Craig Scott’s Lobotomy – “Technicolour Yawn” single review

A brief glance over the influences at work here will have left field music devotees salivating to hear more; Aphex Twin, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Debussy, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Thelonious Monk and Meshuggah. Craig Scott is a Leeds based improviser/composer/guitarist and affiliate of Ikestra and Shatner’s Bassoon. With a CV like that the music here cannot fail to spark interest, and thankfully it does just that. “Technicolour Yawn” teases the listener with a fairly straightforward broken beat opening before turning the music inside out and manipulating the sound using fragments of electronic dissonance woven together with more “traditional” sounding jazz and classical chamber instrumentation. As Craig himself explains,

“The initial idea of the project was invert the relationship of
composition and improvisation in my music, instead of the composition
informing the improvisation, freely improvised material was recorded and
then manipulated and re-composed...”

The above description may cause the casual listener alarm, but the end result is by no means incongruous. The tune meanders amicably over its duration and should please lovers of experimental music and circuit bending alike. The project as a whole is a fascinating deconstruction of the relationship between composer and improviser and demands four minutes of your time. 

Craig Scott website

Bandcamp page