As i was looking for what to post in my preps section i picked two and would you believe it during background research i found out they've worked together and share the same record label.. go figure. I was on the right track there, so i decided to add the movie of the soundtrack i'm posting. After some frustrating failures i found the right tool to get this HD movie...bit too large to share here, so i recoded it to FLV 640x320 for you all, the movie is a bit Koyaanisquatsi like.. considering the speed of living in the mid eighties i'd say its rather contemplative ...but then that's part of the Sundaze charm...
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Ron Fricke's Chronos 42min, HD mp4 700mb or get it here Ron Fricke - Chronos (FLV 640x320 , 189mb)
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Michael Stearns (born 1948) is an american musician and composer of ambient music. He is also known as a film composer, sound designer and soundtrack producer for large format films, theatrical films, documentaries, commercials, and themed attractions. Grown up in Tucson, Arizona, Michael Stearns started practicing guitar at 13. At 16, he played in a surf music band, evolving to acid rock, he began composing music on multiple instruments in 1968 and, while in university and in the Air Force, spent a few years studying electronic music synthesis, the physics of musical instruments, and accumulating equipment (musical instruments, tape recorders...) for his first studio.
The studio opened in Tucson, Arizona in 1972 where he produced jingles and commercials for local radio and television, and nationally released jingles for Schlitz Beer and Greyhound Bus Lines. Stearns's interest in experimental "space" music though left him unsatisfied, as he found no audience to play his musical ideas, which could be at this time only related to the drug experience. After three years, Michael Stearns underwent a spiritual crisis and thought about stopping music.
In 1975, Michael Stearns met Emily Conrad and Gary "Da'oud" David. Emily Conrad ran meditation classes in a workshop named Continuum, with Gary David performing on a Minimoog and looped tapes during the classes. Michael Stearns and his girlfriend Susan Harper moved to L.A., to join Emily Conrad. Not long after Michael Stearns became a resident musician and composer till 1981. All the while developping skills on synthesizers and the musical ideas that would feed his first solo albums. By 1977, Michael Stearns had formed a small independent record label (Continuum Montage) with Susan Harper and a close friend and investor, David Breuer. The same year came the first releases on tape, Desert Moon Walk and Sustaining Cylinders, followed by Ancient Leaves, his first album released on vinyl, in 1978.
In the same years, Stearns started out playing with Fred Stofflet a percussionist, then with Don Preston, the former keyboardist for The Mothers of Invention. Both of them were playing for Emily David's classes. After that, Stearns, Stofflet and Craig Hundley started a free jazz group called "Alivity". Kevin Braheny came to one of their concerts and became friends with Michael Stearns. He later joined Stearns to play live for Continuum, bringing his Serge synthesizer with him, on which Michael Stearns would record his album Morning Jewel in 1979 before building his own Serge synthesizer. In the same period, Stearns started working with Craig Huxley scoring movies and developed a friendship with Stephen Hill.
In 1981, Continuum moved to a new location and Michael Stearns began a solo career. He released Planetary Unfolding, Light Play (1983) and Lyra. on his own Continuum label until in 1984 he signed to Sonic Atmospheres, on which some of his earlier works would be re-released. In 1984, Chronos was the first film music done entirely by Stearns after years of collaboration with Huxley or Maurice Jarre. In 1986, he provided "electronic images and textures" for Constance Demby's album Novus Magnificat. After two more releases for Sonic Atmospheres, Plunge (1986) and Floating Whispers (1987), Michael Stearns signed to his old friend Stephen Hill's new label, Hearts of Space Records and released Encounter.
In the next years, Michael Stearns worked again with Ron Fricke, scoring Baraka, his best known composition and released several albums, working with Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny and/or Ron Sunsinger (1989 : Desert Solitaire, 1994 : Singing Stones and Kiva) or alone (1993 : Sacred Sites, 1995 : The Lost World). In 2000 and 2001, Michael Stearns, now established in Santa Fe, New Mexico, released several albums on his own label Earth Turtle : Within, The Middle of Time, Spirits of the Voyage, The Storm, and Sorcerer. He is still scoring movies and documentaries today. In 2006, he was involved in the IMAX movie Te Vaka
Quote
"What I hope is transferred to the listener of my music is a certain depth. I think the depth that I am really speaking of is that we as human beings are the artistic process here on the planet, as individuals, groups, countries and as a global experience. What we create and think of as our artistic outpouring, be it music, the painted art, a sculpture or just a beautiful dinner that we might create for somebody, are really metaphors or hieroglyphics for the depth of our own participation in the moments that we create them. I hope that this depth creates a context for other people to experience deeper things inside of themselves."
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Chronos is the soundtrack of the IMAX film by Ron Fricke (one of the the creators of Koyaanisqatsi). One could define it as an electronic symphony (a single track of 41:30, with seven movements): few musicians can reach such a degree of expressiveness, of strength and power, of space and crescendos with synthesizers. Michael Stearns used a Serge Modular System, as well as Oberheim, Emu and Yamaha synthesizers, blending analogic and digital textures in a true symphonic way. Constance Demby added her impressive "Space Bass" sound, while a human choir added a lyrical touch to the composition. Slow and meditative or carried away by the hectic tempos of Western megapoles, Chronos is a unique sonic journey through the paths of time and memory, of origins and progress: this soundtrack will inspire you many visions even if you don't watch the movie...
Michael Stearns - Chronos (84 93mb)
01 Chronos (41:45)
Movement 1 - Corridors Of Time
Movement 2 - Essence And The Ancients
Movement 3 - Angels, Bells And Pastorale
Movement 4 - Escalator
Movement 5 - Voices
Movement 6 - Portraits
Movement 7 - The Ride (Finale)
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Born in Oakland CA, Constance Demby gave her first recital for classical pianoforte at the age of twelve. She studied sculpture and painting at the University of Michigan. After her marriage, she lived in New York for seven years.It was both as musician and sculptor that her Sonic Steel Instruments, the space bass and the whale sail were created. An original design, her Sonic Steel Instruments have been recorded by Lucas Skywalker Studios for use in their filmscores, and also filmed by Discovery Channel at Gaudi's Park Güell. The Space Bass is featured on Michael Stearns' soundtrack for Chronos.
As a co-founder of The Central Maine Power, Sound and Light Company, an experimental visual and sound group, she created multimedia shows with sculptures and lights, and her sonic steel instruments.
As a pioneer in her field, she creates sounds you'd swear you never heard before; yet, somewhere in some dim memory, there is a faint memory echo - rich and compelling - calling up archetypal experiences which access the deeper, more profound levels of the mind-body-spirit, allowing listeners to travel into states of expanded consciousness.
Constance Demby - Set Free (89 146b)
01 Waltz Of Joy 4:45
02 Tribal Gregorian 4:19
03 Javalon 4:19
04 I Set Myself Free 4:30
05 Moving On 4:45
06 Mother Of The World 5:29
07 Chambers Of The Heart 4:37
08 Lotus Opening 5:53
09 Into The Center 11:01
10 The Galactic Chalice 7:26
11 Celestial Communion 9:16
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elsewhere on this blog (Rhotation 29)
Constance Demby - Novus Magnificat ( 86 ^ 99mb)
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