Scott Taylor/srmeixner
Please keep clear at all times CD (E34)
A collaborative album between Scott Taylor, whose previous releases can
be found on the Sijis, Touch, and Con-V labels, and srmeixner, once a
member of the influential UK group Contrastate. ‘Please keep clear at all
times’ consists of three tracks, combining musique concrète, field recordings,
and other source material (the piano of Kenneth Kirschner and recordings
by M.A. Tolosa on Kirschner Wind, and vocals by Jonathan Grieve on The
Sound of X) into dramatic soundscapes. The latter track, composed by an
additive process of file exchange, is a radical re-working of a live srmeixner
concert recording made by Scott Taylor. Aside from recording work,
Scott Taylor and srmeixner also run, respectively, the Lapilli and Black
Rose Recordings labels.
First edition of of 300 copies.
£8
Sam Davies in The Wire
All three tracks are great pieces of haunting, cinematographic field
recordings and careful electronic treatments. Great stuff.
Frans de Waard at Vital weekly
—
The music of Taylor and Meixner collects memories of a by now un-
reachable past, putting them right into the wrinkles of minds that got
raped by too many easy listening tortures. Kenneth Kirschner’s piano contributes to a general state of corporeal abandon in ‘Kirschner Wind’,
whose sparse chords bathing in a suburban atmosphere are a delicate
threat to the excess of solitude. ‘Nothing falls into place’ is all subsonic turbulence and nocturnal insight amidst industrial loops and noises.
‘The Sound of X’ features the softly bewailing voice of Jonathan Grieve, between rumbling shadows and aquatic pressures in what’s maybe the
only track containing slight references to Meixner’s past work with
Contrastate. Yet, this is not that kind of psychedelia, rather an
engrossing, even disturbing concoction of skilled composition and
unique electro–acoustic visions. Highly recommended.
Massimo Ricci at Touching Extremes
—
There are bursts of tonality, and even fragments of melody. These arrive
most frequently in the track Kirschner Wind, where gathering heads of
steamy static evaporate suddenly into startled piano notes. Throughout…
there’s some involving play between the colder regions of the white noise
spectrum and warmer tonalities, such as those created by filtered and
processed piano. The pair play with dualities elsewhere, especially in their
use of the familiar pattern of tension and release. The presence of found
sound is more subtle. This is a headphone record, not only because of the
carefully weighted mix, but for easy to miss details like some distant field-
recorded harmonica. Taylor and Meixner don’t use these elements to create
juxtapositions or illusory shifts of space and place but rather to import
atmospheres — such as the rain recording on Kirschner Wind — to effect
slight but distinct adjustments of ambience.
Sam Davies in The Wire