A murder of crows cuts a swath through a shimmer of ambient. Lanreath is a symphony opera for drone and indigenous fowl, with common crows, magpies, sparrows and wood pigeons as its primadonnas.
Matthew Shaw, who founded and runs Apollolaan, is the orchestra, playing and treating guitar and conducting the “phonography”, which may mean he runs the tape recorder. What he has created is the sound of standing still in one place – a village in Cornwall – and listening. Which is something we all ought to do more often, because the ambience of the everyday is powerful stuff.
It’s a redacted version of the democracy of sound, as Shaw’s shifting drones mingle with the air in which the birds soar and which blows through the tree tops in sophisticated, harmonious interplay. The drone is not shy accompaniment, but effusive and expressive. There is drama to the piece, which stretches over a good three-quarters of an hour, there is both darkness and light, but first and foremost there is a magnificent mind for composition. The flutter of wings taking flight at the very end is the perfect finale. And a great distance is covered without moving an inch.
Stephen Fruitman
