blue twenty-two, by Wild Anima

blue twenty-two

by Wild Anima

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DB Beautiful, meditative reverb-soaked vocal chants that ebb and flow right through you., followed by a more spacey and floaty mist of pure ambient bliss. A gorgeous journey. Favorite track: Selene.

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of blue fifty, vol. 5, blue forty-nine, blue forty-eight, blue forty-seven, blue forty-six, blue forty-five, blue forty-four, and 39 more. , and , .

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	1.	Live 04:16
	2.	You Saw The Light 07:52
	3.	Forget and Forgive 05:22
	4.	Dive Out 02:09
	5.	Who We Are 00:27
	6.	Selene 20:22
	7.	Live (Alix Hyde remix) 02:45
	8.	Who We Are (Alix Hyde remix) 03:52
	9.	Live (Anna Stereopolou's 'The Imaginary Live' remix) 11:59
	10.	Live (H4N's 'Ouzhou' remix) 02:58
	11.	You Saw The Light (9T Antiope remix) 08:08
	12.	Forget and Forgive (Jérémie Nicolas Bâtardises remix) 04:38
	13.	Forget and Forgive (Kaheem remix) 04:04
	14.	You Saw The Light (Jean-Yves Leloup's 'Droned Out' remix) 15:13
	15.	Live (Vincent Guiot remix) 03:55
	16.	You Saw The Light (Meditation Music Farm remix) 13:21

about

Update: The original blue twenty-two sold out, so we have not only reissued the release (on beautiful glitter-blue tapes!) but tripled it in length!

blue twenty-two now has three distinct movements - a suite of choral pieces known as Songs from Above; a version of Songs from Above reworked into an extended collaborative piece called Selene; and a set of remixes of the original recordings.

In its new expanded form, there’s a dreamy, time-lapse transition from those initial acapella skeletons to the warm, full-bodied compositions towards the end of the tape; it’s like you can feel and hear Alex’s friends and collaborators breathing flesh onto her bones, making her whole.

As a piece of work you can fall asleep to it, immerse yourself in its journey, or absorb small portions of its sound on a daily basis for weeks, grazing on it like psychic sustenance. Tapes save your place.

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Nearly-not-words. Vocal tones that might be described as 'pure' if they weren't so smudged around the edges with reverb, obfuscating the words. Cadences heavy and almost sore, that angel of a voice struggling to lift.

Alex Alexopolous has previously recorded for Blue Tapes with her delicate, precise Kurosounds project (blue seven). As Wild Anima, Alex works with a select troupe of collaborators, applying her unique sound design skills to a set of minimal vocal studies.

Fans of blue eight (Katie Gately) and blue ten (EyeSea) will find much to love here. But where Katie crafted a kind of vocal-only future-pop - gibbering, amassed, wordlessly beautiful ADHD macro-melodies - Alex pares everything back to a monastic shaft of voice.

It's a voice that - on the first side of the tape, codenamed Songs from Above - appears to be deep in something that some people might call prayer, but is probably a lot more complicated than that.

The second side of the tape is one long piece constructed to evoke a lunar atmosphere: the transcendent Selene.

praise for blue twenty-two:

"Sitting somewhere between the madrigals of 16th century Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo, the decaying tape loops of 20th century minimalist William Basinski, and Enya, the music here is made up almost entirely of distant murky choirs. Side A was recorded on a farm in Devon back in 2013 before the project even had a name, deep under the spell of Tibetan culture and "feelings of compassion". The recording quality is muddy to almost alien degrees, as meditative repetitions of female voices seep into vast caverns of reverb. Keiji Haino’s short lived medieval music project, Nijiumu, springs to mind, if only for the sheer spiritual intensity of that vacant space. Side two’s side-long piece titled ‘Selene’ was recorded later, and integrates barely recognisable strings and echo-laden voices of Inuit shaman amid Alexopoulos’ epic vocals. The floaty amorphous soundscape strangely reminded me of The KLF’s trippy Chill Out - although perhaps swapping out Elvis Presley on a car radio for Pandit Pran Nath in a cave." - The Quietus

"Shamans’ chants weaving together to soundtrack a dream sequence where you can imagine the flashing lights and seemingly endless tunnel of that Willy Wonka psychedelic boat ride scene, only less scary." - Tabs Out

"It’s a meditative, internally explorative work, and the further her voice spreads outward, the deeper Alexopolous seems to journey into herself." - ATTN Magazine

"...revenant chants and keening, minimalist orchestration channeling both the echo-laden haze of Liz Harris’s Grouper and the crumbling tape loop melancholy of William Basinski into ethereal compositions that, despite their weightlessness, always seem anchored to the material world." - We Need No Swords

"...this feels like monastic chant in the best way possible. Think The Name of The Rose meets The Wicker Man." - Bandcloud

credits

released August 1, 2016

Songs from Above
Songs from Above was conceived after a trip to India, discovering the wonders of the Tibetan Culture. It was very inspired by feelings of compassion, forgiving, insights and the power of the heart. It was recorded as a one take recording in a farm near Nomansland in Devon in january 2013, a few years before Wild Anima found its name.

Selene
Selene is an epic ambient track produced by French Ambient Dub producer Tom Morant aka Natse. After listening to Songs from above Natse felt compelled to create an ambient album using recordings from Wild Anima's violonists and my vocals to create an epic landscape of contemplative sounds recalling peace and a lunar atmosphere. The recording also includes voices from Inuit shamans.

Remixes from Above
The remixes from above are a collection of pieces produced and (re)composed by international sound artists that I’ve met in special circumstances that have inspired me in my life and that I admire. Experimenting how powerful it can be to completely let go at giving total creativity over your work to other people, seeing how ideas of creation can work from one being to another and how the sound appears through different channels. Almost like letting go of your ownership of the creation. Allowing miracles emerge and giving space to them to be revealed. Letting the songs from above to evolve and unfurl themselves into a work in progress that unfolds and becomes alive with its own pattern of evolution.

Artists: Alix Hyde (UK) / Anna Stereopoulou (Greece) / H4N (France) / 9TAntiope (Iran) / Jérémie Nicolas (France) / Kaahem (France) / Jean-Yves Leloup (France) / Vincent Guiot (France) / Meditation Music Farm (France)

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Blue Tapes UK

For more than 10 years, Blue Tapes has curated a numbered series of releases emphasising different aspects of minimal music - from grime to gugak, American primitivism to Japanese ambient - presented with appropriately minimal and often abstract cyanotype artwork. ... more

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