Lefthand Meditations
Glaswegian sonic alchemist Alistair Crosbie's
Lefthand Pressings label released a glut of new
CD-R releases in April – musicforawakening, Scarlett
Dies, All Suns Must Set (Prelude To Wanderlight Falls)
and a collection of previously unreleased works melded together
across two discs, Cinders. The music contained in these
four hand-crafted and beautifully-packaged releases range from the
ethereal and uplifting processed guitar of Scarlett Dies,
the deep bass tones of All Suns Must Set, to the eclectic
Cinders, containing fragments of everything from icy piano
works to spoken word passages to poetry to pulsing electronica.
'I started writing songs before I could play anything,
when I was about eight or nine,' says Crosbie by email. 'My parents
took a little persuading before I was eventually allowed a guitar.'
Aside from a few demos of what Crosbie describes as teenage angst,
his musical education was entirely classical, learning classical
guitar initially before becoming more interested in the wider reaches
of sonic possibility and sound processing. A major influence on
Crosbie's immersion into more esoteric territory was when he began
working with Brian Lavelle in 1993; the collaboration
freed Crosbie from notions as bland as form and structure, diving
into 'a world of loops, backwards tapes and raiding the kitchen
for percussion... I loved it – it was satisfying, fulfilling even.'
Time in Eye Shaking Kingdom with
Moon Unit guitarist Ruaraidh Sanachan,
also known as Nackt Insecten, produces fond memories
for Crosbie. 'We started playing together to see what would happen
and eventually hit upon an amped-up twin-Casio attack that was much
louder and noisier than the vast majority of my work. We did several
shows. My favourite was perversely the longest. Ruaraidh suggested
we start at the exact point when the doors opened so we did, playing
an epic set to a slowly filling room – the last 15 - 20 minutes
were ecstatic.'
After a diversion into electronics between 2000
and 2003 as d/compute, it wasn't until 2006 that
Crosbie felt happy enough to release music under his own name. Crosbie
reveals himself to be a complex, almost troubled individual. 'I
wanted my music to be communicative of the things I struggle to
communicate in words. After the metaphorical dust has settled on
this period, I'll decide how successful I have been in this aim.
And that will influence whatever follows.'
In his biographical Arena documentary,
Brian Eno spoke about the influence of choral music
on his textural work, and some of that elegiac, emotional quality
can be heard in Scarlett Dies, musicforawakening
and last year's shimmering mini-epic The Last Days Of Summer,
which Crosbie says comes from a conscious place. 'Some of the pieces
concern very specific events both emotional and actual, often both.'
'I did an album called The Study Of Cycles
in 2007,' Crosbie elaborates. 'In the six months or so that preceded
the recording of this album, my grandmother fell ill and was later
diagnosed with dementia. The album specifically concerns this and
is effectively an extended essay on communication.' For that piece
Crosbie used nothing more than his voice. 'The first piece is clearly
vocal but wordless. In the second the voice has been processed beyond
comprehension and the third piece is an extrapolation of single
aaah – so I'm using fewer and fewer actual sounds as it progresses.
The added sadness was of watching her disappear in mind – this inevitably
added a weight to the music and I ended up concluding the album
with a mostly improvised a cappella piece which made this explicit.
That's it at its most blatant, I think. Other pieces are – necessarily
– more occluded, but there are always things that just sound good
and don't carry any further significance – at least not consciously.'
'I've been fairly insular these last few years,'
Crosbie says when asked about other influences on his work, but
the effect of his surroundings is writ large. 'I'm very, very fortunate
– I live in a city which is home to a first class live music scene
with excellent venues of every size, some superb music retailers
and, more to the point, I have such gifted collaborators. I freely
admit to having drawn inspiration from them and their working methods
and I hope I've added something for them in return. Glasgow is also
a very artistic city and I can very happily spend time in the various
galleries, especially the Gallery of Modern Art which has occasionally
been home to musical performances as well – I saw AMM
play there in 1997.'
'I think one's location and circumstances will always
influence one's work. Some artists have had the freedom to do this
on purpose, but most of us just adapt as we go along, sometimes
unwittingly. Glasgow also has its aggressive side and my alienation
from that plays a part.'
Turning to his work, Crosbie becomes self-conscious
and reflective, even uncomfortable, once again, describing the music
made under his own name as being 'an attempt to finally deal with
some things that have been ongoing for quite some time. This has
probably not been healthy.'
In an email advertising the new releases, Crosbie
wrote of All Suns Must Set thus: 'Endings are an inevitable
consequence of beginnings and they should be neither feared nor
resisted to any greater degree.' This suggests an acceptance of
the concept of 'impermanence', which appears as a continual theme
in Crosbie's work, with many of his song names reflecting predictable
finalities.
'I certainly agree that this is the natural state
of things and it intrigues me how resistant to the notion people
are. Look at Flickr. “6,734 uploads in the last minute” – we document
our lives and our culture at a faster rate than anyone could possibly
hope to absorb it. My angle is less general than that – some of
the conclusions that my work concerns are very specific and, in
some cases, it’s how I didn’t feel that persists. The upcoming Wanderlight
Falls album goes into a bit more detail. I hadn’t really spotted
how many of the recent releases fit with this theme but I’d have
to agree that they do. I know that an era of my work is definitely
drawing to its conclusion. That’s not a decision on my part, it’s
just happened.'
Cinders is a double 3” CD-R compilation
which comes in one of Crosbie's customary lovingly hand-made sleeves.
Wrapped around the cardboard is a reel of four-track tape, supposedly
long enough to form a small tape loop, from the previously unreleased
work 'the skills programme', released under the anagrammatical alias
Sir Eric Sailboat. 'Cinders is actually
one of my favourite releases. The nature of the release is that
all the pieces somehow fell by the wayside – some didn't fit on
the albums for which they were recorded, some were interesting experiments
that never found a home, some should have been released but it just
didn't happen for one reason or another. So there's an element of
taking care of the strays. Plus, I really liked the idea of doing
a Faust-Tapes style collage. It felt like a good time to do it –
almost like the out-takes reel that sometimes gets shown at the
end of a television series. It's a nice contrast to the longer scale
that I often work at.'
2009's The Last Days Of Summer, with its
eddying textures and submerged melody was constructed using only
guitar and provides a clue to Crosbie's working methods. 'It's based
around a loop played on a slight alternate tuning. I then overdubbed
six or seven other parts, all played in real time, all finishing
on a sustained e-Bow note. After some consideration and remixing,
I spun the track at half speed and then added the normal speed version
back over the top at a cross rhythm to the half-speed version. After
a little EQ-ing and editing, I finally judged myself happy with
the results. It was typical insofar as it went through a few incarnations
before it was finished. It's actually very rare that something is
actually finished the first time I think it is – many of my sound
files are marked with legends such as “absolute final mix", "last
ever edit" and so on.'
Scarlett Dies employed a similar process,
and produces an effect not dissimilar to hearing ships docking in
a harbour owing to some deep swells of sound, whereas All Suns
Must Set saw Crosbie switching to bass to create textures that
at times sound unexpectedly like a church organ. 'The bass chords
were played with the attack removed, either manually with the volume
knob as I played, or by adding fades-in afterwards. These were then
layered and mixed together until I was happy.'
Given his apparent predilection for guitars, you'd
be forgiven for thinking that these are Crosbie's instruments of
choice. 'I think my favourite instrument is probably the piano but
I don't have one and I've never had a lesson in my life so the guitar
comes out more often. I've played guitar for nearly 25 years so
I'm comfortable with it in my hands. That said, over-familiarity
can be a problem – it's hard to do something new with an instrument
you've played for so long. The characteristic I like most is the
same as the piano in fact – the ability to sound some notes together
and then let them resonate. My right foot is rarely off the sustain
pedal when I play piano.'
All of which makes an earlier focus on electronics
somewhat incongruous. 'The d/compute thing was quite specific. I
was very interested in rhythm for a while – especially creating
rhythm patters and loops separately and then putting them together,
almost randomly at first, and then seeing which combinations produced
something worth pursuing. My interest in that left me very suddenly.
In fact, I was actually on stage at the time.' Half-way through
his set, Crosbie decided that electronic rhythms weren't where his
head was at, and d/compute was quietly packed back into its box.
'I still use a lot of electronics and computer-based processing
but I can't see myself heading back to rhythm any time. My research
is complete,' he concludes.
Excerpts of the new releases and some exclusive
material can be found here.
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