lawrence english studies for stradbroke

Lawrence English - Feature Article

Where others balk at curdling one's sound with conceptual and referential elements, thinking it a dangerous route in which the musical form is rendered a directive intermediary, a wellspring of epidermal effects that illuminate and inflate its creator, and in turn reduces the listener to the status of peeping-tom, Room 40 label manager and artist in his own right Lawrence English sees reason to fall short of such outright renunciations.

His long-standing label Room 40 has been charmed by the furtive notion of the passage and transmutation of ideas into sound. The most recent results of this approach have taken the form of a series of compilations, from On Isolation to Airport Symphony, all of which chronicle and comment upon to tantalizing result the inextricable reciprocity between sound and environment, and the changes seen in each due to ongoing advancements in instantaneous telecommunications. For English, "projects like this tend to offer a chance for myself and other artists to contemplate change, shifts in understanding and possibility. The idea that art should comment or at least consider the world around it is something that I think still has currency today. We need to be asking questions and developing understandings from a variety of perspectives and projects like these offer a small way to do that". And without prescribing remedies of any sort, these works have shown a good deal of novelty in the unprecedented nature of the questions themselves, in the way the questions have been asked and put to the delegates and others in attendance at the conferences and festivals for which they were specifically fashioned.

With the swarm of activity from the label, though, the solo endeavors of English himself have been noticeably curbed. A scant few full-lengths have materialized over the past decade, surfacing on labels such as Cajid Media, Cronica, Quartermass, and Baskaru, respectively. The music has traversed disparate territories, from slot machine spill-overs of percussion (Pandemic), to field recordings abstracted under the microscopic lens of close miking, and cloaked by thick layers of electronic synthesis (Transit), and finally minimalist collages that shift time with surprisingly delicate electronic fingers (For Varying Degrees of Winter).

The present year, however, promises to see a flurry of activity from English, who has already released albums on Winds Measure Recordings (Studies for Stradbroke) and Touch (Kiri No Oto), with yet another for Taylor Deupree's 12K imprint looming not far off in the distance. Insofar as his first two new efforts are of any indication, his time spent piloting the label has perhaps only helped his formalist pursuits for a communicative sound that, rather than acting as mere decoration, functions actively, creating a scenic rhythm or otherwise expressing the specific manners in which sound furnishes and animates space. As with any work from English, instead of draining out from the plumbing of his brain, Studies For Stradbroke has the impression of being made in real space, and yet it's as strict and calculated as that of any properly composed piece of work, with an immense objective richness as well. There is a remarkable stillness and control to the album, strongly marked as it is by a fastidious interchange of pitches and rests, a precision and delicacy that arranges the sound space such that each subtle inflection, sonority, or sluicing of sound is offered up to the ear for exaltation. As English maintains, "I guess in some respects I have a deep affinity for environments and enjoy experiencing them both for their sonic qualities, but also for their influence in other ways. Be that urban or remote places, there's usually something to be found there, something new to be experienced or discovered and that's really satisfying to experience. Even this past weekend I managed to visit Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth and came across some truly great sound spaces around the swamps that dot the inside of the island - complete with the world's largest and most hungry blood sucking insects! Everywhere you visit has the chance to reveal a new sound state".

His most recent, and perhaps most poignant foray into the dynamics of space and one's relationship to it through sound, may be found in Kiri No Oto, his album for Jon Wozencraft's Touch label. The recording stands as the first installment in a series of works that will canvass the distortions in perception induced by extreme mists, sea sprays, and the like. English' production gives one a sonic panorama that stretches way into the distance. During the course of the album, with its harmonic density and continuous yet confusing rhythm of emergence and secrecy, the listener is brought to the other side, right into the proceedings, one's ear becoming but "another layer of auditory fog". The duration and extent of the multi-faceted fatigue experienced in this constant process of relocation is as wondrous as it is wearing, though, to be sure, this seems in keeping with English' approach to the act of listening: "Listening, in a musical sense at least, works ideally at a range of levels in any given situation - physical, emotional, cerebral etc - and in the best cases combines all of these areas into one swelling experience that's powerful enough to move you in some memorable way. In Kiri No Oto English has his most astute rendering of his own obscure object of desire - a work whose concept and technical acquiescence in no way limits his aesthetic ambition, but rather upsets what it has taken as given, and urges it to travel further still.

Max Schaefer

Signal to Noise, issue #51 fall 2008. feature by Max Schaefer