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Balmorhea

THE TRAP (OST) Balmorhea

The Trap

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Who Brought You Up

Michelle At Home

Northern Dirt

Joe Leaves

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Ghost

Joe And Michelle

Seaton Sluice

I Thought I Wanted To Meet You

Joe And Anna

Where To Find Me

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Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

The Texas-based minimalist instrumental duo Balmorhea (Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller) release their album The Trap. On the project, they present their soundtrack for a movie of the same name, written and directed by actress Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) that premiered in October 2023.
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
A movie about a woman shut off from the world that is brought back to life through a friendship with a damaged young man, the music "is very honest and intimate; gravitating mostly around piano and vibraphone with atmospheric guitars and analog synthesizers completing the sonic image,&rdquo; says the duo.

Balmorhea - Pendant World

PENDANT WORLD Balmorhea

Klassische Solo-Instrumente

KLASSIK

Pendant World

CD 1

Balmorhea have recorded a second DG album, Pendant World. The album features the band’s founder members Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller alongside a great

Balmorhea have recorded a second DG album, Pendant World. The album features the band&rsquo;s founder members Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller alongside a great line-up of guest artists: violinist/vocalist Aisha Burns, cellist Clarice Jensen, experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, Joseph Shabason on tenor sax and flute, clarinettist Jonathan Sielaff, percussionist Jason Treuting, and vocalists Steph Jenkins and Lisa Morgenstern. Jonathan Low adds synths and percussion and also produced the album.&nbsp;

Acclaimed Texas duo Balmorhea sign to Deutsche Grammophon 

&ldquo;...&nbsp;a sound that evokes imagery of brilliant landscapes and quiet pastoral scenes. Their&nbsp;sweeping instrumentals and sporadic yet haunting vocals draw influence from&nbsp;both&nbsp;classical music and experimental acoustic folk.&rdquo;
- NPR
Berlin, November 2020. Building on its commitment to new repertoire created by contemporary composers and musicians with distinctive original voices, Deutsche Grammophon is delighted to announce the signing of an exclusive agreement with Texas-based duo Balmorhea (pronounced &ldquo;Bal-more-ray&rdquo;). With a gift for interweaving different styles and ideas to produce mellifluous, eloquent soundscapes, multi-instrumentalists Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller have been hailed by The New Yorker for their &ldquo;slow-burning ambient Americana&rdquo; and by The Atlantic for their &ldquo;stunningly gorgeous music&rdquo;.
Balmorhea began life in 2006 when Lowe and Muller met and made music at a summer camp in the remote Texas Hill Country. The two friends continued experimenting and exploring after they returned to Austin, where they combined complex layers of guitar and piano sounds in ways that appeared to mirror the majestic mountains and rugged landscapes of their home state.
Since then, six studio albums, various EPs, four singles, remixes, a live album and more than a decade on the road have helped secure cult status for Balmorhea. Lowe and Muller have performed both as a duo and as the core of variously expanded Balmorhea ensembles to audiences around the world, everywhere from cathedrals to rock clubs, art galleries to Berlin&rsquo;s Funkhaus and Bozar Brussels.
Open to a striking range of genres and cultural influences, their distinctive form of minimalism, spacious and sublime, embraces everything from the classical tradition and experimental acoustic folk to post-rock experimentalism. While often evoking the sights and sounds of nature and the changing seasons, their music has a depth that also leaves it open to the listener&rsquo;s own interpretation.
Signing with the Yellow Label marks both a new beginning for the duo and a return to the origins of their partnership. Both musicians are looking forward to working with the DG team: &ldquo;Neither of us, as young boys growing up in Texas, would have dreamed that we might create music for the same label that produced so many records which left such a profound impact on us. We couldn&rsquo;t be more elated with this new adventure.&rdquo;
Christian Badzura, Vice President A&amp;R New Repertoire at Deutsche Grammophon, welcomed Balmorhea to the Yellow Label. &ldquo;I am truly happy that they have joined the Deutsche Grammophon artist roster,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;After expanding to an ensemble Rob and Michael have now returned to their roots as a duo, opening a new chapter in their lives as composers and performers while recalling the way they started, scoring and playing hauntingly beautiful compositions and arrangements.&rdquo;
Balmorhea&rsquo;s Deutsche Grammophon debut album will be released in spring of next year. Written in remote locations around their home state, the new tracks were refined and recorded in the iconic Saal&nbsp;3 at Berlin&rsquo;s Funkhaus. Having first visited the studio in 2018, the duo were determined to come back and record in a space Lowe describes as &ldquo;made to capture acoustic instruments beautifully&rdquo;. Again inspired by the vast landscapes of Texas, their latest works also address the threat posed to the natural world by climate change and the limits of the human imagination, their restraint and simplicity speaking volumes.

Balmorhea look back to their roots for upcoming album The Wind, debut release with Deutsche Grammophon

&ldquo;Slow-burning ambient Americana that manages to captivate while avoiding the histrionics of its post-rock forebears.&rdquo;&mdash;The New Yorker
&ldquo;...a sound that evokes imagery of brilliant landscapes and quiet pastoral scenes. Their sweeping instrumentals and sporadic yet haunting vocals draw influence from both classical music and experimental acoustic folk.&rdquo;&mdash;NPR
&ldquo;Rich textures push it past the point of background music, and its gorgeous melodies serve as anchors for even the sparest moments&rdquo;&mdash;Pitchfork
January 12, 2021 &ndash;&nbsp;Lauded minimalist group Balmorhea will share The Wind, their new album and debut collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon, on April 9; pre-order <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/Balmorhea">HERE</a>. The Wind comprises a dozen tracks inspired variously by meditations on the natural world and its fragility, an ancient tale about a saint who carried the wind to an airless French valley and thoughts of climate activist Greta Thunberg crossing the Atlantic. The album&rsquo;s first single &ldquo;Rose in Abstract&rdquo; is out today; listen/share <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/the-wind-balmorhea-12219">HERE</a>.
&ldquo;Rose in Abstract&rdquo; features both Balmorhea musicians Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller on piano for the first time. To fill out the intro, the two used friend Nils Frahm&rsquo;s pipe organ and later added breadth and color to the piece with the help of horn player&nbsp;Morris Kliphuis&nbsp;(Stargaze Collective), cellist&nbsp;Clarice Jensen&nbsp;and singer&nbsp;Lisa Morgenstern. &ldquo;If there is a character in our story, this is where she might make a realization that things are changing,&rdquo; says Lowe.
The Wind marks both a return to Balmorhea&rsquo;s original set-up and a new beginning for the founding duo, who forged ideas for the album at the Lowe family house by the River Llano, around a two-hour drive from Austin, Texas. The remote area&rsquo;s vistas, rocky terrain and profound peace allowed the two to regroup creatively and open up their musical process. Near the end of the composition period, Lowe discovered a translation of the&nbsp;Otia imperialia, a 13th century compendium complete with descriptions of marvels and miracles. He was drawn to the tale of &ldquo;The wind which St. Caesarius shut up in a glove,&rdquo; in which the archbishop of Arles carries the sea breeze to a desolate valley and releases it to make the place &ldquo;fruitful and healthy.&rdquo; &ldquo;I felt it was a resonant metaphor for the music we created,&rdquo; says Lowe. &ldquo;The wind stands here for renewal.&rdquo;
The album was recorded in the iconic Saal 3 of Berlin&rsquo;s Funkhaus, musical home to Lowe and Muller&rsquo;s multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer friend Nils Frahm and co-produced by Grammy-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low (Taylor Swift, Caroline Shaw, Sō Percussion), and mixed and mastered by Low at Long Pond in upstate New York, the studio that he operates for Aaron Dessner and The National. Other collaborators old and new include bassists Sam Pankey, Alex Browne and James Suter and bass clarinettist Jonathan Sielaff, vocalist Jesy Fortino, percussionist Jason Treuting and Los Angeles-based Lili Cuzor, who reads extracts from a French translation of Otia imperialia for the opening and closing tracks.
Balmorhea, pronounced &lsquo;Bal-more-ray&rsquo; and named for a small town in western Texas, began life in 2006 when Lowe and Muller met and made music at a summer camp in the remote Texas Hill Country. The group gradually evolved into a larger ensemble and toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Following an intense five-year period on the road and the decision of some of the band&rsquo;s members to relocate outside of Texas, Balmorhea&rsquo;s two founders took advantage of a break from touring to improvise and experiment together once more. The Wind and their collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon grew from there.

Balmorhea share new single 'La Vagabonde'

Balmorhea unveil their new single "La Vagabonde"&nbsp;today. Listen to the pre-release track <a href="https://DG.lnk.to/Balmorhea">here</a>. The track, which premiered on BBC&nbsp;6 Music&rsquo;s Mary Anne Hobbs&rsquo; show earlier this week, is named for the vessel that Greta Thunberg returned home on from her trip to the US in November 2019 and appears on Balmorhea&rsquo;s upcoming album The Wind, which is set for release on 9 April and available for pre-order <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/Balmorhea">here</a>.
&ldquo;Thunberg very much embodies the thinking and energy that I eventually came to associate with much of the music on this album,&rdquo; says composer and multi-instrumentalist Robert Lowe, one half of the duo that also includes Michael A. Muller. Lowe remembers telling a friend that he was working on a piece for piano, French horn and a trio of double basses and being called &ldquo;insane&rdquo;. &ldquo;It hadn&rsquo;t occurred to me that that was an unusual combination,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;La Vagabonde&rdquo; follows &ldquo;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpiyPymhj3w">The Myth</a>&rdquo; and debut single &ldquo;<a href="https://dg.lnk.to/Balmorhea_Rose">Rose in Abstract</a>&rdquo;.
&ldquo;Beginning with this track we sense a softly bending arc in our story,&rdquo; says Muller. He traces the sense of dissonance that builds within &ldquo;La Vagabonde&rdquo; until &ldquo;we are pulled back into the main melody and the ship is pointed straight ahead once again&rdquo;. The track features a host of musicians, including Morris Kliphuis on French horn, Jonathan Sielaff on clarinet and frequent Balmorhea collaborator Sam Pankey on double bass along with Alex Browne and James Suter. The basses were tracked in Austin, Texas at the Church House Studio by David Boyle, who also produced, recorded and mixed Balmorhea&rsquo;s 2017 release Clear Language.
The Wind was recorded in the iconic Saal&nbsp;3 of Berlin&rsquo;s Funkhaus, musical home to Lowe and Muller&rsquo;s multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer friend Nils Frahm, co-produced by Grammy-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low (Taylor Swift, Caroline Shaw, Sō Percussion), and mixed and mastered by Low at Long Pond in upstate New York, the studio that he operates for Aaron Dessner and The National.
Balmorhea, pronounced &ldquo;Bal-more-ray&rdquo; and named for a small town in western Texas, began life in 2006 when Lowe and Muller met and made music at a summer camp in the remote Texas Hill Country. The group gradually evolved into a larger ensemble and toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Following an intense five-year period on the road, Balmorhea&rsquo;s two founders took advantage of a break from touring to improvise and experiment together once more. With the release of The Wind, they&nbsp;are the first-ever Texans to join ranks&nbsp;with a wide cast of new fellow artists, from Brian Eno to Beethoven,&nbsp;on the historic Yellow Label.

Balmorhea release 'The Wind'

We celebrate the release of Balmorhea&rsquo;s new album The Wind, this project comprises a dozen tracks inspired variously by meditations on the natural world and its fragility, an ancient tale about a saint who carried the wind to an airless French valley and thoughts of climate activist Greta Thunberg crossing the Atlantic.
Balmorhea, pronounced &ldquo;Bal-more-ray&rdquo; and named for a small town in western Texas, began life in 2006 when Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller met and made music at a summer camp in the remote Texas Hill Country. The group gradually evolved into a larger ensemble and toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Following an intense five-year period on the road, Balmorhea&rsquo;s two founders took advantage of a break from touring to improvise and experiment together once more.
The album is released today, 9 April 2021.

Balmorhea Announce 'The Wind – Deluxe' With Portico Quartet Remix of 'Rose in Abstract'

Deutsche Grammophon presents the Portico Quartet remix of &ldquo;Rose in Abstract&rdquo;, the lead single from Balmorhea&rsquo;s DG debut The Wind. The new track has been specially produced for the extended edition of the album, The Wind &ndash; Deluxe, and follows on from the release of Joseph Shabason&rsquo;s fresh take on &ldquo;La Vagabonde&rdquo; earlier this year. The &ldquo;Rose in Abstract&rdquo; remix comes out this Friday, 23 September, while The Wind &ndash; Deluxe will be released digitally on 7 October.
Like Balmorhea, Portico Quartet defy easy categorisation. Describing themselves as &ldquo;widescreen minimalists&rdquo;, the London-based band are renowned for their experimental approach and unique sound. From the Mercury-nominated debut Knee-Deep in the North Sea to last year&rsquo;s Terrain and Monument, their seven studio albums so far have drawn on influences as varied as jazz, dance, electronica and ambient music, as well as minimalism.
They bring that eclecticism to their interpretation of &ldquo;Rose in Abstract&rdquo;. While adding intense new layers of texture to the sparser, more chamber-like original &ndash; the first Balmorhea recording to feature both Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller playing piano at the same time &ndash; the Portico Quartet version also captures to perfection its essential sense of mournfulness and yearning. One of the piano motifs runs pulse-like through the track, piercing through swells of rich instrumental sound. The sombre cello line is woven into this lush fabric, along with undulating brass and, as the track evolves, gently rippling percussion and wordless vocals. The music fades away to leave the ambient sound of the wind blowing.
&ldquo;It was a pleasure for us to work with such beautiful parts, in re-imagining this track as something distinct,&rdquo; says Duncan Bellamy of Portico Quartet. &ldquo;The result is something quiet, ghostly, still, that carries traces of the original into an open space.&rdquo;
Texas-based duo Balmorhea signed with DG in November 2020 and their Yellow Label debut came out six months later, to widespread critical acclaim (&ldquo;beautiful, unexpected flourishes&rdquo; &ndash; &nbsp;Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC Radio 6 Music). The forthcoming extended edition, The Wind &ndash; Deluxe, includes four previously unreleased tracks from the original sessions, together with the Portico Quartet and Joseph Shabason remixes and a rework of &ldquo;Nos&rdquo; by Christian Badzura.

Balmorhea Announce New Album Pendant World & Share Single “Step Step Step”

On Pendant World, Balmorhea&rsquo;s founders Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller are joined by experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, regular collaborators violinist and vocalist Aisha Burns and cellist Clarice Jensen, and a distinguished line-up of guest artists, including composer and percussionist Jason Treuting, vocalists Steph Jenkins and Lisa Morgenstern, clarinetist Jonathan Sielaff, and Joseph Shabason on tenor saxophone and flute. Today, Texan instrumental ensemble Balmorhea have announced that on 16 June 2023 they will release Pendant World, the group&rsquo;s eighth studio album and second release on Deutsche Grammophon. The news comes alongside the release of Balmorhea&rsquo;s new single, &ldquo;Step Step Step&rdquo;, a haunting mix of piano, percussion and the warping lilts of Sam Gendel&rsquo;s shapeshifting saxophone.
Following 2022&rsquo;s deluxe reissue of their 2021 album The Wind (featuring remixes by Portico Quartet and Joseph Shabason), a stunning live film, and newly commissioned works for Nils Frahm&rsquo;s Piano Day, Brian Eno&rsquo;s EarthPercent and Randall Poster&rsquo;s Birdsong Project, Pendant World sees Balmorhea forging new ground and expanding their pool of exciting collaborators.
Pendant World, named for a line from Shakespeare&rsquo;s Measure for Measure, grew from Lowe&nbsp;and Muller&rsquo;s desire to reunite with friends and perform with like-minded musicians after a long break. Their album dissolves hard genre boundaries to reveal a spectrum of musical styles, instrumental textures, propulsive rhythms and multihued tonal colours. The music was recorded in ideal conditions in rural Vermont in collaboration with three-time Grammy-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift, Sufjan Stevens).
&ldquo;Step Step Step&rdquo; is released today with an accompanying film from the artist Odd.One. The onscreen images, inspired by quantum physics and the mysteries of the universe, play with patterns of light and shade to create a sense of complex motion and ceaseless change, complementing the subtle rhythmic energy of Balmorhea&rsquo;s music.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s always difficult to portray our music visually,&rdquo; comment Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller. &ldquo;Without lyrics we are often seeking new ways of personifying the visceral emotionality of sound in ways that feel like organic complements; layering new dimensions into the experience of listening rather than striving to communicate a specific message.&rdquo; They were intrigued by a series of visuals shared with them by Odd.One, which the duo found &ldquo;difficult to decipher, neither digital nor analogue &lsquo;source material&rsquo;. The composition still remains mysterious to us. We&rsquo;re grateful to Odd.One for their care-filled, innovative treatment of our music and are thrilled to have the opportunity to reveal a new dimension around what we built with Pendant World.&rdquo;
Odd.One took an imaginative leap into the restless universe. Their &ldquo;Step Step Step&rdquo; video encompasses complex wave patterns, pulsations and fleeting forms that flow like clouds in the wind. &ldquo;There is no language more universal than music,&rdquo; observes Odd.One. &ldquo;We live lives full of birdsong, awash in the energy and cymatic resonance of all things. This exquisite, peculiar energy creates a rippling vibration &ndash; a subtlety of insight, emotion, and empathy with the power to heal. If we remain curious, attentive, and accepting, the abstraction of birdsong takes shape, and we find a blueprint that allows us to, in the words of philosopher Gillian Rose, &lsquo;pass beyond the preoccupation with endless loss to the silence of grace&rsquo;.&rdquo;
To celebrate the release of their forthcoming album, Balmorhea will be playing a short run of live dates, including a show at London&rsquo;s Barbican on 14 July (more to be announced).

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Nos (Live in Marfa)

Before Barbed Wire (Visualizer)

Oscuros (feat. Heather Broderick, Aisha Burns, Christian Euman)

The Bright Door (feat. Lisa Morgenstern, Aisha Burns, Jonathan Low)

New Conditions (ft. Joseph Shabason and Jason Treuting)

Rose in Abstract (Live in Marfa)

Solanales (Official Music Video)

Balmorhea - The Myth

Videos

Photos of Balmorhea

THE WIND Live in Marfa / Balmorhea

THE WIND Balmorhea (Digital Deluxe Edition)

SOLANALES Balmorhea

TIME IN THE HAND Balmorhea

THE WIND Balmorhea

More music from Balmorhea

Biography

Balmorhea (pronounced bal-more-ray) was founded in 2006 by Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller, friends who met at a summer camp in the Texas Hill Country. They began creating music together: informal yet intentional layerings of guitar and piano that found poignancy in restraint, &ldquo;evoking imagery of brilliant landscapes and quiet pastoral scenes&rdquo; (NPR). In the 14 years since, new voices have entered in and out of Balmorhea&rsquo;s narrative with Lowe and Muller remaining at the group&rsquo;s core. Through six studio albums and various EPs they&rsquo;ve woven in string ensembles, percussive detail, ambient vocals, field recordings, and experimental sounds. Their distinctly spacious minimalism has remained a through line, drawing comparisons to classical tradition, experimental acoustic folk, and the feeling of wide-open, &ldquo;slow-burning ambient Americana that manages to captivate while avoiding the histrionics of its post-rock forebears&rdquo; (The New Yorker).&nbsp;
Balmorhea defies easy compartmentalization, spanning genres while resonating with a vast worldwide listenership. Lowe and Muller have performed (both as a duo and full ensemble) to audiences from Mexico City to China, Istanbul to Italy; they&rsquo;ve played everywhere from gothic cathedrals to rock clubs, renowned art museums to respected European venues like Berlin&rsquo;s Funkhaus and Brussels&rsquo; Bozar. They have shared the stage with neoclassical pianists Nils Frahm and Dustin O&rsquo;Halloran, experimental artists Oneohtrix Point Never and Grouper, and rock acts like Efterklang and Sonic Youth&rsquo;s Thurston Moore. Their diverse audience and malleable range &mdash; &ldquo;both restorative and disquieting, depending where one lands in its deep catalog&rdquo; (The Atlantic) &mdash; has led to collaborations and original compositions for feature films, television, high-end fashion houses, and dance performances.&nbsp;&nbsp;
In recent years, Lowe and Muller have in many ways returned to their roots &mdash; retreating to remote corners of Texas to write new music as a duo. It&rsquo;s a circling back to their origin story while embarking on a new chapter with the history-seeped Deutsche Grammophon label; a collective soundtrack for life&rsquo;s swells, silences, and anchoring in the present.

Concerts and Operas

Live in Marfa

Balmorhea: The Wind

Documentaries

Balmorhea to Release The Trap 

Balmorhea wrote and performed this atmospheric score for Lena Headey&rsquo;s 2023 feature-length directorial debut
The Trap comes out as a digital album on 29&nbsp;August 2025
&ldquo;We are grateful to Lena for trusting us on this beautiful film and are honored by the collaboration. We are so excited for Balmorhea listeners to hear this music and hopefully be touched by it in some way &ndash; equally as we were in its creation.&rdquo;
Rob Lowe &amp; Michael A. Muller
Texas-based duo Balmorhea (Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller) present their latest Deutsche Grammophon album &ndash; the original soundtrack they composed and recorded for The Trap, written and directed by actress Lena Headey (Game of Thrones). Based on Headey&rsquo;s BAFTA-nominated short of the same name, and starring Michelle Fairley and James Nelson-Joyce, The Trap was premiered at the Austin Film Festival in October 2023. Balmorhea&rsquo;s soundtrack album, made at Estuary Recording in Austin, comes out digitally on 29&nbsp;August 2025. The title track will be available for streaming/download on 1&nbsp;August, followed by &ldquo;I Thought I Wanted You&rdquo; on 15&nbsp;August.
The Trap is a psychological drama about a woman whose solitary life is disturbed by her meeting with a troubled young man. Balmorhea&rsquo;s evocative score enhances the film&rsquo;s sense of isolation, mystery and unease. &ldquo;The music is very honest and intimate; gravitating mostly around piano and vibraphone with atmospheric guitars and analog synthesizers completing the sonic image,&rdquo; say Lowe and Muller.
The duo were able to start work unusually early in the film-making process. &ldquo;The first session actually took place in response to the script alone; before the shoot had even taken place,&rdquo; they explain. &ldquo;This allowed the musical ideas to develop purely in response to the characters and concepts in the script rather than reacting directly to the picture. We were then able to mold the themes and fit them with the beautiful images as the edit took shape. For us, this is the ideal way to work.&rdquo;

Balmorhea unveil their second album for Deutsche Grammophon: 'Pendant World'

Haunting melodies and exquisite sound colours run through Balmorhea&rsquo;s keenly awaited second album for Deutsche Grammophon. Pendant World retains the essential spirit of the Texas-based group&rsquo;s music while transporting it to fresh creative territory, thanks to collaborations between founders Rob Lowe and Michael A.&nbsp;Muller and an exceptional line-up of guest artists. Above all, its thirteen tracks cross genre boundaries to explore heartfelt forms of expression. Pendant World is released digitally, on CD and on vinyl today, 16&nbsp;June 2023.
Joining Lowe and Muller on the new album are regular collaborators violinist/vocalist Aisha Burns and cellist Clarice Jensen, and an equally distinguished line-up of guest artists, including experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel, Joseph Shabason on tenor saxophone and flute, clarinetist Jonathan Sielaff, percussionist Jason Treuting and vocalists Steph Jenkins and Lisa Morgenstern. The music was recorded in ideal conditions in rural Vermont in collaboration with three-time Grammy-winning engineer and producer Jonathan Low (The National, Taylor Swift, Sufjan Stevens). &nbsp;
&ldquo;Mike and I were yearning to make music with others in a collaborative way after long months of lockdown,&rdquo; recalls Rob Lowe. The excitement of playing with friends old and new is translated into the notable sense of energy in Pendant World, one balanced by tracks of greater introspection &ndash; there&rsquo;s a sense of healing, but also of pushing on to explore new musical landscapes. As Muller notes, this dichotomy runs through not just the music but the titles and artwork as well.
The title Pendant World derives from a quotation Lowe discovered while reading Lyall Watson&rsquo;s book Heaven&rsquo;s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind. He was struck by a line from Shakespeare&rsquo;s Measure for Measure, in which one of the principal characters contemplates death and compares it to being &ldquo;imprison&rsquo;d in the viewless winds, / And blown with restless violence round about / The pendant world&rdquo;. Thoughts of a world suspended, its fate to be decided, took root in Lowe&rsquo;s mind.
&ldquo;It felt like the right image for the time we were composing most of the music,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;It played into a distilled idea of the world, like an earring or precious jewel, being violently suspended. In some ways it captured this contrast of beauty and fear, which many people experienced during the pandemic; it also relates to themes that we&rsquo;d explored in The Wind.&rdquo; And, as Muller notes, Dylan Hausthor&rsquo;s evocative black-and-white cover image also &ldquo;juxtaposes those ideas of fear and beauty&rdquo;.
&ldquo;This album deserves your time and attention not just because the music is sublime but because it&rsquo;s a work that speaks with sincerity and an open heart about life&rsquo;s fragility in a way that is both painful and beautiful&rdquo; &ndash; Chris Kontos, editor-in-chief of Kennedy Magazine
Pendant World embraces multi-layered acoustic and electronic sounds, intensified by surging pulses of rhythmic energy and exquisite textural contrasts. While several of its tracks evoke the softly spoken minimalism of The Wind, others contain driving rhythms, complex instrumental textures and big, bold sonorities.
&ldquo;We had a desire to create new sounds,&rdquo; explains Lowe. He notes that the album&rsquo;s short opening track, &ldquo;Nonplussed&rdquo;, includes found sounds that were manipulated and gradually slowed down to create a feeling of disorientation. &ldquo;We&rsquo;d never used this before since we started making music together as Balmorhea in 2006. It was new compositional territory for us.&rdquo; Muller goes on: &ldquo;Our main Balmorhea &lsquo;voices&rsquo; are piano and open-tuned acoustic guitars with some string elements, to which we&rsquo;ve added everything from samples and vinyl recordings to synthesizers, brass and flutes. It was about retaining our identity while pushing the envelope for ourselves creatively.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Oftentimes we find ourselves bridging different worlds, which is something I love about our music&rdquo; &ndash; Rob Lowe
The duo&rsquo;s original compositions were further refined in the studio. &ldquo;Sam Gendel helped us hit some of the marks we were hoping to achieve,&rdquo; Lowe observes. &ldquo;That energy of jazz, which really hits home, was very important to us. Neither Mike nor I are jazz players, so we needed a helping hand. Sam did a really good job with that.&rdquo;
The musical ideas contained within Pendant World are often more concise, especially in their rhythmic construction, than those found in the music of The Wind. &ldquo;That rhythmic muscle was something we wanted to reintroduce to our music after the last release,&rdquo; comments Muller. &ldquo;That took this album beyond genre walls and let it spread a little over the flood plain, as it were. Hopefully that will reach more ears and is more inclusive of a wider audience.&rdquo;
Highlights include &ldquo;Step Step Step&rdquo;, graced by Lowe&rsquo;s solo piano and Sam Gendel&rsquo;s keening tenor saxophone; &ldquo;New Conditions&rdquo;, a meditative song built around a solo piano riff; &ldquo;Range&rdquo;, with its subtle blend of acoustic and electronic sounds; the tender &ldquo;Held&rdquo;; and &ldquo;Desiderium&rdquo;, with its clear echoes of Erik Satie&rsquo;s piano music.
&ldquo;On Pendant World,&rdquo; sums up Chris Kontos, editor-in-chief of Athens-based Kennedy Magazine, &ldquo;Balmorhea offer the opportunity to escape from a world perceived and translated with our senses to another one suspended between here and the infinite &mdash; an ethereal universe painted with memory and nostalgia as its canvas and colours &hellip; The Texan duo are not just composing music; they&rsquo;re creating worlds.&rdquo;

Riding the Wind: Balmorhea to release 'The Wind – Deluxe'

Balmorhea&rsquo;s Deutsche Grammophon debut album, The Wind, moved reviewers and listeners alike with its contemplative blend of ambient and electronic sounds. The Wind &ndash; Deluxe, set for digital release on 22 July 2022, offers the chance to discover four previously unreleased tracks from the Texas-based duo&rsquo;s original sessions. It also includes remixes by Canadian avant-garde composer and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Shabason and the London-based Portico Quartet, together with Christian Badzura&rsquo;s elegiac rework of &ldquo;Nos&rdquo;.
Listen to the first track &lsquo;La Vagabonde&rsquo; (Joseph Shabason Remix) <a href="DG.lnk.to/WindDeluxe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
To coincide with the release of The Wind &ndash; Deluxe, Deutsche Grammophon will be screening Balmorhea: The Wind &ndash; Live in Marfa on DG Stage on the same day, 22 July, at 6pm PST. For this film, made in the desert town of Marfa, Texas, Balmorhea&rsquo;s Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller were joined by Aisha Burns (violin/vocals), Clarice Jensen (cello) and Rob Mazurek (piccolo trumpet). Over the course of a day, they performed the album in the vast and atmospheric surroundings of the Arena,&nbsp;one of the large-scale installations in the permanent collection of the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum founded by US artist Donald Judd. The building itself becomes a voice in Balmorhea&rsquo;s music, as its roof expands and contracts according to changes in temperature and wind patterns, creating varying degrees and types of noise.
Long-term creative partners Lowe and Muller first developed ideas for The Wind while taking a break from touring and spending time at the Lowe family home near the River Llano, a two-hour drive from Austin. As their composition work neared its end, Lowe discovered a translation of the Otia imperialia, a 13th‑century compendium containing accounts of marvels and miracles. He was drawn in particular to the tale of St Caesarius carrying the sea breeze to a desolate valley and releasing it to make the place &ldquo;fruitful and healthy&rdquo;. The image chimed with the Balmorhea duo. &ldquo;I felt it was a resonant metaphor for the music we created,&rdquo; says Lowe. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to go too much deeper into it, because we feel the music does the work of expression. But the wind stands here for renewal.&rdquo;
Their DG debut album was recorded in Germany, then mixed and mastered back in the US. &ldquo;Between sessions for The Wind at Saal 3 in Berlin and Long Pond in upstate New York, we tracked a wide array of music and settled on a programme that excluded a few pieces from the final sequence,&rdquo; recall Balmorhea. &ldquo;For this special deluxe release, we asked Portico Quartet and Joseph Shabason to lend their unique voices for remixes, while an 18-piece orchestra expands the range on the track &lsquo;Nos&rsquo;, arranged and reworked by Christian Badzura with Scoring Berlin.&rdquo;
&ldquo;&lsquo;Nos Nos&rsquo; floated around during the composition of The Wind, attaching and unattaching itself from a number of different pieces, a vagabond of a musical idea. It is presented here as a solo piano composition. A solo piano version of &lsquo;Rose In Abstract&rsquo; is included as well, and two extra tracks featuring Jason Treuting of Sō Percussion [&lsquo;Arles&rsquo;] and Jesy Fortino of Tiny Vipers [&lsquo;Otherness&rsquo;] round out the bonus material. The Wind was also mixed for Dolby Atmos at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles for this deluxe reissue. Whether this is your first or hundredth time with The Wind, we hope it takes you to a special place.&rdquo;
The Wind &ndash; Deluxe reflects the wealth of material composed for the original album as well as the resonance its music holds for other artists. UK post-jazz experimental band Portico Quartet have remixed &ldquo;Rose in Abstract&rdquo;, blurring genre boundaries to give the piece an even deeper bluish hue. For his remix of &ldquo;La Vagabonde&rdquo;, Joseph Shabason weaves soft woodwind textures and the sound of distant children&rsquo;s voices around a languid piano solo to evoke images of hazy summer light, while Christian Badzura&rsquo;s expanded &ldquo;Nos&rdquo; rework channels the individual instruments of Scoring Berlin to become a potent singular voice. Shabason&rsquo;s take on &ldquo;La Vagabonde&rdquo; was released as an e-single on 27&nbsp;May, and will be followed by the &ldquo;Rose in Abstract&rdquo; remix on 17&nbsp;June.

Balmorhea: The Trap (OST)

Balmorhea: Before Barbed Wire

BEFORE BARBED WIRE Balmorhea

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Balmorhea - The Wind Digital Deluxe Cover

Balmorhea - Solanales Cover

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Balmorhea - Overview | Deutsche Grammophon