Plutonic Rainbows

Jonas Reinhardt - Conclave Surge

Great new album from this artist. Conclave Surge is a set of soaring pieces that bring to mind the work of Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel-Jarre and Klaus Schulze.

I also enjoyed Terekke - Plant Age.

Pitchfork:

Terekke’s music is like a warped, alternate-reality version of Burial. Though the two producers conjure disparate moods (where Burial is rainy and despondent, Terekke is warm and hopeful), they take a similar approach to abstracting dance music into its own world, inside your headphones and your head. The two producers also share an affinity for using samples from pop stars like Mariah Carey or Beyoncé, melting their voices into gooey echoes that feel familiar but unplaceable. On last year’s “i wanna what love is,” Terekke molded Carey’s voice into a spectral image, and on 2014’s “Untitled B1,” under his X alias, he sampled Sade’s “Is It a Crime” into a loose, rippling club jam. Terekke’s skeletal, dubby approximations of house reflect the same deconstruction-reconstruction of dance music as Burial, though Gardner meshes inspiration from Chicago house and Berlin dub techno, where Burial reflects the musical legacy of the UK underground.

Plant Age is an album as comfortable and versatile as your favorite sweater—it’s lived-in, welcoming, and warm. Recorded sporadically over the past five years, it’s considerately sequenced and is glued together in a fairly uniform haze. The congruousness of Plant Age, the ubiquitous smoky gel that cushions all of his tracks, speaks to Terekke’s fondness for recording to cassette tape. The album effectively sets a mood and continues to reveal itself more deeply upon repeated listens. “BB2” is the clubbiest cut on the release, a muted yet pounding house track that sounds like it’s being played through a pillow. “BB2” hews closest to Terekke’s older material, with gorgeous oozy chords peeking through a smoky haze, and a ghostly vocal sample makes the song both spooky and forlorn.

Palmbomen II - Memories of Cindy

Listening to this new album today while I try and understand how Python calculates a file size and then copies it to another file.

from sys import argv
from os.path import exists

script, from_file, to_file = argv

print "Copy the %s file to the %s file." % (from_file, to_file)

#get file size

in_file = open(from_file)
indata = infile.read()

print "The file size is %d bytes." % len(indata)

print "Ok. Does the output file exist? %r" % exists (to_file)
print "Hit return."

out_file = open(to_file, 'w')
outfile.write(indata)

out_file.close()
in_file.close()

Opening & Reading Files

Trying to get my mind around this. It's probably very simple for some people.

from sys import argv

script, file = argv

txt = open(file)

print "Hi there. I am the '%s' script. The file called '%s' is shown below." % (script, file)
print txt.read()

print "Type the file name again."
file_again = raw_input("> ")

txt_again = open(file_again)

print txt_again.read()

In other news, Alva Noto will release a new album next month.

Carsten Nicolai (a.k.a Alva Noto) will release a new album, UNIEQAV, on March 16.

The 12-track release will be the third and latest edition of the Uni series, an outlet for his more rhythmic and dancefloor-oriented work. The series began when Nicolai was booked to play live at the club UNIT in Tokyo and had to adapt his sound accordingly for that environment.

UNIEQAV is described as a continuation and development of the concept of Alva Noto’s Unitxt and Univrs albums and completes the third part in the trilogy, whereby each record is both unique and part of the bigger picture. This is also mirrored in the artwork for each, which when combined form a triptych spelling "Uni."

Described by Carsten as “sonically representing an underwater dive," UNIEQAV brings, as usual, an inherent artistic, conceptual, and scientific depth. Mathematics, data, unit systems, grids, rhythms, codes, text, language, spoken word, DNA, science technology, and nature are all utilised, for both inspiration and execution.

As with the last two Uni releases, the French sound poet Anne-James Chaton collaborates here, on "Uni Dna." Where on previous records Chaton first provided a vocal track to which Nicolai composed, this time the duo flipped it; the poet wrote for an existing track, adding his vocal approach to recite amino acids that constitute the DNA molecule.

UNIEQAV is preceded by two albums on NOTON featuring Alva Noto: Live 2002 with Mika Vainio and Ryoji Ikeda and Glass with Ryuichi Sakamoto, released January 19 and February 16 respectively.

Johnny Jewel - Digital Rain

Brand new album from Johnny Jewel (whose work recently featured on the Twin Peaks revival). This new work is devoid of guitars and percussion - focusing instead on atmospheric (and somewhat) romantic electronics.

Boomkat:

In the most classic sense, Johnny evokes his themes with beautiful subtlety and clarity throughout the entirely instrumental suite of Digital Rain, using filigree synthesis and a rarely paralleled feel for narrative to convey the sensation of rain on skin or hail on a roof, precisely evoking all the feelings of nostalgia you’d arguably associate with electronic music’s cinematic representations of rain, romance, and enigmatic intrigue.

It’s an ideal album for creating your own movie on the fly, acting as a sort of soundtrack to your life, likely to turn late night drives for a pint of milk into the most dramatic scenarios, or maybe turn your next commute into a Love on a Real Train (Risky Business) situation. Might want to be careful with that 2nd one, though.

Sun Electric - 30.7.94 Live

Lovely early 90s ambient electronics from this often forgotten group consisting of Max Loderbauer and Tom Thiel. 30.7.94 Live harkens back to those days with dreamy, billowing synth washes, echoing samples and uplifting melodies.