Just yesterday I discovered a new genre of music, Illibient Music. As Chris Tweney describes it,
The theorists of illbient, headed up by DJ Spooky, carry the avant-garde high-art banner with pride. The occasional Soundlab parties, which set the illbient sound as a backdrop to relaxed, comfortable social spaces filled with multimedia installations, are the often-trumpeted ideal. But the reality doesn’t always match up — illbient performers are sometimes disappointed to find that audiences watch the DJ tables as they might a concert stage. So the emphasis of early illbient on pure textures and ambiance is starting to give way to more accessible, beat-oriented sounds. The shakeout of pure ambiance reflects illbient’s split personality. This is beat-driven music that’s not meant for dancing. Illbient is funk turned upside down and inside out, with sprawling, scary sampled bass lines in place of punchy bass guitar. Where the P-Funk Mob wanted to take you for a nonstop boogie ride on the mother ship, illbient wants to sit you down in front of a powerful subwoofer and let you absorb the bass from the inside out. Illbient lays claim to being the soundtrack of the premillennial urban experience. The topsy-turvy approach to “dance” music is just the first brick in a growing sonic warehouse.
MP3.com has an illbient chart, and Simulacra, this amazing Minnesota-based musician named Eric Peterson, has composed many pieces in this style. I’ll write a more in depth story on his music later, but he has a prodigious amount of mp3’s freely available on mp3 including the extraordinary pieces 4am, Apparition, and the faster Auriga and Jawbreaker . Well, registration is required, but Simulacra’s inventive musical imagination makes it worth the trouble this time. Although Peterson has acheived a fair amount of success (getting tracks on Matrix and Disney films), I’m amazed that no one has thought to write about his extraordinary music. (Stay tuned for more thoughts).