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Period
Jonathan Coleclough
A beautiful piece based entirely on sounds from a Bluthner grand piano, looped
and extended into long, drifting, calm drones with occasional punctuation of recognizable
notes slowly resonating. The piece becomes "Periodic" at the hands of
Colin Potter, whose remix of the piece turns it into a more dark and haunting
experience which reveals even less of the characteristics of a piano than the
original. Two complimenting, yet also contrasting, views of the same material
which both show a great deal of depth and cohesion. All wrapped in a full color
cover designed by Jonathan and featuring his photographs.
"Like many of my pieces of music, the finished version of 'Period' is
very different from the idea in my mind which I started out with. The idea acts
as a seed and the piece grows, often in unexpected ways, from that seed. So
I was extremely pleased when I heard Colin's remix of the piece, because he
had transformed the piece into something much more like my initial idea. He
had returned the piece full circle."
reviews of the original LP release:
from The Wire:
"Jonathan Coleclough is a relatively new Deep Listening composer, but
one who deserves a place with the experimental Ambient pantheon that glorifies
the work of Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, and :zoviet*france:. 'Period,' a vinyl
only release and his third solo album, draws all its sounds from a Bluthner
grand piano. With each key that Coleclough strikes, he has rigged up an undefined
set-up (perhaps a series of interlocking delay pedals creating a delicate feedback
loop or an acoustic device of various strings and springs which act as a modified
Aeolian harp) to generate beautifully resonating tones, which appear at first
to sustain indefinitely yet almost imperceptibly begin to show signs of decay.
When a spartan cluster of impressionistic notes trickles from the piano's soundboard,
Coleclough has an amazingly rich drone to work into gradual shifts and modulations
until another series of gentle piano notes is required. The flip side of the
record is an exceptional piece on which Nurse With Wound and Ora collaborator
Colin Potter reworked the original source material. Potter's contribution entitled
'Periodic,' effectively erases the obvious references to the piano, leaving
befind a densely tangled web of calm reverberations." - Jim Haynes
from the 9th issue of The Sound Projector:
"Two long beautiful pieces from this talented English musician / composer.
He released Windlass in 1999, an epic voyage into the heart of a siren-like
drone. The piano side 'Period' is much calmer than that tempestuous release,
comprising a repeat-structure of a few simple acoustic piano notes against a
soothing organ backdrop. The flip side 'Periodic' is a much more complex and
extremely slow-moving drone, something which would not have felt out of place
on the Isolationism compilation.
Coleclough often works with a very simple and small sound source (something
as basic as a metal scrape), but through intensive reworkings inside his computer
these sounds build up into something gigantic, as wide as the horizons in Montana
and as deep as the Grand Canyon. The computer is used merely as a processing
tool; there's nothing in the end product that resembles the usual harsh digital
effects we sometimes associate with that area of working. Rather, Coleclough's
sounds are 100% human, deeply moving, and apt to mesmerise you in such wise
that, like the couple photographed on the cover dwarfed by a magnificent landscape,
you will want to pause to take stock of the vastness of the world and everything
in it. Humbling." - ED PINSENT
from Aquarius Records:
"Quite happy in releasing sporadic productions in painfully small pressings,
Jonathan Coleclough has been one of Aquarius' favorite dronologist / deep listening
composers and one who deserves a place in the experimental ambient pantheon
that glorifies the work of Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, and Zoviet France. 'Period',
a vinyl only release, draws all its sounds from a Bluthner grand piano. With
each key that Coleclough strikes, he has rigged up an unknown set up (a series
of interlocking delay pedals creating a delicate feedback loop? an acoustic
device of various strings and springs which act as modified aeolian harp? it
probably doesn't matter) to generate beautifully resonating tones, which appear
at first to sustain indefinitely yet almost imperceptibly begin to show signs
of decay. When a spartanly placed cluster of impressionistic notes trickles
from the piano's sound board, Coleclough has an amazingly rich drone to gradually
shift and modulate until another series of gentle piano notes is required. While
this piece would be enough to warrant high praise from all at AQ, the flip side
of the record is an exceptional piece on which Nurse With Wound and Ora collaborator
Colin Potter reworked the original source material. Potter's contribution entitled
'Periodic' effectively erases the obvious references to the piano, leaving behind
a densely tangled web of calm reverberations. Totally amazing!!!"
from Massimo Ricci:
"In the growing (and not always interesting) field of droning, Coleclough
is really good as we all know, and this vinyl LP is no exception. This record
consists of two long tracks: "Period" is made of piano chords treated
with long, long reverbs and "Periodic" is an additional reworking
of those frequencies, with the help of Colin Potter. The result is, in some
instance, just astonishing. You get static soundscapes, low drones, barely audible
harmonics and so on. I had wondered why putting this out on vinyl, since I believe
this kind of listening is made for CD...but it really doesn't matter, this is
a great record anyway and - furthermore - the vinyl quality of my copy is excellent
indeed - no noises at all."
reviews of the CD reissue:
from Aquarius Records:
"One of Aquarius's favorite drone compositions, Jonathan Coleclough's
'Period' was originally released early in 2001 as a limited edition piece of
vinyl on Anomalous Records and has now been reissued with an extended mix of
the title track that is better suited to the CD format. Coleclough began collecting
field recordings and transforming them into emphathic dronescapes back in 1989,
around the same time he began corresponding with Colin Potter about his ICR
cassette projects. Since then, Potter and Coleclough have worked closely on
a number of projects starting with Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate in Ora, and
culminating more recently with their well-received 'Low Ground' collaboration.
'Period' again finds Coleclough employing the production / engineering talents
of Potter (who has also been working quite intently with Steven Stapleton in
Nurse With Wound). Throughout his career, Coleclough has defined himself as
a sound organizer, modifying acoustic events and field recordings to enhance
the emotional resonance that he finds in those sounds. Here on 'Period,' Coleclough
draws all of his sounds from a Bluthner grand piano, surrounding the spartanly
placed clusters of impressionistic notes with a complementary set of delicately
fluctuating drones. Coleclough does well to accentuate the sublime reverberant
decay that follows the piano's sustained tones. Furthermore, Potter offered
his interpretation of the source material entitled 'Periodic' which effectively
erases the obvious references to the piano and leaves behind a densely tangled
web of calm reverberations. As a whole 'Period' stands as an amazingly rich
and balanced piece of work on par with Brian Eno's 'Thursday Afternoon' and
the Cindytalk piano improvisations. Aquarius has also gotten in a limited number
of the double CD sets of 'Period' which features a third mix of 'Period' by
both Coleclough and Potter, and a gorgeous track called 'Summand,' which is
a re-working of some of the source material that Coleclough brought to the 'Sumac'
sessions with Andrew Chalk. There's only 300 of those double CDs in print. Don't
blame us when they sell out!"
from issue 223 of The Wire:
"The motion of light on water" is how Jonathan Coleclough prefers
to explain his music, acquiring the poetic whisper of careful deliberation that
is characteristic of Bernhard Gunter's written words. The British drone explorer
seeks out the tiny imperfections and unique variations within a long continuous
sound which enable his compositions to capture the interest of an audience throughout
an extended duration. Few artists have had the ability to pull off such an unassumingly
difficult task, but Coleclough has had the good fortune to work with several
of them, notably the hermetic Andrew Chalk (who has turned his talents to the
Mirror productions with Christoph Heemann) and the versatile Colin Potter (who
has often leant his sympathetic engineering ear to Nurse With Wound). Within
Coleclough's most recent set of recordings Period / Periodicity and Low Ground,
both Chalk and Potter do haunt these beautiful recordings, though Chalk's presence
is far more ephemeral than Potter's hands-on collaborative and engineering work.
Period / Periodicity is the extended CD version of Coleclough's Period LP, also
published by Anomalous. For the Period / Periodicity recordings, Coleclough's
source material is entirely the piano, whose clustered notes he massages into
variable, evanescent washes of sound. These pointillist marks smeared through
digital effects do recall previous successes at piano driven ambient music --
in particular Eno's Thursday Afternoon and even some of the piano impressionism
sprinkled throughout the Cindytalk albums -- but Coleclough's sensibility and
pacing is even slower and more sparse. His use of the piano in conjunction with
his assortment of blurring techniques activates a subtle, but distinctly present
tension between harmonious purity and unnerving dissonance. Throughout this
sprawling double-disc album, the most obvious references to the piano are gradually
done away with, as Potter contributes a reworking of Coleclough's original piece
by entangling all of the piano reverberations to such an extent as to effectively
erase the original notes. Coleclough completes the album with an extended buzzing
drone, constructed from some of the source material for the epic Chalk / Coleclough
Sumac sessions. - Jim Haynes
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