CD Album – Jewel Case – 3 tracks
Design & photography by Jon Wozencroft
Premastering by Christian Fennesz
Mastering by Denis Blackham @ Skye
Tracklist:
1. part 1 – Unfinished – mellow 33:39
part 2 – Unfinished – waiting
part 3 – Unfinished – longing
2. Unfinished – sailing 16:44
3. Unfinished – ending 2:55
“The sun is God” (The last words of painter, JMW Turner)
“Which side of the picture should be hung uppermost? – 2003, London: the first time I visited Tate Britain, Tate Gallery, and the first time I saw and really experienced the paintings of JMW Turner (1775-1851). Overwhelmed, especially by his late and unfinished works I was stunned by the power of the stillness of his work. 25 years before that something similar; me, as a young man in Madrid; Prado, Goya paintings and etchings – for me an initiation which opened up the door to earlier art and its pioneers. Like Goya one generation before him, Turner is one of those artists whose language was becoming radicalized in the high age. (In the field of music he is the contemporary of Beethoven.) His later paintings transcend light, full of poetic imagination, exquisite liquid calm. Free pure painting – nothing as light, air and water. When I left the exhibition, it was clear to me that this visit was the starting point for my musical approach to his paintings. Over the years, it was a pleasent challenge to get closer and closer to the painter’s complex simplicity, transforming the enigmatic atmospheres of his late and unfinshed works into personal tempting musical soundscapes.” Burkhard Stangl, September 2013
Track notes:
#1 recorded live by Norbert Benesch at Porgy and Bess, Vienna, 4th January 2013
#2 recorded by Fennesz at Amann Studios, Vienna, 5th March 2013. First take, no edits, no cuts.
#3 recorded live by Philip Leitner, at Garnison7, Vienna, 18th June 2010
Burkhard Stangl: electric guitar and tapes (electronics and field recordings). Unfinished 1 (mellow) is based on Stangl’s composition for three zithers Mellow (My Feldman), dedicated to and played by Trio Greifer.