James Fella & Gabriella Isaac: Performances LP (Gilgongo, 2023)
April 7, 2023 at 8:35 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment
James Fella & Gabriella Isaac: Performances LP
contains performances from Gilgongo’s 15th anniversary celebration in 2019, starting with a duo set and followed by solo sets. The first part of side A is James Fella & Gabriella Isaac together, using the six reference lacquers from their
CCTK Music album in order to make a live collage (similar to the B-side of that record). While the source material for the original recordings included a cymbal and a kalimba, this is a jagged maelstrom of harsh, violent feedback, sometimes speed-altered so that it turns into a surreal, hallucinatory noise experience. Isaac then performs a solo laptop noise set, starting out with controlled dispersions before erupting into multi-tracked digital chaos, ripping through several channels at unpredictable intervals. I tend to appreciate noise best when it’s finely tuned yet harsh and chaotic, rather than just a wall of static, so artists like John Wiese (who recorded and mastered this) stand out, and this is entirely in that space. The second side is just Fella, and it’s a longer piece primarily created using tape machines. It starts out with the whirring sounds of rewinding or fast-forwarding cartridges, then gradually piles on more rapid bursts of feedback and tape manipulations, sometimes sounding like smudged static, other times like hyperspeed classical piano. A dark, metallic fog sets in, and scraping steel sounds creep in from several angles, yet after a while it’s apparent that these are audio illusions, and they start to bend and fray. While nowhere near as noisy as the first side, it has its own way of disrupting reality.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 
[…] This album contains performances from Gilgongo’s 15th anniversary celebration in 2019, starting with a duo set and followed by solo sets. The first part of side A is James Fella & Gabriella Isaac together, using the six reference lacquers from their CCTK Music album in order to make a live collage (similar to the B-side of that record). While the source material for the original recordings included a cymbal and a kalimba, this is a jagged maelstrom of harsh, violent feedback, sometimes speed-altered so that it turns into a surreal, hallucinatory noise experience. Isaac then performs a solo laptop noise set, starting out with controlled dispersions before erupting into multi-tracked digital chaos, ripping through several channels at unpredictable intervals. I tend to appreciate noise best when it’s finely tuned yet harsh and chaotic, rather than just a wall of static, so artists like John Wiese (who recorded and mastered this) stand out, and this is entirely in that space. The second side is just Fella, and it’s a longer piece primarily created using tape machines. It starts out with the whirring sounds of rewinding or fast-forwarding cartridges, then gradually piles on more rapid bursts of feedback and tape manipulations, sometimes sounding like smudged static, other times like hyperspeed classical piano. A dark, metallic fog sets in, and scraping steel sounds creep in from several angles, yet after a while it’s apparent that these are audio illusions, and they start to bend and fray. While nowhere near as noisy as the first side, it has its own way of disrupting reality. – Paul Simpson / The Answer Is In The Beathttps://theanswerisinthebeat.net/2023/04/07/james-fella-gabriella-isaac-performances-lp-gilgongo-202… […]
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