Håvard Volden & Toshimaru Nakamura
Crepuscular Rays

Håvard Volden  12-string guitar & objects
Toshimaru Nakamura   no-input mixing board

1.  Scattering         21:41
2.  Perception        22:46

Recorded in Oslo & Trondheim, November 2008

     

Reviews

“This evening I listened to a CD that it feels like I have owned for absolutely ages- Crepsucular Rays, the duo by Toshimaru Nakamura and Hårvard Volden on the Another Timbre label. I guess actually that I have had this one for a while, having bought a copy back at the concerts the duo played in London in February. Volden is a young Norwegian improviser that plays an acoustic guitar laid flat upon a table that he then bows, scrapes and applies electroacoustic devices to to create quite a wide variety of sounds, from everyday plucked strings to alien sounding drones. The inevitable similarity to Keith Rowe’s techniques, or at least his techniques from a few years back are unavoidable, but while some of Volden’s approach may well have been influenced at a distance by Rowe his sound is actually quite different, the main contrast being the acoustic nature of much of it. Toshi Nakamura’s no input mixing board will be familiar to most readers of these pages, and throughout the two tracks on Cresucular Rays he mixes up his approach from extended clean sinetones through to some of his more aggressively violent work.

In many ways Crepsucular Rays is just a good solid improv album. Having played it through three times tonight after a break of a couple of weeks when it didn’t get played at all, I am actually struggling to find things to say about it that are not really obvious comments. Its a CD that veers wildly between beautiful and ugly sounds, but arranges them in constantly shifting patterns that highlight a conversation that works in both linear and laminal ways at the same time. The twists and turns of the music, the little dark corners hiding unexpected moments of sound all curl and unfold together as the tracks progress, with Nakamura’s washes of colour and scorching rasps of heat seeping around the generally smaller, incidental sounds of Volden. The combination of electronic and acoustic sounds overlaid also gives a depth and richness to the music. It seems obvious to state it here, but it is the combination of the rough and the smooth, the dark and the light, short and long that give this music its energy. There are lengthy passages during which one or the other musician might let extended sounds run, or might repeat a single phrase several times. So the other will react with the opposite approach, adding disruption to any kind of comfort, throwing a handful of grit into the well-oiled machine.

Searching for an overall descriptive term with which to describe Crepsucular Rays maybe “sensual” fits the bill. Not in some cheesy warm and cosy bubble bath advert manner, but rather as a way of describing the mix of intense approaches and close engagement between the two musicians here. Sure we have heard music this good, and also even better from Toshi before on a good number of occasions, but its great to hear a new voice in the music as well working alongside him in a confident and accomplished manner. This duo seem to continue to play together quite often, despite the geographical challenges in doing so, suggesting that there is more to come from the pairing in the future. I certainly hope so.”                  Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear

“Another duet, this time between Håvard Volden on 12-string guitar and Toshimaru Nakamura on no-input mixing board. Two 20-minute tracks, two meticulous improvisations where noise and silence weave a physical form of tension. Nakamura always manages to enrapture with only a few sound gestures, thanks to his incredible sense of space-time placement. Volden easily finds his place inside this soundworld. Excellent.”                    Francois Couture, Monsieur Délire

’Håvard Volden’s guitar has twelve strings, and the no-input mixing board of Toshi Nakamura is always the same.  In other words here Nakamura has two times as many sounds onto which to add effects than he does with a regular guitar.  And moreover this is what he sets about doing.  Pulling or stretching the sound of a string into infinity (or almost) to force Volden to find the best way of producing a counter-attack.   At one moment the guitar sounds like a buzzing koto or whirring cogwheeels, but it is soon spitting out interference and distortion, the chords and arpeggios of noise music. I think I’ve heard Nakamura elsewhere playing more poetically, but what he loses in poetry he here gains in brute reality.  Poetry is perhaps no longer the priority.”                                      Pierre Cécile, Le Son du Grisli