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“Convergence” marks the debut collaboration between Erik Wøllo and Michael Stearns offering a blend of slowly-evolving, contemplative and intimate music reflecting a very visionary and vast aural landscape. The outcome is a perfect blending of technology, music, and emotion utilizing sophisticated electronics, acoustic and original instruments like the Kantele from Finland and Michael’s self-built string instrument “The Beam.” The initial idea merging their talents and working on new music arose at Belgian’s B-Wave 2018 festival where both musicians played a live-set. They soon found out there had an instant connection and mutual understanding when it comes to creating evocative atmospheres, immersive aural landscaping, and more. Eventually, things took off in the spring of 2019 with Erik sending a series of sonic sketches, some rhythmic, others melodic to Michael who blended them with guitar, synthesizers, and assorted stuff from his own scoring libraries. The following process was the two shared audio files back and forth between Norway and New Mexico (most of the stuff Stearns created were very atmospheric in nature) as well as connecting through Skype to talk face-to-face about ideas and progress. Their efforts have led to a 72-minute overall relaxed, fluid evolving -and occasionally even visceral- soundpainting where the signature sound of both artists is evident. Aside from captivating, moody ambient soundscapes -with “A Solitary Place” and “Subterranean Canyon” even journeying into ethereal environs- there are also a couple of notable, more energetic-infused outings here such as “The Way Ahead Parts 1 and 2”, “The Nomad’s Journey” (with its lovely groovy current) and “The Herald”. The whole album is enchanting, dreamy yet reflective ambient-space music with an occasional percussive edge many will appreciate for sure, I reckon.
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| Website: http://projektrecords.bandcamp.com
You can see what reviews I have done of this artist on the Erik Wøllo artist page You can see what reviews I have done of this artist on the Michael Stearns artist page Sonic Immersion © 2024 |
