Premiere
Dominic Valona
Photo Credit: Miles Hart
Sebastian Reynolds ‘The Universe Remembers’
(Faith & Industry) Single/27th March 2020
Oxford-based polymath Sebastian Reynolds has finally found the time in his prolific schedule of collaborations, remixes, session work and productions to create his very own solo soundtrack of various inspired peregrinations. The Universe Remembers quintet drifts and wafts across an ambiguous, often vaporous soundscape of neo-classical composition, retro futurist production, swanned Tibetan mystical jazz, both languid and accelerated running breakbeats, and ghostly visitations – haunted narrated extracts from T.S. Eliot’s all-encompassing philosophical, religious and metaphysical Holy Grail purview The Wasteland, can be heard in fuzzy echo on the featured title-track single.
A cosmological junction of dystopian literature and Buddhist Eschatology, The Universe Remembers is, as you might expect from a composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer who’s created music as varied as the transcendent Southeast Asian Manīmekhalā score that accompanied the multimedia Mahajanaka Dance Drama and the visceral chamber pieces of his collaboration with the pan-European Solo Collective trio, the evocations are simultaneously as dreamy as they are ominous and mysterious.
A guest producer on the premiere track we’re hosting today, Capitol K has lent his skills before to Seb’s work as a remixer. His Faith & Industry label, the platform for Capitol K’s output as well as luminaries such as previous Monolith Cocktail albums of the year entrant John Johanna and Champagne Dub, is facilitating the release of this EP. Ahead of the 22nd May 2020 release date, Seb has kindly agreed to share that twinkled trembled cascaded piano and slow beat vaporous turn tumultuous reversal title-track. Featuring the ambiguous mystical fluttering, spiraling and drifting clarinet of Rachel Coombes, and a penchant for the glitch-y piano resonance of Susumu Yokota, this traverse wafts between the snake charmer bazaars of Egypt and Calcutta, the Hitchcockian, and avant-garde.
Expect to be enticed into a wonderfully amorphous soundscape of trance, esoteric mysticism, trip-hop, new age, satellite jazz and the poetic.
Background:
Following his formative years leading premier UK cult musical ensembles the Keyboard Choir and Braindead Collective, Sebastian has more latterly made a name for himself with the modern classical trio Solo Collective in which he performs with German chamber musicians Alex Stolze and Anne Müller (Erased Tapes) and the Thai/Anglo dance and music show Mahajanaka Dance Drama that he scored and produced. The Universe Remembers is a distillation of these various musical inclinations, from the distorted crescendos of tracks such as the elegiac, otherworldly ‘Everest’, evoking the digital climaxes of the Keyboard Choir, to the deft use of clarinet on the title track and the swooning saxophone melodies of ‘You Are Forgotten’ evoking the retro futurism of the Blade Runner score and nodding to the post-jazz interests of the Braindead Collective. The vocal samples on the title track are from T.S. Elliot’s epic poem The Waste Land and they represent Sebastian’s ongoing interest in dystopian contemporary literature, as previously heard on the Catch 22 based piece ‘Ripeness Is All’ (featured on Solo Collective Part 2). EP opener ‘Amoniker’ calls to mind Boards of Canada’s use of tape-warped samples and stuttering rhythms. The Universe Remembers is Sebastian’s first solo release aside from the dance score commissions and it certainly serves as a further glimpse into the inner workings of a prolific, wide ranging and unpredictable music creator.
Previous releases include the two Solo Collective albums, Part 1 (November 2017) and Part 2 (June 2019), both released through Alex Stolze’s imprint Nonostar, and two EPs from the Mahajanaka Dance Drama Thai project, Mahajanaka (April 2017) via Nonostar again, and Maṇīmekhalā (October 2019) via his own PinDrop label and PR company. Sebastian’s projects have had glowing critical acclaim from across the media, and received airtime across the BBC and far beyond.
The Monolith Cocktail is now on the micro-donation payment hub Ko-Fi:
Hi, my name is Dominic Valvona and I’m the Founder of the music/culture blog monolithcocktail.com For the last ten years I’ve featured and supported music, musicians and labels we love across genres from around the world that we think you’ll want to know about. No content on the site is paid for or sponsored and we only feature artists we have genuine respect or love for. If you enjoy our reviews (and we often write long, thoughtful ones), found a new artist you admire or if we have featured you or artists you represent and would like to buy us a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/monolithcocktail to say cheers for spreading the word, then that would be much appreciated: especially in these most uncertain and anxious times.
Premiere: Sebastian Reynolds ‘Maṇīmekhalā EP’
October 16, 2019
Premiere
Dominic Valvona
Sebastian Reynolds ‘Maṇīmekhalā’
(Pindrop Records) EP/ 18th October 2019
Released in anticipation of the upcoming UK tour of the multimedia Mahajanaka Dance Drama, which starts in November, a second EP of serene devotional music from that production’s score is being shared with our readers two days in advance of its official release date (18th October).
Based on the stories of the venerated Jataka, one of the oldest collections of mythological texts in the world, the theme of this interpretive dance, music and visual production is taken from the Mahajanaka, a moralistic chronicle of Buddha’s previous lives, which describes the future guru’s birth as the prince of that title. Prince Mahajanaka, we’re relayed, is usurped by a ‘wicked uncle’. During exile he becomes a merchant so he can gain the fortune he needs to regain his kingdom. Of the many travails the prince experiences, there’s one that appeals especially to the artist and collaborators behind the leading peregrination of this EP: Mahajanaka’s rescue from a shipwreck by the guardian of the seas, the goddess Maṇīmekhalā – who as it transpires, very important to the story, only saves the lives of the virtuous. The man behind this project’s visceral soundtrack, Oxford-based polymath Sebastian Reynolds, composes a most diaphanous ascendant theme to that deity; the leading transcendent evocation from this new EP is a subtle, resonating vision of blissful devotion that softly (angelically even) transforms the rich sounds of Southeast Asian traditional music to produce a dreamy lofty cloud gazing homage.
The musical, dance and artful direction of this production and its score can be found in Thailand. Sparked, in part, by Reynolds’ arts-funded trip to Bangkok in 2016, the reedy sound of the native Pi-Nai instrument, which he recorded during his time there, can be heard permeating the goddess saviors theme. You may also hear the accentuated and understated tonal drones of German cellist extraordinaire Anne Müller woven into the effortless fusion of veneration tradition and the contemporary ambient. Müller of course recently released a debut LP, but has collaborated with Reynolds on a number of albums and performances, most notably the triumvirate of experimental chamber electronica, the Solo Collective, with both Reynolds and German virtuosi Alex Stolze.
The EP’s accompanying track, the lively bamboo skittering South Seas ‘Cherd’, features an attentive cascading mallet bouncing regal dash performance from the Thai piphat troupe, The Jongkraben Ensemble; a performance that was originally specially commissioned by Reynolds. Continuing with the many Thai connections, one of the two remixes on this EP is by the Thai producer, musician, composer and project collaborator Pradit Saengkral, who expands Reynolds original Maṇīmekhalā theme into a both expansively dreamy and more seriously intense journey of caressed piano, pondered bass guitar notes and mysterious atmospherics.
As I’ve already said, a collaborative affair, The Mahanjanka project from which this latest EP derives, was conceived and put together by Reynolds, the contemporary dance company Neon Dance and the award-winning Thai dancer and choreographer Pichet Klunchun. Taking their source material and inspirations extremely serious, not only by spending time abroad absorbing and working with an array of Thai talent, Buddhist scholar and author of the Penguin Classics translations of the Jataka, Dr. Sarah Shaw, was on-hand to lend support and monitor this special interpretation.
Closer to home, cult producer of the moment, Capitol K offers a brilliant transportive and sophisticated ‘psytrance’ pumped exotic treatment of The Jongkraben Ensemble’s wooden mallet dash to nirvana, ‘Cherd’. Of which he opines:
“From playing the Goat Herder album out live I found myself recently developing more ambient long form dance floor tracks, focusing on the low midrange and kick frequencies in particular. In conversation with a producer friend recently we were discussing the merits of the much maligned idea of psytrance in a festival context, I don’t think this remix quite makes it to psytrance but I felt that in remixing the ancient and complex scores of piphat, the only way I could be humble with my illiteracy to the form was with my own take on a trance remix.”
A most beautifully conceived vision that fuses tradition with the subtlest of electronica, ambient and trance, this multi-disciplined performance is worth experiencing in the flesh. You can catch the UK leg of the tour at the following venues and on these dates.
Mahajanaka Dance Drama – UK Tour November 2019
13th – Jacqueline du Pré, Oxford
14th – Pavilion Dance, Bournemouth
16th+17th – British Library, London
20th+21st – The Library Presents, Cambridgeshire
Plus a talk and excerpt performance event at the Multi-Faith Centre, University of Derby, on 19th November.
Until then, enjoy the second EP of congruous spiritual evocations from that captivating project.
Monolith Cocktail Blog 