Plutonic Rainbows

Brian Eno - Reflection (Review)

January 08, 2017

I enjoyed this new album but it's far from his best ambient work. Having lived with the iOS app edition for a few days, it quickly tires. The main problem with 'Reflection' is that the actual sounds Eno has chosen to program into the algorithm that produces what you hear are pretty uninspiring.

21st century Brian Eno has a very peculiar idea of what constitutes a beautiful sound. The actual textures and atmospherics don't do an awful lot for me and are, dare I say it, old-fashioned. They are the sort of sound he was producing back in his Koan period.

I appreciate that he's trying to let a machine dictate what happens but he could have given it better sounds to play with. While I applaud his desire to bring generative music to the fore, nothing on 'Reflection' even remotely comes close to the beautiful sounds on albums like 'Thursday Afternoon' (1985) and 'The Shutov Assembly' (1992).

Ironically, the instruments he used on Shutov Assembly (I'm guessing late 80s Korg Series, Roland D50 and Yamaha DX7 all treated and maniplulated) sound more modern and futuristic than the (largely) uninspiring sounds on 'Reflection'.

Reflection

January 01, 2017

Brian Eno's new long-form ambient album is out today. There are a variety of formats including compact disc, vinyl and a quite expensive iOS app.

Digital downloads are available from Bleep.

Folklore Tapes Mix

December 29, 2016

Five years ago the British folklore research project Folklore Tapes released Two Witches by label heads David Chatton Barker and Ian Humberstone. A vinyl version was released soon after by Demdike Stare and Andy Votel's Pre-Cert imprint. To celebrate, Folklore Tapes has put together the mixtape and zine project: Library Catalogue Cassette Volume 1: 2011–2016, which includes an extensive history of the label written by Jez Winship. It went on sale on Bleep last week and sold out in a staggering two hours.

The label has offered a stream of the mixtape. And you can read more about Folklore Tapes over at their website.

Michael Crichton - Dragon Teeth

December 23, 2016

A new novel from the late author is due next year in June.

The year is 1876.

Among the warring Indian tribes and lawless gold-rush towns of America’s western territories, two paleontologists pillage the Wild West. They are hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.

Into this treacherous territory plunges the arrogant and entitled Yale student William Johnson. Determined to survive a summer in the west to win a bet, William has joined world-renowned paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh on his latest expedition. But Marsh becomes convinced that William is spying for his nemesis, Edwin Drinker Cope, so he abandons him in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a locus of crime and vice.

Soon William joins forces with Cope and stumbles upon a discovery of historic proportions. The struggle to protect this extraordinary treasure tests William’s newfound resilience, and pits him against some of the West’s most dangerous and notorious characters.

You can order from Amazon here.

Connections (1978) BBC Television

December 22, 2016

Enjoying watching a series of science programmes first broadcast in 1978. Interesting to see how the future was spoken about and the point at which science was back in the late 1970s. Most of these are available on YouTube.