Normally releases by Pax Records land on the desk of Dolf Mulder, but for whatever reason this arrived at HQ, and was investigated by fresh ears. Sabrina Siegel is, despite her appearance on fifteen CDs a new name to me. She lives in Eugene, Oregon and she plays guitar and cello, although her background is classical voice and flute. Her pieces are from the field of improvised music, but she certainly has her own edge to it. She plays 'situations' rather than 'pieces'. Placing a bunch of rocks on the strings and then slowly move the guitar - that sort of thing. However the outcome is much more musical, and much less 'fluxus' than my inapt description may sound. Sometimes she does play a real song like thing, with singing and all that, but oddly enough I must admit that these pieces work less for me. I prefer the more abstract sound exploring she does. Sat in a room with a wooden floor, the ambience is of equal importance as the actual playing is. Quite intense music, with a lo t of things happening, yet at the same time it seems a lot less that is going on. In these pieces tension is felt, between the player, the instrument and the environment in which things happen. It makes this quite a remarkable release of improvised music.

Grace/Precarious is the fifth solo recording of improvised compositions from multi-disciplinary artist and musician Sabrina Siegel. Featuring cello, electric guitar and voice, the physicality of playing a musical instrument is the driving force behind Siegel’s improvisations. Each composition draws on the circumstances (physical, spatial, emotional, sensual) of its creation to reach a fine balance of grace and precariousness: ‘In the relationship of grace to the precarious / in the moment unknown, a space for an event of the body, the sprit … / the precipitate of living urges .. Of forces in the timing of nature - in a body and out of the time/space of a sexual surge, a breath, a smile, the handling of a rock, a chair, a bow / what will be envisioned, felt, experienced?’ While Siegel doesn’t elaborate on the exact processes she uses to create Grace/Precarious (there is, for me, a disappointing lack of sleeve notes), in tracks such as Drop Bow Down Cello the percussive and wooden sonic materials tempt the listener to take the title literally. A number of tracks betray not just the body of their creator but also the spaces they were created in, from the lingering resonances in Yom Kippur to the more obvious crackling of the flames in the hearth in Fire. The compositional processes and instruments Siegel uses are varied enough to sustain interest throughout the thirteen tracks, yet still give a sense of cohesion. Siegel’s vocals feature on over half the tracks, sometimes as a faint and childlike whisper, sometimes singing a rich harmony and at other times ear-piercingly operatic or slightly hysterical. Instrumental sonorities tend to be jagged or sharply visceral, exploiting in full Siegel’s physical relationship to the instrument, making conventional playing styles of bowing or plucking all the more powerful when they are heard.. The final track, Light comes closest to conventional musical models with its strumming and singing, but hardly crosses into comfortable singer-songwriter territory, while ‘big electric rose’ mixes gentle, petal-like vocals with thorny jagged strings, as Siegel scratches around in the pegbox of her instrument for inspiration. The opening track, Yom Kippur, features the granular scraping of rock on electric guitar, wearing away the surface to leave moments of near-violent clarity, the aural equivalent of another of Siegel’s projects - leaving photographic negatives outside for four years to let nature take its course to reveal a new beauty. It seems likely a similar phenomena will occur with this Grace/Precarious: instead of merely sounding worn down with repeated listening, new dimensions will continually emerge. Review by Stacey Sewell  

Grace/Precarious is the fifth solo recording of improvised compositions from multi-disciplinary artist and musician Sabrina Siegel. Featuring cello, electric guitar and voice, the physicality of playing a musical instrument is the driving force behind Siegel’s improvisations. Each composition draws on the circumstances (physical, spatial, emotional, sensual) of its creation to reach a fine balance of grace and precariousness: ‘In the relationship of grace to the precarious / in the moment unknown, a space for an event of the body, the sprit … / the precipitate of living urges .. Of forces in the timing of nature - in a body and out of the time/space of a sexual surge, a breath, a smile, the handling of a rock, a chair, a bow / what will be envisioned, felt, experienced?’ While Siegel doesn’t elaborate on the exact processes she uses to create Grace/Precarious (there is, for me, a disappointing lack of sleeve notes), in tracks such as Drop Bow Down Cello the percussive and wooden sonic materials tempt the listener to take the title literally. A number of tracks betray not just the body of their creator but also the spaces they were created in, from the lingering resonances in Yom Kippur to the more obvious crackling of the flames in the hearth in Fire. The compositional processes and instruments Siegel uses are varied enough to sustain interest throughout the thirteen tracks, yet still give a sense of cohesion. Siegel’s vocals feature on over half the tracks, sometimes as a faint and childlike whisper, sometimes singing a rich harmony and at other times ear-piercingly operatic or slightly hysterical. Instrumental sonorities tend to be jagged or sharply visceral, exploiting in full Siegel’s physical relationship to the instrument, making conventional playing styles of bowing or plucking all the more powerful when they are heard.. The final track, Light comes closest to conventional musical models with its strumming and singing, but hardly crosses into comfortable singer-songwriter territory, while ‘big electric rose’ mixes gentle, petal-like vocals with thorny jagged strings, as Siegel scratches around in the pegbox of her instrument for inspiration. The opening track, Yom Kippur, features the granular scraping of rock on electric guitar, wearing away the surface to leave moments of near-violent clarity, the aural equivalent of another of Siegel’s projects - leaving photographic negatives outside for four years to let nature take its course to reveal a new beauty. It seems likely a similar phenomena will occur with this Grace/Precarious: instead of merely sounding worn down with repeated listening, new dimensions will continually emerge. Review by Stacey Sewell

The “Precarious” portion of the title seems apt– this is gingerly-balanced music, seemingly about to fall apart at any time. I’ve really been enjoying the highly sensual feel of this album; it is incredibly easy for the listener to imagine a tactile connection to the sounds recorded here.