The Squid's Ear Magazine


Rowe, Keith / Graham Lambkin: Making A (erstwhile)

Keith Rowe first met Graham Lambkin at erstwhile's 2007 Amplify 2011 festival in NYC, playing again in 2013, and recording this album at Lambkin's house that same year, creating something unusual and unique from each player's perspective.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Keith Rowe-contact mic, objects, field recordings

Graham Lambkin-contact mic, objects


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Label: erstwhile
Catalog ID: 067
Squidco Product Code: 17512

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2013
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded at Empty Stage Studios, Poughkeepsie, NY on January 17th and 18th, 2013.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Graham Lambkin first heard Keith Rowe's sixties work in AMM as a teenager growing up in Folkestone, a small town in Kent, England, and for him it was very influential. That same year, Lambkin formed his now legendary band The Shadow Ring and Lambkin says, "For Darren (Harris) and I, AMM was one of the groups that gave us licence to just do what we wanted, regardless of whether it fitted with convention or employed 'accepted' techniques, and did so from a very English standpoint which held great appeal." A decade of increasingly skewed and inspired work by the band culminated in 2003's I'm Some Songs, constructed long distance as Lambkin had relocated to the US in 1998. Since then, Lambkin has primarily worked under his own name, both as a solo artist and in duo with Jason Lescalleet.

Rowe first became aware of Lambkin's work more recently, initially via 2007's Salmon Run, but when the two first met at the AMPLIFY 2011: stones festival in NYC, the connection was immediate. 2012 was spent in preparation and in January 2013 the duo met first in NYC for a memorable live set and then travelled to Graham's house in Poughkeepsie where Making A was recorded. The instant personal chemistry between the two fully translated to their musical relationship, both the similarities and differences seem to perfectly fit. This immediate rapport led to the quickest ever turnaround time from recording to release for an Erstwhile, just 77 days. Both musicians feel that Making A represents something very unusual and unique from their own perspective, and it is also the first release in Rowe's close to half century of recording in which he does not use a guitar or a radio. The six panel digipak features combined artwork from the two musicians, joining forces to create a visual whole that parallels the music."-erstwhile

"On 'Making A', Rowe and Lambkin share a connection that extends beyond music. The two enter the other's bloodstream, emerging as a new whole, informed by, but not bound to their individual parts. The sounds they find in this merged place conjure pasts real or imagined. A truly rare recording."-Matthew Revert

"A unique pairing that sees the duo formulate a new solitary ground. 'Making A' slips outside the realm of music into a shrewd juncture between the familiar and foreign, the external and internal, the mind and matter."-Mark Harwood


Artist Biographies

"tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both the influential AMM in the mid-1960s (though in 2004 he quit that group for the second time) and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, Rowe's paintings have been featured on most of his own albums. After years of obscurity, Rowe has achieved a level of relative notoriety, and since the late 1990s has kept up a busy recording and touring schedule. He is seen as a godfather of EAI (electroacoustic improvisation), with many of his recent recordings having been released by Erstwhile Records.

Rowe began his career playing jazz in the early 1960s-notably with Mike Westbrook and Lou Gare. His early influences were guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and Barney Kessel. Eventually, however, Rowe grew tired of what he considered the form's limitations. Rowe began experimenting, slowly and gradually. An important step was a New Year's resolution to stop tuning his guitar-much to Westbrook's displeasure. Rowe gradually expanded into free jazz and free improvisation, eventually abandoning conventional guitar technique.

This change in his approach to guitar, Rowe reports, was partly inspired by a teacher in one of his painting courses who told him, "Rowe, you cannot paint a Caravaggio. Only Caravaggio can paint Caravaggio." Rowe reports that after considering this idea from a musical perspective, "trying to play guitar like Jim Hall seemed quite wrong." For several years Rowe contemplated how to reinvent his approach to the guitar, again finding inspiration in visual art, namely, American painter Jackson Pollock, who abandoned traditional painting methods to forge his own style. "How could I abandon the technique? Lay the guitar flat!"

Rowe developed various prepared guitar techniques: placing the guitar flat on a table and manipulating the strings, body and pick-ups in unorthodox ways to produce sounds described as dark, brooding, compelling, expansive and alien. He has been known to employ objects such as a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar. A January 1997 feature in Guitar Player magazine described a Rowe performance as "resemble a surgeon operating on a patient." Rowe sometimes incorporates live radio broadcasts into his performances, including shortwave radio and number stations (the guitar's pick-ups will also pick up radio signals, and broadcast them through the amplifier).

AMM percussionist Eddie Prévost reports that Rowe has "an uncanny touch on the wireless switch", able to find radio broadcasts which seem to blend ideally with, or offer startling commentary on, the music. (Prévost, 18). On AMMMusic, towards the end of the cacophonous "Ailantus Glandolusa", a speaker announces via radio that "We cannot preserve the normal music." Prevost writes that during an AMM performance in Istanbul, Rowe located and integrated a radio broadcast of "the pious intonation of a male Turkish voice. AMM of course, had absolutely no idea what the material was. Later, it was complimented upon the judicious way that verses from The Koran had been introduced into the performance, and the respectful way they had been treated!" In reviewing World Turned Upside Down, critic Dan Hill writes, "Rowe has tuned his shortwave radio to some dramatically exotic gameshow and human voices spatter the mix, though at such low volume, they're unintelligible and abstracted. Rowe never overplays this device, a clear temptation with such a seductive technology - the awesome possibility of sonically reaching out across a world of voices requires experienced hands to avoid simple but ultimately short-term pleasure. This he does masterfully, mixing in random operatics and chance encounters with talkshow hosts to anchor the sound in humanity, amidst the abstraction." "

Some accounts report that Rowe's guitar technique was an influence on Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett: "Taking his cues from experimental guitarist Keith Rowe of AMM, Barrett strived to push his music farther and farther out into the zone of complete abstraction."

Rowe has worked together with numerous composers and musicians, including Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Howard Skempton, Jeffrey Morgan, John Tilbury, Evan Parker, Taku Sugimoto, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz, Burkhard Beins, Kurt Liedwart, Toshimaru Nakamura, David Sylvian and Peter Rehberg.

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Rowe)
3/13/2024

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

"Graham Lambkin first entered the public consciousness at 19 when he formed his band The Shadow Ring, in Folkestone, a small town in Kent, England. The band was memorable and built an rabidly passionate fan base because of its sui generis approach, blending elements of folk, noise, cracked electronics, and surrealist poetry, while radically changing the overall formula with each release. A decade of increasingly skewed and inspired work culminated in 2003's I'm Some Songs, constructed long distance as Lambkin had relocated to the US in 1998. Over the last few years, Lambkin has primarily worked under his own name, most notably with 2007's brilliant Salmon Run, a precursor to The Breadwinner."

-erstwhile records (http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/catalog/052.html)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Over C 12:00

2. Making A 15:15

3. Wet B 15:15

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Keith Rowe
Duo Recordings
Objects and Home-made Instruments
Instant Rewards

Search for other titles on the label:
erstwhile.


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