My new recording, The Lost Year, is out now. I am really excited for the release of The Lost Year. This is a recording that I’ve been working on intermittently for the last year. If you liked Consciousness of Light, it’s the follow-up that I promised would be out in early 2020 but, when COVID hit, work crawled to a halt. The Lost Year brings together two things I’ve been trying to successfully merge for years: My deep love for textural, ambient drone music and the other side of my artistic self, my songwriting. I’ve gotten close to merging these at times, but never quite hit it in a way that lasted, for me. Consciousness of Light marked a change in my process, formula and approach; The Lost Year continues what started there. For me it perfectly merges what Brian Eno talked about with ambient music – ‘a music that be listened to as easily as ignored’ but also a music that comes from a deeper part of my artistic self.
Category: Music (Page 3 of 4)
I’ve been ‘woodshedding’ for the last 18 months or so, trying to find that sweet spot between ambient and songwriting that I began in 2004 with Olagra, and I’ve been exploring ever since, never quite able to capture the sound I imagined and heard in my head. Well, I’ve finally got something, a process, a sound that stands up to repeated listens. It’s ambient, it drones, it’s sonically interesting, but these are songs that I’ve crafted, words and singing that integrates my being into the music… it can be listened to or ignored, to hearken back to what Eno said regarding what an ambient music should be.
For a while I was calling it Drone Folk, maybe it is or it isn’t… Either way, I’ve finally hit the mark, captured the lightning in the bottle and merged two sides of my creative self, successfully.
The new recording is called Consciousness of Light. It’s only on Bandcamp right now. I’ll be submitting it to my distributor soon (Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc.), but I wanted to give you, in my email community, first crack at this. Consciousness of Light is an EP. I believe that I’ll have a follow-up, full-length done early in 2020, as I have dozens of songs that I’m looking to work into this new process.
I’m super excited about this new recording and I plan to be performing it live as my entire new process is also something that I can recreate for the live audience; that’s really the second exciting dimension of this new direction. To that end, I’ll also be putting up live videos from time to time on my YouTube page – https://www.youtube.com/user/mattborghi
I was very pleased to have the opportunity to present a ‘guest’ mix as part of Dave Michuda’s excellent Low Light Mixes program.
Here’s my write-up on the program, a bit on the track selections and the track list:
I was very pleased when Dave invited me to submit a guest mix to the Low Light Mixes. Dave’s mixes are as diverse as they are interesting and they’re always chill with good vibes. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about what I might contribute that could hang with so many great mixes. I have a certain thing I do with the Ambient Soundbath Podcast, but the Low Light Mixes are more all-encompassing.
After a couple months of deliberation, I decided that I would feature the work of my favorite composer, Harold Budd and newcomer, Durango Budd. Harold Budd’s fantastic catalog of work very much informs the work of Durango Budd (https://durangobudd.bandcamp.
Track list for program:
- 00:00 – 06:00 – The Child with a Lion – Harold Budd – The White Arcades
- 06:00 – 09:30 – Piano Drone 4 – Durango Budd – Drones for Prepared and Synthesized Piano
- 09:30 – 12:30 – A Child in a Sylvan Field – Harold Budd – By the Dawn’s Early Light
- 12:30 – 31:00 – Bismillahi’ Rrahman Rrahim – Harold Budd – The Pavilion of Dreams
- 31:00 – 33:00 – Piano Drone 5 – Durango Budd – Drones for Prepared and Synthesized Piano
- 33:00 – 39:00 – The Room of Ancillary Dreams – Harold Budd – The Room
- 39:00 – 46:30 – Piano Synthesis Drone 3 – Durango Budd – Drones for Prepared and Synthesized Piano
- 46:30 – 59:00 – Agua – Harold Budd – Agua
- 59:00 – 61:30 – Piano Drone 1 – Durango Budd – Drones for Prepared and Synthesized Piano
Hey there. About ten years ago I released a recording called All Points North under the Manitou pseudonym. It was my second letterpress-printed CD edition and a love letter to the city of Detroit, my home, for all intents and purposes. It was impressionistic with reflections on time and experience, but also not, a “Matt Borghi” record… I went into kind of a different process and different state of mind to make that record.
Ten years on, over the summer of 2015, I decided to visit that mindspace again and created a new Manitou record, possibly the last, this is a historical reflection on the city of Detroit, the city of my family, the city of my ancestry. For me, there’s little reflection on or identification with the northern Italy of my great grandparents and my family name, nor is there much reflection on my Scotch-Irish Appalachian roots, instead, I’m a Detroiter, quintessentially, of mixed ethnic origin, steeped in many cultures and many experiences with an overtone of post-industrial morose and a hopeful optimism for tomorrow’s future. So, this is a long-winded way to say that the latest Manitou record is out. All of the tracks are named after things in 19th and early 20th century Detroit, the Detroit that I heard stories about on the knees of grandparents and looked at longingly in books when we were the “Paris of the Midwest”. That’s it. There’s not much more for me to say. I hope you enjoy the recording and enjoy the experience.
Links for listening, purchase, etc…
Amazon – http://amzn.to/1kB9P5R
iTunes – https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/landscape-histories-sentiment/id1044015330
CD – http://kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00H1TCH5
Shades of Bending Light is Matt Borghi & Michael Teager‘s second studio recording and the follow-up to 2013’s critically acclaimed Convocation. Recorded in one take without overdubs, Shades… shows the synthesized guitar and saxophone duo venturing deeper into their “jambient” style which brings together improvised ambient soundscapes from musical ideas created on the spot. Building upon the momentum and trajectory of Convocation and Awaken…, this album features more involved melodic and rhythmic interplay between Borghi & Teager. Fans of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra, Vangellis’s Blade Runner soundtrack, Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow, and Tortoise will immediately recognize these influences on Shades of Bending Light.
Purchase digitally via iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic, or physically via Kunaki or at live performances.
Critical Praise for Shades of Bending Light
“Combining the intellectual heft of Jazz and Ambient Music with the appeal of New Age/Contemporary Instrumental Borghi & Teager highlight a range of different tonal modes and musical moods… Their genre strives to lift our inner lives, and [they] are right up there among the best.” – From Chuck van Zyl at Star’s End, full article here.
We’re bringing the soundscapes back eastward this October! Come check us out if we’re in your area. Info and links below:
10.08.14 – Baltimore, MD – The Windup Space w. Jason Sloan, 9:00 PM
10.09.14 – Manhattan (Greenwich Village), NY – Cafe Nadery – Manhattan, 9:00 PM
10.10.14 – Pre-Recorded Show for Live Constructions on WKCR, Columbia University Radio
10.10.14 – Brooklyn, NY – Goodbye Blue Monday, Time: TBA
10.11.14 – Princeton, NJ – Live performance on Music With Space on WPRB 103.3 FM, 12:00 AM (midnight)
10.11.14 – Philadelphia, PA – The Gatherings Concert Series w. Jeff Pearce, 8:00 PM (info: http://www.thegatherings.org/104gather.html)
10.12.14 – Philadelphia, PA – Live performance on Star’s End Radio on WXPN, 2:00 AM
Matt Borghi & Michael Teager‘s new live album Awaken the Electric Air: Live from Star’s End, October 20, 2013 is now available.
The music on this CD comprises live renditions of several selections from Convocation, as well as new compositions that include fresh performances by Teager on flute. Recoreded live at Philadelphia’s WXPN in the World Café Live studio and housed in packaging that’s comprised of original photography by Star’s End host and veteran electronic musician Chuck van Zyl. Our brief time in Philly was magical and welcoming; it’s satisfying that we were able to truly represent these special moments musically, and with the help of Echoes producer Jeff Towne the recordings are superb.
We’re proud of this performance and happy to make this available to the public. The album is available for purchase digitally via iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic, or physically via Kunaki or at live performances. You can hear an excerpt of the recording below.
That’s right our Living Room Concert is being broadcast on Echoes tonight, where we performed several selections from Convocation – Read John Diliberto’s excellent post about our performance and our work here… Truly an honor to have John write up something and even listen to our work. Honored.
With the show syndicated to hundreds of stations it’s bound to be on near you – Check the site for local listings –http://www.echoes.org/
Michael Teager and my recent Living Room Concert, where we performed selections from Convocation, is set to run tomorrow, 11/6/13 on Echoes with John Diliberto. With the show syndicated to hundreds of stations it’s bound to be on near you – Check the site for local listings –http://www.echoes.org/ – In the meantime, check out our bad selves on the homepage of Echoes:
