Interview: In my own Words - Thy Veils about “Mountain And Cloud”

Written by Marcin Majewski Tuesday, 31 May 2011 13:48

Daniel Dorobantu (Thy Veils) about

Mountain And Cloud

Romanian ambient band THY VEILS, released their fifth studio album entitled ‘Mountain and cloud’ this year. In our series of articles "In My Own Words", Daniel Dorobantu, leader of THY VEILS, speaks about the new album.

01. Mountain And Cloud
Daniel: This song, that also gives the album title, is inspired by Tozan's words that I first encountered in ‘The Zen Mind’ film: "The blue mountain is the father of the white cloud. The white cloud is the son of the blue mountain. All day long they depend on each other, without being dependent on each other. The white cloud is always the white cloud. The blue mountain is always the blue mountain". After showing this text to Ciprian Costache (guitar; member of Arc Gotic) and Anna Kontridze (tabla), we improvised freely over a simple looped melody that I've made a few days before our meeting. The song came out in one take and a few days later we re-recorded the tabla in the studio for a better sound.

02."Nature
Daniel: A song inspired by a persistent feeling that I had for a long time in my life, that of being "caught between worlds", a "frontier being". Eventually it led to finding the necessary peace of mind mostly in nature, only there being able to contemplate your own inner nature. Fortunately, Manuela knew instantly what this was all about, no words and explanations were required. We recorded the song while rehearsing and a few months later Petrica coloured the story with his trumpet.

03."Clocks
Daniel: ‘Clocks’ is a song that was not initiated by any thought, feeling or mental image. It was just a curiosity towards the way things work. Contemplating the mechanics of the flow... patience... Some clocks speaking Japanese, as my sister said after hearing it. Generative techniques and free improvisation were used to build the sonic foundation and then Manuela and Petrica explored it their way.

04. Deep Space
Daniel: Before we started to play together, me and Petrica were going to the swimming pool. I observed that he liked to float just beneath the water surface, without moving, still ... just like I also did. I asked him about this and he replied: "yes, I like it, it's like meditation". "Let's jam some ambient music" I instantly replied. And not many days later we started to play and record. After a few rehearsals, I described him a dream I had some years ago, in which I was exploring the vacuum of space, sitting on a floating hi-tech platform, just looking in all directions, thinking that even if the platform's gravity gives me a sense of direction, in fact there is none. We improvised for about 40 minutes and went to the studio with the resulting recording. This is ‘Deep Space’.

THY VEILS ‘Mountain And Cloud’ was released in January 2010

This article was originally published at wiadomosci24.pl