Steve MacLean

CUTLER, CHRIS and STEVE MACLEAN: The Year of the Dragon Code:ReRCCSM1 Price:£12.50

A collection of 5 songs and 4 instrumental pieces that explore equally - and simultaneously - spontaneous performance values, close compositional detail and extensive processing. Made out on the rocky coast of Maine with just a TV eye keeping tabs on a world skidding to hell in a handcart, all the basic work was done by MacLean and Cutler with Julie Thompson (voice) added later - alongside additional parts played by Frank Gross (bassoon), Michael Bierylo (laptop, samples, circuits) and Titus Abbot (bass clarinet and saxophone). These are complex, focused pieces, some highly rhythm-rooted - mostly at rapid bpm rates - generally wide open with a close receptivity to timbral nuance and non-linearity.

 

"Steve's fourth CD for us is a remarkable set of pieces for mediated acoustic piano that operates in the shadowy territory between what is playable and what is programmable; between narrative simplicity and performative complexity; between hopeful intentionality and flawless execution. Unusually, Steve has put our ear right inside the piano, sans artificial reverberations and blurring tools and, over the course of the CD, various musical dialects are explored and extended - from the plausible through the exquisite to the impossible. MacLean also mines a subtle complexity that offers more on each audition and, occasionally, an extreme (of Nancarrowistic speed or sound amplified through gongs). The process remains impenetrable, so what remains is the listening. In Steve's long and varied musical career he has consistently explored new compositional techniques and new technologies (he teaches at Berklee in Boston) and this is no exception; a unique take on the acoustic piano."