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Amoeba (band)
Amoeba is an experimental music group that fuses the pop and ambient music genres. They formed in California, United States, in 1992. The core members of the group are ambient musician Robert Rich and guitarist/bassist Rick Davies. Rich and Davies have worked together since 1979. Davies had just returned to the United States after working with several experimental rock groups in the United Kingdom and Spain. During the next five years, Rich and Davies worked on several collaborative projects. The style of these projects was an aggressive blend of art rock and pure avant-garde composition. In 1983 Rich and Davies formed a trio with bassist Andrew McGowan called Urdu. Urdu performed several concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of their last performances was a live radio broadcast in 1984. Some of their recorded material was released as a self-titled album on cassette in 1985. In 1992 the first version of Amoeba formed. It was a quartet featuring Robert Rich, Andrew McGowan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pop Music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms ''popular music'' and ''pop music'' are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular and includes many disparate styles. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. ''Rock'' and ''pop'' music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which ''pop'' became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible. Although much of the music that appears on record charts is considered to be pop music, the genre is distinguished from chart music. Identifying factors usually include repeated choruses and hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much pop music also borrows elements from other styles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audio Cassette
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips in 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (''Musicassette''), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed - for example the Microcassette - the generic term ''cassette tape'' is normally always used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. Its uses have ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers; the Compact Cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led to it supplanting the stereo 8-track cartridge and ree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Christian (musician)
Hans Christian (also seen as Hans Christian Reumschüssel and other variations) is a German-born musician and producer now based in the U.S. in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Christian is a multi-instrumentalist (bass guitar, cello, nyckelharpa, and sarangi, but also balalaika, santoor, sitar, tambura, etc.) usually associated with world music, ethnic fusion, chamber jazz and sometimes new-age music, but who also plays electronic and classical music. His solo concerts feature the cello, sarangi, sitara, and nyckelharpa with a technique called live looping, where he uses a customized system to record and overdub his live playing on stage. His production work includes projects in a range of genres, from Americana to bluegrass, folk, rock, and devotional chants. He operates a recording studio in Sturgeon Bay, WI called STUDIO 330 and a record label named ''Allemande Music''. His first six years in the United States were spent in Los Angeles where he recorded, performed live or appeared on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pivot (album)
''Pivot'' (2000) is an album by the American experimental pop music group Amoeba. The style of this album is similar to that of Amoeba’s previous album ''Watchful'' (1997) except with a somewhat more active and direct approach. The lyrics are also more literal and emotional than those of ''Watchful''. Track listing #”Fireflies” - 3:47 #”No Empty Promises” - 4:34 #”Traces” - 4:43 #”Pivot” - 4:24 #”Moonlight Flowers” - 3:40 #”House of Rust” - 1:17 #”Harvest” - 4:42 #”Miniature” - 2:09 #”Seasons Passing” - 5:01 #”Underground” - 5:30 #”Sparks” - 4:34 #”To Other Days” - 4:15 Personnel * Robert Rich - vocals, piano, harmonium, synthesizers, lap steel guitar, flutes *Rick Davies - electric and acoustic guitars :with: *Don Swanson - drums *Andrew McGowan - bass *Hans Christian Hans Christian may refer to: People * Hans Christian (musician) (born 1960), German-born musician and producer * Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), Danish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Watchful
''Watchful'' (1997) is an album by the American experimental pop music group Amoeba. This is the first Amoeba album to feature the classic lineup of Robert Rich and Rick Davies. The style of this album consists of subtle and largely acoustic pop compositions with heavy ambient textures. Work on this album began in 1994. It was completed in 1995. Over the next two years they searched for a label to distribute the album. It was finally released in 1997 on the Lektronic Soundscapes label. When distribution problems arose with Lektronic Soundscapes, they moved to Release Records, who had also released Rich’s solo album ''Trances/Drones''. Track listing #”Inside” - 4:57 #”Skin” - 2:53 #”Origami” - 2:17 #”Footless” - 5:02 #”Ignoring Gravity” - 7:21 #”Water Vapor” - 2:12 #”Desolation” - 4:39 #”Big Clouds” - 2:50 #”Saragossa” - 4:06 #”Any Other Sky” - 6:38 #”Watchful Eyes” - 5:20 Personnel *Robert Rich - vocals, percussion, synthesizers, lap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lap Steel Guitar
The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional acoustic guitar, in which the performer's fingertips press the strings against frets, the pitch of a steel guitar is changed by pressing a polished steel bar against plucked strings (from which the name "steel guitar" derives). Though the instrument does not have frets, it displays markers that resemble them. Lap steels may differ markedly from one another in external appearance, depending on whether they are acoustic or electric, but in either case, do not have pedals, distinguishing them from pedal steel guitar. The steel guitar was the first "foreign" musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music. It originated in the Hawaiian Islands about 1885, popularized by an Oahu youth named Joseph Kekuku, who became known for playi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthesizer
A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI. Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, RCA Mark II, which was controlled with Punched card, punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eye Catching
''Eye Catching'' (1993) is the debut album by the American experimental pop music group Amoeba. It is an EP length CD consisting of five songs. This is the only Amoeba album not to feature the two-man lineup of Robert Rich and Rick Davies. The lineup on this album is a quartet featuring Rich, bassist Andrew McGowan, guitarist David Hahn and drummer Matt Isaacson. Rich and McGowan had previously worked together in a group called Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu" '' Lizard Brain'' - 4:59
#'' Kne ...
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Urdu (album)
Robert Rich (born 23 August 1963) is an ambient musician and composer based in California, United States. With a discography spanning over 30 years, he has been called a figure whose sound has greatly influenced today's ambient music, New-age music, and even IDM. Biography Early life At an early age, Rich thought he disliked music. Around age 12, he began growing succulent plants as a hobby. He would leave a radio tuned to classical music for his plants. This experience influenced his interest in avant-garde and minimal composition. In the 5th grade, he began studying viola and voice. He never completed his formal training because he became uncomfortable with reading musical notation. He began looking for ways to generate sounds similar to those he heard in his mind. He started improvising on his parents' piano to hear the sound of the sustained strings droning in tonal combinations, in the style of Charlemagne Palestine. He began building his own synthesizer in 1976 when h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambient Music
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. The genre is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual",Prendergast, M. ''The Ambient Century''. 2001. Bloomsbury, USA or "unobtrusive" quality. Nature soundscapes may be included, and the sounds of acoustic instruments such as the piano, strings and flute may be emulated through a synthesizer. The genre originated in the 1960s and 1970s, when new musical instruments were being introduced to a wider market, such as the synthesizer. It was presaged by Erik Satie's furniture music and styles such as musique concrète, minimal music, and German electronic music, but was prominently named and popularized by British mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Governments to include the nine counties that border the aforementioned estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other definitions may be either smaller or larger, and may include neighboring counties that do not border the bay such as Santa Cruz and San Benito (more often included in the Central Coast regions); or San Joaquin, Merced, and Stanislaus (more often included in the Central Valley). The core cities of the Bay Area are San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. Home to approximately 7.76 million people, Northern California's nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urdu (band)
Robert Rich (born 23 August 1963) is an ambient musician and composer based in California, United States. With a discography spanning over 30 years, he has been called a figure whose sound has greatly influenced today's ambient music, New-age music, and even IDM. Biography Early life At an early age, Rich thought he disliked music. Around age 12, he began growing succulent plants as a hobby. He would leave a radio tuned to classical music for his plants. This experience influenced his interest in avant-garde and minimal composition. In the 5th grade, he began studying viola and voice. He never completed his formal training because he became uncomfortable with reading musical notation. He began looking for ways to generate sounds similar to those he heard in his mind. He started improvising on his parents' piano to hear the sound of the sustained strings droning in tonal combinations, in the style of Charlemagne Palestine. He began building his own synthesizer in 1976 when he w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
