Drone Records

PARKIN, NICK - Refract

Format: CD

Label & Cat.Number: Soleilmoon Recordings SOL 140CD

Release Year: 2006

Note: still a 'secret tip" of the transcendental drone scene, NICK PARKINs 'Refract' draws its inspiration from the movements of light and water.. many fragile microsounds come to the surface, shimmering metallic, often based on gongs and other metal objects.. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - STILL TO DISCOVER !!

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €13.00

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More Info

Zu Unrecht ist NICK PARKIN immer noch ein Geheimtip im Genre des
experimentellen Transzendental- / Subjektlosigkeits- / Unterwasser- / Mutterleibs-Drone (nein es ist KEIN „New Age“!). REFRACT zieht seine Inspiration aus der Bewegung von Licht und Wasser, viele fragile Mikrosounds kommen an die Oberfläche, das ganze schimmert metallisch, viele Sounds basieren auf Gongs und anderen Metallobjekten.... exzellent!

“Refract”, Nick Parkin’s latest release on Soleilmoon Recordings, draws its inspiration from the movement of light and water. To create this album Parkin electroacoustically manipulated and blended a variety of gongs and other metallic percussion with environmental field recordings. It’s eight tracks of intense, multi-layered work evoking hidden subterranean waters and gloomy oceanic depths, where shards of light only occasionally penetrate. Sonic images conjuring reverberant aquatic chambers, stormswept surfaces and horizons abound, while winds and other elemental phenomena bring about transmutations, distillations, evaporations and cycles of tides. This CD is presented in a standard jewelbox, in a limited edition of 500 copies. Nick Parkin works with a variety of dance and theatre companies in the UK and Europe. He studied Electroacoustic Composition at the University of East Anglia, and in 2001 won a first prize in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Competition. He has more than 10 solo and collaborative CD releases to his name now, and continues to specialize in electroacoustic compositions derived from landscapes, environments, and his interest in geology. His Soleilmoon releases include three solo albums, “Island of Dust”, “Entropolis” and “Geomorphic Resonance”, along with “Red Shift”, a project recorded with Tom Gillieron (Day for Night, Southern Comforters).” [press release]
“If I'm not mistaken this might be already the fourth CD (five if you count his album with Tom Gillieron) by Nick Parkin on Soleilmoon. Somewhere in my book, I associated the name Nick Parkin with ambient with the big A, but that chapter needs to be re-written, I guess. Parkin won a first prize in 2001 at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Competition and on 'Refract' he uses a 'variety of gongs and other metallic percussion with environmental field recordings. That may sound the best ingredients for a good ambient album, but Parkin takes the material a bit further, and makes it much more edgy and angular than y'r average ambient album. Parkin takes the techniques of modern classical electronic composing, but it's to effect on his own sound material, and starts playing around with the result. Now unlike a lot of the modern composers it's not the usual pitching up/down of the material, making sounds roll over each-other or that kind of thing that is popular amongst his contemporaries, but he makes minimal pieces of slowly evolving sound material, in which 'water' is a recurring theme. The music washes by like an endless stream of sound. At times it sounds like a friendly creek and at others like an ocean. It's throughout the entire a fine balance of ambient music and modern music, thus breaking with both traditions and making a very, delicate and intense album.” [FdW / Vital Weekly]