Is New Age just wallpaper music?

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GoogaMooga
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Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby GoogaMooga » 29 Jun 2021, 03:00

New Age - wellness, mindfulness, crapfulness? What have you got in New Age? Is it all just wallpaper music? Is Erik Satie the father of wallpaper music? I culled most of my classical, but I kept the Satie. Enigma - they had a chart hit or two, didn't they? Enya I just ignore. Then there is Kitaro, perhaps New Age's only true superstar. I pick up his albums in thrift, but even at 50 pence each, I still feel I have been had.

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"I send a message of sound toward the sky, engulfing empty space, soaring far beyond grasp, high above the mountain tops, beyond ocean waves, stretching to reach the Andes and lightly touching Nepal . . . now catch the sound and feel the light by feeling things which are with life . . . this is a beginning connecting the dream to the color of your breathless heart peace and tranquility, you need only to sing . . . it is for you" --Kitaro
"When the desert comes, people will be sad; just as Cannery Row was sad when all the pilchards were caught and canned and eaten." - John Steinbeck

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Muskrat » 29 Jun 2021, 03:16

Penn Jillette used to pronounce "New Age" to rhyme with "sewage." Can't imagine he's reconsidered the assessment.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby GoogaMooga » 29 Jun 2021, 03:48

Muskrat wrote:Penn Jillette used to pronounce "New Age" to rhyme with "sewage." Can't imagine he's reconsidered the assessment.


:D
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby trans-chigley express » 29 Jun 2021, 05:18

I wouldn't describe Enya or Enigma as New Age, or Satie, but Kitaro certainly fits the bill and what I've heard is pretty dull. Yanni is another. I associate New Age with a particularly bland form of instrumental music

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Six String » 29 Jun 2021, 05:26

I like Eno’s comment on New Age music. It lacks a touch of evil or darkness or something like that and he’s right of course. It’s all based on major chords and designed to happify you. While I like being happified by music that isn’t the genre I would choose to do it. And yes, it is sonic wallpaper although one could say the same for Eno’s ambient albums but there’s a big difference between Kitaro and Eno.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Rorschach » 29 Jun 2021, 08:07

I've never knowingly heard Kitaro, and if what Googs quoted above is anything to go by, I hope I never do.

I don't have any objection to wallpaper/elevator music in principal; I often have that sort of thing in the background while I'm working; but it's not something I'd ever choose to listen to.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby GoogaMooga » 29 Jun 2021, 10:01

Yes, I've got some of Eno's ambient albums and I am keeping those, for sure.
Last edited by GoogaMooga on 29 Jun 2021, 11:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby naughty boy » 29 Jun 2021, 10:54

I listened to so much Eno the other day I had to be taken home in an AMBIENCE
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Rorschach » 29 Jun 2021, 13:44

OUTPLAY wrote:I listened to so much Eno the other day I had to be taken home in an AMBIENCE


I'm nicking that.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby BARON CORNY DOG » 29 Jun 2021, 15:07

New Age - wellness, mindfulness, crapfulness?


I don't know. I suppose that depends on what you mean by "New Age."

What have you got in New Age?


I don't know, probably nothing. I had a prism I got a a new age bookstore in the mid 80s, but it's long gone.

Is it all just wallpaper music?


I don't know, who could possibly say? What is wallpaper music?

Is Erik Satie the father of wallpaper music?


Obviously, I'm not well versed in this strange world of music named for wallpaper, so it won't come as a surprise that I am completely ignorant to its lineage.

I culled most of my classical, but I kept the Satie.


I support your cull in every respect, except this one. Surely culling most of "your classical" was a rash move and you will live to rue the day! In a thread of uncertanties, I believe I can say this with a great deal of confidence!

Enigma - they had a chart hit or two, didn't they?


I believe they did. Is Enigma "New Age," "wallpaper music," or something else? I remember it being of its time, but self-evidently silly even then.

Enya I just ignore.


She hasn't been by lately, but I'm sure I would treat her with some modicum of respect!

Then there is Kitaro, perhaps New Age's only true superstar. I pick up his albums in thrift, but even at 50 pence each, I still feel I have been had.


I have never heard of this Kitaro! Did you know you were being had when you paid your money for New Age's only true superstar? Were you misled? Or have you changed your mind about "New Age?"

"I send a message of sound toward the sky, engulfing empty space, soaring far beyond grasp, high above the mountain tops, beyond ocean waves, stretching to reach the Andes and lightly touching Nepal . . . now catch the sound and feel the light by feeling things which are with life . . . this is a beginning connecting the dream to the color of your breathless heart peace and tranquility, you need only to sing . . . it is for you" --Kitaro


That's why I listen to New Riders of the Purple Sage! When they aren't being grubby hippies perpetrating outdated views of the male/female dynamic, and Jerry Garcia is on pedal steel, it's straight to the Andes by god.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Mike Boom » 29 Jun 2021, 16:09

Image

"I really enjoyed this foray into wallpaper … and hope to go further with it in the future. It didn’t feel very different from making music, but this was a discreet kind of music to be gently played on walls." – Brian Eno

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby GoogaMooga » 29 Jun 2021, 16:11

You guys are killing me! :lol:
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby ChrisB » 29 Jun 2021, 18:01

And the wallpaper is woodchip

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Darkness_Fish » 30 Jun 2021, 13:57

Joanna Brouk was considered new age, but I absolutely adore this collection I picked up a few years back:

Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Minnie the Minx » 30 Jun 2021, 14:34

I have listened to a lot of the Joanna Brouk - I like it too.
When I have been listening to Japanese composers on YouTube which is some of my favourite background music while working on the computer, it often takes me to something that may be considered dental waiting room music but I often like it a lot. I never realise it's "unhip" or whatever the term is until I open the screen and take a good look.
One of my favourite things is this:

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Seemingly, they are not even Japanese- they are Argentinian! But I absolutely love it.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby GoogaMooga » 30 Jun 2021, 15:15

Back in the 80s I listened to Durutti Column and liked it, but never got around to getting any of that on CD. How would you categorize DC?
"When the desert comes, people will be sad; just as Cannery Row was sad when all the pilchards were caught and canned and eaten." - John Steinbeck

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman » 30 Jun 2021, 17:14

OUTPLAY wrote:I listened to so much Eno the other day I had to be taken home in an AMBIENCE


:D

Very good! So far the words 'new age', 'sewage', and 'ambience' struck me... this, and a mental picture of some poor BCB'er in an ambulance, could lead to the lyrics of an imaginary Fall song about extremely dull music being a hazard to your mental stability.

Oh, and I saw the expression 'happify' here for the first time.

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby C » 01 Jul 2021, 18:08

Satie called it 'furniture' music. In other words it slips into the background and is just there. He said the music "mingles with the sound of the knives and forks at dinner"

Brian Eno picked upon the idea when he was in hospital and he wanted to play some classical harp music - his friend put the album on and left the room but the volume was too low. It was raining outside, and Eno says he began listening to the rain and to "these odd notes of the harp that were just loud enough to be heard above the rain".

Eno said this experience taught him a new way to perceive music. It motivated him to record the album Discreet Music.

Eno recommends that his ambient albums are played at low volume which I always do

This is one of the best albums ever made:







.
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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby trans-chigley express » 02 Jul 2021, 05:26

Darkness_Fish wrote:Joanna Brouk was considered new age, but I absolutely adore this collection I picked up a few years back:


This just veers on the right side of New Age. It's wallpaper music but very pleasant and interesting enough that you can focus on it but it let it drift along in the background while doing something else. There's no whale sounds or washes of bland keyboards that I associate with true new age music.

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Re: Is New Age just wallpaper music?

Postby trans-chigley express » 02 Jul 2021, 05:29

C wrote:
Eno recommends that his ambient albums are played at low volume which I always do

This is one of the best albums ever made:







.


More ambient than new age but does veer dangerously close. The kind of thing that would be on an endless loop at a week yoga retreat.


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