VLMV - Flora & Fauna (Bigo & Twigetti)

What Your Ears Say & The Cover Looks Like

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What We Say

For some reason the cultured sounds of classical music just sound better on a Sunday, so can I suggest you dust of the fine china for your morning brew, maybe pop your butter & jam into ramekins & find that silk dressing gown you bought on your Asian holiday. All set? Glide over to your stereo & press play on the graceful, unhurried ambient neoclassical strains of the new VLMV EP for Bigo & Twigetti.

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What The Release Notes Say

Flora & Fauna’s original conception was to be one extended entire piece of ambient meditation music. After writing and re-writing, and recording and re-recording, each idea developed more and slowly it began to build into something slightly progressive. The thread that was kept throughout was not to conform to a normal or typical structure; Not to change sections, chords, verses, when it felt correct to do so - but to sit there in the moment and be still. The changes happen mostly for myself, rather than for my listener. Thus the meditative nature can get lost and explore itself rather than shift quicker for fear of being too monotonous or losing the listeners interest. All music, even ambient, has a predilection to retain interest, abiding by certain conformities, and I wanted to ignore any of the old rules and to do something without that narrative, but simply to change when I felt I wanted a change.


The EP was born as we left lockdowns, ventured outside and began to find a new normality. To see nature again. A lot of my pandemic time was spent alone writing Sing With Abandon, the EP’s full length predecessor, in my dark and cold studio Nice Weather for Airstrikes. Flora & Fauna was my hope-tinted re-emergence into the outside world. I had to add a little real crowd noise at the end of ‘Flora’ to really reinforce this - this was recorded at St Pancras Old Church, August 14 2015, at VLMV’s very first album launch show. It was the noise of like minded people gathered in a shared space to celebrate something hopeful, together. And I wanted to transmit that within Flora & Fauna in a very literal way.

Recording during lockdown wasn’t always possible, and unlike with Sing With Abandon where we could record individually, the Contrabasson and Cello had to be recorded by the players at their respective homes and sent on to me. I also worked hard trying to find and record a choir - we even discussed flying to Iceland and recording a choir for 1 day and flying back. It just wasn’t possible, and in the end I decided the only solution was to build a choir from scratch at home, asking a bunch of trusted friends to record Ooos and Aaahs at home, whatever their home recording capabilities were, and send it over for me to build into a comprehensive sampler. I’m very pleased with the result and have used it on pretty much everything since!

CREDITS
Songwriter: Peter David Lambrou
Published by Erased Tapes Music
Recorded, Mixed, Produced by Peter David Lambrou
Mastered by Aneek Thapar
Artwork by Jonathan Cenzual Burley
Cello on tracks 1, 2, 4, 5 by Fraser Bowles
Contrabassoon on track 5 by Thomas Stone

Vocals on tracks 3 & 6 by The VLMV Choir:
Anja Madhvani, S-J Mellin, Timothy Sutcliffe, Hannah Cartwright, Alice Louise Lacey, Charlie Barnes, Alex Simone, Emma Larcombe, Sara Zozaya and VLMV

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