The ambient/cross-genres record label Concentric Records (Simone Merli / Soundwalk Collective & Luca Calo / Born In 1986) - launches Colliding Wind, the second compilation of its introductory release trilogy. Featuring music by Christina Vantzou, Echium, Etapp Kyle, Jana Winderen, Kareem Lotfy, Soundwalk Collective, Tragic Selector (Daisuke Tadokoro & Terre Thaemlitz), the album is composed of a wide spectrum of ambient, field recording-based and experimental works, exploring unexpected sonic spaces and evocative landscapes.

COLLIDING WIND is inspired by the powerful force that is produced when a minimum of two beings or elements are combined and acting together. Science explains us that a colliding-wind binary is a binary star system in which the two members are massive stars that emit powerful, radiatively-driven stellar winds. The location where these two winds collide produces a strong shock. As we reference the state of world chaos today, a colliding-wind is a reassuring reminder of the inspiring thought that the act of coming together as one produces exponentially powerful results.

The opening track is SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE’s ‘Running On Emptiness’. Commissioned by Sasha Waltz for her 3-hour epic choreography ‘EΞΟΔΟΣ I Exodos’, the piece is composed out of moving architectural structures and their echoing resonances. Back in 2012, the Collective has placed 147 contact sensors on all surfaces inside and outside of the Berghain club: concrete walls, steel staircases, water pipes, ventilation tunnels, air ducts, metal frames, ... mapping out the whole structure and progressively recording the entire movement of the building under the impact of the music, with the intention of exposing the silent voice of the building. This composition reflects the sense of a space that is left behind in between the margins.

Raised in a small town in western Ukraine, ETAPP KYLE was trained as a classical musician before his first teenage club permanently changed his musical trajectory. Over the past few years, his cavernous and often hallucinatory techno has dovetailed into an obsession with spatial qualities of sound. “10K was originally recorded in 2017 as a simple piano-leading ambient track during a home studio session. It was developed further only in 2020 after Simone & Luca invited me to contribute to the project. A sudden burst of inspiration came during a mix-down session when I tried to re-record the original timbre of the piano. Eventually, while experimenting, it went a completely different direction and the track turned into its present form. Thanks to Simone for an encouraging word while I was working on the track.” - Etapp Kyle

TRAGIC SELECTOR is the duo comprised of Daisuke Tadokoro and Terre Thaemlitz. “This piano piece was originally composed for an event with the Japanese Butoh dance ensemble Dairakudakan. The focus of Butoh seems to be stopping and holding the body in place. Globally speaking, from classical ballet to dance parties, most forms of dance emphasize movement. Perhaps the core of Butoh is more akin to learning to sit in a chair. In that sense, there are similarities to some forms of Western contemporary dance. But most contemporary dance still emphasizes movement. Butoh has a lot of stillness. In order to be still - to stop the body - a dialogue with gravity becomes necessary, which is how this piece gets its title. Pianos create sound by hitting strings with hammers. The hammers of a grand piano strike in conversation with gravity. The vertical hammers of an upright piano resist speaking with gravity. The high- grade electric piano used for this particular recording has a hammerlike mechanism. Whether or not it is in dialogue with gravity, I am uncertain." - Daisuke Tadokoro

KAREEM LOTFY (Arabic: كريم لطفي) is an electronic music producer, graphic designer and visual artist from Egypt, who lives and works in Cairo. Lofty’s work engages critically with current political and social issues. Influenced by Internet culture, he is fascinated by the intercultural mix in his native Egypt. ‘Molten Tactics’ offers a palpable departure from his usually lush and visceral ambiance, notably heard on Kelela’s AQUAPHORIA mixtape and PAN’s mono no aware compilation (the latter was sampled in Kanye West’s ‘I Thought About Killing You’). The track’s obscured granular synthesis creates a vacuum of feeling, leaving remnants of field recordings to guide the rest of the composition. It teases Lofty’s classically soulful and foreboding style – but only for a second before trailing off into the abyss.

CHRISTINA VANTZOU’s ‘Dvorjacked’ is a rework of Dvořák's "American" Quartet - Movement II (Lento). “It’s a fragment of the piece, one phrase really, and it's just old enough to be in the public domain which is of interest to me. I used a modular synthesizer called the Morphagene to loop and process the recording. I wanted to work with a piece of existing chamber music and I was especially looking for something that sounded like a love song. The process I used to decompose and recompose is modelled after mid 20th Century tape experiments so the piece points to early sound sculpting. The vague familiarity of the work is an important element. All of my work deals in some way with deconstructing existing musical forms and re-thinking them while considering how memory operates and how the brain deals with familiarity and abstraction.” - Christina Vantzou

JANA WINDEREN is an artist who currently lives and works in Norway. Her practice pays particular attention to audio environments and to creatures which are hard for humans to access, both physically and aurally – deep under water, inside ice or in frequency ranges inaudible to the human ear. ‘The Listener’ is a sound composition created from hydrophones and Sound Field recordings in and by the River Orne in Normandy. Freshwater biologists count underwater insects and use this data as an indicator of the water's health. If one identifies the sound of the specific underwater insects with their varying ability to survive forms of pollution, one can possibly, through focused listening, reach an understanding of the health of the river. «The Listener» (6 channel audio installation) was part of the exhibition Second Nature and the project Nature and Renaturation: A Sensory Overview of a History of Changing Watercourses. A three-year-long project which started in 2014 by Thierry Weyd, Esam Caen-Cherbourg (Art Academy) and Camille Prunet, Research Coordinator chez École Supérieure d’Arts et Médias Caen/Cherbourg

As part of the next wave of artists innovating within dub techno and experimental ambient zones, ECHIUM looks to loosen up its strictures while playing deep within its unfathomable dimensions, literally urging a dematerialisation of mindsets and musical structures with literal titles such as ‘Collapsed Senses’ and ‘Glacial Rust’ matched by meticulous sound design that connotes and evokes their meaning in the most elusively abstract, lushly sensorial terms. The result is the creation of imaginary spaces that smudge the listener’s perceptions of artificial and organic texture, tone and spatial dynamics. ‘Compulsions of Reality’, explores the emotions built into daily existence. A divergent semblance, exhaled through the sonic process. Locking sections of minute particulars, in time. This personally represents a gateway to the symbiotic understanding of how I no longer depend nor want, and why I had to stop, to become.” - Echium

Dance Trax Vol 55

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