ORGANUM

Packaged in a plain white tip-on cardboard jacket with insert and clear sticker affixed to the outer resealable plastic sleeve. 'RAVEN' is the first new Organum album release since that of 'SOROW' in 2010 (Siren Records) and was recorded in 2017. For the realisation of RAVEN, Organum was comprised of David Jackman, Alan Jones, and Daisuke Suzuki. The first Organum 12-inch release 'Tower of Silence' (LAYLAH-1985) was a work of multi-layered bowed sound and scraping metallic objects, but there was an innate silence within this wall of noise - as Basho's Haiku poem echos : "Deep silence, the shrill of cicadas, seeps into rocks." 'RAVEN' is composed of striking piano-keys, church bells, temple gongs, a crow, a raven and a rook and is divided into 13 parts. In 'RAVEN', sounds appear from silence and then return again into that silence. 'RAVEN' is a work within those very silences. You can contemplate emptiness intently after the sounds have ended. As in another of Basho's Haiku poems : "The old pond, a frog jumps in, then silence again." 'RAVEN' is another Tower of Silence and a listener will reflect, that absence and emptiness are the permanent essences of Organum's music, within the chaos and flux of its phenomena. Less is more and Organum leave with us only the bare essentials in 'RAVEN'. 'RAVEN' is neither a hymn, nor a requiem. (label info)