![collected reviews for ‘silver rain, green trees’ by nigel samways [eph01]
a new label from london is ephre imprint. the first release is available on a lathe cut 10” record or on cdr and is by one nigel samways. I never heard of him. he records his sounds on the streets of london on this occasion, but also has releases which take the streetsounds of paris and venice. to this he adds he piano, harmonica, flute guitar, analogue and vocals, and melts this together on the computer to create his music. melodic at times, abstract at others, but throughout there seems to be a melancholic thread through his music. his pieces are short and to the point: six in twenty some minutes. field recordings and instruments blend together nicely here in somewhat clouded and sombre colors. nice stuff actually which bypasses various musical genres, which I guess is always a good thing.
(FdW, vital weekly 714, jan 2010)
like label mates vecchi-teller, samways operates at the periphery of what could possibly be construed as being noise music, where he differs however is through his use of melancholy instrumentation to conjure an all-pervasive mood of absence and loss. his music is, at times, almost unbearably sad, at other times, it’s almost whimsical. the music is established upon a bed of field recordings (sourced around london) upon which samway has layered various instruments (piano, harmonica, flute, guitar, synth and vocals). there’s a vaguely coil-like feel to samways’ music but shorn of all the goth pomposity that sometimes blighted that band’s music. i don’t really get to hear much music of this sort anymore but perhaps the scarcity makes it all the better when one does hit my seedee player. i like this album a lot.
(ian holloway, wonderful wooden reasons 32, feb 2010)
nigel samways, who has issued previous releases on experimedia and cctober man, among others, now inaugurates the london-based ephre with a twenty-three-minute ep (available in ten-inch or cd-r formats) of pieces heavily centered around field recordings. silver rain, green trees, which uses recordings made in london during 2007-8 as a springboard, follows upon two previous releases that samways also oriented around recordings made in different cityscapes, specifically mestre full stop (venice) and veilleur de nuit paris). though the silver rain, green trees contains seven pieces, one follows after another without interruption, though an abrupt shift does occurs between the title track and “dulwich.” rather than tipping the balance too far in either direction, samways gives equal room to the field elements as he does the musical, the intent being to complement london’s decaying dimension—its “bruised and battered underbelly,” as he puts it—with music of a similarly decomposing kind. as such, melancholy themes voiced by piano and guitar merge via computer with texture-heavy field materials in a such a way that all parts swim within a common, dense mix. a fog envelops much of it, rendering the parts indistinct and allowing them to blend together more hazily. at opposite ends of the ep, sparse piano droplets sprinkle over a stream of city sounds and voices in “victoria/vauxhall,” and crystalline bells intone amidst washes of blurry noise during “lambeth in saviour.”
(textura #66, March 2010)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxycbofG6d1qb4b6ro1_r1_250.jpg)
collected reviews for ‘silver rain, green trees’ by nigel samways [eph01]
a new label from london is ephre imprint. the first release is available on a lathe cut 10” record or on cdr and is by one nigel samways. I never heard of him. he records his sounds on the streets of london on this occasion, but also has releases which take the streetsounds of paris and venice. to this he adds he piano, harmonica, flute guitar, analogue and vocals, and melts this together on the computer to create his music. melodic at times, abstract at others, but throughout there seems to be a melancholic thread through his music. his pieces are short and to the point: six in twenty some minutes. field recordings and instruments blend together nicely here in somewhat clouded and sombre colors. nice stuff actually which bypasses various musical genres, which I guess is always a good thing.
(FdW, vital weekly 714, jan 2010)
like label mates vecchi-teller, samways operates at the periphery of what could possibly be construed as being noise music, where he differs however is through his use of melancholy instrumentation to conjure an all-pervasive mood of absence and loss. his music is, at times, almost unbearably sad, at other times, it’s almost whimsical. the music is established upon a bed of field recordings (sourced around london) upon which samway has layered various instruments (piano, harmonica, flute, guitar, synth and vocals). there’s a vaguely coil-like feel to samways’ music but shorn of all the goth pomposity that sometimes blighted that band’s music. i don’t really get to hear much music of this sort anymore but perhaps the scarcity makes it all the better when one does hit my seedee player. i like this album a lot.
(ian holloway, wonderful wooden reasons 32, feb 2010)
nigel samways, who has issued previous releases on experimedia and cctober man, among others, now inaugurates the london-based ephre with a twenty-three-minute ep (available in ten-inch or cd-r formats) of pieces heavily centered around field recordings. silver rain, green trees, which uses recordings made in london during 2007-8 as a springboard, follows upon two previous releases that samways also oriented around recordings made in different cityscapes, specifically mestre full stop (venice) and veilleur de nuit paris). though the silver rain, green trees contains seven pieces, one follows after another without interruption, though an abrupt shift does occurs between the title track and “dulwich.” rather than tipping the balance too far in either direction, samways gives equal room to the field elements as he does the musical, the intent being to complement london’s decaying dimension—its “bruised and battered underbelly,” as he puts it—with music of a similarly decomposing kind. as such, melancholy themes voiced by piano and guitar merge via computer with texture-heavy field materials in a such a way that all parts swim within a common, dense mix. a fog envelops much of it, rendering the parts indistinct and allowing them to blend together more hazily. at opposite ends of the ep, sparse piano droplets sprinkle over a stream of city sounds and voices in “victoria/vauxhall,” and crystalline bells intone amidst washes of blurry noise during “lambeth in saviour.”
