Hunter Complex - Airports and Ports (2022)

The new Hunter Complex album Airports and Ports features contributions from Aquiles Navarro (trumpet, Irreversible Entanglements), new age legend Kat Epple (flute, Emerald Web), Alexander Hawkins (piano, Louis Moholo-Moholo), Justin Sweatt (aka Xander Harris, guitar) and Coen Oscar Polack (field recordings). Airports and Ports is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed synth albums Dead Calm and Zero Degrees (Burning Witches, 2020) and Open Sea (Death Waltz, 2019) and takes a new direction with influences from new age, ethereal jazz and krautrock. The gorgeous artwork was created by Luke Insect.

For Airports and Ports, Lars Meijer of Hunter Complex invited musicians from all around the globe to contribute to the album. Meijer: ‘I wanted to know what they would come up with, what new sounds and styles they would bring to my music. My previous album Dead Calm and Zero Degrees came out at the beginning of the Covid crisis in March 2020. I didn’t create music for months, it felt like time stood still. I missed the energy I got from being around people, from seeing concerts, from traveling. Those musicians gave that back to me and inspired me to create and discover new grounds.’

‘Aquiles Navarro is a fantastic trumpet player in the group Irreversible Entanglements, but the record that hit me was the album Heritage Of The Invisible II (2020, International Anthem Recording Company) that he did with drummer Tcheser Holmes. He takes the sound of the trumpet to another level, but never forgets its melancholical side. I got to know the music of Kat Epple of Emerald Web through The Stargate Tapes compilation on Finders Keepers Records. Together with her late husband Bob Stohl she made some really beautiful new age albums in the late seventies and early eighties. Her flute playing is magical, it takes you to another universe. I saw Alexander Hawkins perform piano in a group with Shabaka Hutchings and legendary drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam and was blown away by his adaptive powers on the piano. He can change from a rhythmic, textural or lyrical style in the blink of an eye and still tell a story.’

‘Justin Sweatt also released music (as Xander Harris) on Burning Witches Records and other cool labels like Not Not Fun Records and Data Airlines, but his last two albums under his own name, Say Your Goodbyes and When The Light Goes, are truly beautiful. He added some beautiful atmospheric guitars to City Pulse, the closing track on Airports and Ports. That track also has some field recordings by Coen Oscar Polack. We used to make music together in the group Living Ornaments, but he’s also flying solo with a brilliant new record on Moving Furniture Records in the pipeline. Jantijn Prins, also a long time collaborator, plays a bit of acoustic guitar on some songs.’