cipher - one who whispers
Cipher's One Who Whispers, is the follow up to their acclaimed 1999 debut No Ordinary Man (Hi Art5).
The album further explores Cipher's individual soundworld, mixing live flute, sax and bass with dark soundscapes and hypnotic layers of looped instrumental atmospheres. The nine tracks explore different aspects of the Cipher sound - including the purely abstract and textured sounds of To the Shelters, the WARP- like beats of Panoramic Lounge, the dark electronica of Celluloid, the metamorphosing multi-layered flutes of The Apparent Chaos of Snow and the wah-wah sax and dark filmic world of Love, Death and Drowning and Absorbed.
Six tracks feature the "glissando" guitar textures of Gong's Daevid Allen. Glissando guitar is a free form of slide guitar pioneered by Syd Barrett and Daevid Allen in the mid sixties in which the strings of the guitar are played using various unorthodox utensils (Allen famously used gynaecological instruments). The guitar signal is heavily processed through echoes and loops of different lengths, which can then be reversed or played at different speeds. The result is a hypnotic sound that is both textural and
expressive.
Celluloid is a collaboration with synth texturalist Richard Barbieri (Japan / Porcupine Tree). It is also, perhaps surprisingly, the only track that actually incorporates keyboards as opposed to processed organic samples and glissando guitar. Many of the samples and soundscapes are in fact performed by Dave Sturt's MIDI bass, by which different notes on an electric bass trigger whole washes of sound, beats or abstract noises.
The album was mixed and co-produced by Steven Wilson - Porcupine Tree main man co-leader of No Man and producer of Anja Garbarek, Fish and BassCommunion. It was mastered by grammy-nominated Pink Floyd engineer Andy Jackson. The album title comes from a quote by the artist Peter Schmidt who famously once wrote " in a room full of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting".
Tracks
1 One who whispers
2 Celluloid
3 Love, death and drowning
4 The last word
5 The apparent chaos of snow
6 Panoramic lounge
7 To the shelters
8 It did happen
9 Absorbed
Credits
mixed and co-produced by Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree)
featuring the glissando guitar textures of Gong's Daevid Allen
and synth texturalist Richard Barbieri (Japan/ Rain Tree Crow)
mastered by grammy nominated Pink Floyd engineer Andy Jackson
Notes
Theo Travis has established a reputation as a distinct voice on soprano saxophone and flutes in the jazz, avant garde, and rock scenes and has worked with Gong, Jansen Barbieri Karn, Bass Communion, No Man, Anja Garbarek and John Etheridge as well as having five solo albums to his name - Mojo magazine referred to him as "a brave and restless talent to watch for".
Bassist/Sound Designer Dave Sturt has been a member of the seminal ambient group Jade Warrior, a producer, engineer and programmer on many albums, a session bass player with the likes of Michael Kamen, Dave Gilmour and Isaac Guillory and has composed music for film and TV.
Cipher was formed in 1996 and since then they have made two albums, performed live at chill-out events and written and performed new scores to silent films by Alfred Hitchcock and Karl Valentin. They are currently working on a new score for Pabst's Pandora's Box - a film once described as "The most humanely tragic portrait of obsession that the cinema has to boast" and featuring the erotically alluring Louise Brooks. The score will feature some music from One Who Whispers .This will be performed live at the Croydon and Birmingham Film Festivals then toured live with the film in cinemas around the UK in November 2002.
Further information, see www.cipher.f9.co.uk
