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TWO MOVEMENTS

Regan Bowering / Conal Blake / Li Song
Feedback Moves (2024)



Listen / buy here: https://feedbackmoves.bandcamp.com/album/two-movements 


  

Reviews 

“The interplay of drums, microphones and amplifiers animates Two Movements, the second release from the trio of Conal Blake, Regan Bowering and Li Song. Each piece explores a different combination of these, with the additional factor of movement. For “Swinging” the composer-performers suspended snare drums from the ceiling of Cafe Oto, amplifying them using different feedback generating set-ups. At certain points, the score required them to manipulate the equipment, at others, the instruments were left to play themselves. There’s a compelling volatility to the interactive passages, as rubbed drum skins feedback and distort, their gnarled moans dissolving into static.

As the musicians step back, an unstable beauty arises, as mid-range feedback tones flutter and sigh over liquescent white noise. “Oscillating” introduces undulating sine tones to the intimate space of Hundred Years Gallery, intensely beautiful beating patterns and washes of noise emerging as they cross.” (Stewart Smit, The Wire, Jan 2025)



“Together, they merge live performance with moving installation. Two Movements, released this year on Blake’s Feedback Moves label, documents two live sets. “Swinging”, from London’s Cafe Oto in 2023, involved snare drums swinging from the ceiling while attached to different feedback generating set ups. Also recorded in London, “Oscillating” captures a set from Hundred Years Gallery. For that piece, the trio slowly moved snare drums, Bluetooth speakers playing sine tones and tin foil around the space, dousing the small basement venue in mesmerizing layers of resonance and tone to the point that the whole room started to feel like a giant reverberating cavity.

Merging improvisation with performance scores, and there’s a temptation to say: you had to be there to really experience it (this writer was present at both). But Two Movements is more than a souvenir. The recordings allow us to dwell in the sounds the trio make and absorb their full spellbinding power, to appreciate the equal parts alien and mundane textures they work with”

(Daryl Worthington, The Wire, Jan 2025)