Dreaming In Gamelan is a brand new launch by musicians Invoice Brennan and Andy McNeill, who mix their experience — each as composers, McNeill at residence within the studio, and Brennan as a very long time member of Evergreen Membership Modern Gamelan — on the album.
The album, an unbiased launch that drops October 24, is the end result of a journey that noticed it start because the rating for a documentary on the CBC community again in 2001. Subsequently, a collection of music from the movie noticed a stay efficiency in Massey Corridor. The fabric has advanced and developed through the ensuing interval, and combines the traditions of West Javanese music with up to date experimental, jazz, and ambient modes.
Canadian electrical violinist Hugh Marsh provides to the instrumental combine, and he additionally co-composed one of many tracks with the duo. Marsh has beforehand labored with innovators like Jon Hassell, Joseph Shabason, and Loreena McKennitt.
Stay instrumentation and electronica come collectively on this distinctive music.
We spoke to Invoice Brennan and Andy McNeill concerning the venture.
Invoice Brennan & Andy McNeill: The Interview
“I used to be approached to do that rating for this documentary,” Andy remembers.
The producer had seen Invoice performing with Evergreen, and thought it might make for an fascinating soundtrack for a documentary on nanotechnology and biotech.
McNeill says arising with the monitor titles, equivalent to Tunnels of Mild, Morning Beams, Cloud Forest, and the title monitor, Dreaming in Gamelan, impressed a type of overarching narrative for the album over time.
“This entire journey concept, and dreaming,” Andy says, “the cinematic components are simply inherent to my strategy — numerous textures, numerous house.”
“Loads of what we do,” Brennan says, “I might say Andy extra so, is on the planet of telling a narrative by way of music.” He notes that’s in distinction to telling the story through lyrics.
“It being a documentary about the way forward for drugs and the way the trade was wanting at the moment,” he says, “[it was] ahead considering.”
He loved the concept of writing inside that idea, to reinforce the concepts offered, but additionally depart room for folks to pursue their very own ideas about what it means.
Growing the Music
“I feel that the items began taking up their very own lives within the years afterwards,” McNeill says. “Some are fairly intact from the unique.” Different tracks, lots of which started as brief cues of a minute or two for the motion on display, have been expanded and additional developed. “Grooves added.”
“The primary session, we had every week along with the devices, Invoice and I, improvising,” Andy says.
The violin was added later, together with over dubs.
“Definitely, a few of our items got here from improvising, some have been by way of composed,” Brennan says.
As he factors out, Indonesian music usually incorporates improvisation in a method that isn’t not like the practices of Western jazz; i.e. there’s a construction, with particular sections the place musicians improvise. The improvisation itself usually follows a conventional sample.
“The periods that we had have been based mostly on improvisation,” Invoice provides.
Style?
Between them, the pair play a wide range of conventional and trendy devices, together with boning, panerus, kendang, jengglong, peking, gongs, percussion, keyboards, and vibraphone, with McNeill including electronics, bass, and numerous remedies.
“What are we going to name this? I like that,” Andy says. “[It’s] seemingly uncategorizable. Folks with open ears, it’s for them.”
“I consider this music as being in that ambient world,” Brennan presents.
The digital and acoustic components mix collectively seamlessly.
“I feel possibly the rationale that it connects nicely is that the electronics are constructed across the acoustic components,” Andy provides.
He explains that the ultimate model contains granular processed variations of the unique recordings, quite than added layers of synthesizer. The final monitor, Reverie, is a 10-minute lengthy ambient journey.
“It’s totally manufactured from every part you’ve heard earlier than,” MacNeill explains, “folded, manipulated, processed. On a second pay attention, you’d most likely choose up on these issues.”
“It turns into a part of the composition. It’s a compositional software,” Brennan says. “I don’t assume it’s essentially an addition.”
Dreaming In Gamelan by Invoice Brennan and Andy McNeill
Why Launch the Music Now?
“I feel we all the time felt after recording it, that there’s one thing right here,” Brennan says. That’s what led for the stay efficiency at Massey Corridor by the Evergreen Membership.
They started to think about the music past the concept of a soundtrack.
“A collection of nicely fashioned items of music,” Invoice calls it. In the course of the twenty years that the music was brewing, Brennan moved to the east coast. It was a matter of merely having the time this previous summer season to work on it.
The music’s lengthy growth has some benefits, as McNeill factors out.
“Having the posh of years to take heed to them, and work out what to do to make them totally developed,” Andy says, “the music is the higher for it.”
The venture has additionally bolstered their bonds as musical collaborators.
“We’re searching for one other excuse to work collectively,” McNeill says. “It’s undoubtedly a gathering of two worlds, and two minds.”
“I realized so much from Andy working collectively,” Brennan provides.
- Dreaming in Gamelan might be accessible on October 24, 2025; you’ll be able to preorder/stream/purchase [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a inventive writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
