"Temporary Places is a musical conjuring of impressionistic landscapes that serve as an antidote to the loss of mobility, both mentally and physically. It seeks to open an access point to the enchantment of the natural and inner world. It was initially created as a study in memory. Using personal field recordings and sound design, I was attempting to conjure an audible portal to an emotional recollection of my youth. I imagined colossal wind chimes clapping together, swarming my daydreams on the front porch, a storm rolling in, a neighbor revving her Harley from across the street, a shiny black ant crawling across my mother's gardening glove. But a conversation I had with my father, incarcerated in a state penitentiary, changed the intention of that portal and its potential journeyers. He had expressed sorrow about being detached from the outside world-of not touching a tree or feeling the rain in years. Simultaneously, a family friend lay bedridden, recently paralyzed from a tragic fall. I wanted a way to deliver, in assisted musical reverie, a heightened version of the natural world to them and anyone who finds themselves quarantined from enchantment. Whether trapped in cell, a bed, or imprisoned by the stresses of contemporary human constructs, these are Temporary Places that can blossom within the listener. Places in which to imagine, play, and be still.

These tracks have been meticulously stitched together from field recordings and studio creations. The field recordings are from the grassy streams of Tam Cốc-Bích Động and moaning jungles of Cúc Phương National Park in Vietnam; the hissing of the summer lawns of Arona, PA; the raining, rocky shores of Castro Canyon and Big Sur, CA; the echoing basement halls of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA; and dozens of areas throughout the San Gabriel Mountains. The studio sounds are made from dry desert wood, clay pots, jugs of water, dismantled organ flutes, gravel, rustling honeysuckle branches, rusty buckets, creaky chairs and lots of bells."-Nicolas Snyder

"The most unanimously accepted definition of music is the one presenting it as "organized sound". In a literal and unique way, that's precisely what Nicolas Snyder offers us in his debut album, "Temporary Places". These are meticulously stitched together compositions constructed from field recordings made in several geographic locations, blended with various studio materials, like manipulated clay pots, organ flutes, branches, creaky chairs, chimes and bells. With a strong cinematic feeling, this new album is in Snyder's words "a musical conjuring of impressionistic landscapes that serve as an antidote to the loss of mobility, both mentally and physically". Though it's musical application is serendipitously ideal for the current quarantine period resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, it was originally composed with his incarcerated father in mind and for anyone imprisoned "by the stresses of contemporary human constructs". These are Temporary Places indeed, moving and evolving, but all the while holding space for personal exploration and contemplation. Just beautiful."-Shhpuma

This album has been reviewed on our magazine:


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