Maya Shenfeld Announces Expansive, Kaleidoscopic New Album “Under The Sun” Out February 23rd 2024 via Thrill Jockey Records
Following live premieres at Atonal Festival, Semibreve Festival and more, Berlin-based composer Maya Shenfeld announces her expansive, kaleidoscopic new album Under the Sun out February 23rd. Composed and produced over the last two years between a studio in Berlin and on site at one of the world’s deepest marble quarries in Portugal, the album’s powerful sounds are a meditation on the natural world, wrestling with the looming threat of catastrophe and crisis, and the power of community and collaboration to enact change. Under The Sun’s slowly evolving, hypnotic electro-acoustic pieces that make canny use of repetition, space and silence to play with our very sense of time and our relationship to our surroundings.
Alongside the announcement, Shenfeld shares the mesmeric video for lead single “Interstellar”, directed by Pedro Maia. The video was shot in 2022 in the same marble quarries in Vila Vicosa, Portugal, where the album was produced. Through a cycle of electroacoustic pieces for analogue synths, woodwinds, voice, and field recordings, and imagery shot under the scorching sun of the hottest summer on record, Shenfeld and Maia explore change and repetition, deep time and the ephemeral moment, equilibrium and imminent threat. Pushing the boundaries of Super 8 film and drones shootings, Maia’s analog film processing is brought into dialogue with Shenfeld’s layered textural compositions to create an immersive radiant live audio-visual experience.
The new video is every bit as hypnotic as the arrangement. Built on these mesmeric loops, tender and alternating atmosphere. A vivid voyage that churns through these enveloping complexities and mammoth magnetism, expressive textures emerge and soar and the repetition adds such a startling effect. Another crucial release from this visionary artist.
Maya Shenfeld’s music is as illuminating as it is exquisite. Classically trained, Shenfeld has fast grown into one of contemporary music’s most exciting, vital voices. Every aspect of her dazzling, multifaceted output interrogates the way we experience the world around us – be it solo microtonal explorations, site-specific installations or commissions for leading New Music ensembles. Under the Sun provides a daring expansion of that musical vision.
Shenfeld will perform music from Under the Sun throughout 2023 and 2024.
Upcoming Tour Dates:
Nov. 10 – Leipzig, DE – Heilandskirche w/ FUJITA [tickets]
Dec. 2 – Bratislava, SK – NEXT Festival ^
Feb. 10 – Baden, CH – OOAM Festival (solo set)
Feb. 23 – Berlin, DE – Silent Green (Under the Sun album release show) ^ [tickets]
Mar. 2 – Graz, AT – Elevate Festival ^
^ live A/V set with Pedro Maia
Maya Shenfeld – Under the Sun tracklist
A guide for the perplexed
Tehom
Geist
Interstellar
Light, refracted
On its rounds the wind returns
Sedek
Analemma
Pre-order Maya Shenfeld’s Under the Sun:
https://thrilljockey.com/products/under-the-sun
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