Last Days of Reality

Room40 release The Last Days Of Reality, featuring Decibel performing the works of Lionel Marchetti and Cat Hope. "I first met Lionel Marchetti in Australia in 2010. Decibel were touring our Alvin Lucier program, and Lionel was on the same bill performing a live performance set manipulating electro-acoustic materials with dancer Yoko Higashi. I was so taken with Lionel's performances that I asked him if he would write a piece for Decibel. I didn't realize that he hadn't done something like this before. The first work was Première Étude (Les Ombres), communicated as a text score, and premiered in 2012. I was asked by Lionel to make some recordings of ocarinas, harmonicas, and folk instruments; I sent these to him to be featured in the live performance. For this piece, the part comes from speakers beside each performer, and a bass amplifier beneath the piano. Like his own performances I had seen the year before, the work was naturally performative, with unique speaker and performer configurations. It was a remarkable combination of electronic, spatial, acoustic and textural music. The performers use the partition Concrète as a score. I visited Lionel in Lyon in 2014, recording flute improvisations in his studio. He used these as a basis for Une Série de Reflets, again communicating via text instructions and each performer having their own dedicated speaker to interact with. Pour Un Enfant Qui Dort again requested flute sounds that were time part of the live performance as well as the partition Concrète. The next work saw a more 'compositional' collaboration; The Earth Defeats Me began as a graphically scored work written by me and recorded by Decibel. That recording was used to make the partition Concrète which is now an embedded as part of the score. These works exist as live performances, but also as singular Concrète works, without the instruments. Working with Lionel has been remarkable; he has a singular way of thinking about sound and it's relationship to works and images. These pieces enable the acoustic instruments to be part of that, extending the ideas in the partition Concrète, using them structurally and texturally, as well as being part of them. It is music that concerns itself with the incredible power of sound, but from the most delicate and dream-like perspective." -Cat Hope.