Landscape and music

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

As I walked home on this pristine summer evening, the sky a gorgeous milky blue, planes gliding silently in the distance, the trees murmuring, etc. This came on shuffle and I wondered why it's trancey synths were so perfect for the weather.

It seems to me that these synths "appear" absolute clearly in a space, with the echo suggesting dissolution that is totally visible. The isolation of these sounds in space suggests a clear view for miles.

Also the haziness of them as they echo and dissolve into the distance, it's suggestive of tremulous desert air, distant mirages.

And also inertia, the inertia of the track suggesting a hot, clear day, no reason to move. Stifling.

For a long time I've been idly musing on the effect of landscape (including weather) on how we hear and make music (and everything else). Not just nature's landscape but manmade structures.

I suppose this might well be an avenue of dematerialisation.
 

droid

Well-known member
This is a minor obsession of mine. I've spent quite some time curating a suite of music that's perfectly suited to a particular environment.

One thing that becomes quite stark when you're out in nature is how completely wrong some music sounds - rap, grime etc. anything that reflects an urban environment just doesn't work, like there's some latent environmental consciousness embedded into its fabric.

The main problem with music in nature however is its superfluousness. There's already so much sonic stimuli there for you if you just listen. The ambient sounds are apart of that experience.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Is it specious or merely cliched to say that hard-edged music comes from hard-edged environments?

The straight lines of tower blocks and dual carriageways translating to on-grid rhythms?

Sometimes I read that sort of thing as critical pretension but there must be something in it.
 

droid

Well-known member
Match a piece of music to a photograph and then try and figure out if the link is subjective or implanted.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I like walking around London sometimes with the Lord of the Rings soundtrack playing. It makes everything seem very dramatic. In fact I'm always walking around London with what perhaps should be incongruous music (Brian Eno, e.g.) playing. Sort of softens it all. Perhaps its unhealthy.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
There used to be a Bristol band called Movietone who made some records that evoked the Severn Estuary very exactly.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
They had this grey, moping melancholy sound and sang about sea gulls, pylons and mud flats. Like something off the woops list.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
They had this grey, moping melancholy sound and sang about sea gulls, pylons and mud flats. Like something off the woops list.

Bit literalist isn't it, actually singing about sea gulls?

Not to discount singing about landscape. Everyone's welcome in Corpsey's Landscape thread!

But the greyness, how was it grey?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I want to dig into these cliches we music journalists use a little. Or is that like digging into a sunset?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
You're a poetry professor aren't you?

Words are your department, Proff. Hip me to the meaning of 'grey'.
 
Top