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Galactic Travels™ Monthly Special Focus Log - 2024


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The Special Focus for January was
MICHAEL BRÜCKNER
Michael Brückner

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Michael Brückner produces electronic music in a wide variety of styles, concentrating on Berlin School, ambient, and drone. A self-managing artist, he has created more than 120 albums since 1992, most of which can be ordered directly from him or via his Bandcamp page.

Since 2012, a number of his albums have been released by independent labels such as SynGate, Klangwirkstoff, Aural Films, BI-ZA Records, and Winter-Light. He has also performed in a number of European electronic music festivals.

Michael is also involved in collaborations with other artists like Detlev Everling, Alien Nature, Mathias Brüssel, Cousin Silas, Mathias Grassow, Rebekkah Hilgraves, Harald Bertram, and Lutz Thuns. His collaborations include several long term projects: B4 SUNRISE, La Mansarde Hérmetique, Betzler and Brückner, and Bridge To Imla.

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Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Michael has been a Special Focus on Galactic Travels™ before:
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
Date Album Label
01/04 Astronauts Volume 2 disk 1 Aural Films
01/11 Astronauts Volume 2 disk 2 Aural Films
01/18 Astronauts Volume 2 disk 3 Aural Films
01/25 Test of Time SynGate
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for January
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for February was
MATHIAS GRASSOW
Mathias Grassow

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Mathias Grassow is a prolific composer who specializes in ambient music. His deep minimalist style makes him a master of drones, creating music that is drifting and expansive. Mathias is fond of collaborations and has done projects with Jim Cole (Spectral Voices), Amir Baghiri, Klaus Wiese (ex-Popul Vuh), and Michael Brückner, to name a few.

Musically active since 1980, Mathias trained at Synthesizer Studio Jacob in Wiesbaden during the early '80s. In 1986, Mathias released his first cassette followed by his first CD in 1990.

Click on the name or photo above to go to the artist's web site.

Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Mathias has been a Special Focus on Galactic Travels™ before:
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
Date Album
02/01 Ambience
02/08 Namakar
02/15 Lanzarote Spirits
02/22 Psychic Dome
02/29 In Search of Sanity
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for February
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for March was
MARK JENKINS
Mark Jenkins

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Mark Jenkins has been described by Eurock Magazine as "the master synth musician in the UK." His music is influenced by that of Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Jan Hammer, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Richard Pinhas & Heldon, Yanni, John Tesh, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Brian Eno, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Rick Wakeman, Pink Floyd, Can, Neu!, Kraftwerk, Enigma, Deep Forest & Ash Ra Tempel. Many of his albums include themes of space travel, cosmology, science fiction, ecology and exploration. He recently became the first British musician to perform at the Greenwich Planetarium in London and has performed throughout Europe and in the USA, Brazil, China and Russia.

Mark is influenced by the authors Iain M. Banks, Larry Niven and Richard Dawkins, and by movies including the Babylon 5 cycle and 2001: A Space Odyssey. He is an internationally published author on the subjects of music and media technology and is the editor of the online media magazine EMIX.

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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
All releases are on AMP Records.
Date Album
03/07 Modular Sessions 11:
The Spirit of Heldon
03/14 Modular Sessions 12:
Live in the USA disk 1
03/21 Modular Sessions 19:
Live in the USA disk 2
03/28 Modular Sessions 20:
Superhero Landing
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for March
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for April was
ROBERT RICH
Robert Rich

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Robert released his first album Sunyata in 1982. Most of his subsequent recordings came out in Europe until 1989, when Robert began a string of critically acclaimed releases for Fathom/Hearts of Space, including Rainforest (1989), Gaudi (1991), Propagation (1994) and Seven Veils (1998). His two collaborations with Steve Roach, Strata (1990) and Soma (1992), both charted for several months in Billboard. Other respected collaborations include Stalker (1995 with B. Lustmord), Fissures (1997 with Alio Die) and Outpost (2002 with Ian Boddy). Robert's contributions to multi-artist compilations have been collected on his solo albums A Troubled Resting Place (1996) and Below Zero (1998). His group, Amoeba, explored atmospheric songcraft on their CDs Watchful (1997) and Pivot (2000). Live albums such as Calling Down the Sky (2004) and 3-CD Humidity (2000) document the unique improvised flow of his performances.

Robert has performed in caves, cathedrals, planetaria, art galleries and concert halls throughout Europe and North America. His all-night Sleep Concerts, first performed in 1982, became legendary in the San Francisco area. In 1996 he revived his all-night concert format, playing Sleep Concerts for live and radio audiences across the U.S. during a three month tour. One of those concerts was WDIY's first over night broadcast. In 2001 Robert released the 7 hour DVD Somnium, a studio distillation of the Sleep Concert experience, possibly the longest continuous piece of music ever released at the time. It's worldwide radio premier was on Galactic Travels.

Robert has designed sounds for television and film scores, including the films Pitch Black, Crazy Beautiful, Behind Enemy Lines and others. His musical scores grace films by Yahia Mehamdi (Thank you for your Patience, 2003) and Daniel Colvin (Atlas Dei, 2007, with 90 minutes of Robert's music in surround); and a video installation by Michael Somoroff (Illumination, 2007). Rich works closely with electronic instrument manufacturers, and his sound design has filled preset libraries of Emu's Proteus 3 and Morpheus, Seer Systems' Reality, sampling disks Things that Go Bump in the Night, ACID Loop Library Liquid Planet, WayOutWare's TimewARP2600, and synths by Camel Audio. Rich has written software for composers who work in just intonation, and he helped develop the MIDI microtuning specification. As mastering engineer and mixer, he has applied his ear to albums in all styles, and his studio was featured twice in Keyboard Magazine, and elsewhere worldwide.

Robert has been featured on this program since the very first episode. Since then, his music has graced the 1000th broadcast as well as the worldwide radio premier of his seven hour epic, Somnium, played in its entirety.

Click on the name or photo above to go to the artist's web site.

Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Robert has been a Special Focus on Galactic Travels™ before:
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
Date Album Label
04/04 Rainforest Hearts of Space
04/11 Yearning with Lisa Moskow Fathom
04/18 Shamballa Space for Music
04/25 Strata with Steve Roach Hearts of Space
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for Apr
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for May was
Mutagénèse
Click on the name, photo, or logo above to visit the artist's website.

Ambient and electronic music / Musique ambiante et électronique

English:
Between ambient, atmospheric and electronic, the music of Mutagénèse explores sound textures. The musical roots of Mutagénèse comes mainly from the Berlin school, but also from artists like Jean-Michel Jarre, Steve Roach, Brian Eno, Future Sound of London and Autechre.

Français:
Variant entre l'ambiant, l'atmosphérique et l'électronique, la musique de Mutagénèse explore les textures sonores. Les racines musicales de Mutagénèse proviennent principalement de l'école de Berlin, mais aussi d'artistes comme Jean-Michel Jarre, Steve Roach, Brian Eno, Future Sound of London et Autechre.

Mutagénèse is François Vallières of Quebec, Canada.

Click on the name or photo above to go to the artist's web site.

Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
Date Album Label
05/02 Errance Planétaire none
05/09 Exploration Spatiale none
05/16 Ganymede none
05/23 Microcosm SynGate
05/30 Voices SynGate
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for May
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for June was
dreamSTATE Logo
Click on the name, photo, or logo above to visit the artist's website.

Based in Toronto and tangled in patch cables, dreamSTATE's Scott McGregor Moore (Scott M2) and Jamie Todd submerge in the studio, creating their evolving sound environments with a collection of vintage and modern synthesizers. Their first public expression of their electronic explorations was an ambient soundscape installation in 1996. This ever-changing, multi-speaker creation played continuously for six months at The H5 Project, a holographic art gallery in Toronto.

dreamSTATE's first CD release was in 1998 and they have performed at the World Electronic Music Festival, Interference Orange, THE AMBiENT PiNG, and the Junction Arts Festival to name just a few. Still working in the deep end of the ambient pool, dreamSTATE remain active ambient and electronic music performers.

Click on the name or photo above to go to the artist's web site.

Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
Date Album Label
06/06 Passage e-Space Recordings
06/13 A Decade of Dreaming e-Space Recordings
06/20 Drone Day e-Space Recordings
06/27 Stone Shore with Heiki Sillaste paper+sound
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for June
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for July was
DINO PACIFICI
Dee Logo

Click on the name, photo, or logo above to visit the artist's website.

Dino Frank Pacifici of Montreal began his musical studies at the age of five, concentrating on classical guitar and began composing at the age of 13. Dee received his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts (music) from Concordia University.

Grounded in ambient and chillout music with a jazz influence, Dee writes Pop-Oriented and Dance music and plays in local bands. Dee has spent many years studying, recording, and performing live in which he continuously expands his musical horizons becoming proficient with bass, keyboards, programming of electronic instruments, as well as his first love the guitar. His compositions include recordings of ambient/space and chillout/jazz albums.

In 1997, Dee released "The Journey" which began his adventure into recording ambient/space compositions. To date, Dee recorded over 25 albums in many genres, including Smooth Jazz, Ambient, Space, Chill-Out, Rock, Pop, and Dance.

Click on the name or photo above to go to the artist's web site.

Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
All titles are released on Scorpio Rising Music.
Date Album
07/04 New Earth
07/11 Geo-Ambient Excursions
07/18 Kinetic N-R-GEE
07/25 A Boat Without Oars
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for July
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for August was
LA MANSARDE HERMÉTIQUE
photo

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La Mansarde Hermétique (The Hermetic Attic) was founded in 2013. It is the electronic improvisation project of Mathias Brüssel and Michael Brückner. Both are electronica and ambient artists from Mainz, Germany, and are involved in solo projects and other collaborations. They have been active in the German ambient and electronic music scene for more than 25 years.

Click on the name or photo above to go to the artist's web site.

Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
All titles are self released.
Date Album
08/01 The Attic Diaries Episode 1
08/08 The Attic Diaries Episode 2
08/15 The Attic Diaries Episode 3
08/22 The Attic Diaries Episode 4
08/29 The Attic Diaries Episode 5
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for June
Link to this month's Top 20

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The Special Focus for September was
ALIAS ZONE
photo

Click on the name, photo, or logo above to visit the artist's website.

Alias Zone is Chris Meyer of LearningModular.com. He fell in love with electronics at the age of six and with electronic music at the age of ten. As a teenager in the 1970s, Chris took lessons on piano, bass, and modular synthesizers, wanting to learn how to emulate the music he heard on albums by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Wendy Carlos, and others.

Not wanting to be just another starving musician, Chris hatched a plan to get an engineering degree so he could afford these toys. Just a year out of college, he landed a job with synthesizer manufacturer Sequential Circuits, where he worked on numerous instruments and created a technique known as Vector Synthesis. He went on to work for Digidesign, Marion Systems (Tom Oberheim), and eventually became chief engineer at Roland R&D US. On the side, Chris taught synthesis at UCLA Extension, wrote numerous articles for Music Technology Magazine plus a column for Keyboard, and was technical chairman of the MIDI Manufacturers Association where he created and championed numerous extensions to the MIDI specification.

In addition to designing instruments, Chris also used them, playing with Richard Bugg's ensemble Cosmic Debris in the Los Angeles area in the 1990s. He took his favorite performances with this ensemble and reworked them to release the first Alias Zone album "Lucid Dreams" in 2001. It debuted at #1 on the relevant college radio charts, and went on to win the AFIM award for best independent electronic/new age release in 2002.

By then, Chris had moved from the music industry to creating graphics for video and film. This distraction eventually pried him away from music until 2015, when he asked himself what did he enjoy most in life? The answer: creating sound.

Chris embarked on his return to music by creating LearningModular.com to teach others how to use modular synthesizers. Originally creations of the 1960s and 70s, modular synths were back in vogue again, but few musicians had a solid grounding in the fundamentals of how to use them. This work eventually led to Chris co-authoring with Kim Bjørn the now-classic book, Patch & Tweak: Exploring Modular Synthesis.

Now Chris is applying his past and new experiences to create music again, still under the name Alias Zone. Today Chris is primarily a solo act, with the modular synthesizer being the core of his personal “orchestra.” He combines the modular with other instruments ranging from polyphonic digital synthesizers to primitive hand percussion to virtual instruments in the computer, along with guest performances by friends. The result is a fusing of the past and future into brand new synthetic yet still organic soundscapes, each with an underlying story.

Click on the name or logo above to go to the artist's web site.

Click this banner for the Special Focus listing on WDIY's website.
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
All titles are self released.
Date Album
09/05 Lucid Dreams
09/12 We Only Came to Dream
09/19 Water Stories
09/26 Finite Space
Here is the Top 20 Monthly Report for September
Link to this month's Top 20

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While Bill is on hiatus for the remainder of 2024, please enjoy these archive episodes from 2019.
The Special Focus for October is
MODULATOR ESP
Photo

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Modulator Experimental Synthesis Project (Modulator ESP) is Jez Creek from Nottingham in the UK. He performs improvised music that explores the boundaries of dark ambient, drone, Berlin School sequencing, and noise using modular synthesis, real-time sampling, sound manipulation, and live looping.

Modulator ESP has been described variously as "vintage synth overload to propel you into the outer reaches of the cosmos" and "one man will descend to (this) earth in a hail of analogue synth tones; called upon from the singular consciousness of John Carpenter and Vangelis - like a 2046 dystopian dream with the optimism of Jean Michael Jarre, and his penguins."

When Modulator ESP discovered that there was more to EM than TD, Jarre, Pickford and Shreeve by finding bands like Arc, RMI, Redshift, Airsculpture, and Arcane, bands that were doing a more retro-styled improvisational take on EM, it came as a revelation to him. One of the reasons he'd left the band he was in was because he wanted to do something a bit more freeform. He knew he still wanted to play live but without playing along to pre-programmed, structured backing tracks.

Things started to snowball when he discovered certain synthesizers, both hardware and software, step sequencing, and delay processors.

Modulator ESP loves playing synths because he loves the electronic, synthetic, other worldly nature of the sounds. This makes Ambient, Berlin School EM the best style for his interests.

Click on the name or photo above to go to the artist's web site.

Modulator ESP has been a Special Focus on Galactic Travels™ before:
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Featured CD at Midnight by Week
All albums are self released.
Date Title
10/03 Electro Positronic Systems
10/10 The Mind Caged
10/17 Signals from the Earth
10/24 Entrancing Elemental Energies
10/31 Cymatic Structures

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Galactic Travels™ is designed to bring WDIY listeners hour-long soundscapes of electronic, ambient, and space music.
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