Barry Schrader

CD AND DIGITAL TRACKS AVAILABLE ON BANDCAMP

Program notes

At the age of 80, I’m releasing my first album of new music in over a decade. Composed in 2024 and 2025, Ambient : Aether is different from my previous works in its use of stylistic features of ambient music and also experiments in controlled distortion. While I’ve used ambient elements before, I haven’t intentionally composed an entire album that utilizes characteristics of the style. Yet, Ambient : Aether is not ambient music in the traditional sense, and it still incorporates my techniques of musical development and timbral transformation. As to distortion, which has become increasingly important in electro-acoustic music, I’ve introduced distortion to several timbres; some sounds are the kind that might come from forceful playing on a string or produced by overblowing on a wind instrument, others are sound masses that exhibit more extreme distortion, including artifacts.   All of the sound material in Ambient : Aether was created using a computer and a variety of software; no acoustic sounds were used.  Ambient : Aether is an imaginary journey through the aerosphere, traveling  from the rising clouds that we can see to the atmospheric edge and the invisible mythic aether beyond.

TRACK LIST

I - Cloudrise (15:12)

II - Atmospheric Rivers (13:33)

III - Supernal Ascent (15:53)  (Troposphere [0:00]; Stratosphere [2:52]; Mesosphere [5:30 ];Thermosphere 8:30]; Exosphere                                                   [12:26])

IV - Aether (15:48)

Total Time 1:00:06

LISTEN TO AMBIENT : AETHER ON BANDCAMP