Engine Detail, Digressions 1-4

Description

Figgis' wide instrumental pallet includes pigbass, church organ, harmonium, pitched microphone feedback, piano, Hammond organ, Mellotron, spatula, snaredrum autopan, electric bass, processed brass, processed strings, fizzbass, cello, playground swing, (faulty) plumbing, Revox, clock, bicycle horn, water taxi, Moog Taurus 1 bass pedals, running the gamut from his earliest tape experiments on a Dictaphone and a borrowed Revox to state of the art electronics and orchestral instruments.

As Artist-in-Residence at the Pearse Museum (Dublin) with his six-month old son in tow, a water taxi in Venice 2011, a local security demonstration (binlids) which he captured on iPhone at the Cannes film festival 2010, an early "jazz kit" extemporization at a 17th century farmhouse, to the faulty plumbing at an old family residence revisited as base camp for the completion of the programming arm of this project.

Figgis does not quote "verbatim" in his work, a cello is as much a found sound as is a playground swing. Both are "catered to" in a surprisingly traditional compositional process so the notion of found sound - as it is normally understood - is entirely redundant in this case. The found sound archive is as composed and "played" as are the live instrumental parts. The piece sounds very fluid, if jarring in places, but at no point does it deviate from strict tempo.

The audience experiences a certain trompe l'oreille (to mildly abuse the term). Figgis finds a long walk in the woods is conducive to getting the mood and the tone and the picture right. engine detail digressions 1-4 is very "forest-y" in this respect. It addresses natural decay. It is not very urban.

The CD's sleeve image is by Ireland's leading landscape painter Donald Teskey. The album was designed by renowned art director, Steve Averill who has designed all of U2's records in addition to records by Elvis Costello, Depeche Mode, Clannad, Brian Eno, etc.

Daniel Figgis curated and served as a major contributor for Hersey's critically acclaimed compilations of Irish electronic music, On the Nature of Electricity and Acoustics and A Map of the Kingdom of Ireland. His album Skipper is widely recognized as one of the great groundbreaking recordings of the 1990s.

"I've known Daniel's work since (the early days) and initially regarded him as a courageous artist. Later I began to see him as visionary, unclassifiable in his installation work. I've long heard an uncanny mix of elegy and anger in Daniel's music which doesn't require words or explanation. But I find this combination quite thrilling and moving." - Eamon Carr

"engine detail: digressions 1-4 is gorgeous, inhaling cacophony and silence simultaneously, reaching into places I have never been. The work bleeds spirit, and it reminds me of the present." - ANOHNI

"Daniel Figgis's compositions act as portals between the worlds of the organic and the inorganic, order and chaos, animate and inanimate. Things are seldom what they seem for more than a moment, but despite the tumultuous caravan of seemingly disparate energies, the pieces are entities which possess the cohesion of an intricate cityscape, or the panorama of a random weather system over a turbulent sea." - Donal Lunny

Artists:
Susan Doyle: flute
Emily Thyne: violin
Lisa Dowdall: viola
Arun Rao: cello
Kate Ellis: cello
Aine Ni Dhubhghaill: harp
Daniel Figgis: various
Deirdre O'Leary: clarinet
Malachy Robinson: double bass
Oren Ambarchi: bowed metal
John Martyn: electric guitar, voice
Arun Rao: cello
Emily Thyne: violin
Isabelle O'Connell: piano
John Godfrey: electric guitar
Kate Ellis: cello
Lisa Dowdall: viola