Bryce & Brian

Bryce & Brian’s performance doesn’t begin: it approaches. On April 5th, 2018, a small audience sat captivated on Commend’s floor as a distant shaker emerged from the post-chatter silence, gently echoing and looping in on itself, its scattering beads forming a mist to buoy around the advancing sounds.

On the back of Brian Allen Simon (aka Anenon)’s new record, Tongue, released on Friends of Friends, Brian and Bryce Hackford joined together for a couple of shows in New York – at Commend and at National Sawdust – performing collaborative, improvised journeys referencing the instrumental pallette of Tongue to evolving effect. Tongue is not only a deeply personal work, but a locally specific one: it was recorded in Tuscany in April 2017, and draws on that particularity of place and time through field recordings, in addition to piano (including its internal mechanisms, its strings and hammers) and saxophone (including the breathing patterns that accompany it – perhaps this, and the incidental sounds of the piano, are site-specific field recordings, too). The performance at Commend reorients that experience as two voices in a different place, moving intuitively through and alongside this “original” moment: the spiritual jazz motif of a glissando-ing piano dancing amongst a cello’s warm creak and a breeze of cymbals abruptly arrives and finishes in a repeated cycle, descending into inviting formless passages, Brian’s horn lilting over the the click of strings and eventually continuing that thought a cappella. The progression eventually withdraws until out of sight, leaving behind a trace of wisdom. Bryce uses a mixer, SP-404SX, percussion and MicroKorg; Brian plays soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, OP-1, and electronics.

Mastered by Andy Osterhoudt, limited edition of 50 available exclusively from Commend.

Buy: https://shop.commendnyc.com/collections/exclusives/products/here003-bryce-brian