Between Back and Foreground, by Romy Caen, Nick Ashwood and Jim Denley

Between Back and Foreground

by Romy Caen, Nick Ashwood and Jim Denley

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	1.	Between Back and Foreground - Part 1 11:47
	2.	Part 2 06:46
	3.	Part 3 11:26
	4.	Moto Shadow 24:27

about

Romy Caen - harmonium, synthesiser and percussion

Nick Ashwood - acoustic guitar

Jim Denley - winds

Derek Bailey, after a flirtation with 'a-tonal', eventually called his non-idiomatic musicking 'non-tonal,' which is a weird assessment considering the amount of tones he generated. In Between Back and Foreground we don't shy away from something you can only describe as 'harmonic' despite the fact that it is made up of un-systemised, unmeasured tones/noises. All this ‘non', ‘a' and 'un’ tends to sound a tad negative, is there a positive way of describing this music?

Listening to all the tones and noises that invade the porous shelter that is Tempe Jets, the abandoned sports club next to Sydney's airport where this was recorded; the motorbikes, planes, birds, the weather — our trio's bowings, expirations and inspirations emerge with all the sonic energies of the world in a complex and ambiguous placing. Every sound sits on a cusp of definition between back and foreground, between environmental and musical. Can we call this a 'tuning-in-to-the-world'? Or can we say all the actors — the musicians, the traffic, the wind, other people and animals — wittingly or not — all co-created, dilating and diffracting sound into a precipitation that hangs in the air, a sonic fog that becomes a harmonic atmosphere, a music. A music defined not by its 'non' or 'un' relatedness to other anthropocentric stabilities, (music systems), but rather by its braiding with a specific time/space. All the energies — the weather, the city's transport systems, the critters, an Indonesian speaker in the kitchen, the musicking — create this harmony and this placing together. Can we then say the music is eco-tonal?

In a sense, we musicians got lucky — the combination of energies all melded serendipitously to create this audio document. But for the poetry of coexistence to flow, the mics have to be placed well, and the musicians need the right degree of eco-tonal sensitivity for the work to feel like an authentic worlding — eco-logical. I believe this recording positively does that.

Jim Denley.

credits

released June 25, 2021

Recorded by Nick at Tempe Jets, 26th November 2020.

Mixed and mastered by Jim at Kaloola.

Artwork by Jim - photo of Romy's homemade synth taken at Tempe Jets

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caterpillar Sydney, Australia

Caterpillar is a digital sub-label of Splitrec. A platform for releases by Sydney-based artists and collaborators affiliated with Splinter Orchestra.

splitrec.com

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