"Windy Lands" is the third opus of a climatic and ambient series started with the albums "Misty Lands" and "Frozen Lands".
This musical trilogy explores new aesthetic and sonic directions,
inspired by the minimalist and neoclassical current represented by
composers such as Ólafur Arnalds or Nils Frahm, but also by certain
atmospheres of the ECM label.
With the contribution of string instruments and, on two tracks, of an
electric guitar, "Windy Lands" would like to approach the expressivity
of a small hybrid or mixed chamber music ensemble, between electronic
soundscapes and acoustic sounds, thus reviving the experiments that we
carried out in Lightwave, notably with the album "Bleue comme une
orange".
Original release: January 11, 2023.
https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/album/windy-lands
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REVIEW
“Windy Lands” is an album that builds. Again, all cosmic, and
this time more predominantly electronic, it starts very minimally, then,
as the tracks progress, so the sonic canvas spreads out and stretches
across the horizons, to reveal new textures, new layers and give the
music more strength and depth, as it progresses, almost “orchestral”, in
a minimal sense, on the final couple of tracks...."
ANDY GARIBALDI, Inkeys (UK)
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To redeem here: https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/yum
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"In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it's not boring at all but very interesting"
John Cage, quoted by Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats. John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, The Penguin Press (2012), p. 385.
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"I think it was Steve Reich who said it was clear I was involved in process, but it was a process the audience didn't participate in because they couldn't understand it. I'm on the side of keeping things mysterious, and I have never enjoyed understanding things. If I understand something, I have no further use for it. So I try to make a music which I don't understand and which will be difficult for other people to understand too."
John Cage, quoted by Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats. John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists, The Penguin Press, 2012.
"Most people who believe that I'm interested in chance don't realize that I use chance as a discipline — they think I use it — I don't know — as a way of giving up making choices. But my choices consist in choosing what questions to ask...
If I ask the I Ching a question as though it were a book of wisdom, which it is, I generally say, "What do you have to say about this?" and then I just listen to what it says and see if some bells ring or not"
John Cage, quoted by Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats. John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, The Penguin Press, 2012, p. 213.
John Cage
"(These elaborate sound charts) resemble checkerboards laid out with combinations of sounds. In composing, Cage makes "moves" by drawing lines — diagonals, horizontals, verticals — on the chart to determine which sound comes next"
Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, Penguin Books, 2013, p. 168.
"The need to change my music was evident to me earlier in my life. I had been taught, as most people are, that music is in effect the expression of an individual's ego — "self-expression" is what I have been taught. But then, when I saw that everyone was expressing himself differently and using a different way of composing, I deduced that we were in a Tower of Babel situation because no one was understanding anybody else; for instance, I wrote a sad piece and people hearing it laughed. It was clearly pointless to continue in that way, so I determined to stop writing music until I found a better reason than "self-expression" for it"
John Cage, quoted in: Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, Penguin Books, 2013, p. 119-120
One last question about Paul Haslinger: how did you meet him and what was your collaboration like? It seems that you currently have a project with him?
We met Paul in March 1986 during the two Tangerine Dream concerts at the Olympia, organized by Serge Leroy. Paul returned to Paris a few days later, and we met him again thanks to mutual friends. We had the opportunity to play him Cités analogues and discuss our musical activities. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has lasted for decades, as it continues to this day. Our collaboration took many forms: we played two concerts together (in Paris and London), and Paul participated in five of our albums, either for occasional edits on our mixes or for direct creative input on certain tracks. It is thanks to Paul that we were sponsored by Atari at one point and signed by Hearts of Space/Fathom. Paul also recorded Jon Hassell's contribution to one of the tracks on Bleue comme une orange in his studio in Los Angeles. Paul has given us so much, both technically and artistically, and we have wonderful memories of rehearsals and composing in the studio, as well as the two concerts we gave together, not to mention the convivial moments in Paris and Los Angeles...
Draft cover of the forthcoming album (SOOND label)
We named this album Mallarmé, in reference to the famous 19th-century poet who paved the way for modern poetry through his creative deconstruction of the French language and the typographical space of the handwritten and printed page. The three long pieces on the album are based on slowness, space, and the gradual metamorphosis of sounds and textures. Mallarmé is a project that opens up a listening space that is both minimalist and abstract, ambient yet quite contemporary. IMHO, its is a very beautiful album…
Our album will be released by SOOND in the first quarter of 2026 (CD and digital), a label specializing in classical, contemporary, and electroacoustic music, from Johannes Brahms to Philip Glass, from Gesualdo to Bruno Letort.
We have also agreed with Paul to continue this collaboration, in a format different from Lightwave, but which may involve Christoph Harbonnier in future projects, recordings, and live performances.
