Ran SlavinThe Mediterranean Drift

The Mediterranean Drift

CrĂłnica 049~2010 download

Release date: 1 April 2010

Tracklist

  1. Losing coordinates in the Mediterranean Drift (15:24)
  2. Some nights when our dreams were scratched away, we tried to remain calm with the Single String Charmer (05:05)
  3. On the Red Sea we drifted on the orange waves, swept calmly into the vast ocean to the point of no return (04:55)
  4. Financial Warfare and Psychological Sedatives (07:20)
  5. Chemical Canaries and Car Alarms (05:00)
  6. Every road leads to the BAD ROAD (04:44)

The Mediterranean Drift is composed by six new/old pieces split in two movements. The first three tracks function as establishing shots. They are textural compositions, reflective soundscapes that can be played as loops back to back to form a prolonged meditative audio space. Whereas the first half points to a feeling of nostalgia, positive feelings and a yearning to a ‘solution’ the second half of the release brings us to a more poignant zone and points to uncertainty, threat, fear and the turmoil omnipresent in the middle east and epitomized in Claude-Joseph Vernet’s painting The Shipwreck (1772) — set in an unidentified maritime landscape that very much resembles the port of Jaffa in Israel. This scene blends the sublime and the beautiful that can be found in a horror scenario, it is the background and the prime mover of Slavin’s music in these new/old compositions. It is the region’s omnipresent new/old political tension and war that is reflected indirectly in the bittersweetness that flows from “The Mediterranean Drift”, an album that is yet another big step in Ran Slavin’s maturing work as a composer.

Ran Slavin is a multi faceted artist who works primarily with video installation, sound and film. His work explores fiction and prismatic forms and narratives through video and sound installation and can be interpreted as an expansion of cinematic forms, usually utilizing post production and compositing sensibilities as tools of subversion and reality enhancement. His work often embraces the tension between fact and fiction, supernatural and mythical, history and futurism and compels the viewer to wander beyond reality and the immediate, into a prism of digital superposition.

Slavin has released recordings on Cronica, Mille Plateaux, Sub Rosa, False Ind, to name a few and shared stage and concert lineups with Thomas Köner, Aphex Twin, Vladislav Delay, Alva Noto, Klimek, Random INC, AGF, Rechenzentrum & Lillevan, Maja Ratkje & HC Gilje, Stephan Mathieu, Janek Schaefer, @c, Nico (ex Velvet Underground), Crime and the City Solution, The Folk Devils, World Domination Enterprises and many more.

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