Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - “A Treasure Chest” from forthcoming The Closest Thing to Silence, out LP/CD/Digi on February 2nd 2024
Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer
"A Treasure Chest"
New single by Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, out now.
“A Treasure Chest” is the second offering from their forthcoming album – The Closest Thing to Silence – which will be released on vinyl LP, CD, and digitally on February 2nd, 2024.
In August 2022 the Australia-based, French born new age musician and electronic music composer Ariel Kalma was invited to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction series of special collaborations. The program pairs artists who have not previously worked together to create new music cooperatively.
Kalma was quick to suggest working with two musicians whom he had never met – International Anthem recording artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, whose critically-acclaimed duo debut Recordings from the Åland Islands had been released just a few months earlier. His invitation was received with enthusiasm, as Chiu had long been a fan of Kalma’s work, even citing him as a major influence on his approach to electronic music composition. Their initial work was broadcasted on Late Junction in September of 2022; but simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding their collaboration.
The three artists’ collective approach was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes.
Ultimately, the collection of music they created highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the kind of contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s duo work with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group, which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary released by RVNG Intl, as part of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music. Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.”
Preview & Preorder
The Closest Thing to Silence here.
"A Treasure Chest"
Today’s single, “A Treasure Chest,” enters with meditative organ, as modular synths bring a rhythmic pulse from underneath. Of all the songs on The Closest Thing to Silence, this one most prominently features the viola playing of Marta Sofia Honer (whose extensive resumé of string work includes performances and/or recordings with Beyonce, Makaya McCraven, Ms Lauryn Hill, Angel Olsen, Kamasi Washington, Adrian Younge, and many more). Honer enters about halfway through, after a saturated organ swell gives way to a bed of looping, bird-like warbles. In the final section, Honer’s viola lines are synthesized into a prismatic tangle of sound.
In a hypnotic video made by Chiu, patterns from the album artwork are overlapped and rotated to create a moiré effect, not unlike the sound of Honer’s strings in the song’s final passage.
Watch & Listen here.
~~ also available today ~~
Inputs & Outputs
Included in the recently-released issue #2 of our newsprint zine Tracing the Lines is an unfiltered conversation between legendary musician (of Galaxie 500 fame) and UMAW (Union of Musicians and Allied Workers) organizer Damon Krukowski and International Anthem artists Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer.
Although it was originally intended to be a conversation about the realities of doing creative work for a living within the current layout of the music business (per the prompt from zine editor David Brown), the three artists took a fairly immediate and permanent detour into deep discussions of their respective creative processes and artistic approaches.
The conversation - which earned the natural title "Inputs & Outputs" - is now available in the online version of Tracing the Lines.
*Deluxe Vinyl Package*
*** Silent Gray color vinyl ***
The Closest Thing to Silence comes on a 140-gram vinyl LP (pressed by Pallas in Germany and New Orleans Record Press in the US, with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST) inside a heavyweight jacket, with IARC obi strip and dome patterned inner-sleeve.
And, as always, we have a limited edition color vinyl option for the first pressing only, available via our Bandcamp page only, which is 444 copies of *Silent Gray* color vinyl.
Distribution via RedEye for USA, Canada, North & South America
This album will also be available on CD and Classic Black Vinyl LP (same package specs as listed above).
Retailers in the United States or Canada or anywhere else inside of North, South and Central America... Please reach out to your sales rep at RedEye Worldwide if you are interested in making wholesale purchases of this album, or any other album in our catalog. Don't yet have a RedEye rep? Please just reach out to us and we'll get you hooked up!
Distribution via !K7 forEurope, UK, Australia, Japan, and ROW
This album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Australia, Japan, and everywhere else in the world outside of North & South America.
If you are a retailer or store with questions about wholesale or are just looking to get some of our records... we'd like to make things as easy for you as possible, please do not hesitate to reach out!!!
