Penny Poppet
The duo of Robin Barnes and Andrew Chalk, Isolde represent one of the several examples of untainted creativity typical of the English area of exploration where mystery, melancholy and concreteness meet, as if the musicians were trying to depict the course of existence with all its gradations of awareness and forgetfulness, everything occurring under a next-to-downpour sky.
Two crucial elements, more or less present everywhere, constitute the groundwork of this CD. On the one hand, field recordings of birds and other creatures from the woods apparently taped in nocturnal settings, their extended pseudo-wailings seemingly defining a substratum of sufferance. These sounds are unquestionably not soothing, rather evoking the consciousness of being gone astray somewhere without a chance of returning home. The second critical constituent is the stable presence of the electric guitars, recorded warts and all – probably via microphones placed quite distant from the amplifiers, whose hum is nevertheless audible at times – in a room shaped and sized to exalt their slight detuning, thus generating waves of conflicting upper partials and grey-tinged metallic resonances that add a degree of ambiguity to an already difficult-to-fathom soundscape.
What is evident since the very beginning is a mutilation of commonly accepted meanings, an unrealistic yet extremely crude representation of coincidences that might be lucky or terrible, the will immobilized by a raw sensation of daze that appears both infatuating and grotesque. A house of mirrors that gives back the distorted image of illusions ready to be destroyed by an unending gloominess. This crippled aesthetic is strikingly hard to accept but once we penetrate the essence of this inhospitable music, the realization of something important that’s there to be picked up and preserved in the depths of our fortitude immediately occurs.
Fascinatingly unfriendly, deeply significant reflections by a pair of artists whose seriousness remains distant from suspicion, an unfinished beauty calling out remote sympathies. We need more items like this to replace the fake assurances of inexistent sunrises auspicated by releases where the initial splendour vanishes the morning after.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Sunday, 22 March 2009
CHRISTINE SEHNAOUI / MICHEL WAISVISZ – Shortwave
Al Maslakh
This splendid music originates from a series of recordings captured at the notorious GRM studios in Paris in two different periods of 2007. Christine Sehnaoui (alto sax) and the late Michel Waisvisz (playing The Hands, one of his weird self-made instruments designed to pilot synth modules) amassed such a quantity of material during these sessions that, reportedly, six versions of the program were considered for release. Judging from the fascinatingly transfixing animation of the sounds concocted, this writer could probably have accepted a sextuple - but let’s be thankful anyway for a single disc’s worth of improvised radiance.
The determinant factor in attributing a magna cum laude mark to Shortwave is the tightness of the conversation between the musicians, who appear at the apex of their edifice of receptiveness throughout. Although digressions and contrasts are firmly at the basis of a shrewd analysis of timbral multiplicity there’s a definite inner apparatus at work, fuelled by lucid organization and instant configuration. Sehnaoui is a proficient saxophone surveyor who manages to find pictographic sides even in the harsher facets of her playing; the ability of eliciting sweet-sounding venom in disparate contexts and a swift sensitivity to conditions of extreme variability are but two of the numerous resources that she brings to the table. Waisvisz is a demanding partner in that sense, a gatherer of impulsive spills and unsentimental twists that rarely allow the listener to individuate familiar eventualities. Yet he’s also the holder of an uncharacteristic sort of sympathy, every discharge organically projected in the surrounding environment, spontaneously delineating a deeper conception of the acoustic phenomenon.
The mixture is unmistakably successful, gravity and irony easily living together over the course of the record; there are occasions in which distinguishing gurgling sublingual flutters from obstreperous synthetic patchworks is not exactly unproblematic. Recognizable features in the originality of an artistic pairing to which, unfortunately, we will only be able to listen again by preserving this gorgeous CD among the best specimens of enthrallingly munificent free improvisation.
This splendid music originates from a series of recordings captured at the notorious GRM studios in Paris in two different periods of 2007. Christine Sehnaoui (alto sax) and the late Michel Waisvisz (playing The Hands, one of his weird self-made instruments designed to pilot synth modules) amassed such a quantity of material during these sessions that, reportedly, six versions of the program were considered for release. Judging from the fascinatingly transfixing animation of the sounds concocted, this writer could probably have accepted a sextuple - but let’s be thankful anyway for a single disc’s worth of improvised radiance.
The determinant factor in attributing a magna cum laude mark to Shortwave is the tightness of the conversation between the musicians, who appear at the apex of their edifice of receptiveness throughout. Although digressions and contrasts are firmly at the basis of a shrewd analysis of timbral multiplicity there’s a definite inner apparatus at work, fuelled by lucid organization and instant configuration. Sehnaoui is a proficient saxophone surveyor who manages to find pictographic sides even in the harsher facets of her playing; the ability of eliciting sweet-sounding venom in disparate contexts and a swift sensitivity to conditions of extreme variability are but two of the numerous resources that she brings to the table. Waisvisz is a demanding partner in that sense, a gatherer of impulsive spills and unsentimental twists that rarely allow the listener to individuate familiar eventualities. Yet he’s also the holder of an uncharacteristic sort of sympathy, every discharge organically projected in the surrounding environment, spontaneously delineating a deeper conception of the acoustic phenomenon.
The mixture is unmistakably successful, gravity and irony easily living together over the course of the record; there are occasions in which distinguishing gurgling sublingual flutters from obstreperous synthetic patchworks is not exactly unproblematic. Recognizable features in the originality of an artistic pairing to which, unfortunately, we will only be able to listen again by preserving this gorgeous CD among the best specimens of enthrallingly munificent free improvisation.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
MARY HALVORSON TRIO – Dragon’s Head
Firehouse 12
Announced from all sides as the “new thing” in contemporary jazz’s register of innovative guitarists, Mary Halvorson – who’s used to be surrounded by artists on the same level as Anthony Braxton, Jessica Pavone, Nate Wooley and Elliott Sharp - is indeed a musician gifted with a sturdy personality, immediately evident by listening to this set with bassist John Hebert and drummer Ches Smith. Halvorson utilizes a clean timbre, only rarely blemished by effects and even more infrequently invading the territories where “overdrive” is the keyword – listen to “Momentary Lapse” to recognize that mayhem is not beyond reach for this lean (and sometimes mean) girl.
In a recent magazine feature, Halvorson reportedly affirms to have “thrown caution to the wind” while composing these tracks, as she did her best to forget about the limitations of what was taught at school in regard to “jazz notions”. This notwithstanding, the whole of Dragon’s Head remains absolutely intelligible, its unique schemes visible at a first glance but instantly forgotten when the trio shift gears to full-throttle improvisation mode. “Scant Frame” is a gorgeous example in that sense, beginning with a logic of skewed discretion that soon mutates into a series of disobedient runs towards the disintegration of conservatism, truly electrifying if ever kept in check by Halvorson’s inside watchdog of compositional order.
To realize how far this music gets from tradition, think that the monster whose icon popped up in my mind was a mixture of Sonny Sharrock, Emily Remler and Forever Einstein, the latter evoked by the incredibly emaciated yet extremely functional themes of pieces like “Sank Silver Purple White”, which remind me of Charles Vrtacek O’ Meara’s angularly basic linear exposition. Hebert and Smith form a natural partnership with Halvorson (their work in “Too Many Ties” is alone worth of the whole effort ), a feel justified by the perceivable consistency of musicians who sound more as a strong-minded three-headed unit than a “rhythm section plus guitar star” inflexible commonplace. In a nutshell, unrepentant and respectful at once.
Play loud – there’s meat for everyone here – and yes, this young lady is definitely for real.
Announced from all sides as the “new thing” in contemporary jazz’s register of innovative guitarists, Mary Halvorson – who’s used to be surrounded by artists on the same level as Anthony Braxton, Jessica Pavone, Nate Wooley and Elliott Sharp - is indeed a musician gifted with a sturdy personality, immediately evident by listening to this set with bassist John Hebert and drummer Ches Smith. Halvorson utilizes a clean timbre, only rarely blemished by effects and even more infrequently invading the territories where “overdrive” is the keyword – listen to “Momentary Lapse” to recognize that mayhem is not beyond reach for this lean (and sometimes mean) girl.
In a recent magazine feature, Halvorson reportedly affirms to have “thrown caution to the wind” while composing these tracks, as she did her best to forget about the limitations of what was taught at school in regard to “jazz notions”. This notwithstanding, the whole of Dragon’s Head remains absolutely intelligible, its unique schemes visible at a first glance but instantly forgotten when the trio shift gears to full-throttle improvisation mode. “Scant Frame” is a gorgeous example in that sense, beginning with a logic of skewed discretion that soon mutates into a series of disobedient runs towards the disintegration of conservatism, truly electrifying if ever kept in check by Halvorson’s inside watchdog of compositional order.
To realize how far this music gets from tradition, think that the monster whose icon popped up in my mind was a mixture of Sonny Sharrock, Emily Remler and Forever Einstein, the latter evoked by the incredibly emaciated yet extremely functional themes of pieces like “Sank Silver Purple White”, which remind me of Charles Vrtacek O’ Meara’s angularly basic linear exposition. Hebert and Smith form a natural partnership with Halvorson (their work in “Too Many Ties” is alone worth of the whole effort ), a feel justified by the perceivable consistency of musicians who sound more as a strong-minded three-headed unit than a “rhythm section plus guitar star” inflexible commonplace. In a nutshell, unrepentant and respectful at once.
Play loud – there’s meat for everyone here – and yes, this young lady is definitely for real.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
OKKYUNG LEE / PETER EVANS / STEVE BERESFORD – Check For Monsters
Emanem
The irredeemable insurrectional spirit animating the protagonists of these two sets - recorded in New York and Philadelphia in March 2008 - constitutes the axis of Check For Monsters, a CD which presents the bewildering aspects of a trio performance regulated by high-calibre musicianship. Never really exacerbating the inharmonious character of their expression, these artists do the utmost to reach an acceptable balance between a compulsory sense of disrespectfulness for the norm and an exhaustive analysis of the possibilities of the instruments, at least for what concerns the not-overly-extreme regions of timbre; namely, without recurring to preparations and additional dissections of machines that alone are sufficient to guarantee an appreciable degree of pandemonium.
Indeed the musical barometer indicates turbulence more often than not, yet finesse is clearly perceivable all over the program. The three-minded logic that moves “Yinothanot” - almost eighteen minutes of last-chance insinuations and magnificent in-your-face rambling – is explicative of the general approach to this music. Evans is the perennial frontrunner, his trumpets sustaining the attention usually given to a wasp: we’re careful not to be stung when it flies, ready to be fascinated by its colours and features as it walks on a window. Beresford alternates deviously reminiscent phraseologies and eruptive outbursts, somehow managing to hang about the areas of pianism where his charismatic sincerity shines brightly. Lee’s cello sounds elegantly divergent at times, but is frequently and obviously the collating factor of parts which would otherwise tend to a stubborn affirmation of specific rights and needs – which, in improvisation, typically translates into technically advanced incomprehensibleness. “Gwendol Ap Siencyn” begins as a quasi-serialist chamber piece, then turns left to arrive at sonorities halfway through disgruntled incompatibility and genuine eagerness – always with a bitter aftertaste, though.
Arduous listening for the ill-equipped, this is nevertheless a rewarding album under any circumstance, uncompromising music whose unsentimental physiognomy symbolizes the best answer to the fossilization lurking behind the corners of theoretical autonomy.
The irredeemable insurrectional spirit animating the protagonists of these two sets - recorded in New York and Philadelphia in March 2008 - constitutes the axis of Check For Monsters, a CD which presents the bewildering aspects of a trio performance regulated by high-calibre musicianship. Never really exacerbating the inharmonious character of their expression, these artists do the utmost to reach an acceptable balance between a compulsory sense of disrespectfulness for the norm and an exhaustive analysis of the possibilities of the instruments, at least for what concerns the not-overly-extreme regions of timbre; namely, without recurring to preparations and additional dissections of machines that alone are sufficient to guarantee an appreciable degree of pandemonium.
Indeed the musical barometer indicates turbulence more often than not, yet finesse is clearly perceivable all over the program. The three-minded logic that moves “Yinothanot” - almost eighteen minutes of last-chance insinuations and magnificent in-your-face rambling – is explicative of the general approach to this music. Evans is the perennial frontrunner, his trumpets sustaining the attention usually given to a wasp: we’re careful not to be stung when it flies, ready to be fascinated by its colours and features as it walks on a window. Beresford alternates deviously reminiscent phraseologies and eruptive outbursts, somehow managing to hang about the areas of pianism where his charismatic sincerity shines brightly. Lee’s cello sounds elegantly divergent at times, but is frequently and obviously the collating factor of parts which would otherwise tend to a stubborn affirmation of specific rights and needs – which, in improvisation, typically translates into technically advanced incomprehensibleness. “Gwendol Ap Siencyn” begins as a quasi-serialist chamber piece, then turns left to arrive at sonorities halfway through disgruntled incompatibility and genuine eagerness – always with a bitter aftertaste, though.
Arduous listening for the ill-equipped, this is nevertheless a rewarding album under any circumstance, uncompromising music whose unsentimental physiognomy symbolizes the best answer to the fossilization lurking behind the corners of theoretical autonomy.
VERYAN WESTON – Allusions
Emanem
Veryan Weston is both a peerless virtuoso, his uncontaminated figurations and innovative intuitions difficult to compare with anyone else’s, and a shamefully overlooked pianist when the stupid games of name-throwing begin. Allusions, which comprises almost the entirety of a concert recorded in 2002 at the Librairie Mollat in Bordeaux, may be used as a toe-dipper for the unversed despite its specific character, nearer to pure ad-libbing (or, as per Martin Davidson’s definition, “stream of consciousness improvising”) than previous records by the same artist which were based on prearranged structures, such as the unforgettable Tessellations (also on Emanem). This is one of those items who should hypothetically open many people’s eyes about the fact that the planet with 88 keys is not exclusively revolving around Köln: there are also musicians whose intellect features a couple of supplementary gears.
The problem, perhaps, lies in how the general audience might react to the use of those “supplementary gears”: the wonderful decentralizations of chords, the self-reliance of Weston’s fingers as opposed to the pre-digested concepts which several presumed masters punch the clock of our tolerance with, and the now inert, now furious dynamics succeeding minute in, minute out could easily push back someone who approaches a solo piano effort with the disinterested attitude of a cretin, that kind of yes-I-know-what-it-is-ism which prevents knowledge and experience from depositing even a few seeds of curiosity in the mind of a human being.
Over the course of these seven tracks, we’re marvellously attended by a realistically down-to-earth, yet hypercritically incorruptible creativity. This music appears in gushes and trickles, nearly materializing in ever-multiplying figures in front of the listener for barely a handful of seconds; then it goes straight to the archive of generic recollection, the place where a record is filed as a “colour” rather than effectively committed to memory. It leaves an indelible mark, yet there’s not a single fraction – except maybe for the short citation of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” – which we’ll be able to literally recall. However, consider yourselves stone-hearted if you’re not moved by the wondrous harmonic passages in the final section of “Traces Of Nuts”.
Allusions is a fundamental addition to any creditable collection, in the hope that its originator finally receives the accolades he’s been deserving for decades by a larger social segment.
Veryan Weston is both a peerless virtuoso, his uncontaminated figurations and innovative intuitions difficult to compare with anyone else’s, and a shamefully overlooked pianist when the stupid games of name-throwing begin. Allusions, which comprises almost the entirety of a concert recorded in 2002 at the Librairie Mollat in Bordeaux, may be used as a toe-dipper for the unversed despite its specific character, nearer to pure ad-libbing (or, as per Martin Davidson’s definition, “stream of consciousness improvising”) than previous records by the same artist which were based on prearranged structures, such as the unforgettable Tessellations (also on Emanem). This is one of those items who should hypothetically open many people’s eyes about the fact that the planet with 88 keys is not exclusively revolving around Köln: there are also musicians whose intellect features a couple of supplementary gears.
The problem, perhaps, lies in how the general audience might react to the use of those “supplementary gears”: the wonderful decentralizations of chords, the self-reliance of Weston’s fingers as opposed to the pre-digested concepts which several presumed masters punch the clock of our tolerance with, and the now inert, now furious dynamics succeeding minute in, minute out could easily push back someone who approaches a solo piano effort with the disinterested attitude of a cretin, that kind of yes-I-know-what-it-is-ism which prevents knowledge and experience from depositing even a few seeds of curiosity in the mind of a human being.
Over the course of these seven tracks, we’re marvellously attended by a realistically down-to-earth, yet hypercritically incorruptible creativity. This music appears in gushes and trickles, nearly materializing in ever-multiplying figures in front of the listener for barely a handful of seconds; then it goes straight to the archive of generic recollection, the place where a record is filed as a “colour” rather than effectively committed to memory. It leaves an indelible mark, yet there’s not a single fraction – except maybe for the short citation of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” – which we’ll be able to literally recall. However, consider yourselves stone-hearted if you’re not moved by the wondrous harmonic passages in the final section of “Traces Of Nuts”.
Allusions is a fundamental addition to any creditable collection, in the hope that its originator finally receives the accolades he’s been deserving for decades by a larger social segment.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
RICHARD PINHAS / MERZBOW – Keio Line
Cuneiform
An implausible collaboration, you might think. Yet Richard Pinhas and Masami Akita have been reciprocal admirers for years; when the occasion arose in 2007, they started playing together - both live and in “a strange studio at the end of the metro Keio Line” - subsequently manipulating the results and gathering enough material for a double CD that brims with sweet mercilessness: divine for many, appalling for the rest. In my case the reaction was, to some extent, a mixed bag of feelings.
Although Pinhas’ metatronic style is explicitly deriving from a slight modification of the concept of Frippertronics, the guitarist often achieves an outcome that surpasses the original in terms of pure psychosomatic gratification. Huge masses of superimposed lines, enhanced by saturation and additional processing, give birth to repeated episodes of supreme fulfilment: while listening to certain sections of this record – but the same, with greater consequence on the mind, happened with the previous outings on this very label – one feels like shifting gears towards a dimension where sound is sufficient to render people impregnable to any attack, even of the physical sort. In a word, those stratifications make us feel invincible.
Merzbow, who utilizes an EMS Synthi and a laptop to do his thing, is obviously a master of the game and calling him a “noise artist” has somehow become a reductive cliché. The pulsating-and-chopping patterns, extemporaneous upsurges and magmatic fumes appearing from behind amidst the thick clouds generated by the Deleuze-inspired French soundscaper succeed as an alternative source of power, yet not completely as far as a true compositional sense should be involved. The two sonic entities appear paralleled, not really as a single body. Merzbow’s heavy blows and Pinhas’ choking vapours are easily discernible; despite the obvious mutual respect, the music does not result in a consistent whole, akin as it is to a rotating showcase of the individual aesthetics, with rare intersections.
Therefore, even if Keio Line remains an intriguing release characterized by several moments of brutal bliss, in truth I believe that it doesn’t stand out in relation to its potential. The best that these artists are able to offer has still to be found in their respective solo productions.
An implausible collaboration, you might think. Yet Richard Pinhas and Masami Akita have been reciprocal admirers for years; when the occasion arose in 2007, they started playing together - both live and in “a strange studio at the end of the metro Keio Line” - subsequently manipulating the results and gathering enough material for a double CD that brims with sweet mercilessness: divine for many, appalling for the rest. In my case the reaction was, to some extent, a mixed bag of feelings.
Although Pinhas’ metatronic style is explicitly deriving from a slight modification of the concept of Frippertronics, the guitarist often achieves an outcome that surpasses the original in terms of pure psychosomatic gratification. Huge masses of superimposed lines, enhanced by saturation and additional processing, give birth to repeated episodes of supreme fulfilment: while listening to certain sections of this record – but the same, with greater consequence on the mind, happened with the previous outings on this very label – one feels like shifting gears towards a dimension where sound is sufficient to render people impregnable to any attack, even of the physical sort. In a word, those stratifications make us feel invincible.
Merzbow, who utilizes an EMS Synthi and a laptop to do his thing, is obviously a master of the game and calling him a “noise artist” has somehow become a reductive cliché. The pulsating-and-chopping patterns, extemporaneous upsurges and magmatic fumes appearing from behind amidst the thick clouds generated by the Deleuze-inspired French soundscaper succeed as an alternative source of power, yet not completely as far as a true compositional sense should be involved. The two sonic entities appear paralleled, not really as a single body. Merzbow’s heavy blows and Pinhas’ choking vapours are easily discernible; despite the obvious mutual respect, the music does not result in a consistent whole, akin as it is to a rotating showcase of the individual aesthetics, with rare intersections.
Therefore, even if Keio Line remains an intriguing release characterized by several moments of brutal bliss, in truth I believe that it doesn’t stand out in relation to its potential. The best that these artists are able to offer has still to be found in their respective solo productions.
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