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Stephan Micus Stephan Micus : voice, steeldrums, sinding, shakuhachi, suling, nay, tin whistles, percussion Tracks: Earth / Passing Cloud / Violeta / Flowers in Chaos / In The High Valleys / Gates Of Fire / Mad Bird / Night Circles / Words Of Truth
In the recording studio Micus has preferred to work as a soloist, making sensitive use of multi-track playback techniques. His recordings for the ECM label are essentially solo efforts in which the illusion of an ensemble is created by the composer's extensive overdubs. Micus' intention is not to play these instruments according to tradition, but to combine modes of expression from around the world in exciting new ways. His compositions, which are often based on improvisation and always difficult to classify, have been widely acclaimed for their meditative and spiritual qualities. He is an acoustic purist who often develops unconventional performance techniques on ethnic instruments. His new album, 'The Garden of Mirrors', is his 13th album for ECM, and highlights two traditional African harps, the bolombatto and the sinding, instruments that the Bavarian multi-instrumentalist studied with local musicians in Gambia. Regarding the harps, Micus says: "They give the music a physical quality, they're like a primitive bass. As I played these harps I automatically felt closer to the roots of black American music. The way black American musicians have used the double bass in jazz has its roots in these harps." 'The Garden of Mirrors' is a work of both substance and subtlety, where everything is not as it at first appears. He has taken elements of both classical and "primitive" African music and merged them within a structure derived from many roots. The album consists of gentle, thought provoking compositions featuring mainly wind and percussion instrumentation combined with sung random vocalizations. Each track expresses a measured, almost ponderous, spiritual life, expressing a far greater joy and sensibility than the composer's works have previously displayed. Ultimately, the key to this recording seems to lie in it's embrace of both the darkest despair and cathartic exultation which can encompass the experience of life in the plains of Gambia and of it's people. Micus is concerned about express his own voice. His method of accomplishing that goal is by combining acoustic instruments from unrelated cultures and from different historical periods that have never been played together before. This is the unifying key to his unique and enigmatic sound world. 'The Garden of Mirrors' is very relaxing, ...a very meditative album varying from ambient to quite rhythmic passages. Micus manages to somehow conjure up an entire textbook of distant African emotion. Sure, it's mostly osmosis, but he does seem to absorb it so well. Both very unusual and remarkably approachable, you must listen to it yourself. Highly recommended Review by Ben Kettlewell information:
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This
respected German composer and multi-instrumentalist began
traveling the world at age of 16. Micus has spent a great
deal of time investigating musical instruments from various
regions and then bringing them into his own unique
understanding of music. He tends to explores the edges of
music and sound in a very intimate way.