Dan Easley and Lunattack

Dan Easley of Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA and Lunattack (Barbara Duchow) of Toulouse, France, are adapting poems by Arthur Rimbaud to music. As part of the Beethoven Pastoral Project, they will set “Le bateau ivre” (The Drunken Boat) to a modern experimental piece built out of motifs from the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony.

“The poem, written in 1871, describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea in a fragmented first-person narrative saturated with vivid imagery and symbolism.” “The fourth movement depicts a violent thunderstorm with painstaking realism, building from just a few drops of rain to a great climax with thunder, lightning, high winds, and sheets of rain.” – Wikipedia

Beethoven and Rimbaud were both innovators in their respective fields, renowned for the emotional impact of their work and their role as pivotal figures within a larger stylistic transformation. Both took refuge and solace in nature. We hope to synthesize a new work that, drawing from the power of our shared past, conveys the urgency, dread, and opportunity available to this moment: we must work together to protect our planet.

Easley and Duchow met in 2019 at a workshop, Beatcamp, at Real World Studios in Bath, England. Duchow has led the electro-rock-pop project “Lunattack” since 2014, incorporating performance art, dance, and visual art within a multilingual exploration of the psyche and spirit. Easley has been self-producing music in pop, folk, and experimental genres since 1997, with recent releases including “Historic Shoreline Motor Hotel” and “Revisionist Mystery”.