RTCD22 - Fergus Kelly: Vanishing Point

 

 

 

 

 

Vanishing Point comprises eleven tracks running to 47 minutes. It's a sister album with my previous album Natural History - it uses the same sources, minus the field recordings - a combination of found metals, plastics, glass, wood and processing (using Leafcutter John's Forester 2022 software). 

 

 

The work began by recording materials in a large resonant concrete interior. Metals in the form of saw blades, alarm bells, coiled springs, steel stands, metal conduit, wire mesh and Chinese cymbals were struck, swung and dragged in the space to capture the unique sound character of materials in motion. A variety of other metals were thrown and bounced about the space, and glass bottles were smashed. A small improvised horn with a flexible tube was played whilst whirling the tube. A long length of plastic cable was similarly whirled, as was a bull roarer. Large wooden laths were dropped and dragged in the space. 

 

   

Other recordings were made in large concrete walled, wooden floored interiors. This involved dragging steel frame plastic chairs and trestle tables to generate drones. Timpani mallets were used on floating inflated plastics. Metals were recorded in studio, struck and bowed. All recordings were edited and pitch-shifted to draw out latent harmonic content.

Leafcutter John's Forester multi-FX software was used as a kind of blender to throw random selections of edited recordings into and digitally whisk into new forms and textures. The most successful moments were then edited into loops and textured stretches which are used as the building blocks for the compositions. Strong rhythmic elements emerged from the process which gave some of the music a driving, motive force I really enjoyed. Forester is great fun to play with, but like anything of this nature, the ratio of useful material generated to not so useful can vary considerably. This is where the real job of work occurs: editing and fine tuning.

 

 

I wanted to keep things simple in the compositional process: sections would be multi-tracked together without any further processing or additional elements. It was a deliberate and useful discipline. Elements of the source material remain recognisable in places, emerging from denser textural landscapes, forming a tactile link to their origins and acoustic spaces.

 

"Didn't we review a new album by Fergus Kelly only eight weeks ago? Isn't he the guy who does an album every year? What's wrong? Nothing, as it happens, as this new release is the sister album to 'Natural History', using the same sources and not the field recordings. He started with recording metals (saw blades, alarm bells, coiled springs, steel stands, etc.) in a large resonant concrete interior - this line is from the sister review. Still, in the current text, he describes more processes, locations, and materials. Lots of metal and wood, but also a plastic tube.

Kelly also uses the Forester 2022 software, developed by Leafcutter John. He uses this as a "kind of blender to throw random selections of edited recordings into and digitally whisk into new forms and textures". Kelly is a percussion player and yet that's not something that is all too obvious; not on many of his previous releases, but even more on this new one.

In what I think of as a musique concrète-like tradition, the editing process and the processing with software bring Kelly's music into a different territory from traditional solo percussion music. It's not live music anyway, allowing him to act as a composer more than a performer, but snippets of him performing in situ as scattered around the 11 compositions on this album. As with 'Natural History', Kelly is on the firm abstract ground here, with lots of drone-like sounds, broken-up metallic textures, and objects smashing. It is a vivacious feeling, very organic, and none of this feels forced or rushed. As before, there isn't a weaker brother (or sister) in sight, and it's indeed a lovely companion to 'Natural History'. A different kind of drumming !"

Frans de Waard/Vital Weekly

 

"Fergus Kelly strikes again with his new album which seems like a continuation of ''Natural History'' from September. 

I cannot emphasize it enough how ingenious Fergus is. How he blends not only different techniques but also different moods, compositional techniques and the expertise of different materials and acoustics related to them is simply unique and impossible to match with anything I have heard in recent years. You could probably put it in the sub label of  a musique concrète, but with modern software editing that has happened here.

Fergus is a careful composer which means that he takes a very considerate risks in terms of how he plunges into a polyrhythmic world and gets the best bits out of it - making edits, processing it and finally putting all of it into neat compositions. And neat doesn't mean they are crystal clear, academically adequate compositions. On the contrary - there is so much nuance here in terms of distortion and error aesthetics that blends perfectly all his trademarks of using percussive objects to the extent of impossible tactics made possible.

The narrative of this album is just ingenious - there is no unnecessary sounds or breaks or anything that could distract your attention. An imaginative journey through the stations of bliss, perception dissonances and  upheaval that leads to the moments of balance when everything you hear makes a complete and perfect sense." 

Felt Hat Reviews