Nocturnal Emission
Tharmuncrape An'Goo
Track listing
The most recent and most surprising appearance of Nigel Ayers's long-running
(17 years!) and ultra-prolific drone-throb project is this disc, a manipulation
of bagpipe music played by John Webb. The essence of bagpipes is their
drones: pushing breath through a series of reeds with tremendous force.
Ayers plays with the sound of the drones (artificially slowing down or
speeding up the passage of the "air"), and with the meaning of a drone
(Does it have so be a note or group of notes? Can it be a repeated rhythmic
pattern?).
Some of these tracks
have new drones added to the sound of the bagpipes - barely perceptible
electronic hums, or gentle mechanical noises that distinctly don't belong
to the world of wood and cloth. Passages played on the chanters are looped
and turned into cycling constants; one set of drones crossfades into another;
the instrument's overtones are separated from their context, and presented
on their own. After a few tracks, the piping no longer has the connotations
of its original instrument - it's just a human and ancient sound.
Robin Edgerton and Douglas Wolk
CMJ New Music Report