Solo LP

Cognitive Shift Recordings

All compositions written, arranged and conducted by Roger Goula

Electronics, Guitars and pianos: Roger Goula

Solo Violin: Violeta Vicci

Violins: Max Baillie, Eloisa Fleur Thom, Alessandro Ruisi

Violas: Jordan Bergmans, Richard Jones, Alison de Souza

Cellos: Sergio Serra, Max Ruisi, tatiana Chernyshova

Double Bass:Andy Marshall

Recorded at The Empire, London.

Executive producer: Bob MacDade

Mixing: Francesco Donadello

Mastering: Calyx

Artwork: Petulia Mattioli

Videos: Fabrica Works

PR: Le Tiger Noir

As the name of the album indicates, Ecosystems is not a linear trajectory. Instead, each track functions like a world of its own, encompassing its own stories, tensions and outcomes. At the same time, these microcosms exist in relation to a larger theme, one which, according to Goula, speaks of our interdependent yet fraught relationship to nature. “The whole album responds to this idea of how we interact with nature, and hopefully it can offer some harmony in the end,” says the composer. If the whole journey of Ecosystems is a search for harmony, the listener needn’t go further than the first track to find it. The album’s poignant opener, Gift was inspired by Goula’s life-changing experience of becoming a father, and it delicately balances the urgency and wonder of newborn life. Stirring strings weave themselves onto a pulsing heartbeat – the actual ultrasound recording of Goula’s pregnant wife – to express the miraculous gift that is life. “In Gift something is born, and it’s magical and exciting, full of energy and life, and it will take us on a sonic journey that will change us forever,” says Goula. While not all of Ecosystems is as harmonious as Gift, there is, throughout the album, a recurring recollection of that first moment, a memory of wholeness that seeps through the music like streaks of light.

Everything on Ecosystems seems to unfold organically. Despite relying on modular synths, sampling and orchestration the music very rarely feels like it's been fabricated. Rather it unravels in its own rhythm and pace, as if it were its own being imbued with a life of its own. “All my ideas come from sound itself, I never set out to do songs. I imagine swells of sound growing, it’s all very intuitive,” says Goula about his compositional process. The composer often uses repetition and counterpoint as a starting point for his exploration into sound, from then, melodies and textures will surface as a consequence of certain interactions, never before them. At times, simple motifs will come together to create surprising new shapes and directions, while at other times they clash discordantly. On other occasions still, sounds coexist quite independently from each other. On Perfect Balance for instance, Goula micro-sampled a rainstick to create the piece’s grainy bed, atop which he placed guitar and strings with big reverbs. All of these sounds seem to float in different speeds and planes, yet somehow they coexist. In every track it feels like Goula was tinkering with the pre-conditions only, trying out different ingredients and quantities, and then sitting back to see how these might combine and grow into their own ecosystem.

Throughout Ecosystems, Goula makes an appeal to unity. Every one of the tracks’ names, from Symbiosis to Embodied, Everything is in Everything to Becoming One, calls for it. “Existence is not an individual affair,” says the composer, quoting the American philosopher Karen Barad, and no other track on his album embodies the statement as much as Relational Beings. Created with a Crumar multiman and a tape machine, the piece expands as one, big, dense texture. There’s a heaviness to how the piece is held together, which points to a certain dysfunction perhaps, but it’s nonetheless a forceful reminder of the tenacious bonds of interdependence we share with others on earth. Thankfully, for Goula there is light at the end of the tunnel. The composer closes his journey cyclically, coming back to his hopeful opening track, Gift with a newfound maturity. On Becoming One the composer tones down the urgency, and reinvites wonder to his world with a solo violin performed exquisitely by Violeta Viccii. Harmony is, at last, found.