The album will be released via Deutsche Grammophon on December 4.
Posted on
Per
The renowned Bad Seeds frontman Nick Cave and Belgian composer Nicholas Lens have collaborated on a “camera opera”, L. I. T. A. N. I. E. S, which will be released in digital, CD and vinyl Deutsche Grammophon on December 4.
There are several things that the Belgian composer and the Australian singer-songwriter have in common, but the most important thing is that none of them like to spend time. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two learned that their respective schedules for 2020 were likely to be Lenses dismayed to see the performances of their operas cancelled until the following year, and Cave also saw a long tour of North America and Europe for his band The Bad Seeds, which will be on ice until 2021.
Lens, who astonished foreign audiences in 2012 with his opera Slow Man, which he wrote with Nobel Prize-winning novelist JMCoetzee, was not used to the feeling of having so much free time and began exploring his hometown of Brussels on a motorcycle and despite of everything. of all that the unusually deserted streets and the new blank air reminded him of some other place. The sense of peace took him back to a deeply moving stopover he had made in Yamanouchi, Kamakura, a lush hillside community in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. of the oldest and most valuable Rinzai Zen temples in the world.
It says: “The initial concept of LITANIES was born in the herbal silence that rises from the bright green rainforest surrounding those 13th-century temples. And because my reminiscence works on musical phrases, writing LITANIES has my approach to remembering the peace I discovered when visiting Japan.
Because he needed a libretist to write the lyrics to his music, he contacted Nick Cave. The couple had painted in the past in combination with the 2014 opera Shell Shock, about the horrors of war. Lens recalls: “I looked to paint with someone who was new to the opera box; someone who was the most believable and original thing in the way he used words. Nick was clearly that person.
Nick Cave repeats the story: “Nicholas called me to lock up and asked if I would write “12 litanies. “I gladly accepted. The first thing I did after I hung up the phone was look for “What is a litany?”A litany was “a series of devout requests” and I knew I had written litanies all my life.
He wrote 12 lyrical pieces that suggest the birth, realization, fracture and eventual rebirth of a human being and were “requests to a divine author that were not a kind of easy cosmic recognition. “For Lens, the term suggests “a natural form of poetry. “. . a lyrical form of minimalism that can lead to a trance state,” and recognizes that the two men have completely different concepts about what LITANIES means.
Lens warns others not to think of the finished work, which will be released in digital, CD and vinyl format on December 4, 2020 through Deutsche Grammophon, as a staged classical opera with well-defined characters and a transparent narrative arc: “I would hate to aggravate opera purists!Think of it perhaps more as a modest sleeping dream chamber opera, a trance adventure that doesn’t need to be avoided for an hour, a journey that takes the listener in turns. . . »
The record was actually a DIY issue and the “modest” room set in question was basically made up of other people who were close to Lens locking it up. Among litANIES’ 11-track instrumental organization was his daughter artist Clara-Lane, who became trapped in Brussels due to a travel ban. In general circumstances, he has no interest in recording music, however, here he was discovered betting keyboards, helping with production and even making a song on some of the tracks.
Due to social estating regulations, each of the musicians had to enter and record their component separately, however, the beautiful and moving finished paintings show a unified organization that works with a singular purpose. The studios were absolutely closed, so Lens organized the sessions. in his own home, and feels that that component of the “dead and terrifying people’s environment with their surroundings” has permeated this special recording.
Lens laughs: “At the end of the day, everything was recorded in one room, so it’s literally chamber music!”
L. I. T. A. N. I. E. S. se will be released on December 4. Scroll down to the full list of songs and order it here.
Pat Benatar’s best songs: 15 powerful ballads and pop-rock bands
Badu Babies: How Erykah Badu’s Vocal Style Transformed Music
How the “Hackers” High-Tech Soundtrack Captured the Future
Amy Winehouse’s Best Songs: 20 Essential Soul Themes
About Us – Contributors – Terms of Use – Privacy Policy – © 2020 uDiscoverMusic