Timeless

Artwork used in cover design: Rudolf Crivici.

Works for string quartet/ looping device and didjeridu, (composed by Crivici, as well as group improvisations) and improvisations for didjeridu and piano (Atkins and Crivici) 1999.

This album was Elektra’s second major step in the journey to expressing a broader and deeper sense of being, place and culture, both here in Australia and beyond. It is a record of our attempts to explore and develop a number of ideas and performance possibilities which, because of their improvisational nature, were very much like “passing thoughts”, “the nameless ones”, and, being expressed “in tongues of insects”, transient and easily forgotten. A late night recording session (10.30 -11.30 pm), of spontaneous dialogue and shared rhythms between Mark and myself (forgotten by the next morning), revealed in “Kooriwadjula Talking” and “Kata Tjuta” something beyond the apparent differences of culture, history and identity.
Limited time and resources (a tour of South America and Europe was imminent) didn’t seem to matter in the face of the group energy, sense of play and creativity that kept moulding the pieces, both improvised and composed. It felt like the right thing to do, at the tight time, and in that sense it was “Timeless”. Whether this album becomes ‘timeless’ in any other senses of the word, well, only time will tell: probably best to leave it to history, and the listener to sort that one out!

R.C. -11th Feb. 09

Elektra: Mirka Rozmus, the brothers Crivici, Marcus Hartstein (cello), Mark Atkins (didjeridu), Blair Greenberg (percussion).