Pilgrim (Graham Bowers album)

Pilgrim is the fourth album by Graham Bowers avant-garde British composer. Released in April 1999, sub-titled ‘A prelude to Pilgrim’s Progress’ it was intended to be the first in a new series of works, however due to a serious accident on-going works were unavoidably put on hold, and after a long period of recovery, work has now commenced and a new work is scheduled for release early 2007.

1 Overview
2 Track listing
3 Personnel
4 External links

[edit] Overview

The Overview of this album, initially, follows much the same in format and wording as that of Of Mary's Blood, Transgression, Eternal Ghosts, in so far as Bowers’ approach to musical composition tends to bypass the usual conventions of musicality, placing more emphasis on what he describes as “associative listening” (the association of sound related to life experiences) and “Sound Theatre” where, and I quote “if a sound is produced either intentionally or unintentionally on a musical instrument, or is a found sound, if it has relevance and contributes to the assigned and adopted identity within my approach to a composition, it has validity”. Placing this work in a clear cut genre is impossible as it spans and encompasses several, namely avant-garde, experimental, dark ambient, progressive rock, jazz and contemporary classical.

The album consists of one continuous 50 minute track which is divided into three sections ‘Unconditional’ ‘Loss of Innocence’ ‘Mechanistics’. Although this format appears to be a recurring event in his works to date, the musical style, and content of ‘Pilgrim’ is much different from his previous albums. The arrangements and production take on a lot clearer and more defined approach, and in many ways are much simpler. His manipulation of two dimensional stereophonic space into the three dimensional environment of his ‘Sound Theatre’ is much more apparent, as he has allowed the instruments and their assigned characterisation to be clearly identifiable. An aspect of the work picked up by Julian Cowley in his review for The Wire “As a painter, Bowers understands well the workings of perspective, and his most successful musical effects follow from skilled manipulation of acoustic zones of recession. His utilisation of the middle distance is especially striking. There, animated activity assumes a blurred form, discernible yet indistinct. Deciphering the event becomes a compulsive challenge, as acoustic phenomena simultaneously proclaim their identity and deny it.”

In the main the instrumentation consists of alto saxophone, clarinet, and recorder along with percussion and percussive instruments such as acoustic piano and hammer dulcimer, with acoustic strings in the form of violin and cello, being introduced at various and spasmodic points throughout the work.

The artworks accompanying the CD are reproductions of Bowers’ figurative and surrealistic paintings.

The album received critical acclaim and examples of reviews and can be seen at the website of Red Wharf (See External links)