Speculative Memories


Yair Elazar Glotman is a Berlin based composer and experimental sound artist. Having trained in classical double bass and electroacoustic composition, he uses these traditions in combination with improvisation, with particular focus on analogue processes, to create textural and spatial works. In recent years, Glotman has been known for his notable pieces in film and media composition, working closely with influententual late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson on acclaimed titles such as Mandy (2018) and Last and First Men (2019), which he co-composed and produced the score.

Speculative Memories is an introspective dive into memory. Stemming from Glotman's childhood memories, the album is the most personal piece Glotman has ever composed. The project could be pinpointed back to exploring specific memories from his time growing up in a small village in the Galilee, from the perspective of a now Berlin citizen. However, this idea grew into something much more abstract, traversing into the notion that memories are a dynamic, ever evolving piece of material, shaped by time and perspective. Glotman explains, “Memories are elastic forms, so that focusing only on its narrative content can miss the point, which changes over time and perspective. The memory’s essence can shift when you look at it again.” Rather than looking back at a memory by a series of events, Yair began to immerse himself in the abstract feelings attached to these moments, triggered by elements such as taste, smell and sound with some of these moods being dictated by both the present and the past, influenced by time, perspective, relationships and lived experiences. From this idea, Glotman began to create entire worlds, moods and mindsets for each individual track, made from one small moment in time.

Speculative Memories creates a deep, atmospheric world.. From moments of enchanting, swirling strings, chilling vocals, to ambient drone and piercing contrabass, Glotman has a flair for striking such raw emotion, without having to use a single word. The album also features field recordings by Yair of sounds that had made him reminisce, such as the sounds of jackals and dogs howling from his hometown: “every night after sunset, jackals would spend ten minutes howling to each other and all the dogs would bark back”.

On this record, every moment in time and specific sound has been carefully crafted by Glotman and his collaborators as Speculative Memories is made up of varying processes of tape manipulation and analogue tape layering. As he explains: “decisions are made in correlation between time and lived experience. When you make electronic music on DAW, the perspective of time shifts, because you can make a one hour track in two minutes. However, using a tape as I did in this album, if you want to make a ten minute piece with four layers, , you know it will take forty minutes, which adds personal value to the process, or at least makes you think about the value inherent in that time spent. Time gives perspective on whether an idea is worth exploring”. Thus making this project, a recorded performance and documentation of the decision-making process above anything else. The album's accompanying sample library follows a similar approach and techniques.

Speculative Memories is due out October 27th via SA Recordings. The release of this album comes alongside a Spitfire Audio sample library. 

credits

releases October 27, 2022

All music composed, produced and mixed by Yair Elazar Glotman.

Musicians:
Sara Fors - Vocals
Viktor Orri Árnason - Violin, Viola
Mats Erlandsson - Bowed Guitar
Haraldur Þrastarson - Trombone
Yair Elazar Glotman - Contrabass
Mephisto Wunderbar - Tape Manipulation

Mastered by Bo Kondren at Calyx Mastering, Berlin.
Additional Stem Mixing by Tobias Ober at Bonello Studio, Berlin. Recorded at the Mephisto Wunderbar Sound Studio, Berlin.
Cover design by Dennis McInnes & George Edge Photography by Shuka Glotman.

Dedicated to Tami & Shuka Special thanks to Adela, Mats, Sara, James and EMS Elektronmusikstudion. 













Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson - Emanate


Label: 130701 / Fatcat    Released:  May 15, 2020

Both prolific composers in their own right working within the field of modern composition/ new electronic music, Berlin-based Yair Elazar Glotman and Stockholm-based Mats Erlandsson have been collaborating since 2015. ‘Negative Chambers’, their first joint album together was released on Miasmah Recordings in 2017, and saw them exploring new approaches to the use of traditional acoustic instruments. Having recently signed to FatCat’s 130701 imprint, and following closely on from Deutsche Gramophon’s release of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ‘Last and First Men’ project which Yair co-composed, the pair’s sophomore album ‘Emanate’ is a powerful and stunningly executed extended duration work that utilises a fantastic ensemble cast and continues to explore their ideas of a ‘displaced sound’ – combining electronic and acoustic sound sources through both analogue and digital means to create an ambiguous composite work, a music that sounds neither clearly electronic or acoustic, existing instead in some in-between space.

In our oversaturated digital age where omnipresent media connectivity enables instant gratification and a continuous flood of competing interests, we’re frequently lead to make snap judgements as we multitask through a mass of incoming information – continually scanning and skipping over surfaces. Technological advances were supposed to free up creative thinking, but this flood has instead lead to an erosion of our creativity and attention. In many ways, the idea of a longform music is unsuited to and out of phase with these times. And yet, there is recent evidence of a reaction against this – witness the rise of the practise of mindfulness and the cultural elements of a ‘slow living’ movement; the huge success of Max Richter’s marathon ‘Sleep’ project; and the emergence of an expansive musical niche that draws from drone, electroacoustic and classical traditions and prioritises a more immersive, durational sound worlds – see artists like Kali Malone, Ellen Arkbro, Clarice Jensen, Abul Mogard, William Basinski, Claire M Singer, and labels like Longform Editions and XKatedral. Music here is intended to function not as ambient backdrop to other activities but as a deep listening, intensive immersion.

Aligned with these approaches, as opposed to New Age ambience or the endless soporific, ‘chilled’ music playlists, Glotman & Erlandsson’s work is suffused with a chromatic density and a tendency towards an edgy darkness that puts it closer to Hildur Guðnadóttir’s ‘Chernobyl’ score or Jóhannsson’s ‘The Miner’s Hymns’. It shares that same brassy, bass heavy weight and glowering, simmering sense of tension as well as a similar, sliding feeling of instability – a regular sense that it’s slipping inexorably elsewhere. Its authors cite the influence of Renaissance vocal polyphony; Giacinto Scelsi’s ‘Pranam II’; György Ligeti’s 1967 piece ‘Lontano’ (heard on the soundtrack to Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ and Scorcese’s ‘Shutter Island’); as well as American composer Ingram Marshall, and Iceland’s Valgier Sigurdsson. Gorgeously recorded, beautifully focused and measured throughout, ‘Emanate’ is a texturally rich, deep spectrum exploration that flows and unfolds almost seamlessly throughout its fifty-minute span to create an energy field which feels simultaneously static and yet continually shifting.

Although divided into nine parts, ‘Emanate’ was envisaged and recorded as one long, single composition – an attempt to create an ensemble piece, closer in length and formal approach to classical music compositions than the ever-shorter spans of so much music now tailored for consumption via digital streaming. With time and space allocated for each of the instruments to respond to and expand upon the composition, its extended duration arises from an ongoing exchange between the instrumental ensemble, the electronic elements and the structure of the piece, and invites the listener to follow along an elongated dramatic arch. ‘Emanate’ was written and recorded in a gradual process, structured around the strict formal design of a three-part palindrome, following the pattern A1-B1-C-B2-A2. Each of these 5 parts is bridged by interludes (titled I-IV) which follow their own logic, working with the degradation and variable density of a separate, percussion-based material. Each part on the first side of the palindrome focuses on a specific approach to tonal harmony – chordal or intervallic, contrapuntal/canonic and melodic. As the piece progresses through its second half, these borders become blurred with material and approaches from the different parts bleeding into one another. As a consequence the piece has two parallel formal arches: one linear progression through the whole duration and one mirrored.

Begun as an electronic piece, ‘Emanate’ was composed, performed and recorded from a basic framework of material during a week of intense work at Yair’s Berlin studio, starting out with recordings of zithers and bowed strings processed through extensive electronic treatments – both digital and analogue. The electronic parts were written with a heavy focus on performance – playing parts using manual tools such as reel-to-reel-machines rather than merely working within the confines of the computer. The second part of the process involved transcribing parts of these electronic pieces for a score for a small chamber ensemble consisting of violin, cello, viola da gamba, trombone and double bass. Using this electronic structure to trace out new parts to be played by the ensemble, the score ended up being in time-based notation with all pitches fixed and added another layer of complexity by allowing performers enough freedom to make their own musical decisions when reacting to the electronics and to other players. The resulting instrumental parts weave in and out of the electronics, sometimes blending in with them entirely and sometimes acting individually.

Recording took place at Bonello studios in Berlin on February 2nd 2019, with an ensemble consisting of Hilary Jeffery (trombone), Lucy Railton (cello), Liam Byrne (Viola da gamba) and Simon Goff (violin). Yair played double bass and the piece was performed in its entirety twice, with the second take being selected as best. This swift recording method was only possible due to the exceptionally professional and talented ensemble and the fact that the work had been performed at the CTM festival two days before, providing enough rehearsal time. Additional overdubs were then recorded at Yair’s studio in Berlin and in Stockholm at EMS and the Royal College of Music. On these, Viktor Orri Arnarson played the viola, Sara Fors provided vocals and Maria W Horn added organ.

With individual track titles referring back to the form of the piece, the album’s title is suggestive of the work’s aesthetic resonance. As Mats explains, “it has to do with the textural qualities of the music itself. How it feels or behaves – its inherent seeping or slowly unfolding tendencies, as if it is a gas or liquid emanating from somewhere. It also relates to the transfer of ideas and intentions happening through the making and publishing of a musical work, where the album acts as a sort of container.”

Stunningly conceived and realised, ‘Emanate’ is a bold and gorgeously rich work that dilates time and exists in a blurred interzone between emotional states; between classical, and experimental electronic music music worlds. Step back a moment from the modern media coalface, allow yourself the time and space to be immersed in its currents and depths and ‘Emanate’ will amply reward your attention.





Jóhann Jóhannsson & Yair Elazar Glotman - Last and First Men


Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Release date: 28.2.2020


“Two years after the death of the Icelandic film composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, his only movie as director has become available in the UK on streaming platforms. It is a 70-minute cine-novella or essay film: a meditation on humanity’s future and what it means, or will mean, to be post-human.

The score is by Jóhannsson, working with sound artist and composer Yair Elazar Glotman, and this eerie, breathy soundtrack works well with its unearthly images. Last and First Men is inspired by the 1930 novel of the same name by British SF author William Olaf Stapledon, narrated by a figure from humanity’s final evolutionary form billions of years in the future. This voice is performed with crisp lack of affect by Tilda Swinton.

The visual images Jóhannsson finds to accompany this prose-poem are strange and disturbing sculptures that look like something built on Earth by aliens, a mix of Stonehenge and Angkor Wat. I wondered if Jóhannsson had had them designed and built. In fact, these are the brutalist Spomeniks, the socialist-era monuments in former Yugoslavia, mostly in remote windswept landscapes, built in the 1950s and 60s to commemorate the tragedy of the war and the resistance to fascism; they are truly strange in their fierce, concrete giganticism, and have a cult following.

By detaching them from their historical context, Jóhansson finds something very unsettling in these sculptures: they really do look like creations from the future, not the past. Last and First Men is an interesting if minor work, perhaps comparable to Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Homo Sapiens or Michael Madsen’s Into Eternity.”

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