The Escalation by The Escalation
An occasional project for two guys who lived in the same small town in New Zealand. Peter Wright has had a long career - emerging from the post-punk Industrial miasma of early '90s Christchurch into an open landscape of drone-based guitar improvisation. Bruce Russell's career is even longer, hobbled to the shadow of his eternal supergroup, the Dead C. His solo guitar playing is really the relevant touchstone here, starting as an experiment with the live support of pre-recorded analogue tape-loops, eventually he felt capable of defying a paying audience with just a guitar. Out of that tragic struggle he has emerged as a plausibly flexible improviser in duo settings.
This album documents a summer afternoon at the Lyttelton Coffee Company in 2014. Filmed for the 'speculative documentary' On an Unknown Beach (dir. Adam Luxton/Summer Agnew) - see it where you can. The session was also recorded by Peter Wright on a borrowed zoom recorder, and this LP is the eventual result. Frequencies hover, half-baked rhythms emerge and subside, riffs die in embryo and 'we all go home barefoot'. In the words of Thomas Pynchon - 'right fuckin' on!'
Tracklist
| 1. | Towers Rise, Towers Fall | 16:37 |
| 2. | (Complications Of) Geometry | 17:39 |
Credits
Bruce Russell + Peter Wright: Electric guitars, amplifiers + electronic devices.
Recorded live to a Zoom digital recorder at the Lyttelton Coffee Company, 5 January 2014. Edited by Peter Wright, April 2014 + March 2021.
This session was filmed + edited to feature in On An Unknown Beach (2014), a film by Adam Luxton + Summer Agnew.
Artwork + layout by Peter Wright. Film stills reproduced with permission.
THANKS! Adam Luxton, Summer Agnew, Jo Burzynska, Stephen Mateer, Manjeev Muker, Ted Lee.
The vinyl edition of this album is limited to 150 copies, issued on Bunkland Records, Distant Bombs + Feeding Tube Records.
VINYL PRE-ORDERS available from 12 November:
AOTEAROA: Flying Out: flyingout.co.nz
USA: Feeding Tube Records – feedingtuberecords.com/releases/st-3/
UK: Bunkland Records – bunkland.bandcamp.com/album/s-t-blr23-distant-bombs-043-ftr638
Distant Bombs 043
FILM: Towers Rise, Towers Fall
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-hvfXYKrtA
WATCH: On An Unknown Beach vimeo.com/ondemand/onanunknownbeach
WATCH: The Escalation live at The Christchurch Art Gallery: christchurchartgallery.org.nz/multimedia/gigs-at-the-gallery/the-escalation
