Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
€10EUR or more
Cassette + Digital Album
Buoyant Figures gets magnetic with this special cassette release, containing high quality ferric tape in a nice, on-shell printed "ice white" cassette. Comes in a shiny black box with double J-card artwork and includes a matching guitar pick. The cat is not included and not for sale!
Includes unlimited streaming of Buoyant Figures
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Some of these days I wake up
And look around and wonder
Where I am
Hands are cold but I am
Feeling quite relaxed
Some of these days I go downtown
And wonder where you are
Nobody down here except for
One lost soul who is
Feeling cold and dark
These days
The storm takes you away
Out of time and place
Into another day
Some of these days I go outside
And take a train away
To the boundaries of thought
And I
Stay for one more day
Skin is cold and lifeless
I can hardly feel
That you've gone away
Some of these days I wake up
And I wonder why
These days
I'm out of time and place
Tired and confused
Time is getting late
These days
The storm is gonna take you away
Out of time and place
Into another day
These days
I'm out of time and place
I'm tired and confused
Time is getting late
This album is one about change. It came to be as a rainy soundtrack for a long and tough winter in the city followed by a bittersweet summer, in which people lose and get lost, find and get found, search and are searched for. There’s intimacy and distance, standing still and moving forward. Maybe it’s even about growing up, in a way. This album was unplanned, like mornings of melancholia, the death of a close one, spontaneously falling in love or the first sunny day of the year... it just sort of came to me with a sudden urgency.
The sounds are based on a true story. Well, it’s not really a story with a beginning and end, or something that should be told as a story, but rather just a piece of reality; a certain span of time (and space). The album resembles more an environment than a chronological story, in that it presents sculptures of sound that can be walked through as if they are streets or buildings in a city, rather than building blocks for a storyline. Still, all is based on events and encounters I have experienced in the months prior to and during the creation process of the album which were very real, although some felt more like a haze or a dream.
Like different aspects in life, the album contains both compositional and improvisational pieces, some of them actually having a clear beginning and end, and others being continuous and ever-flowing. It also contains many field recordings of city ambience and nature. The recording sessions took place on a couple of Sundays and one Thursday in Volta, with Geert van der Beek’s wonderful engineering. The project required a new approach that was built mostly around loose compositions and overdubs, different from the improvised albums I recorded before. Some pieces are excerpts of improvisations I did on my own or with other musicians, either with or without additional overdubs. Some pieces are parts of recordings edited into collages of layered loops. More thoughts went into sounds and specific parts, and more thoughts went into the mixing afterwards. Still, I wanted to capture the unpolished sounds of the feelings I had in that period, resulting in the use of a detuned piano and uncontrolled guitar feedback as well as chance combinations created by desynchronised ambient tracks.
The interesting thing about the continuous and desynchronised pieces on this album is that, while the listener clearly hears what is there, they only hear so much of what there used to be and they may notice how much actually is not heard. Which is: beginnings and endings for the continuous pieces, and recurring harmony for the desynchronised pieces. There is a sense of movement in these works, like listening to something that just keeps going without ever being complete, which makes them start living a life of their own. It makes them complete in their own right, ironically enough. It resembles how people fade in and out of each other’s presence during a lifetime in constant change of form, without always beginning or ending, and it creates a complex structure of sounds relating to each other on different levels. Similar to how people can be strongly connected on a deep level, or only just know each other’s names.
As much as this album is about change and movement, though, it is not about the future or the past. Nor is it about the present, even. Because some feelings just don’t connect with any frame of time, and lean more towards timelessness or spacelessness instead. This music is not about changing into something or moving towards a destination, but instead it is about change within the current state of being. Rather than where time goes, it is about where it is as it goes. I attempted to put the listener on a ledge balancing between timeliness and timelessness, to freeze the moment and snap out of existence for a seemingly small notion. But that notion, then, can be as small or big as they like, because they are not tied to the concept of time anymore. And the same goes for space, naturally. It should be possible, but I didn’t prove it yet, to stay within this music forever and ever and ever. This is a risk that should be taken into account when one decides to give this album a listen. This is a disclaimer, and it is also a joke, but please be careful still.
————————————
Playlist by Arjan van Sorge for the Free Radicals program on Concertzender Nederland, featuring ‘Buoyant Figures in the Dark’ along with some other really cool stuff:
www.concertzender.nl/programma/free_radicals_541169/
“Met ‘Buoyant Figures’ heeft de Amsterdamse gitarist Luka Schuurman de vrije improvisatie . . . voor een belangrijk deel verruild voor de filmische geluidssculpturen. Daarmee ontvouwt hij zijn vaardigheden als componist en beperkt zich tevens niet langer tot de gitaar. Sterke composities vinden we hier, afgewisseld met het terloopse van de improvisatie.”
- Ben Taffijn (Nieuwe Noten)
www.nieuwenoten.nl?p=8113
credits
released December 1, 2019
Credits:
Together with me, there are numerous people who worked their magic on this one, resulting in the following beautiful list of efforts:
Luka Schuurman:
Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, keyboards, electronics, noise, ambience, installed percussion, wineglass & voice
Marco van Outersterp:
Keyboards, synths, noise & ambience
Elsa Lubbers:
Trumpet
Lini:
Voice
Geert van der Beek:
Windchimes
Without them, this music would not be what it is now.
All tracks recorded at Volta Amsterdam by Geert van der Beek between March 24st and August 15th, 2019, except for track 3 (recorded at home by me) and track 11 (recorded in Felgar, Portugal by me).
Compositions, field recordings, editing, mixing and mastering by me.
Recorded fields:
Traffic, train stations and ambience of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague (The Netherlands)
Rain, wind, birds and frogs of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Rain, insects, church bells and ambience of Felgar (Portugal)
Traffic, water and ambience of London (United Kingdom)
Artwork & cover photography:
Luka Schuurman Ontwerp
(For those really exact, on-the-details and obsessive people who want the complete specified credits, click on the individual songs. I acknowledge your existence, you are my family.)
I would also like to express a big THANK YOU VERY MUCH to the following people for all they have done, being it working directly on the tracks or offering inspiration and support:
And special thanks to Robin for recovering the lost recordings.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Luka
“When you start working, everybody is in your studio — the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas — all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.”
- John Cage
My band Halli Crigi's debut album: a colorful collage of melodies, noises and cinematic passages. Released on the really cool Keroxen label, check them out too! Luka Schuurman
The North Carolina singer and multi-instrumentalist translates the "story of lightness" into nine experimental ambient spirituals. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 8, 2021
The 17 mindbending songs on this compilation represent minimalist experimental music at its best, a collage of blips and static. Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 3, 2022
An ambitious cross-genre journey from the Richmond Avant Improv Collective, who bring in 17 (!) guest musicians to fill out their vision. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 12, 2021
Field recordings intertwine with hushed acoustics and gentle ambience to create songs that are hypnotic and immersive. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 13, 2020
