Being under the annoying grip of having to use a VPN has been an irritant living in the city of my employment. Being in Japan led to a horrible surprise in that I have been missing some stunning releases. Thankfully, I have a chance to amend this, so I start with our old friend William Ryan Fritch who comes to us courtesy of the ever-wonderful Lost Tribe Sound. From the label’s Bandcamp site:
“For this record, the primary instrument used throughout was a Cristal Baschet that was custom-built for Fritch back in 2022. It is an instrument unique in its transmission of vibrations through multiple materials and its sound is one that is both beautiful and haunting. It served as the perfect analog for the idea behind the characteristics of adhesion (water molecules binding and attracting to the molecules of different substances).
To flesh out the orchestration of the album, Fritch developed techniques for four complimentary instruments; a cello with 12-foot metal springs attached from each string to a section of a piano soundboard, an analog ribbon synthesizer transduced through a chau gong, a tenor saxophone played directly in front of multiple wind gongs and aluminum resonators, and an upright bass using the multiple springs to attach to the head of a bass drum. Each one of these instruments was mic’d only on the resonator its vibrations were being transmitted to. The effect this has significantly alters the way each instrument behaves, sustains, or shifts timbrally throughout their respective registers and dynamic ranges.
The intention was to create an instrumental palette that was fully capable of unpredictability and volatile singularity. A palette that could also bind to one another, with all their disparate qualities teeming as one. “
