Screengrab viaThe minimalist sounds of tracks by artists ranging from Aphex Twin to John Cage and Philip Glass are reinterpreted in the new album Statea,out on InFiné,from Mexican producer Murcof (Fernando Corona) and French pianist Vanessa Wagner. Both are classically trained musicians, but their careers have seen them focus on different approaches, Murcof on ambient and electronica, Wagner on classical music. For their crossover album, they combined approaches for an electronic take on minimalist contemporary classical. They put in Aphex Twin's "Avril 14th," too, as a nod to their interpretations. "The minimalist and repetitive music we chose for this album has strongly influenced the current electronic producers," notes Wagner. "There is an obvious connection between these musical styles."
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The name of the album is a reference to old Italian scales and the balance between two units of measurement, and also references how they balance Murcof's textured electronica with Wagner's elegant piano-playing. The first track on the album is John Cage's "In a Landscape," and as the song builds, Wagner's delicate piano sounds often become indistinguishable from Murcof's loops."This idea of fusing sounds of different sources so that the borders between them become blurred has been an interest of mine for years," explains Murcof to The Creators Project. "And here in Statea this was a very important goal to achieve, to have the piano and electronics exist in their own domains at some moments and at other moments have them become a single entity."
Screengrab viaThe meditative video for the song is by Life Observing Life and for it the filmmakers shot natural footage showing the cycle of day and night over 24 hours, compressed to the length of the song. Cage's song was originally a choreography piece written for dancer Louise Lippold back in 1948. Life Observing Life used natural elements instead of a human form to represent this dancing and movement—wind, trees, plants, running water, the movement of shadows cast by rocks and mountains, along with the ebb and flow of clouds forming and changing.Although it's all shot on-location in natural environments, when electronic elements come into the song, the filmmakers have added subtle digital effects. One other digital component is a reflective Kubrickian monolith that rises and falls from the landscape, a nod to the organic and digital facets of the video, the acoustic and the electronic in the music, and the title of the album.
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"Behind this title is the idea of balance: between ancient and contemporary, acoustic and electronic, bare and augmented piano sounds, between our two personalities," Wagner notes. "It's also the idea of a passage, a connection and of our encounter—and a reference to the balance as a point of weightlessness, a feeling which emerges when you listen to Murcof`s compositions and electronic sonorities. And an invitation to a contemplative journey."Listen to Murcof and Vanessa Wagner's "In a Landscape," below.
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