“Above all this is a beautiful, enchanting album.....endspace is quite stunningly
gorgeous....This is chamber-
-
“This is one of those rare albums that when it finishes, one is hard pressed to think
what to follow it with. More often than not, the solution is to simply play it again.
And again. A delight.” -
“endspace is an album that inspires... It seems destined to become a milestone
recording for this area of music.” -
“A precious record, gifted with beauty to spare” -
“A strange kind of beauty moves within hum......this is a concentrated music
exploring the essence of sounds.....a world of squeaks and small shrieks, of gusts
of breath and mournful laments” -
“ Improvisations full of variegated lucidity informed by careful listening and
radiant interaction.” -
“These are small sounds, as though written on the wind, or traced in dust....
A classic of the Bruit Secret aesthetic.” -
“Davies and his counterparts are extending the trajectory of improvised music, but
not on terms determined by their predecessors.” -
Little shrieks
“The rare beauty of these pieces for shakuhachi means that this disc is truly
significant. It is like no other.” -
“Denyer has made music of such remarkable personality that the shakuhachi now
emits just Denyer sounds”. -
“Unnamed is a stunning piece, a study in subtlety, traversing the dynamic range of
quiet to barely audible......a piece of dramatic intensity” -
“This CD is a testimony to a collaboration between composer and performer that took
shakuhachi playing to a new level.....Denyer creates his own unique sound world,
perfectly rendered by Iwamoto’s otherworldly playing.” -
“This is one of the best piano/vocals duos that I’ve ever heard....No assertion can
really express the wealth of minute details and the stunning reciprocal reactivity
that identifies this splendid record.” -
“A stranger, more delicate and astonishing music can hardly have been made”
-
“This little gem features two truly extraordinary musicians, both of whom are giants
from a technical and creative point of view....Fantastic.” -
“The intricate shimmering polyphony of bowed, plucked, strummed and struck
timbres is as complex as it is haunting.” -
“Each musician has an achieved purity of sound so that he might stand as a
model of what soprano, trumpet or clarinet should sound like….. The sum total is
an ineffable masterpiece, an unusual collocation of the original and beautiful.”
-
“When I listen to the music I hear three great instrumentalists who complement
each other perfectly.” -
“Music of extraordinary lunar beauty” -
“Music which is both aerial and floral. And music which is always also beautiful.”
-
click on covers for reviews & more information
at05 ‘endspace’
angharad davies -
tisha mukarji -
recorded london june 2007
at04 ‘hum’
rhodri davies -
matt davis -
samantha rebello -
bechir saade -
recorded london may 2007
at03 frank denyer -
played by yoshikazu iwamoto
1. On, on; it must be so (1977-
2. Quite white (1978)
3. Wheat (1977-
4. Unnamed (1997)
at02 ‘tasting’
sophie agnel -
phil minton -
recorded poitiers july 2006
at01 ‘tempestuous’
the contest of pleasures
john butcher -
xavier charles -
axel dörner -
recorded huddersfield november 2006
at06 a life saved by a spider and two doves
max eastley -
graham halliwell -
evan parker -
mark wastell -
recorded london, september 2007
“A work of great beauty” -
“This marriage works wonderfully well. An endless stream of sounds colliding into
one another, bumping but also carefully missing each other, like a near collision.....A
great work.” -
“One of the most beautiful sound landscapes of the year....Majestic.”
-
“This delicately nuanced recording could easily be a formal electro-
composition....It’s all movement, but movement of a markedly abstract sort......
Excellent.” -
at07 obdo
frédéric blondy -
thomas lehn -
recorded bourogne, montreuil
& périgueux, 2003 -
“A pairing that works wonderfully well together. A fine, thought-
improvisation.” -
“The duo displays a large tendency for subtlety. It’s in the quiet, contemplative
moments that the radical beauty of Obdo is found.” -
“A drama of tension, of the play of timbres and spaces, opening up landscapes that are diffracted and then shattered by delicate excavations.”
-
“This cd will delight all those like me, who love to be surprised by the richness of a soundworld and moved by the musicianship of the players.”
-
“Beguilingly beautiful chamber improvisations” -
“A wonderful experience....Bell and Saade are masters of the game....
A great, great record.” -
“There’s a strong creative spark....the breathy overtones of the flutes fly like
molten sparks or chips of ice.” -
“Haunting, exhilerating but mostly calm improvisations that see the two musicians
become a single unit, An Account of my Hut is naked and honest music of the highest
timbre.” -
at08 an account of my hut
improvisations for shakuhachi & ney
clive bell -
bechir saade -
recorded london, june & october 2007
INTERVIEW WITH BECHIR SAADE: click here for an interview with bechir saade about his music and the improv scene in lebanon
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