NORMAL
photo by Carly McLane
Normal is Fred Frith and Sudhu Tewari,
playing manually & electronically manipulated home-made instruments.
Not really instruments in the sense of beautifully crafted art objects requiring Extended Techniques, so much as crude de-constructions patched together using the simplest of means,
and requiring only minimal exertion to produce sound.
Fred's "planks of wood with strings" were almost all built in the early 80s, when for a period of several years he abandoned the guitar as his primary vehicle for improvising. The birth of this duo in 2001 marked the first time he had performed with them in many years. The fact that he is doing so again is the responsibility of Sudhu, bricoleur extraordinaire , who plunders garages and junkshops for the sources of his sound world,
turning the smallest spring into a potential orchestra.
In 2020 Sudhu and Fred were invited to present their work in a virtual exhibition at the Center for New Music in San Francisco. This gave rise to a number of new creations including the Portable Street Piano, the Post Hole Tone Music Box, the No Strings Guitar, Sudhu’s Infernal Spring Thing, and the Superstrut Bandsaw Bass. The first Normal CD—Moving Parts—was released on the Foc’s’le label in May 2023.
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May 23, 2023 - CD release
Normal: Moving Parts
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December 11, 2020 - CD release
Lock Me Up, Lock Me Down
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Video
NORMAL at Tangents Guitar Series, February 6, 2015
Normal at OtherMinds 11, 2005