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Performance
Credits
Lead Vocals: Eda Maxym Backup Vocals: Eda Maxym, Esmerelda Kent, Eszike Tarics Bicycle Spokes: Stephen Kent Click Stick: Stephen Kent Didjeridu (Didgeridoo): Stephen Kent Drums: Stephen Kent Guitar: Stephen Kent Ngoma Drums: Stephen Kent Percussion: Stephen Kent Shakers: Stephen Kent Taped Atmosphere: Stephen Kent Drums: John Loose Frame Drums: John Loose Multi-Ethnic Percussion: John Loose Tablas: John Loose Digital Atmosphere: Simon Tassano Drums: Matt Butler Djembe: Suru Alto Clarinet: Beth Custer Bass Clarinet: Beth Custer Clarinet: Beth Custer Bass: Nancy Kaspar Double Bass: Nancy Kaspar Chimes: Eddy Sayer Drums: Eddy Sayer Suling (Balinese Bamboo Flute): Kenneth Newby Drums: Geoffrey Gordon Pedal Harp: Barbara Imhoff Bicycle Spokes: Rachel Clare Rebab: Peter Whitehead
Production
Credits
Producer: Stephen Kent Producer: Dave Nelson Producer: Simon Tassano Recording Engineer: Dave Nelson Mixing Engineer: Simon Tassano at Emeryville Recording Studios, Emeryville, California Recording Engineer: Simon Tassano at Emeryville Recording Studios, Emeryville, California Recording Engineer: Christian Jones at Mobius Music, San Francisco, California Recording Engineer: Dave Nelson at Poolside, San Francisco, California Mixing Engineer: Simon Tassano at Coast Studios, San Francisco, California Recording Engineer: Simon Tassano at Mesa Studio, Sebastopol, California Recording Engineer: Simon Tassano at Elephant Studios, London,
Liner
Notes
I remember the first time I heard Stephen Kent. In 1989, synthesist Steve Roach sat me down in his living room and put on 'Somewhere', the first album by Stephen's group at the time, Lights In A Fat City. Surging from the speakers was a tribal throb of percussion, synthesizers and a sound forged in a primordial spirit. It was the didgeridoo, played by Stephen Kent.
The didgeridoo is an instrument from Australia's Aboriginal tribes that's made from tree branches hollowed out by termites. There are no valves, not even holes, just straight, albeit elaborately decorated, tube. You blow into it somewhat like a trumpet, creating a fundamental low-tone that is splintered into complex overtones. In Stephen Kent's hands, it emits earth shuddering growls, primal squalls and poignant pleas. In the didgeridoo is the first wail as consciousness was born on the earth.
Originally from England, Stephen Kent came across the didgeridoo while working in Australia as the music director of Circus Oz, a Cirque du Soleil-style performing troupe. Stephen became entranced by Aboriginal culture saying that 'the energy of the land sang Aborigine to me.'
Although he spent several months in the outback visiting Aboriginal settlements, he had no intention of simply replicating their ancestral sound. Instead, he returned to England and formed the techno-tribal Lights in a Fat City. Traveling the globe he landed in San Francisco where he met more musicians with roots in ancient music and branches reaching out into the modern world. Clarinetist Beth Custer, percussionist John Loose and Kenneth Newby with his Indonesian winds and percussion, joined Kent to form Trance Mission. They mixed cultures and technologies in a hallucinogenic swirl risen from the dance floors of the early rave music scene. Other groups and collaborations followed, including Beasts of Paradise, with Kent's partner, singer Eda Maxym.
The didgeridoo is the core of Stephen Kent's sound. When he plays, it extends from his mouth like another appendage. But the didg isn't where his musicality ends. Family Tree traces textural drone works and ecstatic dances fired in didgeridoo rhythms, mixed in a psychedelic crucible and baked in the imagination of Stephen Kent.
-John Diliberto
(John Diliberto is the producer & host of 'Echoes', a daily music soundscape heard on over 135 Public Radio International stations.)
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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