A new suite of eight improvisations for percussion and electronics.
On the 30th November 2025 Walt Shaw and Jim Tetlow recorded material for the fourth album by the duo. They used a similar methodology to their last album, Towards Momentum in that the whole album was recorded in that one day. Each track was done in one take with no overdubbing. There was some editing carried out by Jim in the weeks afterwards.
By now Walt and Jim have developed a very close mutual listening and response. There was only some very general discussion about structure before the session and the tracks were laid down in a totally improvised mode. Unlike the previous albums though there was a pause and some evaluation between tracks.
The title of the album was a tribute to the great William Blake and his Auguries of Innocence. The opening lines were our inspiration:
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.”
So in our own modest way we were embracing imagination, vision, trying to see the bigger picture from tiny components.
Walt Shaw used acoustic instruments and his own constructed instruments which were modulated in real time with some electronic effects. The acoustic instruments were bowls, gongs, djembe, frame drum, hand percussion, found objects (some toys, cans, steel wire, etc). The home-made instruments involved springs, small saw blades, contact microphones, broken music box, bent wire, dismantled autoharp, wire brush, mounted needle, metal egg slicer, etc. Some modulated field recordings were in use too.
Jim Tetlow used a laptop with controller keyboard to unleash a wide plethora of software-based instruments, samples and modulation effects.
Walt Shaw is an artist and musician whose work undermines the divide between the visual and the musical. Among other things, as an artist, he creates assemblages which, as an activity, is only a short step away from creating some of the instruments he uses here which, as the album notes explain, ‘[involve] springs, small saw blades, contact microphones, broken music box, bent wire, dismantled autoharp, wire brush, mounted needle, metal egg slicer, etc.’ Jim Tetlow, as well as being a musician, is also a graphic designer and – like Shaw – an artist. As it says on his website, he’s ‘passionate about that wonderful hybrid zone where the boundaries dissolve’, be it that between art and design or art and music. This sensibility is an area of common ground he shares with Shaw. Where the creative tension comes in, it seems to me, is in the choice of instruments. Shaw’s choices are predominantly analogue, whereas Tetlow is using a laptop to play samples, software-based instruments and modulation effects. – INTERNATIONAL TIMES https://internationaltimes.it/in-pursuit-of-the-unsayable/
Of course, the Blakean title, A Grain of Sand, sets a high bar for anyone with the courage to use it. As listeners, having been invited to see the world in a grain of sand, we expect to ‘hold infinity in the palm of our hand[s]’. It’s a challenge Shaw and Tetlow are well aware of: as they say in the album notes, ‘in our own modest way we were … trying to see the bigger picture from tiny components.’ And they succeed. Although it’s often difficult – and, of course, unnecessary – to know which musician is making which sound, I get a similar feeling listening to the music as I get from Shaw’s assemblages: a sort of new primitivism, an impression that they – and it – could be the work of some post-apocalypse mudlark finding fragments of a past they never knew and putting them together in new ways that often bear no relation – other than the merely coincidental – to their original purpose, but which are clearly the work of a human: what they’re formed into goes beyond what can be put into words to resonate in archetypal ways with what we are and how we fit into that bigger picture.
We have covered percussionist Walt Shaw many times before at Exposé, most recently his excellent solo album Cave Printmaker, and two earlier collaborations with Jim Tetlow, Inner Skull Trail and Towards Momentum, both offering amazing evidence as to what can be done in conjunction with a laptop controller, the electronic and the mostly acoustic percussion. A Grain of Sand is their latest effort, from early 2026, and if one appreciated the innovative and experimental spirit on those earlier efforts, this new one will not disappoint. The title is a tribute to William Blake and his Auguries of Innocence, attempting to embrace a similar imagination and vision herein across the eight included tracks, four of which reach for or exceed the ten-minute mark, giving the listener plenty of immersive space to get lost within. Shaw used various acoustic instruments as well as homemade instruments including gongs, cymbals, bowls, frame drum, shakers, found objects, metal objects, springs, saw blades, a dismantled autoharp, broken music box, and much more, some of which were modulated in real time with electronic effects. Tetlow’s main instrument is a laptop with keyboard controller playing various software based instruments, as well as samples from field recordings and effects. There is plenty going on herein that should well illustrate an entire world of unusual sound combinations that can be achieved mixing acoustics, electronics and a blazing spate of creative genius between two musicians intent on producing something highly original. Their process involved recording all eight tracks in a single one-day session, no overdubs, all essentially improvised with the exception of some general structure pre-planning, and some editing after the fact in the weeks that followed. While every piece here is unique among all the others, there are few moments wasted on senseless repetition, each piece is an exploration of ideas and sonic chemistry that always moves in a forward direction, and while on a certain level it’s challenging in its overt strangeness, it’s nonetheless calming and easy on the ears. – Peter Thelen, EXPOSÉ http://expose.org/index.php/articles/display/walt-shaw-jim-tetlow-a-grain-of-sand-3.html
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