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LP
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ROKU 026LP
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New music from XT (saxophone player Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott) in the form of an exhilarating, super compressed, reflective re-assembling of a dozen years working together. Re-animating free improvisation with a Chicago house palette, Deorlaf X is made up of frenetic slabs of mutated multiphonics and triggered percussion, suspended in bouts of possessed reflexive quiet. Where the duo's 2019 release Palina'tufa (EE 004LP) on Empty Editions focused primarily on a response to the real (and imagined) landscapes of Hong Kong, Deorlaf X is located in Dalston, and specifically at OTO. Wrung through Shuan Crook's studio over three nights, the recordings dug from XT's archive aren't simply "duo" -- instead they actively draw on their public and social contexts, involving the influence of audience, engineers and other visiting musicians -- Ghédalia Tazartès, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Senyawa, RP Boo, and others. "A changing cast of OTO guests, audience and emotions hosted each time in a new London. XT structures sound an ongoing attempt to listen and learn about the rich and transformative affordances of the situations we occupy." The resulting record puts a pin through a dialogue between Abbott and Wright, between histories, potentials, fact, fiction, ideas, friends, audiences, and spaces. The heavy use of referencing recalls the footwork or house traditions of sampling across all manner of influences; what's recalled is primarily the structures of jazz -- Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton -- but also Ann Quin, Clarice Lispector, Anna Halprin. What's created in recall is a kind of diary, a hyper remembering -- a blisteringly warped kind of future music. Recorded by James Dunn, Shaun Crook and Paul Skinner. Assembled, mixed and re-recorded January 19, 20, and 21, 2020 by XT at Lockdown Studio, Cable Street. Engineer Shaun Crook. Sounds/design by XT. Cover painting Leon Kossoff, Dalston Junction No.3, June 1973 oil on board, 20.5 x 25 cm.
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2LP
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EE 004LP
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Empty Editions presents Palina'tufa, the newest work from saxophonist Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott's long-running duo XT. Wright and Abbot's respective practices have been marked by a simultaneous engagement (with) and desire to challenge the limitations (of) the British tradition of improvised music -- represented by groups such as AMM and John Stevens's Spontaneous Music Ensemble. This album charts a new trajectory for Wright and Abbott, as they draw on recent live collaborations with RP Boo and Container in developing a sound which hybridizes the spontaneous interplay and timbral experimentation of free improvisation with the recursive formal structures of dance music. The album's title is an enigmatic portmanteau of "Palina" (taken from the name of a species of butterfly sighted by the duo during recording) combined with the word "Tufa" -- a type of rock composed of ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption; the bedrock of the island of Hong Kong. Compellingly, the green sheen of the Palinurus butterfly is not produced by pigments, but emanates from the microstructure of its wing scales. Similarly, XT's Palina'tufa contains a brilliant internal logic of stacked component parts all amalgamated into a singularly iridescent instrumental structure. Recorded during a two-week studio residency in Hong Kong, Palina'tufa departs from XT's previous albums -- primarily documentations of live performances -- in its embrace of the recording studio as a form of instrumentation: a tool to sculpt, overdub, and (re)assemble their chimeric sounds. The result is a striking cybernetic version of the classic sax-and-drums duo pioneered by legendary groupings such as John Coltrane and Rashied Ali, Evan Parker and Paul Lytton, and Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille. Wright's unconventional use of feedback and Abbott's heavily deconstructed electro-dance textures expand upon this simulated space, unfurling their instrumentation into an authentically liberated territory. Across four dynamic fifteen-minute cuts, the duo craft an esoteric response to the real (and imagined) landscape(s) of Hong Kong. Interpreting their experience of the island as a kind of extended metaphor, Palina'tufa translates chance encounters, pockets of cultural history, vernacular architecture, and local wildlife (among other phenomena) into organizing principles for the creation of speculative music. Palina'tufa is a brilliant showcase of Wright and Abbott's composite sound: naturally synergistic, with careful attention paid to how psycho-geographical experience is transposed into the deeply considered interplay of their respective instruments. Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering. Featuring artwork by Ikebana artist Kosen Ohtsubo. 180 gram vinyl; edition of 300.
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