Worried About The Fire

About

Experimedia presents the fourth full length solo album by Kansas-based Aaron Martin. A former collaborator of artists as diverse as Machinefabriek and Dawn Smithson (Sunn O))), Martin originally devised 'Worried about the Fire' as the soundtrack to a short film and the record sees him deconstructing preexisting snippet, sketches and samples from various collaborations and solo performance. All prior restrictions were set aside as Martin forwent his regular live-approach, untypically using electronic processing and effects and editing the parts without limiting himself in any way. Still built around his set-up of cello, banjo, harmonica and organ, there is an unsettling installation-character to the work, with distant echoes of acoustic instruments shining through the ghostly fabric of these twelve short piece. Mastered by 12k label-head Taylor Deupree, 'Worried about the Fire' has however not only turned out a dark and demure work, but also one of brittle beauty - ranging from the meditative cymbal-space of 'Ice melts' and the broken-Piano semblance of 'Blue Light' to the consoling Ambient-Folk of 'Making Rope'. Written & Produced by: Aaron Martin Mastered by: Taylor Deupree Photography & Design by: Jeremy Bible CD in professionally produced, offest printed, custom engineered, 18pt, 5 x 7, 6 panel packaging in crystal clear 1.6mil resealable poly bag. Detailed photos coming soon. Your order of the CD through http://experimedia.net includes an immediate bonus download in a variety of format. Water Tongue is to be featured on The Wire Tapper 23 CD included with all issues of The Wire (April Issue #314). //fluid-radio.co.uk The cello is arguably the most diverse of stringed instrument, offering depth and moody basses to convey doom and foreboding sound, while still maintaining the ability to transmit music of hope and immense beauty wrapped in a rich melancholy. Over the last year the experimental, modern classical scene has been treated with a healthy body of cellists with David Darling lending his talents to Dakota Suite’s "The End of Trying," Hildur Gudnadottir releasing "Without Sinking" on Touch and Danny Norbury’s "Light In August" all some of the highlight. Returning in 2010 for his fourth solo album, Aaron Martin, the Australian born, Kansas based multi-instrumentalist, releases "Worried About The Fire," an album certain to be noted in this year’s collective of cello recording. Originally conceived as the soundtrack to a short film, the album is actually a deconstruction of previous solo and collaborative recording, meshed together with electronic sounds and post production processing. It is an album that slowly lures you in. Starting with downright dark, hypnotic drone, "Albee" is an unnerving opening laced with subtle string sounds over a looping humming of noise. It’s a track that offers no clues as to what will follow, and indeed the set-up of harmonica, banjo, organ and bell sounds that feature on this album throughout bring an ambiguity to the overall sound. If Aaron Martin does have a trademark amongst his ongoing expansion of sound, it is with his layered, loop-based composition. The first hint of this is on "Open Knife" a beautifully detailed cello composition showcasing the full range of delivery of the instrument. "Water Tongue" allures the listener, highlighting the depth of sound Martin evokes from his cello playing, with the warmth of his slow low notes juxtaposed with fast rhythms as his bow scatters over the higher one. While these tracks perhaps define the Aaron Martin sound, and are indeed the most accessible to listen to, the album is rich with very dark, often unsettling music that never detract from the album’s overall composition. A standout track perhaps is "Beaver Falls" which builds slowly from a layering of strings and wind sounds to launch seamlessly into a cinematic scoping of cello. It conveys images of chases through forests (at least with me!), and exemplifies what this album is all about. Mastered by 12k label head Taylor Dupree, there is an intimate sound here, and often one can picture themselves being in the same room with Aaron Martin as he joins all his music together. Overall the crafting of each track is reflective of the album as a whole and just as Martin has been able to successfully layer a multitude of different instrument, "Worried About The Fire" stands as a meshing between darkness and light; proving chaos can exist in the most graceful surrounding. -By Josh Atkin //tokafi.com The cover of Aaron Martin’s fourth full-length album, Worried About the Fire, depicts a row of bare trees under an icy snowfall. The picture is a perfect indicator of the music within—chilly and eerie drones of bowed cello, harmonica, humming sound, and samples altered beyond recognition quietly encircle one another in dark and beautiful miniatures that together create a dark and evocative work. Most of the pieces are built around a single droning note, from which other timbres slowly stretch to create beats of dissonance. As additional alien sounds enter the sonic palette—a note bowed over the bridge or fingerboard to create a natural sense of distortion with overtone, glissing harmonics chopped up and manipulated, canons of sawing strings—the listener becomes engulfed in a dark and textural world. All but one of the pieces clock in at less than 4 minute, but each manages to suspend one’s perception of time so that every composition constitutes its own miniature journey. "Blue Light" floats electronics and breathing sounds moving between the speakers while strings sift weightlessly through a sea of reverb. In "Albee," a sound reminiscent of a tiny helicopter circles dreamily around delay-heavy hits of a vibraphone-like instrument. "Water Tongue," easily the least droning of the composition, layers emotional folk-like cello melodies over a descending bassline, As high-string tremolos fade in and out with the quiet scratch of bows scraping against bridge, the piece delicately snowballs to a sustained moment of icy ecstasy. It’s no surprise that Worried About the Fire was originally conceived as a soundtrack to a short film. The music seems a perfect accompaniment to a ghostly snowfall or a sedate but disturbing dream sequence. These are experiences as much as they are piece. While the album as a whole delicately builds to a number of climaxes—the relentlessly looped strings ¾ into "Marked In Dust," the intensely building 8th note cello figures that close "Beaver Falls"—much of the music has a floating, aimless quality that makes for psychologically sonic textures more than narrative piece. As abstract as much of Worried About the Fire i, the album makes for an engaging and beautiful listen that consumes you in its textural world. The fact that the pieces are similarly constructed results in a uniform listen where each composition floats into the next while at the same time standing uniquely alone. A score for a film that may or may not exist, Worried About the Fire makes for a deeply and evocative experience that conjures plenty of images of its own. -By Hannis Brown //boomkat.com By now it's probably safe to stop introducing Aaron Martin with references to his prior collaborations with Machinefabriek and the like (oh darn, I've just done it anyway); he's become a major player on the improvised electroacoustic scene in his own right, and Worried About The Fire is his fourth album. The cellist and all-round one-man soundscape devised this new collection of works as a score to a short film, and finds him shirking his usual live approach in favour of processed, electronically edited material. This doesn't interfere with the language of Martin's music (the cello, banjo, organ and harmonica constituent parts remain key) but it does give Martin the opportunity to work in a more composerly fashion than his usual style would dictate, stripping the music of its emphasis on realtime layering and the structural limitations that implie. The album begins in a tentative fashion, spinning a percussive drone through a phaser on 'Albee', before 'Ice Melts Onto Fingers' deconstructs the atmospherics with bell, cymbals and a kind of minimal harmonica fanfare. It's only by 'Open Knife' that Martin's recognisable musical idiom reveals itself, and from here on the string arrangements really start to flow, from the quiveringly melodic majesty of 'Water Tongue' to the suspenseful discord of 'Reed Tunnel', complete with bowed saw. The album's twists and turns make for an always-compelling sequence, and Worried About The Fire is almost certainly Martin's most in-depth and varied long-player to date; 'Wires Of Glass' finds him spinning through loops of vinyl crackle and choirs of meandering, wordless vocal, while elsewhere you encounter the likes of 'Blue Light', whose mysteriou, dissolved plucks sound like a piano being played somewhere in the blurry distance. 'Beaver Falls' (presumably a place name rather than a prompter for aquatic mammal schadenfreude) proves to be exceptionally beautiful too, filling its three-minutes with slippery, multilayered high frequency glissandos that eventually cement into rhythmically urgent bowing figure. The recording is such that it sounds as if Martin started out the piece at the back of the room, before eventually making his way towards the mic for a dramatic finale. There's much to absorb here, and Worried About The Fire makes a strong case for being Martin's most assured and mature statement to date. The polish on the finished product is commendable too - Taylor Deupree handles the audio mastering while the opulent, oversized digipak ensures this is a finely dressed release to boot. //bleep.com Machinefabriek/ Sunn O))) collaborator Aaron Martin is back on disc agin with this stunning solo effort packaged in a scintillating DVD style card slipcase and naturally limited quantities available. Worried About The Fire was originally conceived as a soundtrack piece composed of cello, guitar, banjo and piano, now through the wall of heavily processed electronics do these instruments bleed, leaving us enchanted by a thick haze of sound. Tip for fans of Richard Skelton, Hildur Gudnadottir. //normandrecord.com Our very own Business Lady was just commenting that she's glad she's not into the stuff that always seems to come in these oversized packs 'cos it'd fuck up the carefully-arranged Habitat filing systems in her inner-city penthouse. Brian solves problems like these by losing difficult to store items before he's even got them home. Aaron Martin's new one comes packaged in this way ("professionally produced, offset printed, custom engineered, 18pt, 5 x 7, 6 panel packaging in crystal clear 1.6mil resealable poly bag" if you're really asking) and it's got pictures of trees on it. Look! Trees! On the disc you'll find a collection of brief pieces featuring sounds ranging from piano to cello to organ to the reasonably unidentifiable, all processed into sound-arty type shapes which beautifully evoke a variety of mood, generally of the slightly unsettling variety. Good shit. //vitalweekly.net Last week I traveled a small bit with Rutger Zuydervelt of Machinefabriek and I couldn't help noticing that he has collaborated with a whole bunch of people which I never heard of, mainly from what can loosely be called 'modern classical/improvisation'. The name Aaron Martin was not mentioned in this connection, but its also someone Zuydervelt worked for his 'Cello Recycling' (see Vital Weekly 564). This new release, I believe the first pro-pressed one for Experimedia, is my first proper introduction to the music of Martin. He started out on guitar and drum, but at the age of seventeen he switched to the cello. He has already had a bunch of releases on various label. 'Worried About The Fire' started out a soundtrack to a short film, but here, on CD, he uses bits of that to create new work, and adds along the road also cello, banjo, harmonica and organ. Some of it is treated electronically and appears in various layers throughout the twelve piece. Martin's pieces are rather short, which I thought was a pity. His minimal approach is well-suited, I think, to play pieces of music that is beyond the three minute mark. Often employing a few sounds per track, which are all 'played' (as opposed to 'sampled'), there is natural element in the music, which could be expanded, perhaps into some more 'formal' minimal music approach. That is a pity, as it seems now a bit too 'sketchy' in approach. That's a pity, I think, as there is great potential in the music. Also the recording sounds a bit hollow, like it was recorded in a big open room with some natural reverberation, which add a bit of unwanted treble to the music, and is not as warm as it could have been. This especially is the case when the cello is heard, and not in the various other instrument. However all of this is minor stuff. The music throughout is very nice and thoughtful. Modern classical in approach, recorded through the methods of improvisation, carefully constructed (I assume) on a computer. Nice one. (FdW) //dwar.radio6.nl DOWNLOAD RADIO SPECIAL - MUSIC AND INTERVIEW .

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