Plains
Into Tone (Scarcelight)
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The idea of a sextet, y’know … a musical group with six members,
isn’t anything too unusual, That is, until you venture into the world
of new improvised, electro-acoustic, noisy, post-electronic (whatever)
music. Here, the small unit is the dominant format – soloists, duos,
maybe three-piece. Six is something special. Anyone familiar with the
extensive discographies of these gents: Tim Coster, Richard Francis, Rosy
Parlane, Mark Sadgrove, Clinton Watkins and Paul Winstanley will find
anticipation of this mega-ensemble (convened by Richard last year) well-rewarded.
Reduced to its simplest form, Into Tone is a two-part improvisation, a
bit over 30 minutes long. Conventional instrumental sources occur more
as ghostings than fully-fledged voices– the tremble of a guitar,
buried soundings from an electric bass. The core instrumentality is all
the other stuff: field recordings, computers, digital feedback –
you could say “marginal audio”, reconstituted into affecting
music of patient, slow thrills.
This sort of trawler aesthetic, layered and snail-paced, is now so common
in the experimental scene that it’s looking like becoming the new
lounge music for enlightened ears. But a well-trodden path can still a
lovely and memorable journey make, and this is the case here. There are
some cool transitions: like the brittle texture that heralds the entry
of a dominant speaker-churning (but far from unpleasant) vascular hum.
The audio tableaux gradually sinks into your perception, suggestive but
very alien. Percussive textures are prominent but not dominant –
no mean feat.
What happens next? A bunch of electro players can wind up on auto pilot,
lead into a corner by each others sounds, especially once more sustained
layers settle in. But in another transient high point, the underlying
retinal drone shifts intensity and heads, as the title suggests: into
tone. We might have ended up in the same ball park as Surface of the Earth/K-Group,
but there’s a less monolithic impression. Each individual part has
a nice degree of activity and evolution, and instead of a drifting zone-out
there’s a stealthy return to the earlier murky intensity, before
concluding with a brief spell of fresh-audio-air.
I was fortunate to watch this music being played, at last year’s
Version Festival and it’s been a real pleasure to revisit it. At
the time I wasn’t entirely won over by the concert, which says something
about how I experienced seeing this music being made. What I took, as
an audience member, for tentativeness and hesitancy on the part of the
players now seems on the evidence of the CD to have been admirable restraint
and caution. Maybe I should just shut my eyes in future….
John Kennedy
Plains contact:
mpfaudio@hotmail.com