~ LAAPS 013 ~ [SEQ.02 - LP13]

artist : Sonmi451
album : Seven Signals In The Sky
durations : 39.10 mn (Vinyl) / 56.07 mn (CD)
 date : July 29th, 2021

edition :
-  vinyl : limited to 300 copies / yellow colored vinyl / hand numbered 
- cd : limited to 200 copies / hand numbered + handcrafted, sealed

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pre-order : July 12th, 2021 / official release : July 29th, 2021
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All tracks written & produced by Bernard Zwijzen/Sonmi451. 

Equipment : Moog Mother 32, Elektron Octatrack, Instruo Arbhar, Make Noise Morphagene, Happy Nerding FX Aid. Plugins by Applied Acoustics, Native Instruments, Arturia and U-He. Additional production, sequencing and mixing in Ableton Live.

Mastered by Taylor Deupree.
Artwork by Stéphane Mahé
Design by Sprflxgrfzm

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"Bernard likes to thank Mathias for his wonderful work on the LAAPS project and for the opportunity to participate. Thanks also to friends & places for inspiration"

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Links :
https://laaps-records.com/
https://sonmi451.bandcamp.com/

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℗ & © 2 0 2 1 - L A A P S - L A A P S 0 1 3

Seven Signals In The Sky

Sonmi451 - Beautifully Dovetailed

Two gongs with crystal bowls are recorded live during a recent sound journey session. This long version, although just a portion of the whole session, presents a sonic journey of soundscapes with ethereal yearning vibrations of the gongs along with the imagined call of whales in the distance. The sounds and vibrations guided you into a state of meditative release and relaxation.

Gongs With Crystal Bowls - A Sonic Meditative Journey - Long Version

Intuitive #Pianoflow improvised song which came out of my fingers during a private love concert for a beautiful couple Anna & Godfried. Thanks for the inspiration!
This music is purely improvised in the moment atuned to this couple. 
I play my Yamaha G2 grand piano tuned in 432Hz and a little lyre harp I use with my right hand at the same time.

Infinity

Roger Spees - Infinity

3 minute audio sample from the 66 minute nature soundscape; "Dawnsong of Tuis", available for download from www.listeningearth.com/LE/product.php?id=123

The Tui (pronounce "too-ee"), a native honeyeater of New Zealand, has one of the most extraordinary voices of the bird world.

Their vocabularies consist of fluting and ringing bell-like tones, wheezy whistles, buzzes, clucks and ultrasonics almost too high for the human ear.

This recording will take you to the majestic old-growth forest of Whirinake, to hear a sublimely musical chorus of Tuis singing in the hour before dawn.

As I stood in the darkness that morning, under ancient tree ferns, hearing those first Tuis begin calling, I knew it would be a special recording. It was one of those moments that I hope to hear; when nature creates pure beauty. I feel this album is a meditation on the beauty of the natural world. 

'Dawnsong of Tuis' - Album Sample

Huron Beltane Fire Dance

Composite piece from 3 Plinth Shows, June 2014 

- Colchester Arts Centre 
- Cafe Oto 28/06
- Leigh Folk Festival 29/06

Played by:

- Alison Nicholas Cotton (Viola)
- Amanda Feery (Piano)
- Niamh De Barra (Piano)
- Michael Tanner (Accordion, Sound manipulation)

Thank you Daniel Merrill and Lee McFadden for audience recordings

Photo by Frances Castle


Plinth - June 2014

Rise

Taken from Maxwell Sterling - Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker of Truth
LP/Download [ELP050] 
Ecstatic Recordings, 24/04/2020

Weaving an intricately detailed tapestry of meditative, spiritual jazz and dream electronics, Maxwell Sterling’s astonishing second album ‘Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker Of Truth’ blooms in the gaps between Don Cherry, Talk Talk and Kara-Lis Coverdale, gently coaxing us into a trance- like reverie where the real and artificial morph into one pulsing organism.

Originating as a multi-channel installation commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary in 2018, the four extended pieces here were recorded at home in Morecambe Bay and then subsequently placed in a room alongside works by Moki Cherry (spouse of Don, mother of Neneh and Eagle-Eye Cherry), Penny Slinger, and a collection of static musical instruments the piece was intended to complement. As a follow-up to Sterling’s 2017 cult hit ‘Hollywood Medieval’ for The Death of Rave, ‘Laced With Rumour’ works with notably more fluid and gently psychoactive structuring that takes in seemingly disparate influences - from Roman mythology to Nottingham’s Lace industry - that results in a sprawling but intimate world of sound, characterised by aetheric arrangements that effectively elide the disciplines of spiritual jazz, chamber music, and art installation into something altogether new.

Much like Kara-Lis Coverdale’s converging interests in traditional vs hyper-modern, acoustic vs artificial and synthetic modes of sound, Sterling’s work here is fluid and unorthodox, but rooted in a deep understanding of convention which he proceeds to bend and re-shape at will. The album opens with a slowly contemplative and almost solemn drift between ‘Laced’, which features samples of Don Cherry weft into its tingling fray of electro-acoustic timbres, alongside the breezy chamber strokes of ‘With Rumour’, the hallucinogenic qualities of ‘Loud-Speaker’, and the darker revelation ‘Of Truth’, which concludes with a transition from mired murk to tones that channel Maxwell’s refined cinematic nous.

One of those albums that seems impossible to fully absorb in one sitting, listening to ‘Laced With Rumour...’ takes you from a swirl of brushed cymbals into harpsichord shimmers, passages of solo piano brushing up against the deepest subs - like a more bruised and flipped Sakamoto + Alva Noto collab, to Arthur Russell’s ‘World Of Echo’ slowly descending into synthesised madness. It’s a rich and stunning meditation for our time.

Maxwell Sterling - Laced [ELP050]

I patched this up with my baby daughter strapped to my breast, sleeping. When I recorded the Rhodes parts, she sat next to me and banged the keys. My wife supplied the the countermelody in the middle. Its a family song.

Song of the Sea

Nanda Devi

Between Dusk and Dawn

Que la Luz eterna me conduzca: 
De lo irreal a lo Real,
De la profunda oscuridad a tu Luz eterna,
Y de la muerte a tu dulce néctar inmortal

asatomä sadgamaya
tamasomä jyorti gamaya
mrtyor mä amrtam gamaya


(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - I.iii.28)

Asatoma sadgamaya

Eschewing teeth, skin and expensive electrical equipment since 1977 - Plinth, The A.Lords, The Cloisters, Thalassing, Bible Student and other silly names.

Plinth - June 2014

Michael Tanner

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