SIMON LLEWELYN EVANS - Collaborations

Water flows placidly. An ocean of time, a source of regeneration. Slowly, its flow takes the shape of music. Simon Evans and Aaron Nakagawa have learned to immerse themselves in the waters of the soul, seeking to distill its whisper. In the silence of a hermitage on the Fiji islands, in the shade of an imposing mango tree, they shared the same spiritual quest and the same devotion to music. Because art, as their teacher Adi Da Samraj used to say, is above all "the art of reality": "the illusion of individuality suggests the idea that human beings should constitute the measure of reality and control it, whereas reality is instead beyond the 'point of view', beyond control".

So, one day, Simon Evans shut himself away with his acoustic guitar in a corner of the island's laundry room and recorded a handful of intimate meditations. He then decided to entrust them to Aaron Nakagawa, so he could refine them with his inlay of electronic embroidery. The work continued even after the two left the island, through an exchange of e-mails between Australia (Evans's homeland) and Hawaii (where Nakagawa lives). "Collaborations" is the fruit of this artistic communion, but above all it is the fruit of the depth of a true friendship: one of those capable of accompanying you in the search for your own path.

The starting point for entering the spirit (and spirituality) of the ten songs that make up this album lies in the candor of Evans's writing, already evident on the previous "Draw Your Mountains There", the solo debut of the Australian songwriter under the name Simon Llewelyn Evans. Light, essential picking, at times almost bare, lends itself to creating minimal acoustic sketches over which Evans's hushed voice traces delicate, gentle melodies veiled in melancholy. Nakagawa's electronic origami enriches the tracks, lending them brightness and vitality. An excellent example is "Candle", a track that had already appeared, in an alternative version credited solely to Evans ("Candle Song"), on the first volume of OndaDrops, and which in this more recent guise lights up amid the sonic layering engineered by Nakagawa.

Thanks to Nakagawa's work, moreover, the contemplative aura that pervades the record takes on a quite particular connotation, constantly balanced between the ancient and the modern. The meditative mood of the songs is further intensified by the various sounds of nature that Nakagawa generously weaves among the notes of Evans's compositions: the incessant flow of water or the chirping of birds among the trees seem to transport the listener to the pure, uncontaminated landscapes of the East, where time seems to expand indefinitely, losing all sense of concreteness and value.

It is from an open wound that life can begin to flow again: "You ain't got a lot to show for three years / Just an open wound", Evans whispers in "Candle". It is an insatiable thirst that drives one back to the source, learning to contemplate all the colors of the ocean within a single teardrop. The gaze loses itself along the borderless line of the horizon: man seems like nothing before the vastness of the universe, and yet everything in him is made for that infinite measure. And that sense of disproportion, in "Warm Thing (By Your Grace)", becomes the murmur of a prayer addressed to the mystery that animates all things: "By your grace, may these prayers be so / How I miss you lord, which way shall I go?".

The tracks on "Collaborations" weave together brief illuminations along the path of this search. "I looked upon the greatest one / And I reached out to touch his arm", is the certainty that animates "Long Ago": it can reveal itself on an island at the edge of the world, it can reveal itself in the eyes of a friend. Sometimes it can even reveal itself between the lines of a song.

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04/01/2011