★Confront Recordings
Live at I-and-E
This is a long-awaited re-issue, unavailable since 2006. The duo had formed the previous year for ErstQuake in NYC and this was to be their second and, as yet, only other performance together. The breadth and depth of [the] music is totally inspiring, I absolutely love this piece of music. Total unity in sound to make a perfect piece in the moment. It doesn't get better than this! (Gordon W. Smith)
Keith Rowe and Mark Wastell. This last performance balanced the evening well. Louder, more gestura…
Concert
Nordwall is here captured - perhaps on cassette, given the self-confessed terrible quality of the recording - during a 17-minute set in Oslo, in 2008. It's too bad that we can't really get a hold on the actual gradations generated by this 'skull transmission' (I had thought about an Alvin Lucier-like performance with wires linked to the artist's head, then read that JN is a member of Skull Defects) because what transpires is positively stimulating. These sounds might have ranked in the field of …
Live at Cafe Oto
Reissue. \'As darkness fell outside so the duo of Joachim Nordwall and Mark Wastell took their places behind their instruments, assorted tone generators-synths and a tam tam respectively. This was the third time I had seen this duo play, the first two occasions, both in 2007 had been in the tiny basement of the Sound323 shop and in a packed Red Rose club, two very different performances. These days the duo have (for some inexplicable reason!!) chosen the name Oceans of Silver and Blood for the d…
Derby 11.05.2002 / Liverpool 10.05.2002
A blast from the past! Or, rather, a whisper from those long ago days when reductionism (that hated term) held reign and only the merest sounds were often discerned during the course of a concert. A welcome return, in this case.Previously available in exceedingly minimal quantity (like 50), Confront has generously allowed these two sets to once again see the light of day. Davis was often heard on trumpet and Wastell on cello or percussion, but here it seems (no instrumentation is listed) that bo…
Berlin
Rhodri Davies: harp. Mark Wastell: violoncello. Simon H. Fell: double bass. 'One day, I hope, the story will be written. The story of the group IST and its relationship to the birth of the music that subsequently became variously known as New London Silence or Lower Case Improv (and yes, I use those upper case letters intentionally). Perhaps the learned critics (who seem very rarely to actually ask the musicians) will tell us just what our place is in this history. Certainly we were not the firs…
Terrain
Graham HALLIWELL, software based saxophone feedback and electronics. Lee PATTERSON, amplified objects. 'Terrain', comprises of multi-layered saxophone, amplified objects and field recordings. The four pieces are the result of a week long field and studio recording session in North Norfolk, Summer 2006. With reference to the title, each piece occupies a no man's land between composition and improvisation.
Resonant Spaces
****THE WIRE 2008 TOP 50 RECORDS OF THE YEAR WINNER****"A couple of years ago the promoters Arika invited John Butcher to tour a number of out-of-the-way spaces in Scotland. The venues, selected for their extreme acoustic properties, included a mausoleum, a wartime fuel-storage tank and a cave. This album grows out of Butcher’s evident interest in escaping the acoustic confines of conventional venues (work with resonant spaces is documented on the earlier Geometry of Sentiment and Cavern with Ni…
Over shadows
Rhodri Davies solo recording for harp and ebows. Recorded January 2004 at the Old School, Bracon Ash, Norfolk. Digipack. "Over shadows" - title courtesy Redell Olsen's "Secure portable space" book - is a single track, 36 minutes long, for harp and eBow. The chief reference name in this composition would obviously appear to be Alvin Lucier, as Davies' subtle juxtaposition of resonant overtones elicits the typical effects of beating between frequencies on the one hand, of marvellous saturati…
Radial
Radial was recorded on the first of June 2003 on acoustic cello without overdubs or editing. Radial is a piece in three parts, a structure of continuous sound and/or silence. Random order of the parts is encouraged. "Nikos Veliotis uses his cello without overdubs to break long minutes of silence with longer, muffled "manual" drones. "Radial" is one of those records I like calling "Sunday afternoon winter music": it's perfect in those grey cold days when you just want to stare out of the window…
Foldings
At 7pm on a cold Tokyo evening in January 2002, Taku Sugimoto met Mark Wastell at the exit to Yoyogi underground station. Taku had with him his acoustic guitar and a cello that Mark was to use for that evenings concert. They walked the short distance to Offsite, more or less just around the corner. Once inside, Mark began to change the cello strings and Taku started to arrange the recording equipment. Tetuzi Akiyama and Toshimaru Nakumara arrived shortly after and busily set about install…
Breath - taking
Since an appearance at Derek Bailey’s Company Week in the late 1970s, Suzuki’s visits to the UK have been few. The day after his British Museum show he played an improvised duo with David Toop at the Sound 323 record shop in Highgate. This was a delicate, probing set, in which Suzuki got much mileage from a polished brass plate, spun, scraped and hit. Toop meanwhile moved from crackling dried flower stalks to dog whistles, and embarked on adventures in feedback oozing from a microphone beneath a…