EXTREMITIES

Extremities biography
An Endgame spin-off project, Extremities were a British electroacoustic music quartet from Leicester, consisting of Alan and Steve Freeman, Jim Tetlow and Dave Powell. The group's impetus began the night of April 21, 2002, where Powell played his first live performance joining Endgame on amplified hurdy-gurdy for their set at The Victory in Leicester. Powell's successful experiment led to more concerts and studio sessions with Endgame before the four took the name Extremities for their ensemble in 2003.

Wielding processed instruments such as guitar, bass, flute and glockenspiel along with synthesizers, laptops, samplers and Powell's hurdy-gurdy, Extremities improvised otherworldly and constantly-morphing soundscapes not far from the template established by Endgame: moody, mysterious and hallucinatory, but with a more rhythmic bent. Much less prolific than their flagship band, Extremities released ten full-length LPs and one live album, each issued via the Freemans' Auricle label. The quartet took primary inspiration from krautrock and industrial music, namely Faust and Nurse With Wound, while also referencing Third Ear Band, Taj Mahal Travellers, early Kraftwerk, Limbus, This Heat and Kluster.

Tetlow later departed the UK to stay with friends in New South Wales, Australia for the next three years. Recording sessions for Extremities were then reduced to once a year during his temporary absence, with the Freeman brothers and Powell forming the Triax project in the interim. Extremities existed alongside Endgame and Triax for a time before running out of steam in the early-2010s, though the quartet occasionally performs at the Freeman brothers' monthly Quadelectronic improv night.


- Gordy, October 2023