Diffused Light by Wooden Flowers
Michal Menert (Pretty Lights, Pretty Fantastics) and Adam Tenenbaum (Giant Metal Crickets) first met and worked together as the creative team for Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead), co-producing and doing sound design for a wide variety of sonic explorations and experiments, each taking a turn at creating content for and piloting Mickey’s RAMU system during Dead and Company’s infamous Drums and Space segments. Recognizing a mutual affinity for innovative and rich sounds and music, the two became fast friends and collaborators.
Wooden Flowers (and “diffused light” specifically) began as a Thanksgiving day jam in 2018, in the Northern California coastal town of Gualala, where Michal’s High House Studio is nestled within and looks out into a lush redwood forest.
The duo began improvising on an assortment of instruments, heavily effected guitars, various keyboards (including a much cherished Mellotron), granular techniques, touch screen, and loads of found sounds.This initial session yielded the record’s opening and closing tracks, “Sun Spot” and “Leaves” respectively. The following session unexpectedly began with an impromptu, pre-lunch, equipment test, and “Everything Is Fine” appeared pretty much from start to finish. That same day Michal captured and expanded on Adam’s guitar arpeggios to begin “The Golden Thread Between.”
Over time Adam and Michal shaped and augmented the tracks, lastly adding “Chromesthesia”, which began as a short guitar loop and a collection of wild iPad experiments, then fitted with a proper beat.
The Wooden Flowers vibe is a colorful, emotional, progressive, psychedelic joy ride.
Tracklist
| 1. | Sun Spot | 6:15 |
| 2. | Chromesthesia | 4:11 |
| 3. | Everything Is Fine | 5:03 |
| 4. | The Golden Thread Between | 5:11 |
| 5. | Leaves | 9:37 |
Credits
Composed, arranged, produced, and mixed by Adam Tenenbaum & Michal Menert.
Mastered by Jason MacLeod.
License
All rights reserved.
With 'From the Sea', Gualala, California based artist and producer Michal Menert and his band the Pretty Fantastics have crafted a musical salve for those suffering from the relentless stream of contemporary reality. The record churns at the intersection of jazz, hip hop, and electronic music; following its own internal rhythm, it ebbs and flows between crystalline clarity and swirling opacity.