Keir Neuringer and Matthew Wright - Speak Cities (Extra Normal Records XN005)

Historical article recovered from a Wayback capture dated 2018-02-24.

If you allow it, sounds like these can expand your horizon, open possibilities and stimulate the senses. Keir Neuringer is a Philadelphia based saxophonist, improviser and composer. Matthew Wright is a composer and post-DJ, whose work stems from turntablism and electronica. Recorded in 2013, Wright spent the following two years assembling 6 tracks from the session, resulting in a conceptual theme around the interaction one has with the city. Above the Clouds invokes the eerie isolation of space inside a skyscraper using the heady drones of the saxophone against the dizzy repetitious energy of data transfer and digital communication. Cityspeak restores the funk with ground level energy, like a fast forward film clip of an avenue filled with screeching cars versus the orderly conforming pedestrians. Nightmusic is very personal interaction with the city, in fact you can hear apprehension with each breath you take in a lonely alleyway that gradually turns dangerous then industrious. The saxophone is distant while the sounds of the city resonate against the hard surfaced city gorge. Superhigh Informationway is a melodic re-imagination of the sound of metadata and digital file transfer akin to the 21st century ‘connected’ city. Wright’s mega sound-byte manipulations are punctuated by Neuringer’s sparsely repetitious but monotonic interjections. Wright gradually adds further layers to the digital melee before Neuringer re-enters and the download speed diminishes. This work is highly thought provoking but certainly worth the challenge.

Peter Wockner