Classical

Ian William Craig - A Turn of Breath (2018)

2018-07-13T08:33:39Z

Ian William Craig - A Turn of Breath [Extended Edition] (2018)


1    Before Meaning Comes – 3:12
2    On the Reach Of Explanations – 6:00
3    Red Gate with Starling – 3:18
4    Rooms – 2:06
5    A Slight Grip, a Gentle Hold (Part 1) – 4:19
6    Second Lens – 3:25
7    The Edges – 5:10
8    New Brighton Park, July 2013 – 1:32
9    TEAC Poem – 2:44
10    Either Or – 5:27
11    A Slight Grip, a Gentle Hold (Part 2) – 4:48
12    A Forgetting Place – 1:56
Deluxe Edition also holds:
13    Reason Simmers Over – 5:52
14    Red Gate Drifting – 7:31
15    Erat Hora – 2:51
16    A Slight Grip, A Gentle Hold, Pt 3 – 3:27
17    Either Or (Darkroom Version) – 2:26
18    6 Years, 33 Million (For Bo) – 2:04
19    Heaviness Sketch in Winter – 2:43
20    Genesis Device – 10:10
21    Interstice – 1:59
22    Bon Voyage, Wesbrook 210 – 4:04

Ian William Craig - composer and performer

Recital here presents the premiere LP by vocalist Ian William Craig (b. 1980, Edmonton). Ian, a trained opera singer, delivers an elegant balance Following several self-released digital albums, Canadian composer Ian William Craig made his vinyl debut with the astonishing A Turn of Breath, originally released by Sean McCann's Recital label in 2014. Craig crafts his art using decrepit tape machines and analog synthesizers, utilizing techniques common to underground noise and experimental music, but he incorporates his own operatically trained vocals into the fabric of his compositions. The busted equipment makes his already haunting voice sound more fragile and eerie, with distorted fragments passing through the tape heads several hundred times and creating ghostly, abstract rhythms. When lyrics are audible, as on the two-part "A Slight Grip, A Gentle Hold," they're about allowing heaviness and feeling something shift. More often, the vocals are transformed into patterns and clusters of sound that express pure feelings and sensations in a way that words couldn't possibly do justice. Quite simply, A Turn of Breath is one of the most creative, original, and moving experimental albums of the 2010s. ---Paul Simpson, AllMusic Review

The other day I was wandering around the campus of UBC where I work, and found myself randomly (perhaps drawn by this rerelease) back around the building where once my old studio was, both printmaking- and sound-wise. I confess now (enough time has surely passed?) that the latter activity was entirely underhanded, and that most of A Turn of Breath was a clandestine affair against all manner of UBC policy – though looking back I probably didn’t do as good a job obscuring one set of anachronistic technology amongst the other as I’d thought (if they are reading, thanks to my supervisors for turning a graciously blind eye). The building where A Turn of Breath was recorded was an old converted hospital from the Second World War, made of institutional greens and long enfilades into which we squirrelled our printing presses while waiting for our new studio to be constructed. It was a study of contrast: we found ourselves nestled in with virology, marine biology and psychology. We printmakers, covered constantly in facemasks and litho ink, would encounter pipette-wielding lab-coated scientists outside of sealed viral reliquaries. I have no doubt the psychology department, quietly observing the whole thing, revelled in these daily clashes. At the time too, I had just become the printmaking technician there; a massive change in my life. Transitions and texture everywhere!

It hadn’t donned on me before wandering there again, but A Turn of Breath was in this regard a record made entirely in and of transition, recorded in the interstices between studios, between time, between situations, between permissibility, between thinking I knew what I was doing and the jubilant chaos that holds us all. It was also culled from many different sources and intentions, starting life out as an entirely different released record. It has transformed many times, transforming here again, and will likely continue to. It pretty much *is* transformation. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on it, I think more than anything else A Turn of Breath must then be my love letter to change, a means for me to revel in becoming as a perpetual and nourishing thing. It certainly helped during that chaotic time. I am grateful beyond measure that the nature of this change has resonated with people. And, of course, that the neighbours in that old building didn’t seem to mind the many blurred rackets on into the night. ---Ian William Craig

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Ian William Craig - Centres (2016)

2018-07-25T15:56:38Z

Ian William Craig - Centres (2016)


1 	Contain (Astoria Version) 	10:04
2 	A Single Hope 	6:26
3 	Drifting To Void On All Sides 	4:14
4 	The Nearness 	7:45
5 	Set To Lapse 	2:47
6 	Power Colour Spirit Animal 	6:28
7 	Arrive, Arrive 	2:39
8 	A Circle Without Having To Curve 	9:52
9 	An Ocean Only You Could See 	6:02
10 	Purpose (Is No Country) 	3:18
11 	It Need Not Be Hopeless 	4:21
12 	Innermost 	3:28
13 	Contain (Cedar Version) 	4:21

Ian William Craig - composer, performer
Marek Joseph - drums (track 2)

After two well-received albums on Sean McCann's Recital label, Canadian composer Ian William Craig moved up to FatCat Records' neo-classical imprint 130701 for the release of his most ambitious statement to date, Centres. As with his previous recordings, Craig employs obsolete, faulty tape machines, layering his operatic vocals in decaying static. Centres is significantly more polished, with some clearer sonic elements and a few compositions that push closer to traditional song structures (especially "A Single Hope," which even features drums), but it's still as otherworldly as his previous works. Basically, the increased production budget makes everything sound more. It's smoother and more accessible in some ways, yet it's also more abrasive and intense. The sounds are fuller and more haunting, with tape hiss layered so heavily that it often approximates torrential rainstorms. He begins "The Nearness" with a light accordion drone and singing, eventually building up thick, noisy distortion clouds before drifting back to the sounds of the accordion sputtering away off of a tape recorder on its last legs. "Power Colour Spirit Animal" opens with the sound of a heavily throbbing machine that sounds like it's giving off sparks and about to conk out, and this transforms into a lovely wash of bright yet diseased-sounding synths. Eventually this gets doused in sizzling static, and waves of vocals emerge from underneath. "Innermost" features faint vocals struggling to speak out from under the skipping tape loops and organ drone. Some songs consist entirely of Craig's multi-tracked vocals, either floating in effects as on the breathtaking "Set to Lapse" or more straightforward as on the graceful hymn "Purpose (Is No Country)." "A Circle Without Having to Curve" (one of two ten-minute tracks on the album) might be Craig's darkest composition to date, evoking imagery of a city ravaged by a hurricane through chilling vocal drones and swarms of Fennesz-esque processing, and eventually meeting a sudden end. The album ends with a stripped-back acoustic guitar version of opening piece "Contain," captured by a wire recorder so it sounds sepia-toned but not hissy or blurry. Taking Craig's already distinctive, powerful sound to extremes, Centres is another truly remarkable work. ---Paul Simpson, AllMusic Review

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Ian William Craig - Cradle For The Wanting (2015)

2018-08-06T15:47:18Z

Ian William Craig - Cradle For The Wanting (2015)


1 	Doubtshapes 	3:15
2 	Habit Worn & Wandering 	7:27
3 	No Cradle For The Whole Of It 	5:20
4 	Each All In Another All    (Lyrics By Octavio Paz)	4:52
5 	Glassblower    (Lyrics By Rumi)	4:46
6 	Empty, Circle, Tremble 	5:56
7 	Shipbreaking 	5:01
8 	Grace In Expectation 	5:26

IWC (Ian William Craig) - composer, performer

All sounds created using the human voice layered onto a series of reel to reel decks specially manipulated and looped
Recorded at home in Vancouver, Canada during the winter of 2014/15

If you were to describe something to me as “Bon Iver meets William Basinski,” I would tell you that it sounds like a fucking train wreck.

But, somewhere on the internet, that is how tape loop/vocal artist Ian William Craig is described—I encountered this description after I started listening to his 2014 album A Turn of Breath, earlier this year. And despite my instinct to cringe at such a perplexing juxtaposition of artists, I can’t think of any better way to describe what it is he does, and what it sounds like.

A Turn of Breath would have wound up on my paltry, eight album long, “Best of 2014” list had I heard about it in time—but I came across it in the bleakness of the month of January, with an iTunes gift card burning a hole in my pocket, while I was on a quest for new, ambient music to discover. It came recommended to me both through tweets from the gawd Tom Krell (How to Dress Well), and it was also repped very hard by former blogger turned podcaster Justin Snow of Anti-Gravity Bunny.

This winter was not the kindest to me, setting a rather dark tone for the rest of the year that followed, and in the months of confusion and spiraling depressing, I found solace in listening to one specific Craig track over, and over again—the haunting, evocative, melancholic “A Slight Grip, A Gentle Hold”—one of the only compositions of his that actually has discernable lyrics.

That’s kind of the beauty of Ian William Craig: it’s music for a feeling.

The man himself has returned, with a late in the year entry that picks up exactly where A Turn of Breath left off—Cradle For The Wanting is eight new tape loop and vocal manipulation pieces, each more haunted, damaged, and unbelievable sounding as the record progresses.

But why did someone on the internet describe this as “Bon Iver meets William Basinski?”

Well, it has to do with Craig’s otherworldly range and howl—reaching that same soaring falsetto that Mr. Bonny Bear himself Justin Vernon is now infamous for. It also has to do with the fact that all the compositions are solely based around ¼” tape loops, experiments, and manipulations, creating a dark, cacophonic, yet occasionally triumphant and hopeful environment.

There are moments on Cradle For The Wanting that sound like something from the spirit world is trying desperately to reach through the white noise and make some kind of connection with you—it’s an experience that is not for the faint of heart or faint of ears. By far, the album’s high point is nearly right out of the gate, with the sprawling, emotionally draining seven-minute “Habit Worn and Wandering,” which serves as a bit of an introduction for those uninitiated with what’s about to take place on the rest of the record. Descending into a low dissonant rumble, Craig’s voice soars through various distorted iterations of itself, creating a disorienting, somber, and somehow comforting wall of sound to rest your head upon.

The rest of the album arrives as a way to cement Craig’s status as a true innovator—to my knowledge, nobody is putting themselves out there completely in this fragile of a way, allowing their sorrow, their hope, and most importantly, their voice to be the only instrument used.

Cradle For The Wanting is a big, important statement, speaking dissonant, distorted, angelic volumes of the state of the world around us—not just the bigger picture, but also of the small, mundane moments that pass us by and that we take for granted. It’s a soundtrack to a world that is constantly crumbling under its own weight, and always trying desperately to rebuild itself. ---Kevin Krein, anhedonicheadphones.blogspot.com

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Ian William Craig - Meaning Turns To Whispers (2012)

2018-09-09T10:06:03Z

Ian William Craig - Meaning Turns To Whispers (2012)


1. Lovers; Cascading (Part I) 08:11
2. Lovers; Cascading (Part II) 07:32
3. Wherever Two Circles can be Drawn 05:53
4. Open Passage, Closed Passage, Hidden Passage 07:50
5. Expanding Hope into Caverns 10:58
6. Everything and Tired 03:26

All sounds by Ian William Craig

Meaning Turns to Whispers is a combination of piano improvisations and FM feedback loops, recorded over various winters in the last three years or so, and edited down/manipulated/degraded to reveal some of their hidden spaces. ---ianwilliamcraig.bandcamp.com

Beautifully choking, chaotic, yet somehow lush and spacious modern classical experiments - a combination of piano improvisations and FM feedback loops - from Vancouver’s Ian William Craig, who’s amassed quite a catalogue over the last few years with LPs for FatCat and Sean McCann’s Recital Program.

This one for Belgium’s Aguirre is a particularly potent example of his feel for epic, sweeping statements that seem to be caught in flux between dimensions, like lofty panoramas obfuscated by inclement weather, only to reveal themselves, sunlit and rainbow-streaked like fleeting details of a grand landscape.

Meaning Turns to Whispers’ beauty is recognisable from the outset and throughout, but only really settles in once the album is finished and you can step back and luxuriate in your memory of what just happened, and marvel at the way in which Craig’s sleight of hand transported you from A to B by only just revealing the signposts along the way. ---boomkat.com

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