...Galbraith’s most concise record came with the release in 2000 of Cry on Emperor Jones. Only 13 tracks long, it is perhaps his masterwork, from the first breathless ‘Bellbird’ to the final poignant ‘Forest Flower’. The songs here are mostly multi-tracked — built with the now familiar back-to-front guitar or violin lines, clavioline, e-bowed electric guitar, and tape loops — though both solo guitar and improvised solo violin get in with a piece each. Track lengths are the longest since Plagal Grind, including the nightmarish ‘Full Soup Head’ at more than six minutes, and the nearly nine minute ‘Koterawa’ duet with HDU’s Constantine (Dino) Karlis on drums (a pairing which would find a full-length release on 2003’s Radiant). Even in this longer format, not a moment is wasted, and Galbraith still surprises, as with his singular, serenely Snapper-iffic ‘One Method’...
...2002 found Galbraith ready for change once again, and he briefly shifted to Whanganui as the Sarjeant Gallery’s Tylee House Artist-in-Residence, where he built his first fire organ (now in that gallery’s collection). He has since constructed a second organ, of a full 44 glass Rijke tubes – up to 2.4 metres high – made by local Otago glass blowers. These hover over blue flames which spurt from galvanised and rubber piping, and are animated by a disarticulated piano keyboard. From this, Galbraith pinches rare sounds, like mournful inhaled trumpeting or a theremin whose sine wave generator has been replaced by an EVP receiver channeling dead opera stars.
In 2006, Galbraith received the extraordinary honour of becoming an Arts Foundation Laureate. Chosen by their peers – and with no idea they've even been nominated – Arts Laureates are given not only exceptional recognition for their work, but a cheque for $50,000.
With some of the money from the award, Galbraith continued his embryonic project of building a glass harmonium, or armonica. In performance with the armonica, Galbraith often relates the convoluted and captivating story of this (mostly) forgotten instrument, the origins of which go back to the 1740s, before being perfected and mechanised later that century by American natural scientist Benjamin Franklin. The instrument, which resembles both visually and in playing style a set of nested, tuned wine glasses on a spindle, has an incredibly pure sound, which can create physical sensations of disorientation and discomfort as well as conjuring the celestial and sublime. This uncanny tone pricked the interests of composers including Handel, Beethoven and Strauss, who all wrote works for it. The armonica's vogue was brief, undone by two factors: its relative quietness compared to other orchestral instruments, and its diabolical reputation for driving its players mad.
Throughout the mid-2000s, Galbraith was back in a band, the Hundred Dollar Band (or $100 Band) with partner Maxine Funke (guitar, cello, transceivers) and Mike Dooley (drums). Funke and Dooley were two thirds of The Snares — their third having quit for the North Island — and continued as a duo until Galbraith joined in. Their slinky string minglings, near-unison harmony vocals, and whack and clattering drum dynamism kept them droning around Dunedin for a while, releasing a lathe-cut 7-inch side split with Spit, and CD Waves and Particles.
Relaunching Next Best Way in 2007, Galbraith’s Orb is a return to his classic mix of experimental pieces with intimate folk miniatures – which sometimes, on tracks like ‘Tumbling’, fight to sink or swim in the lo-fi dough. The fire organ makes its first recorded appearance, in a funny/paranoid eerie-echoed whale-song call-and-response – it will appear again arm and arm with the glass harmonium on the very limited CD-R Dances for the Blind Owl. Even digital technology gets a nod, on both the brief and witty literally-titled 'Skip' (with Alan Haig on drums) and some drum machine on ‘Drift'.
After the brilliant luminosity of Cry, both Orb and 2010’s Siltbreeze release Mass are a bit less polished. They are Galbraith’s most ephemeral albums, testimony to the home studio’s undisputed strength at nurturing the most fleeting inspirations, and continue to be staunchly lo-fi, the format which Galbraith helped pioneer. The glass harmonium rings and tingles your spine on two tracks in a row, the Otago Museum’s ships’ bells peal a dolorous chorus, and Richard Pearse takes flight in a bloom of flabby feedback. ‘Newborn’ and ‘Money is So Sad’ elegantly illustrate the song-form called ‘Constructive Melancholy’, a term fellow traveller Tom Rapp coined to describe the complex emotions of his own bittersweet folk blues.
Alastair Galbraith is a restless adventurer in sound and song, evidenced by the long list of collaborations, performances and recordings on his extensive CV.
In October 2013, the one-sided 12-inch Pure Speculation was released, “composed in correspondence” with ex-pat experimental guitarist/bagpiper David Watson and French composer/filmmaker Jean Jacques Palix (who had previously appeared on Mass under the name Amiel Balester). Hallucinogenic, sad and beautiful, playfully experimental; like the rest of Galbraith’s career, Pure Speculation is a glorious gallimaufry. - Jon Chapman & audioculture
trax:
01 Bellbird 02 Charmed 03 Meatwork 04 Identical 05 Wish 06 Green Dream 07 Full Soup Head 08 From the Empire 09 In the Taieri 10 One Method 11 Koterana 12 Lull and make it snow 13 Forest Flower
…served by Gaius…
...Firebyrd was an artistic triumph and a commercial disaster -- released to rave reviews and an enthusiastic response as one of the finest solo projects ever to come from an ex-Byrd, it was killed by poor distribution (demand in Europe, especially Germany and Italy, where fan interest in Clark and the Byrds was very high, resulted in high premiums being paid for used copies). "Rain Song," "Rodeo Rider," and "Something About You" were some of Clark's best songs in years, and his covers of two old Byrds numbers, "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Feel a Whole Lot Better," are perfectly credible reinterpretations, and he even does justice to Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind." Not a "lost Byrds album" by any means, but a must-own for any serious Byrds fan. [In 1995, an expanded version of Firebyrd was released in Great Britain with the title This Byrd Has Flown.] - Firebyrd Review by Bruce Eder
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