Κλίμα (Klima) is the third album by CV & JAB, the duo of Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett. An assertive step forward in the two artists' investigations into melodic interplay, acoustic processing and field recordings, the full-length conjures the modus operandi of archaeologists searching for unheard soundscapes. Structured as an itinerant mise-en-abyme, Κλίμα (Klima) summons worldwide submarine circuits and tropospheres populated by sudden findings and progressive re-encounters - hazy dreams amalgamate with mosaics of reality.
Catalyzed by a 2021 invitation to perform at the UNESCO world heritage site Santuário Bom do Jesus do Monte in Braga, Portugal, the music of Κλίμα (Klima) then fermented across a period of two years, during which live experiments, cyclical studio sessions, and travels across the Island of Tenerife’s effervescent ambiences gradually contributed to its completion. It is on the volcanic island that the narrative core of the album materialized, prompted by a month of recordings across the radically different microclimates populating the landscape. CV & JAB’s flashing transpositions from desert to rainforest are evoked over ten tracks operating as an abstract audio-guide of the outer and inner realms permeating the pieces.
Κλίμα (Klima) is conceived as a rhizomatic composition rather than a sequential excursus; percussion, refracted voices, chirps and gurgles, other-worldly synthetic winks, reverberated piano chords, and yearning flute circumnavigations all surface sometimes in solo, sometimes synchronically to eventually dissipate again. The remote and enigmatic atmospheres that characterized previous CV & JAB albums acquire an intimate intensity in the solo piano excursions - “Klima” and “Lands of Permanent Mist” - and a penetrating emotional resonance with the instrument’s flirtatious entanglements with JAB’s bass flute on “Dwelling” and “Pottery Fragments” or with CV’s flickering plasma voice in “Jetstream”.
Suggesting timeless wanderings in ambient études and classical minimalism, the album deploys as a mirage, inducing listeners into a contemplative state through mellifluous repetitions and offshore sci-fi inflections. The palpable depth of the recordings bestows each track with a distinctive density and presence: sounds and chords materialize and dematerialise as landscapes at which we gaze, half-asleep over a long journey. Ten sips of a familiar rapture which ooze a renewed sense of expansion in sound, informed by more than five years of CV & JAB’s continuous sonic wanderings and wonderings together.
The labyrinthine and meteorological odyssey becomes tangible in the artwork, realized by the duo’s long-time collaborator Zin Taylor, mind and hand behind their two previous albums’ covers. Κλίμα (Klima)’s simulacra evokes a map in which curves transform into a score with “small systems of differences emerging side by side”.
- Vittoria de Franchis, July 2023
credits
released September 29, 2023
All music composed, performed, and arranged by Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett
Christina Vantzou: voice, electronics, piano, percussion
John Also Bennett: bass flute, c flute, piano, synthesizers, percussion
Field and hydrophone recordings from Tenerife, Canarias; Marin County, California; and South Thomaston, Maine by CV & JAB
B3 contains a Bernard Parmagiani sample courtesy of GRM
Recorded by JAB except A4, A5, and percussion on B3, recorded by Roman Hiele
Mixed by JAB with CV
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu (Bonn, Germany)
Artwork by Zin Taylor (Torino, Italy)
Layout by Jeroen Wille (Thessaloniki, Greece)
Special thanks: Mich Leemans, Meakusma, Ludwig Kuckartz, Semibreve, Gonçalo F. Cardoso, Spencer Clark, Amy Faust, Dimitris Papadatos, François J. Bonnet, Gerald Donald, Stav Yeini, Felicia Atkinson, Tomoko Sauvage, Lieven Martens, and The Island of Tenerife
John Also Bennett is an American composer, synthesist and multi-instrumentalist who creates music that could be described as avant-garde, atmospheric, or minimalist.
Up there with my favourite albums of 2020. Organic, cinematic and nicely psychedelic! Read review here: www.cedriclassonde.com/sounds-of-2020-a-weird-year-in-music/ Cedric Woo
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My full review essay at https://eliotcardinaux.wordpress.com/2024/06/05/kali-malone-living-torch/ eliotcardinaux
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