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HILTON, CRAIG / TOMAS PHILLIPS - Le gout de neant

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: Absinth Records 019 Release Year: 2011 Note: stunning collaboration by these two US composers (also members of praised GAUCHISTE) using the chinese zither Guzheng and electronics to create wonderful dronescapes, minimal haunting atmospheres, but also more fragmented sound-art eruptions,.... nicely printed full colour silk screen fold out 7" cover, numbered ed. 500. Highly recommended !! Price (incl. 19% VAT): €16.50 More Info "Craig Hilton (guzheng, laptop). Tomas Phillips (laptop). Recorded at gouche studios 2009/2010. Hand printed screen print gouache on cardboard Cover 20x7in foldetd to 7inch. Ltd. & numbered edition to 500 copies. The collaboration between Tomas Phillips and Craig Hilton runs a fine line between composition and improvisation and digital and acoustic properties. Utilizing a series of low frequencies, isolated microsounds and processed guzheng improvisation, their work attempts to generate an immersive sound environment that allows space for the listener to be an active participant in the music, thus inviting a particular quality of engagement beyond the confines of casual listening. The opening track, “Sans mouvement I,” is a studio recording for solo guzheng; the following compositions utilize this material and continue adding layers while paradoxically stripping the compositional field to a minimalist tapestry of sonic events. Le Goût du néant marks their first joint effort. While not necessarily following the hopeless sensibility of Baudelaire’s poem – from which the music takes its name – this collection of tracks does exercise a certain austerity. And it is within such an atmosphere of “nothingness” (néant), the music might suggest, where “je contemple d’en haut le globe en sa roundeur” (“from heights I contemplate the roundness of the world”) – a deceptively simple goal." [label info] www.absinthrecords.com "On the improvised music label Absinth a rather unusual collaboration of two guys on a laptop, Craig Hilton and Tomas Phillips. I must add that Hilton also plays the guzheng and the whole first track is him playing that instrument solo. That ten minute recording is used in the subsequent three pieces. The guzheng is played to make beautiful sustaining sounds, and then these sustaining sounds are slowly expanded in the next three pieces. Phillips and Hilton know how to create a wonderful, rich sound from the basic source, and at times, I believe they add new layers of guzheng playing to the music. Curiously enough what you expect is what you don't get, at least my assumptions were wrong. I expected some glitch like drone/ambient music highly inside the world of digital music. That's not the case. These two men create music that is highly organic, with carefully layered constructions of real time events, a bit of loops hopping around, sustaining sounds from the addition of sound effects and three excellent atmospheric pieces of music arise majestically from a no-man's land. It all hardly sounds improvised, but more thoroughly composed, which perhaps makes it an odd ball for this label, but also a true beauty." [FdW/Vital Weekly]