Label: Tapu Records

100部限定、ナンバリング入り。83年頃からアクティブに活動、Jon Hassellの"Fourth World music"に強い影響を受け、ジャズ、カットアップエレクトロニクス、ワールドミュージック、ポップス等を融合させカテゴライズ不可能なスタイルを築き上げたオランダの奇才サウンドアーティスト/作曲家Michel Banabila。7人編成で挑んだオーケストラ的アンビエント作[Uprooted]を入荷。チェロ、バスクラリネット、ビオラ、ヴァイオリンというアコースティック多めの編成がクラシカルな要素を強く押し出し、またそれだけでは無く東洋的なイメージも出現する荘厳なアンビエント長編。





'The Uprooted Orchestra'

“Orchestral.” The word’s an adjective, certainly, an unambiguous one. It depicts amassed instruments working in synchrony according to a fixed document prepared in advance.

But what if “orchestral” were uprooted? What if “orchestral” referred to what we heard, not how it was recorded? What if “orchestral” welcomed electronic instruments not just into the pit, but into the compositional process?

For that is the sound of Michel Banabila’s Uprooted, this album of beautiful, striated, patient music — patient on the surface, deep with turmoil underfoot. When bass clarinet and harmonium rise above a misty string section halfway through “Breathe,” that’s orchestral. When woodwinds trill and pulse against piano on “Dragonfly,” that’s orchestral.

Over the years, Banabila has made his share of experimental ambient, wherein future roots cultures are foreseen through a low-tech looking glass. On Uprooted, the tech is transparent. The album has touches of Fourth World, most notably on “Collector” and "Breathe," but Uprooted is orchestral, full stop.

It’s also an album entirely forged of material sampled by Banabila from improvisations by invited musicians. Those samples were then constructed into a whole by Banabila, layered sinuously rather than triggered on a rhythmic grid. The fixed orchestral document here is the recording, and it marks the close of the composer’s efforts, not the start of the performers’.