Max Eastley & Rhodri Davies
dark architecture

CDR copies nearly sold out

Max Eastley - sound sculptures and arc

Rhodri Davies - electric harp

Recorded at South Hill Park art gallery, Bracknell during the exhibition ‘kinetic drawings’ featuring the sculptures of Max Eastley

TT: 34:30

Reviews

“I don't think I'd heard Eastley's music since the old Obscure LP.  My loss and foolishness.  This is an absolutely lovely and entrancing site recording with contributions from Eastley's sound sculptures (mechanically induced, though as natural sounding as could be), his arc (described on his MySpace page as "a monochord of wood and wire, which is scraped, bent and flexed into an orbit of amplified effects") and Davies, seemingly staying pretty much with his ebow on the harp.  Not all smoothness and light--it grows quite troubled at points--but dwells in the space very convincingly."                                              Brian Olewnick, Just Outside

“Dark Architecture features a lot of tinkling, wooden clicks and pops courtesy of Max Eastley’s sound sculptures, and similar pings and taps and a few electronic drones from Rhodri Davies’ tabletop harp. It also features a lot of fireworks going off outside the room in which it was recorded. The deliberate musical sounds just seem to work really well with the fireworks, so comfortably well in fact that all sorts of questions occurred to me on listening to the album for the first time a week or so back. After about ten minutes or so of the recording, just as a series of irregular clicks and crackles is passing by the listener’s ears the unmistakable sound of fireworks can be heard, first in one little flurry, and then again a few moments later. The fireworks fit the music superbly well, as if they were meant to be there, and so this is where I started to ask questions.  The recording was made at an arts centre in Bracknell, Berkshire.  This immediately struck me as an odd place to have recorded the album as neither of the musicians are resident in that particular town.  It was also recorded just a few days before Bonfire Night, the evening when in the UK we “celebrate” in a somewhat bizarre manner the execution of Guy Fawlkes by pretending to burn him again on a big fire as fireworks are let off.  The strange recording location, coupled with the date made me wonder if the recording had been timed to coincide with a display of fireworks, so that the sounds could be deliberately incorporated into the music.  The fireworks sounds on the recording are also very clear, suggesting to me that perhaps a microphone had been placed outside to capture these extra sounds.

It turns out that none of the above is true and that the fireworks we hear were entirely incidental and came from a local display in the park adjacent to the recording space celebrating the festival of Diwali. The musicians clearly do allow the fireworks into the music once they begin, but it seems that there was nothing premeditated at all, and the way that the pyrotechnic sounds seem to fit the music is down to a combination of coincidence and sharp musical ears ready to accept and adapt to whatever was thrown at them. That the disc really revolves around the moments with the fireworks is testament to these two fine musicians who used it as a central point for the piece rather than seeing it as a hindrance.

Dark Architecture is great anyway. That the music feels full of deep tones scattered with sparkling little pops and scratches it doubtlessly in part a result of knowing the fireworks are there,  but I feel that even if they weren’t the music would still suggest this to me. Or would it? Is our processing of a piece of music really altered so dramatically by an incident like this so that we hear it differently? When did fireworks first enter my mind on that first listen? Before or after I actually heard them? I can’t remember to be honest, but I find it interesting that an external event such as this should alter my perception of a piece of music so dramatically. Yet another AT goodie anyway. Add it to your order from the label if you haven’t already.”                                                        
Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear

“The attunement that electric harpist Rhodri Davies and Eastley achieve is profound.  Davies’s e-bow hums and cirrus pitches combine with the ghostly groans and lonesome whistles of Eastley’s arc, a self-constructed, flexible wood and wire monochord, on the live recording Dark Architecture, but their confluence is so perfect it’s pointless to do so. Particularly since the larger point of both records seems to be the productive coexistence of each duo’s playing with potentially disruptive elements.

Dark Architecture enjoys the involvement of both planned and unplanned randomisers. The original plan was for the two men to play along with Eastley’s sound generating sculptures, whose occasional ringing and clatter contribute a laconic commentary, sparse yet pertinent.  Less polite are the fireworks from a neighbouring park that start up about 11 minutes in, so loud you couldn’t have blamed the duo for stepping out until the display was over and then trying again.  Instead, the fireworks become part of the music, less predictable and more insistent than Eastley’s sculptures, yet all framed by singing sine tones and bowed sighs.”              
Bill Meyer, The Wire

“The music here is the unedited recording of a concert held at South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell, Berkshire, on Saturday 1st November 2008. Importantly, that date is four days before November 5th, Firework Night, when Britons remember Guy Fawkes' 1605 plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and mark the occasion by letting off fireworks.

Davies plays electric harp while Max Eastley plays arc, an instrument of his own making which he bows to produce drones. Both musicians are accompanied by four of Eastley's sound sculptures, which are powered by irregularly phased motors and produce unpredictable sounds. The recording opens with silence from which small sounds slowly emerge. The drones and hums gently ebb and flow, punctuated by quiet percussive sounds creating a delicate piece full of gestures.

Ten and a half minutes in, a resounding bang punctures the atmosphere. The bang initially sounds like a microphone being knocked. However, it was in the park immediately outside the concert hall and it signals the start of a firework display that continues loudly for the next ten minutes, with its sounds clearly audible inside. Punctuated by the unmistakable sounds of crackles and explosions, Davies and Eastley show themselves to be true troopers. They persist with their performance and turn the interruption to their advantage by integrating its sounds and rhythms into their music and reacting to them. Their previously muted soundscape becomes more percussive and dramatic.

Once the firework display subsides, the duo subtly recreate the beautiful soundscape they had constructed before the unplanned interruption. They expand it, giving it more depth and richness before bringing the piece to a satisfying conclusion.   Altogether, this is a truly remarkable document of an extraordinary occasion.”                                                    John Eyles, All About Jazz

“Dark Architecture is a single 34-minute improvisation by Max Eastley and Rhodri Davies on invented instruments (most of them contact miked) and amplified harp, respectively. Eastley, a visual artist and inventor, was at the heart of non-idiomatic improvisation in the late 70s, working with Alterations' Peter Cusack and David Toop as well as the London Musicians' Collective. Here, he plays his "arc", a wire and wooden sculpture bent and bowed, as well as motorized objects and incidental bits of metal, wood, and the like. The focus is on environment, as the players' enveloping, discrete yet interconnected occurrences produce a landscape of unfamiliar sounds. It's not always clear who's playing what at the outset, though Davies' electric tabletop harp could be the generator of low-toned feedback amidst the rattling wood, odd-interval clacks, and unearthly bowed rumble.
Dark Architecture was recorded on November 1, 2008 in Bracknell, not long before Guy Fawkes Day, and about ten minutes in the subtle cracks of fireworks outside the venue enter into the sonic environment – at first delicate snaps, but soon building into pops and bangs impossible to avoid. Where previously the duo had focused on small sounds and space, they found themselves confronted with a prominent "third member", and rather than quit playing, they integrated the sounds of the fireworks into the proceedings. As soon as the first isolated outdoor pop is heard, the landscape changes – dissociated knocking becomes subtly rhythmic and, as strings of fireworks are set off, Eastley's arc rumbles throatily and jumps into furious high-pitched whinnies. As bow and feedback wail, bells clink and explosives shuffle, one gets a sense of progression – the minimalist harp tapping and furious plucking seems somehow composed, as if accident may have, in fact, begotten structure. Even as the musicians return to their taps, bells and rolling marbles in the closing ten minutes, one senses the whole event has subtly shifted. On its own, Dark Architecture is certainly a beautifully-realized recording, but it requires a stretch of imagination to visualize the proceedings – we're lucky to be even a fifth of the way there with a disc like this.”                                                                                              – Clifford Allen, Paris Transatlantic

“Max Eastley has been working with his own invented instruments and sound sculptures for more than thirty years, collaborating with David Toop (Obscure label LP from 1975), as well as Evan Parker, Hugh Davies, Paul Lytton & Paul Lovens.   Not being able to see what exactly Max Eastley is playing, we can only hear the results. Also, Rhodri Davies, who once played with the trio IST at Tonic, also plays odd sounds on his harp. The sounds that this duo make are fascinating but not so easy to describe. I hear what sounds like toys, bells, ringers, banging on boxes, bowed material, a bicycle buzzer, rubbed surfaces, small fan tapping on metal, etc. It sounds like (Fluxus artist) Jo Jones Tone-Deaf Music Company, where the instruments play themselves. What I like about this is that the sounds evolve slowly and spaciously and have a natural sounding effect. A careful, cautious and splendidly formed musical landscape.”
Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery