A jumper is not a body
Improvisations: Znojmo II
A jumper is not a body
An improvisation for unaccompanied voice
A jumper spread
on the floor is not
a body
not ‘til it fills with flesh
Sometimes I leave
my clothes
on the bed
You arrange them as if
I’m there
Me flat deflated
You waiting
for me
to come and laugh at my twin
The panels of silence
between us are bigger now
more space
between those hiccups of laughter
I should set a joke dancing
Would you bare your teeth or your tongue?
Artist statement
This piece begins with a text generated through a daily writing practice: using a painting as a starting point, I create a mind map, join pairs of words into unexpected combinations, then write automatically to fill the page. The result is edited lightly if at all. The source painting was Luis E. Pombo by Guillermo Laborde.
These texts are not intended to be personal — yet reading them back, I am often surprised by how much they have excavated my own interior life without my conscious intention. The writing process seems to bypass the editorial mind entirely.
In performance, the text guides a fully improvised melody — the words generate the melodic material in the moment rather than being set to a pre-composed line. Repetition and return are structural tools, bringing back key images and phrases to create coherence across the improvisation.
Recorded live 10 March 2024 in Znojmo, Czech republic.
Credits
Text, composition, and improvisation: Erica Bramham
Video: Erica Bramham
“Working in a musical world where a fine mist obscures any lines between jazz, folk, improvisation and rock, [Bramham] writes songs that often feel like settings for poetry rather than lyrics”
About Erica Bramham
Erica Bramham is a Melbourne-based composer, vocalist, and double bassist working at the intersection of text, sound, and interdisciplinary performance. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, she has released three albums and an EP since 2016, with work praised by The Age/Sydney Morning Herald and All About Jazz, and was nominated for the 2021 Music Victoria Awards (Best Folk Act).
Her practice begins with text — using poetry as the foundation for melody, rhythm, and sound design. She self-produces her recordings, layering and transforming acoustic instruments through live electronics and field recordings, and performs with voice, double bass, and loop pedals to create continuously evolving sonic environments.
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