説明
オレゴン州ポートランドを拠点に活動する作曲家であり、マルチ奏者のEric Phillipsによるソロ・プロジェクト、Kennebec。映画『The Holdovers（ホールドオーバーズ 置いてけぼりのホリディ）』の劇伴や、バラク・オバマ制作のドキュメンタリーシリーズへの楽曲提供など、気鋭の劇伴作家としても高く評価される彼が作り上げた『The Water Wheel』は、万物の「無常」と「循環」をテーマに据えたコンセプチュアルな一枚だ。
自身の人生における大きな変化、幸福と表裏一体にある不安と向き合う中で生まれたこの作品は、混沌とした時代における「心の処方箋」のような役割を果たしている。サウンドの質感は極めて多彩で、Luiz BonfaやArthur Verocaiといったブラジリアン・ジャズの伝説への敬意、坂本龍一や武満徹といった日本の巨匠からの影響、さらにはアメリカの室内楽的なフォークやゴスペルの要素までが、緻密なアンサンブルの中に溶け込んでいる。
特に印象的なのは、彼自身が初めて作詞とヴォーカルを手がけた「Listen」。James Brownのブレイクビーツにギターのリフを重ねた即興から発展したこの曲は、軽快なリズムと空へ舞い上がるようなコーラスが耳を捉えて離さない。また、Miguel Atwood FergusonやYazz Ahmedといった精鋭たちが参加し、ストリングスや管楽器が幾重にも重なるオーケストラ的なアレンジが、静謐な没入感をもたらす。
ヴァイナルの溝に深く刻まれたのは、緻密に編み上げられた音の粒子とシネマティックな情景。針を落とした瞬間に広がる立体的な音像は、不確かな世界を生きる聴き手を優しく包み込み、日常の喧騒を忘れさせてくれる。現在、アメリカの公式サイト等では約30ドル（約4,600円）前後で流通しているが、この音楽がもたらす精神的な充足感は、価格以上の価値を約束する。
アーティスト・プロフィール
Eric Phillips (Kennebec) ポートランド在住のプロデューサー、作曲家。Kennebec名義ではSamuel T. Herring (Future Islands) やSudan Archives、Alfa Mistらとも共演。ライヴではArooj AftabやKevin Morbyのオープニングを務めるなど、ジャンルを横断した活動を展開している。映画音楽の分野でも頭角を現しており、その繊細なスコアリング能力は音楽シーンからも熱い視線を浴びている。
A1. Hungry Soul (feat Alea Loren & Co)
A2. Neakahnie (feat Miguel Atwood-Ferguson & Yazz Ahme)
A3. Listen (feat Alea Loren & Co, MESSIAH!)
A4. Transform (feat Charles Overton)
A5. The First Of The Salmonflies
A6. The Water Wheel (feat Miguel Atwood-Ferguson)
B1. Cycles
B2. Moonlight & Shadow (feat. MESSIAH! and Alea Lorén & Co)
B3. Obstacles/Opportunities
B4. Wind In The Night (feat Alea Loren & Co)
B5. Hungry Soul Reprise (feat Alea Loren & Co)
Portland-based composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Kennebec - aka Eric Phillips - returns with a new single, ‘Listen’, and news of his forthcoming third full-length album, The Water Wheel.
A de facto concept album about impermanence and the cyclical nature of life on Earth, The Water Wheel was born from a period of significant change in Phillips’ life. After falling in love, Phillips struggled to reconcile his newfound happiness with the existential anxiety that comes from living in a world that’s never felt more unstable. As the world around him became more uncertain, Phillips found himself gravitating, as both a listener and a creator, to music that is inherently more and more soothing.
Locking himself away in his home studio, he found a tonic in the creation of The Water Wheel; an album that’s a settling, cathartic celebration of life, meant as a balm for our chaotic times. It’s an acknowledgement that at once things never end, they only begin again, yet they’re always changing and evolving, never staying the same, and the omnipresent contrast between impermanence and timelessness.
Musically, The Water Wheel is Phillips’ most accomplished record to date. A globally inspired work, with inspiration drawing from Yazz Ahmed’s Bahraini roots, Brazilian jazz guitar legends Luiz Bonfa, Toquinho and Arthur Verocai, Phillips’ Japanese composer heroes Ryuichi Sakamoto and Toru Takemitsu, and a distinctly American sound of cinematic chamber folk and gospel, The Water Wheel is a densely packed medley of sonic and lived experiences.
The pacifying one-two of opener ‘Hungry Soul Reprise’ and closing track ‘Hungry Soul’ are gorgeous slices of layered instrumentation and vocal harmonies, serving as carefully crafted bookends to an album that’s as experimental as it is musically accomplished. Elsewhere, the transformatively soothing ‘Neakahnie’ marks Kennebec’s reunion with long-term collaborators Yazz Ahmed and Miguel Atwood Ferguson, while mid-album highlight ‘Moonlight and Shadow’ brings a bouncing and jubilant hip-hop/jazz fusion and sense of genuine creative curiosity to an album that’s nothing if not artfully defiant in the face of existential crisis. It’s a record of experimentation, and is perhaps the greatest recorded proof yet of Phillips’ boundary-pushing, eclectic, and novel creative palette.
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the album’s first single, ‘Listen’. An instant earworm, the initial spark for ‘Listen’ came from Phillips improvising a guitar riff over a James Brown break - a moment that he actually captured in this video. After much evolution, it grew into what we hear today: an acoustic beat-driven wonder with a soaring chorus and the kind of melody that you’re destined to remember for a long time.
Lyrically, ‘Listen’ is also one of the first tracks in Kennebec’s repertoire that carries Phillips’ own written voice. While he’d historically recorded other vocalists, this album was the first he wrote lyrics for. He’d long been attempting to process his own thoughts of impermanence, love and fears of loss; and, in the midst of these cycles in his own life, he found himself searching for solace in the written word, documenting the timeless changing of the seasons in both a literal and metaphorical sense, and trying to remember to feel the timeless amidst the tumult without turning any of it away.
‘This was the first album where I wrote lyrics, and I found myself writing about the tension between the beauty and the fear that can come with falling in love’, says Phillips. ‘In ‘Listen’, I liked how the lyric “might fall in” mirrors the descending minor chord—it carries a sense of uncertainty, of hesitation. But the song ultimately resolves - allowing oneself to let go into the love. At its heart, it’s about being quiet enough to Listen, and open enough to receive.’
Elsewhere on The Water Wheel, the presence of a series of high-profile collaborators, including the aforementioned Yazz Ahmed and Miguel Atwood Ferguson, MESSIAH!, and Mirabai Peart, lends new depths and layers to Phillips’ already exemplary audio craftsmanship. Additionally, skills gleaned from Phillips’ work as a composer and scorer (with recent works including Alexander Payne’s modern classic The Holdovers and Barack Obama’s Netflix series Working: What We Do All Day) help ensure that the album is laden with the lush orchestral arrangements, intimate fingerpicked acoustic guitars, and sculpted cinematic soundscapes that have become a trademark of Phillips’ in-demand compositional approach.
Ultimately, The Water Wheel represents the cyclical nature of time - and, most importantly, the simple truths that remain while the surfaces of the world continue to churn. It’s a record of acceptance of the fleeting nature of human mortality, the relationships within it, and of nature itself. And perhaps, of Phillips’ acceptance of his own inability to change this.
‘I think it’s a natural course of things to wonder about impermanence as we grow older’, remarks Phillips. ‘Now, into my 30s, I’ve found myself becoming more and more aware of death and the fleeting-ness of life. Paired with the chaos of our times, I can’t help but feel this deep sense of uncertainty that we all live with every day. And there’s beauty and poetry with how we all live through all that - darkness and all. And I wanted this record to see that with clarity, and to somehow make me feel that it’s all OK, without looking away from that truth.’
Kennebec is a recording project outlet of the composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Eric Phillips. Prior Kennebec collaborators include the legendary Late Night Tales label, Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring, Sudan Archives, Alfa Mist, Joe Armon Jones, Ash Walker, John Craigie and Rush Sturges. As a live act, Kennebec has previously opened for Grammy-winner Arooj Aftab, Joep Beving, Kevin Morby and Grammy-nom Liz Story.
