Weingarten, Carl - Living In The Distant Present

Year of Release: 1985
Label: Multiphase
Catalog Number: 43656
Format: CD
Total Time: 51:06:00

Traversing the spiritual border between friendship and love is the firm trigger of the most tingling of sensations and the most ethereal of emotions, caressing in smooth waves of wondrous warmth and transforming every passing moment into vast and undying eternity. The tendrils of love extend slowly outwards and reveal beauty that once remained hidden in the surroundings, so that perceptions merge with the corporeal and the passionate while absorbing the listener in childish rapture. Living In The Distant Present, Carl Weingarten's first truly solo outing, is the very embodiment of this peaceful rapture.

With a gorgeous collection of sonic waves and ambient awe that awaken the most elemental of dreams into floating conscience, Weingarten gently proves for the first time that his own sonic designs are beautiful instrumental webs capable of holding on their very own. Gone are extensive collaborations and shared visions, replaced by a diaphanous glimmer that slowly acquires its vague form during "The Fifth Season" and then chooses to remain in existence for fifty minutes of innocent meditation, intangible sensuousness, and gentle grace. Guitars are barely separable from synthesizer presence, the various layers of each track slowly coalescing and twisting around themselves while growing further with timidity until they finally acquire full maturity.

And the manner in which these musical coils wrap around each other in perfect movement becomes nearly a miracle after knowing that every piece on the album was improvised and recorded in single takes. What divine hand came and set the gears into synchronicity is unknown, but it left them with resplendent sentimentality and with a collective heart that ties the pieces together clearly but refuses to drown their particular traits. Living In The Distant Present is both an indivisible entity and a collection of different parts at the same time; macroscopic and microscopic; vast and personal; transcendental and warm; divine and human.

Perhaps the doorway to locked emotions represented by experience is not the only passage into the lucid emotions mentioned, as this album is quite capable of bringing them to figurative existence and imbuing them with life. It is an undertaking of gorgeous success; a moment of graceful wonder combined with sensuality that has some of its deepest moments on "Glide" and "Letters," the latter of which even allows one of its coils to transform into a short-lived Middle Eastern motif that soon comes back into the reigning wonder. And as these tendrils surely must have enveloped Weingarten and enchanted him into bringing them to life, they will absorb you with their transcendence and inescapable magic.

Tracklisting:
The Fifth Season (5:12) / Her Father's Hands (3:55) / Swing Song (4:20) / Soft Waters (6:03) / Glide (3:10) / Of the Moment (3:18) / Swim (5:34) / Letters (2:21) / Dreaming In Colors (7:45) / Wintercolors (4:10) / Silk & Sand (3:44) / Two Friends (3:34)

Musicians:
Carl Weingarten - guitars, slide, synthesizers, processing, loops, delay
Guest musicians

Fo Jammi - synthesizers
Walter Whitney - surf

Discography:
Submergings (1981) (w/Gale Ormiston & Phil Neon)
Delay Tactics - Out-Pop Options (1982)
Windfalls (1983) (guest app.)
Delay Tactics - Any Questions? (1984)
Living In The Distant Present (1985)
Delay Tactics - Dreaming In Colors (1986)
Laughing At Paradise (1988)
Primitive Earth (w/Walter Whitney) (1989)
Critical Path (w/Walter Whitney) (1991)
Slide Of Hand (1991)
Pandora's Garage (1992)
The Court Musicians - At The Court Of The Chera King (1993)
Redwood Melodies (1995)
The Acoustic Shadow (1995)
Silent Night (w/Kavi Alexander) (1998)
Blue Faith (2000)
Escapesilence (2002)
Hand In The Sand - A Collection 1990-2004 (2004)
Local Journeys (2005)
Invisibility (w/Forrest Fang) (2006)
Lost In The Air (2008)

Genre: Other

Origin US

Added: May 18th 2002
Reviewer: Marcelo Silveyra
Score:
Artist website: carlweingarten.blogspot.com
Hits: 2677
Language: english