RODRIGO AMADO / KENT KESSLER / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE – The Abstract Truth

European Echoes

A jazz trio has by now become something of a commonplace. The format at the basis of several past masterpieces is reduced to a vehicle for showcasing futile virtuosity hiding a depressing absence of compositional ideas, typically underscored by that kind of swinging pulse that does not clarify if the rhythm section is made of geniuses or just a shelter for people who can’t even keep a steady pace in a music piece.

And yet, as we listen to The Abstract Truth, there’s room for hope. That’s because the principals look interested in introducing a welcome measure of rationalization in their playing, rather than abandoning themselves to the bacchanalia of “let’s get lost in a meaningless rowdiness”. For starters, the saxophonist – tenor and baritone – is one of those soloists not scared of showing disaffection for the fraudulent aspects of bebop imagery, acuminate shards of fragmentary, at times repetitive melody pushing the phrasing in close proximity to intuitive drawing without causing exhaustion. In “The Kiss” the interaction with Kessler and Nilssen-Love is perhaps at its maximum level of intensity, the bassist’s constantly grumbling arco and the drummer’s abstemious percussive consistency projecting the tunes against a white wall where every figuration is perfectly delineated and utterly comprehensible. A remunerative regeneration of prismatic instrumental brightness which appears to be totally gone in many similar circumstances.

Still, when Amado wants he’s got power to spare: the sturdy baritone in “Universe Unmasked” shows that, coming the right juncture, the will of getting down in the dirt is there. Kessler and Nilssen-Love sustain that particular moment of inspiration with elegant authority - entirely deprived of invasiveness - in seven minutes of extraordinary lucidity fuelled by well-channelled energy, the solidity of the interplay never dissipating into free gimmickry, the instruments maintaining the respective features fully visible.

Dissertations that do not weigh upon the shoulders of our patience, intelligence remaining in sight throughout. A refined album that nevertheless doesn’t sound politically correct, an example of cleverness and self-restriction generating results that are definitely superior to destined-to-oblivion burnouts.

MOLLY BERG + STEPHEN VITIELLO – The Gorilla Variations

12k

Brazilian video artist Éder Santos, a longtime collaborator of Stephen Vitiello, asked him for help in organizing a soundtrack for a filmic portrait of a lonely gorilla named Idi Amin, who lives in Belo Horizonte’s zoo, as a part of an installation called Boxing The Game. The original request was for a short fragment, yet Vitiello and Molly Berg recorded about 40 minutes of material to choose from, which constitute more or less 4/5 of this CD’s content.

The couple utilized an elusive blend of instruments (clarinets, guitar, bass, electric piano), samples and field recordings, also exploiting Berg’s daydreaming vocalizations and distilling the whole into an intoxicatingly scented sonic substance. That Vitiello has returned to playing a real instrument for the first time in circa 6 years is a noteworthy detail, as it is exactly this mixture of studio seaming and semi-improvised candour that gifts this album with an appreciable feeling of wholesomeness, lots of space to roam amidst ethereal loops, assorted melodic ingenuities and improvisations that may appear démodé for the cynical among us, but on the contrary are gifted with deepness to spare. The association between the transparency of the procedures, the mesmerizingly heart-warming simplicity of the pieces, and the fact that the work is dedicated to a solitary animal whose physical aspect is, ideally, quite threatening (as opposed to the tenderness perceived throughout) is a winning combination. There’s not a single occasion in which the initial idea overstays its welcome. All that’s stretched in terms of repetition and duration is never strained, looking near to some sort of bodiless manifestation. Indeed, an easily gaugeable spiritual level characterizes the entire record.

A classic case of creative sincerity determining the birth of something that encourages repeated savouring. Though not really a milestone, surely The Gorilla Variations does good in getting close to that status, in idyllic fashion. Idi Amin would feel flattered by this treatment.

LAWRENCE ENGLISH – A Colour For Autumn

12k

I’m not in the mood for markedly tonal music so often, especially when “ambient” is the keyword. Still, Lawrence English is among the very few musicians in this area who not only facilitates my problematic absorption of easy progressions and slow fragments of sweetness, but dresses them with tasty ingredients – typically, delicately inserted field recordings and almost invisible processing – which transform things that should be classified in the ranks of obviousness into appreciable pastels gifted with a degree of introspective reminiscence. That said, I’m sorry to report that this record fails to do so.

A Colour For Autumn is the second chapter of a series that began with For Varying Degrees Of Winter (on Baskaru), where English attempts to transfer the seasonal gradations related to the biotic and climatic aspects of certain zones to his soundscapes. The listener is left alone in hypothetical rumination, either surrounded by quiet backgrounds or more visible strokes that may appear as insubstantial or plain evocative according to the moment, remaining anchored to the single harmonic nucleus upon which every piece unfolds. No excessive variations or surprises, the instrumental shades meshed without specific definitions.

The influence on the psyche is not significant, and indeed several tracks sound a little too mono-dimensional in their elementary structure. Traces of Eno are observable - with particular reference, once again, to the Music For Films era - yet those exceedingly consonant traits are frequently burdensome, and one feels somewhat liberated when airy echoes (like, for instance, at the beginning of “…And Clouds For Company”) emerge to alleviate the whole a bit.

Cameos by Dean Roberts and Christian Fennesz remain pretty much unnoticed. English’s experience and sensitive ears prevent the album – just - from falling in the wallpaper cauldron but this is, regretfully, a lost chance for an influential sonic rendition of the thousands of hues characterizing the most beautiful season of the year.

ANNA ZARADNY – Mauve Cycles

Musica Genera

In his comments on Mauve Cycles – first CD of Polish Anna Zaradny – Daniel Brozek points out that “the involvement of women in contemporary experimental music still seems to be perceived as unusual”. Of course, talented girls such as Olivia Block, Natasha Barrett or Helena Gough will beg to differ in their respective ambits; Brozek himself quotes Delia Derbyshire, Christina Kubisch and Kaffe Matthews as somewhat contrary examples to the original thesis. There is life on the planet of intelligent female composers after all.

Zaradny has already collaborated with diverse kinds of artists, from improvisers Tony Buck, Burkhard Stangl and Cor Fuhler to celestially inhuman destroyers like Zbigniew Karkowski. The essential character of this album is one of stability, despite the continuous modification of the sonic matter: incessant pulsation, inconstant distortions and anaesthetizing sequences – always informed by a static type of bubbling-and-throbbing – constitute the large part of “Mauve 1”, a piece that flows away before we realize about its true consistency, ending with extremely beautiful superimposed layers of angelic tones (which, I’m pretty sure, are NOT voices) eliciting an aura of harmonic and timbral uncertainty that leaves the listener baffled, to say the least.

“Mauve 2” approaches territories where shortwaves (not sure, indeed) and ultrasonic ghosts run free. Yet it takes a compositional frame of mind to channel those emissions so satisfactorily, thus obtaining a heavily droning, dynamically shifting mix, pitches more or less unaltered while the ebb and flow of the electronic mass behaves in agreement with our physical needs, my slow breathing causing a higher percentage of oxygen to enter the lungs. At circa 5’45”, the scenario changes dramatically, a scarcely mobile moan acting as a background for acute frequencies inching in, both statically and rhythmically. It is probably the instant in which Zaradny achieves the climax of her intuition, and one can’t help but remain transfixed in front of a message that digs deep in spite of a theoretical plainness. Quite simply, this is a moment of transcendence that only those who perceive a vibration in a certain way are able to attain. This woman surely belongs to the category.

A deceptively straightforward release worthy of cyclical revisiting, definitely deeper than the initial appearance. Add another name to the inhabitants of the above mentioned sphere.

URS LEIMGRUBER / THOMAS LEHN – Lausanne

For 4 Ears

The recording dates back to 2006, first time in which Urs Leimgruber and Thomas Lehn met and played together. Three years have passed but the whole sounds like it was conceived yesterday; that’s what occurs when artists approach an improvisation with the genuine will of forgetting what their musical training has been, contemporarily filling the brain with the sort of inherently memorized experiences that are exactly what informs our speaking, our reactions to adversity, our behaviour at large. Liberated playing should correspond to this, and it doesn’t happen always. Luckily, in Lausanne it does.

This is an instrumental combination that works, at times perfectly, because of the complementariness of the “styles”. In essence, Leimgruber’s high-pitched surges, the squealing invocations to implausible gods, the tentative conversations with absent birds are the product of a human apparatus that is surely as complex as Lehn’s analogue synth, which in turn tries to adapt its circuits to something that is controlled by a man yet behaves erratically. This fusion of probationary instances and filled interstices, from which peculiar complexities and spastic farts may emerge with the same consequence of an official statement, leaves no chance to interpretation. To quote Phill Niblock, the music “is what it is”, and we’re pretty much content that way. Soliloquies don’t last for long: an intelligent conversation elevates the level of the participants, if talking is effectively needed. This is what seems to materialize during these exchanges, a special brand of virtuosity where the ability in mutual listening counts more than the weirdness of a solution. Still, the moments in which the timbres almost disappear in a puzzling void (as heard in “Deux” following the eleventh minute or so) become occasions for veritable contemplation, at least until Lehn decides that a seriously hypercritical discharge must wake us up.

Finding an unsatisfactory release on this label remains a very difficult task. A specimen of gratifying experimentation which spits in the eye of silence after having paid respect to it (listen to the splendid “Quatre” to understand), Lausanne is a thorny record which is going to stimulate the common sense of those who want to deliver judgments from bias, the confirmation of Leimgruber and Lehn’s intrusive inventiveness.

BURKHARD BEINS – Structural Drift

Künstlerhäuser Worpswede

The constant transition from “plain” improvising percussionist to composer of electroacoustic works seems to cause no problem to Burkhard Beins, who with Structural Drift – entirely conceived during a residency at Künstlerhäuser Worpswede from April to June of this year – managed to manufacture stimulating music through the use of a few instruments and objects, a clear-minded disposition of the same in rather linear compositional schemes and a clued-up utilization of the studio for editing and post-production. Generators include “e-Bowed and propelled zithers, analogue synthesizers, E.T. (!), looper, igniters, chimes, wood block, steel bands, fire and stones”. Some of these sources result practically unrecognizable, yet the ensuing amalgamation is rich in implications despite a deceptive elemental simplicity.

That something has changed in regard to Beins’ habitual structures - typically organized around a well-controlled discipline of intuitiveness - is immediately evident as “Drift 1” gradually invades the listening space via a velvety layering of synthetic tones that – once juxtaposed – elicit a classic effect of throbbing undulation which instantly puts Eliane Radigue, or Maryanne Amacher, in the listener’s mind. Only after a while a tangible rhythmic component appears, a cyclical repetition of quiet asymmetrical cracks (pebbles, perhaps?) that results extremely functional in comparison with the entrancing qualities of the fundamental pulse.

The second movement is more of a consecutiveness of interconnected settings, although a somewhat inert stratum often remains at the core of frequent moments of overcoming entrancement. The concrete materials begin to establish their authority pretty prominently, recurrent discharges of hoarse frequencies, clicking insurgences and metallic intromissions acting as contrasting elements in Beins’ palette, appearing in a state of undress for the occasional instances in which the electronic background disappear. About six minutes in, a gorgeous melodic figure depicted by strings establishes the main shade of what’s possibly the most emotionally charged moment of the album. A cross of heavenliness and irredeemable dissonance whose underlying harmonics sound like a choir of dirty-faced angels, before a clamorous rumble comes and destroys the scene decisively. Sort of a rite of passage backwards, from weird echoes back to the concreteness of a tough reality, the latter looking as the composer’s focal point of interest. The section ends with a three-note chime accompanied by infinite/looped upper partials (probably from the bowed zither) and additional interference, signalling that the storm may have passed but it’s better not to sleep.

The final and shortest track (“Drift 3”) is quite instable as far as timbres and dynamic continuity are concerned, characterized as it is by white noise-ish emanations, sudden interruptions, solid pitches that seem to eschew humanity, the whole sounding as cold as a hospital room invaded by cyber-insects. Contrarily to what many artists do, “dulcis in fundo” is not Beins’ motto: as a matter of fact he pushes us into a hole full of puzzlement and uncertainty, leaving doors open to different interpretations of his ideas. An added value to a cleverly succinct and, to all intents and purposes, brilliant record.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ / MICHAEL GENDREAU – Tddm

Sonoris

In times like the ones we live in, contrasts are at the basis of everyday life and nothing more than a working place showcases them. Think, for example, to the difficulties typical of the relationships with colleagues, or to the mind-boggling irrationality in the combination of routine procedures, extreme noise and vocal exchanges commonly found in a factory. This is a good starting point for the appreciation of Tddm, a double CD comprising four long segments chock full of deafening environments and thunderous machines interspersed by exceptionally rare moments in which a faint human presence – or an intercom message - is perceived amidst the continuous threat of the mechanical monsters.

The recordings were made in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, China and Japan, as to homage the renowned toughness of certain Asian labourers, used to the hardest sacrifices yet frequently swallowed by a sense of duty that represents both a stimulus to exemplary productivity and the reason for nervous instability and, ultimately, suicide in the nastiest instances. This might remind someone of Phill Niblock’s films, where infinite drones accompany the images of people performing manual works but this release is much less rewarding in terms of adjacent-frequency nirvanas. López and Gendreau share the discs with a piece each, having separately collected sonorities that range from massively static to heavily rhythmic. Theirs is a coldly detached view of the ambience from which this stuff is originated: the raw materials remain for the large part untreated (even though some degree of editing seems to typify particularly reiterative parts), only the definitive dynamics decided by the assemblers. Describing what happens in detail is utterly pointless, although the first section of López’s “D138” is transfixing to say the least, profound reverberations and vacillating auricular membranes the by-product of a superior susceptibility to the propagation of sonic waves.

The monolithic qualities of the captured sounds reveal a series of acoustic sub-particles attributing to the record its “musical” characteristics. This is actually another functional contrast: the clunking mass, the violent thudding, the constant racket of roaring apparatuses that, especially at the beginning of Gendreau’s “T921” gives the false idea that airport echoes are being heard, are in effect “minimalist” according to a heartless repetitiveness absurdly determining a sort of hypnosis, the brain cuddled by the booming resonance of these monotonous cycles. In turn, a disproportion with the tremendous amount of physical and mental tension surely experienced by the plant’s personnel during their shifts.

Indeed, should a single album be labelled as a paradigm of “industrial music”, this would have to be it. But Gendreau and López are not Esplendor Geometrico or Maurizio Bianchi: they are authentic composers who in this circumstance chose to use alienation as the principal factor in a project whose distressing temperament must not detract from a tangible value. One has to learn to find musicality down to the apparently inaccessible lower spheres of clangour, and there’s no doubt that this nice pair mostly succeed in letting us crave the mere illusion of a tiny light at the end of a massacring experience.