While most music is communal, more or less, some is even more so, being the work of a commune.
I hesitate to use that word, commune, for fear it will turn some away like a bad acid trip. But fear not! intrepid listeners—Habitat Ensemble’s self titled debut from November of last year, released on The Netherlands’ Music From Memory label, has more good vibrations than the Beach Boys minus Mike Love.
I’m reminded of some of Don Cherry’s 1970s records like Organic Music Society in the best possible ways as the Habitat Ensemble are rooted in folk music. What music isn’t? Habitat Ensemble is filled with acoustic and electronic elements plus field recordings adding up to one helluva trippy 46 minute ride.
From the liner notes:
The collective originates deep in the south of the Czech Republic, on the border with Austria, amongst the idyllic hills and fields of a village called Maříž, where a summer school of outsiders and creatives have been gathering since the 1990s. Enriching each other through intercultural exchange, summer school participants have created a unique gathering of artistic expression and interdisciplinary research.
Originally grown out of the idea of translating the unique energy of the community and its environment into a musical journey where each member makes their own individual contribution, during the summer of August 2022, Habitat Ensemble became an exciting vehicle for connection and co-creation.
Whether it be musical experimentation, composition, poetry, song or dance, Habitat Ensemble, having started as a series of multidisciplinary workshops, slowly developed into a unique musical recording. The album serves to conjure the unique nature, community, experimentation surrounding the school and the collective’s search for harmony across all of these, both musical and spiritual.
If any time was in need of the spiritual it’s ours.
