peter knight: shadow phase

Australian composer and director of the Australia Art Orchestra, Peter Knight, resolves his extensive work as an improvisor and band leader into his first solo recording in a decade, Shadow Phase. This is a recording which charts out a sense of perpetual opening, in a time of restrictive movement. It is a music of verticality, spiraling simultaneously up and down, effortlessly generating a depth and openness that is reflected both compositionally and texturally. Shadow Phase is also a music of light and dark, of elements being revealed and concealed with unerring patience. Even at its most dynamic this is a music that carries itself with a quality of a reductive, yet effervescent landscape. It is a masterful exploration of sound, anchored by Knight's evocative approach to trumpet. From Peter Knight: "Most of this record was created in the shadow of COVID and deep in the maw of Melbourne's 2020 long winter lockdown. It is a meditation on the nature of connection. Restricted to a 5km zone, one of the only people I saw outside my family during this time was my old friend and teacher, Ania Walwicz. We met in the overlap between our zones on the waterfront near Docklands to walk and talk on bright, cool winter afternoons. Those conversations became large in my thoughts when Ania suddenly passed away in September. Her voice was in my head as I worked on this music, trawling through threads of ideas, recordings made on my phone, and thoughts jotted down in notebooks. Ania's practice as a writer relied on 'automatic' processes. Her work was informed by everything she had read (a lot) but it was created in the manner of dreams . . . I recorded everyday using the trumpet, my old Revox reel-to-reel, a couple of synths, a harmonium I lent from a friend, and whatever else was around. I worked mostly on just diving a little deeper each time I sat down to it. Through the simple process of exhalation, I explored my relationship with the trumpet, which has been through so many twists and turns. I let the tones produced by my breath unfurl on long tape loops and degrade beyond recognition through pedal and plugin chains, until the only imprint of the initial gesture remained. My process also involved long bike rides during which I'd listen to the work of previous days on ear buds, gliding through familiar streets made slightly strange by the absence of people and movement..."