Stretched Landscape #1 (2002)
CDR available from Burning Shed
Burning Shed CDRs are burnt to order and packaged in a stylish rubber stamped cardboard sleeve with card inlay
Download this album in 256k MP3 or CD quality FLAC format
category: Ambient / Soundscape
length 57:30
composed, performed, produced and mixed by michael peters
piano recorded in peter wetzler's church in kingston, ny
bowed guitar, various field recordings, and digital treatments done at home in kürten, germany
thanks to: bernhard wöstheinrich, markus reuter, peter wetzler, rasmus ekman
This music came to life when I needed a background soundtrack for an exhibition of my computer graphics. I wanted something unobtrusive but it should of course sound interesting to the interested listener - functional ambient music in the tradition of Satie and Eno. I only used found materials - recordings of crickets from my backyard ... some sustained guitar loops ... and some sparse piano chords that I had played and recorded back in 1986, in an abandoned church in Kingston / New York that belonged to Peter Wetzler, a composer I had visited on my 1986 USA trip. The chords were nice though not enough for a one-hour ambient work, but then I found a wonderful timestretching setting in Granulab, my favorite granular synthesis software, and now the piano chords stretch out for minutes, shimmering with myriads of tiny microharmonics. Magical!
Stretched Landscape #1 - excerpt (6:26 min, 6.2 MB)
- CD Cover
Album description by Burning Shed:
"A continuous suite of processed piano and textures, German composer Michael Peters (primarily, a guitarist) has produced a beguiling work worthy of comparison with the best of Brian Eno's Ambient output. Evocative, emotional and chilled"
Review in WIRE magazine:
"A single 57-minute surge that unfurls via waves of ghost voices, spare, nodding piano shapes, sustained guitar und coloured field recordings populated by bullfrogs, birds and the first rays of the sun as it breaks the horizon, Stretched Landscape #1 began life as an adjunct to one of German composer and guitarist Michael Peters's installations.
Although ostensibly modelled on Brian Eno's site-specific work, Stretched Landscape #1 more than transcends its roots thanks to the use of some grainy, sawtoothed sonorities and a recording quality that's punk enough to impact on the guts as well as the third eye. It is at once reminiscent of the primitive minimalism of early Richard Young's sides like Advent, the cavernous drone work of New Zealand Improv units like Surface Of The Earth and K-Group, and the solarised ensemble sound of the Makoto Kawabata-affiliated Toulouse-based group Ueh, as well as earlier progenitors of organic, minimal sonics like Robert Fripp and Tangerine Dream. But the sound remains very much the product of the world-straddling reach of Peters's own fingers."
- color version of the b/w CD Inlay
Christopher Orczy:
"I have had this album for over a month now, and not a day has gone past where either I have listened to it, or a segment has popped into my head. This is classic. pure ambient material, and one that time will prove to be the masterpiece that it is. "
John Serdy:
"I have heard this piece on SOMA FM's Streaming Internet Radio station Drone Zone several times now, and it never fails to brighten my workday. Thank you for creating such a wonderful and thoughtful work and contributing it to the world. "
