Relaxing Piano

Ambient Soundbath Podcast #126 – Dan Palladino’s Pastoral Memory

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Ambient Soundbath Podcast #126 - Dan Palladino's Pastoral Memory
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I’m really pleased to present Pastoral Memory, the excellent work of Dan Palladino. Dan first got in touch through email and as I listened to Pastoral Memory, I was struck by what a great addition this would be to the Ambient Soundbath Podcast. When I first listened to the individual tracks, how it came to me, I was struck by how Pastoral Memory really stood alone as a single longform track, my preference for the Soundbath. I inquired with Dan on this and he informed me that all the tracks had been edited into shorter works, but they came from a singular whole. I asked if he could re-assemble them, to which he politely obliged… then Archive.org was hacked (where the Mp3 files for the Soundbath are hosted) and we were put into a holding pattern.

Today, I’m pleased to report that Archive.org is back up and I’m able to upload the files and present Dan’s wonderful Pastoral Memory to you. Please enjoy!!
-Matt

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Dan Palladino is a guitarist, vocalist and composer based in New Jersey. He began his journey on guitar at the age of seven, played his first gig at the age of 12, and has performed in public for the past 50 years. Along the way, he has backed Broadway stars, opened for comedians, appeared with contemporary jazz groups, and performed live and in the studio, with various singer/songwriters and R&B groups.

Currently, Dan performs 160+ live dates per year with Acoustic NRG, an acoustic classic rock trio.

In 2019, Dan Palladino released his first ambient album, Pastoral Memory, which was awarded Best Meditation Album of 2019 by New Age Music Guide, and Best Ambient Album of 2019 by One World Music Radio.

Pastoral Memory, a single long-form piece, began as a quest to record nature sounds. “I set up a pair of mics to record the joyful birds singing in my yard one fine August morning, and before I knew it, I’d amassed quite a library of birds, crickets, cicadas, streams, and rainstorms.” The calming nature recordings influenced the instrumentation that would follow: swirling synth pads, kalimbas, chimes, wooden flutes, harps, voices and eventually, many layers of hypnotic acoustic and electric guitars.

Dan Palladino Pastoral Memory“Most of the slowly unfolding melodies featured on Pastoral Memory began as improvisations, which is my preferred method of working. Once I’d discovered these melodies, I created supporting counter melodies and harmonies to complement them. Accidental interplay came bubbling up each time a new layer was added to the mix.”

https://danpalladino.bandcamp.com/
http://www.danpalladinomusic.com/

Record Review: Innesti – Diaphanous

Innesti
Diaphanous 
I’ve been enjoying Innesti’s sound work for the last few years. I’m a well-established listener of Soma FM’s DroneZone and each time Innesti’s work comes on my ears prick up and I just pause and listen to the wonderful sounds and textures. This was my starting point when I received a release announcement from the excellent Past Inside the Present label and their release of Innesti’s most recent recording Diaphanous.

There’s a wonderfully poetic write-up in the release notes that unburden this writer of trying to add even greater poetics to the lush and centering sounds of Diaphanous, specifically:

“As with many tracks on the album, its background drones seem to appear from behind a mountain, conveying a humbling sense of scale as they sweep across the glacial valley in between sonic swells.”

“…crystalline flickers, approximating some psychic communication between nebulas, impossibly far away and millions of years in the past.” 

These beautiful passages only begin to frame the excellently organic sounds that Innesti has put together on Diaphanous. 

Diaphanous gives me a sense of looking through an old 18th century wavy glass window that’s aged to a point of abstraction; You can still make out shapes and colors, but it’s partly obscured and without sharp, well-defined edges, creating a rich and impressionistic soundscape that evokes a peaceful, floating gaze. This is something not lost on the author of the PR write-up, as they mention: “The very title, Diaphanous, suggests the scarcely seen, or the partially obscured…” I can’t say enough great things about the small sampling of the work that I’ve heard thus far and I look forward to listening to the recording in its entirety upon release. Well done!

Diaphanous comes out October 16, 2024 on Bandcamp in both digital and with a beautifully designed hard copy digipak option, limited to 200 – Get it here: https://pitp.bandcamp.com/album/diaphanous

-Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath

Record Review: Deckard Croix – Weltschmerz

Deckard Croix
Weltschmerz 
Deckard Croix’s work Weltschmerz, a German word that combines ‘world’ and ‘pain’ to create a sort of poetic melancholy, as Carl Jung talked about it, when I first heard the term, may have the undertones of a poetic existential ennui, but there’s a hopefulness here; like a winter morning sunrise, when the sun is still low enough to cast beautiful hushed oranges in the moments before it reaches a low, gray cloud cover and disappears, absorbed into the gray-black nothing. Croix’s work is fleeting, beautiful and understated. Weltschmerz, to my mind, acts as a chapter in Croix’s far-reaching catalog, with each release, sound and story being a patch on a quilt that contributes to a warming whole – This is the best of what psychedelic music is. Get it on Bandcamp here.

Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath

Record Review: Ed Herbers – Upper Atmosphere

Ed Herbers
Upper Atmosphere

Matt Borghi Music Review Ed Herbers Upper Atmosphere

Ed Herbers’ Upper Atmosphere is a deep space-bound voyage that is reminiscent of the best that Jonn Serrie and the late Constance Demby’s work had to offer in both sound and content. Upper Atmosphere is ‘space music’ in the purest sense of the term; a music that gives you a space for thinking and being, but also one where the spaciousness of the sound, timbre and textures allows a listener to get absorbed into the work and taken in. When I listen to Upper Atmosphere, I feel like I’m meeting up with an old friend and by that I mean it’s a warm summer night in the late 1990’s, I”m just getting settled into a new home about an hour outside of the Detroit suburbs, when I was randomly surfing the radio dial to see what new sounds my new location might reveal and I discovered Music from the Hearts of Space; Stephen Hill’s disembodied voice eerily booming through the sub-woofer on my 8-speaker AIWA stereo and I was hearing, fresh and anew the music of VidnaObmana, Kevin Keller, Jeff Pearce, Richard Bone and Steve Roach. That experience became my entry point into the music that would come to define the last 25+ years and most of my adult life – It was a wonderful time of sonic and musical awakening. Upper Atmosphere takes me back to that place, that space, that state of mind, covering, somehow the panoply of that artistic canon. I can’t guarantee that Upper Atmosphere will transport you like some kind of time-travel back to your simpler self, but I can’t guarantee that it won’t either. Do yourself and listen to Ed Herbers’ Upper Atmosphere, your peace of mind will be glad you did. Get it on Bandcamp here.

Matt Borghi
Ambient Soundbath

Listen to Ambient Soundbath on Apple Podcast – Spotify Blocks Us

I’ve talked about this before, but here’s an email I just received when posting Ambient Soundbath #125. In part of their attempt to completely dominate and monopolize online listening, Spotify does not allow music-only podcasts, i.e. artists must pay or be formally distributed (distributor pays) to be carried on their platform. We’re small potatoes, but this is a huge blow to independent music artists and music-only podcasters everywhere, but great for Joe Rogan and the like, if that’s you’re thing. Since I’ve talked about this, I thought I’d share this email.

Apple Podcasts is a giant, but I have to recommend them as the best, most accessible and most user-friendly tool for listening.

Boycott Spotify

 

Ambient Soundbath Podcast #125 – Anatomy of Melancholy

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Ambient Soundbath Podcast #125 - Anatomy of Melancholy
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Look, I gotta tell you right up front, I don’t know much about this track, Anatomy of Melancholy, except that it’s strikingly beautiful, sounds like a lost Harold Budd composition and has a strange and questionable provenance.

Through some research I learned that it came from a long out-of-business shop in Boston called Gargoyles, Grotesques and Chimeras (Old Yelp listing link). Supposedly, the proprietor of this shop, Lewis Gordon, composed and recorded the piece and that the recording played on a continuous loop. This recording is from a CD that was sold at the shop of that recording. I haven’t been able to find or reach Mr. Gordon to confirm any of this, but since this is non-profit, no money venture, I figured it couldn’t hurt to share this wonderful music.

Thank you also to John “Pathfinder” Lester for initially posting this track on his website here.

It’s a lovely, lovely recording. I’ve been listening to it for months and I really felt that the Ambient Soundbath listeners would enjoy it. I hope you do.