TREPPENWITZ - Sister In Kith
Discus: 105CD
Matthew Alpin: piano; Tom Riviere: double bass; Steve Hanley: drums; Nel Begley: voice.
Recorded and mixed over two afternoons by Sam Hobbs in The Old Cowshed.
The DIY nature of the recording (with the musicians, their instruments, microphones and mixing desk crammed into the front room of house – I imagine somewhere on a rainy hill in the north of England) has a quirkiness and charm that reflects the compositions and the camaraderie of a trio who had spent the previous two years touring and developing these tunes. The aim of the set-up of instruments was to bring the vibrancy of live music-making to the listener. What it also does is to bring the intimacy of being in a small venue where you are almost rubbing shoulders with the musicians, close enough to see their hands and fingers find the next notes and the expression on their faces when these notes are close but not exactly what they’d played before and the pleasure when these ‘new’ notes sound better.
On ‘Sound Logic / Sound Magic’, track 2, a piano riff slowly dissolves into an arco bass that dissolves into a repeated to and fro sawing before the piano kicks back in, with the piece picking up pace and the drums scuttling behind the instruments to shepherd the piece to a close. This piece shows the inventiveness of the musicians and the ways in which they push tunes to breaking point or to the verge of disintegration and then twist these broken fragments either back into the original shape or into new forms. What I particularly like (and am looking to catching them live) is the ways in which this dissolution and disintegration happens subtly until the listener feels they have nowhere to go and then, hey presto, they turn the tables and the music seems to rebuild itself. Definitely a form of sound ‘magic’ that has a clear and discernible logic to it – but only after you’ve heard the piece a couple of times can you begin to guess at how they’ve set up the smoke and mirrors.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Discus: 105CD
Matthew Alpin: piano; Tom Riviere: double bass; Steve Hanley: drums; Nel Begley: voice.
Recorded and mixed over two afternoons by Sam Hobbs in The Old Cowshed.
The DIY nature of the recording (with the musicians, their instruments, microphones and mixing desk crammed into the front room of house – I imagine somewhere on a rainy hill in the north of England) has a quirkiness and charm that reflects the compositions and the camaraderie of a trio who had spent the previous two years touring and developing these tunes. The aim of the set-up of instruments was to bring the vibrancy of live music-making to the listener. What it also does is to bring the intimacy of being in a small venue where you are almost rubbing shoulders with the musicians, close enough to see their hands and fingers find the next notes and the expression on their faces when these notes are close but not exactly what they’d played before and the pleasure when these ‘new’ notes sound better.
On ‘Sound Logic / Sound Magic’, track 2, a piano riff slowly dissolves into an arco bass that dissolves into a repeated to and fro sawing before the piano kicks back in, with the piece picking up pace and the drums scuttling behind the instruments to shepherd the piece to a close. This piece shows the inventiveness of the musicians and the ways in which they push tunes to breaking point or to the verge of disintegration and then twist these broken fragments either back into the original shape or into new forms. What I particularly like (and am looking to catching them live) is the ways in which this dissolution and disintegration happens subtly until the listener feels they have nowhere to go and then, hey presto, they turn the tables and the music seems to rebuild itself. Definitely a form of sound ‘magic’ that has a clear and discernible logic to it – but only after you’ve heard the piece a couple of times can you begin to guess at how they’ve set up the smoke and mirrors.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
