Tom and Gerry
Thomas Lehn & Gerry Hemingway - Fire Works

Info

Thomas Lehn and Gerry Hemingway blew into Chapel Hill in early March 2000. During their three-day stay (they lost a gig when a club in Asheville lost their liquor license or something), I saw them perform three times: once in their scheduled Go! Studios show, once in my living room for as many folks as would come, and once in Winston-Salem at The Wherehouse. To me, they were on a tour, a mission, to expand the dictionary of interactions between a synthesizer and drummer. I've been a huge follower of Gerry Hemingway since I saw him with Marilyn Crispell and Reggie Workman in a previous visit to the Triangle. Thomas was a new force for me, but to see Gerry with Thomas is to see an entirely new kind of duo communication, one that is so viscerally and visually exciting and new that it is unique in contemporary music. It does not visit old anything or harken back to this or that. It is music in the moment by two folks who couldn't be better at it if they tried (but they are always trying and always succeeding!). To watch Thomas twitching like an electrified pretzel as he surprises - and is surprised by - his analogue synthesizer is to watch a brilliant child playing with a sonic erector set, jamming little pieces of metal and wire and circuit boards into tiny open mouths on the patchboard surface. To watch Gerry is to see a sculptor in love with his medium - the good old trap set, but adorned especially by Gerry with sound "randomizers" - metal, different beaters, broken cymbals, tubes, dowels, who knows what! What is completely and immediately clear is how much fun this music is to create and perform.

This CD captures many such moments of supreme clarity from their 2000 tour - at Experimental Intermedia in New York, at Lamar's Lounge in Chattanooga, at Bard College, and at The Empty Bottle in Chicago. In compiling their favorites, Gerry indicated there was no shortage of great material, so this really is the best of a great tour. We all hope you enjoy it as much as we did putting it out. - Ian Davis (082001)

1. Pot's a feu (4:03)
2. Coconut Pistil (3:04)
3. Floating Leaves (6:32)
4. Dragon Eggs (7:44)
5. Girandola (13:30)
6. Fishes & Whistles (10:49)
7. Ripple to Red Wave (4:03)
8. Titanium Salute (7:24)
9. Walking into Sky (4:53)
Total Time 62:41

1+4 recorded March 11, 2000, by Phill Niblock at Experimental Intermedia, NYC, NY
2+7 recorded March 6, 2000, by Brian Powderly-Cagle at Lamar's Lounge in Chattanooga, TN
3+6+8+9 recorded March 10, 2000, by Nicholas Krapels at Bard Hall, Annandale, NY
5 recorded March 8, 2000, by Malachi Ritscher/Savage Sound Syndicate at the Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL