Miracles of Modern Science

Miracles of Modern Science acoustic cover of Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’

閑静な住宅街・Quiet Residential Area, by Hegira Moya

Hegira Moya from Tokyo joins Muzan Editions with a combination of synths, guitar loops and field recordings. It all starts like a daydream. Gentle synth sounds paired with meditative guitar loops swirling through the air. Later on he takes us on a stroll around what feels like a subterranean park built underneath Tokyo. Sounds coming from the left and right keeping the listener in the dark until a simple but enchanting melody shows the way back up.

Released September 12, 2017 

Hegira Moya. 
Based in Tokyo Japan. 
Making ambience and melting tones with synths and electric guitars.

The Silent Horizon, by Zero Condition

Originally released December 5, 2017

Ruins and Remains, by Wolfert Brederode, Matangi Quartet & Joost Lijbaart

Poignant, stirring & . . . gorgeous!

Ruins and Remains, a suite for piano, string quartet and percussion, was composed by Wolfert Breferode in 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Over time, however, it has come to embody meanings broader and more personal, with wide-ranging resonances. “At a number of levels, the piece has to do with grief and loss and learning to stand up again,” Dutch pianist Brederode says. There is a vulnerable but resilient quality to the music, as it hovers over its emotional terrain, with moods both bleak and guardedly hopeful.  Highly sensitive playing by Brederode, percussionist Joost Lijbaart and the Matangi Quartet (increasingly regarded as one of Holland’s most adventurous string quartets), distinguish a special album recorded in Bremen’s Sendesaal in August 2021 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Background

For his fourth ECM release as a leader, following the acclaimed quartet albums Currents and Post-Scriptum as well as the trio record Black Ice, Dutch pianist Wolfert Brederode introduces a very different, and very special, project. Ruins and Remains is a suite for piano, string quartet and percussion. Originally composed by Brederode in response to a commission for music to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the piece was premiered in November 2018. In the interim, however, it has come to embody meanings broader and more personal. “At a number of levels, the music has to do with grief and loss and learning to stand up again,” Brederode says. There is a vulnerable but resilient quality to the music, as it hovers over its emotional terrain, with moods alternately bleak and guardedly hopeful.
 
The musicians involved in the project have been friends since student days at The Hague’s Royal Conservatory. The Matangi Quartet, who have collaborated often with Wolfert Brederode in performances of his music for theatre, have meanwhile acquired a reputation as one of Holland’s most versatile string quartets, with a repertoire spanning baroque music, contemporary composition, jazz and more. (Lately they’ve been getting attention for their recordings of Schnittke, Silvestrov and Shostakovich.) Back in 2014, the Matangi Quartet included music by Brederode on one of their own albums, alongside pieces by Louis Andriessen and Chick Corea. As the Ruins and Remains project has progressed, the Matangi players have found increasing freedom inside it, also participating actively in its improvised sections.
 
Drummer Joost Lijbaart has worked across genres with Brederode since 2004 –playing jazz with Yuri Honing, and working in an improvising duo which strove to subsume individual identities in a single sound, “as if playing prepared piano together”, rather than percussion and piano duets. This sensibility finds an echo in the approach taken in Ruins and Remains.
 
“My goal is always for the music to be one thing,” says Wolfert Brederode. “I love to dive into the sound of the string quartet, and play as if part of that. I think with the quartet and with Joost we’ve found a special sound together which, in its way, is quietly radical.” Ruins and Remains has been mutating since its first performance. The idea of change is built into it: “Calling it ‘an evolving suite’ gave me the liberty to change pieces and add pieces as we went along.”
 
The process was accelerated during the session at Bremen’s Sendesaal.  Violinist Maria-Paula Majoor notes that “the sound in the hall gives you the room to find the poetry behind the notes,” adding that Ruins and Remains had begun its life as an outgoing and rhythmical jazz piece and been transformed in the recording process into something else. We changed the soul of the music.”
 
In the collaborative work with producer Manfred Eicher, “new directions were opened up in the suite,” says Brederode. Transitions between written and improvised material became blurred:  “We all focused on the blending of sounds and worked very much on dynamics.”
 
The result is a touching album of great subtlety, both texturally exploratory and deeply lyrical.
 
Wolfert Brederode, Joost Lijbaart and the Matangi Quartet play the music of Ruins and Remains at the Bremen Sendesaal on September 2, followed by a series of concerts in the Netherlands: Verkadefabriek, Den Bosch (September 24),  Bimhuis, Amsterdam (October 15),  Theater Lindenberg, Nijmegen (October 26), Theater ‘t Hof, Arnhem (October 26), Theater Junushoff, Wageningen (November 18), Tivoli Vredenburg, Utrecht (November 20), Paradox,Tilburg  (November 25), Lantaren Venster, Rotterdam (December 3), Porgy & Bess, Terneuzen (December
 
More information:  www.ecmrecords.com | www.wolfertbrederode.com | www.matangi.nl | www.joostlijbaart.com

Featured artists

Wolfert Brederode   Piano

Matangi Quartet:
Maria-Paula Majoor   Violin
Daniel Torrico Menacho   Violin
Karsten Kleijer   Viola
Arno van der Vuurst   Violoncello

Joost Lijbaart   Drums, Percussion

Samples: https://ecmrecords.com/catalogue/1655729401

This will feature prominently on 2023’s “elements [alluvion]”

The Sound Of Living Things, by Tatsuro Murakami

Each track was inspired by the experience of the landscapes connecting the body and displacing it into a sound.

Track1: La Paz (Bolivia)
Track2: Eduardo Avarua Andean National Reserve (Bolivia)
Track3: Machu Picchu (Peru)
Track4: Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Track5: Atacama Desert (Chile)
Track6: São Paulo (Brazil)

Tatsuro Murakami is a guitarist and composer, based in Tokyo and São Paulo. Since 2014 he has been studying the roots of Brazilian popular music from Choro and 7-string classic guitar. Besides ambient music, he works with soundtracks for movies, art installations, and his own creations on sound art.
(tatsuromurakami.com)

credits

released March 18, 2022

Music by Tatsuro Murakami
Vocal on track 2 and original photography by Anais-karenin
(anaiskarenin.com)
Mastered by Taylor Deupree

La meccanica degli oggetti, by Macrogramma

La meccanica degli oggetti
(Soundtrack to “UNDICI” by Dario Panzeri)

SIDE A “La meccanica degli oggetti”(The mechanics of objects): the personal acknowledgement of how helpless we are against the emotional connection between cause and effect.

SIDE B “Due collisoni” (Two collisions): NYC – September 11th 2001, first collision (08:46), second collision (09:03).

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La meccanica degli oggetti
(Commento sonoro a “UNDICI” di Dario Panzeri)

SIDE A “La meccanica degli oggetti”: la constatazione personale di quanto siamo inermi davanti alla connessione emozionale tra causa ed effetto.

SIDE B “Due collisoni”: NYC – 11 settembre 2001, prima collisione(08:46), seconda collisione (09:03).

credits

released December 15, 2021

Music by: Matteo Mariano (macrogramma.com)
Mastered by: Andrea Porcu
Cover art by: Dario Panzeri (dariopanzeri.org)
Record label: Lᴏɴᴛᴀɴᴏ Series
Publisher: ROHS! RECORDS

Suíte Onírica, by Rafael Martini Sexteto, Orquestra Sinfônica da Venezuela e Coral, Maestro Osvaldo FerreiraSuíte Oníricaby Rafael Martini Sexteto, Orquestra Sinfônica da Venezuela e Coral, Maestro Osvaldo Ferreira

“Suite Onirica”, recorded in Brazil and Venezuela, joins Rafael Martini Sextet, the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra and Choral, under the direction of the Portuguese conductor Osvaldo Ferreira, and brings the jazz-symphonic piece “Suite Onírica”, in five movements, composed and orchestrated by Martini, with texts by the poet Makely Ka, inspired on the universe of dreams, the interpretations and in the writings of Carl Jung on the subject.
The musicians of Rafael Martini Sextet, who has some of the most outstanding composers of the new scene of instrumental music in Brazil, such as flutist Alexandre Andrés, clarinetist Joana Queiroz and drummer Felipe Continentino, are the main soloists of this work, which presents a strength rarely found in popular music nowadays.
Produced by Rafael Martini and the Venezuelan musician Hildemaro Álvarez, the album counts approximately with150 musicians to present a hybrid music, that transits between song, symphonic music, jazz and Brazilianmusic.

credits

released May 29, 2017

Maestro Osvaldo Ferreira – Regência

Rafael Martini Sexteto
Alexandre Andrés – Flautas
Joana Queiroz – Clarineta e Clarone
Jonas Vitor – Saxofone
Rafael Martini – Piano e Voz
Trigo Santana – Contrabaixo
Felipe Continentino – Bateria

https://youtu.be/-fvQZP6qnHs

Offgrid, by Mind over MIDI

I’m fascinated by TV shows like Mountain Men, The Last Alaskans, Alaska the Last Frontier a.o.
They are masters of independence and living offgrid and off the land.
This album is dedicated to the men who make their living off the land – hunting, fishing and trapping to put food on the table.
For Mountain Men, survival is predicated on using ancient skills perfected over hundreds of years.

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Long-serving Norwegian electronic explorer Helge Tommervag is fascinated by those who choose to live their lives in farthest corners of the globe, miles from ‘civilisation’. Offgrid, his latest album for Lontano Series, takes this idea and runs with it, with Tommervag doing a spot of musical daydreaming about the “coldest, darkest parts of Norway”. Like his contemporary Geir Jenson (AKA Biosphere), Tommervag’s take on ambient has always been icy, glacial and windswept, but on Offgrid he pushes this to extremes, delivering a chilly and immersive epic crafted from a…  more

credits

released July 22, 2022

Music & photography by: Helge Tømmervåg
Record label: Lᴏɴᴛᴀɴᴏ Series
Publisher: ROHS! RECORDS

‘A New Wave of Jazz’ [podcast series]

Next edition, “Brick by Brick“ out next month . . . October, 8-9 2022.

God Save the Queen [!]

May she rest in peace (we mean it, man)!