Under an Ancient Sky

Echoes Listeners' Poll Top 25 of 2008

Hearts of Space Label

Barry Stramp and Michael Graham Allen reunite with the latest Coyote Oldman offering:  Under an Ancient Sky. Coyote Oldman is exploration and art.  Michael Graham Allen shapes ancient flutes and flowing melodies while in the studio Barry Stramp shapes the time and space in which this unique music unfolds and expands.

2008: Under an Ancient Sky embodies the work of two seasoned experimental artists who achieve a surreal sound sculpture of comforting music in this thoughtful and strangely crafted recording.

The Anasazi (ahn-uh-sah'-zee) were prolific artists and innovators.  Their culture arose and flourished for thousands of years in the vast rocky, arid Four Corners area of the southwestern United States.  The Anasazi were the ancient founders of the Pueblo cultures building stone and adobe villages, developing agriculture, making beautiful pottery, cotton cloth and extensive roads in an impressive civilization.  And they made some very fine wooden flutes.  The flutes used in "Under an Ancient Sky" are based on 1,200 year old artifacts of Anasazi flutes unearthed in Central Eastern Arizona.

Archeology supplies us with well-documented artifacts: flutes that are clearly original and unencumbered by interpretation.  Even in fragments, old flutes are embued with information: their musical notes and voice still readable in the length, bore, finger hole size and placement, information that survives for centuries under the right conditions.  With precise measurements skillfully reproduced in wood, this ancient flute comes back to life, its' voice heard once again in our world.

The flutes heard on "Under an Ancient Sky" were built and played by Michael Graham Allen and bear the original tone and scale of an instrument that has been silent for the past 700 years; the lush harmonic overtones and unusual compositions are inspired by the mysterious voice of the Anasazi flute, the soul of this latest Coyote Oldman recording "Under an Ancient Sky".

The latest in 21 years of Coyote Oldman recordings is formed around the ancient flute, haunted by complexly shaped notes that seem to glow with strange unknown colors reflected in an elegant atmosphere of sound.  The Anasazi flute is a significant musical instrument that will spread and live again on this planet.  "Under an Ancient Sky" is part of the reintroduction of this, until recently extinct, flute of the New World.  Musician Michael Graham Allen has been researching, building and reintroducing traditional flutes of North America since the 1970s.

The futuristic musical sound transformations heard on "Under an Ancient Sky" were researched, developed and created by Barry Stramp.  THese compositional methods combine many common and uncommon ways to change sound, and were tailored specifically for each piece of music.  This recording is about cycles of life and sound, and their synergistic metamorphosis.