James Rushford Turzets

The latest in a prolific string of solo and collaborative releases by James Rushford, Turzets collects a pair of newworks primarily created and recorded last year while the Australian composer-performer was in residence at LaBecque, an art center on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The side-length piece "Fallaway Whisk" explores hesitationin its many forms_reticence of speech, sonic restraint_using live, abstracted translations of text from English toGerman against a lush and swelling soundscape. On the flip side, "Quire" is a work in ten movements influencedby the composer's study of late medieval repertoire on portative organ, weaving the instrument's woodsyinterlocking melodies with angelic Yamaha CS-80 synth sweeps and stuttering glitches. The combined effort issomewhat a departure for Rushford, working in traces of Klaus Schulze, concrete poetry, and ars subtilior into aprecise and ever-unfolding tapestry.Rushford's work draws from a wide range of collagist and improvisatory musical languages, staking out anidiosyncratic stylistic space that has been variously described as "electro-acoustic experimentation with a beatingheart" (Boomkat) and "haunted Jacobean ASMR" (The Wire). Investigating the creases, cracks, and folds intraditions ranging from early music to New Age, Rushford's work subtly exaggerates seemingly liminal aspectssuch as atmosphere and the bodily presence of the performer until these take on a weight equal to musicalelements such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre. In recent years, Rushford's solo work has been guided by histheorization of sonic images, particularly the shadow, which has inspired pieces as diverse as an hour-longcompanion to Federico Mompou's 1959-67 piano cycle Música Callada (2016) and a sumptuous translation of theplay of light across flat surfaces into synthetic sound (The Lake from the Louvers, Shelter Press, 2021). Hislong-standing performance practice for piano, portative organ, synthesizers, and electroacoustic devices, isconstantly infuse...