27 November 2011

Taylor Deupree & Marcus Fischer – in a place of such graceful shapes (12k, 2011)

During the last days of autumn in 2010, Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fischer started a long distance collaboration project, exchanging sound files,but after a few rough sketches, limitations and frustrations occurred and a plane ticket from Portland to New York for Marcus solved the problem.

During four intensive days in February 2001, while winter was in full force, they conceived most of the guidelines of this project, from music to pictures.


There is a CD with a fifty minutes long composition, with a 7 inch featuring two shorter compositions between 5 and 6 minutes and a booklet of photographs. They use guitar pedals, looping boxes, analog synths, tape recorders, found objects and percussion instruments, a series of sound sources for a scheduled meeting between Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fischer, and as a result, the strong emulation of a silent conversation, white and grey.

There is some urgency inside the record, but the urgency to finish and the impression of a semi-improvised result with a succession of long p assages finding a resonance with the icy austere surroundings around the studio settled in the countryside.

Fifty minutes for a single track is quite long and the result is very monotonous and relatively unspectacular at the beginning, but slowly it become pleasant and comfortable, really translating the vision of winter landscapes, and the last 18 minutes, when the guitar finally emerges, turn into something finally sublime and deliciously minimal.

They should have cut it in two parts.The first part is disordered as elements slowly adjust to each other and you wish you could skip it. Around five minutes, scattered sounds of guitar bring punctually some sunlight through the clouds. Later, around 9 minutes it turns into a pleasant walk outside, with the cold air, the vast, pale and bleak  sky and the snowy, icy paths. Later the atmosphere becomes blurry again and I lose my track, falling into limbo.

Only later, just before the 33 minutes mark, the guitar comes back again, like a sunny spell, opening a vast mineral blue sky, with a few scintillating stars dancing above, but then it won't stop until the end, simply captivating with its vibrant melancholy.

I wish they had cut this 50 minutes composition into parts because it's mostly the last 15 minutes which are really interesting.


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IN A PLACE OF SUCH GRACEFUL SHAPES from m~fischer on Vimeo.

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