Behind the Music: 'Clouds And Waves' by Ecovillage

Inspiration and thoughts behind the making of 'Clouds And Waves' by Ecovillage

Los Angeles
In Autumn 2019 we did a mini tour with Ludvig Cimbrelius and long time collaborator Gayle Ellett. The City itself and all the people we met made a huge impact on us. The trip overall was very inspirational on so many levels and we had lots of surreal experiences. Doing beautiful trekkings in Topanga Mountains and Santa Monica Mountains gave us inspiration and material for over three albums alone.

We also did an amazing road trip to Joshua Tree with beautiful scenery and endless horizons. We almost feel that we can say that for Ecovillage as a duo it is like before and after LA. Our creativity and that inner fire for taking our music to the next level has definitely increased a lot since that visit. It is definitely an interesting place, but of course like any other city it has both heaven and hell in it... It is something strange, extreme, magical and bi-polar about California, just like Ecovillage can be sometimes. That place truly is a mystery to us and the change it made on the way we look at our music is almost overwhelming. This journey around California has been as much an outer journey as an inner journey. Life is a journey. And after all, it is the journey itself that matters. It is both the starting point and the goal. On the deepest level the end is built in the beginning.

Becoming Parents
Peter got his first son (He has two daughters) and Emil became a father for the first time in 2020. Really life altering experiences that put everything in perspective and have taken our music to deeper places and inner rooms we had not explored before. As a parent you have no choice but to evolve and grow as a person and it helps you a lot with the beautiful art of forgetting yourself. You also have less time to create so you have to be really dedicated and effective. You have a new responsibility and you got to sacrifice for others to make them feel safe and loved. All this gives your music more substance, sincerity and meaning. We almost quit the ecovillage project in 2016 as other family situations took over and we were focusing more and more on the contemplative life. Peter played some rough sketches in 2017 we had made earlier and Emil said they were way too good to not be released, that's where it all started again. The result was Sacred World that was released on Constellation Tatsu in 2018.

Meditation/Contemplation
Music for us is a must, it's almost like a drug with huge highs and lows. One day the new track you are working on sounds like the best track ever created and the next day the worst. It can be an emotional rollercoaster and very challenging to create an album. You put so much energy, emotions and passion in it that you can feel totally drained after. You can be all over the place with emotions like euphoria and total despair on the same day. For us meditation has been a way to balance our interior life and we are both meditation instructors. We both have been meditating on a daily basis for many years and it helps to keep us grounded, it also helps with creativity and to inspire our lives in general. To be out in nature is easily one of the most inspiring things to do and the perfect place for meditation. To be out in the stillness of nature goes hand in hand with contemplative life.

You could say our mission has always been to try to create timeless spiritual music and meditation has definitely helped us to achieve what we want. We are trying to express the inexpressible which we artists are doomed to fail at anyway but at least we try our best.

Truly great art can take you beyond the finite and get a glimpse of the infinite. For us music will in all ages stand supreme as the highest expression of what is the deepest in one self. A great artist can remind us that art, ultimately, is not about word-explanations but just intense experience. Hopefully Ecovillage can give the listener an experience of any kind, if so, we are beyond thankful.

7 Tracks that inspired this album
John Coltrane - Welcome
Manual - Ica
Keith Jarett - Spirits 4
Boards Of Canada - Zoetrope
Federico Durand - Canción De La Vía Láctea (Milky Way Song)
Ulf Lohmann - Nicht Die Welt
Altars Altars - At The Harbour

All tracks written, composed and produced by Emil Holmström and Peter Wikström
Mixed by Emil Holmström and Peter Wikström
Track 2 Co-produced by Gayle Ellett, additional flute and guitar by Gayle Ellett
Recorded from October 2019 to September 2020 in Topanga and Umeå
Mastered at Kaleidoscope Tone Studio (IN) by zakè
Design, layout and assemblage by zakè
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