"Repetition draws us into music, and repetition draws music into us." Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
'The Meditation Loops' represents our initial forays into creating loop based music. Exploring various atmospheres, tones. and repetitions across three albums collected into one document.
The seeds of these sessions were sown during a hectic period of time where we were writing and producing an opera project with a tight deadline. Amidst the countless writes, rewrites, rehearsals, changes we realised that it was becoming necessary to find ways to counteract the regimented working process we were ensconced within.
A particular way of doing this was to dive into exploring ideas of abstraction, simplicity, and repetition. We began recording experiments, playing and looping tiny phrases of music, recording the phrases for extended periods of time, and then overlapping these lengthy recorded pieces on top of one another. The most important and difficult part of this process laid in developing the ability to allow ourselves to accept the combination of these sounds.
These three albums represent many things: ambient music, relaxation music, background music, environmental music, diffusive music... but in particular they became our own form of wellness music. Providing us a means to relax our analytical minds and engage in an organic process of minimal engagement recording, wherein the least few steps and planning were involved, and being okay with that. Allowing the recordings to exist as the sum of their parts without falling prey to self critiquing, editing, or excessive post production to the original sounds.
By adhering to this ideal, the rewards of listening and experiencing the recordings have been abundant. We have listened to these pieces numerous times: within the background of gradually awakening during early mornings, whilst cooking, preparing to go to sleep, during social gatherings, or during working on other projects. Interestingly no two listens have ever been alike. The random convergence and intersections of sounds makes it difficult for the ears to find discernable patterns, as though each listen is for the first time.
A dualism, in which the music can seem unknowable to the ears, while upon repeated listens, a relationship, expectation. and familiarity with the tones and moods of each of the albums develops.
credits
released June 19, 2020
Played and recorded by Holly and Zac
Guitar, field recordings, violin, ocarina, organ
Mastered by Paul Saarnak
Photography by Holly Winterwood
We are a husband & wife duo based in New Zealand. We make music drawing on our diverse musical backgrounds in classical
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