ALC #14: Tête-À-Tête by Ruth Anderson&Annea Lockwood

[KitchenSink]

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Tête-À-Tête by Ruth Anderson & Annea Lockwood
Release Date: 2023
Genre(s): Electroacoustic, Sound Collage, Drone
Origin: USA & New Zealand


In the early 1970s, early electronic music innovators Ruth Anderson and Annea Lockwood met one another while the former filling in for the latter as a substitute teacher at the Electronic Music Studio at Hunter College. Very quickly, and continuing for nearly 5 decades after, the two found themselves in a flourishing creative and romantic partnership.

Ruth Anderson passed away in 2019. The subsequent years Annea Lockwood has spent arranging for the release of this album, containing both new and archival material, which seems to function as both something of a swan song for Anderson as well as a love letter to Anderson from Lockwood.

The first track is the most simple but arguably the most challenging. A single drone gradually descending the octaves. Little variation, extremely measured and subtle, I found the piece initially frustrating (even as someone who normally is way into drone shit like this) but quickly clicked as I treated it less like ambient background noise or like active listening music and more like a guided meditation. Deeply hypnotic, found it good for just kinda removing myself from reality for a few minutes.

If anyone bails on that first track or if this just isn't the kind of music you dig, I'd recommend giving track 2, titled "Conversations", a shot at least for a little bit. A curious wandering sound college piece housing fragments of laughter and conversation recorded by Anderson from phone calls between her and Lockwood and given to the latter as a gift, it seems to document 2 people falling in love in real time, presented almost like a dream. I found it deeply beautiful, and genuinely profound in it's unabashed sentimentality. People have a tendency to criticize this kind of music as overly academic but I found this piece to be anything but, found it to be intensely human, to be unashamedly sincere.

The final piece, titled "For Ruth" and composed by Lockwood between 2020 and 2021, is the counterpart to "Conversations", as well as its epilogue. Lockwood collected numerous field recordings taken from near Anderson's resting place by Flathead Lake, and placed them on a palette alongside further excerpts from the recorded phone conversations that Anderson had used to craft "Conversations" 50 years prior. It's a more reserved kind of track, a delicate reciprocation of Anderson's deeply personal gift to her life partner, and I think maybe also something of a parting gift. There's an understated melancholy here, but also a certain gentle sense of peace. We often think of the love song as existing primarily within the realm of one-guy-with-a-guitar, but I found this to be every bit as expressive and intimate as any acoustic ballad. In any case it's beautiful, as is the whole album imho, and I highly recommend it both to seasoned fans of this brand of experimental music but also to people who tend to avoid that kind of thing due to a feeling of it being overly cerebral, mechanical, or pretentious, because I really believe this is anything but.

Can listen (and read the full background) here.
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A Variety of Artists

[KitchenSink]

P.S. I haven't forgotten about the previous ALC selections I haven't gotten around to yet, will be writing something there for each of those very soon. Always excited to see what y'all pick for these.
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A Variety of Artists

[LedZep]

[Applerill]

This is my second attempt so far (after being recced to me by Gabe a month ago), but while I LOVE the opening track, for some reason I keep having trouble with the second one.

[Applerill]

....Wow, that was beautiful all the way through this time....