Sphuzo by Paul Abbott

This is Abbott’s third solo release and comes as 81 minutes of sound and 16 pages of text in an A6 booklet.

Written and recorded in London, Lisbon, Vilnius and Berlin, 2017.

Sphuzo is a confluenece; a weather system; a collection of questions—an experiment in writing, listening and touch with real and synthetic drums and text.

“Found fluctuating tender, between the body and ends of words, and the beginnings and flesh of sounds, for less than a startle between ripple and letter. As maple drops condylar flight before contact, a whole hole for pages: stretching, bridged, thin and clear. I am Sphuzo, Queen. Kymbax blood. Amongst other things I awoke late. I am not a first, or lone, if breath lets. Gravity falling supple in motion catches accident-limbs, before an end or ends in elegance…”
—Sphuzo (extract)

“Abbott uses grammar and history to delight our senses, he simultaneously foments taste, touches to bodies, textures and lines of drums, as well as a world of internal, unearthed matters. Images are plates, the working of language and reference are exposed to them. Sphuzo is a reaction, with medical precision to time. And although it refuses any one genre, I experience an honoring of hands before it, its structure post-structural and its nature; generously a ‘real’ ideal. Sphuzo proposes unlimited entrances to its lifecycle, between its 81 minutes of audio and the pages of text. To end with a “scaley tick swing[ing]” is the beauty of a precarious and vital system, as a tick falls to its host, a pulse generates another loop.”
—Keira Greene

“Continually assessing his surroundings, Paul Abbott’s solo improvisation is as much a collaboration as it is a solitary process. Caught between the affective and the physical, Abbott’s approach to his kit both moves and contains, whilst honestly documenting the tension in between. Terse, political and ultimately very present.”
—Abby Thomas, Cafe Oto

Musician and drummer playing with acoustic drums, synthetic sounds, algorithmic composition, live performance and writing.

paulabbott.net