On Black Falcon long term Australian avant-garde musician Ros Bandt plays the Tarhu, a long neck stringed instrument created by Australian luthier Peter Biffin. If you have chanced across any of her performances or recorded documents you may be taken immediately by her virtuosity and unique abilities in sound compositions, fashioning of musical instruments, spatial and environmental sound engagements. Erdem Helvac, a talented contemporary electro-acoustic musician predominately working with guitar and electronic sound design. Black Falcon is composed as a lament for this Australian bird of prey whose numbers are on the decline and is considered an endangered species as well as the European black falcon otherwise known as the Eleanora falcon.
The seven tracks of this highly evocative work flesh out the idea of the Balck falcon through it’s call, flight, radical freedom and the sense of it within nature. Ros Bandt’s Tarhu at times creates a sound image of a voice of the falcon, imagined but present its calls as much as the electro-acoustic scapes Helvac evokes create a territory for the Falcon. This is one way the piece fleshes out its material which in other spaces does not aim at the descriptive mode as much as creating the mournful reflection on the looming absence of the bird. Bandt’s Tarhu, a four stringed instrument elicits the emotive language to create the scene and content for such an act and Helvac¸lu colors the backdrop with imminent and close atmosphere. Pieces such as ‘Flow of Victory’ feature more of the guitar work of Helvac and strike less of an evocative image but concentrate on the aspects of performance and technique. Similarly ‘Moment of Delicacy’ is a work that is predominately within the ambient electro-acoustic space and the aspects of the Tarhu are abstracted as the emphasis on the manipulation of sound comes to the fore and the piece moves to the possibilities of sound through technology and seemingly oblique to the theme of the album. ‘Returning Home’ as a resolution piece of the album sees Ros Bandt again eliciting the idea of the Falcon and constructing a final narrative to close the album while the pristine drones of Helvac¸lu fill the atmosphere.
Black Falcon is an incredible musical recording of an idea that started in Melbourne at the ABC Studios and was recorded in Turkey. As a sonic experience it has few rivals in the experimental field able to achieve such technical prowess combined with live experimentation, cohesive narrative form and engagement with the edge of music.
Innerversitysound
