Jack Sheen

Press

The Trilogy Tapes

A piano quintet composed for and recorded by Apartment House. 

‘The instruments are muted and heavily prepared. Players are instructed to perform very quietly with an exaggerated flautando, using as much of the bow as possible while producing minimal sound. Sheen often even asks them to mime. The result is an unsettling disconnect between the intensity of physical exertion and the sound produced’ (Ed Cooper, VAN).
‘Press moves with grossly impoverished intent… trembling and stumbling on the cusp of accident… right on the edge of culture, just before language. Most of the time, it is enough simply to breathe and move: the complexity of these actions alone is astonishing… And then, through the buzz of wood, guts, and bluebottles, a piano appears—all shining lacquer, muscle, and grammar’ (Ed Atkins).

“When people play my violin pieces, I always joke with them that when you start playing them, the audience should feel like they’ve gone deaf or something. The sound is so not there that you should think there’s something wrong for a second…
“It’s so disappointing when you see a bunch of instrumentalists walk on stage and you already know how the piece is going to sound. It’s not what music is about for me…
“The word ‘liminal’ is such a cliché but it’s annoyingly pertinent for my music. Trying to find a sweet spot between states: in between presence and not presence, in between tonality and not tonality, whatever that is, between noise and pitch. I really want things to sit in an uncertain middle ground between everything.”