Sleeve Notes

CASSIEL is a project dedicated to the construction and live performance of electronic scores for contemporary dance, using custom-built instruments and software control systems.

Electronic music has a reputation for being unfeeling and inhuman. This is largely because modern digital instruments and recording methods encourage a musical process which is linear, inflexible, and uncollaborative. It is therefore little wonder that choreographers rarely make use of live electronic music, if doing so merely relocates a studio mindset onto the stage.

With CASSIEL we have developed techniques emphasising live performance and articulation, rather than recording and playback. Our working process concerns itself with axes of expression and degrees of freedom in musical components. This approach opens new opportunities for collaboration, interaction and improvisation between dancer and musician, and this notion of process seems much more in tune with that used by choreographers.

There is an inherent contradiction in attempting to promote a process by means of a recording; and in any case, working methods will vary according to the requirements of a project or the artists involved. We are content to present the music of LISTEN/MOVE as a partial vindication of our approach, and would encourage interested choreographers to contact us to discuss possible collaborations.

LISTEN/MOVE is drawn from material performed live for dance projects between 1992 and 1996, together with some tracks constructed specially for the album. There is music for listening to, and music for moving to. You are free to decide which is which.

This recording is copyright but royalty free when used for dance projects, workshops and performances - we want you to dance, not call your lawyer - but we ask to be credited, and to be kept informed of its use in public performances.