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LP
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MIA 027LP
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LP version. Includes a download card. Adventurous Belgian percussionist Eric Thielemans makes a fairly unusual entry into the Miasmah catalog with the surprisingly positive-sounding album Sprang. Thielemans has actually appeared on the label earlier -- as guest percussionist on Kreng's debut album L´Autopsie Phenomenal De Dieu. Although you can recognize the sound on this record, the main focus of Sprang is to revert to the pure joy of sound experimentation and letting go of your foothold. Thielemans' previous exercises in expanding singular ideas and rituals in the two genre-bending and theoretical albums, A Snare Is a Bell & EARR Plays a Snare Is a Bell (SR 339CD), inevitably leads to Sprang. Embracing the bliss of working freely with his many percussion tools, he creates 11 pieces that are both instinctual and industrial. His impulses evoke a calm yet alive atmosphere where there is always movement. The tones of dripping water, settling dew, and flourishing plants of spring are juxtaposed with unexpected sounds of motion, of factory equipment, and gears turning. Though Sprang is a solo percussion album, its detail and depth is something wholly unique. Thielemans broadens his theory that there is always more to hear, more depth to interpret, and a way for the listener to add their own elements and create something new. A welcome addition to the Miasmah catalog, whose slogan "music for scenes and places" maybe never has been more spot-on.
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CD
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MIA 027CD
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Adventurous Belgian percussionist Eric Thielemans makes a fairly unusual entry into the Miasmah catalog with the surprisingly positive-sounding album Sprang. Thielemans has actually appeared on the label earlier -- as guest percussionist on Kreng's debut album L´Autopsie Phenomenal De Dieu. Although you can recognize the sound on this record, the main focus of Sprang is to revert to the pure joy of sound experimentation and letting go of your foothold. Thielemans' previous exercises in expanding singular ideas and rituals in the two genre-bending and theoretical albums, A Snare Is a Bell & EARR Plays a Snare Is a Bell (SR 339CD), inevitably leads to Sprang. Embracing the bliss of working freely with his many percussion tools, he creates 11 pieces that are both instinctual and industrial. His impulses evoke a calm yet alive atmosphere where there is always movement. The tones of dripping water, settling dew, and flourishing plants of spring are juxtaposed with unexpected sounds of motion, of factory equipment, and gears turning. Though Sprang is a solo percussion album, its detail and depth is something wholly unique. Thielemans broadens his theory that there is always more to hear, more depth to interpret, and a way for the listener to add their own elements and create something new. A welcome addition to the Miasmah catalog, whose slogan "music for scenes and places" maybe never has been more spot-on.
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2CD
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SR 339CD
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"'A Snare Is A Bell' (formerly released as a single-sided vinyl on Ultra Eczema in 2008) is a solo piece for snare drum, voice and the room in which it is played. Inspired by some close encounters I had with African shamanic/trance musicians and my personal experiences with meditation and music, it also relates to a known-to-many-of-us acoustical wonder of sitting on the toilet and picking up the tone of that little room (often by accident while coughing or talking out loud to oneself) and enjoying singing that tone and letting the toilet become filled with an enormous resonance. So, the roll on the snare drum is my practice. My daily exercise and meditation. Also, it is simple: I'm playing a roll on a snare drum, which has been done many times and a long time before me. Like baking cookies with a simple recipe, right out of grandma's cookbook. This basic aspect has the pleasurable result of freeing me from the idea of needing to be special. Or in other words, the fascination of this work, for me, does not lie in its unique composition or incredible virtuosity to play a roll, but in how what I hear, when doing this roll, touches me, changes me, guides me, every time again. ('A Snare Is A Bell' is only available on the CD version, as extra bonus). EARR Plays A Snare Is A Bell, is a revisitation of the roll and its overtones by an ensemble of musicians with very different musical backgrounds. The choice of musicians is above all a heart thing. I love hearing and seeing what they play. I like their recipes and the special cookies they bake. And I like sitting down and watching the stars with them. So It started again with my snare drum and voice in a room, and we all listened and added voices and sounds to what we were hearing. As if we were all fishes in a stream. Sometimes just swimming, sometimes wanting to show ourselves, wanting to be heard, making sounds and noises, adding to that stream, sometimes just floating, breathing, hanging in there. And sometimes we heard not only single sounds but many sounds together and sometimes we heard a song. And we started to think about where all these sounds, songs and noises were coming from. And where they were going to ? Your instrument is this place and your snare drum really brings to life the surroundings like the bow enlivens the violin or a reed needs the mouthpiece of a clarinet. As a result, I've been very sensitive towards experiencing musical time and space." --(Olivier Messiaen's highly-appreciated organ player, Louis Thiry on "A Snare Is A Bell")
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LP
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SR 339LP
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LP
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UE 049LP
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"This is the first in a series of solo percussion LPs on Ultra Eczema titled STS. A meditative psychedelic experience is what I would like to call this, though I realize I make it sound like a silly zen blowout, and that's not what it feels like at all! When I first saw it live in a giant church in Mechelen, Belgium, I was yelling 'this is the best show of the year.' I thought there wouldn't be an end to it and didn't even feel a build-up to a more tense sound or a drone. There was a difference in resonating sound and it definitely changed, but as with more constructive minimalists such as Steve Reich or maybe even Terry Riley, you can't tell when things change. That experience got enlarged as well by the scenography he played in, a splendid eye-torturing construction, built especially for this piece by Antwerp-based sculptor Filip Metten. On record it feels different of course, as you can skip the needle up and down to the end and back, you can hear an enormous tension and sound difference. Though this piece is written for only a snare drum and a tiny bit of vocals (resonating with the snare drum) it sounds like either 20 people on a snaredrum, like if Glen Branca would invite 567 people playing the exact same snare roll, or like a choir, and by the end definitely like the sound of a Whitehouse LP; building up strongly to the point of absolute silence, which feels like a relief! This piece is based on a snare roll which changes 3 times. Live, this piece can go up to an hour or longer, on this record, it is one full side. The B-side is a psychedelic etch! Eric Thielemans is based in Antwerp, Belgium and has made percussive pieces for theatre, has played psychedelic guitar music with Mauro Pawlowski, spaced free music with Sickboy and Cassisini Division and a ton load of great free jazz with Andre Goudbeek and Peter Jacquemyn. This record is limited to 500 copies, has an insert and comes in a duo colored psychic design by Dennis Tyfus."
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