crou028: Keith Berry: The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish CD

CROUTON NO.28
Keith Berry
“The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish”
CD

OUT OF PRINT

London composer Keith Berry’s The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish is a complex, albeit soothing piece, stretching over nine tracks. The movement of the piece is akin to closing one’s eyes while floating gently down a nighttime river. But ironically, this slow pace demands quick attention, as the sound all around you passes you by. Fortunately, unlike a river experience, one gets the opportunity to discover additional nuances, that in themselves each open new worlds with repeated listening. Crouton is pleased to present this mind encompassing new work from one of the brightest electronic composers in the UK today. His previous work has been released on such labels as trente oiseaux, Authorized Version, and Twenty Hertz. This release is presented as a special hand-numbered and limited edition of 300, packaged in a small kraft box filled with blue smally leaves, and adorned with with an original photographic work by Keith Berry.

About the composer:

After immersing himself in the books of Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castaneda, Lao Tzu and Nietzsche, poetry from the great Sufi masters Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, Jala al-din Rumi and Farid ud-din Attar, the Japanese philosophies of Wabi-Sabi, Zen and the I Ching, a book of oracles containing the whole of human experience through the symbolism of its hexagrams, Keith resurfaced with the aim in becoming technically proficient enough with his macintosh so as able to assimilate these philosophies to sound.

An encounter with Akira Rabelais’s software programs Argeiphontes Lyre & Argeiphontes Recalcitrance - plus the usual array of more academic programs needed for sound design, helped shift his view of this little machine from an over glorified typewriter, to a powerful sound-tool that could transform, mutate and add a magical realist and random element into this labyrinth of sound experiments - which by now it’s corridors had taken on an mystical otherworldly, yet organic sound, a sort of waking dream which if the listener had the right tools to penetrate could be awarded with a heightened awareness of their long upheld perception of the world around them, something religions of the East have called Maya, an illusion.

“I work with blocks of sound in the same way a zen koan might work, in the sense that these “blocks” are supposed to be “triggers” which though they do not contain enough information in themselves to impart enlightenment, may possibly be sufficient to unlock the mechanisms inside one’s mind that leads to enlightenment”. - Keith Berry