Easter is perhaps my favourite time of year … not for any particular religious reason, but for what it represents: renewal, rebirth, Spring, longer days, and new beginnings.
I saw a minutes-old freshly born lamb the other day, being tended to by its mother in a farm park, which was quite moving. I’d share a picture of it with you had I taken one, but I was preoccupied with how to retrieve a Little Person’s pink boots from a duck house (another good reason always to keep an extendable tripod and gaffer tape in the van), so you’ll have to make do with that …
Anyway, I have some Easter listening for you in the form of an amazingly meditative new track, in 4 different versions, by Antony Pitts, RE-NEW, to which I contributed some Scrapings, alongside the Excelsia Choir and others.
You can experience it right now through some deliciously immersive tech at https://one.equal.music/re-new
Or, listen on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, or YouTube.
Or, just click this:
Antony – one of those rare and precious musicians who’s a master of harmony yet also an incredible melodist – makes deeply moving and insightful work. It’s always a privilege and pleasure for me to contribute, as I’ve been a superfan of his group Tonus Peregrinus – and now Tonus Australis – for years.
I find his sounds to be even more relevant at this time of immense upheaval. This kind of music speaks, like the great choral traditions of the last few hundred years, to much deeper and more powerful forces that we do not fully understand, and to which no amount of digital this or AI that can fully bring to bear emotional and spiritual clarity, or energetic awareness.
There is no way of measuring understanding.
Power for the faint.
Strength for those who have none to spare.Even the young grow weary — and fall.
But those who wait… renew their strength.
They rise, as with eagle’s wings.
They run, and don’t grow weary.
They walk, and don’t faint.— adapted from Isaiah 40:28–31
Curiously, Antony has been exploring murmuration, the word for how a flock of birds moves as one, and reflecting this in both his music-writing techniques and the soundworlds that he’s generating.
It’s the kind of music for which you’ll want to find a calm, still place to listen, then give it your full attention … or if you don’t, it’ll wash over you so hypnotically that you find you have to stop what you’re doing and just let yourself become immersed in the pulsing motives and the throbbing melodic fragments… here, have a listen:
Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, or YouTube.
There’s a much bigger project coming from Antony too … I’ll post again soon about his epic Requiem For The Time Of The End …
… but for now, if you’re in a contemplative mode, click to play, and enjoy!
Whilst you’re listening, here’s some actual murmuration I witnessed off the end of Blackpool Pier the other week. Amazing how these birds do this. A nice metaphor, I think, for how everything is connected and how everything ultimately affects everything else.
Even if at first we don’t see it.