Tim Motzer / Gregg Bendian – The Eternal (1k069) The debut of improvisational duo Tim Motzer & Gregg Bendian thrums with primordial wonder

The Eternal, the debut release of improvisational duo Tim Motzer & Gregg Bendian, is the astonishing result of their first collaboration. Blending Motzer’s hypnotic, guitar-driven soundscapes with Bendian’s evocative, spacious tapestry of orchestral percussion, The Eternal traverses dynamic and dramatic landscapes – at times soothing, at other moments haunting and unsettled. These adventurous explorations might sit in the same musical realm as Takemitsu, Feldman, or Stockhausen, or the cinematic atmospheres of Jerry Goldsmith or Bernard Herrmann. Through their profound alchemy, Motzer and Bendian have spontaneously composed music that thrums with a sense of something primordial yet uncaged by time.

As the album’s overture, ‘Beneath the Hallowed Ground’ beckons and immediately enchants through Bendian’s bowed vibraphones and Motzer’s long e-bow tones with octave fuzz and feedback against sinuous micro-loop manipulation. Sparse melodic guitar lines creep over vibrato vibraphone intervals, floating into an eventual resting place.

Bowed cymbals and gongs (Bendian) and guitar drone micro loops (Motzer) inform the beginning of ‘Stars Above, Stars Within,’ the album’s shortest piece, with descending suspended harmony resolving into varying continual spirals to final resolution.

‘A Shaman’s Spell’ pulls us in with Bendian’s mallets on vibraphone, glockenspiel, triangles, and bells, interwoven with Motzer’s bowed guitar figures over dark drones and glitched sonics. Ghostly bowed cello-like guitar and percussive melodic lines appear, cascade, and eventually dissolve into the mist.

The expansive final piece, ‘The Eternal,’ introduces Bendian’s cymbals, orchestral concert bass drum, tuned roto-toms, bells, and bongos. Over Motzer’s chordal harmonic drones and pulsing electronic glitch maneuvers, ‘The Eternal’ mingles multifold timbres and melodies of guitar and mbira with Bendian’s epic percussive dialogue. As the album’s crescendo, it’s a wondrous, 28-minute sonic adventure.

“We somehow achieved a music that is both earthy and celestial – meditative and dramatic. It feels like a soundtrack of the earth, and of the heavens, and beyond. Our approach to the mixing of this record only heightens this feeling.” – Gregg Bendian

“These recordings are an incredible realization to me. I’ve listened to this album many times and continue to hear new and deeper details in the dialogue between Gregg and me. It’s an honor to work with Gregg for the first time, and it’s a first time for me working with orchestral percussion. The way our sounds merged together was surprising and riveting.” – Tim Motzer