TRAW & RHODRI DAVIES - 

Cwymp Y Dŵr Ar Ganol Dydd

(confront collectors series ccs 06)

 

Rhodri Davies : harp, electronics, accelerometer

Owen Martell : sampling, real-time processing

Richard Llewellyn : sampling, real-time processing

Simon Proffitt : sampling, real-time processing

 

Recorded in Cardiff, Wales 2005

 

In making Cwymp y Dwr ar Ganol Dydd, each member of Traw took away a selection of Davies' harp + electronics material (recorded by Michael Sansom at Surrey University) and processed them according to his own lights. In July 2005, when the group reconvened in the company of Davies, they improvised with this de- or re-personalised material to make new sound configurations. Davies too was improvising, in this case with his own transmogrified self, and a live feed of his playing was also available to Traw for further manipulation. It's as though Davies had stepped into a sonic hall of mirrors. Traw is a Welsh word meaning pitch, or, in a more poetic sense, diapason, a wholeness, an encompassing. The CD title translates as The Water Falls at Morning's End, and all of the track titles are water-related, named after rivers or waterfalls around the Pontneddfechan-Ystradfellte area of South Wales. But there's more to it than that: 'Mellte', a river, also refers to lightning, and 'Einion Gam', the name of a waterfall, means crooked anvil. On Cwymp y Dwr ar Ganol Dydd, the music is subjected to elemental fire, forged, and doused with water to toughen it up. But forge also means 'to fake', and that too is appropriate: a gloriously fake Rhodri Davies is presented in this recording.