Jason Sharp‘s third album, The Turning Centre Of A Still World, is excitingly just days away from its release. The extraordinary Montréal composer, improviser and saxophonist had already enticed us with two singles, ‘Everything Is Waiting For You’ and ‘Blossoming Rest’. Both tracks were offered with accompanying visuals made by experimental filmmaker Guillaume Vallée, who has also created a full visual album featuring hand-processed & hand-painted Super8 films. Vallée commentes:

“This collaboration with Jason was such an amazing and smooth audiovisual adventure. At the beginning, I was planning to work in a different way than I usually do, with a more minimal approach to the visual. But the more I listened to Jason’s album, the more it brought me elsewhere. I wanted to shoot everything on Super8 and hand-process the whole thing, to grasp the organicism and physicality of the music. Working with the film emulsion made sense to me, with hand-painting and chemical treatment, to get closer to my material and an intuitive symbiosis with the music. I used a film/video hybrid processes, strongly inspired by the work of Al Razutis, a uniquely amazing multimedia artist and pioneer of the film/video hybrid process in the 70s (actually based in British Columbia). I was very happy that Jason was receptive to my process and I did the best I could to visually translate the complexity and beauty of this album.”

Speaking about it, Sharp remarks:

“Guillaume’s interpretation of my music with moving images has been a refreshing coda to an extremely detailed, intensive composition and recording process. His Super8 film treatments inscribe a similar detail and intensity, with vitality and texture that channels the music of The Turning Centre Of A Still World into evocatively abstract visual movements. I’m beyond delighted with the resulting synthesis of our respective mediums and processes, and can’t wait to perform the music live while flooded with this visual work.”

The good news is the full visual album is now available to watch and listen, ahead of its release this Friday. Press play and let yourself drift away.

The Turning Centre Of A Still World is out on August 27th through Constellation

The Turning Centre Of A Still World, the third album from Jason Sharp, is nearing its release day. Following the first utterly moving ‘Everything Is Waiting For You’, the Montréal composer, improviser and saxophonist has shared another cut from the album called ‘Blossoming Rest’ and he had this to say about it:

“The synthesizer melodies of this composition are played with my left foot while my right foot plays synth bass, simultaneously with my performance on bass saxophone. My heart monitor is not only responsible for the pulse heard in this piece but is also shaping the modulation of the synth melodies. ‘”Blossoming Rest” is deliberately calm, keeping my heart rate slow, providing space for synthesis to fill the sonic gaps.”

Experimental filmmaker Guillaume Vallée has again created a video to accompany ‘Blossoming Rest’. Here it is.

The Turning Centre Of A Still World is out on August 27th through Constellation

Montréal composer, improviser and saxophonist Jason Sharp has a new album on the way entitled The Turning Centre Of A Still World. Unlike his two previous albums that saw him collaborate with guest musicians, the upcoming album is a solo effort conceived “as an interplay strictly bounded by his own body, his acoustic instrument, and his evolving bespoke electronic system”, as the press release describes. Sharp offered some insight into it:

“This music was developed and composed with the use of a customised electroacoustic interface in which I wear a heart monitor that sends signal to an array of modular synthesizers. All electronic rhythmic elements stem from my real-time human pulse, establishing a fluctuating centre that continually channels and responds to the physicality of the performance. The entire compositional process is given essential shape and colour through biofeedback; the electronics are humanized. The music is orchestrated with my bass and baritone saxophone playing, along with other methods of intentional breathing and heart-rate manipulation, to influence and interact with my electronic/synthetic materials to fulfill the arc of each composition.

In live performance, tempos and other signal-processed components of the music are different each time, directly conditioned by my visceral and emotional presence. My physicality is inherently patched into all aspects of these electroacoustic séances: concentration, vulnerability, emotion, meditation – all are at work in the performance of the music, including at a formal/structural level through biofeedback of constituent sonic materials. As synthesized sound elements shift according to fluctuations in the signal path sourced from my pulse, the performance accommodates and manipulates these responsive variables, continually re-synthesizing the synthesis. These works are always and fundamentally unique to each performed instantiation, in a connective way that encompasses audience, machine and me.”

The Turning Centre Of A Still World arrives on August 27th through Constellation and ahead of it Sharp has shared the first utterly moving ‘Everything Is Waiting For You’. The track comes with an accompanying video created by experimental filmmaker Guillaume Vallée. Watch it below.

We were instantly taken by A Boat Upon Its Blood, the debut album from Montréal composer, improviser and saxophonist Jason Sharp, when it came out in 2016. So we’re glad he’s following it up with a new album, Stand Above The Streams, slated for February 23rd release through Constellation. As well as playing sax, Sharp also continued to develop his custom-built equipment, breathing and signal processing techniques to create all the sound sources on the record, as the press released explains, with the exception of violin on one song from Jesse Zubot. “Bass and baritone saxophones, heartbeat, pulse, and breathing are played/processed in real time”, it adds, using Sharp’s own signal-bending synthesis rig and also the bespoke ‘controlled feedback’ amplification system from Canadian sound artist Adam Basanta, who collaborated on the album.

For a riveting taste of the upcoming Stand Above The Streams, listen to an excerpt from it, ‘Stand Above The Streams Pt. 3B’.

‘A Boat Upon Its Blood (Pt. 3)’, the tremendous title track from Jason Sharp’s upcoming debut album, emerged last month and we were instantly taken by the immersive beauty of his sounds. We weren’t previously familiar with the Canadian composer, improviser and reedist but he’s no stranger to the Montréal experimental/improv scene and has for long collaborated and played with a slew of talented musicians.
A Boat Upon Its Blood is inspired by Robert Creely’s poem ‘The Heart’, and its song titles are also named after the poem. The album “impels deep listening and demands to be taken in as a whole”, describes the press release. We’ll need to wait until September 30th when it drops via Constellation to embrace it fully. But luckily, we can already hear another staggering track from the album, ‘A Boat Upon Its Blood (Pt. 1)’.

After a quieter start of the year, the ever wonderful Constellation Records appears to have a fruitful second half of the year in store for us. Montréal composer, improviser and saxophonist Jason Sharp is one of the recent incredible additions to the label. His connection to Constellation is not new though, having previously worked and recorded with now label mates Matana Roberts, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, and Sam Shalabi’s Land Of Kush.
A long-time presence in the Montréal experimental/improv scene, Sharp has developed and uses breathing techniques and custom-built equipment “to translate breath and heart rate into sonic triggers”, as the label says, “alongside other modes of signal processing in tandem with traditional instrumentation”.

This Autumn will see the release of Sharp’s debut album under his own name, and he’s offering a tremendous glimpse of it with ‘A Boat Upon Its Blood (Pt. 3)’, featuring guest contributions from fellow Montréal musicians Josh Zubot and Joe Grass. We’ll be on the lookout for more details. Now listen to ‘A Boat Upon Its Blood (Pt. 3)’.