When human diversities – both physiological and intuitional – merge inside a musical composition, the possibility for a listener to be dealing with temporal parallelism becomes certainty. In that case, it is necessary to manage individual indicators mostly based on breathing, either strictly physical or creatively gestural, sometimes in communion.
People scared by sudden changes of perspective and, in general, deviation from the norm tend to disregard the notion of time. This is typically due to a congenital inability to instantly recognize the composite rhythms and quick twists typical of our existential score, particularly in conditions of solitude. Thanks to the inquisitiveness of Rhodri Davies – a sonic investigator who is equally at ease in quiet and noisy environments – we’re now presented with sounds useful to absorb fundamental data for the transmutation of theoretical “shocks” into steady, if ever-changing undercurrents.
The core of the matter lies in the metamorphic qualities of the sources in a simultaneous synthesis, as one absorbs substances as acoustically varied as they are natural in terms of dynamic ebb and flow. The modest virtuosity of the players – listed at the link above – goes far beyond their instrumental and corporeal command. In fact Transversal Time, rather peculiarly, generates feelings of detachment from earthly materiality more often than not. An aggregate of faint disseminations leads to a veritable annihilation of the performers’ selves, as the improvised frames succeed according to a logical consequentiality. This wholeness represents the clearest response to the attempt of altering reality into one’s liking when facing a diversity not classifiable within the limits of correspondence-course sapience.
As per the introductory notes, “improvising musicians develop acute sensitivities to body clock, breath, pulses and the silent transformations of time-between-time”. If there was a need to understand why acquiring essential frequencies by mute listening is preferable to the accumulation of untrustworthy information in a saturated brain, here we have an obvious explanation. This work, conceived in 2017 and recorded a year later, will serve as an example for decades to come while confirming Davies as a musician of rare profundity.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 