Richard Gilbert and Jeff Cairns, co-founders of The Mother Tongue Project, conceived of and implemented the project from their studio, BigFishStudio in Kumamoto, Japan as a means to reach out, with music as the vehicle, to like-minded and interested musicians around the world in order to create a unified and cohesive thematic work. Atmospheres is just such a project.
The project began with consideration of various atmospheres of the Earth from a scientific and/ or esoteric point of view. Each 'atmosphere' was looked at with regard to its relationship to the Earth and its interrelationship with other atmospheres. From there, Gilbert and Cairns created a sonic representation of each individual atmosphere. Each atmosphere was then considered for a first musician to interact with in an improvisational way which happened for each piece on this album. The initial improvisations were returned to BigFishStudio where subsequent musicians were sent further tracks to improvise to, which were either a part or whole of the piece as it existed at that time. Through this process, each piece was built, edited and further processed in the studio. After five years of this process, the end result is what Gilbert and Cairns are happy to share with the listener as Atmospheres - A Mother Tongue Project.
credits
released May 9, 2020
All pieces were composed by Jeff Cairns and Richard Gilbert at BigFish Studio, Kumamoto, Japan
Musicians:
Jeff Cairns - shakuhachi, bawu, EWI wind controller, electronics
Richard Gilbert - guitar, electronics
Yuny Park - gaeyageum
Fakih Kademaglu - sufi ney
Adam Bowman - drums, percussion
Jeff Bird - contra bass
Stephen Nachmanovitch - voice
Dong-Won Kim - vocals, gongs, Korean drums
Daniel Fischlin - acoustic guitar
Momoka Iwashita - vocals
Keiko Shiga - piano
Gary Diggins - trumpet
Aragaki Mutsumi - Okinawan vocals, sanshin
Bae Il-Dong - Pansori vocals
Hidehiko Kashihara - flamenco guitar
Bruce Stoller - piano
A joyous and mind-blowing combination of Afrofunk rhythms and traditional Japanese instrumentation, “Abrada” is kaleidoscopic party music. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 5, 2017