Littoral is taken from Hummel’s second album mediOCHRE and is a poignant meditation on ageing and the human spirit. Filmed by Kate Logan in Wellington.
hummel
Andy was born in May, 1974. He has had previous experience playing and writing music, in both bands and as a solo artist but hummel is the first album he has written and produced. Andy has also presented works of theatre and performance poetry which is reflected in hummel. He is currently an additional vocalist for pop-experimentalists Cloudboy. He recently finished three audio-visual pieces, one of which is a video for the song helloface (from hummel). Future plans include soundscapes for a series of short film projects.
Second album by Hummel aka Andy Cummins continues in the same vein as the his self-titled debut with spoken word, song, samples, live instruments and electronica adding up to a haunting and evocative soundscape.
Reviews
“(mediOCHRE is)…a sonic journey from lo-fi beginnings through spoken-word samples, downbeat electronica, live guitars, gentle songs, and techno-static. It finds its soul in the exploration of space between sound. Experiments never sounded so fruitful. Further proof quiet can say a lot.” **** The Herald
mediOCHRE
In the NZ Herald, Graham Reid said
Another low-key ambient outing with a Cloudboy connection: Hummel is the album and nom de disque of Andy Cummins who has toured with Cloudboy as a vocalist but, as with Contag, has a private life in the quiet zone. Plucked guitars, barely audible vocal sounds, a few emotionally intense folk-styled songs scattered around, spoken poetry, small sonic landscapes etched in the background.
Chris Long of Rip It Up said,
Andy Cummins, a recent contributor to Cloudboy’s live performances, has released a haunting, and exciting album in hummel. The album flirts with hard-edged ambience, with some sparsely employed singer/songwriter style acoustic guitar and vocals, to shake things up. Definitely recommended.
Hummel is an aural soundscape; a lyrical landscape; words sung and spoken, incurring dynamics; musical contrasts with fluid transitions. A token; a watermark; a collage; a correlation. A simple, textural, tonal montage. Hummel consists of large scapes of downbeat electronica, blended with sparse live acoustic guitar and vocal songs.
These are woven with spoken word and washes of incidental atmosperics to create an organic, free flowing, sonic dialogue. Hummel is a commentary on concealment of the human spirit. It explores the complex relationship between fear, love and silence. The album is also an initial attempt at merging what is essentially a ’singer-songwriter’ background with the electronic dabblings of the last three or four years: a process which intends to be pursued.
