Porous Collective
Delicate, otherworldly, wondrous—a beautiful meditation that will take you places. Close your eyes and let yourself go into this immersive experience.
A return to the orchestramaxfieldparrish presents ÆRA project. Now simply called ÆRA.
In celebration of The Great Conjunction and Winter Solstice of 2020.
Move into the light.
Produced by M. Fazio
- peace.
credits
released January 22, 2021
Recorded December 16 - 19, 2020
Download includes a 12 page pdf booklet
Please download and listen to in the highest fidelity possible.
from textura.org:
ÆRA: A Winter's Tale
Faith Strange
After dazzling in 2020 with his multi-volume orchestramaxfieldparrish set Guitar Improvisations I-VI, Mike Fazio does so again, though this time under the ÆRA alias. Issued on cassette, A Winter's Tale sees him operating in ambient soundscaping mode with four immersive pieces totaling seventy-six minutes. While the release doesn't copy what's come before, it does follow in the footsteps of hugely influential ambient albums that appeared in the ‘70s, including Eno's Discreet Music and Music For Airports.
After the title track enters boldly with Vangelis-like flourishes reminiscent of the Blade Runner soundtrack, the material casts itself as an ambient soundscape that's veritably symphonic in its grandeur. Fazio demonstrates exceptional mastery at sustaining tension and control in his execution here. Tones stretch out magnificently during the nineteen-minute excursion to intensify the music's impact. It's not classical music, formally speaking, yet there's an elegance to the compositional unfolding that lends it a gracefulness characteristic of the form. The treatments Fazio's applied make it difficult to determine whether the instruments used to generate the material are synthesizers or guitars, but the point's ultimately moot: what matters is the sound hovering in the air and floating, be it majestically or serenely, through it. Enhancing the material's entrancing character is the numerous times its chord sequences tease at resolution, the effect made all the more powerful when Fazio extends the length of the tones to maximize tension before resolution occurs.
Organ appears to be the primary sound source for “A Snowflake Falls From Cloud to Earth,” the tone of this setting quietly ecstatic. Organ flurries create the impression of a dense snowfall, with the mood created by the material akin to the replenishment one experiences hiking through a forest blanketed by snow on a winter morning. The uplift expressed in the second setting carries over into “Children With Their Faces Skyward, Spinning in Circles, with Arms Outstretched,” with the sense of wonder captured in “A Snowflake Falls From Cloud to Earth” conveyed through a series of incrementally ascending gestures, soft glimmerings, and gentle percolations. For twenty-three minutes, the music imparts a sense of quiet rapture, after which “A Pearl in Sorrow's Hands” strips the recording's overall sound design to its orchestral essence. Like a sleeping body's gentle breathing, tones rise and fall peacefully, Fazio's material conveying an impression of contentment and, once again, wonderment. All told, A Winter's Tale is a remarkable statement and one that feels perfect for a time when music's nourishing quality is so desperately needed.
February 2021
from Vital Weekly (April27, 2021:
ÆRA - A WINTER'S TALE (cassette by Faith Strange)
Recently I reviewed works by Doc Wör Mirran, Richard Youngs and Derek Piotr, all people who different things under one name, here is Mike Fazio, who does a lot of music with various aliases. It is not always easy to find the differences in these aliases, to be honest, but, then, I may not have heard all the work he did. Fazio's primary instrument is the guitar, and
he adds lots and lots of electronics to the game to let the six strings spark and fly. Previously he called this part of his work orchestramaxfieldparrish presents ÆRA, but these days simply go by ÆRA, which you, no doubt, pronounce as 'area'.
There are four lengthy cuts on this cassette, spanning close to seventy minutes of music and in all four pieces, time goes by very slowly, and the guitar is nowhere to be recognized. It is melted, deformed, reshaped and remodelled so that it rings and sings like a synthesizer or two. Deep and majestic tones are played, one by one, until the full force of sound is there, moving back and forth, with the least kind of change, but that is just a trick; the music does change rather substantially, below and above, while the middle ground drone needs a longer and slower curve. The darkness may not fit a sunny day in April, and we have to keep in mind that the music was recorded from December 16 to 19, 2020 and is in "celebration of The Great Conjuction and Winter Solstice of 2020", and the dark tones of ÆRA for that season pretty well.
All four pieces have this gentle, dark ring of cosmic to it, lengthy, sustaining and spacious with in the piece 'Children With Their Faces Skyward, Spinning in Circles, with Arms Outstretched' the only track with shorter sounds to imitate the sound of snowflakes, set against a wall of reverberating drones, drifting like clouds in the sky. This is some wonderfully quiet music, the perfect soundtrack for early morning. (FdW)
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