Electronic Music, Writing, and Reviews

From what you see here, it's been more than a year since I posted to "Sound Words." I've done a lot of listening and connecting since then, and so I think it's time I started this music blog up again. If I do more connecting, then I might actually get people to read it.

Ambient music continues to flourish in its narrow niche. The Internet has made this flourishing possible. Without the almighty Network, ambient creators would still be mailing cassettes to each other and calling each other up on the phone (The type with wires coming out of it). The high-speed network allows composers and artists to share music, commentary, technical knowledge, and gossip, all over the world. It is now ordinary to talk online (through typed-in chat messages or even video conferencing) with people you will never meet in countries you will never visit. And it's also ordinary (though I think it's some sort of miracle) to send music over the Net and listen to live concerts on streaming audio.

Lest you think I am being silly, you must remember that twenty years ago this whole thing didn't exist. In 1990, and all the way through most of that decade, internet was slow and subject to even more failures than it is now. I was on dial-up service for at least five years before I got cable. High-speed broadband net has made all the difference in the world for music listeners of all kinds. Including ambient.

I belong to an ambient music community which meets online. Face-to-face contact and jamming happens rarely, usually no more than once a year. Yet we are talking to each other and sharing music almost every night through the means of an audio stream and a chatroom. Typed messages, limited as they are, can build solid friendships and enhance creativity. The chatroom accompanies live DJ's who play music over the internet radio station that is the main attraction for this community. That is Stillstream.com.

Stillstream was founded in March of 2005 as a place to showcase ambient music which would otherwise not be heard in any commercial broadcast. The founder is Darrell Burgan, a tireless software engineer, family man, and electronic music artist who goes by the net-name "Palancar," after a reef in Mexico that he used to dive to. From his home in Texas, and almost entirely out of his own pocket, he maintains this rich resource on behalf of the ambient music community. Not only is there a 24-hour continuous stream of music available on internet broadcast, but there are live DJ shows at night (USA time, that is), live online concerts, and a chatroom for ambient fans to socialize in. Stillstream has grown to be a "social network" for ambient fans and as a constant visitor, I think of it as a place I can always find friends to talk with about one of my favorite subjects, music.

Another really good thing about Stillstream, and in general about the ambient community, is that many of the people involved are ambient creators themselves. Very few genres of music have this much closeness between artist, composer, and listener. Classical music lovers will hardly ever be friends with their favorite conductor or soloist, and rock fans even less likely. But in ambient, you will most likely be chatting online with the very artist whose music you are listening to. So there is an intimacy to ambient fandom that is unusual in the music world. The other side of that intimacy is that if you say something too negative or critical, the artist knows right away and can get mad at you. I have had this happen! Even if there is no chatroom involved, someone will refer a negative review to the artist over the instant communication of the Net and the miffed composer will get back to you with an angry e-mail.

So you must be careful in the glass house of ambient and in this Blog I intend to observe care and awareness that whoever I review might just be reading what I write. There is so much good ambient music out there in the electronic world that I don't really need to pick anything I'd say negative remarks about. So this renewed Blog will have plenty of reviews of new and even older releases. I will also be talking about artists and their "body of work", and bringing new artists into view. I don't intend to talk about just ambient, either. I'm a big classical listener so there will be plenty of classical music talk as well. And you never know when I might drop a line about bluegrass or jazz or ethnic music….or something completely different.

Stay tuned, ambinauts and ambientfans, and I hope you will enjoy my postings here on "Altocumulus Sound Words."

Posted at 11:24 pm | link