MICHAEL BEGG 'WITNESS. AMBIENT CHAMBER WORKS' CD
March 2025 Available now
The album features selections from the WITNESS series, released as waypoints during the COVID lockdown, as well as pieces from ‘Light Water is Black Water,’ ‘Sounding The Ice Factory,’ and the forthcoming ‘Out of Whose Womb Comes the Ice’.
In this five year long development of Begg’s signature ‘data composition’ process we encounter earth monitoring satellites, earthquakes, ionospheric lightning strikes, the clean night air of lockdown, receding Arctic ice, mutated migrations and currents, collapsing glaciers, the cycles of deep time and the collapse of predictable weather cycles. We find a new music that speaks to our growing solastalgia that is true to science and faithful to a convulsing world.
WITNESS includes collaborations with Clodagh Simonds (Fovea Hex), Ben Ponton (zoviet*france), and the Black Glass Ensemble.
The collection features live recordings and alternative mixes, and the first preview of new work arising from Begg’s two month residency in Antarctica as the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute’s first musician in residence.
credits
Michael Begg
Black Glass Ensemble
Clodagh Simonds
Ben Ponton
Clea Friend
Aisling o'Dea
Julia Lungu
releases May 19, 2025
Review from Vital Weekly by Frans De Waard : It’s been a while since I last heard from Michael Begg, ambient music operator par excellence and collaborator with Clodagh Simonds in Fovea Hex. I wish not to speculate about the reasons, but having a new sign of life is good. This CD is a collection of pieces from the last five years, which include working with Clodagh Simonds (Fovea Hex), Ben Ponton (:zoviet*france:), and the Black Glass Ensemble, but also going on field recording trips with the European Marine Board, Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Ocean ARTic Partnership. He saw different vistas than most of us. Some of these pieces are alternative mixes; some are live recordings. This combination of works and environments adds an interesting variation to the music. On one side, Begg loves his orchestral side, with slow, sustaining strings and ditto wind instruments, bringing a slow and majestic wave to the pieces. It’s here where Begg is most traditional in modern composition. Some of these pieces wouldn’t have been out of place on a record in the Obscure Records series. On the other hand, when working with field recordings, he goes into a more electro-acoustic field, treating these sounds so they become ambient soundscapes. Sometimes, we hear the original sounds (birds, ice); sometimes, it isn’t easy. Like the orchestral pieces, the ambience aspect is essential. These pieces are fluid, and things aren’t as black and white, and both ends meet up, the orchestral backing in a field recordings piece, or so some birds flying over the orchestra. It’s a long album, close to 80 minutes, and none of the 13 pieces seems long or too long. As the true master he is, Begg knows about length and pacing, and he does that very well.
