Tokyo Yakimono

I decided on Tokyo Yakimono as the title of my new piece. Yakimono actually means pottery more than ceramics, but yakimono could refer to fried food and food was a defining feature of my visit to Japan! You can hear an extract from this piece at :

http://www.myspace.com/stephenkilpatrick

I hope Tomo won't be offended that I refered to her ceramic art as "pottery".

Finished Work!

I've just finished my latest tape piece and I think it' s pretty good, even if I do say so myself. It's composed from sounds derived from tapping and scraping a number of small ceramic works that were given to me by ceramic artist, Tomomi Kitazawa. I made the recordings over two years ago, but I have never been satisfied with the compositions I had attempted with them previously. The sounds have a wonderful grainy quality to them that I was eager to exploit and this time, I think I have managed it.

I had set myself two goals with this piece. One was to exceed 10 minutes duration. The reason for this was to force myself to work hard to develop the material. Many of my most recent pieces are very short and focus on the presentation of one or two ideas. What I was aiming for in this piece was to work developmentally and to engage with longer forms. The other goal I set myself was to write gestural music rather than the textural music I have produced previously in this genre.

I haven't managed to come up with a suitable title for this piece yet. I'm looking for a word in Japanese that is related to ceramics, or percussive/grainy noises. I was thinking of Pachinko, because there is a section with tumbling percussive sounds that reminds me of the amusement arcades I saw on a recent visit to Japan, but I don't think that is really what I'm going for.

There is a rough version of this piece available on my MySpace site and I will put a finished version up soon.

http://www.myspace.com/stephenkilpatrick

This new piece will be played at a concert entitled Echochroma 4, which will happen in the next few weeks at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Flute Trio Update

I've almost finished one of the movements of my Flute Trio for Expatrio. It's been slow going so far, but I'm starting to come to terms with that particular instrumental grouping. I've been a bit shy about playing any of it to anyone so far, but I ran it by a trusted composer friend this morning and they gave me some really positive feedback about it.

What I am trying to do in this piece is incorporate what I have learnt working with electroacoustic composition into my instrumental writing and so far it seems to be working. The material of the first movement is derived from the partials produced by the flute when playing particular multiphonics. In this way, spectral elements of the flute define the material around which harmony and pitch relationships are based.

Frakture Big Band

You can find a recording of me playing with the Frakture Big Band here

http://www.frakture.org/ensembles/fbb_audio.htm

The track is "Suck it and See It". I'm playing the Jazzy sounding guitar and the fuzzy bass guitar!

Flute Trio

This is late news, but at least it lets you know what I am up to.

I have been commissioned by a flute trio by the name of Expatrio for a new work to be premiered in the Summer. I'm really chuffed about this because they are great musicians with really good taste in music.

If you haven't heard Expatrio, you should check them out on MySpace.

http://www.myspace.com/expatrio

Or better still, catch them live.

New Pieces

I've just spent the afternoon at Brendan Williams place attempting to sort out the hours of recorded material we have. Over the last two years, we have recorded over 10 hours of music intended for commercial release. Unfortunately, neither of us has had time to mix or master this stuff, so it's just languishing in our vaults. It's must easier for us to be motivated to make music than it is to polish it up.

We do have a producer based in Belgium who is working on some of the stuff (hopefully) for the most important experimental music label in Europe. The rest of the stuff we intend to release on the My First Moth label as soon as we can sort it out.

This is the year of the big push!

Boris with Merzbow: Sun Baked Snow Cave

This second teaming of ridiculously prolific Japanese Drone Rock meisters, Boris, and even more prolific number one J-Noise guru, Merzbow, could well be a marriage made in Heaven or Hell depending on your point of view and the health of your eardrums.

The album consists of a single hour long track, which surprisingly gets of to quite a gentle start with a few acoustic guitar notes from the Boris gang and some gentle buzzes and hums from merzbow. . early section is actually quite calming and makes use of silence in a way less common to J-NoiseThis builds throughout the first two thirds of the album until we are faced with a much more familiar aural assault slightly more intense than the freakout on Boris' Smile, but not in the audio nasty territory of Merzbow's Merzbear. The guitar and electronics merge particularly well here and avoid Boris' tendancy on Smile to occasionally sound too much like they are attempting to play Prog-Rock solos, but failing miserably.

Boris with Merzbow - Definately more than the sum of its parts.

Taku Sugimoto: Live in Australia

This double CD comes complete with a 1000 plus word essay by Sugimoto himself discussing the nature of music, performance, recording and found sound. Pretty interesting stuff, but unlikely to prepare the unwary listener for the musical experience he/she has just invested in.

What you have here are two tracks, both over an hour in length, on two CDs that are are much about the aural environment as about Sugimoto's performance. For the majority of the recording we can hear cars passing, audience members coughing, rain rattling on the roof, chairs squeaking etc. Occasionally (and I do mean very occasionally), Sugimoto plays a muted note on his guitar. I haven't counted, but I would be very surprised if Sugimoto plays more than 10 notes in the 62 minute Music for Amplified Guitar and it seems like forever before the guitarist makes any musical comment on the torrential rainfal that makes up the first 15 minutes of Dot.

Although this is a fascinating recording for those interested in questioning the nature of performance and the role of recording, it's not recommended for those seeking catchy tunes or virtuosic displays. It might be good for messing with peoples heads at parties though.

Disc 1
Dot (73) 72:24Recorded live by Matthew Earle at Performance Space, Sydney, September 12, 2003
Disc 2
Music for Amplified Guitar 62:20Recorded live by Lawrence English and John Chantler at Nine Hours North, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, September 14, 2003
All composed by Taku SugimotoTaku Sugimoto: guitar

Taku Sugimoto & Moe Kamura: Saritote

I have been a fan of Taku Sugimoto's album Opposite for some time now, so on a recent trip to Japan I did my best to track down some more of his music. Out of the CDs I bought, this collaboration with Moe Kamura is the one that has stood out for me.

Sugimoto's music is often labeled Reductionism due to the fact that some of his recordings and improvisations have more ambient noise and amplifier hum than "music" (please debate the inverted commas on your own time!). At one point in his career, Sugimoto estimated that he might only play 11 notes in 40 minutes. On this particular CD, Sugimoto and Kamura keep the number of notes small, but also contract the duration (7 tracks in under 12 minutes) producing a collection of lovely, intimate miniatures.

The sparse textures produced by the toy piano and guitar and the simple melodies and quiet child-like voice create an eery atmosphere that conjures up images of a haunted playroom. Each piece seems to be a fragment of a larger narrative that bring to mind Kurtág's Messages of the Late R. V. Troussova, Scenes From a Novel and Kafka Fragments. On the whole, this is an intriguing CD, although I would have preferred it to be a little longer.

Stay It Fragile (0:27)
A Chair 3 (1:21)
And Yet (2:14)
A Chair 1 (1:22)
A Chair 2 (1:28)
Stairs (2:03)
Postlude (1:51)
All music by Taku SugimotoAll words by Moe Kamura
Moe Kamura: vocal, guitar, toy pianoTaku Sugimoto: guitarTaku Unami: contraguitar (7)
Recorded and mastered by Taku Unami in Tokyo, May 2007Drawing and design by Taku Sugimoto

White Chalk - P. J. Harvey

I've been listening to this album since it came out in 2007 and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it's set to be remembered as a true classic.

Of course, all of P.J. Harvey's albums are great, but White Chalk seems to distill of all the her best ideas down to very simple, but fragile statements. For a long time, I struggled to think of a way to describe the atmosphere she creates on this album and now I think I've got it. It's the aural equivalent of listening a conversation that you were never intended to hear. The stories are evocative, but strangely incomplete and yet almost painfully intimate and confessional. It is as though the listener should feel guilty for listening, as if they were reading a teenage girl's hidden diary.

A perfect example is the song "When Under Ether". Lyrically, this song seems to be describing the anaesthetised state of a woman undergoing an abortion, although P.J. Harvey herself denies that this is indeed the subject she was thinking of. Despite, Harvey's denial, it is difficult to escape this interpretation and as a result the reception of the song is coloured by this idea. The vocal performance, like the majority on this album, is naked, heartbreakingly fragile and without artifice.

In an interview in The Wire, Harvey confessed to leaving notes around the house reminding herself to sing as if she were a child again on this album. That's not to say she is imitating an hysterical toddler, but is stripping her voice of the guile, artfulness and insincerities of a professional singer. This approach has allowed her to plumb the emotional depths of each song and deliver performances that can, at times, send a shiver down the spine.

The Gathering: The Reek

This is a film for Channel 4 that Brendan Williams and I composed the Soundtrack for

Electro

I've just got back from a mini-spending spree in Manchester. As usual, I didn't intend to buy anything, but consumerism got the better of me. Amongst other things, I picked up a double CD of the Streets Sounds Definitive Electro and Hip Hop Collection for £3 in Fopp!... Bargain!! I used to collect these Electo mixes when I was about 11 or 12 and it really took me back to those days of exchanging 4 sweaty pound notes for a bit of wobbly vinyl full of drum machines, scratching and unlikely monikered rappers.

Besides the obvious big names, such as Grandmaster Flash, Herbie Hancock and Afrika Bamaataa, you get The Real Roxanne, UTFO, Egyptian Lover, The Packman and Full Force.

Worth 3 quid alone for the Hip Hop rendition of the Inspector Gadget theme!

Free Improvisation

I’ve just got back home from a gig and it’s around one o’clock in the morning. I was playing guitar and bass with a large free improvisation ensemble at a one day festival of Experimental music. There were about twelve ensembles and soloists performing at the event and my band were the last to perform, hence the late hour.

I have to confess that I didn’t attend the whole event, which began at three o’clock, but I have a few observations to make about the artists I did see.

The first observation I have to discuss is that of space. In recent years, space has become the most important element in music for me, but many musicians don’t seem to consider it. What I like to hear from both composed music and improvisations is, not only the musicians leaving room for one another to allow for a musical discussion, but also leaving gaps within the fabric of the sound to allow the music to breathe and to frame the musical gestures. What I heard from several of the groups tonight was a complete disregard for space within their music and a layering of very similar sounds to create an aural mud. I remember reading a good analogy for this in a letter in The Wire which compared this kind of improvisation to mixing paints. The writer suggested that in mixing paint you have at your disposal a range of beautiful colours, but if you mix them all at once, all you get is brown. Sadly for me, many of tonight’s performances were brown.

Something else that disappointed me was the lack of rhythmical impetus in much of tonight’s music. All the performers, with the exception of the one, relied solely on the percussionists and drummers to create any momentum in their music. Most performances were of a very static nature – not in itself a bad thing – but gave the impression of motion through the use of driving or repetitive percussion. I can’t help thinking that perhaps some of their music would have been better without percussion, as they would have had to consider the impetus of their performances at a fundamental level.

My final observation is not a new one and has been a bug bear of mine for some time: guitarists. As usual it was the guitarists who let the side down in several ensembles tonight. They tended to be the worst culprits in terms of not leaving space and creating “brown” music and they really did not seem to be listening to their band mates. My other problem with the guitar is the sound. It is such a limited palate that the guitarist needs to work so much harder than the other musicians to create variety. Many guitarists try and expand the palate of the guitar by using effects, but this just seems to add to the “brownness” of the music. On top of this, every gesture on the guitar is already a cliché.

Although a guitarist myself, I often elect to play piano in improvisations because of the problems with the guitar I have already mentioned. When I do play guitar, I go back to basics. I deliberately use a very limited sound with strong associations (fat Jazz guitar sound) with no effects. I also avoid using any extended techniques, as these have all become Rock clichés on the guitar. I suppose the challenge I am setting myself is to say something new without putting on a funny voice.

I wouldn't say I was succeeding yet, but improvisation is all about failure.

Film Music

Something I'm really keen to be involved in is film music.

I recently co-composed the soundtrack for a Channel 4 film called The Gathering:The Reek directed by Colin O'Toole. It's a really beautiful short film that you can see at:

http://www.pulsefilms.co.uk/vid/colin/thegatheringthereek.html

Welcome

Welcome to my blog!

My name is Steve and I'm a composer. It's posssibly not the easiest of career routes, but I keep coming back to it. I did manage to give it up for about 5 years, but somehow it managed to find me again.

As well as composition, I am involved in free-improvisation. I work in a duo with Brendan Williams called - rather imaginitively - Williams/Kilpatrick. I have also recently started playing guitar in the Fracture Big Band, which is a free-improv collective based in Liverpool.

Like many composers, I do not rely on composition as my only source of income and hold an academic position teaching composition in a UK university.

If you are interested in hearing some of my music, then feel free to check out my MySpace site at:
http://www.myspace.com/stephenkilpatrick

If you like that, you could check out my collaboration with Brendan Williams at:
http://www.myspace.com/williamskilpatrick

I haven't got round to creating my own website yet, but the plan is to sort that out in September.

Thanks for reading!