New York, NY (Top40 Charts) After his critically acclaimed 2016 release There Is No Calamity,
Peter Himmelman wanted to rotate the prism of his musical engagement a bit, and so he embarked on a project to do just that with collaborator John Paterno, an L.A.-based, Grammy-winning producer/engineer and multi-instrumentalist. Paterno recently recalled, "As I was reading these pieces
Peter had written, I found myself imagining the worlds they might live in from an aural perspective. I was really engaged with the quality and depth of the thoughts, at how they were conveyed through the characters
Peter created from one story to the next, and how certain themes were weaved throughout the whole set."
The result of their work together is Breath & Pulse & Awe,a collection of spoken-word pieces with ambient/atmospheric sonic underpinnings.
A track called "Consensus 31B" explores the power of words to unite or to deceive:
We wage war, we declare money: important, we cure meat and polio, we stare at Donald Trump, and we listen to Howlin Wolf, and we think of it all as real. And who is this entity called You and I, but the joining of interests and aligned attraction?
Another piece, entitled "She Wonders If the Dead Can Hear," finds a woman summoning a loved one in a kind of mournful quest for answers to the unanswerable:
... She feels the floor with the soles of her feet and represses a laugh. This is life, this is breath, and pulse, and awe, she thinks — and a dog barks in the distance. She thinks of her sister (I know how much she misses her), and wonders if the dead can hear.
Born out of a conversation about writing, music, and the hard, wondrous minutiae of life itself, Breath & Pulse & Awe explores the modes through which human beings in the modern era relate to the world, in ways both grand and deceptively plain — with all they experience appearing beautiful and mystifying in equal measure.
The words and music in this unique collection combine to guide the listener through the stories of the characters that inhabit these strange and yet surprisingly familiar psychological landscapes. The ambiguity of the words and music leave listeners free to bring their own feelings and emotions to the experience of hearing this work.
As Himmelman points out, "Don't expect to dance to this record. It's unlikely you'll come away humming any memorable melodies either. Breath & Pulse & Awe is an assembly of words and atmospherics created to put you in a fever-dream, to lull you into a space that is one part madness and one part prayer."
Breath & Pulse & Awe will beavailable on all digital platforms today, April 20, 2018.
https://himmelman.lnk.to/breathpulseawe
