Tom Scott has long been a long-term guest at OTO, treating us solo sets and collaborations with the likes of Andrew Chalk, Ashley Paul and Timo Van Luijk for over a decade now. Scribed over summer and Autumn in 2020 lock-down, 'Tattered Angels' is an 18 part suite for piano, seeing Tom pick up fragments of memory and distill them into a set of sanguine melodic lacunas.
Alongside his music practice, Tom is a photographer, capturing the barren landscapes, sea shores, boats, stones and marine objects by the coast of Barrow-in-Furness. Like a photo album rendered in aural form, 'Tattered Angels' unfurls a series of vignettes that meditate on place and time. With his piano keys, Tom paints impressionist moods of each memory, delicately aligning each note with the contours, rhythms and small details that seep from the frame. Like Satie, Poulenc and Ravel, Tom is able to unearth latent emotions and piece them together in a weightless space. Music that slowly dances from his headspace to ours.
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Tom Scott - piano
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Recorded at Piel View House, late October & early November 2020
Titles lifted from poetry by Guy Garrett
Cover image by Tom James Scott
Design by Oliver Barrett
Tracklisting:
1. The Half-Light Sky
2. Mercurial Embers
3. Seeping Mist
4. City Beacons
5. The Foothills of Ink
6. Station House
7. Communication Lines
8. Beyond a Southern Sky
9. Night-Lights Blink
10. The Widest Stretch of River
11. Her Worlds Dreamed
12. The Air is Different Now
13. Nameless Sands
14. Phantom Refuge
15. Coils and Creeps
16. The Dawn Moor Heavens
17. Godless Constellation
18. Halloween Winds
Tom James Scott is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser who currently lives on the North-West coast of England. Since 2007 he has published music through a number of labels including Students of Decay, Where To Now?, Bo'Weavil Recordings, Carnivals, and his own Skire imprint (established in 2013).
Scott's early interest in music was informed as much by a fascination with sound and improvisation as it was by traditional musical training, and his work continues to explore both lyrical and abstract means of sound making and composition. Since 2007's 'Red Deer', Scott's solo releases to date have seen a switch between guitar, piano and keyboard as their focal point (often with the addition of bowed objects and strings, field recording and electronics). United by a preoccupation with modern composition, traditional music, improvisation and song, Scott's recorded work also draws inspiration from visual and literary sources, with certain titles often citing a now largely archaic form of dialect particular to Scott's home county of Cumbria.
Scott is currently working on a collaboration with the filmmaker Laurence Campbell and continues to perform and record with Ashley Paul, Andrew Chalk, Ecka Mordecai, Timo van Luijk and Russell Walker (primarily as Charcoal Owls).
