Thunder

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Cat No: 5553934

Release Date: 17 November 2023

Label: ECM Records

Packaging Type: Slip Sleeve (CD or Vinyl)

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 602455539342

Genres: World Music European

Description
Stephan Micus is a unique musician and composer, he collects and studies instruments from all around the world and creates his own musical journeys with them.

This is his 25th solo album for ECM and its sound is dominated by the four-metre long Tibetan dung chen trumpet, an instrument he has recently learned and is using for the first time. It was the thunderous sound of this instrument that led to the album's name and its nine tracks celebrating deities around the world.

"I dedicate this music to the big family of thundergods around the world, humbly hoping that - when they hear it - their destructive powers will be somehow pacified," he says. It features instruments - all played by Stephan Micus - from Tibet, India, Burma, Borneo, Siberia, Japan, South America, Gambia, Namibia, Sweden and Bavaria.

'Thunder' was released to coincide with Stephan's 70th birthday on January 19th 2023.

Stephan Micus: frame drums, dung chen, Burmese temple bells, Himalayan horse bells, ki un ki, bass zither, bowed dinding, kyeezee, shakuhachi, sarangi, nyckelharpa, kaukas, sapeh, voice, nokhan.

Press:

"A booming tribute to thunder gods from around the world...The music Micus has devised is newly composed and sometimes seems like an offering, sometimes a celebration. 'A Song for Perun', the closing track for the Slavic thunder god, marks the final return of the Tibetan trumpets, starting quietly but arcing into glorious fanfares pushing the instrument to crazy extremes like a golden light in the sky after the storm has passed." - Songlines

"A work of epiphany inducing insight and swirling epic power. Fascinating stuff." - Jazzwise

"As with every Micus recording, the stories through which he acquired and learned to play each instrument, together with musical contexts and the instruments are the starting point for his fertile imagination and experimentation in mixing and matching sounds and textures." - Jazz Views
Tracklisting