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CD
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VHF 065CD
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"In contrast to the live performance-based pieces on Simon Wickham-Smith's 1999 CD Butterfly Dust, the perversely titled follow-up Extreme Bukake is a dissection of religious music, realized on laptop computer. Traditional components like Catholic hymns and Wickham-Smith's vocal on a Hare Krsna prayer get fragmented, splintered, and reassembled into a rich blob of sound. According to his notes on the tracks, 'The Self-Immolation of Thich Quang Duc' is a programmatic work based around the death of the titular Viêtnamese monk who set himself alight to protest about the activity of the Viêtnamese government in the early 1960s. He was a friend of Thich Nhat Hanh, whom Martin Luther King Jr. nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. The music sounds like the insanity of the situation, the external noise of cars and people and the internal noise of the heart and the soul of this man. 'Sri Guru Vandana' is a song from the Hare Krsna (ISKCON) tradition of Krisna Vaisnavitism, a nod in the direction of Wickham-Smith's pre-Buddhist, teenager self, the young man who got into ISKCON and then freaked out at the evangelical nature of the organization. This track acknowledges the positive side of his experience. 'Ave Regina Celorum' is based on a Catholic hymn to Mary, an attempt to create a piece which could perhaps be used for meditation, either formal or informal."
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CD
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VHF 044CD
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"The first solo CD by Simon Wickham-Smith follows a long and prolific 10 year recording partnership with Richard Youngs. Recorded during a temporary relocation to Australia, Butterfly Dust is a strikingly intimate solo performance on organ, voice, Peruvian Reed, and didgeridoo. The performances here are informed by a rare combination of virtuosity and exploratory improvisation. In comparison with some prior performances (e.g. Simon's startlingly skilled assault on a grand piano on Knish), Butterfly Dust is in a more minimal style, where sounds are given room to build up and establish a mood over the long term. This is particularly true of the long organ solo "Objects Appearing", where notes are slowly added to a drone over a period of several minutes, giving each newly introduced note a significant impact."
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