Clocked Out – Out of Time
Released 6 November 2026, via CD, LP and digital
Erik Griswold - prepared piano
Vanessa Tomlinson - percussion
For more than twenty-five years, Clocked Out, the acclaimed duo of Erik Griswold (prepared piano) and Vanessa Tomlinson (percussion), have carved out a singular place in Australian experimental music. Their new album, Out of Time, is a mesmerising exploration of rhythm, ecology and our changing relationship with time itself.
Using a carefully tuned collection of prepared piano, resonant percussion, found objects and micro-tuned instruments, the duo create a vivid world of mind-bending polyrhythms, shimmering overtones, warped grooves and kaleidoscopic sonic colour.
Both playful and profound, Out of Time asks listeners to experience time not as something fixed, but as something lived, stretched, repeated and transformed.
Created between urban Brisbane and the bushlands of southern Queensland, Out of Time reflects the contrasting rhythms of contemporary life. Weekdays were spent immersed in commutes, traffic and the relentless pace of the city, while weekends unfolded among forests, wildlife and geological time. Those opposing experiences became central to the music. “We are running out of time. We are playing out of time. That blissful feeling of being out of time,” say Griswold and Tomlinson. “These are some of the meanings embedded in this collection.” Throughout the album, tightly interlocking rhythmic systems coexist with moments of freedom and unpredictability, creating music that is stubbornly organic yet never repetitive, intricate yet deeply human. Every note is performed live, revealing the subtle imperfections and fluctuations that distinguish living rhythm from digital precision.
The album’s compositions draw equally from the natural world and the strange elasticity of musical time. Dirty Lizard celebrates the first moments of spring as a bearded dragon emerges from hibernation, inspired by the cyclical renewal of nature. Threes and Fives unfolds through shifting subdivisions and warped grooves, while Scrubbing transforms piano and percussion into a living sampler of glitches, stutters and rhythmic dislocations. Elsewhere, Seven Plus, Shooting Star, In Time and Travelling meditate on repetition, perspective and subtle variation, finding extraordinary complexity within the simplest musical gestures. Across the album, prepared piano, resonant percussion and carefully tuned objects create an endlessly evolving sonic landscape where rhythm itself becomes the central expressive force.
Since launching Clocked Out in Melbourne in 2000 after first meeting at the University of California, San Diego, Griswold and Tomlinson have become internationally recognised pioneers of experimental music. Their work spans original compositions, site-specific performances, intercultural collaborations, festivals and large-scale artistic projects exploring the intersections of music, ecology, architecture and science. Recipients of two APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards, including the Award for Excellence in Experimental Music and Outstanding Contribution by an Organisation, as well as two Green Room Awards, they have performed everywhere from the Sydney Opera House to Roulette (New York) and SuperDeluxe (Tokyo). Their recent collaboration with the Australian Art Orchestra, Water Pushes Sand, received an ARIA Award nomination, while their long-running residencies at Queensland Conservatorium and the Piano Mill have helped shape Australia’s experimental music landscape. With Out of Time, Clocked Out continue their remarkable journey, creating music that invites listeners to slow down, listen deeply, and discover new ways of hearing the rhythms that connect us to each other and the world around us.
-
All music by Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson
Produced and Mixed by Sam Pankhurst
Recorded by Marly Luske at Alchemix Studios
Mastered by Joe Talia
Design Layout by Brodie McAllister
Image by Clocked Out
-
Part of the development for Out of Time took place in the bushland of southern Queensland, where we took inspiration from the environment. One morning we witnessed a bearded dragon (“Dirty Lizard”) coming out of hibernation. Extremely groggy and covered in dirt, it seemed defiant in its determination to hold its ground. There are many seasons, and according to Tyson Yunkaporta, one is the season of the Dirty Lizard. That moment in the spring where the lizard comes out of hibernation, on a sunny day, still caked in dirt. Life still takes effort as it begins to heat its body. The lizard awaits time beginning anew.
"Threes and Fives" - so simple yet complex. Slowly unfurling; changing tessatura; piano or percussion? There are long drawn-out lines in this piece, alongside contrasting speeds and warped grooves. Time searching for balance.Some techniques first used on our album Foreign Objects (2009), including polyrhythms and ostinatos moving through a field of shifting subdivisions.
“Seven Plus” is loud, chunky and unforgiving. Time expands and contracts. The central improv is totally out of time. Yet time continues predictably on. On top of the tight unison, some hectic prepared piano right hand pops out: improvising freely over the tight groove. The piano preparations add to the off-kilter effect.
In “Water Buffalo” Vanessa gives us a spiral tour of her “stand up drumkit,” sounding the objects in a circular pattern, while Erik brings in a repeating pattern underneath. What does time sound like when it is a gaze across a valley – the water buffalo’s gaze? What is in time, what is out of time? Where do you feel time in your body, in the journey of time between sound and sight?
“Shoot my star.” The triangle sparkles – it is a diamond in sound, with every frequency travelling at a different speed, energetically dancing. “Shoot my star” is the most purely sonic investigation on the album, as the triangle vibrates on various surfaces, while prepared piano tremolo harmonizes and supports the shifting textures.
Scrubbing builds its own logic as we create a live sampler with glitches, stutters, expansions and occasional moments out of time. Piano and percussion forge a singular line, bound to each other in time, even while the sonic worlds diverge.
Inevitable is a companion piece to Water Buffalo, where we hear the prepared piano holding down a repeating cellular pattern, and percussion takes a more gestural approach. Two time approaches, one piece.
"8 notes," 8 sounds, cycling inevitably onward. But there is occasional slippage in the system. Periodically the unison rhythm drifts apart, rippling gently through the duo before joining together again. What causes these ruptures?
"Travelling" – imagine every morning climbing the same mountain, following the same path, nose to the ground; swimming the same current in the river, at the same depth. Same, same but with endless variations – weather, smells, temperature, speed, pressure.