Lawrence English - The Peregrine

(Experimedia, 2011)

The Peregrine is a concept album, an audio homage to the J.A. Baker book of the same name, but I haven't read that book and you don't need to read that book to appreciate and utterly sink into English's work here.  Why?  This may be Mr. English's quintessential composition.  And for those well ingrained in the history of Lawrence English, in the wide ranging discography and collaborations, to make a quintessential claim at this point in the game is saying a lot.  Without saying much (I never do), I am trying to say a lot.  This is an album that pulls and meditates, storms and swells, literally takes heart, talons and wings--and despite having never heard of or read Baker's book before English's album, the album falcons about, dominating the landscape like a peregrine peering down over its domain.  English's drones have never been so rich, his composition never so evocative.  I did a brief interview with English about using the book as a catalyst.  He obviously loves the namesake of his album and I couldn't think of a more wonderful way to recommend a literary world than something as thoughtfully and impressively artful as this album is.  Looks like I'll be heading to the bookstore shortly as well.

Lawrence English - The Peregrine (album preview) by experimedia

Minamo + Lawrence English - A Path Less Travelled

Minamo + Lawrence English
A Path Less Travelled
(2010, Room40)
RIYL = Chihei Hatakeyama, Sawako, Stars of the Lid

The album title for Minamo and Lawrence English’s collaborative effort, A Path Less Travelled, doesn’t seem wholly accurate. This path is well trodden. In fact, the music itself, a minimalist drone, actually mimics in a way a heavily worn path, a trail ground down into dust, nearly into disappearance. It’s something I’ve touched on before (something I feel I almost always think of when listening to a new drone album), but, as is always the case when I end up having the strength to post something about an album, A Path Less Travelled manages to be one of the exceptions. Minamo and Lawrence English manage, without straying from the well-worn course plotted out be their predecessors (which includes themselves), to sparkle. A Path Less Travelled though does hint at, in a narrative or visual sense, lonely road. A solitary space, slow, but none the less, a place of motion. The music is gentle and patient, submerging you bit by bit into its sense of warmth and cold, its tinkering tones and small majesty. It’s a beautiful journey, and for those who complete it, A Path Less Travelled manages to add something not easily described to the building blocks of a person. A simple little notch of honesty, beauty and character.

-Thistle

Minamo + Lawrence English - The Path by ROOM40

Lawrence English - Kiri No Oto

Lawrence English
Kiri No Oto
(07.2008, Touch)
Verdict = Quite literally an auditory fog

Lawrence English, label head of Australia’s Room 40 imprint, has let his most recent solo album loose on the equally superb Touch label. Perhaps it is just a means of rest to go through Touch or perhaps a general nod to the label’s similar knack for progressive sound artists, either way Kiri No Oto adds an incredible cog to the Touch catalog and is deserving of a well won vacation because English is at the top of his game here. Listening to Kiri No Oto is as brooding, hazy and indistinct as walking through an endless mist of varying shades of grey. English must have been well aware of this when naming the album seeing as how its Japanese translation is something like ‘sound of fog.’ You’ll just have to listen to discover how incredibly apt that title is. English works with a veritable wall of sound that is simply awash with brick after brick of slowly oscillating white noise. Extremely layered and smartly composed, tracks like “White Spray” and “Allay” break through the standard muted drones with surges of industrial squalor. The basis of the sounds manipulated here is a whole 'nother story as well with the building blocks of Kiri No Oto coming from both found sounds and instruments of far reaching locals from Japan to Poland that English harvested through his own travels. English may not have the same name recognition as contemporaries like Tim Hecker and Fennesz, but Kiri No Oto is definitely a statement that stands with the likes of Harmony in Ultraviolet and Endless Summer. Just check the album cover, it sounds like that.

-Mr. Thistle

Lawrence English - "Organs at Sea"