We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Ool​ô​ng: Ambient Works

by Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings

/
1.
Time Regained 15:35
info
buy track
2.
Butterfly of Ninh Binh 08:26
info
buy track
3.
Ruby Ceylan 10:48
info
buy track
4.
Dragon Inn 09:17
info
buy track
5.
Grand Jasmin 05:56
info
buy track
6.
Assam Jungle 06:17
info
buy track
7.
Himalayan Flower 07:36
info
buy track
8.
Summer Monsoon 09:40
info
buy track

about

Oolong: Ambient Works is the 17th studio album from multi disciplinary artist Ran Slavin. A 74 min ambient minimal symphonic album that conceptually takes after various tea’s in the far east. Each track is named after a tea blend and additionally accompanied by a set of 8 videos shot in East Asia in a slow meditative atmospheric fashion. Oolong can be experienced as single tracks or joined to a 74 minute immersive audio visual piece. 

Oolong (Wu-lung) tea originates from China and is actually transliterated from two words meaning “Black” and “Dragon” in English. Besides its inherent meaning, the two words describe the shape of the Oolong leaves in their novel state. Oolong tea goes through a unique semi-oxidization process that ranges from 1% - 99%.

It is the second release of Ran Slavin on Mille Plateaux after his seminal work Insomniac City CD/DVD in 2006.

The immersive tea-walk in Zen radiates an infinity. It is an art of the path. The tea path is first and foremost a drama of water, but each place in Slavins journey represents a whole in itself. Everything in the cosmos is like the cosmos itself. Slavin’s tea path functions by adopting processes of neighboring art genres such as video, painting photography and sound.

Slavin’s Oolong dissolves the environment into a blend of ambiences. The music integrates synthetic textures into a patch-worked concrete soundscape brimming with sonic harmonics, micro-sounds, interferences and designed noise. Slavins music is about catching the world’s alienness while reinventing the relation between materiality and the immaterial, the concrete and the abstract, and also between the terrestrial and the extra-terrestrial dimension, what sounds to be here and what seems to be there.

The formal restriction to the audiovisual means of expression is similar to the minimalist concept of tea architecture. As an overall work of art, the tea path correlates to and anticipates the cinematic processes of shot, slow motion and montage. The tea path is the art of matter, body and spirit. Its not only about the glitchy ambient sound, but also about the dimension of cinematic production, in which one works with tools such as film material, camera, microphone, lighting, editing equipment and so on. The visibility leads to a comparative discourse with the sound of the movie. It is easy to recognize that the accompanying videos and the tea path operate with a similar system of selective sounds. The ambient works in Oolong are not merely a signal but represent an ambiguous flow of signs with rich qualities. It is impossible to know exactly what the individual sounds signify. Sometimes it might be the intention to hear the sounds of nature. But its not a question of identifying its source and its effect. These acoustic phenomena have their subtle gradations and nuances that correspond to the vitality of the visual texture of things. Sometimes the sound refers to a traceable source, sometimes it refers to no definable source. The film acoustics, which are virtually generated have a metaphorical character comparable to the soundscape of the tea path. Not only the centripetal, but also the centrifugal orientation of the sound is imaginary. Slavins journey creates an artificial, abstract soundscape that deviates from the everyday perception of the sound environment. A microcosm and the cosmos opens up and reverses the relationship between the finite and the infinite.

Achim Szepanski, Mille Plateaux

credits

released March 22, 2024

Music, visual and cover art by Ran Slavin

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings image

Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings Tel Aviv Yafo, Israel

Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings is an independent music platform for new music and related visuals focusing on releases by Ran Slavin.

contact / help

Contact Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

If you like Nocturnal Rainbow Recordings, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring Riley Pinkerton (aka The Rat Queen) from the theatrical NYC rockers, Castle Rat.
listen now