Today’s Track of the Day comes from Starblood, a duo based out of Atlanta/California, according to their Facebook, off their July 2015 Station Identification EP. From what I can tell their output has a pretty interesting mix of long form ambient/drone works and shorter instrumentals. The shorter form pieces on this EP reminded me a lot of songs from Bibio’s excellent Vignetting The Compost release, especially “Dopplerton”.  I went with The Incredible Journey of Jewell Marceau because I found myself doing some mopey headbanging, which I always figure is a good sign. The guitar sounds also made me think of “Winners Take All” off one of my favorite records of recent years, Inner Tube’s self-titled release. Finishing this EP off with a rich drone like Ohr really seals the deal. Enjoy!

This medievalist psych gem comes from Blondi’s Salvation off their January 2014 self-released Crusades. According to the hilarious Google Translate they

originally formed Constant psychedelic ideology by its two intertwined visions. The son of imperturbable Puritan singer golds; jingles moving, medieval soloist guitarist.

I guess my work here is done! Truthfully, their blend of medievalism with sludgy psych probably should just speak for itself. I’ll just add that it’s like if a bunch of medieval peasants got together to take mescaline. According to their Facebook page they are constructing a new studio and have a new album, Wisdom Whisper coming out on Howlin Banana Records in the next few months.

I’m really fascinated by the medieval period, especially the music, which doesn’t get nearly as much exposure on classical stations as the big guys, especially Debussy. I took a road trip with my grandparents this year and we listened to classical radio the whole way, which involved tuning to a new station every two hours or so and every. station. we. listened. to. played. Debussy. Nothing against the guy, but I just wish there was more medieval music being played because the sparse arrangement and bizarre vocals are such a departure from much of the classical music canon. There’s a great Nonesuch release, The Pleasures of the Royal Court, that I picked up at a thrift store for a buck and it’s been worth every penny and then some. The music from the Spanish Court is my particular favorite.

Lest you think I spend the fall walking around a state park wearing medieval garb and calling everyone “m’lady,” rest assured I am not a Renaissance Fest person. Maybe if they got Blondi’s Salvation to play I’d grab myself a turkey leg, a mug of mead, and start stomping in the sawdust.

Released in 1981, Topia was Dimitris Papdimitriou’s first solo record but it kicked off more then 25 years of music, most released in (you guessed it) Greece. While studying law at the University of Athens, he composed music for stage productions and has been active musically since then. In addition to new age material like the above, he has scored many film and TV projects including something called Totally Married in which, according to IMDB:

Thomas and Lily, a couple in their mid-thirties with a child, are in the seventh “difficult” year of their marriage. The sudden departure of their household help sets off a chain of explosive situations. Lily refuses to take care of their child and their home. Thomas hires Irina, a 23 year-old foreign hooker, to help out.

I bet everything goes smoothly from there. Dimitris’ work has garnered six awards from the Greek film festival and numerous accolades from the Greek ministry of culture. Much of the rest of Topia consists of longer-form new age material but this uptempo jam reminds me a lot of Hideki Matsutake’s Logic System. The first track of his that came to mind was “Unit” and if you’ve never listened to Logic System I’d highly recommend it, especially for fans of Yellow Magic Orchestra. That last link is from their performance on Soul Train and it’s awesome.

If you are interested in hearing more of his work, it might be helpful to have the greek spelling of his name:

Δημήτρης Παπαδημητρίου

Dimitris Papadimitriou – Topia (Discogs)

Today’s track of the day comes from Cedar Dreamer off a split cassette release with Organelle. To my ears it’s the middle of a Venn Diagram between Mathias Grassow’s Himavat and Earth’s Angels of Darkness Demons of Light I. There are some excellent shorter pieces on Cedar Dreamer’s Soundcloud as well. Warm gooey drones for what is for me a beautiful Saturday morning! Hope you enjoy it as well.

Soundcloud

In an effort to be more engaged with people who create and enjoy the same music I do, I’m picking a track a day to try and discover great new music for myself and, hopefully, other folks. The honor of first post (for which the winner did not know he was nominated) goest to The Valley of Broken Dreams by Ørdop Wolkenscheidt. Videos and tracks like this are the kind of thing I love about ambient/experimental music. Even though by the year of our lord 2015 it’s trite as fuck to talk about the ability for the internet to bring people from around the world together, it’s still pretty awesome that someone halfway around the world can create immersive audio/visual atmospheres like this and I can stumble upon them in my underwear. There’s a few more releases on Bandcamp and other related tracks on Soundcloud.

Here’s the link to download the rest of the album:

Soundcloud