Artist : Seth Nehil / JGrzinich
Album : Gyre
Year : 2006
Genre : Avantgarde
Source : CD
Label : Cut
Catalog : cut 018
Rls.Date : 2006-12-13
Bitrate : VBRkbps
Size : 60 MB
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1. Cast 17:21
2. Weald 14:12
3. Glaze 9:58
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41:31
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The three compositions on Gyre were formed from varied location-based sound
actions, which were then processed and composed in the studio. These acoustic
recordings bear the trace of empty barns, forests, fields and hills. Material
origins of wood, glass, air and metal are transformed into abstraction. The
result balances tangibility with disassociation, focused microscopy with
breathy expanse, and raw physicality with ghostly glimmer.
Cast sources recorded at Bard studios, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, summer 2005
by SN.
Material for Weald and Furl recorded in Mooste, Estonia autumn 2005 by JG/SN.
Additional material for Weald recorded in Saaropera, Estonia by JG (with
mnortham and Koz).
First mix of Gyre presented as 4 channel sound piece for Correnti Sonore 05,
Tarcento Italy.
REVIEWS:
For more than a decade Seth Nehil and John Grzinich work together, playing
highly processed acoustic recordings of them playing together. You can
imagine them sitting together in the woods, in a cave or on the top of a hill
with a small array of wood, glass or metal, and producing sounds with that.
The natural acoustics also play a role: the acoustic space or the wind or the
rain. Recordings of such pieces are combined together in the studio and
formed into lengthy pieces of drone music. 'Gyre' is their third release,
following 'Stria' (see Vital Weekly 360) and 'Confluence' (see Vital Weekly
353), which were companion releases. On 'Gyre' we find three of these pieces,
in which the environment sinks into the playing of the musicians, such as in
'Cast', which has the rumbling of acoustic objects, gradually fading over
into the sounds of wind and rain. The drone music of Nehil and Jgrzinich may
not have changed since their first two releases, but it's quite still a
highly captivating journey and a strong, personal view of drone music. That
makes this most worthwhile.
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly, 7.2006
Gyre is a sound art project which investigates, and then renders abstract,
acoustic experiences of place and location. The collaboration of Seth Nehil
and jgrzinich has no doubt been informed by the vast distance which separates
their homes in, respectively, Oregon and south east Estonia. The pair work
acoustic material from "empty barns, forests, fields and hills" into heavily
processed passages. The process is most recognizable in "Weald": sparse,
echoing taps and gongs sketch out the contours of their surroundings, as they
ring and report back from distant surfaces. But Nehil and jgrzinich also
invert such notions. For "Cast", they use their source sounds not to imply or
describe any kind of space, but to build a gathering slew of thickly textured
sound, which enters into the listener's space like a concrete object.
Sam Davies -The Wire, Oct. 06
Gyre was originally presented as a four-channel sound piece for Correnti
Sonore 05, Tarcento Italy. Seth Nehil and John Grzinich recorded the source
material in New York and Estonia through 2005, and the resulting three pieces
all cleave fairly strongly to post-processed, gently dislocated field
recording "composition." ItÆs not exactly an under-populated field, and at
times Gyre struggles to distinguish itself from similarly-minded recordings.
The duo are fascinated with resonance, tracing and testing the properties of
spaces through "sound actions" and then building new architectures through
juxtaposition and a cool editing hand. These recordings offer a kind of
psychogeographic hauntology, the displacement caused by manipulation
rendering the original spaces somehow absent, yet present: youÆre constantly
trailing an idea of an origin without recourse to any "real" referent. Nehil
and Grzinich are smart composers, though they do often rely on wind-tunnel
atmospherics as scaffolds for their compositions: not a bad thing, but they
sometimes risk over-homogenising their creations.
Jon Dale, Paris Transatlantic Weekly, 9.2006