Cover image by artist Nigel Wood

KUMARA
CONFLUENCE
KU 9471
1994

01 White Spring
02 Red Spring
03 Influence
04 Confluence

Ricky Gardiner: Guitars
Virginia Scott: Keyboards/Vox
Trevor Stainsby: Programming

‘My idea for Kumara was to bring five different elements together, allow the elements to co-exist simultaneously while not necessarily depending one upon the other. After a reasonable time had elapsed I found one of the elements brought forth nothing and one of the other elements struck me as unsuitable for the project but had a lot to offer for another time and another project. That left three, myself, Virginia Scott and Trevor Stainsby. The process was quite simple.

Virginia recorded seven pads made up mostly of strings. They were very slow moving with no absolute pulse. I selected four of the passages for further work. These four were duplicated and I worked on one lot and Trevor worked on the other. Trevor had the midi information which was driving the original string parts and substituted his own sound as he saw fit. He also added ad lib ‘one of’ sounds. He then added percussion in such as way so as to blend with the synth part. I worked on the original and added guitar.
On White Spring this turned out to be regular electric and I improvised a melody on top of the strings. On the other three pieces I used a sustaining device called an E BOW to elicit the ‘bowed’ effect from the electric guitar After editing the guitars which meant eliminating the redundant sections, Virginia then recorded her voice on top. She paid particular attention to making her voice sound like one of the instruments. Trevor and myself then got together, amalgamated our equipment and started playing back everything together.

By retaining the elements that we agreed worked musically and rejecting everything that did not, we arrived at what became Kumara – Confluence. My choice of the Kumara name comes from Sanat Kumara which translates as the ‘Spirit of the Earth’ or the ‘Inhabitant of the Earth’ Confluence was chosen to reflect the converging of the quite separate streams to form the one entity. Is not all music like this ?’
Ricky Gardiner 2007

Review
“A majestic atmposphere music, wide landscapes drawn by Ricky Gardiner’s guitar. Hardly for those who knows the guitarist by his work with Iggy and Bowie, but those into FLOYD or Ennio Morricone may find this album enjoyable. Thought-provoking it is. Other musicians are Virginia Scott – she played with Gardiner in one of the best early prog bands BEGGARS OPERA – on violin and cello and Trevor Stainsby operating electronics and percussion. One way or another, the primary instrument is the fluid guitar capable of filling the space with divine sound.

There are four pieces, one hour in all, based on the works of Alice Bailey, and they’re enough to turn off you mind and float downstream from the off, “White Spring”. The guitar sound gets as close to cello that the instruments interchange appears seemless, the method Gardiner and Scott later applied to their “Auschwitz” mini-album. And yes, it’s a violin the main inhabitant of the delicate world of “Red Spring”. Once you spot the John Cage concrete drift Virginia lets her crystal voice soar to the sky. Synthesizer paint the ambience picture of the icicles melting, drops and drops around shining in the sun…

If it were an LP, two “Springs” would make Side One lending Side Two to “Influence” and “Confluence”, two sides of another coin. “Influence” is more sparse, anxious and complex with vocals as a guitar stretch continuation and a violin coming from the voice – that’s an influence illustrated the best. Analysis comes naturally followed by synthesis which is “Confluence”. Think of elements here or, better, of people – as we, people, are elements united in the end of the day.”
Dmitry Epstein