Playthings in the Storm, tracks one to three.

Icelandic Hurricane by Tomas Tranströmer

(Nobel prize winner literature 2011)

     No earth tremor, but a skyquake. Turner could have painted it, secured by ropes. A single mitten whirled past right now, several miles from its hand. Facing the storm I am heading for that house on the other side of the field. I flutter in the hurricane. I am being x-rayed, my skeleton hands in its application for discharge. Panic grows while I tack about, I am wrecked, I am wrecked and drown on dry land! How heavy it is, all that I suddenly have to carry, how heavy it is for the butterfly to tow a barge! There at last. A final bout of wrestling with the door.  And now inside.  Behind the huge window-pane. What a strange and magnificent invention glass is—to be close without being stricken. . . Outside a horde of transparent splinters of gigantic shapes rush across the lava plain. But I flutter no more. I sit behind the glass, still, my own portrait.

( from The Blue House 1988, translated by Göran Malmqvist)

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WINDS AND STORMS

Part one: Playthings in the Storm

Track 01 Intro

Photo by Beate Wølner

Listen / Download at SoundCloud

Short intro featuring snippets of things to come,

mostly from the title track Playthings in the storm.

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Track 02 Drum Storm feat. Antonio de Braga

Photo by Beate Wølner

Antonio on the net:

SoundCloud

MySpace

Reverbnation

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03 The Cold North Wind feat. The Mass of the Silence

Photo by Beate Wølner

Great work from Obi Gavin on this one! When he “takes over” after three minutes

everything gets bigger, colder and more beautiful. Play loud!

The Mass ofthe Silence on the net:

SoundCloud

Myspace

The Winds and Storms project

(Artwork by Imi Gavin)

Around 2002 I got in contact with a small record label in Paris, Ocean Music. At first they wanted to work with different types of electronica, like ambient and trip hop. Two of my Sirkum Polaris pieces are featured on the first release on the label , a collection called The mirror date.

Ocean Music then wanted to release a full cd with Sirk, and gave me a title to work with: Winds and Storms.I thought this was a great idea so I started to create lots of sketches and even finishad 5-6 tracks, and a cover was made:

 

The record was scheduled for release spring 2004 but then two things happened: Ocean music shifted their focus to singer-songwriters and folk music and at the same time  I went into one of my long breaks from creating music (from 2003 until 2006). So the whole project was put away and forgotten.

But in 2006 I opened an account at MySpace, met a whole bunch of likeminded musicians and started making music again. And after a couple of years with a lot of new collaborators and new tracks, I incidentally came over these old winds and storms tracks again. At first I used elements from a couple of them to finish the Sirkum Polaris project, but around 2009 I startd to concentrate on this project again, as it fitted very well in with the music I wanted to make now. And the idea seemed to attract my collaborators on My Space too , because 6 month later I had almost 20 tracks finished with 7 great collab partners involved:

Lil Dreamland (Madzka Skalmierska)

We Harmonize (David Sutton)

The Mass of the Silence (Obi Gavin)

Mach Feedback (Imi Gavin)

Antonio de Braga

Pixyblink

Mark Bradley

But then I went into one of those long  periods of inactivity again. And that has lasted until now…..

But out of respect for the artists who put their soul and creativity into this project, and because I can hear that there are some good music in here, I’ll try to finish the project now.

At this time, I’ll try to edit or master each track as well as I can and put them up on Soundcloud and this blog one by one. But I will not consider this project finished before I have managed to get the properly mastered and produced Winds and Storms record out in a physical format (aka a CD, remember those?)!

It’ll then be as a double album, but in two parts,  part one: Playthings in the storm, and part two: The Day After. To put it very simple the style of first one is  downtempo electronica and the second  is more (dark) ambient!

So here we go then , hope you’ll enjoy the ride!

Sørum Norway 22.December 2011

Kristian W.