Banyan Metropolis
Genres: techno, ambient, tribal
Before China closed its gates in 2020, I happened to travel to an island in northern Thailand. My favourite travelling activity is to put aside music and pick up ambient sounds with my recording equipment. I rode to the mountains, and the trees and birds there played a unique sound for me. As humans continue to overuse our planet’s resources, many species, animals and plants, will disappear soon, which makes me want to cherish nature as much as I can the now. This island’s environment and its sounds led to the foundation for my song Banyan Metropolis.
Like a banyan tree, it’s built up of several strands of environmental sounds that rise to support a wide canopy. The vocals are from the Portuguese artist Mariana Bragada, due to the pandemic we have never met in person, but built a connection via music. Another strand of the Banyan are tribal music nfluences and their various wooden instruments. Acidy tunes and a pumping base make up the remaining strands of the tree. These strands support a canopy of sound that resembles our daily life’s industrial sounds. I imagine a metropolis growing on the various strands of the Banyan were high technology that changed our lives and improved our human progress does not separate us from nature and human instincts.
This song resembles the simple structure of my mood at that time on the island. It triggers the primitive instinct of human beings to find the rhythm of dancing in nature. Throughout my career, I always believed that music is vital to humans, and its arrangement is rooted in the ground like a tree.