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BLACK GLASS ENSEMBLE - Arise from the Twilight

Format: CD
Label & Cat.Number: Omnempathy OMCD13
Release Year: 2020
Note: first release of this "ambient supergroup" from U.K, initiated by MICHAEL BEGG (HUMAN GREED), feat. BEN PONTON (ZOVIET FRANCE), CLODAGH SIMONDS (FOVEA HEX), and diverse other professional musicians on Cello, French Horn, Violin, Trumpet, etc.. combining electronics and long form / harmonic / classical instrumental drones for an emotional transcension experience... - recorded live at The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 13 February 2020, just before the lockdown!!
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €15.00


More Info

Note. These recordings combine signals from mixing desk output and ambient microphone placement. Elements of the performance were conducted with no amplified signal. Consequently, these brief passeages appeared only on the ambient signal and are correspondingly quiet.

Acknowledgements:
Evan Henderson and colleagues, the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh; Alison Johnson, the Coach House, Athelstaneford

Black Glass Ensemble acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of Creative Scotland, Help Musicians UK, Hope Scott Trust
credits
released November 6, 2020

Michael Begg; witness engines, data, electronics, keyboard, erosions
Douglas Caskie; tuned and bespoke percussion
Jen Cuthbertson; French horn
Neil Cuthbertson; trumpet
Clea Friend, cello, voice
Julia Lungu; violin
Aisling O’Dea; violin
Ben Ponton; VLF receiver, electronics, field recordings, lapsteel guitar, forensics

Nicole M Boitos Hayworth; voice (narration) track 2
Clodagh Simonds; voice (celestial vocal clusters) track 4


https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com/album/arise-from-the-twilight



"The first full length release from award winning experimental composer Michael Begg’s groundbreaking ensemble captures the group’s debut performance at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall in the final days before lockdown.

Black Glass, comprises members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra alongside Begg and fellow experimental artist, Ben Ponton (:zoviet*france:). Here, they invoke an immersive and deeply moving medium of ambient sound in which processed electronics, field recordings, atmospheric receivers and live sonified streaming data from environmental and earth observation agencies combine with elegiac passages of strings, brass and tuned percussion to realise Begg’s vision of a new music that speaks to our growing sense of solastalgia*

* the term combining solace and pain, coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2005 to articulate the sense of existential distress caused by living through environmental change.

As musical director, Begg provides his troupe with both scores and the encouragement and support which enables the world class players to step out of their comfort zone and into an uncharted territory requiring them to improvise with satellite positional data, live weather systems, audio streams of calving glaciers – not to mention the experience of having their playing captured and returned to them live as processed loops.

Arise From The Twilight captures the realisation of one of the most compelling new fusions of contemporary classical and experimental music of recent times."