Martin Rev - Les Nymphes (CD)

About Martin Rev: NYC’s Martin Rev is a one of music’s most influential and creative. His mainstream profile has remained somewhat opaque due to his focus on creativity and art as opposed to commercial viability. Nevertheless, as the lone instrumentalist in the legendary duo Suicide, his pulsing hissing keyboards continue to challenge and inspire generations of underground music fans. Countless artists have cited Suicide as an influence including The Jesus and the Mary Chain, Joy Division, New Order, Nick Cave, Radiohead, Spacemen 3, Ric Ocasek, R.E.M. and Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen's "State Trooper" from his Nebraska album is clearly influenced by Suicide. Springsteen also performed a solo keyboard version of Suicide’s "Dream Baby Dream" to end the concerts on his 2005 "Devils and Dust" tour. Suicide’s recordings are considered to be some of the most influential alternative music recordings of all-time. Suicide (1977), is particularly heralded, often regarded as a classic. Suicide continues to play live throughout the world, performing at among others, the South Street Seaport Festival in lower Manhattan in August of 2007, the London Forum with Nick Cave on his debut of his new group Grinderman, and Agnes B's fashion week 30th anniversary celebration at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, featuring groups including Sonic Youth and Patti Smith. While remaining active in Suicide, Martin Rev is busy as a solo producer and performer. Les Nymphes marks his seventh solo album, released almost three decades since his self-titled debut salbum was released in 1980. Les Nymphes follows Rev’s debut on File Thirteen, 2004’s very well received album To Live. Since the release of To Live, Martin Rev has played solo dates in Europe including Athens and Thessalanki in Greece, many cities in Italy, Helsinki and Tampere Finland, Berlin, Geneva, festivals in Nantes (the Ideale) and Pau, Paris, and Lille in France. In 2007, the Rev CD Cheyenne was re-issued by Mind Expansion records that included three new tracks not on the previous 1991 release. In May of 2008 Cheyenne and Strangeworld were reissued digitally. Describing Les Nymphes: Dance and groove templates approached from an arranging perspective, as well as a composing one, give way to a journey into Greek mythology meets American Indian (“Sophie Eagle”) and New Orleans meets Ulysses and Circe (“Valley of the Butterfly”), as well as more urban landscapes such as “Nyx.” The result is an array of new colors and textures, dance-like repetitive in places but more unusually so, and not as often, reflecting the contemporary thought of the artist through the additional prism of modern balletic dance as well theatrical sets and dialogue, while drawing on the ancient Greek as a springboard to the imagination. And that is a key word regarding Les Nymphes: “imagination,” translating the worlds of fantasy that inspired the work and the dreamlike images that convey a desire to delve deeper into uncharted frontiers; an impulsive desire that seems to drive one Rev work after another. The titles in varied languages play, for the artist, a further opening of possibilities creating an even more colorful palette than usual from which to paint from. Les Nymphes was produced in New York and Montreal - totally digital with live instrumental performances.

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