Where ambient, cinematic and classical music meet to homogenize into something affecting on many different levels, Patina, the new album by rising composer Peter Gregson excels. The album which explores themes of absence is the first ever specifically recorded and designed for Dolby Atmos audio. Patina was mixed at the Abbey Road studios, and it's out on Deutsche Grammophon.
Gregson comments on the entirety of Patina: “I didn’t want to write an album where each track finishes with a full stop. I needed there to be space in the music for the listener to bring the music into their world, to make their own decisions and have their own response... Nothing was recorded in big lush rooms, everything is very intimate and I didn’t want it to sound like a Classical Record. I wanted to treat my cello as a voice - singing these modern ‘songs without words’.
“All the ingredients have to tell the same story - so much of this composition is held in the created space - the actual elements are as simple as can be, melody, harmony, bass line, but using the room, finding spaces, using harmonisers and vocoders and plate reverbs and gated reverbs and old tape… these are all found more commonly in the sort of electronic music that is permeating pop at the moment - I suppose this record is an intersection where electronic music meets classical music.”
The minimal, yet, majestic cello based composition, Cluster, is a work of class, on both the musical and the visual fronts.
Gregson remarks: “I write these records chronologically, starting at track 1 and working through until the end, but this is a melody I’ve had in my mind for a while. When I started to write this piece, it kept coming back into my mind, nagging to be involved.”
The captivating video which comes with the piece was directed by Arran Shearing, shot in British Columbia one late winter. The director comments: “I tired to create a soft meditation on nature, urbanization, and the aesthetic found in both. Peter’s music seems to take all these elements from the creative process that other people ignore or disregard and brings them to the forefront in really exciting ways.”
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Artist photo by Paul Husband
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