Wagner by Cloudland Blue Quartet

"Wagner" is the sixth in an ongoing series of "classical" releases by Cloudland Blue Quartet, which aim to take pieces by various composers (previous albums have featured treatments of works by Satie, Cage, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg and Haydn) and warp them into something completely new, whilst retaining elements of the "DNA" of the original works.

"Wagner" was commenced in October 2021 with initial experiments involving recordings of the supersonic airliner Concorde, a recounting by drummer Tony Williams of how it came to be that he joined Miles Davis' band and samples of Williams' drumming.

While that line of work was abandoned, the pieces created at that point are available to downloaders of "Wagner" as bonuses.

The album was returned to in June 2022, with the concept being finalised by utilising short pieces from preludes from three of the four operas by Richard Wagner which comprise his cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" (WWV 86).

Each piece is slowed, manipulated and treated to leave only the barest element of Wagner's melodies and is then overlaid with field recordings, also slowed, manipulated and treated, of, variously, passing traffic, subway stations and subway train interiors, in order to create brand new soundscapes.

Further bonus tracks, featuring only the orchestral elements of each track are also provided to downloaders.

The final bonus track, "Station, Interior, Traffic Passing" is a further soundscape comprising an amalgam of all the field recordings used in the creation of the four pieces on the LP.

A quartet in name only, initially influenced by Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and The Velvet Underground's debut, songwriter & soundscaper David Reilly started musicking in 1977 by creating drones using sellotape on the keys of his dad's Bontempi Organ. The subsequent junk shop purchases of an electric guitar & fuzzbox and the acquisition of an old Beatles songbook, led him into songwriting...

crispycat.co.uk
mixcloud.com