Andrew Tuttle: Fleeting Adventure | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Hi readers, your captain speaking. This is a pre-boarding announcement for the review of local musician and composer Andrew Tuttle’s (Tutts as he is more affectionately known) new album Fleeting Adventure, with service from Meanjin/Brisbane to ‘Cosmic Australiana’ and stopovers in ambient country and experimental folk. I ask that you strap yourself in, open your ears for listening, mind to spirituality and heart to feeling. The time is ...whenever your hearing this and the weather is cool but dry in sub-tropical winter as we look forward to spring. Thank you for choosing us. I hope you enjoy the trip.

Our journey begins with nine year old Tuttle unwillingly learning guitar thanks to lessons organised by non-musical parents that he loves dearly. Lessons from an “old stoner” logically progressed to joining a band, playing grunge covers and writing his own music inspired by Nirvana et al through adolescence. Listening to 4ZZZ, revelling in the underground rave scene and learning how to make computer music with his then best mate Gwen Raymond, led to solo electronic project Anonymeye 2004-2012. The purchase of a banjo and listening to country and experimental music lent itself to releasing instrumental ambient folk music under his actual name and three albums in just about as many years before his landmark release, Alexandra in 2020. Alexandra highlighted Tuttle’s dexterity for pastoral soundscapes, acoustic instrumentation and signal processing, truly announcing himself as a master of his domain. Alexandra Variations followed within the same year and then a collaborative release with Pandang Food Tigers during the pandemic.

The supremely good Fleeting Adventure is a celebration album, an expression of gratitude by Tuttle and friends. Listeners are prepared for take-off with the lush warm tone provided by electronics on opening track and second single Overnight’s A Weekend. The wash is uninterrupted for more than a minute which grounds us and establishes a sonorous foundation for the album. Plucks and twangs of Tuttle’s banjo are gently introduced, and they float gloriously over the electronics as the ensemble slowly come to life with the electric guitars of Steve Gunn and Michael A. Muller (Balmorhea), saxophone by Joe Saxby (These Guy) and violin from Aurelie Ferriere. Next Week, Pending ambles along expansively with accompaniments from Darren Cross (Gerling) and Luke Schneider. Correlation is cosmic gravy with ‘American primitive’ grandmasters Chuck Johnson and Josh Kimbrough lending a hand for the first single released from this collection.

As we reach the halfway point of this expedition Tuttle plays solo on Freeway Flex, a mindful meditation which stretches out time and space. As we begin our descent, the back half of the album includes third single New Breakfast Habit with support from Cross and Schneider again, Filtering, is neoclassical with orchestral and jazz undertones which features Pandang Food Tigers, Conrado Isasa and home grown musicians and composers Claire Deak, Flora Wong, Luke Cuerel and Tony Dupe. Closing track There’s Always a Crow is another solo affair, a synthesis of field recording and acoustic elements which clears our mind for landing as spring breaks and we feel rejuvinated after a temperate hibernation. Luminaries Johnson and long term artistic mentor and collaborator Lawrence English mix and master the compositions and are a guiding presence along the way.

There is a special kinship on this vast collection of ‘Cosmic Australiana’. It’s full of worldly folk, and otherworldly ambient treatments which together create complex tones and textures. So what does it all mean? If we all talk less, listen (to) more (Andrew Tuttle) and practice gratitude, the world would be a better place. And if you are not there yet, try to remember that as fleeting as it might be, the “adventure is worthwhile, in itself”.

- Tristan Birrell.