Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air

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[Bubble Wrap]

a stimulating ambient atmosphere of swirling colored spheres

[Bubble Wrap]

this ones been around for awhile
orignal version from 1967

[Bubble Wrap]

Originally Posted by Bubble Wrap

this ones been around for awhile
orignal version from 1967

edit 1965
somewhere in the mid 60's, I'm close at least

[Iris]

Oh, please let it end. This is too hyper for ambient.

[Bubble Wrap]

more like psychedlic rock than ambient

[Iris]

Argh! This is way, way too hyper for ambient. Oh, my ears...

[Baxxxter]

ouch ... makes my ears hurt

no thx ...... just no thx

[Baxxxter]

gah... thas it im out of here gonna change channel .. cant take this !!! its to much for even e

[KeSs]

possibly the worst track i have heard.....ever....remove ASAP

[Francis Vaughan]

It is really nice to hear stuff from guy's like Terry Riley. This is important work from a serious modern composer. But yes, it really isn't ambient. Terry would probably be puzzled if anyone suggested it was.

There is a lot of stuff out there in modern music land that would be interesting to play here. Actually the obvious omission of any Philip Glass, is one, but that might polarise opinions more than most. But some Gavin Bryars would be interesting. John Adams' Grand Pianola Suite too.

[Iris]

I'd really like some Philip Glass. I think I mentioned it in the other Terry Riley thread.

Yes, Terry Riley is important, because he showed what can be done with a synth, but I still don't think it's music. And no, as you said, it's not ambient.

We need an "experimental" channel here. (And then maybe we can have some Philip Glass at last if we can't have it on this channel? )

*edit* oh, but not Einstein on the Beach. The badly accented talking on that drives me to distraction. But even as I write, I'm listening to Philip Glass' violin concerto. Although that's too classical for this channel...there's a lot that is nice though, both old and new.

[Francis Vaughan]

This channel does seem to be a bit of a dumping ground for experimental stuff, and whilst some is good, there is a real problem when it really really isn't ambient. I get quite fed up with some of the tracks that cycle around. Pet hates include sampled voices, especially sampled bits of film dialogue. Exactly why that fits any sort of definition of ambient is quite beyond me. I'm quite happy to have it put under experimental, but when I want ambient I do not expect to hear screaming girls and gunshots (for one.)

Einstein on the Beach. Yup, I have that on CD - the first version. It was that that made me realise the issue with accents. Philip Glass is blind to the grating horror which is the New Yorker accents on that recording. I attended a local production of EotB recently. It was quite superb. There is no doubt that it is intended to be a theatrical experience. It all makes perfect sense then. And the accents were local - so I didn't hear them :-)

[Iris]

I know what you mean about really clear and disturbing samples. That sort of thing definitely isn't ambient. (Why do I think you are referring to Woob - Strange Air? Actually, I like that, BUT not when I want ambient. I like it when I want "experimental.")

There are times when I believe that voices -- even disturbing voices such as in a fight or a riot -- are ambient. This is when they are mixed well into the music and don't stand out. I don't believe that ambient is always the same as relaxing: for me it means music that blends with an environment (usually the relaxing kind) OR music that creates an impression of an environment -- and that may include crowd sounds or even a disturbance of some sort -- as long as it's happening in the distance and not right next to me, as it were. In those cases, I can drift and pretend there's just a crowd somewhere around, but I don't have to pay attention if I don't want. Otherwise, I can "eavesdrop" on various members of the crowd. It depends on my mood.

If the voices demand attention even if I don't want to give that attention, then it's not ambient, it's experimental.

Those are my opinions.

[Francis Vaughan]

I pretty much agree with your definitions. Indeed the phrase "demand attention" really nails it. I think Brian Eno used a similar phrase in the very early days of his ambient works to help describe the idea.

Ambient should never demand attention. It should reward attention, but never demand it. Voices that are clear and forward in the mix demand attention like no other sound. Our brains are wired this way. The thing I hate is the way a voice starts our mental processes of semantic analysis going. This isn't a musical reaction.

There are very good uses of sampled voice, one of my favourite early ones would be Brian Eno and David Byne's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts". Also the track NY3 from Robert Fripp's Exposure. Nothing more than samples of two people have a bit of a domestic argument underpinned by Robert's edgy guitar. It works very well. But I would shudder to have it played here.

A favourite work that mixes film track samples and bits of radio samples is Simon Fisher Turner's 'Nadja" soundtrack. He uses these samples in a very intelligent and restrained manner. Unlike the heavy handed blundering of some of the tracks we do hear here. Nadja would go well here.

[ThePro]

I like it... But yes, this is not ambient.. But it's nice anyway

[Baxxxter]

Philip Glass i can take but not this ... its to far out

[Bubble Wrap]

Originally Posted by Baxxxter

Philip Glass i can take but not this ... its to far out

this is too far out for you??
this is easy listening compared to some of the weird shit i've heard.
and saying a track is bad because its on the wrong channel is not an argument

[Sweep]

I've just found this thread while Googling for interesting forums using Terry Riley as bait.

I agree with the last poster - Rainbow seems hardly `far out.' But the minimalist approach may be a bit hard to take for people who aren't used to that.

I'm puzzled about the problems with fitting Riley into a genre for these forums - and similarly with Philip Glass. Both would surely fit most easily into a minimalist section of the forum, and there is in fact such a section here.

But that leads to another point - the contemporary fixation with genres. Why not just let it be music and relate to it exactly as it is, without having to put it in some safe kind of box?

One other thing - the second side of the original album is totally different from A Rainbow in Curved Air. Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band is slower, slowly evolving and not rhythmic the way Rainbow is. Trying to force it into an Ambient genre still may not help, but it's worth bearing in mind that Riley took two quite different approaches to music based on repeated structures on this album.

[nox-o-lan]

banausen! too less whale in it...
meeemoooriiies!!!