Tangara & Somnoroase Păsărele 

Tangara is a sound project grown by an ever-changing group of musicians. All the manifestations of this plant are yet to be discovered as different musicians with different perceptions of the sound craft join together in each season of its flourishing. This is the first compilation of the recordings.

 

Rika is Tangara’s fruit planted by two friends who found the perfect balance in their collaboration. Andrii is a multi-instrumentalist with an academic background who creates the fundamental patterns of the compositions. Orfin grows these patterns further, combining them with field recordings and arranging the fragments to achieve the final soundscape. On the way, they met Anastasia – an actor with expressive work of voice and body synchronising with music. She has drawn the vocal patterns for this record.

They let a chance to be involved during the process, having the soundscape grow organically. The result is the continuous combination of improvised electronic and organic sounds involving vocal patterns, whispers, and field recordings – all of it creates an alluring and ambiguous sound matter flowing as a river (hence the name in Ukrainian).

“With this album, we converted our flow of consciousness into diverse soundscapes. It is our way of the exploration of each of us individually and the world that surrounds us. At the same time, we don’t want any canons to be tied to this record – the record is complete only once perceived by an individual. Do we really need words to perceive the sounds?”

Somnoroase Păsărele is a sound project by Gili Mocanu.

Born (1971) in the historic city of Constanța beside the Black Sea, Gili Mocanu is widely known as an accomplished and unique Romanian painter whose work has been shown in numerous major galleries and museums across the world. Inspired by a generation of avant-garde Romanian composers like Iancu Dumitrescu, Octavian Nemescu and Ștefan Niculescu, Gili has also been consistently involved in sound recording since the early ‘90s, and under his long-running Somnoroase Păsărele and Centrul Isteric guises, sometimes in collaboration with others, his music has evolved its own distinctive character. Employing atypical synth sounds, spectralist techniques, and asymmetrical or non-rhythmic elements, the results have included excursions into abstract electronic, minimalist, ambient, spectralist and drone territories.

 

“The album was recorded pre-2020 on a pretty worn out mac laptop; Gili has sat on it for a few years for editing/mastering, then I (Miru) sat on it as well. From the initial 105 minutes of recordings, we now have 35 min. The tracks are meant to be increasingly ‘agonal’; one can feel that in the sound perhaps, and it’s also reflected in the titles.

The ‘artworks’ (used as the album cover and track tiles) were/are placed near a children’s summer camp in Năvodari, Romania. Gili has been familiar with these since childhood, given that he grew up in the Black Sea area. I cannot tell you exactly why, but the entire album has a very personal feel for Gili, so that ‘blast from the past’ is not out of place here.

One cannot help but notice that as the state of our world progressively gets more insane and corrupted, folks are beginning to make nostalgic posts about life in the 80s or how great their childhood was in the 70s/60s. An interesting coping mechanism; and one could say that the shift in collective memory back to perhaps simpler and largely less propagandised times is a symptom of desiring an end to the delusion. People are missing direct connection with each other, with society at large. It may be a good sign, or at least something to ponder on.”

Miru Mercury 2022