Our complete podcast series is available on these fine platforms and on Mixcloud + Soundcloud – below at the end of the post is our complete Ambient Meditation Series and Spotify Playlist that is updated weekly:
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Ambient Meditations S2 Vol 55 – Rob Burger
This week, we have a beautifully chilled-out selection from pianist Rob Burger, who brings a cinematic mix that fits your December mood. Burger is currently preparing to release his new album Marching With Feathers that is out on February 11th, a follow-up to his 2018 release, The Grid. His mix features a wonderful variety of artists from Can to Brian Eno to John Cage and many you may have never heard of before. So sit back, stare up at those holiday lights you've draped around your house and let your mind unwind. It's time to let the holiday spirit take over.
Ambient Meditations 55 Tracklist By Rob Burger
Bernard Herrmann – The Bedroom
Can – One More Night
Brian Eno / Harold Budd – The Silver Ball
Alice Coltrane – Sita Ram
Terry Riley – Anthem of the Trinity
Moondog – All Is Loneliness
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou – The Song of the Sea
John Fahey – Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Tom Zé – Toc
Ambient Meditations S2 Vol 55 – Rob Burger
In Conversation: Anja Schneider [Sous Music]
Album Review: Teen Daze – Interior
John Cage – VIII
The Haxan Cloak – The Mirror Reflecting (Part 1)
Morton Feldman – excerpt from Piano and String Quartet (1985) Hans Joachim Roedelius – Girlande
Low – Dancing and Fire
Jonny Greenwood – For The Hungry Boy
Spotify Monthly Playlist
Soundcloud Season Two
Soundcloud Season One
More About Rob Burger
Marching With Feathers is out February 11, 2022
Rob Burger's keyboard work can be heard behind everything from Guggenheim showcases to Ocean's films, as well as albums by John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, and Iron & Wine, but the moonlit compositions he spins up on his own may be the most compelling work to bear his fingerprints. His newest solo venture Marching With Feathers departs from the exotica and kosmische of 2018's The Grid toward a genreless seesaw of electrified apprehension, and capacious piano rumination. From the involuntary isolation of his home studio in Nashville, Burger uses the skills he continues sharpening with his soundtracking and session work to transmute the hardships of the new decade into a hibernatory dreamscape.
A lifelong musician, Rob began learning piano at age four and would go on to study under jazz luminaries Max Roach, Archie Shepp, and Yusef Lateef at the University of Massachusetts. As if his formal education weren't impressive on its own, his informal one consisted of frequent visits to New York City creative hubs The Knitting Factory, and The Kitchen, where Burger became a fly on the wall to the likes of Arthur Russell, David Byrne, and Laurie Anderson with whom he would later work. Burger switched coasts and made a lasting impression upon the Bay Area's music scene with his group Tin Hat Trio while furthering his session and film-score work adjacently. When Tin Hat Trio disbanded in the early '00s Burger found himself back in NYC where playing a Neil Young tribute show would entwine his path with that of Sam Beam– aka Iron & Wine. From then on, Burger has been an inextricable component of Beam's live band and discography spanning from 2007's The Shepherd's Dog to 2017's Beast Epic.
In the span between those titles, the growth of Burger's family and his yearning for quieter climes led him to Portland, Oregon, where he amassed an enviable collection of vintage keyboards to create 2018's The Grid. Where that album braided the joviality of mid-century exotica with the controlled exploration of krautrock and kosmische, his new album Marching With Feathers further reveals Burger's command of mood and texture without the need of stylized referentiality. "Figurine" opens the album in ballet-like grace around a melodic piano refrain that eludes expectations as much as it soothes them. Just as the piece resolves, a faint drone wafts in from far afield before solidifying into "Library Science," an arid psych vignette that whistles and hums across the high desert as easily as it would fit into a Michael Mann montage, while a determined drum machine taps beneath a growling wurlitzer and searing synths.
