karakoram by katharine eastman

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very quiet electronic minimal ambient - #1 is very minimal indeed and only the most spartan of minimalists could endure it for long - #2 is more complex, no doubt more "interesting", possibly "better" in the eyes (ears) of the popular - but I think it's much weaker
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As everyone knows, and I know now that I've seen the documentary The Alpinist, the 1950s expeditions up Everest and K2 were large-scale blitzes, lots of people, lots of work, lots of camps, lots of backwards-and-forwards, lots of time. They eventually did the job, but somehow without much beauty. Then people like Reinhold Messner started climbing the really big peaks in the Alpine style - quickly, in pairs or just solo, sometimes going all the way to the top of the 8000+ metres ones without oxygen etc etc etc.

And in a way that sort of leads on to the subject of The Alpinist and others of his mindset - to do things as lightly and fast and simply as possible, without ropes. To me, what these people do is beautiful. I have no head for heights. And the closest a coward like me can get is to make music as lightly and fast and blindly as possible.

The second track is what happens when I get bogged down and spend far too much time on a piece - it took about 90 minutes to make. A dreadful waste of time. The first track took about five minutes to make. Yes, to many it will sound accordingly lazy and unbearable. Its beauty doesn't lie in hearing it all the way through - something that probably only I am capable of happily doing - but in just knowing it exists - like the great peaks, and the high bare walls - leaving it for the people who know that having too much to think about is life's surest route to unhappiness - instead just trying to be good at one thing within one slightly bigger thing within just the very few things that you need to do to live.
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(recorded today, photo Hampshire this month)
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