If, Bwana / Dan Warburton

I am Sitting in Phill Niblock's Kitchen

Label: Monotype Country: Poland

"To prepare for our concert at De Witte Zaal in Ghent, Belgium, on April 4th 2008 - a triple bill with Mecha Orga and Illusion of Safety organised by Esther Venrooy and Han van den Hoof - I took all the Al Margolis / If, Bwana CDs in my record collection, loaded them into the computer and timestretched each piece to last precisely 45 minutes (that being the projected duration of our set), ending up with about 100 tracks of dense sludge which I systematically decanted and edited into a single span of music. Al Margolis then made the final mix the day before the gig by playing it back in the kitchen at Phill Niblock's apartment in Ghent - hence the title of the work, which refers not only to Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room, of course, but also to my own remix collaboration with Alan Courtis and Roberto Conlazo, I am not sitting in a room with Reynols (Absurd 43, 2004) - recording the ambient sounds of the space and passing traffic along with it. In concert he added live electronics and clarinet while I played violin. For this version, he repaid the compliment by adding a timestretched and pitchshifted piano piece of mine, Speed Study I (from Guy Livingston's Don't Panic: 60 Seconds for Piano, Wergo WER 6649-2, 2001). Anyone familiar with that work is highly unlikely to recognise it played 45 times slower, but you certainly feel it at times."-Dan Warburton

Dan Warburton. After studies at Cambridge University and a Harkness Fellowship to pursue a doctorate in Composition at the Eastman School of Music (Rochester NY), Dan Warburton settled in Paris in 1988. In 1992 he was awarded the Lili Boulanger Prize for Composition, and subsequently was commissioned to write for the Composers Ensemble (UK) and the Newt Hinton Ensemble (NL). Since 1997 he has been Editor in Chief of the Paris Transatlantic web magazine (www.paristransatlantic.com), and also writes regularly for The Wire (UK) and Signal To Noise (US). As a performer on violin and piano, he has recorded with Alexandre Bellenger, Jac Berrocal, Frédéric Blondy, François Fuchs, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Eric La Casa, Jean-Sébastien Mariage, Bruno Meillier, Aaron Moore, Aki Onda, Edward Perraud, Nikos Veliotis and Reynols, for labels including Tzadik, Wergo, Leo, Ayler, Chloe, Absurd, Durtro, SMI, Crouton, Meniscus, Creative Sources and Not Two.

Since the Eighties, Al Margolis has earned himself an international reputation as a vanguard for experimental music, running the indie cassette label Sound of Pig Music. Among the label's diverse and thrilling offerings, you will find numerous releases by Margolis (under the identity: If, Bwana), wherein he explores a plethora of sonic experiments, transforming conventional sounds into uncanny otherness, and even finding ways to distort unconventional distortions. His music has succeeded in fusing ambience with industrial and musique concrete, producing strange soundscapes that are both soothing and unnerving, often at the same time. In the Nineties, Margolis evolved the Sound of Pig label into Pogus Productions, replacing the cassette medium with compact disk technology. His own sonic pursuits have matured too, growing ever stranger and more daring."-Monotype

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