Download only release.
Walt Shaw – percussion and electronics
This third solo album follows on from the work of the last one, “Cave Printmaker”.
At the heart of the work is percussion, mediated using electronics and, as usual, using a range of instrumentation that I have constructed from several materials.
So yes, there are stretched wires, springs, bent metal, various saw blades, circular and fret, wood, glass, metal plates, tuning forks, marbles, and naturally some drums, found objects, voice, cymbals, singing bowls, metal and wooden tongue drums and importantly, gongs of differing size.
On several tracks I have used various stones and pebbles, lending itself to the title of the album.
Contact microphones and conventional ones are used extensively, often placed on drumskins, cymbals and blades to create feedback effects.
I search for sources of vibration, which are essentially percussive, but using techniques such as placing pebbles and small stones in large bowls and cans, also exploiting the decay from a range of gongs by using close microphones after the initial attack.
On the track ‘Snowquilt’ I would like to thank my wife, Joanne, who reads excerpts from one of her beautiful poems.
On another track, ‘Death of a piano and its afterlife’ I would like to thank Kevin Davenport for allowing me to strike and record the smashed upright piano that he no longer wanted to keep.
“Darkness at noon” was influenced by reading the eponymous book by Arthur Koestler.
The track ‘A man who looks on glass’ derives the title from George Herbert’s poem ‘The Elixir’.
“A man that looks on glasse,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
And then the heav’n espie” ( Original spelling )
I have avoided any recognisable idioms, but loved using drones and textures from the above instrumentation and also creating interesting soundscapes from extensive experimentation. As with my visual art I try to exploit accidents by harnessing the unexpected to as rich an effect as possible. One accident was actually physical, caused by a large gong, but I didn’t need stitches and cleaned up the blood !
I hope you enjoy the soundscapes as much as I enjoyed making them.
Let me come clean straight away: I am no fan of drummers. In fact I detest most drummers and their drumkits. I usually say the exception is John Marshall’s ‘Four Gongs Two Drums’ on Bundles, which is a masterpiece of restraint, although there are odd moments in many band’s repertoires where I think ‘yes’. (Guy Evans’ double drums on Van der Graaf Generators ‘Gog’ springs to mind.) In the main though I prefer percussion, and well-programmed drum machines. Rotatoms were a gift from god in my humble opinion.
So you can perhaps see why I surprised myself liking Walt Shaw’s new album, although to be fair he does state that ‘At the heart of the work is percussion, mediated using electronics’. So, although there are some drumskins involved this abstract music is mostly reliant on what Shaw calls ‘sources of vibration’, which includes stones in cans, the decay of gongs, and a whole load of other things:
stretched wires, springs, bent metal, various saw blades, circular and fret, wood,
glass, metal plates, tuning forks, marbles, and naturally some drums, found
objects, voice, cymbals, singing bowls, metal and wooden tongue drums
There are mostly recorded with contact microphones and then treated with effects, to produce drones and textures, which sometimes lay beneath the clanking, twittering, echoing and gently chuntering foreground sounds. It’s like a weird kind of play, characters moving across the stage, in front of an abstract scenic backdrop, to interract, argue, nod to each other and move on. On ‘Snowquilt’ a voice quietly declaims amongst and through the sounds. The titles are as impressionistic as the music, which hovers between ambient and free jazz improvisation. Although there is a lyrical freedom at work here it is one executed with care, by someone paying attention to the mistakes, accidents and possibilities of sound. I feel privileged to be shown this secret life. – Rupert Loydell, INTERNATIONAL TIMES https://internationaltimes.it/good-vibrations-4/
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