Channeling Apollo (1994)

Channeling Apollo is the first single from Silonics' retrospective album: Channeling Apollo/Art Dance Classics (1989 - 2001), which releases in June 2024. It features several works created in collaboration with choreographers for contemporary dance performances, plus some other experimental art music tracks, which are yet to be choreographed, including this one...

Channeling Apollo is a kind of spiritual jazz, recorded in the winter of '94, very late one mid-week evening, when an eerie fogbound stillness had enveloped the grounds surrounding the La Trobe University Music Department's Recording Studio and working alone, this piece was made.

The mythical Greek god 'Apollo' was channeled to bring beauty and creativity and as I felt my way into the music, Monk and Ornette were channeled to shape and colour my improvisations, producing a unique dreamy jazz flavour.

A looped bass pulse quietly starts up a foundational groove and rumble, sparse piano fragments define an angular space, an alto sax tentatively enters and with growing assertiveness unfurls intensifying soaring tones that swirl and dance around the keys, with delay effects accenting and augmenting the interplay and mood...

Did I actually channel Apollo or Monk or Ornette? It is a question that I can't objectively answer, but I know that I tried to and in so doing, I gave myself over to a spiritual process and an intuitive mindset, to feel my way into spontaneously improvising the music that emerged that night, which kept unfolding as I evolved the track with delay fx over the following days.

Six years later, Channeling Apollo was broadcast on New Music Australia on ABC FM classic radio in 2000, when the host and composer Julian Day said that it reminded him of Bowie and now nearly thirty years since it was made, it is being released because it still sounds fresh and beautiful to me, so worth sharing.

Amongst other mythical strengths, Apollo was believed to heal through music and was gifted with the power to end pandemics!!!

So with that in mind... maybe we could all try channeling Apollo to collectively activate musical healing worldwide and so help to overcome our current covid, social, political and environmental calamities... and otherwise bask in the natural healing powers that music can bring to us all... and perhaps choreograph some new art dance moves as we do,,,