- There are precious few good things about COVID-19 and self-isolation. Even the store of music recorded pre-pandemic, that continues to be released and thus stops me going insane, is going to run out at some point. However, homes and bedrooms don’t have to be purely claustrophobic hells and it’s nice to be able to draw attention to the artists who’ve turned adversity into opportunity and -really only in a couple of months- produced the music of our new reality.
Brisbane stalwarts Danny Widdicombe and Ant Aggs are two such artists, doing just that. Their own, personal COVID experience began, oddly, when the pair realised they’d both been in the same room as a contagious Tom Hanks. Responsibly, Danny and Ant retreated to their abodes, preparing for a stint of self-isolation. Almost immediately they got busy, online, sharing musical ideas and suturing together what would become a collaborative record called FACE.
Not to do an injustice to their COVID-creativity, but honestly, Danny and Ant have been so prolific over the course of their careers, it may well have been more of an effort to sit around doing nothing, rather than start noodling out their next projects. I say careers, but the outpouring of composition is more spontaneous than any work done just for a paycheck. Ant, for instance, has been a longtime session muso, touring band member and commercial composer, a large part of his work taking him overseas, but despite this he has always found time to spirit himself back to Australia and work with a variety of local talent, creating left-field r’n’b. Widdicombe is at least as busy on any number of little passion projects. I have to admit, a little shame-facedly, that, from his early days with the Wilson Pickers, I’d just filed him under ‘country’ and not really thought about the guy. The truth is much more diverse and features a near endless list of bands and solo releases spanning country, pop, singing-and-songwriting, jazz, dub-reggae, electronica and, of course, ambient music.
Widdicombe’s 2018 release, Ambrosia, is the forerunner to his latest work, though, as with the best ambient releases, the two records are quite distinct. The two, epic cuts that form that album are themselves contrasting efforts. The title track has a rhythmic complexity and subtle energy that recalls The Necks, while the latter has an electronic-world-fusion thing going on that reminds me of Bill Laswell - I’ve heard Danny’s a fan.
FACE is something different again. To begin with, it stands distinct from the largest body of contemporary ambient -which is heavy on the electronics, field recordings and production trickery- and is more organic, something like what Brian Eno had in mind when he first started nutting out his low-key, hypnotic instrumental works; you can hear a kindred spirit connecting FACE to the likes of Music For Airports. Actually, in the production department this is probably even simpler than even Eno’s earliest forays into the style. Aggs and Widdicombe rely, just about wholly, on their instruments: the former on his piano and the latter on his pedal-steel.
Together, they create what they originally intended to, a gently coalescing improv record that smooths all the tension from a tense and furrowed brow. It’s slightly embarrassing, I’m not actually sure why it’s called FACE, but fortunately the track titles -Alpha Centauri, Delta Delphini and Vega- make more obvious sense. It’s strange to hear these two instruments, especially the ‘country-as-a-chicken-coop’ pedal-steel, put to work in the service of space travel but they turn out to be skilful explorers of the inky void. Actually, their cosmos is far from a cold forbidding hell. Instead you'll find yourself floating in a glowing, beautiful and welcoming expanse.
In a sense, this is easy-listening music, it was only intended to be a stress-relief and it fulfills that role admirably; but it’s something beyond that. To trot out the old adage, adversity can produce beauty. It’s surely why Widdicombe and Aggs chose to release FACE: in difficult times they’ve created something almost unintentionally beautiful.
- Chris Cobcroft.