Review Summary: "It's about the memory... As always..."
Ian Hawgood is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, instrument builder and sound engineer. He is associated with the Home Normal, Tokyo Droning, Nomadic Kids Republic, Koen Music, and Folk Reels labels.
He is well-known his sound design work, which has been featured in installations and galleries around the world. His work as a mastering engineer features heavily across the ambient, experimental, and post-classical scenes, and he currently writes music for theater and film.
His solo works have featured on a number of labels over the past ten plus years, and among his many collaborations he is perhaps best known as the sound architect behind the Black Elk quartet, as well as his work with Bvdub, Danny Norbury, and Maps and Diagrams.
After spending much of his adult life living in Japan, he currently resides in Warsaw, Poland. Since 2012 he has been working on creating music from old disused reel to reel recorders, his childhood piano, and an array of vintage synths he has been collecting for the better part of twenty years now.
Ian Hawgood delivers an album completely recorded with analog instruments. His most subtle and personal up to date. As the title suggests "Peace Fragments” is a journey into childhood when most of our experiences appear to us as mysterious and melancholic.
On the one hand, "Fragments ll" is a meditation on the elementary ethereal sound of hazy drones and gentle nostalgia encapsulated in 40 minutes. Hawgood is happy to be blessed with a musical family and circle of friends who lent pump organ, chimes, violins, trumpets and loads of other stuff for further investigation. On this release, Ian went for a more “vintage” and minimal approach, so all of these instruments sound like they are slowly "disintegrating" and you can't distinguish them apart.
“Fragments lll” starts with some quiet atmospheric sounds, like wind, water and some static, slowly drifting away… Until you can't hear anything but silence. This song reminded me of William Basinski´s “Disintegrations loops”.
Overall, “Peace Fragments” represents a contribution to calm Ambient. Ian was successful in creating a deeply personal journey, but one in which Ian invites you to join him in remembering the good times as he allows the quiet sounds of nature and old tapes to soften your heart
