“A wild stallion fights its way up from the dirt and tries to receive recognition by separating itself from the herd. Breaking through the anonymity of the group to the freedom of running through endless land- and soundscapes into horizons of new sonic worlds.”
These sentences, used by Berlin label Project Mooncircle to introduce the Uprising Compilation, had me spending two hours looking for an interview in which Werner Herzog declares that he doesn’t believe the rogue penguin from Encounters at the End of the World to be insane. Herzog further offers that if he had to spend every day sitting monotonously with the same collective, he too would eventually say, “To hell with it,” and head off into the mountains on his own.
Alas, I cannot find this interview, so I leave it to you to fill in the thematic and conceptual blanks. [Writer’s note: here it is. Fast-forward to 24:05.]
Speaking of themes and concepts and all that good-good, Project Mooncircle, a driving force in international beat culture for the better part of a decade, has been killing it on the compilation front for just as long, specifically by bringing together artists from different parts of the world to make stories of soundscapes. One standout project of theirs, The Moon Comes Closer served as sonic representation of a dream journey to… you guessed it, the moon. While embracing the premise of “instrumental compilation as concept album” might demand a slight stretch of the imagination, simply enjoying the tunes therein is much easier.
Stream the Uprising Compilation below, and if it suits you, order the 3xLP vinyl version complete with silk-screen artwork here.
• Project Mooncircle: http://projectmooncircle.com
More about: Various Artists: Project Mooncircle
