Richard Reed Parry / Susie Ibarra – Heart and Breath: Rhythm and Tone Fields (OFF AIR)

Cross polinated by American minimalism, global post-minimalism and other recent trends in Western music based on the repetitive of ingeniously constructed motifs set in offbeat loops, Richard Reed Parry’s approach is linked this time to the super rich percussive language of the highly gifted American musician Susie Ibarra, who is recognized in international contemporary music circles as totally admitting improvisation as a form of composition. The Montreal bassist, multi-instrumentalist and the percussionist are launching this recording which coincides with the highly publicized return to the stage of the group Arcade Fire, of which he is a founding member. But this personal project of Richard Reed Parry has little to do with the pop side of his career, as is the case with his previous recordings. The posture here is contemplative, linear, calm, meditative, timeless. Strings, keyboards, percussion, bells, human voice, evocations of balafons and gamelans, all those elements feed a rich and textured continuum. The artists have cleared, ploughed and seeded these hypnotic fields, often close to the sounds of nature, which one flies over without taking one’s head off. Ibarra and Parry also say they draw inspiration from their heart and breathing rhythms to carry each track and build a life force illustrated by sound. The project began as a bank of sounds for the Splice creative platform, and continued with an organization of ideas contributed to the bank. Would you like to open an account?