Wickham-smith, Simon

Wickham-smith, Simon

Extreme Bukake

Vhf

***In contrast to the live performance-based pieces on Simon Wickham-Smith's 1999 CD Butterfly Dust, the perversely titled follow-up Extreme Bukake is a dissection of religious music, realized on laptop computer. Traditional components like Catholic hymns and Wickham-Smith's vocal on a Hare Krsna prayer get fragmented, splintered, and reassembled into a rich blob of sound. According to his notes on the tracks, "The Self-Immolation of Thich Quang Duc" is a programmatic work based around the death of the titular Viêtnamese monk who set himself alight to protest about the activity of the Viêtnamese government in the early 1960s. He was a friend of Thich Nhat Hanh, whom Martin Luther King Jr. nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. The music sounds like the insanity of the situation, the external noise of cars and people and the internal noise of the heart and the soul of this man. "Sri Guru Vandana" is a song from the Hare Krsna (ISKCON) tradition of Krisna Vaisnavitism, a nod in the direction of Wickham-Smith's pre-Buddhist, teenager self, the young man who got into ISKCON and then freaked out at the evangelical nature of the organization. This track acknowledges the positive side of his experience. "Ave Regina Celorum" is based on a Catholic hymn to Mary, an attempt to create a piece which could perhaps be used for meditation, either formal or informal.  * Another inventive solo work from the laptop half of R!! & S!!  * Bob Ostertag would sell his sampler to...

Wickham-smith, Simon

Butterfly Dust

Vhf

***The first solo CD by SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH follows a long and prolific ten-year recording partnership with RICHARD YOUNGS. Recorded during a temporary relocation to Australia, Butterfly Dust is a strikingly intimate solo performance on organ, voice, Peruvian reed, and Dijeridu. A wonderful collection of performances that combine both virtuosity and exploratory improvisation to create gorgeous dronescapes that you wouldn't want to be caught dreaming without. Includes a twenty-one-minute wall-of-sound Didjeridu body enveloper, aimed to restore respect to an instrument long abused by short-sighted new agers and dull-witted World Music hacks.