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Bassist and composer Joseph Franklin returns to NM for a wildstyle heat exchange, actioned live in collaboration with synthesist, composer and improviser Ben Carey. Modestly, this one does what it says on the box, however ‘a thousand tiny mutinies live’ revises motifs and prompts from Franklin’s solo bass and extended technique LP for NM in 2024 with spectacular license, captured in stunning high resolution audio.

Surrounded by an encircling audience, Franklin’s fragmented acoustic cycles issued from an array of instruments and sources were splayed across 4 channels at Brunswick’s Quadraphonic Club via Carey’s impressively restrained synthesis, software interaction and live engineering, mixed down to stereo for this release. The duo’s staggering meshes lurch from blistering to elongated and back again, often as tactile as they are psychically liquefied, both performances rippling at each other’s wide-eyed interpolations.

Quantitively, mere sinews of the original work flit in and out of focus, yet these strands are most noticeable even to those with a cursory familiarity with ‘a thousand tiny mutinies’. Carey’s attention to detail and care in the mix actively places Franklin’s performance in sharpest focus, re-nesting these percussive, often inter-tonal molecules into a realm of digital faceting, dragging their shared rationale into the cosmological. 

Frightening in its unpredictable objectives, this rare capture of a duo in such gleaming, inspired symbiosis does not strike so often.

a thousand tiny mutinies live (excerpt)

nicemusiclabel.com Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.

a thousand tiny mutinies live (excerpt)

Nice Music Label