Steven Hess & Christopher McFall – The Inescapable Fox
Posted In: Christopher McFall, Matt Shaw, Steven Hess, Steven Hess & Christopher McFall – The Inescapable Fox, The Inescapable Fox, Under The Spire
Comments: One Response
We begin with hushed piano chords, coming slowly to the foreground, I imagine an old stand up piano, sat in the corner of a slightly neglected room but well used and loved all the same.
Some kind of disembodied voice calls out on a loop, sounds like it may be on an old vinyl lp, I could be wrong. I do know that “The Inescapable Fox” relies heavily on analog tape recordings passed back and forth through the mail between Steven Hess and Christopher McFall. These tapes both treated and untreated make up much of the source material here. These tapes are used to incredible effect.
The sounds and texture that emerge from the subtle and simple Piano opening is much more involved and less clear for me to interpret, the sources are obscured, the collage creates an interesting juxtaposition between what I think I’m hearing and the unknown. Mind music of the highest order.
I lose all sense of time as the journey continues, sounds rub along side each other having lost their original context. This feeling of no context or new context makes each sound and each decision of how to use that sound so important, Hess & McFall know what they’re doing, no doubt about it. The pieces fit together very cleverly, this is dream like in it’s form, an audio book of dreams, a sound world that is as pleasurable to journey through the first time as it is to re-visit with new discoveries on each listen.
- Matt Shaw for Fluid Radio
It’s a great release. Loving it.