Mallet Guitars Two' is the second release by Ex-Easter Island Head. Expanding from the duo of their debut, 'Mallet Guitars One' to a quartet, the piece is four movements for mallet guitars, percussion and trumpet.
Originally commissioned for Liverpool Light Night (2010) and honed over a ten-month period of notable live performances alongside Rhys Chatham and Philip Jeck, 'Mallet Guitars Two' broadens the groups’ pulsing percussive minimalism into a full spectrum shimmer of electrified strings, chattering percussion and meditative brass.
Incorporating prepared third-bridge guitars to create a chorusing attack of alternating chords and a bamboo-struck field of flaring harmonics, 'Mallet Guitars Two' explores the melodic potential of overtones and drones generated through multiple electric guitars. Anchored by the mesmeric repetition of three fixed chords and incorporating tuned singing bowls alongside gong-like washes of cymbal, this composition exhibits a further refinement of Ex-Easter Island Head’s unique guitar minimalism.
Translated as “One who is lost”, Moai Hava is a ritually significant relic of the now lost Tangata Manu (Bird-Man) religion of Easter Island.
Taken from a burial ground on the island in 1868 by the crew of the British ship HMS Topaze, it is unknown whether this name refers to a deceased ancestor or the act of removal from the island, but his relocation coincides with the cataclysmic end of a culture which had existed on the island for around one-thousand years.
Recorded live before an audience of several hundred people, 'Music for Moai Hava' was commissioned for performance around the statue itself in the cavernous atrium of the World Museum, Liverpool. The piece sees Ex-Easter Island Head collaborating with members of the a.P.A.t.T Orchestra, an inclusive ensemble of no fixed size or instrumentation, bringing together players of all ages, abilities and backgrounds.
Performed with a twenty-seven piece ensemble, scored for mallet and third-bridge guitars, drums, hand percussion and voices, 'Music For Moai Hava' positions Ex-Easter Island Head’s guitar-struck minimalism at the centre of rattling bamboo, handclaps, cymbals, bells, gongs and shakers before a horizon-line drone of prepared guitars ushers in a swelling chorus of wordless vocals, amplified by the five-storey space of the museum’s vast atrium.
Ex-Easter Island Head live and rehearse with innumerable other bands in a huge dilapidated mansion just outside of Liverpool known as the Lodge. Rent is dirt cheap and extra affordable due to housing benefit laws, everyone's a member of each other's band, and improvisation is king. One ex-resident told me, "Hearing somebody start to play down there [in the basement] was like a magnet, and every day became an endless jam with revolving cast members."
This week, E-EIH are releasing their new mini-album, Mallet Guitars Two/Music for Moai Hava, a record of repetition and rumbling resonances so beguiling that it's easy to see how making it could have absorbed whole days. The record's highlight, the prosaically titled "Mallet Guitars Two Second Movement", brings to mind Rhys Chatham's seminal work with tone, and John Cage's rhythmic sensibilities as filtered through early Clogs releases. The two diverging guitar tones here feel like the carefully digitized mechanics of an old steam train; one representing pistons as delicate as sewing needles, the other the train's glorious steam plumage
– Laura Snapes, Pitchfork best new music September 2012.
'Mallet Guitars Two’ widens the scope of previous duo Ex-Easter Island Head into a full quartet. It works wonders too, bringing to mind Steve Reich or possibly Rhys Chatham, yet never resorting to pastiche. The pieces that make up ‘Mallet Guitars Two’ smartly never stay on one course for two long, drifting from the luxurious drone of the opening part into choppy percussive waves of guitar into almost total percussion. From the opening notes it’s clear the band are expertly placed to explore these styles with precision and confidence, and this sets up subtle ultra-minimal fifteen-minute closer ‘Music for Moai Hava’ perfectly. Killer stuff.
- Boomkat
credits
released September 4, 2020
Originally released by Low Point records, September 17, 2012
Written and performed by Ex-Easter Island Head:
Jacob Chabeaux
Benjamin D. Duvall
Nicholas Hunt
George Maund
Recorded by Stephen Cole at the Kazimier Club (R.I.P), Liverpool, February 2010
Mixed by Stephen Cole at What Studio, Liverpool - whatstudio.info
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