marvin ayres - deliquescent music

if you were to unravel the contents of my ipod, you’d see very little rhyme or reason in terms of the types of music you'd find all jammed together inside its scrawny confines. music spanning hundreds of years, across many many genres, ranging from pop to avant-garde (assuming they represent the extremes of the music spectrum), in fact the one common thread you'd notice is that i like music that compels me to change in some way while i am listening to it. you could argue that all music does that in some way, but i think that the kind of change i’m trying to describe has more to do with thought-patterns.

my own experience has been that there is all sorts of music that can change your emotional state, your physical state, even your spiritual state. but music that adjusts your perspective or alters the way that you think is much less common. to have music that is capable of doing this has always been valuable to me.

this has become especially important in the last few years where i have noticed that i am less-inclined to sustained creative thinking. i don’t know if this is a reflection of my age, my stage in life, or if it’s simply my sense of how i should be, given those two conditions. whatever the cause, i find myself gravitating more to music that is textural, layered, more often reflective or considered, of longer duration, and not so much to the more fragmented music of my twenties through fourties. i guess if i had to characterize it with a term i'd say that i listen to more music that has what i know as “flow”.

at the same time, i like music that challenges, that makes me need to listen again and again in order to better understand and appreciate it. today i came across the music of marvin ayres. u.k. music magazine ”the wire” describes ayres as “a serious and thoughtful composer”. astonishingly to me, ayres’ worked through the eighties with such pop notables as culture club, simply red, frankie goes to hollywood, and prefab sprout!

ayres’ music is complex, layered music that wavers between a genre described as “holy-minimalist” and music that would be more properly described as "ambient". at times ayres' music sounds as if it is on the verge of liturgical music and then just as quickly settles back into washes of colour. more detailed information about the music, the composer and about past and present projects can be found at marvin ayres’ website.

if you're not familiar with ayres' music and would like to view and listen to some examples, then you should have a seat and click these up.

this first film was made by pavel rudanovsky.

here is marvin ayres’ music live at the camden festival of electronica . . .

and again at the launch of his album “eccentric deliquescence” . . .
samples of ayres music can be heard at revere nation’s website.