🇬🇧 Royaume-Uni
James Holden
#1 106
Position mondiale
2
points
0
abonnés
Profil
In early 2023 seasoned synth wizard James Holden released his fourth artist album, the expansive otherworldly sound collage of Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities , and together with a select cast of rotating bandmates set off on tour across the venues and festivals of Europe – including support slots at all of The Smile’s UK and European shows. Now back on the terra firma of his London studio, his attentions turn to the ongoing development of his own open source music software for live performance “benny” ( www.playbenny.com ) as well as new musical projects, beginning with the resumption of his fruitful collaboration with the celebrated Polish clarinet player Waclaw Zimpel (booking shows in support of their new album The Universe Will Take Care Of You throughout 2025 and beyond). British synth wizard James Holden meets Polish clarinet guru Waclaw Zimpel to form Holden & Zimpel: a collaborative alliance wherein these two versatile modern composers might explore their deepest improvisational urges in an intimate setting, to strikingly lush, hypnotic and deeply emotive effect. Two like-minded masters of their instrument come together in an in-the-moment lyrical conversation between alto clarinet and modular synth, cementing the joyful convergence of their disparate musical journeys in an explosion of raw musical creativity in its most primal form. Long established in their own respective fields of electronica and jazz, Holden & Zimpel’s paths would first cross at the 2018 edition of The Hague’s Rewire Festival, where mutual feelings of respect drove the pair to seek each other out for an introduction. Their first recordings happened later that year in Holden’s London studio, during four snatched days of between-shows downtime for Waclaw, where the pair committed to laying down one composition a day to gradually assemble a four track EP of deliciously krauty in-the-moment improvisations. The resulting richly textured Long Weekend EP pitted Holden’s handmade modular synth rig against Zimpel’s multifariously expressive alto clarinet, judiciously supplemented by organ, voice, assorted percussion and (on Tuesday & Wednesday ) the Balearic-tinged guitar playing of Zimpel’s long-time collaborator Jakub Ziolek, making for an immersive and transcendent lost weekend of deep listening. With this initial release emerging on the eve of the pandemic, the duo’s first scheduled live performances across Europe had to be squeezed in around lockdowns, where the intimate, all-enveloping warmth of their electro-acoustic explorations proved to be a good fit for the fully seated socially-distanced concert settings which proliferated as the world began to open back up. And whenever Waclaw found himself with a day off in London the experiments would continue in Holden’s studio, nudging the pair inevitably towards their next release: the blissful escapism of 2025’s lush The Universe Will Take Care Of You album. Embracing a similar playful, experimental approach to that of their Krautrock forefathers, the new album sees both virtuosos encouraged and empowered to reach out beyond the instruments with which they made their name. Thus Holden supplements his bespoke computer and modular synth systems with his long-neglected childhood violin and his more recently cobbled together collection of hand percussion, whilst on some songs Zimpel forgoes his alto clarinet altogether in favour of electric piano, organ, lap steel guitar, airless harmonium and the Indian twin pipe algoza flute. Actuellement #1 106 au classement mondial BookedDJ. Le booking est assuré par 3D Agency. Également classé dans The DJ Sessions #1895.
Sources du classement
The DJ Sessions
#1 895
