Pendant World Balmorhea

• Michael A. Muller (b. 1986), Rob Lowe (b. 1964): Nonplussed:
• 1Nonplussed00:41
• Oscuros:
• 2Oscuros04:16
• Step Step Step:
• 3Step Step Step04:01
• Desiderium:
• 4Desiderium02:55
• Rob Lowe, Michael A. Muller: The Bright Door:
• 5The Bright Door02:25
• Michael A. Muller, Rob Lowe: Loess:
• 6Loess02:53
• New Conditions:
• 7New Conditions03:54
• Held:
• 8Held03:44
• Range:
• 9Range01:44
• Rob Lowe, Michael A. Muller: Fire Song:
• 10Fire Song02:06
• Michael A. Muller, Rob Lowe: Violet Shiver:
• 11Violet Shiver03:33
• Elsewhere:
• 12Elsewhere04:14
• Depth Serenade:
• 13Depth Serenade05:33
• Total Runtime41:59

Info for Pendant World

Poignant melodies permeate Pendant World, the eagerly awaited second Deutsche Grammophon album by Texas band Balmorhea. The 13 tracks break hard genre boundaries and reveal a wide spectrum of styles, textures, rhythms and colours. Found sounds, samples, vinyl recordings, synthesizers, horns and flutes are newly added to Balmorhea's usual "voices" of piano, acoustic guitars and strings. In addition to Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller, who are featured on "Pendant World", violinist and vocalist Aisha Burns and cellist Clarice Jensen are regular collaborators with Balmorhea. They are joined by an equally stellar line-up of guest artists: experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, Joseph Shabason on tenor saxophone and flute, clarinetist Jonathan Sielaff, drummer Jason Treuting and vocalists Steph Jenkins and Lisa Morgenstern. Grammy award-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low contributes synthesizers and percussion and produced the album at the state-of-the-art Guilford Sound recording studio in Vermont.

Known for their stark-yet-vibrant portraits of emotional landscapes, Balmorhea are coming off a lively 2022 that saw an EP dedicated to Harold Budd, a feature-length concert documentary filmed in Marfa, a deluxe reissue of their DG debut ‘The Wind,’ and newly commissioned works for Nils Frahm’s Piano Day, Brian Eno’s Earth Percent, and Randall Poster’s Birdsong Project. This special live presentation will be among the ensemble’s first performances since 2018.

Balmorhea defies easy compartmentalization, spanning genres while resonating with a vast, worldwide listenership. Performing to audiences from Mexico City to China, Istanbul to Italy; they’ve played in everything from gothic cathedrals to rock clubs, renowned art museums and respected venues like Berlin’s Funkhaus and Bozar in Brussels. They’ve shared stages with neoclassical pianists Nils Frahm and Dustin O’Halloran, experimental artists Oneohtrix Point Never and Grouper, to rock acts such as Efterklang and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. Their diverse perspective and expansive range—“both restorative and disquieting…” (The Atlantic)—make Balmorhea essential listening for those seeking to engage with sincerity and an open heart in life’s fragility; in ways both painful and beautiful.

Balmorhea

Balmorhea
the duo of Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller — intentionally defies easy compartmentalization. The Texas group’s genre-spanning oeuvre has cultivated a vast worldwide listenership with music that evokes “imagery of brilliant landscapes and quiet pastoral scenes” (NPR); that’s “both restorative and disquieting” (The Atlantic); a collective soundtrack for life’s swells, silences, and anchoring in the present. In recent years, Lowe and Muller have returned to their roots, retreating to remote corners of Texas to write new music as a duo while embarking on a new chapter with the history-seeped Deutsche Grammophon label.

This album contains no booklet.