* Limited edition 10" hand made lathe cut. Clear virgin vinyl with handmade covers.
Only 25 for sale. Limit one per customer.
Guitarsonics, antique mellophone, bowed pedal steel, piano, synth, prepared lute - Fazio
Recorded, mixed and mastered in 24bit / 96K fidelity.
I believe I will now begin writing and recording my next piece of music from the inspiration of this one man alone...
Thank you Ziya Abay,
- Mike Fazio
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- This elderly man spends his time on a tiny island, where he’s planted 4,000 trees in memory of his late wife.
“I lost my wife in 1995. That’s why I came to the island. To keep my wife’s memory alive. I have grown these trees on behalf of her.”
83 year old Ziya Abay lost his wife in a traffic accident, leaving him heartbroken. Years later, he came upon a small island while on his boat in Turkey’s Keban Dam Lake. He decided to begin planting thousands of fruit trees. He now travels every day from Pertek, Turkey, to the island so he can water and tend to the trees.
“There are 4,000 trees on the island; I water some of them with pressurized water with help of a water engine. When there is no diesel, I water with a bucket.”
Some locals gave him the nickname Robinson Ziya, in reference to the fictional character Robinson Crusoe, who spent some of his life on an uninhabited island.
His advancing age poses some challenges for harvesting fruit. In 2020, a group of 20 workers helped perform a cherry harvest upon the instruction of Turkey’s minister of forestry and agriculture. Ultimately, Abay says he is happy living with nature. “I’m happy here; I feel very peaceful, am away from gossip.”
released June 1, 2022
Four Thousand Trees
recorded between July 27, 2021 and December 17, 2021
a faith strange recording - fs64 - 33 1/3
Guitarsonics, antique mellophone, bowed pedal steel, synth, piano, prepared lute - Fazio
Cut by Tyler Bisson @ Audio Geography
Published by Ludwigstrasse Music, BMI - 2022
© All rights reserved
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Four Thousand Trees has been chosen as one of the best ambient records of 2022 by textura. Many thanks to
textura.org for shining a light on this little corner of the universe.
www.textura.org/archives/articles/2022picks.htm
from Vital Weekly:
orchestramaxfieldparrish - Four Thousand Trees (10" lathe cut by Faith Strange)
From the many names used by Mike Fazio comes a new record; limited to fifty copies. The title comes from a story about 83-year old Ziya Abay, who lost his wife in a traffic accident. Years later he started planting fruit trees on a island at Turkey's Keban Dam Lake. There are now 4000 trees on the island. Quite a sad story, but also a beautful one and the music reflects that sadness and hope.
I heard various works of Fazio before, and I think with orchestramaxfieldparrish (no capitals required) he has a slightly more experimental touch to his music. The main instruments on the two pieces on this 10" record are the piano and the guitar. A third one could be the computer, which he uses to stretch and alter his sounds. Not a lot, not massively, as the original instruments are still easily recognized in the music here. There is throughout these two pieces a strong melodic touch to the music, building on 'Island Of Memories', toward a dramatic build up, and, towards the end, slowly abandoning the listener. The sense of loss is felt here.
On the other side we find the title piece, which is a more a computerized affair, this time adding cello/string sounds to the equation. These are fed through a bunch of resonators, shortish and spikish, but below there is the orchestral long-from drone lingering about. Starting out in full force, slowly elements are removed the piece and it becomes more and more about the individual sounds. Here too, a sense of loss, is being made audible, but now from a more abstract point of view. Two great pieces of music, which made me crave a bit more. That's the downside of this format. There is never enough space if things are really good. (FdW)
from textura:
orchestramaxfieldparrish: Four Thousand Trees
Faith Strange
Need an example showing how much more effective a physical format can be than a download? Look no further than Mike Fazio's latest orchestramaxfieldparrish release Four Thousand Trees. Sure, its two tracks sound great in their digital-only form and certainly make a lasting impression too. But in pressing the tracks on a handmade lathe-cut of clear ten-inch vinyl and housing it and a text insert inside a personally assembled sleeve, the release registers much more powerfully; as important, the care with which Four Thousand Trees has been crafted is consistent with the indefatigable spirit embodied by the man who inspired the project, Ziya Abay. One's appreciation for what Fazio has done goes up when the time and energy involved in producing the fifty physical copies is factored in.
At this stage, orchestramaxfieldparrish functions as an umbrella term for whatever artistic direction Fazio's currently interested in exploring. Years ago, the moniker might have been associated with guitar-based ambient soundscaping (see The Silent Breath of Emptiness, for example), but now, with live guitar-generated compositions and and synth-based explorations respectively collected under the Guitar Improvisations and ÆRA names, orchestramaxfieldparrish-related productions are amenable to any number of possible instrumental combinations and stylistic expressions. Consistent with that, the two long-form settings on the twenty-six-minute Four Thousand Trees were created using piano, synthesizer, antique mellophone, prepared lute, bowed pedal steel, and ‘guitarsonics.'
It's easy to understand the appeal Abay's story had for Fazio when both have dedicated years of their lives to the realization of personal projects. Years after his wife died in a traffic accident in 1995, Abay discovered a small island while boating in Turkey's Keban Dam Lake and decided he would start planting trees there in her memory. Now in his eighties, he travels every day to the island from Pertek, Turkey to water and tend to the 4,000 fruit trees he's planted. The material Fazio created in response isn't programmatic; instead, it represents his attempt to distill the essence of Abay's story into sonic form and honour his spirit and the toil of his undertaking. Familiarization with the project's background naturally deepens one's appreciation for what Fazio has produced.
The A-side's “Island of Memories” unfurls in a series of flourishes, washes, and rumbles, the sounds collectively evoking an expansive landscape with sky stretching limitlessly above. Against a backdrop of arcing synth tones, accenting chords appear alongside distant noises to evoke a verdant nature setting ablaze with portent and mystery. A brief injection of woozy pitch-shifting near the end destabilizes the track before the general sound design reasserts itself. A sense of real-time, spontaneous creation informs the piece, but there's nothing random about it. Both it and the B-side's “Four Thousand Trees” develop in accordance with an organic logic that's clear even from a single listen. Fluttering textures immediately differentiate the title track from the other, as do the cello-like timbres that emerge alongside them in a tone painting that gradually grows ever more quiet and peaceful. Of the two, it's “Four Thousand Trees” that's perhaps most reminiscent of earlier orchestramaxfieldparrish material, though even here the production carves out its own indelible space.
As is often the case with Fazio, Four Thousand Trees is but one of many projects the NYC-based artist has on the go. Two other new orchestramaxfieldparrish releases, the full-length Ancient Exiles, Tell Me About Your Seas and a remix EP of it called Passio - The Exiles Companion, were issued concurrently with the EP, and another, The Earthly Line, has been in production for years and will soon see the light of day as a vinyl release. That his creative fire still burns so strong is inspiring to witness, much as Abay's project was for him.
June 2022
