As followers of me and my work will know, folktronic has been released online. To know more about this, read here: folktronicIn a series of blog posts, I'll go a bit more in depth with the tracks from that album. I'll begin with the end, the closing track of the album:
Ta Prohm.
My wife was born in Cambodia. It follows, that it's only natural that she and I went to visit the Khmer country back in December 1999. Among other things, we visited the world famous Angkor temple complex in the northern part of Cambodia, as the tourists we (among other things) turned out to be. Angkor is a fabulous place, where archeologists have dug out the most fantastically ornamented grandiose buildings from the grip of the jungle. The same jungle that has managed to keep the whole temple complex hidden from the outside world for 500 years.
Obviously, it's a deeply fascinating experience walking around the temples, restored to make you feel right back at the height of the Angkor civilisation. But the most fascinating temple of them all is the one called Ta Prohm. Here, the archeologists have left the trees standing, enabling you to experience how the forest has been slowly strangling and demolishing the buildings. Tree roots and trunks go straight through and around walls and reliefs in a slow wrestle through thousands of years, ending in the forests inevitable victory. In many ways an aphorism for Cambodia itself, where the inherent beauty of the country and the people are constantly scarred by the violently destructive confrontations with the forces that seem to flood over the history of the country.We spent a whole day in and around Ta Prohm. Some of the time, we just walked around and absorbed the impressions. Some of the time, we sat down and recollected our impressions as best we could. My wife made drawings. I wrote the melody that ended up with the title Ta Prohm in my notebook. While walking around, I recorded some of the sounds in and around the temple. Birds. Streams. Unidentifiable sounds of the forest.
The melody, Ta Prohm, is a polska. Strictly speaking, a Swedish traditional form, and as such, it has little in common with prehistoric Cambodia. But two reasons made me use it anyway; one, I was very occupied with the polska format at that time; and two, I find that the labyrinthic and intertwining rhythmic possibilities of the polska reflect the location most appropriately.
The recording of Ta Prohm featured on folktronic rests on two principles:
- the rhythm track and the sound effects are mainly based on the actual sounds I recorded in Cambodia, with emphasis on the sounds from the Ta Prohm area itself. One can say that the rhythm part builds on a sort of documentary idea, with a single heavily squashed drum track added for low frequencies, and spiced with a few percussion parts.
- the melody and the other tonal content can be played on any instruments. All possibilities are available. In other words, the possibilities are so many that it's almost impossible to choose one. So, in the end I decided to make it a dogma for the recording to keep strictly to one instrument for every track, and then process the recorded sound to give me bass, chord tracks, melody counterpoints etc. All tonal parts are initially recorded playing my accordeon.
Ta Prohm - an instrumental documentation of a part of Cambodian history. Enjoy.
