12000 miles’ debut album As the White Crane Flies is out now. You can buy it from the Flying Mountain shop for now - it will be on iTunes and other places soon.
12000 miles is the silicone egg brainchild of Boofa and myself. After meeting online in 2005 we decided to work on a project together and 12000 miles was born.
12000 miles is the distance between drongomala (Manchester, UK) and Boofa (Wellington, Aotearoa).
AS THE WHITE CRANE FLIES is three years of bouncing files through cyberspace, winters and summers.
12000 Miles have played ‘in analogue’ once in Manchester in 2007. Also guesting is the stellar flutist Iain Dixon of Manchester.
The Story...
Drongomala and Boofa met by chance on myspace in 2005 - they stumbled on each other’s music and dug what they heard. Drongomala was already 4 albums and six bands into his experimental musical path and Boofa was just finding his footing making simple yet provocative down beat electro. There was a natural alchemical connection that both D and B felt, they decided to work on a track together which soon turned into an idea for an album.
Keeping the demo files ‘low weight’ in the beginning allowed the pair to bounce whole suites of changes back and forth across the net. As the tracks developed then so did the size of the audio and midi files and eventually the pair moved from using Reason and a common-soundbank to Ableton Live and audio.
“We really challenged each other sonically and ended up with something that we could never have made alone. The overall sound is something that we came to by experimenting and doing things that we weren’t doing on our solo stuff. By exchanging files over the net, each session was open to the other completely ripping the material apart, so in a Buddhist styley we couldn’t become to attached to any material or ideas, just two takes each of sonic experimentation” Boofa.
The file exchange cycle became longer and the pair survived a band splitting up, 2 breakins, released three other records between them, started a t-shirt company and a degree in music, moved house 4 times and much else but they still managed to ‘tag’ one another over the two years with the developing demos. Boofa flew to his home town of London to see friends and family and made the trip up to Manchester where Drongomala and Boofa spent 6 short days working their 20 or so demos into a manageable live set for the 5th day in Manchester at the alternative Glastonbury event put on in Manchester’s Green room.
The set was raw and well received and the real life collaboration cemented the original connection that the pair made. After Boofa left the UK back to Wellington NZ the guys got to honing the material for an album, but what started off as an idea of 6 months max for a finished album turned into two years.
Drongomala got the auteur wind player Iain Dixon to come in and play flute over the material to cement the feeling of air and wings in the album. This was the second record that Drongomala has done with him and he says of Iain:
“I can’t rate him highly enough - he’s a master wind player. He is Macbeth and Puck in the same breath and regularly only needs to gentlest of nods to click into constant motion. I say ‘Cranes attacking Pygmies on the beach’ and that’s what comes out of the horn/flute/clarinet. A proper conjurer like a musician should be. Iain also turned down a Van Morrison tour just before he recorded with us which is a fun detail” Drongomala.
D & B then reworked the original material remotely - the music melted together and produced an expansive sonic landscape. The crane mojo was at work.
The album is quite different to anything that’s out there at the moment. It’s dynamics are almost operatic with some tracks sounding like a dropped pylon cable in a timpani section while others are gentle and conciliatory. As an album it is more than the sum of it’s parts - the spell doesn’t seem to break.
Don't take our word for it - listen now !
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