In A Landscape T-shirt + CD
Release date: 6 September, 2024
This bundle contains:
- In A Landscape CD
- In A Landscape T-Shirt - XS
This Bundle Contains:
- In A Landscape Exclusive LP
- In A Landscape T-shirt
Max Richter’s ninth solo album – the first to be written and recorded at his serene new studio in rural Oxfordshire – is a fleeting self-portrait of a musician in constant motion. In A Landscape is a record about “reconciling polarities”, as Richter puts it, bringing together the electronic and the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living.
The 19-track album began life in summer 2022 as a natural counterweight to the urgent political tenor of his previous projects. Shifting focus to Richter’s immediate surroundings, In A Landscape marks out a psychic space in which to meditate on the present while recognising a lifetime of artistic influence, from Bach and Purcell to the poetry of Keats, Wordsworth and Anne Carson. “It’s me having a look around, trying to examine where I'm at,” he suggests, “like a memoir of the present moment.”
In A Landscape is his first solo album recorded at Studio Richter Mahr, the minimalist, eco-conscious creative retreat designed and operated by Richter and his wife, visual artist Yulia Mahr. “The whole building is like an instrument,” he says. “There's an element of exploring the capabilities of the building, how all the spaces sound, all the textures, and trying to dicover the fingerprint it has.”
The creative process was deliberately minimal, with Richter writing notation by hand and restricting his palette to just a few colours: string quintet, grand piano, Hammond organ and MiniMoog, plus tape delays, vocoders and reverbs. “I’m always looking for ways to get to the essence of things, to get to the simplest version of everything.”
Tracklisting:
They Will Shade Us With Our Wings
Life Study I
A Colour Field (Holocene)
Life Study II
And Some Will Fall
Life Study III
The Poetry of Earth (Geophony)
Life Study IV
Only Silent Words
Life Study V
Late and Soon
Life Study VI
Andante
Life Study VII
A time mirror (Biophony)
Life Study VIII
Love Song (after JE)
Life Study IX
Movement, Before All Flowers
Reviews
“A welcome ode to the simple act of listening. Inject it into your veins if you must – or just lie back and let it wash over you” - Clash - 8/10
“In the Richter tradition, In a Landscape is elegiac and resigned yet quietly triumphant” - Pitchfork.
“[A] beautiful album, which blends acoustic & electronic, sprinkles in field recordings and serves as a stock take for one of modern music’s most eclectic & exciting composers” - Rolling Stone UK
“Some of Richter’s best work” - SPIN
“Richter has consistently redefined what music with classical roots might be capable of in a digital age” - The Economist