Setting the tone with intricately plucked guitar, and layered violin and oboe, as the composition expands with cello, bass and rippling tabla, we are totally hypnotized by Alluvial Fans.
The brain child of composer Mark Vickness. who also plays guitar on the dimensional track, Alluvial Fans is a transcendental piece that fuses cultures, rhythms and soundscapes from all over the planet.
The composition comes with a video that demonstrates the effort and features Mads Tolling on violin, Matt Renzi on oboe/english horn, Joseph Hebert on cello, Dan Feiszli on bass, Mark himself on guitar, Ty Burhoe playing tabla and MB Gordy on percussion.
The track is taken from the upcoming album, In The Rain Shadow which was recorded by Dan Feiszli at 25th Street Recording, Oakland, CA with audio mastered by Reuben Cohen.
The composition amps up a third of the way through, generating a playful energy, juxtaposed to the more immersive start. We love the return of the tabla as it ripples through the song bridging the production and adding cerebral dimensionality.
Speaking on the opus, Mark says, “I formed the group Mark Vickness Interconnected in 2019. As a composer, this is my dream ensemble. There is almost no style of music, no musical culture or era that we cannot draw from.”
“We have a classical trio (violin, cello, oboe), a jazz quartet, percussion instruments from almost every continent and culture, and virtuoso players capable of playing pretty much anything I put in front of them from funk to raga style improvisation, from interwoven counterpoint to rock power chords, from a fast Irish 12/8 romp to an ambient textural musical tapestry and more – they do it all with ease and with an infectious energy that is palpable on every track.”
There is an epic bass solo riff from Dan Feiszli two-thirds of the way through the track that truly has us in awe. We can definitely see the composition as the score to a great cinematic movie, and have been exploring the imaginative mind of Mark Vickness further by listening to his album, Internconnected.