Special one time pressing compilation Double CD including After The Rain & The Mysteries is also available. Compilation Edition includes both albums with downloads at a reduced price than downloading each separately.
credits
released May 28, 2021
produced by Mike Fazio
from Vital Weekly:
ORCHESTRAMAXFIELDPARRISH - AFTER THE RAIN/THE MYSTERIES (2CD by Faith Strange)
Mike Fazio is a busy bee. I am sure I uttered such words before. Maybe I also remarked that Fazio uses various names to release his musical products and that I am not always sure what the differences are. The previous two releases from him (Vital Weekly 1282) were under the guises of ÆRA and A Guide For Reason, now it is time for orchestramaxfieldparrish, with a double CD of recordings from last year.
All three projects deal with atmospheric music of some kind, and if anything, I'd say that as orchestramaxfieldparrish he
works with a more experimental set of sounds, or at least with a more experimental outcome of his ambient work. Here he uses field recordings, a variety of louder drones, may be generated from the guitar, but I can just easily imagine these to processed field recordings or synthesizers. Most likely is a combination of all of this. Sometimes the music has a drone-like character, but there is also room for percussion (in 'Like A Pagan Priestess Reads Aloud Sing-Song From The Thick Babylonian Dream Book'; this on the second CD, 'The Mysteries', where all six pieces have such long titles as opposed to the first disc, where it is all quite short) and strange abrupt changes within the music. Also, Fazio uses 'other' sorts of rhythm, a drum machine, perhaps, right from the start in the title piece of the first disc. This sounded like a stripped-down/deconstructed piece of techno music. Maybe I am reading too much in the use of the word 'orchestra', as being a part of the band name, but I
think there is also an orchestral feeling to the music, and that Fazio uses samples of orchestral passages, spun out like a mighty drone.
The music on 'The Mysteries' form altogether some sort of narrative, or at least, that I what I believe to hear. At thirty-six minutes I wouldn't have minded this to be longer. The first disc has pieces that stand by themselves, rather without a thematic approach or story running through them. As you can see, orchestramaxfieldparrish goes in many directions, and yet, maybe, strangely enough, this works well within the overall picture of the album. This is throughout an excellent album of the experimental side of drones and atmospheres and bouncing off in various directions; as such, it is an album for people who like to take a risk. (FdW)
from textura.org:
orchestramaxfieldparrish: After The Rain / The Mysteries
Faith Strange
In an artist's statement accompanying the latest orchestramaxfieldparrish collection, Mike Fazio reflects on a long musical journey that culminated in a most challenging year that invited any number of possible responses, from despair and denial to stoicism and anger. True to his nature, Fazio chose to funnel his energy into creative work and not let his focus be derailed by the pandemic. One of the greatest things about his project is that it grants limitless creative possibilities to its NYC-based creator. Anyone familiar with his output would likely realize that his follow-up to the six-volume Guitar Improvisations set issued (on USB drive) last year wouldn't be more of the same, and sure enough the double-CD collection After The Rain / The Mysteries is unlike its predecessor. Whereas the earlier set features relatively unadorned, real-time solo guitar pieces, the new material was created with guitar, synthesizers, and percussion, and various treatments and processing were also called upon in the production process. Initially released as distinct digital editions, the two volumes, one recorded in September 2020 and the other a month later, now appear in a six-panel gatefold package in a limited run of 100 copies. Fazio has smartly merged the releases into a cohesive design while at the same time retaining visual elements from both releases to individuate them on the package and CD faces.
Sequenced first is After The Rain, whose eight pieces range from two to twenty-one minutes; never shy about acknowledging inspirations, Fazio dedicates two to Alice Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix. With elements fluttering like birds' wings and with near-subliminal synth enhancements woven into the arrangement, the title track quickly distances itself from the largely treatments-free approach adopted for Guitar Improvisations, and the impression's instantly established that After The Rain will be adventurous and unpredictable. Adding to the track's impact is Fazio's careful positioning of elements within the sound field, which sees them darting rapidly between channels. Whereas “Walk Gently Through the Gates of Joy” works everything from aggressive electronic convulsions and peaceful, organ-laced sequences into its twelve-minute time-frame, the set's deepest plunge is “Vale of Bliss,” a wide-ranging excursion whose ambitious reach befits a piece honouring Coltrane. Dazzling constellations of stars and bells surface alongside sprawling synthesizer washes and guitar textures, after which “Ribbons of Euphoria Bold As Love” pays affectionate tribute to Hendrix with six minutes of billowing, clangorous psychedelia.
In contrast to After The Rain, The Mysteries uses lengthy track titles for its six settings, with the opening piece representative: “To Return Is Impossible and to Talk About It, Forbidden. How It Was Filled With Bliss, That Heavenly Garden.” Interestingly, at fifteen minutes the softly rumbling dronescape (later submerged in a furiously churning water bath) is the volume's sole extended track, with the others weighing in at five minutes or less. They boldly venture into exotic realms, with gong strikes, cymbal rolls, and other percussion textures prominent in “Like a Pagan Priestess Reads Aloud Sing-Song From the Thick Babylonian Dream Book.” and reverberations giving “Beneath the Jasmine A Stone Marks a Buried Treasure. On the Path, My Father Stands. A Beautiful, Beautiful Day.” the feel of a walking tour of a palace's hallways. Elsewhere, jittery pulses and uplifting intimations of recovery surface before the elegiac ambient meditation “All That Might've Occurred. Like a Five-Fingered Leaf. Fluttered Into My Hands, but It Isn't Enough.” brings the project to a close.
Each experimental setting on these volumes is sculpted with fastidious attention to detail and sensitivity to timbre, space, and silence. In creating the material, Fazio draws upon his extensive command of production strategies to bring the explorations to fruition. In that aforementioned statement, words by Joseph Campbell appear as an epigraph, and fittingly they could stand for a manifesto for the orchestramaxfieldparrish project: “Follow your bliss. Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.” No one listens to and respects his muse more than Fazio, and long may he do so.
June 2021
Free-flowing, loosely structured songs that borrow lightly from jazz and ambient but expand in directions all their own. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 7, 2023
With all proceeds going to benefit Ukraine, the latest from Angela Winter is a beautifully haunting work that centers the human voice. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 16, 2022
This stunning, beautiful project from Fujian duo Southeast of Rain 东南有雨 blends field recordings with rippling notes from the pipa. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 8, 2021
