Ongoing Box
Most recent listen commenced with entering a 54-mile road with no clear exists in Colorado, full of mountains, ice, snow, and no guard rails. Didn't think I was coming back. But, boy, was this opening track made all the more vivid. Love this record!
Favorite track: I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good.
Subscribe
now to receive all the new
music
Unseen Worlds releases,
including
4 back-catalog items,
delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android.
Learn more.
I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley’s mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand’s wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics.
The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley’s opera company, with whom he was a principle vocalist for many years. Sam Ashley’s work has appeared on other Unseen Worlds releases (J. Jasmine: My New Music) and in solo and collaborative performances alongside “Blue” Gene Tyranny and other artists across the world.
Werner Durand, also active since the late Seventies, performs music for saxophones, Iranian ney, and self-made wind instruments. He is a linchpin figure in the experimental music scene in Germany and abroad following formative studies with Ariel Kalma and Gilbert Artman in Paris, Indian Classical Music with Kamalesh Maitra, and Iranian Ney with Ali Reza Asgharia. He has worked notably with David Behrman (Music From Memory), Arnold Dreyblatt (Animal Magnetism), Muslimgauze, Henning Christiansen, Catherine Christer Hennix (Born of Six), David Toop, and Amelia Cuni (Ashtayama, Diasporagas). He also was a longtime employee of Ursula Block’s gelbe MUSIK (Broken Music).
credits
released March 8, 2019
Produced by Werner Durand
Mixed by Werner Durand and Taylor Deupree
Mastered by Taylor Deurpree
Artwork by Sam Lubicz
supported by 217 fans who also own “I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good”
Since encountering Gene's solo work (admittedly very late) in 2019, this and Out Of The Blue have been listening mainstays. Gene brings a remarkable lyricism and clarity to his performances. "She Wore The Red Shoes" has rapidly become one of my favourite pieces of music: hypnotic, alluring and very, very beautiful. Tristan Louth-Robins
In a lane all his own, aint about me lays moody spoken word over rippling soundscapes on songs that feel cinematic in scope. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 23, 2020
Poet Douglas Kearney and composer/producer/drummer Val Jeanty link up for a a compelling LP that feels like the written word come to life. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2021