Featured Artist: Terry Day

CD Title: 2006 Duos

Year: 2007

Record Label: EMANEM

Style: Free Jazz / Avante Garde

Musicians:

Terry Day (bamboo pipes, voice, toy amplifier with echo and shaken plastic bottle of water), Charlotte Hug (viola and voice #1), Rhodri Davies (harp and preparations #2),  Phil Minton (voice #3), Hannah Marshall: (cello #4), John Russell (guitar #5).

Review:

Recorded in 2006 at different venues, fabled British improviser Terry Days performs on various bamboo pipes and uses a toy amplifier in duo frameworks.  And in the liners, the artist discusses the mechanics and embouchure of the various bamboo pipes he uses.  Nonetheless, Day’s musical world is a unique one, at that.  With these duet improvisations, you’ll hear a cavalcade of abstracts and contrasts. 

On the twenty-three minute opener, violist Charlotte Hug’s gliding lines and scrappy encounters with Day often generate a surrealistic effect, where micro-themes disappear and refresh on a nanosecond’s notice.  Regardless, Day produces mesmerizing sounds.  In fact, the wide tonal spectrum he induces might conceivably be mistaken for electronics-based implements, other than his use of a small amp.  He makes his pipes weep and yearn via the music’s indefinable frameworks. 

The piece titled “Framed,” features Rhodri Davies’ scraping his harp strings as the duo elicits notions of an unworldly state of being, awash with mutated dreamscapes and non-idiomatic twists and turns.  Then with “Rumblings,” cellist Hannah Marshall mimics the leader's voicings due to her droning and rather solemn phrasings.  They execute sounds and a mindset that toggle between angst and pathos.  In addition, famed improvising vocalist Phil Minton squares off with Day during “A Little Charver.” In sum, Day’s longstanding reputation for producing outer realm musical jaunts remain consistent throughout the preponderance of these curiously interesting sequences of duets.

Record Label Website: http://www.emanemdisc.com

Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita

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