"Oceans of Storm Clouds"
[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 contiguou
Last volume I noted that Shadowfall Equinox was catching up to Salsatic Vibrato in terms of number of volumes. And, with this latest one, they’re officially tied. Realistically, I think SfE may hit a volume IX before SVb does. We shall see.
As I said last time, the primary reason is that Equinox is what I use for background music when I work, and this volume is no exception to that. And, as usual when getting to these large numbers of volumes, the challenge is to bring something fresh to the mix without abandoning the dependable artists that have been with us on every volume. Let’s see how we did.
In the category of repeating artists, there’s one who has been on every volume, and two who have been on every volume but one, and they’re all three here. The inimitable Jeff Greinke is certainly back, with an album we haven’t heard from yet on this mix: Winter Light.1 “Mountain in the Clouds” is the same drifting, ethereal ambient that we’ve come to expect from Greinke, but this album has more of a brittle, crisp feeling, as the seasonal reference in its title implies. Still, I feel this particular track works in a more autumnal setting, which is what this mix is all about. As for pianist Kevin Keller,2 “Stillness” is a melancholy, cello-heavy piece that’s pretty perfect for the mix. And, finally, darkwave masters Black Tape for a Blue Girl3 also provide a cello-heavy piece, “Fitful.” This is a particularly ambient track for Rosenthal, with the occasional crescendo of what might be brass (or just synth), and the gentle, almost unnoticeable, wordless vocals of an uncredited female singer.
Other returning artists include Ruben Garcia (seen on volumes IV, V, and VII) and Ludovico Einaudi (seen on volume VI), whom I paired back to back so that Einaudi’s spare piano on “In Principio” could highlight Garcia’s departure from that style with some fuller, synthy work on “Five Dreams from Yesterday” (which really sounds more like Greinke than Garcia’s normal output); Dead Can Dance and Loreena McKennitt (who I paird on volume V), here again with a touch of worldmusic: on V, I used McKennitt followed by DCD as an opener, whereas here I’ve followed DCD’s somber “Agape” with McKennitt’s beautiful “Tango to Evora” as our closer; and, last but not least, cellist Jami Sieber (seen on volume IV).
Cello, in fact, is a pretty common instrument for this mix: we’ve heard not only from Sieber before, but also cellist David Darling and groups like Amber Asylum and Angels of Venice who feature full-time cellists. Plus various guest cellists: Martin McGarrick on This Mortal Coil tracks, Audrey Riley on Hope Blister tracks, and Mera Roberts on several Black Tape for a Blue Girl songs. Here, I’ve put together a solid block of cello music as our centerpiece: 5 songs in a row, and I kick it off with Eugene Friesen. He’s a recent find for me, which explains why we haven’t seen him here yet, but he’s been around since the 80s, and I think he may become a regular here. For his debut on this mix, I’ve chose the title track from his 2005 album In the Shade of Angels, a very spare, not-quite-melancholy, ultimately gorgeous instrumental to kick off the block. From there we go into the melancholy track from the Kevin Keller Ensemble (including Clarice Jensen on cello), and then to Colm McGuinness, who we’ve mostly seen in this series as a purveyor of gaming music: his “Welcome to Wildemount” is the explosive opener of Eldritch Ætherium II, and he has one more track there as well as one on the following volume. But he’s also an excellent cellist (as well as playing many other instruments) and “Koala” is a sweeping yet still tenebrous track that is perfect for the midpoint of this block. Then we hit Sieber, who is surely my favorite cellist of all time, with “The Burning Dawn” from 2013’s Timeless. It’s an anticipatory track, though it’s not clear exactly what the listener is waiting for. But it carries us sedately to the block closer, BTfaBG’s “Fitful.” Frequent contributor Mera Roberts plays the cello here, and the light, wordless vocals may well be Roberts herself, who provides vocals as well as cello for her other two projects.4 She’s very talented, and lifts this BTfaBG track to a level of sublime I don’t think it could otherwise achieve.
And, speaking of blocks of tracks, I close out the mix with a fun triad of worldmusic, starting with Thievery Corporation’s “Indra.” The DC-based Corporation is normally too upbeat for this mix: we normally see them in places like Smokelit Flashback (volumes III and V), Paradoxically Sized World (volumes I and IV), and Apparently World. Still, we also heard from them on Zephyrous Aquamarine and even once on Numeric Driftwood (volume IV), so we know they can do mellow when the mood calls for it. And “Indra,” while it maintains a decently strong hip-hop beat, really brings the dreamy trip-hop with some Middle Eastern flair. Then to “Agape,” continuing the Middle Eastern theme with what is probably an oud and a qanun, layered with more of Lisa Gerrard’s powerful vocals, singing in a language which might be Earthly or might be just Gerrard’s glossolalia. And we close with McKennitt’s “Tango to Evora,” which starts out with a simple flamenco-style guitar and then layers on violin, harp, and finally McKennitt’s angelic wordless vocals. A gentle, soothing track which makes for an amazing closer.
Once again, we’re quite short on lyrics to draw a volume title from, so I used the now-typical method in such situations (that is, I plucked words from various song titles and glued them together). I actually really like this particular one.
[ Oceans of Storm Clouds ]
“Oceans of Change” by Stray Theories, off Oceans, Volume 1 [EP]5
“Tanaris” by Tracy W. Bush, off World of Warcraft Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Aquarium” by Casino Versus Japan, off Whole Numbers Play the Basics
“Stay with Me” by Clint Mansell, off The Fountain [Soundtrack]
“In Principio” by Ludovico Einaudi, off Nightbook
“Five Dreams from Yesterday” by Ruben Garcia, off Lakeland
“Riders on the Storm” by Yonderboi [Single]
“In the Shade of Angels” by Eugene Friesen, off In the Shade of Angels
“Stillness” by Kevin Keller, off In Absentia
“Koala” by Colm R. McGuinness [Single]
“The Burning Dawn” by Jami Sieber, off Timeless
“Fitful” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off Remnants of a Deeper Purity
“Mountain in the Clouds” by Jeff Greinke, off Winter Light
“Seelenlos” by Scabeater, off Necrology
“Indra” by Thievery Corporation, off The Mirror Conspiracy
“Agape” by Dead Can Dance, off Anastasis
“Tango to Evora” by Loreena McKennitt, off The Visit
Clint Mansell’s beautiful if haunting score for The Fountain makes its first appearance here; “Stay with Me” is a slow, synthy track that seems to have ghostly tones in its background. The World of Warcraft soundtrack also makes its first appearance outsdide Eldritch Ætherium, where I used two of Jason Hayes’ tracks on volume III. This is a Tracy W. Bush composition, “Tanaris,” which also has a very haunted quality, as well as sounding somewhat oceanic. I thought it might be a bit too much to put those two back to back, so I broke them up with an interesting track I found while looking for different versions of Saint-Saëns’ “Aquarium.”6 This track of the same name by Casino Versus Japan (the musical moniker of Wisconsin electronica artist Erik Paul Kowalski) has nothing to do with the piece from Le Carnaval des Animaux, but it’s a great, underwatery ambient/downtempo piece that I’m glad to have stumbled onto by accident.
For the rest, there’s nothing too unexpected here. Stray Theories is a cinematic and electronica project by New Zealand artist Micah Templeton-Wolfe; “Oceans of Change” is a gorgeous ambient piece that flows insanely well off of our opener and sets us up for the more cinematic tracks to come. That opener, of course, is the exquisitely named Mountain Goats’ track “For the West Coast Dark Ambient Bedroom Warriors,” which is, as the Brits would say, exactly what it says on the tin. John Darnielle’s long-running (since 1994) project is musically eclectic, and was originally a one-man affair, though by the time of 2017’s Goths, he was opening up to more long-term bandmates. This amazingly spare track is, as its name suggests, the epitome of what this mix is all about, so the second I heard it I knew it had to be a volume opener. It’s a bit of a departure for the Mountain Goats, but then you can say that about most of their songs, so it starts to become meaningless after a while.
And that just leaves us with a small bridge from Scabeater, a band not only so obscure that neither AllMusic nor Wikipedia know they exis
And that just leaves us with perhaps the oddest choice, Hungarian producer László Fogarasi Jr., better known as Yonderboi, who here graces us with an instrumental, jazzy-to-the-point-of-being-loungy version of “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors. I love the original track (it is almost certainly my favorite Doors song), and something about this offbeat cover really caught my ear. It takes the song in a completely different direction (as all the best covers do) and is somehow faithful to its inspiration while also being a completely new song. I’ve drug it around through several volumes of this mix, never quite finding the perfect placement for it, until it finally managed to land here. Its Hammond-organ-style melody flows beautifully off the fading synth of Garcia’s “Five Dreams,” and it serves as the perfect palate cleanser before we leap into the 5-cello block of Friesen / Keller / McGuinness / Sieber / BTfaBG. I’m glad I finally found it a home.
Next time, we’ll look at some more creativity-inducing gaming music.
1 Although I used “Orographic” from that album on Mystical Memoriam.
2 Seen on every volume except the first.
3 Seen on every volume except IV.
4 Mera is half of Mercurine, a third-wave goth band that occupies the same space between goth and industrial as Faith and the Muse, and all of Oblivia, a cello-driven dark ambient project reminiscent of Amber Asylum, but with more vocals. Both are relatively unknown, and both undeservedly so.
5 You guys know how much I hate to link to YouTube, but I can’t find anywhere else to get this song.
6 I used one version on Classical Plasma I and one on Phantasma Chorale I.
7 I may have to invent a new term ... super duper obscure band, perhaps?
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