Description
In April 2017, Barnaby Oliver and I started recording with the aim of improvising long-form pieces made up of a restricted palette of gestures and sound sources. Throughout the next two years we came together sporadically as we continued this quest, working through various ideas and changing instrumentation. Our work was gradually refined done to what you hear on this album: a combination of harmonics arising from bowed metal bowls and violin (or piano), coalescing into other-worldly music that at first appears static, yet constantly shifts and re-grounds itself – Clinton Green
Glass-mastered CD housed in full-colour 4-panel wallet or digital download.
As I am sitting in my comfy chair, reading a book and drinking afternoon tea, I play the new release by Barnaby Oliver and Clinton Green… [Oliver] plays violin and piano…Green plays bowed metal bowls. With these limited sources they set out to play long-form pieces, and they have been doing so since 2017. As I sit back and do all the things mentioned, I listen to music and feel blown away. On the first piece, ‘The Interstices’, they keep bowing the strings and bowls in a very delicate drone-like piece that works very well with acoustic overtones. Think a bit of Organum or Nurse With Wound’s ‘Soliloque For Lilith’, but acoustic. It is refined and rough and works very well. It lasts nineteen minutes but for me, it could have lasted an hour. It is minimally changing and that’s enough. ‘Of These Epidemics’ is four minutes longer, twenty-three minutes in total and here Oliver plays the piano and Green keeps striking and bowing the bowls. Oliver plays chords, loosely and spacious, reminding of the best jazz works from down under I heard before; think Spartak, Gilded, 3ofmillions and Infinite Decimals but also The Necks, I would think. It’s smooth, it’s a bit of jazz and with Green’s backdrop on the bowls, it is spacious as it roughly edged. As I am sitting in my comfy chair, reading a book and drinking afternoon tea, I play the new release by Barnaby Oliver and Clinton Green again. I get up and just play it all over again. It’s melancholic, it’s sad, and I might think this is the best release I heard this week – Vital Weekly 1250
In “The Interstices” the coalescence of metal and strings produces a series of semi-dissonant, never-too-loud organic stratifications. Imagine David Jackman’s rawer output sounding decidedly more moderate – say, as on an Another Timbre recording – and you’ll have a faint idea of what I’m meaning here. The relative fragility of the pitches enhances the release of specific harmonics from their combination, placing the music in a niche between contemplative mood (always with an eye open) and slight uneasiness.”Of These Epidemics” is strongly characterized by Oliver playing peaceful sequences on the piano, a resonance reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s Rick Wright circa “The Great Gig In The Sky” but with an entrancing repetitiveness à la Charlemagne Palestine. The fluctuation of those chords along the strident mantra of Green’s bowed bowls is uniquely delightful. Without the need of revolutions, the duo’s interaction remains accessible to most everybody. Overall, an appreciably unadulterated work – Touching Extremes
