LUKE WYLAND - KUMA COVE

1. Grounded
2. Click Clap
3. Unwinding
4. Chimes
5. Voice Valley
6. Pitched and Bowed
7. Be Ya
8. Pollinators
9. Kuma Cove

Interdisciplinary artist and composer Luke Wyland brings a 9-track l.p. to Balmat Records, in the form of 'Kuma Cove', which skirts between the genres of modern classical and ambient electronica.

Recorded as a 'diary of spontaneous live recordings' in the studio, Wyland does a terrific job of blurring computer-based components with his delicate piano work, resulting in a beautifully emotive works.

Some notes from Wyland

'I made this record while spending significant time in the woods by the Sandy River in Corbett, Oregon, where I've had my studio for the last five years. It is a diary of spontaneous live recordings edited to highlight the moments of clarity that emerge from long-form improvisations. These compositions express a slowing internal rhythm. An unwinding. A somatic recalibration as I enter middle age. A newly empowered vulnerability.

Here are the internalized cadences of my stutter, flowing freely from my fingers. The musicality of my disfluency is revealed in its frictions, elongations, and foreshortenings. Disruptions in linear time, where the bubbling cadences of my stutter find unexpected pathways, reveal the elasticity of the present moment. This is my idiosyncratic language, shaped and inspired by my disability. Subliminally mirroring internal processes, neural firings, cognitive entanglements...

The title, Kuma Cove, refers to a beloved cove on the coast of Oregon my wife and I return to yearly. There has always been something so magnetic about coves. The way they cradle one from the overwhelming enormity of the ocean beyond, muting a primordial fear. I experience these improvisations as ecosystems I'm able to inhabit for stretches of time, embodying the particular rhythms and sensorial textures within each. Music is my forever cove.

Everything you hear is created live in Ableton on a setup I've been honing for 15 years. I celebrate MIDI and computer music as an extension of self and strive to make it as expressive as any analog instrument. I was a visual artist for the first half of my life and quickly adapted those skills to composing and producing on a computer. The transition felt natural within the landscape of DAW's interfaces, especially as a synesthete. Ableton and its community of Max creators continue to surprise me with its expansiveness.

I'm forever searching for a better descriptor than looping, which feels too simple and flattened by overuse. I envision sonic loops as tangled masses of time, three-dimensional knots spinning on tilted axes, or overlapping wreaths refracting out a myriad of colors. My practice is continually refocusing my ear to what is revealed in the repetitions, searching for the fingerprint of each. I find it incredible how technology lets us manipulate time like this. Nothing on this record is quantized or locked to a universal bpm. Experiencing numerous tempos at once feels important. Recordings as mirrors. Freedom from expected (conversational) flow as we hold time for each other.' 

If you like this, why not check out previous releases from Balmat Records, as well diving into our new releases within our ambient music category.