Faten Kanaan - A Mythology of Circles (2020)

A Mythology of Circles is the new album from Brooklyn-based composer and musical artist Faten Kanaan, her first to be released on Fire Records. It explores cyclical repetitions in nature & time, and the allegories attached to them.

Cosmological myths explaining natural phenomena have long been part of human narratives: the movements of planets and seasons, of time and tides. Some of these symbolic stories continue to resonate today because they illustrate something in our collective spirit. They're re-conjured here as an attempt to embrace 'mystery' and temper the anthropocentric hubris. To revere nature without the need to overpower it.

The album also has an autobiographical side: a story of movement, migration, and return. Of renewing hope in the face of political and environmental struggles.

Cyclical patterns and ‘variation through repetition’ are central to Faten's music. Harmony and counterpoint are composed intuitively and treated as narrative tools- with sound, silence, and the resulting mystical relationship between notes used as gestures to tell a wordless story. The album is separated into a ‘dusk to evening’ side, and an ‘underworld/dream-state’ side; highlighting the myths of Ishtar, Inanna, Orpheus, and others.

All the sections are played in real time, neither looped nor sequenced- allowing for subtle changes to unfold. The use of VST sampled choral voices in this album embodies the forlorn state of technological acceleration, and the desire to return to a vulnerable human sound. The album art also explores a complicated relationship with technology: the statue comes from a series of digital replicas, returning in its last stage to a more intimate and handmade feel.

“Strangely haunting yet beautiful bouquet of nocturnal, electronic blooms ranging from poignant ambient vignettes to chamber-like pop, from Brooklyn’s Faten Kanaan- a gifted musical story-teller”