Will Guthrie - body and limbs still look to light

Cathnor
CATH002

Will Guthrie’s “body and limbs still look to light” does indeed have a more luminous character than the listener might have expected given the rather brutal nature of recent work such as “Spear” or his fine collaboration with Ferran Fages, “cinabri”. The three pieces on this disc are more contemplative and even airy, less slab-like in nature.

Each piece is also very different from the other in the basic sound palette employed. “Taken” contrasts skittering, small percussive sounds with soft, deep gongs and smatterings of electronica at its start. It’s relatively brief, stays on a single, gentle track and works quite well as a self-contained examination of a given area; terseness as a virtue while hinting at larger spaces. The second track, “Peak”, concentrates on radio usage and, while it has moments of sharp, concise, beauty, it also serves to illustrate how difficult it is to plow this particular field. The line between the arbitrary and serendipitously revelatory is a tough one to negotiate and, too often, this teeters into the first territory, at least to this listener’s ears. When, about midway through the piece, the radio steps aside to act as companion for some Muller-esque electronics, things gel enticingly into a slithery, warm plasma. “Withdrawal”, the longest track here at about 15 minutes, is my favorite work on the disc. After an initial ultra-quiet section, Guthrie spends the bulk of the performance contrasting eerily similar pitches culled from very different sources, overlapping them in irregular waves. It’s a beautiful idea, beautifully realized as ship horn-like toots, thin sine waves, rough percussive scrapes, and other tones from who-knows-where that sound oddly related (some radio too, I think) weave and slide over and beneath each other. It’s like a rug made from varicolored and differently textured strands of the same thickness. If it loses a bit of steam 12 or so minutes in, well, it’s been a great ride up until then.

The disc has a something of a searching quality to it, perhaps surprising after the overt confidence of previous Guthrie works, but encouraging as well. It’s a solid, rigorous, sometimes probing recording, one that significantly whets one’s appetite for future endeavors.

cathnor