Two new releases: Snare drum & turntable textural studies LP / automatic music handmade tape

Graham Dunning / Colin Webster – Terrain
Snare drum and saxophone explorations of texture and timbre. Released by Raw Tonk on 1st June, LP and download
https://grahamdunning.bandcamp.com/album/terrain

Graham Dunning – Play It Today
Handmade tape of two extended automatic compositions: one using mechanical/electroacoustic soundmakers, the other using an algorithm and rave samples.
https://fractalmeat.bandcamp.com/album/play-it-today

Pilots 28 – Dent de Lion, video by Amy Cutler – features the track Scaling from Terrain.

Graham Dunning and Colin Webster have worked together since 2014, and to date have recorded six albums as a duo as well as two trio releases with Sam Underwood. Until now the duo have utilised the same instrumentation – Colin on saxophone, and Graham on turntable and additional hardware.
On Terrain, Graham moves away from the turntable and exclusively plays snare drum and objects, often manipulating the skin with motors and fans. Combined with the saxophone, a sonic world is presented and then sustained without much noticeable development. In this respect, the nine tracks of Terrain can be seen as a series of textural studies. This different way of working for the duo eschews the usual rapid-fire dialogue that is prevalent in most improvised music.

Graham Dunning: snare drum & objects
Colin Webster: alto & baritone saxophonesRecorded at Sound Savers, London on 13 July 2018
Engineered by Alex Clegg
Mixed by Marlon Wolterink
Mastered by Dirk SerriesArtwork by Colin Webster
Layout by Rutger Zuydervelt

Raw Tonk Records 2020

Below: the making of Side A of Play It Today, using mechanical rotation (and a bass synth) to make a constantly shifting sound collage.

Recorded May 2020 using the Music by the Metre method.
Edition of 20 tapes, individually recorded with hand made recycled covers, and digital download.
The recordings were made with automated systems which were left to run, each tape recorded in succession so that each is different to the last while containing sound from the same set of sources.

Side A uses locked groove records, synth pulse and physically triggered home made instrument, the featherphone.

Side B uses the live-coding program TidalCycles: an automated composition that shifts tempo, timbre and rhythm over time, different parameters changing randomly or with different phase relationships.