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Home Diaries

by Hipnotic Earth

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about

Released on whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com/music

See the live videos of these improvisations here
www.youtube.com/channel/UCQVvVSh2lI8ugPdnf9WgrKA?view_as=public


~~from the interview below, about the HOWLING (track1) from the pandemic when we were all confined to being Artists in Residence ~~~

"I wonder what it is like elsewhere, but here, at 8:00 every night a cacophony and chorus of howling erupts for as far as the ear can hear. I recorded it nightly for three weeks. We are a little higher in elevation from a major city six miles away as the crow flies and one night when the nearest neighbors’ voices had died down I swear I could her a faint thunderous roar coming from the direction of the city. Was it the mass of voices in a great roar of freedom? Gave me spine tingles!! The howling recordings printed with any of the many evening creatures that would join in at the time and I wove some of these samples into an ASMR track. They are layered field recordings in that one can hear the layout of the land, feel the small hills and valleys with your ears and heart. You could discern voices very near and then down the road and then further out and away over the miles in all directions! The sound and sensation of communing and communicating in call and response with neighbors that we NEVER speak to (even the one over the fence) all in solidarity, vocalizing in a primal way with families near and far way, well this brought tears to my eyes and prickles to my spine and the Howl can be quite loud! Editing the track afterwards gave me the same feeling and when these samples are fused with the music in the song I feel that this sensation comes through at times. Bone chilling! Humans singing together for freedom and for union! We are all in this together. "


Home Diaries is a series of albums/EP's released by UK label Whitelabrecs to document ambient artist's personal experiences during the shelter-in-place or social distancing conditions that are upon us, due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Here are some excerpts from my interview about the album:

Q. what has your situation been like? Have you been in lockdown and how have you kept yourself busy?

A. I do not subscribe to the use of the phrase “lockdown.” That is a prison term! I gravitate more towards “artist in residence,” lol.

Q. tell us about your home diaries record. what were your thoughts and ideas whilst making it?

A. I wonder what it is like elsewhere, but here, at 8:00 every night a cacophony and chorus ...

These are three jams/videos recorded April 9th, and two more tracks from around that date.
I use some water samples from my hot springs hometown that burned down to nothing four years ago that are nearly impossible to record without invasive noises! I have a few different springs and creeks from there and I wish I had more and I am truly obsessed with using zoom recordings from my various homes past and present. I imagine some circles of artists may have judgement around such nature samples but I just love them and they feel good so to heck with it! Art for art’s sake, for my own enjoyment always. This Home Diaries concept of Harry’s was intriguing to me and I decided I was going to set up a camera while I was playing after seeing so many were suddenly sharing online via video. I found that it helped me focus in a deeper way and I found these tracks needed less editing than usual and if you watch the videos you will find the improvisations are 99% intact. They appear on the album as they were made with some post-processing and some final editing. An exception: on 8:00 Howling I was enjoying manipulation of the semitone knob on the Virus in the second half of the song. It worked on some notes and did not on others! I fixed it in the mix pretty convincingly but a savvy eye would be able to tell by watching the video. www.youtube.com/user/cosmosmusicnow/featured?view_as=subscriber

Q. what equipment, software or techniques did you use in your home diaries?

A. I've really been loving the three-at-once keyboard jam lately and track 5 has some live looping. For each song I tweak a couple of the many soft synths I use and get them dialed in with some effects, find a key and a mode that feels good in the moment and that works with the timbres I have set up and then just let the sound take me away. I sometimes have a field recording going which I play to that helps set the mood. I do really like going over and over each rendered version as I polish and fine tune the colors and movement and balance, I’m sure there is a faster way to work and I can be a perfectionist! Interesting gear note: there is not one compressor used anywhere on the album! All envelopes are painstakingly hand drawn for the right feel I wish to achieve. As of late I have been using an NI controller, a Virus TI2 and a tiny Launchkey Mini.

Q. What other artists, musicians and labels are you inspired by?

A. My induction into ambient started with Pandora streaming in 2014. I was listening to space music and then somehow found Chihei Hatakeyama (who mastered my first album Essence) and then Stars of the Lid and boom! I went down the rabbit hole of sleep music. Manual, Windy & Carl, Billow Observatory, Taylor Deupree, tsone, Hakobune; I’ve really loved Gallery Six’s style and sounds a lot. Then Warmth, stabilo (speaker gain teardrop), Hilyard, Gas, Sinerider… and then 2017 happened and it went on and on! There is so much genius music I would love to share, I’m sure you would know many or most! Big shout-out to Blank Embrace for so many beautiful drones. Neo-classical is a whole other rabbit hole we could go down… I am really amazed at the sheer quantity of great ambient that has come out since my first CD on Whitelabrecs one year ago and I am totally humbled by the quality of production by the top-tier artists in this field.

Q. have you got any musical plans in the pipeline?

A. I have one album of drones in the cans coming out on Past Inside the Present later this year that I am very excited about. I have another coming in 2021 on cassette with Dronarivm and a track with a Shimmering Moods compilation where I experimented with bass and drum. Last autumn I decided to focus more on my deep drones style that I enjoy and which had been put on the back burner since The Waters of Home hipnoticearth.bandcamp.com/album/the-waters-of-home. I am happy to be returning to piano sounds with Home Diaries! I also just released two ambient remixes, my first ever, of a wonderful artist called Liquid Bloom with a psychedelic flavored meditative world ambient sound. Eternell also appears on the album with a sweet remix. It was fun, I mean GREAT fun doing these and I would LOVE to start doing more with other artists in the community! liquidbloom.bandcamp.com/album/regen-deep-ambient-remixes .

Lastly, I want to share my MUSICAL DREAMS!!
#1 is to have the space and money to procure and setup an electric guitar with effects pedals and create some ambient atmospherics getting back to analog gear, fingers and toes and strings. And alternate tunings! I often feel my music is too busy but I am confident as time goes on that I will play fewer and fewer notes until there is nothing left but space.
#2 is a deep desire for a well-tuned studio! with proper monitors and the dream of dreams is to be able to listen and monitor music again at volume levels other than whisper-quiet.
#3 is to keep experimenting with bass and drum which, as a former percussionist, is surprisingly elusive to me in the realm of sleep music! #4 is to try using tape like I did in the old days; there’s something powerful about printing to magnetic ink.
#5 is a wish to record once again with friends; cello and other strings and voice. It is much more challenging ever since 2014 as my hearing had been handicapped from Hyperacusis which makes mixing and recording and daily life extremely difficult and painful. Just living day to day and grateful for the muse and for these healing sounds and for this wonderful community of ambient lovers and producers, musicians, collectors, gearheads and record-label geniuses! What a positive and beautiful thing that we all get to share! I am thankful every day that my ears allow me to make do with what is and fulfill these humble sounds. Oh! Dream #6 – I am not even going to go there… yet.

credits

released June 15, 2020

Improvised and mixed by Cosmos
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong
Artwork by Harry Towell

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Hipnotic Earth California

Hipnotic Earth is an ambient soundscape project birthed from a deep need for quiet, slow motion music; from a carnal urge toward silence.

My mission is creating and delivering soothing musical soundscapes to millions of over-stimulated eyes and ears for deep restoration.
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