The Mediterranean Drift cover

Ran SlavinThe Mediterranean Drift

Crónica 049

Release: 1 April 2010

Losing coordinates in the Mediterranean Drift
Some nights when our dreams were scratched away, we tried to remain calm with the Single String Charmer
On the Red Sea we drifted on the orange waves, swept calmly into the vast ocean to the point of no return
Financial Warfare and Psychological Sedatives
Chemical Canaries and Car Alarms
Every road leads to the BAD ROAD

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.