subsidence [2012-16]
electric, steel-string slide guitar (2 players) [30’]
commissioned for the RMIT University Sonic Arts Collection, 2015 for the ELISION Ensemble
recordings
Huddersfield Contemporary Records. Performed by the ELISION Ensemble [Daryl Buckley & Peter Neville]. Purchase/download here.
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further reading
From body schema to score: creating spatial grammars in contemporary electric guitar practice. Daryl Buckley. PhD Dissertation. RMIT University. Melbourne, Australia [2015]
performance history
7/19-21/2023 - Recording Session Residency. hoodwink. EMPAC. Troy, NY
3/19/2022 - Collegium Novum Zürich [Stephen Menotti & Kevin Fairbairn, slide guitar]. Krypta Grossmünster. Zürich, Switzerland.
12/7/2019 - ELISION Ensemble . Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Melbourne, Australia.
9/21/2019 - ELISION Ensemble. JOLT Sonic Festival. Melbourne, Australia.
2/22/2018 - ELISION Ensemble. Brunswick Green. Melbourne, Australia.
2/12/2018 - ELISION Ensemble. La Mama Musica. Melbourne, Australia.
10/24/2017 - ELISION Ensemble. Southwestern University. Georgetown, TX.
5/20/2017 - ELISION Ensemble. Paine Hall. Harvard University. Cambridge, MA.
9/21/2016 - ELISION Ensemble. RMIT Storey Hall. Melbourne, Australia.
reactions
“[…] a 30-minute pitch-black spiral down into slack strings and popping pickups. A seriously dark piece […]” -"Albums to look out for in 2020", Tim Rutherford-Johnson [ The Rambler ]
"[…] the amplified instrument is a stethoscope revealing the microsonorities hiding within ostensible noise. Throughout the disc, ELISION’s prodigious virtuosity pushes beyond itself to what lies on the other side: queer, strange, insatiable vitality.” - “Group Innovation,” Liam Cagney [Gramophone]
program note
subsidence plumbs a nearly featureless world of soft but charged noise to reveal its subterranean motion. At times static, at times turbulent, the movements and behaviors within this noise embody a geologic heaviness and hugeness. Named after the gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land, subsidence enacts a slow concentration of matter and energy which give way to a protracted, eventually cataclysmic implosion. Press into the earth - all your weight - a gradual subsidence.