Browse by Artist: RUSSELL, BRUCE

Artist:	RUSSELL, BRUCE
Title:	Painting The Passports Brown
Label:	CORPUS HERMETICUM (NEW ZEALAND)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	HERMES 035

"This, the third solo album recorded by the artist currently known as Bruce Russell, consists of three live slabs of improvised guitar, electronics, and analogue tape loops, recorded live in Melbourne, Australia in May 1999. This was the first of two visits he made to Australia in that year, the second being in the company of Alastair Galbraith as A Handful of Dust. These recordings are totally solo, built respectively around a pre-recorded seven metre loop taken from the Anabase LP by Dust (Black Flies #1 & #2), and a slowed down and reversed tape of thumb piano improvisation (With Rimbaud in Abyssinia). These extended works are less brutal than the pieces featured on the first two solo albums, with more space and attendant dynamics in evidence. They abrade, rather than assault, the ears. This album represents a step forward in BR's solo work, integrating the pre-recorded and live sounds ever more fully into a seamless whole. The recordings have been edited at the front and back, but otherwise are presented totally live as recorded to minidisc by Melbourne resident and Freeway Sound label curator Marco Fusinato. The Rimbaud track is subtitled 'Ass Backwards' as the reversal of the backing tape was an unintended but fortunate accident, resulting from a failure to rewind the tape after the first show. These kind of random factors do so much to enrich the work of improvisers of all stripes, as witnessed by the music on this compact disc. Going on at length about the artist responsible for these recordings would be needless in the case of the very great majority of those reading these words. Suffice to say he performs and records with the Dead C, A Handful of Dust, and Pieters/Russell/ Stapleton, manages the label on which this excellent disc has been released, and takes the kind of holiday snaps of bridges and buildings with which the cover is decorated. A 10" vinyl postscript to this recordings is being released about the same time on the Smalltown Supersound label in Norway, that record being of a much more dense and apocalyptic guitar-squall nature, recorded solo at one of the Melbourne Dust dates referred to earlier."

Artist:	RUSSELL, BRUCE
Title:	The Movement Of The Free Spirit
Label:	SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND (NORWAY)
Format:	10"
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	STS 044EP

"The Movement Of The Free Spirit is a beautiful guitar piece with realtime tape loops, recorded in Melbourne, Australia, in October 1999. The piece is naturally falling in two parts (one of each side), titled 'The 1st Movement' and 'The 2nd Movement'. Recordings from the same live session is now being released on Russell`s own Corpus Hermeticum label, titled Painting The Passports Brown. The 10" is described by Russell himself as 'being of a much more dense and apocalyptic guitar-squall nature' than the CD. The 10" is a limited pressing of 500." Limited stock.

Artist:	RUSSELL, BRUCE
Title:	Gilded Splinters
Label:	SPIRIT OF ORR RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	SO 049CD

"About the project: I have been interested in the use of sound recordings to make 'music' for a long time. In the early 1980s one of the things that drew me to the work of groups such as Cabaret Voltaire, The Fall and This Heat was their use of recordings as an element in their work, and as a way of restructuring played pieces once they had been recorded. In my own work, I started making tape works from day one, buying my first open reel tape machine in 1983, the same year I bought my first electric guitar. The first Dead C. album included 'The Wheel' and 'Mutterline,' both of which I constructed from tapes (1987). Later about half of the third Handful of Dust album; 'From a Soundtrack to the Anabase of St.John Perse,' was constructed in the 'studio' (1995). When I began to record under my own name, one of the things I wanted to focus on was tape work, as opposed to documentation recordings of live improvisations, which most of my other work has been. My first solo single was produced by the simple expedient of halving the tape speed, thereby doubling the beauty of the original ultra-lo-fi recording. A great boost to my resolve in this area was given by Ralf Wehowsky's invitation in 1996 to participate in what became the Tulpas project. His faith in me gave me confidence to consider my work as a form of composition, and has led directly to this album. In this regard, the support of Matthew Leonard has also been very helpful. My plan was to compile examples of my tape work over the last few years, as a way of showing the different approaches and developing methodologies that I have employed. Originally I envisaged a double CD, but this has proven to be both too expensive and ultimately too hubristic. Making these recordings has been a learning process, but a very satisfying one. My working practices have often been deliberately primitive and brutal, and I make no apology for that. It is the ideas and their expression that should be of interest, not merely questions of technique. It remains only to note the inspiring example of many more illustrious names in this genuinely twentieth century art form. I will not compile a list of names, as these lists have a way of becoming almost too famous, but national pride compels me to mention the late Douglas Lilburn. He founded, in 1966 at Victoria University of Wellington, the Southern Hemisphere's first Electronic Music Studio. Recently his magnificent analog electronic works have entered the digital domain in a long overdue re-edition. Hurrah!" --Bruce Russell, Lyttelton, 2004.

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