COMMON OBJECTS - Whitewashed With Lines

The double album “Whitewashed With Lines” documents two performances that amount to the “shakedown” run of a new outfit devoted to free improvisation: the original nucleus features the tireless saxophonist John Butcher, the equally singular harpist Rhodri Davies, and Lee Patterson, a specialist in soundscape and acoustic manipulation; the trio is joined by the violin of London-based Angharad Davies, who after classical training chose to devote herself entirely to the experimental field.

Two performances recorded live in two locations in the north-east of England, in Newcastle in April 2014 and in Durham in May 2013 respectively. The title of the first track, “Cup And Ring”, refers to the mysterious circular carvings found on prehistoric rocks (see also Holden), fascinating traces of human origins translated into a graphic score by Rhodri Davies.

A composition that draws us back to the shores of so-called non-music: almost an hour of minimal actions wrapped in the darkness of a primordial night, prior to language and organised sound, where the four voices at times become indistinguishable; isolated gestures – crossed by an atmosphere akin to a mild, continuous tremor, then to a static hum – mimic the slow unfolding of an almost motionless nature, populated by life forms still in embryonic form.

“Repose And Vertigo”, on the second disc, is a more classic group improvisation: it too seems to unfold in darkness, but this time it's the restless darkness of a Sciarrino-esque nocturne, from which the instruments emerge more clearly yet remain just as fleeting; a screeching of muted strings, whistles that quickly retreat back into the shadows, presences all originating from the same drone led by Patterson. A decidedly more engaging performance, one whose open dynamics and more contained length make it the right complement to the hermeticism of the first half.

Davies' liner notes reveal the conceptual inspiration behind the two performances, the fruit of historical and anthropological research far broader and more elaborate than the empirical evidence replayed on “Whitewashed With Lines”, which nonetheless conveys those same ancestral sensations entirely on its own terms. The raison d'être (and at the same time the limitation) of the audio format is that it conceals the gestural aspects and focuses everything on the sonic outcome, drawing us into microcosms as forbidding for “novices” as they are inviting for “adepts”.

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11/05/2015