We look for where ancient folklore and futuristic sound pallets may fuse together well. Sun Horse could fall within the ‘Folktronica’ genre - but with an emphasis on traditional folklore, rather than folk music in general.

Sunhorse Shephards

Sunhorse MezaRadi

"Kolado" - ar skaņu, kas skandinot izklausās pēc ganu zvaniem, ir daudzu Ziemas saulgriežu dziesmu piedziedājums. Šīs dziesmas saknes ir sēļu dziedāšanā, ar tai tipisku sekundu daudzbalsību. Kā kontrastu uzmundrinošajiem Ziemassvēktu hitiem, no kuriem neizbēgt, vēlējāmies uztaisīt arī savu mīklainā un pārdabiskā skanējuma Ziemassvētku dziesmu.

"Kolado" is the Latvian refrain of many Winter solstice songs, that sounds like shepherd's bells when chanted. The lyric concerns an ancient tradition of wearing costumes resembling mythical creatures or figures from the underside of the world, which is still practiced today by groups of mummerers who visit houses during the winter season, bringing blessings and good wishes. The second intervals are particularly typical of song from the Selonia region of Latvia. As a contrast to the modernly popular Christmas hits from which we cannot escape, we wished to create a mysterious and supernatural sound for this Christmas carol.

Historical lyric, melody and harmony sung by Elīna Ellere. Music and arrangement by Jachin Pousson.

Sun Horse - Kolado

Written in the late summer of 2014 for an accordion focussed workshop held at the Palendriai monastery in Lithuania authored by Martins Levickis. It premiered along with several other new works in the main hall of the monastery, attended by music personalities, villagers, monks and a bishop; conducted by Ben Lunn.

The piece was conceived by thoughts about how the accordion's timbre can sound like it is accompanied by an electric hum when played in mass. So I began sketching numerous rapid additive and subtractive patterns for the maximum number of accordions available, and added 2 strings for accentuation and pedalisation.

Program note:

An abstraction of sounds and music related and springing from analogue instruments such as early synthesizers and radio equipment. 

Working with primitive electronics involve the process of tuning into frequencies or shaping sound-waves. I want to express the tactile experience of turning knobs or flipping switches as an element in this piece. I want to use minimal, mostly tonal pitch material, focusing more on rhythm, structure and an electronic yet tactile sound palette. 

I hope that this piece will be imbued the sound world of synthesizers, radios and similar analogue audio equipment.

Cirqitri

Originally just a little sketch for piano, the score of this short piece was featured in the book "For The Pleasure of the Text" by Jeremy Fernando, a response to Roland Barthes. You may find the book here: 

https://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Text-Jeremy-Fernando/dp/9810979037?ie=UTF8&qid=1467974569&ref_=la_B0039STDGM_1_3&s=books&sr=1-3

Le chapeau Invisibilité

This work is poetically inspired by gravitational anomolies on the moon - in particular 5 landscapes known as Mares or “Seas”. The moon’s crust varies in mass due to impact craters and embedded asteroids. The additional mass results in spots of stronger gravity which have been  
mapped and calculated by NASA’s GRAIL mission. 

The piece is structured over five sections, each containing music intuitively abstracted from the varying landscapes and gravity observed on orbital paths over 5 of the moon’s Mares. 

The title refers to the stark lunar landscape as a “White Sea”,  the Mares being “Whirlpools” of  concentrated gravity encountered whilst traversing them from chosen orbits.

I. Mare Vaporum - Sea of Vapors
II. Mare Orientale - Eastern Sea
III. Mare Nubium - Sea of Clouds
IV. Mare Crisium - Sea of Crises
V. Mare Tranquillitatis - Sea of  Tranquility

Whirlpools In A White Sea

Written for JVLMA choir, piano and percussion. This piece focusses on several modern and ancient singing techniques and an original Japanese text roughly translated as follows:

The relentless rolling of the earths heart,
roaring deep beneath our feet.
Calls to us: return to the circle that cast you.
into the unwoven future.

A circular stage positioning of singers is used to further communicate the idea and shape the resulting sound.

Rituals - for choir, piano and percussion

A tumulus is a burial mound built by pagan cultures found throughout Northern Europe, and Asia to house their dead. I encountered the Viking tumuli in Uppsala, Sweden in the winter of 2011 and their huge and lonely curves stretching into the snowy distance left me with a deep impression. No amount of ideological conflict and change that occurred between Christian and Pagan peoples in the last 1500 years have erased these markings from the landscape. A poignant reminder of wrestlings with our own beliefs about death and the afterlife from the perspective of a long and mostly forgotten history.

The music juxtaposes the sound of Christian and Pagan worship and ritual, structured in sections that reach further and further back in time. Electronic effects create canonic, textural, and timbral changes thoughout the work. These can be controlled live offstage, or be fully automated.

Tumulus is a work for a solo multi-instrumentalist and written specially for the saxophonist Arvydas Kazlauskas.

Tumulus - for solo multi-instrumentalist

Written for and performed by Perpetuum Ritmico, 21 Dec 2017, Spikeri Concert Hall, Riga. 

Recording by Latvjias Radio 3

Some notes:

Rhythm is ubiquitous to both machines and life itself. This piece is about mechanical and biological rhythms, and seeks to discover what music can be found at the borders between beat, pulse and tone. It is written specifically for Perpetuum Ritmico’s unique strengths - I believe they have a wonderful musical curiosity and explorative attitude towards percussion as full bodied musical sound.

Inspiration first came from the sounds of theoretical perpetual motion machines which attempt to use gravity or magnetic fields to break the laws of physics to achieve continuous motion without external power. Watching these machines, we can observe and hear the little actions of friction and gravity which inevitably cause these machines to stop. By metaphor, biological rhythms within the human body are also in continuous motion, and we try to keep them running as long as we can, until the inevitable last day of life.

In terms of musical construction, a core idea concerns independence of tempo between 3 percussionists. It also focuses on getting into a flow of drumming, where there is a certain amount of freedom given to each player to develop patterns intuitively. Within the music, several lines emerge, expand into patterns and collapse into blocks through independent acceleration and deceleration.

The music illustrates the sound of whirring machinery, changing gears, and the formation of harmonic fields at places where tempos lock together. These also fall apart due to the actions of little ‘devils’ in the machinery. The feeling of being in synchrony is found and lost, but the feeling of smooth flowing drumming and expressive freedom is present throughout.

Mechanical Devils - Percussion Trio

Gardens are a beautiful way of organising nature in harmony with human life and human needs. The idea of Gardens on Mars reflects upon the idea of a very simple human joy, placed in harsh otherworldly conditions. The piece nods towards the efforts of man to reach and colonise Mars such as the Mars Generation have been doing, while describing the growth of flowing flora and genius mechanisms for sustaining them. 
 
The piece is conceptually constructed, with a time signature that begins in 3/8, moving through 4/8, 5/8 and 6/8 to arrive at 7/8 in the final section. Though carefully rooted in a tonality of Eb major, it uses both chromatic and modal modulation throughout.

Gardens on Mars

Rainworld represents Jachin Pousson, composer of contemporary classical and film music.

Rainworld

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