Cassette Review // Roxanne Nesbitt / Ben Brown / Marielle Groven "Play Symbiotic Instruments" (Small Scale Music)

https://smallscalemusic.bandcamp.com/album/play-symbiotic-instruments

A small piano piece brings about the song of scattered strings.   Those keys return and take turns with the strings, but then also percussion comes in and it all feels like we're in such a hurry.   The sound of the piano reminds me of church and everything else just feels so hectic it's like we're quickly rushing out of that church for some reason.   This is both the calm and the storm.   There is this feeling both of scratching at strings, bottles being rolled around and it all together just comes out with some sense of being eerie as well.

This all comes to a head, then we have this rhythm of a beat with a glass being dinged, a zipper being pulled and then strings are plucked within it as well.   It is making quite the normal song sound but with the use of non-traditional instruments.   It's growing, it's like that piano jazz and it's also just so smooth on the ears.  It's liquid.  It shakes and rattles now, as the keys vibrate.  The strings slowly build as if on the sea.

It grows darker with the bass and then we go into this rattling of a bottle with piano keys with much more bass.   This is the type of song you might hear at a funeral: slow and sad.   As this grows with the strings, you can really begin to hear the bottles rolling around- that glass sound- and yet it also still remains somewhat sad in the chaos.   The strings slowly sneak through now like a Hitchcock score.   Every time it feels like it might be winding down, it just comes back more powerful.

Tones now- such as through the glass- come out in a way which might sound like church bells.  I do hear church a lot in this cassette and it's likely not a coincidence.   There is a little bit of scraping behind this and I think of this Claymation Christmas Special which had these bells in it ringing.   But that goes away as the percussion kicks in, real slick like a "Rock On" way.   The rhythm of this now feels like a snake, slithering up to its prey.   As this grows, so do the pianos.  

That banging, which feels like glass but it also of a bowl I presume, can be heard as we start the flip side.  There is also that sound of when one rolls something around in a bowl, which perhaps did not originate with Jay Peele but that's where my mind always goes.   Strings come through as if they are breaking, and then this all just begins to feel like a broken carnival ride.   The piano keys seem to echo that feeling as well.  This is like one of those wind up toys that's just breaking down.  

The tones now shift to that of one of those big clocks that tells you what time it is with their sound.   But it's also kind of bouncing around, the way the opening score to a film filled with suspense might.   This takes us into a deeper bass with the drums and it just sounds like slow metal, like Liturgy.   It moves through something between jazz and rock, as the percussion crashes and all other sounds seem to follow suite.

We start the next song now with what reminds me of the ticking of the clock.  There is some sort of distortion type effect here, as it pushes out then quickly pulls back in, all the while the sound of that ticking feeling more like a bowl being tapped.  It all comes together in a flurry at the end and I feel like this entire piece of music just launched straight up into space.