Canadian pianist-composer Matt Choboter’s Unburying, from Liminals, Emerging evokes the subconscious and the spirituality of dreams and how these dreams correspond with our past and offer maps of meaning into imagined futures. Choboter merges into this album influences from the mythical-spiritual worlds of South Indian Classical (he studied oral traditions of South Indian classical music) and Balinese Gamelan music, post-jazz, contemporary experimental, and ambient music, as well as his reflections from travels to Delphi, with its myths of ancient Greece, and the Dordogne Valley in southern France with its paleolithic cave art. This album attempts to suggest post-religious spirituality or A Jungian way of being in the world, between conscious and subconscious, wakefulness or dreaming. Choboter hopes that it would motivate the creative potential of our society and solidify its humanity.
Choboter devised a visionary, untimely new tuning system that reconciles Eastern-Balinese gamelan microtonal music and Western Just Intonation, Nature’s «pure sounds». To enhance this ambitious system, Unburying, from Liminals, Emerging was captured in various architectures and materialities. The alto, tenor and baritone saxes were re-played and re-recorded in different spaces, and out of specific objects like old oil cans and cymbals, and suggest varied states of matter of an extended time-collage. Choboter also used the unique architecture of the historic TunnelFabrikken (where the Øresunds bridge that links Denmark and Sweden was constructed), just before the major renovations and gentrification. The enigmatic music sounds like nothing you may have listened to before but feels so familiar, vivid and stimulating.
Similarly, Synaptic Biosphere was conceived as a soundtrack to dreams. The Copenhagen-based trio of hyper-pianist Choboter, Danish guitarist John Arne Rånes and German percussionist Jan Kadereit (who plays in Unburying, from Liminals, Emerging) created a multi-dimensional map of an imaginative world, completed with drawings of nine phantasmal animals by French biologist-painter Dorian Noel and layered and post-production sounds, that explores dreams and the collective unconscious.
The surreal pieces suggest mysterious and vibrant soundscapes, full of surprising sonic treasures, that instantly trigger the imagination and summon colorful, impressionistic dream-like textures that spring from the musicians’ – or – listeners’ – subconsciousness. And all flow with its inner logic and a narrative that invites the listeners to explore the world in our mind, the synaptic biosphere. Rånes enriched these soundscapes with many effects, and tonemeister, Adrian von Ripka, tweaked further details and mixed and mastered the music.
Unburying, from Liminals, Emerging and Synaptic Biosphere offer sonic-spiritual experiences that celebrate our own creativity. The latter album comes with a 12-page booklet, featuring the drawings of Noel, and their magical biosphere, from the tranquil serenity of soaring skies to the eerie depths of echoing caves.
Eyal Hareuveni
Matt Choboter (microtonal prepared piano, extended piano), Jan Kadereit (percussion, tabla, janggu, shakuhachi), Calum Builder (alto saxophone), Miguel Crozzoli (tenor saxophone), Michal Biel (baritone saxophone), John Arne Rånes (guitar, electronic effects)
