Label: Cold Blue

ニューヨークタイムズで異端電子音楽家として絶賛されたJacob Cooper、そしてボーカルアンサンブルThe Crossingの創設者であるSteven Bradshaw、確かな経験を持つコンポーザー2者が共同で制作した米Cold Blueからの2022年最新作。なんと1年間のやりとりで完成させたという意欲作であり、事の発端はCooperがBradshawに送ったというサウンドスケープ録音。それをもとに抽象メロディーやボーカル、ヒスノイズを少しずつ重ねていき非常に魅力的かつ強靭な多層音響として構築。このレーベルの中では少し異質な作風となりますが、その変則バランスが素晴らしい。



Created during the 2020–21 pandemic, "Sunrise" derives its title and lyrics and more from “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise,” a popular tune written during the 1918–20 influenza pandemic and subsequently recorded by many noted performers (including Fritz Kreisler, Django Reinhardt, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Les Paul and Mary Ford, and Willie Nelson). “As we watched the world unravel around us, that song really resonated,” Bradshaw notes, and the two used it as inspiration for Sunrise, with melodic and harmonic material from the song itself appearing in phantom traces and its lyrics reconfigured.

Sunrise‘s starting point was a soundscape that Cooper sent to Bradshaw. Bradshaw then layered it with melodies, motifs, vocal scrapes, hisses, whispers, and screams before sending it back to Cooper for sonic manipulation and the adding of new material. Their compositional-improvisational back and forth continued for a year, resulting in Sunrise’s inviting yet intense multilayered sonic dialogue.

Jacob Cooper has been lauded as “richly talented” (The New York Times), “conceptually intrepid” (Pitchfork), and a “maverick electronic song composer” (The New Yorker). His music has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Eighth Blackbird, and the Calder Quartet and released by Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, and other labels. His string orchestra work Stabat Mater Dolorosa was an NPR Top Ten album for January 2020.

A founding member of the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble The Crossing, Steven Bradshaw has appeared as a soloist with Bang on a Can, the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, and other groups and has recorded and toured with Roomful of Teeth. He premiered Ted Hearne’s Place at the BAM Next Wave Festival, and in 2022 he will reprise his role in Place with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.