‘Tangled Goodbye’ is a collaborative, improvised album from decorated solo percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, virtuoso bassist John Edwards, experimental guitarist and cellist Owen Gardner and innovative percussionist and xylophonist Bex Burch.
With a residency at London’s Café OTO as the backdrop, Burch’s ‘messy minimalism’ intertwines with Glennie’s percussive mastery, Edwards’ expansive contrabass techniques, and Gardner’s hypnotic guitar micro-tones, resulting in five tracks that enthrall and reward deep listening, with their unexpected turns and vital dynamics.
Glennie – who has won two Grammys among other awards and nominations, and whose work includes that with Bjork and Bobby McFerrin – has been exploring percussive sounds by listening with her whole body for decades. Virtuoso contrabassist Edwards’ staggering range of techniques has been expanding the role of the instrument as a pillar of the London experimental music and free jazz scene since the mid-1990s, whilst being a near permanent fixture in Evan Parker and Louis Moholo-Moholo’s groups too.
Gardner, best known for his work with Matmos, and the beloved experimental rock band Horse Lords, creates deeply personal and hypnotic microtones on his self-modified guitars, using the ‘just intonation’ tuning system. Burch’s work is characterized by a unique blend of space, repetition, and controlled chaos, as exemplified on her acclaimed 2023 solo album, ‘There is only love and fear’, released by Chicago’s International Anthem, and awarded the prestigious title of The Guardian’s Contemporary Album of the Month.
Safe spaces for free expression and collaboration are becoming increasingly rare these days, but Café OTO in Dalston, East London, has provided that freedom to its community of artists and listeners for more than 15 years. The venue regularly invites performers for multi-day residencies, allowing them the opportunity to present a wider scope of their work than a single concert ever could.
In September 2022, OTO welcomed Bex Burch for one of these residencies, and for one evening, Burch invited Glennie, Edwards, and Gardner to perform an improvised set with her. The results sound wild and free at times, then again quiet and restrained, thriving off dynamics and contrast. Quietness and space gives way to loudness and frenzy, gentle slowness leads into frenetic busyness. What doesn’t change is that it feels vital and alive in every moment.
The base layer of the music is shaped by the two percussionists Burch and Glennie, with sparse melodic elements added by Burch’s xylophone and Garder’s microtonal guitar, while Edwards’ double bass works like a motor, suggesting direction and holding together the compositions that cohere elements of free jazz, noise, industrial, minimal music and musique concrète.
Relying mainly on room mics, without any overdubs. The five tracks on the album were compiled and edited from the most striking moments of a longer OTO set, picked by Burch and titled by Glennie.
Each song title consists of two words – a concrete, relatively specific noun combined with an abstract, airy adjective or adverb that confuses the listener’s imagination, similar to the often unforeseeable changes of direction in the music. How can a goodbye be ‘tangled’? When’s an image ‘liquid’? What is ‘nervous’ attraction? Which toys were ‘stolen’ and by whom?
The album marks the sixth release on Burch’s Vula Viel Records, named after the post-punk band she helms, and follows ‘Skylla’, a Guardian Top Ten Album of 2021, by long-time Vula Viel bassist, Ruth Goller, and ‘Boing!’, the collaborative album with Leafcutter John.
Vula Viel means ‘good is good’ in Dagaare, or ‘the good we do remains’. ‘Tangled Goodbye’ isn’t about commercial scalability, but about artistic expression, about continuing to create, expand and inhabit these spaces.
Available for pre-order now, the album releases 23rd August 2024 via Bandcamp.