|
Digital composition from the guitarist for New York trio
San
Agustin (previous releases available through Road
Cone, Family
Vineyard and Table
of the Elements). The understated improvisational nature
of that group's work filters through in the deceptively
random-generated feel of these carefully treated field
recordings from the southern United States and New Mexico.
Everyday occurrences are recreated and recast in a shimmering,
scraping fogbank of sound that approximates something
like the oblique process of memory. Operating alongside
the loose boundaries of composers such as Brandon LaBelle
and Bernhard Günter, David Daniell
brings a richness and depth of field to this compositional
style from his other playing situations and so surpassing
the genre to find something personal and unique.
"If it's initially difficult
to identify these two pieces as based on location recordings,
you may just have to take David Daniell's word for it. But
whether or not these pieces aurally signify the times and
locations specified in their titles, they do speak to a
steely-unto-meditative concentration and an obsession with
the irreducibility of individual sound events—the non-identity
of the similar. All of which moves... gradually, gracefully...
to conclude in an earthy layer of strings. These are largely
abstract landscapes in which space is a blessed given."
- David
Grubbs
"The tonal modulations give
a nocturnal touch to this work that sometimes is close to
Steve Roden's 'Crop Circles' for the mantra-like quality
of the sounds, for the meditative dimension of the percussive
effects and of the background interferences suspended between
silence and small sonic events."
(click
for full review)
- Blow
Up Magazine
"David Daniell uses carefully
treated field recordings along the highways or roads from
the southern United States and New Mexico, to come up with
two long compositions in which carefully and gracefully
interwoven soundscapes play the major part... the soundlevel
is very low and the changes are minimal, which gives the
listener the impression of great distances and large abstract
landscapes."
- Phosphor
Magazine
"A complete and hermetic audio
environment is achieved within the extremely rewarding sonic
detritus to be found on sem. These two complementary
pieces contain the kind of compositional moves made only
by the obsessive and the obsessed. Each new listen reveals
detail and motion not noticed the previous time. A very
gentle provocation; a very musical non-music."
- Popstocker
|