Duncan Harrison & Ian Murphy - Slow Lightning
Sham Repro. SR-002. LP/DL
‘We better do it now’ are the first words you here on this Duncan Harrison, Ian Murphy is it a split, is a collab lovely slice of wax courtesy of Sham Repro. Assuming you play the Duncan Harrison side first of course. The words are spoken by the man himself and I know this because he has a distinctive voice. If he wasn’t doing whatever it is he does during the day he really should be working in radio, such are his languid easy on the ear intonations. I’d personally stay up until well after ten o’clock just to hear him read the late news on Radio 4. Yes I would, really. Or why not give him a show documenting what it is that goes on in Brighton in terms of the undergrahnd guvner. Because for quite some time now Brighton and its outliers have been producing some deep and nutritious loam from which all manner of sounds have sprouted. As soon as this sodding virus sods off I’m straight down there just to take pictures of the rotting pier and collect some field recordings, soak up the vibes, get me some mung bean salad and pay six quid for a pint without flinching. Its been too long Brighton. I think I’ve said this before but it bears repeating.
I don’t know how long it is Harrison and Murphy have been knocking around the south coast but it seems inevitable that those working within similar spheres within the same post code will eventually come together and as far as I’m aware this is the first time its happened between the two. Thats if this is a collaboration? Their names adorn each side of the record and each track is given a title but each bears similarities within the sounds too especially with the inclusion of Harrison’s voice, oh that voice, appearing on both. A collaboration then? Maybe or maybe they’re just working with each others sound and why not because they compliment each other to a great degree.
‘Mount Zion Bathed in Lightning’ and ‘New Index of Delusion & Error’ are both collections of sounds and voices that you’d find on either of their solo projects, Murphy with Hobo Sonn and Harrison under his own moniker but here something special seems to have happened. That its taken both of them five years to put this together shows that this is no chucked together amalgam of sonic detritus as done over a weekend down in Hove when Seymour just happened to be in town. This is a heady ride in the world of found sounds, field recordings, tape muck, samples and decay and its one of the best things I’ve heard this year.
Murphy’s side has the rhythm of skateboard wheels on uneven paving, a computerized text converter voice mangling various pronunciations of fellow south coast luminaries, records slowing to halt after the turntable has been turned off, voices edited to reveal bits of words, the end result being a sea of mangled form. There’s vinyl crackle and Harrison saying ‘fuck you’ and he can say fuck you to me for as long as he wants, his words tumbling over each other between duck quacks as two seconds worth of The Clangers moonlike soundtrack appears. An abandoned piano being pounding precedes a sublime five minutes worth of Basinski like looped decay thats studded with high-hat hip-hop beats, buried Broadway sing-a-longs and operatic tenors. Thats quite some trip.
A short video on the Sham Repro website gives us some idea as to how these sounds were collected with Harrison traveling through barren landscapes and sitting at street side cafes, a two and a half minute, cine verite exploration in which the camera never stays still while capturing beach cats and Harrison forever glimpsing over his shoulder in european market squares.
Harrison’s side was recorded in Jaffa, Ramallah and the Roedale Valley and its where we find the going a little darker; passages of granular ultra murk culled from deep pocket crackle boxes, broken tape recorders, pan scourer scrubbing marathons, outdoor gobby sessions, obscured voices, words spoken into Dictaphone’s that emerge as meaningless lullaby babble, its where Sunday morning church bells sit next to delicate piano melodies, a Saturday afternoon in a Brighton cafe with everyone speaking at once. But please, let Duncan speak alone for a moment.
Certain people whose opinion I value highly, have been speaking of Slow Lightning in glowing terms, record of the year and all that. I don’t think they’re that far off the mark.
https://duncanharrison.bandcamp.com/
https://ianmurphy.bandcamp.com/
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