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The CD is sub-titled “108 Chinese crickets conducted by Lars Fredriksson”. Now you might be thinking, how can 108 crickets be conducted? The way Lars has done it is to take 100 hours of live recordings and condense it into 79 minutes of philharmonic orchestration. The 19 ‘tracks’ are split into five sections of “meditative, minimalistic and organic music”.

I certainly found it relaxing on the first couple of listens. To be honest, I fell asleep as the crickets ‘performance’ that you associate with evening choruses, does set you up for some shuteye.

This type of album is the link between improvised and experimental music (like Unsafe), Click House and phonography (that’s not a typo, see links below). At the launch party, Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures shared the bill and at the end of the show, the musicians, including Joseph Bowie (also Defunkt, Ethnic Heritage Ensemble) joined the crickets for a very quiet jam session. How special would that have been?

I must admit, I was a little hesitant with this one, but turn it up load for a totally unique oral experience. You’ll be surprised what you can hear. If they’re after some remixes, I’d suggest Radio Slave/REKID for the dance floor, Solo Andata for the ambient free jazz and Motohiro Nakahima for the minimal mix.

Reviewed: Lars Frediksson - Ting Qiu : Listening To Autumn (Country & Eastern) Cat. No. CE06 Release date: November 2006

Tracklisting:
Invocation
Prologos
Listening To Autumn
Autumn Night
Parting

Links:
www.countryandeastern.se
www.bolingo.org
www.phonography.org
Country & Eastern Nights - 1st November Lice at Etnografiska
324 Playing Crickets (China)
Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures (US)
Berger Knutsson Spering (Sweden)
www.myspace.com/rekid