Thunder (ECM)
Stephan Micus
Released January 2023
DownBeat Five-Star Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mXUvnrfhRG52T7CHKhrZQizMGu-UUw3To
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About:
Stephan Micus’ new album is a tribute and offering to thunder gods around the world. As a natural phenomenon so dramatic and alarming, it’s clear that cultures everywhere would create their gods to placate lightening and thunder.
However Micus’ original inspiration wasn’t the thunder gods, but an instrument. Since 1973 he’s been travelling extensively in the Himalayas, from the Hindu Kush, Ladakh and Zanskar in the west to Eastern Nepal and Sikkim in the east. “The great attraction first of all was the mountains and the dramatic landscapes, but a highlight always was spending time in the Tibetan monasteries. Whenever I could I would listen to the ritual and ceremonial music. Music that seems timeless – both ancient and modern – at the same time.”
The most striking instruments in these Tibetan monastic ceremonies are the long dung chen trumpets, growling as a deep fundamental tone behind the most significant and profound ceremonies. This ritual trumpet is the inspiration behind Stephan’s 25th solo album for ECM, a compelling statement about our reaction to the power of nature, our inability to control it and desire to placate it.
Stephan Micus has travelled the world studying and collecting instruments and playing them in his own compositions. When he wanted to learn the Tibetan dung chen trumpet, it proved surprisingly difficult. He finally found a monastery in Bodnath, a Buddhist centre in Kathmandu, Nepal where the monks agreed to teach him. “They said that it is usually only taught to monks and that I am possibly the first non-Tibetan to learn and play it.”
The dung chen tracks are the most dramatic on the album and form the opening, centre, and closing, like a repeated pattern in a mandala. The central track is dedicated to the Tibetan Buddhist thunder god Vajrapani – usually depicted in images or statues with the the ‘vajra’ (lightning bolt} in his right hand. “I wanted to combine the dung chen with the nohkan – both instruments played in orchestras far from the Western understanding of music and both influenced by Buddhism.” The nohkan is the flute used in Japanese noh theatre. Although gyaling shawms are part of Tibetan Buddhist rituals ensembles, it seems surprising that flutes are not used.
In Tibetan music, the dung chen only plays a couple of low drone notes, but on this album Stephan makes it do agile horn calls. And he combines it with a Siberian instrument, the ki un ki, a two metre long stalk through which the player inhales, rather than blows. Closely miked, this sounds remarkably trumpet like. It’s amazing how these two contrasting instruments sound so appropriate together.
Micus first saw the ki un ki in Munich when Siberian groups toured Europe in the 1980s. He wanted to buy the instrument, but the player couldn’t part with it till the tour was over. Afterwards, the Udegey (one of the many indigenous peoples of Siberia) left two instruments for Stephan in Berlin as a present. “The ki un ki is just a stalk growing in the forest. Once cut at the bottom, the instrument is ready to play. When my first composition with it was finished, I had a strong wish to visit the Udegey to see how they lived and especially to see the plant growing in the Siberian forest. But it was in the time of communism and I could not get a permit. Finally in 2014, I was able to visit the Udegey around 200 km east of Khabarovsk, almost near the Pacific, and thank them for their present.” The only other time Stephan has used the ki un ki is on his 1990 Darkness and Light album when one reviewer wrote: “it sounds as if Miles Davies has finally gone really mad”.
“All these instruments have their own stories – how I was able to find them or how they were able to find me”, says Micus. “It’s the personal stories of the instruments that help give me the energy to create music with them. If I could just buy these instruments online from Amazon, it would never be the same.” The Himalayan horse bells he is using come from an adventurous trek in Zanskar.
Another instrument Micus is using for the first time is the kaukas – a five string harp or lyre of the San people in Southern Africa, “it’s very aesthetically beautiful looking somehow like a sailing boat, one of the most archaic instruments on our planet. It took me a long time to find the kaukas as it is, like so many other instruments, disappearing and hardly being played any more. I finally found one in a San settlement in Nambia”. Its soft, metallic plucking joins the sapeh from Borneo and accompanies Stephan’s voice on A Song for Armazi and A Song for Ishkur (the thunder gods of Georgia and ancient Mesopotamia). Nine thunder gods are praised with instruments from Tibet, India, Burma, Borneo, Siberia, Japan, South America, Gambia, Namibia, Sweden and Bavaria.
Track Listing:
1. A Song For Thor 6:39
2. A Song For Raijin 4:21
3. A Song For Armazi 7:27
4. A Song For Shango 4:53
5. A Song For Vajrapani 6:51
6. A Song For Leigong 6:27
7. A Song For Zeus 3:46
8. A Song For Ihskur 5:12
9. A Song For Perun 5:15
Personnel:
Stephan Micus: Frame Drum, Dung Chen, Burmese Temple Bells, Himalayan Horse Bells, Ki un Ki, Bass Zither, Bowed Dinding, Kyeezee, Shakuhachi, Sarangi, Nyckelharpa, Kaukas, Sapeh, Voice, Nokhan
Recorded 2020-2022, MCM Studios
Producer: Manfred Eicher
Recorded and Mixed by Stephan Micus
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Cover Art: Eduard Micus
Design: Sascha Kleis
Review:
Recorded from 2020 to 2022, Thunder reflects Micus’s fascination with Tibetan monasteries and the liturgical Buddhist music their monks play. The “star” of this aggressive, exciting album is the dung chen, a ritual trumpet more than 13 feet long. It makes quite a noise. So do the South African storm drum, the Japanese bamboo flute known as the shakuhachi, the ki un ki (a handmade wooden flute one plays by inhaling) and kyeezee, triangular bronze chimes used in the temples of Burma. Micus played those instruments and more to record his nine homages to thunder gods, spiritual figures one finds across belief systems. Each Thunder segment has its own character, and each tells a different story. This narrative music clears paths fresh to most Western ears. The longest track is “A Song For Armazi,” the thunder god of Georgia, the former Soviet republic. It starts with a plucked sarangi rumble, sounding like a giant bass bouncing around a cathedral ceiling. The melody develops across an expanded scale. What a way to cap a voyage to the heart of mythology.
Carlo Wolff (DownBeat)
