Known for her distinctive voice as an improviser and composer, UK guitarist Tara Cunningham’s new solo release, Almost – Not Exactly, balances bold experimentation with the natural percussion of rocks, sand, and driftwood. Out July 25 on nonclassical as a cassette tape and digital release, the five tracks (plus three remixes by Christos Stylianides, Liam Noble, and Morgan Noise) explore the idea of rhythm; where it lives, both within sound and silence. The resulting magic of this short EP – recorded while she was on holiday in northern France – is not knowing where guitar ends and these sampled found objects begin.
Street Wall Crash opens with sour drones, curdling and separating from each other amid jostling flits of articulated pops. Each track has a companion film by video artist Jemima Seymour, and the video for Street Wall Crash brings a physicality to the work; the pushes, pulls, and interlocking arms of dancers Elina Demirtzioglou and Sofia Poutchtou only momentarily sync with the rhythmic landscape Cunningham has created, drawing our attention to the music that exists between these moments.
Much of the EP exists in this way: fleeting fragments disappearing like sand between your fingers. Digital Hymn dances around the listener – at first shy and appearing in faint blips, but then finding its footing with an increasingly assertive ambient line that takes us to the end of the track.
Triptych is brilliantly disorienting and groovy all at once, with static ricochets dragging us further onto the dance floor. Rings of wooshes and whirls later transport the music to somewhere more paranormal, creating imaginary ‘back-to-back’ DJ sets in our minds.
Bite Point scales back to a sparser, almost mechanical texture before being guided back into a groove, punctuated by loose drones filtering through. The title track brings in siren-like whistles that contrast the light, woody percussion, lending an air of nostalgia as it calls back to ideas from the previous tracks and effectively summarizes the clear aesthetic vision for this project.
Remixes often afford us the opportunity to see composers and creators through the lens of their collaborators. Offering the opportunity to respond or even stray in a completely different direction allows us into the creative process and to see how artists work together to create new musical ground. The remix of Bite Point by Christos Stylianides deliciously complements the fragmentary nature of this EP with languid strokes of synth, while Liam Noble’s remix of Digital Hymn provides more techno, video-game type noise to the already bustling groove. Morgan Noise’s spin on Street Wall Crash introduces the only instance of vocals on the album, which feels surprising at first, but is approached delicately so as to not interrupt the texture. With the air of an exasperated jazz singer, Morgan’s cool, distorted vocals ask, “How much faster / can I feel“ as they melt into slower, breathy phrases from wind-like instruments.
For a project dedicated to experimenting with the rhythms of found objects, Almost – Not Exactly also tackles silence with such beauty. Throughout, Cunningham deftly pieces together snippets of sound and texture to create a tight EP with a clear sense of identity.
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