Cameos

Mark Cain lives in Fremantle, Australia, and specialises in a highly impressive number of reed and other wind instruments, as well as having a sideline in percussion objects. This solo collection features 18 tracks, many of them between one and two minutes in length, and steadily recorded over the last decade.

Besides the familiar soprano and baritone saxophones, Cain also makes many of his own blowing devices, with several pieces also featuring Indonesian gamelan parts. The brevity of the tracks underlines something of a demonstration feel, particularly as most of them are simply named after the instruments used, with nearly every ‘sketch’ involving different tools. Cain uses whirling tubes, jaw harp, gongs, whistles, flutes, with the odd instrument out being the Brazilian berimbau (musical bow). One of the longest pieces is ‘Gaidarski’, which is indebted to the duduk of Djivan Gasparyan. While episodic in nature, this cumulative sequence has the charm of a movie soundtrack, and indeed, several of the works were composed for theatrical productions. These transient experiences are like snatches of overheard conversations, mostly with a South-East Asian aura shimmering around their perimeter.