Mike Majkowski Swimming in Light

Swimming In Light is a gripping durational study in perpetual tension and release by a gifted double bass soloist, Mike Majkowski, for the ever-curious Entr’acte label. It’s the Australian composer’s 6th solo album since his debut, Ink On Paper (2008) and possibly the strongest demonstration of his innovative extended technique, deployed in two subtly contrasting yet equally hypnotic sides.Using rapid bowing technique to paradoxically generate ostensibly static, sine wave-like tones, coupled with analogue synth, vibes, piano, percussion and field recordings, Majowski explores the perceptions of “stillness” and “movement” which give dynamic form to the content of musical composition.Effectively, the Berlin-based artist makes his main instrument sound electronic, yet due to the acoustic harmonic richness it’s capable of, the results render a much lusher, immersive, and subtly chaotic spectrum of spectral sonics than one might typically expect from purely electronic sources.In multiple parts, the shimmering swell of Radio Weather Vending Machine offers a cyclical resolution of hi-speed ostinato gesture, the sound of the gesture, and the overtones which exist independent of that gesture; in effect creating a sort of Nth variable which he attempts to isolate and intensify over the course of the piece, conjuring a clammy, paranoid atmosphere recalling Harley Gaber’s Winds Rise In The North in the process.However, the B-side, Structure and Posture appears to operate on the flipside of that wave, dissipating the tension into slow, swooning contours giving rise to a glowing aurora of consonant overtones, which, once you’ve settled into their shadows, begin to deeply recall the doom jazz introspection of Bohren Und Der Club of Gore or the exquisiteness of Elodie stretched into the horizon.