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Peter Phippen & Ivar Lunde Jr. — Earthly
(Projekt ARC315, 2024, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-11-09

Earthly Cover art

With his collection of dreamy and introspective traditional flutes, Phippen once again joins forces with Norwegian composer Ivar Lunde Jr., whose electronics and processing are the perfectly matched accompaniment for their other-worldly endeavors. The first collaboration was 2022’s Galaxies, which also included Rahbi Crawford (playing crystal singing bowls), which was followed a year later by Primordial Forest. Lunde’s input to the collaboration is primarily in a support role enhancing the focal point of Phippen’s lead as he wanders through various melodic developments, the support via subtle synthesizer voicings, percussives and sound processing. Throughout we are clearly in meditation territory, with three of the tracks cracking the ten minute mark and two more stopping just shy of it, only the opening title track stops at a succinct seven minutes and some change, so there are plenty of deep starlit canyons for a listener to get lost within. “Dreams of Blue” is especially intoxicating, with Phippen making his flutes bark like a didgeridoo at numerous points along its path. On some of the cuts there are clearly two or more wind instruments playing, as well as gentle cadences of hand drums, bells, synthesizers and field recordings as needed for support. The more one listens, the more all of these subtle sonic details come to light; the closer “Shadowy Allure” has a beautiful shimmering backdrop of sounds, while the wood flutes in the foreground are intentionally more subtle, while “Essence,” at eleven minutes, leads off with a floating synth dreamscape as the mesmerizing backdrop for multiple flutes at play. Every cut on Earthly presents a mystical and passionate world of engaging sounds, introspective and masterfully crafted.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Peter Phippen

More info
http://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/earthly

 

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