Sweat Lodge Guru:
When it comes to contemporary experimental and drone music, one of the first names on the team sheet should always be Australia’s own Lawrence English. When he’s not busy running one of the best and most innovative labels around, Room40, or playing in the modular synth duo Holy Family, he’s cranking out incredible solo works for the likes of Touch Music and 12k. This, his first full-length available on vinyl, was originally released on the latter and finds new life inside these black analog grooves. “A Colour for Autumn” is the second in a series of albums from English that explore the changing seasons and his innate ability to transform such esoteric imagery into sound is immediately on display. ”Droplet” opens the record and immediately grabs you and cradles you beneath undercast skies. Dean Roberts’ lends voice to the track, giving it an otherworldly feeling but also a degree of warmth against the underlying sea of tones. But it’s on “Watching it Unfold” where the album really takes flight. English’s simple guitar patterns reek of nostalgic debris. As the piece coalesces and the leaves change from green to gold, everything gets washed over by brassy drones. The horns return, but more muddled, on “Galaxies of Dust” and add another element of cacaphony to an already dizzying track. It’s in passages like there were English’s incredible compositional talent shines. Fennesz lends his electronic expertise to “The Surface of Everything.” Whenever I hear this, I always think of crisp October nights, the smell of chimney smoke perfuming the air while you wax nostalgic about summers past. English provides the spine with his methodical crystal-toned guitar exercises but it’s the added crackle and texture from Fennesz that makes this the stand-out song on the album. There’s so much depth and subtlty to “A Colour for Autumn” that it would be easy to gloss over on first listen. On repeated trips, however, the whole picture reveals itself. This is an approachable album full of all the emotion and understated beauty that I associate with the fall. English covers the spectrum expertly. And then, as the glassy remnants of “…And Clouds for Company” begin to shift and fade away, you can smell the snow coming and winter is almost here.
12k:
"A Colour For Autumn is the second in a series of editions from Australian sound artist Lawrence English that trace the experience of seasonal transit. Following on from For Varying Degrees of Winter (published by Baskaru), A Colour For Autumn reflects on and explores the transitory nature of Autumn - counterpointing the uniformity of the ‘term’ with the varied qualities expressed by landscapes in different countries.
Like all environmental phenomena, seasonal variation is highly localised, and expressed not only visually through vegetation etc, but also sonically as insect life, leaves under foot and fauna all change in response to the climatic shifts. Northern and southern hemisphere experiences of Autumn are strikingly different and it’s also this contrast which rests at the very centre of A Colour For Autumn.
Recorded between 2007-2009, this series of pieces acts almost as small auditory portraits of given spaces in the often gentle throes of Autumn - ‘Droplet’ for example features field recordings gathered in Notre-Dame De La Garde in Marseilles, capturing the infamous ‘Mistral’ wind as it blows the first cooler breezes of Autumn into the city in 2007. By contrast ‘Watching It Unfold’ measures a more Australian experience of Autumn - a series of open static phrases, shifting ever so slightly - a reflection of the slow changes of the season around English’s home of Brisbane.
Working with a range of analog approaches, A Colour For Autumn is a tonally rich affair, sourcing much of it’s sounds from a mixture of instruments, field recordings and assorted electronics. A Colour For Autumn also features contributions from New Zealand’s Dean Roberts (whose vocals adorn the opening moments of the album) and Viennese musician Christian Fennesz, who offers intricate clusters of electronics in ‘The Surface Of Everything’.
This is an album of subtle variation, graded hues and tonal warmth, all of which act as an invitation for the listener to consider their own localised transition of Autumn.
