Label: Omnempathy

数あるこの人物アルバムの中でも非常に優れた内容の一枚!!Colin Potterとの多くの共同制作、氏も参加するユニットFovea Hexへの参加、エクスペリメンタル・デュオHuman Greedの片割れとしての活動など、90年代から地道なリリースを続けるスコットランドの作曲家/サウンドアーティストMichael Begg。自国の栄誉ある音楽賞を受賞した作家でもあり、本作は音、科学、環境を探求した5年間の集大成として作り上げた2025年アルバム[Witness]。なんとソビエトフランスのBen Ponton、Fovea HexのClodagh Simondsなど豪華ゲストが参加、副題になっているヘビーなアンビエント・チェンバーミュージックを展開しています。



New Music Scotland Award winning composer and sound artist Michael Begg announces the release of ‘WITNESS. Ambient Chamber Works 2020-24’, a collection that brings together five years of work exploring sound, science, and the environment. This compilation includes highlights from Begg’s collaborations with scientists, experiments with environmental data, and residencies with the European Marine Board, Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Ocean ARTic Partnership.
The album features selections from the WITNESS series, released as waypoints during the COVID lockdown, as well as pieces from ‘Light Water is Black Water,’ ‘Sounding The Ice Factory,’ and the forthcoming ‘Out of Whose Womb Comes the Ice’.

In this five year long development of Begg’s signature ‘data composition’ process we encounter earth monitoring satellites, earthquakes, ionospheric lightning strikes, the clean night air of lockdown, receding Arctic ice, mutated migrations and currents, collapsing glaciers, the cycles of deep time and the collapse of predictable weather cycles. We find a new music that speaks to our growing solastalgia that is true to science and faithful to a convulsing world.

WITNESS includes collaborations with Clodagh Simonds (Fovea Hex), Ben Ponton (zoviet*france), and the Black Glass Ensemble.

The collection features live recordings and alternative mixes, and the first preview of new work arising from Begg’s two month residency in Antarctica as the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute’s first musician in residence.