Already Awake in the Night : Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand

Already Awake in the Night by Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand

Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand : Already Awake in the Night.
Experimental winds meets indian classical.

The night is a strange country. Life withdraws from the streets; colours turn to a grayish blue; the din of the city is replaced by a silent orchestra of tactile sounds, one's field of vision reduced to two lonely street lamps glowing like torches in front of grimly towering trees. As the world is descending into rest, the mind begins to wander. For those tossing and turning in their beds, a curious journey begins: There are phases of rapid eye movement and passages of all but absolute stillness. The territory of dreams beckons, opening up and then dissolves into ashes and dust again. At around two o' clock, awareness plunges headlong into deep sleep, at four, body temperature has sunk to its low point. In just two hours from now, the sun will rise again, waking sleepers from their state of hibernation. But until then, embedded into a tiny pocket of time opening up in the trough between the material and the spiritual world, the shapes and structures of quotidian life are taking a break. This is the time of the Raag Lalit from the canon of Hindustani music, and for years, Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand have returned to it time and again to explore and work out its mood as precisely as possible. Their patience has paid off: On Already Awake in the Night, they are playing a centuries-old form of music like no one's ever heard it before.

Given their approach, that is a most astounding outcome. For although the three pieces contained on it, named ("Already Awake in the Night", "Wavering Twilight", "Morning Surge") to reflect the transition from the above mentioned early morning unreality to a hopeful and expectant post-sunrise ambiance, are not actually classical raags, they have very much been meticulously modeled on historical blueprints. In fact, large portions of the album appear to be entirely traditional, Cuni singing or breathing through a bamboo resonator and befriended instrumentalist David Trasoff contributing sarod lines on two occasions. It is, at least at a first glance, mainly in Durands parts that a transformation takes place. Instead of accompanying the soloists with the familiar stringed tanpura, he is working with sine waves tuned in the raag's original intervals and minutely processed through effect devices to create a sense of slow, sleepy movement. What may seem an insignificant change has a momentous impact on the compositions. Far softer in timbre than the tanpura, the sines are creating a tranquil cloud of gentle oscillation, a field resonating with corresponding and conflicting sensations of mystery, warmth, solitude and comfort. Tucked away behind it, the musicians are treading as carefully as though they were playing underneath a blanket, their sound peacefully muffled by a soft sourdine of silken fabric.

Text by Tobias Fischer

Songs:

1. Already Awake in the Night
2. Morning Surge
3. Wavering Twilight

Listen to: the entire album.

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Release date: 04/02/2021
Amelia Cuni and Werner Durand lives in Berlin Germany

Tagged as: World, Vocal, Indian, Indian Influenced, Yoga

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