| July
News 2003 |
Reviews
by Dan Warburton, Nicholas Sharyshkin and James Baiye:
|
|
Editorial
Maria de Alvear
New on Ground Fault: Christian Renou / Tidal Chaos
as Shelter Krutogolov / Eric Cordier / Vertonen
From Holland: Arnold Marinissen / Maarten Altena
Ensemble
New on Absurd: Research Center for the Definition
of Happiness / Ilios / Murmer / Mattin & Rosy Parlane / Gareth
Mitchell
Eric Chasalow
Eliane Radigue
New on Crouton Music: Hat Melter / Collections of
Colonies of Bees
Contemporary In Brief: Waschka / Michael Byron
Electronica Roundup: Reynols / Un Caddie Renversé
Dans L'Herbe / Speedranch^Jansky Noise / Arc Lalove
Improv Roundup: Michel Lambert / Keune, Russell
/ Leonard ,Skrowaczewski ,Zappa / Tomlinson, Beresford, Turner
/Riley, Tilbury, Tippett / Bosetti, Hotz, Fagaschinski, Mahall
/ Tetuzi Akiyama / Meeting at Off Site Vol.2 /
Last Month
|
Editorial
Welcome once again to the pages of Paris Transatlantic, where the
hot sunshine of July in the French capital finds PTM publisher Guy
Livingston locked away in a studio recording George Antheil's "lost"
piano sonatas (to be released shortly on Wergo) and editor Dan Warburton
burning off the hangover of a 40th birthday party by listening to
his new release on Ayler Records (Return of The New Thing: "Traque"),
and trying to reorganise his record collection at the same time. Many
thanks to everyone who has sent (and continues to send) material in
for review, and apologies to those whose work has not yet been covered.
As ever, we can give no cast-iron guarantees that anything we get
will be reviewed -that's the kind of dumb promise we used to make
five years ago, and we're still paying the price - but it will certainly
be listened to attentively, both here in Paris or in the more far
flung reaches of the globe where our various correspondents hang out.
Talking of which, if you yourself wish to contribute articles (CD
and live concert reviews, or features of a more general nature), feel
free to consult the FAQ page and contact us via the homepage. Providing
that the material is well-written and hasn't already been published
somewhere else, and that it has some tangible connection to the kind
of music we feature in the magazine—we'll take a rain check on
Massive Attack, Johnny Holliday (Happy Birthday Johnny), Celine Dion
and the Rolling Stones (who?)—we're always open to suggestions.
Surf's up.
— DW
Maria
de Alvear
LIBERTAD
World Edition 1
WORLD
World Edition 2
SEXO
World Edition 3
VAGINA
World Edition 4
LLENA
World Edition 5
BAUM
World Edition 6
by Dan Warburton
When respected Village Voice critic Kyle Gann describes someone
as "the most original young composer in Europe", it's a lead certainly
worth following up on, even if his hyperbole probably reveals more
about his own tastes and sensibilities than it does the current state
of European contemporary music (one would hardly expect a seasoned
New Yorker to trumpet the achievements of Mathias Spahlinger or Richard
Barrett, after all). Spanish-born Maria de Alvear (whose "Fuerzas"
was reviewed in these pages back in February) has been resident in
Germany since 1980 - she studied with Mauricio Kagel in Cologne until
1986 - and has certainly been prolific: her website www.mariadealvear.com
lists over a hundred compositions, many of quite considerable duration,
and her own World Edition imprint has so far released seven albums,
six featuring her own music, and a seventh consisting in part of fascinating
field recordings by Peter Ablinger.
An accomplished performer in her own right, de Alvear is a fervent
advocate of the kind of shamanism that the European avant-garde tries
desperately to bury under volumes of Hegel and Deleuze. On "Libertad"
she sings her own charismatic setting of texts she describes as being
"connected to the Spirit World in a very strong way", written by Cherokee
poet and medecine-woman Tsolagiu M.A. RuizRazo, to whom the work is
dedicated. She's joined by Enrique Lozano "Pescao", a truly astounding
- and from the sound of it, not too young - Flamenco vocalist who
has been performing since he was eleven with the likes of Fosforito,
Menese, Jose Merce and Aurora Vargas, and an accompanying instrumental
group consisting of two pianos (tuned a quarter tone apart in Pythagorean
just intonation), trombone and percussion. The sheer scale of this
82 minute slow movement is something the European contemporary establishment
probably couldn't comprehend - unless it came from the pen of a star
like Stockhausen - though considering the "success" of his Licht opera
cycle, even that is debatable. In similar vein, "Baum" is a 64 minute
"incantatory ritual" in eight movements for voice (de Alvear once
more) and four-piece percussion ensemble, Drums Off Chaos, founded
in 1982 by legendary Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Its guttural wails
and primal rhythms are the kind of stuff most genteel consumers of
new music might accept on a so-called "ethnic" music album, but hardly
something you'd expect them to dress up for and discuss over cocktails
in the foyer of a plush concert hall.
If basic binary pulse is somehow taboo by dint of its sheer "primitiveness",
works such as "Sexo" and "Vagina" probably strike pure fear into the
heart of the staid bourgeois audience they seemed destined for. Herein
perhaps lies the problem of de Alvear's music - instead of courting
the non-classical audience (one hesitates to use the word "pop", as
many of the musical subgenres whose aficionados de Alvear's music
could appeal to are hardly big box office), she seems determined to
take arms against the whole creaking edifice of The Tradition by presenting
vast works for soloist (herself) and instrumental ensembles. "Sexo",
a 68 minute monologue for speaker and orchestra, is another long lyrical
slow movement (with an extended violin obbligato) over gently pulsing
accompaniment. If de Alvear would just take a break for a while we
might be able to hear a little more of what's going on; as it is,
her non-stop declamation in German, Spanish and English is, to say
the least, tiring (the texts in English are also, though presumably
not intended to be so, somewhat amusing, thanks to her pronounced
accent and certain errors of translation). Serious issues of sexuality
- which de Alvear presents in its most global and generalised form:
this is no cheap thrill bullshit - are buried under the sheer weight
of the monologue; what could (perhaps even should) be an uplifting
and genuinely transcendetal experience at times risks becoming as
prima-donnaish as a Bellini aria. "Vagina" also features the composer's
voice, this time alternating speech and singing, but fortunately leaves
a little more space for the accompanying music to reveal itself -"accompanying"
because de Alvear's dramatic persona, when present, immediately takes
centre stage and tends to deflect one's attention from the intricacies
of her instrumental score. At 46 minutes it's a more palatable and
varied work than "Sexo", though once again one feels that seeing it
in the conservative setting of a concert hall might somehow detract
from its considerable potential power.
The most ambitious work on offer here is "World", a forty-five minute
double piano concerto - "ceremony" is de Alvear's preferred term -
dedicated to the Native American indians and performed by its dedicatee,
Hildegard Kleeb (and Joseph Kubera) and Petr Kotik's SEM Ensemble
Orchestra. Here, without the physical presence of the composer as
performer, one can at last come to terms with her compositional skills.
The work's odd melange of diatonicism and chromaticism is indeed noteworthy,
as is its form, an open, splintered structure as weatherbeaten as
a tree. As piano concertos go - and I suppose we are invited to situate
the work somewhere in "the canon" along with Ligeti's concerto, Lachenmann's
"Ausklang" and Xenakis' "Keqrops" - it's certainly original, and even
after repeated listening leaves the impression that it is in some
way a work in progress. Whether this is intentional or not is open
to question, but "World" is a fascinating, sprawling work that demands
concentrated and repeated listening.
Maybe it's because of my own personal conviction that the symphony
orchestra belongs in the museum these days, but the works that capture
my attention more completely and focus it on de Alvear's compositional
craft are her chamber pieces. "Llena" is a 72 minute work for solo
piano, beautifully performed by Reinier van Houdt, who stares meaningfully
out from behind a table lamp inside the digipak. The liner notes,
such as they are, refer to the "natural phenomenon" of de Alvear's
music, providing little more than a brief description of the work
rather than any analytical meat as such. While this is perhaps to
be regretted - the composer's work could benefit from a bit of set
theory analysis and yield some interesting results - it's probably
deliberate. The piece unfolds almost as if it were improvised (maybe
it was, in whole or in part, and subsequently transcribed: nothing
wrong with that - Scelsi seemed to be rather good at it), soon settling
into patient exploration of the instrument's middle register, an agglomeration
of hundreds of tiny cellular phrases, like clouds. After about 18
minutes, the extreme registers are reintroduced with bell-like chords
(Beethoven comes to mind) and the surface of the music becomes more
unsettled. The work's architecture is more open and arboreal, and
it needs your concentrated attention to reveal its many nuances. The
same can be said in fact of all these releases, which are well worth
seeking out. I won't go as far as Kyle Gann - if de Alvear is not
the most original young composer in Europe, she's certainly
one of the most original.
New
on Ground Fault
Christian Renou
FRAGMENTS AND ARTICULATIONS
Ground Fault GF 023
Tidal / Chaos as Shelter / Igor Krutogolov
INGATHERING OF EXILES
Ground Fault GF 024
Eric Cordier
DIGITALIS PURPUREA
Ground Fault GF 025
Vertonen
THE OCEAN IS GONE, THE SHIP IS NEXT
Ground Fault GF 026
by Dan Warburton
At his home base just outside Paris, Christian Renou's working
method is, apparently, to feed pre-existing material (the first piece
was sourced in a percussion solo recorded back in 1982, the second
uses field recordings, and the third some "very dirty" frequencies
generated by a homemade instrument) into the computer for processing.
When the computer itself is slightly defective - we're told that the
second piece owes much to a damaged CYRIX processor - the results
can be quite intriguing, but a touch of editing along the way might
not have been a bad idea: dense electronic music is often more easily
digested in ten and twelve minute mouthfuls. Renou, now operating
under his own name instead of the moniker Brume, which he used until
recently for a slew of releases in the cassette underground, is another
talented and unjustifiably obscure French electronic composer you're
not likely to have heard of unless you're a diehard noise nut (hats
off once more to GF's Erik Hoffman for releasing this).
"Listen in a dark room at average volume. Your soul might hurt, not
your ears," it says on the booklet of "Ingathering of Exiles". Whoever
wrote this pretentious twaddle must have been smoking some venomous
tree bark or listening to too many Nurse With Wound albums, maybe
both. None of the three collaborating artists - David Brownstead (aka
Tidal), and Israel-based Vadim Gusis (Chaos as Shelter) and Igor Krutogolov
- actually takes credit for the remark. The album title refers to
the projected return of the Ten Lost Tribes to Israel in the Messianic
Age, but if this is what they'll be listening to when they arrive
I'd advise them to stay where they are, unless they're old Goths or
manic depressives. Cutting these guys some slack, the sounds they
use are certainly arresting, for a while - strange ethereal tinkles,
mournful wailing stringed instruments and gloomy Russian-style basso
profundo, wrapped in blankets of thick, queasy drone - but, as uncle
Milton Babbitt once said, "nothing grows older faster than a new sound,"
and without a discernible sense of architecture one's attention quickly
wanders, the album becoming not only uninteresting but irritating.
Sourced from recordings of multiple-loudspeaker installations in northern
France between 1993 and 1997, "Digitalis Purpurea" is Eric Cordier's
second outing for Ground Fault (he also forms part of the group Afflux
with GF regulars Jean-Luc Guionnet and Eric La Casa). Original sound
material for Cordier's works is culled from church organs, dulcimers
and hurdy gurdy - he's one of the few practitioners of the instrument
worth listening to (check out the trio Schams) - imparting a rich
stringy texture to the sounds, which are then stacked up into dense
but not impenetrable structures (cf both the title track and "Dactyle
Aglomérée"). "Les Os Longs" is more varied in texture, originating
as it does in diverse field recordings - though unlike his friend
and colleague La Casa, Cordier goes to great pains to disguise the
sources - and the final "Postface" ("no tape manipulation", the composer
stipulates) is a weeping draughty smear of pipe organ. The same instrument,
by the way, features on Cordier and Guionnet's "Tore" (Shambala 004),
being the result of a particularly fruitful collaboration between
the two composers and La Grande Fabrique in Dieppe, which also yielded
Cordier's first solo album "Houlque".
The offering from Vertonen, aka Blake Edwards, serves to remind us
that it's not just a question of having good material but of knowing
what to do with it. "Untitled for air organ and turntable motor" is
reminiscent at times of the vast soundscapes of Jeff Wrench (aka Brutum
Fulmen, whose excellent "Flesh of the Moon" appeared on Edwards' Crippled
Intellect imprint last year), while "The last great circus of desperate
heritage" sounds as if Edwards has dropped the stylus on a plate of
porridge, but settles into squeaking gate groove by the time it checks
out. Some sound sources are easily recognisable - "Four chambers plus
the various fluids" ends in birdsong - others cunningly disguised.
The sustained major ninth tonality of "Soma trio study (#2)" has me
wondering whether the title might refer to the mind-numbing drug of
the same name in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", while "Harbor
surfacant" starts out sounding like one of those extraordinary fucked-up
asymmetrical samples Tricky used to love (you half expect his phlegm-rattling
voice and crashing backbeats to come slamming in at any moment) until
the fragments of piano become progressively buried in a humid moss
of drones and surface noise.
From
Holland
Arnold Marinissen
TRACES OF CULTURES
BV Haast 0303
by James Baiye
As anyone who's read James Holland's essential 1977 Yehudi Menuhin
Music Guide "Percussion" knows, the arsenal of instruments a classically
trained percussionist is called upon to play these days is vast, with
many instruments originating outside Europe - not that you could ever
argue that European classical music had a great interest in percussion
to start with. Dutch percussionist Arnold Marinissen's well-rounded,
satisfying and eminently accessible album sets out to showcase these
extra-European influences by gathering together five works that feature
sonorities as diverse as the zarb, Thai gongs and African slit-drums
as well as "traditional" instruments such as the vibraphone, in keeping
with a tradition, started arguably by the Kronos Quartet, of popularising
- without demeaning - contemporary classical music. Mexican-born Javier
Alvarez's "Temazcal" is a fast-moving virtuoso workout for maracas
and tape (using both electroacoustic sounds and traditional Latin-American
folk music). Alvarez is based these days in London, and there's a
London flavour to Gunter Lege's "OH CLOCK" too, which is entirely
based on the famous Westminster Chimes motive and scored for vibraphone,
played not only with the customary mallets but also with bows, fingers
and fingernails. Christopher Fox's "Phonogrammatische Inventionen"
is an instrumental setting of a text from Günter Grass' "Tin Drum",
part of the composer's ongoing research into the relationship between
music and speech, and fragments of an oral tradition seem to permeate
South African-born Kevin Volans' "She who sleeps with a small blanket",
a virtuoso study for drums (and, briefly, marimba). Canadian-born
Claude Vivier travelled widely in South East Asia a few years before
his untimely death in Paris in 1983, and the "Cinq Chansons pour Percussion"
are clearly and deeply influenced by the gamelan music that surfaced
in his last extraordinary compositions.
Maarten Altena Ensemble
GENERATIONS
X-OR CD 013
by Dan Warburton
The Dutch contemporary music scene seems to have been breeding ensembles
with odd line-ups for years (think of De Volharding, Hoketus, or more
recently The Newt Hinton Ensemble). The Maarten Altena Ensemble -
their relation to bassist Altena is curiously not explained on the
disc - consists of voice, recorder, sax/clarinet, trombone, violin,
bass, electric guitar, piano and percussion, often accompanied by
recorded material on tape. The six composers featured here all studied
at some stage with either Louis Andriessen, Gilius van Bergeijk, Martijn
Padding or Diderik Wagenaar, influences of whose work (and, standing
behind them all, Stravinsky) are evident throughout: a lot of the
music is chunky, cellular, often diatonic and rhythmically direct
enough to get your feet tapping. Cypriot-born Yannis Kyriakides bases
his piece on the bridge from Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose"; Fats
himself pops up on the backing track, which the ensemble follows slavishly.
The result is kinda cute but somehow stilted, nowhere near as rewarding
as Kyriakides' magnificent "conSPIracy cantata" on Unsounds, the label
he runs jointly with guitarist Andy Moor (of The Ex). The delicate
scoring of Alison Isidora's "No 6 (Nachtvlinders)" and the Hebrew
incantations of the (at times Feldmanesque) "Be In Your Own World"
by Rachel Yatzkan, who hails from Israel, serve as a lyrical interlude
before Jan-Bas Bollen's "Zoab", which sounds like a strange cross
between Reich's "Desert Music" and Conlon Nancarrow's player piano
studies remixed by a techno DJ, transcribed and arranged for the Harry
Partch band and recorded at the bottom of a dustbin. It's interesting
stuff, and typically Dutch, but the grainy backing track tends to
dictate the flow of the music too rigidly. The music of Ricardo Giraldo
(born in Colombia) reveals the same upbeat influences - mainstream
70s US minimalism as filtered through Andriessen, with a generous
dose of jazz and cop show theme tunes - but "W", despite a midtempo
groove sustained throughout, somehow falls rather flat. The disc is
worth the asking price for Piet-Jan van Rossum's "Are You Going Out?",
a strangely disturbing 21-minute work for tape and ensemble. True,
the tape is once more the central element (the composer admits as
much), with its disembodied voices and disconcerting glitches and
occasional clouds of noise, but the ensemble's commentary on it showcases
the MAE's instrumentation to great effect.
New
on Absurd
Various Artists
RESEARCH CENTER FOR THE DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS
Absurd 23
Ilios
18102002
Absurd 24
Murmer
DEFINITION
Absurd 25
Mattin / Rosy Parlane
AGUR
Absurd 26 (3")
Gareth Mitchell
AUGUST; SNOW; PIECES
Absurd 27
Go to: www.anet.gr/absurd
by Dan Warburton
Nicolas Malevitsis's CDR label Absurd, with its beautifully designed
artwork (he's especially fond of circular foldout cardboard covers)
and its eclectic selection of defiantly underground musics - from
ultraminimal improvisation to neurone-melting noise - is one of new
music's best-kept secrets. That said, all but three of the first 22
releases on the label are sold out (that's the nice thing about releasing
material in limited edition - 150 usually - hand-numbered copies),
so all the more reason to jump on these new ones.
The Research Center for the Definition of Happiness is a loose collective
of noiseniks from the Phokis region (Malevitsis himself, Costis Drygianakis,
Tasos Panagiotopoulos) and the compilation of the same name also features
contributions from CM von Hausswolf, Ilios, Sons of God and Ralf Wehowsky.
It's a wondrously strange mixed bag of field recordings (sourced from
abandoned houses, Greek hillsides, and what sounds like furniture
being dragged across a floor), mangled samples of twentieth century
classics and ethnic pop, and various lo-fi devices (Wehowsky's track
sounds like a cassette recording of someone melting an answering machine
with a blowtorch). If I'd stayed long enough in the Boy Scouts to
learn how to tie all the knots, I'd tell you which one it is that
adorns the album cover, but you'll have to unravel that one yourself.
Ilios reappear on Absurd #24, a 43 minute slowburner laptop outing
that's as austere and elegant as the plain grey cover it comes in,
and which will give your woofers and downstairs neighbours a thrill.
Shame they couldn't have edited out the applause at the end - did
we really need reminding that this was a live event? I suppose they
think we did.
Murmer, aka London-based Patrick McGinley, provides three extended
compositions on "Definition", sourced, so we're told, from trumpets,
synthesizers, water bottles, freezers, fluorescent lighting, burglar
alarms and airplane landing gear (wonder how he got to record that
last one). There seems to be a certain pleasure to be had on the part
of several electroacoustic composers these days in telling punters
what they used as sound sources, as if we're invited to marvel at
how unlike the music sounds compared to the objects concerned. Personally,
I prefer not to know (I've still not figured out what the hell Xenakis
used to make "Bohor", and don't really mind if I never do) - the question
of how the compositions unfold seems more important. McGinley's heartbeat
is slow, and concentrated listening (headphones, perhaps) required
to appreciate it, or the mind can tend to wander, especially in "Spoke
Speak", sourced exclusively from a bicycle wheel. When the texture
is richer and more complex, as on the final "Liquid Solid", things
seem to work better.
Also based in London, laptoppers Mattin and Rosy Parlane contribute
a more austere affair whose pristine ultra-high pings and whines occasionally
recall the crystalline precision of Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree
(though things get decidedly more crunchy after a few minutes). Shame
they couldn't have come up with the kind of beautiful packaging that
characterises the 12k label: the unadorned 3" CDR (with brand name
highly visible) comes in its boring blue mini jewel box, with (minimal)
track info on a tiny sheet of transparent plastic which invariably
falls out and gets lost. Though that just might be my promo copy.
Gareth Mitchell - aka Philosopher's Stone, whose Kranky releases are
well worth checking out - offers three pieces on "August; Snow; Pieces",
the first a tantalisingly mysterious assemblage of crackles, glitches
and treated sound sources whose fragmented, pockmarked surface recalls
Kevin Drumm's work with Ralf Wehowsky on their recent Selektion outing
"Cases". The second track (am I right to refer to this as "Snow",
or is "August; Snow; Pieces" the title of the album alone?) is more
continuous and patient exploration of bell-like sonorities. If you
do happen to nod off, the final track will rip your ears back into
life for sure.
Since all of these are, as we mentioned above, limited edition releases,
you'd be advised to move fast. In point of fact, by the time this
review hits cyberspace some of them may have already sold out. I can
think of few things as patently absurd as reviewing a disc that nobody
is ever likely to be able to get hold of, but at the same time I can
think of even fewer things that give me as much pleasure as Absurd.
Go Greek.
Eric
Chasalow
LEFT TO HIS OWN DEVICES
New World 80601-2
by Dan Warburton
New Jersey-born Chasalow is Professor of Music at Brandeis University,
so unsurprisingly the nine works presented on this varied and satisfying
album reference a diverse range of influences and styles, from the
post-modern reworkings of Beethoven and Brahms idioms (1998's string
trio "Yes, I Really Did") to Jerome Kern ("Crossing Boundaries"),
Dizzy Gillespie ("Out of Joint"), Eric Dolphy ("In A Manner of Speaking")
and the doyen of American academia Milton Babbitt. Indeed, "Left To
His Own Devices" would have been the title of Babbitt's last work
for the fabled RCA synthesizer if the studio hadn't been burgled and
the machine damaged; for his homage to Babbitt, Chasalow recreates
a "virtual" RCA synth himself and uses it to play not only fragments
of Babbitt's own music but also extracts of his speaking voice. No
fewer than seven of these works feature electronic tape, which Chasalow
handles with the painstaking precision typical of composers who can
afford to take the time to master the medium. Most impressive is "Dream
Songs", a song cycle setting five of John Berryman's poems of the
same name, brilliantly interpreted by tenor William Hite and coordinated
with the forces of the Boston Modern Orchestra with exemplary precision.
Elsewhere, "Crossing Boundaries" collages fragments of speech (by
fellow electronic composers as well as the composer's family and friends)
and music into a fast-moving, highly inventive and accomplished nine-minute
retrospective of just about everything worth listening to in twentieth
century music. This album gives the lie once and for all to the old
Downtown vs. Uptown myth (i.e. the hip and happening are no longer
to be found in the dusty set theory textbooks of university music
faculties); there's more life, energy and creativity in any one of
these fine pieces than the dreary stodge Philip Glass is turning out
by the diskful every week.
Eliane
Radigue
GEELRIANDRE -ARTHESIS
Fringes Archive 01
by Dan Warburton
Pianist Gérard Fremy, in his liner notes - in French only, so you'd
better invest in a good dictionary - recalls the story of the world
premiere of Eliane Radigue's "Adnos" in the Musée Galliera, Paris,
on November 10th 1974, an event at which all the important music journalists
of the time were present, and not one of them wrote about.
A kind of anti-Rite of Spring, if you like. Fremy seems somewhat baffled
at the (non) reaction, but it seems clear that the reason for their
silence was that they were confronted by a music that was literally
decades ahead of its time. Back in the early seventies the first musicians
who worked with ARP and Moog synthesizers were more interested in
sci-fi bloops and swoops, but Radigue was one of the few composers
(perhaps even the only composer) who recognised and exploited its
potential for extremely slow transitions of pitch and timbre. Though
she'd long been associated with the French musique concrète establishment
through her work with Pierre Henry, her music revealed no apparent
interest in Schaefferian solfège or the jump / cut aesthetic
of standard slice'n'dice electronic music. Filing her away in the
minimalism drawer might be inevitable, given her long association
with various American institutions and enthusiastic champions of her
music such as Phill Niblock, but the mystery and magic of Radigue's
music occupies a twilight zone of minimalism between the static drone
world of Young, Conrad and Niblock and the gradual process aesthetic
of Reich and Glass. With the former, we're presented with great blocks
of sound that occupy the listening space, redefining our perceptions
of its architecture - the music itself is unchanging (until the often
abrupt transition to the next drone), but we are free to explore its
inner nuances; with the latter, once the process is set up and loaded,
to quote Reich, it's more a question of following its gradual development,
as musical material changes either incrementally (Glass's linear additive
and Reich's later block additive processes) or at a regular rate (Reich's
phase pieces). Radigue's elusive music sits squarely between the two
perceptual worlds - it is forever on the move, albeit very slowly
(try loading one of her pieces into some music software and speeding
it up fivefold, and you'll be surprised), but constructed so meticulously
that it somehow slips out of time: change is perceived as having
taken place rather than taking place. However many times
you listen - and this is music you will return to on many occasions
- you'll probably never quite figure out how she did it.
The release (at last!) of these two works dating from 1972 and 1973
is another major event in the (re)discovery of Radigue's music, after
Table Of The Elements' landmark triple CD issue of "Adnos" last year.
"Geelriandre" features Fremy on piano, gently inserting beautifully
poised sonorities into Radigue's seamless textures - John Tilbury's
work with AMM comes inevitably to mind. Originally premiered in Paris
in 1972, this particular recording was made in Amsterdam's Stedelijk
Museum seven years later, and a few distant Dutch hacking coughs unfortunately
manage to make themselves heard. "Arthesis", realised on a Moog synthesizer
during Radigue's residency at the University of Iowa in 1973, is heard
here in a recording of its world premiere in Los Angeles' Theatre
Vanguard that year. It's utterly useless to describe either of these
works: they simply must be heard to be believed. French musician and
Metamkine label boss Jérôme Noetinger, who released Radigue's "Biogenesis"
on his Cinéma Pour L'Oreille Collection a while back, has indicated
that there remain several other pieces her early 1970s music that
have so far not been released. It surely is only a matter of time:
the world might not have been ready for "Adnos" in 1974, but thirty
years later, Eliane Radigue's time has come. Anyone who seriously
claims to be interested in new music simply cannot afford to pass
this by.
New
on Crouton Music
Hat Melter
UNKNOWN ALBUM
Crouton Music Crou017 LP
Collections of Colonies of Bees
MEYOU
Crouton No.20
by Dan Warburton
"I love being underground, man. They get you into the mainstream,
and it's not happening, trying to be commercial. I didn't want to
play that. I'm happy underground. There's not much money, but I'm
happy." Crouton's Jon Mueller would be among the first to agree with
the words of Arthur Doyle: going underground means consciously avoiding
the possibility of being gobbled up by a major label - unless you
happen to be namechecked by an alt.music "star" like John Zorn or
Jim O'Rourke (and those artists whose careers have benefited from
a few kind words from Jim - Kevin Drumm, Thomas Lehn..- haven't felt
the need to compromise their artistic integrity) - and hence being
able to issue your work in limited editions destined for a small number
of punters who you know will appreciate it. I'm especially happy to
be able to feature two of the best underground labels in this month's
issue, namely Crouton and Absurd. Mueller's Milwaukee-based label
is a glorious example of high quality recordings of uncompromising
creative music, beautifully packaged with painstaking attention to
detail. The thirty-two minutes of music on the "Unknown Album" by
Hat Melter (that's Steve Hess, percussion, Jeff Klatt,
cello, Jon Mueller, percussion and Matt Turner,
cello) are packed full of incident and detail, presenting a rare synthesis
of the acoustic and electronic, i.e. a musical surface that manages
to be both. The cellos remain cellos and the percussion percussion,
but technology is brought to bear on the material in wonderful ways
as cymbal and drum resonances are sliced up into soundfiles and scattered
round the stereo space by Muller and his long-time playing partner
Chris Rosenau. Like Mueller's excellent recent collaboration with
Asmus Tietchens, "7 Stücke" (Auf Abwegen), "Unknown Album" is undisputable
proof that challenging new music - take it from me, this stuff is
about as far from EZ listening Space Age Bachelor Pad as Marilyn Manson
is from New Year's Day Strauss waltzes in Vienna - is not only exciting
to listen to, but actively sensuous and ultimately profoundly moving.
Mueller and Rosenau return on "Meyou", a twenty-one minute piece dating
from October 1998 (at the time they were also working on the Pele
album "Elephant", though as Mueller explains, "the people releasing
the Pele stuff surely would not have been interested in this"). Recorded
in the middle of a room whose perimeter was "filled with mics with
the levels and gains absolutely cranked," it's an altogether strange
but curiously affecting performance, with Rosenau bowing a lapsteel,
whose hurdy gurdy-like sound, in conjunction with Mueller's strange
nasal vocal wails, occasionally recalls Keiji Haino (on downers, or
maybe after one of those deep fried Mars bars, or whatever it was
that prompted him to cancel a gig in Scotland last year) jamming along
with a Derek Bailey lp on 16rpm in a motel room once occupied by John
Fahey. Resolutely, defiantly and gloriously underground to the last
drop.
Contemporary
Roundup
Rodney Waschka
SAINT AMBROSE
Chamber Opera for Saxophone and Electronics
Steve Duke, Saxophonist/Actor
Capstone CPS-8708
by Nicolas Sharyshkin
Ambrose Bierce, now a mostly forgotten character of American history,
was a living legend in his own time. A curmudgeon of epic proportions,
he was the author of the notorious Devil's Dictionary as well as a
Civil War hero, whose reports on the war earned him plenty of fame
and not a little hatred. Composer Rodney Waschka's astonishing chamber
opera, scored for electronics, voice, and saxophone, is based on Bierce's
writings, narrated by Steve Duke in a slightly ironic manner (not
as cynical as one would expect of Bierce, but strikingly charismatic
all the same). Although I had mixed feelings about the toy-like computerized
part of the music, Duke's melodious saxophone playing drew me instantly
into the drama of Bierce's philosophy, which Duke, and Waschka tie
handily into current politics (freedom, liberty, and the war in Iraq).
This is an intriguing CD, with a strong narrative flow right through
to the end, in the manner of the golden age of radio drama. Let's
hope for future collaborations from this duo, with lots more of the
surprises found for example in a fogged electronic rendition of "Oh
My Darling Clementine". As the warped Clementine song finishes, a
little girl's voice is heard in the background: "That's not the way
it goes!" Of course not, but I bet Bierce would have approved.
Michael Byron
AWAKENING AT THE INN OF BIRDS
Cold Blue CB 0012
by Dan Warburton
Michael Byron's "Continents of City and Love", for two pianos, string
quintet (and possibly synthesizer, though it's hard to make out -
a precise listing of who's playing what on each track never goes amiss)
is a fine illustration of the problem facing much of the music on
the Cold Blue label, namely deciding where to draw the line between
the restful and the soporific. On paper, Byron's music, like that
of his contemporary up north in Alaska, John Luther Adams, partakes
of the structural and contrapuntal rigour associated with "mainstream"
classical music, but its unremitting prettiness can cause it to veer
dangerously close to Windham Hill (that said, the frontiers between
soft minimalism and New Age have often been hard to locate - Wim Mertens
being a case in point). You could quite easily stroll into a health
food restaurant in Bolinas CA and find this, or the album's gentle
epilogue "As She Sleeps", playing in the background, and it wouldn't
ruin your appetite. The same applies to "Tidal" (which in fact dates
from twenty years earlier, though you'd probably never guess) but
not, however, to "Evaporated Pleasure", which ruffles the surface
with angular bitonality and extreme registers, even though its gimmick
(the bottom line is the mirror image of the top - you could presumably
play the score upside down) soon becomes apparent. The folksy strains
of the title track recall Terry Riley's recent forays into the world
of the string quartet, and though it doesn't exactly explore the timbral
potential of the medium (shame, as Byron used pizzicati to wonderful
effect on his previous Cold Blue outing, 2000's "Music of Nights Without
Moon Or Pearl" - a hard act to follow), it at least gives the members
of the excellent Flux quartet something more consistent to get their
bows into than the static chords of the two openers.
Electronica
Roundup
by Dan Warburton
Reynols
RAMPOTANZA GRODO REMPELENTE
Locust Location Sound Series L28
"Field recordings" it says here, but in fact the tapes used in the
title track (don't ask what it means, it's another one of Reynols'
guru drummer Miguel Tomasin's inspired verbal creations) were made
in a busy Buenos Aires street in 1994, with jackhammers and roaring
traffic. Had to laugh when I heard this for the first time, not because
I had the pleasure of meeting Alan Courtis and Roberto "Moncho" Conlazo
recently, but as much of my listening tends to get done on the way
to and from work using a trusty old Walkman, it transpires that I
was checking this track out while walking past a group of jackhammer-wielding
construction workers. It's the kind of blurring the difference between
Life and Art, between the commonplace and the magical, that Reynols
are uncannily gifted at. The second track, dating from July 2002,
remixes the street sounds into an atmospheric grainy mist before a
crazed psychedelic jam session kicks in at 4'33" (coincidence? I hardly
think so..). The ensuing eleven minutes find Tomasin's utterly original
and totally wonky drumming steering the ensemble into all kinds of
odd corners, with hilarious and wonderful results. The Reynols discography
is chaotic, huge and sprawling, especially if you include all the
compilations they've appeared on, but if you're a fan this is one
you won't want to do without.
Un Caddie Renversé Dans L'Herbe
NOW THERE'S A WEIRD TASTE IN MY MOUTH
Dekorder 001 3"CD
This intriguing and disarmingly naïve (not in the pejorative sense
of the word) little three incher presents the work of Barcelona-based
Didac Lagarrida, originally from Sao Paulo in Brazil. Its six tracks
feature a variety of instruments from thumb pianos and balaphones
to cello and guitar, and possess that homemade experimental quality
that made landmark albums such as Steve Beresford's "Bath of Surprise"
so endearing; none of the pieces really adds up to much, nor seems
to want to - each goes on its way without apparent need to arrive
anywhere. Satiesque piano samples are overlaid with tiny balaphone
pings and melodica toots - minimal, if you like, but not so much Steve
Reich as John White. If you used to enjoy the Penguin Café Orchestra
this'll suit you just fine.
Speedranch^Jansky Noise
MI^GRATE
Planet Mu ZIQ71CD
Quite apart from having the best track titles I've come across
in a long time ("Bring Me The Ear of Celion [sic] Dion" indeed), including
possibly the longest I've ever seen (number 13 and I won't bother
typing it all out), this is forty minutes of non-stop fun. Fun, that
is, if your idea of fun is having your ears slashed to bits with B-movie
soundtracks, trash metal, trashed metal, screams, squelches, buzzes,
rips, uncontrolled and uncontrollable digitized bowel movements and
all manner of cultural ejectamenta. Personally, after a boring day's
work in a hot office, this is just what you need on the trusty old
Walkman during rush hour to transform me into an axe-wielding homicidal
maniac. According to the press release Speedranch's real name is Paul
Smith - funny, I seem to remember it was Paul Richard (cf The Wire
#176, October 1998 - who's right here?) - but I don't suppose it's
the same Paul Smith who makes those trendy suits. Shame, because a
blast of "Mi^grate" in the local haute couture boutique would work
wonders for turnover. This is great stuff. Specially recommended for
people of a sensitive nature who grew up watching "Trumpton". Look
at the photo of the bloke on the back cover and see what destiny awaits
you. Rock out.
Arc Lalove
EGO CONSUMIMUR
Pricilia P-REC 019
www.pricilia.com
This is the work of one Sylvain Gauthier on laptop, using Audiomulch
(and a whole host of effects boxes, all of which are listed, presumably
to impress us) to play audio and non-audio files. It's hardly user-friendly
stuff, consisting more often than not of knotty, spastic glitches,
crunches and short loud buzzes being swatted in your earhole like
digital flies. I could imagine it working well to accompany film or
dance, but on its own it's a pretty tough listen, though a welcome
sign nevertheless that the Nancy-based label is making NO compromises
to the mass market.
Jazz
& Improv Roundup
by Dan Warburton
Michel Lambert
OUT TWICE
482 Music 482-1019
These eleven tracks, recorded on two separate dates, one in Los
Angeles, the other in the south of France, are based on drawings (reproduced
in part on the CD booklet) by Canadian percussionist Michel Lambert.
These range from notated lines, chords and rhythms to maps and expressionistic
swirls - "graphic scores" might be an appropriate description (further
illuminating information is available at Lambert's website, www.michellambert.com).
On the LA date he's joined by pianist Milcho Leviev and bassist John
Giannelli, while the French session features bassist Barre Phillips
and local saxophonist Lionel Garcin. Not surprisingly therefore, the
music, though improvised, is closer in idiom to (free) jazz than it
is to outright free improvisation, and is propelled forward by Lambert
with a loose but nevertheless distinct sense of time, recalling both
Barry Altschul and Sunny Murray. Superbly recorded and as fresh and
colourful as Lambert's watercolours.
Stefan Keune / John Russell
FREQUENCY OF USE
Nurnichtnur Improvisers' Series
Though it certainly won't win any prizes for its "artwork" (what
a godawfully drab affair - whatever happened to Nurnichtnur's metal
boxes?), "Frequency of Use" is a superb, if a little on the long side,
set of duos between London-based guitarist John Russell and the young
German alto and soprano saxophonist Stefan Keune. Recorded in London
by Emanem's Martin Davidson, two of the tracks live at the Red Rose,
it's a passionate and cogently argued set. Though largely self-taught,
it's clear who Keune has been listening to (these days, however, the
work of the post-Evan Parker generation is often fresher and riskier
than the prolific output of the master himself). Russell's music is,
as ever, a joy: you get the impression he's just as agreeably surprised
by what he's doing are we are listening to it. Somebody at the label,
however, should really be taken to task for the appalling cover -
nobody in their right mind would ever even pick up such a dull-looking
disc, let alone buy it.
Leonard / Skrowaczewski / Zappa
VISIONS
Archive Edition 110 1971 4
c/o Stanley Zappa (ihammy@hotmail.com)
This is a strong debut recording by a trio of ex-Bennington students,
bassist Mark Leonard, percussionist Nick Skrowaczewksi and tenor saxophonist
and clarinettist (and sometime Bananafish journalist) Stanley Jason
Zappa, with liners by Ben Young and cover art by Bennington professor
Bill Dixon. Somebody should figure out a way to get these guys together
more often (they live respectively in California, Oregon and Minnesota),
because they've certainly got something to say: none of the twelve
pieces overstays its welcome - the longest clocks in at 4'34" - and
each manages to explore a wide range of textures and moods. Zappa
once wrote an extended polemic for Bananafish on the much-criticised
award of the MacArthur Fellowship to Ken Vandermark (I happen to remember
this as my own album came in for a good swatting, though I was flattered
to be compared to the Ganelin Trio), not surprisingly suggesting the
cash should have gone to Dixon (I'll have to part company with him
on that one, however). Thankfully he can play just as well as he writes,
articulating strong ideas with clarity and precision. I like to think
even KV would approve. Bassist Leonard is rugged and muscular, and
drummer Skrowaczewki, who presumably passed through the hands of Bennington's
other notable educator, Milford Graves, is fantastically inventive.
If you're getting fed up of the tired New York and Chicago-based cliques
of American free jazz (it ain't all that free anymore), do yourself
a favour and get a copy of this.
Alan Tomlinson / Steve Beresford / Roger Turner
TRAP STREET
Emanem 4092
This is trombonist Alan Tomlinson's first full-length album since
a long out-of-print offering on Phillip Wachsmann's Bead label (which
I've never seen.. if you're reading this, Phillip, how about a reissue?),
and the fact that his work on the alto and tenor instruments seems
to have gone unrecorded for so long is to be regretted, as it's outstanding.
On "Trap Street", each of whose eleven tracks takes its title from
a London postcode and whose booklet art is a map of the venerable
city taken from an 1888 Baedeker, he's joined by the ever surprising
Steve Beresford (electronics and objects) and the ludicrously inventive
Roger Turner (percussion) in a fine example of what the London scene
is particularly good at: strong personalities meeting and playing
together without feeling any need to upstage each other. Beresford's
objects might be pocket sized, but he can easily match Turner's seemingly
limitless energy and Tomlinson's lungpower. At time raucous and ebullient,
at times introvert and ghostly, "Trap Street" is another terrific
outing from Martin Davidson's excellent label.
Howard Riley / John Tilbury / Keith Tippett
ANOTHER PART OF THE STORY
Emanem 4088
What on paper looks like it should be a British Pianists Dream Team
turns out to be about as confrontational and dangerous as afternoon
tea at Harrod's. These three titans (none of whose careers needs summarising
here) are more concerned with peaceful and respectful cohabitation
- witness the eminently listenable "Equanimity" - than with wrestling
with the problem of finding common ground between their highly diverse
backgrounds and approaches to the instrument. There must be a way
to accommodate both Tilbury's gently acidic clusters and Tippett's
chunky octaves, and even the snatches of boogie and sub-Bartók, but
somehow this doesn't seem to find it. As Nate Dorward perceptively
noted in his Victoriaville review last month, multiple instrument
meetings "will inevitably throw up some good music but are mere sideshows
to the players' oeuvres". As such, anyone interested should seek out
Tippett's recent work with his longstanding quartet Mujician, the
two splendid Riley reissues on Emanem - "Synopsis" (Emanem 4044) and
"Improvisations Are Forever" (Emanem 4070) - and his superb quartet
outing with Tony Wren, Larry Stabbins and Mark Sanders, "Four In The
Afternoon" (Emanem 4067). As for Tilbury, if you haven't already rushed
out to buy "Absinth" (Grob 435) and "Duos For Doris" (Erstwhile 030-2),
then I must be failing somewhere along the line.
Alessandro Bosetti / Gregor Hotz / Kai Fagaschinski
/ Rudi Mahall
BERLIN REEDS
Absinth 001 4 x 3"CD
Released in a limited edition of 200, this is a beautiful piece
of work, with four 3" CDs (one for each player) exquisitely mounted
into a 20 cm² gatefold. Buy now or cry later, though I suspect they're
already down to the dozens, as Captain Beefheart would say. If you
only know Alessandro Bosetti's work from the arch lowercase group
Phosphor, and the breathy minimalism of his trio date for Potlatch
with Bhob Rainey and Michel Doneda ("Placés dans l'air"), you'll be
in for a bit of a surprise when you pop the first disc in the machine.
Bosetti uses two cassette recorders and a soprano saxophone - apparently
unplayed - to set up some monumental slabs of feedback noise. Gregor
Hotz' "Friendly Fire" is a patient and meticulous exploration of slowly
shifting multiphonics on the bass saxophone, interspersed with pregnant
silences. Hotz's work recalls Thomas Ankersmit in its single-minded
determination to explore one technical problem; if your definition
of what music is doesn't stretch this wide, let's call it acoustic
research. Kai Fagaschinski's "I'm afraid of Americans too" starts
out in similar vein, before abandoning the continuous tones in favour
of tiny key clicks and breath noises, and with it Fagaschinski joins
the ranks of the few brave souls who are trying to take the saxophone
to the next post-nmperign level (in France, watch out for Stéphane
Rives and Bertrand Gauguet). To reassure us - perhaps - that all Berliners
aren't completely out there, disc four kicks off with a burst of applause
for bass clarinettist Rudi Mahall (and his tapping feet), who delivers
three pieces of what I suppose can still be described as free jazz,
recorded live back in 1998. Recorded so close in fact it sounds as
if Mahall is blowing his horn right in your earhole. It's a superb
performance, and a great way to round off a challenging and highly
original set. Hats off to Absinth's Marcus Liebig for putting out
such an ambitious and beautiful project. Here's to the forthcoming
"Berlin Strings".. go to www.Absinthrecords.com
Tetuzi Akiyama / Greg Malcolm / Toshimaru Nakamura
/ Bruce Russell
INTERNATIONAL DOMESTIC
Corpus Hermeticum Hermes040
Bruce Russell, despite being somewhat isolated on the South Island
of New Zealand, has managed to keep up very well with the times thanks
to his activities as a guitarist, journalist (Opprobrium) and label
manager (Corpus Hermeticum). This album was recorded live during guitarist
Tetuzi Akiyama and no-input mixing board whiz Toshi Nakamura's recent
tour of Australia and New Zealand, and features Akiyama in three duets
recorded with, respectively, Nakamura, guitarist Greg Malcolm and
Russell himself on electronics and clavioline. Though Akiyama is an
active player in the onkyo scene (that sounds rather like a
contradiction in terms, but never mind), he's certainly not averse
to producing the odd blast of gut-wrenching noise, and does things
to his guitar pickups with a steak knife that would have a sushi chef
sweating. Nakamura's work is more disjointed here too, and their 14-minute
duet packs a few nasty surprises. The duet with Malcolm sounds more
like what you'd expect to hear in Tokyo's Off Site, but Russell, who
clearly has little time for some of the ultra-lowercase stuff that's
appeared over recent years (his Opprobrium review of Radu Malfatti's
Erstwhile "dach" with Phil Durrant and Thomas Lehn was positively
withering), is more confrontational, not necessarily vis-à-vis Akiyama,
but with the world at large. Their duet emerges out of a babble of
audience noise, the (poor unsuspecting?) punters in the Physics Room
evidently not realising the show has started until Russell takes their
scalps off with some deafening squiggles that Sun Ra would be proud
of. The audience titters, but it's nervous laughter - the piece exists
in a permanent state of impending catastrophe, building a fantastic
sense of tension that's all too often lacking in Japanese-style micro-improv.
Another great release from a great label.
Various Artists
MEETING AT OFF SITE VOL.2
Improvised Music In Japan IMJ 506
Curated by Tetuzi Akiyama and Toshimaru Nakamura, whose guitar,
turntables, air duster (!) and no-input mixing board appear on each
of the seven tracks, this is the second volume of material recorded
between December 2001 and May 2002 at Tokyo's tiny but highly influential
Off Site venue. The additional musicians include guitarist Taku Sugimoto,
cellist Mark Wastell, percussionists Sean Meehan and Tim Barnes, laptopper
Kaffe Matthews, turntablist DJ Peaky, Andrea Neumann on inside piano
and Aki Onda on cassette recorder, none of whom, with the exception
of Sugimoto, appeared on Vol.1. There are welcome signs that the ultra-quiet
aesthetic associated with Off Site is evolving into something a little
more active: the overall pace remains slow and chess-like, but Akiyama
and Nakamura seem more willing to roughen up the surfaces. The second
of the two tracks featuring Aki Onda is positively spiky, and Nakamura's
mastering throughout boosts the decibel levels and makes no attempt
either to filter out the ambient room noise or to fade out the tracks.
It's gripping stuff - check it out.
Copyright 2003 by Paris Transatlantic
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