NORMAL

NORMAL

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 marked the first time he had performed with them in many years. The fact that he is doing so is the responsibility of Sudhu, bricoleur extraordinaire, a tinkerer of genius, who plunders garages and junkshops for the sources of his sound world, turning the smallest spring into a potential orchestra,
the bluntest needle into a sharp response.

And as with any music, what is really going on is intense listening,
the joy of discovery, and tricks of memory.

 

 

 

 

 

Normal at the Stone, 2013

Normal

 

Fred's homemades

normal

 

Sudhu's "Heavily Modified Readymade" and pedals

normal