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CMU Approved
Approved: Bigo & Twigetti – The Exquisite Corpse
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 2 May 2017
Experimental classical and electronic label Bigo & Twigetti does a nice line in interesting collaborative releases.
Its first, ‘Forty Eight’, saw an EP created over 48 hours by three of the label’s artists, each creating a final track by reworking something already worked on by the other two. Next, they expanded the idea further, with seven artists creating an album over the course of a week, each only getting one chance to add their input to each track before passing it on to the next musician.
This week sees the completion of a slightly different take on the idea, which has been building slowly since last year. Working with artists from Moderna Records, the inspiration for the album is taken from the surrealist game of consequences, ‘Exquisite Corpse’. Each track on the new record is a rework of the one before it – with Leah Kardos’s ‘Little Phase’ used as a starting point.
Explains B&T boss Jim Perkins: “The album starts with a re-working of Leah Kardos’s ‘Little Phase’ which is transformed and abstracted as it is passed from one artist to the next, gradually losing all trace of the original as new instrumentation and sounds are introduced and as the musical structure is re-shaped and abstracted in the hands of each new creator”.
This also meant that mid-project, Leah Kardos herself was tasked with reworking a rework of a rework of a rework of a rework of one of her own compositions. It’s all quite ‘Inception’.
With new tracks added to the album roughly every two weeks since November, Tim Linghaus completed the project with his contribution yesterday. Listening through the ten tracks, it’s fascinating to hear how each piece of music changes, and what themes prevail, with each development. The finished result is both a cohesive and varied body of work, and a thoroughly enjoyable listen.
Listen to ‘The Exquisite Corpse’ here:
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