Back in the day, as the young people seem to have stopped saying now, I used to annoy my university housemates by insisting that we watch the Landscape Channel on cable TV.
(Actually, I used to annoy them by insisting we get cable TV, mainly so that Andy G and myself could watch Premiership and winter-tour cricket. I would also annoy them by making curry every saturday that stank the house out. On the upside, I tidied the garden and on one occasion cleaned the bathroom after making a mess during our 'chip the golf ball up the stairs and into the bathroom if you can manage it' game. The ceiling never recovered though. But I digress).
The Landscape Channel was, I insisted, music video television for classical and instrumental music. It helped me relax, I told them, from my busy lecture schedule (which during my final semester saw me have to go to classes on both Monday and Tuesday, with only a five day weekend in which to do my dissertation) and I also postulated the occasional strains of Mozart and Bizet would help all our brains function better, especially the engineers who had actual work to do.
Actually, I just enjoyed watching it, or having it on in the background while doing other things. It was wonderful for reasons I simply can't explain: there was just something captivating about seeing the boat cross the canal aqueduct really really slowly to the strains of Dvorak's Hovis symphony (I don't know it's real name and I'm not going to look it up, but UK readers know what I'm on about), or seeing the penguins survive the winter and hatch their eggs while Pachelbel played in the background. My favourites were a pastel-based animation to the strains of some panpipe music ('Incantation' were the band - I even bought their 'Panpipes of the Andes' album on the back of this) and the rarely-shown 'deserted coastal resort and pier' to the sax music of David Roach (turned out to be Great Yarmouth on investigation).
Anyway, I left university and never thought about it much again, until the all-encompassing power of things like Google and YouTube made me wonder if I could find it again. And a few weeks ago, I did: I discovered that the Landscape Channel folks have struggled for a while to find a place for their work, but now some Euro-wide satellites are beaming their stuff in HD around the place, and they even have a website now, from where you can purchase HD vids for download. Not sure about that, though... it was nice having it there in the background but I can listen to WFMT for free, and if I was going to buy something relaxing I might well choose to get some white noise MP3s instead (that site deserves its own blog entry, though - and you can try it here).
But then Google did another wonderful thing and turned up not only the official site and some YouTube rips, but actually an official podcast that the Landscape folks did not so long ago, where there are nineteen 20-minute Landscape Channel snippets available for download and viewing (therefore featuring four or maybe five vids per podcast). Podcast 2 features a couple of donkeys in a field listening to Mark Knopfler's 'Wild Theme' from Local Hero and number 15 features David Roach's 'Love Is' sax thing while showing the afore-mentioned deserted coastal resort (second vid on the podcast). The penguins are in there two or three times and even the boring canal boat features once. I don't see the panpipes one there, but then I have that CD anyway so it's just you who's missing out on that one.
Why do I say all this? No idea, it just struck me as something wonderful and timeless, and for those of us who remember the Landscape Channel (or the Art of Landscape on Channel 4, as it was even prior to the cable channel), it's a chance to detox your day just like we used to, without having to annoy housemates in the process.
Footnote: Listening to the music without the pictures is better for work purposes. I've discovered that I like some of the music more than others, even though I don't know it all. Twice I've thought 'oo, I like that, wonder what it is', and it turned out to be the Art of Noise; three times I thought 'hm, don't like that much' and it turned out to be Bach. Not saying there's any absolute comparison there, but I guess I just really don't like Bach.
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8 comments:
ahh the wonders of Videotron
Videotron! That was it! I was trying to remember the name of that idiotic cable company.
You actually like panpipe music? Funny, it incites me to want to commit violent acts (preferably on the people perpetrating the awful noise) ...
Insisting on having cable for footy/cricket, as well as cooking curry every weekend, I would say makes you a great housemate though.
Swings and roundabouts.
Well, I got the CD for 4.99 after seeing it in a big basket at Snip or PoundStrangler or whatever. I admit to not listening to it much, but the odd track here and there is ok.
It's better without those weirdly-dressed dudes performing it in the town centre though: I've been to the Andes and the folks there weren't dressed like that, nor did they do things like that. They just sat around all day drinking matte and being very chilled, and occasionally phoning our hotel room to say tell us in Spanish to look out of the window because it's snowing.
I didn't like matte.
Hmm, just googled matte - think would have to give it a miss as tend to avoid caffeine these days, but looks kind of interesting though ...
www.landscapehd.com
Well ogmium, you say that but if you click it it takes you to the same link that I gave in the blog article: the online store.
To get to the Landscape website proper, try this:
http://www.landscapehd.com/index1.html
Neither does Matt. Jamie prefers Handel.
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