Bringing the trilogy of Audio Recording 19 reviews to a close, Mark D Price rejects the instant gratification of the modern ‘hit’ in favour of a patient, analogue conversation. He frames the album as a velvety journey through inner landscapes and Celtic overtones, where silence and empty space are as vital as the music itself.
Photographs by Paul Kever Burbeary.
Words by Mark D Price.
I don’t know when the word ‘hit’ became associated with music but I guess it is a symptom of some fundamental change in how we consume things. It is not that we expect too much from music, rather that we commit too little of ourselves. Nobody can try Tai Chi or yoga just the once and expect it to work miracles for their flabby arms. Yet music has largely become a drug which has to be mainlined, has to hit fast, has to do something NOW to stop the pain or start the pleasure. If it is a hit you’re after, Robert Corless’ Audio Recording19 is the kind of music which will gently shake its head and point you to the lads outside McDonalds. No judgement, just… off you jolly well fuck.
From the opening track ”Full of it” you are presented with options of how to navigate Corless’ bright and expansive spaces. Think of a series of short walks in open zones where it seems that nothing is and nothing can happen violently. If there is emptiness here it is a warm emptiness, analogue emptiness, a velvety and almost cosy existential dread. ”Turned upside down” spirals around a charmingly naïve but far from simple melody, the panning effects and woodwind tones allowing enough space for flight. After that ”All the Cost” weaves a carpet of sounds above a subterranean cathedral containing slow-motion carousels. Atop this, a dizzying solo voice darts back and forth. Then an almost choral section, a single subtle drum beat giving a pulse, then the return of the zig-zagging solo synthesizer. This is the kind of music which says what it says and moves on via volume drops and silences which say more.
Because Audio Recording 19 is here for a conversation and not a ”hit’ it takes patience, almost a passivity in the listening. It is not going to jump scare you. Nor is it going to put all its goods in the shop window. You have to let it approach you on its own terms – which are not by any means extortionate. Each track is short but never abrupt, crafted but not machined. There are melodic references to Celtic religion in ”OK I Will Still be Waiting” with its swelling chords like the pump organ of a Scottish church, the overtones enriched and arranged like violins. In several pieces the emergent overtones play out like the ghosts of highland ballads or fairy laments.
The work is in conversation with landscapes. Inner landscapes of longing, hope, acceptance – and the literal but also mythical landscapes of the high moors and the semi-desolate isle of Anglesey where the last known Druids were hunted to extinction. The sense of events and people far away in time, enduring in some parallel present close to the heart – is a subtle constant in Corless’ works. ”For Whose Sake?” gives life to a single brass note, mournful and well-rounded, while a falling organ phrase rises again into a bright, almost uncomfortable conclusion like an unexpected conclusion to once reassuring thought. And then one revisits the track, and it is not like that at all… it has taken its own time, and in that time it has changed. As landscapes and conversations will.
”Serpent Girl” joins the conversation with a deep bass rumble from which there rises a sinewy riff reaching towards a flute tone, then with a minimal counterpoint of woodwind the voices merge, flow into each other. Inner and outer, point and counterpoint, landscape and human – there is much by way of co-creation here.
Even without counting the tracks ”Fluid delusion” stands out as a concluding piece. The initial element is a pulsed wall of tone soon overtaken by a harsher, sawtooth brass with a rusty edge to it. This is in turn overwritten with a glistening xylophobic or xylophilic melody, patiently climbing towards a sense of calm… triumph? Yes: triumph with a question mark. In less than two minutes the piece conjures an exchange in which much has been resolved and the new questions sharpened. Musically and psychologically, Corless has a love for what the orientals call ‘ma’ or empty space. Volume and silence converse, conspire, co-create. For patient listeners to Corless’ oddly off-grid, electronic-organic, home-grown produce, there is more than can be dreamed of in the hits which have been quantised to McDonald’s and back.
