Composer, producer and pianist David August revisits last year's acclaimed 'VĪS' on this monumental suite of reinterpretations, extending the album's landscape and unique language by passing the torch to 12 of the world's most intriguing experimental artists.
For the original album, described as "an exercise in world-building" by The Wire, August turned his personal narrative into a four chapter multi-disciplinary project that included an interactive website, a unique alphabet, and a series of sold-out live performances.
Now, he adds more flora and fauna to the world's verdant environment, inviting friends and inspirations to put their unique fingerprints on his epic saga of history, transformation and metaphysics. Meticulously conceptualized, 'VĪS Reinterpretations' retains the album's linear 13-part arc, but gives the collaborators the license to venture into all the album’s parts, bringing new rhythms, tonalities and textures to August's arsenal of expertly sculpted sounds.
Award-winning Paris-based sonic alchemist Aho Ssan is up first, and takes an expectedly thoughtful approach, subtly augmenting August's dramatic strings and organ blasts with buzzing cybernetic punctuations that immediately challenge the timeline. If 'VĪS' was rooted in the ancient world, Aho Ssan considers its impact on the hereafter, melting the old into confounding speculative futures.
Iranian-French percussionist and sound artist Cinna Peyghamy takes a radically different approach, adding his resonant tombak rhythms into the mix and emerging with a kinetic fusion of euphoria and cadence that harmonizes with August's 'VĪS' addendum 'WORKOUTS', that was released earlier this year.
And Berlin-based American experimental musician Ulla, who's best known for her releases on labels like West Mineral Ltd., 3XL and Quiet Time, lends mystical smoke and saturation to the original album's monastic chorals. Tuned bells and mossy percussive shimmers are liquefied into a psychedelic reflection on Hamburg duo Space Drum Meditation's deep, pensive remix, while sound artist Flora Yin-Wong, who's released on PAN, Modern Love and PTP, reduces August's sounds to a powdery residue, softening the substance with ghostly vocals and cavernous oscillations.
Milanese producer and co-founder of Haunter Records Danielle Guerrini, aka Heith, captures the baroque grandeur that underpinned many of August's original tracks on his surreal electro-acoustic vignette, and virtuosic percussionist/composer Valentina Magaletti brings the album's ancient pulse into the spotlight, cutting mystical wails and bells over a lopsided, woody beat. DJ and producer Đ.K. follows up on albums like 'Gate of Enlightenment' and 'Spiral Shape' with gusts of synthetic ambience and delicate, hallucinogenic accents, while PAN's Marina Herlop splits dancefloor elegance with whimsical contemplation, singing over a brittle drum 'n bass beats and ghostly piano phrases. The set's most mysterious cut arrives courtesy of the shadowy Blue Canvas, who assembles weightless rhythms and breathy synths, conjuring a magical Fourth World atmosphere around August's most glistening soundscapes. And welding disarming environmental recordings to a framework of processed instruments, Canadian-American concrète modernist claire rousay finds the mid-point between harmony and chaos on her reinterpretation, leaving Ludwig Wandinger, who recently released 'Is Peace Wild?' , to widen the aspect ratio, tangling harsh digital crunches with August's blissful arrangements.
Fittingly, it's left to August himself to conclude the album, and he reframes his material by shuttling into the stars, coating his sounds in chrome and exposing time-fluxing rhythms with his thoughtful processes. It's a mix, and indeed an album, that speaks directly to August's ambition, with his music and raft of collaborations, his label 99CHANTS. The 'VĪS' story might have come to an end, but there's plenty more on the horizon.
credits
released November 28, 2024
Mastered by Kassian Troyer
Imaginary Alphabet by Hiba Baddou
Artwork design by Saeed Abu-Jaber & Mothanna Hussein
