Restricted by pandemic, bassist John Edwards took compositions for Remote Viewers written by Dave Petts along with recordings from himself and saxophonists Caroline Kraabel, Sue Lynch, Adrian Northover & David Petts, using digital compositional methods to maintain Petts' concepts while manipulating and inverting each piece in wonderfully riotous and unexpected ways.
"These compositions began life as pieces written by Petts for various instrumental combinations, mostly focussed around reed instruments and double bass. 'The Moviegoer' for example was originally scored for four saxophones, marimba and piano, 'The Gift' for saxophones, percussion, piano and bass.
In normal times we would have rehearsed these pieces with the allotted instruments, maybe played some concerts and then recorded. But, circumstances this year meant there was no way to get musicians together for rehearsals, much less perform concerts. And so the idea arose for Edwards to take the original scores as a starting point, re-work them using computer and electronic based sounds and arrive at different musical conclusions.
Working digitally afforded the possibility to run riot with them. Sections were cut up and thrown away, instrumentation changed, tempos and parts re-written, some pieces were inverted, sounds manipulated out of all recognition and the use of sampled sound sources enabled saxophone parts to be played by vacuum cleaners and fridge sounds; a whole score could be played by harp or car horns.
Even though the results sound completely unlike their original form, through the lens of Edwards' disruptive influence, Petts' writing can still clearly be heard."-Remote Viewers