Outstanding among the new releases
Here’s a little fleshing out of detail on ‘A House, a City.’
Drawn from The Ruin that pianist composer improviser Elliot Galvin says is inspired by Anglo Saxon poetry and is emblematic of how he feels ”inspired by the feeling of living in England.”
Structured cyclically
He explains: ”Taken from iPhone recordings of improvisations that I played on my first-ever piano – bought using money left by my late grandfather. The whole album is structured cyclically so that it gradually builds up and crumbles away, starting and finishing with solo piano. To this end, the very beginning of the album starts with a reversed iPhone recording of me improvising a melody on this piano and ends with this same recording playing forwards.”
Reading the runes
how wordlessly time works
The Ruin
“The Ruin” is from the tenth-century Exeter Book, probably written in the 8th or 9th centuries. Anglo-Saxon poetry was oral and improvised, according to the TLS. The poem describes the overgrown ruins of Aquae Sulis – Bath. It even can be thought of as anticipating 20th century modernism.
Album personnel includes Ruth Goller, Seb Rochford, Ligeti Quartet and Shabaka
We have heard Galvin live a few times – most recently playing solo in Dublin in 2019.
We’d compare him to Marcin Masecki a bit. He is just as brilliant as the formidable Pole. Born in 1991, it was back in 2017 that Galvin was in the Mercury Music Prize nominated band Dinosaur lauded that year for Together, As One. His generally well received albums include The Influencing Machine (2018) and Modern Times (2019) both issued by Edition.
The Ruin album personnel includes bassist Ruth Goller, drummer Seb Rochford, Shabaka Hutchings and the Ligeti Quartet. Another album track ‘From Beneath’ streamed back in the autumn.
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