what is space music

egw · Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 7:25 am Post subject: what is space music

I don't know of any generally accepted definition for this one.
I suppose you could say it's music that allows the listener to "space out."
Maybe it's just an alternative to "ambient" which tends to be applied too broadly.

redskull · Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Posts: 203 Location: Texas

one group name says it all (in my opinion):

Beanfield...space music my friends, and they should know Smile

here's some info on them and their style of "space music" as I see it, taken from their official site (url below the info):

Have you ever seen the close-up of a beanfield, or can you imagine what it looks like? If you can’t you will have to wait another thirty years for the real thing when these 10sqm chunks of the moon will be sold by the International Space Selling Corporation.

Bevor then Beanfield, the munich-based project of Michael Reinboth, Jan Krause and Tobias Meggle, give you another rare and unique microcosm. Nourished by ancient elements of Rare Groove and Latin Jazz from the Old School into a modern, urban Electro of thier own. Conjuring up aural images remiscent of Jurassic-style monster movie soundtracks, the human melting-pot of New York, and the mystic exoticism of the Brazilian Jungle, Beanfield fuse musical skill with analogue & digital technology - all on top of a thick layer of funky grooves - to create the freshest sound you will come across for a long time.
Listen to the absurdly catchy "Planetary Deadlock" (vocoder courtesy of Boris Geiger), or the experimental electro-jazz of "Green Angel" (containing a Wurlitzer solo by Jazz-pianist Till Sahm). Whichever track you turn into, you will encounter BEANFIELD’s highly individualistic mix of sublime noise fragments woven into complex webs of global beats. And watch out for the haunted video to "Planetary Deadlock", a creation by underground filmmaker Klaus Tartler in which he combines various video formats to create a unique, intricate set of images which perfectly capture the surrounding musical landscapes.

DJ, music jounalist and author Michael Reinboth is the founder, head A & R of Compost and Compose Records, and has been the brain behind three highly regarded club nights in Munich. Jan Krause, ex-apprentice of Jürgen Koppers (Godfather, with Giorgio Moroder, of the Munich Disco Sound. Producer of Donna Summer a.m.o.), is a sound-engineer and doubles as bassplayer of the world’s most famous rare-groove band Poets of Rhythm. Keyboard player Tobias Meggle, a respected composer/arranger and producer, was the key creative force on the late Patrick Gammon’s (Tina Turners Keyboarder) last album. Together they have arranged, produced and mixed several albums and 12-inches for Compost including Four Ears, Knowtoryus, DJ Linus, Kristo, the first two A Forest Mighty Black singles, Taran, Moodorama, and many more...Besides, their remixes for Kruder & Dorfmeister’s project Tosca, for Kosma, Tinbalada, Eric "IQ" Gray, as well as MC Solaar’s "Nouveau Western" ,the Mighty Dub Cats and Sofa Surfers, are internationally acclaimed. Thier very first release, "Charles" - probably the only dancefloor record ever to be played regularly at both 45rmp and 33rmp - received excellent review in both the German and the international music press. Beanfield are currently working on a number of projects, including film soundtracks and the Disco project Moon Machine which is out on Compose.
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http://www.compost-records.com/sections/labels/cpt_arti/beanfie1.htm

seraph · Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2003 2:46 pm Post subject:

Electro-music.com forum member Tony Gerber's #1 ranked mp3.com station devoted to space music. Nobody knows this genre better than Tony, so you can be sure that this is a good representation. Get ready to dream...
http://www.spaceradio.fm/

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2003 3:09 pm Post subject:

There is a related launch platform at:

http://www.spaceformusic.com/catalog/

http://www.spaceformusic.com

Then some light reading before the LSD kicks in:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/index.htm

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elektro80 · Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2003 3:16 pm Post subject:

One of the sites I check daily: http://www.spaceweather.com/

BTW: for music: http://www.spaceweathersounds.com/

Audio files at: http://www.spaceweathersounds.com/sndbites.htm

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2003 3:32 pm Post subject:

I used to be a great fan of good old hawkwind.. masters of spacerock..

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http://www.hawkwind.com/

A few classic covers:

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Hmm.. space.. and synths ? Tim Blake used to be a leading figure at the "space academy" http://moonweed.free.fr

A live pix from 1978

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This LP contained live material from that period. Pretty good.. and he does what he does better than anyone else at the time. There are some amazing moments on that LP. I think it is out on CD now too.

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It was originally released on the great old french label EGG. A lot of great music came from EGG back then. I have tried to find the history of the label on the web.. but there is not much info there. No wonder they folded. I was probably the only guy buying their LPs.

AgentA · Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 5:57 pm Post subject:

A couple of years ago I joined ION briefly and we did our take on space music. Space music gone awry though. What I call space craft wreckage. Laughing

http://www.mp3.com/deucemachina

I first started listening to space music thanks to the Star's End radio show.
My buddies and I would drive out to the woods for some stargazing and tune in through to the dawn.
This is not to say that host Chuck van Zyl limits his programs to include only space music. He's turned me on to lots of great ambient music also.

If someone says space music, then I expect to hear sequencer driven synthesizer oriented music that makes some people say, "this just goes on forever". Yup, it uses a lot of space, tracks that go well beyond ten minutes. While there's a pulse, there's generally no percussion oriented rhythms. I think of the stuff done in the seventies by Tangerine Dream and Michael Hoenig. But then again there's the type of space music that has those synthy swooshes with blips and bleeps. A lot less intense then the sequencer driven stuff. Since the sustaining layers of sounds last awhile, it conjures up the vastness of space for me. This kind of music serves well for ambient purposes also.

A lot of the artists seem to be into space exploration and science fiction that deals with it. I may be mistaken but I vaguely recall that Spacecraft got a lot gigs in planetariums.

Here are a few artists I've enjoyed over the past couple of years:
Nebula Drone
TranceVersions
(((stereofect)))
Lovecraft's Adjectives

Ah those pics bring back memories electro80. I caught a stellar Hawkwind show back in the seventies when I was kid. I could've sworn their main dancer, "Stacy" or "Stacia"? was 7' tall. What a light show! Most everyone attended came prepared for the best costume contest, what a trip! I think it was their Space 1999 tour back in 1976 or so.

Hawkwind fan Jerry Kranitz has a space rock site called Aural Innovations, complete with online radio shows and webzine.

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 10:24 pm Post subject:

Great story about that Hawkwind gig. A friend of mine who saw them in London in the late 60s had an amusing comment. It was quite evident that they were far more wasted than the audience. Which in the late 60s would have had to be an amazing effort to achieve. Probably laudable or something Shocked

nothing happens · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2003 9:37 am Post subject: hawkwind

ah yes... hawkwind. managed to pick up a couple of their LP's at used record stores a few years ago (the very same albums whose covers you posted in fact)... great stuff. But now my record player doesn't work anymore... Crying or Very sad

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

...also, I think ambient is more mood-oriented. Ambient is mood, space is atmosphere. Or perhaps I am daft.

Cyx

egw · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 6:33 am Post subject:

space music:
music that is best listened to while lying flat on your back!

mosc · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 8:31 am Post subject:

Space music is another term for lullaby.

seraph · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 9:40 am Post subject:

egw · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 9:59 am Post subject:

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

I'm lying on my back right now, and there is nothing you or any of your henchmen can do about it! Twisted Evil

And I'm not even listening to music at all, how's that for defiant, not even space music.

Cyx

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 1:05 pm Post subject:

Who is on top? Shocked

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

Poseidon.

Cyx

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 2:03 pm Post subject:

An aquired taste. ( Carlo, go get that camera )

Hmm.. I am looking for iTunes export scripts.. I thought using scripts I could make it a lot easier to create .m3u files and html dl pages for the music.. hmm

I wonder. These scripts seem very stupid. I can just as well hack together sopmething in Filemaker.. hmm.. We have a license for the Filemaker Developer Kit here.. so theoretically I can make standalone Filemaker apps that parses together webpages and .m3u files

Any interest for something like this?

I guess one could start by collecting the files in a filder.. the one to go up on the webserver.. then drag and drop the files into filemaker.. set the options .. add text and edit whatever.. ahh.. and set the server paths etc. and then export text files.. hmm.. on tha mac I can easily create some scripts for changing filenames intop websavvy filenames..

I will not do this today.. but.. any interest in something like this? It can be compiled into a PC and a MAC app.

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

It would be interesting.

I had suggested to Apple that one thing I thing would be very cool is live sharable playlists. In otherwards, the app acts as a net service, and authorized friends can access your live playlist at any time via the net. I would love to know what friends of mine are listening to at any given time. Perhaps that would introduce too great a security hole that Apple would rather not be responsible for. Who knows. Just a thought.

Cyx

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 2:23 pm Post subject:

Lotsa third party stuff can do that.. like send an html file to a server now and then.. and iTunes HAS shareable playlists on a lan.. they "closed" the internet access to playlists.. so on a LAN you can play the music on another mac somewhere down the corridor .. or browse all mac playlists in the building. This feature is possible to turn on or off. This allows you to have a main music server on your home LAN. Dunno if the PC version has the same feature.. quite possibly it does.. look in prefs.. probably named "Sharing"

iTunes is scriptable and there are a lot of scripts for it.. and it is not that hard to learn Applescript either.

The 4.0 version of the iTunes for mac is NOT restricted and will share over the internet.. but you kinda has to announce the addie.. and there are tools for this too. The 4.x versions have all been crippled. In theory this became within seconds the RIAA´s worst demon ever. No wonder Apple decided to comply and remove this feature. Actually.. for as long as it was available.. a lot of cool services showed up on the net.. iTunes directories .. iTunes recorders.. iTunes sniffers.. iTunes hubs..
Two weeks longer and this would have become the biggest cult on the net .

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

Yeah, the local sharing feature is cool, (Entourage is it called?) but I was thinking more along the lines of simply being able to view the playlists, not being able to access the files themselves. Similar to the celebrity playlists they tout on the store. I would enjoy that.

"I wonder what mosc is listening to right now..."

Cyx

seraph · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 3:43 pm Post subject:

Cyxeris · Joined: Oct 30, 2003 Posts: 1125 Location: Louisville, KY

Norm Vogel · Joined: Feb 20, 2003 Posts: 157 Location: Central NJ

*I* would define it as music that "flows" and sounds very "ethereal", much like music that they play at planteriums, etc.

My fav space music group was "WaveStar" -- does anyone remember THEM?????

Norm