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Volume IV: Cafe OTO, 2009​-​02​-​19

from Archive: Volumes I​–​V: 2005​–​2009 by The Seen

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This 2009 recording insinuates a very different stand-off to the one which eventually unfolds: where ‘us’ (acoustic musicians) and ‘them’ (electronic musicians) translates to a case of ‘him’ (Paul Abbott) versus ‘everyone else’ (Mark Wastell, Matt Davis, Phil Julian, Dominic Lash and Phil Durrant). Its beginnings seem familiar enough, the sextet exchanging initial formalities in a mode of insect-like chatter, a mimicry of muffled rhinoplasty procedurals performed by over-anxious pixels mapped out in the pages of one of Blake Butler’s disturbing dystopias. Julian and Durrant draw off simpatico sine waves from their hot-wiring, coating the muted clarion of Davis’ trumpet in a serene nimbus, as Wastell and Lash make mischief at the peripheries of their tam-tam and double-bass, cajoling textural substance to balance the mutant smoke. It’s as if this latter pair were, by their actions, warding off the coming spectre, putting up a gallybagger in a carefully plotted field. The big bad crow, the fly-in-the-ointment, the pieces’s rogue pilot is Paul Abbott, whose caustic electronics burst in uninvited on the meditative diffidence displayed by his fellow performers, throwing them momentarily off course. Rumours post-gig suggested Wastell had hired himself an analogue assassin. Abbott adopts the role of a life insurance salesman crashing an uneasy family Sunday roast, discharging corrupted circuitry all over the Yorkshire pudding before kicking over the dining table, gravy boat and all. It’s his blasts of noise that pull this music from out of its natural, near-ambient orbit to somewhere altogether unexpected. It’s the kind of gambit that makes THE SEEN such a continually engaging and original proposition. — Spencer Grady

credits

from Archive: Volumes I​–​V: 2005​–​2009, released November 27, 2018
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Mark Wastell: tam tam and shrutti box
Matt Davis: trumpet
Phil Durrant: maschine
Dominic Lash: double bass
Phil Julian: analogue electronics
Paul Abbott: electronics

Recorded in concert by Jonathan McHugh at Cafe OTO, London on 2009-02-19.

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