Origamibiro

I think that the last time I checked in with Tom Hill and his Origamibiro project was 2014, and he just got signed onto the German Denovali label. Also, if my memory serves me, by then the solo project evolved into a group of an audio-visual trio, dabbling in combining found sound with electronica, neo-folk undertones, and uncategorized eclectic instrumentation, not to mention the troupe’s haunting live performances, involving typewriters, home movies, sellotape, and bespoke visual contraptions. It’s been six years, and Tom Hill is back, again as a single cast member, with a contribution from his fellow multi-instrumentalist Andy Tytherleigh as a collaborator, for an album collecting a Miscellany of works amassed since Odham’s Standard. Hill’s technique of stitching acoustic textures from everyday objects (plastic toy Easter eggs, forest brambles, and dismantled piano parts) is now wrapped in a blanket of a rich palette of varied instruments (viola da gamba, zither, glockenspiel, and more) to compose electroacoustic pieces, sometimes approaching a chamber music’s character. The strings and the piano take on a central stage in the last track on the album, titled “Cascade”, for which I am premiering a video today. The dancers, Xin Ji and Veronica Butturini internalize and then express the motions of the music, co-choreographed by Amber Liberté, and beautifully captured by Aidan Rogers with shifting angles, movement, and light.