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Alister Spence / Tony Buck: Mythographer
ByThis spontaneous, one-day-session recording opens with "Dry Wood Talking." It sounds as if the talking is being done with sleigh bells in the beginning, in a tune that unfolds in a searching-for-the-center mode.
"And Yet She Turns," clocking in at near 23-minutes is like the late night sounds of a city in a rain storm. The rain pelts down then wanes into trinkles. Buck's drums might be the closing of a dumpster lid as the city trunk prepares to lift the metal box and empty its contents. The sparse beauty of the music shifts from whispers to the rattles of a bamboo wind-chime on the balcony of a third-floor apartment.
The experience is free, in an approachable sense, with both artists drawing from deep experiences and utilizing penetrating abstractions, noise (that never seems random), spacious moments of reverie, and compelling, often wistful soundscapes.
"The Extent To Which We Still Need Beauty" opens with a tolling that seems to predict dooma repeated dark chord on the piano and scattershot drums. "Free jazz" often includes unlistenable cacophonies. This tuneindeed, the entirety of Mythographerinstead embraces beauty and form, much in the way that pianist Satoko Fujiiwith whom Spence has toured and recordedcreates sounds by searching and creating in the moment, in an "anything goes" state of mind.
"Curious Terrain" is a clattering journey, a jaunt through an alien landscape, frenetic at first, then shifting into a more deliberative sort of stalking, under the influence of novel visions expressing themselves from all directionsthe cries of an elephantine presence, the ominous clatter of tribal drums, the subtle vocalization of an otherworldly feline creature, family and species unknown.
"Put To Sea" closes the album with a sense of mystery, a sense of tomorrow's myths forming just beyond our current understanding.
Track Listing
Dry Wood Talking; And Yet She Turns; The Extent To Which We Still Need Beauty; Curious Terrain; Strange Luminant; Mythographer; Put To Sea.
Personnel
Alister Spence
pianoTony Buck
percussionAdditional Instrumentation
Alister Spoence: prepared piano, percussion.
Album information
Title: Mythographer | Year Released: 2023 | Record Label: Alister Spence Music
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Alister Spence / Tony Buck
Album Review
Dan McClenaghan
Mythographer
Alister Spence Music
Satoko Fujii