Product Description
2 Eye of the Day
3 Essence
4 Dreams of Blue
5 Mystical Passions
6 Shadowy Allure
Chain DLK: "Phippen’s flutes – a fascinating array from Edo-period shakuhachi to Native American styles – do not merely echo nature; they commune with it, suspending us in the weightless wonder of Earth’s raw voice."
Grammy-nominated recording artist Peter Phippen says, “Earth music is actually space music.” On Earthly, his sixth album for Projekt, Phippen’s mysterious and introspective flute is accompanied by award-winning Norwegian composer Lunde, Jr.’s electronics and processing. The two musicians weave traditional flutes from across time with the darker sounds of nature and subtle electronics to create six long-form tracks of haunting, emotive, transcendental world music. It’s an album of translucent panoramas of perception, illustrating the shimmering sonic frequencies of all that is Mother Earth.
Exposé wrote about their previous collaboration, “[Music] a listener can easily get lost within, in fact one where a listener will want to get lost in pure introspective meditation with the breath of life flowing through various flutes of the world while a backdrop of gentle synths and tuned percussion guides the listener through the inward spiral journey to sacred worlds where time seems to stand still.”
Listen to the earth.
Frozen winter soundworlds
Sunlit melodies
Eerie cries of night
Woodland serenades
Thunder, wolves, and wind
Nature’s sounds are earth music.
Earth resides in space.
Space is silent
Earth’s orchestra sings pure beauty
Tone poems resonante from a living planet
Earth’s song has no end, seasons come and go.
Listen to the earth.
Hear, feel, and wonder
Earth resides in space.
Space is silent
Earth music is space music in our observable universe
One spirit evermore
Nature’s sounds are earth music.
Listen to the earth.
Gigi Risberg Stafne, natural medicine writer, educator, and clinician at Green Wisdom School of Natural and Botanical Medicine writes:
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CREDITS:
Peter Phippen: Edo-period shakuhachi flutes, Olwell bamboo flutes, antique bansuri, contemporary shakuhachi, antique alto bamboo flute, alto recorder, Native American style flute.
Ivar Lunde, Jr.: Synthesizers, string bass, drum, sound samples, gong.
John Downing: Frozen Minnesota lake recording
Concept: Peter Phippen
Produced by: Ivar Lunde, Jr and Peter Phippen
Recorded, arranged, mixed, and mastered by: Ivar Lunde, Jr. at Skyline Studio, Eau Claire, WI.
Projekt release: October 11, 2024
SHORT:
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
With his collection of dreamy and introspective traditional flutes, Phippen once again joins forces with Norwegian composer Ivar Lunde Jr., whose electronics and processing are the perfectly matched accompaniment for their other-worldly endeavors. The first collaboration was 2022’s Galaxies, which also included Rahbi Crawford (playing crystal singing bowls), which was followed a year later by Primordial Forest. Lunde’s input to the collaboration is primarily in a support role enhancing the focal point of Phippen’s lead as he wanders through various melodic developments, the support via subtle synthesizer voicings, percussives and sound processing. Throughout we are clearly in meditation territory, with three of the tracks cracking the ten minute mark and two more stopping just shy of it, only the opening title track stops at a succinct seven minutes and some change, so there are plenty of deep starlit canyons for a listener to get lost within.
“Dreams of Blue” is especially intoxicating, with Phippen making his flutes bark like a didgeridoo at numerous points along its path. On some of the cuts there are clearly two or more wind instruments playing, as well as gentle cadences of hand drums, bells, synthesizers and field recordings as needed for support. The more one listens, the more all of these subtle sonic details come to light; the closer “Shadowy Allure” has a beautiful shimmering backdrop of sounds, while the wood flutes in the foreground are intentionally more subtle, while “Essence,” at eleven minutes, leads off with a floating synth dreamscape as the mesmerizing backdrop for multiple flutes at play. Every cut on Earthly presents a mystical and passionate world of engaging sounds, introspective and masterfully crafted. -Peter Thelen
Reviews Editor –
From Chain DLK
In Earthly, Peter Phippen and Ivar Lunde, Jr. invite us into the hallowed terrain where time stands still, and sound flows as freely as breath. Imagine wandering into a forest not bound by gravity, where each step reveals the world’s hidden music, resonating through icy lakes, ancient bamboo, and the quiet sigh of distant, shadowed landscapes. It’s a journey that isn’t just heard; it’s felt in the deep hum of our bones, reverberating with a primordial familiarity. Phippen’s flutes – a fascinating array from Edo-period shakuhachi to Native American styles – do not merely echo nature; they commune with it, suspending us in the weightless wonder of Earth’s raw voice.
Phippen, a Grammy-nominated flutist and self-professed space music devotee, finds his perfect counterpoint in Norwegian-born composer Ivar Lunde Jr., whose deft touch on synths and textures enhances the album’s depth. Together, they weave soundscapes that are as vast as the heavens and as intimate as a single, dew-dropped leaf. Lunde doesn’t just accompany the flute; he cocoons it, blending field recordings from frozen Minnesota lakes and shimmering ambient layers into something that feels less like a composition and more like a natural phenomenon. The sound flows as if time itself had been melted down and forged anew, forming six expansive, long-form tracks.
The album opens with the title track, “Earthly”, where flutes and synthesizers blend like fog lifting in dawn’s first light. Each note feels like a revelation, as though the instruments themselves had patiently waited for millennia to finally speak. In “Eye of the Day” and “Essence”, we drift deeper, meeting sunlit melodies and eerie nocturnal whispers in equal measure. It’s a little unsettling, like being lulled by a lullaby sung by wolves and wind. And yet, it’s irresistible. By the time we reach “Dreams of Blue”, we’ve left solid ground entirely, immersed in a dreamlike sea that laps gently at our consciousness.
But what truly elevates Earthly is the subtle undercurrent of irony in its conception. Here we have Phippen and Lunde conjuring Earth’s raw voice, which humankind has often ignored, defaced, or taken for granted. And yet, here we are, gathered in awe to witness its splendor in music, as if to remind ourselves of all we’re missing. In Earthly, nature becomes sacred and sentient, humbling the listener with each note, yet playfully ironic – a gentle nudge for us to wonder why we need an album to remember what we should have never forgotten.
In this age of disconnection (with nature, but often with mind and soul), Earthly doesn’t just invite us back to nature; it compels us to embrace it with a reverence that is long overdue. To listen to this album is to breathe with the earth itself, to hold in each sound the simple, profound truth that we are – and have always been – part of this timeless song. -Vito Camarretta