Leigh, Geoff & Yumi Hara

Upstream

Label: MoonJune Records Country: USA

"It's difficult to discern whether Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara are improvising freely, or if they've pre-composed the pieces on their Upstream collaboration. If it's the former, then their spontaneity has generated a good degree of melodic invention. If the latter possibility is so, then their works have an untethered nature, working through a succession of encounters that often sound ritualistic or meditative. Although a multi-instrumentalist, Leigh concentrates mainly on the flute, although it's frequently fed through an entanglement of electronic effects, lending a subtly harmonised burr. Hara plays keyboards, changing her palette from acoustic piano to hard-edged organ sounds. Often, she can be gently ruminative, but there are also spells where Hara rumbles with great intensity on the piano's bass notes or charges up to a Gothic organ sustain. Their music possesses some highly contrasting densities. Leigh coats his small gongs with an effects burnish, spangling into infinity. Hara also alters her voice at times, again with a subtly harmonised displacement. Leigh sometimes overblows, creating a harsh edge, suggesting the sound of a Japanese shakuhachi flute. This is made all the more gripping when surrounded by the overall atmosphere of slowly evolving calm. The pair also evoke a specific Tibetan Buddhist feel, with bells and a vocal drone, or alternatively matching their high-vaulting voice and soprano saxophone ranges to the imaginary sounds of ocean-deep whale communications. Leigh and Hara have produced a deeply sensitive soundscape, populated by a number of surprising (and exciting) forays into a more intense form of expression.

Artist Profile:

Geoff Leigh: Geoff Leigh plays the flute and soprano saxophone, as well as carrying an array of smaller percussive or blowing instruments. He was an early member of the English band Henry Cow, who were innovatively perched somewhere between the encampments of freely-improvised jazz and complex modern composition. He played on their debut album Legend in 1973, subsequently departing, but again turning up on 1975's In Praise Of Learning. Leigh went on to play with Slapp Happy, Hatfield And The North and Mike Oldfield. In the Radar Favourites band, he also worked with Charles Hayward and Charles Bullen, two-thirds of what was to eventually become This Heat. By the end of the 1970s, Leigh was gigging with Univers Zéro in Brussels, and released his debut solo EP Chemical Bank. In the 1980s, living in Rotterdam, he became increasingly involved with North African music. Returning to the UK, he formed the Ex-Wise Heads, a duo with bassist Colin Edwin from Porcupine Tree. In 2005, he forged a firm connection with Faust. Lately, Leigh has become something of a regular at the Hastings Electric Palace Cinema, where he creates improvised soundscapes to accompany experimental films.

Yumi Hara Cawkwell: Yumi Hara Cawkwell studied medicine at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and practiced as a psychiatrist for eight years before moving to the UK in 1993. In 1999, she graduated in music from City University in London with a first-class honours degree specialising in acoustic and electroacoustic composition and performance (piano). She also undertook extensive study of non-western musics. Yumi Hara Cawkwell has completed her PhD in composition at City University under Rhian Samuel in 2005 and has received a number of awards including a prize in the Continuum Ensemble Improvisation Competition, Sculpted Sound competition and the British Medical Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology Fanfare Competition to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. Her music has been performed by, among others, PianoCircus, Ensemble Bash, Jane Chapman and OKEANOS in concerts and festivals in the UK and Japan. Yumi has led voice improvisation workshops for the Yokohama Boys and Girls Chorus at the ISCM World Music Days in 2001, taught music production to young offenders at the Islington Youth Offending Centre and gave a paper on The Oral Traditions of Japanese Blind Mediums at the University of Sorbonne in Paris. She regularly gives improvised performances as a solo vocalist, duo with David Cross, and HUMI (Hugh Hopper & Yumi Hara Cawkwell). In addition, Yumi Hara Cawkwell is active as a DJ, and since 1996, has been a member of the performance-art girlband Frank Chickens. She also performs with Vaseline Towers and Lemon Squeezer and is a Lecturer in Music at University of East London."-Moon June

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