Sitting Still For a Living
(Adhuman) CD $14.00
Traditional folk songs (learned recordings by The Watersons, Lou Killen, Sam Larner, and Harry Cox) interpreted and performed in single takes from memory, recorded in a single evening. Mackle reworks the songs through a vocabulary of gulping, stuttering, mumbled verbiage, pushing the texture of Mackle’s unaccompanied voice and the pure sonic qualities of the lyrical arrangements to the fore. The pieces remain somewhat recognizable but are drawn into territories more immediately associated with the deconstructions of Sound Poetry or free vocal improvisation. Sitting Still for a Living also features three long-form instrumental compositions built from recordings of tin whistle and recorder played by Mackle himself. Pulling direct influence from uilleann pipe music, these pieces introduce the influence of other traditional forms by way of Mackle’s characteristically austere and disjointed approach to the sampler.