Confluencia is the fifth installation in the Danish-Argentinian Mark Solborg’s TUNGEMÅL (idiom or tongue in Danish) ongoing project, focusing on how the words, our idioms, and mother tongues are deeply connected with our view of ourselves and the way we resonate with the surrounding world, or the role of the electric guitar as a speaking voice in contemporary chamber musical contexts. The album features Portuguese, Stockholm-based trumpeter Susana Santos Silva (who has played in TUNGEMÅL III, Ilk Music, 2021), Danish pianist Simon Toldam (who has played on TUNGEMÅL II and Babel, Ilk Music, 2020 and 2023), Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach, who plays on vibrating membranes, and Solborg on electric guitar and electronics. The album was recorded at the Village Recording in Copenhagen in April 2024.
Confluencia distills Solborg’s TUNGEMÅL studies to the most essential and poetic outcome. The album addresses the confluence of knowledge and resources, of individual voices, and a conversation that becomes increasingly important if we are to solve the challenges of our society and species. Solborg seeks to investigate, illustrate, and raise awareness of the continuous cross-cultural inter-human debate, towards a more varied, complex, and compassionate perspective, by cherishing diversity and multiple insights.
Confluencia was inspired by the drawings of English plant anatomist Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712), which are used in the album’s artwork, and illustrate the inner structures and confluences of liquid and nourishment in roots and branches. These drawings suggest the phenomenon of mycorrhiza to the mind, the symbiosis between trees and fungi, providing both with enhanced living conditions, fertility, and stamina.
The album attempts to offer such a natural, organically developed inner workings of the Confluencia quartet. Solborg composed eight loose and minimalist pieces, and the last bonus piece (which is not on the vinyl version) was free improvised by the quartet; all employ the idiosyncratic, poetic voices of Solborg, Santos Silva, Toldam, and Zach in an intuitive, free-associative, and deep listening dynamics. These intimate pieces unfold slowly with their own mysterious, inner logic, resonant timbres, enigmatic frictions, and odd grooves, imagining their own sonic parallel mycorrhiza. Solborg succeeded in creating a vibrant, balanced, and tangible confluence of beautiful voices, interacting in the most natural, humble, and almost austere manner, and teaching us how to listen carefully in a world burdened with too many distractions.
The limited edition, transparent vinyl version comes with black or brown natural confluence elements.
