Hildegard Westerkamp

(first 4 photos from lastfm, last one from Continuo.)

So much admiration and respect for the work of Hildegard Westerkamp. Truly one of our great sound adventurers, right up there with Ruth White and Daphne Oram. Born in Germany and now living and teaching in Canada, Westerkamp was a member of the dictaphone-wielding World Soundscape project with R. Murray Schafer in the 1970s, and has since sculpted out a formidable body of work in the fields of environmental sound and acoustic ecology. Her compositions involve the capture and release of human voices, ambient urban and rural sounds, found audio from radio and TV, and -- I could be wrong here -- percussion and electroacoustic flourishes of her own making. It is beautiful, deeply humane, and often quite funny work -- it is the "music" I have been wanting to hear for a long time. Her output seems to be scattered among hard-to-find cassettes, so I've just been listening to the 20+ amazing sound documents posted on her website. D/l here.

Balls Out!

AV Geeks strikes again with a new compilation of educational films about bouncing spherical objects. Includes a Dutch film about marbles and a magical Norwegian short in which the Moon descends to Earth in the form of a mischievous yellow rubber ball. Buy here and support the genius that is AV Geeks! Here's a short excerpt of "Moonplay."

Ros Bandt

Le Seuil du Vide

Bonkers post-new wave surrealist fairy tale out of France in 1974, directed by Jean Francois Davy. Wanda, a painter, rents a triangular Parisian apartment from a creepy old lady on the condition that she never open a certain mysterious locked door. A nice reworking of the old Bluebeard plot -- soon enough the door opens to reveal an acid-tinged theater of illusions, a kind of goth, baroque salon if you can imagine. Some nice color-filtered psychedelic scenes worthy of Shuji Terayama or Pierre Clementi. Highly recommended!

Fun with Colored Foil

Manfred Burggraf, Fun with Colored Foil (Watson-Guptill, 1967)

The Spirit of the Beehive

Watched this again the other day and was reminded how great it is. This time my favorite scenes were: dad's headphone reverie, mushroom picking, cat petting (although this quickly goes awry), and bonfire jumping. Here's a quick rip of Luís de Pablo's music. One of my absolute favorite film scores -- if you like Lubos Fiser's Valerie soundtrack then you might be into it.

G. Ernesaks

1978 tv show -- title translates as "Mysterious Exchange Student." Kinda eerie looking at this post-Fukushima.

Dance of the Trees

From Peter Slade, Child Drama (1954).

lithuanianbooks

Coolest ebay store. Endless dreamworld of Estonian/Lithuanian/Soviet picture books. Weaving, textiles, folk art, etc.