Two new album releases from Decibel
- Rachel Davison
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Decibel new music ensemble announces two new international releases: a re-issue of Tuned Darker on UK label Huddersfield Contemporary Records (HCR), and Cat Hope’s Speechless on Swiss label Hat Hut – both out now.
Though different in scope, the albums reflect Decibel’s continued investigation into timbre, tuning and notation technologies as sites of musical meaning.
Originally published in 2015 on the now-defunct Perth label Listen|Hear, Tuned Darker returns in a new HCR edition exactly 10 years on. This expanded release includes an additional track Percipience: After Kaul (2019) by Louise Devenish and Stuart James, which joins works by Cat Hope, Lindsay Vickery and Stuart James.
The album takes its conceptual cue from Louise Glück’s poem October (2004) – “The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now.” Across the four tracks, low-frequency weight, extended instrumental techniques and micro-shifts in tuning reveal sonic colours that sit beneath the familiar register of chamber music.
“Tuned Darker comes from our ongoing interest in how subtle shifts in pitch, noise and register can fundamentally alter the emotional and perceptual space of a piece,” says Decibel’s Artistic Director Cat Hope. “The new edition allowed us to revisit that terrain a decade later and to add a work that deepens the palette even further – an expansion of the shadows already present in the original release.”
Cat Hope’s wordless opera Speechless has now been released worldwide by Swiss label Hat Hut, produced by Tura. The album features the premiere performance from the 2019 Perth Festival conducted by Aaron Wyatt; performed by Decibel, the Australian Bass Orchestra, and community choir; and featuring vocal soloists Caitlin Cassidy, Judith Dodsworth, Sage Pbbbt and Karina Utomo.
The work received the 2020 AMC/APRA Art Music Award for Best New Dramatic Work, and Wyatt received a Helpmann award for best direction of the opera that same year.
The opera responds to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Forgotten Children report, using graphic notation derived from the document – children’s drawings, charts, design elements and photographs transformed into the score.
Cat Hope says: “Speechless is my response to the plight of refugees worldwide – a protest and plea to citizens of all nations to support humanitarian values in the face of unfolding crises. It is disappointing that it still feels so relevant today.
“Across both albums, we’re working with sonic timbre as both material and metaphor. These works sit in the darker register of our catalogue, but we think they speak clearly to the moment we’re in.”
Selected performance reviews for Speechless:
“A deeply moving, almost spiritual experience” – Limelight
“An absorbing and visceral experience… Speechless allows their plight to be heard” – The Conversation
“Overwhelming; forcefully immersive” – Seesaw Magazine
“Avant-garde, emotionally charged, and difficult to ignore” – Gutter Culture
