Rhodri Davies, Matt Davis, Samantha Rebello, Bechir Saade

Quartet improvisations recorded at London's Red Rose in June 2007. Rhodri Davies (harp & objects), Matt Davis (trumpet & electronics), Samantha Rebello (flute) and Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet) unite for intimately detailed collective sound explorations mining the lower boundaries of dynamics and densities. Davies and Davis are well-established improvisers; Rebello is a new name; Saadé is a member of the Lebanese improv scene along with Sharif Sehnaoui, Christine Sehnaoui, and Mazen Kerbaj.

It's odd to think the micro-gestural sound world of musicians such as these now has a deep tradition to draw on. Today's listeners are attuned to flickers, breaths, scrapes, and hisses to the point they can get past the surface textures of extended technique and focus on the music being created. Hum re-launches the quest for new expressive methods in that area of EAI which mainly deals with constituents such as air, saliva, friction. The instrumentation makes for some fascinating interaction, with Davis' electronics often constituting an element of menacing doubt amidst detailed suspension characterized by various types of overtones that peep first, clash later, then look for a meeting point somewhere in the middle.

As Bill Shoemaker wrote in Point of Departure: "The resulting music can have an alluring elegant starkness or the bracing iridescence that is frequently achieved on hum. It is an approach that comes off as intrinsically relaxed, in that the sounds move and coalesce seemingly of their own accord, requiring only a small initial push by the musicians." In the midst of alternating phases of construction and collapse, hidden behind apparently empty spaces, small movements occur and are picked out by faint light. Then sometimes the music abandons itself to moments of extreme introspection as the wind instruments produce sounds of abstract melancholy, and impromptu drones, thanks mainly to Davies, revolve and then slowly evaporate.

Massimo Ricci in Touching Extremes noted how the music "wears the timbral components down to frazzles, giving the music a far-reaching anxiousness miles away from self-indulgence." Shapes morph unpredictably, given the array of timbres they can produce. The constituent parts of the quartet's improvisations frequently have the snuggly joined quality largely found in composed works. Davies and his counterparts are extending the trajectory of improvised music, but not on terms determined by their predecessors. A unique and sublime ensemble that deserves the highest recommendation.