Since Lieven Martens Moana's(Dolphins Into The Future) last lp, the massively
overlooked "Music from the Guardhouse", our composer has moved from the
islands of Okinawa to the Swampland of Mexico City to the Portuguese
countryside, running his Private Press, and composing music for ensemble and
commercials. This very pluralistic life-style and commitment has led us to his first
full length record in three years: "Idylls". Presented as a 12 page book with an LP
disc, the listener first hears concentrated and intentional sound-prose poems of
the life of Robert Louis Stevenson as Martens attempts to "see through the eyes
of RLS". Because of Martens ability to poetically reflect Stevens' obsessions, we
can hear field recordings, not just as documents, but as compositions and
imaginative story-boards of a poets journals in the locales of Polynesia. As we flip
sides we enter into the colorful and active aspect of Marten's palate. Flowing from
active electronically treated thumb piano to tranquil serene alien piano, growing
towards a rumbling volcano and settling into archaic Goldberg Variations by Mia
Prce of Miaux, the listener is now startled by Captain Moana's refusal for his
music to be pure inspired decoration, but instead a world of prose and storytelling.
By now, we ask ourselves what has changed in the music of Lieven
Martens Moana? Its is for certain on "Idylls", that with a Polynesian Fascination
seemingly unchanged, the intellectual palate has grown so much, that what we
have in front of us, are wildly colorful and intellectual compositions that seem to
have arrived from a literary mode, and grown into pieces that have an illusively
romantic allure. The uniqueness of "Idylls" rests upon the artists willingness to
arrive at strange and difficult compositions by way of natural story-telling and
inspired readings; Martens further exacts his process, away from just
appreciating Polynesia, and into the act, that Gaugain and Stevenson might have
enjoyed, of symbiotic immersion. We can for certain hear from the Captain
himself:

"Being("Idylls") a portrait, an ethnographic study, an exotic illustration and a ritual. The latter
used in the most mundane sense ever, since I’d like to stay far away from a sensational
bubblegum approach to (religious) ethnography, to the copying of ethnic behaviour, or to
approaching it as something odd or weird. These behaviourisms unavoidably invoke the end of
all rituals, thus making the world a duller place. As being interested in the exotic, (c.q. the
exotist), an act under constant scrutiny, it is a duty to observe and sustain, to withdraw and
refrain.”

Pacific City Sound VIsions is extremely stoked to present the new works by
Lieven Martens Moana, in the year 2017, as we continue to grow and expand with
an artist revelling in pushing his initially beautiful instincts to a point where they
begin to be outright living intellectual endeavors.

-Spencer Clark, Pacific City Antwerp, Belgium