Search - Rhodri Davies - harp, Michel Doneda - soprano saxophone, Louisa Martin - laptop :: Fragment of the Cadastre

"The quintet in question are Michel Doneda, (soprano sax) Rhodri Davies, (harp and preparations) Louisa Martin, (laptop) Phil Minton, (voice) and Lee Patterson (amplified objects). The recording is a forty-odd minute long live concert set beautifully captured in Leeds the night before the Midhopestones album recording was made. This release, for reasons I am unsure of, is named Fragment of the Cadastre. I really enjoyed Midhopestones, it was one of my favourites from last year, an example of a larger group that really worked well together, superbly balanced and able to create a sound that sounded wholly organic, one big seething mass of detailed delicate sounds rather than just the sum product of five musicians playing together. Fragment... is very much the same, layers of intricate sounds that combine together really well, with maybe fifty percent of what we hear unattributable to a particular musician. The music shifts slowly through sections that vary in volume and density, slipping into near silence at its quietest, making the speakers really work at its busiest. Although all of the sounds slip over each other with apparent ease the music does not feel like a drone. It changes too much, too often, and on occasions it really surprises. After a very gradual opening period in which assorted textures and colours are allowed to mass together, Minton suddenly comes to the fore, having remained very subtle with his vocalisations until now. There is a sudden burst of inhuman crackles and gurgles from him that shows up as a spike above the undulating swarms below, and this triggers the first of several periods of furtive activity. An obvious analogy, particularly with Lee Patterson involved, but I am reminded of a saucepan of water on the stove, starting with the surface only broken by the occasional bubble hitting the surface, and slowly building until suddenly things seem to accelerate very fast and the pan boils over." ~excerpt from The Watchful Ear blog