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ARTIST
TITLE
Dark Star Safari
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
AMEL 718CD AMEL 718CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
5/10/2019

Dark Star Safari, a newly formed group featuring Samuel Rohrer, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, and Eivind Aarset presents Dark Star Safari, an evocative song-driven album. These songs conjure shadows of memory, clouds of dreaming and silhouettes of foreboding through the album's layered, many-textured fabrics and Bang's silken delivery of Honoré's lyrics. Dark Star Safari is the work of four kindred spirits, an open modus operandi, and a remarkably interconnected creative nerve system. Key to their collaboration is an organic freedom that enables the music "to fill itself in", to be self-actualizing via the musicians as medium. The music of the ten songs resulted from a two-stage process: an initial phase of free-flowing open improvisation, and a subsequent exploratory phase where hidden potentials were discovered and nurtured. The groundwork of the album originates in a session initiated by Rohrer, who invited Bang and Aarset to the Candy Bomber studio in Berlin. The session was run under the imaginative craftsmanship of sound engineer Ingo Krauss, who worked in the famous Conny Plank studio, its recording and mixing employing sophisticated use of vintage analog equipment alongside cutting-edge digital processes. This meeting opened the door for something larger to emerge; the group did not settle for just the initial open improvisation. They were driven to dig deeper, to examine and manipulate the material, in order to discover what it had to offer. During this second phase Bang, while meditating upon the possibilities and reach of the improvised material, felt a strong urge to give additional shape and color to it by singing. Thus, he organically stepped into the role of vocalist, a role he had not pursued since the early days of his musical career. He sent the results to Honoré, who immediately was inspired by its potential, penning lyrics and providing the project with its name. Honoré composed two additional songs, "Mordechai" and "Fault Line", and thus rounded the project out towards a fully realized opus. The group continued this back and forth process, with Rohrer and Aarset bringing in fine-tuning and enrichment to the song structures and textures. Born out of the spirit of open improvisation and the improvisational practice of the immediate live-remix, Dark Star Safari transcends both of these creative processes in a pursuit of fresh approaches to songwriting. Their music is now ready to meet the hearts, minds and bodies of live audiences, to evolve through that interaction. Art by Ian Anderson, The Designers Republic.