The duo of Liz Allbee on trumpet and Anthea Caddy on cello in beautifully paced, mysterious improvisations using a minimal approach of extended and often disconcerting techniques augmented with subtle electroacoustic touches.
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Liz Allbee-trumpet, synth, field recordings
Anthea Caddy-cello
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UPC: 616892202141
Label: Relative Pitch
Catalog ID: RPR1021
Squidco Product Code: 19065
Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2014
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded in Studio Boerne 45 in Berlin, Germany, by Werner Dafeldecker.
"Bogan Ghost is Liz Allbee on trumpet and Anthea Caddy on cello and 'Zerfall' is one pleasant, totally absorbing surprise. "Surprise" if only because of my limited prior exposure to their music. I happened to have heard them both as part of the Splitter Orchestra (and a subset or two thereof) last year at St. Merri in Paris but still, I wasn't quite prepared for the music encountered here.
I guess the main unexpected (and very welcome) aspect is the degree of concision in play and the fact that each of the nine tracks, to me, has a real sense of purpose, a clear idea as to what it's about. Long tracks in improvised music are almost automatic, have been for a long time. While of course this is often appropriate, sometimes it feels obligatory and the listener gets the idea that paring things down time-wise would have been highly beneficial.
I'm not sure to what extent the music here is free-improvised (I get the feeling there's some structural organization involved though I could easily be wrong), but the track lengths are around 4-6 minutes each, I think (no times given and I haven't sat and watched my display) and in every instance, the duration seems perfect, especially in the few that veer more toward a kind of efi approach, "The Gates", for instance. More often the general tone is dark, brooding and exceedingly rich, conveying a strong, grainy cinematic quality; the first and last tracks include ambient recordings used to great effect. Allbee's trumpet tends to stay in its lower ranges whether she's using breath tones, burbles or, rarely, standard pitches. And Caddy's cello, almost always bowed is right there with her, somber, plumbing great depths (even when in rasping mode), bearing marvelous layers of detail; some of the striking moments occur when the pair are both way, way down there, growling and humming in tandem, subterranean, forbidding and fantastic. When Caddy does pluck notes, as on the deliciously umbral "The Absence", with Allbee vocalizing disturbingly via her trumpet, I picked up the slightest hint of "Bitches Brew"--nice. There's not a track here that doesn't pack some punch.
Both the musical choices and the decision to render them in discrete batches add up to an excellent, relatively listener-friendly offering. Don't let this one slip under the radar."-Brian Olewnick, Just Outside
The Squid's Ear!
Get additional information at Brian Olewnick's Just Outside
Artist Biographies
• Show Bio for Liz Allbee "Liz Allbee (1976) is a composer-performer who works with the imaginarchic potential of sonic material. Recurring themes in her work include extensions & embodiments and their interplay with instruments, everyday objects, and high and low technologies. She is fascinated by the gutteral, protolinguistic qualities of musical voices and bodies. She performs often with her trumpet, quad-trumpet, voice, and electronics. She has performed at Maerzmusik, Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, Huddersfield, Ostrava Days, Serralves, Bolzano Museum of Fine Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Berlin JazzFest, NorbergFestival, CTM, and Berghain, among others." ^ Hide Bio for Liz Allbee • Show Bio for Anthea Caddy "Anthea Caddy (b.1981) lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Melbourne, Australia. Her practice explores the spatio-temporal aspects of sound and architecture, applying these to audio works that manipulate and distort perceptions of time, space and experience. Caddy's work focuses on the incorporation of acoustic, electro-acoustic and recorded space within performance, installation and concert presentation, often using amplified cello as her primary sound source. In her live performance she uses multi-channel configurations in low lighting or complete darkness. Alongside her solo work Anthea has collaborated with many artists in various projects, most notably with Thembi Soddell (Cajid Media, Room40), Annette Krebs (AnotherTimbre), Philip Samartzis, Magda Mayas (Dromos), Valerio Tricoli, Michael Vorfeld, Liz Allbee (Bogan Ghost), Helena Gough (Entr'acte), Eric la Casa, Werner Dafeldecker, Christian Wolff and Tony Conrad. She is a current member of the 24 piece Splitter Orchestra, Berlin. She has performed and exhibited in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Europe notably at, Bludenzer Tage, Austria, Liquid Architecture National Festival, Australia, Diapason Gallery, New York, Leipzig Museum of Modern Art, Reina Sofia Center of Contemporary Art, Madrid, Observatori Contemporary Arts Festival, Valencia, Issue Project Room, New York, Goethe Institut, Boston, Project Space Gallery, Melbourne, Wroclaw Museum of Contemporary Art, Poland, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Tesla Centre of Media Arts and Radial System V, Berlin. She has contributed to numerous works for video installation, dance, live sound design/score for theatre (with Darrin Verhagen and Franc Tetaz), film (Rogue, 2007) and video. Alongside Thembi Soddell she is discussed in Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia edited by Gail Priest published by UNSW Press 2008." ^ Hide Bio for Anthea Caddy
11/29/2023
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
11/29/2023
Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.
Track Listing:
1. For Janus 3:37
2. Egress 5:57
3. The Gates 3:40
4. Past Future Faces 4:30
5. Pits 1:13
6. Trenches 1:55
7. Accumulation 4:34
8. The Absence 3:52
9. Decay 5:19
Improvised Music
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Field Recordings
Duo Recordings
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