SOLD OUT

Matt Lord _ chitarra acustica
Mike McInerney _ shakuhachi

Musica improvvisata da questi due musicisti inglesi. ll disco è stato registrato in studio nel novembre 2010. Si legge nelle note di copertina: "Descending the Bone Staircase. Asking the I-Ching for an impression of this album, we received the yielding and stripping away excess, with a changing line that referenced a fight between the yellow earth dragon and the deep blue dragon of the sky. Images that came to mind were of bones, bleached by the desert sun, and the steady descent through a tall building. Hence Descending the Bone Staircase."

"(...) I came across Mike McInerney playing a version of “Tamuke” in December, at the 2011 Spitalfields Festival in London. He was part of an unusual event (devised by composer Duncan Chapman) that also featured a primary school orchestra of ambient laptops. Later in the concert “Tamuke” was remixed into a group piece, informally known as “Spooky Tamuke”. Afterwards McInerney gave me a copy of his new CD, on an Italian label which translates as ‘Bristle Of Pork’. Descending The Bone Staircase is a set of improvised duets for shakuhachi and Matt Lord’s acoustic guitar. The playing throughout is gentle and delicate, creating a generally melodic, ambient environment and occasionally launching out into more noise-based atmospherics. Twice McInerney puts down his flute and takes up stones, struck or rubbed together. The recording is clear, but the space around the musicians sounds small and dry, not offering the atmospheric support that you find, for example, in a church in Spitalfields. This type of duo improvising is not easy to bring off. You want the music to conjure magic, to generate something more than the sum of its parts, and for me this happens intermittently. Both players are strongly drawn to the key of E minor, an obvious comfort zone for guitar, less so for the shakuhachi, which seems constrained. Blues idiom is touched upon but not really explored. But more excitement arrives at moments when tentative melodic exchanges are abandoned and the pair start playing with sound itself. McInerney studied shakuhachi with Yoshikazu Iwamoto when the latter was living in York, and composition with Frank Denyer at Dartington College. He now teaches at the University Of Plymouth. Another release due in early 2012 is Membranes by Poems In Stone: this is a noise/drone quartet run by guitarist Lord, with McInerney again, plus trombone (Alice Kemp) and the late Joey Chainsaw on noise guitar. I get the impression that this is more familiar territory for Lord, who releases south-west UK ecstatic no-fi projects on his Omcore label. McInerney also has his own interesting excursions into electronics, employing various devices to process his shakuhachi playing." Clive Bell, ESS Shakuhachi society

01 _ Floor Seven 03:19
02 _ Floor Six 03:26
03 _ Floor Five 02:17
04 _ The Crossing 03:12
05 _ Just A Kiss 03:13
06 _ Floor Four 04:26
07 _ Floor Three 01:05
08 _ Gilimanuk 04:46
09 _ Floor Two 05:14
10 _ Floor One 04:05
11 _ Floor Zero 05:13

C) + (P) 2011

SOLD OUT

Matt Lord _ guitar
Mike McInerney _ shakuhachi

Improvised music from England. "Descending the Bone Staircase. Asking the I-Ching for an impression of this album, we received the yielding and stripping away excess, with a changing line that referenced a fight between the yellow earth dragon and the deep blue dragon of the sky. Images that came to mind were of bones, bleached by the desert sun, and the steady descent through a tall building. Hence Descending the Bone Staircase." (From the linear notes).

"(...) I came across Mike McInerney playing a version of “Tamuke” in December, at the 2011 Spitalfields Festival in London. He was part of an unusual event (devised by composer Duncan Chapman) that also featured a primary school orchestra of ambient laptops. Later in the concert “Tamuke” was remixed into a group piece, informally known as “Spooky Tamuke”. Afterwards McInerney gave me a copy of his new CD, on an Italian label which translates as ‘Bristle Of Pork’. Descending The Bone Staircase is a set of improvised duets for shakuhachi and Matt Lord’s acoustic guitar. The playing throughout is gentle and delicate, creating a generally melodic, ambient environment and occasionally launching out into more noise-based atmospherics. Twice McInerney puts down his flute and takes up stones, struck or rubbed together. The recording is clear, but the space around the musicians sounds small and dry, not offering the atmospheric support that you find, for example, in a church in Spitalfields. This type of duo improvising is not easy to bring off. You want the music to conjure magic, to generate something more than the sum of its parts, and for me this happens intermittently. Both players are strongly drawn to the key of E minor, an obvious comfort zone for guitar, less so for the shakuhachi, which seems constrained. Blues idiom is touched upon but not really explored. But more excitement arrives at moments when tentative melodic exchanges are abandoned and the pair start playing with sound itself. McInerney studied shakuhachi with Yoshikazu Iwamoto when the latter was living in York, and composition with Frank Denyer at Dartington College. He now teaches at the University Of Plymouth. Another release due in early 2012 is Membranes by Poems In Stone: this is a noise/drone quartet run by guitarist Lord, with McInerney again, plus trombone (Alice Kemp) and the late Joey Chainsaw on noise guitar. I get the impression that this is more familiar territory for Lord, who releases south-west UK ecstatic no-fi projects on his Omcore label. McInerney also has his own interesting excursions into electronics, employing various devices to process his shakuhachi playing." Clive Bell, ESS Shakuhachi society

01 _ Floor Seven 03:19
02 _ Floor Six 03:26
03 _ Floor Five 02:17
04 _ The Crossing 03:12
05 _ Just A Kiss 03:13
06 _ Floor Four 04:26
07 _ Floor Three 01:05
08 _ Gilimanuk 04:46
09 _ Floor Two 05:14
10 _ Floor One 04:05
11 _ Floor Zero 05:13

C) + (P) 2011