Sunday, September 20, 2020

MARKUS REUTER OCULUS - NOTHING IS SACRED

From the Bandcamp page:

"This is insane music. I used a compositional system that basically disallowed the musicians to play intuitively. They had to follow rules which served to create really strange melodies and harmonies," Markus revealed. "In the back of my mind, I wanted to create something as fundamentally radical as was (Miles Davis') 'Bitches Brew,' back in the day ... sort of an improvising 'big band' – where each player is on their own when it comes to specific pitches, but connected in terms of a common rhythmic grid and unified texture."

Recorded live in the studio (at the 4th annual MoonJune gathering, at La Casa Murada, Catalunya, Spain), every song is a mesmerizing journey, weaving seamlessly between various coarse and fine textures, where moments of tranquil harmony magically morph into spells of delightfully chaotic dissonance, stampeding one minute, and tip-toeing, the next.

Within the context of such challenging musical environs, some extraordinarily gifted, visionary players emote with defiant abandon, somehow, never discarding their unified 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' mindset or their polished collective dynamic swagger. Such paradoxes abound throughout this timeless classic.

Five extended compositions are thoroughly probed, despite the inherently reverential treatment they receive from the participating artists. Exhibitions of musical brilliance are overshadowed by the abstruse ingenuity of the foundation upon which they're constructed, amalgamated sonic offerings take on a life of their own. 

Out on Moonjune Records
Released on CD but also available as digital download.





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