blue fifty-one: Other Light Ensemble
This is a staggering team-up.
Other Light Ensemble is a new operating name for past collaborators Jonathan Hill, Chris Jones, Matthew Redfern and Ryan James Mawbey, and on blue fifty-one they are joined by Tony Buck, Patrick Shiroishi and Alessandro Cau.
While the collective are somewhat coy about exactly who is doing what on this 28-minute composition, Body of Ritual Tapestry, it is worth noting that in Ryan, Alessandro and legendary Necks’ sticksman Tony Buck alone they have three of the most gifted and lyrical percussionists operating in improvised music today.
Patrick Shiroishi, meanwhile, may be the most acclaimed saxophonist of the post- Brötzmann era.
Body of Ritual Tapestry was written and recorded in stages over the course of two years, with emerging sections stitched together in a form of ‘sonic tapestry’. That is interesting, but it doesn’t feel like a collage, it feels like poetry.
The piece glides instinctively through different moods and movements. A tense, cinematic build gives way to a bareboned duet for harmonium swells and a saxophone that sounds for all the world like it’s talking, reasoning, explaining - muttering important things. It’s a sound written in hand gestures, hunched shoulders and swirls of smoke from an impressing cigarette.
I can’t explain why, but I understand every syllable.
When the horn steps back from the narrative, shadows swarm all over. That’s what the synths in the third act feel like – swirling, breathing, darkness things. Somewhere just above your head and sucking up all the oxygen. When the sound winds down and finally flames out it’s like a match being struck in reverse.
Essential noise for fans of Staraya Derevnya, Minaru, Tashi Dorji and jazz as a psychic force.
Praise for Ryan James Mawbey
“Not so much a journey through or into but movement itself generously peppered by highs and lows, light and darkness. I find it exhilarating and extraordinary.” – Magazine Sixty
“While meditative drones pervade, it’s Mawbey’s inventive, understated drumming that provides a very organic core.” – Electronic Sound
“There’s a subtle psychedelic hue to this that borders on the best of post-rock territory but thankfully evades cliche for a willingness to explore beyond. I’m reminded somewhat of Charles Hayward’s approach to percussion-bound music or Andy Pyne of MAP 71’s work due to this intuitive approach, yet the music itself is comparatively more refined or restrained, akin to a more avant-garde Seefeel or some such.” – adverseeffectmagazine
“…a wonderfully effective statement and a wildly evocative, moving listen. Absolutely packed with twists and turns and every bit the exciting prospect from a great artist.” – Piccadilly Records
Praise for Patrick Shiroishi
“A staggering, important work.” – Popmatters
“Shiroishi’s productivity is due in part to his versatility. Through a multitude of guest appearances, he has found a space for his saxophone in the Armed’s muscular hardcore, Agriculture’s ecstatic black metal, and Quicksails’ fractured electronica, among scores of others.” – Pitchfork
“The music builds into something genuinely breathtaking, a melancholic exaltation, an achievement that feels both too sensitively, intelligently constructed to be improvised and so honest and immediate that it could only be the result of unplanned, instinctual release.” - Treblezine
“Fam, this is some deep shit.” – Jazz Right Now
“One way to approach Shiroishi is to think of him like Peter Brötzmann, a player with so much to say, whose art actively engages with the world, and who forms deep connections through improvisation.” – Free Jazz Collective
Praise for Tony Buck
“It’s absolutely magnificent. The polytonal percussion builds and builds; industrial, tribal, everything all at once, with sonorous drones and crushing distortion and noise and wailing feedback whistling and screaming all the while, it’s a relentless barrage of sound – but not noise, and that’s an important distinction here. There are noises, and they’re collaged into something immense, with the rattling of cages and furious beating of skins.” – Aural Aggravation
“A captivating example of spontaneous and largely unstructured arrangements. It is a strange ride and one well-suited for deep listening.” – Avant Music News
“An unorthodox mindset attracted to the unchartered is what makes Tony and his music somewhat radical. Freedom, an elusive state for many, appears to be a philosophy that Tony applies to everything he engages with. This defiant, underlying quality weaves throughout all his art, video and music (solo and collective) and on all accounts demonstrates independence, self-determination and absence of restraint.” – Iris Magazine
“Tony Buck's percussive work is a marvellously sustained blur of skin-and-metal tinkering, constantly inventive as he explores timbre, texture and tension at a frightening rate.” - BBC