Walk by Walk

Walk is a suite of music about going for a stroll and thinking the same repetitive thoughts. Many different short, cyclical, repetitive and often meditative forms are trodden on. Sometimes the mood is mellow and the scenery along the walk can be enjoyed. Sometimes the walkers have stressful jobs and places to be and the walk is more manic.

Walk features some of Sydney’s finest and most unique improvisers, and the music offers scope for each idiosyncratic voice to be heard.

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People Sound proudly presents the self-titled debut from Walk, the six-piece band led by Sydney-based saxophonist and composer Jack Stoneham and featuring Hilary Geddes (guitar), Toby Graham (vocals), Linus Foley (keyboards), Jacques Emery (bass), and Ashley Stoneham (drums).

A singular voice in Sydney’s jazz and experimental scenes, Stoneham is known for his contributions to a variety of ensembles including Wilbur Whitta’s Wildfire, large-scale improvising collective The Splinter Orchestra, hip-hop band Sagrada Familiar, jazz quintet Skram Luff, and his own The Pen Club.

During his studies at the Sydney Conservatorium he developed an instantly identifiable sound on the alto saxophone, and began composing short pieces as vehicles for collective improvisation, inspired the formal rigour of Australian improvisers Marc Hannaford and Phil Slater, as well as New York improvisers Matt Mitchell and Kate Gentile.

The album’s title, Walk, speaks to both its structure and its origins:
“If something goes wrong, or I need to process something, I go for a walk and tend to think the same thought over and over—it helps clear my mind. I think a lot of people can relate to that. Often, after a walk, I’d come back and write music. The music wasn’t necessarily about those thoughts, but that was the pattern.“

The music here mirrors this experience of ideation while walking, lost in one’s thoughts while taking in the environment: musical ideas loop, shift, and transform, moving seamlessly between form and improvisation, the planned and the spontaneous.

Rather than working toward a pre-determined sonic outcome, the album reflects a process of discovery, shaped as much by the musicians' interactions as by Stoneham’s compositions.

“I feel like a big compositional choice is made when I ask the musicians to join the band. If I’ve asked them and I like their music, then I just trust that whatever they choose to contribute has merit…I remember having these specific musicians in mind when writing the music for Walk. I just had this sense that they would navigate all the different places the music would go. They can all be very delicate, and also very rowdy.”

The resulting album captures the group’s razor-sharp interplay, seamlessly shifting between unrestrained intensity and delicate restraint, navigating heavy and subtle moods with equal conviction.

Every player shines, whether it’s Stoneham and Graham’s telepathic duets, Geddes’ blistering distorted guitar solos, Foley’s warm shimmering Wurlitzer, or Emery and Stoneham’s elastic grooves.

Like walking itself, the music unfolds step by step, revealing new details with every listen - always shifting, always searching, inviting the listener to walk alongside it.

"documenting a new wave of creative music"

run by jacques emery.

operating in so-called Sydney on the land of the Eora nation.

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