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About the project:
The Eternal Return Arkestra is an ever-evolving body of work.
Curated by A-Sun Amissa and Gizeh Records founder Richard Knox, this project sees a community of musicians collaborating in a new way and existing outside the usual parameters of bands, labels, distribution, marketing and touring.
In 2014 Gizeh Records was invited by Manchester-based avant-garde promoters FatOut to curate a stage at FatOutFest, situated at the legendary Islington Mill space in Salford. We decided to create a four-hour long improvised performance featuring up to twenty musicians at a time playing in a huge circle, with the audience situated in the middle where they were free to move around and explore the individual components or experience the noise as a whole. The session included contributions from members of Gnod, Nadja, FareWell Poetry, This Heats Charles Hayward and many others. We named it the Eternal Return Arkestra of Gizeh.
The next stage of the project was to work out how it could exist as something more tangible, whilst retaining the ideals and spontaneity of the initial idea. The website will operate as the platform. It is an artist-led, independent environment: a place to create with freedom, without barriers, exploring different ways to collaborate. It’s a space to share work, share the process, build pieces of music organically from the ground up, and involve the listener in every step of that journey.
It operates outside of the usual music industry framework. No physical products, no labels, no heavy marketing campaigns, thus removing the infrastructure and traditional creative barriers. We have a collection of all the recorded material archived which is accessible via a subscription.
Each piece of music created here will be shared as a reflection of the creative process. Musicians will be invited to provide, or to collaborate on, a piece which will then be added to by another musician, and then another and so on. The music will be uploaded to the website and as each new contribution arrives the previous version will be replaced and archived. Each layer will be documented in a timeline with full credits and links to the artists involved.
The concept is that the material is essentially never finished and will continue to evolve over time without restrictions. It is not designed to replace any existing models but to deliver a more spontaneous, transparent and open way of working and collaborating.
Here’s what you get:
- All the new music we make streaming instantly on your mobile device via the free Bandcamp app, and also available as a high-quality download.*
- These back-catalog and subscriber-only releases:
- The satisfaction of knowing you’re supporting us in a sustainable way.
