Esc Rec
What’s often missing in contemporary improvisation is a logic of entertaining. Does a midway point exist between excessive seriousness and buffoonery? Apricot My Lady – a quartet composed by Adam and Jonathan Bohman, Lukas Simonis and Anne La Berge – try and provide an answer with this amusing CD, which features eighteen petite pieces that, in the words of their creators, were put together because they tend to appear as a “song cycle”. I wish the world had more songwriters like these. One only has to take a look at the instrumentation utilized to understand, as it comprises “giant comb”, “eternal springs” and “short guitar” (all played by the Bohmans) amidst “regular” machines such as Simonis’ “guitar with at least 10 pedals” and La Berge’s flutes, filters and samples.
The inventive originality and the sense of humour which this music is gifted with instantly connected yours truly to the original intentions of the artists, of course still unknown after the second and third listen. But, in truth, who cares? Unserviceable squealing, incompatible paternities of slanted rhythms, nonsensical vocal counterpoints, rasping and scrubbing bravado, a temperament of gutturally visceral explicitness manifest throughout. And one of the Bohmans narrates the circumstances surrounding his tonsil and adenoid operation as a kid in a particular “tune”. Weird as you want, always intelligently delivered, this is excellent stuff.
