Woodlot by Arthur Bull

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Slash / Returning to the cabin he takes one glance backwards / At sky and sunlight pouring through the trail he’s just cut

From tightly-woven networks forged of some luminous and chiming substance, to solitary figures draped across an evaporating field of their own resonance, guitarist Arthur Bull wrings from his instrument an array of tones both demanding and fruitful. At once conceiving and resolving mysteries, these are recordings of a highly reflective quality. Paired with a book-length collection of poetry written by the musician that examines the binaries of place/displacement, longing/belonging, and attachment/detachment, Woodlot captures the experience of traversing an abundant field in isolation, deeply aware of the story it tells and your insignificance within it.

Featuring free-form, non-idiomatic improvisations, Bull's playing touches the boundaries of various genres long enough to blur them before adding their elements to his meditative meanderings. So too does his writing absorb influence: classical Chinese poetry, nature field guides, Sophocles, the flight patterns of a silent, gliding owl. Regardless of the pieces that push Bull's puzzles to their heights, his is a singular voice. Woodlot calls upon that voice to masterfully tell of one man wandering through sounds, through words, through trees simultaneously rich in metaphorical abstraction and ecological substance.

58-page book with CD, handmade and numbered • 2015

Slash / Returning to the cabin he takes one glance backwards / At sky and sunlight pouring through the trail he’s just cut

From tightly-woven networks forged of some luminous and chiming substance, to solitary figures draped across an evaporating field of their own resonance, guitarist Arthur Bull wrings from his instrument an array of tones both demanding and fruitful. At once conceiving and resolving mysteries, these are recordings of a highly reflective quality. Paired with a book-length collection of poetry written by the musician that examines the binaries of place/displacement, longing/belonging, and attachment/detachment, Woodlot captures the experience of traversing an abundant field in isolation, deeply aware of the story it tells and your insignificance within it.

Featuring free-form, non-idiomatic improvisations, Bull's playing touches the boundaries of various genres long enough to blur them before adding their elements to his meditative meanderings. So too does his writing absorb influence: classical Chinese poetry, nature field guides, Sophocles, the flight patterns of a silent, gliding owl. Regardless of the pieces that push Bull's puzzles to their heights, his is a singular voice. Woodlot calls upon that voice to masterfully tell of one man wandering through sounds, through words, through trees simultaneously rich in metaphorical abstraction and ecological substance.

58-page book with CD, handmade and numbered • 2015

Active since the 1970s, guitarist Arthur Bull is a veteran of the Canadian free improvisation scene who has played extensively within that community and shared the stage with such luminaries as Derek Bailey, Roscoe Mitchell, and Roger Turner. Bull is also a poet and a translator from Chinese to English. He lives in Sandy Cove, a small village of fishermen in Nova Scotia, with his wife, artist and musician Ruth Bull.