New York, NY (Top40 Charts) "It runs from soft, drifting music with a huge amount of space that makes me feel like I'm lying in a field staring up at the clouds in a bright blue sky to psyched out masses of guitars spiralling off into the stars" ~ Adrian Bloxham, Louder Than War
"Definitely among the best set of tracks involving Mark Gardener since RIDE's heyday. Absolutely stunning delivery that leaves me wanting more" ~ The Record Stache
FOR LOVERS OF: Ride, Spiritualized, Radiohead, Creation Records' output
GENRES EXPLORED: shoegaze, space rock, indie rock, alternative rock, post-rock, dreampop, ambient
LEAD TRACKS:
Peter Song, Doing My Head In, Morning Rise, Happy Dancing Woman (original and radio edit)
Pure Phase Ensemble is an international music collective, created especially for the SpaceFest festival in Gdansk, which takes place annually in December and is organised by the Nasiono Association. The city of Gdansk plays host to this blossoming music festival each year in the first week of December, at which time numerous select musicians from Poland and abroad gather to take part in a special workshop series. They collectively compose a concert's worth of music, which they then present live to the festival-goers. Each year, this unique performance is recorded live and subsequently released as an LP.
The programme for each workshop is jointly curated by Ray Dickaty, a British saxophonist improviser and former member of
Spiritualized (1997-2002), and
Karol Schwarz (KSAS), who also manages Nasiono Records. Along with these two key figures, every festival involves a new musical director - a legendary, internationally recognised musician, who is invited to co-curate the workshop.
During the latest SpaceFest, Mark Gardener, the frontman of celebrated shoegaze pioneers RIDE who also recently released an LP with
Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), occupied this seat of honour. Past participants include Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), Chris Olley (Six By Seven), Steve Hewitt (ex Placebo), and Jaime Harding (Marion).
"For me, this it interesting - it's perfect because it reminds me in some ways of how some of the early Ride songs came together... I didn't come in with a script, nor does Ray. There is no pre-work on this. It was just completely spontaneous," explains Mark Gardener. "Sometimes music like that is good before things get thought about too much and worked on too much. That can kill the energy sometimes. Of course some things have got to be worked and developed, but in this scenario, with such little time and to get an interesting set together, I think it's been good to keep it fresh and not over-worked."
"The way we've arranged the music - for me, it starts off in a certain mood and goes through a tremendous amount of emotions and then returns to the familiar mood we started with at the beginning. It's a perfect circle of music," says Ray Dickaty.
Pure Phase Ensemble 4 'Live at SpaceFest!' is currently available on Bandcamp, iTunes and Spotify and the CD is also available on the Nasiono Records website. Demonstrating the international scope of this project, Canadian-Ukrainian dreampop duo Ummagma have also created an exclusive radio edit for one of the album's lead tracks Happy Dancing Woman.
TRACKLIST
1. Intro 04:10
2. Morning Rise* 08:03
3. Notatki** 15:47
4. Zostan na noc*** 09:12
5.
Peter Song* 05:41
6. Doing My Head In*** 03:32
7. Happy Dancing Woman*** 08:37
TOTAL TIME: 55:01 minutes
All songs composed by Pure Phase Ensemble 4
Lyrics: *Mark Gardener **Karol Schwarz ***Michal Pydo
Mark Gardener (Musical Director, Ride) - voice, guitar
Ray Dickaty (Musical Director) - saxophone, flute, korg monotribe
Jacek Rezner (Wilga) - drums
Kamil Hordyniec (Wilga) - bass
Michal Pydo (Hatifnats) - voice, guitar
Michal 'Kostek' Stolc (Cisza nocna) - synths, backing vocals
Karol Schwarz (KSAS) - guitar, voice, Korg monotribe, phase
