Involvement in Honore Project

Sakamoto, Fripp, Czukay et al.

Involvement in Honore Project

Postby silentwings on Mon Aug 20, 2012 3:34 pm

Excerpts below from the website for new Aagre/Honore project 'Year of the bullet'. The artwork is by Chris Bigg. It's almost like a Samadhi release put out on another label. Interestingly Dai Fujikura has said that an album of his music that he had previously stated would be released in Samadhi will not now be released on the label. I wonder whether Samadhi is now reserved for David himself...

"Following their two Norwegian releases as Elsewhere, Greta Aagre and Erik Honoré step onto the international stage under their own names with Year of the Bullet - an album of multilayered writing, gentle lyricism and moody soundscapes that has already caught the attention of international names like David Sylvian, who contributed essential advice during the final stages of the recording process.

Honoré's relationship with Sylvian dates back, in fact, to the British avant-songsmith's 2002 compilation Camphor, on which the producer/songwriter remixed "Mother and Child," in collaboration with live sampler and long-time friend/musical partner Jan Bang. Honoré was also a more extensive partner (again with Bang) on Sylvian's Died in the Wool (2011), and has worked with other internationally known Norwegian artists including trumpeters Arve Henriksen and Nils Petter Molvær, singer Sidsel Endresen, pianist Christian Wallumrød, and, under the moniker Humcrush, keyboardist Ståle Storløkken and percussionist Thomas Strønen. But it's Honoré's work with Bang as the creative force behind the annual Punkt Festival - the eight year-old Live Remix event - that has, in addition to Sylvian, placed these two musical innovators firmly onto the radars of artists like Jon Hassell, John Paul Jones and Brian Eno.

The spirits of Sylvian and Eno may, indeed, loom over Year of the Bullet, but the album speaks with its own voice, a combination of Aagre's warm, articulate and deeply expressive voice - capable of fragile vulnerability and unbridled power - and Honoré's sample-driven electronic landscaping. And Year of the Bullet clearly reflects Honoré's ongoing work as co-Artistic Director of Punkt. "Punkt has mainly provided the craft: the knowledge or skill of working intuitively and swiftly with electronic instruments and samplers, and hopefully doing it with taste, which to a large extent means making the right choices," explains Honoré. "I believe Greta and I have had the singer/songwriter bit in us from way back, but the arrangements on this record needed the craft that the whole Punkt experience has taught us......."

"The album's samples come from a multiplicity of location, times and events. "Much of the album is based on samples from travels," Honoré explains. "Sometimes very concrete and recognizable: an old piano recorded in an apartment in Rome; the sound of an approaching subway train in New York; the humming sub-drone of a bridge in Lisbon; an airy atmosphere from the church in Florence, where Dante supposedly met Beatrice. But, more often, the samples are just tiny fragments made unrecognizable because they are so short - or treated so that they blend with the other instruments.

In addition to performances and/or samples by Arve Henriksen, Jan Bang, guitarist Jørgen Rief, percussionist Tom Rudi Torjussen and backing vocalist Greg Williamsburg, Japanese composer Dai Fujikura's 2011 Punkt performance in Kristiansand has been liberally sampled for three tracks: "Birth Mark," the dark-hued title track and the lyrically hard-edged but sonically soft-textured "Move to Strike." "When we asked him for permission to use them, he liked the way they sounded but didn’t recognize where they were from, since they’re made up from short fragments that are combined and pitched, stretched, etc. Actually, he didn’t even hear that it was 'him' on one of the tracks. And now I don’t remember either," says Honoré with a chuckle......."

"And Year of the Bullet makes an emotional impact, from Honoré's lyrics and Aagre's delivery to designer/artist Chris Bigg and photographer Luís Filipe Cunha’s evocative cover art. "The aim was to make music that was an organic mix of ingredients," says Honoré, "a seamless blend of our singer/songwriter tendencies with its more electronic instrumental surroundings....."

John Kelman, All About Jazz

http://www.aagrehonore.com/about/about.php
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” att to Jack Kerouac
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silentwings
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