A few quotes from my review on AAJ. The album has just been released officially in Germany! A bit later than in Norway.
“His approach has increased the liquidity and permeability of sounds, as well as the (in)determinacy and (in)definiteness of musical form. Bang is one of those rare electronic musicians who does not use a laptop onstage, but—without staring at a screen—creates live brilliant new music just with the button-box of an Akai sampler and a simple dictaphone.”
“Bang is a master of assembling and synthesizing harmonic musical wholes from music fragments, plops, bleeps, crackling, creaks, rustle and sough. He sculpts creations of high melodic content that radiate through several layers. The sounds on Narrative seem to well up from the realms of the subconscious, carried by this twilight zone. It’s a world of sound that resembles the experience of (fever) dreams and in certain forms of cinema, in which laws of time and space seem to be shifting or are lifted. It’s a remote world of sound coming pretty close with its flurries of mild horror, equally brilliant sunrises and glowing utopian flashes.”
“There is an undeniable Wahlverwandtschaft, an affinity between the ambient nature of this ancient song and Bang’s music, and one reason that Tormis and Sega Choir Noorus, also from Estonia, were guests at the 2010 Punkt Festival. Bang used „Singer’s Childhood“ recently, with surprising results, in the encore of his duo concert with Jason Moran at the 2013 Molde Jazz Festival.”
“The essence is that these traces in their sound arise from the fog of the past, from the subconscious and fade as remote voices, voices from a distant past (there is a certain resemblance to the approach of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov). No imitation, no quote, no mix but a matter of deeper connecting.”
“To avoid turning into ghost-music, the way of transporting, and the quality of the ether, are essential. Both are of impressive character and exceptional quality.”
And here is the link to the first review of Erik Honoré’s brandnew album HELIOGRAPHS, released september 5 with a release concert during the Punkt Festival 2014.