Inclusion Principle

This new release from Inclusion Principle ( Hervé Perez and Martin Archer ) is a thing of real beauty . It uses a wonderful sonic palette to create colours and textures that draw the listener in. This is electronic music that feels really organic, full of breath, warmth and humanity. – Bandcamp UK Jazz & Improvised Music

Inclusion Principle began back in 2005 as the duo of Hervé Perez and Martin Archer, the former contributing laptop, sound design, and field recordings, the latter on violin, electronics, synthesizer, and software instruments. Their first recording in 2006 was credited to the two protagonists and titled The Inclusion Principle; the duo’s second album in 2010 and all recordings since are credited to Inclusion Principle. The Call of a Crumbling World is the group’s fifth studio album (there were a couple live albums in 2017 with guests), and it consists of a single 40-minute improvisation split into four shorter cuts at sensible points for easier airplay convenience — the entire session is also presented in one piece as the album’s fifth cut. This album, the first of a series of recordings scheduled for release this year, is something of a celebration of twenty years as a group. This time out Perez is credited with field recordings, electronics, processing, beats, shakuhachi, alto sax, and the scores for all woodwinds; Archer plays organ, electronics, flute, tenor sax, and bass recorder. The piece began as a live improv for organ and laptop, then additional arrangements were added subsequently as the piece reached its final presentation. One might be tempted to pick this apart track by track, but what needs to be understood is that almost anything can happen at any time; the mood is gentle and somewhat relaxed, nothing harsh or difficult to listen to, it’s clear that both players have worked together enough to understand where the other is going next, and follow each other as they create in real time. It comes as a download only, the four segments followed by the piece in its entirety, thus one will be able to listen to the entire piece twice. There are plenty of unusual sounds to be heard herein (acoustic, electronic, and hyper-mysterious), but all work together beautifully as the piece unfolds. – Peter Thelen, EXPOSÉ http://expose.org/index.php/articles/display/inclusion-principle-the-call-of-a-crumbling-world-3.html

Martin Archer and Hervé Perez – both reed players with a number of interesting sidelines in keyboard, electronics, field recordings and suchlike – have developed the balancing of the different elements in their work, from their use of field recordings to the cool jazz, to a fine art. That they have been playing together – as the duo Inclusion Principle – twenty years now, may have something to do with it. They aim to celebrate this anniversary with a series of releases over the year, of which the call of a crumbling world is the first.
The title is apt. There are four tracks, although the music was originally recorded in a single session, an improvisation for organ and laptop. If I read the notes on the album right, the woodwinds were added later. The album offers two options: to listen to the session as one track, or as four separate tracks. At the beginning, the way I hear it, blocks of dark electronic sound create the sense of a forbidding environment, an earth devoid of everything we rely on to allow us to take it for granted. The saxophones, when they come in, seem to exist as an oasis in the middle of it all, nowhere more so than in the third section, romantic tangential. I’m not sure if the jungle-like sounds are field recordings or electronically created, but, either way, they had me thinking of the paintings of Henri Rousseau. It then occurred to me what an apt association this is; Archer and Perez seem to work to a similar aesthetic: at once avant-garde while at the same time being approachable. Erik Satie does something similar, and there is something of Satie, too, in this music: not the sound itself, but the way blocks of material are added together to create larger forms and the way the music takes its time to evolve yet still holds our rapt attention. the call of a crumbling world is exactly what it says. It’s too complete a work of art to do anything as crude as carry a ‘message’, but it leaves you with the feeling that you’ve been listening to music that speaks of the times we’re living through in ways that are more easily expressed with music than with words. Essential listening. – Dominic Rivron, INTERNATIONAL TIMES https://internationaltimes.it/keeping-it-together-as-the-world-crumbles/