Monday, May 25, 2009

Ai!R's 'Insomnia'



Jamendo is now the #1 Creative Commons Licensed Music site in the world. There are true finds at Jamendo, too. Like Ai!R. This is Ai!R's second album. (I also posted on his first, Waxworks.)

Ai!R writes, in his description of Insomnia: "The album presents a four-part suite for chamber orchestra, piano, a few symphonic orchestral instruments, choir and perscussion. Its polyrhythmic musical language is both classically-shaped and modern and mostly addressed to lovers of chamber music. At the same time, all listeners may, hopefully, find it interesing as well."

I wrote (yes, I'm posting comments, it's a way to highlight artists whose work I really like): "I wrote a review some time back and lost it in the posting process. The stars showed up, but nothing else.

That night I was inspired to share images of your music that came while listening.

It hasn't come back again, that 'whatever-it-is'... but I feel I need to respond anyhow.

The title worked well for me - the pieces are beautifully woven into the hours of a long night when one can't sleep and travel through the hours in reminiscences, partial dreams, hallowed moments of visionary light, tiredness, a slow waiting for the unconsciousness of sleep.

There was a syncopated element in the music that was more Jazz-like than your earlier album.

I like the rhythms in these pieces. They are poems of the night. Sonorous. Slow. Fast. Beating with rhythm through the endless dark hours. When it is quiet. When you can free yourself from the constraints of space and time and drift and dream. While awake. On the edge of sleep. That profound state, my favourite one.

Thank you for these pieces, their harmonies that sooth and yet entrain with the strange harmonies of our inner lives. Where we transmute our darknesses into subtle and steady and holy light."

And now that I am again listening, of course Stravinsky and the strings. Chamber music, yes. I think I meant ambient jazz, which can have a classical soundscape.

Anyway, I post because I love Ai!R's work. Deep, complex, covering a huge tableaux in its sweep in the spirit of Russia's greatest artists. What isn't here, in his panoramic tonal vistas?
___
Direct link: Ai!R's Insomnia, in Four Parts.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Woman with Flowers 7.1

(7th sketch in series, first iteration of this one) Woman with Flowers  Flowers, props  upholding the woman. The flowers, fragrant, imaginar...