Juliana
Day (recorders, whistles, vocals, live electronics); Manon McCoy (lever harp,
vocals, live electronics); Zebedee Budworth (hammer dulcimer)
This follows on, in the NJaIM canon, from two pieces by Paul Taylor that acted as interlude music (Interludes) and music to be played on the Civic Centre Carillon (Permutations) as part of the 2023 Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. This year Juliana Day’s lull provided the interlude music. Taylor’s music still works as a beautiful chilled sound and still gets played here at Sayer Towers. lull is a very different beast; shorn of an aural foreground of chat and the chink of stemware it elbows itself forward. Hearing it in a domestic setting it sounds much more prominent; assertive ambience, if you will.
It probably falls more comfortably into the ‘Improvised Music’ part of the label's name, consisting as it does of live electronics, through which more human elements emerge, such as the thin reed sound in opener solder one. orbit, decay flows less easily but there are oases in the drones in the form of the ringing hammered dulcimer; things that are struck are always more human than manipulated electronic noises. Another human note is provided by the police car that passes Highfield Trinity Church in Sheffield, where this music was recorded, whose siren is heard part way through orbit, decay.
Repetition is the dominant feature of sphere; a simple, hypnotic recorder
motif develops and grows to dominate over ethereal swirls. Title track, lull, builds from a strengthening
foghorn tone whilst waves of sound create the fog through which the notes
sound. It is music that surrounds and envelopes and Day uses the extended
length of this piece to allow it to grow slowly and incrementally as unrushed
recorders insinuate themselves into the mix. retread, drift is the most unmoored piece on the album; not quite
howls and wails hover over an ebbing and flowing miasma, punctuated by very
occasional percussive rattles. pull sounds
like it has the potential to burst into something more compelling but is held
back. A long high pitched tone is punctuated by harp (?) and dulcimer (?).
Closer, solder two, flows through
howls and waves, pulsating, ebbing and flowing, creating visions of rooted
movement.
I suspect that many
readers will have heard this music, consciously or otherwise, at the recent Festival
and it may have left an impression on some because it is not quiet enough to be
ignored but nor is it loud enough to retain. On Day’s website HERE she explains that, having been
commissioned to compose this music she chose to “explore interludes- things
that serve “in between” functions- places, periods of time, journeys, dreams
and stages of life.” Dave Sayer
lull
is
available from Juliana Day’s Bandcamp Page
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