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LP
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PP 1003LP
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"Still life painting, also referred to as 'natura morta' ('dead nature') in Italian, stretches back to ancient times. Some of the earliest works, found in Pompeii, depict commonplace objects such as fresh autumn fruits alongside man-made objects such as a small amphora and a small terracotta heap with dried fruits. These two-thousand-year-old paintings give a snapshot of Roman life and also create a link to time and space. A slice of life has been created by binding the earth's pigments with extracts of oil, made from nuts and seeds, painted with brushes, and made from a variety of fibers, such as trees and hair from animals. While life wanes with each brush stroke, by shifting reality into the past, art exists to make people come alive, being a living image of a dead thing, a surface, and a symbol with symbolic powers of its own. Still life works celebrate material and ephemeral pleasures by returning to nature as the ultimate source for our standards in art as well as in life itself. Natura Morta collects pieces from a continuous variety of melodies -- supported by a decisive rhythm section -- creating a musical kaleidoscope of ever-changing colors. Sven Wunder brings life into this rich assortment of musical implications by fusing and combining melodic instruments with each other in a setting that spans from a classical to a modern idiom. The author evokes this panoramic portrait by articulating an instrumental dialog between a chamber orchestra and a jazz ensemble. The result is a musical celebration of material pleasures that also serves as a reminder of the brevity of human life."
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LP
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PP 1002LP
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"By welcoming the beauty of imperfection and simplicity, Sven Wunder applies the timeless wisdom of Wabi Sabi on this musical journey. What you can hear is filtered through Ukiyo-e (which translates as 'pictures of the floating world'), which illustrates everyday life, as well as through Japonism, the study of Japanese art, and more specifically its influence on European works. The result is a surface that creates an illusion through sound. The infusion of Min'yō with jazz-rock, this hazy scene evokes the landscape of Monet's The Water Lily Pond, which depicts the painter's Giverny garden, with a Japanese bridge, bamboo, ginkgo trees, and the reflection of the sky in the pond. This illusion constructs both time and space. The surface of the music, like the canvas of the painting, invents a journey between now and then by interpreting the idiom of folkloric and western art instruments. In this composition, the sound of the Western concert flute, which stretches back to the Renaissance and Baroque periods, evokes the sound of the bamboo flute ('shakuhachi'), which reached its peak during the Edo period. The guzheng, also known as the Chinese zither, with a more than 2,500-year history, joins traditional Japanese folk melodies with modern pop percussion and 20th-century electronic instruments such as the Moog synthesizer, Wurlitzer electric piano, and electric bass. This is the illusion that celebrates the fleeting nature of all things. A journey. A deep inhale and a slow exhale. It has a mix of jazz (both funky and progressive), East Asian, and South Asian sounds. The idea of fusing these styles and reframing them with the aesthetic of Wabi Sabi is to reconnect with nature and concentrate on asymmetries and emphasize ornamentation to generate new ways of looking at the world, here and now."
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PP 1001LP
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"This is the first stop on Sven Wunder's musical journey. Wunder takes the listener somewhere around the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea, around the Levantine Sea, where he paints a colorful portrait and illustrates the region's flora through sound. The fruitage is a vivid bouquet where Wunder fuses colors and pigments by using traditional and modern instruments merged with arrangements and melodies that stretch from popular to folk music by portraying tulips, red roses, hibiscus, hyacinths, chamomile, magnolia, daisies etcetera. With both fine and thick brushes these flowers are pictured in both modern and classic idiom. The outcome is prismatic. It stands between Anatolian rock and European jazz-funk with ponderous drum patterns, groovy organs, far-out synthesizers, enchanting sax, and impetuous bass lines. Eastern Flowers sweeps through time and space and points towards the future. It could appeal to both psych and prog listeners, folk or jazz aficionados, and as well the gourmet hip hop connoisseurs."
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LP
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PP 1004LP
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"When the sun hovers near the horizon, the rays of white sunlight are scattered out of the beam by small particles and molecules in the atmosphere that sprinkle the sky with brilliant hues indicating that the day starts to fade. As night begins to fall, tree-tops redden and begin to glow. Darkness closes in and falls like a blanket covering the sky. It is late again and all is in shadow below. It is when stars align and dreams come true. Sven Wunder thrives at nightfall and welcomes the horizon of beginnings on Late Again, a collection of nocturnal jazz pieces that depict shooting stars and scattered beams from the setting sun, with an emphasis on gentle compositions for piano and orchestral pop-jazz arrangements for flute, brass, and strings."
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