james ginzburg: six correlations

Subtext releases James Ginzburg's Six Correlations, originally composed for a commissioned performance in Berlin and recorded in early 2018 over three days. James Ginzburg is one half of Emptyset and founder of Subtext Recordings, as well as co-curator of the Arc Light Editions imprint with Jennifer Allan. Six Correlations explores the intersections between traditional music from various cultures, with a particular focus on Gaelic folk music native to the remote island regions of Scotland, where half of Ginzburg's family originates from. It incorporates influences of Iranian traditional music, Indian classical and generative composition techniques. Six Correlations considers the relationship between the organic and the digital world as a meditation on whether modernity implicitly represents a long slow goodbye to nature: a long slow goodbye to everything that is not integrated into the networked world. The response to the disappearance of both nature and non-digital culture is presented here as an aspiration to imagine and communicate a harmonious relationship between the organic and the technological. Produced using a hand drum, piano, voice, shruti box and Roland SH-101, Six Correlations brings together many of the influences from the Subtext artists with whom Ginzburg has worked with over the last years, such as Turkish artist and percussionist Cevdet Erek and Swedish composer Ellen Arkbro, as well as connecting with his instrumental explorations with Paul Purgas as Emptyset, and recent releases on Arc Light Editions such as Salm an LP of Gaelic Psalm singing from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.