#scatterArchive

[dustedmagazine]

Pat Thomas —كنز القلب [KANZA AL QALB] (scatterArchive)

Pat Thomas has been a strong presence on the English and European improvisational scene since the 1990s. His contributions as pianist and co-conceptualist in the quartet  أحمد  [Ahmed] have elevated his profile a bit, but that’s certainly not the sum of his work. He also plays electric keyboards and electronic devices, both solo and in ensembles, and his improvisational methods find freedom where others might perceive roadblocks; for examply, he has a long-running partnership with Orphy Robinson that honors their shared roots by pointedly incorporating Caribbean styles into free improvisations.  

القلب [KANZA AL QALB] is the fifth in a series of Thomas solo releases on Scatter Archives, a Scottish label whose pay what you wish, download-only catalog is quite a trove. This music on this album, like its predecessors, is completely electronic, initially performed on an iPad loaded with the software sampler Kontakt and subsequently warped using IRCAM’s Time Stretch application. Its title serves to underscore a point made clear in the interviews that Thomas has given on the occasion of أحمد  [Ahmed]’s two recent releases, Wood Blues and Giant Beauty;that Islam and mystic awareness are at the heart of Thomas’ creative practice. القلب [KANZA AL QALB] translates as Treasure of the Heart, foregrounding the belief that the heart holds knowledge that the intellect can’t grasp. It seems significant to apply such a statement to music made entirely by electronic means, just as it’s important to note that a lazy listener might mistake it القلب [KANZA AL QALB] for a record of inscrutably organized percussion and strings. The point, one supposes, is that what you see and what you’re told aren’t as important as what you deeply feel and what you do.

In this case, Thomas is manipulating the sounds of bells, cymbals, and other metallic objects which he has extracted from easily obtainable freeware. Hacks use this stuff to make ignorable soundtracks every day, but Thomas obtains from it something genuinely strange. Frequency-tweaked, digitally melted, temporally disrupted, and carefully collaged, the closer you listen to them, the further they retreat from familiarity. Sounds flicker and melt (“REFLECT”), dart and drip (“QALBC”), or smack messily back and forth across the stereo spectrum like deafened, caffeinated, flak-jacket-clad bats careening through HVAC vents (“REFLECT 2”). Mystery, this music demonstrates, is close at hand and completely procurable through ordinary means.

Bill Meyer

[gianttankeh]

A new Off Brand album on scatterArchive.

Firas Khnaisser & Ali Robertson hit record and tanned a couple of beers while their families watched the Eurovision Song Contest and the results have been released TODAY by scatterArchive. You can stream, download & purchase this new album here.