Echoing Down The Centuries

Tenor John Potter has a track record of participation in projects that link early music with the contemporary through such collaborations as those of the Hilliard Ensemble and the Dowland Project. Whereas the Dowland Project is very much his baby, on this disk his particiapation is perhaps more that of a hired hand for electronic composer Ambrose Field. The disk is titled Being Dufay and it takes the music of Dufay from the 15th century as a jumping off point for improvisations and compositions using electronica that melds found sounds from everyday life with manipulations and distortions of Potter's vocals which are occasionally allowed to sing the theme uninterrupted and pure. The effect is one of music echoing down the centuries through some kind of time machine, forever in the ether, neither here nor there. Field's stated aim is to remove the mechanical and atificial from the electronics and incorporate them into a human whole, personal and expressive. To a very large extent this succeeds, though if I am being honest, I will admit to being likely to spin my disk of unadulterated Dufay with more frequency than this one, intriguing as it is.