Anonymeye / Part Timer
Silhouettes 3

Andrew Tuttle, who is Anonymeye, used to live in Brisbane; John McCaffrey, who is Part Timer, used to live in Northern England; both now live in Melbourne. This is more relevant to this split CD-R than it may seem: the four tracks on Silhouettes 3 (one from Tuttle and three from McCaffrey) all deal, consciously or otherwise, with the notion of displacement and the peculiarities of belonging.

Tuttle’s contribution, a ten-minute improvisation titled ‘Stop 122, Line 1/8’, sees his folky fingerpicking become (not cruelly) subjected to a raft of real-time effects and signal processing. The track revels in imperfection – as Tuttle slowly builds its rhythmic skeleton by layering and looping his playing, his every minor stumble (this is improv, after all) is given tenure, maintaining the acoustic guitar’s inherent humanity even as it is almost subsumed by waves of crackling digital feedback.

Similarly, Part Timer smashes apart the fundamental elements of folksong and reassembles them into frail collages. His three tracks are an eclectic collection, from the ghostly vocals and chopped-up guitar of ‘Asthmatic Throat Clutching’ to the almost Telefon Tel Aviv-esque ‘Upbeat And Happy People Make Bad Company’ (awesome title, that). ‘Between Decisions’ is the disc’s most straightforward piece: McCaffrey applies the subtlest nips and tucks to a bright, summery guitar line and lays the results over the top of distant, clattery field recordings. It’s so, so simple and yet – like the other three tracks here – so incredibly beautiful that’s it’s hard not to declare it a small slice of genius.

by Adam D Mills