New
on Palmetto
Matt Wilson
HUMIDITY
Palmetto 2089
Bobby Previte & Bump
COUNTERCLOCKWISE
Palmetto 2091
Ted Nash
STILL EVOLVED
Palmetto PM 2092
by Nate Dorward
Palmetto Records has struck up a useful alliance with the musicians
associated with New York's Jazz Composers Collective, notably drummer
Matt Wilson, in recent years one of the most ubiquitous sidemen in
jazz as well as a leader in his own right. Ted Nash's Still Evolved
features a familiar JCC roster - Nash on tenor, Frank Kimbrough on
piano, Ben Allison on bass, Wilson on drums - with guest stars Wynton
Marsalis and Marcus Printup taking turns in the trumpet spot. The
result is handsome if somewhat pasteurized hard bop, typified by the
complementary, cultured reworkings of blues harmonies that open the
album, "The Shooting Star" and "Jump Start"; Nash plays genial host
by yielding the leadoff solo spot to Marsalis on the first track,
Printup on the second. A few stylistic threads in the weave step outside
stricter hard-bop orthodoxies. "Point of Arrival" is modelled on forward-looking
Blue Note jazz of the 1960s, though Andrew Hill's Point of Departure
is less directly sourced than Larry Young's Unity (the melody
includes a lift from "The Moontrane"). Nowadays the Cool School has
been "mainstreamed" a bit, perhaps due to the example of Mark Turner.
Its influence is audible in Nash's steep-angled jumps into limpid
high-register notes à la Marsh, in Kimbrough's Tristano borrowings
on the title track, and in "Ida's Spoons", a serpentine gloss on "Stella
by Starlight" which follows a Tristanoesque course even down to its
final harmonized arpeggios. Despite the leavening of excellent work
from Wilson and Allison, Still Evolved is somewhat airless,
and it doesn't help that Nash virtually always voices heads in double
or triple unisons: a little Mingusy expansiveness would have helped
open out the arrangements. The temperature increase when the band
shrinks to a tenor-bass-drums trio momentarily on "Ida's Spoons" also
suggests Nash would make a stronger impression in a leaner format.
Matt Wilson's own new release, Humidity, is a lighter, more
playful and protean disc, with an efficient two-sax, bass and drums
format augmented sparingly with brass and fiddle. Saxophonists Andrew
D'Angelo and Jeff Lederer tackle the miniaturized exotica of "Raga"
and "Swimming in the Trees" with pungency, and draw cheerful scrawls
over canonical bop material like "Our Delight" or the "Rhythm"-changes
essay "Free Willy". "Wall Shadows" is wistful Americana intended as
a tribute to the poetry of Carl Sandburg; somehow it's inevitable
that D'Angelo and Lederer switch to clarinet for the piece (perhaps
one could dub this the Law of Frisell). It's apparent from the liners
that Wilson's children are a frequent musical inspiration for him
- not in sentimental Victorian fashion, but rather because he values
the destabilizing, intuitive surrealism of a child's sensibility.
Though bop and Ornette are the main stylistic reference-points for
Humidity, they coexist with charming toy percussion on "Raga"
and the dinky sound of a vintage rhythm machine on the title track.
All the pieces are colourful and attractively pocket-sized; a curmudgeon
might quibble that the bright, ruffled surface of the music acts as
a substitute for a more forceful approach the disc nonetheless hints
at, but that would be too harsh a verdict: this is a smart, fun ride,
well worth hearing.
Once known as Bump the Renaissance, Bobby Previte's regular band has
had its handle cut down to just Bump for Counterclockwise.
A similar economy of means is present in the music. The disc's backbone
is the series of five "Soul" pieces, an endlessly permuting chain
of riffs assembled on the fly, under the guidance of the leader's
tireless kit-bashing and shouts to the band. By yelling out names
of cities ("Chicago! ... Detroit, Detroit! ... New York!") he cues
each riff, as well as pays homage to classic roll calls of American
city-names from Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA" onwards. Marty Ehrlich
is, as always, beseechingly eloquent on tenor; Curtis Fowlkes acquits
himself well, though he's no Ray Anderson (trombonist on the band's
previous disc Just Add Water); but the album's sound is largely
dictated by Wayne Horvitz's prowling keyboards and the combined rumble
of Steve Swallow's bass guitar and the leader's oversized drums. Previte
could afford to let his best ideas breathe more freely - "Patricia"
could have been a Simon Nabatov chart if it weren't for the drum kit
thrash - but if you crank the volume up high enough you won't care
about such niceties.
New
on Eremite
Jemeel Moondoc / Denis Charles
WE DON'T
Eremite MTE 043
Allen / Drake / Jordan / Parker / Silva
THE ALL-STAR GAME
Eremite MTE 044
by Dan Warburton
Recorded back in 1981 when drummer Denis Charles was still on the
planet, We Don't is a fine and craggy set of four pieces, three
penned by altoist Moondoc (the title track is public domain). The
difference between Moondoc's tone today - twenty years down the line,
several fine releases have appeared under his leadership, most of
them on Eremite - and what it was back then is immediately evident;
the edge is harder, the attack more pronounced, but the innate sense
of melody and timing is unmistakable. "Denis Charles he'd just chug-a-lug
you for ever," Sunny Murray reminisced in our recent interview, and
he was right. Add Ed Blackwell to the equation and you can clearly
see just where Hamid Drake came from. There's a strange dull reverb
to some of the tom tom crashes, though that's presumably an inevitable
result of Jim Hemingway's remastering of the original recordings,
made in a studio down in Alphabet City. This is a minor quibble though
in the face of such glorious, strong, lyrical musicianship. One wonders
what else might be lying around in the vaults awaiting the attention
of Eremite's Michael Ehlers.
Anyone who dares say that Alan Silva's over the hill as a bass player
just because he spends a lot of time these days sitting behind a synthesizer
should be forced to listen to this baby through ten times in a row.
He teams up here with William Parker to form the most dynamic two
bass section since Cecil Taylor's Unit Structures (which featured,
as you'll recall Henry Grimes and.. Alan Silva). For once even Hamid
Drake sounds like he's being driven rather than doing the driving.
Not surprising since there's another titanic duo out front,
veteran Sun Ra alto saxophonist Marshall Allen and Edward "Kidd" Jordan
on tenor. Actually, "veteran" is the kind of disparaging term that
Ehlers has been fighting against since he started his label (so I'll
tactfully withdraw the epithet): his artistic credo has always been
to document the work of the earlier generation of free jazz pioneers
who are still very much alive and kicking but whom few labels seem
to want to record (the Ken Vandermarks of this world can fend very
well for themselves, after all). This volcanic 75 minute live set
recorded in Boston's ICA Theater on December 1st 2000 is glorious
proof that Ehlers is on the right track. The combined age of these
five gentlemen may be well past 300, but any one of them could go
the full fifteen rounds with the young cats and probably floor them
with a hook to boot.
On
Nurnichtnur
Birgit Ulher / Martin Klapper / Jürgen Morgenstern
MOMENTAUFNAHMEN
Nurnichtnur CD 1001030
PUT (Birgit Ulher / Ulrich Phillipp / Roger Turner)
UMLAUT
Nurnichtnur CD 1000425
by Dan Warburton
Peter Niklas Wilson, in his liners to Umlaut, is right to point
out the considerable differences that exist between improvised music
and (free) jazz, these two albums featuring German trumpeter Birgit
Ulher being most definitely examples of the former. On Momentaufnahmen
she's joined by bassist Jürgen Morgenstern and Martin Klapper (toys
and electronics) for twelve tracks of scratchy, jittery, nervous improv.
It's arresting and impressive, but exhausting stuff. After about half
an hour of peeps, honks and splutters - not all by any means originating
from Klapper's kindergarten arsenal of duck calls, ocarinas and kazoos,
either - you feel like a break. I suppose you don't have the play
the whole CD through from start to finish though. Klapper is certainly
very good at what he does, but ultimately toys tend to sound like,
well, toys. They also inevitably recall the anarchic generation of
London-based improvisers that appeared on the scene at the end of
the 70s, notably Steve Beresford and Terry Day, who put them to superb
and subversive use in Four Pullovers and Alterations. It's probably
not all that surprising then to find another British past master of
this musical kung fu aboard here, in the form of percussionist Roger
Turner, who joins bassist Ulrich Phillipp in the Put trio. In accordance
with my customary practice, I recorded (selected tracks from) both
these albums back to back on a C90 cassette to take out on the road.
Not noticing that I'd inadvertently nudged the auto reverse button,
I listened to a good two minutes of "ø", the first track on Umlaut
(yes, strange characters abound, not only in the recording studio
but also as track titles..) before realising it. There's the same
rapid fire chatter, beautifully executed and predictably unpredictable,
the same mastery of extended techniques (Ulher is on superb form),
but just one of those Beresford raspberries, or an irreverent snatch
of cheesy organ or lo-fi dub would somehow just add a little extra
sparkle. Once more, an album as packed as this one is with myriad
sudden changes of direction needs some concentration.
On
Barely Auditable
Kyle Bruckmann / Scott Rosenberg / Michael Zerang
SIX SYNAPTICS
Barely Auditable BAR 333
Bruckmann / Diaz-Infante / Shiurba / Stackpole
GRAND MAL
Barely Auditable / Pax BAR 1234
by Dan Warburton
You wouldn't expect the music that appears on a label with a name
as good as Barely Auditable to make any concessions, and it doesn't.
On Six Synaptics Rosenberg (one of two good reasons for buying
the 4CD set of Braxton's Ghost Trance music on Rastascan, Gino Robair
being the other) plays sopranino, alto and tenor sax, flute and contrabass
clarinet, while Kyle Bruckmann forsakes his usual double reed instruments
to concentrate on minimoog and live processing. Michael Zerang, perhaps
the only percussionist whose name sounds like the noises he makes,
completes the trio to perform six intense and acerbic improvisations
packed with virtuoso listening and playing recorded in Chicago in
June 2001. Bruckmann, whose electronics also featured on the recent
excellent EKG outing on Locust with Ernst Karel, Object2, and
who's also the accordion-wielding crazed lead singer of Lozenge (along
with the Flying Luttenbachers one of the most criminally underrated
outfits in alt.rock) is one of a growing number of Moogsters out there
who are taking the instrument even further out than Sun Ra did. Anyone
interested in improv with balls and brains ought to check this one
out.
Six months later, Bruckmann, this time armed with his oboe, English
horn and suona, was out in Oakland CA where he teamed up with local
guitarists Ernesto Diaz-Infante and John Shiurba and percussionist
Karen Stackpole to record Grand Mal (not to be confused with
Justin Bennett's trio of the same name on Andy Moor's Unsounds label,
though that's worthy of your attention too). Curiously enough, on
"Catatonic Posturing I", Bruckmann's reeds sound more like a Moog
than anything else. Shiurba's electric guitar work is especially vicious
on "Nervous Tic" (imagine Heinz Holliger jamming with Borbetomagus)
and contrasts nicely with Diaz-Infante's acoustic scrabblings. Stackpole's
percussion work is attentive and imaginative throughout. On "Big,
bad" Bruckmann's microtonal phrases are brilliantly punctuated by
shards of guitar and percussion in a track that says more in 1'45"
than most albums manage to do in fifteen minutes. All in all, Grand
Mal is solid and uncompromising proof that the Bay Area improv
scene has really taken off. It's up to you to make sure Barely Auditable's
balance sheet does likewise.
Doing
to you in your earhole
Pascal Battus
MASSAGES SONORES #2
Pink P05 CDR Contact: pink.rec@free.fr (www.pink-rec.fr.st)
by Dan Warburton
These days the kind of stuff I get in the mail more or less forces
me to listen on headphones, either because it's too damn weird and
disturbing to inflict on family members, or because it verges on the
inaudible (sometimes both), but here's a disc that I don't have to
feel guilty about putting the cans on for, because it's specifically
designed for headphone listening. "Short-circuit the medium in which
the soundwave propagates and divides: air", writes guitarist Pascal
Battus in his liner notes, "and substitute skin, bone and flesh".
Battus plays table guitar - he actually prefers to call it "guitare
environnée" ("surrounded guitar"), but it amounts to the same thing
- and excites it with all manner of objects familiar to devotees of
Keith Rowe's work (and several that would be more at home in a dental
surgery or iron foundry), capturing the resulting sounds with contact
mics and, in performance, transmitting the signal directly to an earpiece
inserted in the listener's lughole. Performance, then, is a one-to-one
consultation; lie down on Dr. Battus' couch, close your eyes and let
him operate. Battus performed his sound massages at last year's Musique
Action festival (the other sound doctor on hand was trombonist Thierry
Madiot, whose own disc of Sound Massages on Pink comes with
a box of objects for DIY use.. I'll hopefully be reviewing that one
shortly) and subsequently recorded them in Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy's
CCAM studios. The sounds he gets from the instrument, or rather from
the objects placed on and near it, are extraordinary; a crumpled ball
of paper becomes a forest fire, a small wooden rod rubbed vertically
into the resonating body of the instrument a vast booming cavern.
Best of all, and this is somewhat rare these days, the soundworld
he creates is just as interesting as the concept behind it, and its
attendant implications - this music becomes a uniquely personal experience,
especially when Battus does it to you in your earhole, calling into
question the whole notion of performer and public, and replacing it
with something more akin to a medical consultation. The idea of trust
comes into play, then: just as you implicitly trust your doctor to
act in your best interests, you keep your fingers crossed that Pascal
won't accidentally nudge the volume switch and blow your bloody eardrums
to smithereens. For the record, it also sounds perfectly wonderful
at high volume through the speakers. That admittedly isn't the guitarist's
intention, but, hey, I can do what I want with my CDs - I like to
play ultra-lowercase stuff like bernhard günter with the volume cranked
up (so incidentally does he) and it's also quite pleasant to listen
to earwax-melting noise à la Merzbow played at the threshold of audibility.
There's not as much difference as you might think between Masami Akita
and Taku Sugimoto. Anyway, enough of that, time for a massage.
On
Creative Sources
I Treni Inerti
URA
Creative Sources CS 006
Ernesto Rodrigues / Guilherme Rodrigues / Manuel
Mota / José Oliveira
ASSEMBLAGE
Creative Sources CS 007
by Dan Warburton
It seems Portugal has really exploded into life since it hosted
Expo in 1998 (someone should write an extended English language feature
on the subject, until which time you'll have to swot up your French
and get hold of Rui Eduardo Paes' occasional articles in Revue & Corrigée),
and in the domain of jazz and improvised music it's decidedly one
of the most happening places in Europe right now. At least that's
the impression I get on discovering the wealth of great new music
on fledgling jazz / electronica / improv labels such as Clean Feed,
Sirr, Headlights and Creative Sources. This latter, run by violinist
Ernesto Rodrigues, is solid proof that when it comes to superquiet,
lowercase, reductionist - delete as appropriate - strategies in improvisation,
there's as much going on in the Iberian peninsula as there is in Somerville
MA, Tokyo's Off Site and phosphorescent East Berlin. Assemblage
features Rodrigues and son Guilherme (cello, pocket trumpet), José
Oliveira (percussion, inside piano and acoustic guitar) and Manuel
Mota on electric guitar, hailed by none other than Derek Bailey as
one of today's most original performers on the instrument. Its three
tracks, entitled respectively "Assemlage" I, II and III (no "b", but
it's just a typo, I'm assured) unfold at a leisurely pace, with nobody
pushing anyone else around, and judiciously avoid the "thou shalt
not play loud or fast" dogma that has made several other notable lowercase
improv outings in recent months somewhat tedious and predictable.
With its meticulous attention to detail, Oliveira's percussion work
recalls John Stevens' finest moments, and Mota's gentle flecks of
sound counterpoint the woody scrapes of Rodrigues père et
fils to perfection, to produce one the richest and most rewarding
examples of the genre since London-based Assumed Possibilities Rossbin
outing last year Still Point.
There's another connection here; Assumed Possibilities' cellist Mark
Wastell and harpist Rhodri Davies frequently collaborate with trumpeter
Matt Davis (in Broken Consort, and there's also an Erstwhile release
in the pipeline with Phil Durrant), and Davis is one of two trumpeters
featured in I Treni Inerti, the other being Ruth Barberán. The third
member of the group, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, plays accordion, but
if you think a two trumpet / accordion line-up sounds like a recipe
for some knees up TexMex, you'd damn well better think again: Ura,
recorded and mixed along the coast in Barcelona in July 2002, is one
of the most challenging and austere explorations of extended techniques
since Davis' own extraordinary solo outing Mute Correspondences
CDR on Confront a while back (now completely unobtainable.. reissues
anyone?). The trio's unswerving dedication to charting the nether
regions of their instruments' potential as sound sources is such that
"normal" trumpet and accordion sounds, on the rare occasions they
actually appear (there's a killer moment at 9'43" in "Osso"), sound
as otherworldly and alarming as a blast of Merzbow might in the middle
of a Mozart slow movement. Of course, strange new sounds for their
own sake don't make for good music, a fact that Barberán, Davis and
Monteiro are well aware of. Each of the four pieces on offer here
is as structurally solid as the metal gantry depicted on the album
cover. Ura is certainly not something you'd want to put on
the beatbox to accompany your barbecue, but there's certainly just
as much meat to get your teeth into here. Strongly recommended.
George
Crumb
70TH BIRTHDAY ALBUM
Bridge 9095
WORKS VOLUME V
Bridge 9113
by Nicolas Sharyshkin
Crumb's debt to Ives is obvious and blatant-and he is the first
to acknowledge it-in "Star Child", a work of spatially-distributed
music, which frankly, it does not belong in the category of the great
works (one thinks of Boulez, Brant, Xenakis, Stockhausen, not to mention
Ives himself) of architectural/spatial music. Too much is derivative,
far too much is obvious. Perhaps Crumb is at his best after all in
chamber music, in small works that stretch the idiom to epic and undiscovered
proportions. Slather on the players, and much of the detail that makes
his music so captivating becomes lost in the shuffle-and no composer
is more interested in detail than Crumb. Any pianist who has laboured
(in the "Makrokosmos") to distinguish between six types of pizzicato
while confronted with a dizzying array of glass rods, thimbles, and
plectra will appreciate Crumb's compositional precision, verging on
fanaticism. A mark, then, of his genius is that this type of obsessive
writing should actually lead to some of the freest and sweetest music
of our time. "Star Child", however, loses in the expansion. And Ives'
unanswered question works better in the original. Crumb definitely
does not have the answer. You can't stop listening to it though…I'll
admit it's endlessly compelling (has Crumb ever written a movie soundtrack?
He would be so good at it.).
Crumb is a vigorous and optimistic composer. Although much of his
music deals with the ethereal, the spiritual, and the memorial, he
nonetheless retains an eager and genial outlook on life. Yet his works
can be powerfully wrenching. Despite his good-natured personality,
he has not hesitated to write protest music: political music, which
most composers seem too wimpy to create. "Black Angels" is one of
the most appallingly beautiful pieces of art to depict the Vietnam
war, and the "Vox Balaenae" is that rare eco-work that does not lose
itself in sappiness. The complexity of the scores probably helps ensure
intensely committed performances. One could say that perhaps also
of Ferneyhough or others whose music is dauntingly complex: no amateurs
need apply.
Most wonderful and awe-inspiring on Volume V is "A Haunted
Landscape", in whose program note Crumb writes that "places can inspire
feelings of reverence or of brooding menace. Sometimes one feels an
idyllic sense of time suspended." Nothing could better describe this
astonishing performance by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. I argued
above that Crumb was not always at his best in large ensembles, but
this is wonderful, and the performers deserve congratulations for
such vivid tone painting. Obligatory references to Debussy and Stravinsky
only serve to heighten the effect, sinister and truly haunting, played
by a spectral-certainly not spectrale- ensemble. As with all the albums
in this series from Bridge Records, the recording quality is excellent
with great clarity and depth.
Jad
Fair / Jason Willett
by Dan Warburton
Jad Fair / Jason Willett
SUPERFINE
Public Eyesore 67
In case you haven't been keeping up with the Jad Fair / Half Japanese
discography (a more or less full-time job), here's something to help
you catch up. Superfine contains no less than 155 (!) songs,
20 on the album itself and 135 more in mp3 format. Now that's what
I call value for money. As always, Fair seems to be able to reference
almost everything worth listening to in indie rock and leftfield insanity
from the Residents to Devo to Contortions to Sun City Girls to Sun
Ra to Hasil Adkins while always managing to sound quite like nobody
else. Quite how he and Willett managed to choose what would make it
to the album proper and what would remain in mp3 format is a mystery,
since some of the best stuff is buried in the latter, from the fucked
up 7/4 weirdabilly of "You're Out Of Sight", via the appallingly lo-fi
garage grit of "Marshmallow World" to the wonderful "Hot As A Match",
which sounds like a home recording of the Arkestra trying to play
early Hüsker Dü with lyrics by Mayo Thompson. The recording quality
is refreshingly cruddy throughout, with cheap electronics battling
it out with biscuit-tin drums, touchtone phones, surfcore guitars
and all manner of bleeps and gurgles. "Neon Sunrise" sounds like a
medieval shawn recorded on a dictaphone, while I was understandably
drawn to "Vampires of Paris". As Fair intones on "Head In A Jar",
"When will we ever stop it?" His voice is as distinctive as Eugene
Chadbourne's, and he's about as prolific and probably even crazier.
Yes folks, there's enough on this disc to fuck you up for the rest
of the year.
Check out http://www.sinkhole.net/pehome for further details.
Jazz
& Improv Roundup
by Dan Warburton
Goldsparkle Trio
THUNDER REMINDED ME
Clean Feed CF009 CD
Hailing originally from Atlanta GA, altoist / clarinettist Charles
Waters and drummer Andrew Barker are now well settled in Brooklyn
and have integrated themselves into that thriving jazz community curated
(amongst others) by indefatigable bassist and Vision Festival organiser
William Parker. Like Rob Mazurek's Chicago Underground projects, Goldsparkle
sometimes appear as a duo, sometimes as a band, but it's perhaps as
a trio with the superb underpinning of bassist Adam Roberts that they're
best appreciated (it's a shame Roberts couldn't have taken part in
Waters and Barker's recent Drimala outing with Matthew Shipp). And
appreciated they certainly were on the evening of May 29th 2001 in
the Knitting Factory's Old Office, where they played as part of that
year's Vision Festival. Barker and Waters share the songwriting credits,
both providing strong heads and punchy structures that reveal a debt
to (and enormous love of) Mingus, Coleman and Dolphy, not to mention
a whole host of great players that have come this way since. Barker
gives the game away a little calling one of his pieces - a solo -
"For Billy Higgins", but it's clear he's been checking out everyone
else too. Waters dances as gracefully as Eric, with a similar fondness
for angles and corners, and Roberts anchors the set beautifully. Another
fine release from Pedro Costa's superb new Clean Feed label, this
one sparkles indeed.
Anders Gahnold Trio
FLOWERS FOR JOHNNY
Ayler aylCD 017/018 (2CD)
A while back, reviewing …and William Danced, a superb studio
encounter between Swedish altoist Gahnold and the extraordinary rhythm
team of William Parker and Hamid Drake, I expressed a wish that Ayler's
Jan Strom might unearth some of Gahnold's recordings with bassist
Johnny Dyani and drummer Gilbert Matthews. Well, sometimes wishes
are granted. This release of a 67 minute live concert recorded at
the 1983 Umeå Jazz Festival and a 33 minute set at Stockholm's Jazz
Club Fasching two years later is great news for several reasons. Firstly,
the artists featured here have recorded comparatively little, which
is unfortunate in the case of Gahnold, a superb post-bop stylist with
a strong tone and ideas to match, but nothing short of tragic in the
case of South African-born Dyani, a bassist of monumental stature
throughout a career that took off upon his arrival in England with
the Blue Notes and continued until his death in October 1986. Drummer
Matthews is best known for his work with Chris McGregor's groups (his
trio and the fabled Brotherhood of Breath), but on the strength of
this he should be right up there with the aforementioned Drake in
the Guild of Master Drummers. With the exception of an infectiously
foot-tapping "Summertime", all the material here is penned by Gahnold,
who proves himself to be as able a composer as he is saxophonist,
and thanks to Ayler Records' exclusive AYVI system, you can also access
a fascinating collection of visual documents at the label's website
by using the code printed on the discs themselves. Go check it out
- it seems pretty clear that Anders Gahnold is the best thing to come
out of Swedish music between Abba and Mats Gustafsson.
The Remote Viewers
SUDDEN ROOMS IN DIFFERENT BUILDINGS
GE5
Contact: davidpetts@yahoo.com
After five albums on Leo, the Remotes have decided to go it alone
with Sudden Rooms.. - though Leo Feigin assures me they haven't
left the fold for good - which kicks off with another extraordinary
cover version (to add to the Madonna and Portishead masterpieces on
their preceding outings): this time it's David Sylvian's "Ghosts"
that gets the Louise Petts treatment, her silky smooth voice accompanied
by husband David's weird swoony harmonisations. One imagines that
Mr Sylvian, who's now hooked up with such avant heroes as Derek Bailey
and Christian Fennesz, will appreciate the homage. Elsewhere, the
outlandish microtonal synth work and positively disturbing saxophone
arrangements might give you a clue as to why the Remotes opted to
release this themselves. Five years on from their Leo debut they're
still one of the most original and as a result under-appreciated outfits
around, and it's ironic that they're based in the city with perhaps
the liveliest improv scene in the world, London. Unless there are
some seismic changes in the world cultural map, The Remote Viewers
are rather unlikely to be playing in a venue near you in the foreseeable
future, so you'd be advised to email Mr Petts forthwith and procure
yourself a copy of this little treasure.
Pandelis Karayorgis/Mat Maneri Quintet
DISAMBIGUATION
Leo CD LR 334
by Nate Dorward
This 2002 disc co-led by the prolific Mat Maneri seems to have slipped
under the radar of alt.jazz fans, at least in comparison to the buzz
surrounding two contemporary Maneri releases, Sustain and Going
to Church. Maneri plays unamplified viola on the disc rather than
his electric six-string fiddle, and it suits him, allowing him to
work quietly around the fringes of each note, bending or feathering
it with the bow; he uses a disconcertingly gradual attack rather than
biting into a phrase, as if fading up on it note by note. It's a fine
display of how to make your own time within time, and his companions
- pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, bassist
Michael Formanek, drummer Randy Peterson - all possess the same combination
of poise and mobility. Karayorgis is the composer of the five pieces
on the disc, oblique boppish heads that drift in and out like spectres,
independently of their surroundings. The improvisations are left free
to find their own pace and mood, the players developing intricate
dialogues precisely because they leave each other a great deal of
space. Silence is internalized in the music, giving it a fluidity
and openness to change which is the reverse of how silence functions
on an ECM disc (as a mirror held up to each note). A quietly innovative
disc, Disambiguation provides food for thought as well as enjoyment.
Contemporary
Roundup
by James Baiye
Rhys Chatham
AN ANGEL MOVES TOO FAST TO SEE
Table Of The Elements 57 Lanthanum 3CD
The release of this lavish 3 CD box set, which resembles
nothing less than the NY skyscraper depicted in Robert Longo's artwork,
complete with a 142 page book, has been much trumpeted, but Chatham
collectors will already have four of the seven works: "Die Donnergötter",
"Waterloo N°2" and "Guitar Trio" were released on Dossier in 1987,
and "Massacre on MacDougal Street" appeared under the title "For Brass"
on Factor X (Moers) in 1983. That leaves "Two Gongs", a 62-minute
piece for, well, two gongs, dating from 1971, 1982's "Drastic Classicism"
for five electric guitars and drums, and the title track, 1989's "An
Angel Moves Too Fast To See", scored for no fewer than 100 guitars.
As the gong piece is interesting but not exactly earth-shattering
and the 100 guitar piece frankly anticlimactic - quite apart from
its harmony and voice leading, which are what one might expect from
a twelve-year old, there's little here that couldn't have been executed
perfectly well by ten guitars - it's up to you to decide if you want
to invest big money in the packaging, especially since Chatham's writings
(including pieces with titles like "The Late 1970s and 1980s, Report
from NYC - Music in Crisis: Catastrophe of Meaning") are as repetitive
and mildly megalomaniac as his music. It's to be regretted that the
set couldn't have included his other works for the 100 guitar ensemble,
"Warehouse of Saints: Songs for Spies" and "Tauromaquia", or some
of his more recent chamber music, rather than the tepid militaristic
boredom of "Waterloo N°2".
Robert Erickson
PACIFIC SIRENS
New World 80603-2
Robert Erickson (1917 - 1997) escaped from Michigan to settle in
California in the 1950s, where he passed on what he'd learned from
Ernst Krenek to several generations of university students. As one
can imagine, the music he produced throughout his career was accordingly
well written, earnest and academic. "White Lady", written in 1975
for that perennial institution of American music school academia,
the wind ensemble, is a fine study in klangfarbenmelodie but displays
its set theory chops all too readily. "Garden" is also pretty easy
to figure out (one imagines Erickson's copies of Schoenberg and Forte
accompanied him on his walks in the high Sierra), but the oriental-tinged
lyricism of the solo violin part, ably executed by Laura Martin and
sympathetically accompanied by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, is
touching. Equally atmospheric is "Pacific Sirens" (1969), which invites
the performers to play along - the score consists of graphic instructions
rather than notes - with pre-recorded tapes of waves breaking on Pescadero
Beach, but the real fun on this album is the inclusion of a 1974 concert
recording of Erickson's 1963 "Piano Concerto", which features pianist
Keith Humble going ballistic with a seven-piece ensemble. Written
at a time when composers were beginning to check out free jazz and
try to find a way to incorporate its brute force into their work,
the piece stands along with Ralph Shapey's "Rituals" as one of the
best examples of the genre.
Pietro Grossi
BATTIMENTI
Ants AG 03
Take ten frequencies (395Hz = 1, 396 = 2 etc. up to and including
405), combine two (ten permutations), three (25 permutations), four
(31) and five (28) at a time, allow about thirty seconds for each
permutation and then move on to the next one. Sounds like a mathematical
exercise? So does the music. Interesting acoustically it may be, claiming
it as "one of the most fascinating works of music of the last century"
(as does Albert Mayr, whose own tedious "Hora Harmonica" came out
on Ants earlier this year) is frankly pushing it. It depends what
you listen to music for, I guess. Remind me to take this one along
with me next time I have to get my ears tested as part of the annual
medical check up. In the meantime, pass the Eliane Radigue.
Kari Väkevä
TUNING IN
Computer Music CD 001
I'm not sure if Computer Music is the actual label, or just the
musical genre, but it's certainly that, and Finnish-born Väkevä doesn't
spare us the gory details of how each of the ten pieces on offer here
was created in a press release that abounds with HRTF spatializations,
granular synthesis and SCM, whatever that is. It's technically very
accomplished (as one might expect) with all its bleeps and whooshes
in the right place, but rather frosty stuff, and not well-served by
a frankly unimaginative cover depicting what seems to be a radio telescope
pointing at a night sky.
Electronica
Roundup
by Dan Warburton
Minamo
SHRINE | NEST
Mr Mutt Mlive03
Having been mildly disappointed by the last Minamo that came my way,
it's deeply gratifying to report that this outing, regrouping two
performances by the Japanese quartet in October and November 2002
(live, in conformity with the ethos of the Mr Mutt label, of which
more later) is absolutely enchanting. "Shrine" was recorded in the
Suwa shrine, Nishi-Nippori (Tokyo) and it's clear that guitarists
Keichi Sugimoto and Yuichiro Iwashita in particular were breathing
the same quiet holy air that made "Opposite", the magnificent HatNoir
outing by another Sugimoto - Taku, so special several years back.
Within minutes keyboard player Namiko Sasamoto has picked up on the
vibe, and the tiny, exquisite flurries of notes he inserts to embellish
the glowing F# major tonality are picked up by computer whiz Tetsuro
Yasanuga and transformed into something rich and strange. By the eleven-minute
mark the music has modulated to C#. It's perhaps a question for faculty
types to ponder, but I think we can actually speak of modulation for
once, with the caveat that we're no longer dealing with functional
tonality in the nineteenth century sense of the word, i.e. a titanic
Beethovenian struggle on the structural level which attributes patently
heroic characteristics to various keys and lets them battle it out
in the macro-form, but rather a sense of place, a colour even, for
the music to inhabit for as long as it feels necessary. It's rare
in these troubled times, especially in the world of Japanese improvised
music that is subject to such scrutiny by the alt.music press, to
come across something as poised, as settled as this. "Nest" inhabits
the same territory, but feels somehow slightly more active; Sasamoto's
gently repetitive piano loops seem to dominate somewhat, imposing
a sense of pulse (admittedly nebulous) that "Shrine" managed to avoid.
Here one senses the real danger of the live event: seeing how easy
it is these days to load a recording of the gig into the machine and
edit out the rough spots, it's admirable that Rossano Polidoro and
Emiliano Romanelli (aka Tu m') have chosen to adopt a warts'n'all
live policy for their Mr Mutt label. Go to www.tu-m.com
Leafcutter John
THE HOUSEBOUND SPIRIT
Planet Mu ZIQ061 CD
This third album from London-based John Burton moves away from the
glitch hop of his earlier outings on Tigerbeat6 towards a more eclectic
mix of digitised pop balladry, musique concrète, dub and easy
listening, edited and assembled with consummate panache. It's a technically
impressive but, in its stylistic plurality, aesthetically confusing
package that I'd be tempted to qualify it as postmodern, were that
word not so unfashionable these days. The surface of the music, with
its myriad pans, fizzes, bubbles and gurgles is extremely seductive
but somehow can't completely make up for the rather mundane nature
of the compositions lurking underneath.
Kazumasa Hashimoto
YUPI
Plop PLIP 3007
This debut album from Tokyo-based multi-instrumentalist and recording
engineer Hashimoto is a highly listenable if somewhat sugary collection
of unashamedly tonal doodles, whose snatches of birdsong (real or
digital?) and delicate midtempo minimal montage - think late 70s Reich
/ Glass / Eno rearranged by Simon Jeffes - make it one of those perfect
summer holiday albums, light and refreshing as a fruit juice cocktail
and similarly guaranteed not to give you a hangover. A dash of vodka
and bitters might spice it up somewhat, but presumably that wasn't
Hashimoto's intention.
Copyright 2003 by Paris Transatlantic
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