Korg PS3200

A solo guitar piece dedicated to Catherine Lamb. She is a constant source of inspiration. 
Thanks, Cat!

For Catherine Lamb

https://caterpillarrec.bandcamp.com/album/transparent-forms?fbclid=IwAR2MDtUAVEyTzpVchoR3fwAMPJ5VHkhc6Qsdyf_xPuVaN_SZn_5DltuNFw0

Transparent Forms - Nick Ashwood - Cat 010 

Composed in 2022 for Microfest, an annual microtonal festival hosted by Kraig Grady and Michael H Dixon. 

Transparent Forms is Nick’s first group composition following on from his 2020 solo piece Unfolding/Overlay, (Inexhaustible Editions 027). Amanda Stewart wrote in the liner notes to that: “Enfolded in the shifting tones, our ears are at the edge of themselves.” With this new work, he continues this interrogation into the edges of harmonicity and perception. Frequencies from bowed guitar, flute and clarinet burst away from any notion of a stable lattice to reshape our understandings of intervals and chords, and our listening is continually surprised and delighted by the 'tastes' and 'colours' that are revealed. 

The instruments dissolve into each other to create an unrecognisable timbral unity where melody emerges from harmonic clouds.
credits
released December 2, 2022 

Laura Altman - Clarinet 

Jim Denley - Flute 

Nick Ashwood - Acoustic Guitar 

Recording at Tempe jets by the group, Tuesday 14th June 2022 
Mixed by Jim Denley

Transparent Forms

https://nickashwood1.bandcamp.com/album/inside-the-body-of-a-wave

tones coalesce into a wash of colour exchanges, that shift, swell and absorb into one another, creating a wave that is ever-changing. When listening I hope for the listener to hear these small waves and exchanges coming together to create a larger meaning. 

Buchla 200e 
self made reed organ

inside the body of a wave

Home Recording

https://nickashwood1.bandcamp.com/album/liquefying-harmonies

Improvised reed organ - 
Each piece was recorded in one take with one stereo pair in the space. 

though justly tuned reed's tones liquefy throughout space, dissolving into air.
credits
released November 16, 2023 

recording and music by Nick 

Mixed and Mastered by Joe Talia

Liquefying Harmonies - Two

Organ pipes were laid down near a beachside dock at 10 pm. 
This is an improvised piece, that plays with space and changing environments.
credits
released November 16, 2023 

recorded and mixed by Nick

10​/​15​/​11​/​23

Nick Ashwood - reed organ / composer
Laura Altman -  clarinet 
Jim Denley - flute
Alexandra Spence -clarinet 
Peter Leung - tenner sax
Tony Osborne. - voice

1- 6 - live at Sydney MicoFest, 2024

Nick Ashwood: prepared guitar, objects

Dale Gorfinkel: vibraphone bars, self made devices 

Alex Spence: Tapes, contact mic, clarinet, objects

By the creek

A piece from a little while ago
3 bowed guitars

Waves on Waves

Rhys Butler - Alto sax
Nick Ashwood - Acoustic guitar

- Rhys + Nick -  Duo -

https://caterpillarrec.bandcamp.com/album/battery

Nick and Laura first met in 2017 and have been playing together both as a duo and in Splinter Orchestra since. 

In March 2019 Laura travelled to nipaluna/Hobart, where Nick was living, to spend time playing, recording and hanging out - one afternoon was spent in a studio and two days in locations in and around the city. One of these places was Alexandra Battery in lower Sandy Bay - one of Nick's favourite spots to play. They lugged their gear up a large grassy hill and then descended into the dark, reverberant concrete bunker where they played for an hour or so. The three pieces on this album are from this session. 

Using clarinet, small amp feedback, tape players + cassettes, small objects, acoustic guitar and e-bows, their playing tends towards a series of colour exchanges that explore the possibilities of acoustic phenomena, methods of preparing instruments and long-form improvisational structures.

Nick Ashwood & Laura Altman -verdigris

Michael McNab - Percussion, Objects 

Nick Ashwood - Acoustic guitar, Objects

Michael McNab & Nick Ashwood - Inward Precipice

talking to a friend, guitar solo
 Eva-Maria Houben 2014

Recorded 2020 at Tempe jets, Nsw

Eva-Maria Houben - Talking To A Friend

Prepared Piano

https://inexhaustibleeditions.bandcamp.com/album/unfolding-overlay

Unfolding/Overlay (2019) (38:30)
Nick Ashwood: acoustic guitars
Composed and realized by Nick Ashwood
Recorded by Zarvan Kara at Reel To Reel Studios in Margate, Tasmania, Australia on 27/7/2019
Mixed and mastered by Jim Denley at Kaloola
Score graphics by Nick Ashwood
Liner notes by Amanda Stewart
Graphic design by László Szakács
Produced by László Juhász
Special thanks to Jim & Viv, Laura Altman, Amanda Stewart, Liam James, Fredrik Rasten, Cat Lamb, Clara de Asís & The Splinter Orchestra

Dedicated to Cor Fuhler (1964-2020)

Unfolding/Overlay

Mesmeric displacements, chordal transmutations, long tones, latent tonalities, austere, immersive, realigning the senses, clear yet unstable, ephemeral yet tangible. Listening to Nick Ashwood’s unfolding/overlay for the first time, I am struck by its restraint, its elegance, and the complexity that evolves from the most simple of elements and approaches: the tonalities generated by two, bowed, acoustic guitars.

This performance of the composition has been created ‘live to tape’ in two continuous, unedited recordings that unfold and overlay in relation to each other in real (recorded) time. This process is palpable in the listening experience, engendering an organic intimacy and vulnerability as the work develops. Using just intonation and a capo, Ashwood’s tones splinter, multiply, abstract and coalesce into a wash of colour exchanges. As the piece progresses, these washes continuously evolve into new fields of harmonicity, forming paradoxical points that unfold vertically and horizontally in space and time.

Ashwood usually works within extended guitar technique traditions (as developed by Keith Rowe and others since the 1960s). However, in unfolding/overlay, he has chosen to utilise bowing techniques to explore immersive fields which can be generated from minimal resources.

Enfolded in the shifting tones, our ears are at the edge of themselves. As I listen to the work again, and again, I hear it differently each time: new intricacies and multiplicities that I hadn’t fully absorbed emerge. The piece, itself, seems to expand one’s experience of the moment as an unstable and ultimately unknowable interplay. Amanda Stewart 2020

Nick Ashwood

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