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Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 March 2017 CE
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Mar 27, 2017, 11:34
Re: Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 March 2017 CE
Mar 27, 2017, 11:24
Wagner Transformed - J. Peter Schwalm, Brian Eno, Eiving Aarset, Christine Schütze

In the spirit of trying to stick to talking about things that are off the beaten track this is kind of interesting and passed me by totally on release four years ago despite Eno's co-credit.

It's much more than a straight up ambient record and more satisfying than any Max Richter re-boot of a well-loved / over recorded piece from the classical standard repertoire. The piano playing is really beautifully done. I suspect that Eno's role (credited on the cover but only for one track as a performer in the notes) is more inspirational / curatorial than concrete. The electronic treatments have a point to them and are not intrusive to the point of being headache inducing. I've owned a copy for a couple of weeks and when I play it I make a mental note to play it again soon. It's not Wagner but given that there are fragments of melody, primarily from Parsifal and Siegfried, that appear and disappear it's not not Wagner either. What it doesn't have is the tidal orchestral sweep that can knock the unsuspecting off their feet. It certainly does have that thing of giving the impression of stopping time but still having a musical pulse. The best bits are gorgeous. Puts me in mind of "Catch-Wave", "August 1974" and some of Robert Fripp's more cavernous and cathedral-like pieces but don't hold me to any of that. One listener's "No Pussyfooting" is another's root canal treatment.

EDIT - scandalously the cd wasn't easy to track down but it is on Bandcamp as a download

https://jpeterschwalm.bandcamp.com/
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Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 March 2017 CE (1001realapes)
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