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The music you hear tonight is available on the artists' Bandcamp pages and websites and Spotify.
This
is the project that our performance at Echoes in 2017 inspired. Vin,
Jeff, and I decided to see what would happen if we let ourselves wander
together into the music. We gathered at my studio with no preconceptions
about what we were going to play. I had some ambient loops prepared,
and we picked a few to give us landscapes to play into... and then we
just explored and responded to each other in the moment. I love how it
turned out... and I particularly love that Vin played electric guitar
and was completely at home with the slow drift that Oster and I have
spent so much time in. Hope you love it!
Seven Conversations
A shimmering blend of Jeff Oster’s liquid Flugelhorn, Vin Downes’ dreamy electric guitar, and Tom Eaton’s watercolor touch on keyboards and bass. At times soft and emotional, at times driving and propulsive, the album explores deeply ambient territory across seven in-studio improvisations.
From the liner notes:
"my admiration for tom and vin as musical artists is exceeded only by my appreciation of their wry humor. sometimes laughter comes from the deepest places, just like this music."
- jeff oster
"an indescribable alchemy happens when good friends create music together in the moment. words are unnecessary. these musical conversations capture that magic so well."
- vin downes
"we chose a key and one of us began. nothing written, no safety net. the real trick to improvising in a group is not the playing, it's the listening, and these are two of the very best listeners out there."
- tom eaton
Seven Conversations
A shimmering blend of Jeff Oster’s liquid Flugelhorn, Vin Downes’ dreamy electric guitar, and Tom Eaton’s watercolor touch on keyboards and bass. At times soft and emotional, at times driving and propulsive, the album explores deeply ambient territory across seven in-studio improvisations.
From the liner notes:
"my admiration for tom and vin as musical artists is exceeded only by my appreciation of their wry humor. sometimes laughter comes from the deepest places, just like this music."
- jeff oster
"an indescribable alchemy happens when good friends create music together in the moment. words are unnecessary. these musical conversations capture that magic so well."
- vin downes
"we chose a key and one of us began. nothing written, no safety net. the real trick to improvising in a group is not the playing, it's the listening, and these are two of the very best listeners out there."
- tom eaton
credits
released April 26, 2024
FreeForm thanks Tom Eaton for providing us with a copy of this excellent release.
all songs written and performed by
jeff oster (ascap)
vin downes (bmi)
tom eaton (bmi)
Jeff Oster - Flugelhorn and Trumpet
Vin Downes - Electric Guitar
Tom Eaton - Keyboards, Loops, Programming and Bass
Produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Tom Eaton
all songs written and performed by
jeff oster (ascap)
vin downes (bmi)
tom eaton (bmi)
Jeff Oster - Flugelhorn and Trumpet
Vin Downes - Electric Guitar
Tom Eaton - Keyboards, Loops, Programming and Bass
Produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Tom Eaton
Variations is a classical and rock fusion album. The music was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and performed by his younger brother, the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber.
The Lloyd Webber brothers were always very close but their two different careers (a rock musical composer and a classical cellist) meant that a collaboration seemed unlikely. It was not until Julian beat his brother in a bet on a Leyton Orient football match that Andrew was forced to write his cello work.
As his subject, Andrew chose the theme of Paganini's 24th caprice and added 23 variations for cello and rock band. The work premiered at the 1977 Sydmonton Festival with rock band Colosseum II, featuring Gary Moore, Jon Hiseman and Don Airey being joined by Barbara Thompson (sax, flute), Rod Argent (piano, synthesizer, keyboards) and Julian Lloyd Webber (cello). It was subsequently rearranged and recorded in 1978. It reached Number 2 on the UK album charts.[3]
The cover is based on the painting Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his sisters by Philip Mercier.
Personnel
- Original rock version
- Julian Lloyd Webber – cello
- Gary Moore – Gibson Les Paul, Rickenbacker electric 12 string & Fender Stratocaster electric guitars, Guild acoustic guitar
- Rod Argent – grand piano, synthesizers (Minimoog, Roland RS-202, Yamaha CS-80)
- Don Airey – grand piano, synthesizers (ARP Odyssey, Minimoog, Solina String Ensemble), Fender Rhodes electric piano
- Barbara Thompson – flute, alto flute, alto & tenor saxophone
- John Mole – Fender Precision Bass, Hayman fretless bass guitar
- Jon Hiseman – Arbiter Auto-Tune drums, Paiste cymbals & gongs, percussion
- with additional performers
- Andrew Lloyd Webber – synthesizer
- Dave Caddick – piano
- Bill Le Sage – vibraphone
- Herbie Flowers – bass
- Phil Collins – drums, percussion
"Stalker"
is Eighth Tower's tribute to the cinematic masterpiece "Stalker" (1979)
by Russian director Andrej Tarkowskij. Tarkowskij 's second science
fiction film after Solaris, "Stalker" is based on a novel by the
Strugackij brothers, Arkadij and Boris, renowned authors of Soviet
science fiction. The novel, titled "Roadside Picnic," was released in
1971. Tarkovskij adapted the basic literary work, written in the form of
dispatches and intelligence reports, inspired by the Tunguska event of
1908—a probable impact in a remote Siberian area of a meteorite or
possibly a comet. This collision, still the subject of studies and
controversies today, in the 1970s generated a series of pseudoscientific
hypotheses akin to a pre-Roswell event, based on the suggestion that
the mysterious crashed object was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
The Zone is primarily the interior of a rural territory that has been disrupted by an unspecified event, perhaps the fall of a meteorite or the passage of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Within it, strange and mysterious events occur, and many people have disappeared. Above all, there is a rumor that a "Room" capable of fulfilling any desire is located within the Zone. After attempting to study the Zone, the military evacuated the population and restricted access. Scholars need special permits to enter. Only the Stalkers, guides who, for money, accompany anyone willing to try to reach the Room of Desires, challenging the authorities, venture into that territory. The film follows the journey of one of them. The man, a father of a legless daughter, despite his wife's opposition, decides to bring a failed writer in search of inspiration and a professor driven by scientific curiosity into the Zone. Three unnamed characters who seem to represent faith, art, and science.
The world of "Stalker," filmed in Estonia, Russia, and Tajikistan, is a science fiction of inner space, reminiscent of Ballard, a dreamlike space. Leaning light poles, debris, abandoned huts. The film's world is heavily degraded and contaminated by trash, debris, and wreckage. A damp world, flooded, with puddles and rain. A disturbed world of a civilization now in a state of post-industrial decay, continually punctuated by the "dodeskaden," the noise of trains and their vibrations. If we remember the Soviet Union, which would eventually have its forbidden and radiation-contaminated zone around the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, then we can say that Tarkovskij was prophetic in outlining that degraded landscape with the reactors of a nuclear power plant in the background.
Everyone will form a different idea while watching Stalker, but everyone will be left with the impression of having witnessed a work of art, thanks to the emotion that the images and dialogues manage to evoke. After all, art is, above all, emotion.
"The Zone is the Zone, the Zone is life: crossing it, a person either breaks or resists. Whether a person will resist depends on their sense of their own dignity, their ability to distinguish the essential from the transient."
— Andrei Tarkovskij.
In this compilation of musical tracks and soundscapes, Eighth Tower Records and the musicians involved in the project pay passionate homage to this masterpiece of science fiction cinema and, more broadly, the history of cinema.
The cd is accompanied by a beautiful anthology of unpublished stories by: B. E. Dantalion, Andrew Coulthard, Chris McAuley, J. Edwin Buja, Glynn Owen Barrass, Michael F. Housel, Nora B. Peevy, Sarah Walker.
The Zone is primarily the interior of a rural territory that has been disrupted by an unspecified event, perhaps the fall of a meteorite or the passage of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Within it, strange and mysterious events occur, and many people have disappeared. Above all, there is a rumor that a "Room" capable of fulfilling any desire is located within the Zone. After attempting to study the Zone, the military evacuated the population and restricted access. Scholars need special permits to enter. Only the Stalkers, guides who, for money, accompany anyone willing to try to reach the Room of Desires, challenging the authorities, venture into that territory. The film follows the journey of one of them. The man, a father of a legless daughter, despite his wife's opposition, decides to bring a failed writer in search of inspiration and a professor driven by scientific curiosity into the Zone. Three unnamed characters who seem to represent faith, art, and science.
The world of "Stalker," filmed in Estonia, Russia, and Tajikistan, is a science fiction of inner space, reminiscent of Ballard, a dreamlike space. Leaning light poles, debris, abandoned huts. The film's world is heavily degraded and contaminated by trash, debris, and wreckage. A damp world, flooded, with puddles and rain. A disturbed world of a civilization now in a state of post-industrial decay, continually punctuated by the "dodeskaden," the noise of trains and their vibrations. If we remember the Soviet Union, which would eventually have its forbidden and radiation-contaminated zone around the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, then we can say that Tarkovskij was prophetic in outlining that degraded landscape with the reactors of a nuclear power plant in the background.
Everyone will form a different idea while watching Stalker, but everyone will be left with the impression of having witnessed a work of art, thanks to the emotion that the images and dialogues manage to evoke. After all, art is, above all, emotion.
"The Zone is the Zone, the Zone is life: crossing it, a person either breaks or resists. Whether a person will resist depends on their sense of their own dignity, their ability to distinguish the essential from the transient."
— Andrei Tarkovskij.
In this compilation of musical tracks and soundscapes, Eighth Tower Records and the musicians involved in the project pay passionate homage to this masterpiece of science fiction cinema and, more broadly, the history of cinema.
The cd is accompanied by a beautiful anthology of unpublished stories by: B. E. Dantalion, Andrew Coulthard, Chris McAuley, J. Edwin Buja, Glynn Owen Barrass, Michael F. Housel, Nora B. Peevy, Sarah Walker.
credits
released May 2, 2024
FreeForm Radio thanks Raffaele Pezzella (AKA Sonologyst)
for a copy of this release.
REVIEWS
Mark Hjorthoy
Eighth Tower Records is responsible for turning me on to movies I had never heard of before. How many music labels can boast that? Their latest delves into a movie called ‘Stalker‘ by Andrej Tarkowskij – a 1979 Russian sci-fi thriller, that has a huge cult following. The tracks included on this release bring the chills and fear associated with the plot brilliantly, and leave you feeling like you’ve just lived through a harrowing experience. Post-apocalyptic brilliance shines hard on this album. A perfect representation of a long-loved creative masterpiece. This is a huge winner from a great label. I’m going in for another listen.
Ver Sacrum
www.versacrum.com/vs/2024/05/stalker-music-inspired-by-andrej-tarkowskijs-movie-by-various-artists.html
Bizzarrechats
bizarrechats.blogspot.com/2024/05/eighth-towers-stalker-music-inspired-by.html
Music by: Cult Of Light, Rapoon, Mombi Yuleman, Tsath, phoanøgramma, Mario Lino Stancati, Esa Ruoho, Kelados, Morgen Wurde, vÄäristymä, Zabbaleen, Yousef Kawar, Glacial Anatomy.
Artwork by John D. Chadwick
Layout by Matteo Mariano
Curated and mastered by Raffaele Pezzella (a.k.a. Sonologyst)
Published by Eighth Tower Records
Cat. Num. ETR049
© 2024 All rights reserved.
FreeForm Radio thanks Raffaele Pezzella (AKA Sonologyst)
for a copy of this release.
REVIEWS
Mark Hjorthoy
Eighth Tower Records is responsible for turning me on to movies I had never heard of before. How many music labels can boast that? Their latest delves into a movie called ‘Stalker‘ by Andrej Tarkowskij – a 1979 Russian sci-fi thriller, that has a huge cult following. The tracks included on this release bring the chills and fear associated with the plot brilliantly, and leave you feeling like you’ve just lived through a harrowing experience. Post-apocalyptic brilliance shines hard on this album. A perfect representation of a long-loved creative masterpiece. This is a huge winner from a great label. I’m going in for another listen.
Ver Sacrum
www.versacrum.com/vs/2024/05/stalker-music-inspired-by-andrej-tarkowskijs-movie-by-various-artists.html
Bizzarrechats
bizarrechats.blogspot.com/2024/05/eighth-towers-stalker-music-inspired-by.html
Music by: Cult Of Light, Rapoon, Mombi Yuleman, Tsath, phoanøgramma, Mario Lino Stancati, Esa Ruoho, Kelados, Morgen Wurde, vÄäristymä, Zabbaleen, Yousef Kawar, Glacial Anatomy.
Artwork by John D. Chadwick
Layout by Matteo Mariano
Curated and mastered by Raffaele Pezzella (a.k.a. Sonologyst)
Published by Eighth Tower Records
Cat. Num. ETR049
© 2024 All rights reserved.
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