[16 Oct 2020]
Jacaranda Records’ first ambient album – Æternally Aligned Angels by mrmmr – is out on all platforms today.
Composed specifically for Dolby’s immersive Atmos format, the 13-track debut takes the sound arrangement rulebook and shreds it with laser scissors. Combining an oblique strategy to composition with access to the world’s largest collection of keyboards, pushing frequency manipulation & extreme phase shifting to create ‘Drift,’ a unique sub-genre of electronic ambient music designed to play with the listener’s ears, their expectations, and their ideas of what they are listening to. Heavily influenced by seminal genre defining synthesizer led soundtracks, the music shifts in and out of a wide range of frequencies, with their own disparate time signatures, the multichannels have their own dissonance and movement in and out of phase as the material drifts through tones, samples and loops. A sense of unease just as easily hits a Goldilocks sweet spot of melody before parting on their own paths.
Available in the original full-blooded Atmos on Tidal and Amazon Music HD, the album represents the latest creative output from an immersive audio producer who has pioneered work on experimental audio projects with a diverse set of A-list artists and organisations, being instrumental in the Immersive remix of The Beatles’ 50th Anniversary of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, he was then allowed to deploy the groundbreaking work of the legendary Beatles’ audio processing logic to drive the rerecording and multichannel immersive mix of Luciano Pavarotti’s canon of material, as well as genre defining work with the likes of Ennio Morricone, QAing with John Paul Jones on the immersive orchestration for REM’s Automatic For the People remix (which he originally scored) and regularly working with Sir Elton John’s engineer Greg Penny.
Immersive producer/composer mrmmr (also known as Jacaranda Records’ Capomaestro – Ray Mia) said:
“I’m applying basic fundamentals of Immersive thinking to unlock buried frequencies that are already there if you go looking for them. Music is sound and sound is frequency – which Atmos allows me to manipulate at a core visceral level. There are other spatial tools out there which I’m playing with, but nothing as yet gives me the controls I’m looking for. I’ve said it before, there is a psycho-acoustic relationship between music and the mind that Atmos allows me to explore, painting pictures with sound.
“This is about a certain level of human reality. The COVID reality is pushing creativity into some unusual and uncomfortable spaces, it’s not just the industry of sound that’s being challenged, it’s the forms and aesthetics and meaning of what artists do and why that’s making some people do and say some stupid shit. So this material is about playing with our emotions through different vibrations and manipulating the air that makes the sounds we hear. This is about the electromagnetic spectrum as it relates to what some folks call Chakra points. Think of the human body as a musical instrument, and if you can do that – imagine Chakra points being a physical manifestation of spiritual fretboards, the naadis lines connecting the Chakra points are strings, and the chords you play create the frequencies of pranic energy that surround all of us. It’s the air we breathe, and the compression and decompression of that air creates – music. It’s the closest words I can think of to explain it all. Ultimately, what does music make you feel? What I’m trying to explore is an area that exists under the surface of making music, if we are surrounded by frequencies as we are, and if we can drift through sounds which connect with us, emotionally, physically, in some cases spiritually – whether through memories, or experiences lived or imagined, then accessing this through immersive music becomes very interesting. I don’t think Lockdown should stop any of us from thinking or exploring or experiencing, I found being able to write this liberating from the daily infection rates and seismic death tolls we’re all becoming numb to… being able to write this way, and for this way of listening is life affirming in a way the material makes you feel.
“I’m learning how to play the human instrument through immersive audio, and this is an expression of that… its music for Weirding Modules”
[Listen Here] [Wear Headphones]
Release Details
Æternally Aligned Angels was written, performed and produced by mrmmr.
Immersive engineering by Jamie Barker
Immersive mastering by James Kershaw
From Immersive-first Label Jacaranda Records, specialists in spatial audio, Æternally Aligned Angels can provide anyone using a set of standard headphones a 3D immersive audio experience on both Tidal and Amazon Music HD. The track is also available to stream or download in standard stereo via Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and all other major streaming services.
