Staycation Again, Like We Did Last Summer

This week I began a bit of a staycation, which will extend into the middle of next week.  I’m trying to catch up on a bunch of computer stuff that has been stacking up, with mixed success.  Hopefully I make a bit more progress as it goes on.  But, either way, we should have a longer post next week.

Numeric Driftwood IV

"Hints of Lilac Light"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

At this point, Numeric Driftwood plays in my room nearly constantly: I turn it on shortly after dinner, and it plays until after I get out of the shower the next morning.  It soothes me to sleep at night, and greets me in the morning.  Given that I’m hearing it so often, I figured it only made sense to expand it a bit more.  So here’s a fourth volume of relaxing, sleepytime music.

This is a pretty decent volume in terms of returning artists, if I do say so myself.  Of the three artists who appeared on all three of the previous volumes, only two are back:¹ Angels of Venice and Kitaro.  AoV are here with their seventh appearance on this mix, another track off Forever After² called “Wildflowers.” While all AoV is harp-focussed (harpist Carol Tatum is the founder and only constant member, after all), this one is particularly so: the opening harp solo is about a minute-and-a-half long, backed only by subtle birdsong, and even when the other instruments come in, they’re very much in the background.  It’s a very pretty, soothing piece.  For Kitaro, for his fifth appearance here I finally stray from my favorite album of his, India, to the second album of his that I ever bought: Astral Voyage.  Well, technically, I bought them both at the same time, but it very quickly became apparent to me that India was the superior offering.  But Astral Voyage has a few gems, and “By the Seaside” is one.  As you might imagine from a song called “Seaside” on an album called Astral, this song is a strange hybrid of sitting by the ocean and flying through space, but somehow Kitaro makes it work, which is really just a testament to his fifty years’ experience.  Plus it makes a beautifully seamless transition into “Ocean and Tambura,” by second-time returning artist Anugama.  This song is just what it says on the tin: the calming sound of ocean waves, backed by the subtle strains of a tambura, which is a “drone” instrument.³  At over 8 minutes, this track isn’t as long as “Shaku Sunset” from last volume, but it’s pretty long; happily, that’s irrelevant when the point of the music is to help you drift off to sleep anyway.  

For other other returning artists, Enya and Skydance are back: we missed them last volume, but they now return to provide a welcome Celtic injection into the mainly Far Easter festivities thus far.  Both previous Enya tracks were instrumentals off my favorite album of hers, Shepherd Moons, so I thought I expand my scope a bit here as well.  “Watermark” is the title track off her sophomore album; while Watermark isn’t quite as good as Shepherd Moons, it does contain the amazing “Orinoco Flow,” as well as this pretty, slightly-longer-than-bridge-length instrumental, which flows nicely into “Wildflowers.” For Skyedance, I follow the exact same pattern: while Way Out to Hope Street will always be my favorite of theirs, their follow-up Labyrinth contains this beautiful gem “The Other Side of Sorrow,” which focusses more on Alasdair Fraser’s fiddle than Eric Rigler’s pipes.⁴

And everyone else here is fresh.  Kim Robertson is another harpist, and her music is often described as Celtic, though I find her amazing album Wood, Fire & Gold to be a bit more than that.  I can’t now remember how I discovered her, but “Anamchara” is just the most beautiful, soothing piece you can imagine, with harp backed by strings and some soft, wordless vocals.  Canadian Mychael Danna is perhaps best known as the composer for Life of Pi; with his brother Jeff (also a film and television composer), they produced a couple of albums for Hearts of Space records, and you may recall that’s the label of the show that inspired my modern mixes.⁵  To be sure, HoS is where I first heard excerpts from this album, titled A Celtic Tale: The Legend of Deirdre; “Loch Etive” is a peaceful Celtic instrumental that flows very nicely into Skyedance.

Most of the other new artists are invading from Shadowfall Equinox, most notably Black Tape for a Blue Girl (while uncharacteristically—and surprisingly, given the name—non-sombre track “With a Million Tears” is their first appearance here, they’ve appeared six times on five of the six SfE volumes) and Kevin Keller (one of the artists showcased in the Hearts of Space program Shadowfall II that directly inspired SfE, Keller’s spare piano track “The Lost Father” is just a touch melancholy, but still pretty relaxing).  Another pianist I’ve drawn from for Shadowfall Equinox⁶ is Ruben Garcia; he’s only appeared on SfE twice,⁷ but his mellow piano track “90 Degrees at 7 A.M.” works very nicely here, especially coming directly off the Keller track.  In fact, I seem to have inadvertently created a whole Shadowfall Equinox block:⁸ after the opening pair of ocean-inspired new age tracks, we go into the wind-and-birdsong backed darkwave of “With a Million Tears,” then to Rapoon,⁹ who is normally sort of ethno-ambient, but “Noord” is actually pretty darkwave itself, and thence to the pianists—the Keller is very spare, the Garcia is as well, if a bit synthy, and then on to Tim Story, with a perfect balance of piano and synth in “Scene and Artifact”¹⁰—and then circling back around to the darkwave with some Love Spirals Downwards and their very ambient “Waiting for the Sunrise,”¹¹ and finally fetching up at Julianna Barwick,¹² whose looped and overlaid wordless vocal tracks make something which is tough to categorize, but probably closest to ambient, and who here gives us “Offing,” an echoey track with some angelic voices, and that drops us right into the Celtic centerpiece of the Dannas, Skyedance, and Enya.  Quite a run!

Numeric Driftwood IV
[ Hints of Lilac Light ]

“By the Seaside” by Kitaro, off Astral Voyage
“Ocean and Tambura” by Anugama, off The Lightness of Being [Compilation]
“With a Million Tears” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off Mesmerized by the Sirens
“Noord” by Rapoon, off Cidar
“The Lost Father” by Kevin Keller, off Nocturnes
“90 Degrees at 7 A.M.” by Ruben Garcia, off I Can Feel the Heat Closing In
“Scene and Artifact” by Tim Story, off Threads
“Waiting for the Sunrise” by Love Spirals Downwards, off Idylls [Reissue]
“Offing” by Julianna Barwick, off Nepenthe
“Loch Etive” by Mychael Danna & Jeff Danna, off A Celtic Tale: The Legend of Deirdre
“The Other Side of Sorrow” by Skyedance, off Labyrinth
“Watermark” by Enya, off Watermark
“Wildflowers” by Angels of Venice, off Forever After
“A Gentle Dissolve” by Thievery Corporation, off The Cosmic Game
“Anamchara” by Kim Robertson, off Wood, Fire & Gold
“Stretch Out Your Arms” by Devics, off The Stars at Saint Andrea
“5 More Minutes” by Meaghan Smith, off The Cricket's Orchestra

Total:  17 tracks,  69:28

That only leaves us with the three moderately unexpected tracks.  Thievery Corporation have popped up all over these mixes, from Smokelit Flashback III to Zephyrous Aquamarine I with several stops in between, but you might not expect to hear their Caribbean-flavoured electroworld on a mix of sleepytime music.  And, indeed, “A Gentle Dissolve” almost didn’t make the cut here: it’s got a noticeable electronic beat and even some brass.  But, at the end of the day, the gentle, almost hypnotic synth trills and washes convinced me that it deserved its spot here, close to the closing.

And, speaking of the closing, that brings us to the two closing vocal tracks.  This is a tradition that started with Numeric Driftwood II, and I decided it worked here as well.  For the penultimate song, I chose a Devics track that was less dreampop and more slow and mellow.  (Whether you find it creepy or not probably depends on how closely you listen to the lyrics ...)  Devics of course we’ve seen on Smokelit Flashback,¹³ twice on Darkling Embrace, and once on Dreamscape Perturbation (and that ought to give some idea of where most of their music falls), but also on Shadowfall Equinox III and Porchwell Firetime I.  So “Stretch Out Your Arms” is a bit atypical, but they’re eclectic enough to make it work.

And we wrap up the festivities with normally quite upbeat Meaghan Smith, another artist who’s been all over these mixes: Salsatic Vibrato V, Moonside by Riverlight I and II, Slithy Toves I, and Sirenexiv Cola I.  The closer for her excellent album The Cricket’s Orchestra is “5 More Minutes,” a soft little ballad in which a child begs for a little more time to enjoy the evening.  It’s a beautiful closer, both on her album and on this volume, plus it provides the titles for both as well: “hints of lilac light” is one of the most poetic descriptions of a dusky, twilit sky that I think I’ve ever heard.  A really special closer for this one.

Next time, let’s return to the gaming table.

⇐ Numeric Driftwood III

Numeric Driftwood V ⇒

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1 Satori may show up again one day, but I used every track off his excellent For Relaxation, and I just haven’t gotten another of his albums yet.

2 The previous track from this album was “Starshine Lullabye” which appeared way back on volume I.

3 Other drone instruments include the bagpipes and the shawm.  Also the kazoo.

4 Honestly, if Eric is in there somewhere, I can’t really make him out.

5 And, in particular, Shadowfall Equinox.

6 And who also had a track on the aforementioned Shadowfall II.

7 Specifically, on volumes IV and V.

8 Or maybe I did it vertently and then forgot about it.

9 We first saw Rapoon, and discussed a bit about his origins, on Shadowfall Equinox IV.

10 We first met Tim on Shadowfall Equinox II and then saw him again on Shadowfall Equinox IV.

11 We first encountered LSD on Shadowfall Equinox I, but we’ve also seen them on Smokelit Flashback V, Rose-Coloured Brainpan II, and Candy Apple Shimmer.

12 We’ve actually only heard Julianna so far on Incanto Liturgica, though I’ve no doubt she’ll eventually show up on SfE.

13 Volumes IV, V, and VI.

A bit of a cliché, but true nonetheless

While I’m not in general fond of “man it sucks getting old” posts, I do have to say that, of late, I definitely have been feeling my age.  Nothing major in the health department, really ... just your standard quantity of aches and pains that inevitably come with the wearing out of joints and the brittleness of bones.  There’s nothing to be done about it, per se, but I’m not sure I really need to do anything about it.  Overall, I’m fairly lucky, so I feel a bit ungrateful whining about the advancing years.  As they say, it’s better than the alternative.  Still, ...

Getting old does kinda suck.  Sometimes.

Whither Animals?

I’ve spoken many times on this blog of my love of animals and my opinions on ”pets.” But lately I’ve started to think about a trend that is happening in our society.

When I was young, I went to countless zoos, and circuses, and animal parks, and aquariums, and marine mammal shows.  Much of what I knew and learned about animals, I learned from those experiences: sometimes directly, sometimes because I was inspired to seek out knowledge after seeing some animal or other in person.  I would never trade away those memories.

However, it’s completely fair to point out that many of the animals I took such pleasure in watching and learning about were miserable.  Today, the circuses are completely gone,^* thanks to numerous articles; marine mammal shows will soon disappear for good, thanks to documentaries such as Blackfish; and societal changes mean that even zoos are on the decline, according to many sources.  And I’m not saying any of these things are bad.  Certainly the terrible treatment of animals in circuses and marine mammals in parks such as SeaWorld makes me believe that such places do more harm than good.  I’m sure all those marshmallows we fed the hippo in Homosassa Springs weren’t very good for his digestion (although, miraculously, he appears to still be alive as I write this).  As for zoos ...

When I was young, there was a book at my grandparents’ house called How the Animals Get to the Zoo.  Published a few years before I was born, I assume it was bought for me, though I can’t remember specifically being given it as a gift.  I do remember that, even as a child, I was more horrified than fascinated at the examples given in this book, which ranged from throwing nets on zebras from a helicopter to taking ostriches down with bolas.  Also plenty of spring traps and tranquilizer darts and other very disturbing imagery.  So I am not insensitive to the idea that zoos are not always good for animals.

Still ...

My youngest child has never seen a circus, and she almost certainly never will.  She’s never seen a marine mammal show, and, while it’s possible that she might one day, it’s pretty unlikely (certainly it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever take her to one).  She’s been to a few zoos and aquariums, and maybe an animal park or two (or maybe not; I can’t think of a specific visit), but there’s no doubt that she has far less real-life experience of animals than I did.  Of course, there’s more instantly availble video of animals than I could have ever dreamed of as a child; YouTube alone allows me to show her any animal I happen to mention within minutes, if not seconds; if we ever idly wonder “what sounds does a <fill in animal here> make?” then it’s a simple Google search to turn up a soundfile or video that will settle the question.  But is it the same?  I can’t help but wonder.

PETA in particular is very much opposed to any sort of system where animals are kept for the entertainment of humans.  But, if humans never experience animals in any other context than as images on a screen, will they care about preserving them?  Sometimes I think that PETA is going to end up causing the eventual extinction of many species just because people won’t recognize them well enough to give a shit when they’re endangered.  There are always unintended consequences.

In fact, studying the Wikipedia page for “unintended consequnces” is quite instructive.  In China in the late 50s, sparrows were identified as pests who ate 4kg of rice grains per year—each.  So the government put sparrows in their “Four Pests” campaign, and millions of them were killed.  Of course, sparrows eat insects too.  By the 60s, “with no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned” ... and guess what locusts eat?  “The Chinese government eventually resorted to importing 250,000 sparrows from the Soviet Union to replenish their population.” As for the “Four Pests,” sparrows were replaced with bedbugs: yet another insect that, as it turns out, the sparrows were keeping under control, until their near-extinction.

Then there’s the Great Plague of London.  “The means of transmission of the disease were not known but thinking they might be linked to the animals, the City Corporation ordered a cull of dogs and cats.  This decision may have affected the length of the epidemic since those animals could have helped keep in check the rat population carrying the fleas which transmitted the disease.” And then of course there are the classic biocontrol-gone-awry stories, such as the Australian cane toad, which was supposed to control the grey-backed cane beetle, and ended up killing countless pets and endangering anywhere from 70 to 100 other species.

I miss some of these methods of exhibiting animals, even as I feel glad that fewer animals are suffering because of their decline.  But those unintended consequences are always impossible to identify, except in hindsight.  Will my children even have the chance to fall in love with animals in the way I did?  I can’t say.  I do what I can—taking them to whatever places are left that I believe are treating their animals in an ethical manner, watching nature documentaries with them, introducing obscure animals into games of “20 Questions,” and never failing to stop what I’m doing to bring up a video on YouTube if I think it can add to a conversation—but I never know if it will be enough.  And I think it will be important for this next generation: important for them to think of animals as awe-inspiring, as fascinating, as worthy of preservation, just as I always have.  If they don’t, if animals are just “ho-hum” or “yeah, I guess they’re okay” or “I suppose they’re fine, but they don’t really impact me” ... if they don’t realize how interconnected everything is, and how those unintended consequences can start falling like dominoes, then it might be too late to change course by the time someone realizes things have gone too far.

So, maybe it’s better that we have fewer zoos, and circuses, and all that.  Maybe animals are better off.  But wouldn’t it be a strange twist of fate if animals ended up suffering more because we are systematically removing all the places where people who live in the city and the suburbs used to interact with them?  I hope that’s not what ends up happening.  But I don’t know.  And I think maybe I’m happy I wasn’t born 40 years later than I was.

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* Unless you count things like Cirque du Soleil.  Which, you know, I don’t.