In addition to her work as a composer, Allison Cameron has a long history of solo improvisational music. Drawing from a mixed bag of instruments, Cameron’s solo music is both eclectic and innovative. Her concerts have been known to include (but are not limited to) keyboards, Honeytone mini amplifiers, ukulele, banjo, radios, a desktop theremin, drums, drum machines, crackle box-synth, cassette tapes, miscellaneous objects, and toys amplified with a variety of contact mics and a variety of guitar pedals.
LIVE RECORDINGS & REVIEWS
Recorded at Ratio, September 29, 2014.
Allison Cameron – Ratio (excerpt)
On a night where Draperies were presenting one of their infrequent sonic/topographic explorations, Allison Cameron was called upon to set the stage with some electroacoustic forays of her own. This set employed irregular fizzling background ticks against banjo plucks in a manner that she has worked in before, though here they were in a less structured, more exploratory vein. Later, she’d add a ribbon synth into the mix, both for some additional buzzing as well as a banjo slide to complete the map of an abstracted/refracted sonic terrain.
Recorded at Ratio, August 5, 2015.
Allison Cameron – Ratio (excerpt)
Providing a contrast to the more laptop-based works in the night’s other sets, Allison Cameron’s electroacoustic immersion was a more hands-on experience, with its mix of banjo pluckings, contact mic feedback swells, keyboard doodles and found sound tape textures.
Recorded at April 7, 2015 at Track Could Bend
Allison Cameron – [excerpt from last section]
A new night of sonic instability, this actually nestled into Johnny Jackson quite nicely, giving the audience a chance to lounge and relax in comfort, and take in some experimental music in hi-fi sound. Allison Cameron filled two tables with her mini-amps, speakers and electronic devices, spending the first part of her set adding banjo plucks to the hums and buzzes, then paying more focused attention to shaping the sonic sculpture. Taken from that latter section, this includes a recording of an ice cream truck (or merry go round?) that keeps bobbing above the soundwaves.
Recorded at The Tranzac, December 10, 2013.
Allison Cameron – Last Landing
Falling somewhere between noise-rock bricolage and folk deconstructionism, Cameron’s banjo plucks and skittering static bursts felt like traditions imploding, fragmented meaning-ness drifting somewhere in the space between atoms of a haphazardly-expanding universe.