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BWR 006CD
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"Fluid and engaging, 7 Hertz fluctuate and mutate live before your very ears. Incorporating all or none of the following instruments -- bassoon, violin, voice, double bass, French horn, glockenspiel, clarinet, mandolin, trumpet -- they create glorious pieces with total, beautiful spontaneity. With imaginations that rival those of Tom Waits and Stravinsky, this is modern 'classical' music that writhes and soothes. Their debut full-length, Tender, Almost Vulgar, is a record that mixes their own blend of improvised and composed work that walks the line between chamber, folk, jazz and a range of contemporary music. The resulting album (recorded in St. Mark's Church, Leeds, lends to the proceedings a hauntingly beautiful slant) is a unique and boundary-defying body of work from a band evidently confident in each others' company. As 7 Hertz themselves describe the process "...we find mutual ground through listening to each other, and making it up as we go along." To put it simply -- similarities can be drawn between 7 Hertz and a plateau of others -- Stravinsky, Ligeti, Terry Riley's Cadenza on the Night Plain, Gabriel Prokofiev's recent string quartets or anything from the New York downtown free music scene -- but this is a truly original listening experience. The Birdwar label seems to be going from strength to strength recently, but how they managed to wrangle 7 Hertz away from the heavyweights of the division such as Tzadik is truly admirable. One of the most delightful debuts of this or any year."
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BWR 002CD
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"Chris Summerlin's debut album under the boastful, ironic pseudonym Last of the Real Hardmen follows six years of releasing lathe-cut vinyl and hand-crafted CD-Rs that received tiny circulation to no more than a small circle of fans. The quality of the tunes on offer suggest this is a third or fourth album rather than an excitable first. Summerlin is a virtuoso guitarist and lays down electric guitar patterns with drums, field recordings and the occasional bottleneck to provide depth and variation. Instrumental music can be hard to keep interesting and this is where Summerlin's skill really kicks in, injecting his form of purist instrumental music with nods towards inevitably John Fahey merged with the full-bodied widescreen emissions of Tortoise. The lovely folks at Birdwar have also included 6 tracks from Summerlin's ultra-limited lathe cut 10" originally released on Lone Hand recordings and this faultlessly adds to the mass of an almost worryingly beautiful album. Despite costing 30p to make on a cassette 4-track, this is otherworldly and timeless music."
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