Husk · Jonathan Coleclough & murmer 
2006 · Digisleeve CD · ICR57 · ICR · UK

Release date: 31 May 2006

‘Husk’ is the first product of an ongoing collaboration between Jonathan Coleclough and murmer (US born composer Patrick McGinley.) They first met in 2002 after appearing on the compilation LP ‘Chaleur’, and soon began work on the material that would become ‘Husk.’ Sharing a fascination with using ‘found sound’ in their music, ‘Husk’ includes recordings of refrigerators, thunderstorms, sheep, car horns, ferryboats, windblown sand, crackling charcoal, as well as more conventional instrumental sounds including a variety of percussion instruments. Much of the music started as live improvisation, in one case during a radio broadcast on McGinley’s regular ‘Framework’ slot on the London-based radioart station Resonance FM. These live recordings have been carefully edited and mixed over several years.

‘Husk’ is packaged in a 6-panel Digisleeve featuring photographs by Patrick McGinley.

The first 200 copies of ‘Husk’ include a second CD of pieces recorded over the same period. A further 47 copies (only 25 of them for sale) include both CDs plus an additional uniquely packaged CDR, each one containing a unique composition. The music for these CDRs is based entirely on recordings made in McGinley’s home in London during April 2006, his final month there before moving to France.

murmer’s website: http://www.murmerings.com/

‘Husk’ is released in three versions:
Standard edition: ICR57 (edition of 700)
Special edition 1: ICR57 + ICR58 (edition of 200)
Special edition 2: ICR57 + ICR58 + ICR59 (edition of 47, only 25 for sale)

Tracklist:

CD · ICR57
1. Husk (30.36)
2. Approaching Pucara (14.30)
3. Fieldwork (7.51)
4. Germ (21.19)

Bonus CD · ICR58
1. Wend (20.55)
2. Freon (15.16)
3. Pucara (8.49)

Bonus CDR · ICR59
1. Nevill (approx 5 minutes: each version unique)

Available directly from ICR at http://www.icrdistribution.com/

Reviews

Are they artificial or natural? Analog or digital? Coleclough’s recordings of the natural environment are masterfully produced, evoking mysterious abandoned buildings or walks through a forest at dusk.
Christina Kubisch, writing in Artforum Magazine’s ‘Best of 2006.’

In his previous collaborations with Colin Potter, Andrew Chalk, Tim Hill and most recently Lethe, Jonathan Coleclough has demonstrated his ability to distil sonorous frequencies, impressionistic tones and smeared ambiences from any given source material or field recording into supernal, droning compositions. Patrick McGinley, aka Murmer, also manipulates field recordings and environmental sounds, often emphasising the tactility intrinsic to each of his sources. Together, they make a formidable duo.
While the exact source materials for the four tracks on Husk aren’t specified, enough information can be gleaned from the sounds to connect the dots if one wishes. The 20 minute title track is a sinewy composition, bouncing distant metallic clangs and windswept debris across the stereo field, multiplying resonant shimmers into a chorus of singing electrons. After an undulating series of phasing shifts (reminiscent of Coleclough’s Period solo outing), ‘Husk’ crescendos on a threatening torrent of protracted, shadowy sonics.
‘Approaching Pucara’ situates a vaporous drone behind an occasional growl from what sounds like a motor agitating a wire. The strategy of layering a tactile event on top of a fluctuating tone is a commonplace within the realm of dronescaping, and this piece is not the duo’s best. ‘Fieldwork’ and ‘Germ’ are more successful. The latter derives exquisite interplay from a tangled network of hissing textures, and the former surges with the bleak Isolationist language of Thomas Köner. Barring a flaw here or there, Husk stands as one of the finest drone records of the year.
Jim Haynes, The Wire, issue 270, August 2006.

Both McGinley and Coleclough are men armed with microphones. You can see them crawling behind refrigerators, admist sheep or out on the street capturing the traffic. Of the two, McGinley is usually the one with a lesser extended sound treatment and leaving sounds as they are, whilst Coleclough is the man to treat the sound to such an extent that nobody can recognize the original. That is already a most promising start.
Much of the material on this CD started as a live improvisation, at least that is what we are told, as it certainly doesn't sound like it. After careful editing, which seems to me the work of Coleclough, the rest is spread over four long pieces.
The first time around I was listening to this CD in a totally new house, in a new house block, with some work being carried out still. The occasional drilling outside interfered nicely into the music, which had a similar drone-like character, but in the end the whole thing is less rigidly orchestrated than the usual drone record. Field recordings of all sorts drop in and out with irregular intervals, thus creating a slow but lively mixture of drone-like sounds that go on, but change to quite an extent, and sounds dropping in and out. Bell like sounds, engines or whatever is hard to identify.
This is quite a beautiful CD. Another fine addition to the small but great catalogue of both artists.
Frans De Waard, Vital Weekly, issue 531, June 2006.