Jon Doe One // Sol Invictus LP

In the pastJon Doe One, an experimental musician from Antwerp, Belgium, announced by Entr'acte and others.This is the latest work released in November 2021 from the Dutch experimental label esc rec, limited to 11 copies.

Includes 4 songs from acoustic drone to neoclassical jazz using baritone saxophone and clarinet. DL code included.

Labels and other worksplease use this form. ///Click here to see more Esc.rec. Releases available at Tobira.

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Edition of 250.

Notes:

"I
It was in a dream that Johannes d'Hoine had emerged from the winter of suspended animation. Horror Vacui, his last record, had marked a nadir: in trying to whittle the musical gesture to its core, he'd inadvertently tapped into some ungodly frequency, reduced to a shadow of a man by the bleakness of his compositions. And the world had followed suit, as though his imagination had unleashed catastrophe onto the air waves, a self-fulfilling prophecy on a global scale. Had his music infected others , or was the plague merely a mirror to his own deleterious tendencies?

II
After the fall, the double bass had remained a consolation, seeming to speak to the low-pitched times. But, by some curious operation, every time that he took to it, beautiful melodies would slip between his fingers, asserting themselves despite him. In the dream, the quag of thoughts that had been clouding his mind now crystallised. A lit door, d'Hoine walking towards it. No need for Freud: d'Hoine had conjured the dream to resolve the problem. And so the composer began. to shy away from the darkness he had previously sought and started looking towards the light.

III
Sol Invictus was to be his own fiat lux, an invocation of the lighter regions of his mind. It was time to cast off the short days, to invite beauty and organic matter into his music. And so he conjured the elements: first wind, Hanne De Backer took to visiting under cover of night, saxophone secreted under her coat. Then Berlinde Deman, with her rare Renaissance serpent. For the record, the trinity united at Vooruit, joined by visual artist Stijn Grupping, who had devised a light installation that responded to sound. I saw them that spring. I saw rays dance a ritual over the room. And out of darkness, Jon Doe becoming One with light. "

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Vital weekly review by Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg:

"... This LP ticks the boxes of: gloom, insecurity, isolation, hope, tranquillity, no high energy. And above all: breath and breathing.

Machinefabriek has made records called With Drums and With Voices. Aube worked with only fire on one record (one amongst many experiments with sole source material). Hazard produced a record focusing on wind. Sol Invictus is not made with sounds of breath only. Nor But somewhere in the suspended winterly animation of this record, breath and breathing takes a chokehold on all proceedings. Both are always near, close and up-close and personal.

This breathing goes without saying. But it is never taken for granted as the constituent factor per se for these epic, languid, long melodic lines. Here: breath and breathing, too, both, elements that are severely implicated in terms of gestural musical impact , but – of course – also took center stage in the deadly respiratory pandemic and airborne catastrophe we find ourselves in. This record then, also, like an affirmation of the adage: to breathe is to be alive.

Sol Invictus touches the extremes of our current life and times: personal, local, and grander scales. Slowly plucking away the double bass is a somewhat reassuring presence, comforting though hardly less melancholic in its voicings. And yet. But still. From the stillness Sol Invictus then also as a ritual of cleansing, leaving behind, shedding skin, moving on.

Slowly composition folds into improvisation as cut-up loops merge with close-mic'd bass clarinet as if the listener is inside the instrument. These tracks are imbued with masterly detail and the most subtle of presences. , precisely because attention is constantly jolted into heightened states of awareness, without the use of scare tactics – no: these long lines ebb and flow in sparse fields overgrown with the aesthetics of Another Timbre or Touch and mellowed, hallowed echoes of or reverberations in the innermost workings of elemental industrial. A cathartic celebration out of time, of all times, through these (dark) ages. "

Artist: Jon Doe One

Label: Esc.rec.