Ephemeral is the latest release from Aotearoa New Zealand-based artist Dave Wilson, featuring Wilson on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet in an improvising ensemble including trumpet, guitar, bass, drums, and string quartet.

With multi-layered grooves and intricate textures, Wilson creates musical worlds that foreground the wide-ranging musicalities of his collaborators and amplify the many dimensions of his playing.

For Ephemeral, Wilson brings together a group of musicians with deep experience in a wide variety of musical worlds, providing him – and the other players – with the widest range of aesthetic tools to sonically materialise the tight-knit bonds of Wellington’s music community. Callum Allardice, Ben Hunt, Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa, Chris Beernink, Amy Brookman, Monique Lapins, Nicholas Hancox, and Bennie Sneyd-Utting all feature on the album, contributing from their own musical pathways that have wound through groups including French for Rabbits, Richter City Rebels, Raw Collective, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand String Quartet, and more.

The album’s nine tracks take listeners down a path that explores ephemerality of all kinds, guided by alternatively floating and driving improvisatory melodies and rhythmic impulses of Wilson and the ensemble. In the themes that it approaches, Ephemeral is not simply about transience, it is about how we as humans are – only briefly – interconnected with one another and with other elements of the world.

Along those lines, each of the album’s compositions explores relationships of some kind, and how they give meaning to and are expressed in sounds, spaces, and places.

Releases December 1, 2023

Produced by Dave Wilson & Thomas Voyce
Recorded by Mike Gibson
Assistant Engineer Robbie Pattinson
Mixed by Satoshi Noguchi
Mastered by Oscar Zambrano at Zampol Productions, NYC

All music composed by Dave Wilson

Recorded September 17th and 18th, 2022 at Ahumairangi (Massey Studios), Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), Aotearoa New Zealand

Album artwork and design by Wallace Gollan
Photography by Nick George Creative, landscape photos by Dave Wilson

Double Vinyl 33RPM release of Ephemeral in a beautifully designed gatefold package with insert. Cut on heavy 180gm black vinyl.

Tracklist:
1. Speak To Me of Yesterday andTtomorrow (Elusive As the Dead)
2. What shines is a thought that lost its way
3. For Olivia
4. Liv's Theme
5. A Hundred Glowing Clouds
6. High Maintenance
7. Lift
8. Dissipation
9. Keep It To Yourself