The Squid's Ear Magazine


Carlsson, Erik: The Bird And The Giant (Creative Sources)

Swedish percussionist Erik Carlsson in a solo work using multi-tracking to create a set of composition ranging from ominous environments to quirky abstractions, an excellent collection of modern percussion pieces.
 

Price: $15.95


Quantity:

Out of Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 4.00 units

Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



Erik Carlsson-percussion


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




UPC: 5609063401905

Label: Creative Sources
Catalog ID: CS190
Squidco Product Code: 15037

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2011
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded at Vindruvan, Stockholm in July 2010 by Erik Carlsson.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"[...] This piece of writing is actually something commissioned from me by the Swedish percussionist Erik Carlsson to accompany the release of his second solo album on the Creative Sources label. It kind of reads like a review though, and it includes my honest thoughts about the album, though maybe it glows with praise perhaps more than it might if it was an non-commissioned piece. I still think its worth posting though, and given how light on content these pages have been recently, lets face it anything is better than more nothing! The text is as follows then:

The role of the solo improviser recording an album is always a difficult one. Inevitably (s)he will find himself in one of a few scenarios, either sticking to the limitations of the chosen instrumentation, trying hard to stretch those limits out via extended, unfamiliar technique, or utilising recording technology to bypass the restrictions of playing alone. In many ways, on his new, second solo album called The bird and the giant, the Swedish improvising percussionist Erik Carlsson manages to take all three approaches at different times.

There are five tracks here, or six if you wait and seek out the hidden bonus at the end. Each of them uses multitracking techniques to layer separately recorded, but resolutely unedited parts over one another. So we hear Carlsson improvising live, but alongside himself, perhaps several times over in places. This then avoids the inevitable restrictions that being a human being with only so many limbs presents the percussionist, but still the music has a certain vibrancy and energy to it. It doesn't sound like a set of contrived pieces. Carlsson is one of the rare breed amongst modern improvising percussionists that is not afraid to make music by hitting things, perhaps playing percussion closer to how it was originally intended to be played than many of his contemporaries. His playing exudes a certain confidence. He is not afraid to strike objects, form patterns with his sounds, let tones hang in the air and slowly decay, and yet he also understands the colour and textures possible with his battery of sounds very well. His work on this album is sensual and richly detailed, but he has found these qualities through a combination of intuitive playing in the moment and a finely structured compositional integrity pulled together across the separate tracks.

There is a wide range of sounds put to use. The opening "Could be emotional" indeed does fill you with a range of sentiments, its dark, slow, struck metal sounds coming together in clouds of rich colour. Sounds repeat themselves over and over, and the sensation is of deathly slow clockwork, but even with the closest, most attentive of listening it isn't clear if there actually are any patterns to be found in the music, or if the brain, tricked by what it expects when it hears percussion like this tries to seek out an order to the sounds that isn't there at all.

The following "Heavy rest" works in a similar way, but the tempo raises very slightly and the rich sonorities are replaced by quick, abrupt sounds created by killing any decay dead immediately by hand. So we hear little clusters of sound that flow freely, but with a jagged, jerky intensity. If Derek Bailey played percussion then he may have sounded like this. "Hope, perhaps feelings" is the title of the track that follows, and here we witness a return to the almost ritualistic sobriety of the opening track, slow simple sounds turning slowly, but this time with the unmistakable rich warmth of bowed metal combining with deep, softly struck metallic tones breaking the surface that the music wallows just beneath.

"The Dead Spirit" is a far more complex scattering of tiny percussive sounds- metal chimes and wooden clicks. Here the multitracking comes into its own, generous flurries of gathered minutae, a garden full of windchimes on a windy day throwing dense combinations of shapes into the air. Again we wonder if there are patterns in there, do we hear the same thing circling around us again and again or does the mind play tricks? Following the highly recogniseable sounds of the first four pieces, we are suddenly thrown into a completely different sound world by the aptly named fifth track, "Something else somewhere". Here we are not so much confronted, but gently caressed by the slightest slither of grey hiss and shimmer, more reminiscent of a detuned shortwave radio than anything we might expect from percussion. How this thin, gaseous layer of sound is created I'm not sure, perhaps the surface of objects lightly agitated by vibrations, perhaps something else, but the piece comes as a gentle reflection after the fine details of the previous track and as a clear reaction to the more traditionally inspired playing elsewhere on the album.

Wait patiently and a sixth track appears, untitled, but indeed something else somewhere. This ghost of a piece is related in form to the previous track, more cold shivers of sound rather than any percussive structure, perhaps an even more cleanly defined than the last set of sounds, though more impatient in its need to stop and start and create tension through gradual layering than the fifth track's more static dynamic.

This is a fine album of carefully constructed, but also somehow partly unconsidered works by a finely talented musician. The six pieces each make clear musical statements, separate to one another and yet they form a well rounded, nicely balanced suite when brought together. As good an example of what can be done with simple percussion and just a sprinkle of recording trickery as we have heard in a while."-Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear



This album has been reviewed on our magazine:

The Squid
The Squid's Ear!

Get additional information at The Watchful Ear

Artist Biographies

"Erik Carlsson is an improvising percussionist whose blissful sounds resound throughout the world. Apart from performing solo, he is also heard with musicians and ensembles such as Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Martin Küchen, Chip Shop Music, Skogen and Mats Gustafsson's Swedish Azz."

-Bon Bax Bom Bax (http://www.bombaxbombax.com/people/erik-carlsson)
3/25/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Could be emotional 10:38

2. Heavy rest 9:06

3. Hope, perhaps feelings 8:24

4. The dead spirit 6:41

5. Something else somewhere 8:21

6. The Bird and The Giant 7:16

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Percussion & Drums
Creative Sources
Free Improvisation
Instant Rewards

Search for other titles on the label:
Creative Sources.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
Granberg, Magnus / Skogen
Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn
(Another Timbre)
Composer Magnus Granberg took influences from Schubert's song cycle "Die Winterreise", extracting tonal material, which he merged with rhythmic influences from medieval English folk music and a song by Dowland, merging them into a temporal framework for this large and subtle composition, executed by a setpet including Angharad Davies, Erik Carlsson, Henrik Olsson, d'incise, &c.
Skuggorna Och Ljuset / Magnus Granberg
Would Fall From The Sky, Would Wither And Die
(Another Timbre)
A new composition by clarinetist and composer Magnus Granberg, the leader of the highly acclaimed ensemble Skogen, this time with a new, smaller group that includes percussionist Erik Carlsson, performing his beautiful, melancholic music.
Keune, Stefan
Sunday Sundaes
(Creative Sources)
Solo improvisation from Stefen Keune performing on sopranino and alto saxophones, intense playing that focuses on hard-blowing and extreme performance, wringing a singularly desperate yet astute language from the horn.
Charbin / Van Isacker
kryscraft
(Creative Sources)
Tense and subtle improvisation from the Belgian duo of pianist Marjolaine Charbin playing inside and out of the piano and alto saxophonist Frans van Isacker using microtonal and extended approaches with the sax.
Busolini / Loriot
VIOLAtwoVIOLA
(Creative Sources)
This duo arose from the meeting between two violists avid to confront with their instrumental double to create a common sound universe from the same instrument played by two different personalities.



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Phantom Trio (Tavares / Almeida / Martins)
#00
(Creative Sources)
An excellent jazz album using diverse styles bridging free and lyrical playing from the trio of Sergio Tavares (bass), Fabio Almeida (sax) and Joao Martins (drums), playing in and out of the jazz idiom and augmenting Almeida's sax with electronics in compelling ways.
Rodrigues / Rodrigues / Trinite
Aether
(Creative Sources)
Strings and small percussion imbue this darkly beautiful set of extended improvisations from the Portugese trio of Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello, and Monsieur Trinite on small percussion; creative richly open soundscapes with intriguing interventions.
Akiyama, Tetuzi / Anla Courtis
Naranja Songs
(Public Eyesore)
Two acoustic guitars collaborate in a beautiful and spare dialog, using extended techniques including bowing and percussive approaches that never detract from the sublime elements of their playing.
Threadgill Zooid, Henry
Tomorrow Sunny / The Revelry, Spp
(Pi Recordings)
Henry Threadgill and his Zooid band follow up the 2 part "This Bring Us To" series with this exceptional album of NY jazz, abstracting the jazz idiom in persuasive and stunning ways through great writing and playing.
Bondi / d'incise / Rodrigues / Chagas / Torres / Moimeme
Brume
(Creative Sources)
Extended improvisations using a mix of acoustic and electric instruments from the sextet of Ernesto Rodrigues, d'incise, Cyril Bondi, Abdul Moiemem, Eduardo Chagas, and Nuno Torres.
Moser, Michael
Resonant Cuts: (2 CDs AND BOOK)
(Edition Rz)
Book and 2 CDs documenting a 2010 concert and sound installation by Carsten Seiffarth and Michael Moser, with Polweschsel & guests (Burkhard Beins, Axel Dorner, &c) performing the concert.
Denley / Lauzier / Martel / Myhr / Normand
Transition de Phase
(Tour de Bras)
Intense and understated electro-acoustic improvisation from saxophonists Jim Denley and Philippe Lauzier, electronic artist Pierre-Yves Martel, guitaris Kim Myhr and bassis Eric Normand.
Halvorson, Mary Quintet
Saturn Sings
(Firehouse 12 Records)
Halvorson's quintet in a new book of music exploring close knit and dissonant harmonies for her ensemble of trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, saxophonist Jon Irabagon, bassist John Hebert & drummer Ches Smith.
Various Artists
I Never Meta Guitar - Solo Guitars for the XXI Century
(Clean Feed)
An encompassing modern guitar compilation curated by Elliott Sharp with pieces from Henry Kaiser, Nels Cline, Scott Fields, Mary Halvorson, Janet Feder, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Mick Barr &c. &c.!
Gottschalk, Gunda / Xu Fengxia
You Lan
(Les Disques Victo)
A duo of contrasts and compatabilities from German violinst Gunda Gottschalk and guzheng virtuoso Xu Fengxia, exotic and beautifully textured improvisation live from Victoriaville, 2008.
Mayas / Buck
gold
(Creative Sources)
Necks drummer and percussion Tony Buck in a duo from December 2007 performing at the dOeK Festival in Bimhuis, Amsterdam with extended technique pianist Magda Mayas.
Mezei Ensemble, Szilard
Sivatag
(Creative Sources)
Extending his own ensemble into a 10 piece orchestra of impressive range and tonal colors, Szilard Mezei presents 3 compositions that bridge modern classical and improvisational music.
Denyer, Frank
Music for Shakuhachi
(Another Timbre)
Unprecedented music for Shakuhachi by Frank Denyer (releases on Tzadik, Mode) with Yoshikazu Iwamoto on shakuhachi and Paul Hiley joining Denyer on percussion.
Tammen, Hans / Christop Irmer
Oxide
(Creative Sources)



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC