album // Still Moving Light
Still Moving Light was recorded as musical accompaniment by Simon Fisher Turner for dance collaborations with Rosemary Butcher. The dance troupe who realised these pieces included Russell Maliphant, who has also worked with Barry Adamson, with a collaboration most recently at The Barbican (click here to read my review). Music for dance pieces has always intrigued me, in particular the scores that John Cage and David Tudor prepared for Merce Cunningham, simply because - in my simplistic worldview - I can't work out how it's possible to put dance to something so non-linear, and often free of a discernible and regular rhythmic pulse. Then again, that's probably why I'm working in investments rather than as an artist.
I listened to this Cherry Red album after hearing Turner's album Swift under the guise SFT, and the contrast is quite remarkable. Where Swift is a selection of jazz and tape works that are often abrasive, but also often soft and emotive, the music for Still Moving Light concentrates on the latter. The wispy tones and subtle atmospheres remind me very much of the frozen tundras of contemporary minimalist Thomas Koener, while the simple piano refrain that informs 'Fragment 21' as well as other tracks elsewhere on the album reminds me of both Roger Eno and Harold Budd. The sequence 'Fragment 21', '2 White' and 'Displace' also feature a heavenly choir of female vocalists, wrapping their way around the pads and synths. It's a fundamentally quiet album that requires a similar level of silence in which to manifest itself.
This is a satisfyingly long and also highly absorbing suite of music that is never cloying or tedious to listen to. Part of the reason for this is its dreamlike, and quite mysterious air, especially the repeating piano passages when they come in. The pieces flow together to create one long suite, but are punctuated with occasionally ushered-in miniature sound events - a flurry of maudlin cello and violin, a cut-up well-mannered Joselyn West urging us to 'cut and save / paste' on 'Still', the beginnings of a rhythm on 'Recover' and 'Change Of Speed'. There are also moments of tension, of gathering speed, that arrive suddenly; for example, the sound of sheet metal being struck, the reverberations creating miniature ripples of sonic activity as they retreat.
The sleevenotes are nothing but brief regarding Turner's music, the instruments used etc, but they do detail the names of the members of the dance troupe. The sleeve simply enforces the view that this music was intended as an accompaniment to the music, and just as the dancing would be different without the music, the same is true ofthe music without the dance, leaving you wishing hopelessly for a DVD version to return this music to its original - and intended - context.