HALLIWELL PATTERSON - TERRAIN

(confront collectors series ccs 08)

 

Lee Patterson : field recordings and amplified devices 
Graham Halliwell : saxophone feedback and processing

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CD EDITION SOLD OUT

 

Recorded 2006

 

"When I first listened to Terrain (Confront), we were in the midst of an unexpected second snow in North Carolina. There was something alien and unpredictable about this circumstance, and it seemed to suit this lovely recording from Graham Halliwell and Lee Patterson. Halliwell’s stunning saxophone feedback seems perfectly apposite here, a presence in motion beneath and amidst the distinct environments that Patterson (field recordings and amplified devices) generates. The disc is quite simply one of the richest things I’ve heard this year. Throughout much of this recording there’s a lovely rubbed glass effect which, to my ears at least, partially recalls Bernhard Günter’s contributions to +Minus. These are frosty, icy laminations, amidst which Halliwell seems to be working in an almost imperceptibly intervallic fashion. Occasionally there are slow pulses – almost like homing beacons – that seem to well up. This is especially effective on the opening track, where it ushers in a series of suggestive changes, from a passage of relative density to a distant rumble at the margins and some soft watery drips – it’s almost like being in some cocoon and floated downriver, with everything outside only barely audible. Some similar effect is achieved on the fourth and final selection here, which plumbs the depths in what sounds like a contact-miked bathysphere (or some reverberant frame drum). Yet elsewhere the music sounds somewhat more direct in its articulation. The second piece deals openly with stark contrast in both tonality and dynamic – an emphatic low buzz here, and there a distant feedback whine of crystals singing together, with midrange hum slowly snaking throughout. The third track reveals a beatific glow from within a gentle gauze covering, but there’s no Fenneszian slumber here; rather, the piece delivers some intriguing dissonances and even a few arch harmonic moves. I suppose it’s in the distance between amorphous sound and definite gesture that Halliwell’s and Patterson’s music takes shape. Unpredictable in its beauty, it seems to come and go, almost like the ripples left by rocks skipping over the surface of a pond. (Jason Bivins, Bagatellen)