Stephan Micus - Nomad Songs (2015) {ECM 2409}
Stephan Micus - Nomad Songs (2015) {ECM 2409}
EAC 1.1 | FLAC tracks level 8 | Cue+Log+M3U | Front+Back | 203MB + 5% Recovery
MP3 CBR 320 Kbps | 129MB + 5% Recovery
Genre: Ethnic Fusion, World
EAC 1.1 | FLAC tracks level 8 | Cue+Log+M3U | Front+Back | 203MB + 5% Recovery
MP3 CBR 320 Kbps | 129MB + 5% Recovery
Genre: Ethnic Fusion, World
Stephan Micus is a unique figure in music. In his numerous journeys all over the world he seeks to study and understand traditional instruments, the sounds that they produce and the cultures that brought them to life. He then composes original pieces for them, playing all the instruments himself and multi-tracking the compositions in many layers. In this way he combines instruments that would never normally be heard together, chosen from different cultures simply for their character, texture and sonic beauty. Micus’ music is profound, powerful and very original. Songlines magazine described his as “a one man universe of sound.” Nomad Songs is his 21st album for ECM.Track List
While his last album Panagia was a meditative reflection around prayers to the Virgin Mary, this new one, Nomad Songs is more earthy and more vigorous.
Its main characters are two instruments that Micus hasn’t used before. The first is the Moroccan genbri, a lute covered with camel-skin, played by the Gnawa in Morocco. The Gnawa are the descendants of former Sub-Saharan slaves who play the genbri in night-long trance and healing ceremonies, traditionally combining it only with voices and big iron castanets. The deep sound of the genbri carries the earthy vibrations of Black Africa rather than the refined melodies of Arab lutes common in North Africa.
The second is the ndingo, a lamellophone similar to the kalimba, used by the San people in Botswana. These indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa have been pushed off their land and marginalised by the new nation states. “All over the world there were people who lived over hundreds or thousands of years in complete harmony with nature and caused no damage to the environment,” explains Micus.
In his journeys all over the world Stephan Micus seeks to study and understand traditional instruments, the sounds that they produce and the cultures that brought them to life. He then composes original pieces for them, combining instruments that would never normally be heard together, chosen from different cultures simply for their character, texture and sonic beauty. Nomad Songs is his 21st album for ECM; he plays nine different instruments, but emphasizes two he hasn’t used before: The first is the Moroccan genbri, a lute covered with camel-skin, played by the Gnawa in Morocco. The second is the ndingo, a lamellophone similar to the kalimba, used by the San people in Botswana. These indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa have been pushed off their land and marginalized by the new nation states. With the album’s title Micus, who sees himself as a musical nomad, refers to both the situation of people like the Gnawa and the San as well as his own way of working and living. - monoandstereo.com
Two years from the release of Panagia, which featured settings of Byzantine Greek prayers, Stephan Micus turns his focus to still more musical investigation and discovery performing on instruments from all over the world.
The German composer makes use of such unfamiliar instruments as the ndingo (a kalimba from Botswana) and the camel-skinned bass lute genbri familiar to the Gnawa among the array of instruments he plays.
Matching clashing textures to tantalising effect, more to the point conjuring meditational mood as part of the spell, Micus manages to harness the potential of sounds not always heard together and develop their possibilities. Nomad Songs certainly has a cleansing quality, not that everything quite works, the twin tin whistles played simultaneously on ‘Sea of Grass’ a little on the twee side for instance.
Recorded over an extended period between 2012 and 2014 Nomad Songs can also be a little self-indulgent at times, as laboriously multi-tracked albums by solo performers sometimes are. ‘Leila’ the second tune in, a dialogue between steel string guitar and the recorder-like suling, has a beguiling beauty to it as do many of the best tracks, more so than Micus’ over earnest vocalisations in an imaginary language.
Certainly for musical research and practical application of acquired knowledge Nomad Songs is hard to beat. But maybe it’s an album easier to admire than to absorb on a deeper level.
1 Part 1 - Everywhere, Nowhere 4:40
2 Part 2 - Leila 5:27
3 Part 3 - The Promise 8:19
4 Part 4 - The Stars 2:47
5 Part 5 - The Spring 2:54
6 Part 6 - The Blessing 4:30
7 Part 7 - The Feast 5:04
8 Part 8 - Laughing At Thunder 4:21
9 Part 9 - Sea Of Grass 5:01
10 Part 10 - The Dance 6:12
11 Part 11 - Under The Chinar Trees 6:42
Stephan Micus - ndingo (1,5), genbri (1,3,5,8,10), steel-string guitar (2,7,10), suling (2), nay (3,7), rewab (3,10), rabab (3,10), twelve-string guitar (4,10), voice (6,11), two 14-string guitars (7), tin whistles (9), ndingo (11), shakuhachi (11)
Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015
EAC extraction logfile from 24. July 2015, 11:44
Stephan Micus / Nomad Songs
Used drive : LITE-ON COMBO SOHC-5236K Adapter: 1 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track
Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Portable\eac-1.1\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%–tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %source% -o %dest%
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 4:40.12 | 0 | 21011
2 | 4:40.12 | 5:27.68 | 21012 | 45604
3 | 10:08.05 | 8:19.05 | 45605 | 83034
4 | 18:27.10 | 2:47.30 | 83035 | 95589
5 | 21:14.40 | 2:53.03 | 95590 | 108567
6 | 24:07.43 | 4:30.04 | 108568 | 128821
7 | 28:37.47 | 5:04.27 | 128822 | 151648
8 | 33:41.74 | 4:21.14 | 151649 | 171237
9 | 38:03.13 | 5:01.56 | 171238 | 193868
10 | 43:04.69 | 6:12.54 | 193869 | 221822
11 | 49:17.48 | 6:42.55 | 221823 | 252027
Track 1
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\01 Everywhere, Nowhere.wav
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Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 0E0E0844
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Track not present in AccurateRip database
Copy OK
Track 2
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\02 Leila.wav
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Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC C1D165CD
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [1CBA7529] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 3
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\03 The Promise.wav
Peak level 97.5 %
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Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC C4BB0C85
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [2502BCB1] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 4
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\04 The Stars.wav
Peak level 46.9 %
Extraction speed 2.5 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 1D18E978
Copy CRC 1D18E978
Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [6B303D57] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 5
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\05 The Spring.wav
Peak level 56.7 %
Extraction speed 2.6 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 714DE2B8
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [53E256D7] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 6
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\06 The Blessing.wav
Peak level 38.0 %
Extraction speed 3.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC E664B565
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [B7EE29A9] (AR v2)
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Track 7
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\07 The Feast.wav
Peak level 54.1 %
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Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B3EF9FE7
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [7640C8D5] (AR v2)
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Track 8
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\08 Laughing at Thunder.wav
Peak level 85.3 %
Extraction speed 3.3 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC F72C7148
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [AB3A5B26] (AR v2)
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Track 9
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\09 Sea of Grass.wav
Peak level 26.1 %
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Test CRC F03CEBB5
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [D3903706] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 10
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\10 The Dance.wav
Peak level 89.6 %
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Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 70F16FE3
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [FF6EC1C7] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 11
Filename C:\EAC\Stephan Micus — 2015 — Nomad Songs [ECM 2409 4714325]\11 Under the Chinar Trees.wav
Peak level 63.9 %
Extraction speed 3.6 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 0E197DAF
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Accurately ripped (confidence 1) [36FDA7CC] (AR v2)
Copy OK
10 akuratnie zgrane
1 nie ma w bazie danych AccurateRip
Some tracks could not be verified as accurate
No errors occurred
End of status report
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[CTDB TOCID: iqGxZVHBhA6wtpx9Mb4ApPPHgGE-] disk not present in database
Submit result: iqGxZVHBhA6wtpx9Mb4ApPPHgGE- has been uploaded
==== Log checksum 59A12E075C2C8B2DA075E43FFEFBD69ABA080520BDAFDBC93B086BE4DE4C673C ====
foobar2000 1.3.13 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2019-11-25 13:18:47
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Stephan Micus / Nomad Songs
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR11 -0.97 dB -15.73 dB 4:40 01-Everywhere, Nowhere
DR10 -6.44 dB -22.44 dB 5:28 02-Leila
DR14 -0.22 dB -17.90 dB 8:19 03-The Promise
DR14 -6.56 dB -29.33 dB 2:47 04-The Stars
DR17 -4.91 dB -26.89 dB 2:53 05-The Spring
DR12 -8.40 dB -25.87 dB 4:30 06-The Blessing
DR10 -5.33 dB -19.72 dB 5:04 07-The Feast
DR15 -1.38 dB -20.83 dB 4:21 08-Laughing at Thunder
DR10 -11.66 dB -26.36 dB 5:02 09-Sea of Grass
DR16 -0.95 dB -22.56 dB 6:13 10-The Dance
DR12 -3.88 dB -20.80 dB 6:43 11-Under the Chinar Trees
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Number of tracks: 11
Official DR value: DR13
Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 634 kbps
Codec: FLAC
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Stephan Micus - Nomad Songs (2015) {ECM 2409}
Thanks to the original ripper