reviews
Hugh Davies on Another Timbre
Another Timbre AT-R-01
Another Timbre AT-11
Two new releases on Simon Reynell’s Another Timbre focus on the music of English instrument-maker and improviser Hugh Davies (1943-2005) who, despite a scant recorded legacy, has exercised a notable influence on European free improvisation through both solo work and his presence in ensembles like the Music Improvisation Company and Gentle Fire. The former coupled Davies’ subtonal density with the skittering guitar of Derek Bailey, soprano saxophonist Evan Parker, percussionist Jamie Muir and occasional vocalist Christine Jeffrey. Gentle Fire featured Davies, Richard Orton, Graham Hearn, Stuart Jones, Richard Bernhas and Michael Robinson, and was somewhat of an analog in England to groups like the Sonic Arts Union in the US or Musica Elettronica Viva in Italy. Though often working in a group setting, Davies’ SHOZYG LP on FMP/SAJ (1979) is a prime example of what he could do with his instruments unaccompanied—contact mikes and circuits housed in a box that gives early Sonic Youth a run for their money.
Performances 1969-1977 feature Davies mostly solo on amplified springs, bowed diaphragms, miked egg and vegetable slicers and a SHOZYG duo with Orton. “Music for Two Springs,” recorded in 1977, is resoundingly physical without giving one a sense of the object being played. There is a strong sense of Davies as texturalist, for this isn’t entirely about white-noise; he strokes and coaxes sounds from metal with ribbed, miked sticks and finds a multiplicity of passing rhythms a la Harrison Birtwistle’s “Chronometer.” But unlike tape music, Davies’ instruments—even if one is not in the presence of their fullest expression—are entirely gestural, the composer’s hand swinging in wide arcs as components act in sonic collision. One can feel the striking, twisting, blowing on, and other facets by which the artist works. Yet there’s also a willful sense of drift, of events occurring in time but without an overarching structure beyond instrumental specificity (which is itself frequently abandoned). There is very little sonic repetition, for even if Davies comes across a pattern, it’s usually abandoned quickly enough. For example, “Solo at Ronnie Scott’s” spends its first several minutes in distant twittering and scampering, before erupting into a churning spring assault that at its most sparse, resembles bent, wiry electric guitar chords and even approaches facility befitting the Bailey-esque.
While there’s a great amount of random play at work in Davies’ music, as rigorous as it might seem, Gentle Fire were mostly known for playing other composers’ work—rarely did they “improvise” in the strict sense of the word. Here, Gentle Fire is represented by a brief duo with Richard Orton from 1969, a pairing which overlapped the ensemble’s initial lifespan and which apparently subbed for the full band in some situations and which emphasized freedom. In duet, sounds play off of one another in an electro-acoustic sparring contest, moderately dense scraping, whooshes, plinks and prods that are among the liveliest of the set. Though Davies’ art acquits itself equally in solo and group contexts, it’s decidedly a different beast in each. Even in isolation, Davies’ music is endlessly fascinating, occupying a sound world that creates its own rules and adheres to them with a direction that while hard to follow for the outsider, is nevertheless like nothing else in contemporary music.
For Hugh Davies is an odd amalgam of the dedicatee’s solo work (on tape) and group music by way of three improvisers accompanying and giving the illusion of interacting with Davies’ instruments. Cellist Mark Wastell is ostensibly at the helm of this disc, and he’s joined by electro-acoustic improvisers Lee Patterson and Adam Bohman on six improvisations, five of which include tapes from Performances. Yes, it might seem a bit morbid to have the focus of the dedication in ghostly absence as the trio accompanies Davies’ bowed and plucked springs with guttural string growls, metallic clatter and dog-whistle harmonics. The analog could be found in improvising with pre-recorded tape, which is nothing new in the world of contemporary music. Regardless, whether or not this is an illusory effect, the music does seem like an honest-to-goodness quartet, sounds of indeterminate origin merging and jousting in a tonal world of industrial dark corners and tortured acoustic playing. Though these pieces use the exact performances from the CD-R above, one wouldn’t recognize them, so couched in collectivity they’ve become. In this way, Wastell, Patterson and Bohman are more than just resurrecting—they’re breathing continued life into Hugh Davies’ legacy, whether he’s around to experience it or not.
~ Clifford Allen
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I always meant to ask Simon where he got the two album covers from. Are those suspension bridges?
Good to see these two records have been reviewed several times. There’s Massimo Ricci’s take over at http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2008/11nov_text.html#3 and my own Wire pullout from last month, both of which come to rather different conclusions (I ended up preferring the solo CDR, Massimo didn’t). Let’s hope though that it might spur someone on to reissuing the Gentle Fire stuff. You can find things online as free downloads, but a properly mastered and documented re-release would be nice.
Great to see these reviewed here, thanks Clifford.
I like both discs but if I had to choose one it would be the quartet recordings. I had a lot of reservations about what would result from the project but I agree with Clifford that it all works together very well and doesn’t just sound like three people playing over the top of a tape.
I hope that my take will appear in Dusted before the end of November. I also prefer the Davies CDR stuff, though both are quite nice. Good stuff from Simon’s label.
I’m a big fan of Davies work and I was really pleased to have those archival recordings. The Quartet stuff just didn’t work at all for me though. It was okay in the background but under closer scrutiny I just didn’t think it gelled. I’d have rather heard those musicians do a straight tribute.