Browse by Artist: CUSACK, PETER

Artist:	CUSACK, PETER
Title:	Your Favourite London Sounds
Label:	LONDON MUSICIAN'S COLLECTIVE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	RES FLS1

"Field recordings by one of Britain's leading electro-acoustic artists that comprise an astounding audio portrait of London. Taken as a whole the favourite sounds reveal a fascinating perspective on London -- that of the ear. It is quite different from that of the eye. London's soundscape is regularly described as general urban noise, loud, undifferentiated and not usually pleasant. The amazing variety suggested here shows otherwise. Sounds range from the extremely loud to the very quiet, from the natural to the digital electronic. There are those found under, at or above ground level, indoor and out. Some are deeply personal and others all-encompassing atmospheres. They clearly distinguish between season and time of day and take London's unpredictable weather very much into account. No two suggestions are exactly identical. London's sounds are appreciated with a surprising degree of detail which obviously relates closely to individual lives. The tiniest sound differences can become significant if they are within the pattern of someone's daily life. It is also good to be reminded that, even with the ever increasing levels of background noise in urban areas, we can still be sensitive to the smallest and most local sounds of everyday London life."

Artist:	CUSACK, PETER
Title:	Where Is the Green Parrot?
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER PC1

"Guitarist Peter Cusak has been active in the UK improvising scene since the early 1970s and has recorded with Clive Bell, Nicolas Collins, Max Eastly and Thomas Koner, among others. He is curating The Week Of Small Miracles, a multimedia millennium project on the river Lee in North London, to run in the year 2000. Where Is The Green Parrot is not really an album, but more of a series of locations. The roaming microphone is like a camera, recording events, ambiences and interactions, with music merely one part of the fabric. Peter reprocesses the sounds, adding electronics and samples, and some of the soundscapes are also then laced with bazouki and guitar improvisations."

Artist:	CUSACK, PETER
Title:	Baikal Ice
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER PC2

Subtitled: Spring 2003. "Over the last thirty years Peter Cusack has built a reputation as an improvising musician, and is often to be found plucking an array of string instruments, including guitar and balalaika, while simultaneously triggering live electronics. Peter had known for some time about the extraordinary Lake Baikal, a 600 kilometre long lake in Siberia. It is thought to be the world's oldest and deepest lake and holds one fifth of the earth's fresh water. It was only recently, however, that he came across a reference on the internet to the mysterious noises made by the ice, which covers the lake from autumn to spring to the depth of a meter. The sounds are most spectacular when the ice melts and breaks up, and the lake transforms itself back into water. This album is a document of Peter's journey, on a mission to record these sounds. There are humorous incidents, as when a telephone engineer unexpectedly falls through the ice while Peter is recording (he made it out to safety!), or when the local children take over the village's PA system. There are haunting vignettes; a young girl burst into song on the train, on the small branch of the Trans-Siberian railway part of which runs along the shore of the lake; an accomplice of Peter's performs bell-like angular music on the broken metal fountain which they find in the town of Angarsk. But centre stage belongs to the sounds of the ice break-up itself, as ghostly creaks and agonising groans emerge from the tinkling, sparkling flow. Baikal Ice is comparable to Chris Watson's pristine sound recordings, to be found on the Touch label."

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