paul jebanasam: rites

Subtext presents the debut album from UK-based Sri Lankan artist, Paul Jebanasam. Rites brings together five settings of stark sonic poetry whose underlying logic bridges the worlds of contemporary classical, metal, sacred music and sound design. The pieces explore the central themes of grace and savagery, contrasting historical musical languages with the emergence of visceral sonics and immersive tonality, overlaying the past on to the present and considering the possibilities of sound as an eternal, universal medium embedded within the order of civilization. Rites takes its central inspiration from Jebanasam's exploration of liturgical music while integrating aspects of his seminal production work for the Bristol-based Tectonic label and his defining role in the re-emergence of Subtext in 2011. Through the five ceremonial passages, Rites brings together a unified vision of existence projected across human memory, merging the primal impulse of metal, noise and richly-textured drone with the tension and emotional narrative of classical composition. The material summons these elements together, evoking a machine of incalculable scale, forging a world distinct of time where man's transit and reckonings merge with a vast and unforeseeable purpose. The visible and invisible stream together into pools of chaos and sanctity, a landscape stalked by the unknown, the human spirit uttering a desolate whisper to the spirit of its ancestors. Rites brings these classical themes together into an immersive statement that considers the possibilities for contemporary composition to connect with new sonic forms, exploring abstracted structures and sculptural synthesis, and ultimately examining music's potential to converse with its earliest origins while being embedded in the present.

Paul Jebanasam - Rites III