Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore, two of the most celebrated contemporary voices in ambient and experimental music, have teamed up for a new single. The duo made ‘Perpetual Adoration’ at the Philharmonie de Paris, with access to the historic instrument collection of the Musée de la Musique, in partnership with the French label InFiné. Inspired by a visit to the Basilica of Sacré Cœur de Montmartre, Lattimore played an Érard double movement harp (France, 1873), while Barwick selected a Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5 analog synthesizer (USA, circa 1975). Listen to the resulting collaboration below.
‘Perpetual Adoration’ comes paired with a video of Barwick and Lattimore performing the song live. Directed and edited by Joel Kazuo Knoernschild, the performance was shot at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room at the Lafayette Hotel in San Diego this past June.
“Our very first evening in Paris involved a trip to see the Sacré Coeur,” Barwick and Lattimore said in a joint statement. “It was a Sunday evening and there was a mass taking place and as we neared the exit a beautiful surge of organ playing cascaded through the breathtaking building and a nun began singing a luminous hymn from the pulpit. We were all moved by the gorgeous music that we felt physically in this historic space.
“The next day was our first day in the museum and as we were setting up our instruments we began to play a little, and what began as a jam inspired by what we had already seen and heard became something we decided was worth recording and fleshing out,” they continued. “What was born was the hymn-like ‘Perpetual Adoration’, very much influenced by the tones from our evening at sacre coeur. Outside there was a placard that described daytime masses as ‘perpetual adoration’ and we loved the phrase and the connection to the city. ‘Perpeutal Adoration’ is the first piece of music we made at the museum with those precious instruments.”
