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CD
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BT 057CD
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Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie returns to Black Truffle with Nist-Nah. Like his previous solo record on the label, the abrasive hip-hop concrète of People Pleaser (BT 027LP, 2017), Nist-Nah finds Guthrie branching out in a new direction, this time in a suite of six percussion pieces primarily using the metallaphones, hand drums, and gongs of the Gamelan ensembles of Indonesia. The music presented here is grounded in Guthrie's travels in Indonesia and study of various forms of Gamelan music, from the stately suspended temporality of the courtly Javanese Gamelan Sekatan, to the delirious, thuggish repetition that accompanies the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, to the shimmering acoustic glitch of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat/ However, far from an exercise in exoticism, Nist-Nah develops out of Guthrie's extensive work with metal percussion in recent years (as heard, for example, on his 2015 LP for iDEAL, Sacrée Obsession), where gongs, singing bowls and cymbals are used to build up walls of hovering tones and sizzling details. Though Guthrie is broadening his palette to explore Gamelan instrumentation and pay tribute to his love of this sophisticated yet elemental percussion music, the pieces presented here are equally informed by Guthrie's interests in free jazz, electro-acoustic music, and diverse experimental music practices, exploring long tones, extended techniques, and non-metered pulse. Nist-Nah presents a variety of approaches across its six pieces, from the crisp, precise rhythmic complexity of the opening title track to the droning textures of "Catlike" and "Elders". On the epic closing "Kebogiro Glendeng", Guthrie offers an extended, layered rendition of a Javanese piece belonging to a repertoire primarily used for warmups, beginner's groups and children first learning Gamelan, elegantly gesturing to his own amateur status while using the piece's insistently repeated melody as an extended exploration of the hypnotic effects of repetition, falling in and out of time with himself to create woozy, narcotic effects until the piece eventually dissolves into a wavering fog. Images by Sylvie Meunier. Recorded in 2019 by Lucas Pizzini. Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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LP
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BT 057LP
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LP version. Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie returns to Black Truffle with Nist-Nah. Like his previous solo record on the label, the abrasive hip-hop concrète of People Pleaser (BT 027LP, 2017), Nist-Nah finds Guthrie branching out in a new direction, this time in a suite of six percussion pieces primarily using the metallaphones, hand drums, and gongs of the Gamelan ensembles of Indonesia. The music presented here is grounded in Guthrie's travels in Indonesia and study of various forms of Gamelan music, from the stately suspended temporality of the courtly Javanese Gamelan Sekatan, to the delirious, thuggish repetition that accompanies the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, to the shimmering acoustic glitch of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat/ However, far from an exercise in exoticism, Nist-Nah develops out of Guthrie's extensive work with metal percussion in recent years (as heard, for example, on his 2015 LP for iDEAL, Sacrée Obsession), where gongs, singing bowls and cymbals are used to build up walls of hovering tones and sizzling details. Though Guthrie is broadening his palette to explore Gamelan instrumentation and pay tribute to his love of this sophisticated yet elemental percussion music, the pieces presented here are equally informed by Guthrie's interests in free jazz, electro-acoustic music, and diverse experimental music practices, exploring long tones, extended techniques, and non-metered pulse. Nist-Nah presents a variety of approaches across its six pieces, from the crisp, precise rhythmic complexity of the opening title track to the droning textures of "Catlike" and "Elders". On the epic closing "Kebogiro Glendeng", Guthrie offers an extended, layered rendition of a Javanese piece belonging to a repertoire primarily used for warmups, beginner's groups and children first learning Gamelan, elegantly gesturing to his own amateur status while using the piece's insistently repeated melody as an extended exploration of the hypnotic effects of repetition, falling in and out of time with himself to create woozy, narcotic effects until the piece eventually dissolves into a wavering fog. Images by Sylvie Meunier. Recorded in 2019 by Lucas Pizzini. Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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BT 027LP
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Nantes, France-based drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie presents People Pleaser. Initially rising to prominence in Australia as a drummer in the fields of jazz and improvised music, Guthrie later turned increasingly toward electronics and amplified percussion, developing an idiosyncratic style of electroacoustic performance characterized by shimmering metallic textures, rapid-fire textural transformations, and aggressively high volume. Guthrie has since returned to the drum kit in both solo and collaborative work, pushing at the limits of his formidable technical abilities as a player in the free jazz tradition and working variations on short rhythmic units into an endless flow of non-metered pulse. Although drawing on many aspects of Guthrie's past work, People Pleaser stands alone in his catalog. Working intuitively over a period of three weeks, Guthrie crafted a suite of song-length pieces that combine his drumming with electronics, field recordings, and sampled detritus. Inspired by the rough-and-ready sampling style of producers like the RZA, J Dilla, and Knxwledge, and by the endless possibilities of musique concrète, People Pleaser uses a highly divergent array of sound sources, building pieces from drum and percussion tracks left over from other projects, audio ripped from skate videos, noise electronics, fragments of a police interrogation, and anything else ready to hand. Guthrie's unique rhythmic sensibility is the thread drawing all these elements together, his drum performances propulsively rhythmic yet insistently irregular in a way that sometimes brings to mind the uniquely open rhythmic space carved out by early Weather Report and other classic fusion. Drawing together manifold influences in an entirely sui generis way, People Pleaser is a raw, exciting, and surprisingly accessible peek into the laboratory of a unique sensibility. Designed by Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, August 2016.
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