"It Was Always Here" is the first official release by Transient (AKA David R Molina), after 20 years of performing live experimental, ambient and improvised music under that moniker. This recording also documents the second meeting and performance by Molina and trumpet player Darren Johnston. The set was improvised, and recorded live at Dog Adrift's studio in NYC, in September 2019. There was no prior rehearsal. Molina had some loose, basic structures and sounds he was exploring while on tour as Transient that fall. The beauty of playing with such a skilled musician and listener as Johnston, is that the unexpected happened, and the structures become something new. The result was an expansive, ever changing soundscape, which evokes traveling through space, time, and alternate states of reality.
Darren Johnston is a Canada-born trumpeter/improviser/composer/songwriter. He has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists. His interests rotate around composing instrumental music, writing songs, and performing all styles of jazz, chamber music, experimental and purely improvised music, as well as traditional music of the Balkans, Greece, and Macedonia. He has performed and/or recorded with luminaries such as ROVA Sax Quartet, Marcus Shelby, Fred Frith, Meklit, Hamid Drake, Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Allison Miller, Brass Menazeri Balkan Brass Band, Matt Wilson, Mark Dresser, Marshall Allen, and many others.
Transient is a solo and collaborative project in which Molina explores electro-acoustic, ambient, noise, industrial, free improvisation, and experimental music. He sometimes plays traditional acoustic instruments, or invented and found object instruments, and filters them through electronics, effects pedals, loops them and then alters the samples in real time. The results can be meditative soundscapes which are either light, beautiful and haunting, or dark and disturbing. Other times it can be beat driven layers of noise, or a wall of shoegaze noise guitar. Transient has collaborated and performed with John Ingle (violinist), Yvette Jackson (composer/sound artist), the late composer Chris Webb, George Cremachi (bass); electronic musicians: Thomas Dimuzio, Polar, Garret La Fever, Miguel Hernandez, Mickey Tachibana, and Kyron; saxophonists: the late Marco Eneidi, Drew Ceccatto, Marc Williams, Alex Weiss, and Ackamoor/Molina Duet; video artist Mickey T, filmmaker Anna Geyer, and performance artist Violeta Luna.
credits
from It Was Always Here,
released June 5, 2020
David R. Molina: guitar, effects pedals, Kaoss Pad, Ableton Live, bells.
Darren Johnston: trumpet
Artwork by Susana Valdez
Recorded live to 2 separate stereo tracks, at Dog Adrift Studio, by Molina, NYC, September 6, 2019
Mixed and mastered by Molina, at DRM Sound, SF CA, April/May 2020
David R Molina is an award winning composer, multi-instrumentalist, sound artist, sound designer, and instrument inventor.
He has created music for the performing arts, film, and multimedia installations, nationally and internationally, for the past 24 years. His work leans towards social justice issues. His bands are: Ghosts and Strings, Transient, and Impuritan,...more
One of my favorite albums right now! Also had the honor to hear this set live when it was performed at Pro Arts, Oakland. A very deep moving album David R Molina
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