Do I really need to write something about ESP? Let me shut up and start spinning the CDs, which in this case were released between November 2008 and February 2009. Learning history while discovering something new is always an excellent practice to avoid mental stillness. Thanks to Fumi Tomita for his kindness and patience.
PAUL BLEY QUINTET – Barrage
Talk about a necessary reissue, although this particular album has already been re-released several times. This is one of those items which teachers should play in the classroom when the children are 10 or so, in order to immediately determine the survival of the fittest. Six tracks, all penned by Carla Bley, interpreted with passionate fire by a wordlessly schizophrenic, Coleman-influenced Paul Bley with Marshall Allen (alto sax), Dewey Johnson (trumpet), Eddie Gomez (bass) and Milford Graves (percussion), 28 minutes (!) of restless fighting centred around rapidly sketched themes, all revolving around a furious tortuousness except “And Now The Queen” (curiously recalling the incipit of “La Vie En Rose”), where commitment and sabotage appear as interchangeable elements of a jazz that sounds as fresh as youthful exuberance. Allen’s solos pierce my left ear in the headphones, distinctly panned on that side of the mix. Johnson’s perseveration in bursting out with ill-tempered chattering is a spectacle in itself, his conversational attitude with the others in “Around Again” the highest point of the album. Bley’s lurking mastery doesn’t need that incandescence, though: he sounds educated and well-mannered even during the harshest quarrels, apparently disconnected flurries and slanted chords making all the sense in the world. Gomez and Graves sustain and enhance the discussion, showing the virulent side of a rhythm section’s self-government without exaggeratedly affecting an already dangerous environment. Fabulous stuff.
YXIMALLOO – Unpop
There’s a whole conceptual investigation - explained in detailed liners by Momus – behind Japanese sound artist Yximalloo and this particular release, which would be too long to report in the context of a review. Got to throw a couple of names, though: Residents and Renaldo And The Loaf. In a word, this writer was reminded of Ralph Records – remember that label? – and relative derivates, with a laptop-ish aroma permeating the 68 minutes of the disc. Speaking of which, the music at large is attractively unpredictable, halfway through a demented kind of rambling lo-fi charm and an entire world of carefully constructed mechanisms between the biotic and the impassibly detached, with predisposition to a mechanized kind of sublimely idiotic intricacy. With his hypercritical disclosures of inadequateness, this man – an erstwhile “friend” of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Yellow Magic Orchestra – attempts, not always successfully, to transmute antediluvian evidences of repulsive synthetic pleasures into a well-composed patchwork of problematic breaks and arrhythmic injunctions. Appropriate for devotees and tolerant listeners only, yet significant in a singular way: this is the third consecutive spin, and I’m starting to comprehend. Maybe.
ALAN SONDHEIM – Ritual-All-7-70
An improvisation jubilee from 1967 featuring Sondheim on an array of regular and exotic instruments plus Ruth Ann Hutchinson, Chris Mattheson, Barry Sugarman, J.P. and Robert Poholek. As the nominal leader writes, “only Western man walks in two-for time”; that tells a lot about the totally unconstructed nature of this album, which could be considered an intellectually old-fashioned exercise in hypothetical liberty on a side, a demonstration of unqualified transparency on the other. The intimate character of a few of these pieces is a good starting point for an appreciation of sorts, as one clearly feels the flowing of passion and sense of autonomy animating Sondheim in a track like “ 779” for solo koto (or “actually a 16-string ch’in”, as he himself emphasizes). We can even smile in patient comprehension when fronting certain peculiar misrepresentations of tentative free jazz nearer to psychobabble than “oh-so-avantgarde” lack of restrictions, or in the absurd juxtapositions of Hawaiian guitar, trumpet, bass, drums and tabla of “781” – exotica meets psychosis indeed. What remains in our mouth is an aftertaste of archaeological find: this is a conciliatory brand of unrehearsed ingenuity – noticeably symbolized by Hutchinson dated-sounding vocals - that does not manage to excoriate the skin of remembrance and, as such, appears more as an oddity than a veritable piece of art.
BARNACLED – Charles
Named after a goat pictured on the digipack, Charles is an interesting enough offering by a septet hailing from Providence, Rhode Island whose orchestrations include electronics, keyboards, saxophones, bass, percussion, accordion, horn in F, bassoon plus shortwave and “modified Speak & Spell”. Although Barnacled’s music is relatively complex – picture a cross of a punk version of Univers Zero, a violent-looking cousin of Samla Mammas Manna and a few additional RIO influences scattered more or less everywhere – this album was recorded in a single night without overdubs, except for a tiny “embellishment”. The wide-ranging nature of the group is effectively symbolized by the hiccupping noir-tango of “Losing Weight Through Prayer”, a piece where Arabic scales and Henry Cow-ish arrangements meet to give birth to a mixture of incongruous irritations and noteworthy implacability, the whole bordering on a chaotic dilapidation of an otherwise extravagant technical mastery. In “Three Rapid Fire Shell Divisions” the dignity of arrangement is lost in favour of an irrepressible urge for portentous grubbiness. Still, the musicians’ acumen remains evident all across the record, a winsome collection of situations whose sonorities range from lucidly overwrought to woozily abandoned, with a clear tendency to conceptual dissolution as the time elapses.
PATTY WATERS – Sings
A clear work of art, recorded in 1965 but still sounding as bright and significant as one can get, Sings would teach a thing or two to certain supposed virtuoso vocalists of our era through its instantly recognizable purity of intents and, so to speak, shadowy radiance. Famous for a stomach-churning translation of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” (which concludes the album, with Burton Greene, Steve Tintweiss and Tom Price adding pre-apocalypse hues to the singer’s haunting rendition), and a recognized influence on ladies such as Diamanda Galas and Yoko Ono, Patty Waters was able – in a debut release, no less - to pen beguilingly current songs that, in a time span ranging from one to three minutes, speak at the deepest interior levels with the exclusive aid of an undernourished piano counterpoint accompanying the voice – a tone whose apparent fragility reveals instead a force coming from the very guts of an amazingly sensitive (and sensual) woman. And if that voice weren’t enough, Waters should be much esteemed as a composer, too: all the tracks except the above mentioned traditional were written by her, all remarkably beautiful, touchingly suggestive in a really special way with particular mention for “Sad Am I, Glad Am I” and “You Loved Me”, which definitely weaken any residual defence. We can keep throwing names and associations as we please - Nina Simone, Annette Peacock, Joni Mitchell, just vague references for those who still haven’t been subjugated by this artist’s charismatic essence. As a matter of fact Patty Waters is inimitable and this is a top-rank record, regardless of genres and categories.
DON CHERRY – Live At Cafe Montmartre 1966 Volume Three
Sincerely: shouldn’t all good music lovers appreciate ESP for the reissues more than anything else these days? When this writer was only two years old, Don Cherry’s quintet - featuring Gato Barbieri on tenor sax, Karl Berger on vibes, Aldo Romano on drums and Bo Stief on bass – were burning down the house at Copenhagen’s Cafe Montmartre, turning the uninviting sides of free jazz into combinations of barbarous blowouts (got to dig the alter ego version of Barbieri, a bona fide “cultured brute” in several shattering moments of his solos, making us forget about the Latin syrups typical of a wealthier future) and recollections of celebrated themes such as “How Insensitive”. Recklessness and reflection fused in a single package, this broadcast beams of a laissez-faire mindset that nevertheless appears perfectly synchronized to an inherent clock device dictating the ebbs and the flows of the music in a sequence of unintentional epiphanies. Cherry’s trumpet illuminates the path, the man committed to the achieving of a perpetual state of erudite activity; Berger and Romano splash their no-nonsense yet enthusiastic attitude all around, attributing identifiable colours to the tunes. Stief glues the whole in style, unbendable in pumping the pulse and filling the frequency holes in total reliability. Joyous ebullience - needed as oxygen nowadays – spiced with the discriminating musicianship of five greats.
MONTEGO JOE’S HAR-YOU PERCUSSION GROUP – Sounds Of The Ghetto Youth
In accordance with the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited Act, in 1965 conga master Montego Joe gathered a group of artistically gifted young kids from that area with the aim of teaching some of his percussive knowledge, the fundamental intention being to deliver them from at least a part of the trouble caused from growing up in a ghetto renowned for riots and, in general, hard-living conditions. Aged between 16 and 19, the musicians – essentially a nucleus of Afro-Americans and Puerto Ricans – learned fast, so that after a few years of training their professor felt that they were ready for a commercial recording. ESP’s Bernard Stollman and Leonard Parker – director of the HAR-YOU program – decided together with Montego Joe that the money generated from the sales of the album would be used for a scholarship fund. All of this is enough to quantify the socio-political weight of this record, but then there’s the music – an incredibly mature collection of jazz & salsa tunes bathed in African rhythms that predates what we’ve been hearing for decades, from Santana and associates to the tsunami of boredom resulted from the post-Buena Vista era of insertionism. “Oua-Train”, for good measure, adds a touch of Coltranian minimalism (pardon this definition), indicating that the members of this “spiritual family” (as per the leader’s depiction) were more farsighted than smarter peddlers who think that the label “Afro-Cuban” should only be stuck to shaking butts and wearisome formulas. Dance, but never stop thinking.
LEVITTS – We Are The Levitts
A brittle nugget recorded in 1968. A family band born from the lucky discovering of then 13-year old guitarist Sean Levitt performing in Central Park by Alf Troy Garrison, The Levitts revolved around swing vocalist Stella (who had sung with Woody Herman) and her husband Al, a “journeyman jazz drummer” who worked with Lee Konitz among others. Aided by a group of renowned NY session men including Ronnie Cuber (Frank Zappa’s fans might remember him from the Zappa In New York album) and Chick Corea and featuring a whole generational scale of artists down to the quasi-toddler stage, this disc is a useful instrument for looking back at a past made of candid ingenuity and domestic values that will sound ridiculous to the masses of brain-deprived cynical androids walking around, completely absorbed in an iPod-twitch-and-perennial-zap stupidity (or, alternatively, brain-jammed with esoteric convictions designed to “enhance” a pathetic existence). We Are The Levitts ought to be treasured if one has an inch of beating heart left: rather orthodox renditions of Brazilian tunes, children songs (pun not intended) and episodes of slightly-out-of-tune mellifluous romanticism, in union with the perfectly preserved noises of the original’s vinyl, caused yours truly to cogitate about times in which gathering a clutch of relatives and buddies near a piano - or a record player - and singing (or just listening) together was considered a sacred ritual. With a difference: The Levitts were also able to (gently) kick ass when they felt like, always with a little help from their friends. Where we are today parents are kicked and slowly killed for money, properties and other divine law-related questions instead, but that’s another story. Enjoy the CD - it is going to make you heave quite a few sighs.
FLOW TRIO – Rejuvenation
Second release for the trio of Louie Belogenis (tenor sax), Joe Morris (bass) and Charles Downs (drums), the latter formerly known as Rashid Bakr. The artists’ remarkable background is but one of the elements concurring to build an approach to interplay that justifies a clichéd “cosmic” definition, an all-aerials-up communication evident since the very first moments of the initial “Reflection”. In “Pick Up Sticks” we’re the witnesses to recurring series of communal convergences across an invigorating stream of events, chains of constructive affirmations elevating the music to a zone of challenging probing and profound awareness. Belogenis happens to scream bent declarations of revulsion for prejudice, at the same time appearing calmly dedicated to melodically advanced journeying, Downs seams wreaths of interlocking patterns and dazzling rolls, Morris’ unbroken equitableness is hallowed by his conscious attempt of keeping the flame of emphasis alive and burning. “Two Acts” is an enlightened assessment of the relations between space, silence and the wrecked continuums of a free-flowing triple-head extemporization, the musicians looking for correlations and parallelisms while throwing an eye towards the exit door that leads to unhindered autonomy. “Unfolding” sounds like a manifesto against egotism, Belogenis elaborating on fragments of instantaneous literature upon Morris’ sturdily built castle of dissonant bass lines and Downs’ now vulnerable, now robust drumming. The title track, concluding this gorgeous recording, amplifies the perspective of a pragmatic determination which finds its origin in the fundamental heterodoxy characterizing the choices applied by the players. Three reliable navigators of the outermost currents of jazz, a wholeness achieved through different minds functioning as a single apparatus.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Brecht And Hendrix With Strings In A Jazz Club
Vocalist and composer Sophie Dunér – pronounced “do near” – was lovely enough to send a couple of recent releases which I listened to with dutiful interest, given the proverbial unawareness that had prevented my summit with her music to date. This Swedish girl - also a fine painter - might not be flying at superstardom altitudes, yet thick substance and a distinct personality, which distance her from the gazillions of clones infecting this genre, are present in several of these pieces. Going through Sophie’s website, one is linked to a photo in company of none other than Karlheinz Stockhausen - not exactly what one would associate torch-singing to.
Genre, you ask. The City Of My Dreams – a self produced CD – is credited to “The Sophie Dunér String Quartet” and is indeed precisely that: a collection of tunes arranged for voice and strings, running a whole gamut of often unexpected eventualities while showing the influence of theatrical recitals for its large part. Dunér is not afraid of attempting difficult ranges, and in a track such as “Happy People” or “Why” she strives for us to receive the message right (the lyrics are frequently ironic and overall funny) more than caring about technical over-perfectionism. This is appreciable, especially in virtue of the peculiar arrangements and temperaments of the strings, accompanying the renditions with intelligibly discordant counterpoints and Purple Haze-ish cadenzas (“Hey Doctor”), Balanescu meets “Moon Of Alabama” if you get my point. Don’t know why, but “Jack The Ripper” brought to mind reminiscences of Marc Hollander’s Aksak Maboul in its odd-metre walking; instead, “It’s Been Too Long” mixes spicy inharmoniousness and a very lyrical melody to destabilize us in utter absence of fake cordiality. “Silent Revolution” could turn into a million-copy hit if sold to some horribly “soulful” pop singer, but this version – vivid lines of metamorphic counterpoint caressing Sophie’s voce with restrained severity – is wonderful as it is. It only remains to mention the names of the players: Carles Fibla, Emilio Robles, Diego Galaz, Guillermo Martinez, Marina Sorin, Elena Bordevias, Paco Ortega, Silvia Villamor, Hector Rojo, all deserving applause together with arranger (in five tracks) Tony Heimer and sound engineer Javier Lasaosa Fernandez. There’s much to savour in this excellent work, worthy of the utmost attention despite a few fragilities here and there.
The Rain In Spain - released in 2006 on CIMP - is a polite album featuring less deviations from the norm and a number of standards, including “Caravan”, “Lush Life” and “Lonely Woman”. In this case Dunér is accompanied with typical civility (and lack of adventurousness, alas) by guitarist Rory Stuart, bassist Matt Penman and percussionist Kahlil Kwame Bell. What we perceive as almost palpable throughout is the expertise of the musicians, who perform cleanly and specifically, allowing the vocal pitches to remain pertinent to the tune in every circumstance, never exacerbating the listener’s patience with excessively stretched solos. Still, this is a category of jazz where coming out with something original is a gargantuan task – not that the principal intended to break any rule, I believe – and managing to once again welcome yellowed evergreens (pun definitely intended) has become next to impossible for this writer. That's not to say that the record is bad, quite the contrary – it’s properly interpreted and particularly urbane – but if you want to enjoy the real essence of this lady from the North, go for The City Of My Dreams, a point of departure that promises and transmits better things than this assortment of largely emotionless candlelit scenes.
Genre, you ask. The City Of My Dreams – a self produced CD – is credited to “The Sophie Dunér String Quartet” and is indeed precisely that: a collection of tunes arranged for voice and strings, running a whole gamut of often unexpected eventualities while showing the influence of theatrical recitals for its large part. Dunér is not afraid of attempting difficult ranges, and in a track such as “Happy People” or “Why” she strives for us to receive the message right (the lyrics are frequently ironic and overall funny) more than caring about technical over-perfectionism. This is appreciable, especially in virtue of the peculiar arrangements and temperaments of the strings, accompanying the renditions with intelligibly discordant counterpoints and Purple Haze-ish cadenzas (“Hey Doctor”), Balanescu meets “Moon Of Alabama” if you get my point. Don’t know why, but “Jack The Ripper” brought to mind reminiscences of Marc Hollander’s Aksak Maboul in its odd-metre walking; instead, “It’s Been Too Long” mixes spicy inharmoniousness and a very lyrical melody to destabilize us in utter absence of fake cordiality. “Silent Revolution” could turn into a million-copy hit if sold to some horribly “soulful” pop singer, but this version – vivid lines of metamorphic counterpoint caressing Sophie’s voce with restrained severity – is wonderful as it is. It only remains to mention the names of the players: Carles Fibla, Emilio Robles, Diego Galaz, Guillermo Martinez, Marina Sorin, Elena Bordevias, Paco Ortega, Silvia Villamor, Hector Rojo, all deserving applause together with arranger (in five tracks) Tony Heimer and sound engineer Javier Lasaosa Fernandez. There’s much to savour in this excellent work, worthy of the utmost attention despite a few fragilities here and there.
The Rain In Spain - released in 2006 on CIMP - is a polite album featuring less deviations from the norm and a number of standards, including “Caravan”, “Lush Life” and “Lonely Woman”. In this case Dunér is accompanied with typical civility (and lack of adventurousness, alas) by guitarist Rory Stuart, bassist Matt Penman and percussionist Kahlil Kwame Bell. What we perceive as almost palpable throughout is the expertise of the musicians, who perform cleanly and specifically, allowing the vocal pitches to remain pertinent to the tune in every circumstance, never exacerbating the listener’s patience with excessively stretched solos. Still, this is a category of jazz where coming out with something original is a gargantuan task – not that the principal intended to break any rule, I believe – and managing to once again welcome yellowed evergreens (pun definitely intended) has become next to impossible for this writer. That's not to say that the record is bad, quite the contrary – it’s properly interpreted and particularly urbane – but if you want to enjoy the real essence of this lady from the North, go for The City Of My Dreams, a point of departure that promises and transmits better things than this assortment of largely emotionless candlelit scenes.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Minus Pilots – Superior Proof Of Cinema
From Panic Arrest – a label run by vinyl enthusiasts – comes a finely designed album (both musically and graphically) by the previously-unknown-to-this-writer Minus Pilots, entirely made with “electric basses, various looping devices, ageing cassette tape recorders and a collection of analogue, vintage, digital and custom effect pedals”. Let me start with the reformulation, with different intentions, of the same question posed on the label’s info sheet - “Why vinyl?” – to once more point the finger at clicks, pops and every kind of imaginable noise for having ruined an otherwise marvellous listening experience. There is indeed some degree of fascination in spinning LPs and sniffing gatefold covers – I grew up with this sort of erotic rituals - yet this material needs a compact disc like a fish necessitates of water.
Quietly spellbinding cascades of superimposed arpeggios whose harmonic auras tend to a natural stratification accompany us with lulling delicateness, diffusing their old-fashioned perfume across the room (and making my wife fall asleep in the meantime). The melancholic remembrances typical of a unenthusiastic Sunday afternoon come out little by little, the caressing simplicity of the music perfect for a few minutes of intense reflection about what the upcoming week is going to bring (additional futile words from lacklustre individuals as usual, no doubt). It’s all here, the tracks succeeding similarly one after another, the infinite repeats immersed in a blur of low fidelity. And we love it as it is. Great stuff but next time – please – send me also a clean version of the master if possible. Better still, send me NOW a CDR of THIS master, or reissue it digitally (then I’ll even pardon the addressing of the promo to “Massimo Rocci”…). Scratches might not blemish Quicksilver Messenger Service or Dixieland, but Superior Proof Of Cinema deserves a spotless format.
STOP PRESS 3/23/2009 - ERRATA CORRIGE (AKA "MASSIMO ROCCI IS AN IDIOT"):
Just in by Adam at Panic Arrest:
"...the crackle isn't due to poor vinyl quality - it's actually the crackle picked up through the recording processs Minus Pilots use. It could have been reduced during the master but the Pilots (and us) liked it."
There you go. Retirement time, perhaps.
Quietly spellbinding cascades of superimposed arpeggios whose harmonic auras tend to a natural stratification accompany us with lulling delicateness, diffusing their old-fashioned perfume across the room (and making my wife fall asleep in the meantime). The melancholic remembrances typical of a unenthusiastic Sunday afternoon come out little by little, the caressing simplicity of the music perfect for a few minutes of intense reflection about what the upcoming week is going to bring (additional futile words from lacklustre individuals as usual, no doubt). It’s all here, the tracks succeeding similarly one after another, the infinite repeats immersed in a blur of low fidelity. And we love it as it is. Great stuff but next time – please – send me also a clean version of the master if possible. Better still, send me NOW a CDR of THIS master, or reissue it digitally (then I’ll even pardon the addressing of the promo to “Massimo Rocci”…). Scratches might not blemish Quicksilver Messenger Service or Dixieland, but Superior Proof Of Cinema deserves a spotless format.
STOP PRESS 3/23/2009 - ERRATA CORRIGE (AKA "MASSIMO ROCCI IS AN IDIOT"):
Just in by Adam at Panic Arrest:
"...the crackle isn't due to poor vinyl quality - it's actually the crackle picked up through the recording processs Minus Pilots use. It could have been reduced during the master but the Pilots (and us) liked it."
There you go. Retirement time, perhaps.
A New Soundtrack By Bernardo Sassetti
Published by Trem Azul, the newest release by Bernardo Sassetti (a personal hero of late) is a soundtrack to Mário Barroso’s Um Amor De Perdição. I can’t tell you anything about the movie – I just managed to find the time to watch the hard-to-get DVD of Marco Martins’ Alice, whose commentary constitutes one of Bernardo’s absolute masterpieces together with the film itself – but the music reflects, as usual, that kind of indefinable spirit which aliments the most poignant orchestral works, an unpolluted poetry comparable to the imagery of a world discovered by perceptive children, their eyes wide open, their soul ready to be affected by an unexpected turn of events or, if you will, a harmonic passage which sounds regal and touching at once.
A knowledgeable use of the instrumental capabilities of the Sinfonietta De Lisboa, the non-invasive presence of reciting female voices (including Sassetti’s partner Beatriz Batarda) and the emblematic awareness demonstrated by the Portuguese composer throughout the course of his career do the rest, once again achieving the aim of sticking the listener to the seat in attentive response to an unremitting progression of scenarios: dramatic to delicate, surprising to obvious, and even the “obvious” appears magnificently delivered. This artist’s name might be relatively unfamiliar in proportion to an undeniable talent yet one wonders if sometimes it’s better that way, similarly to those well-kept secrets we don’t want to share, afraid of ordinary people not understanding the real value of something perceived as essential.
A knowledgeable use of the instrumental capabilities of the Sinfonietta De Lisboa, the non-invasive presence of reciting female voices (including Sassetti’s partner Beatriz Batarda) and the emblematic awareness demonstrated by the Portuguese composer throughout the course of his career do the rest, once again achieving the aim of sticking the listener to the seat in attentive response to an unremitting progression of scenarios: dramatic to delicate, surprising to obvious, and even the “obvious” appears magnificently delivered. This artist’s name might be relatively unfamiliar in proportion to an undeniable talent yet one wonders if sometimes it’s better that way, similarly to those well-kept secrets we don’t want to share, afraid of ordinary people not understanding the real value of something perceived as essential.
Vinyl Department: Isounderscore
AEMAE & ARASTOO – Ostrakon
LP-sized, EP timed release (22’53” total). Collaboration between Brandon Nickell aka AEMAE and Arastoo Darakhshan, pretty different from their previous solo outings on this very label. The first side finds the latter artist playing romantic piano figures throughout, suggestive reverberations enhanced by an intelligent use of synthesis, adding a few layers of depth and spacey resonance to an otherwise simple (…too simple?) concept. Not exactly eliciting gasps of admiration, but quite pleasing overall. The second part sounds instantly more mysterious, vapours of opaque amorphousness diffusing their influence across the room for a slightly post-industrial atmosphere, which I definitely prefer (although we’re certainly not talking about groundbreaking sonorities), then the piano enters the frame again with echoing arpeggios, somewhat enigmatic. Unfortunately, long segments of my promo copy were systematically ruined by clearly audible defects of the vinyl: pops and distortion a go-go, too bad. A reissue in CD is unquestionably desirable.
MALEFICIA – Maleficia
Debut album by a drone-noise duo from Oakland, California consisting of Ilysea Sunderman (vocals, viola) and Andy Way (electronics). The formula on “Making” is quite straightforward: reverb-drenched prayers for lamenting voice and almost inaudible, yet existing (and decisively contributing to the timbral muscle) viola in parallel with a gradually growing wall of distant-sounding turbulence, more of the roar-and-rumble kind than out-blasting or otherwise chaotic. A semi-controlled racket, so to speak. My preference goes to the second side titled “Remaking”, Sunderman’s tones a little brighter in the mix as Way proceeds to destroy whatever arises in front of his machines with devastating outbursts of electronic wind and moaning reminiscences of some sort of long-gone creature from ancient eras, then suddenly stops and contemplates the results while the chants continue, at times mesmerizingly. The not excessive duration – 33 minutes total – is a clever choice, as one remembers better the haunting parts as opposed to the (scarce, in truth) duller ones.
ATA EBTEKAR & THE IRANIAN ORCHESTRA FOR NEW MUSIC – Ornamental
This is a double LP, even if relatively short at 51 minutes. Ebtekar is also known as Sote, whose Dastgaah on Dielectric in 2006 had left me totally unimpressed. Here we’re offered another type of concept, more attention-grabbing and nicely speckled, as the music was generated after three years of collaboration with renowned Iranian composer Alireza Mashayekhi, who gave the green light to Ebtekar in order for him to alter his compositions via complex arrangements involving synthetic treatments and studio manipulations. Although the results vary in terms of psycho-emotional response to the sounds, there is an unbelievably heterogeneous assortment of settings ranging from seriously misshapen specimens of processed orchestral emanations to out-and-out abstractions based on smudgy electronics and dysfunctional pitches where one might even manage to recognize the sources yet keeps feeling like undergoing reiterated aural hallucinations. A curiosity rather than a masterpiece, Ornamental remains an acceptable product, ultimately offering a few moments of genuine puzzlement together with a couple of gimcrack episodes that, preposterously, add to the captivating incongruity of the release.
Isounderscore
LP-sized, EP timed release (22’53” total). Collaboration between Brandon Nickell aka AEMAE and Arastoo Darakhshan, pretty different from their previous solo outings on this very label. The first side finds the latter artist playing romantic piano figures throughout, suggestive reverberations enhanced by an intelligent use of synthesis, adding a few layers of depth and spacey resonance to an otherwise simple (…too simple?) concept. Not exactly eliciting gasps of admiration, but quite pleasing overall. The second part sounds instantly more mysterious, vapours of opaque amorphousness diffusing their influence across the room for a slightly post-industrial atmosphere, which I definitely prefer (although we’re certainly not talking about groundbreaking sonorities), then the piano enters the frame again with echoing arpeggios, somewhat enigmatic. Unfortunately, long segments of my promo copy were systematically ruined by clearly audible defects of the vinyl: pops and distortion a go-go, too bad. A reissue in CD is unquestionably desirable.
MALEFICIA – Maleficia
Debut album by a drone-noise duo from Oakland, California consisting of Ilysea Sunderman (vocals, viola) and Andy Way (electronics). The formula on “Making” is quite straightforward: reverb-drenched prayers for lamenting voice and almost inaudible, yet existing (and decisively contributing to the timbral muscle) viola in parallel with a gradually growing wall of distant-sounding turbulence, more of the roar-and-rumble kind than out-blasting or otherwise chaotic. A semi-controlled racket, so to speak. My preference goes to the second side titled “Remaking”, Sunderman’s tones a little brighter in the mix as Way proceeds to destroy whatever arises in front of his machines with devastating outbursts of electronic wind and moaning reminiscences of some sort of long-gone creature from ancient eras, then suddenly stops and contemplates the results while the chants continue, at times mesmerizingly. The not excessive duration – 33 minutes total – is a clever choice, as one remembers better the haunting parts as opposed to the (scarce, in truth) duller ones.
ATA EBTEKAR & THE IRANIAN ORCHESTRA FOR NEW MUSIC – Ornamental
This is a double LP, even if relatively short at 51 minutes. Ebtekar is also known as Sote, whose Dastgaah on Dielectric in 2006 had left me totally unimpressed. Here we’re offered another type of concept, more attention-grabbing and nicely speckled, as the music was generated after three years of collaboration with renowned Iranian composer Alireza Mashayekhi, who gave the green light to Ebtekar in order for him to alter his compositions via complex arrangements involving synthetic treatments and studio manipulations. Although the results vary in terms of psycho-emotional response to the sounds, there is an unbelievably heterogeneous assortment of settings ranging from seriously misshapen specimens of processed orchestral emanations to out-and-out abstractions based on smudgy electronics and dysfunctional pitches where one might even manage to recognize the sources yet keeps feeling like undergoing reiterated aural hallucinations. A curiosity rather than a masterpiece, Ornamental remains an acceptable product, ultimately offering a few moments of genuine puzzlement together with a couple of gimcrack episodes that, preposterously, add to the captivating incongruity of the release.
Isounderscore
A Slow RIP
In the summer of 2008 Australian label Endgame published For The Time Being, a 2-CD compilation by a trio “from the Northern beaches of Wollongong” named A Slow RIP, the last word an acronym for R(ob) Laurie, I(an) Miles and (P)hil Turnbull. These gentlemen, who definitely don’t look like snotty kids on the press release photos, express themselves through a whole array of instruments including guitars, bass, percussion, analogue synthesizers, winds and a few vocalizations. They have been releasing quite a number of self-made CDRs over the years, from which the best tracks for this set were selected. Except for a couple of episodes overly tending to a kind of noisy psychedelia that conclude the first disc and sound positively second-rate, the experience of going through the entire set was mostly enjoyable. Avoiding the help of MIDI or any other electronic facilitation, ASR are heavily into stratifications of echoing resonances, arcane repetitiveness, revelatory ceremonials for jangling guitars and hypnotic keyboards; blurred terms of reference could be Pink Floyd circa A Saucerful Of Secrets, Djam Karet, early Aidan Baker, early Philip Glass and a chunky list of German cosmic couriers, with particular relevance to Ash Ra Tempel. Considering the great diversity of the artists’ backgrounds (all multi-instrumentalist protagonists of the Australian alternative scene, from experimental jazz to post-punk), the record is surprisingly coherent with a poetry of the non-attack, a pleasurable journey indeed. Recommended for those who still like their dose of lysergic trance in the middle of an otherwise regular evening: certain chapters – “The Freeway Temple” and “Look Back” come to mind – are alone worth the price of admission.
Thomas Lehn & Marcus Schmickler
A pair of rather diverse outings – on the same label, A-Musik – from Köln’s Lehn and Schmickler, who seem to be totally oblivious to what happens around as they start manipulating synthesizers (analogue the former, digital the latter) and, especially, make us fail to remember not only a propos of daily life’s humdrum, but also what occurred thirty seconds before. Such is the abstract disorientation generated by their teamwork that trying to get to grips with this type of aesthetic certainly doesn’t come easy, despite the predictable “what-you’re-talking-about-Willis?” facial stances by the connoisseurs.
Navigation Im Hypertext is a record that, at first, will stir up those who love to turn the knobs of every instrument in a music shop, then is probably going to terrorize them (plus close relatives) with its absolutely high degree of unfriendliness (then again, do people who listen to this kind of records have a family anyway?) Regardless of the extreme levels of aural bombardment and – although infrequent - unsolvable motionlessness, this CD reveals a thorough consideration for an acceptable consecutiveness of events and a sense of (ahem) space: not in the sci-fi acceptation of the term, but in the “sound-silence-new sound” meaning. The artists’ clairvoyance is explicated by chains of supernatural jumbles and last-ditch galactic discontinuities, without the slightest chance of memorizing even a single waveform coming by those machines. This stuff – “tranquil” parts included, and there are many – hurts our awareness viciously, sounding seriously conceived throughout. Suitable as a detached commentary on the collapse of human efforts and illusions.
If you crave real hot blood, then Kölner Kranz (a vinyl LP) is the right choice to be made if one doesn’t want the twin set. Had you managed to find rare moments of relief in the previous outing, this album is imbued of pure sonic guerrilla - a veritable mugging of the ears (let me be perfectly clear with the non-experts: careful to the volume levels when listening via headphones, in both cases. Synths emit frequencies that prick the membranes quite acutely). Incessantly violent outbursts of loud stridencies and repeated consecrations at the altar of discordant harmonics certify, once and for all, that Lehn and Schmickler are not going to accept any measure of compromise, and that those who manage to swallow these releases in succession are worthy of my utmost respect.
Two important chapters in the updated book on the art of nonfigurative noise, obvious must-haves for both artists’ supporters.
Navigation Im Hypertext is a record that, at first, will stir up those who love to turn the knobs of every instrument in a music shop, then is probably going to terrorize them (plus close relatives) with its absolutely high degree of unfriendliness (then again, do people who listen to this kind of records have a family anyway?) Regardless of the extreme levels of aural bombardment and – although infrequent - unsolvable motionlessness, this CD reveals a thorough consideration for an acceptable consecutiveness of events and a sense of (ahem) space: not in the sci-fi acceptation of the term, but in the “sound-silence-new sound” meaning. The artists’ clairvoyance is explicated by chains of supernatural jumbles and last-ditch galactic discontinuities, without the slightest chance of memorizing even a single waveform coming by those machines. This stuff – “tranquil” parts included, and there are many – hurts our awareness viciously, sounding seriously conceived throughout. Suitable as a detached commentary on the collapse of human efforts and illusions.
If you crave real hot blood, then Kölner Kranz (a vinyl LP) is the right choice to be made if one doesn’t want the twin set. Had you managed to find rare moments of relief in the previous outing, this album is imbued of pure sonic guerrilla - a veritable mugging of the ears (let me be perfectly clear with the non-experts: careful to the volume levels when listening via headphones, in both cases. Synths emit frequencies that prick the membranes quite acutely). Incessantly violent outbursts of loud stridencies and repeated consecrations at the altar of discordant harmonics certify, once and for all, that Lehn and Schmickler are not going to accept any measure of compromise, and that those who manage to swallow these releases in succession are worthy of my utmost respect.
Two important chapters in the updated book on the art of nonfigurative noise, obvious must-haves for both artists’ supporters.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Trying Not To Drown Amidst Creative Sources Releases
Although we have never met in person (but it’s not too late), Ernesto Rodrigues and myself share a silent alliance since the very beginning of our reciprocal enterprises, as he’s always been at the forefront of the thousands who were fooled by copious doses of purple prose hiding a total lack of insightfulness. Creative Sources remains one of the top labels of improvisation around, despite 1) constant criticism by people who don’t actually listen to the music and 2) a sometimes overly egalitarian approach in terms of quality control. Isolated scribblers are perennially submerged by records, thus I am in long delay with the recent releases by Ernie’s imprint. Let’s try and fight back in order not to be counted out by the referee while absorbing fusillades of blows to the ears.
JACOB WICK / ANDREW GREENWALD – 37:55
A trumpet (Wick) and percussion (Greenwald) duo; don’t recall having heard other music from these two but I might be wrong. Classic CS release, a study in the pneumatic exploration of conduits as opposed to the subtle crackling of objects inserted in a percussive kit and expertly manipulated. Good recording quality, very detailed sound (especially by headphone). Wet (h/k)isses, sucking and popping against scraping, brushing and rubbing (and some eruptive drum outburst, such as a considerable fraction of the third track). Never in a frenzy yet apparently aroused sometimes, the musicians chart their path across the genre’s obvious references with a degree of class and reciprocal attentiveness, thus producing an artefact that’s much more listenable and significant than several hypothetical musts from Zen-ish labels and artists whose subordination to expectancy – even in a theoretically enlightened mindset - makes me vomit.
PEDRO REBELO / FRANZISKA SCHROEDER / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / ERNESTO RODRIGUES – May There Be…
Piano, soprano sax, cello and violin. Great album: an assortment of moods and dynamics changing from track to track, a tendency to utilize the extremities of the instruments while maintaining a distinct chamber flavor. The Rodrigueses are concerned with making the strings sound as a marble-cutting machine one moment, a chain of delicate whispers the next. Rebelo can handle different kinds of timbral duty – inside and outside the piano frame - with ease, in certain circumstances (“…Stillness”) approaching a pseudo-romanticism of sorts. Schroeder is the most unobtrusive voice, an almost spiritual rather than instrumental participation, but her absence is noticed as soon as we realize. Impressive ensemble work in the static dissonance of “…Tension”, and an overall sense of control on the directions that the music, even if instantaneously generated, should take. Harmonically fragile yet percussively emphatic in several episodes, this material sounds like having been somewhat planned in advance, possessing a kind of implicit contrapuntal substratum that renders the listening experience even more gratifying.
ARG – Animali
The correct title should be written ANIMAli, a cross of “soul” and “animals” in Italian. This document finds its origin in a namesake musical theatre opera, based on “gestures and voices from Julio Cortazar’s “Rayuela”, whose soundtrack (here contained) was composed by Graziano Lella, alias ARG. I was left neither terribly disappointed nor howling with pleasure after listening to the CD, comprising a nine-movement acousmatic piece with a variety of interesting episodes (my preference going to nocturnal landscapes and ice-cold tampering of unspecified sources), a considerable amount of speaking entities (in truth, not always a welcomed presence) and states of affairs already experienced in myriads of similar electroacoustic adventures. What’s commendable is Lella’s attempt to circumstantiate the music more conscientiously than concrete-sound latecomers usually do; there are many who believe that wandering around the neighborhood with a portable recorder is enough to be authorized to release a record of field-bullshiting, and ARG luckily seems to try and distance himself from this canon. On the other hand there’s also a definite sense of irresolution in some segments - principally deriving from the lack of a valid architectural concept underneath - causing our absorption to dwindle a little bit. Perhaps this material works better while watching the stage performance; in any case, the good marks exceed the bad ones.
LUCA MAURI – Between Love And Hate
Possibly (and partially) influenced by Aidan Baker and, just maybe, Peter Wright, Mauri utilizes looped guitars plus selected drum parts to concoct five tracks that sound normal at first, perturbed after a while, infuriated at one point, engaging throughout. Every trick of the trade is put at work: dappled resonances, stratified jangling, overdriven nervousness, slight detuning, transgendered arpeggios where discordant lines and straightforward melodies fight for a place in the sun, the result a nice mess of contrasting sensations. “Pulse/Loop” introduces a welcome rhythmic factor underlying mucky reiterations and semi-industrial echoes tarnishing an otherwise ordinary sequence, yet this limited compositional allure is exactly what constitutes its strength. “Choke” and the splendid, conclusive “All That Remains” touch on aspects of guitar-based entrancement that will satisfy the many fans of the genre, but Mauri does possess a personality of his own, a kind of humbleness which I couldn’t really explain but is clearly felt. Lacking the disproportionate ambition and inane affectation typical of the majority of his compatriots, this is in my opinion the most honest music released by an Italian on Creative Sources to date.
DUE – Few And Far Between
“Due” means “two” in Italian, but Susann Wehrli (flutes, melodica) and Karin Ernst (laptop, live electronics) hail from Switzerland. Thirteen improvisations whose structure is instantly visible: Wehrli suggests, Ernst manipulates, both thoroughly respecting each other’s designs and instant modifications. Intelligible ideas abound throughout, the real-time processing applied with a stroke of moderation and, in a way, childish candour so that the music preserves a sort of leprechaun-ish temperament in definite moments (check, for instance, the fourth episode to better understand). A captivating alternance of chiaroscuro-tinged sonic environments and uncertain metamorphoses, never transcending the limits of good taste. These girls seem to share a penchant for gracefulness: their attitude stands poles apart from the glacial standards followed by the large part of computer artists, permeated as it is with humanity, sense of humour and a much appreciated pinch of innocence. A gathering of bits and pieces that results as quite likeable, provided that we don’t expect the new Ten Commandments.
JACOB WICK / ANDREW GREENWALD – 37:55
A trumpet (Wick) and percussion (Greenwald) duo; don’t recall having heard other music from these two but I might be wrong. Classic CS release, a study in the pneumatic exploration of conduits as opposed to the subtle crackling of objects inserted in a percussive kit and expertly manipulated. Good recording quality, very detailed sound (especially by headphone). Wet (h/k)isses, sucking and popping against scraping, brushing and rubbing (and some eruptive drum outburst, such as a considerable fraction of the third track). Never in a frenzy yet apparently aroused sometimes, the musicians chart their path across the genre’s obvious references with a degree of class and reciprocal attentiveness, thus producing an artefact that’s much more listenable and significant than several hypothetical musts from Zen-ish labels and artists whose subordination to expectancy – even in a theoretically enlightened mindset - makes me vomit.
PEDRO REBELO / FRANZISKA SCHROEDER / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / ERNESTO RODRIGUES – May There Be…
Piano, soprano sax, cello and violin. Great album: an assortment of moods and dynamics changing from track to track, a tendency to utilize the extremities of the instruments while maintaining a distinct chamber flavor. The Rodrigueses are concerned with making the strings sound as a marble-cutting machine one moment, a chain of delicate whispers the next. Rebelo can handle different kinds of timbral duty – inside and outside the piano frame - with ease, in certain circumstances (“…Stillness”) approaching a pseudo-romanticism of sorts. Schroeder is the most unobtrusive voice, an almost spiritual rather than instrumental participation, but her absence is noticed as soon as we realize. Impressive ensemble work in the static dissonance of “…Tension”, and an overall sense of control on the directions that the music, even if instantaneously generated, should take. Harmonically fragile yet percussively emphatic in several episodes, this material sounds like having been somewhat planned in advance, possessing a kind of implicit contrapuntal substratum that renders the listening experience even more gratifying.
ARG – Animali
The correct title should be written ANIMAli, a cross of “soul” and “animals” in Italian. This document finds its origin in a namesake musical theatre opera, based on “gestures and voices from Julio Cortazar’s “Rayuela”, whose soundtrack (here contained) was composed by Graziano Lella, alias ARG. I was left neither terribly disappointed nor howling with pleasure after listening to the CD, comprising a nine-movement acousmatic piece with a variety of interesting episodes (my preference going to nocturnal landscapes and ice-cold tampering of unspecified sources), a considerable amount of speaking entities (in truth, not always a welcomed presence) and states of affairs already experienced in myriads of similar electroacoustic adventures. What’s commendable is Lella’s attempt to circumstantiate the music more conscientiously than concrete-sound latecomers usually do; there are many who believe that wandering around the neighborhood with a portable recorder is enough to be authorized to release a record of field-bullshiting, and ARG luckily seems to try and distance himself from this canon. On the other hand there’s also a definite sense of irresolution in some segments - principally deriving from the lack of a valid architectural concept underneath - causing our absorption to dwindle a little bit. Perhaps this material works better while watching the stage performance; in any case, the good marks exceed the bad ones.
LUCA MAURI – Between Love And Hate
Possibly (and partially) influenced by Aidan Baker and, just maybe, Peter Wright, Mauri utilizes looped guitars plus selected drum parts to concoct five tracks that sound normal at first, perturbed after a while, infuriated at one point, engaging throughout. Every trick of the trade is put at work: dappled resonances, stratified jangling, overdriven nervousness, slight detuning, transgendered arpeggios where discordant lines and straightforward melodies fight for a place in the sun, the result a nice mess of contrasting sensations. “Pulse/Loop” introduces a welcome rhythmic factor underlying mucky reiterations and semi-industrial echoes tarnishing an otherwise ordinary sequence, yet this limited compositional allure is exactly what constitutes its strength. “Choke” and the splendid, conclusive “All That Remains” touch on aspects of guitar-based entrancement that will satisfy the many fans of the genre, but Mauri does possess a personality of his own, a kind of humbleness which I couldn’t really explain but is clearly felt. Lacking the disproportionate ambition and inane affectation typical of the majority of his compatriots, this is in my opinion the most honest music released by an Italian on Creative Sources to date.
DUE – Few And Far Between
“Due” means “two” in Italian, but Susann Wehrli (flutes, melodica) and Karin Ernst (laptop, live electronics) hail from Switzerland. Thirteen improvisations whose structure is instantly visible: Wehrli suggests, Ernst manipulates, both thoroughly respecting each other’s designs and instant modifications. Intelligible ideas abound throughout, the real-time processing applied with a stroke of moderation and, in a way, childish candour so that the music preserves a sort of leprechaun-ish temperament in definite moments (check, for instance, the fourth episode to better understand). A captivating alternance of chiaroscuro-tinged sonic environments and uncertain metamorphoses, never transcending the limits of good taste. These girls seem to share a penchant for gracefulness: their attitude stands poles apart from the glacial standards followed by the large part of computer artists, permeated as it is with humanity, sense of humour and a much appreciated pinch of innocence. A gathering of bits and pieces that results as quite likeable, provided that we don’t expect the new Ten Commandments.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Roundup Galore, The Beginning: Room40
Hey, these labels keep throwing out goodies by the dozen, so what’s a poor writer to do?
I’ll start my roundup series with Lawrence English’s Room40, but expect more accumulations in the future. (Thanks to Brian Olewnick for unintentionally suggesting this kind of approach to multiple-CD reviewing).
TAYLOR DEUPREE & KENNETH KIRSCHNER – May
A recording from the OFFF Festival in Lisbon dated May 9, 2008 gives both the frame and the title to a CD lasting about 36 minutes, delicately unobtrusive and somewhat melancholic. The set was played by the two artists sitting side by side, a single piano in front of them and laptops switched on, Kirschner dealing with the keys, Deupree with the inside parts of the instrument. The outcome is a fine combination of crystalline taps and melodic reminiscences - in some instance maybe a little too sweet-sounding for my taste but definitely not persistent - over a stratification of looping variegations and poignant shades. I hesitate in calling this music “ambient” – it’s more a stimulation of our nostalgia glands symbolized by a peculiar kind of seraphic sinuousness, with a turn to an ominous greyness at the end. Very nice album, growing with each listen.
ROBBIE AVENAIM – Rhythmic Movement Disorder
This was made with “drums, junk, e-sticks, vibrators, tuned percussion and concrete cutters”. Avenaim has worked with Oren Ambarchi and Keith Rowe, but nothing could have prepared yours truly for this splendid - if too short at 24 minutes - episode of percussive transcendence. The first track, aptly titled “Headbanging”, is quite hyperactive in terms of dynamics, while the remaining three mostly propose crinkly timbres and pulsating annihilations of willpower underscored by a multitude of frequencies that might occasionally sound threatening, yet remain good-tempered enough to exalt luminescent amorphous shapes and further magnify already prominent details. A cross of acousmatic painstakingness and charming spatial resonance, likely to keep your CD player spinning in repeat mode for at least four consecutive times.
DJ OLIVE – Triage
Third instalment in DJ Olive’s “sleeping pills” series after Buoy and Sleep, Triage – originally the soundtrack for an installation at the Whitney Biennale - is most probably the ideal pick as a single taster of the triad. God only knows how much thin-skinned people need these kinds of record in times of growing tensions and repressed anger, so let me tell you: this is just what the doctor should order for nerve-soothing purposes. By following the composer’s instructions as usual (“please listen to it quietly”) we’re immediately and endlessly embraced by successions of stifled aural scenarios where one can barely intuit some sort of harmonic progression gradually drowning in the quicksand of nebulousness. Illustrious guests such as David Watson and Christian Fennesz are listed in the collaborating line-up, yet trying to weigh their contribution would be futile. The stretching of the limits of our semi-wakeful mental territory is what the CD attains without difficulty, placing this work in a hypothetical Hall Of Fame of the post-Eno era. Like looking at a huge aquarium while the brain is fading to black. Utter quietness, possibly at late evening, is a must.
LUC FERRARI – Tuchan-Chantal
For a non-speaker of any given language, understanding a piece entirely articulated in that idiom is obviously a hard task (enter “Massimo Ricci” and “French” here). One can always rely upon the musical qualities of the words, either by considering them elements of the soundscape or plain instruments (René Lussier’s Le Tresor De La Langue being an untouched masterpiece in that sense). Although partially revealed by the explanatory notes, the social implications of this - basically a 41-minute interview of a girl from a small town in Corbières (department of Aude, South-Western France) conducted by Luc and Brunhild Ferrari and interspersed with environmental intrusions and oddly slanted classical guitar interludes – don’t justify a public release. Even more so the resulting “music”, which doesn’t sound as a documentary at all and, at times, is manifestly tedious. Not wanting to appear blasphemous, my feel is that Tuchan-Chantal has very little to add to this great composer’s recorded output; it’s similar to a radio play performed by adolescents and dilettantes, whose best is to be found in the few seconds of silence during the conversations, underlined by cicadas, buzzing flies and faraway vehicles.
ASHER – Landscape Studies
A work born from Asher’s customary interest in creating “recordings which have the unique characteristics of a particular room or space which only exists in the context of that recording”, Landscape Studies is probably the less unfathomable – but still entrancing - among this composer’s releases. The instantly noticeable new ingredient is the use of repetitive synthetic waves whose ebb and flow influences the music deeply, thus pushing the whole nearer to Installation Land than usual. Listen carefully enough, though, and you’ll recapture the Bostonian’s distinctive external undercurrents blemishing an otherwise flawless geometry, a timid reassurance of sorts against the dangers of excessive consonance. This notwithstanding, the electronic factor remains primary in the mix, so that these pieces are likely to be (superficially) associated to the world of ambient instead of being scrutinized as the “studies” of internal environments that their originator had in mind.
I8U – 10-33 cm
Described by the press release as a “compelling meditation on the nature of sound in time”, this work by Canadian France Jobin was conceived by taking into account the “theoretical size of the strings that makes up the universe”. The impression is mainly one of morphing resonance, like someone manoeuvring an equalizer while a sequence of consecutive drones is unfolding. A chain of pretty static visions, some of them in fact engrossing, rarely presenting truly shocking elements yet effective, at least in spurts. Still, the compositional effort doesn’t appear extreme; this will probably determine a filing in the jam-packed folders of “good but not really memorable” near-minimalism, with the exception of “String 6” and “String 7”, whose impressive bottomless rumbles and subsonic purrs are something to be heard. Dulcis in fundo, indeed.
VARIOUS ARTISTS – Audible Geography
A collection of 11 tracks, theoretically responding to “the shifting and expanding field of geography” while “providing insights into our relations with space and place”. The featured geographers are Eric La Casa, Stephen Vitiello, Lee Patterson, Asher, Jeph Jerman, Toshiya Tsunoda, Philip Samartzis, Marc Behrens, James Webb, Andrea Polli and Francisco López. In actual fact, this is yet another gathering of urban and/or rural aural landscapes - untreated or manipulated - ranging from nearly obvious (but well made nonetheless) to awesome (“Dundee Law” by La Casa, “General Electric” by Samartzis, two veritable jewels). If you take a close look to the participants’ list, then determining the average quality level (=tending to high) comes rather natural. And yet, the magnitude of the basic concept reads as inversely proportional to the unavoidability of situations that the record presents, except maybe for Polli’s inscrutable “Round Mountain”, the third favourite here. The world may be changing but its sounds – rarefied or in-your-face, processed or not – remain virtually the same, even if López’s birds always seem to chirp and whistle more clearly. Quite beautiful to hear at home in full-tranquillity mood.
DNE – 47 Songs Humans Shouldn’t Sing
Reissue of a very rare item, a 250-copy vinyl edition by Eugene Carchesio (recording under the DNE moniker) that quickly disappeared after the advent of the CD and the closing of the pressing plant which was holding the original tape. This digital version was remastered from one of the remaining LPs, which in turn were born from 4-track cassettes. An oddity amidst this batch of (often) introvert-sounding items, these miniatures are small masterpieces of self-made improvisation – often in a well-defined structural musculature - with all sorts of overdubbed instruments including guitars, drums, keyboards, reeds, flutes and god knows what else. The press release quotes Ayler and Chadbourne as (vague) stylistic resonances, and who am I to argue? This record symbolizes the wholesomeness of ingenuous artistry, an ode to the fun that a creative mind can generate while closed in a room at home. Yes, you guessed right: it did remind yours truly of his own adolescent experiments, but Carchesio’s elucubrations sound definitely better than mine... Unclassifiable, lively, hilarious, perfect length at just over half a hour. Recommended.
I’ll start my roundup series with Lawrence English’s Room40, but expect more accumulations in the future. (Thanks to Brian Olewnick for unintentionally suggesting this kind of approach to multiple-CD reviewing).
TAYLOR DEUPREE & KENNETH KIRSCHNER – May
A recording from the OFFF Festival in Lisbon dated May 9, 2008 gives both the frame and the title to a CD lasting about 36 minutes, delicately unobtrusive and somewhat melancholic. The set was played by the two artists sitting side by side, a single piano in front of them and laptops switched on, Kirschner dealing with the keys, Deupree with the inside parts of the instrument. The outcome is a fine combination of crystalline taps and melodic reminiscences - in some instance maybe a little too sweet-sounding for my taste but definitely not persistent - over a stratification of looping variegations and poignant shades. I hesitate in calling this music “ambient” – it’s more a stimulation of our nostalgia glands symbolized by a peculiar kind of seraphic sinuousness, with a turn to an ominous greyness at the end. Very nice album, growing with each listen.
ROBBIE AVENAIM – Rhythmic Movement Disorder
This was made with “drums, junk, e-sticks, vibrators, tuned percussion and concrete cutters”. Avenaim has worked with Oren Ambarchi and Keith Rowe, but nothing could have prepared yours truly for this splendid - if too short at 24 minutes - episode of percussive transcendence. The first track, aptly titled “Headbanging”, is quite hyperactive in terms of dynamics, while the remaining three mostly propose crinkly timbres and pulsating annihilations of willpower underscored by a multitude of frequencies that might occasionally sound threatening, yet remain good-tempered enough to exalt luminescent amorphous shapes and further magnify already prominent details. A cross of acousmatic painstakingness and charming spatial resonance, likely to keep your CD player spinning in repeat mode for at least four consecutive times.
DJ OLIVE – Triage
Third instalment in DJ Olive’s “sleeping pills” series after Buoy and Sleep, Triage – originally the soundtrack for an installation at the Whitney Biennale - is most probably the ideal pick as a single taster of the triad. God only knows how much thin-skinned people need these kinds of record in times of growing tensions and repressed anger, so let me tell you: this is just what the doctor should order for nerve-soothing purposes. By following the composer’s instructions as usual (“please listen to it quietly”) we’re immediately and endlessly embraced by successions of stifled aural scenarios where one can barely intuit some sort of harmonic progression gradually drowning in the quicksand of nebulousness. Illustrious guests such as David Watson and Christian Fennesz are listed in the collaborating line-up, yet trying to weigh their contribution would be futile. The stretching of the limits of our semi-wakeful mental territory is what the CD attains without difficulty, placing this work in a hypothetical Hall Of Fame of the post-Eno era. Like looking at a huge aquarium while the brain is fading to black. Utter quietness, possibly at late evening, is a must.
LUC FERRARI – Tuchan-Chantal
For a non-speaker of any given language, understanding a piece entirely articulated in that idiom is obviously a hard task (enter “Massimo Ricci” and “French” here). One can always rely upon the musical qualities of the words, either by considering them elements of the soundscape or plain instruments (René Lussier’s Le Tresor De La Langue being an untouched masterpiece in that sense). Although partially revealed by the explanatory notes, the social implications of this - basically a 41-minute interview of a girl from a small town in Corbières (department of Aude, South-Western France) conducted by Luc and Brunhild Ferrari and interspersed with environmental intrusions and oddly slanted classical guitar interludes – don’t justify a public release. Even more so the resulting “music”, which doesn’t sound as a documentary at all and, at times, is manifestly tedious. Not wanting to appear blasphemous, my feel is that Tuchan-Chantal has very little to add to this great composer’s recorded output; it’s similar to a radio play performed by adolescents and dilettantes, whose best is to be found in the few seconds of silence during the conversations, underlined by cicadas, buzzing flies and faraway vehicles.
ASHER – Landscape Studies
A work born from Asher’s customary interest in creating “recordings which have the unique characteristics of a particular room or space which only exists in the context of that recording”, Landscape Studies is probably the less unfathomable – but still entrancing - among this composer’s releases. The instantly noticeable new ingredient is the use of repetitive synthetic waves whose ebb and flow influences the music deeply, thus pushing the whole nearer to Installation Land than usual. Listen carefully enough, though, and you’ll recapture the Bostonian’s distinctive external undercurrents blemishing an otherwise flawless geometry, a timid reassurance of sorts against the dangers of excessive consonance. This notwithstanding, the electronic factor remains primary in the mix, so that these pieces are likely to be (superficially) associated to the world of ambient instead of being scrutinized as the “studies” of internal environments that their originator had in mind.
I8U – 10-33 cm
Described by the press release as a “compelling meditation on the nature of sound in time”, this work by Canadian France Jobin was conceived by taking into account the “theoretical size of the strings that makes up the universe”. The impression is mainly one of morphing resonance, like someone manoeuvring an equalizer while a sequence of consecutive drones is unfolding. A chain of pretty static visions, some of them in fact engrossing, rarely presenting truly shocking elements yet effective, at least in spurts. Still, the compositional effort doesn’t appear extreme; this will probably determine a filing in the jam-packed folders of “good but not really memorable” near-minimalism, with the exception of “String 6” and “String 7”, whose impressive bottomless rumbles and subsonic purrs are something to be heard. Dulcis in fundo, indeed.
VARIOUS ARTISTS – Audible Geography
A collection of 11 tracks, theoretically responding to “the shifting and expanding field of geography” while “providing insights into our relations with space and place”. The featured geographers are Eric La Casa, Stephen Vitiello, Lee Patterson, Asher, Jeph Jerman, Toshiya Tsunoda, Philip Samartzis, Marc Behrens, James Webb, Andrea Polli and Francisco López. In actual fact, this is yet another gathering of urban and/or rural aural landscapes - untreated or manipulated - ranging from nearly obvious (but well made nonetheless) to awesome (“Dundee Law” by La Casa, “General Electric” by Samartzis, two veritable jewels). If you take a close look to the participants’ list, then determining the average quality level (=tending to high) comes rather natural. And yet, the magnitude of the basic concept reads as inversely proportional to the unavoidability of situations that the record presents, except maybe for Polli’s inscrutable “Round Mountain”, the third favourite here. The world may be changing but its sounds – rarefied or in-your-face, processed or not – remain virtually the same, even if López’s birds always seem to chirp and whistle more clearly. Quite beautiful to hear at home in full-tranquillity mood.
DNE – 47 Songs Humans Shouldn’t Sing
Reissue of a very rare item, a 250-copy vinyl edition by Eugene Carchesio (recording under the DNE moniker) that quickly disappeared after the advent of the CD and the closing of the pressing plant which was holding the original tape. This digital version was remastered from one of the remaining LPs, which in turn were born from 4-track cassettes. An oddity amidst this batch of (often) introvert-sounding items, these miniatures are small masterpieces of self-made improvisation – often in a well-defined structural musculature - with all sorts of overdubbed instruments including guitars, drums, keyboards, reeds, flutes and god knows what else. The press release quotes Ayler and Chadbourne as (vague) stylistic resonances, and who am I to argue? This record symbolizes the wholesomeness of ingenuous artistry, an ode to the fun that a creative mind can generate while closed in a room at home. Yes, you guessed right: it did remind yours truly of his own adolescent experiments, but Carchesio’s elucubrations sound definitely better than mine... Unclassifiable, lively, hilarious, perfect length at just over half a hour. Recommended.
Forget-Me-Not: Illusion Of Safety
My heart has a soft spot for Illusion Of Safety, creature of Dan Burke - one of the very first artists interviewed by yours truly in the early 90s (via snail mail, of all things). Published by the Russian label Waystyx in 2007 and received only last year, In Session is as gratifying an experience as IOS can award to an unprejudiced recipient.
Fictitious circuits of preparation to the inevitable welcome us - no hints of smile - amidst a cross of entropic energies, actual instruments and electronic gadgetry challenging the defences intensely. Sudden outbreaks of noisy harmony are sometimes replaced by regular pulses constituting the basis of a pseudo-calmness, while an inexhaustible pressure – typically generated by overlaid looped mechanisms – mounts without actually allowing an explosion to put an end to our misery. Disorientated yet unshakable we set ourselves to resist to the next sonic landslide but we’re left waiting uselessly, as Burke’s monster walks away; further attempts to wreck the poor listener’s lingering certainties are delayed to the next occasion.
Another declaration of consistency from an artist who has been quietly producing a substantial quantity of memorable, if often not memorized albums for almost 20 years. Pearls like Cancer, Probe and Water Seeks Its Own Level need instant revisiting, and this CD is a worthy addition to the list.
Fictitious circuits of preparation to the inevitable welcome us - no hints of smile - amidst a cross of entropic energies, actual instruments and electronic gadgetry challenging the defences intensely. Sudden outbreaks of noisy harmony are sometimes replaced by regular pulses constituting the basis of a pseudo-calmness, while an inexhaustible pressure – typically generated by overlaid looped mechanisms – mounts without actually allowing an explosion to put an end to our misery. Disorientated yet unshakable we set ourselves to resist to the next sonic landslide but we’re left waiting uselessly, as Burke’s monster walks away; further attempts to wreck the poor listener’s lingering certainties are delayed to the next occasion.
Another declaration of consistency from an artist who has been quietly producing a substantial quantity of memorable, if often not memorized albums for almost 20 years. Pearls like Cancer, Probe and Water Seeks Its Own Level need instant revisiting, and this CD is a worthy addition to the list.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Ripples Of Mystery
This writer already entertained several discussions via email with Daniel Crokaert, boss of Mystery Sea, regarding our opposite views in relation to the myriads of so-called musicians who infest the world by walking across the open-to-anybody gates of dark ambient and field recording-based market, the place where any idiot can buy a synth and a multi-effect device to churn out 20 discs per year until pre-recorded underwater bubbles, dreadful workstation presets and sampled sanctified chants materialize, remorselessly suffocating the poor victim. In any case, no question about the fact that this Belgian label is among the rare imprints in this perspective whose releases maintain a sufficient standard of quality and, occasionally, are plainly outstanding (honest!).
Celer (Will Long & Danielle Baquet-Long) have become a recognized name in this field. Admittedly, at first I was not entirely persuaded after hearing some of the (mainly) loop-derived early works that they had sent me - very kind-heartedly indeed - upon my request. Yet I’m almost sold, as today the duo easily fits amidst the region’s preeminent hypnotizers and everything experienced in this room - either self-released or published elsewhere - has been credibly charming since that initial approach. Tropical is one of those records composed on very few elements that, in the great scheme of things, result extremely momentous, determining a veritable change of mood during the listening session. Everlasting obscurities and consuming frequencies succeed at a snail's pace, each time with increased potential; there were moments in which both my wife and myself remained with our mouths shut as mammoth mumbles bounced around the house, playing hide-and-seek in the corners of the walls. Although somewhat glacial in terms of sheer stimulus, the music possesses a sort of electronic porosity that renders its cryptic character wholly acceptable. This stuff influences the nervous system in a positive sense; no wonder that the Longs are also active in the area of musical therapy for children. A gorgeously humming album, highly recommended to real specialists who want to subject themselves to over 52 minutes of solemn stupor.
Another precious thing comes from Christopher McFall – not that there were any doubts, as nowadays the man from Kansas City is probably the overall deepest operator in this congested sector. For its large part, This Heat Holds Snow definitely belongs in Mystery Sea’s top five, on the same level of awareness and profundity of, say, Aidan Baker’s At The Fountain Of Thirst. Still, where the Canadian loopmeister utilized stratified guitars to elicit unearthly atmospheres packed with wraithlike entities, McFall continues to focus on the disquieting aspects of his urban setting to call out misplaced souls and puzzling uncertainties in a mixture of reiterative low-key mourning and hopes crumbled under the weight of an eternal world-weariness. The truly remarkable feature of this composer’s music is the perfect balance between familiarity - usually evoked by successions of events that instantly throw the susceptible receiver into a classic state of “back-to-childhood” emotional discovery - and a pinch of apprehension. The mastery with which apparently discordant factors – inner-city components, radiophonic emissions, barely audible voices, secluded rumbles – are seamed in this study on human reaction to obscurity is unequivocally impressive, as being vaguely acquainted with a sonic symptom but not able to effectively determine the source is a bewildering experience for a conscious listener. This uninterrupted displacement is what makes opuses like this a necessity, just as all the rest of McFall’s production. In this small land we don’t content ourselves with bell-and-whistle façades and bogus arcane ruminations, you know. This quiet artist delivers unsettling substance by the truckload.
Well designed yet less surprising, Nautilus With Wings is an effort by From The White Chimneys, namely Ben Fleury-Steiner and Danny Kreutzfeldt. The foremost origin of this record is “a fascination with the hydrothermal vents of the Mariana Trench” and, sure enough, the impression is one of submarine environments spiced with lavishly reverberating drones, upsetting hisses and whispers and various kinds of ominous clattering. Here lies the main problem: those remote thuds and (possibly) intimidating undercurrents, while finely displayed and reproduced, have been heard too many times by now (and in this particular case it looks as the compositional impetus wasn’t actually pushed to the limit) therefore the cognisant can’t really differentiate this from hundreds of similar records utilizing analogous ingredients. The sources are deployed rather linearly and we’re left to contemplate – if so desired – their acoustic gloominess throughout the progression. That’s all. On the other hand, at least two segments exist (for example, the bulk of the second movement) in which the harmonic permutations of the droning resonances result as delightfully complementary to certain transitory mental dispositions of the reviewer; I’d be willing to bet that processed guitars were carefully used in those ear-rewarding passages (this could be just an inkling of mine, though). In essence, what we got is an adequately good-sounding outing that, however, stands a notch below the previously analyzed two thirds of this triptych.
Celer (Will Long & Danielle Baquet-Long) have become a recognized name in this field. Admittedly, at first I was not entirely persuaded after hearing some of the (mainly) loop-derived early works that they had sent me - very kind-heartedly indeed - upon my request. Yet I’m almost sold, as today the duo easily fits amidst the region’s preeminent hypnotizers and everything experienced in this room - either self-released or published elsewhere - has been credibly charming since that initial approach. Tropical is one of those records composed on very few elements that, in the great scheme of things, result extremely momentous, determining a veritable change of mood during the listening session. Everlasting obscurities and consuming frequencies succeed at a snail's pace, each time with increased potential; there were moments in which both my wife and myself remained with our mouths shut as mammoth mumbles bounced around the house, playing hide-and-seek in the corners of the walls. Although somewhat glacial in terms of sheer stimulus, the music possesses a sort of electronic porosity that renders its cryptic character wholly acceptable. This stuff influences the nervous system in a positive sense; no wonder that the Longs are also active in the area of musical therapy for children. A gorgeously humming album, highly recommended to real specialists who want to subject themselves to over 52 minutes of solemn stupor.
Another precious thing comes from Christopher McFall – not that there were any doubts, as nowadays the man from Kansas City is probably the overall deepest operator in this congested sector. For its large part, This Heat Holds Snow definitely belongs in Mystery Sea’s top five, on the same level of awareness and profundity of, say, Aidan Baker’s At The Fountain Of Thirst. Still, where the Canadian loopmeister utilized stratified guitars to elicit unearthly atmospheres packed with wraithlike entities, McFall continues to focus on the disquieting aspects of his urban setting to call out misplaced souls and puzzling uncertainties in a mixture of reiterative low-key mourning and hopes crumbled under the weight of an eternal world-weariness. The truly remarkable feature of this composer’s music is the perfect balance between familiarity - usually evoked by successions of events that instantly throw the susceptible receiver into a classic state of “back-to-childhood” emotional discovery - and a pinch of apprehension. The mastery with which apparently discordant factors – inner-city components, radiophonic emissions, barely audible voices, secluded rumbles – are seamed in this study on human reaction to obscurity is unequivocally impressive, as being vaguely acquainted with a sonic symptom but not able to effectively determine the source is a bewildering experience for a conscious listener. This uninterrupted displacement is what makes opuses like this a necessity, just as all the rest of McFall’s production. In this small land we don’t content ourselves with bell-and-whistle façades and bogus arcane ruminations, you know. This quiet artist delivers unsettling substance by the truckload.
Well designed yet less surprising, Nautilus With Wings is an effort by From The White Chimneys, namely Ben Fleury-Steiner and Danny Kreutzfeldt. The foremost origin of this record is “a fascination with the hydrothermal vents of the Mariana Trench” and, sure enough, the impression is one of submarine environments spiced with lavishly reverberating drones, upsetting hisses and whispers and various kinds of ominous clattering. Here lies the main problem: those remote thuds and (possibly) intimidating undercurrents, while finely displayed and reproduced, have been heard too many times by now (and in this particular case it looks as the compositional impetus wasn’t actually pushed to the limit) therefore the cognisant can’t really differentiate this from hundreds of similar records utilizing analogous ingredients. The sources are deployed rather linearly and we’re left to contemplate – if so desired – their acoustic gloominess throughout the progression. That’s all. On the other hand, at least two segments exist (for example, the bulk of the second movement) in which the harmonic permutations of the droning resonances result as delightfully complementary to certain transitory mental dispositions of the reviewer; I’d be willing to bet that processed guitars were carefully used in those ear-rewarding passages (this could be just an inkling of mine, though). In essence, what we got is an adequately good-sounding outing that, however, stands a notch below the previously analyzed two thirds of this triptych.
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