June 08
Latest CDs reviewd in the July edition of The Wire by Brian Marley:
"If the material that has turned up on CD is truly representative, some of the most interesting improvisation during the last few years has been made in Ireland, and Fergus Kelly, David Lacey, Dennis McNulty and Paul Vogel have had a hand in much of it. They seem able to move freely and unselfconsciously between improvisation's various sub-genres, doing things in their own sweet way. McNulty and Vogel play computers, Lacey is a percussionist whose kit includes electronics, and Kelly plays the Cabinet of Curiosities, an amplified acoustic instrument of his own making.
The ritual tolling with which the Trinity College Chapel performance begins reveals the room's cavernous resonance, and the members of the quartet engage with it as much as they do with each other. In this unbroken 34-minute performance they cover a lot of ground, and the music moves through several distinct phases. As with some of the best group improvisation, its evolutionary narrative is characterised by temporal lulls, sudden developmental spurts and systemic mutations. From moment to moment the direction that the music will take is often hard to predict, and there's not a dull moment to be had.
On Leaching the Pith, Kelly's principal source material is a performance given by the quartet, in the same chapel, in 2004. Although the resonance characteristics and the instrumentation are the same, Kelly abstracts elements from the material and in the process de-emphasises the cohesiveness of the group as well as altering the pace and graduated flow of the music. He teases out elements that were tightly woven into the music's fabric and, in looping and modifying them, gives them an entirely different complexion. The CD's seven pieces, and in particular those in which the source material is represented by only a time-stretched snippet, such as "Shear", "Afterimage", and especially the exquisite "Lulling the Limbs" shimmer in and out of focus like a mirage."
Cheers Brian !
April 08
Two new CDs now available through my MySpace site: Fergus Kelly: Leaching The Pith, composed from live and studio recordings made by the quartet of Fergus Kelly: cabinet of curiosities, David Lacey: percussion/electronics, Dennis McNulty: computer, Paul Vogel: computer.
The second CD, Kelly/Lacey/McNulty/Vogel: Trinity College Chapel 8 October 2005 is a live recording of the quartet recorded in Trinity College's spacious and resonant chapel, as part of the Loving Architecture Festival.
A sound art compilation CD by Aphasia Recordings was recently released on which I have a track called Fanfare For An Uncommon Man (in memoriam Paul Burwell 1949 - 2007). More information here
September 07
Site update well overdue... recent months have seen the release of two new CDs: A Host Of Particulars and Strange Weather. The former was created from recordings of prepared bass and metal percussion which have been well and truly ground through the mill of electronic processing to produce corrupted cacophanous artifacts which have been hammered into relentless insistent patterns and free-floating tactile forms. The latter is a 3" CD of compositions created with recordings made in Chicago, Dublin, Helsinki, London, Madrid & Recklinghausen 1986 - 2006.
Photos have now been added from recent appearances at the I & E Festival in Dublin, Apostates in Limerick, and the Darklight Festival in Dublin. A 5 minute edit of footage shot at the Darklight Festival has been uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed below.
I will be doing a duo gig with David Lacey on Thursday September 6th, at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios in Dublin as part of the opening of Volume 4, their annual sound art show, this year curated by David Crawforth (Beaconsfield). Sharing the bill on the night will be Bruce Gilbert, Nina Hynes, and DJ Tendraw.
January 07
My solo 3" CD, Material Evidence is reviewed by Byron Coley on the Size Matters section of the February 2007 edition of The Wire:
"Fergus Kelly is a Dublin based sound artist. Recorded inside two deserted Guinness vathouses, this solo piece employs detritus as musical instrumentation and offers a brilliantly confusing set of sounds. Densely packed with sonic events, it's really hard to figure out the source material for the sheets of percussion that rattle and scamper throughout the three selections. My favourite bits have dripping water as a backdrop to a kind of circular metallic shimmer, which succeeds in sounding like a worm eating its own tail without becoming droney. Nice trick."
Cheers Byron !
December 06
My duo album with David Lacey, Bevel, has been reviewed by Brian Morton in the Jazz & Improv section of the January 2007 edition of The Wire:
"Good to be reminded that Temple Bar in Dublin isn't only soundtracked by screaming hen parties and disco throb. Bevel's last three tracks were recorded without an audience at Temple Bar Gallery in July 2000 (that should read 2005), while the opening "Whittle" comes from an earlier public gig at Trinity College. Kelly is Ireland's Hugh Davies, shrewd guardian of the cabinet of curiosities, while Lacey provides percussion and electronic asides. It's often very soft, intimate, even introspective, but both men manage to sustain their discipline and sense of order even when the dynamics increase."
Cheers Brian !
Meanwhile, TULCA festival photos, taken by Sean Óg, can be viewed here
November 06
I will be performing in a duo with David Lacey as part of the TULCA live arts festival in Galway on Saturday the 25th of November, at 7pm in the Nuns Island Arts Centre, admission free.
This summer I was invited by Danny McCarthy to compose a piece to celebrate Beckett's centenary, for a CD of 100 one minute pieces, produced by Art Trail, who are based in Shandon, Cork City. On Beckett's taking leave of Ireland he made a final call to Cork, to Shandon, to visit the grave of Francis Sylvester O'Mahoney, aka Fr Prout, a writer he greatly admired. This compilation, "Bend It Like Beckett" is now available from Arttrail and Aphasia.
Here's some background to my contribution:
Ebb (2006) 58"
There are various starting points, interactions and associations for this piece. My first starting point was the use of Dun Laoghaire pier as a location that had resonance for Beckett, famously referred to in Krapp's Last Tape as his site of epiphany, when it was "clear to me at last" what he had been searching so long for as the subject of his work. Though the actual truth of this revelation is rather more prosaic, as it occurred in his mother's seaside house in Greystones.
The pier is a significant site for me too as I grew up nearby and it was a favourite haunt. God knows how many miles I clocked walking its stretch over the years. I loved the sound of the foghorn, how it could be heard from afar, defining a particular sense of the landscape with its long melancholy drone, like some large beast exhaling. This particular foghorn was replaced by a far less interesting one years ago, but, thankfully I managed to get a recording of the old one in 1986. A fragment of this recording briefly appears, low in the mix, about three quarters of the way through.
The main sound that occurs throughout is a gong sound made from a sample of a saw blade which as been pitch-shifted. Beckett was a keen music lover, and his sole musical foray was in 1966, when Claddagh Records made a recording of Jack McGowran reading from Beckett's work, with musical accompaniment by John and Edward Beckett. Beckett himself played gong to mark the division between passages.
Morton Feldman was in the back of my mind whilst assembling this piece. Feldman was a great admirer of Beckett, and wrote an orchestral work, For Samuel Beckett, and dedicated his String Quartet II to Beckett. He managed to get Beckett to write a libretto for his opera, Neither (both of them disliked opera).
There are parallels between Beckett and Feldman, as they both worked with extremely simple ideas which were constantly being whittled down to simpler and more elegant forms over the years. The silence between words and sounds were of equal parity to both. Hence the use of silence as an active element in this composition - breathing spaces for the decay of the sounds. Beckett's phrasing and timing was always very musical. Feldman also scored parts of his work to be played very quietly. Hence the low volume of this piece.
The third sound is made with a prepared bass, used simply because it worked, no other conceptual agenda. The title relates to the natural phenomena of sea movement and sound decay. It was also the original title for Beckett's radio play, Embers.
Meanwhile, I recently took the plunge and joined the exponentially expanding Myspace community, figuring I'd nothing to lose...
June 06
Two new CDs completed; a new duo album with David Lacey, Bevel, and a new solo 3" CD, Material Evidence, of compositions using the detritus and acoustic properties of two ex-Guinness sites in Dublin. This forms part of the work made for the Captured exhibition at The Digital Hub on Crane Street, running till July 7th. Copies of the CD are available from reception, price 5 euros.
Bevel will be launched at The Lazybird Club at The International Bar on Sunday 18th June at 9pm (5 euros), where Kelly/Lacey will give a duo concert, with support from Paul Vogel (computer).
March 06
MP3s now available for perusal on the audio page... a few recent and not so recent bits and bobs from the archive...
February 06
Welcome to Room Temperature... a label initiated for the pragmatic purpose of getting my stuff out there in some form without intermediaries. A solo 3" CD of layered field recordings, UNMOOR, and a quartet studio CD, Kelly/Lacey/McNulty/Vogel, has been produced so far (see releases).
Other planned CDs for 06:
Kelly/Lacey CD of live and studio material - Soundscapes based on quartet TCD chapel recording from 04 - Quartet TCD chapel recording from 05 - Another 3" solo CD of layered field recordings - CD of prepared bass solos well and truly ground through the mill
Hope to get some MP3s up soon, and eventually get to grips with the business of online ordering...
Meanwhile, I will be playing at The 2nd I & E Improv Festival in The Printing House in Trinity College, Dublin, March 31st - April 1st, in a trio with Cork instrument inventor Mick O'Shea and French trombonist Mathias Forge.
