Robert Jarvis & Michel Banabila: 'An Agreement Of Sorts'

It was back in February 2012 that Michel contacted me to say he had sent me an mp3 "with a funny melody". "I am just wondering if you can play that. Exactly with the same tuning", he said. I had a listen and thought "You must be joking", as what I was presented with appeared to have no fixed notes nor conventional tuning, and sounded almost impossible to play. (I learnt later that the synthesized tune he had sent me was a melodic tracking - via software - of the musical pitches inherent in the voice of a man talking, recorded in Ghana by his friend Mark Dingemanse from the Radboud University). I put the strange sounding melody on repeat so that I could listen to it again and again, and by playing along continuously with it I eventually found the required notes on the trombone. After a week I could play the whole thing. And that was 2012. More recently, I found myself thinking, "Whatever happened to that tune". I had done a lot of work on it, and it seemed to have disappeared with no resulting composition appearing. So, I searched through my archives, found mine and Michel's original recordings, and played around with them until I had the beginnings of something coherent. At this point I contacted Michel, and he performed his usual magic, and eight years later we have our composition! Over the years Michel and I have occasionally swapped musical ideas, and our 'B-side' is the result of another such exchange, from a recording a year earlier. (Robert Jarvis, Faversham, December, 2020)

This single is a download only.

Robert Jarvis: trombone.
Michel Banabila: synth & sampler.
Recorded in Faversham & Rotterdam via file sharing.
Written & performed by Robert Jarvis & Michel Banabila.





Cat. nr. TR121220.
2020 ℗ Tapu Records.
UPC 195497778669.
Cover art by Michel Banabila.