Ecotone: new music for empyrean atlas and sandbox percussion
Ecotone is a new 35 minute work for a nine person super group comprised of the ensembles Empyrean Atlas and Sandbox Percussion. This music expands on the deep musical relationships developed with the members of Empyrean Atlas (20+ years) and Sandbox Percussion (10 years), pairing melodic accessibility with strikingly complex polyrhythmic and cyclic rhythmic concepts, utilizing a polyrhythmic song style combined with an approach to multi-movement, large scale forms.
selected press
with empyrean atlas
"Depending on the tune, the interwoven triple-guitar gamesmanship of Empyrean Atlas can run in a few different directions: toward the mathy post-punk of Horse Lords or Battles, toward warmly anesthetic ambience (say, Pink Floyd meets Bradford Cox), or toward West African high life. On “Echolocation,” the clangy, lapping repetitions feel most in line with that last influence. The quintet’s movements are coiled and contained, but pulsing with small, ecstatic fibrillations." Giovanni Russonello, New York Times
"At eighteen minutes, Poly Rush might seem more EP-length teaser than full-length argument on behalf of Empyrean Atlas, yet what a teaser it is...I can't recall another outfit whose polyrhythms lock quite so tightly together as do Empyrean Atlas's...Brief it might be, but a track like “Echolocation,” for example, is very much capable of inducing an entranced swoon the moment that dazzling interplay appears." Textura
with sandbox percussion
“Crowell’s minimalism is wonderfully rich and harmonically complex: busy arpeggios sketch out dense, extended chords that constantly mutate and move in unexpected directions…Throughout, Crowell constructs geometric structures that have a rare sense of kinetic energy: this is music that glistens, sparkles, and dances with joy.” John Lewis, The Guardian (included in the “10 Best Contemporary Albums of 2024” list)
“The four movements of David Crowell’s Music for Percussion Quartet range from energetic flourishes and layered rhythms to sustained halos of sound. Patterns change organically as the instruments - including guitar, played by the composer - interact with seamless animation or stillness.” Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone
musiC
for empyrean atlas:
for sandbox percussion: