#alt.vinyl

In case you’ve slept on Trem, Over Shadows, and Wound Response (and if you have, for shame), Pedwar is a marvelous opportunity to acquaint yourselves with this fascinating, engaging music. In contrast with the fulsome drones or spare, flinty textures Davies explored on the first two releases, his deftness with instrumental preparations yielded something wholly new when he began using the lap harp more regularly with Wound Response. But whereas that release was raw, distorted, amplified, his latest sounds – both in the condensed harmonic range of its explorations (the smaller harp has only 20 strings, compared with the 47 of the large one) and in timbre – like ice made acoustic. Davies continues to use Ebows, fans, and other like devices often used by improvisers to manipulate strings, but he puts them to singular use. 

Somewhere between what he admits is the instrument’s natural tendency to produce beautiful sounds and the violence of his preparations and improvisational attack, this music springs forth. The bright, at times nearly brittle sound often suggests a zither tuned too high, or an autoharp with frozen strings. Each of these short studies combines these distinctive techniques and timbres with a manifestly folkish quality. Davies arpeggiates incessantly, pausing at points of density for maximum tension. He lets the notes fall away from the end of the phrase, and they tumble entrancingly (just check out this effect on the opening “Soaked Ruins of a Raft”). 

The different sounds from track to track sometimes give the impression that Davies is switching pickup positions. “In Distortion-Free Mirrors” sounds boxy and woody, like he’s using a thumb-pick too. One of the strings seems to flatten, maybe from the force of the attack, giving this track (and others) a kora-like effect. The glorious insect chorus on “The Rule Was” recalls gagaku court music, too (and Davies has spent time listening to these and other idioms). Elsewhere, wind seems to sweep away some of the rougher elements. “Each Clear and” is so lush and spare, filled with gorgeous rippling chords as Davies climbs the scales and floats back to the bottom. The chiming resonance of “Continues Placement” sounds almost like a piano in places, with rough cuts and prepared strings creating fascinating “dirty” effects against the “clean” playing (hear this, too, on the gentle, mandolin-like “Fingers Pluck Played”).

 As the recording wheels toward its conclusion, the array of effects is wider still. Notes flicker and click on “A Cut Circle” almost like a player piano. Davies renders the harp tinny and percussive on “The End of Now.” “Outward Radiating Against” is like a burbling traditional harp serrated by saws. “Each Annulling the Next” and “Wet Thru Mine Stones” course with the sound of strings springing out of tune, or automated chopsticks twisting the harp apart from the inside. And we reach a kind of buzz and throb that carries “On the Outer Reach” to the disc’s conclusion. 

Hearing this music in the context of Pedwar is fascinating. In time, it may stand as the culmination of a phase of Davies’ work or just a fascinating entry in his transformation of his instrumentalism and his method. Certainly the shift inaugurated with Wound Response and continued on An Air Swept Clean of All Distance is suggestively analogous to changes elsewhere in the history of improvising strings (consider, say, a shift from early 1970s Bailey to Hans Reichel or Fred Frith). However the listener chooses to adduce these changes, Davies’ solo music over the past fifteen years is continually bewitching. Stay tuned for the next document, and in the meantime consider Pedwar an essential release.