GERM STUDIES ALBUM LAUNCHED
BUY DOUBLE ALBUM & WALL CHART HERE
After 5 years of research GERM STUDIES launches a double album of 198 tracks, with wall chart featuring illustrations by hundreds of improvisers, artists and family members. [July 2009]
BUY DOUBLE ALBUM & WALL CHART HERE
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PRESS RELEASE:
GERM STUDIES (CHRIS ABRAHAMS & CLARE COOPER)
GERM STUDIES FOR GUZHENG & DX7
2CD & WALL CHART (SPLITREC 19, Australia)
Germ Studies is the inspired Australian pairing of renowned Sydney pianist Chris Abrahams, and Berlin-based harpist Clare Cooper – but if you’re expecting a harmonic polyphony of harp and piano you’ll be shocked by the alien landscapes that span the 198 tracks of this double disk.
The unlikely combination of 1980s Japanese synth and 1380’s Chinese harp creates an ambiguous and ambitious music. Although stemming from a language borne of contemporary electro-acoustic improvisation – Germ Studies approaches the path from a very different angle – filled with wonder-ful, ecstatic and unexpected joys.
Chris Abrahams is perhaps best known for his work with the improvising trio The Necks. He has also released 5 solo albums, 5 albums of songs (with the singer Melanie Oxley), as well as many collaborative projects with artists such as Clayton Thomas, Mike Cooper and Stevie Wishart. He has composed for the silver screen and has been nominated for two Australian Film Institute awards for best soundtrack in a feature film. He has also worked in radio, both as producer and as composer, collaborating with sound artist Sherre Delys and the writer Rick Moody, amongst others. A veteran of the Australian improvised music scene, he first began playing the DX7 in the 1980’s and has remained a constant explorer of the poetry in this remarkable FM synthesiser. His deeply personal work on the instrument is obvious from the first undulating sweep of ‘Acid Shower’.
Clare Cooper is keenly interested in extended vocabularies on the concert harp and the guzheng. As a founder of the NOW now Festival and as a gifted improviser, Clare has had an immense impact on the Sydney music community. Since moving to Berlin in 2007, she has performed across Europe, with many of the worlds most venerated improvisers including work with the John Butcher Octet, Kapital Band 1, The Trondheim Jazz Orchester, and forming the international seven piece HAMMERIVER with Tobias Delius, Werner Dafeldecker, Christof Kurzmann, Tony Buck and Clayton Thomas.
GERM STUDIES for guzheng and DX7 stands alone in their collective oeuvre.
Moving from five-second sound bites to five-minute odysseys – the journey that takes you from the first Germ to the 198th is marked by daring flexibility, and distinguished by captivating detail – as if the collected output of Pierre Schaeffer and Todd Dockstadter were being channeled through the quick-fire mind of a chess master.
Not content with the gargantuan output of 198 distinct pieces, GERM STUDIES goes a step further – presenting an A3 Wall Chart with 198 Germ illustrations, depicted in sinister and candid detail by colleagues and friends, from Otomo Yoshihide to Clare’s mum.
More than a collection of improvisations by two imaginative musicians, Germ Studies is a defining document, presented with all the care and attention to detail that these complex, bizarre and beautiful pieces deserve.
“The interplay between artists is never less than enthralling, their actions raw, revealing, and lovingly recorded, a ceaseless procession of sounds veering off in all directions.�
Joshua Meggitt review for Cyclic Defrost Australia
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Buy your very own copy online
HALFTHEORY (AUSTRALIA) or METAMKINE (EUROPE/USA)
We hope you enjoy the Germs.
germstudies.com |Â GERM STUDIES on myspace |Â SPLITREC
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http://visitationsmusic.blogspot.com/
Sitting audience-level following the opening duo’s sprawl of six keyboards and synthesizers on stage, Germ Studies proceeded to play a number of pieces–some improvised, some taken from their newly released double CD, GERM STUDIES for guzheng & DX7.
Words: Nicholas Wells
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[ Full review RealtimeArts65 by Gail Priest here ]
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July 2003 – Piano and pedal Harp improvisations (during the recording of Clare’s solo cd ‘gut’)
July 2004 – extensive DX7 and Guzheng improvisations
December 2004 – begin editing down to germs
January 2005 – germ performs at the NOW now festival
December 2005 – germ performs at the NOW now program launch
January 2006 – germ + Louise Currem (live super8 film) and Xavier Charles (clarinet)
… editing, mixing, mastering
December 2006 – germ completes 198 tracks.
2007 Mastering Germ Studies – changes name from Germ to Germ Studies after learning about ‘the Germs’
2008 Collecting illustrations to accompany Germ Studies. Wall Chart created to accompany the 2CD album. Splitrec Australia offers to release the project in 2009.
Performances:
the NOW now festival 2005 program launch, Sydney
the NOW now festival 2006, Sydney
Articulating Space 2006, Melbourne
Electronic Church 2008, Berlin
Ausland – Album Launch 2009, Berlin
Listen to Germ Study “Whimper” here
For bookings please contact germ .at. gutstring.net
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REVIEWS of GERM STUDIES FOR GUZHENG & DX7
THE WIRE
Review by Clive Bell – September Edition 2009
Chris Abrahams & Clare Cooper
Germ Studies For Guzheng And DX7
Splitrec 2xCD
Like the enchanted porridge pot Grimm’s fairy tales that can’t stop producing food, this is a madly generous double album: 198 duets for Clare Cooper’s traditional Chinese zither (guzheng) and Chris Abrahams’s ancient (1980’s) Japanese DX7 synth. Cooper is a Berlin based Australian improviser who also appears on John Butcher’s recent Somthingtobesaid ensemble album, while Abrahams is pianist with easygoing minimalists The Necks. But Necks fans beware – Abrahams’s heartbeat pulses, digital gargling and mutoid disco sci-fakery are a fierce proposition countered at every turn by Cooper’s non-oriental bowing and scraping. The approach is pretty much one clear idea per piece, which makes for great improvising. Track lengths vary from four seconds to a minute, though there is one eight minute monster, “Neutrino�, which demonstrates the principle of getting your sound perfect – in this case a two-note school – ruler – on – desktop buzz – jam plus a muffled, pumping beat – and then just repeating it.
My only quibble is Cooper’s adamant refusal to reference the history of her instrument. A couple of times rich guzheng-like tones are permitted to ring out, but mainly Cooper treats the zither as a neutral and handily portable sound source. What about that medieval twang thang? However, it’s good to see an album so fully thought through as an artword. Each “Germ Study� has it’s own accompanying drawing, many by fellow improvisers, and the resultant wall chart is warm and witty, a witness to Abrahams and Cooper’s comminuty of friends and co-workers. Five years in the making, it’s a special release. My favourite of the 198 titles: Sting’s Doorbell� (46 seconds).
Clive Bell
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chris abrahams & clare cooper
GERM STUDIES (Splitrec)
three stars
Art comes in all sizes, from cathedrals to earrings, and music is no different. Grand opera is monumental, while what Chris Abrahams (of the Necks) and Clare Cooper do is the miniaturized music that bacteria tap their molecules to. With Abrahams playing a DX7 synthesizer and Cooper playing a guzheng (Chinese zither), they have created no less than 198 tiny improvised duets across two CDs, each one a dialogue of gesture and nuance. There is a fascination in the process, but there are also flashes of humour and beauty amid the unfolding displays of two imaginations hard at work and having fun making incredible shrinking music. The discs come with a poster containing an illustration for every improvisation.
John Shand – Sydney Morning Herald METRO – Australia
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http://www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd/reviews.php?which=4386
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http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/?p=3026
Joshua Meggitt review for Cyclic Defrost Australia AUGUST 8 2009
http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/author/joshuameggitt/
GERM STUDIES
GERM STUDIES FOR GUZHENG & DX7
2CD & WALL CHART (SPLITREC 19, Australia)
My strongest (not fondest) memory of the DX-7 is of a shabby cover
band performing ‘Sunglasses at Night’ on Cottesloe Beach sometime in
the eighties. That sound is a hard one to trace here, fortunately,
where The Necks’s ivory tinkler Chris Abrahams turns his hands to
deconstructing the synthesizer, alongside Berlin-based Australian
harpist Clare Cooper on the guzheng (Chinese zither). The pieces are
very short (between five seconds and five minutes), as are the
gestures: small clinks, spurts, pings and belches, the familiar
language of reductionist electro-acoustic improv. Recorded between
2003 and 2008, this fascinating release reflects such an extended,
intensive period of creative involvement, and is complimented by the
lavish presentation: a book-sized two disc set, with fold-out poster
featuring Anthony Braxton-esque sketchings by friends and colleagues
(Oren Ambarchi, Tony Buck, Stephen O’Malley, Otomo Yoshihide)
representing the 198
tracks/germs that make up this behemoth.
Subtitled ‘198 scratches, itches and ailments’, the analogy with
germs is entirely appropriate – pieces flit to life like mating
cells, making skewed, suprise lurches and appearing generally
feverish throughout. The interplay between artists is never less than
enthralling, their actions raw, revealing, and lovingly recorded, a
ceaseless procession of sounds veering off in all directions.
Instrumentally its an odd pairing, sure, but seen as an updated form
of the violin sonata, in Webern-esque miniature, drawn by post-onkyo
minimalists, it begins to make sense.
Joshua Meggitt
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http://www.vitalweekly.net/680.html
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