Artist : Alexander Turnquist
Album : Flying Fantasy
Year : 2014
Genre : Instrumental
Quality : 236kbps / 44.1KHz / Joint Stereo
Source : CD
Playtime : 0h 37m
Size : 66.00mb
Label : Western Vinyl
Catalognr : WEST123
Tracklist:
01. House Of Insomniacs 7:31
02. Finding The Butterfly 5:47
03. Wildflower 6:19
04. Red Carousel 8:47
05. Flying Fantasy 6:43
06. Cloud Slicing 2:18
Releasenotes:
Often, fantasy is seen as a recourse to escapism, as an imaginary distancing
that allows a momentary glimpse of personal utopia, an ephemeral feeling
ingrained in the thought of someplace other where a negative 'I' exists. It is
in this negation, however, where fantasy comes back full circle and stops
running away, becoming a kind of hope that confronts the here and now with the
magnificence of possibility, dislocating what is permitted in favor of a million
daydreams and a million pleasures. Like music, it betrays an immateriality that
irks all architects of sound, all orderly suppositions of what it must or must
not be, rejecting any and all discourses that state its inability to do. It is
perhaps under this light that Flying Fantasy by Alexander Turnquist might be
heard, having been conceived during a period of hardship where the danger of
losing the ability to play guitar was ever-present. With tragedy always around
the corner, the album swells with emotion, no longer supported by the grand
gestures of virtuosity - always looking forward, always pulling fantasy down to
a prowess that has no end û but by a deep connection between composer and music
that relies on looking at past, future and present, that understands that what
has no end is not the physicality of it but, like almost any fantasy, its
fundamental uncertainty, the mystery with which all great art is brimming.
Unlike past albums, this music has lost its strength, and it is much more
profound for it.
It is also a collaborative effort, and the participation of musicians such as
Christopher Tignor enrich what is already a series of amazing arrangements from
Turnquist. Uncertainty, after all, leads beyond the individualism of virtuosity,
perhaps because its ultimate consequence is a constant memento mori that serves
as dissolution of the permitted, turning nods into smiles, smiles into hugs.
Flying Fantasy has a tenderness to it that is very different from the artist's
other works, and it often slows down to contemplate ambient electronics and soft
drones that appear to lie under the fingerpicking, the 'reality' of a type of
sound that knows no bounds because it is constantly evading being defined by
listeners' ears. It is here where Turnquist differs from peers like James
Blackshaw, in the sense that for Turnquist the transformation implied in
virtuosic stream-of-consciousness does not lead to a path that is
philosophically akin to minimalism (or, at least, to a conceptual maximalization
of it), but to one that is much closer to, of all things, the emotional expanse
of post-rock: every note has the potential to fill entire rooms and change them
through sheer un-definition. And what is in our times more fantastic, more
dramatically prone to utopia than post-rock? What other kind of music bursts
most easily through clear-cut hearing by means not of avant-garde notions but
less intellectually attractive and infinitely more awkward teenage visions of a
life filled with the joy of feeling? I guess that, after all, in the heart of
every sickness lies a feverish realization: there is a certain bliss to willing
for a different path, one that longs for life while never for a moment denying
the inevitability of death. A flying fantasy is a sun-drenched fantasy, and the
sun will always burn the wings away.
In the end, I'm convinced that this is Turnquist's best album to date, and it is
the one where he can no longer only be regarded as a guitar player. Sure enough,
the playing is great, but the perspective of the whole is what makes it acquire
its intention, what gives the fantasy the weight it needs to come back and
express all sorts of longings and fulfillments through each movement of the
hands, creating harmonies out of the everyday, creating passionate meanings out
of something that in principle is only technical. I cannot wait to hear what
comes next!
(David Murrieta, acloserlisten.com)
http://westernvinyl.com/artists/turnquist.html