Debut solo records usually default to one of two categories: 1. Breathtaking but vacuous displays of virtuosity; 2. Gorgeous but empty digital fantasies. You can guess at once that Philip Sheppard’s approach doesn’t fit the first category – the booklet is almost too reticent about the performer’s name – and suspicions of the second category fade quickly. Yes, it uses overdubbing; yes, it features a new digital and/or acoustic five-string cello. But the pieces use state-of-the-art technology without being overwhelmed by it. In any case, Sheppard restricted himself to the sounds made on the instrument, as opposed to using it as a MIDI controller.
Maybe the programmatic nature of the venture also helps Sheppard to avoid conventional pitfalls. Harrison’s Chronometer is a soundscape of a voyage to Lisbon; The Glass Cathedral depicts ‘an impossible space’ and sent me back to my LP collection to compare Bryars’s Sinking of the Titanic on Obscure. Like that piece, The Glass Cathedral always avoids narcosis, whilst dealing with drones and generally slow changes (except once or twice when Sheppard drops a huge string section right in your lap after a lull). He’s very committed to improvisation, but I’m not sure how much it could figure in a piece involving 44 cello overdubs. Whatever the case, it works beautifully.
Harrison’s Chronometer uses a wider vocabulary, drawing on creaks and what sounds like whale song. It’s gripping music – much more than a soundtrack for an imaginary movie – and it reclaims for string players those long drones and chords that ‘ambient’ musicians couldn’t function without.
Because the disc is, in effect, an EP it’s not going to seriously dent most punters’ budgets. Blue Snow is a new, independent label run, in true improvised music fashion, by Sheppard himself. If all of the releases are up to this standard, Sheppard (glimpsed recently with The Smith Quartet, Pulp and Terry Riley) has nothing to worry about. Steve Beresford