This is a concert that commands your attention, with catchy melodies, rich harmonies, and driving grooves. The tunes are designed to take you on a journey; the long form, almost through-composed arrangements seamlessly weaving from the organised to the improvised and back again.
Alister: “I think the only words we had beforehand were to decide that it would be best to record improvisations together. Apart from that we really discussed very little about the approach that this recording would take.”
From the media release Magnusson/Oehlers/Vanderwal “Paper Tiger” CD launch tour 2014 In 2013 these three fine musicians got together to perform and enjoyed the results […] Read More
The Wilfreds’ singing seems all the more urgent when it is riding atop a band that is in this state of what we might call restrained agitation. And it is this interplay that breeds that sense of mystery, where both parties are enriching the other’s tradition; when the Dreaming of the Yolngu people intermingles with Western flights of imagination; where any demarcation line between ritual and creativity is blown away in a sand-storm of sound.
‘It was so hot in the studio one day, some musicians removed their pants to cool down. That would not happen in Melbourne.’
“A personal and detailed music born of a sympathetic collaboration” From the media release The debut release Yellow Lights from the Damien Kingston Trio reveals […] Read More
Internationally acclaimed US pianist/composer Myra Melford, and one of Australia’s most original pianist/composers, Alister Spence weave an extraordinary, unified soundscape in their first musical encounter.
Just as the album’s title is both brooding and punning, so the music is in a constant flux of what, were it writing, we would call ‘tone’. Grabowsky can seem to create a pastiche of an idiom out of which a deep truth will grow in the improvising, while a more solemn-sounding piece will spawn sly asides and dramatic jolts from the players, or perhaps contain an unexpectedly curdled harmony.
This is a disc you should perhaps listen to casually at first, (perhaps while ironing your sheets or perhaps just your shirts) then return and take your place in this remarkably silent audience.
And what a band – all Hunter cohorts from many a gig, all entirely familiar with his body of work and with these particular works; and all entirely in tune with the spirit that drives this remarkable music: Andrew Gander on drums, Matt McMahon on keys and Matt Keegan on tenor and soprano.
