CD – Chant Records

When two improvisational singers have the opportunity to meld techniques and approaches to performance, they are able to recreate their own art, triggering a new language of musical invention and spiritual connections. This is exactly what happened when Randi Pontoppidan met Thomas Buckner in 2017 and set up a home session. This later turned into a live show at Monday Club (Copenhagen). “Voicescapes” was recorded in 2018 at Karmacrew Studio in the Isle of Møn in Denmark. Nothing was pre-prepared, no overdubs and or sound sources of any kind other than vocals. The cultural background of such experiments is naturally that of free improvisation, unconventional jazz, electroacoustic composition and sound poetry, although in this case many of the tracks included also bring to mind a certain classicism with stylistic elements of ancient sounds. The duo’s range of professional experiences is undoubtedly vast. Randi Pontoppidan has interpreted Steve Reich, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, weaving his extensive vocal techniques into poetry, contemporary classical music projects and electronics. Thomas Buckner is at ease with chamber music, with orchestral pieces and song cycles, alongside developing new approaches to solo and group improvisation. He is also attentive to musical invention, new experiments and extended vocal techniques. During his career, he had the opportunity to work with big names like the jazz multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell, but also with key figures in the contemporary scene, such as Robert Ashley, Annea Lockwood and Alvin Lucier. Some might say that music is never “spontaneous”, even in the most extreme improvisations, although Pontoppidan and Buckner easily find their own style, balanced, intimate and very poetic, never forced and always spiritually engaging, even when they become enveloped in guttural outbursts, fractured syllables and half phonemes. The release enriches the already substantial catalogue of Chant Records, a label accustomed to publishing adventurous, avant-garde and uncompromising music, embracing the entire possibilities of the stylistic spectrum.

 

Randi Pontoppidan & Thomas Buckner – Voicescapes