Every Movement by Left Hand Cuts off the Right

Sound artist Robbie Judkins returns to Brachliegen Tapes as Left Hand Cuts off the Right with Every Movement, following 2023’s 12” LP Free Time/Dead Time. Moving away from the synthesisers and processed sounds that tunneled throughout Free Time/Dead Time, Left Hand Cuts off the Right resolved to employ a focused sound palette of treated acoustic instruments on Every Movement. Composing for other performers for the first time, the result is a densely layered assemblage of chamber musique made concrète that is characterised by mutability and unrest.

Every Movement takes a line from novel Flights by Olga Tokarczuk as its primary point of departure; specifically the phrase: “every movement turns into a return.” Judkins resolved to create ten movements which each centred on a single melody. Centring the zither as his primary sound generator, Judkins bows, plucks, scrapes, flicks, and rattles the instrument, building cyclical ostinatos into dense soundscapes which focus on the idea of the eternal return. Inspired by listening to copious amounts of Lungfish, Scientist, Earth, El Khat, Fadimoutou Wallet Inamoud, Tony Conrad & Faust and the Super Djata Band at the time of recording, the sessions for Every Movement found Left Hand Cuts off the Right inviting collaborators Guro S. Moe, Håvard Skaset, ZD Grafters and Dan B. Hill to contribute interpretative and expressive takes on the compositions. Bringing contrabass, violin, guitar, and percussion to proceedings, the players’ additions see Every Movement’s sparse melodic cells engulfed by resonant percussion and dense bowed drones. Orbiting the ever-present burrs and tweaks of Judkins’ zither, these textures coil around the roots of cyclical ostinatos and modulate their tones into fluid and complex masses.

Characterised throughout by motion, Every Movement builds its motifs into ebbing auditory experiences as many hands stir the pot. Sharp resonances cluster together, harmonising with themselves as they weave in a non-linear flux. Rich strings emerge from the clatter as the compound is filled with arrivants who circumvent the compositions down byways and back roads. An iterable accretion of sound, Every Movement is a profoundly human work which expresses the joys of collaboration by drawing the ear of the listener to the precise depth and complexity of its arrangements.

Left Hand Cuts off the Right is the moniker of sound artist and musician, Robbie Judkins. His work melds acoustic instruments, bent electronics, synthesizers, field recordings and more."The freshness of Judkins's restrained approach is felt in an enjoyably weird atmospheric balance between sustained calm and sticky anxiety." The Wire

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