Amby Downs // Ngunmal CD

This is a CD released by Australian artist/experimental musician Amby Downs on the Australian experimental label room2023 in November 11.

Contains two low-end drone songs with no melody.

Below is a commentary by the label.

``Amby Downs' work occupies a deeply personal and unique space in the Australian music scene.This project is as much about trauma as it is about aspirations and hopes.It is a work that recognizes the complexity of intergenerational interactions, emotionally, socially, politically, and culturally.

For the past half-century, Thalia has sought to trace untold and sometimes deeply divided histories, tracing lineages badly worn by the strains of colonial invasion and obfuscation.She is a collector, researcher, and surgeon who stitches together these pieces of connective tissue.

Ngunmal and I Am Holding My Breath are two full-length works that exist both as sound works and audiovisual installations.This is a work that operates in the physical realm.It contains the low frequency energy of breathing, sighing, and longing.Her works feel both contraction and expansion at the same time, and have a texture that draws you in deeply.This depth is felt as pressure.Even a small crack, a small murmur, can be torn open to reveal a whole cave of sound.

Amby Downs', and Palmer's practice more broadly, asks us to make ourselves available.We are required to be vulnerable to unknown places and situations, uncertainty, and instability.In doing so, it gives us the opportunity to experience this wild, intense, provocative, and ultimately beautiful work. "

Labels and other worksplease use this form. ///Click here to see more Room40 releases available at Tobira.

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CD in matte-laminate and monochrome printed sleeve. 

Tracklist:

1. Ngunmal
2. I Am Holding My Breath

Text by Lawrence English:

"The work of Amby Downs, aka Murri/European artist Tahlia Palmer, occupies an intensely personal and unique space in the Australian music landscape. It is a project that speaks as much to trauma, as it does to aspiration or hope. It is work that recognizes the complexities of intergenerational exchange; emotionally, socially, politically and culturally.

For the past half decade, Tahlia has been seeking to trace unspoken, and in some cases deeply fragmented histories, and thread a linage that is heavily worn by the weight of colonial aggression and obfuscation. She is a collector, a researcher and a surgeon, stitching together these pieces of connective tissue, and through doing so she creates the opportunity to imagine, perhaps even re-imagine, the stories that have forged her very being.

Ngunmal and I Am Holding My Breath are two long form works that exist both as sound pieces and as audio visual installations. They are pieces that operate in the realm of the physical. They are loaded with a low frequency energy that breathes, sighs and yearns . There's a sense of simultaneous constriction and expansion in her compositions, a quality that draws you in deeper and deeper. This depth is sensed as pressure. In some respects her sound works mimmic the research that feeds into them; even the smallest crack, the tiniest murming, can be split open to reveal an entire cavern of sound.

Amby Downs, and Palmer's practice more broadly, asks us to make ourselves available. It asks us to be vulnerable to places and situations of not knowing, to be uncertain, to being unsettled. It prompts us to recognize within ourselves the way we operate in the day to day, and through doing so opens us up to experience these wildly intense, provocative and ultimately beautiful works. "

Artist: Amby Downs

Label: Room40