Wendra Hill For / John Harries and Grey Sea Over a Cold Sky Ensemble: Wendra Hill For / John Harries and Grey Sea Over a Cold Sky Ensemble
Lumen Lake Rec. / Fig Tree Music
Issued in cassette and digital formats, this split release presents two contrasting takes on small group improvisation and electroacoustic exploration. Whereas the A side features seven short pieces by Wendra Hill For, the B presents two settings by John Harries, one a largely solo affair and the other a long-form composition realized by the Grey Sea Over A Cold Sky Ensemble.
Guided by the spirit of collective improvisation, Wendra Hill For grew out of Wendra Hill, an Oslo-based duo project originated in 2014 by cellist Joel Ring and guitarist Jo David Meyer Lysne. With Jenny Berger Myhre and Tobias Pfeil added to the lineup, the four developed the project's identity during performances in Europe and Japan in early 2017 before recording the cassette's material in Oslo with flutist Henriette Eilertsen guesting on two tracks. Each quartet member's credited with a number of instruments, but it makes more sense to emphasize the collective sound mass the musicians generate than fixate on individual contributions; for the record, clarinet, cello, electric bass, cassette tapes, guitars (acoustic, twelve-string, prepared, electric), bells, flute, saxophone, and zither were the sound sources drawn upon to create the seven productions.
Connecting lines to musique concrète, acousmatic music, and jazz improv are drawn in settings that see the participants freely exploring and interacting, and though a shared sensibility unites them, differences between the tracks are readily apparent. In “Utomhus,” where the tinkle of a music box collides with rustlings and noises of indeterminate origin, the music unspools like some creaking, broken-down machine. The rustic sawing of the bowed cello appears alongside the sci-fi swoop of a theremin-like instrument in “Okroppslig,” while “Omsonst” flickers and contorts through a field of guitars plucks and strums for two destabilizing minutes. In a suite of pieces that are less formal compositions than sound experiments, Wendra Hill For gives birth to a spidery music packed with tiny gestures and events.
Founder of the Lumen Lake label, Harries is also a drummer and electronic musician based in London, England. Don't think, however, that the two pieces he contributed to the cassette release are drum-driven or rhythm-centered workouts. The first, a semi-improvised piece titled “Grey Sea Over a Cold Sky” and executed by Harries and the Grey Sea Over A Cold Sky Ensemble (fourteen members, including him), does, however, revolve heavily around percussion, scored as it is for eight (or more) cymbal players and high-pitched instruments. With the performers working from a pictorial score and guided by simple instructions, the piece undergirds upper register squeaks generated by saxophone and violin with an impenetrably dense mass of cymbal rolls, the resultant effect not unlike a noisy improv drone The Velvet Underground might have spawned at one of its early live gigs. Halfway through, with the material having settled comfortably into a controlled roar, a lightning storm of sticks-produced cymbal accents appears to intensify the activity level and make the drone feel even more combustible. Largely a homemade solo performance, “Tea, Coffee, Pepper” ends the release with four minutes of vocodered voice effects, organ wheeze, clarinet drones, scratchy noises, and soprano sax overdubs, the latter by by Harries' dad. How fitting that the result is so similar in style and spirit to the material by Wendra Hill For that it could be mistaken for one by the quartet than Harries.May 2019