GRAZING

Two duets with Dominic Lash, numbered edition cdr, ‘petite industrie ephemere 001’

a few copies available.

Reviews:

“Double bassist Dominic Lash and cellist Bruno Guastalla are members of Oxford Improvisers, a collective that also includes keyboard player Pat Thomas and saxophonist Pete McPhail. Their duo recording Grazing comprises two tracks, pastorally entitled “Clover” and “Rye”, each nearly 23 minutes in length. Their improvising is soberly investigative and self-instructive, likeminded yet earnestly attentive. The shared aim is clearly not a matter of pyrotechnics but of correspondence, serendipitous discovery and responsiveness. Caution and exploratory spirit coexist in a manner that works; form without mimicry. There’s a sense of eavesdropping about this music, although with just 100 copies in existence it will remain more or less a private conversation. It’s not idle chatter. ” Julian Cowley, The Wire, June 2006.

“Though based in Oxford, “the city of dreaming spires” (as opposed to Cambridge, which I believe Frederic Raphael once described as “the city of perspiring dreams”), bassist Dominic Lash and cellist Bruno Guastalla have performed with a whole puntful of local musicians and visiting Londoners, and it shows in these two leisurely but often intense improvisations. Events unfold slowly but logically, like chess made audible. Occasionally a surprise move – an unexpected exchange of queens or sudden diagonal swoop across the board by a frisky bishop – prompts a swift and decisive change of direction, but the game soon resumes its stately progress. Orthodox and unorthodox playing techniques coexist without confrontation; both players are equally willing, when circumstances demand, to develop traditional notions of pitch and interval, but are just as happy exploring the outer reaches of friction and percussion on their venerable instruments, in a performance of great physicality and maturity.” Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic, June 2006
The Watchful Ear
The Oxford Times