Presenting the second thematic volume on the "Aquapelagos" series—a collection of split LPs where selected artists offer their own take into water surrounded cultures and communities—after the initial release of the Anthology compilation
Aquapelago in 2022 and the split LP
Atlantico by Lagoss & Banha da Cobra, Discrepant introduces an unique collaboration in the series in the shape of no other than two improvising giants, Mike Cooper and Pierre Bastien.
This second volume blows the lid wide open with a sound journey inspired by the equally majestic and mysterious Indian Ocean, a wide space of open ocean bounded by Africa, to the west, Asia to the north and north-west and Australia, to the south west.
From Philip Hayward and Matt Hill's liner notes: "The album opens with Return To Chagos by emphasising human presence in the oceanic space, opening with gentle percussive taps and distant looped male vocalisation that gradually come into sharper focus, layered and thickened, accompanied by thicker percussion and mouth harp. The sense of departure is taken up in Trincomalee, which lifts over the oceanic textures, opening with slow, struck and scraped metallic sounds before thick low pitched wind instrument sounds enter, oscillating around shifting microtonal frequencies. The shore returns on Side 2, with the miniature epic of Nicobar elaborated over looped 'atmos' sounds of birds and insects over which tonal, slightly distorted electric guitar lines enter before looped high pitched feedback squeals join the texture. Summoning tropical storms and the disruption to the region caused by western intrusion, strong and startling brass accents appear, melding with the looping guitar feedback, creating eeriness and a sense of alarm. Tuangku is permeated by restrained dynamics and an expressive, breathy, low pitched, animalistic melodic voice that offers intermittent and ambiguous utterances, as if rendered in a language essential to and evocative of a place and time but impossible to precisely comprehend – coming from an ocean-aquapelagic beyond that can only be glimpsed and rendered by affect." Philip Hayward and Matt Hill, March 2022
Pierre Bastien (born 1953 in Paris) is a French experimental musician, composer and musical instrument builder.
Bastien post-graduated in eighteenth-century French literature at University Paris-Sorbonne. In 1977 he built his first musical machinery. For the next ten years he has been composing for dance companies and playing with
Pascal Comelade. In the meantime he was constantly developing his mechanical orchestra. Since 1987 he concentrates on it through solo performances, sound installations, recordings and collaborations with such artists as
Pierrick Sorin, Karel Doing, Jean Weinfeld, Robert Wyatt or Issey Miyake.
Mike Cooper (born 1942) is an English guitarist. He has traced a path completely his own for more than 50 years as an international musical explorer, lap steel guitarist, singer, improviser and composer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres, stretching the possibilities of the guitar with an eclectic mix of the many styles he has practiced over the years, straddling jazz, folk, blues, Polynesian, exotica, ambient, electronica, and various experimental and improvisational approaches.
