David Toop / Lawrence English
The Shell That Speaks The Sea
AUSTRALIA ROOM40 RM4205 LP / DIGITAL (2023)
They say you can hear the sea when you put a shell to your ear, but what you’re actually hearing is a distortion of the environmental sounds around you, wherever you are. David Toop and Lawrence English play around with this idea to produce an album of material that is complex and beguiling.
The pair have a twenty-year working relationship; Toop is a respected UK musician and writer, English an Australian artist, composer and curator and the head of the ROOM40 imprint and both men have long and impeccable work histories. The duo describe the material on The Shell That Speaks The Sea as “…sound worlds…the product of spontaneous burst of exchanges, buffered by periods of extended silence”. This may at first sound like a rather austere approach, but don’t be fooled – Toop and English create a rich patina for their machinations; textured swathes of sound that ebb and flow with authority and mystery. Their palette of sounds is fascinatingly wide; from the digital clarity of the synths on “Abyssal Tracker”, the growling flutes, split tones and oscillator of “Mouth Cave”, the spoken instructions embedded within the tape-manipulated flute and struck metal of “The Chair’s Story” to what I think may be rotary percussion, waterphone and Spanish guitar of album closer “Long Night”. Toop is credited with using voice, digital electronics, Spanish, electric and lap steel guitars, bowing, whistling, percussion, and flutes, while English employs electronics, field recordings, shortwave radio, bass drum, ghost flute, bamboo, and stones.
This album demonstrates the mutual respect these players have for each other. Forged in lifelong experimentation and improvisation, Toop and English have developed a unique language that demonstrates highly refined musical sensitivity and mastery of juxtaposition. The Shell That Speaks The Sea is a beautiful set of recordings, and I recommend spending some time investigating its surfaces.