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Simon Scott:
Nivalis Simon Scott follows up his acclaimed Navigare full-length with a three-inch CD-R (200 copies) featuring a single, sixteen-minute piece titled Nivalis. Characterizing it as “a tribute to the winter, the snow and the beauty of how the seasons change here in England,” he created the piece over a two-day span in December 2009 when heavy snowfall convinced him to stay inside studio o3o3o in Cambridge and keep on recording until the snow stopped. In his own words, “The whole time I was writing this piece the snow just never stopped falling so I had this amazing visual flow that inspired me to keep on throwing musical ideas into the track.” The comment captures the general feel of the piece, which presents a constant flow of sounds derived from instruments (drums, guitar), field recordings (including sounds of Scott clearing snow and ice from his doorstep), and samples. A meandering journey through a hazy multitude of sounds, the piece undergoes constant metamorphosis; sounds drift in and out of the haze, and elements and musical motifs bob to the surface, repeat hypnotically, and then recede. Along the way, one encounters creaking noises, bell tinkles, cymbal accents and the light swish of drums, the repeating strum of an acoustic guitar, vocal murmurs, and samples (horns gradually looped into a blur). One might be best to think of Nivalis, then, as a playful collage, or as a mini-portrait documenting Scott's working methods. March 2010
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