Ink on a string
Improvised poetry for voice, double bass and electronics.
Sleeve spinners
An original improvisation for voice, double bass, and loop pedals.
Spiders are at work on your clothes
spinning the sleeves
every hair and freckle covered by
a whitely luminescent film of cloth.
Spiders are at work on your clothes
while I stand
here on the balcony
in the wind.
Spiders are at work on your clothes
spinning the sleeves
when you are dressed
we will go out and find
life in the centre of the city
How long for a spider to spin a shirt?
I will stand here, wrapped
against the wind
until they are done
and you can wrap me up instead.
Artist statement
The composition is anchored by a poem, several melodic fragments, and a harmonic map that moves through different modes in response to the text’s emotional arc. These elements form a loose score, and the piece unfolds differently each time it’s performed.
This piece was improvised using two separate loop pedals. The process of capturing looped fragments across the pedals allows for spontaneous and unexpected layering of textures and rhythms during performance.
Recorded live 25 February 2025 in Znojmo, Czech republic. Text, composition and improvisation by 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 contemporary musician, poet and composer whose genre-blurring work draws on folk, jazz, pop and experimental traditions. Blending voice, double bass, guitar, mandolin, field recordings and digital processing, she creates poetic, melodic, and often surreal soundscapes that weave poetry through both spoken and sung forms.
Her debut album Twelve Moons was named one of the top 10 releases of 2016 on All About Jazz, followed by two more critically acclaimed albums and several EPs. A 2021 Music Victoria Awards nominee and recipient of the Sustaining Creative Workers Grant, Erica’s work has been presented nationally and internationally in music venues, festivals, and art spaces.
As an educator, she leads workshops and mentors writers, singers and musicians in composition, improvisation and creative processes that bridge poetry and music.
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