Andrew Scott Young and Ben Billington play upright
bass and synthesizer on this inaugural foray as Whisker, one of the thousand or
so projects each one is involved in. These two sides, called “Code Room Green”
and “Tough Flux,” were performed live at the Empty Bottle in Chicago on January
28, 2020, a time when live performances thrived and COVID-19 was just a gleam
in our collective eye. So we should probably consider ourselves lucky that Straight from the Bottle (I get it!)
exists at all. Surely that planned live Quicksails album has been shelved till
2021 at the latest.*
As you might expect from these two improv nerds,
Young and Billington approach their instruments like they’re tinkering in a
chemistry lab with beakers and chemicals and tongs and things. They likely
performed these numbers while wearing safety goggles (but not masks, because,
you know, pre-COVID), and I’m sure a microscope or two made an appearance. What
I mean is, the duo takes a rather scientific approach to eliciting sound from
their instruments, experimenting, studying, and recording data to use in the
next round of research. We’re just all privy to the process.
Young’s bass is all physical string, as each creak
of the instrument is audible in the recording. Billington supplements the tactile
performance with his own tangible approach, mixing in micro sonics so that the two
instruments blend into unpredictable kinetic activity, scrabbling like two
different insects spliced together so that they’re one new, unnatural being.
But there’s nothing really unnatural about Whisker, just that they’re weird and
scrabbly. As the minutes pass, the two sound sources separate and merge, each
asserting its identity before combining with the other. I wish I could’ve been
there to see what was going on – it was probably fascinating to watch the
interplay.
* “Live Quicksails album, you say?” Naw, I’m just making
that up.
https://unifactor.bandcamp.com/