A Handful Of Dust

Besides founding notable avant-garde New Zealand label Xpressway, not to mention his even more extreme company Corpus Hermeticum (which between them have released efforts from such musical innovators as Peter Jefferies, Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos, and Flying Saucer Attack), Bruce Russell has pursued a musical career in a variety of areas, most notably the radically inventive trio the Dead C. A Handful of Dust is his equivalent of a solo project, though most of the pieces he creates feature fellow Kiwi experimentalists Alastair Galbraith, usually on violin, and percussionist Peter Stapleton. Russell's goals with A Handful of Dust have always been couched in an erudite combination of academic study in European 16th and 17th century science and epistemology with free noise and improvisational goals; resulting in a series of radical electronic compositions with song titles like "The Third Dance in Honour of the Sabbatai Sevi" and album titles like The Philosophick Mercury, and covers which feature reproductions of centuries-old woodcuts and scientific designs. Many releases consist of live performance pieces, often 30-minutes-long or even longer, while others are brief studio snippets appearing only on lathe-cut singles or cassettes. It all makes for a fascinating blend.