Live at Cafe OTO
by The Sealed Knot
-
Streaming + DownloadIncludes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.Purchasable with gift card
£6 GBP or more
-
Subscription
Subscribe now to receive all the new music Confront Recordings creates, including 6 back-catalog releases, delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android. Learn more.Subscribe Now £30 GBP/year or more
-
Full Digital Discography
Get all 191 Confront Recordings releases available on Bandcamp and save 75%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of A Thousand Years To A Bristlecone Pine, Amongst English Men, Parr's Ditch, Vectorial Spaces, Vibra Trilogy, Naize, Au Crépuscule, At Sound 323, and 183 more.
Excludes subscriber-only releases.
Purchasable with gift card£298.90 GBP or more (75% OFF)
1. |
Live at Cafe OTO
31:35
|
|
about
Burkhard Beins : percussion, electronics
Rhodri Davies : harp, electronics
Mark Wastell : tam-tam, electronics
Recorded live at the 'Another Timbre' Festival, Cafe Oto, London on January 21st, 2009.
"The Sealed Knot are one of the great free improvisation groups, comparable to the classic 1980s SME line-up of John Stevens, Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith for edge-of-your-seat attentiveness and sheer inter-group telepathy. Rhodri Davies, Mark Wastell and Burkhard Beins have been a unit since 2000, a melding of London and Berlin. Recent sightings have been rare, but they played in Berlin this May, and now Wastell's revived Confront label is releasing this live album from January 2009.
The purpose of the 2009 show was to celebrate Another Timbre's release of And We Disappear, recorded live in Switzerland at a 2007 festival titled Ear We Are. That album was about the yawning gulf between Davies's high, piercing ebow work and Wastell's glacial double bass. Whereas the new record has Wastell switching to tam tam, and all three musicians employing electronics - but lo-fi mechanical electronics, rather than digital processing. So there's a pleasing, subdued industrial fury lurking beneath the music. Filigrees of rapid clicking make way for subterranean pulsing, and Beins adds the super-pure tones of bowed cymbals, to blur the electric/acoustic distinction further. Around 18 minutes the group contemplate silence, before launching into a further 13 minutes of patient exploration and metallic mystery.
Wastell has grumbled that critics are "always 12 months behind the flow" when it comes to describing what musicians are up to, and here he is, helping us along by releasing a four year old recording. Never mind that the trend-buzz around Lower Case Improv, New London Silence & co has worn off; with music of this quality we're dealing with simple excellence, and any opportunity to see this group at work should be seized." (Clive Bell, The Wire)
"It's always a pleasure to hear the work of this fine trio, 2/3 of IST (Fell replaced by Burkhard Beins) but with Wastell having long since switched over to tam tam and all three employing electronics and the resultant sound is entirely apart. We're now into long sounds (though I'm somehow hesitant to refer to it as drones), individual strings sustaining for many seconds but extremely varied in pitch and timbre and, for lack of a better term, particulate nature, while always remaining soft. The use of finely chosen long tones combined throughout with an array of quiet, rapid, gently percussive sounds makes this set, again perfectly circumscribed at about 1/2 hour, work so well. Despite the delicacy, the effect on the whole becomes very rich and reverberant, reminding me a bit of Rowe's solo music circa 2004 but with distance between the elements; there's a strong feeling of three-ness here, fantastic levels of detail. after a (luscious) lull mid-piece, there's a sudden and surprising three-note electronic-fuzz figure as the churning music edges darker by a few degrees before fading into some hollow percolation and wheeze.
An excellent recording, one of my favorites of the year. Welcome back, Confront." (Brian Olewnick, Just Outside)
Rhodri Davies : harp, electronics
Mark Wastell : tam-tam, electronics
Recorded live at the 'Another Timbre' Festival, Cafe Oto, London on January 21st, 2009.
"The Sealed Knot are one of the great free improvisation groups, comparable to the classic 1980s SME line-up of John Stevens, Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith for edge-of-your-seat attentiveness and sheer inter-group telepathy. Rhodri Davies, Mark Wastell and Burkhard Beins have been a unit since 2000, a melding of London and Berlin. Recent sightings have been rare, but they played in Berlin this May, and now Wastell's revived Confront label is releasing this live album from January 2009.
The purpose of the 2009 show was to celebrate Another Timbre's release of And We Disappear, recorded live in Switzerland at a 2007 festival titled Ear We Are. That album was about the yawning gulf between Davies's high, piercing ebow work and Wastell's glacial double bass. Whereas the new record has Wastell switching to tam tam, and all three musicians employing electronics - but lo-fi mechanical electronics, rather than digital processing. So there's a pleasing, subdued industrial fury lurking beneath the music. Filigrees of rapid clicking make way for subterranean pulsing, and Beins adds the super-pure tones of bowed cymbals, to blur the electric/acoustic distinction further. Around 18 minutes the group contemplate silence, before launching into a further 13 minutes of patient exploration and metallic mystery.
Wastell has grumbled that critics are "always 12 months behind the flow" when it comes to describing what musicians are up to, and here he is, helping us along by releasing a four year old recording. Never mind that the trend-buzz around Lower Case Improv, New London Silence & co has worn off; with music of this quality we're dealing with simple excellence, and any opportunity to see this group at work should be seized." (Clive Bell, The Wire)
"It's always a pleasure to hear the work of this fine trio, 2/3 of IST (Fell replaced by Burkhard Beins) but with Wastell having long since switched over to tam tam and all three employing electronics and the resultant sound is entirely apart. We're now into long sounds (though I'm somehow hesitant to refer to it as drones), individual strings sustaining for many seconds but extremely varied in pitch and timbre and, for lack of a better term, particulate nature, while always remaining soft. The use of finely chosen long tones combined throughout with an array of quiet, rapid, gently percussive sounds makes this set, again perfectly circumscribed at about 1/2 hour, work so well. Despite the delicacy, the effect on the whole becomes very rich and reverberant, reminding me a bit of Rowe's solo music circa 2004 but with distance between the elements; there's a strong feeling of three-ness here, fantastic levels of detail. after a (luscious) lull mid-piece, there's a sudden and surprising three-note electronic-fuzz figure as the churning music edges darker by a few degrees before fading into some hollow percolation and wheeze.
An excellent recording, one of my favorites of the year. Welcome back, Confront." (Brian Olewnick, Just Outside)
credits
released May 2, 2020
The Confront Collectors Series issued one hundred albums between 2004 and 2019. This recording was ccs 17.
CD edition is SOLD OUT.
The Confront Collectors Series issued one hundred albums between 2004 and 2019. This recording was ccs 17.
CD edition is SOLD OUT.
license
all rights reserved
tags
about
Confront Recordings London, UK
Confront Recordings : proudly publishing adventurous music since 1996.
discography
-
Apr 2024 -
Apr 2024 -
Mar 2024 -
Mar 2024
contact / help
Confront Recordings recommends:
-
ruimte
by Bill Thompson & Phil MaguireDebut release from Thompson & Maguire. 100% of proceeds from this release will go to support Hundred Years Gallery in London.
go to album -
A Duet
by Ross Lambert & John Russell100% of proceeds will go to supporting the Hundred Years Gallery during the Covid-19 pandemic.
go to album
If you like Live at Cafe OTO, you may also like:
-
supported by 6 fans who also own “Live at Cafe OTO”
go to album -
BPA 003 Three October Meetings
by Wolfgang Fuchs / Damon Smith / Jerome Byertonsupported by 6 fans who also own “Live at Cafe OTO”
Wolfgang Fuchs is amazing on his respective woodwinds. He displays some breathtaking abilities here. Damon Smith and Jerome Byerton are a perfect match, as they provide the perfect addition to the reedist.
go to album -
featured on Bandcamp Radio Jul 14, 2020
go to album -
I was too young to hear silence
by Patrick ShiroishiFree jazz saxophonist explores negative space on a vast, improvised work recorded in a L.A. parking structure.
go to album
