Action Pyramid – Singing Below the Surface

Working primarily under the name Action Pyramid, Tom Fisher's projects range from site-specific sound installation and headphone works for galleries and museums, to experimental radio works and commercially released music. Utilising a multitude of recording techniques his work often seeks to explore and re-interpret the seemingly unnoticed and unseen/unheard elements of our surroundings.

In this release for Takuroku, Tom takes to remote locations in his native county of Suffolk, unearthing the sounds of the local marsh, woodlands, river and coast and the multitude of life that exists there. Occasionally arranging these sounds with his own musical interventions, he whisks together beguiling sonic material, rich in timbral, textural and rhythmic quality.

'Singing Below the Surface' features 7 tracks, each of with their own haunting identity. Through subtle collaging, spatialisation and musical symbiosis, Tom opens the liminal space between real and imaginary worlds.

"Over lockdown #1 (Spring/Summer 2020) when I was out in the sticks in Suffolk I amassed quite a large amount of recordings, including but not limited to; hydrophone recordings of the local river, some red list bird species, aeolian harps, bullroarers & reed pipes fashioned from locally found objects, as well as huge variety of soundscapes from the area, and have fed these into a new body of work over the course of the last 8 months. On a personal level I think it's taken me this long to find a way to get a handle on these - partly because they remind me so vividly of that very intense part of 2020. It was the longest time I have spent back in the Suffolk landscape since I left home, and I think one way of dealing with all the madness was to go out and record and listen as much as possible. This is a condensed version of some of that time, as well as an exploration of ways in which we can choose to both explore and interact with our surroundings." - Tom Fisher (Action Pyramid)

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Tom Fisher (Action Pyramid) - recordings, instrumentation & mixing 

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Mastered by Oliver Barrett

Tracklisting:
1 - North Marsh Wind Meets the Window [12:24]
2 - Aeolian Fizmer [3:04]
3 - River Waveney - Aquatic Plants,  Insects & Other Living Things #1 [3:49]
4 - Hoverflies, Reed Pipes, Cockchafers, Bullroarers [9:03]
5 - River Waveney - Aquatic Plants,  Insects & Other Living Things #2 [2:55]
6 - Bat Fox Harp [2:50]
7 - Dunwich Beach [4:50]

Action Pyramid

Working under the name Action Pyramid, Tom Fisher's projects vary from site-specific sound installation and headphone based works for galleries and museums, to experimental sound works, radio and music. Utilising a multitude of recording techniques, often aimed at exploring and re-interpreting the seemingly unnoticed and unheard elements of our surroundings, he looks to present compositional and spatial expressions of these phenomena in a way that attempts to offer up alternative perspectives regarding perceptions of scale, hierarchical bias and the interconnectedness of living things. He has performed and exhibited his work internationally and attended residencies in Iceland and the Finish arctic.

http://www.actionpyramid.com/
@actionpyramid