Nelson Hiu - Music For Roaches, Birds & Other Creatures / Noise Asia / CD

For Ling Lee.


Living alone in the winter of '93, quite like an urban recluse, in an old ninth floor walk-up above the City Contemporary Dance Company's Wong Tai Sin studios, these miniature studies were conceived. They were rehearsed to the ambience of buses, cars, sirens, singing birds, dance class tambourines, mah jong tiles, Chinese opera and fluorescent light hum and recorded one afternoon in a not too quiet studio in Yau Ma Tei with no signal processing, one microphone direct to DAT.

The sound of a single simple flute of wood, bamboo or clay in various non-diatonic tunings provided an inspirational basis for small structured improvisations in which the goal was to touch gently that part of oneself and the listener that is seldom even noticed in our daily high-tech, materialistic existence. Perhaps the best way to listen to this disc is as you look out the window, watching the curtain sway in a slight breeze or on your back staring at the ceiling and certainly as a part of all the other sounds that inhabit your space, It is hoped that that part of you once touched may bloom and grow until it flows joyfully into the sea of compassion and bliss

N. H.

Recorded one afternoon in a not too quiet studio in Yau Ma Tei with no signal processing, one microphone direct to DAT.