Aurongo ~ Inner Listening

ROB THORNE

 An album of taonga pūoro in musical conference with Phil Dadson has for a long time struck me as offering a significant contribution to the New Zealand music scene. The project would present two iconic musics of Aotearoa that align in so many ways, yet result in different manifestations. With improvisation and collaboration being foundational tools in the renaissance of taonga pūoro, and Phil having previously worked with Matua Richard Nunns along with his mastery of autodidactic stone percussion technique, the need for a project like this was obvious to me.

 So much of Phil’s practice aligns with my own. There is a commonality of musical perspectives, sonic transcendentalism and portal magic to the art of deep listening and spirituality in music. There is very little in life more natural than the meeting of like-minds employed in the improvising moment of musical creation.

 I have learnt so much about musical practice from working with Phil and hope that this album is the first of more to come. Over the years, I have come to realise I am more of a live musician than a recording artist. The temporality of performance holds a privilege that allows mistakes to become invitations and prompts for change and final outcomes to be relinquished and set free to the realms of memory, destined to morph and change and eventually be lost forever. The purpose is the journey and not the destination. There is beauty and ease in this. All decisions in my performative creative practice dwell within a world of the present now, suspended in a state of deep listening, made effective immediately and then renounced the moment they are activated. With live improvised music, the work is over the moment I stop playing. Everything done, remembered or not, contributes to what is to come. No need to fear, no need to revisit. We do the best with what we have now, and we move forward. There is peace of mind within this philosophy, where the need to remember is replaced with an ever-growing experiential faith that the knowledge will appear when it is required.

 This is rarely the case when recording and producing an album. An artefact, created after the fact, wrought from ongoing negotiation and decision-making based on taste, style, perspective and opinion, suspending in time — technically forever — a moment that was only ever supposed to be just that: momentary. This work begins when the music stops being played.

 This double album embodies the best of both live recording and post-production. Recorded with immediacy and ease, and then mixed in two very different ways, one that represents the live experience that is Dadson and Thorne mixed by Colleen Brennan, and the other remixed imaginatively by the indomitable Steve Garden. Both embody the essence and power of creativity when it's allowed to activate freely.

PHIL DADSON

 I’m through and through Pākehā, predominantly English/Irish, with no claim whatever to anything other than European ancestry, including a dash of Danish — or so I like to claim with the Dadson name (son of Dad). I imagine the original Dad ancestor as some burly Viking with streaming ginger hair and beard, horned helmet and trident at the helm of a raiding longboat. A fiction, of course, but combined with my Celtic heritage, there’s a clear link in my mind to the affinity I’ve felt since childhood with material and tribal cultures, Māori in particular.

 So, hardly surprising that I jumped to an invitation from Rob, a friend and taonga pūoro player I respect and admire. Rob set up a recording session with our long-time mutual friend Darryn Harkness and one-half day later, the recorded session was transferred to Steve at Rattle for auditioning and eventual mastering. Along the way, Steve got inspired to do a remix of his own, and we decided that two discs and two perspectives were the way to go. Rob and I sought out our own mastering engineer, Colleen Brennan, hence these two complementary approaches, each beautifully mastered.

 What to say about my instruments on the release? Gloop-string/spring/drum, gliss’flutes, songstones and ostifan; I make instruments with qualities that are more textural, percussive, gestural, and harmonic than melodic. Whistleable tunes and phrases are somewhat outside my repertoire, but it’s not to say the instruments don’t sing! Woh no! Voicing an instrument and letting it sing in its own characteristic way is, to my way of thinking, one of the best approaches for making music. Currently I favour improvising over composing as a way of being and responding in the moment, unfettered by mind. And when the performers are on a similar wavelength, as in this session with Rob, the clarity of transmission and communication gives rise to some unexpected magic. I hope you’ll agree when you listen...