The Quiet Club — The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes

Here’s an expansive release from Farpoint Recordings: a C80 cassette, in a nice printed card wallet, with some little inserts - and another 80 minutes of music included as a download… So, it’s not a short listen. We have eight tracks in total, titled ‘Tape 1’, ‘Tape 2’, ‘Tape 3’, and so on, with each track lasting around 20 minutes. The Quiet Club is a duo of Danny McCarthy and Mick O’Shea, here playing (very much) assorted instruments and objects in extended (blind) improvs that echo those territories explored by David Toop, Hugh Davies, and Morphogenesis, for example. I’ll quote from the label spiel: ‘Unable to listen to each other perform during the Covid-19 lockdowns the duo resorted to Telepathic Listening. Uninterested in Zoom, Facetime etc. the duo decided to each perform in their own separate studio’s 20km apart at a given time on appointed days for 20 minutes at a time. Nine tapes were recorded between 4th and 29th June 2020 using reference points including Joyce and Cage. Some of this material became an installation in Lismore Castle and Tape 9 was released on Café Oto's TakuRoku label during December 2020.’

It would be fair to say that the 160 minutes of music on The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes largely fits into one box - there’s no great stylistic jumps between tracks, though certainly the pieces have different tones. Essentially the tracks are layered recordings of each musician, whom each appear to be surrounded with a plethora of instruments and objects and slowly deploy them in the making of small sound events - there are moments of crescendo or short drone but the overall tone leans more to the pointillistic. Some of these instruments can be identified: percussion, cello, violin, trumpet, melodica, electronics, guitar, radio, samples, recorder, sax, and vocals - and probably a myriad of other things. These are sometimes processed, most noticeably with echo and modulating delay. This is evident from the off, as ‘Tape 1’ begins with clanging notes, echoing cowbells (?), and reverbed string sounds; the piece moves through sections involving breathing sounds, scraping, and trumpet, before ending with some noisy junk manipulation. ‘Tape 2’ continues in the same vein, though it does feel busier; there’s delay aplenty, but also a nice mix of delayed, ‘distant’ sounds and more up close rattling. Indeed, there’s quire a few noisier outbursts here, as well as a dirty electronic bass drone - so quite a few elements that aspire to noise. The remaining tracks continue in the same vein and I’m not convinced there’s much point in detailing them all; I’m not being dismissive when I say that, just acknowledging that all the pieces on The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes are similar in terms of form and content, and also acknowledging that there’s a lot of material to cover. To summarise The Quiet Club’s approach here, it’s reminiscent of old electroacoustic or acousmatic music, with a similar sense of pacing, slowly moving through, processing, and connecting individual sounds. However, the tracks are not particularly hardboiled or abstract, which lends them a slight ‘bedroom’ feel - not whimsical or twee, but closer along the spectrum to that than, say, Bernard Parmegiani. Perhaps The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes would fit quite happily into the more sombre territories of the Chocolate Monk label. It could be argued that the tracks would benefit from a more restricted palette, but conversely it could be argued that the overall palette is indeed quite restricted, with instruments and sounds reappearing across the 160 minutes to the extent that sometimes they feel like samples.

The Telepathic Lockdown Tapes is a very recommended release, a huge expanse of work that functions just as well as background ambience as it does reward close listening. If I’m honest, the ‘remote’ aspect adds little for me: McCarthy and O’Shea are the only people who can truly gain from listening to the tracks in that regard, since only they know which parts belong to whom, and thus how they intersect; moreover, as a longstanding improv duo, they will have developed directions and parameters that make remote recording less ‘blind’ - I’d be much more excited about a pub covers band recording remotely. However, that doesn’t affect the sounds within, which are compelling in a low key way. The beginning of ‘Tape 4’ sounds like popping candy in your mouth, whilst you are surrounded by whirring toys, followed soon enough by an effective passage that combines sound poetry-esque vocals over a low drone. This poetry theme is continued in ‘Tape 7’ - my favourite piece here - which is inspired by the works of James Joyce, and contains snippets of Joyce being read out (I assume…); these cryptic snippets really do add to the atmosphere, creating an odd, collage feel with a languid, dreamy tone. The length of this release makes it unusual, and hard to get a firm grasp of, but there’s lots to enjoy here. A fine album.