Annea LOCKWOOD
“On Fractured Ground / Skin Resonance”

Legendary New Zealand-born experimental composer and sound art pioneer Annea Lockwood returns to Black Truffle with On Fractured Ground/Skin Resonance, her third release for the label. Having recently celebrated her 85th birthday, Lockwood shows no sign of slowing down in her exploration of new sound sources and collaborations with an ever-growing intergenerational pool of performers — here with Vanessa Tomlinson. Her creative vibrancy is alive as ever on the two recent works presented here, which demonstrate both her engagement with the social dimensions of sound and the deeply reflective, meditative aspect of her art. “On Fractured Ground” derives from material recorded with Pedro Rebelo and Georgios Varoutsos for the soundtrack of Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon’s opera-film, History of the Present (2023). Working together in Belfast, Lockwood, Rebelo and Varoutsos made extensive recordings of the city’s “peace lines,” the dozens of walls erected since the beginning of the Troubles in the late 1960s to separate Catholic and Protestant areas of the city. Continuing to work in her studio with the material collected for the soundtrack after its completion, Lockwood composed the work presented here, occupying a space somewhere between her own extended-technique percussion music and the Cagean tradition of hyper-amplified small sounds. “Skin Resonance” is a collaboration with Australian composer and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson. Developed through conversations in which the two discussed the idea of “sonic attraction,” the piece focuses on Tomlinson’s relationship to the bass drum, reflecting on the complex web of connections embodied in this seemingly simply instrument, which is at once “animal, wood, and metal.” Approaching the instrument in a suitably elemental fashion, Tomlinson’s performance strips away conventional technique to explore the resonance and timbral properties of skin, drum, and metal hardware, producing overlapping waves of texture that at times seem closer to wind swishing through leaves or the ocean than anything usually associated with a drum. Emphasising the symbiotic relationship between performer and instrument, Tomlinson’s voice is heard at times, exploring the field of associations and connections the bass drum suggests to her. Accompanied by insightful liner notes on both pieces and photographs documenting the recording of “On Fractured Ground” and a performance of “Skin Resonance,” this LP is a moving testament to the engagement, generosity, and openness that sustain Annea Lockwood’s work, still finding new directions after more than fifty years of activity.