Tullis Rennie - Safe Operating Space: Live

Composer, electronic musician, improviser and field recordist Tullis Rennie returns to Hastings to perform his new album Safe Operating Space on Efpi Records (Manchester), a vivid hybrid of club music and free improvisation. Emerging from an entirely improvised recording session alongside Preetha Narayanan (violin), Tara Franks (‘cello), Cath Roberts (baritone sax), and Dee Byrne (alto sax), the album explores new aspects of Rennie’s practice and reflects on themes such as global heating, AI-generated deepfakes, family life, and Kate Bush.

Safe Operating Space is inspired by the beautifully human endeavour of trying to grab hold of unrepeatable moments. A second of magic within a spontaneous musical improvisation. On a dance floor, during a jungle tune breakdown inside an intimate club space. When a light hits something and you freeze, wanting to make it last an age… but the reason moments like these are so alluring is precisely because they’re so fleeting.

The album is built from a completely improvised recording session where Rennie (electronics) joins forces with Preetha Narayanan (violin), Tara Franks (cello), Cath Roberts (baritone sax), and Dee Byrne (alto sax). Working solo in his Hastings studio shed, Rennie plays alongside, against and around these ensemble recordings using analogue drum machines and synthesisers. Safe Operating Space will excite fans of James Holden, Laurel Halo, Kara-Lis Coverdale, or Bernard Parmegiani, and anyone who loves an unexpected ride across club music with its non-adjacent friend, free improvisation.

Safe Operating Space follows 2022’s Fixed Freedoms, released on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Jr imprint as part of their Room 2 series dedicated to electronic music outside the main thoroughfare of club tracks. Rennie says “I knew that I didn’t want to completely repeat the ways in which I made Fixed Freedoms (combining on-the-fly field recordings and impro- vised analogue electronics as personal, impromptu diaries), but nor did I want to throw out a productive way of working. Replacing field recordings with improvising musicians seemed a natural next step in expanding and augmenting the ways in which spontaneity is heard and explored, while also representing a major progression in my practice – expanding my sonic palette and forcing me to think more deeply about the reasons why one would choose to preserve and re-present a sound.”

https://efpirecords.bandcamp.com/album/safe-operating-space

"Rennie foregrounds the act of listening as an active component in the creation of musical experience”—The Wire Magazine

"...touches on Vladislav Delay, Lorenzo Senni and DJ Sprinkles ... a mutated set of electronic experimentsthat bends recognizable formulae (trance, dub techno, electro) into abstract landscapes"—Boomkat

“With his unique combination of experimental electronics, improvisation and field recording, Rennie’smusic seems to reach towards a hyper-realist kind of ambient. His pieces are sensitive to the importance ofnoticing sound”—The Cusp Magazine

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