After a lengthy silence, four FMP titles - courtesy of label honcho Jost Gebers - were recently received by yours truly. I can’t forget that one of my first massive orders of improvisation-based LPs was placed with this historic German imprint, a long time ago. There were no credit cards in this writer’s shabby pocket - he had to send a bank draft. How old (and poor) we have “grown up” to be.
I’m not unbiased when Cecil Taylor is implicated. He’s an absolute hero and a big influence on my own guitar (!) protocols. But the imperative at this juncture is trying to somehow illustrate what he conjured up – together with William Parker and Masashi Harada – in CT: The Dance Project, a set recorded in 1990 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin during the Summer Music concert series. As pointless as underlining the merits and the careers of the involved parties might appear, the exceptional meshing of technical adroitness and physical boldness that this performance offers is something to literally contemplate and remain astonished at. Following a classic Taylor approach – utterances and exclamations preceding the contact with the instruments – the trio launches a succession of purposeful explorations of dynamics, immediately acclimatizing to the live environment (which of course featured a dance act on the stage) and eliciting a chain of reciprocal visceral responses from the musicians, who move across the borders of a murderous elegance to arrive at the perfect synthesis of bodily expression and meaningful eloquence. Intellectualism is thoroughly annihilated, Taylor’s fragmented fluency shifting the centre of attention between persistence and venomous ardour, Parker confident and perspicacious at once, Harada only apparently in the background yet ready to let his influence be felt without any need of sounding thunderous.
Talking about greats, Alexander Von Schlippenbach’s Piano Solo ’77 was taped in a basement set up as a studio by Gebers himself, a windowless cellar where the pianist got the chance to “really focus, pushing my playing forward and taking myself right to the edge”, referring to his improvisational capabilities. Now, if there’s a recording where Von Schlippenbach can be heard unashamedly punching holes through the keyboard, this must be it. The pianism is often on the verge of utter fury but maintains an inexhaustible lucidity that snatches the music from the jaws of pandemonium, absurdly discordant patterns and detrimental-to-normality contrapuntal shapes intersecting and self-reproducing in a continuous (ir)rationalization of artistic doggedness. The commitment, the magnetism, the total involvement emerging from this set is directly proportional to the listener’s will to accept the concept of being beleaguered by a pouring energy, the active principle of a style whose evolution has brought several stellar albums over three subsequent decades, just like the recent Friulian Sketches on Psi. Still, the raw eminence of this aggressive soliloquy would be hard to duplicate by today’s pretenders banging away at our exasperation.
With all the due respect – because the guy is an old associate of the clan – I’ve never managed to truly appreciate Olaf Rupp’s technique whenever the occasion arose to evaluate his output. Whiteout is the first attempt on an electric axe – a Fender Stratocaster played in a vertical position on Olaf’s laps – and a honest one too, regardless of the presence of a number of not excessively precious tracks (sorry, I hardly identify with those jangling overdriven mega-clusters which saturate the headphones, destroying the fine details by drowning them in a jumble of noise). On the contrary, when Rupp puts the fingers in trickle-and-dribble mode he generates cascades of scintillating harmonics and minuscule glitzy notes which constitute the most solid asset of an admittedly unsympathetic approach. A world difficult to penetrate, despite the use of the best mental flexibility available; the promise is to try again, as repeated listens didn’t reveal anything that could cause a change of perspective for the moment.
The late Peter Kowald’s off-the-cuff creativity is also evidenced in an unaccompanied release, Open Secrets, captured on tape in 1988 at FMP Studios. This is not an easy assessment of a record for a reviewer to do. We’re listening to one of the finest double bassist of the last 40 years, a man whose integrity is totally out of question, a technique allowing him to generate what the liners rightly define as “bass sculptures”. Indeed the nine chapters of this CD explore the imperceptible deformities of instrumental nimbleness quite deeply, the modest virtuoso extracting juices of significance even from a connection of fairly regular if unpredictable (from the point of view of a “tonality”) plucked lines. Kowald’s aesthetic pledge is explicated by the unique crossing of arco and glissando that characterize the title track, for which finding a resemblance to whatever else is next to impossible. On the other hand, the pictorial qualities of the large part of this music, in conjunction with the ever-lucid articulation of the artist’s creative notion, aren’t in any case enough to elevate this job to the level of masterpieces such as John Eckhardt’s Xylobiont or Paul Rogers’ Listen. This comes from over two decades ago, though – don’t you ever forget. It is by all means an appealing collection, required listening for any serious practiser (or plain lover) of this colossal instrument.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Memories Of Mr. 23 (The Alfred Harth Chronicles)
CASSIBER, MARK I
In a perfect world (pun intended), the finest music would result in a composition that sounds like an impromptu outburst of accomplished creativity – no pre-established rules, no rigidness, no nothing as Peter Brötzmann would have it. Cassiber (originally Kassiber, the name deriving from the Slavonic term indicating a “message smuggled out of prison”) were maybe the group that got nearest to that vision. The band’s official trace starts from 1982, but Christoph Anders, Chris Cutler, Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth had already met five years earlier, at the times of the Sogennantes Linksradikales Blasorchester. Interested by punk, willing to mix that influence with radical jazz, classical and various kinds of interference – made concrete by the use of radio and TV snippets and all sorts of samples – the original quartet recorded a couple of gems between 1982 and 1984, their significance at a stage of intensity and unrefined magnificence equivalent to the most essential politically committed talents of that (and any) era. After Harth’s departure in 1984 to form Gestalt et Jive and Vladimir Estragon, the remaining three kept producing great work in albums such as Perfect Worlds (there you go) and A Face We All Know, both on Recommended. Yet this writer has always perceived Cassiber minus A23H as a healthy body missing a limb.
Still, what really identifies the quintessence of this coherently wild corporation is probably Anders’ perennially hollered delivery: an exaggerated, histrionic mixture of irony, rage and sorrow that constitutes a veritable trademark instantly evident in “Not Me”, Man Or Monkey’s icebreaker. This introduction is unquestionably ill-mannered, an instantly nervous concoction of non-existent harmonic contexts where the collective multi-instrumentalist ability of the quartet is straight-away detectable, the sound shifting across many finalities without a definite answer to the needs elicited by this suspension. The repeated piano note constituting the backbone of “Red Shadow” brings to mind the first movement of Fred Frith’s “Sadness, Its Bones Bleached Behind Us” on The Technology Of Tears, whereas the fake Mariachi style of the impressively anguishing “Our Colourful Culture” is incontestably the most dramatic moment of the album, Anders reciting Cutler’s lyrics portraying a desperate man rambling about his people starving and getting killed while “we fight in the mountains”, the song ending with the protagonist’s spine-chilling hysterical laughter as the main theme fades to black. Curiously, this is the only segment in which the drumming chores are handled by another musician, Peter Prochir. “O Cure Me” sees the fervent vocalist declaiming a passage by Johann Sebastian Bach along delirious instrumental circumstances where contrapuntal implicitness and transitory phases are the menu du jour, the whole underlined by a cheap sequencer-based progression. Perhaps this release is where the doses of anarchy are more abundant than anywhere else, as clearly demonstrated by the free-for-all character of the lengthy title track and the Miles Davis-meets-dilettante guitarist adventure of “Django Vergibt”. The best was yet to come, though.
The Beauty And The Beast is, simply put, an epochal masterpiece of “progressive something” (put your designation here). Here, Cassiber’s deranged poetry achieves the highest level of expressivity, the music conversant with post Henry Cow-ism in the remarkable “What” and, especially, “Six Rays”, featuring Anders again uttering his restlessness amidst apparently unrelated brass blasts and a killer riff emphasizing the piece’s surefooted walk. “Robert” utilizes shreds of classic orchestration in a genre-pulverizing framework defined by illogical vocalism; instead, “Last Call” appears as the soundtrack to a noir interpreted by Tod Browning’s freaks, sarcasm and mystery surrounding an intoxicated telephone conversation. “Ach Heile Mich” is a hallucinating circus beginning with Anders chuckling and talking over a chaotic parallelism of volatile harmonies. Harth hopelessly tries to restore some balance with more linear (…) phrasings, only to get overwhelmed and blasted out by the return of a Tchaikovsky-ish cadenza leading the foursome towards a crazed garrulity in one of the many dangerously exciting moments of this group’s history. This particular piece should be downloaded in millions of iPods across the globe. Also notable are “Under New Management”, a potentially relaxed vibe completely disintegrated by the irredeemably lawless spirit of the ensemble, and the gorgeous “Vengeance Is Dancing” – namely the nearest thing to Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like The Wind” that Cassiber could ever conceive. In any case, nobody will ever beat the irresistible passion of the final suite, ending with the hymn “At Last I’m Free” (that's right, Chic!): the musicians play and sing like if they knew in advance that this is the final tune they‘re going to perform prior of their demise, intransigence and dogmatisms thrown out of the window in favour of a multiform granulation of sonic varieties that generously invite the audience to join a party celebrating the upcoming end.
Accept a friendly advice from an indelicately aging old fart: everything made by Cassiber is mandatory listening, among the most excellent efforts in the four members’ careers. If you want to start with a single title The Beauty And The Beast is the absolute must, a supreme epitaph for what was once called “art” and nowadays has been reduced to the same status of toothpaste and stockings at the supermarket. What these guys achieved with this record can’t even be remotely understood by the laptop-fed, cell phone-burnt, one-dimensional brains from the present, definitely imperfect world.
In a perfect world (pun intended), the finest music would result in a composition that sounds like an impromptu outburst of accomplished creativity – no pre-established rules, no rigidness, no nothing as Peter Brötzmann would have it. Cassiber (originally Kassiber, the name deriving from the Slavonic term indicating a “message smuggled out of prison”) were maybe the group that got nearest to that vision. The band’s official trace starts from 1982, but Christoph Anders, Chris Cutler, Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth had already met five years earlier, at the times of the Sogennantes Linksradikales Blasorchester. Interested by punk, willing to mix that influence with radical jazz, classical and various kinds of interference – made concrete by the use of radio and TV snippets and all sorts of samples – the original quartet recorded a couple of gems between 1982 and 1984, their significance at a stage of intensity and unrefined magnificence equivalent to the most essential politically committed talents of that (and any) era. After Harth’s departure in 1984 to form Gestalt et Jive and Vladimir Estragon, the remaining three kept producing great work in albums such as Perfect Worlds (there you go) and A Face We All Know, both on Recommended. Yet this writer has always perceived Cassiber minus A23H as a healthy body missing a limb.
Still, what really identifies the quintessence of this coherently wild corporation is probably Anders’ perennially hollered delivery: an exaggerated, histrionic mixture of irony, rage and sorrow that constitutes a veritable trademark instantly evident in “Not Me”, Man Or Monkey’s icebreaker. This introduction is unquestionably ill-mannered, an instantly nervous concoction of non-existent harmonic contexts where the collective multi-instrumentalist ability of the quartet is straight-away detectable, the sound shifting across many finalities without a definite answer to the needs elicited by this suspension. The repeated piano note constituting the backbone of “Red Shadow” brings to mind the first movement of Fred Frith’s “Sadness, Its Bones Bleached Behind Us” on The Technology Of Tears, whereas the fake Mariachi style of the impressively anguishing “Our Colourful Culture” is incontestably the most dramatic moment of the album, Anders reciting Cutler’s lyrics portraying a desperate man rambling about his people starving and getting killed while “we fight in the mountains”, the song ending with the protagonist’s spine-chilling hysterical laughter as the main theme fades to black. Curiously, this is the only segment in which the drumming chores are handled by another musician, Peter Prochir. “O Cure Me” sees the fervent vocalist declaiming a passage by Johann Sebastian Bach along delirious instrumental circumstances where contrapuntal implicitness and transitory phases are the menu du jour, the whole underlined by a cheap sequencer-based progression. Perhaps this release is where the doses of anarchy are more abundant than anywhere else, as clearly demonstrated by the free-for-all character of the lengthy title track and the Miles Davis-meets-dilettante guitarist adventure of “Django Vergibt”. The best was yet to come, though.
The Beauty And The Beast is, simply put, an epochal masterpiece of “progressive something” (put your designation here). Here, Cassiber’s deranged poetry achieves the highest level of expressivity, the music conversant with post Henry Cow-ism in the remarkable “What” and, especially, “Six Rays”, featuring Anders again uttering his restlessness amidst apparently unrelated brass blasts and a killer riff emphasizing the piece’s surefooted walk. “Robert” utilizes shreds of classic orchestration in a genre-pulverizing framework defined by illogical vocalism; instead, “Last Call” appears as the soundtrack to a noir interpreted by Tod Browning’s freaks, sarcasm and mystery surrounding an intoxicated telephone conversation. “Ach Heile Mich” is a hallucinating circus beginning with Anders chuckling and talking over a chaotic parallelism of volatile harmonies. Harth hopelessly tries to restore some balance with more linear (…) phrasings, only to get overwhelmed and blasted out by the return of a Tchaikovsky-ish cadenza leading the foursome towards a crazed garrulity in one of the many dangerously exciting moments of this group’s history. This particular piece should be downloaded in millions of iPods across the globe. Also notable are “Under New Management”, a potentially relaxed vibe completely disintegrated by the irredeemably lawless spirit of the ensemble, and the gorgeous “Vengeance Is Dancing” – namely the nearest thing to Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like The Wind” that Cassiber could ever conceive. In any case, nobody will ever beat the irresistible passion of the final suite, ending with the hymn “At Last I’m Free” (that's right, Chic!): the musicians play and sing like if they knew in advance that this is the final tune they‘re going to perform prior of their demise, intransigence and dogmatisms thrown out of the window in favour of a multiform granulation of sonic varieties that generously invite the audience to join a party celebrating the upcoming end.
Accept a friendly advice from an indelicately aging old fart: everything made by Cassiber is mandatory listening, among the most excellent efforts in the four members’ careers. If you want to start with a single title The Beauty And The Beast is the absolute must, a supreme epitaph for what was once called “art” and nowadays has been reduced to the same status of toothpaste and stockings at the supermarket. What these guys achieved with this record can’t even be remotely understood by the laptop-fed, cell phone-burnt, one-dimensional brains from the present, definitely imperfect world.
Monday, 16 February 2009
Three Nice Ones From 12k
Time to gather ideas about a tryptich of recent releases by Taylor Deupree’s label, whose production ranges from mildly infatuating to absolutely necessary, usually maintaining the artistic level well over average while respecting the canons of dumbfounding catalepsy that most of this music evokes.
Amplifier Machine’s Her Mouth Is An Outlaw is a nice collection of somnolent tunes, typically erected upon reiterative guitar chords washed in long reverb, slightly disturbed by small, apparently unconnected noises. Indeed all three members – Seth Rees, James Dixon, Alex Jarvis – play an axe somewhere; other instruments include drums, violin, piano and “Korg” (what model of “Korg” we’ll never know). Being this trio a meeting of songwriters, no surprise then that the tracks are vividly reminiscent of the memorisable qualities of an extremely simple air: everything moves leisurely and predictably, the harmonic basis practically equivalent from a piece to another, the brain veritably lulled in comfortable stupor. Some of the atmospheres, principally in the title track, bring to mind “Twin Peaks” (a commonplace, yet true). The real jewel is “Pockets Full Of Red Dirt”, a hypnotic kneading of the cranium via sub-bass frequencies that the speakers just can’t contain, letting them free to multiply around the place and choke the blissful victim from behind. Not a work of genius, but a pleasurable record for sure.
Perhaps the lot’s finest is Filaments & Voids by Kenneth Kirschner, a 2-CD set that explores the alternance of sound and stillness quite thoroughly, placing several important inputs in the fundamental nature of the conscious listener. Kirschner, an artist living in New York, seized these glimpses of infinity between 1996 and 2008, all but one characterized by the “appearances” of silent segments linking disparate kinds of secretion. Despite the consistency of the basic notion all the way through, the discs are different in terms of sonority. The first contains three pieces, the character of two of them nearer to ambient/space territories – admittedly with a higher degree of intensity - with a particular mention for the unforgettable “October 19, 2006”, a succession of intangible coronas of indistinct harmonics whose impact on our sense of perception is immediate and truly awe-inspiring, especially if listened in utter peace at 5:30 AM as per my customary approach with this kind of material. “June 10, 2008” is the only selection where the resonance is continuous, recalling string-based aural sculptures – picture a bionic replica of Ellen Fullman – yet entirely generated by a computer’s virtual timbres. The second disc comprises a single 72-minute contemplation: “March 16, 2006”, also intriguingly beautiful, derives from re-recorded piano phrases - halfway through transcendence and homesickness - on an iPod with a cheap microphone, occasionally garnished with muted echoes of urban traffic and various types of hoarse murmur and grainy noise. The result is an odd combination of Eno, Basinski and Asher, eliciting memories of pale yellow lights at night in a thick fog, insubstantial misconceptions of melody gradually turning into a disheartening chronic condition of vulnerability.
Giuseppe Ielasi contributed to this splendidly sunny, if ice-cold Saturday morning by way of his latest release Aix, thus called as it was created in Aix-En-Provence, France (the hometown of double bass diva Jöelle Léandre, for those who really wanted to know) in the autumn of last year. Nine petite segments, constructed through the capable assemblage of pre-taped samples – both from existing records and instruments and the actual world – arranged in a sort of biotic arrhythmic structure that nevertheless results welcoming, at times even delightful. Music which finds nourishment in a cyclical unpunctuality, where the acoustic properties of timbral physicality and a multitude of semi-randomized snippets are consecrated at the altar of a malleable variety of electronica where in reality the electronic aspect is nearly kept in the background to privilege event fluency and textural warmth. There’s not a moment of raucousness or discordance, Ielasi’s stratagems always tending to the faultless functionality of the sonic organism. This is - weirdly - the best attribute and a noticeable limit of the album, which sometimes sounds too “smiling” to the ears in its total lack of emergency or dilemmas. Still, this is beyond doubt a lovely outing if you’re not looking for the excessive embitterment of an already complicated reality.
Amplifier Machine’s Her Mouth Is An Outlaw is a nice collection of somnolent tunes, typically erected upon reiterative guitar chords washed in long reverb, slightly disturbed by small, apparently unconnected noises. Indeed all three members – Seth Rees, James Dixon, Alex Jarvis – play an axe somewhere; other instruments include drums, violin, piano and “Korg” (what model of “Korg” we’ll never know). Being this trio a meeting of songwriters, no surprise then that the tracks are vividly reminiscent of the memorisable qualities of an extremely simple air: everything moves leisurely and predictably, the harmonic basis practically equivalent from a piece to another, the brain veritably lulled in comfortable stupor. Some of the atmospheres, principally in the title track, bring to mind “Twin Peaks” (a commonplace, yet true). The real jewel is “Pockets Full Of Red Dirt”, a hypnotic kneading of the cranium via sub-bass frequencies that the speakers just can’t contain, letting them free to multiply around the place and choke the blissful victim from behind. Not a work of genius, but a pleasurable record for sure.
Perhaps the lot’s finest is Filaments & Voids by Kenneth Kirschner, a 2-CD set that explores the alternance of sound and stillness quite thoroughly, placing several important inputs in the fundamental nature of the conscious listener. Kirschner, an artist living in New York, seized these glimpses of infinity between 1996 and 2008, all but one characterized by the “appearances” of silent segments linking disparate kinds of secretion. Despite the consistency of the basic notion all the way through, the discs are different in terms of sonority. The first contains three pieces, the character of two of them nearer to ambient/space territories – admittedly with a higher degree of intensity - with a particular mention for the unforgettable “October 19, 2006”, a succession of intangible coronas of indistinct harmonics whose impact on our sense of perception is immediate and truly awe-inspiring, especially if listened in utter peace at 5:30 AM as per my customary approach with this kind of material. “June 10, 2008” is the only selection where the resonance is continuous, recalling string-based aural sculptures – picture a bionic replica of Ellen Fullman – yet entirely generated by a computer’s virtual timbres. The second disc comprises a single 72-minute contemplation: “March 16, 2006”, also intriguingly beautiful, derives from re-recorded piano phrases - halfway through transcendence and homesickness - on an iPod with a cheap microphone, occasionally garnished with muted echoes of urban traffic and various types of hoarse murmur and grainy noise. The result is an odd combination of Eno, Basinski and Asher, eliciting memories of pale yellow lights at night in a thick fog, insubstantial misconceptions of melody gradually turning into a disheartening chronic condition of vulnerability.
Giuseppe Ielasi contributed to this splendidly sunny, if ice-cold Saturday morning by way of his latest release Aix, thus called as it was created in Aix-En-Provence, France (the hometown of double bass diva Jöelle Léandre, for those who really wanted to know) in the autumn of last year. Nine petite segments, constructed through the capable assemblage of pre-taped samples – both from existing records and instruments and the actual world – arranged in a sort of biotic arrhythmic structure that nevertheless results welcoming, at times even delightful. Music which finds nourishment in a cyclical unpunctuality, where the acoustic properties of timbral physicality and a multitude of semi-randomized snippets are consecrated at the altar of a malleable variety of electronica where in reality the electronic aspect is nearly kept in the background to privilege event fluency and textural warmth. There’s not a moment of raucousness or discordance, Ielasi’s stratagems always tending to the faultless functionality of the sonic organism. This is - weirdly - the best attribute and a noticeable limit of the album, which sometimes sounds too “smiling” to the ears in its total lack of emergency or dilemmas. Still, this is beyond doubt a lovely outing if you’re not looking for the excessive embitterment of an already complicated reality.
Monday, 9 February 2009
News From Mr. Holloway
Always a delight receiving bulletins (under the semblance of new releases, of course) by Ian Holloway, whose label Quiet World – formerly Elvis Coffee – keeps publishing small handmade editions containing music that, particularly when listened at night or in the early morning, causes exactly what the imprint’s name promises, namely making us enjoy a peaceful hour while being caressed by a soothing kind of electronica (with a few exceptions – read on).
Mote is a 3-inch CD that lasts 15 minutes (so much for the above mentioned “hour”), its two tracks essentially conceived for superimposed organ chords, or at least synthetic patches that sound like organs. It’s an extremely uncomplicated statement: stagnant, slightly swelling, almost no harmonic movement and, when there is some, practically indiscernible. A (very) distant term of association could be Charlemagne Palestine’s work with oscillators; obviously we’re not at the same stage of profoundness, but this midget release is quite likeable nevertheless.
Where Have We Been In The World Today? is instead a full-length opus that I found beneficial on the psyche at a moderate playback level (OK, make that “ambient”) rather than by listening too alertly to it. The content here is definitely more variegated from one track to the next, ranging from broad-minded explorations of the galaxies of low frequency – the initial “Froodles” comes to mind - to unsympatheticallydiscordant superimpositions of permanent keyboard clusters, as it happens in “Alpha Riddle”, often travelling through infinite repeats of hypnotic patterns and quivering waves ransacking our misrepresentation of a regular Saturday evening. In general, this is a less-uniform-than-usual record by Holloway, psychedelic to a degree; it doesn’t look for eminence in its relative poverty of compositional means, yet manages to appear as a bizarre embodiment of disguised fears right in the middle of an apparently calm setting. A piece such as “Wherewithall” (sic) might turn out to be a panacea for obsolescent babblers in need of a well-deserved rest, and the conclusive, wonderful “Jute” puts many self-professed shamans of artificial drone to shame. As constantly occurring in this man’s presentations, honesty can literally be smelled: this is the main reason of my appreciation and support.
Mote is a 3-inch CD that lasts 15 minutes (so much for the above mentioned “hour”), its two tracks essentially conceived for superimposed organ chords, or at least synthetic patches that sound like organs. It’s an extremely uncomplicated statement: stagnant, slightly swelling, almost no harmonic movement and, when there is some, practically indiscernible. A (very) distant term of association could be Charlemagne Palestine’s work with oscillators; obviously we’re not at the same stage of profoundness, but this midget release is quite likeable nevertheless.
Where Have We Been In The World Today? is instead a full-length opus that I found beneficial on the psyche at a moderate playback level (OK, make that “ambient”) rather than by listening too alertly to it. The content here is definitely more variegated from one track to the next, ranging from broad-minded explorations of the galaxies of low frequency – the initial “Froodles” comes to mind - to unsympatheticallydiscordant superimpositions of permanent keyboard clusters, as it happens in “Alpha Riddle”, often travelling through infinite repeats of hypnotic patterns and quivering waves ransacking our misrepresentation of a regular Saturday evening. In general, this is a less-uniform-than-usual record by Holloway, psychedelic to a degree; it doesn’t look for eminence in its relative poverty of compositional means, yet manages to appear as a bizarre embodiment of disguised fears right in the middle of an apparently calm setting. A piece such as “Wherewithall” (sic) might turn out to be a panacea for obsolescent babblers in need of a well-deserved rest, and the conclusive, wonderful “Jute” puts many self-professed shamans of artificial drone to shame. As constantly occurring in this man’s presentations, honesty can literally be smelled: this is the main reason of my appreciation and support.
Blank Disc
Having started activities in 1997, Blank Disc are Srđan Muc (guitar) and Robert Roža (no-input, electronics, objects). I first met them in alliance with German saxophonist Georg Wissel under the name “Blank Disc Trio”; last summer (…sigh…) the chaps from Zrenjanin (Serbia) were kind enough to send me a couple of CDs, respectively from 2008 and 2006, which show the level of improvisational adulthood attained with a few technical means and copious doses of shrewdness.
Acoustics is defined as a “homage to Zoran Mirković”, the latter’s “Protophysics” trilogy (completely unknown to this reviewer) constituting the focal motivation behind the music comprised by the CD. We’re dealing with a brand of well-organized abstractness principally based upon the consecutiveness of savagely customized guitar tones and mystifying soundscapes in which rumbles, hums, pops and crackles carry the same weight; the whole doesn’t sound like anything even tenuously comparable, though. At one point, in the initial part of “QWERTZUI”, a truly blissful resonance – think of those grandiose chordal washes by Fred Frith - opens up in awe-inspiring fashion but is instantly scratched by a weird electronic interference, almost to break a magic spell with a touch of irony. This is an exemplification of the “never say never” mindset of the nice pair, whose clear-sightedness in terms of juxtaposition of unusually suggestive timbres renders this humble-yet-significant recording a first-rate introduction to their musical aesthetic.
XII contains four tracks as a duo and three as a trio (not with Wissel: the saxophone duties are in fact handled – rather cleverly - by Andrej Gigić). This record is (slightly) less “abnormal”, not so oriented towards infiniteness and, in a way, more concrete than Acoustics, yet attention-grabbing nonetheless. Crippled shapes and peg-legged manipulations of the strings appear as distant from chaos as a previously delineated scheme; most of this music sounds at least to some extent composed despite its unrestricted freedom, inventiveness channelled in a logical astuteness that transforms every little event into something to observe and file conscientiously in the archive of our unaware reminiscence. Again, no useful association came to mind over the course of several spins: what better compliment to accentuate individuality?
Blank Disc’s work justify serious consideration: in spite of a relative unfamiliarity, their artistic vision leads to states of indispensable pureness that many “names” just dream about.
Acoustics is defined as a “homage to Zoran Mirković”, the latter’s “Protophysics” trilogy (completely unknown to this reviewer) constituting the focal motivation behind the music comprised by the CD. We’re dealing with a brand of well-organized abstractness principally based upon the consecutiveness of savagely customized guitar tones and mystifying soundscapes in which rumbles, hums, pops and crackles carry the same weight; the whole doesn’t sound like anything even tenuously comparable, though. At one point, in the initial part of “QWERTZUI”, a truly blissful resonance – think of those grandiose chordal washes by Fred Frith - opens up in awe-inspiring fashion but is instantly scratched by a weird electronic interference, almost to break a magic spell with a touch of irony. This is an exemplification of the “never say never” mindset of the nice pair, whose clear-sightedness in terms of juxtaposition of unusually suggestive timbres renders this humble-yet-significant recording a first-rate introduction to their musical aesthetic.
XII contains four tracks as a duo and three as a trio (not with Wissel: the saxophone duties are in fact handled – rather cleverly - by Andrej Gigić). This record is (slightly) less “abnormal”, not so oriented towards infiniteness and, in a way, more concrete than Acoustics, yet attention-grabbing nonetheless. Crippled shapes and peg-legged manipulations of the strings appear as distant from chaos as a previously delineated scheme; most of this music sounds at least to some extent composed despite its unrestricted freedom, inventiveness channelled in a logical astuteness that transforms every little event into something to observe and file conscientiously in the archive of our unaware reminiscence. Again, no useful association came to mind over the course of several spins: what better compliment to accentuate individuality?
Blank Disc’s work justify serious consideration: in spite of a relative unfamiliarity, their artistic vision leads to states of indispensable pureness that many “names” just dream about.
Monday, 2 February 2009
A Pair Of Clean Feed(s)
Life Between marks my very first meeting with the music of Angelica Sanchez, a pianist (doubling on Wurlitzer), composer and the consort of saxophonist Tony Malaby, the latter's tasteful approach to a clever type of erudite interplay also featured here. The quintet is completed by guitarist Marc Ducret, double bassist Drew Gress and drummer Tom Rainey. Sanchez's writing tends to harmonic indeterminacy, permanent tonal centres practically absent or extremely blurred. Her itineraries on the keyboard, at all times informed by a sense of moderation that prevents the essential idea from going off course, are by some means redolent of certain moods of improvised jazz-rock of the 70's (I'm especially thinking of an album called Jaco on the IAI label, a free quartet with then-puppies Pastorius and Pat Metheny aided by Bruce Ditmas and Paul Bley). Despite several touches of apparent contrapuntal turmoil themes are indubitably present, often stubbornly affirmed in between series of hardly committable-to-memory transitions, but the overall wisdom is explicated through self-directed restraint by the partakers, regardless of Ducret's attempts to spice the whole with a few intrusions whose discordantly unkind temperament sounds perfectly complementary to the complex cuteness of the leader's tunes. Gress and Rainey are evidently at ease in the generally not-too-nervous vibe, repeatedly taking centre stage almost unobserved to deliver the playing from any residue of schematic pachyderm-ism. To all intents and purposes, this is a well-designed record which definitely elicits gratification, although not really an innovative statement. But that’s not always a must.
Hufflignon is the result produced by a group led by Canadian saxophonist Peter Van Huffel and Belgian vocalist Sophie Tassignon flanked by trombonist Samuel Blaser and bassist Michael Bates. Van Huffel, in this instance on alto and soprano, is the owner of a sophisticated technique and a suavely faultless tone that Tassignon is all too eager to stimulate in scores including problematic dissonant lines that the couple approaches either in unison or in intertwining keenness. She doesn't possess what one might define an immediately identifiable timbre, but is technically unyielding and, what's best, tending to set the vocal parts at the service of the compositions instead of doing what the large part of jazz singers do, namely looking for sunny spots where worn out bebop trickery rapidly drowns the listener in thick tediousness. Blaser's stout phrasing, in addition to his purposeful soloism, shifts the axis of the pieces towards more eccentric environments at times, while Bates' bass is genuinely reactive to the changes in the general perspective, certifying the functionality of the quartet under any condition (never overly extreme, though). Except for a rendition of Antonio Vivaldi's "Cum Dederit" which smells a bit of filling material (let me admit it – he’s not a composer I particularly love), the record reveals interesting manners for voice and reeds to work side by side in such a kind of framework. In spite of a not excessive degree of audacity in devising truly pioneering strategies, it constitutes a pretty convincing option against the abundance of rather irrelevant voice-based jazz recordings.
Clean Feed
Hufflignon is the result produced by a group led by Canadian saxophonist Peter Van Huffel and Belgian vocalist Sophie Tassignon flanked by trombonist Samuel Blaser and bassist Michael Bates. Van Huffel, in this instance on alto and soprano, is the owner of a sophisticated technique and a suavely faultless tone that Tassignon is all too eager to stimulate in scores including problematic dissonant lines that the couple approaches either in unison or in intertwining keenness. She doesn't possess what one might define an immediately identifiable timbre, but is technically unyielding and, what's best, tending to set the vocal parts at the service of the compositions instead of doing what the large part of jazz singers do, namely looking for sunny spots where worn out bebop trickery rapidly drowns the listener in thick tediousness. Blaser's stout phrasing, in addition to his purposeful soloism, shifts the axis of the pieces towards more eccentric environments at times, while Bates' bass is genuinely reactive to the changes in the general perspective, certifying the functionality of the quartet under any condition (never overly extreme, though). Except for a rendition of Antonio Vivaldi's "Cum Dederit" which smells a bit of filling material (let me admit it – he’s not a composer I particularly love), the record reveals interesting manners for voice and reeds to work side by side in such a kind of framework. In spite of a not excessive degree of audacity in devising truly pioneering strategies, it constitutes a pretty convincing option against the abundance of rather irrelevant voice-based jazz recordings.
Clean Feed
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