Scotch Of St James, The

Live at Amplify 2004

Label: Confront Country: UK

"Collector's Series in super basic packaging. Tim Barnes (snare drum and amplification) and Mark Wastell (amplified textures, tuned metal) make small, mostly unidentifiable sounds, nicely opened out into the space, allowed Cage-style to state their business and fade away."-Confront

" .......... The following set by Tim Barnes and Mark Wastell was equally refreshing in its subtlety and variety. For anyone familiar with his sometimes quite 'reduced' work, Wastell was surprisingly active, shifting quickly and adeptly between an array of sounds, including hisses, crackles, rumbles, oscillations, pure tones from his electronics, as well as amplified textures and the ringing clarity of his various metallic percussion instruments. Barnes concentrated on a narrower range of sonic materials, often relying solely on gnarled woody cracks on a drum - yet he too also turned to rubbed and scraped cymbals, grainy bowings, vocal exhalations and what seemed to be bells during the course of the improvisation. The resulting interaction between the two embraced both direct trading of gestures and less obvious congruencies of sound; with great subtlety, it brought together space, silence, shifting textures and intriguing timbres in ways that constantly facilitated and rewarded the listener's focussed engagement."-Wayne Spencer - bagatellen.com