Tony Buck - Environmental Studies

Tony Buck is no stranger to the realm of durational performance and composition. As a part of Australian unit The Necks he has been central to defining a reductive, but rich sound language that equally interrogates timbre and time.

With Environmental Studies he moves even further into these longitudinal pursuits. Environmental Studies is Buck’s most accomplished solo work and is an evolving cascade of sound which weighs in at over 2.5 hours.

Across the span of the piece he charts out the relationships between his primary tools of percussion, guitar and electronics. Each of these clusters of materials are brought into orbit with one other in what might be called a celestial display in sound.

The results are dynamic, frenetic and at times utterly delicate. This is a work that speaks to Buck’s preoccupations with space, time and motion. The edition is published on a USB and comes with a set of polaroids artwork reproductions that act as a score to the album’s instrumental choices.

A note from Tony Buck

An incredibly dense matrix of interwoven voices and layers, each occupying and exploiting a unique space within the fabric of the sound-environment, co-existing to slowly reveal themselves in multiple interconnected relationships.

Each voice devised to representation the instruments most resonant voice, claiming a unique location in the massed sonic field, not only in terms of register, timbre or rhythmic density, but also in relation to the unique and most sonorous characteristic inherent in each instrumental sound-source itself.

The consequence of such a layering of independent autonomous sounds is the emergence of discrete utterances, asserting themselves and divulging their concealed properties and distinctive qualities in ever changing contexts. Over the course of the ensuing nearly two hours, each voice finds a place to shine in a myriad of seemingly endless, living/ breathing permutations, creating a slowly changing tapestry of mood and intensity contributing to make the experience a fresh encounter on each successive listen.