Friday, October 12, 2018

Catatonique - Paax EP

Their first client as producers, wanted a 7-minute-long Mayan song for a real estate promotion video. Phonse traveled to the Riviera Maya to meet their client and to research the instruments used by the Mayan culture. As he kept listening to many different Mayan, Aztec, and Pre-Hispanic songs in general, he finds the rhythm of this music could be merged with electronic music and begins to try this idea, although, their client was interested in a Mayan song, so he proceeds to produce an all instrumental Mayan track for their client. But, they both had to see the outcome of this Mayan Catatonique merge, so they proceeded to produce Paax, which means music in Mayan.

2018 is the first year Phonse and Ucci started dedicating their lives to their passion for art. The Ineffable Enthrall EP was produced while both thought of art as a hobby, the Paax EP was produced as their fulltime job.

Yaan is the first track they produced and the opening song of the EP. At the same time, they both met and became friends with a guy named Max, who is a musician and philosopher, and plays many different types of rare instruments used all around the world, one of these is the didgeridoo. The intro is based on the all instrumental song made specially for their client, but as soon as the didgeridoo solo comes, a progressive merge begins. A high energy song is not necessarily a high bpm song, it’s all in the dynamics of the track that creates the air needed for a high energy atmosphere. The track is at 103 bpm with varying and progressive basslines and percussions. The jaguar sound comes from a jaguar whistle, which is an air instrument not only used by the Mayan culture, but all Mesoamerican cultures, since this animal was considered a sacred figure of power, agility and strength. Yaan means to have, to be, and to exist, in Mayan.

Zen is the second track they produced and the last song of the Paax EP. This track was produced in a trip to the Riviera Maya where Phonse went to his cousin’s 40th birthday party, where some of their family lives, like his brother, who is a musician as well and owns a small studio in his apartment that is also the guest room, which became his room for the trip, so he plugged his brother’s piano to his laptop and started working on this track. This song is not resembling Mayan music, its roots tribute artists like Viken Armin, Satori and Stavroz.

It starts with an Alan Watts’ lecture where he’s introducing the Zen concept to his audience, explaining how nothing really is what you can say or write about it, since nothing is describable. The track begins with a continuous bass frequency and synthetic leads recorded live before the beat starts. The entire lead was improvised and all the sounds in this first half are made with the same synthesizer. The song progresses into an immersive experience of a piano and violin duo, until the percussions come back, and the beat comes back to end the track, and the EP.

"

Now, Zen plays a little game with you. Whenever anybody like myself or Dr. Suzuki talks about Zen, all the other people say, ‘because they talk about it, they don’t understand it’.

“Those,” in the words of Lao Tzu, “who know do not say, those who say do not know”, and yet, he SAID that. He wrote a book of several, 80 chapters or so, to explain the Tao and its power.

Nobody can help themselves, they’ve got to talk.

Human beings are a bunch of chatterboxes and when we’ve got something in our minds that we want to talk about, we talk.

Now poetry, though, is the great language because poetry is the art of saying what can’t be said. Every poet knows this. You’re trying to describe the indescribable. And every poet also knows that NOTHING is describable.

Whether you take some sort of ineffable mystical experience at one extreme, or whether you take an ordinary rusty nail at the other, nothing is really describable.

In the words of the famous Count Korzybski, “Whatever you say something is, it isn’t.”

- Alan Watts

Cunme is the third track produced by Catatonique for this EP as an interlude for the Mayan concept. This track was produced in the flight back from Cancún to Mexico City.

Aquí Nadie Duerme es la cuarta canción producida para Paax y el segundo track del EP. Describe la vida legendaria de una cultura que vivía en perpetuo entretenimiento lúdico y espiritual. El track empieza con percusiones hechas con bongos y con el poderoso sonido y bajo de un didgeridoo. La melodía es llevada por un par de flautas que acompañan el ritmo de las percusiones mientras la canción progresa a un ritmo electrónico indetenible.

El Paax es el segundo álbum EP producido y publicado por Catatonique.

https://soundcloud.com/catatonique/sets/paax



Submitted October 13, 2018 at 12:48AM by Phonseman https://ift.tt/2Ccku3a

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