Brendan Murray and Seth Nehil, Sillage, Sedimental, SEDCD029 (2007)
Buried deep in my collection and only rediscovered while I was spring-cleaning, “Sillage” is a document of live recordings made by these two improvising American musicians using a mixture of found objects, discarded tapes, old reel-2-reel tape recorders and other recycled materials and instruments at hand. Tracks 1, 4 and 5 use material recorded by Keith Fullerton Whitman at the Intransitive Musical Festival in Boston in 2003 and tracks 2 and 3 use material recorded by Richard Garet from the Nisus concert series at Brooklyn in NYC, 2004, but all tracks can be regarded as parts of one meta-track. Whatever instruments they use and whatever sounds they wring out of them, Murray and Seth always have a sense of wonder and adventure as they map out a course across the strange and sometimes dark and bewildering music territory as hinted at by the dense pencil or felt-tipped pen shadings across the gatefold sleeve CD cover.
As we proceed deeper into the soundscapes with Murray and Seth as our guides, the music becomes a little scary – but we push on nevertheless for we know there is hidden treasure beneath these unfamiliar sounds. Buzz, continuous bubbling and boiling, scraping noises, digital whirring noises, metallic taps and shimmer, light-industrial factory ambience, pulsations, flutters, objects bumping across a wooden floor: all and much more appear here, making for a listening experience that opens up the mind to all kinds of imaginative possibilities.
As with the most interesting improv performances, Murray and Seth hold us spellbound with their discoveries of curious sounds and noises, in the manner of naturalists who, no matter how many times they revisit the same place, always approach it as if they’re exploring for the very first time. By the end of the CD, everyone is totally lost and retracing our steps is useless as we seem to get ever deeper in this new continent of sound. But that’s all right because it’s not every day that everyone is a pioneer able to stake out a new piece of land – even if it only exists in the mind.
Contact: Sedimental