Freedom Lapse
Recorded over a four-week period in early 2020, Freedom Lapse is the debut solo release of Australian multi-instrumentalist and composer Adam Halliwell. A versatile improviser and lover of performance, Halliwell has been an active contributor to numerous musical communities in recent years. The release of Freedom Lapse marks an exciting stage in Halliwell’s journey as an artist with the culmination of several important musical facets that are now becoming foundational to his practice.
As Halliwell tells us, Freedom Lapse owes its genesis to an epiphanic moment experienced whilst traversing a mountainous passage in Mexico, a place where ‘the past present and future stretch out in one place’. Entranced by this environment, its colours, the villages and local life, Halliwell listened to music that inspires him (he cites Jon Hassell here). The result: ‘complete aural, visual and spiritual completeness’, a moment of discovery, he explains. Shortly after, the material that now comprises Freedom Lapse was recorded, distilling this powerful sensorial experience into a body of music that he has now invited the world to share with him.
“I first heard this music in a record store in Collingwood. I detected elements of Miles Davis’s seventies electric funk, shades of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World futurism, but it sounded too now for that. I was so taken, my immediate thought was: surely, I must know this music. Turned out I was listening to an extended piece called ‘Cyborg Dance’, featuring trumpeter Reuben Lewis, off Melbourne-based Adam Halliwell’s new solo album Freedom Lapse. Now, I knew Adam a little, mainly as bass player in Lewis’s improvising ensemble I Hold the Lion’s Paw. But truth be told, I’ve only since twigged to his local renown as a multi-instrumentalist, and his role in Aria-award winning psychedelic fusion band Midlife. Regardless, Freedom Lapse, his debut solo outing, counts as a significant step up. Over six tracks and forty-minutes of music, Halliwell composes and performs all instruments (except on the aforementioned ‘Cyborg Dance’) contributing bass, organ, flute, percussion, electronics. The album kicks off with ‘Memory Gold’, an ambient scene-setter, five-minutes of organ, meted out over minimalist, chunky percussion and electronics. ‘Banana Leaf’ elongates the mood, an extended wash of bass, organ, electronics, and percussive effects. The title track could double as an imaginary soundtrack, something mysterious, near-spiritual. ‘Cyborg Dance’ is the album’s highwater mark, Reuben Lewis’s dark trumpet tones dancing across a subdued bedrock of slow-burn electronica. Lesson learnt: never underestimate the bass player. Halliwell’s music resides somewhere in the contiguous frontiers criss-crossing minimalism, ambient and electronica, a music steeped in atmospherics, secret meditations, rhythmic pulses, dream-haunted vistas.”
- Des Cowley, Rhythms Magazine (November 2023)
All instruments recorded and performed by Adam Halliwell.
Trumpet and Electronics on Cygon Dance played by Reuben Lewis.
Written and recorded between March 18th - April 8th 2020.
Produced and mixed by Adam Halliwell and Jim Rindfleish.
Mastered by Corey Kikos.
Cover art weaves by Martha Sexton.
Photography by Hamish Macdonald.
Design and Layout by Jack Hewitt.
