Soundflowers by James Murray

SELECTED PRESS:

"a blazing panorama of synthesizer-charged grandeur"

- Ron Schepper, textura

https://www.textura.org/archives/m/murray_soundflowers.htm

Melodies, harmonies and arrangements on James Murray’s new album Soundflowers arise from a generative compositional approach centred around the Torso T-1 algorithmic sequencer. When technology is invited to seed the natural order the process can yield collaborative sonic forms that spontaneously, unexpectedly unfurl within the composer’s care.

Texture and tone emerge from hardware too: Tasty Chips GR-1, ARP Odyssey, Haken ContinuuMini, ASM Hydrasynth, Arturia MicroFreak and a pair of Menq Qi Wingie IIs providing harmonic overtones. Thus analogue layers grow from synthetic seeds, from the overwhelming romance of wistful advance single No More Roses through to the album’s crowning crescendo Post Script (I Love You). This is a machine-penned love letter to nature in all its beautifully thorny forms, an unmistakably contemporary pastorale under whose surface course wild undercurrents of emotional turbulence and environmental anxiety.

Soundflowers appears across all digital platforms and in our CDr edition on a recycled six-panel insert featuring photography by Grant Gard aka Landtitles, sealed in a rubber-stamped envelope bearing a custom postage stamp, enclosed within a wax paper bag. Hand assembled at Slowcraft with utmost care.

Exceptional unclassifiable soundworks curated by James Murray since 2011.

slowcraft.info