(Dark Ambient, Neo-Classical, Experimental) Gareth Davis & Frances-Marie Uitti - Gramercy - 2012, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 2 from 29. April 2011
EAC extraction logfile from 29. December 2012, 13:50
Gareth Davis & Frances-Marie Uitti / Gramercy
Used drive  : Optiarc DVD RW AD-7240S   Adapter: 2  ID: 0
Read mode               : Secure
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Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction                      : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
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Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface
Gap handling                                : Appended to previous track
Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
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Quality                         : High
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TOC of the extracted CD
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Track  2
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Track  3
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Track  4
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Track  5
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Track  6
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Track  7
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All tracks accurately ripped
No errors occurred
End of status report
==== Log checksum 8A87B191A60D869345837B4E11834EC89A5438ECC269DFF39BEEC785F9F1479B ====

REM GENRE Ambient
REM DATE 2012
REM DISCID 580E2A07
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PERFORMER "Gareth Davis & Frances-Marie Uitti"
TITLE "Gramercy"
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Gareth Davis plays various clarinets. He also partakes regularly in the consumption of coffee, in particular, that which is brewed by forcing hot water, under pressure, through finally ground beans. Espresso /esˈpres.əʊ/. Either single origin or a few signature blends, stalwart companions, that, year in year out, retain a solidity by clinging to their name. Changing yes, but temperamental no. Ascaso stepless burr grinder. La Pavoni Europicola machine which, on occasion, has been known as the chrome peacock. Gareth spends a fair amount of time at airports, but prefers traveling by train.
Frances-Marie Uitti has a zoo of cellos; an aluminum one from the 20's, a six string one with no body, a digital one with a body but no strings, a plastic one, a Mongolian deviant, an Uzbecki wannabe, plus a slew of quasi-normal ones. For the Gramercy recording she used 2 bows in one hand.

Gramercy is an anxiety attack waiting to happen; a languid, seemingly infinite prelude to madness. Every second draws closer the darkest of thoughts, nestled in the furthest corners of the mind with no chance of evading those events, no chances of stopping the terrible from becoming a reality. They say there’s nothing to fear but itself, well think again, for this wait is far worse and it will shake your being. To the first time listener, the melancholy emanating from Frances-Marie Uitti’s cello on album opener “2 am” – probably the most straight forward track on the album – might seem as dark as it gets. It’s brooding, cold and shapes up as an instantaneous call for attention on the listeners’ behalf. What ensues from then on, however, abandons melody almost completely and focuses entirely on the atonal, using abrupt silences and Gareth Davis’ clarinet drones to maximal effect. What follows is a test to anyone who listens to the album, an exercise in allowing the overpowering sense of despair to conquer one’s thoughts and send listeners to terrains they often avoid treading. An overwhelming urge to recluse from all things material runs deep; that far corner in your room seems like exactly the place to be at the moment. On viewing the album as a whole, a twisted sense of symmetry begins to reveal itself around the album’s centerpiece and clear highlight “Detour”. Sounds unfurl, with cello and clarinet playing as extremely interesting counterpoints to each other, and dissolve into nothing but distant wails. As we approach the aforementioned “Detour” sounds begin to disappear, the music grows slower, silence prevails. It would be natural for one to expect that this silence will give way to something louder, more tangible, a long awaited resolution to the wait, at least one would hope so, but Davis and Uitti have other plans in mind. Chaos resumes, reaching its peak, the drones have gotten more abrasive and the notes less and less audible. We ask for reprieve, hell we beg for it! The answer remains a very firm “NO!” and by the end of that extremely solemn, highly ill advised, detour, silence returns. “Razor” shuts one out completely and reasserts what “Cold Call” achieves. We accept our fate and come what may, nothing good can come out of it; we surrender. The music is that intense; it consumes all around it with no need for overdoing anything, a stroke of rarely paralleled genius. The question that begs to be asked right now is why would anyone put him/herself through all this? Why would someone, after reading this, want that amount this amount of madness? Simply put, because it adds flavor to one’s day, it shakes things up and opens closed caverns in one’s mind. It stirs the thinking in a way that I personally haven’t experienced before through music alone. There will always be a yearning to opt out, press the stop button, pick that needle off the record and take the easy way out, but with music this raw and with a gravitational pull as strong as such, it is nearly impossible. This is a record that has to be played from start to finish, a ride that has to be taken without pit stops and one that ends up enlightening its listener. Being released through Miasmah, this album takes the label in a somewhat different direction since it might be the most atonal, arrhythmic project to be released by the label so far. Signs of any percussion, or moving forward in anyway aren’t to be found on this hour long record, a sickly beautiful all encompassing stalemate, which makes the prospect of whatever Mr. Skodvin picks next for his label extremely appetising and incredibly hard to predict. Having reviewed five of Miasmah’s last seven releases both here and on the pages of The Silent Ballet, the label doesn’t seem to be backing down any time soon and it might be, or in fact is, the most exciting label in experimental music these days. Some will think it’s an overstatement, but it isn’t. ~ mohammed ashraf, fluid-radio.co.uk
Gramercy begins in the darkness. At 2am to be precise. Gareth Davis lacerates on the brooding clarinet as Frances-Marie Uitti anguishes over the distressed cello. Both instruments cry and wail in agony, scratching over strings, escaping the tone valves, and stirring the vibrations in the still of the night. Even when the morning comes, I have to open the blinds to let some light into the suffocating climate. On the album, virtuoso cellist Uitti’s “sweeps and drones are matched perfectly with Davis’s patented haunted drones and breathy chokes, resulting in a deftly academic yet unnervingly involving narrative.” At times the clarinet barely whispers, like a gasping ghost trapped between the twin bow and the strings. This haunting organic ambiance stirs the emotions, raises the hairs, and crawls down the spine, landing on the roster of Miasmah‘s catalog among the label-mates like Kreng, Kaboom Karavan, and Gultskra Artikler. Gareth Davis has previously appeared on my rotations after I discovered his collaboration with Machinefabriek on Drape (Home Normal, 2010), and his work with Steven R. Smith on The Line Across (Altvinyl, 2010). His most recent release includes another partnership with Rutger Zuydervelt, titled Grower (Sonic Pieces, 2011) and has been featured on Headphone Commute’s Best of 2011 list, Music For Sonic Installations In The Cavern Of Your Skull. Meanwhile, Frances-Marie Uitti has been collaborating on music since 1990s, releasing on contemporary classical, avant-garde and jazz labels such as Cryptogramophone, hat ART, and ECM New Series. ~ headphone_commute, discogs.com
Reverb, like a spoon full of sugar, can help some strong medicine to go down. Bass clarinetist Gareth Davis and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti are a pair of American-born, European-based, New Music-associated instrumentalists whose merged address books could hook you up with Steven R. Smith, Mark Dresser, and the late Giacinto Scelsi. You might not expect their collaboration to find release on a label primarily associated with the not terribly demanding atmospherics of Jasper TX or Kreng, but they’ve managed to come up with a record that has something for both their followers and Miasmah’s dark nail-polish-wearing fan base. The record opens fairly late night. Uitti’s cello on “2 am” strikes some Eastern European dissonances while Davis slowly ululates; it’s like an ECM Records treatment of the age-of-coal vibe that Davis’s old mate Smith achieved on his Hala Strana records. The next track, “Felt,” is even more reverb-swaddled, so that high, keening sonorities seem to echo from some clean and distant place. The treatment might take the edge off, but there’s enough sharpness left to hook you. By the time we get to “Cold Call,” Davis is working in the same breath and spittle zone as Axel Dörner or Mats Gustafsson, but once more leisurely pace and liberal echo render it eerie rather than bracing. The album pivots on the lengthy centerpiece “Detours,” which gives ample space to Uitti’s double-bowing technique. Her ability to play distinct parts with two bows isn’t just some parlor trick here, but essential to the piece’s layered coloration. And while the production once more takes a bit of the grit off of the duo’s sounds, there’s still enough roughness in their woody tones to make you watchful of splinters as you feel their grain. ~ bill meyer, dustedmagazine.com
On 'Gramercy', we find clarinet abuser Gareth Davis (who might be best known for collaborations with Machinefabriek and Steven R. Smith) paired with virtuoso cellist Frances-Marie Uitti. Uitti is widely revered for her unusual and original twin bow technique, which allows her to eke out far more sounds from the humble cello that you might initially expect. These sweeps and drones are matched perfectly with Davis's patented haunted drones and breathy chokes resulting in a deftly academic yet unnervingly involving narrative. 'Gramercy' manages the most difficult thing of all and makes music usually restricted to the hallowed libraries of institutions somehow read perfectly amongst label- mates Kreng and Gultskra Artikler. Davis and Uitti are not self-consciously 'dark' but their treatments, when combined evoke unmistakably shadowy, abstract imagery. It would be demeaning to simply label 'Gramercy' as cinematic, but this is dreamlike and alluring in the best possible way, bringing to mind the seamier, more unusual celluloid memories you could possibly conjure up. While challenging, the patient listener will be rewarded with an album of divine restraint, with its darkest corners inhabited by barely a whisper of sound, and in the end it is this which truly scares us. ~ miasmah.com

Gareth Davis - bass clarinet
Frances-Marie Uitti - cello