Review

Rushes is the most recent missive from the Concrete Gazebo, the Cambridge collective who also run monthly improvisation nights at the Blue Moon pub in the city. There is a pronounced orientation toward drone, but the most apt way to describe this is as electro-acoustic dub noise. The pieces are all concise, ranging from 20 seconds to just under 7 minutes, presumably culled from lengthier improvised sessions. The combined brevity works in the collection’s favour and contributes to the feeling of accumulative sound design. Liquid pulses ebb and flow, complemented and contrasted with the scrape of violins, bell-like tones (from prepared guitars?), and percussive textures. “In The Hole” in particular makes efficient use of dubby delay and reverb. There is no shortage of drone music being produced with much of it veering toward banal, New Aged tastefulness. Fortunately, Rushes possesses an undercurrent of the uncanny that recalls ambiguous landscapes, hidden spaces, and haunted environments. This is evident in the titles – “Tomorrow – Fog,” “Velvet Wood,” “Winter Walk,” even “Deep Suction” evoking the languid hazards of the Fens. “Save Your Energy” drifts on top of breathy flows of what might be processed voices reconstructed as swelling tones. Having witnessed them live I can attest to the way the see-sawing cinematic waves of sound impact on the affective intensity of a place (in this instance, the site of a former barracks in Waterbeach near Cambridge). Like a soundtrack to an adaptation of a rediscovered MR James story.