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OFFICER:  Paragraphs and Principles
OFFICER: Paragraphs and Principles

Coming out of left field this, is - to say the least – enigmatic; it’s also confident and full of detail, with some 30 musical contributors, constantly changing instrumentation and shifting musical styles, making it musically uncategoriseable. Loosely hung on the work of British composer, improviser and political activist, Cornelius Cardew, it mixes references and re-figurings of some of his work, as well as one straight rendition (Winter Potato No.3) using, apart from almost conventional song form, collage, pastiche, spoken and sung text, quotations and snippets of documentary recordings, all painstakingly assembled out of commissioned contributions mostly recorded separately (both temporally and geographically), then assembled and mastered. Not that you can tell, the sound and the musical coherence are excellent. Mick Hobbes is the MC and contributors include fellow Work members Bill Gilonis and Rick Wilson, Andy Bole, David Kerman, Catherine Jaunieux, Xentos Fray Bentos and Jeroen Visser. Harry Gilonis has written thorough and erudite notes that illuminate each track but, Feldmanlike, allow them to hang free with multiple threads linking them but no contextualizing root - what five decades ago we would have called postmodern. Engaging, baffling, naive and hyper-complex by turns it's a record I strongly recommend to the curious and to ongoing participants in the long art conversation that goes back to the ‘60s.


Code: Paragraphs
Price: £14.50