Will Gregory Moog Ensemble & BBC National Orchestra Of Wales - Heat Ray: The Archimedes Project (2024) [Digital Download 24/48]

Will Gregory Moog Ensemble announce their debut album, Heat Ray, an album inspired by the work of Archimedes, the Greek mathematician who lived and worked in the third century BC. The album - recorded by the ensemble on analogue synthesizer, alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble – which at times, comprises up to fourteen players – was formed by Ivor Novello winning musician, producer and co-creator of Goldfrapp, Will Gregory. Although they have been performing together since 2005, it took Archimedes to bring the ensemble together to commit these spirals of melody, circular structures, sequences, and patterns to tape. The album’s inspiration occurred during the pandemic lockdowns, when Will started digging into the mathematician’s life, after watching lectures online. “I became a bit of a YouTube fiend. Attending all these lectures I would never normally go to on subjects I had no business to be interested in. Scratch any of these maths gurus and it turned out Archimedes was their favourite mathematician. I wanted to find out why.”

The ensemble’s members – a talented bunch who have worked with the likes of Florence & the Machine and Dua Lipa - include Portishead’s Adrian Utley, a longtime collaborator of Will’s, who plays on the album and produced it. Mute’s Daniel Miller is its “kind of executive producer”, and he even played on one of the tracks. “Given he’s been into synths right from his early days, and is a genius with them, that was a good moment”, alongside John Baggott, Graham Fitkin, Simon Haram, Vyvyan Hope-Scott, Ross Hughes, Hazel Mills, Daniel Moore, Hinako Omari, Eddie Parker, Harriet Riley and Ruth Wall, their instruments include Minimoog, Moog Voyager, Korg 700s, Prophet 6 and Roland JX3P, their individual lines coming together in intricate arrangements creating a stunning superstructure of sounds.

Heat Ray takes the fertile imagination and application of those incredible times, and adds an effervescent spirit of discovery to the mix, one that often crackles and sparkles when musicians are powerfully inspired to make music together. Another legacy of Archimedes’ work rises up as a consequence – an album that brings ancient history into the modern world, pushing us towards an endlessly curious fascinating future.

Tracklist:
01. Young Archimedes (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)
02. Buoyancy Theory (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)
03. Circles, Spirals and Pi (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)
04. Law of the Lever (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)
05. The Claw (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)
06. Archimedes' Screw
07. Heat Ray (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)
08. The Sand Reckoner (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)
09. Archimedes' Legacy (feat. BBC National Orchestra Of Wales)


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