Erik Truffaz
Ever since his appearance on the contemporary jazz scene in the early 1990s, and all the more since Dawn (1998), his breakthrough recording for the Blue Note label, Swiss born Erik Truffaz has never ceased to explore new sounds with various formations, experimenting and fusing his music with rock, hip-hop, drum’n’bass or electronica.
There was a generation or two of trumpeters who picked up ideas from the meteoric musical trajectory of Miles Davis and developed them after Miles himself had moved on. Palle Mikkelborg and Enrico Rava are good examples, but the Swiss-born Frenchman Érik Truffaz is one of the most consistently creative. He just can’t help sounding beautiful and lyrical, whatever the setting. Alyn Shipton – BBC Review
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Murcof
“Soundscape” is a recurrent term when it comes to describing Murcof’s music. Born in Mexico in 1970 and now based in Barcelona, Fernando Corona (aka Murcof) is a minimalist electronica artist influenced by the music of classical composers like Arvo Pärt, Gyorgy Ligeti or Henryk Górecki. Assembling orchestral samples, glitch noises, layered mixes, basslines and beats, Murcof creates beautiful textured and atmospheric sound collages.
“Mexico’s singular landscape is submerged in Murcof’s sound” notes the Leaf Label’s introduction to the artist’s 2002 release Martes. Or as Murcof remarks himself, discussing the inspiration behind his 2009 release Cosmos, the music
“basically comes from that state of wonder and mystery and joy and humbling that you get when you let your mind wander freely on a starry night, away from the contamination of city lights. From the realization that there’s an infinite universe outside the man-made world and how silly this latter one seems in comparison.” The Leaf Label
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Mexico
“I discovered Murcof’s music when leaving Tecate city. His friend José Guizar, the tour driver, played his latest album in the car. We were driving through an incredible landscape made of blood and gold which is typical of South California. When I returned to Europe, I recorded a few trumpet lines on one of his projects, which I had never done before. This is how our collaboration began.” Erik Truffaz
Interesting to note how a lyrical trumpet player initiates a remote collaboration with a minimalist electronica artist after listening to the latter’s “soundscapes” while driving through the landscape that inspired the music in the first place.
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