Will Guthrie
Body and limbs still look to light

The Wire

The enigmatically titled Body and Limbs Still Look to Light is a powerful solo set by Australian percussionist Will Guthrie, recorded at Apo33 in Nantes, France, during 2005. Guthrie isn’t a ‘pure’ percussionist in either the classical or jazz tradition, he’s just as likely to work with electronics and found sound, and much of “Peak” the second of the CDs three tracks, involves a dense montage of sounds sourced mostly from radio. The raw material of these pieces is the result of improvisation and chance, but Guthrie carefully sculpts the sounds and arranges them in intriguing ways. The electroacoustically adjusted gong tones and bass drum booms of “Taken” are strung along a line of swift, skittering percussion (muted metallophones and small drums) that sounds remarkably like the work of Paul Lovens. The final track, “Withdrawal”, charts a withdrawal from, rather than into, silence. It’s fairly quiet during the first five of its 17 minutes, but as the volume gradually increases so too does the intensity. Deep chiming figures are thickly overlaid with percussion of all kinds, together with electronic and electroacoustic sounds, and the pace of the piece, despite the different speeds at which some of the material comes and goes, remains stately throughout.