“Listen to the world, always hoping to hear more and more fully.”
Tom Bickley
Bathtubs and crickets and eagles and trains. Tom Bickley has his ears open. One expects no less from an artist with a background in medieval music, African-American sacred music, and Deep Listening—the meditative improvisational techniques developed by electronic music pioneer and San Francisco Tape Music Center founding member Pauline Oliveros.
On Jepson Prairie, his debut solo commercial release after years of composing and performing, Bickley takes the motionless listener on sonic journeys from Houston to Kyoto to Berkeley, at times allowing field recordings to play cleanly (the buzz of machinery, the voice over the intercom giving instructions in Japanese) while at other times modulating recordings into wiry sculptures, alive and plastic all at once. Electronic sounds, arranged stringed instruments, tones, and timbres, twisting and refracting into each other like our daily moments, a tapestry of presence.
Other Minds Records, the label that released Jepsen Prairie, is hosting its annual experimental music event Other Minds Festival 27 next week. More info here.
