Omnempathy announces release of New Music Scotland Award winner Michael Begg’s new recording, Sonambulo.
Sonambulo (OMCD12) will be released on November 4th 2019 in a ltd (150) edition CD – which will ship directly from the UK via this site, the Omnempathy Bandcamp, and select UK mail order outlets. It will also be available to download and stream via all major vendors; iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc. Subscribers to our newsletter or the Bandcamp page will be able to purchase the recording several days ahead of formal release.
Sonambulo documents the work and performance completed during a residency at the Centro Mexicano para la Musica y las Artes Sonoras in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico during November and December 2018: Sonambulo: un bebedero para pájaros compuesto por dientes para la novia del viento. (Sleepwalker: A birdbath made of teeth for the Bride of the Wind)
The residency was developed as part of Seeing Hearing UK Mexico, a three-year collaboration between the UK and Mexico made possible with the support of Anglo Arts the cultural department of The Anglo Mexican Foundation A.C; British Council Mexico, CMMAS and Cryptic.
Sonambulo’s central subject is Leonora Carrington, the British painter closely aligned to the Surrealist movement who settled in Mexico soon after the Second World War. There, Carrington’s alchemical, visionary work made her a household name. The people of Mexico accorded her a degree of admiration and respect only now starting to be echoed in her native Britain.
Michael Begg “Through meditation, and surrealist techniques including free-association, automatic writing, juxtaposition and pursuing the logic of dreams, I endeavoured to place myself at the alchemical table of Leonora, surrounded by moths, and steam, whilst impossible beasts, hags, witches, sooth-sayers, mutated archetypes and psychic golums ebb and flow through walls and shadows.“