Arvo Pärt – Tabula Rasa

The aptly titled Traveller is an icy ambient journey through the harshness of a midwestern winter. Enveloped by nature and snow, Sampson recorded the Traveller entirely alone in a bedroom closet in Minnesota, with only a Yamaha DX-7, a guitar, and a four-track TEAC reel-to-reel. Shortly after its scant 1987 release and generally poor reception, Sampson returned his landscape inspired music to the earth, throwing all of his remaining copies into a landfill. Thankfully, Chicago label – Love All Day – salvaged this lost beauty from the rubbish and reissued the record in 2018. Also interesting to note that this record was originally inspired by a Chinese ink painting that Sampson saw in a London exhibit in 1980. Sampson reflects, “The power and depth and atmosphere of simple black ink – the stuff they sign checks with – applied to take the maximum effect of the swirling, cloudy texture of silk. Those Chinese painters invented negative space.” If music could paint, with simplicity like black ink to paper, it might sound a lot like this.
– Dane Majors
Recommended – A1 La Bella Dona, A2 Travelers on a Mountain Road, B1 Drifts
A1 La Bella Donna
A2 Travellers On A Mountain Road
A3 On The Reef
A4 Sweetly
A5 Miss Jessel
B1 Drifts
B2 Embankment
B3 The Coming Darkness
B4 City Layers
B5 The Natural Skater
Composed By, Synthesizer, Guitar – Warren Sampson
Artwork – Lisa M Sampson
Photography By – Richard Peterson