I love music. I would like to tell you about an album I have been listening to lately called FIRE OPAL.
It is on the Spotted Peccary Music label.
https://spottedpeccary.com/artists/massergy/
Fire Opal is an inspired and colorful ambient album by electronic artist Massergy (by day known as
Eric Jensen) featuring some expressive instrumental sonics and lush resonant textures. This unique work
was recorded and mixed entirely outdoors in all weather conditions and crafted with exclusively analog
hardware, keyboards, and guitars.
The album notes say that Fire Opal embraces the imperfections and sound anomalies of this technique,
lending an authenticity to this non-conventional diverse sound voyage.
The album notes say that Fire Opal embraces the imperfections and sound anomalies of this technique,
lending an authenticity to this non-conventional diverse sound voyage.
Using analog, digital, and hybrid hardware exclusively, Eric performed, recorded, and mixed Fire Opal entirely outdoors without the use of sequencers, loops, software, or plugins. A recording device was used to capture the performances.
"My 'studio' is a small elevated balcony in the middle of a nature preserve, essentially my backyard" Eric
explains. "The preserve is home to several coyotes, owls, deer and other creatures. Think 2 a.m. with a
huge sky full of stars, eerie moonlight, and the sounds of strange creatures."
"I can see my own breath, there's a light mist in the air, it's very sleepy; that’s the kind of atmosphere where my magical moments often occur." Additionally, no sound edits or any other manipulations were made after the fact, so all of the tracks on Fire Opal sound pretty much as they did the night that they were originally created.
A sparsely vibrating electric guitar and bass leads the way through a decorative synthesizer fog, with
sparkling electronic sounding glockenspiel accents. The track “Cold White Smoke” (17:57) is a long
journey, after the sparkling part things slow down to a mysterious metallic tap and creak, hidden in the
fog. Eventually the vibrating electric guitar emerges, gently returning and pausing back and forth, and
eventually there is a sound just a little like a sequencer bubbling away in the fog, but it is simply a
handmade mallet on wood pulse pattern happily repeating and in the end it's just the vibrating fog.
In Mexican folklore, the Fire Opal is a stone that is said to have powers, offering its bearer healing and protection. Spotted Peccary Music’s latest release, from Massergy and titled Fire Opal, is a colorful and melodic take on ambient music featuring expressive instrumentation and saturated lush resonant textures. In the words of the artist himself, “I can describe the sound profile of Fire Opal in visuals: Firefly tracers in a dark forest, saturated animation, technicolor melancholy, glints of sunlight piercing gray clouds, old blurry photos of fireworks, hovering pearlescent film, a warm crackling fire that shoots sparks of electricity, underwater sleigh bells.”
1) Vinesong (03:21)
2) The Shepherdess (10:24)
3) Lunar Cinema (06:25)
4) Cold White Smoke (17:57)
5) Fire Opal (17:17)
6) El Viajero (05:25)
7) La Extraña (09:25)
Eric is a self-taught composer of ambient soundscapes who creates music entirely outdoors within a nature preserve somewhere in Texas, near Austin I think. Massergy was originally created to honor Jensen’s brother Adam, a young electronic musician who was killed in a car accident in 2002. Without a musical background or training of any kind, Eric felt compelled to continue and expand upon his brother’s unfinished work. Eric spent the next ten years crafting a style and developing original methods of composing and recording before choosing to release music to the public as Massergy.
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