The ideas, concepts and field recording trips that went into the making of the album, 'Motion'. An insight into our work and what attracted us to making and documenting a fantastic ambient journey around our country. How we took recordings and sounds from four places to create four distinct pieces that celebrated interesting and intimate journeys.

Motion is an innovative new album by sound artists Toby Marks and Andrew Heath. Although the pair have collaborated on individual tracks and shows before, this is the first album they have worked on together.

Toby and Andrew started making extensive field recordings on trips to the four corners of Britain during 2018. They went deep into Llechwedd Slate Caverns in Wales, explored Suttle Stone Quarries in Bournemouth, hopped on the Swanage Ferry to Poole Harbour, took to the air with the Yorkshire Gliding Club, floated down the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and rode the Bure Valley Railway in Norfolk.

By the end they had a staggering hundred hours of audio in total, which they processed and transformed, blending piano, guitars and electronics, to produce a deeply meditative, endlessly unfolding collection.

Sometimes evoking images of machinery, sometimes of nature, these pieces flow and twist, at all times maintaining a humanity and sense of personal experience at their core.  At times intense, sometimes barely even present in the mix, the music enthralls and entices, drawing the listener into a world both seemingly familiar and weirdly unknown – a quite alien, and yet still organic, space, which is of this world and yet ultimately of Marks and Heath’s own invention.

Motion is available to download or stream and on CD from http://smarturl.it/motionalbum

Motion

Motion - The story behind the album

A soundscape artist and composer, Andrew Heath creates quiet, ambient, lower-case music based around piano, electronics and field recordings, drawing inspiration from a simple piano motif, an electronic shimmer or a processed found sound. The work he produces blends piano, electronics and found sounds into a mix that on the surface sounds quite minimal and open, but on closer listening, contains detailed fragments, constantly shifting and changing place.

Early collaborations using Fender Rhodes, piano and electronics with fellow musician, Felix Jay under the name Aqeuous led to the release of ‘Tall Cloudtrees Falling’ on Hermetic Recordings in 1995. This inspired a partnership with the legendary Hans-Joachim Roedelius with whom they collaborated on ‘Meeting the Magus’ in 1997. A late night performance in an art studio resulted in the ‘Entertaining Angels’ album in 1998, which was swiftly followed by their last collection, ‘Vortexia’ in 1999.

Andrew went on to produce a number of video and site-specific, sound installations. This introduced him to the technique of working with field recordings, often leaving in the sonic detritus that most would seek to eliminate as being ‘non-musical’.

In 2014 he released his first solo album, ‘The Silent Cartographer’ on Disco Gecko Recordings.  The Ambient Music Guide hailed it as “environmental ambience of the highest order” and one fan went as far as stating that “if you’re one of the legion of fans hankering after the new Budd, Roedelius or Eno, quit waiting and immerse yourself in this”.

Andrew followed this release with ‘Flux’ in 2015, ‘Europa’ in 2016 and ‘Found . Assemble” in 2017. Not only did he revisit his previous Aqueous collaboration with Roedelius to create “After The Magus – to resound” in 2015, but he recorded a concert they performed together at Stroud’s Goods Shed with Christopher Chaplin in 2016 and released that earlier this year as ‘Triptych in Blue’. Crack Magazine loved the “stunning recordings …. which are delicate, wistful and supremely moving”, while Electronic Sound Magazine complemented them on their “sublime ambient/neo-classical compositions … each mesmerising track floating beautifully in astral space” 

His 4th album for Disco Gecko Recordings, ‘Soundings’, was released to critical acclaim worldwide on November 3rd 2017.

Andrew Heath

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