Max Richter - Songs From Before

180-gram pressing mastered from original sources

Pressed at Optimal in Germany

Album download included, offer subject to expiration

Beautifully recorded and cinematic in scope, Songs From Before carries a pensive, emotionally resonant tone. Punctuated by Robert Wyatts distinctive, understated readings of Haruki Murakamis text, the music evokes forgotten memories or lost histories, a series of bittersweet articulations that seem suspended somewhere between a dreamy sense of awe and melancholia.

The title refers to the fact that, as well as this being a kind of specimen case of music written over a long period, the album carries other music inside it — with the sources ranging from music between 5 and 300 years old — either used as starting points for Max's own writing, or submerged deep within.

Musicians:
Louisa Fuller / Natalia Bonner, violins
John Metcalfe, viola
Ian Burdge / Chris Worsey, cellos
Robert Wyatt reader (Tracks 2, 4, 7, 9, 11)
Max Richter, piano and electronics