Guitarist David Birchall, double bassist Olie Brice and percussionist Phillip Marks recorded these seven improvised tracks in Manchester, October 2011. The interplay is distinguished by a fair degree of concentration in large quantities of succeeding events: no room for lingering silences here, though one clearly detects the attention with which the players listen to each other. Quite significantly, the timbral wholeness sounds crunchily lumpy, positively appetizing and rather nonconventional in spite of the customariness of the instruments utilized. In “Wall Of Horns”, Birchall extracts infinitesimal particles of feedback and iridescent picked droplets as Brice’s arco spreads harmonics all over the place, moulding frequencies until they sound like drunken flutes; Marks counterpoints with charming snippets of assorted percussive belongings. “Back Spasm” hiccups and hobbles amidst several kinds of controlled contractions, delivering us from the urge of locating a regular beat (something that you’ll never find in the abundant hour of this CD). Just a pair of examples of what the trio can do, often in condensed temporal stretches. Focused listeners are challenged without resorting to gratuitous aggressiveness, thus allowing a more than partial comprehension of the mechanisms lying at the basis of the instrumental interaction.
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David Birchall 