LARRY GOVES (b.1980): Distant Airports for Flute, Alto Sax, Guitar, Cello and Electronics, Music inspired by Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Suburban Relapse” played with little regard for coordination and tuning (flute, sax, cello, electric guitar), Borneo Rivers for Flute, Piccolo, Bawu, sax, cello, electric guitar), Music for Melody Instruments, Objects and Electronic Sounds (flute, sax, cello, guitar, electronics), Nehemiah 2 (flute, sax, cello, electronics), MATTHEW SERGEANT (b.1984): Matters of Matter #4 A bowed string instrument is played 2’29 with a found branch, twig, or similar…, SARAH HENNIES (b.1979): Growing Block (flute, sax, bass clarinet, guitar, cello, piano, electric guitar, objects), AMBER PRIESTLEY (b.198?): With wholesome hunger plenty (flute, sax, guitar, cello, electronics), CLAUDIA SESSA (1570-1617)/arr. Larry Goves: Occhi io vissi di voi Nos. 1 (sax) & 2(flute, sax, cello).
Catalogue Number: 04W064
Label: NMC
Reference: D269
Format: CD
Price: $18.98
Description: "The House of Bedlam performs exploratory and experimental music with a focus on new and challenging instrumental performance practice, including object performance, electronic music, improvisation, and installation." And that is what we have here, curated by the ensemble's resident composer and sound projectionist Larry Goves, who contributes the electronic drone textures to most of the pieces. He also assembled and mixed some of them from their independently recorded component parts, as this album is at least in part an exercise in giving the finger to Covid-19 by recording pieces for an ensemble that really wants to play together while in lockdown separation. Extended instrumental techniques predominate, for example in Goves' Borneo Rivers, which consists of independently recorded, vaguely 'flowing'-style instrumental lines interpreted from a graphic score, or 'visiting' composer Matthew Sergeant's piece, in which the open strings of a violin are played with sticks picked up at random in the garden. Goves often uses simple fragments in a quasi-ambient, quasi-minimalistic way, as exemplified by Distant Airports and Music for ... here, which are dreamy and consonant. The full title of "Music inspired by the opening of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Suburban relapse’ played with little regard for coordination or tuning" - harsh, noisy dissonant unison chords undergoing a kind of post-minimalistic progression - tells you all you need to know about the piece, and the sense of Covid-inspired frustration that inspired it. Amber Priestley's piece draws on bits of a Renaissance melody to be played in various styles and sounds, from conventional to noise, in improvisatory combination; true to the spirit of the album, the improvised co-ordination was assembled by Goves in the studio. Various performers.