LISTEN AND SHARE “FOGO” HERE
ALL THIS HERE, THE FIRST FULL-LENGTH AMBIENT WORK FROM JONAS BONNETTA, DUE OUT APRIL 27 VIA IDEA OF NORTH RECORDINGS
ALBUM RELEASE SHOW IN TORONTO ON MAY 27 FEATURING EDWIN HUIZINGA, MIKA POSEN, AND ADAM SAIKELY
PHOTO CREDIT : Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Over the past few years, Jonas Bonnetta has used the time in between touring and performing as Evening Hymns to record his first full-length ambient album, All This Here. The record began as the score to the documentary film Strange And Familiar: Architecture On Fogo Island which follows the story and construction of the Fogo Island Inn and a series of artist studios on the island designed by architect Todd Saunders.
All This Here sounds like a record of dawn and dusk, of light that frets at the edge of the day. The album finds field recordings from the coast of Fogo Island echoing throughout the record, horns which glisten into strings or shimmer apart into the rumble of surf. Forlorn murmerings suggest some alloy of whalesong and cello, while particles of recorded footfalls collide in the vacuum of wind or woodwind and cold, watery piano tones.
Album track “Fogo” begins with Bonnetta’s own footsteps along the gravel shoulder of the road leading from his saltbox house back towards the Inn. “You can hear a little dog,” says Bonnetta. “It was on the back porch barking away while I wandered. The process of field recording really heightens the connection to place. Walking around listening deeply. It's like an extra layer of seeing. You hear a truck or two pass me by. They were probably wondering what the heck I was up to. I crossed the field to the Inn and then recorded all the piano on the grand piano they have there.”
LISTEN AND SHARE “FOGO” HERE
“A place like Fogo has such character,” he continues. “The landscape is powerful. The ocean constantly moving and making noise. The sounds are inescapable. A few summers earlier I'd lived in a tent on R. Murray Schafer's property in Ontario and I'd brought along his book The Tuning Of The World and was thinking deeper about sounds connected to place and wanting to incorporate more of this thinking into my compositions.”
The writing process for the tracks on All This Here often began with field recordings; a dog barking in the distance, footsteps in the snow, a microphone hung in a juniper bush in the wind, the icy waves rolling up against the rocks outside the Fogo Island studio. A process which Bonnetta compares to type of foraging, a hunt for treasures in the forest, then assembling the fragments into a vision of something stubbornly pure.
The recordings were captured partly in and around an artist cabin perched over the ocean on Fogo, on the Easternmost tip of Canada, and partly at Bonnetta’s Ontario countryside home studio, with the help of Anne Müller (Nils Frahm, Agnes Obel) and Mika Posen (Timber Timbre, Agnes Obel) on strings, and mastering by Philip Shaw Bova (Feist, The Belle Orchestre).
The result of Bonnetta’s time capturing the architecture and environment of Fogo Island is something that feels more found than constructed, a buried memory recovered whole, embedded with sounds from the island and music inspired by that beautiful place. Currents merged into a single, sprawling field recording, a map of physical and emotional landscapes in superposition. Each tidal movement flows into the next, and arrangements wash themselves away, slowly exposing the haunted, haunting spirit of a place that exists only for a moment.
Bonnetta will celebrate the release of All This Here with a special performance at The Drake in Toronto on May 27. Joining Bonnetta on stage will be Edwin Huizinga (Tafelmusik, Yo Yo Ma, Wooden Sky), Mika Posen (Timber Timbre, Agnes Obel), and Adam Saikely (Acorn, Telecomo). Tickets for the show are available here. More performance dates will be announced shortly.
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PURCHASE / STREAM “LITTLE SELDOM” HERE
ALL THIS HERE TRACKLIST
01 Seldom
02 Deep Bay
03 Interlude I
04 Little Seldom
05 Interlude II
06 Fogo
07 Tilting
08 Island Harbour
09 Tilting (Evening)
10 Interlude III
11 Stag Harbour
12 Interlude IV
13 Little Fogo
14 Interlude V
15 Joe Batt’s Arm
16 Fogo (Evening)