To create the music that you can hear on our record "The Almagest", we loosely took inspiration from the astonishing work of second-century AD astronomer Ptolemy. Set to describe the irregular paths of the planets in the night sky and make them appear both circular and uniform, Ptolemy devised an ingenious mathematical model in which he considered the planets as worlds travelling in circular motion on solid crystalline circles (the epicycles), whose centres travel on other spheres, which themselves revolve around a fictional point in space (the equant) from which a planet's speed appears uniform. Ptolemy detailed his sophisticated model in his treatise "The Almagest", which dominated the western view of the world for the next fourteen centuries - we're not that ambitious of course but, yes, that's where the name of our record comes from. Now, we are neither astronomers nor mathematicians, but music makers. When we created our tracks, we considered each acoustic, electric or electronic instrument as a world in itself, and made it travel on a loop whose centre was itself moving around another sound, and so on. We played several instruments in order to illustrate this: lush chords, floating wind ensembles, perpetual beats, rotating percussions, silvery guitars, tense basses and glimpses of strange electronic devices. If, like us, you are moved by Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Trentemøller, Populous, New Order, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Mötley Crüe, James Newton Howard, Basil Poledouris, Angelo Badalamenti and Howard Shore, you may like our music.

first release

Ptolem released their first album, The Almagest...

produced by PTOLEM / all music by Francesco and Patrick
guest on TO TRAVEL ON EPICYCLES Arto
recorded during 2006 by Patrick at Serenity Recording Studio, Geneva, Switzerland
mixed & mastered in spring 2007 by Nicolas at Recordings@bifulci.com Studio, Geneva, Switzerland

all rights reserved 2007 Ptolem / design by Superposition

available at cd baby 

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