General
On behalf of the whole Red Sun Soundroom crew i want to extend a hearty welcome to newcomers and old friends alike. This is the new weblook for Red Sun, and since we’re all so busy trying to make things sound great, it was no small diversion for us to focus our attention on making our web presence look great too.
We had a pretty simple 1-page weblog look in the past. At the time we felt posting what we’re playing on our hi-fi now and again and a few links to downloadable music would be enough.
You asked for something better, something more worthy of Red Sun. We took a crack at it, and we hope you like it. It remains a work in progress, but with the new format, it will be easier to continuously improve, refine, update with pertinent information, as well as provide the occasional appropriate ornamentation.
Please note that the entire archive of posts has been preserved, and all new posts will appear in the same place, On The Notepad. There is now an added benefit of posts being organized by category. You can, for example, with a click of the mouse see all the playlists from past Listening Salons. (Or, rather, all the playlists i got around to posting in the first place! The debaucherous nature of said events can sometimes lead to a day or two of laziness and thus playlists at times get pushed further and further down the task list until they just never get published. I aim to make this is a phenomenon of the past. Not the debauchery, of course.)
We hope you enjoy the In The Stream page, which will lead you to free downloads of some albums and singles birthed within these walls. Also on this page are many excerpts from pieces of original music as well as sample beats and atmospheres ready to appear in our clients’ original productions or sent out into the marketplace for others to use. Please note: we have intentionally designed this page so that you can play more than one selection at a time. Try putting a beat and an atmosphere together. Play a song excerpt and add another one to it but at lower volume. For those of you who have spent any time in our shop, you know we often experiment by blending prepared ingredients. Join in the fun!
Many thanks to Sayontan Sinha for providing the scaffolding during our renovation.
No small thanks to you all for stopping in for something warm, and for making the Red Sun Soundroom the special place it has become. Cheers!
Don’t forget to subscribe to our updates!
Exciting times: Ms M. right away brought the following New York Times article to my attention. Soon after, i found the acoustic ecology community is all abuzz about it:
I’ve often celebrated the achievement of Edison and Redpath in bringing sound recording into this world. To learn that Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville successfully recorded sound nearly two decades before Edison and Redpath is astonishing indeed.
However, what is even more astonishing is that Scott had the brilliance to accomplish such a feat but never the forethought of recording sound for sound reproduction. He has said so in his own self-published writings when reminding us of the true, literal meaning of the word phonograph: a visual representation of sound.
Impressive as the news of his invention is, i am reminded of the many music-makers and sound artists of today who attempt to conquer many if not most of the critical decisions in their work while looking at squiggly lines on a computer screen instead of closing their eyes and listening.
We do things a little more old school in the Red Sun Soundroom. We’ve got access to the visuals of the digital editing workstation interface, sure—and do use this tool from time to time. But you’ll find we make our decisions far more often with our eyes closed and our ears peeled. It’s like tasting a dish being cooked up in the kitchen to decide it needs more cumin, and not relying solely on what’s written in the recipe from a magazine. Physical response is a key component of how we operate.
That said, listening to those few seconds of “Au Clair de la Lune” sung by an unknown voice in 1860 and recorded by Monsieur Scott gives me goosebumps.
The excitement for me, though, is in the playback, in listening to those few seconds.
That’s where the magic lives.
We had a delightful Listening Salon just recently here at Red Sun Soundroom headquarters. Check back in a few days for the full playlist (as well as the playlist for November’s Listening Salon we never quite got around to posting—the crazy buzz, excitement, and your pleas to release it notwithstanding). You won’t want to miss it.
But first:
As long as they keep coming, we’ll keep serving them up for you to enjoy.
Here’s yet another review of Pseudophone’s Reach that hit the interweb zone a few months ago, this one in the Teutonic territories. I’d have posted this earlier, but our scholars needed time to fine-tune the proper tone of the English translation. The original review in German is here, and reads:
“Ich tue mich immer sehr schwer, elektronische Musik in ein Schublade zu tun. Sei es, weil die Schubladen eine kurzfristige Mode ausdrücken, oder sei es, weil die Übergänge fließend sind.
Also versuche ich gar nicht erst zu ergründen, ob Pseudophone’s Reach Ambient, Illbient, New Age oder einfach nur Electronica ist. Die Musik ist durch lange flächige Sounds geprägt, die sich klangmalerisch langsam weiterentwickeln. Dazu ab und zu Percussions, verhallte Samples oder Field Recordings. Die Musik lädt dazu ein, die Tür hinter sich zu schließen, sich zu entspannen und den Rest der Welt das machen zu lassen, was er so will.
Daher mein Tipp: Unbedingt ‘downloaden’!!!”
Well that’s just fine, isn’t it? I put my best team on it to give us the clearest English translation, valuing truth over misappropriated applause, of course. This is what they came up with:
“It is always very difficult for me to categorize electronic music. I don’t know if it is because the categories express a short-term trend or whether the distinctions between the categories are fluid.
I don’t try to figure out whether Pseudophone’s Reach is ‘ambient’, ‘illbient’, ‘new age’ or just plain ‘electronica’. The music is characterized by deep drones, which through time-stretching slowly evolve. Interspersed among the sounds are percussion, samples, and field recordings. The music invites the visitor to close the door, relax, and let the rest of the world go.
My tip: a must download!!!”
Translation by Robert Nunnally and Tony Thornton
And i can happily report that listeners all over the globe have been letting “the rest of the world go” by the thousands. As of this posting, we’re showing that Reach has seen a upwards around 8,000 song downloads since its release last July.
Danke schön!
“Un buon lavoro questo Reach di Pseudophone, godibile, ricco di atmosfere fatte di flussi sonori ciclici che lentamente si sovrappongono e si inseguono.”
Many thanks to Mauro Graziani, Italian musican and writer who had such kind words to say about Pseudophone’s Reach, the free EP we put out on Negative Sound Institute midsummer. Reviews like these have business picking up: the label is reporting tremendous increased interest in Reach, and the number of music fans downloading the full record or individual tracks keeps growing every day. Mille grazie, indeed!
For those folks who, like me, have little Italian, perhaps you’ll take pleasure in what the linguistic algorithms of web translators offer as the English equivalent of Mr Graziani’s observations:
“A good job this Reach of Pseudophone, enjoyable, rich atmospheres made of sound cyclical flows slowly that overlap and chase.”
Yep, that about nails it.
“Music that is calming, other worldly and with a generous dose of mystery.”
So says a nice little review of Pseudophone’s Reach that recently appeared on Free Albums Galore. This team provides the excellent curatorial role of identifying quality music on the web. Click here for the full review, and thanks for listening.
