John Tilbury, Johnny Chang, Angharad Davies, Jamie Drouin, Phil Durrant, Lee Patterson
Variable Formations

John Tilbury (piano)
Johnny Chang (viola)
Angharad Davies (violin)
Jamie Drouin (electronics)
Phil Durrant (electronics)
Lee Patterson (amplified objects)

Total Time: 41:15

In February 2013 the Berlin-based musician Johnny Chang visited London as part of a short tour along with his some-time playing partner Jamie Drouin, the Canadian musician and artist who had recently moved to Berlin. The duo constructed an installation at the Soundfjord gallery in Tottenham, and also played at a concert entitled Variable Formations at Cafe OTO in East London. 

In the first half of the concert the musicians played in their established groupings (Tilbury solo, Chang/Drouin duo and Davies/Durrant/Patterson trio). The trio realised some pages from Eva-Maria Houben’s composition ‘von da nach da’, John Tilbury played a solo entitled ‘Homage to Moriarty’, using themes and sound extracts taken from the early film ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’, and the Chang/Drouin duo played a semi-improvised piece which they had developed for their tour.  

In the second half of the concert all the musicians played together as a sextet. The concept for the sextet performance, which Johnny Chang had suggested, was that each group should develop the material that they had presented in the first half of the concert in relation to the work of the other groups. It was left open as to exactly how this development and integration of material should occur, resulting in a degree of uncertainty which was heightened by the fact each musician had never played with at least two of the other musicians before.

The CD ‘Variable Formations’ consists of the sextet performance from Cafe OTO.

Reviews

“Just about a year ago, these six musicians — from different generations of improvisational or otherwise experimental music — convened at Café Oto. Variable Formations is a single 41-minute piece informed by the ideas generated in smaller groupings earlier in the evening (as well as some prepared materials). It’s a lovely study in incandescence.

The limpid notes of Tilbury, along with the subtle drones of Chang and Davies, form the central components of these Formations, taking shape and fading out in momentary settings of hushed but tense electronic crackle and glitch. The sound the musicians create is palpable and airy at once, warm but presenting itself via the distance between notes and shapes as well as their proximity or intimacy. Indeed, one of the piece’s most compelling features is the musicians’ attention to the subtle, at times nearly microtonal range between sounds.

This is a creation of not simply colour and grain but considerable tension. The evident drama is located in the layers of sound that emerge from these bundled tensions: those amazing, sub-woofing clouds that Tilbury gathers in the lowest register of his instrument (against which the barely audible high-end sawing creates something spectral), a soft woody rattle, a chorus of overtones, a steady arpeggiation, or a long, unfurling flatulence ensconced in warm electronic coil.

What’s equally effective throughout is the generosity of space and attention to density, as when the strings back off to reveal spare piano and high whines from Patterson, Durrant, or Drouin. Their gorgeously humming electronics, a warm upper-middle range, serve as a kind of pivot for Tilbury’s entrancing chords and intervals. Perhaps because of the pitched qualities of his instrument, and also because of his musical temperament, Tilbury continually seems central to Variable Formations’ motion and transitions: a hard clang that catalyzes a pitch shift or a thickening of ingredients; a descending skulk paired with a laconic major third atop it; or his work inside the piano, contributing to the undercurrent of woody (almost percussive) motion that courses throughout the piece.

But the piece is, despite what this observation might connote, far more than simply piano and continuo. Sounds gather and exhale, hum and whine, coalescing every so often in a declamation, ending finally in a fairly stunning moment of close harmony. By the time the piece is concluded, one feels that the previous 41 minutes have been spent in an atmosphere conjured, a ritual evoked.”    Jason Bivins, Dusted

“A sextet improvisation realized at Cafe OTO in February of this year, following three prior sets (Tilbury, solo; Chang/Drouin, duo; Davies/Durrant/Patterson trio). A nice notion given that each musician had never before played with at least two of the others. In a way, it still breaks down, in my ears, to three units: Tilbury, Chang/Davies and Drouin/Durrant/Patterson, the strings often combined, in my head, into a duo, the three electronicists similarly in a trio. As in any risky improvisatory endeavour, there's no reason to expect that it will work; much of the interest is simply hearing how this given combination, on this evening, unfolded. Any moments of emergent beauty are almost icing on the cake and there are several scattered through this particular adventure.

Tilbury is, well, Tilbury and he's prominent enough in the mix so that one can, if so choosing, hear it as a mini-concerto of sorts. For the first ten or so minutes, I tend to do that, the pianist patiently doling out two-note figures, the rest scurrying/droning alongside. At that point, there's a break, the music shifting to a kind of simmering, out of which surface sad string cries and single, sharply struck piano notes. Indeed, after a few minutes, it seems that Tilbury is once again the contributor around which the sounds gather. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that he's inevitably, unavoidably himself, with such a developed personality--a single, well-struck note from him bears much weight. I hasten to say that this doesn't, for me, detract form the music at all, it just casts it in a slightly different light than what you might expect. About halfway through its 41 minutes, a fine low, vibrating buzz enters amidst what sounds like (but can't be) swirling, stroked cymbals and soft flutters--lovely. The sextet really pulls it together over the final ten minutes, generating a fine seethe, Tilbury either laying out or quietly working off the keyboard, until re-entering just before the close with some fantastic, slightly muffled and sour notes.”       Brian Olewnick - Just Outside