RELEASE: Safe Passage
ARTIST(S): Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck
REMIXERS: Bvdub, East Of Oceans, Frits Wentink, Matthew Herbert, The Soft Pink Truth
LABEL: Dekmantel | DKMNTL088
GENRE: LOSSLESS, Electronica
RELEASED: 2021-02-15
AVAILABLE FORMAT: 774Kbps/FLAC
DOWNLOAD SIZE: 392.03 MB
TOTAL TRACKS 14
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – The Half Collected Soul (01:50) key, bpm83
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – The Shadow of a Gnarled Thorn (00:42) key, bpm119
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – What Joy to Breathe (05:05) key, bpm107
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – An Infant’s Dream (00:59) key, bpm149
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – A Rememberable Life (01:30) key, bpm135
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – A Choir of Angels (05:34) key, bpm123
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – The Imagination of the Whole (05:28) key, bpm153
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – A Fracture in the Vapor (04:29) key, bpm120
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – Is It Not Better to Walk Alone (01:27) key, bpm99
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – Safe Passage (Matthew Herbert’s “Withers” Dub) (11:25) key, bpm120
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – Safe Passage (The Soft Pink Truth’s “The Weight of Pleasure” Mix) (07:23) key, bpm121
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – Safe Passage (BvDub’s “Breathless Haunts / Crush of Air” Mix) (09:13) key, bpm70
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – Safe Passage (East of Oceans’ “Delusion of Safety” Mix) (09:37) key, bpm121
- Frits Wentink, Erik Madigan Heck – Safe Passage (Frits Wentink ‘Garden’ Mix) (04:52) key, bpm120
Total Playtime: 01:09:34 min
It is often said that the best art comes out of adversity, and so it is that producer Frits Wentink, photographer Erik Madigan Heck and actress Tilda Swinton have collaborated on Safe Passage, a fascinating audio-visual project born out of loss. Consisting of classical, choral, and electronic music in three movements, the gatefold album will be presented by Dekmantel with a 40-page booklet of additional photographs and paintings, as well as digital-only remixes from Matthew Herbert, The Soft Pink Truth, BvDub, and East of Oceans.
Dutch producer and renowned innovator Frits Wentink helms the Will & Ink and Bobby Donny labels build synthesizers and beautiful controllers and puts out always experimental, left-of-center house music that pushes at the boundaries. This project initially started out as him attempting to musically illustrate the photography of American visual artist Erik Madigan Heck. The internationally renowned Heck is known for lavish and experimental use of color that has won him the prestigious International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award as well as makes him a regular contributor to high profile media such as The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Harpers Bazaar.
Midway through the project, Erik’s mother was hospitalized due to breast cancer complications before also contracting Covid-19. By her bedsides and as a means to ease her passage, he repetitively played the first portion of the score, and then, once she passed, he decided to commemorate the music’s function as a soundtrack for her transition to the afterlife by naming it Safe Passage. The involvement of Academy Award-winning Scottish actress Tilda Swinton has lent the music an extra dimension of spirituality: throughout the album, she interjects whispered fragments of Heck’s poetry, blurring the lines between one phase of music and the next.
The music has three movements across two sides: Side A, Safe, has a sense of hope and reflection as it undulates from minimalist string and brass arrangements to ambient and dissonant classical piano. Side B, Passage, then depicts the start of the transition into the afterlife as the voices of a choral madrigal ensemble gradually diverge, then break down entirely before a grand tonal expansion leads into a frenzied crescendo of choral vocals, hardened dub techno, and anxious rhythms that convey the violence of the soul’s exit from this world. Finally, a cathartic Epilogue resets and bids farewell with the gentle sounds of a piano.
Because of the global on-going loss of life as a result of Covid-19, Safe Passage has become a soundtrack in which many people will find solace as they remember the sad transitions made from this life to the next during this unprecedented time in history.//
