Recording: Sound Of The Mountain with Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama

Artist: Sound Of The Mountain with Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X AVANT XIV: Forward – Night 4), October 20, 2019.

Sound Of The Mountain with Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama - [excerpt]

Having toured to Japan and back a few times now, it was exciting to see Sound of the Mountain's Elizabeth Millar and Craig Pedersen getting an opportunity to play host to some of the kindred spirits they'd encountered there. Corresponding with a new recording, Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) and Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar) joined Pedersen and Craig to expand the SOTM template with some new clonks and whirs — that left more space for them to just play trumpet and clarinet instead of the motors, fans and other electroacoustic interventions that have joined their aresenals. That said, instruments were still disassembled mid-set and contact mics were dragged across their surfaces as the quartet created an enchanting soundfield, pushing the audience to lean in closer to try and figure out just from which musician some of those sounds were emerging.

Recording: Sound of the Mountain & Bim Prongs

Artist: Sound of the Mountain & Bim Prongs

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (H.W.G. Showcase), July 14, 2018.

Sound of the Mountain & Bim Prongs - [excerpt]

There was a hint of sadness to this night as it was the only surviving vestige of the planned second instalment of the Eclec~Tic~Toc Fest, which was brought low by some of the perennial problems with finding suitable spaces for DIY events in this city. That was far outweighed, however, by a chance to catch up with the now-expatriated force of nature known as {AN} EeL, joyfully mashing musicians together just as he does on some his mail-art-styled recording projects.

Previously more purely focused on their practice of generating electroacoustic sounds from close-mic'd clarinet and trumpet, after spending some time in Japan and beyond Elizabeth Millar and Craig Pedersen are now mixing in an electronics kit's worth of wires and alligator clips. That added in a whole new layer of macro-focus drama, like observing the dancing of a tiny chain tossed around by a speaker magnet's invisible field, adding small currents of electronic uncertainty below the breath-sounds. All of that was an excellent match for William Davison's tape warbles and small-scale electronic manipulations and the trio found a shared space that felt like an invocation of the ghosts of broken and half-disassembled small household appliances.

Recording: Sound of the Mountain

Artist: Sound of the Mountain

Song: [edited excerpt]

Recorded at Handlebar (Track Could Bend #28), July 4, 2017.

Sound of the Mountain - [edited excerpt]

Elizabeth Millar (clarinet) and Craig Pedersen (trumpet) have been working on this electroacoustic project for awhile now, so it was no surprise to see them in full control of their extended technique, carefully mic-ing the breath-sounds and buttons of their instruments to create a living soundscape seeping into all corners of the room and creating all sorts of "effects" without the use of pedals or laptops. The pair were celebrating an excellently-crafted album (recorded by Thierry Amar at Hotel2Tango) with a westward journey across the country — an adventure as big as their sounds suggest.

[Track Could Bend returns to The Steady tonight (August 1st) with Invisible Out's social media complications, Tom Richards' shoreline synth drones and BABEL's last ever (!?) performance.]

Recording: Sound of the Mountain

Artist: Sound of the Mountain

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Array Space (Audiopollination 44.2), July 24, 2016.

Sound of the Mountain - [excerpt 1]

Sound of the Mountain - [excerpt 2]

This duo project from Elizabeth Millar (clarinet) and Craig Pedersen (trumpet) takes its name from a Yasunari Kawabata novel but also hints at the geological scale (almost like a timelapse recording of tectonic shifting) of the pair's playing. Eschewing electronic processing, they instead used close-miking techniques to amplify their instruments, pushing their extended techniques (breath noise, finger taps) into electroacoustic space, creating a field of whirs, wooshes and clacks. The result was both graceful and mildly dislocating, filled with sonic elements that sounded like they'd been stretched out and backmasked.

[As always, you can check out the documentation of the whole night over at Audiopollination's bandcamp. Audiopollination is back with some awesome musicians (including a kick-ass combo of SlowPitchSound, Germaine Liu and Nilan Perera) on Saturday night.]