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Music Of Different Skies | ||||||||||
Earth Mantra Releases
MUSIC SAMPLES FROM Arcs & Angles DVD
Carnivore One (high bandwidth)
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Different Skies - Strange Lines and Distances (2007) On October 18, 2007, the twenty musicians of Different Skies 2007 came back to their rigs on the main stage at Arcosanti after a lovely dinner and a few drinks each, sat down, and began to improvise.
The concept of live electronic improvisation isn't new by any means. But there's a difference between improvisation among one, two, or three musicians, and improvisation among twenty of them. When you've created a veritable orchestra of electronic musicians, any one of which has enough gear to carry a full song arrangement on his own, putting them on the same stage and yelling "GO!" carries one hell of a set of risks.
The mantra of Different Skies is and has always been, "Listen Twice / Play Once." In a setting like this one, it is vital that musicians use their ears and only venture onto the canvas very gingerly to add their colors to the palette. Mistakes happen often, and there is the ever-present risk of piling noise upon noise until the result is impossible to listen to.
But when these problems are circumvented, the results can be magical.
On this night, the musicians jammed for two hours without a break, with a small audience of Arcosanti residents in the Colly Soleri Amphitheatre and somewhat more of an audience on the Internet via StillStream and Second Life (thanks to Bibi Book for the SL rebroadcast).
Twenty musicians ... many of whom had never met one another before the previous Sunday ... all on a stage at once ... with no one telling them what to play or not play. These are not excuses, they are merely the conditions under which this album was created. The music the artists feel happy about having you hear, without excuses, is contained in this album. Listen twice...
This release is available for free at the Earth Mantra website.
Different Skies - Imaginary Spaces (2007) The second set of 'All Star Jams' for the week of Different Skies 2007 was captured in the late evening of Thursday, October 19, 2007. The twenty musicians of Different Skies were euphoric after an extremely successful set of rehearsals that day, and a powerful set of jams the previous night. More to the point, as is often seen in the latter half of the week at Different Skies, the musicians had begun to listen more and play less, to fine-tune their collaborative skills, and to think and move and play as one unit.
As a result, the Thursday night jam was shorter but far more productive than the previous night. The musicians played for about 45 minutes for a small audience of Arcosanti residents and for an Internet audience around the world on StillStream.com and on Second Life (thanks to Bibi Book for the SL rebroadcast); in doing so, they created a collage of five distinct movements which are presented here almost in their entirety.
The quality of these performances is entirely due to the fine musicians who see fit to drag their gear into the Arizona high desert for seven days of grueling tech work, hard rehearsals, and nerve-wracking performances ... all melded inseparably with a level of camaraderie and friendship that cannot be described to anyone who has not come and taken part.
This release - along with its companion release for Wednesday night's jam - offers a brief and piquant taste of the atmosphere of our evening jams, a momentary immersion into the musical wonderland that is Different Skies. We all hope you enjoy it.
This release is available for free at the Earth Mantra website. | ||||||||||
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Arcs And Angles DVD In 2004, Different Skies created two distinct types of musical output. One was a set of composed pieces by subgroups of the attendees, which are made available elsewhere. The other were the "all-star jams", spontaneous improvisations that involved any or all of the Different Skies musicians creating music by listening to one another and cooperatively building intensive musical soundscapes.
The best of these improvisations are now available on ARCS & ANGLES, a 90-minute DVD featuring eight songs and over 90 minutes of music, with computer visuals by David Tristram of Tristram Visual. There is not nor has there ever been a record like this one, with its combination of hypnotic visuals and intense, absorbing music.
We are offering two sample tracks in audio-only format: She Calls and Carnivore One. Download the samples using the links to the left. ARCS & ANGLES is a region-free NTSC format DVD-Video playable on any compatible system. We recommend a high-quality stereo audio listening system. There is no surround content or LFE so a full 5.1 monitor setup is not necessary, but suitably large speakers will bring out the best of the program's extended frequency range in the low bass.
Price: $20 plus shipping
Order the DVD from Film Baby now
Arcs And Angles Limited Edition CD A limited-edition promotional CD of the ARCS & ANGLES music was also created, but all 50 copies were sold and is now OUT OF PRINT.
Different Skies 2003 Sampler Disc Free mp3s 1. Soliloquy (excerpt) by Dave Brewer from his album Phase Shift 2. Centipede by Mutation Vector (Greg Waltzer and James Lacey) from their album Placebo Merchant 3. Dusk by Tony Gerber from his album Altamira on Space For Music 4. Silent Stones by Sundagger (Brian Good), previously unreleased 5. 1919/21 (Green Axis) by CASSIEL (Nick Rothwell), from his album Listen/Move on Atomic City 6. Remember by Etherium (Giles Reaves) from the album Etherium 7. Ouroborus Part 2 by Dweller At The Threshold (John DuVal and Dave Fulton) from the album Ouroborus on Hypnos 8. Iapetus by Xeroid Entity (Bill Fox, Greg Waltzer, Howard Moscovitz) from their album Moons Of Saturn 9. Dark Around Us by Ma Ja Le (Paul Vnuk Jr. and Christopher Short) from a live unreleased set at Space For Music 2 10. By Tens Forever by Tim Walters from his album Lost Continents 11. Beneath Stars (excerpt) by Team Metlay (Mike Metlay, Nick Rothwell, John 3 Rossi, Darwin Grosse, David Turner) from their album Beneath Stars on Atomic City 12. Saurus by Ozone Player (Otso Pakarinen) from his album E on Visual Power | ||
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