Group Listening
Musical collaborators for the past decade, Paul Jones and Stephen Black are together
known as the woodwind-and-key-wielding, sculptural-papier-mâché-hat-wearing Group
Listening.
Following renegade reinterpretation records Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works Vol. 1 (2018)
and Vol. 2 (2022), which pulled apart, pondered, and re-shaped cult ambient classics by
the likes of Robert Wyatt, Arthur Russell and Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Walks (2024) — a
shining modernist monolith buried deep in the woods — is their first volume of completely
original compositions.
Walks draws from the field recordings of Ernest Hood; the abstraction of Harold Budd; the
saxophone of Sam Gendel; the “heightened naturalism” of a Martin Parr photograph; the
clarity and site-specificity of Japanese ambient, environmental & new age music of the
80s and 90s, and, prominently, Robert Walser’s pseudo-biographical novella The Walk —
an appreciation of the philosophical space gifted by walks to walkers.
An ode to the gently psychedelic potential of wandering around in some place, any place,
every place: the places in one’s own mind, Walks invites you to listen and think; to slip
through the fabric of time a little or a lot, depending on how long you’ve got. Over all, to
paraphrase Walser, it invites you to glow and flower yourself in the glowing, flowering
present.
Diva Harris, November 2023
“Exquisite neo-classical work” Electronic Sound Review
“Supremely serene” Uncut
“Hazy, bright and sleepy – a dreamtime soundscape” Elizabeth Alker, BBC R3
Ty Pawb Friday 23rd August 10.30pm PERFORMANCE SPACE (£12)
