Ute Kanngiesser - cello
Daniel Kordík - field recording
The release is accompanied by a PDF of writing by Evie Ward in response to the release.
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"At 4AM I slip out of the house to cycle east, towards dawn, with cello on my back and a stool strapped to the rack. The word 'essential' is turning over and around in my head. I am taking the quietest roads, trying to stay invisible, worried that someone might stop me and interfere with our plans. I find Daniel with recording equipment and hand sanitizer and together we walk another distance through dawn and smell of rain. We enter the Marshes, these essential lungs of East London. It is where he had come almost every day of these locked-down weeks to field-record and breathe. And it is where Evie and I met for walks and secret music - carefully bending the laws of the officially ‘essential’. I am wondering about places and times when public music was forbidden and never driven to extinction. This time it is for pandemic reasons and the severity of consequences is unspeakable and has turned into much noise in my head. But the birds, the wind, and the rain offer such relief and I feel so shy in their presence that my music can only become the smallest of offerings to them in the rainless window between 4.48AM and 5.15AM." - (Ute Kanngiesser, June 2020)
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Photography by Daniel Kordík
Cover design by Oliver Barrett
Ute Kanngießer is a London based cellist and composer from Germany. Over the years, she has carefully deconstructed her classical roots and almost exclusively performs unscripted, improvised music. Much of her work has evolved in relationship with other art forms such as film, poetry, dance and site specific work. She is interested in the vast expressive possibilities of her instrument in relation to body, space, and others, always looking to rediscover or redefine what is musical/lyrical in this moment in time.
Recent releases include Blue Monday - a collaboration with writer Zara Joan Miller - on New York label Reading Group.
Kordik works mainly as an improviser, music collaborator, field recordist and a regular member of the duo Jamka and duo with Edward Lucas with whom he co-runs Earshots Recordings. "Kordik’s electronics are pretty weird (...). At least some of them seem to work by Theremin-style hand control, which results in a different type of sound than if he were playing either with a keyboard or a modular-style patch." (Paul Margree)
www.urbsounds.sk/kordik
Evie Ward (b. London, 1993) is a poet and writer based in London. Her poems have appeared in Art Licks, SALT, Cesura//Acceso, and '5AM' - a digital release on Takuroku with Ute Kanngießer and field recordist Daniel Kordík. She often works collaboratively at the intersection of writing with music and art, having recently read new poems, stories and journal fragments with Ute Kanngießer for a live performance at Cafe OTO and exhibited a site-specific poem as part of 'Like A Sieve' at Kupfer. She has conducted extensive research on Moki Cherry and continues to work closely with Cherry's archive when possible. Evie is currently working on a book collaboration of interwoven poems & drawings with Corinne Bernard.
www.evieward.com
