Morpheus Trance & Christy Doran - In Trance We Trust (2024) [Hi-Res]

"There is no boss." Christy Doran places importance on this statement. The guitarist considers Morpheus Trance, the trio with bassist Wolfgang Zwiauer and drummer Lukas Mantel, as a collective. Although the majority of the pieces are based on his compositional ideas, “We look at this together. Everyone should contribute to this. Wolfgang and Lukas have their own ideas." Consequently, the pieces are arranged together and take on a form, which is Morpheus Trance.

Of course, Doran also knows that he is initially taken as the focus. The Swiss, who had come to Switzerland from a coastal town in Ireland as an eleven-year-old boy, recently turned 76. For decades, Christy Doran has been one of the outstanding guitarists of the European jazz/crossover scene; it is no coincidence that the German magazine Jazz Thing included him in the illustrious circle of "European Jazz Legends". He had already made a name for himself internationally in the 1970s. At that time, he was a member of the Swiss collective OM, which was temporarily expanded by the Brazilian percussionist Dom Um Romao. OM was counted among the avant-gardists of European rock jazz. After the dissolution of the group in the early eighties, the adventurous master of strings went his own creative ways. His broad radius included improvisational encounters of various kinds, including lyrical and solo recordings. In the nineties, Doran became the central figure of an extremely successful, wildly expressive Jimi Hendrix homage band, and later he performed in exciting, stylistically daring groups such as New Bag and Sound Fountain just to mention only a few of his numerous stations and projects. Many of them are documented on recordings released by Double Moon and Between The Lines.

Morpheus Trance emerged from a performance of Christy Doran’s Sound Fountain, in which Wolfgang Zwiauer substituted for the group’s regular bassist. This gave Doran the idea to create a permanent trio of a completely different kind with Zwiauer and drummer Lukas Mantel. The bassist was part of Doran’s New Bag years ago, and Mantel is a regular member of Sound Fountain. Both are significantly younger than Doran. Doran, who is constantly curious and searching for creative ideas, stresses that age is not relevant to him: "Only the musical spirit counts. Everyone has his own preferences, no matter how old they are."

The trio format also has something magical for Christy Doran. With Morpheus Trance, this also applies to the musical direction, the musical context. The album title "In Trance We Trust" indicates the program. Doran had come across this formula during a visit to Bali, the Indonesian island in the Indian Ocean. The sentence was emblazoned on a wall. "That struck a chord with me". In a village off the usual tourist paths, he experienced the performance of a wooden gamelan ensemble, followed by a private celebration during which dancing women fell into a trance. Wolfgang Zwiauer brought Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, into play. The musical concept and many of the pieces were worked out during sessions on the Greek island of Paros. Doran had discovered a secluded professional studio there, which the trio booked for several days. "The experience was a flash!" The final recordings for the album were made in Zwiauer's own studio in Bern.

While the compositions that Christy Doran wrote for earlier bands such as New Bag were often complex, this time he deliberately opted for a much more emotional approach. The open experimentation with "devices" in the form of various effect devices resulted in more unconventional sounds and building blocks and increased the richness of colors as a result. Several pieces rely on a repetitive flow. The trance factor is amplified by other subtle factors. Lukas Mantel has recently dealt intensively with Indian music, which had already impressed Christy Doran at the time of OM(!). In addition, the guitarist recently closed a biographical circle to his Irish roots. He discovered his love for uilleann pipes, the traditional Irish bagpipe: a drone instrument. Christy Doran had grown up with their specific sound and old folk songs.

Morpheus Trance has matured into a solid band: a captivating collective with its own unique sound. Concerts are in the planning stage.