Massive Music Distr. Ysanne Spevack & Philip Clemo : Soundzero (UK/US,2008)***'
Composers of this project are violinist Ysanne Spevack and Philip Clemo, also film maker, with the help of Cleveland Watkiss (voice), Pete Lockett (percussion), and Mark Sanders (drums).
It is a varied but endless and monotone drone attachedness with in this sphere improvised violin improvisations, and moving onwards in sections drums, with bass, and a clever deformation of its created sounds. Especially this violin, sometimes sounding like a trumpet (or is it), sometimes like a vocoder (or is this) a deformed different instrument, shapes in these improvisations very interesting to listen to four-dimensional harmonic shapes and sounds. Outside this creative bubble of space there is not much more moving towards the outside : this really IS a bubble of space, a ground zero, an endless shoegaze prison, an endless trance-shape with incredibly interesting clever sound projections within that bubble, moving, turning, while the rhythms don’t push, hang on to the notes, the drone. These shoegazed reflections are close to late night stagnation. Some of these create harmonies, triplets of chords of violin or trumpet recall Bill Laswell. Sometimes with tabla and such this gets a fusion touch. Some bass parts are very jazz-like, a song is poppy suddenly, and another movement is chamber music-like, while never ever this projection bubble of space is left for a truly different air. It is a prison between the ears, while the mind only gets to such a sound attention, it almost falls asleep into some deeper concentration…
All Colour Arts
Philip Clemo : The Rooms (UK,2008)***°
This album very much sounds like another version/chapter or remake of the conditions and ideas but also sound-sculptural moves which formed Talk Talk’s second and third album (only without the vocals). “The rooms” sounds like going back and back again to the same minim(al)ized ideas, giving a different reflection on a different moment when looking back and reinventing the vibrations from a new beginning. It mostly turns to comparable elements, only a few times it appears to change into somewhere/thing different. This starting point is something of almost nothing, a stillness which only smoothly moves, with sonic harmonies of “orchestra-rich” ambient jazz : harmonic drones starting points, ambient-jazz trumpet solos, smooth bass rhythms, a bit of piano, repetitive minimal notes of smooth-rhythmic movements, with a texturing harmonic richness in the arrangements, like some orchestrated monotone tone strings or other arrangements. On just the last track a female singer participated.
Participating are B.J.Cole (pedal steel), Henry Lowther (flugelhorn and trumpet), Chloë Goodchild (voice), Theo Travis (saxophone and flute), Clive Bell (Asian flutes) and a Prague String quartet, with sound engineer Phill Brown (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones,...and also..Talk Talk)
PS. For comparable sounds see also my review of a Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) release here,
release of Bed here, release of Simon Kent here
