Codex
is the debut album from Ghost Harmonic (John Foxx, Ben Edwards (Benge)
and Diana Yukawa). This album will be released on the 11th of May, 2015.
Ghost Harmonic are solo violinist Diana Yukawa, electronic pioneer
John Foxx and his collaborator in John Foxx And The Maths - Benge.
They’ve been working at Benge’s MemeTune Studios in Shoreditch, London
over the last couple of years, creating the Ghost Harmonic sound - a
combination of the purity of Diana Yukawa’s violin with the complexity
and textured noise of analogue machinery.
As Benge puts it, ‘there is something very satisfying about combining
Diana’s beautiful 17th Century violin with a subsonic tone-blast from a
Moog Modular.’
‘It was fairly open,’ says John Foxx, ‘but I guess the underlying
intention was we all wanted to see what might happen when a classically
trained musician engaged with some of the possibilities a modern
recording studio can offer – eg multi-tracking, vast notional spaces,
long echoes, looping, retuning, layering, synthesisers, sound effects,
vintage and cheap equipment etc. Also we wanted to improvise, since that
seldom happens in the classical world. Bach wouldn’t take any student
who couldn’t improvise over a given theme but things seem to have gone
in reverse since then.
Diana was a welcome revelation after all that. She picked up themes
immediately and took them off in all directions. Very exhilarating.’
‘I felt there was a really good flow between us all’, explains Diana.
‘You never know what to expect in the beginning, creating a new dynamic
between three different people but I think it’s our different
backgrounds and influences that made everything come together with such
fluidity.’
Using a tape delay system, Yukawa was able to play along to her own
parts, layering the sound. Any live ‘background noise’ was treated as
part of the recording. ‘The spaces in between the musical notes are
often overlooked in modern recording,’ says Benge. ‘It was these ideas
that we wanted to capture on this record. The ‘ghosts’ in the studio
that we were listening to for inspiration. The name came out of that.’
John Foxx: ‘I noticed an interesting effect when multi-tracking into
long or complex reverbs – certain harmonics would be suppressed or
enhanced and previously unheard ones would emerge from the miasma. This
can be really beautiful and it’s now what I most listen for – I know a
piece is going somewhere new when this sort of thing begins to occur.’
‘Benge’s studio is so full of character that the energy of that is embedded into the album’, states Diana.
The five tracks on Codex are all linked into one continuous piece of
music – by turns elegant, dark and gently blissful. Some of the music
recalls the overgrown cities of Delvaux and Ernst, especially ‘A Green
Thought In A Green Shade’ and ‘The Pleasure Of Ruins’. ‘Dispersed
Memory’ has a strange, alien atmosphere; the dreamlike languor and
melting time of the opening music switching into something more isolated
and chilling. ‘When We Came To This Shore’ is serene but eerie – like
being pulled by the tides to a submerged city or underwater forest.
‘Codex’ closes the album with a sense of stillness and faded beauty.
So what of the future? ‘Diana turned out to be excellent at improvising
and zippy as Higgs Boson at negotiating any sort of technology. So
there’s still lots of territory to explore.’
Further details - including a full track-listing - will follow.
For more infomation visit;
www.ghostharmonic.com
www.dianayukawa.com
Diana to Release New EP this December
