First time trio from Ren Schofield, Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott. Under the Container moniker Ren usually improvises overblown electronic hardware: infectious drum patterns, restructured feedback and dying tape loops. Wright and Abbott’s respective practices look to interrogate the British tradition of improvised music – groups such as AMM and SME - so this meeting somewhat shoves spontaneous interplay onto the dancefloor. The result is a high density recursive tangle of magnified antagonism and genuine investigative collaboration which steps off on the more cognitive side of techno. Not your usual dancefloor but experiments like this will keep free improvisation fresh.
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Seymour Wright / saxophone
Paul Abbott / drums, electronics
Ren Schofield / Roland 909, tape machine, delay
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Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Adam Maschulat on Thursday 9th August, 2018. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn.
Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC
Opening possibilities of language and learning from below, XT bounce questions of the specific material conditions, histories and logics of the saxophone and drum kit in a flexible, manifold process of collaboration, augmentation, bifurcation, antagonism and technological and somatic feedback. Increasingly they plug in, using synthetic and amplified saxophone and drums to extend magnify and delay what they do.
The project explicitly folds together their overlapping interests in language, learning, politics and an investigative ethics of emancipation.
Container is the stripped-down, beat-oriented electronic project of Providence, RI’s Ren Schofield, who somehow sculpts viscious punk sonics into raw jackhammer rhythms that groove in the most relentless, hypnotic, unstoppable and psychedelic ways currently working the grid.
This lo-fi mesh of maxed-out drum patterns, spiralling loops and mesmerising arrangements makes for live music of serious weight and function, capable of both rushing the high-end dancefloors of Unsound, Donau and Berghain, and banging the below-stairs basements of Europe into submission.
Started in 2009 in response to his discovery of nineties minimal techno, Container combined elements from his background in noise and cassette collage music with a new found interest in repetitive beats to create this raw and damaged rhythmic sound.
After a string of various cassette releases, the debut full length “LP” was released by Editions Mego sub-label Spectrum Spools in 2011, and has since been followed up by a second Spools “LP” and the “Treatment” 12” on the Morphine label…a steaming new 12” pulled in earlier this year on Liberation Technologies (see new track 'Glaze' below), as well as the thrillingly violent mauling of Four Tet's 'Kool FM'. Container’s new record came out on Spectrum Spools in June 2015 to much acclaim.
Seymour Wright is a saxophonist. His work is about the creative, situated friction of learning, ideas, people and the saxophone – music, history and technique – actual and potential.
Seymour's solo music is documented on three widely-acclaimed collections - Seymour Wright of Derby (2008), Seymour Writes Back (2015) and Is This Right? (2017).
Current projects include: @xcrswx with Crystabel Riley; abaria with Ute Kanngiesser; [Ahmed] with Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Pat Thomas; GUO with Daniel Blumberg; XT with Paul Abbott; The Creaking Breeze Ensemble; a trans-atlantic duet with Andy Guthrie, and, with Jean-luc Guionnet a project addressing an imaginary lacunae in Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne.
@xcrswx
Paul Abbott is a musician and drummer. He plays with real and imaginary drums, synthetic sounds, performance and writing.
Recent and ongoing collaborations include: XT with Seymour Wright; XT+Pat Thomas; XT+Anne Gillis; X Ray Hex Tet; F.R.David, very good* & Rosmarie with Will Holder; film sound for Keira Greene; Rian Treanor Duo; RP Boo Trio with XT; The Creaking Breeze Ensemble with Nathaniel Mackey; yPLO with Micheal Speers and performances with Cara Tolmie.
Paul has performed at venues and festivals internationally. He was a co-founder and co-editor of Cesura//Acceso journal for music, politics and poetics, and SAM resident artist at Cafe OTO 2015. In 2022 he completed a PhD at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Florian Hecker and Nikki Moran. He is currently undertaking research at Royal Conservatoire/Academy Fine Arts Antwerp.
Recent releases include: solos Nsular, Ductus; XT+Pat Thomas “Akisakila” / Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Oceans, Trees); XT Deorlaf X, Palina’Tufa; Creaking Breeze Ensemble & Nathaniel Mackey Fugitive Equation; F.R.David very good*; RP Boo Trio 31.12.18.
