Today, Christchurch-based violinist and composer Anita Clark aka Motte (pronounced Mot-te) releases the second track off her upcoming album Cold + Liquid, out August 12th on U.S indie label Ba Da Bing! Records. New single ‘Plateau’ follows the album’s lead track ‘Only I’ which currently hits the #3 spot on the New Zealand Alternative RadioScope Charts. Known throughout New Zealand as an expert violinist, Motte performed alongside Luke Buda on his nationwide tour this month and joins the Don McGlashan tour in October.
‘Plateau’ is accompanied by a video in collaboration with Threading Frames, a Tāmaki Makaurau-based movement and film company directed by Joshua and Tyler Carney-Faleatua. Inspired by her work with dancers and modern circus, Clark’s atmospheric soundscapes are visualised through experimental body movement and New Zealand’s austere landscapes: the vast mountainscapes of Duder Regional Park, the remote serenity of Maraetai and Anawhata Beaches, and the deep green shades of Riverhead Forest.
“The track is not the most obvious second ‘single’ from the album,” Clark explains. “It is Track 1/Side B of the record and as the track is titled, it suggests more of a geographic atmosphere of the overall album.”
A track of two parts, ‘Plateau’ begins with a sweeping arpeggiated violin pattern and an ethereal shimmering violin. In the video, a distant silhouetted figure on a beach ducks and swoops, compelled by the whispers of the surrounding mountains, sea, and hills. SW/LW radio frequency sweeps, akin to a retro sci-fi film soundtrack, join the strings. “Perhaps they’re trying to communicate with the far reaches of the galaxy,” muses Clark.
The song’s second phase starts with a triumphant, over-driven violin riff and a pulsing bass line, played on a Korg Volca. The view shifts to a labyrinthine woodland where sound and gravity reverse. Now the figure calls, and the earth responds. In short bouts of instrumental intensity, the song reaches a crescendo before collapsing in on itself and breaking the spell.
Listen to/Watch the video for Plateau
“It’s a burnished, hovering, ever-mutating sound, beautiful and anxious by turns. The fact that Clarke also rolls her glorious thick contralto voice over some pieces, well- that’s almost a bonus.” – Grant Smithies (Stuff) on Motte, Strange Dreams LP
Anita Clark’s new Motte album, Cold + Liquid builds glacial atmospheres, frozen moods and isolated impressions. Portraying Aotearoa/New Zealand through socio-geological sound, breathing in Otautahi/ Christchurch cultures and locales, the album embodies an artistic simulation of the Kiwi environment. Motte borrows from an array of sound sources to create an immense entity, with each piece situated precisely along the path. Cold + Liquid offers this rich sensory experience, transporting the listener into a world of Clark’s imagination.
As a master violinist, Clark is a favourite of the NZ music scene. She’s been employed by Nadia Reid, Marlon Williams, Lawrence Arabia and Maryrose Crook of The Renderers for her skills. Currently, she plays with The Phoenix Foundation, Luke Buda and Don McGlashan and The Others. Her skillful reach across genres fuels her popularity both with the rock under and overground, and she has also built a rich CV of film soundtracks and contemporary dance compositions.
With such a powerful musical force behind it, Cold + Liquid germinated as a result of a prolonged silence. Clark was suffering from vocal cord paralysis, leaving her with a culminating sense of frustration which could only be released through songwriting. The album’s early life was purely instrumental. But as she prepared for the studio and was searching old voice memos hoping to find vocal tracks, her voice returned. A fervent week followed, where she reimagined the entire album, now with singing.
She aimed to make something colossal, and set about finding the right textures to add. A friend who works at Oamaru Freezing Works gave her field recordings of the temperature control room, a vast cold space of isolated machinery, where ice grows and dissolves in ever-evolving sculptures. Getting her hands on shortwave/longwave radios, she incorporated frequency sweeps. Another friend provided her with the mechanical drones underneath the deck of a cement cargo ship, as it lay docked in Lyttelton Harbor. Still more sources came from Sign of the Bellbird, an historic environmental site in South Christchurch, where Clark and Thomas Lambert recorded bellbirds, rolling boulders, snapping sticks, thrown dirt and the papery sound of the native harakeke plant.
While violin dominates the first Motte album Strange Dreams (2017), Clark sought to expand instrumentation. She was gifted a handmade Pūrerehua puoro, a traditional Māori instrument that sounds similar to the whirling and hovering of a moth (which is “motte” in German). A reacquaintance to the guitar occurred after developing an alter ego project entitled ‘Sex Den,’ with sleazy noir-esque guitar riffs in response to a failed rumour from a local drug-addled dive bar. Guitar and synth allowed for a broader songwriting palette along with a sometimes Dadaist approach to lyric writing. These new tools accent the extreme ambiences of Cold + Liquid, while additional work was provided by Ben Woods on synth and bowed guitar.
Listening to Cold + Liquid is a fulsome experience of articulated sound and specific place. Anita Clark dances around the shining candescence of her culture like a night insect, always seeking a better vantage point to the light.
The full album will be released August 12th. Pre-order and pre-save using the link below!
Cold + Liquid Tracklist
1. Andromeda
2. Only I
3. Crystal Waters
4. Gargantuan
5. Visceral Feelings
6. Plateau
7. Cold + Liquid
8. Seeing Into The Minds Of Others
9. Falling Star
Pre Order from your local record store or online: https://lnk.to/motteonlyi
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