Anthony Burr & Skuli Sverrisson - A Thousand Incidents Arise (Workers Inst, 2005)

mp3 / 320 / 106mb / rs | rel. nov 05

"Following on from the debut release from (Sigur-Ros string section) Amina, and the recent new album from Johann Johannson, this intriguing label delivers its third, and most moving release to date. Anthony Burr and Skuli Sverrisson have a collective CV which would have the average leftfield musician choking with envy and getting jiggy with the hyperbole as they tried to plump it out and challenge a list which includes Jim O'Rouke, John Zorn, David Sylvian, La Monte Young and Ryuichi Sakomoto to name but a scant few. Having first come together a little over ten years ago, Burr (bass clarinet) and Sverrisson (bass player) took to each other immediately and have plumbed an increasingly minimal electronic well for inspiration ever since. Yet whilst the digital obsession produced some friable results (notably 1997's circuit-feedback release), Burr and Sverrisson seem to have rediscovered their roots with 'A Thousand Incidents Arise' featuring just as much deeply wrought instrumentation as it does static tickled excursions. All extended pieces, the likes of 'We Shall Be Sure of Not Going Astray' and 'Except in Memory' have overt song structures in their shrouded elegance, whilst elsewhere 'Change Is Far More Radical Than We Are First Inclined to Suppose' reveals a love of drone amongst the stirring bass creased bedrock. Anything but incidental."