( This was copied from http://www.soniccuriosity.com )
THINGS THAT OCCUR IN NATURE: Snow Flower (CD on TTOIN)
This release from 2010 offers 32 minutes of gentle electronic music.
Keyboards conspire with rhythms and strings to generate lovely tunes of soothing temperament.
Keyboards play a vital role in this music, establishing twinkling leads backed by dreamy textural layers. Agile fingers guide the keys in engaging melodies that sparkle with a lively sense combined with a distinctly congenial attitude. A marked versatility is often applied to the overall timbre of the notes produced by the keys, ranging from haunting to spry, resulting in a nicely rounded out sound.
Guitars contribute a selection of gentle riffs as auxiliary threads in conjunction with the keyboards. Sometimes the instrument is electric with a searing voice; at other occasions the guitar is acoustic and delivers a holistic edge to the flow; and there are instances in which electric strumming achieves a soothing disposition.
Percussion supplies slick rhythms that provide suitable locomotion: not too obtrusive, not too minimal.
These compositions are short, thus affording the melodies a focus not diluted by digressing variations. While the title track begins with a subtle darkness that eventually blossoms into optimistic daylight, the album's general mood is one of contemplation with a touch of sprightly animation.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Is Boredom a Good Thing? (for Film buffs and seekers)
I thought this was interesting and profound and honestly, something I struggle with every day. ie; making sure that I take a little quiet time. No computer, no music playing, not TV, no iPhone, etc... It's interesting how broad and narrow this concept can be intertwined with our everyday life. This below applies more specifically Film and was taken from Scott Macaulay's letter from the editor in Filmmaker Magazine .
"I was reading Bob Lefsetz’s email yesterday and came across this:"It's hard to make sense of the world. Used to be there was a dearth of information. I remember going to college and being bored. That would be impossible today. What with every movie and song ever created at my fingertips on the Internet. But with so much information available, people are overwhelmed. They can't make sense of it." I'm old enough to remember being bored too -- those times when there really was nothing on, when your record collection seemed sucky, when that one alternative radio show that turned you onto the new stuff wasn't on for another six days. You needed a media fix, a blast of something inspiring in its newness, and you simply couldn’t get it. You were bored.
Of course, there are other forms of boredom. There are the deeper, more soul-crushing, more existentially challenging sorts. And then there’s the boredom of some great art. I remember being in a college lit class with the late, great Edward Said. The book assigned was Henry James' The Europeans, and none of us had read it. Said exploded at our sloth before finally admitting, "Look, it's a very boring book, I know, but it’s a great book, an important book."
Lefsetz's comment struck me because I've just come back from a film festival and it made me think of the relationship between boredom and cinephilia. I saw lots of great, non-boring films in Toronto. I especially liked Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, Danny Boyle's 127 Hours, Jerzy Skolimowski's Essential Killing, Sophie Fiennes' Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow and Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murikami's Norwegian Wood. None of these films were boring. But I did see some films that were. There were boring films that by not insistently foregrounding a narrative deliberately allowed the viewer to drift in his own mind, like some Situationist "speculative pleasureseeker" exploring the streets of a city. And then there were the films whose subject matters were important ones, and making them flashier and more entertaining would have been untruthful. I may have been a little bored but I respected the sobriety of the filmmakers and was happy they didn’t cheapen their material.
My point here is that if you are scared of boredom, or if your neural pathways have been so rewired that you need fixes of "interesting," then it's hard to discover new cinema. It's hard to be a cinephile if you need narrative excitement in every thing you see, and it's hard to be excited about finding new work if you don't accept boredom as the cost of doing business. Of course, you can wait for everyone else to tell you what's good and only see that, but to sift through the unfamiliar to find that life-changing gem you have to be prepared to spend time with yourself, to allow what's on screen to trigger thoughts in yourself, and to suspend what I fear is an increasingly prevalent reflex to reach for your iPhone or, worse, leave the theater or turn the channel. To quote Aldous Huxley, "Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty -- his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom when it comes, not merely philosophically but almost with pleasure."
"I was reading Bob Lefsetz’s email yesterday and came across this:"It's hard to make sense of the world. Used to be there was a dearth of information. I remember going to college and being bored. That would be impossible today. What with every movie and song ever created at my fingertips on the Internet. But with so much information available, people are overwhelmed. They can't make sense of it." I'm old enough to remember being bored too -- those times when there really was nothing on, when your record collection seemed sucky, when that one alternative radio show that turned you onto the new stuff wasn't on for another six days. You needed a media fix, a blast of something inspiring in its newness, and you simply couldn’t get it. You were bored.
Of course, there are other forms of boredom. There are the deeper, more soul-crushing, more existentially challenging sorts. And then there’s the boredom of some great art. I remember being in a college lit class with the late, great Edward Said. The book assigned was Henry James' The Europeans, and none of us had read it. Said exploded at our sloth before finally admitting, "Look, it's a very boring book, I know, but it’s a great book, an important book."
Lefsetz's comment struck me because I've just come back from a film festival and it made me think of the relationship between boredom and cinephilia. I saw lots of great, non-boring films in Toronto. I especially liked Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, Danny Boyle's 127 Hours, Jerzy Skolimowski's Essential Killing, Sophie Fiennes' Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow and Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murikami's Norwegian Wood. None of these films were boring. But I did see some films that were. There were boring films that by not insistently foregrounding a narrative deliberately allowed the viewer to drift in his own mind, like some Situationist "speculative pleasureseeker" exploring the streets of a city. And then there were the films whose subject matters were important ones, and making them flashier and more entertaining would have been untruthful. I may have been a little bored but I respected the sobriety of the filmmakers and was happy they didn’t cheapen their material.
My point here is that if you are scared of boredom, or if your neural pathways have been so rewired that you need fixes of "interesting," then it's hard to discover new cinema. It's hard to be a cinephile if you need narrative excitement in every thing you see, and it's hard to be excited about finding new work if you don't accept boredom as the cost of doing business. Of course, you can wait for everyone else to tell you what's good and only see that, but to sift through the unfamiliar to find that life-changing gem you have to be prepared to spend time with yourself, to allow what's on screen to trigger thoughts in yourself, and to suspend what I fear is an increasingly prevalent reflex to reach for your iPhone or, worse, leave the theater or turn the channel. To quote Aldous Huxley, "Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty -- his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom when it comes, not merely philosophically but almost with pleasure."
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Email Trick
While this blog post has nothing to do with ambient Music or Things That Occur In Nature,
it has been an extremely useful tip to me so I thought I would share it.
Have you ever found that between your spam, email lists that you thought you would have time to read- and all those millionaires that want to borrow your bank account for a few days that your email IN box is simply overwhelming? I'm not sure if I hold the world record or anything but until today, my email IN box contained 34,331 messages- 26,832 of which were unread. With Mac Mail, searching is easy and fast (kindof like Eudora) it's all indexed and you can search for any keyword and easily find messages. So, if I wanted to look up all the Mix Magazine articles; type in Mix and scroll. Still though, Thirty One Thousand Messages is a bit out of hand. So, my solution to get back to a nice clean, Zen-like empty mailbox? Simply create an additional mailbox called INBOX 2. I then select all the messages in my IN box and drag them (or transfer in Macmail) to INBOX 2.
Voila! Done. So now, if I want to look for that email from the record label where they promised they would put me in the same room with Brain Eno, I search for Brian Eno and....there it is.
I am finding now that I am not only deleting unneeded messages faster but also unsubscribing to junk emails. It just all seems a bit more manageable now.
Try it, if it works or if you have a similar organizational tip, let me know here!
it has been an extremely useful tip to me so I thought I would share it.
Have you ever found that between your spam, email lists that you thought you would have time to read- and all those millionaires that want to borrow your bank account for a few days that your email IN box is simply overwhelming? I'm not sure if I hold the world record or anything but until today, my email IN box contained 34,331 messages- 26,832 of which were unread. With Mac Mail, searching is easy and fast (kindof like Eudora) it's all indexed and you can search for any keyword and easily find messages. So, if I wanted to look up all the Mix Magazine articles; type in Mix and scroll. Still though, Thirty One Thousand Messages is a bit out of hand. So, my solution to get back to a nice clean, Zen-like empty mailbox? Simply create an additional mailbox called INBOX 2. I then select all the messages in my IN box and drag them (or transfer in Macmail) to INBOX 2.
Voila! Done. So now, if I want to look for that email from the record label where they promised they would put me in the same room with Brain Eno, I search for Brian Eno and....there it is.
I am finding now that I am not only deleting unneeded messages faster but also unsubscribing to junk emails. It just all seems a bit more manageable now.
Try it, if it works or if you have a similar organizational tip, let me know here!
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Now available on iTunes, Amazon, Napster etc..
We are excited to announce that The new release from Things That Occur In Nature - titled "Snow Flower" is now available at iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody etc. The CD will be available at Amazon, June 15th.
If you like, Sigur Ros, The Album Leaf, Four Tet, My Bloody Valentine, etc..you will dig this post rock, ambient music.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Sky
If you like, Sigur Ros, The Album Leaf, Four Tet, My Bloody Valentine, etc..you will dig this post rock, ambient music.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Sky
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Apple is Shutting Lala Down!
OK. for those of you that have not found the most awesome music purchasing/listening site on the 'net yet, let me tell you why Lala.com was epic.
1st- Lala let you preview the full single, album, etc. one full time at full rez with out dropping a penny before you bought it. I can't tell you how many times I would sit down in my studio while doing work (that did not require me to listen to audio) and using Lala to preview a new album while blogging, tweeting, facebooking, etc.. This is the only site that I know of that had that kind of variety and catalog that would let you do this. You search, press the play button and go. Which brings me to-
2nd- The interface was super easy to use. Good search features, clearly labeled with little mess.
They must have taken some lessons from Google.
3rd- If you wanted to buy a stream only version, you could for .10. This rocked for stuff that I did not need to download and/or knew that I was not going to take portable.
4th- If you were going to buy, they were the least expensive. As an indie music artist, I am all for us getting paid for our art. Competitive pricing can really sway the buyer one way or another.
5th-Playlists were easy to setup and you could upload your own music!
I'm sad to see Lala go. There are alot of differing views as to what Apple is up to.
If you used Lala and have an opinion or want to add to why you liked Lala, please leave a comment. Let's Shout out to Apple the features that we would like to have if they bring this back as part of iTunes.
Sky
1st- Lala let you preview the full single, album, etc. one full time at full rez with out dropping a penny before you bought it. I can't tell you how many times I would sit down in my studio while doing work (that did not require me to listen to audio) and using Lala to preview a new album while blogging, tweeting, facebooking, etc.. This is the only site that I know of that had that kind of variety and catalog that would let you do this. You search, press the play button and go. Which brings me to-
2nd- The interface was super easy to use. Good search features, clearly labeled with little mess.
They must have taken some lessons from Google.
3rd- If you wanted to buy a stream only version, you could for .10. This rocked for stuff that I did not need to download and/or knew that I was not going to take portable.
4th- If you were going to buy, they were the least expensive. As an indie music artist, I am all for us getting paid for our art. Competitive pricing can really sway the buyer one way or another.
5th-Playlists were easy to setup and you could upload your own music!
I'm sad to see Lala go. There are alot of differing views as to what Apple is up to.
If you used Lala and have an opinion or want to add to why you liked Lala, please leave a comment. Let's Shout out to Apple the features that we would like to have if they bring this back as part of iTunes.
Sky
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