Darkroom ambient podcast - free music from ambient/avant-garde improvisers Darkroom

From the 30th July 2008 Improvizone gig. This was the last section of the night, though there were bass, drums and sitar playing too. This podcast just takes Mike's guitar and my processing of Mike's guitar, for a more ambient experience. Copyright 2008 Darkroom.

Apologies for the long delay between podcasts this time. My main excuse is that as of about two weeks ago I now have a baby boy on my hands. Expect to hear lots of cute baby gurgles on future podcasts. Anyway - this podcast is similar to the last, in that it consists of a semi-random ambient thing I left playing during a pause in a recent Improvizone gig. In other news - our new album is nearing completion. Keep an eye on the blog for more information. We may also put one of the album tracks on this podcast as a free download. Copyright 2008 Darkroom.

This comes from the May 23rd Improvizone performance at the Design Museum, London. The line-up was Os, Andrew Booker and Steve Lawson, but Mike was there in spirit since Os, without any keyboard to play, was spending half his time processing bits of Mike's guitar parts from the forthcoming album. We played pretty much constantly for 3 hours, except for a 15 minute break, during which Os left a semi-random ambient thing happening on the laptop - 2 minutes of which was recorded, which is what you hear in this podcast. Copyright 2008 Darkroom.

This little track is the sound of Os getting to know his new Prophet '08 keyboard. The first track on this podcast so far to feature no guitar at all. Copyright 2008 Darkroom. Composed and performed by Andrew Ostler.

In contrast to the ambient miniatures that have been the last few podcast episodes, here's an entire track from a recent gig (Croydon, 27/2/2008). We played 3 tracks (i.e. we stopped for applause 3 times - given that it was all improvised the concept of a track is moot) and this is the middle one. What you hear here is unedited but quite heavily mixed, mainly to beef up the drums. Personally I was rather pleased with the Tangerine Dream-esque synth choral sound that builds up later in the track. Copyright 2008 Darkroom. Composed and performed by Michael Bearpark, Andrew Booker and Andrew Ostler.

The final track that we'll be uploading from the recent BBC soundtrack. Unusually for Darkroom, this is entirely acoustic guitar. Copyright 2008 Darkroom. Composed and performed by Michael Bearpark and Andrew Ostler.

Hello, and welcome to the Darkroom podcast for February 26th 2008.

We're breaking with tradition tonight by recording this introduction, rather than just giving you the music by itself. We're doing this because there's actually quite a lot going on in Darkroom-land right now, and we wanted to tell you about it.

First, and most importantly, Darkroom has a shiny new website, which you can find at darkroomtheband.net. Central to the site is our blog, which is being updated quite regularly at the moment, with news of our own doings, including progress on the new album, as well as various other bits and bobs of potential interest. We heartily encourage you to subscribe to it, and if you're not sure how to subscribe to blogs, my personal recommendation is to check out Google Reader.

Secondly, we recently made available a free download-only release, containing tracks that didn't quite make it onto our album "The DAC Mixes". You can get it for free from burningshed.com, or read about it on our website, which once again is darkroomtheband.net.

We also wanted to mention that we've recently put all our material up on Last.fm, so you can now go there to listen to bits of all our albums, including some full tracks. If you're not a Last.fm user, check it out at www.last.fm. It seems to be a pretty good way of discovering new music, as well as keeping tabs on bands you already know you like.

So now to the music. This is the third track taken from our recent BBC soundtrack commission, and was supposed to convey wistful sadness. You can download a version with just the music, without this introduction, from our page on last.fm. Incidentally, please do mail us and let us know if you like having an introduction like this on your podcasts. Contact links are on our website, which once again is darkroomtheband.net.

That's it from me, and I by the way am Os, not Mike. I leave you with the track "people you look for". Cheers!

Copyright 2008 Darkroom. Composed and performed by Michael Bearpark and Andrew Ostler.

The second track from the recent BBC soundtrack. The brief for this one was 'screaming guitar'. Copyright 2008 Darkroom. Composed and performed by Michael Bearpark and Andrew Ostler.

We recently did some music for a BBC television news programme - read all about it on the darkroomtheband.net blog. This is the first of several sections that we're going to tidy up and post here. This one's brief was to be ominous and brooding - low hanging fruit for an ambient outfit like ourselves, but surprisingly hard to do when you only have 30 seconds to work with. Copyright 2008 Darkroom. Composed and performed by Michael Bearpark and Andrew Ostler.

About a third of our set from the Festival of Live Looping held in the Norwich Arts Centre on Saturday 17th November 2007. Once again, we were playing with the drummer Andrew Booker. Copyright 2007 Darkroom. Composed and performed by Andrew Booker, Michael Bearpark and Andrew Ostler.