Murmurations

Description

Named after giant cloud formations of starlings and themed around the stunning emergent behaviours that appear within them, Murmurations is as perfectly pitched for headphones as it is for clubs.

To mirror these movements in the sonic landscape and visuals of Murmurations, Simian Mobile Discos James Ford and Jas Shaw collaborated with the celebrated Hackney-based vocal collective The Deep Throat Choir, as well as creative directors Kazim Rashid of ENDLESSLOVESHOW (Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke) and Carri Munden. Other brilliant minds were recruited to bring this vision to life including Del Valle and photographer James Pearson-Howe.

Finding time in between Fords work as a producer and Jas club gigging last year, the duo arranged a session in Shaws countryside studio. After a friend of Fords wife introduced SMD to The Deep Throat Choir director Luisa Gerstein, they began swapping some production notes and melodic ideas. They decided to bring the whole East London-based choir into the studio to experiment and the results were intense. Jas says, Listening to them moving their voices around a tone, altering the timbre, making chords, was like working with an incredible new synthesizer. Rashid and Munden explore related ideas centred on kinetic energy and communal movement throughout the visuals of Murmurations. Rashid says of the collaboration, We were both having discussions around the purity of collective human experience and how transcendental this can be. Techno and the dance-floor is one of the last true expressions of this euphoria.