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LP
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BB 363LP
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LP version. "Ever since he released his music in the early '80s (1983, to be exact), Michel Banabila has been hard to pinpoint to a specific genre or style. His musical output includes jazz, experimental cut-up electronics, world music (especially influenced by the fourth world music as developed by Jon Hassell), new age, eclectic pop tunes, music for dance or other stage projects, and soundtracks for TV productions. Some listeners may have found it somewhat difficult throughout the years to find their way in this versatile output that includes very different genres. Because of this versatility Banabila has grown into one of the most fascinating musicians in Europe and was always highly acclaimed by critics, which was well deserved. Nevertheless -- for possibly that very same reason his work never came across the radar of most people, and that is something he does not deserve. When diving deeper into his output, one gets familiar with the trademark Banabila sound: his personal ways of using samples, the way he incorporates vocal fragments, the fact that there is always an emotional layer you can relate to, even in his most abstract works. Over the years, Banabila's work has progressed and evolved in different directions. It must be weird for any creative artist when the interest of new audiences (and labels) focuses on your earlier work - work that you have long left behind while exploring new directions. On the other hand: Whoever gets interested in your older work may also want to explore the newer stuff (which means they have almost forty years to explore, just imagine!). For this particular release, Bureau B chose a different approach. Instead of archiving early works from the 1980s, Wah-Wah Whispers focuses on Banabila's more recent output. It is a collection of works showcasing many facets of his music: a journey visiting the minimal and cinematic sample scape in the opener Take Me There, a robotic reggae-like rhythm ('Tic Tac'), contemplative ambient/fourth world scenes evolving into a downright funky beat ('Hidden Story'), the synth version of 'Secunde', and more. The album ends with a kaleidoscope of atmospheres gradually building up to a noise climax in 'Narita' (the only collaboration track on the album, with Rutger Zuydervelt/Machinefabriek). No single compilation album could really do justice to the massive scope of Banabila's output since 1983, but with Wah-Wah Whispers, Bureau B did a wonderful job to facilitate a view into his more recent work (2013- 2020, with the exception of 'Tic Tac', which is from 2001)." --Peter van Cooten
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CD
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BB 363CD
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"Ever since he released his music in the early '80s (1983, to be exact), Michel Banabila has been hard to pinpoint to a specific genre or style. His musical output includes jazz, experimental cut-up electronics, world music (especially influenced by the fourth world music as developed by Jon Hassell), new age, eclectic pop tunes, music for dance or other stage projects, and soundtracks for TV productions. Some listeners may have found it somewhat difficult throughout the years to find their way in this versatile output that includes very different genres. Because of this versatility Banabila has grown into one of the most fascinating musicians in Europe and was always highly acclaimed by critics, which was well deserved. Nevertheless -- for possibly that very same reason his work never came across the radar of most people, and that is something he does not deserve. When diving deeper into his output, one gets familiar with the trademark Banabila sound: his personal ways of using samples, the way he incorporates vocal fragments, the fact that there is always an emotional layer you can relate to, even in his most abstract works. Over the years, Banabila's work has progressed and evolved in different directions. It must be weird for any creative artist when the interest of new audiences (and labels) focuses on your earlier work - work that you have long left behind while exploring new directions. On the other hand: Whoever gets interested in your older work may also want to explore the newer stuff (which means they have almost forty years to explore, just imagine!). For this particular release, Bureau B chose a different approach. Instead of archiving early works from the 1980s, Wah-Wah Whispers focuses on Banabila's more recent output. It is a collection of works showcasing many facets of his music: a journey visiting the minimal and cinematic sample scape in the opener Take Me There, a robotic reggae-like rhythm ('Tic Tac'), contemplative ambient/fourth world scenes evolving into a downright funky beat ('Hidden Story'), the synth version of 'Secunde', and more. The album ends with a kaleidoscope of atmospheres gradually building up to a noise climax in 'Narita' (the only collaboration track on the album, with Rutger Zuydervelt/Machinefabriek). No single compilation album could really do justice to the massive scope of Banabila's output since 1983, but with Wah-Wah Whispers, Bureau B did a wonderful job to facilitate a view into his more recent work (2013- 2020, with the exception of 'Tic Tac', which is from 2001)." --Peter van Cooten
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CD
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BB 227CD
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Numerous threads run through the music of sound artist, composer, and producer Michel Banabila (born 1961), whose contemporary work ranges from adventurous electronic cross-breeding of chamber instrumentation through industrial rhythmic sampling and outwardbound modular synthesis to deeply elegiac drones. This set collects the Dutch artist's instrumental 1980s work -- beautiful minimal loop-based electronica, classical-influenced pieces, and ambient drone music -- documenting his early years with material originally released as cassettes, vinyl EPs, and limited CDs. Banabila's piano echoes with a disarming simplicity, its atmospheric gestures bringing to mind the proto-minimalism of Erik Satie. The melody could easily be an additional hundred years old -- except for the fact that the refined patterning is something that likely only could have been pursued in light of the music of Michael Nyman and Philip Glass. The equipment on which this music was made, notably an early sampler, was limited in various ways, key among them the relatively circumspect set of capabilities, especially in terms of memory storage, and the lack of received performance techniques. The equipment was simple and it was new, and neither factor limited Banabila's ambition; on the contrary, the tools concentrated his imagination. If the classical pieces represent the Old World as framed by the new, then the more recognizably "electronic" work here is likewise most at home in a fictional place, an idealized zone. That zone is a quiet neighborhood in the Fourth World, to borrow Jon Hassell's terminology, one in which digital tools render something that is, for all its technological dependency, ultimately a form of folk music -- an otherworldly folk music for another time. Fidgety percussion plays amid a fierce but restrained guitar line (there are echoes of Laurie Anderson and Adrian Belew). An ambiguous and elongated drone, thick with subliminal activity, beautiful in its toxic anxiety, suggests dire activity on the horizon. And yet the horizon wasn't dire. Quite the contrary; what was ahead for Banabila was a long string of releases, a healthy and well-documented career in which so many of these individual threads have been provided time and space to have entire records dedicated to their pursuit. This album of archival works documents the continuity inherent in Banabila's music. It is a map in musical form, tracing a path that crisscrosses back and forth between the Old World and the Next.
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LP
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BB 227LP
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LP version. Numerous threads run through the music of sound artist, composer, and producer Michel Banabila (born 1961), whose contemporary work ranges from adventurous electronic cross-breeding of chamber instrumentation through industrial rhythmic sampling and outwardbound modular synthesis to deeply elegiac drones. This set collects the Dutch artist's instrumental 1980s work -- beautiful minimal loop-based electronica, classical-influenced pieces, and ambient drone music -- documenting his early years with material originally released as cassettes, vinyl EPs, and limited CDs. Banabila's piano echoes with a disarming simplicity, its atmospheric gestures bringing to mind the proto-minimalism of Erik Satie. The melody could easily be an additional hundred years old -- except for the fact that the refined patterning is something that likely only could have been pursued in light of the music of Michael Nyman and Philip Glass. The equipment on which this music was made, notably an early sampler, was limited in various ways, key among them the relatively circumspect set of capabilities, especially in terms of memory storage, and the lack of received performance techniques. The equipment was simple and it was new, and neither factor limited Banabila's ambition; on the contrary, the tools concentrated his imagination. If the classical pieces represent the Old World as framed by the new, then the more recognizably "electronic" work here is likewise most at home in a fictional place, an idealized zone. That zone is a quiet neighborhood in the Fourth World, to borrow Jon Hassell's terminology, one in which digital tools render something that is, for all its technological dependency, ultimately a form of folk music -- an otherworldly folk music for another time. Fidgety percussion plays amid a fierce but restrained guitar line (there are echoes of Laurie Anderson and Adrian Belew). An ambiguous and elongated drone, thick with subliminal activity, beautiful in its toxic anxiety, suggests dire activity on the horizon. And yet the horizon wasn't dire. Quite the contrary; what was ahead for Banabila was a long string of releases, a healthy and well-documented career in which so many of these individual threads have been provided time and space to have entire records dedicated to their pursuit. This album of archival works documents the continuity inherent in Banabila's music. It is a map in musical form, tracing a path that crisscrosses back and forth between the Old World and the Next.
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