I'll be playing a solo set at Matt Wakeling's new gig series Sounds Like This on Saturday the 27th of September.
Doors are 7:30pm, and it's only $10. Venue is the Mars Hill Cafe, 331 Church Street, Parramatta. Matt himself is also playing, along with beatsmith/producer Sails aka Joshua Isaac.
Should be a good one! I'll be doing a straight cello + laptop set. And I did an in-depth(!) interview with Matt the other night to promote the show.
I have a new track with Sophie Hutchings on this wonderful compilation of post-classical, drone & electronics on the Moscow label Dronarivm.
We recorded it at the Cafe Church in Glebe one night with just a stereo pair of mics, positioned near the piano, and I walked with the cello at the beginning and end to provide some true spatial dynamics. As with everything I do with Sophie, it's half-composed, half-improvised. And no electronics here.
We're at track 6, along with a pretty awesome array of other artists.
I've been recording at the old Megaphon studio in St Peters – now Music Lines – with the fabulous Mr Chris Hancock, towards a new album. This time I'm looking at sending it out to some like-minded labels rather than self-releasing.
Perhaps half the tracks are loop-based works painstakingly rendered in ProTools, and half are entirely studio-created, composed on the fly on cello, piano, pieces of metal and wood, synthesisers, out-board effects and computers.
It's been exhilarating and we haven't even started mixing yet!
I'll post one or two tracks as sneak previews once they're ready…
PS Oh also, raven is on Facebook now :)
While travelling in the US in November, I played a few fun improv gigs with different people, did some recording for my friend Tim Condon's amazing krautrock/noise band Fresh Snow, and recorded a little nachtmusik in a tiny cottage in a tiny town in upstate New York.
Here 'tis, unfiltered and unedited (well, there's 3 cello layers there):
Two recent collaborations recently saw the light of day on SoundCloud.
I've known Philippe Petit "on the internet" for yonks, and finally got to meet him when he came to Sydney in January. We played a set together and wanted to continue the musical dialogue. Hence this first work, which for now I've called Opus 1:
We are working on bringing Philippe back to Australia in the near future.
Meanwhile, in May this year I took part in a gig as part of UTS's Diffuse series at the Bon Marche Studio, with a focus on improv. We decided to play continuously, with each performer playing approximately 5 minutes each with approximately 5 minute duos as segues. Presented here is my "15 minutes of fame", with my entry in the denoument of Gail Priest's wonderful feedback-with-glasses-of-water segment, through my looped solo cello scrapes and squeaks and smacks, joined by Alon Ilsar's amazing gesture-controlled sound processing and live beats, until I bowed out. It was a pretty inspiring experience.
I present for you: snoring cello, processed glitchy cello, multi-tracked slightly-klezmer cello, all of which has been put to service in accompanying some wonderful animations by 2nd year UTS Animation students, showing projected in hi-def on a warehouse facade at Pier 4, Walsh Bay (STC, Sydney Dance, Sydney Writers' Fest etc) as part of Vivid!
Listen here, and please go and check it out in person if you can!
Photo courtesy dancepanther
Very pleased to be supporting the wonderful Zoë Keating at The Basement on Friday, March 15th. Bookings and full details here.
Illustration by Craig Carry
Mike Carry has posted a long review and article on New resolution along with a long interview with me at his site Fracutre Air.
The debut Raven record is entitled ‘New Resolution’, which showcases a masterful artist at work. Many of the tracks are recorded live in one take; the magic sparks of spontaneity diffuse across the studio’s space and into the atmosphere of the listener’s world…
On Sunday, Feb 24th, I'm playing at the wonderful Gail Priest's new series Pretty Gritty, at 107 Projects in Redfern. It should be an awesome start to an awesome series. Quite possibly I'll play cello with Michaela Davies' Involuntary String Quartet, and definitely I'll be playing a raven set!
Very pleased to have been reviewed by Richard Allen at a closer listen. He outlines the positives and negatives of his listening experience and is very generous.
Now that we’ve gotten the hard stuff out of the way, we’re free to talk about the heart of the matter: the beguiling 36-minute mini-album hidden within New resolution. This album strikes at just the right time, as the market has become flooded with similar-sounding cello albums as of late. raven’s wise combination of “live looped, acoustic and processed cello” possesses a timbre unique to the artist; after hearing this album, one would be able to identify other tracks by raven as well…