The Squid's Ear Magazine



Saxophonist Halliwell appears here in three duo performances with Rhodri Davies playing E-bowed harp; Steve Roden with extracts from his "resonantlighttones"; and Mark Wastell on tam-tam.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Graham Halliwell-feedback saxophone



Collaborations with:



Rhodri Davies-ebow harp

Steve Roden-resonantlighttones

Mark Wastell-tam-tam


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Label: Confront
Catalog ID: ccs 04
Squidco Product Code: 13376

Format: CDR
Condition: New
Released: 2005
Country: Great Britain
Packaging: Cardboard Sleeve Sealed
"Beat" was recorded in July 2002 and July 2004, mixed November 2004. "Resonantlighttones" was recorded in 1999 and additional revisited parts by Graham Halliwell in April 2003, mixed October 2004. "Vibra #3" was recorded in October 2004.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Saxophonist Halliwell appears here in three duo performances with Rhodri Davies (playing E-bowed harp), Steve Roden (extracts from his "resonantlighttones") and Mark Wastell (tam-tam). Halliwell, as has been his practice in recent years, works entirely with saxophonic feedback generation, an approach he discovered independently from other purveyors of this technique, notably John Butcher. Two of the pieces are constructions based on previously recorded material (supplied by Davies and Roden) while the piece with Wastell is an improvisation.

For the piece with Davies, "Beat", Halliwell used as his source an hour-long recording by Davies in which the harpist utilized two E-bows, Halliwell layering his own feedback alongside, producing a shimmering effect as the sine-like waves form beat patterns. He writes in the liners that the work was created under the strong influence of Eliane Radigue ("Adnos One"). You can hear that but can also relate it to some of the experiments of Alvin Lucier. "Beat", however, has an entirely warmer feel than many Lucier pieces, which sometimes edge toward the clinical. Relatively high in pitch early on, you occasionally get the ghostly sense of a disembodied soprano voice. It begins to waft away gently, pulses intersecting, sometimes consonant, sometimes dissonant, taking its time, re-coalescing into a stronger tone, disappearing. A lovely work.

For the second track, Halliwell took a piece from Roden's disc, "Four Possible Landscapes", and used a form of looped feedback where successive iterations enhanced each other in an attempt to "compliment, not copy, Steve's ideas and beautiful sonorities". The result is my favorite of the three offerings, something that reminds me of certain gorgeous solo works by Sachiko M where, as on the opening track from "debris", she evokes sonar-like blips in a vast, undersea world. Here, the pings are a bit brighter, emerging into the sound-field and winking past like floating, phosphorescent diatoms. It has an irregularly cyclic feel to it that's quite attractive, providing some amount of stasis without ever actually going into a repeat mode. There's also more than enough bite in the tones themselves to stave off any plunges into absolute languor, though I wouldn't mind wallowing here for a long while.

For the duo with Wastell (Vibra #3), condenser mics were placed extremely close to the tam-tams, enabling them to pick up low frequencies and overtones that could profitably mix with the controlled saxophone feedback. Again, an inspired idea. You can hear the softly struck gongs, providing a gentle percussive element missing in the other works as well as a burr-y tonal element (the essential harshness of scraped or struck metal) that sounds wonderful next to the ringing feedback pitches. As with all of the works presented here, it calmly runs its course, taking just about enough time to make its subtle point before leaving."-Confront

"Recorded Delivery is a beautifully conceived disc, deeply contemplative, and one of the finest new releases I've heard this year. Check it out."-Brian Olewnick


Artist Biographies

"Graham Halliwell, born Liverpool, August 1959,, is a saxophonist, whose work has recently been exploring ideas of stillness and sparseness, to this end he has been supplementing its normal sound by utilising it as a device for shaping feedback. This has lead him to work with some of major names in the "reductionist" or "lower case" school. He plays in the brilliant trio +minus with Bernhard Gunter and Mark Wastell, and has recorded with Rhodri Davies and Steve Roden. Other groups include VHF (with Simon H Fell and Simon Vincent)."

-Bagrec Blogspot (https://bagrec.blogspot.com/2006/09/music-questionnaire-no-7-graham.html)
11/4/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Rhodri Davies was born in 1971 in Aberystwyth, Wales and now lives in Gateshead in the northeast of England.

He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice and fire harp installations. He has released four solo albums: Trem, Over Shadows, Wound Response and An Air Swept Clean of All Distance.

His regular groups include: a duo with John Butcher, Common Objects, HEN OGLEDD: Dawson - Davies, a trio with David Toop and Lee Patterson, Cranc, The Sealed Knot and a trio with John Tilbury and Michael Duch.

In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on 'Self-cancellation', a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow.

New pieces for solo harp have been composed for him by: Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock, Christian Wolff, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone.

In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award."

-Rhodri Davies Website (http://www.rhodridavies.com/words/)
11/4/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Steve Roden is an American sound and visual artist, who pioneered the lowercase style of music; where quiet, usually unheard, sounds are amplified to form complex and rich soundscapes. His discography includes Forms of Paper, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles public library.

In 2013 Steve Roden's work was featured in a two-person exhibition with Jenny Perlin at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH and in a solo exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles, CA. In 2010, a mid-career survey of Roden's work was presented at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, curated by Howard Fox. Solo exhibitions include the Creative Media Center, City University of Hong Kong; the Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; the Chinati Foundation, Marfa; the Henry Art Museum, Seattle; the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), Athens; the San Francisco Art Institute; the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science; the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs; and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, among others.

His work has been included in exhibitions at the Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the San Francisco State University, Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco; the Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas; the Mercosur Biennial in Porto Allegre, Brazil; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Serpentine Gallery, London; the Drawing Room, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla; the Sculpture Center, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou Museum, Paris; the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles & Miami MOCA, Miami, the Drawing Center, New York. Steve Roden was also a recent recipient of the 2011 Artist Grant of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and recently of a California Community Foundation Getty Fellowship Grant."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Roden)
11/4/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Beat 14:10

2. Resonantlighttones Revisited 18:20

3. Vibra #3 9:53

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
lowercase, micro-improv, sound improv
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Free Improvisation
Septet recordings
Instant Rewards

Search for other titles on the label:
Confront.


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