Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
€8.88EUR or more
C45 Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of A L K H E M Y
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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ALKHEMY KIT + C45 Cassette (limited edition)
Includes unlimited streaming of A L K H E M Y
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
ALKHEMY floral packaging - Bandcamp Friday special
Cassette + Digital Album
This is a special edition of a limited edition of 3 dried flower packaging handpacked by Wild Anima. Each cassette comes with a blend of specially chosen herbs for smudging or scented decoration and lucky charm. The smudge include juniper, cedar and rose.
Includes unlimited streaming of A L K H E M Y
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Press release:
This project started at a residency in the Eastern Fjords of Iceland, circa 2018. The moment I arrived there, it felt like I was returning home after a long absence. I spent a lot of time out in nature, feeling its essence and rawness – communing with the landscape and wildlife. At the time, I was reading Stephen Harrod Buhner's book "The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature”. The book talks about how the human heart is an organ capable of emitting an electromagnetic field like an oscillator, and this field is what connects us to the greater field, which is emitted by the Earth. This allows us to process information and communicate with our environment, it’s almost like our 6th sense. This is something that I was aware of for a very long time, and this book put into words.
As this realisation sank in, the music and the concept for the record revealed themselves to me, as if through visions. I realised that I wasn’t just making a record, but embarking on a research project in the field of the ecology of emotions*. That’s when I came up with the name Alkhemy**, which to me, is what happens when we open ourselves up to a deeper knowledge and integrate it into our beings. The name also stands for the healing transformation that can happen between the performer and the audience, between two individuals, or the human heart and planet Earth.
The bulk of this material was created while I was touring/travelling all over Europe, and during rehearsals at my studio which is located on this tiny island on the Havel river, on the outskirts of Berlin. Most of it came in the form of live improvisations, which I always start my performance with. That’s why most of these songs are in 72 BPM. I noticed that after every show, the people who came up to me mostly wanted to talk about this particular part of my set. For me, this is the part is when I especially feel like I’m tuning the audience to my energy. I treat my heart as a synthesiser and during my performances I use it to modulate and transmit energetic frequencies towards the people and the space around me.
A lot of my music happens by accident, by me triggering the wrong pad, or making sounds that I didn’t expect. I like to think of these particular sounds as being created by the spirit, because I don’t know how else to explain it. There is this feeling when I know that a particular sound is formed by the “flow and not me trying to control the creative process. It’s all very intuitive. When I improvise, I tend to draw random beats on a midi-grid, using my favourite kicks. Sometimes I play around with loops and then I sing on top of these patterns, and create vocal loops from what I sing. This is the ethereal part of my production. My favourite part of the process, however, is the sound design. I love the idea of sculpting sound – creating textures and landscapes and using them to invoke a particular mood. For this, I mostly use field recordings, which I’ve collected during my travels. They’re like my diary, I remember exactly where each one was recorded. I’m very interested in the natural patterns found in these sounds, nature’s rhythm and voices.
I truly believe that music creates a middle ground for us, where we can see each other in a different way. Whether we’re playing the music or listening to it. Witnessing these magical moments while playing live, or singing, is such an incredible feeling. You're tuning and bonding with people that you’ve never met before. I build mandalas during my performances, they’re installations made out of found objects. It’s as if the stage becomes a sacred space and the performance a ritual. The whole experience creates a different form of intimacy. I know, for a fact, that when I expose my vulnerability while I’m performing, it allows the audience to show up as they are. So communicating through the heart oscillator opens us all to a different state of being. This can be very healing! And we’re living at time where a lot of things require mending, at both macro and micro levels. As above, so below.
*ecology of emotions is a term that came from an email exchange with Alisha Erao aka Lush Agave. we were reflecting on the themes that I was initially working on.
**the misspelling of the word is intentional and serves to differentiate my use from the standard definition of alchemy.
credits
released June 19, 2020
artwork – the cover of the record is a piece called “Physical Love Poem for Land, in Verse" by Julia Kukkonen. we met at the residency in Iceland, and connected through our art and work about and for the Earth. although the piece was created before I wrote this music, it feels as if it was made specifically for this release.
spoken word samples: I sourced these from talks given by Stephen Buhner, Howard Martin (the founder of HeartMath Institute) and Catherine Jane Larkin.
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