New Album from Music for Hard Times

Those who follow this site regularly probably know that I try to keep up with the activities of instrument inventor Tom Nunn, most of whose performances involve playing on boxes on top of which everyday physical objects have been attached, which are then played through contact with other everyday physical objects. Nunn calls these instruments skatchboxes, and watching him perform frequently enhances the experience of listening to the sounds he creates. Regardless of such visual impact on listening to Nunn’s performances, he has released several recordings, one of which, Second Sight, was made with his Ghost in the House quartet and was discussed on this site in July of 2017.

Ghost in the House brings two skatchbox players, Nunn and David Michalak, together with two “conventional” instrumentalists, oboist Kyle Bruckmann (who is particularly talented in his command of extended techniques) and percussionist Karen Stackpole. Nunn also performs as half of the Music for Hard Times duo, joined by Paul Winstanley, another performer with an inventive approach to extended techniques, which he applies to his electric bass. The two of them recently completed a recording entitled Giant Powder Dangerous, which is currently available for digital download or as a vinyl recording through a bandcamp Web page. For this recording Nunn uses a variation on his usual skatchboxes, which he calls the skatchplate, suggesting that he is now working on a different type of surface with new acoustical properties.

The feature that most distinguishes Nunn’s instruments is the absence of a well-defined pitch, making them basically an extension of percussion instruments with the same quality, such as drums, tambourines, and triangles. However, unlike most music for such percussion instruments, there is also a free approach to rhythms that one might almost call discursive, closer to the everyday speaking voice than to a singing one. To complement Nunn’s performances, Winstanley almost entirely departs from drawing upon the familiar pitch qualities of his instrument, drawing instead upon physical approaches to both the body and the strings that tend to reflect Nunn’s own sonorities. Thus, with only occasional exceptions over the course of the five tracks of this album, the effect on listening is one of a single instrument whose overall rhythms amount to more than a single performer would be able to manage.

The title of the album seems to have been based on what is most likely a vintage photograph from the nineteenth century:

cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Music for Hard Times)

Most likely it was taken from the western half of our continent at a site involved with either mining or the building of a railroad. Both of these were dangerous professions for which explosives were necessary but highly hazardous. It is thus no surprise that some of the sonorities on this album serve up ominous connotations. However, such connotations do not pervade the entire album; and, from my own perspective, it seemed as if the darkest material was held off until the final track, “GritzPop.” On the other hand my cat’s reaction to the earlier tracks had more to do with curiosity than with anxiety, as if (to evoke a shameless pun on Nunn’s other group) we had a “guest in the house.”

While I still feel that the visual element contributes much to Nunn’s playing his own invented instruments, Giant Power Dangerous has more than enough to engage the attentive listener and tweak that listener’s imagination.