Install
The luminiferous flock of Peter Wright’s guitars has come again to rescue this poor listener, forced to the ropes by the attack of dwarf clones whose inconsistency is directly proportional to the consideration they receive. Snow Blind, for good measure, is a double CD (hooray!) that sends the magnitude of the quivering signals pretty high in the scale: nearly two hours of blissfully deafening roars, succulently plangent drones and disturbed ringing tones. Depurative, febrifugal, unreasonably suggestive stuff designed for your personalities to develop as angelic children in dissolute adult bodies. And that’s not all, folks.
Ever since the initial and splendidly titled “The Drunken Master In His Crumbling Citadel”, Wright incites the listener to the contemplation of a murky ecstasy through a self-explanatory urban commentary: a field recording of a bona fide drunkard, muttering his own truth (incomprehensibly for this scrutinizer) amidst metropolitan echoes and gradually swallowing walls of wailing axes depicting an idyllic harmonic tissue. A stark contrast, nonetheless suggesting something that sounds, for lack of a better adjective, divine. The discriminating acumen shown by the New Zealander in the assemblage of superimposed distortions (frequently sounding particularly consonant) is in this case counterbalanced by various recourses to extremely rudimentary, yet devastating melodies (check the first disc’s final episode “Follow The Leader”, the very title hinting to a concept that makes me recoil in horror) which should ideally encourage a brighter vision of a decaying materialism but in the end elicits a peculiar type of quiet desperation, to say the least.
As always, the guitarist looks especially interested in changing the gradation of timbres via altered varieties of equalization, a knowledgeable processing that literally disintegrates chords and lines into sparkling smidgens of gritty idiosyncrasy. And those drones: the best on the market for over a decade now. Amplifiers at 11 are not enough to emulate what this man manages to achieve with a simple arpeggio surrounded by thousands of mashed-snail reverberations. Let me tell you once and for all: people like Wright and, on a different playground, Aidan Baker are the initiators of this kind of modern-day six-string painting. The rest are for the large part cheap imitators that occasionally strike a mere ounce of gold with an appropriate choice of colours, nothing more.
Therefore save your money - thus preventing some pathetically incompetent, tinnitus-inducing retrograde from impersonating the god of hermitic thaumaturgy in a valve-amped Walhalla - and support those who have been walking the walk after talking the talk for decades, barely noticed, utterly enlightened. The grief-stricken broken illusions portrayed in this gorgeous release might fight a bit with the witty cleverness of their creator’s real-life attitude (perceivable even in his website and email updates); still, they’re undoubtedly the nearest thing to a representation of guitar-based endlessness that I can think of. A bulletin like this is a good reason to be grateful.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
JACK WRIGHT / ALBAN BAILLY – The Harmony Of Contradictions
Sort Of / Abstract On Black
The border separating gregariousness and complacence is a subtle line that, once trespassed, usually introduces that kind of improvisation where sense of humour and joyfulness appear excessively at the forefront, thus diminishing the overall artistic value. Luckily this does not happen in The Harmony Of Contradictions, a nice set of intelligent acoustic duos, recorded in 2005 and 2006, juxtaposing the unhesitant, only apparently disconnected omnivorous concentration of saxophonist Jack Wright - his frolicsomely illegitimate erubescences as always welcome as a helping of exotic fruits amidst a chain of double cheeseburgers - and the placid yet non-rhetorical politics of Philadelphia-homed French guitarist Alban Bailly, never met before by yours truly, whose style has been marked by rock, Arabic and gypsy Balkan influences.
This is a collection of bastard dialogues that nevertheless bear the stigmata of familiarity, of course being “familiar” an adjective that will come handy exclusively to those in the know. Duets that reveal a penniless brightness, a constant regeneration of finely tuned wisecracking and unprejudiced misshapenness at the basis of a tête-à-tête involving two honourable representatives of erratic graciousness. Wright’s phrases are a journal of nomadic rambling, a multi-sided slapping of reed-based premeditation. Outbreaks, excrescences and good-looking abortions that form a vocabulary as peculiar as a sticky liquid that somehow smells fabulously: one doesn’t care dipping the finger again and again for more sniffing. Reilly operates the instrument with the same lucidity of a John Russell - sparkle and modesty in equal doses - yet he’s also notable for his determination in trading information without taking disproportionate stances. Neither foolhardy nor too respectful, he stands exactly in between, furnishing the music with a well-received balance of zinging metal, threadbare footnotes and plucked indiscreetness, the occasional “sproing” appearing in the mix when the time is right.
The border separating gregariousness and complacence is a subtle line that, once trespassed, usually introduces that kind of improvisation where sense of humour and joyfulness appear excessively at the forefront, thus diminishing the overall artistic value. Luckily this does not happen in The Harmony Of Contradictions, a nice set of intelligent acoustic duos, recorded in 2005 and 2006, juxtaposing the unhesitant, only apparently disconnected omnivorous concentration of saxophonist Jack Wright - his frolicsomely illegitimate erubescences as always welcome as a helping of exotic fruits amidst a chain of double cheeseburgers - and the placid yet non-rhetorical politics of Philadelphia-homed French guitarist Alban Bailly, never met before by yours truly, whose style has been marked by rock, Arabic and gypsy Balkan influences.
This is a collection of bastard dialogues that nevertheless bear the stigmata of familiarity, of course being “familiar” an adjective that will come handy exclusively to those in the know. Duets that reveal a penniless brightness, a constant regeneration of finely tuned wisecracking and unprejudiced misshapenness at the basis of a tête-à-tête involving two honourable representatives of erratic graciousness. Wright’s phrases are a journal of nomadic rambling, a multi-sided slapping of reed-based premeditation. Outbreaks, excrescences and good-looking abortions that form a vocabulary as peculiar as a sticky liquid that somehow smells fabulously: one doesn’t care dipping the finger again and again for more sniffing. Reilly operates the instrument with the same lucidity of a John Russell - sparkle and modesty in equal doses - yet he’s also notable for his determination in trading information without taking disproportionate stances. Neither foolhardy nor too respectful, he stands exactly in between, furnishing the music with a well-received balance of zinging metal, threadbare footnotes and plucked indiscreetness, the occasional “sproing” appearing in the mix when the time is right.
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
TL0741 – Back To Minus
HC3
More good news from Pat Gillis, whose aural fantasies make great use of synthesizers, effects and tape manipulation to achieve results which many knob-tweaking nerds can’t even daydream in terms of creative fantasy and inventiveness. A couple of titles here should give an idea about what to find: “Orchrustra” and “Morphantasia” are precisely what one would expect while travelling across the lands where the reshaping of human discernment is a daily practice. Large portions of this material were recorded directly onto two tracks during live performances, yet there’s a specific structural design in what we hear, typical example of a mind ready to catch the most infinitesimal signal to transform it into striking figurations coloured by unhinged, often plain amazing timbres.
Synthetic morsels of deeper perception, intoxicating diffusions, corrosions of remote harmonies and ringing-around orbiting bodies let us recall different exploratory eras at once; we notice an evident respect for earlier-period pioneers and an attentive ear on the evolutional side of electronic music. Gillis knows what he’s doing and Back To Minus is a highly enjoyable demonstration of the development of his sonic ideals, a perfect proportionality between the chaotic activities of contradictory anti-patterns and the intricate mechanisms that – miraculously - preserve an ideal “galactic equilibrium”.
More good news from Pat Gillis, whose aural fantasies make great use of synthesizers, effects and tape manipulation to achieve results which many knob-tweaking nerds can’t even daydream in terms of creative fantasy and inventiveness. A couple of titles here should give an idea about what to find: “Orchrustra” and “Morphantasia” are precisely what one would expect while travelling across the lands where the reshaping of human discernment is a daily practice. Large portions of this material were recorded directly onto two tracks during live performances, yet there’s a specific structural design in what we hear, typical example of a mind ready to catch the most infinitesimal signal to transform it into striking figurations coloured by unhinged, often plain amazing timbres.
Synthetic morsels of deeper perception, intoxicating diffusions, corrosions of remote harmonies and ringing-around orbiting bodies let us recall different exploratory eras at once; we notice an evident respect for earlier-period pioneers and an attentive ear on the evolutional side of electronic music. Gillis knows what he’s doing and Back To Minus is a highly enjoyable demonstration of the development of his sonic ideals, a perfect proportionality between the chaotic activities of contradictory anti-patterns and the intricate mechanisms that – miraculously - preserve an ideal “galactic equilibrium”.
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
CRAIG HILTON – Craig Hilton
Self-release
As it happens, discretion does not pay in terms of artistic recognition until the decision is taken to let someone know that you exist and do something positive, possibly not implying the standard level of overconfident egotism hiding a desperate superficiality. Craig Hilton, a composer who shows an undeniable ability but is probably too humble for his own good, is a man whose art I felt respect for since the first instants. He sent me a few of his releases a considerable while ago, as usual approached with culpable delay on my behalf, and one struggles to determine which is the best. This unassumingly packaged CDR – an entirely white sleeve, except for the titles - contains three splendidly diverse samples of this artist’s talents, each generating that sort of inner fluctuation and existential uncertainty that will never be experienced by listening to Mozart, and that is the fundamental spur to keep living selflessly.
The magnificent opening track - “Guzheng Improvisation 4” - bestirs the previously sheltered idealization of a stable mesmerism through a congruous exploration of the natural reverberation of a room; the instrument gets outrageously animated, ominously dissonant resonances alternated with turbulent contemplations of unreachable galaxies, echoes of a past reality ricocheting all around the place in an unprejudiced exhibition of open-minded creative acumen bathing in orchestral instantaneousness in one of the most absorbing music pieces heard in a long time. “Untitled Collaboration” also features Ur and, although decisively altering the scene’s characteristics, once again denotes an originality that’s there to admire. The palette in this case excludes sources of blissful entertainment almost completely, as the artists privilege vocal maledictions underscored by wavering drones and electronic morphing à la Roland Kayn, a palpable tension emerging to transform the soundscape in a paralysing demonstration of inadaptability, any sense of redemption cancelled by the awareness of a toxic incontrovertibility. “Untitled Piece For Strings” is a worthy conclusion, a wrapping layering of semi-static chords that, more than strings, seem to be born from a huge harmonium. The processing work is subtle yet effective, its foremost quality an intrinsic slow oscillation that sounds like a slight detuning, the very reason of further moments of cruel emotion.
As it happens, discretion does not pay in terms of artistic recognition until the decision is taken to let someone know that you exist and do something positive, possibly not implying the standard level of overconfident egotism hiding a desperate superficiality. Craig Hilton, a composer who shows an undeniable ability but is probably too humble for his own good, is a man whose art I felt respect for since the first instants. He sent me a few of his releases a considerable while ago, as usual approached with culpable delay on my behalf, and one struggles to determine which is the best. This unassumingly packaged CDR – an entirely white sleeve, except for the titles - contains three splendidly diverse samples of this artist’s talents, each generating that sort of inner fluctuation and existential uncertainty that will never be experienced by listening to Mozart, and that is the fundamental spur to keep living selflessly.
The magnificent opening track - “Guzheng Improvisation 4” - bestirs the previously sheltered idealization of a stable mesmerism through a congruous exploration of the natural reverberation of a room; the instrument gets outrageously animated, ominously dissonant resonances alternated with turbulent contemplations of unreachable galaxies, echoes of a past reality ricocheting all around the place in an unprejudiced exhibition of open-minded creative acumen bathing in orchestral instantaneousness in one of the most absorbing music pieces heard in a long time. “Untitled Collaboration” also features Ur and, although decisively altering the scene’s characteristics, once again denotes an originality that’s there to admire. The palette in this case excludes sources of blissful entertainment almost completely, as the artists privilege vocal maledictions underscored by wavering drones and electronic morphing à la Roland Kayn, a palpable tension emerging to transform the soundscape in a paralysing demonstration of inadaptability, any sense of redemption cancelled by the awareness of a toxic incontrovertibility. “Untitled Piece For Strings” is a worthy conclusion, a wrapping layering of semi-static chords that, more than strings, seem to be born from a huge harmonium. The processing work is subtle yet effective, its foremost quality an intrinsic slow oscillation that sounds like a slight detuning, the very reason of further moments of cruel emotion.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
THOMAS BEL – The Birds Are Still The Monarchs
Annexia
From Toulouse, France Thomas Bel is the mastermind behind an artefact whose undertones revolve around "poetical texts dealing with the fundamental question of time fleeting but never really settling down". In reality, the record is almost entirely instrumental - honestly, a couple of sung segments are very much inferior to the rest - moving along the coordinates of a homemade-tinged ambient containing reiterative fragments of undemanding melodies, hesitant electronics and various kinds of dirtiness in the mix, either hiss or just digital dilapidation, not to mention “classic” glitches and the likes. Bel plays a quantity of unspecified instruments: definitely guitars and piano, different keyboards, cello. Other sources exploited are - you guessed it - field recordings.
All in all, the typical "one among the hundreds", right? Not really. Let’s face it, this kid might not be the reincarnation of the messiah of discreetness, yet his music possesses an indisputable candour that allows us to welcome it without excessive questioning. And the raison d'être of the unrefined loveliness of some of these tracks is spelled "weird resonance": there's always something that jars with the concept of accurate tuning, and which renders even a basically worthless snippet sounding acceptable, when not melancholically connecting. This uneven kind of processing is reasonably functional, the man is adequately receptive, the pieces are OK if one doesn't expect miracles. A marvel this collection surely isn’t, but a non-invasive, nearly soporific, timid aural caress? Yes, no problem. As far as deeper implications are concerned, it looks like I missed at least part of them.
From Toulouse, France Thomas Bel is the mastermind behind an artefact whose undertones revolve around "poetical texts dealing with the fundamental question of time fleeting but never really settling down". In reality, the record is almost entirely instrumental - honestly, a couple of sung segments are very much inferior to the rest - moving along the coordinates of a homemade-tinged ambient containing reiterative fragments of undemanding melodies, hesitant electronics and various kinds of dirtiness in the mix, either hiss or just digital dilapidation, not to mention “classic” glitches and the likes. Bel plays a quantity of unspecified instruments: definitely guitars and piano, different keyboards, cello. Other sources exploited are - you guessed it - field recordings.
All in all, the typical "one among the hundreds", right? Not really. Let’s face it, this kid might not be the reincarnation of the messiah of discreetness, yet his music possesses an indisputable candour that allows us to welcome it without excessive questioning. And the raison d'être of the unrefined loveliness of some of these tracks is spelled "weird resonance": there's always something that jars with the concept of accurate tuning, and which renders even a basically worthless snippet sounding acceptable, when not melancholically connecting. This uneven kind of processing is reasonably functional, the man is adequately receptive, the pieces are OK if one doesn't expect miracles. A marvel this collection surely isn’t, but a non-invasive, nearly soporific, timid aural caress? Yes, no problem. As far as deeper implications are concerned, it looks like I missed at least part of them.
STEVE RODEN – Ecstasy Showered Its Petals With The Full Peals Of The Bells
Ferns
When creative inspiration gets precisely embedded in an artist's brain, there's no risk of failure even in a short proposal like this 3-inch, whose marvellously out-of-time cover reveals - together with the title - the only source for the music: a small bell that someone gave a while back to the composer, who proceeded to exploit its resonating traits according to his celebrated ability to convert the simplest items in mesmeric milieus for the resurrection of long-forgotten interior sensibilities.
By utilizing the authentic voice of the bell and processing the relative emanations, Roden manages to reach that state of half-gaseous, half-liquid timbral instability that permits the enjoyment of a mental edge more than the recording per se, which is saying something given the brilliance of the piece. Loyal devotees and seekers of metal-derived magnetic attraction will not want to miss this one: it's plain dazzling in a semi-hypnotic kind of quietude that sounds at the same time incomparable and innate. Impressions that are constantly there, helpful for a stealing a look at infinity even when one’s unable to immediately understand this kind of magnitude.
When creative inspiration gets precisely embedded in an artist's brain, there's no risk of failure even in a short proposal like this 3-inch, whose marvellously out-of-time cover reveals - together with the title - the only source for the music: a small bell that someone gave a while back to the composer, who proceeded to exploit its resonating traits according to his celebrated ability to convert the simplest items in mesmeric milieus for the resurrection of long-forgotten interior sensibilities.
By utilizing the authentic voice of the bell and processing the relative emanations, Roden manages to reach that state of half-gaseous, half-liquid timbral instability that permits the enjoyment of a mental edge more than the recording per se, which is saying something given the brilliance of the piece. Loyal devotees and seekers of metal-derived magnetic attraction will not want to miss this one: it's plain dazzling in a semi-hypnotic kind of quietude that sounds at the same time incomparable and innate. Impressions that are constantly there, helpful for a stealing a look at infinity even when one’s unable to immediately understand this kind of magnitude.
Friday, 15 May 2009
ROZANNE LEVINE & CHAKRA TUNING – Only Moment
Acoustics
There are points in time in which a writer simply becomes exhausted from the perpetual effort for finding the accurate collocation – or, even worse, a sticker – for something that causes a type of unadulterated gratification which needs no words or definitions to be savoured at any time. When those moments come, just let the music do the healing and everything’s going to be alright, as a little dreadlocked man used to remind.
As soon as one spins Only Moment - the latest offering from Rozanne Levine’s Chakra Tuning - the room is pervaded by presences resembling spirits of well-being. Right away, the clarity of every note played, the consistency of the amalgamation among the musicians and a sense of shared endeavour for the abolishment of narrow-mindedness contribute to a private feeling of enjoyment which is absolutely not based on something “easing the nerves”, or plain silly. With each listen we find ourselves perseveringly intent in attempting a veritable penetration of every sound, like if the completion of the experience depended on a full understanding of any single acoustic event. The music comes out smoothly and extremely physically at once, influenced by so many things – natural occurrences, bird talking, native Indian chants, theatre – that the tracks might represent different segments of a being’s life cycle, and I’m writing this without the fear of sounding nonsensically hippy or esoterically lost in nowhereland, my skill in distinguishing between counterfeit illuminations and sober practices of inside connectivity rigorously trained as ever.
Levine is flanked by Perry Robinson, Mark Whitecage and Rosi Hertlein. Listening to these artists reveal their fundamental nature through the full command of the instruments is just amazing. All kinds of clarinet, saxophones, ocarinas, bird whistles and percussion are utilized by the nominal leader and her long-time male companions, while Hertlein - a mean violinist – also sings and handles additional percussive chores with the same nimbleness. The artists’ technique might be admirable, and indeed it is. But what really wins for me is the sort of opposition to hopelessness that this gorgeous recording generates as early as the circulation of the first notes in the air. Coming from a hard-boiled mankind-disparager like yours truly, this should give you something to chew over.
There are points in time in which a writer simply becomes exhausted from the perpetual effort for finding the accurate collocation – or, even worse, a sticker – for something that causes a type of unadulterated gratification which needs no words or definitions to be savoured at any time. When those moments come, just let the music do the healing and everything’s going to be alright, as a little dreadlocked man used to remind.
As soon as one spins Only Moment - the latest offering from Rozanne Levine’s Chakra Tuning - the room is pervaded by presences resembling spirits of well-being. Right away, the clarity of every note played, the consistency of the amalgamation among the musicians and a sense of shared endeavour for the abolishment of narrow-mindedness contribute to a private feeling of enjoyment which is absolutely not based on something “easing the nerves”, or plain silly. With each listen we find ourselves perseveringly intent in attempting a veritable penetration of every sound, like if the completion of the experience depended on a full understanding of any single acoustic event. The music comes out smoothly and extremely physically at once, influenced by so many things – natural occurrences, bird talking, native Indian chants, theatre – that the tracks might represent different segments of a being’s life cycle, and I’m writing this without the fear of sounding nonsensically hippy or esoterically lost in nowhereland, my skill in distinguishing between counterfeit illuminations and sober practices of inside connectivity rigorously trained as ever.
Levine is flanked by Perry Robinson, Mark Whitecage and Rosi Hertlein. Listening to these artists reveal their fundamental nature through the full command of the instruments is just amazing. All kinds of clarinet, saxophones, ocarinas, bird whistles and percussion are utilized by the nominal leader and her long-time male companions, while Hertlein - a mean violinist – also sings and handles additional percussive chores with the same nimbleness. The artists’ technique might be admirable, and indeed it is. But what really wins for me is the sort of opposition to hopelessness that this gorgeous recording generates as early as the circulation of the first notes in the air. Coming from a hard-boiled mankind-disparager like yours truly, this should give you something to chew over.
TILL THE OLD WORLD’S BLOWN UP AND A NEW ONE IS CREATED – Till The Old World’s Blown Up And A New One Is Created
Mosz
As a rule, Christian Fennesz (electric and acoustic guitars, computer), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass, tape delay, computer) and Martin Brandlmayr (drums, percussion, vibraphone, computer and piano on a track) are scarcely compromising musicians who let us stare - not infrequently in awe – at excellent designs. The hopes in this circumstance were high, especially considering that it took “over four years of intermittent activity” to complete this music, which was recorded starting from regular improvisations that each member of the trio edited into distinct short episodes from which, in turn, snippets were taken to manufacture a longer composition (circa 34 minutes). All of the above is enclosed in a pair of discs, although the one with the three separate tracks lasts 15 minutes minus: a collector’s item but not a real creative statement from this point of view.
In regard to the method, this stuff sounds a tad stylish and probably colder than expected, even if there are moments in which the correlation between the parts works particularly well, for instance when abrupt oxidized roars by Fennesz’s axe get fractured and garbled in tiny bits, perturbing Dafeldecker’s deadpan composites of bass and unhealthily processed paradoxes. Two significant hues are Brandlmayr’s vibes, a constant factor in the sonic palette, and the interspersed silences that grant additional authority to the improvised sections. Sparse appearances of wooden touches and anaemic arpeggios dilute the overall tone in part, thus altering the elegance-to-disorder ratio.
All things considered - and class being always class – this is a good-looking album of mainly manipulated materials which in any case sounds quite blasé when compared to the participants’ customary output. If ECM decided to open their doors to EAI, here’s a recording to look at with interest. My reactions are mixed: there’s no question about the sincerity of the artists’ try to stumble on new expressive ways; yet they succeeded only to some extent, despite the attractive exteriors.
As a rule, Christian Fennesz (electric and acoustic guitars, computer), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass, tape delay, computer) and Martin Brandlmayr (drums, percussion, vibraphone, computer and piano on a track) are scarcely compromising musicians who let us stare - not infrequently in awe – at excellent designs. The hopes in this circumstance were high, especially considering that it took “over four years of intermittent activity” to complete this music, which was recorded starting from regular improvisations that each member of the trio edited into distinct short episodes from which, in turn, snippets were taken to manufacture a longer composition (circa 34 minutes). All of the above is enclosed in a pair of discs, although the one with the three separate tracks lasts 15 minutes minus: a collector’s item but not a real creative statement from this point of view.
In regard to the method, this stuff sounds a tad stylish and probably colder than expected, even if there are moments in which the correlation between the parts works particularly well, for instance when abrupt oxidized roars by Fennesz’s axe get fractured and garbled in tiny bits, perturbing Dafeldecker’s deadpan composites of bass and unhealthily processed paradoxes. Two significant hues are Brandlmayr’s vibes, a constant factor in the sonic palette, and the interspersed silences that grant additional authority to the improvised sections. Sparse appearances of wooden touches and anaemic arpeggios dilute the overall tone in part, thus altering the elegance-to-disorder ratio.
All things considered - and class being always class – this is a good-looking album of mainly manipulated materials which in any case sounds quite blasé when compared to the participants’ customary output. If ECM decided to open their doors to EAI, here’s a recording to look at with interest. My reactions are mixed: there’s no question about the sincerity of the artists’ try to stumble on new expressive ways; yet they succeeded only to some extent, despite the attractive exteriors.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
MICHAEL BLAKE / KRESTEN OSGOOD – Control This
Clean Feed
“I am very proud of this album because when I hear the music, I hear how well we know each other”, writes drummer Kresten Osgood in the liners. A beautiful note of friendship to his partner in this duo, saxophonist Michael Blake (here on soprano, alto and tenor), both also members of Blake Tartare and active since many years, respectively, on the Copenhagen and New York scenes, collaborations including names of the calibre of Sam Rivers, Paul Bley and The Lounge Lizards. The extreme enjoyableness of Control This lies in the reciprocal will of constantly paying attention to what the counterpart has to say, finding every time a correct key to unlock the secrets of an ingenuity that’s often the most unadulterated source of expression in an art form that recurrently privileges selfishness over interplay.
In “Top Hat”, for example, Blake interprets a lyrical flow of linear materials ranging from melodically investigative to eloquently rigorous, his phrases breathing through Osgood’s subtly pervading, ever-attentive sinuousness. The latter commands our interest with an expert management of the dynamics, appearing like an extremely conscious percussionist whose lone interest is driving the comrade to reveal the physiology of the instrument while remaining in the realm of a pragmatic equanimity. “Cotton Mouth” begins with the artists treading parallel paths that after a few instants merge into a bundle of tortuous flurries and destroyed-and-reassembled patterns, in which – once more – we welcome a fine balance of rhythmic drive and intertwined precisions.
The record ends in total fun in a ghost track, a comical snapshot of the solid kinship between two musicians who just love playing, especially when they’re together – and not alone.
“I am very proud of this album because when I hear the music, I hear how well we know each other”, writes drummer Kresten Osgood in the liners. A beautiful note of friendship to his partner in this duo, saxophonist Michael Blake (here on soprano, alto and tenor), both also members of Blake Tartare and active since many years, respectively, on the Copenhagen and New York scenes, collaborations including names of the calibre of Sam Rivers, Paul Bley and The Lounge Lizards. The extreme enjoyableness of Control This lies in the reciprocal will of constantly paying attention to what the counterpart has to say, finding every time a correct key to unlock the secrets of an ingenuity that’s often the most unadulterated source of expression in an art form that recurrently privileges selfishness over interplay.
In “Top Hat”, for example, Blake interprets a lyrical flow of linear materials ranging from melodically investigative to eloquently rigorous, his phrases breathing through Osgood’s subtly pervading, ever-attentive sinuousness. The latter commands our interest with an expert management of the dynamics, appearing like an extremely conscious percussionist whose lone interest is driving the comrade to reveal the physiology of the instrument while remaining in the realm of a pragmatic equanimity. “Cotton Mouth” begins with the artists treading parallel paths that after a few instants merge into a bundle of tortuous flurries and destroyed-and-reassembled patterns, in which – once more – we welcome a fine balance of rhythmic drive and intertwined precisions.
The record ends in total fun in a ghost track, a comical snapshot of the solid kinship between two musicians who just love playing, especially when they’re together – and not alone.
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
SEAN CONLY – Re:Action
Clean Feed
Bassist Sean Conly wrote the music of Re:Action “to let people play the way they play”, yet this quartet – which includes a two-forward saxophone section consisting of Tony Malaby and Michael Attias plus Pheeroan Aklaff on drums – is tightly self-disciplined and performs with composed fire, so to speak. The result is an excellent album, in which no trace of lackadaisical indetermination is found, a persuasive interpretation of tunes that sound exuberantly enthusiastic, calmly scowling, intelligently disengaged from the normalcy of jazz formulas.
The opening cover of Eric Dolphy’s “Gazzelloni” instantly establishes the fundamental temperament, an abjuration of traditional rules that nevertheless concedes very little to the cannibalistic freedom of uneducated freewheeling: the group is solid, its cohesion clearly evident since the first measures of the tune. In a completely different setting – Conly’s “Saitta” – there’s room for classic soloing by the leader, but the theme is what actually gets noticed, a combination of impassive angularity and rhythmic brashness that causes automatic movements of the limbs.
One also digs the skillfully soft-spoken “Luminiferous Aether” and “Illes Du Vent”, penned by Conly with Attias, in which the delicate side of the bassist’s personality is paralleled by the reedist’s refined classiness and sensibility in brief episodes of reciprocal good manners. On the other hand, “Something I Said?” brings in a degree of tension immediately lessened by a warm bass solo introducing additional contrapuntal conviviality immersed in agreeable dissonance.
Although I dare anybody to memorize a single minute of this record, the mark that it leaves is one of indelible brightness, splendidly symbolized by the gorgeous arrangement of “Suburban Angst”, which sounds like someone trying to escape from creditors by running in alleys, Aklaff spectacularly breaking the tempos while Malaby and Attias exchange incendiary darts with unbelievable ease, ready to return to home base when the composite leit-motif calls everybody back. Even an oddity such as the abstract-sounding “Concrete Garden” seems perfectly placed in the record’s context, therefore no more words: go get this CD pronto. It’s great.
Bassist Sean Conly wrote the music of Re:Action “to let people play the way they play”, yet this quartet – which includes a two-forward saxophone section consisting of Tony Malaby and Michael Attias plus Pheeroan Aklaff on drums – is tightly self-disciplined and performs with composed fire, so to speak. The result is an excellent album, in which no trace of lackadaisical indetermination is found, a persuasive interpretation of tunes that sound exuberantly enthusiastic, calmly scowling, intelligently disengaged from the normalcy of jazz formulas.
The opening cover of Eric Dolphy’s “Gazzelloni” instantly establishes the fundamental temperament, an abjuration of traditional rules that nevertheless concedes very little to the cannibalistic freedom of uneducated freewheeling: the group is solid, its cohesion clearly evident since the first measures of the tune. In a completely different setting – Conly’s “Saitta” – there’s room for classic soloing by the leader, but the theme is what actually gets noticed, a combination of impassive angularity and rhythmic brashness that causes automatic movements of the limbs.
One also digs the skillfully soft-spoken “Luminiferous Aether” and “Illes Du Vent”, penned by Conly with Attias, in which the delicate side of the bassist’s personality is paralleled by the reedist’s refined classiness and sensibility in brief episodes of reciprocal good manners. On the other hand, “Something I Said?” brings in a degree of tension immediately lessened by a warm bass solo introducing additional contrapuntal conviviality immersed in agreeable dissonance.
Although I dare anybody to memorize a single minute of this record, the mark that it leaves is one of indelible brightness, splendidly symbolized by the gorgeous arrangement of “Suburban Angst”, which sounds like someone trying to escape from creditors by running in alleys, Aklaff spectacularly breaking the tempos while Malaby and Attias exchange incendiary darts with unbelievable ease, ready to return to home base when the composite leit-motif calls everybody back. Even an oddity such as the abstract-sounding “Concrete Garden” seems perfectly placed in the record’s context, therefore no more words: go get this CD pronto. It’s great.
SKINWELL – Tunnels
.Angle.Rec.
Domesticated daydreaming is not enough for Skinwell, the duo of Martin Dumais (multislab processing, analog melodic extractions) and Christian Corvellec (initial templates and layers, digital processing). The colorful credits notwithstanding, the planning of Tunnels is merely essential: short segments of sonic uneasiness and acidic transiency get meshed, extensively stretched and devitalized to produce soundscapes whose stagnant temperament reveals instead lots of inside movements. The practically unrecognizable substances utilized to reach the desired levels of angst sound compact, markedly unkind, in a way illuminating on reality: these tracks depict a human race on its last legs, the worst aspects underlined by an ceaseless gloominess. We find no silly optimism, no openings to a better future, no blue skies: a deadpan elaboration of sufferance recited by ill-fated souls inhabiting lands where glitter is prohibited.
Despite the pronounced pessimism, the conscious listener is going to accept these bulletins of distress without a problem, and the repetition of this experience is recommended to help disemboweling the corpse of your inhibition. Call it “advanced post-industrialism of the third kind” - or upsetting ambient, should you choose a low-level playback. Not suitable to seekers of fatuous peacefulness.
Domesticated daydreaming is not enough for Skinwell, the duo of Martin Dumais (multislab processing, analog melodic extractions) and Christian Corvellec (initial templates and layers, digital processing). The colorful credits notwithstanding, the planning of Tunnels is merely essential: short segments of sonic uneasiness and acidic transiency get meshed, extensively stretched and devitalized to produce soundscapes whose stagnant temperament reveals instead lots of inside movements. The practically unrecognizable substances utilized to reach the desired levels of angst sound compact, markedly unkind, in a way illuminating on reality: these tracks depict a human race on its last legs, the worst aspects underlined by an ceaseless gloominess. We find no silly optimism, no openings to a better future, no blue skies: a deadpan elaboration of sufferance recited by ill-fated souls inhabiting lands where glitter is prohibited.
Despite the pronounced pessimism, the conscious listener is going to accept these bulletins of distress without a problem, and the repetition of this experience is recommended to help disemboweling the corpse of your inhibition. Call it “advanced post-industrialism of the third kind” - or upsetting ambient, should you choose a low-level playback. Not suitable to seekers of fatuous peacefulness.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
MIRKO UHLIG & MARCUS OBST – The Vertical Horse Lesson
Ibrik
The weird title of this self-produced 3-inch CD comes from a bizarre circumstance: Uhlig and Obst (the latter better known as Dronæment) unsuccessfully tried to take horseback riding lessons a while ago, both ending their experience with a dramatic failure, the stallion mercilessly sending them back to earth (in all senses). Dishonoured and depressed, the aspirant riders decided to make good use of the accident by putting two different microphones on the horse, respectively on the mane and in the nostrils (to be honest I still wonder if the couple’s report of the episode on the press release is indeed a joke), to capture animal-related sonic materials to be altered in the studio.
I really don’t know how sounds derived from the movements of a horse can be turned into creamily humming drones, but these German boys made it happen. These twenty one minutes – subdivided in nine tracks, heaven knows the reason of this discontinuity – spread intoxicating caresses all around, in some cases making the loose parts in my room rattle from the intensity of the sub-bass frequencies. A very simple idea that functions brilliantly: the repeat mode will surely help in prolonging the contagious bliss that the listening educes. Thanks to these magnificent mumblings from the essence of equine illumination, it’s Deutschland Über Alles all over again.
The weird title of this self-produced 3-inch CD comes from a bizarre circumstance: Uhlig and Obst (the latter better known as Dronæment) unsuccessfully tried to take horseback riding lessons a while ago, both ending their experience with a dramatic failure, the stallion mercilessly sending them back to earth (in all senses). Dishonoured and depressed, the aspirant riders decided to make good use of the accident by putting two different microphones on the horse, respectively on the mane and in the nostrils (to be honest I still wonder if the couple’s report of the episode on the press release is indeed a joke), to capture animal-related sonic materials to be altered in the studio.
I really don’t know how sounds derived from the movements of a horse can be turned into creamily humming drones, but these German boys made it happen. These twenty one minutes – subdivided in nine tracks, heaven knows the reason of this discontinuity – spread intoxicating caresses all around, in some cases making the loose parts in my room rattle from the intensity of the sub-bass frequencies. A very simple idea that functions brilliantly: the repeat mode will surely help in prolonging the contagious bliss that the listening educes. Thanks to these magnificent mumblings from the essence of equine illumination, it’s Deutschland Über Alles all over again.
PALI MEURSAULT – Un(zéro)deux
Entr’acte
Recorded in Grenoble in 2007, this music was conceived utilizing location recordings and found objects. The risk of predictability, as always with this type of offer, is particularly high but Meursault did a good job by producing a soundscape that remunerates our concentration, working at various stages of perceptiveness.
In a way the piece is sketched like the curve of life itself: starting from extremely reduced elements - although oddly manipulated since the very beginning - it progressively evolves into a well-shaped body whose muscles are entirely delineated, reaching its conclusive phase in bitter, if expected decay. The quasi-biotic character of the initial sections is instantly accepted by the expert ear, preparing us for the subsequent stages where - layer upon layer - the sonic stratagems gradually increase their thickness and, with it, the psychological impact, which at certain moments becomes significant. The potential ability to discern sources and mechanics doesn’t imply that emotions are not warranted: in particular, a section of looped aircraft moans is alone worth of the whole CD, even if each episode strikes as a rational consequence of what had come prior. This is not a “taped-in-town, stuck-in-the-mix” kind of joke; the fact that Meursault managed to reach this level of attention-gripping quality during a live performance impresses me greatly. A distant comparison, exclusively in terms of attitude towards research, might be Toy.Bizarre’s sound art. Yet an individual personality is easily detectable here, as this artist does not indulge in mere copycat-ism.
When enamelled emptiness leaves room to genuine diligence, there’s a reason for celebrating. In a world jam-packed with people who - being unable to get a different line of work - literally reinvent themselves as manufacturers of sounds (often making nice money out of inexpert audiences), the freshness of a record like Un(zéro)deux is all the more welcome.
Recorded in Grenoble in 2007, this music was conceived utilizing location recordings and found objects. The risk of predictability, as always with this type of offer, is particularly high but Meursault did a good job by producing a soundscape that remunerates our concentration, working at various stages of perceptiveness.
In a way the piece is sketched like the curve of life itself: starting from extremely reduced elements - although oddly manipulated since the very beginning - it progressively evolves into a well-shaped body whose muscles are entirely delineated, reaching its conclusive phase in bitter, if expected decay. The quasi-biotic character of the initial sections is instantly accepted by the expert ear, preparing us for the subsequent stages where - layer upon layer - the sonic stratagems gradually increase their thickness and, with it, the psychological impact, which at certain moments becomes significant. The potential ability to discern sources and mechanics doesn’t imply that emotions are not warranted: in particular, a section of looped aircraft moans is alone worth of the whole CD, even if each episode strikes as a rational consequence of what had come prior. This is not a “taped-in-town, stuck-in-the-mix” kind of joke; the fact that Meursault managed to reach this level of attention-gripping quality during a live performance impresses me greatly. A distant comparison, exclusively in terms of attitude towards research, might be Toy.Bizarre’s sound art. Yet an individual personality is easily detectable here, as this artist does not indulge in mere copycat-ism.
When enamelled emptiness leaves room to genuine diligence, there’s a reason for celebrating. In a world jam-packed with people who - being unable to get a different line of work - literally reinvent themselves as manufacturers of sounds (often making nice money out of inexpert audiences), the freshness of a record like Un(zéro)deux is all the more welcome.
Sunday, 26 April 2009
WILLIAM BASINSKI – 92982
2062
The excruciatingly grieving mood that characterized The Disintegration Loops – William Basinski’s stylistic trademark and most renowned work – is back with a vengeance in 92982, a title corresponding to the date in which these tapes were originally manipulated to conjure up additional hues from the regions of infinite regret. After numerous attentive listens I’m still at a loss for words, such is the nearly metaphysical condition of unspecified anguish which this music elicits.
You could try and inspect Basinski’s creations with a microscope each and every time, systematically failing to label the Texan's gift as he chooses an uncomplicated harmonic sequence, loops it, layers that circular progression over and over to uncoil reminiscences depicting human decay. It’s the same aura irradiated by a portrait of an aging man who has no more reasons in life to smile at the camera. The artist’s ability is especially evident in the reiteration that opens and closes the CD, a cycle of tonal shades that can’t fail in bringing forth a sense of absolute non-belonging, that kind of inside emptiness that materializes in sensitive adolescents when they see a beloved person smiling to someone else, or when equally vulnerable children realize that no one will attend their birthday’s party. Call it “decisive delusion”, a crucial phase of existence that establishes if one’s ready for adulthood or will forever need to be reassured by moms, dads, teachers, gurus or divinities until the transformation into a total no-hoper is completed.
In particular, the concluding section – the composer’s recent reworking of the opening track’s original loop – is a two-chord ebb-and-flow that seem to express the theoretical spectrum of resonances needed to render the transition from flesh-and-bone mortality to pure energy. It easily compares to the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard, and its uncontaminated ecstasy could go on everlastingly. Also, more concrete aspects are observed when listening via headphones: the open-window mayhem of the second part, recorded while everyone was working and the phone kept ringing at Basinski’s studio that day, includes police sirens, traffic noises and, in general, metropolitan echoes that cover the dramatic colours of the main “theme” with a patina of smoggy grime. On the other hand, dig the tape machine’s dysfunctional behaviour in the third chapter, whose concept had already been exploited in Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive (Die Stadt). Mechanic nuances that contribute to a desolate representation, again giving the idea of something that’s not going to work for long before its definitive demise.
As yet another rainy afternoon elapses, it looks like the shadows of an uncertain future are trying to ingest the interior fortitudes of those who are by now conscious of the complete pointlessness of tormenting others with archetypal afterlife issues. There are people in this universe who don’t feel constrained to open the mouth to convey a deeper awareness, and there are rare specimens of beings prepared to disregard private sufferance and daily inanities in order to let their quintessence silently acknowledge the supremacy of evocative reverberation upon anything else.
Godly entities might not exist, but the presence of guardian angels becoming visible through certain kinds of sound is a truth that I’m willing to accept.
The excruciatingly grieving mood that characterized The Disintegration Loops – William Basinski’s stylistic trademark and most renowned work – is back with a vengeance in 92982, a title corresponding to the date in which these tapes were originally manipulated to conjure up additional hues from the regions of infinite regret. After numerous attentive listens I’m still at a loss for words, such is the nearly metaphysical condition of unspecified anguish which this music elicits.
You could try and inspect Basinski’s creations with a microscope each and every time, systematically failing to label the Texan's gift as he chooses an uncomplicated harmonic sequence, loops it, layers that circular progression over and over to uncoil reminiscences depicting human decay. It’s the same aura irradiated by a portrait of an aging man who has no more reasons in life to smile at the camera. The artist’s ability is especially evident in the reiteration that opens and closes the CD, a cycle of tonal shades that can’t fail in bringing forth a sense of absolute non-belonging, that kind of inside emptiness that materializes in sensitive adolescents when they see a beloved person smiling to someone else, or when equally vulnerable children realize that no one will attend their birthday’s party. Call it “decisive delusion”, a crucial phase of existence that establishes if one’s ready for adulthood or will forever need to be reassured by moms, dads, teachers, gurus or divinities until the transformation into a total no-hoper is completed.
In particular, the concluding section – the composer’s recent reworking of the opening track’s original loop – is a two-chord ebb-and-flow that seem to express the theoretical spectrum of resonances needed to render the transition from flesh-and-bone mortality to pure energy. It easily compares to the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard, and its uncontaminated ecstasy could go on everlastingly. Also, more concrete aspects are observed when listening via headphones: the open-window mayhem of the second part, recorded while everyone was working and the phone kept ringing at Basinski’s studio that day, includes police sirens, traffic noises and, in general, metropolitan echoes that cover the dramatic colours of the main “theme” with a patina of smoggy grime. On the other hand, dig the tape machine’s dysfunctional behaviour in the third chapter, whose concept had already been exploited in Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive (Die Stadt). Mechanic nuances that contribute to a desolate representation, again giving the idea of something that’s not going to work for long before its definitive demise.
As yet another rainy afternoon elapses, it looks like the shadows of an uncertain future are trying to ingest the interior fortitudes of those who are by now conscious of the complete pointlessness of tormenting others with archetypal afterlife issues. There are people in this universe who don’t feel constrained to open the mouth to convey a deeper awareness, and there are rare specimens of beings prepared to disregard private sufferance and daily inanities in order to let their quintessence silently acknowledge the supremacy of evocative reverberation upon anything else.
Godly entities might not exist, but the presence of guardian angels becoming visible through certain kinds of sound is a truth that I’m willing to accept.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
DAN WARBURTON – Life In The Greenhouse
Appel Music
In February and March 2007, an exhibition curated by Anthony Huberman at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo included an installation named “Music for Plants” - by Peter Coffin - which consisted in a greenhouse where a number of musicians – among them Noël Akchoté, Hervé Boghossian, Pierre-Yves Macé and Jean-François Pauvros – played a solo set in order to entertain both the visitors and the green bystanders. Dan Warburton entered the context armed exclusively with his violin, the result being what you hear in this, the initial release of Julien Skrobek’s imprint.
It is not the first time that an artist improvises in a gallery with people moving all over the place, and the suffocated whooshing of the large hall - which includes the chattering, the walking, the toddlers’ curiosity and most probably the distant echoes of the outside traffic – is already in itself a warmly cuddling, almost oneiric environment for the set, which essentially consists in Warburton playing a series of distinct episodes, characterized by dissimilar approaches to the instrument. The violin is exploited nervously or placidly, lyrically or percussively, very long notes versus ultra-rapid fusillades. No part of the instrument is left untouched, and the quality of the recording is good enough to reveal the different spots in which the capable hands of the manipulator try to do damage to (and with) that little box. On the other hand, there are instances in which Warburton concocts vibrant reels, sounding minimalist and Eastern European at once: picture Tony Conrad dressed like a Bulgarian folk dancer and moving semi-spastically, unable to remain fossilized on an acceptable modus operandi. Music made of instantaneous intuitions and tiny micro-events which, once put together, incarnate the meaning that each of us wants to visualize. Or maybe it’s just outstanding free improvisation, no labels attached.
The player himself can’t predict the outcome of the disquieting glissandos, plucked reflections and hyperbolic hurly-burly on his closest audience – the plants. When one listens to the microtonal ostinato around the 34th minute - the apparently invariable pitches actually shifting before the whole returns to the calmness of a trouble-free harmonic consecutiveness - we imagine that, after a tolerant acceptance of that undesired guest, the greenhouse is pervaded by a refreshing scent that might even correspond to a polite applause.
In February and March 2007, an exhibition curated by Anthony Huberman at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo included an installation named “Music for Plants” - by Peter Coffin - which consisted in a greenhouse where a number of musicians – among them Noël Akchoté, Hervé Boghossian, Pierre-Yves Macé and Jean-François Pauvros – played a solo set in order to entertain both the visitors and the green bystanders. Dan Warburton entered the context armed exclusively with his violin, the result being what you hear in this, the initial release of Julien Skrobek’s imprint.
It is not the first time that an artist improvises in a gallery with people moving all over the place, and the suffocated whooshing of the large hall - which includes the chattering, the walking, the toddlers’ curiosity and most probably the distant echoes of the outside traffic – is already in itself a warmly cuddling, almost oneiric environment for the set, which essentially consists in Warburton playing a series of distinct episodes, characterized by dissimilar approaches to the instrument. The violin is exploited nervously or placidly, lyrically or percussively, very long notes versus ultra-rapid fusillades. No part of the instrument is left untouched, and the quality of the recording is good enough to reveal the different spots in which the capable hands of the manipulator try to do damage to (and with) that little box. On the other hand, there are instances in which Warburton concocts vibrant reels, sounding minimalist and Eastern European at once: picture Tony Conrad dressed like a Bulgarian folk dancer and moving semi-spastically, unable to remain fossilized on an acceptable modus operandi. Music made of instantaneous intuitions and tiny micro-events which, once put together, incarnate the meaning that each of us wants to visualize. Or maybe it’s just outstanding free improvisation, no labels attached.
The player himself can’t predict the outcome of the disquieting glissandos, plucked reflections and hyperbolic hurly-burly on his closest audience – the plants. When one listens to the microtonal ostinato around the 34th minute - the apparently invariable pitches actually shifting before the whole returns to the calmness of a trouble-free harmonic consecutiveness - we imagine that, after a tolerant acceptance of that undesired guest, the greenhouse is pervaded by a refreshing scent that might even correspond to a polite applause.
Friday, 3 April 2009
STÉPHANE RIVES – Much Remains To Be Heard
Al Maslakh
Exclusively blowing into a soprano saxophone, Stéphane Rives signs the second solo album recorded at his name following 2003’s Fibers on Potlatch. By defining this music “neither an improvisation, nor a composition”, Rives delivers the reviewer from the burden of an apparently inevitable classification, at the same time opening a whole assortment of interpretations to something that, purely and simply, appears like a meshing of physical and metaphysical, a subtle line separating a charged hush from the extreme tension that a bodily contraption generates, and that gets reflected in the shape of prolonged insufflations, or in the wavering piercing buzzing of adjacent harmonics. It’s not an undemanding task.
By continuously holding on a rough pitch – listen to the saxophonist sucking the air in during the circular breathing process, necessary for maintaining the sound uninterrupted – the artist throws out a crucial warning sign of life, symbolizing a presence that’s as basic as a newborn child’s cry, the urge of expressing a concept of “I’m right here, in this space, and this is my voice”. After a while the evolution begins: the note starts breaking up in minuscule shards, struggling to find position and definition in the room yet already powerful enough to let us foresee a development.
This is exactly what happens halfway through the piece, when Rives decides that the moment has come to increase the thickness of the emission. What rubs the ears at that point is a kind of extremely uneven tremor rarely audible in normal circumstances, probably causing a panicky reaction to those who believe that the brain should be lulled in order to be enhanced. Instead, this French gentleman slashes the listener with ruthless textures and stabbing high frequencies until we’re ready to brawl, he himself fighting a battle against the inconsequentiality of cuteness.
The quiet segments amplify the gist of what comes after – which, as time passes by, becomes more “fleshy” and timbrally delineated, but not painless. The variations in the shades of an introverted tone produce a stunning effect of entrancement, particularly evident around the 40th plus minutes; this section is the one that definitively elevates this CD to the highest spheres of essential analysis of a sonic phenomenon. Yet when the timbres begin to be finally accepted by our systems, silence falls again. The same goes to the end, which is preceded by another series of incredible, inhuman-sounding shuddering purrs.
Incandescent lights of sensitivity define this release as a milestone of explorative nothingness. To fully comprehend the magnitude of Much Remains To Be Heard we should perhaps forget about talking for a couple of months as we realize that there’s no need of contact whatsoever, such is the huge quantity of galvanizing energies that the record transmits. It contains everything that sheer being should mean and use – absolute stillness and advanced pulsation – in a hour or so. Alternatively, you can still play a part in community rituals based on made-up blathering about doing something important for the world at large, then go home and realize that you’re feeling as good as dead instead.
Exclusively blowing into a soprano saxophone, Stéphane Rives signs the second solo album recorded at his name following 2003’s Fibers on Potlatch. By defining this music “neither an improvisation, nor a composition”, Rives delivers the reviewer from the burden of an apparently inevitable classification, at the same time opening a whole assortment of interpretations to something that, purely and simply, appears like a meshing of physical and metaphysical, a subtle line separating a charged hush from the extreme tension that a bodily contraption generates, and that gets reflected in the shape of prolonged insufflations, or in the wavering piercing buzzing of adjacent harmonics. It’s not an undemanding task.
By continuously holding on a rough pitch – listen to the saxophonist sucking the air in during the circular breathing process, necessary for maintaining the sound uninterrupted – the artist throws out a crucial warning sign of life, symbolizing a presence that’s as basic as a newborn child’s cry, the urge of expressing a concept of “I’m right here, in this space, and this is my voice”. After a while the evolution begins: the note starts breaking up in minuscule shards, struggling to find position and definition in the room yet already powerful enough to let us foresee a development.
This is exactly what happens halfway through the piece, when Rives decides that the moment has come to increase the thickness of the emission. What rubs the ears at that point is a kind of extremely uneven tremor rarely audible in normal circumstances, probably causing a panicky reaction to those who believe that the brain should be lulled in order to be enhanced. Instead, this French gentleman slashes the listener with ruthless textures and stabbing high frequencies until we’re ready to brawl, he himself fighting a battle against the inconsequentiality of cuteness.
The quiet segments amplify the gist of what comes after – which, as time passes by, becomes more “fleshy” and timbrally delineated, but not painless. The variations in the shades of an introverted tone produce a stunning effect of entrancement, particularly evident around the 40th plus minutes; this section is the one that definitively elevates this CD to the highest spheres of essential analysis of a sonic phenomenon. Yet when the timbres begin to be finally accepted by our systems, silence falls again. The same goes to the end, which is preceded by another series of incredible, inhuman-sounding shuddering purrs.
Incandescent lights of sensitivity define this release as a milestone of explorative nothingness. To fully comprehend the magnitude of Much Remains To Be Heard we should perhaps forget about talking for a couple of months as we realize that there’s no need of contact whatsoever, such is the huge quantity of galvanizing energies that the record transmits. It contains everything that sheer being should mean and use – absolute stillness and advanced pulsation – in a hour or so. Alternatively, you can still play a part in community rituals based on made-up blathering about doing something important for the world at large, then go home and realize that you’re feeling as good as dead instead.
STEINBRÜCHEL – Sustain
Koyuki
A nice drone is what the doctor orders for putting the body and the mind in full-respite mode, but that drone should be made by people who know what they’re doing. Enter Ralf Steinbrüchel – engenderer of the most stimulating brand of electronica in recent years – and sleep like an angel, as Sustain represents exactly the kind of alleviating experience that one would want to reiterate forever, even while yawning his day away at the office.
Wouldn’t it be good, as Nik Kershaw used to sing, if every ugly face and meaningless sentence muttered by squeaking chicken-like creatures were completely cancelled by a robust juxtaposition of low frequencies - only slightly enhanced by intertwining, spiralling harmonic recurrences and (presumably) shortwave radio - that sounds as a wonderfully stuck church organ? You just have to spin this 3-inch CD – infinite repeat is a must – and let your interior mechanisms do the rest. The bulk of this music is sturdily built, the foundations never shake, the result is excellent, including the crunchy noise - similar to ancient vinyl - accompanying the conclusion of the piece. Diffusing from the speakers, this stuff is intoxicating and marvellously hypnotic. Sometimes a raspy curmudgeon loves to be caressed by a Swiss architect who’s able to generate extraordinary currents of aural bliss: this small gem definitely belongs in Steinbrüchel’s very best production – and in your collection.
A nice drone is what the doctor orders for putting the body and the mind in full-respite mode, but that drone should be made by people who know what they’re doing. Enter Ralf Steinbrüchel – engenderer of the most stimulating brand of electronica in recent years – and sleep like an angel, as Sustain represents exactly the kind of alleviating experience that one would want to reiterate forever, even while yawning his day away at the office.
Wouldn’t it be good, as Nik Kershaw used to sing, if every ugly face and meaningless sentence muttered by squeaking chicken-like creatures were completely cancelled by a robust juxtaposition of low frequencies - only slightly enhanced by intertwining, spiralling harmonic recurrences and (presumably) shortwave radio - that sounds as a wonderfully stuck church organ? You just have to spin this 3-inch CD – infinite repeat is a must – and let your interior mechanisms do the rest. The bulk of this music is sturdily built, the foundations never shake, the result is excellent, including the crunchy noise - similar to ancient vinyl - accompanying the conclusion of the piece. Diffusing from the speakers, this stuff is intoxicating and marvellously hypnotic. Sometimes a raspy curmudgeon loves to be caressed by a Swiss architect who’s able to generate extraordinary currents of aural bliss: this small gem definitely belongs in Steinbrüchel’s very best production – and in your collection.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
THE MICROSCOPIC SEPTET – Lobster Leaps In
Cuneiform
After the fantastic retrospective double whammy published by Cuneiform in 2006 (two volumes of History Of The Micros, featuring everything the group had released until then), The Microscopic Septet started a period of touring, the performances welcomed by enthusiastic audiences most everywhere. This prompted the co-leaders, sax player Phillip Johnston and pianist Joel Forrester, to return to a semi-regular activity and, especially, to record this new artefact – the first in twenty years.
Lobster Leaps In might lack a tad of the efficiency and some of the unpredictable explosions of hilarity of the earlier materials, yet it remains a valid release in every aspect, with hints to a middle-aged kind of harmonic exquisiteness that should not be overlooked. The superimposition of styles typical of the band has remained intact, but the quality of playing is now enriched by a more relaxed, nearly contemplative feel that occasionally becomes the reason – preposterously, one would think – of a pinch of sadness, that deriving from the scent of epochs that are gone forever. As hard as one tries to mask the mood under a layer of waxy cheerfulness, the memories keep lingering on; for sure the music contributes to raise the spirit, not to throw us in a hole of depression.
Difficult, in fact, to remain at a standstill when listening to the persistently changing scenarios of “Got Lucky”, catchy melodies unfolding upon an ever-varying succession of impressions. Yet the beginning of the subsequent track, “Lies”, almost reminds of Henry Cow - or Muffins, if you will - in its solemn approach to contrapuntal convergence before the piece takes complete shape, a swinging journey to boogie and reminisce with. The execution, here as in large portions of the album, is technically perfect – except various moments in which the “relax factor” introduces a few missed appointments in terms of rhythmic precision. But it’s all acceptable and, in a way, part of the game.
The greatness of this ensemble – also comprising Don Davis, Mike Hashim, Dave Sewelson, David Hofstra and Richard Dworkin – resides in the detached manner in which the music is rendered, just like a combo performing night after night while facing dancing folks. They know the tunes inside and out, thus being able to carry out the set while looking at the bizarre facets of human interrelation occurring in front of their eyes. “Almost Right”, though, would probably have caused additional trouble in times of war, full as it is of extremely dissonant parallelisms and quirky counter-themes. Needless to say, it’s among the disc’s best tracks.
In the era of computerized vacuum, this outing is a veritable oasis of acoustic relief. Good vibrations or nostalgic echoes, it doesn’t matter: the Micros belong to that endangered species called “musicians”. Those strange animals who can really play an instrument and transmit energies, a living organism with its muscles, bones, wrinkles and several scars, too – and whose appearance elicits immediate recognition and respect.
After the fantastic retrospective double whammy published by Cuneiform in 2006 (two volumes of History Of The Micros, featuring everything the group had released until then), The Microscopic Septet started a period of touring, the performances welcomed by enthusiastic audiences most everywhere. This prompted the co-leaders, sax player Phillip Johnston and pianist Joel Forrester, to return to a semi-regular activity and, especially, to record this new artefact – the first in twenty years.
Lobster Leaps In might lack a tad of the efficiency and some of the unpredictable explosions of hilarity of the earlier materials, yet it remains a valid release in every aspect, with hints to a middle-aged kind of harmonic exquisiteness that should not be overlooked. The superimposition of styles typical of the band has remained intact, but the quality of playing is now enriched by a more relaxed, nearly contemplative feel that occasionally becomes the reason – preposterously, one would think – of a pinch of sadness, that deriving from the scent of epochs that are gone forever. As hard as one tries to mask the mood under a layer of waxy cheerfulness, the memories keep lingering on; for sure the music contributes to raise the spirit, not to throw us in a hole of depression.
Difficult, in fact, to remain at a standstill when listening to the persistently changing scenarios of “Got Lucky”, catchy melodies unfolding upon an ever-varying succession of impressions. Yet the beginning of the subsequent track, “Lies”, almost reminds of Henry Cow - or Muffins, if you will - in its solemn approach to contrapuntal convergence before the piece takes complete shape, a swinging journey to boogie and reminisce with. The execution, here as in large portions of the album, is technically perfect – except various moments in which the “relax factor” introduces a few missed appointments in terms of rhythmic precision. But it’s all acceptable and, in a way, part of the game.
The greatness of this ensemble – also comprising Don Davis, Mike Hashim, Dave Sewelson, David Hofstra and Richard Dworkin – resides in the detached manner in which the music is rendered, just like a combo performing night after night while facing dancing folks. They know the tunes inside and out, thus being able to carry out the set while looking at the bizarre facets of human interrelation occurring in front of their eyes. “Almost Right”, though, would probably have caused additional trouble in times of war, full as it is of extremely dissonant parallelisms and quirky counter-themes. Needless to say, it’s among the disc’s best tracks.
In the era of computerized vacuum, this outing is a veritable oasis of acoustic relief. Good vibrations or nostalgic echoes, it doesn’t matter: the Micros belong to that endangered species called “musicians”. Those strange animals who can really play an instrument and transmit energies, a living organism with its muscles, bones, wrinkles and several scars, too – and whose appearance elicits immediate recognition and respect.
THE DAVE FOX GROUP FEATURING BRUCE EISENBEIL - Home Again
Konnex
Besides being a jazz specialist pianist Dave Fox is also classically trained, although you might not guess it by listening to Home Again, the third CD by The Dave Fox Group after 2004’s Gatewalk and 2007’s If These Songs Could Talk. Comprising the leader on grand piano, clavinet, Fender Rhodes and Hammond B-3 organ plus Bruce Eisenbeil (guitar), Pat Lawrence (bass) and Jon Marc Ryan Dale (drums), this incarnation of the ensemble couldn’t play a minute of formulaic music if one threatened them at gunpoint. Impertinent approaches to improvisation pullulate all over the record and outrageously climactic manifestations of lawlessness abound, with just the slightest exception of the conclusive - and vaguely, distantly tonal - “Home Again, For Now”, whose character mostly derives from jangling chords and overdriven strategies from Eisenbeil’s heavily processed axe.
An opposite example is constituted by “The Well-Prepared Suitcase”: the musicians strive to implement a rather unstructured type of instant invention without caring too much about the ribaldry that some of these semi-educated noises might evoke, generating a rebellious feeling in the (until then) unperturbed listener. “An Encounter With A Street Troll” – what a fabulous title for a piece – is probably the ideal symbolization of the band’s risky demeanour, chock full as it is of sudden increases in the fury-to-calmness ratio and striking exuberance at one and the same time.
Eisenbeil’s clear-sightedness in alternating distortion and purity during incessant circumventions of normalcy is as always astonishing – cultivated punk, if there was ever a better representative – and Fox receives wholeheartedly whatever is thrown his way, counterattacking with idiosyncratic commitment bathed in the sound of instruments from the 60s. Lawrence and Dale smirk appreciatively, swapping footnotes and oddball permutations that hypothetically should never be allowed in a “rhythm section” (ha!).
But this is the fractal tempo of real life’s enigmatic attractiveness, and – contrarily to the welcoming seduction of hypocrite gleaming – this raw charm entices more and more with each listen.
Besides being a jazz specialist pianist Dave Fox is also classically trained, although you might not guess it by listening to Home Again, the third CD by The Dave Fox Group after 2004’s Gatewalk and 2007’s If These Songs Could Talk. Comprising the leader on grand piano, clavinet, Fender Rhodes and Hammond B-3 organ plus Bruce Eisenbeil (guitar), Pat Lawrence (bass) and Jon Marc Ryan Dale (drums), this incarnation of the ensemble couldn’t play a minute of formulaic music if one threatened them at gunpoint. Impertinent approaches to improvisation pullulate all over the record and outrageously climactic manifestations of lawlessness abound, with just the slightest exception of the conclusive - and vaguely, distantly tonal - “Home Again, For Now”, whose character mostly derives from jangling chords and overdriven strategies from Eisenbeil’s heavily processed axe.
An opposite example is constituted by “The Well-Prepared Suitcase”: the musicians strive to implement a rather unstructured type of instant invention without caring too much about the ribaldry that some of these semi-educated noises might evoke, generating a rebellious feeling in the (until then) unperturbed listener. “An Encounter With A Street Troll” – what a fabulous title for a piece – is probably the ideal symbolization of the band’s risky demeanour, chock full as it is of sudden increases in the fury-to-calmness ratio and striking exuberance at one and the same time.
Eisenbeil’s clear-sightedness in alternating distortion and purity during incessant circumventions of normalcy is as always astonishing – cultivated punk, if there was ever a better representative – and Fox receives wholeheartedly whatever is thrown his way, counterattacking with idiosyncratic commitment bathed in the sound of instruments from the 60s. Lawrence and Dale smirk appreciatively, swapping footnotes and oddball permutations that hypothetically should never be allowed in a “rhythm section” (ha!).
But this is the fractal tempo of real life’s enigmatic attractiveness, and – contrarily to the welcoming seduction of hypocrite gleaming – this raw charm entices more and more with each listen.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
ISOLDE – All Things To Fall Like Marching Men
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)