for more info + images & ordering please click on the catalogue number:

forthcoming:

Jez riley French - 'audible silence # 2'

Jez riley French - 'instamatic: japan | instamatic: korea'

Jez riley French - 'instamatic: snowdonia'

& releases by:

Hannah Lash

Sabrina Verdely

Lauren Redhead

Stephen Chase

+

'....if you so wish' - scores for listening (book / pdf)

. point engraved editions:

eg.p018: John Grzinich - 'madal öö' - released March 2012

eg.p017: Catherine Lamb - 'a remark' - released March 2012

eg.p015:

Bruno Duplant - 'deux trois choses ou presque' (

scores by manfred werder) - released March 2012

eg.p014: Various - 'praha, favourite sounds of'

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd

eg.p013: Richard Kamerman - 'CHANGES.txt'

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd / digital download

eg.p012: Barry Chabala & Jez riley French - 'trammels' *8 copies of cd version left*

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd / digital download

eg.p010: Bruno Duplant - 'one hour north'

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd / digital download

eg.p09: Stefan Thut - 'an ort, 1-9'

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd

eg.p08: Paul Khimasia Morgan - 'empty frame'

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd / digital download

eg.p06: julia holter - 'celebration' *sold out*

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd

eg.p05: michael pisaro / greg stuart - 'july mountain' *sold out*

eg.p04: anne guthrie - 'standing sitting' *6 copies of 2nd edition cd version left*

ltd ed full size taiyo yuden cd / digital download

eg.p03: kiyoshi mizutani - 'onoji'

ltd ed full sized taiyo yuden cd *8 copies of 2nd edition left*

eg.p02: catherine kontz - 'canvas'

ltd ed 3inch cd

eg.p01: Daniel Jones / Ivan Palacky / Jez riley French - 'tierce'

ltd ed 3inch cd

engraved glass releases:

egcd040: Jez riley French - 'resonances di topolo / residences de lumiere'

ltd.ed. full size taiyo yuden cd on art card / digital download

egcd037: Jez riley French - 'four objects'

ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd on art card / digital download

egcd036: Jez riley French - 'instamatic # 8 - portugal'

ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd on art card

eg-sr002: Jez riley French - 'between gestures' free download

egcd035: jez riley french / joana silva / luis costa - 'sonata for clarinet & nodar'

ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd on art card

egcd034: Jez riley French - 'dawn chorus - north & south banks'

ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd on art card

egcd033: various artists - 'the isolde scores' *sold out*

ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd on art card

egcd032: jez riley french - 'instamatic # 6 - prague'

ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd on art card

free mp3 + pdf release: jez riley french - 'four approaches to quietude - bruxelles'

egcd031: jez riley french - 'the bright work - hydrophone recordings'
ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd + art cards / digital download

egcd030: jez riley french - 'as (urfaces)'
ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd + art cards

egcd029: jez riley french - 'the view from the studio window'
3inch cd + card

egcd028: jez riley french - 'audible silence'
ltd. ed. full size taiyo yuden cd + art cards

egcd026: jez riley french - instamatic series 'ghent' *2 copies left*
3inch cdr + print

egcd025: jez riley french - instamatic series 'vienna' *2 copies left*
3inch cdr + print

egcd024: jez riley french - instamatic series 'bridlington harbour & thornwick bay'
3inch cdr + print *2 copies left*

egcd022: jez riley french - 'pocklington canal head / wansford canal and watton beck'
3inch cdr + card *2 copies left*

egcd021: jez riley french - 'field recordings vol.21'
full size taiyo yuden cd in 3 panel sleeve / digital download

egcdgp001: jez riley french - 'generator pieces 2727807'
full size taiyo yuden cd in 3 panel sleeve

egcd2007-2: jez riley french - 'two events'
full size taiyo yuden / digital download

egcdsb001: jez riley french & lee patterson - 'live at seeds & bridges'
full sized cdr - *sold out*

egcdr040: jez riley french - 'church flower stand'
3inch cdr

egcd020: jez riley french - 'field recordings volume 20'
full size cdr

all earlier editions are now out or print....

a quiet position editions:

a quiet position - field fest edition (free download)

a quiet position - below the radar edition (free download with subscription to The Wire)

a quiet position - wildeye edition (free download)

a quiet position - slow edition (14+ hour radio broadcast + stream for AV festival 2012)

forthcoming:

a quiet position - traced edition (click here for information on submitting work)

a quiet position - locale edition (for impulsive habitat online label)

a quiet position - sided edition (for notice recordings cassette label)

eg.p018

john grzinich

madal öö

(shallow night)

1. Ööküll forest house, small pond with frogs. Recorded June 28th, 2010 at around 1:30 am

2. Water insect and beaver territory, Räpina Polder. Recorded May 29th, 2011 at around 1:30 am

3. Diverse calls of the Emajõe Suursoo (Ema River delta). Recorded May 15th, 2011 at around 3:00 am

4. Quiet field with Corn Crakes on the road from Rasina. Recorded June 28th, 2010 at around 2:30 am

5. Noisy island on Meelva lake with Cuckoo chorus. Recorded May 21st, 2011 at around 3:30 am

five spring chorus recordings, made in the early hours of the morning in natural wilderness environments in Estonia. Simplicity, clarity and the richness of the sonic landscapes documented make this release a fascinating listen.

available as a limited edition taiyo yuden disc, mounted on an A5 art card with accompanying A6 postcard and as a digital download.

John Grzinich (b. 1970 new york state), lives and works in estonia & has work published on labels such as SIRR (PT), Staalplaat (NL), Edition Sonoro (UK), Mystery Sea (BE) CUT (CH), CMR (NZ), erewhon (BE), Intransitive Recordings (US), Orogenetics (US), Elevator Bath (US), Pale-Disc (JP), Digital Narcis (JP) Taalem (FR), and Cloud of Statics(CH). Currently John is a project coordinator for MoKS – Center for Art and Social Practice , an artist-run international residency center and project space in southeast Estonia.

price / postage options

UK £6.00 GBP rest of world £8.00 GBP

also available as a digital download (released on March 12th)

eg.p017

catherine lamb

periphery

1.periphery (for two) - for two voices with environmental chord (2011)

performed by julia holter & laura steenberge (voices), bryan eubanks (electronic realization)

2. tone/noise - for nine multi-tracked violas (2011)

(performed by catherine lamb)

balancing space, tone & an uncanny hold on the attention, these two significant recent compositions from Catherine feature contributions from Julia Holter, Laura Steenberge & Bryan Eubanks.

available as a limited edition taiyo yuden disc, mounted on an A5 art card with accompanying A6 postcard & as a digital download.

Catherine Lamb (b. 1982, Olympia, WA.) is a composer/violist exploring sound through intimate ensembles and solo work. She is interested in microscopic color variances in (mostly) narrow bands, often with an ever-opening form. She is interested in the elemental/spectral interaction between tones and their shadows, between beings. She works with the phenomenological dimensions of quiet perceptual/sensual layers moving in and out of presence, as a being moving in space.

price / postage options

UK £6.00 GBP rest of world £8.00 GBP

also available as a digital download (released March 12th)

eg.p015

Bruno Duplant - ‘deux trois choses ou presque’ (scores by Manfred Werder)

1- 2009/4 (with the score)

2- 2009/5 (with the score)

3- 2010/2 (with the score)

scores by manfred werder

interpretations by bruno duplant (phonographies, sine tones, double bass & horn)

recordings made in waziers & douai, france, 2011

improviser and phonographer, Bruno’s latest release includes three realizations of ‘The Field’ - a text score by Manfred Werder, using field recordings, sine tones, double bass & horn.

available as a digital download only (released March 12th)

a quiet position: wildeye edition

20 field recordings by some of the nice folks who've attended the Wildeye Location Sound recording courses with myself & Chris Watson over the last few years.

free to download....enjoy !

just received copies of the book / cd ‘mullae resonance’ from Seoul….the publication is the result of the residency, workshop & exhibition put together by Hankil Ryu & the folks at Mullae Art Centre….

the cd features two improvisations by participants, recorded by myself & mastered by Hankil Ryu.

the book / catalogue features photo-layouts from the various sections of the project - workshops | seminars | performances | exhibition, along with texts on some of the diy sound making techniques that were explored.

contact me if you'd like to get a copy....

available now:

'praha - favourite sounds of'

ep.014

25 recordings by Peter Cusack, John Grzinich, Jez riley French, Milos Vojtechovsky, Michal Kindernay, Lloyd Dunn, Stanislav Abraham, Udo Noll & Matthew Sansom

73 minutes exploring the sound of everyday prague.

postage options

UK £6.00 GBP rest of world £8.00 GBP

Prague soundings

The tracks on the CD are selected from several hundreds Prague soundscape recordings collected for the occasion of ‘The Favourite Prague Sounds’ which was set in up in 2008 as a collaborative project of artistic and interdisciplinary research. It was an attempt to assist an outline of contemporary topology of the quickly transforming urban soundscape of Prague. Initiated by two Berlin based curators Gaby Hartel and Frank Kaspar in cooperation with Michal Rataj and Miloš Vojtěchovský and produced in the framework of radio d-cz, several outputs have been accomplished: workshops, radio plays, exhibition, performances and web presentation. Authors Peter Cusack and Miloš Vojtěchovský approached and started dialogues with different people, artists, musicians, students and the result was ongoing web database with contributors from Czechia and abroad. To select the “right” sounds for the CD was hard job and in a way the collection is constructed on stochastic principal. Each track has a different story, the recordist a different strategy, each location sounds differently. There are by chance a lot of machines sounds and especially railroads, since the trains seems to be audible almost everywhere around the city, but it does not mean there could not be composed completely another other interpretation of Prague sounds.

Recordings of a “natural” wilderness environment could sometimes be appreciated as a higher style of musical expression, in contradiction to the sound pollution of any industrial or postindustrial city of the 21st century. The sonic atmosphere of a contemporary city seems to the majority of its citizens rather diffuse, boring, standardized, and taken over by the ambience of machinery or commerce, traffic, and the mishmash or curtain of reproduced music. The tendency towards the “regression” of a sonic identity of a 21st century town, evolving towards the globalized urban sound of a metropolis, is considered by many as a real problem. Still, this symptom can perhaps be taken as an inspiring starting point for further reworking, appreciation and artistic apprehension.

On closer observation, urban soundscapes seems to be negative and disturbing only if we observe or listen to it from the point of a hypersensitive device or “universal surveillance ear”. Prague, like any other big city, offers - besides the “global hum” - a rich variety of different ambiences and locations, each specific to the exact place you stand and how are you able to hear it. The city appears then as a complex living organism, driven by changing scores of multiple sonic lines and niches. If listener is able to navigate or “browse” through them, they can select and perceive them carefully.

If a pedestrian moves out from a busy business street or an underground stairway to the river bank, entering the passages and parks, climbing up to the attics, roofs, and towers, and descending into the “guts” of the town, the musical cacophony of the city dissolves gradually into fine and evolving textures of sonic micro-narratives, images and compound interacting motifs. At night, when the traffic fades out, it is suddenly easy to detect the fabric of almost subliminal noises, hidden by day in the noise of airplanes, cars, trains, the honking of vehicles, etc.

When Peter Cusack came to Prague he was surprised by the sound of air-raid sirens, taking place every first wednesday of month. This is a rather unusual regular event for someone coming from England and most European towns. Peter was also very interested and surprised by the fact that you can approach the railway so easily to listen to it. He noticed that trains are to be found more or less everywhere in Prague. He also noticed that there are many natural sounds in Prague which you wouldn’t guess exist if you didn’t pay attention to them. In fact, there may be more sounds of nature in Prague than in London. It seems that parks in Prague are wilder than those in most cities in the UK, and that the variety of different species could be higher. What about the other European towns? There is still not much comparative research on the phenomenology of the Everyday Acoustics available.

Milos Vojtěchovsky

------------------------------------------------------------------

‘four quietudes - prague’ - Jez riley French

I capture moments - often times of quietude - moments of stillness within daily life. as I listen I become more and more fascinated by the smallest detail - micro-listening - even the sound of the bag on which I placed the microphone coming to rest; tiny movements - changing ones perception, these four 2 minute quietudes are to me like intuitive compositions or minimal improvisation - the joy of listening closer, deeper is something I am very glad to know....

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prague is certainly one of the most visually uncompromising cities I know and like many historical places there can be an imbalance with its audible environment. Yet in all my visits to Prague the sounds I find remain remarkably diverse, much like its landscape. A unique architectural passage is always around the corner and one is never far from a large park to escape the urban streets. A highlight was of course the chance to give an intensive workshop in Autumn 2009 where we could explore the city in depth, including some remarkable acoustic spaces of industrial age wonders like the sewage treatment plant and coal mine facility of Dul Mayrau in the nearby city of Kladno. This was mainly possible through Milos and his continuing efforts to explore the sonic qualities of Prague with its inhabitants and visiting artists.

John Grzinich

-------------------------------

It starts to rain. My window overlooks one of Prague's many enclosed courtyards, and from there, I always enjoy listening to the many activities going on there. This recording is from the afternoon of a late October day. The kestrels and pigeons were becoming agitated as the rain was beginning to fall. More recordings like this and compositions made from them can be found by visiting the nula filecast project at nula.cc.  
thanks -- Lloyd Dunn http://nula.cc/
------------------
notes on some of the tracks - supplied by Milos:
Udo Noll:

1.End of the trams Na Malovance. Tram pole at the abandoned tram
terminus under the Strahov Stadion. Recorded with contact mic.
2011-06-21

2. At the freight train station Žižkov.Heavy diesel engines move
container wagons around, everything is vibrating. Recorded at
night.rec.date: 2011-06-20

Stanislav Abraham:
Ventilation system at Botanical Garden, Albertov
Automatic ventilation system of the roof at the greenhouse at the
Botanical Garden in Albertov. Visitors can enjoy the sounds every
morning at 8.a.m.
rec.date: 2008-09-03

John Grzinich
Bubeneč Sewer Museum water drops
The isolated sound of water drops in the large chamber under the main
hall of the Sewer Museum. The space is made from a single vaulted
ceiling made from brick and filled with water. The voices coming from
groundfloor.
rec.date: 2009-10-31


Quiet sounds in the Vilímek passage
Document from the 'New Maps of Time' sound workshop. This recording was
made from three separate stereo recordings that were synchronized and
layered. The passage was quiet as it is Sunday and closed in the
evening. Mostly it was inhabited by pigeons. Recorded and captured by
Matej, Matěj, Eliška, Lucie, John, Stanislav, Miloš.
John Grzinich
rec.date: 2009-10-14


Peter Cusack
Rubber Tyres on Cobbled Streets
For me this is one of central Prague’s most characteristic sounds.
rec.date: 2008-08-15

Singing Fountain Prague Castle
Peter Cusack
The singing fountain at Belveder within Prague Castle was cast in the
1560s from bronze mixed with bell metal. The water jets produce a
complex of tones that are best heard by ear from underneath. This
recording was made by a hydrophone in the fountain pool.
rec.date: 2008-07-04

Trains Crossing the Smíchov Railway Bridge
Peter Cusack
Sound of trains crossing the Railway Bridge in Smíchov recorded from the
footpath on the same bridge
rec.date: 2009-01-25

Steam machine in the Sewage Museum
Peter Cusack
Steam engine in the machine hall is switched on only during some special
celebrations.
rec.date: 2009-12-12

Strahov, wind in the flagpoles
Peter Cusack
Windy winter day at the Strahov Stadion. The sound of wind and the wire.
Recorded with contact mic, attached on the one of the many iron
flagpoles, standing around this huge, half abandoned building. The sport
stadion was build in 1929. Then it was the biggest stadion in the world
rec.date: 2008-12-04


Masaryk Station Magnetic signals
Peter Cusack
Our current electrical and electronics technologies swamp us in an ocean
of inaudible and invisible electromagnetic radiation and signals. It is
relatively easy to make such signals hearable with cheap devices sold
for recording telephone conversations. It’s amazing what can be found.
These are the magnetic signals inside a City Elephant type train as it
prepares to leave Masaryk Station (Station Mitte).
rec.date: 2008-07-01

new release

Jez riley French - 'resonances / residences'

two compositions for untreated field recordings & locale

'this is 'slow' music - its about listening, that delicate and overlooked aspect of our lives'

resonances di topolo

aquatic life in a stream | ants eating an apricot | balustrades (day) | balustrades (night)

recorded & composed as part of a residency at stazione di topolo, italy - july 2011

residences de lumiere

light supports along the hozugawa river | neon light in seoul | balustrades of the seoul tower | light supports along the hozugawa river

composed for the ‘lighthouse relay’ project, commissioned by folkstone fringe for the folkstone triennial 2011

recordings made on a concert tour of japan & during a residency at mullae art space, seoul, korea - june 2011

****

....if you so wish

the pieces on this cd can be listened to in the following manner

listen, at the quietest time of the day, with a window slightly open - the volume of the music resting alongside (but not above) that of the locale....

in this way,

each experience of listening is a new realisation of the scores

****

engraved glass egcd040

price options

UK £6.00 GBP rest of world £8.00 GBP

also available as a digital download:

now available for free download due to huge demand - 'a quiet position - edition one' is available as a high quality .wav download for a limited time only - so grab it while you can....

a quiet position - edition one - field fest by a quiet position

field recording, in all its forms, has been through incredible creative growth in the last few decades & yet its essential power to engage us in the act & art of listening remains inextricably linked to its subtle simplicity, its ability to make us listen ever more closely to the world in which we move by making us stop for a time....

in October 2011 Field Fest, bruxelles (curated by european sound gallery, q-o2) brings together many artists /composers / musicians whose work involves various aspects of field recording....'a quiet position - edition one' is an online compilation offering you the chance to hear some small elements of that work. it should be noted however that much of the work in this area of music / sound is not ideal for listening via computer speakers so please do listen via headphones or other speakers. I hope you will find the pieces enjoyable, inspiring and thought provoking....thanks....jez riley french

'a quiet position - edition one: FIELD FEST' is now online for your free listening pleasure....

featuring work by jrf, annea lockwood, anne wellmer, mechaorga, eric la casa, els viaene, michael pisaro, manfred werder, peter cusack & more....

direct link:

http://soundcloud.com/a-quiet-position/a-quiet-position-edition-one

link to pdf (artwork / track notes etc):

http://issuu.com/engravedglass/docs/a_quiet_position_-_edition_one?mode=a_p

here also is a link to the main web page for 'a quiet position':

aquietposition.tumblr.com

july 2011

--------------------

engraved glass & . point engraved releases are now

£6 (inc. uk postage)

£8 (inc. rest of world postage)

for all full length releases except 'field recordings vol.21' & 'generator pieces'

tierce - 'caisson'

available now on Another Timbre

&

direct from me / engraved glass

price / postage options

price inc p&p anywhere in the world £8.00 GBP

Every few years some people start saying that improvised music has grown stale and is dying. Such prophets of doom should go out more. They could visit Hull – a city which gets as bad a press as improvisation: it too is supposed to be dying and have become a cultural desert. But if you choose the right weekend and can find the right art gallery amidst the city centre’s backstreets, then you might find three men sitting at tables with an assortment of electronic gizmos and general junk in front of them (one even has an old knitting machine…) It’s true that there’s not a great deal to watch as they sit twiddling knobs and switches and scraping this and that, but that’s why there’s a film being projected on the wall behind them – a documentary without its sound, which seems to be about some weird central European guy experimenting with little rockets in an artistic sort of way. And the music the three men make is captivating. It starts hushed and delicate, but switches every so often into a more assertive, even abrasive texture – which might surprise you if you’ve heard these three before. They play for an hour – they kind of have to because that’s how long the film is. But it’s unusually long for an improvisation, and that’s good because you can hear it stretching them, forcing them to open and explore areas that they might not have got to in the safety of a 30 minute set. And as the film’s credits start to roll, the musicians stop, though I can’t work out how they know to, as they don’t turn round and look at the screen. But that’s the end.

Several months later a disc arrives through my door with no label and no note in it. I receive a lot of music through the post, so I’m neither surprised nor particularly curious. But when I play it I am. What is this? It’s really good. And then I remember that Jez said he wanted me to write a few words about Tierce, and I realise that I’ve heard this before. But I’m hooked by now, and I sit through the whole hour again, wishing everything I was sent was this good. As Shakespeare nearly said, “if this music’s dying, then give me excess of it before it shuffles off its mortal coil.” I just wish that other forms of music could die so gracefully, and with such vigour and vitality.

- Simon Reynell (Another Timbre)

review by Richard Pinnell (the watchful ear):

I’m not going to bore everyone with self-obsessed updates on my health today. Suffice to say I’m improving rapidly and am well enough to return to a decent listening schedule, even though I’ve given and in and got out the CD Player’s remote control for a few days to stop me having to keep getting up to press play. I hate remote controls. Grumble grumble…

So tonight a CD that I have been looking forward to hearing for quite some time, the second trio release by Tierce, the group made up of Ivan Palacky, (amplified knitting machine) Daniel Jones (turntable and electronics) and Jez riley French (field recordings and no end of other stuff). The album is yet another release in the new batch from Another Timbre and is named Caisson. To get the inevitable caveats out of the way, while I haven’t actually heard this music before I know a couple of the musicians well, one of them very well, and only my own technical and organisational incompetence kept me from hearing a rough version a while back. As ever though, my thoughts on the music remain, in my opinion, as objective as can be. I think I’m going to write that paragraph up as a separate page and just link to it from time to time

The first thing that hits you about Caisson is how bright and clear everything is. I’m not sure how much tweaking was done at the mastering stage, but this is the loudest I ever heard Daniel Jones’ output before, and everything sounds very crisp and crunchy. Often I hate this kind of thing, but here the tweaks on the EQ (I’m guessing) do bring everything nicely in to the foreground, though at the same time separating the three sets of sounds quite clearly rather than letting them merge together. On the whole we hear vaguely metallic bumps and thuds and whirring percussion from Palacky, little stabs of fizzing and sparking gritty electronics from Jones and field recordings (birdsong, traffic, the usual) from French though his list of instrumentation also suggests he added various other acoustic elements as well.

In some ways this is your everyday modern improvised trio, sometimes blending sounds together, sometimes setting them against each other as jarring shifts in dynamic. There are loud, collective clouds of noisier parts where things boil up into near angry chaos, but also plenty of parts where it all slides apart into near enough silence. What sets this apart from a lot of recent improv however is the way the field recordings are used. They are not disguised, and often sit clearly as part of the music for some time. At around the half hour mark (the entire disc, recorded live clocks in at about an hour) a lengthy recording of a city can be heard, full of traffic, crowd noises, passing trains, the footsteps of whoever (presumably Jez) is making the recording. This field recording at one point dominates everything, For a while there is a nice rhythmic exchange between Palacky and some buzzing distortion from Jones but soon after they seem to give in and just let the recording go about its way, only picking things up again later after French’s cinematic yet overlong contribution ended with the thud of a closed door. When this section passes though, a really lovely section consisting of a sustained sine tone and some deep rumbling metal is very lovely, only really losing impact as its volume rises a little too high and the subtlety is lost a bit.

Caisson moves through all kinds of section then, almost like several separate tracks pulled together into one live set. Its hard to know if any editing took place but if not the way the various elements slide into one another is really quite confidently and adeptly done. The passage that can be heard from around the forty minute mark onwards, looming, dark clouds of something undercut by insistent piecing tones and odd little bleeps and bloops is really very nice indeed. If field recordings are used in this part then they work better here than anywhere, perhaps as they are impossible to identify and so become part of the abstract pieces of the puzzle rather than just a bed for the other sounds to lay over the top of. A more obvious recording then appears for the closing few minutes, some kind of vaguely industrial sounding space complete with large objects banging softly and a brief whistle from someone. Here again though Jones and Palacky drop away to let this audio picture dominate the closing section when I would probably have preferred them to confront it head on, taking it as just another sound element to react to rather than allow its narrative to take the lead.

Still, tiny quibbles aside, this is a lovely album. The music is understated, with Palacky and Jones in particular finding very nice ways to work together as French seems to drive the shape and structure of the music. Its a significant step on from the brief 3″ disc the trio released a few years back, more nicely recorded with better production values and much more space to stretch out and breathe. I suspect that given the multitrack files I might personally have chosen to mix the disc a little differently but that’s just a matter of taste. A very nice release indeed.

review by Julien Heraud - improv sphere blog

Tierce is an international trio of electroacoustic musicians which has existed since 2007: first Jez riley French (electronics, objects, field-recordings, zither, contact mics, etc..), Daniel Jones on turntables and electronics, and finally, Ivan Palacký on amplified knitting machine (... yes you read that right). The performance that gave rise to the disc Caisson was a single piece lasting an hour at a concert recorded in an art gallery in Hull in November 2010.

So imagine a fairly large box or cabinet ('caisson') of any sort, the important thing being the space that it contains rather than its function. Because space seems essential for these three musicians: the electroacoustic music offered here is a kind of sound design in which the sounds define and individualise the space as they fill it. What sounds then? It's difficult to say; it navigates constantly across DIY electronics, field recordings of all sorts (bells, various background soundscapes, birds etc...) and strange sounds that are unrecognisable. All this is mixed together and merged into a single fluctuating, shifting field, which is both light and corrosive, aggressive and calm. No hierarchy is established between the various sound sources, they all belong to a single stratum. And this stratum carves a space out of time, a space that is created at the same moment as it is inhabited by the music.

Of course, there is a particular form of sonic exploration at work in Caisson; each of the three musicians trace a sound world that is strictly personal, but timbre doesn't seem to be their primary concern. They all seem more interested in the spatial properties and characteristics of the sounds: how will such a noise fill the space?, how will the hearing of some other sound be experienced within the spatial environment? Caisson plays above all with sensory perception ("micro-listening" as Jez riley French says in his interview for Another Timbre), the trio plays with the possibilities of changing our perception (which is auditory in one sense, but also visual, and – why not? - olfactory and taste-based) through a careful listening that evolves in a global environment whose objectivity and solidity are here put in question.

However, despite the tranquility that characterises it, this music is also rather tense, doubtless because of these constant shifts and fluctuations, partly as if any form of stasis was feared, but also because of the often abrasive sounds that are used, which progressively fill the space in an apparently ineluctable process. A space that is filled, but not only by sounds: silence also has a prominent place across the spaces of this piece, a silence so pervasive that it becomes the equal of the sounds with which it interacts. Silences of a frighteningly heavy substance. A music that is above all not static, nor linear, but which evolves across an unstable terrain that is in flux, across spaces that are sometimes saturated with noises, or else with silences, but also across airy regions that would be suitable for meditative contemplation. An approach that flirts with the infinite (time as well as space), so calm and poised that no border would be able to delimit this universe.

I haven't heard Tierce's first album, which was released on Jez riley French's label, but Caisson, despite some difficulties in approaching it due to the considerable attention it requires, takes us on a unique micro-sensory journey across a space that the musicians have brought into being and in which they are fully invested. Their approach to sound and its 'intuitive' unfolding is radical, and this creates a music that is bizarre, unexpected and unprecedented, but once you have overcome your cultural reticence, Caisson has the ability to take the listener inside some fantastic spaces where the Kantian categories of perception are annihilated at the same time as they are exacerbated. A supernatural music seems to allow the opening, maturing and fulfilment as much of perception itself as of the things perceived (especially sound, and space and time).