Another great item from Amy Cimini (viola) and Katherine Young (bassoon), the American duo of geniuses performing as Architeuthis Walks On Land. They had one of the earliest releases on Carrier Records (#005) in Natura Naturans, and now here’s The Surveyors (CARRIER RECORDS 027), five pieces of abstract music whose titles all relate to aspects of real estate and what happens during the process of the commercial exploitation of land. In fact two of the titles here are very precise grid references. Latitudes and longitudes at the ready.
The musicians exploit many facets and features of their all-acoustic instruments, as ever finding new ways to express remarkable tonal depth and complexity (it’s enough to make you swear off amplified music for six months)…on track two, Cimini attacks her strings with an intense bowing energy producing unnatural harmonics and raw creaks that would frighten the life out of Classic FM listeners. On ‘The Assayers’, you can enjoy 15 minutes of gorgeously woody droning tones where the sympathetic timbres feel like they’re strong enough to keep Noah’s Ark afloat. ‘The Speculators’, which opens the album, is one of my personal favourites though, perhaps recorded underneath a tunnel or in a huge resonating abandoned warehouse somewhere in New Jersey, since the cut is so full of foreign echoes, natural phasing effects, and just-plain inexplicable sound events. The performances are enormously enriched by this unusual setting.
The title track likewise has this impressive sense of spatialness and depth – one of the instruments appears to be situated about two hundred yards away. This is an extreme and radical approach to recording and mic placement which I endorse most positively, and it in no way eclipses the strength of the performances on offer here. The press notes online here don’t reveal the exact methods used, but it does speak of “imaginary and physical spaces”, “immersive and spatial frameworks” and “an alien, gothic landscape”, and what you hear on the recordings will bear this out. From 31 December 2014.