BANDT AND LIME, ROS - Soft and Fragile

"Efficient Space presents Soft and Fragile by Ros Bandt and LIME (Live Improvised Music Events), originally released by Move Records in 1983. A pioneering figure in Australian music, Bandt is known for her work with sound sculpture, electronics, acoustic ecology, and invented instruments, as well as her writings and teaching. Soft and Fragile comprises a series of structured improvisations performed on custom-built bells and gongs. On the side-long "Ocean Bells", Bandt performs on her "flagong", a three-tiered vertical glass marimba that she made in 1978, inspired by the "cloud chamber bowls" of maverick instrument builder and microtonal composer Harry Partch. Over a long tape loop made up of slowed down sounds from the same instrument, she delicately strikes the glass bells with mallets, allowing individual pitches to ring out and decay with the aquatic wavering quality that suggested the piece's title, eventually building into flowing melodic sequences. Structured as a series of even