Category: music

Matthew Florianz

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Dutch ambient artist Matthew Florianz has a great catalogue of minimal ambient music to drift off to. His work is deep and subtle and very moody, and has been well reviewed in the ambient community. I have most of the releases on CD, and have been lucky enough to get some limited edition releases too. Niemandsland from 2006 was originally released with two disks of extra material and the three make a great developing soundtrack for a day of creativity. It’s nice to listen to CDs, rather than just streaming or listening to downloads through Winamp – in part because I can have the computer off and just edit or handwrite.

Florianz’s CDs are available through Shopsonic, and you can check out his MySpace page for updates, happenings and samples and songs to listen to while online. There is an album’s worth of tracks to listen to on the MySpace page.

Creativity

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Well, it was a busy week – I finally got my story ready and submitted for the Southern Horror Writer’s Horror Club on Flashes In The Dark. This was a story that took a lot of false starts. First it was about a Blight hitting Slope Point (Slope Point is the Southernmost place on New Zealand’s South Island), then a different version of the same premise (Blight rewrite), then a new story with the same characters (House at Bluff), then, finally, Doubtful Sound:

First started back in January, several runs at the story didn’t cut it. Not every file there is a totally new story – ultimately there are variations on each of the four. Finally, with Doubtful Sound I got something that I was happy with. You can see here, too, how I organise my files as I write – date each new version with the day I start it so that I can backtrack, give it a title that makes sense to me. I keep the old versions as I work through edits and redate the file as I make the changes on the screen.

Sounds The Songs of Seabirds

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Sounds The Songs of Seabirds is prolific Vancouver artist Bob Singley. With an extensive catalogue of ambient and experimental music available to stream and download on his Bandcamp site, Sounds The Songs of Seabirds has hours of exquisite background sounds to tickle your ears as you work, rest and play. Some of the releases are long – over 100 minutes – one, the archive, stands at over 340 (like, six hours) and is growing. Suffice to say I haven’t listened my way through everything yet, but a couple of albums in I’m liking it so far. Most of the music is free to download, but with some nice self-deprecating humour there one album is billed as a fundraiser: “Hello. This album is a fundraiser for myself. I am trying to raise up money to pay my rent. And buy some eggs …” It’s $1 (or more, if you want). Cool that if you buy it, there’s a 25 minute bonus track which takes the running time up to an hour twenty (ie – burn a CD of it). The next album, Soorya Namaskaram, is a crisp work, droney with enough whiskers of melody and strum to keep it interesting – you can listen from the embed below, but do check out his download site, or his myspace page. While much of this is improvisational and live and doesn’t quite have the polish of many professional releases, it’s still very cool, with a freshness and immediacy that’s inspirational. Great stuff.

What is this blog about?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been watching my posts over recent times and realise that I’m all over the place. So, I’m going to try a little structure for a while. In general the blog has always been about creativity, whether that be writing, music or art. When I started it was pretty much all music (hence the blog name), then as my publication list began growing, the blog shifted to more of a focus on writing and, over time, has become very broad (perhaps some would say scattered). Anyway, here’s my plan for the next little while, assuming I keep blogging on weekdays**

Monday – weekend musings: how my projects have gone over the previous seven days
Tuesday – music to write to: a short review of music I’ve been listening to as I write
Wednesday – random notes on what’s up
Thursday – reading for writing: a short review of the book I’m reading*
Friday – music to write to or random

I will also, as they occur, post notes about current publications, music releases, general news, etc.

*I try to read a book a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. During marking blocks, heavy writing times and so on, sometimes I slip so I might write about something I read a last year, or the year before, or 1989 or whenever.

**Being to the left of the international dateline, if I post at, say, 9am on a Wednesday, that’s around midday on Tuesday in LA, 3pm Tuesday EST, so if my posts seem early …

Jerome Faria, 17:14 ep on bandcamp

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve just listened to Jerome’s new ambient/glitch ep 17:14 (yes, that’s the duration and the title) – here on his Bandcamp site. It’s a moody, drifty piece, with little hints of melody, tiny quiet jabs of subtle static and some delicious drones. Jerome usually releases music as NNY, and has a pretty full catalogue of downloads and media. Some of his work is a bit edgy and too glitchy for my taste, but this new ep tags it just right – enough drone and melody to balance the strong frequencies and clicks. Great music to write to – available both as a stream and free download.

Streamined website – why?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to those who’ve given me feedback on the updated venusvulture.com website – I have made a couple of minor changes. I am certainly a fan of minimal and streamlined and tired of sparkly ads, flash player required, complex links and pages stuffed to bursting or that scroll forever. The index page is 1kb of html and 31kb of images. I’ve avoided Dreamweaver, etc. and just hand-coded the html (yes, typed it as a text file). Too old school? Probably. Anyway, this is the code for the index page, for those who are interested.

Ah, no metadata, no java. That’ll probably cost me hits too. Oh well. I do have a favicon, but I still can’t figure out why it’s not working – something missing in the code?

New venusvulture.com site is ready and working

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 4 Comments

New index screen at venusvulture.comWhew. It’s been a while in the making, but the new Venus Vulture/Sean Monaghan website is running. It’s tidier and more streamlined. The homepage probably goes against conventions, but I like the look – going for minimal. There are still some bits to update, but it’s always a work in progress.

I promised this a while ago – there’s a screenshot in this post from late last year of how the site used to look.

Taupo Edge 1973 – new Venus Vulture track on Reverbnation

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I have just put a new Venus Vulture track Taupo Edge 1973 on my Reverbnation page. The three minute track is just a quiet varied drone, with some voice and field recordings. Hopefully a little haunting. I hope you enjoy this – you can stream or download for free from the site. There’s also an earlier three minute piece there “Tolela Visiting the Ghost July 1913”, which is one of my personal favourites.

I’m focusing this year on writing a little more than music so releases might be a bit light for a while. I have tracks submitted elsewhere for compilations, and a couple of concept pieces – an album and an ep – which I will tinker with, but without deadlines. I guess part of the vague plan too is to make a three to five minute track each month – then by the end of the year that’s about album length. It’s good, I think, to make a little music from time to time to use a different part of my creativity.