What we said at the time…

Working across bass clarinet, wild throat singing, and the psychedelic use of a copper kettle and jaw harp, De Dionyso’s Breath of Fire LP has got to be one of the most startling free recordings in years. Really, it’s just so totally OUT. Passages of jaw harp combined with simultaneous throat singing that floats somewhere between a sub-continental raga and dark folk ritual are interspersed with deeply personal bass clarinet work that packs the emotional intensity of Arthur Doyle’s fist in the gut sax playing. There’s also some of the most enlightened creaking solo voice work that half the time sounds like Henri Chopin in some kind of emotional distress and the rest like a psychedelic conversation between man and spirit, or indeed man and beast. I’m not making this up, it’s staggering.

Arrington’s is a singular voice that draws on a clutch of the most particularly virulent strains of avant thought and filters them through an off kilter, shamanic and personal vision. Oh, and I should say that his live performances are the real deal; as the Wire’s Brian Morton puts it, “De Dionyso doesn’t so much shape a performance as let the spirit descend on him haphazardly”.