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Toop, David / Akio Suzuki / Lawrence English: Breathing Spirit Forms [CD & BOOK] (Room40)

Six site-specific and exotic electroacoustic improvisations recorded during a residency in Australia's Tamborine Mountain from the duo of visiting sound improvisers David Toop and Akio Suzuki, joined by Lawrence English, using the environmental sounds of each location along with flutes, sticks, stones, a sponge & hand mirror, shortwave radio, electronics, percussion, &c.
 

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Includes a 24-page book with text by David Toop, drawings by Akio Suzuki and photography by Lawrence English.

UPC: 764227971269

Label: Room40
Catalog ID: RM 4171CD
Squidco Product Code: 31052

Format: BOOK + CD
Condition: New
Released: 2021
Country: Australia
Packaging: CD w/ 24 PAGE BOOK
Recorded on Tamborine Mountain,Australia, in August, 2013.


Personnel:

David Toop-Flutes, sticks

Akio Suzuki-Analapos, flutes, stones, sponge, hand mirror, pocket bottle & mallet

Lawrence English-Shortwave radio, handheld electronics, percussion

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Artist Biographies:

"David Toop (born 5 May 1949) is an English musician, author, and professor and chair of audio culture and improvisation at the London College of Communication. He was a member of the Flying Lizards and a contributor to the British magazine The Face. He is a regular contributor to The Wire, a British music magazine.

Soon after his birth, his parents moved to Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, where he grew up. He was educated at Broxbourne Grammar School, which he left in 1967 to study at Hornsey College of Art.

Toop published his pioneering book on hip hop, Rap Attack, in 1984. Eleven years later, Ocean of Sound appeared, described as Toop's "poetic survey of contemporary musical life from Debussy through Ambient, Techno, and drum 'n' bass." Since the 1970s, Toop has also been a significant presence on the British experimental and improvised music scene, collaborating with Max Eastley, Brian Eno, Scanner, and others. He is a member of the improvising, genre-hopping quartet Alterations, active from 1977 to 1986 and reforming in 2015. In 2001, Toop curated the sound art exhibition Sonic Boom, and the following year, he curated a 2-CD collection entitled Not Necessarily Enough English Music: A Collection of Experimental Music from Great Britain, 1960Ð1977. More experimentally, Toop has also actively engaged with 'sounding objects' from a range of museums."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Toop)
3/22/2023

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

"Akio Suzuki is known as a pioneer of sound art, but the breadth of his activities and the form of his works far exceeds the normal boundaries of sound art. It is perhaps more as a "quester after sound and space" that he has received the most attention from artists in many fields.Suzuki's journey as an artist began in 1963 with a performance at Nagoya station, in which he threw a bucket full of junk down a staircase. The inspiration behind this performance - the idea that if one were to hurl an object down a well-balanced stairway, a pleasant rhythm might be the result - took the desire to "listen" as its subject. That desire to hear, to listen has remained the one constant in Suzuki's stance as an artist.

During the sixties, Suzuki's sense of playfulness led him to undertake a series of Self-Study Events, where he explored the processes of "throwing" and "following", taking the natural world as his collaborator. The experiences he gained in these events led him in the seventies to invent an echo instrument he named Analapos. The instrument's structure resembles that of two mirrors facing each other, reflecting into infinity. As an extension of the principles underlying Analapos, Suzuki constructed the Hinatabokko no kukan (Space in the Sun) in 1988. This space consists of two huge parallel walls, in between which the artist can sit all day and purify his hearing by listening to the reflected sounds of nature. This space leads the artist to discover a new method of listening. Suzuki himself comments, "Sound, which had been conceptually imprisoned in various spaces, is freed to circle the world."

From the late seventies and through the eighties, Suzuki also developed a form of performance he refers to as Conceptual Soundwork. Applying a number of self-imposed, simple and austere rules, he uses objects close at hand in a mode of "intellectual play". While these events do on the one hand express a critique of meaningless improvised performance, at the same time Suzuki is constantly aware of the audience's process of listening and he attempts to create contemporaneous connections with the site of performance. It was around this time that Suzuki began to travel frequently to the US and Europe, and his performances at leading music festivals, Festival d'Automne (Paris, 1978) and Documenta 8 (Kassel, 1987) were rapturously received.

As sound art enjoyed a period of prosperity in the nineties, Suzuki was given the chance to create many installations, particularly in Berlin. Worthy of special note were his soundless installations, such as Otodate (Echo point, 1996) in Berlin, Enghien-les-Bains (since 1997, http://www.insitu-enghien.org/) and Strasbourg; Hana (Flower, 1997) at the Stadtgalarie Saarbrucken; and Pyramid (1999) which involved people excavating sounds. These soundless pieces were not designed to critique the old perceptual theories of music, rather they questioned the very location of music. Through their encounter with these works, the past experiences and memories of viewers were reconstructed as new experiences. This process was fundamental to the action of "listening" to the works.

From the late seventies and through the eighties, Suzuki also developed a form of performance he refers to as Conceptual Soundwork. Applying a number of self-imposed, simple and austere rules, he uses objects close at hand in a mode of "intellectual play". While these events do on the one hand express a critique of meaningless improvised performance, at the same time Suzuki is constantly aware of the audience's process of listening and he attempts to create contemporaneous connections with the site of performance. It was around this time that Suzuki began to travel frequently to the US and Europe, and his performances at leading music festivals, Festival d'Automne (Paris, 1978) and Documenta 8 (Kassel, 1987) were rapturously received.

As sound art enjoyed a period of prosperity in the nineties, Suzuki was given the chance to create many installations, particularly in Berlin. Worthy of special note were his soundless installations, such as Otodate (Echo point, 1996) in Berlin, Enghien-les-Bains (since 1997, http://www.insitu-enghien.org/) and Strasbourg; Hana (Flower, 1997) at the Stadtgalarie Saarbrucken; and Pyramid (1999) which involved people excavating sounds. These soundless pieces were not designed to critique the old perceptual theories of music, rather they questioned the very location of music. Through their encounter with these works, the past experiences and memories of viewers were reconstructed as new experiences. This process was fundamental to the action of "listening" to the works."

-Akio Suzuki Website (http://www.akiosuzuki.com/web/profile01-en.html)
3/22/2023

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

"Lawrence English is composer, media artist and curator based in Australia. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English's work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. He investigates the politics of perception, through live performance and installation, to create works that ponder subtle transformations of space and ask audiences to become aware of that which exists at the edge of perception."

-Lawrence English Website (http://www.lawrenceenglish.com/biography/)
3/22/2023

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


1. The Quietening Of Rocks 8:29

2. Night Drive 8:55

3. Witches Falls 7:44

4. Empty Every Time 3:40

5. Small Holes In The Sky 5:45

6. Leaving No Trace 5:04

7. It's Winter Already 4:49
sample the album:








descriptions, reviews, &c.

"In August 2013, David Toop and Akio Suzuki visited Australia. During a residency on Tamborine Mountain (an anglicized version of the Yugambeh word Jambreen), the pair were joined by Lawrence English for a series of site specific, environment-led improvisations created around the fringes of the Tamborine plateau. Embedded in place, these recordings flow from and merge into the land on which they were created. Aural emissions answering back to the frenetic songforms of Lyre birds, the murmuring waterfalls and the hushed ambiences of night insects amongst the foliage."-Room40

From Lawrence English:

"I am ceaselessly fascinated by how memory operates and, I'm regularly struck by how individually subjective a collective experience can be when recalled by its participants. Lynch's Lost Highway comes to mind here, specifically Bill Pullman's character Fred Madison who says "I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened." Like Madison, I can't help but sense that memory takes shape through an accumulative process that reflects how each of us have lived (and maybe even wanted to live) up to that point in time.

Going back to listen again to these recordings of which I was a part with David and Akio, I was surprised by what elements had stayed with me and what others had slipped into the eternal greying of my mind. I have vivid recollections of listening to a Lyre bird before recording the pieces together at Witches Falls. I remember both Akio and David finding musicality in decaying palm fronds. I remember Akio's voice, amplified through his Analpos, bouncing off the stones and trees. I remember David's flute, so quiet in the pitch black of the night forest as to appear like a hushed tone of wind or a distant animal calling. I also remember trying to match my modest hand held electronics with the pulsing and pitching of the insects around me.

Reading David's text, which is included in the book published alongside this edition, he recounts several things I had forgotten. Conversations about memory, ironically enough, had vanished from my mind until reading his words. I also didn't really remember my role as tick surgeon, removing a living insect from David's ear. I do remember his cooking though, as does Akio (captured aptly in his drawings), no doubt a testament to David's improvisational culinary expertise.

Breathing Spirit Forms represents a distinctive exchange between friends and collaborators. Tamborine commands a special presence and encourages a deep patience from those who are willing to give time to its varied environments. For the three of us, we were fortunate to share these moments together, fleeting in our lives as they might be, to sense the mountain's unique qualities, to respond to them through our exchanges and to form memories (as disparate as they might be) we carry forward with us in time."


Includes a 24-page book with text by David Toop, drawings by Akio Suzuki and photography by Lawrence English.
Related Categories of Interest:


Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Improvised Music
Trio Recordings
Objects and Home-made Instruments
Woodwinds
Field Recordings
Australian Improvisers, Composers and Experimenters
New in Experimental & Electronic Music
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Friends of Squid

Search for other titles on the label:
Room40.

Other Releases With These Artists:
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#115 Spring 2013 [MAGAZINE + CD]
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