If there are musicians who are equally adept in experimenting in solitude, with consistently impressive results, and in bouncing their ideas off like-minded performers, Julie Slick and Tim Motzer belong to this elite category of creators. Both have many solo records and both love collaboration too, being part of various bands, including, respectively, The Crimson ProjeKct and PAKT; more so, these artists collaborated previously – but never as an improvising duo. The result of Motzer and Slick’s session is a gorgeous album entitled “Frozen Holy Water” – that they describe the ambient work as “somber vignettes, crystalline soliloquies, and glacial tone poems of frozen sound” – and available currently only in high resolution digital form at 1k Recordings on Bandcamp.
How did it come to exist?
“Julie and I have been friends for a long time,” explains Tim Motzer, “we played together in a lot of different situations over the years, and she’s also a part of the ‘Secret Voices’ - Caravan’ album that came out recently on 1k, playing bass on that. And now we got together last January just to improvise as live duo, in my studio, Julie on bass and pedals and me on guitars and electronics. We recorded close to two hours of material: very ambient, textural, cyclic, and cinematic. The ideas happen as you’re playing – they come through – and there was a lot of magic and beautiful moments on these recordings. So I went through the material, edited it and produced ten songs that I felt were really striking and emotional.”
Julie Slick – bass, pedals Tim Motzer –electric guitars, bow, electronics