Trick or treat or a new Wio LP?
”Brummagem Brilliance” is the sibling of the ”Brilliant Brummagems” Unread cassette from a few months ago.
Sometimes i like to think of myself as some sort of motivator, a motivator of Wio (some would say stalker) and now that I have a copy of ”Brummagem Brilliance” in my hands I see all my efforts rewarded, all the hours i have spent begging him to record new songs recompensed. ”The Breakthrough Album” from a few years ago featured old songs that had already been released or had been left in a drawer unreleased. So, when Wio wrote me saying he had new songs he had been working for a while, it was like I had a dream come true.
Wio hasn’t been sleeping all these years, of course, he has been super active with de portables and at the end of the day, there was little time left for other musical projects. But then the idea came, to turn that ”problem” into a creative starting point. And so he set himself a challance, whenever he had a small spot of time, to create and record a song in under 15 minutes. He thought: ”If I would aim for a total of 50 of those recordings” and ”if out of this quantity some quality would surface”.
It took two years, from September 2016 to October 2018 to come to the 50 songs mark, to assembly, compose and realize ”Brummagem Brilliance” and ”Brilliant Brummagems”, which also came forth of this project.
15 minutes only! That’s crazy, isn’t it?
I have had in the past, the privilege to attend the birth of ”The Breakthrough Album”, the chance to witness the evolution of songs.
What Wio delivered for the press was something completely different from what I had loved and listened to for months during gestation, some songs had undergone a sort of metamorphosis and I was no longer able to tell if I preferred the first or the final version. Unable to choose, so I stayed
Can we talk about embryos of songs for ”Brummagem Brilliance”? Perhaps.
What would have become of these songs if Wio had spent more time on them? Not that it really matters or that I care about.
Nature is said to be perfect and so are these embryos of songs. More than sketches or drafts, these songs are Wio’s and they have a life of their own.
”Ultrasound Reality” is the first single.
”Brummagem Brilliance” is divided into two sections, the side a of the album contains only instrumental pieces, the side b, instead, songs in which Wio sings.
Of course for this album, that comes out in a limited edition of 100 copies, I will design handmade covers, one different from the other, as always, but unlike the past, this time, to respect the idea and concept of the album, I will spend only 15 minutes on every cover.
It’s a difficult undertaking for one like me that usually spends a couple of hours on every jacket and it is definitely an interesting experiment. The abstract subjects represented on the covers are reproductions of stills from the abstract videos made by Wio for this collection of songs.
Preorder your copy now.
