For those unaware at how Stephan Thelen came to create his brand new album, Fractal Guitar 3 (out now on Moonjune Records), he himself now explains: In 2021, I was simultaneously working on four albums: Transneptunian Planets, Fractal Sextet, Music for Piano and Strings (an upcoming album of piano quintets and string quartets written either by Fabio Anile or me), and this album, Fractal Guitar 3, the third installment in the Fractal Guitar series.

While being stylistically very different, these four albums are connected in many ways, not to mention the fact that various musicians appear on more than one album. In hindsight, it’s interesting for me to see how progress on one album often provided fresh inputs into one or more of the other albums, and how ideas that appeared on one piece were often further developed on pieces on other albums, albeit in a different form.

As usual, I would like to thank all the musicians who were involved in the making of this album: without them, it would have been impossible to make. Thanks also to Leonardo Moonjune Pavkovic for his unwavering support [September 2022].

1. Through the Stargate (16:17)
2. Morning Star (9:49)
3. Glitch (9:37)
4. Ascension (13:38)
5. Black on Electric Blue (11:32)
6. Through the Stargate (Edit/J. Peter Schwalm mix) (9:56) [Bonus Track]

This meticulously crafted, wholly ambient and majestically ornate new recording opens on the emboldened, atmospherically-charged, near 17 minute opus Through the Stargate (a further exploration of material used on Enneagram, the opening track of Black Light), before seamlessly bringing us the quieter, veritably shimmering affair of the near ten minute Morning Star (based on a 5 against 7 polyrhythm), the funky, scratchy, near ten minute Glitch (which is actually a new version of Angular Momentum, a track that was co-composed by Manuel Pasquinelli and also first appeared on Black Light), and then they are in turn followed by the near 14 minute Ascension (which is based on similar musical material as my sixth string quartet of the same name), the recording rounding out on the frenetically exhilarating, and itself near 12 minute Black on Electric Blue (which is based on the same rhythmic patterns in 7/4; simultaneously played in different speeds and in different octaves), closing on the near ten minute bonus track, a reworking of Through the Stargate (Edit/J. Peter Schwalm mix).

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