"Shadow Memories" for headphones
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NEW IMMERSIVE BINAURAL AND
DOLBY ATMOS™ TRACK
This track is an extension of “Enhanced Surround(ings)”. "Shadow Memories" was originally released as "Shadow Memory" on the EP "The Outside Inside" a few years ago. In listening to it, I realized that the mix sounded unfinished. I took the original multitrack and remixed it into multiple stems, and then sent it to engineer Chris Perry in Toronto. He did both the Dolby Atmos™ mix and and mastering, including an enhanced binaural version. He did an awesome job, and I am now finally happy with the sound! Research shows that it's possible to have clear and distinct memories of things that never happened. Are these shadow memories?
The binaural stereo format (using enhanced tools in addition to the standard Dolby Renderer) is available on streaming services and Bandcamp. The Dolby Atmos™ versions are available digitally from: IAA - Immersive Audio Album as both ADM and mp4 files. With both headphones and Dolby Atmos™ versions the immersive experience is available to more listeners.
PLEASE NOTE: BINAURAL VERSIONS ARE INTENDED SOLELY FOR HEADPHONE LISTENING, SPATIAL EFFECTS WILL BE LOST OR INACCURATE IF PLAYED ON SPEAKERS. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording
"Enhanced Surround(ings)" for Headphones
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NEW IMMERSIVE BINAURAL AND DOLBY ATMOS™ MIXES/VERSIONS of tracks from MW Gilbert and featuring Adam Holzman
I previously released remixed versions of the first three tracks of "Saṃsāra" as an EP - “Surround(ings)”. This project made me realize how much I like immersive music but have been frustrated with restrictions on Dolby Atmos™ releases by streaming services. I decided that I would do a project that added additional tracks, and in two formats: all tracks released both as mastered binaural stereo and in Dolby Atmos™ format.
“Enhanced Surround(ings)” comprises eight new binaural stereo headphone versions and Dolby Atmos™ versions of previously released tracks. The first three tracks of "Saṃsāra", featuring Adam Holzman, were remixed into multiple stems, and sent to engineer Chris Perry in Toronto. He did the Dolby Atmos™ mixes, and then Oli Morgan at Abbey Road mastered them. The additional solo tracks from other projects were both mixed in Dolby Atmos™ and mastered for binaural stereo by Chris.
The binaural stereo format (using enhanced tools in addition to the standard Dolby Renderer) is available on streaming services and Bandcamp. The Dolby Atmos™ versions are available digitally from: IAA - Immersive Audio Album as both ADM and mp4 files. With both headphones and Dolby Atmos™ versions the immersive experience is available to more listeners.
PLEASE NOTE: BINAURAL VERSIONS ARE INTENDED SOLELY FOR HEADPHONE
LISTENING, SPATIAL EFFECTS WILL BE LOST OR INACCURATE IF PLAYED ON SPEAKERS.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording.
Mastered by Chris Perry & Oli Morgan
Vinyl 50% off!
"VOICE PING STRUM" vinyl LP
I've decided that I am no longer going to be stocking vinyl LPs. The last release on LP still available is "Voice Ping Strum". I am offering it on sale for more than 50% off on my Bandcamp page!
See the Bandcamp page for additional info about the album.
"Signals"
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"Signals" is an electronic music piece created with modular synthesizer and sampled percussion. I almost titled it "Mixed Signals", since that's certainly what the universe seems to be sending out to me and the rest of us in times like these....
A lot of music gets called electronic music. Many if not most people today hear the term "electronic music" and assume it’s referring to EDM. Or, maybe to ambient, or again to something else specific. However, the term "electronic music" IMHO is not a genre itself (Wikipedia to the contrary); it encompasses all the above genres and then some. In short, it is music made using electronic and/or electromechanical means. To see an amazingly long listing of electronic music sub-genres, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genres
Wikipedia also has a good overview of electronic music and its history (despite the “genre” reference…): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_music
The first actual electronic music synthesizer I ever owned was the Aries Modular that is still in service in my studio. Prior to that I had played around with other people's instruments and built a few experimental circuits to generate sounds. My entire studio then consisted of the Aries, 2 Revox tape recorders, a microphone, and a decent set of headphones. Making music before more current MIDI or DAW e.g. computer sequencing was a very different approach for me than the process I most often tend to use now. I started with modular synthesizer gear, percussion, experimental/abstract concepts, and a tape recorder paradigm for recording workflow! I wanted to get back to using that older/original way of thinking about how I compose. This track, with impressionistic references to the balance of order and chaos we live in, has as a result a wide dynamic range and can be intrusive and disconcerting. Just as it was intended!
As for all of those sub-genres? "Signals" fits in at least a few of them, and I'll leave it to you to decide which.
Mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Sean Magee
"Densities of Light / Shimmering Lake"
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Creating music with Adam Holzman as a featured artist is always a great experience! When working with him I have always tried to make settings for him to work with that measure up to his creative talents. I think that "Densities of Light / Shimmering Lake" meets that goal; it showcases Adam's many strengths as a player, soloist, and co-producer.
Ever since "Winter Light" (from "Moving Pictures"), the play of light in both nature and in the built environment has fascinated me. Light is such an essential part of our existence in wonderful ways, as well as not-wonderful ways such as the rapid encroachment of light pollution. Over a range from the light on the side of a mountain to a neon sculpture, it exists on many layers simultaneously, and it affects us all in a myriad of ways (whether consciously or not). I've always tried to bring that in as some kind of element of my compositions. This piece is a single entity with two movements that have no simple or direct division between them, hence the duality of the title. And...the music sounds as good as it does because a master of mastering puts his finishing touches on it!
Mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Sean Magee
"Saṃsāra" From MW Gilbert Featuring Adam Holzman On Keyboards & Modular Synth
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"Saṃsāra" is a new release showcasing two new tracks featuring Adam Holzman, as a compilation with tracks featuring Adam from recent singles and albums.
Saṃsāra (संसार) is a Sanskrit/Pali word that means “world”, as well as the concept of death and rebirth and “cyclicality of all life, matter, existence”. It is a fundamental belief of most Indian religions. Popularly, it is the cycle of death and rebirth. Saṃsāra can be called transmigration, karmic cycle, reincarnation, etc.
It’s a concept that is part of many religious and spiritual traditions worldwide, practiced by billions of people. Many incredible and insightful perspectives out there other than ours...
I have been working with Adam Holzman on many projects, and I'm constantly blown away by his contribution to, and collaboration with, my music and recordings. He has superb fluid musicality in many different genres. From touring and recording with Miles Davis and up to Steven Wilson he has proved to be one of the great synthesizer soloists. I also think he's an excellent pianist, and I tried to really focus in on piano in a couple of the pieces in this collection. It's a great pleasure working with him, and I want to continue! Mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Sean Magee. The artwork for "Saṃsāra" is by Kate Nelson excerpted from her painting "Tremorous Particles"
"The Vanished Day" Electronic music & musique concretè
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"The Vanished Day” grew out of thinking about how the traumas of the past year have felt: pandemic, the lack of racial and social justice, climate change, authoritarianism, economic inequities… I have found the totality of it unsettling if not overwhelming. The impossibility of grasping it all in social, emotional, or intellectual terms, led to this track. The piece is a six-part suite, building from ideas born in the great electronic music studios of the 50s - 70s, and integrating more contemporary influences. The electronic sounds were created with Eurorack & Aries modular systems, with the addition of musique concretè, voice, and hand percussion. Among all the various genres of music I've worked in, it is this pre-MIDI approach to composing electronic music that I began with in the mid 70s. It has been an element of everything I have composed since. Being personally involved in the modular synthesizer revival that started in the early 2000s has been fascinating. It continues to grow to this day, and I’m looking forward to it. Mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Sean Magee.
More about musique concretè and electronic music here
More about Eurorack modular synthesizers here
More about my music studio here
About Tall Dog Electronics modules in my studio Eurorack rig here
"Music that evokes falling into and out of dreams, things half remembered, sounds that find their way to long buried emotions, now familiar, now novel, now enchanting, now frightening. It is such a pleasure to hear music that is not driven along by a beat but just makes its own time. To make this music requires a good ear, a good imagination and a mastery of the technological resources so that they serve the music and not the other way around"
- Ronald Perera, composer
"Radio Omnibus" Collaborations between MWG & Adam Holzman (Miles Davis), Mark Walker (Oregon), & Sofia Session Orchestra
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"At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being - the reward he seeks - the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity." - Thomas Wolfe, "Of Time and the River"
An omnibus of influences and the first scored instrumental pieces.
Mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Sean Magee.