"Pauses and repetitions spark new life, new ideas, new possibilities, as Vesper Sparrow explores their dysfluency in the context of Black musical traditions. The Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist and former Yale lecturer is heady, intellectual company: in the manner of Alvin Lucier, they gently talk the listener through the sonic and political reverberations of their work. The stutter (cc)can be a musical instrument, Ellis announces, before an exhilarating rush of tiny noises made from hammered dulcimer, flute, piano, voices fizz into being."
"To create Vesper Sparrow's soundscapes of ambient, jazz, spoken word and reimagined gospel, Ellis works with granular synthesis a process similar to sampling which uses the tiniest snippets of sound. Those micro-sounds are called grains, and Ellis makes much of that word's earthy, natural connotations: opening track Evensong, Part 1 (for and after June Kramer) focuses closely on a handful of pinging, metallic grains before they scatter, root, then bloom into washes of dusky, choral noise."
JJJJJerome Ellis uses stutter as a guiding element, turning pauses and repetitions into musical material rooted in Black musical traditions. Pauses and repetitions spark new ideas and possibilities, forming ambient, jazz, spoken word and reimagined gospel soundscapes. Ellis employs granular synthesis, sampling microscopic "grains" of sound to build textures that ping, root and bloom into choral washes. Opening track Evensong, Part 1 focuses on metallic grains that scatter and coalesce. A sparse, elongated rendition of His Eye Is on the Sparrow places saxophone over pipe organ as lyrical repetitions are slowly unpicked. The work celebrates deep listening and prompts reconsideration of what a single sound contains.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]