Space Time is Continuum's 4th album, recorded at the same session as their Yttrium album. The music was a continuous 48minute improvisation and the band decided they wanted to keep it in it's entirety. The track idents are just for ease of navigation but do mark moments of overall sound change in the piece.
It threads organically from a mellow ambient opening, to some free jazz, before going into a Terry Riley-esque minimal organ section, before settling down to a spacey ambient section. Out of this, like the sun rising, there is a ECM styled minimal piano atmospheric ending which grows to a dramatic climax before a stunning exit as strange spacey sound arrive again at the close.
Continuum - Biography
John Runcie is a superbly impressionistic jazz drummer in the mould of ECM label regular Jon Christensen. He has worked with Lee Konitz, John Surman and Barbara Thompson to name a few. His restless creativity abounds, and his subtlety is evident, interacting one minute, and driving the band the next.
Simon Styring's guitar style comes out of Robert Fripp, blending his sustainiac-loaded guitar with guitar synthesizer and effects in intriguing ways. From sustained Frippatronics to splintered Metheny-like free jazz guitar.
Chris Conway paints pictures with his theremin, and with the help of mountains of delays and effects he moves from wild screams to subtle chordal soundscapes which blend with his low Irish whsilte and vocal effects to produce a rich deep layered sound. He has worked with a strangely diverse set of musicians including Talvin Singh, Peter Tork (Monkees), improviser Derek Bailey, Martin Barre (Jethro Tull), composer Gavin Bryars, violin masetro Dr L Subramanium, ECM saxman Martin Speake, and Brazilain jazz diva Ithamara Koorax.
Together they create so many sound combinations as they veer from space sounds to ambient electronica, free jazz to minimal patterns. Out on the edge - not always tonal but with atonality on the brink of breaking out. And vice versa…
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