Christmas carols. Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't avoid 'em during the holiday season. Christmas music has become part of the advertising industry, dedicated to putting you in the mood to buy. Yet underneath the dreamy materialism is a musical tradition with some of the best-loved, most enduring hymns and songs ever created.
Acoustic musicians have long made instrumental versions of classic carols, ignoring the words and letting the music take center stage. Ambient musicians normally take a different approach — slowing down the tempos, stretching out the melodies, and expanding the virtual space of the recording.
But the most radical approach of all comes from our old friend Ohio composer TIM STORY. Revered for his exquisite ambient chamber music, he's applied his refined tonal sense and electronic power tools to extract the melodic and harmonic essence of recordings of the most popular Christmas carol of all: Silent Night. The result is total transformation, from a familiar hymn to "a slow motion immersive epic."
On this transmission of Hearts of Space, slow-floating, harmon-o-gized, spatially-expanded ambient music for the holiday season, on a program called IMMERSIVE CAROLS. Music is by TIM STORY, MATT BORGHI, SAM BRADY LONG, DANNA CUNNINGHAM, and RICHARD STOLTZMAN.
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