Conceived as rendering of a live concept the Berlin based duo of Tony Buck and Magda Mayas have been developing during one year or so, featuring multi-speaker and multi-layered audio, the essence of Stereo sees SPILL performing in the studio, improvising and reacting to previously recorded improvisations and pre-structured, pre-recorded elements.
The result creates a music with a sense of space and depth and an internal logic not often heard in the realm of improvised music. Featuring sonorous harmonies and spacial percussive interactions, it opens up new territories for the duo, expanding on their well established, almost telepathic improvisations. Sounds move from the fore to the background, sweeping across the stereo image in a teeming world of action and reaction, interwoven timbres and fluid resonance. Phrases pass between the musicians seamlessly, moving forward and back in a seemingly three-dimensional conversation, creating a sense of a new and colourful, ambient sound world.
Recorded and conceived especially for an LP release, the two 20 minute pieces, Sway and Magnetic Island, offer contrasting takes on this sense of spacial and gestural give and take SPILL have been developing over the last 15 years.
Magda Mayas (born 1979) is a pianist and composer performer living in Berlin. She has developed a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using amplification, preparations and objects that become extensions of the instrument itself. Mayas has developed a set of techniques that draw on the history of prepared and inside piano vocabulary, but are highly individualized and expand the language for internal piano music making.
She holds a PhD in Music Performance and Interpretation from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 2019, she is the program coordinator and teaches improvisation at Luzern University of applied Sciences and Arts.
Mayas performs internationally solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers. Amongst her projects are
Spill, a duo with drummer Tony Buck, a duo with Christine Abdelnour (sax),
Jane in Ether with Biliana Voutchkova (vl) and Miako Klein (recorders) and the Splitter Orchester Berlin.
She has performed and toured in Europe, the USA, Australia, Mexico and Lebanon and collaborated with many leading figures in improvisation and composers such as Marilyn Mazur,
John Butcher, George Lewis,
Andy Moor, Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Eddie Prévost,
Phill Niblock, David Sylvian, Zeena Parkins,
Fred Frith, Hamid Drake,
Joëlle Léandre, Paul Lovens, Ikue Mori, Ken Vandermark,
Okkyung Lee, Nic Collins, Elliot Sharp and Maja Ratkje.
Tony Buck (born 1962 in Sidney) is an Australian Berlin-based drummer and percussionist, regarded as one of Australia's most creative and adventurous exports. As a drummer, percussionist, improviser, guitarist, video maker and producer, he has been involved in a highly diverse array of projects but is probably best known around the world as a member of the trio The Necks. He has also played, toured or recorded with Jon Rose,
Otomo Yoshihide,
John Zorn, T. Cora,
Phil Minton,
Keiji Haino, Even Parker, The Machine for Making Sense,
Lee Ranaldo, Ne Zhdall, The EX, Clifford Jordan, Ground Zero...
