Laboratoire Central-Sub Rosa sessions #3
Digipack CD SR310

Phil Minton / Audrey Chen: Reality-Piercing Voices

These recordings in two movements
SR310 MINTON / CHEN
SR311 MINTON / CHEN QUINTET
can be taken as, on the one hand, pieces for two voices and improvisation chamber orchestra (which is what the musicians felt throughout the recording session) and, on the other hand, pure free improvisation.

Both voices in interaction, perpetually urging the other on, producing more than their simple addition, producing a third voice - like a semi-autonomous organism - very difficult to explain how - why - as if what had been mostly deeply burrowed was surfacing. an ur-song, like Schwitters' ur-sonate / their breath. the importance of scat, the rhythm from beyond language.
FEATURES


Phil Minton

(1940, Torquay, United Kingdom) is a jazz/free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook's group, Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and extracts from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake with his own ensemble. Between 1987 and 1993 Minton toured Europe, North America and Russia with Lindsay Cooper's Oh Moscow ensemble.
He is perhaps best known, however, for his completely free-form work, which involves "extended techniques" that are extremely unsettling. His vocals often include the sounds of retching, burping, screaming, and gasping, as well as childlike muttering, whining, crying and humming; he also has an ability to distort his vocal cords to produce two notes at once.


Audrey Chen

Chinese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists,doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. She turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and co.......
more

Laboratoire Central-Sub Rosa sessions #3
Digipack CD SR310

Phil Minton / Audrey Chen: Reality-Piercing Voices

These recordings in two movements
SR310 MINTON / CHEN
SR311 MINTON / CHEN QUINTET
can be taken as, on the one hand, pieces for two voices and improvisation chamber orchestra (which is what the musicians felt throughout the recording session) and, on the other hand, pure free improvisation.

Both voices in interaction, perpetually urging the other on, producing more than their simple addition, producing a third voice - like a semi-autonomous organism - very difficult to explain how - why - as if what had been mostly deeply burrowed was surfacing. an ur-song, like Schwitters' ur-sonate / their breath. the importance of scat, the rhythm from beyond language.
FEATURES


Phil Minton

(1940, Torquay, United Kingdom) is a jazz/free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook's group, Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and extracts from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake with his own ensemble. Between 1987 and 1993 Minton toured Europe, North America and Russia with Lindsay Cooper's Oh Moscow ensemble.
He is perhaps best known, however, for his completely free-form work, which involves "extended techniques" that are extremely unsettling. His vocals often include the sounds of retching, burping, screaming, and gasping, as well as childlike muttering, whining, crying and humming; he also has an ability to distort his vocal cords to produce two notes at once.


Audrey Chen

Chinese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists,doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. She turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and co.......
more