#sandy ewen

So, what might one call the music on See Creatures Too? Sandy Ewen (guitar, devices) and Lisa Cameron (berimbauphone, percussion, devices) do not traffic in beats, melodies or harmonies, so some might be tempted to characterize what they do as abstract. Or one can take refuge in the fact that while the first half of this double cassette was made in the studio, and the other contains music recorded at a couple concerts that took place in Texas during the last quarter of 2019, Ewen and Cameron tend to make music playing together, in the moment. Why not call it improvised, and get to listening, okay? Go right ahead, but if your find taxonomy useful, you might find categorizing Cameron and Ewen in with Derek Bailey and John Stevens, or the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, or Zakir Hussain and Shivkumar Sharma is about as useful as describing both Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as songs. It’s objectively true, but doesn’t tell you much. 

Another term comes to mind — concrete music. This is not to be confused with musique concrète, which may employ “concrete sounds” (ie recorded sounds) as raw material, but generally involves a whole lot of abstraction. Ewen starts at a different place from most guitarists. Instead of beginning with a particular technique, she begins with a guitar. She may apply metal objects to its strings and body, which in term rests upon her own body (Ewen puts her instrument on her lap). And she undeniably uses an amp to make her sounds louder, and pedals to cut sounds on and off. But she works with the essence of the electric guitar — vibration, electricity, metal and wood. And if you watch a video of Cameron dueting with Ewen, you might see her hefting a drum before an amplifier, but what you hear is pure feedback. Both musicians get at the essentials of their material, and they are sufficiently in tune that it’s possible to listen to them and not know who is playing what sounds, or even get too hung up on the fact that a “them” is making them. The sounds themselves are irreducible and concrete. 

This release is not the duo’s first effort, and their first recording, See Creatures, is pretty swell. But this follow-up feels less like to two people playing music, and more like an ongoing interaction between essential sounds that could only have been made by these two people, but isn’t about the people so much as the sounds. And you don’t have to value this writer’s efforts to describe or categorize their work to grasp that they make something essential.