Thomas Barquee uses his voice as an instrument for soul travel. Barquee's layered harmonies create an atmosphere of intense yearning and a sense of sanctuary.
"Temple is the result of my desire to create a sanctuary," Thomas explains, "a place where I can shut off the negative side of the mind, where renewal and meditation can occur. It's also my way of engineering 'time travel' into my music. If you allow yourself to enter this space, you will lose track of time and lose what could be termed 'time pressure' or stress. I was trying to look inside and find something that was true for myself with these pieces, something that empowers me. I think that the more you allow yourself to go inside, the more power you can develop. It ís ultimately true for everybody."
Temple was recorded in Thomas' own studio and in various studios around Los Angeles. Initially, guitar and bass parts were provided by outside musicians, but Thomas later replaced them with his own performances in a quest for what he describes as a "stripped-down, personal feel" retaining only the percussion parts played by film composer Steve Gurevitch and Daniel Rossman. To this extent, Temple is more of a personal essay than a conventional music recording.
The tracks comprising Temple were created, by Thomas' own admission, ěn a state of trance. He wrote and recorded these pieces without anticipating the results, experimenting first with setting lyrics in different languages to music, then with Sufi poetry as his inspiration. Finally, Thomas chose elemental sounds - basic syllables and consonant and vowel sounds that suited his voice and built the lyrics outward from these small generative kernels of language. "I wanted to get in touch with aspects of inner life that linear thought and language might inhibit. It was important for this music to possess the feeling of how a language might evolve. Of course," Thomas laughs, "It would have been much easier if someone had just given me the words." |
| |
Buy a CD
$17.98
 |
|
