| December
News 2003 |
Reviews
by Dan Warburton, Nate Dorward, James Baiye, Vid Jeraj & Steve
Beresford:
|
|
Editorial
Reissue this! Steve Beresford on Kwela by Gwigwi's
Band
Marty Ehrlich
Vid Jeraj on Jazz, Improvizative Music, Kanyizsa
(Serbia / Montenegro)
On Musica Genera: Olaf Rupp & Joe Williamson
/ Butcher, Zerang, Lonberg-Holm / Johannes Bergmark & Martin
Klapper / Chris Burn's Ensemble
Christopher Delaurenti
Joëlle Léandre
David Grubbs & Loren Connors
Jazz & Improv: Matt Davis, Phil Durrant, Mark
Wastell / Joel Stern, Anthony Guerra / Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Matt
Hannafin, Bob Marsh / Mike Khoury / Paul Smoker / Derek Bailey
& Tristan Honsinger / Sachiko M
Contemporary: Radu Malfatti, Ilya Monosov / Marie-Hélène
Fournier /
Electronica: Henry Jacobs / JD Robb / Greg Headley
/
Last Month
|
Editorial
In response to the "staggering success" (hahaha, that reads like
a press release) of the Now Playing feature in our tenth anniversary
issue a couple of months back, I asked several other musicians to
write in telling us what was burning up their stereo systems. At roughly
the same time, The Wire magazine in London ran a feature entitled
Great Lost Recordings (Wire 236, October 2003), where contributors
waxed lyrical about favourite recordings that have somehow dropped
off the map (in some cases never really appearing on it in the first
place..). In similar vein, instrumentalist and tireless supporter
of the London free improvised music scene Steve Beresford has kindly
contributed a piece this month on Kwela by Gwigwi's Band (77
Records Afro 101 - see below). Anyone interested in reissuing this
lost treasure take note - and please don't hesitate to contact PT
if you can help out. I also extend an invitation to others out there
to send in similar texts (not too long please, see the FAQ page for
details) if they have any treasured recordings that deserve to be
reissued. A warm welcome too this month to Vid Jeraj for his review
of the Kanjiza Festival in Serbia / Montenegro.
Steve Beresford once memorably described improvising guitarist Roger
Smith as someone "who tends to move away from microphones as if
they were out to get him." Originally hailing from the small Derbyshire
town of Ilkeston, Smith, who was the longest-serving member of John
Stevens' mythic Spontaneous Music Ensemble apart from Stevens himself,
is, compared to fellow English guitar improvisers John Russell and
(especially) Derek Bailey, something of a recluse nowadays, lecturing
and teaching guitar by day, and playing by himself late at night in
his Wood Green apartment - hence the title of his latest album on
Emanem, Green Wood. Like the material on his two earlier Emanem
solo CDs, Unexpected Turns and Extended Plays, these
twelve tracks were recorded direct to DAT in the guitarist's kitchen
(the plumbing system makes itself heard at several places). Smith
plays Spanish guitar without a plectrum, using the rich resonance
of its open strings to perfection. Though the pieces are generally
quiet, they fairly bustle with gentle activity, their myriad notes
rustling like leaves on a tree. The music is fascinatingly introspective,
the filigree pattern-work mapping out an idiosyncratic and totally
coherent harmonic space all its own, yet it's far from cold; there's
a self-effacing sense of humour to tracks like "Fast Forward" that
is all too often lacking in improvised music, a genre that tends to
take itself far too seriously, and credit is due to Emanem's Martin
Davidson for coaxing this gentle nocturnal animal out into the light.
In September 2003 friend and fellow journalist Théo Jarrier, who several
years ago founded the French fanzine Peace Warriors, informed me that
he had been exchanging emails with Roger
Smith, and kindly agreed to let Paris Transatlantic use the material
prior to its eventual publication in French in PW (soon to become
an online magazine too: watch this space for details). Reading and
re-reading Smith's mails has been a fascinating and moving experience,
and has raised some serious questions about editorial practice. When
I began work editing the transcripts I was tempted to flesh out Smith's
email shorthand into complete sentences, but in so doing I soon realised
that I was losing a distinct sense of rhythm in the text; Smith's
abbreviations and punctuation marks, particularly his use of semicolons
and quotation marks, reveal much about his thought processes, and
are curiously (though perhaps not surprisingly) similar to the use
he makes of space and interval in his own playing. I have accordingly
left the text alone as far as possible (even at the risk of leaving
several rather strange non sequiturs unedited), so that this sensitive
and grossly underestimated musician can speak to us all. Do yourself
a favour and check out his back catalogue on Emanem too. Bonne
lecture. —DW
Reissue
this! AFRO 101
The original Dobell's jazz record shop was at the bottom end of
Charing Cross Road in the West End of London. I say original, but
there may have been another one before 1974, which was when I moved
to London. In any case, the place certainly felt like it had been
there for years, with a great selection of second-hand records in
a pleasingly cluttered basement. The listening booths upstairs were
like the ones in Sydney Tafler's music shop in the movie "It Always
Rains on Sunday" except that Dobell's booths had graffiti that read
"Bird Lives!" and "Coltrane is God!" and you hardly ever saw pencil-moustached
bandleaders kissing young ladies in them. Instead you could take an
armful of old LPs from downstairs in and ruin them with massive bakelite
pickups.
A while before that, Mr. Dobell had started a record company called
77 Records after the street number of the shop. I'm pretty sure that
I read somewhere that Bob Dylan's first recording, an anthology released
when he was still calling himself Blind Boy Grunt, was on 77. What
I am sure of is that 77 Records Afro 101 was called Kwela by Gwigwi's
Band and it featured Gwigwi Mrwebi and Dudu Pukwana on alto saxophones,
Ronnie Beer on tenor saxophone, Chris McGregor on piano, Coleridge
Goode on bass and Laurie Allan on drums. Dudu and Chris moved to London
in 1965 and I am guessing that this LP was made soon after that.
Each piece they play is either by Mrwebi or Pukwana and one or other
altoist solos on every tune, sometimes with a piano solo too. They're
very short versions, as though recorded for a series of 7-inch singles,
and the tunes are wonderful, all in the Kwela dance style that was
then captivating South Africa. The terseness of the treatment is in
nice contrast to the generosity of the melodies. Some of Dudu's tunes
that first appeared on this album were recycled later when McGregor
formed the big band The Brotherhood of Breath, but others never seemed
to get played again. I arranged the opener, Dudu's "Good News", for
our South African tribute band The Dedication Orchestra and dedicated
my arrangement to the late Mike Hart, who had given me a cassette
copy of his copy of Afro 101. Mike was a Glaswegian who had worked
for years in Compendium Books in Camden Town. Anything you needed
to know about books or music, Mike could tell you: best new thriller?
bio of Lester Young? hot new cartoonist? Writer and musician Ivor
Cutler popped in there frequently and dedicated a volume to Mike,
one of the tiny books of Ivor's minute poems they always kept on the
front counter at Compendium.
Both Dobell's and Compendium are gone now and I fantasise about a
new system of commemorative plaques. Blue plaques are normally put
on London buildings once occupied by famous people, but my idea is
plaques for the great lost shops of London and the people who, with
love and dedication, worked in them. I'll also always miss The Albanian
Shop in Betterton Street and Wong, Singh, Jones in Portobello.
Reissuing Kwela by Gwigwi's Band would be a pretty sensible
way of remembering departed players like Dudu and Chris, and I'm sure
the guys who are still very much with us - like Coleridge and Laurie
- would rather see it out than impossible-to-find. I have a chum who
thinks he can put his hand on the master tapes. What could they be
like after all these years? Have they crumbled into dust? Is there
hideous print-through? Probably not - my guess is that magnetic tapes
survive better than CDs. We recently went back to cassette masters
from twenty-five years ago and they were in perfect nick. — Steve
Beresford
Marty
Ehrlich
LINE ON LOVE
Palmetto PM 2095
THE LONG VIEW
Enja ENJ-9452-2
Whatever horn he's blowing, Marty Ehrlich plays with a commitment
and gutsiness that make most hectoring free-jazz saxophonists sound
thin. On Line on Love, with the exception of two bass clarinet
tracks, he is playing alto throughout, sounding if anything bigger
and more forceful than he does on tenor (a horn which he tends to
use more often when working as a sideman). This fullness of sound
and spirit - neither "hot" nor "cool," in touch with masters like
Ornette and Hemphill even as Ehrlich goes his own way - lends the
music a centeredness one rarely encounters in contemporary
jazz. A similar impression is conveyed by his penchant as a composer
and improviser for laying half-notes or whole notes against a more
rhythmically active backdrop. Line on Love is in idiom and
instrumentation a classic sax-plus-rhythm date - the superb rhythm
section comprises pianist Craig Taborn, bassist Michael Formanek and
drummer Billy Drummond. The opening "Hymn" is a head-turner: a simple
bass melody rich enough in itself to suggest a whole chorale grounds
a Morse-code message tapped out by the pianist; the modulation from
sweetness to encroaching darkness at the end of the head is beautifully
managed, as is the gradual intensification of spirits and energies
as Ehrlich's solo develops. It's a highly affecting track - dare one
say it, "uplifting". "Line on Love" is delivered with a disarming
directness, a rubato ballad with an Ornette flavour (cf. "Kathelin
Gray" for instance); "Julian's Theme" is a fast-moving Chinese box
of a piece, its whole-note theme dissected in a series of variations
which are later stated in reverse order at the piece's end. To my
ear the two bass clarinet tracks are a mite more ordinary than the
rest of the album (and "The Git Go" - an Ehrlich original, not the
Mal Waldron tune - breaks the album's mood somewhat with its much
more conventional post bop feel - not surprisingly: it's an older
tune than the others), but there's no mistaking the album's quality
as a whole. One of the best jazz releases you'll hear this year.
Ehrlich's other recent release is the ambitious large-scale work The
Long View, a collaboration with the painter Oliver Jackson commissioned
by Harvard University. Developing out of a ten-week residency by both
men at Harvard in 2000, the piece is in six movements, the same number
as the six paintings Jackson produced during the collaboration, though
Ehrlich is careful to state that there is no direct correlation between
each movement and a specific painting; the presiding spirit over the
collaboration is Julius Hemphill, an enthusiast of Jackson's artwork
and one of Ehrlich's mentors. There's a truly extraordinary cast of
musicians on the disc - Wayne Horvitz, Bobby Previte, Pheeroan AkLaff,
Mark Feldman, James Zollar, Mark Helias, Ray Anderson, countless others
- though they are kept on a tight rein, largely sketching in the details
of the score; only Ehrlich himself gets significant solo space, though
still very much with the larger architecture in mind rather than getting
off a spotlit solo. The first and last movements are delivered by
a 14-piece big band; the 2nd movement is for string quartet, soprano
sax, and percussion; the 3rd is for a wind ensemble; the 4th is for
jazz quartet; the 5th for jazz septet. There is also a brief "Postlude"
duet between the leader and Horvitz. Even on the tracks with larger
gatherings, the texture is light (no Kentonesque blows to the tympanum),
the pacing temperate, with a lot of built-in pauses and suspensions
between more active passages. The results are graceful but rather
stodgy and earnest; good moments, such as the unexpectedly spirited
conclusion to the whole piece, compete with dull stretches: the 2nd
movement in particular, all twelve minutes of it, is a real trial.
Let's hope that Ehrlich gets a second shot at a big band project;
I've no doubt he can pull it off, but The Long View isn't quite
there yet. —ND
Joie
de Vivre at the Festival of Music & Dance in Kanjiza
Jazz, Improvizative Music, 11th - 13th September
2003
by Vid Jeraj
Day One
I leave for Kanjiza in Vojvodina, the Northern part of Serbia and
Montenegro from Zagreb, Croatia on Thursday, September 11th, on a
trip that involves changing from train, bus, train and finally sweating
down the road on foot (if I hadn't also wished to document the traditional
craftsmanship of producing wooden barrels in a small city located
on Croatia / Serbia-Montenegro border along the way, I would have
taken a train to Belgrade, and then straight to Kanjiza with a touch
of comfort). By 10.30pm, after unsuccessfully trying to convince a
hip young hopper - Eminem's influence grips the local youth here too
- to come and catch Anthony Braxton (music fan turned missionary:
are we all preaching for the same utopia?), I luckily hitch a lift
from some guy who mistakes my middle finger raised in despair for
a thumb. I have to get there quickly - I'm expecting to meet Josef
Nadj, the famous choreodramatist, and Zoltan Bicskei, the most dedicated
free-jazz impresario I know of. I begin to doubt whether pianist Simon
Nabatov and trombonist Nils Wogram will wait for my arrival, and realise
I'll probably miss the Chet Baker tribute too. Standing in the valley
wind so long, feeling lost, I think of Baker. Chet who needed it so
bad, he even wrote a song for it - "Let's Get Lost".
Arriving in Kanjiza I hear the sound of jazz-guitar spreading around
the town, coming from the basement. There's a cliché: music
coming from the underground. I step down into the sea of smoke and
sound. If it wasn't for the marble, aluminium and advertising, I could
be back in the be-bop era. A post-concert jam session is in progress,
and the local combo, a straight-ahead quartet with sax and guitar
is warming up with some standards. I manage to meet everybody I came
to see, book Nadj's interview for the following day, and sink into
grapevine gossip with some jazz critics from Belgrade.
Meanwhile, the musicians are starting their second set, the shady
vibrato of brass sending signals through clouds of smoke. Nils Wogram's
trombone spits over the drummer's brushes knitting a bluesy "Equinox".
Everyone sitting with me quickly rises in surprise - "These boys are
serious!" - and run to get a look at the master whose wails are coming
from the other side. The pianist catches Wogram's sketches in a finger-breaking
uptempo; girls' hips begin swinging with open eroticism.
Kanjiza, a city of 15,000 inhabitants, is the province's unofficial
cultural centre; it lies on a border with Hungary (and is not so far
away from Romania either) and is populated mostly by Hungarians. I'm
surprised to see that such a small, "semi-urban" community has such
a strong interest in new music and contemporary dance. As the evening
winds to a close, I meet Szilard Mezei, Serbia and Montenegro's only
avant-musician in the true sense of the word, a viola player who has
moved to France to play in Nadj's productions in Orleans, and returns
home once a year. With a degree in Composition from Belgrade's Academy
Of Music, he's set himself the task of trying to create an improvising
ensemble with classically trained local musicians. "My oboist is a
fantastic player. She improvises like a master!" he explains, with
the common gesture of someone going crazy with arpeggios. "But she
says she doesn't believe it comes out spontaneously. She needs something
notated. So I drew her a wavy line, and she plays the wave!" he grins.
Day Two
In the alarmingly kitsch festival dining room, saxophonist Akos
Szelevenyi ['s' is pronounced as 'sh', whether 'sz' is pronounced
as 's', that's why Universal decided to sell him as 'Akosh S.' —VJ]
is eating lunch with his family, unsmiling as ever. I decide to share
my goulash instead with the members of Del Alfoldy Saxofon Egyutes
("Southern Lowlands Saxophone Ensemble") and Egyszolam. As Del Alfoldy's
reedman Burany Bela comes from neighbouring city of Senta, we can
talk a little, while charismatic Romany double-bass player Robert
Benkö sits beside us.
After lunch, off to the city's centre to catch buses for Jaraš, a
locality of mythological significance in the area, where "Blato i
muzika/ Sar es zene/ Mud & Music" (tri-lingual title, very democratic),
the event of the day is scheduled to happen. Since it's been raining
almost continuously, proceedings have been moved to the local cinema,
where five different crews from TV Novi Sad are already in waiting.
(It's hard to miss Peda Vraneševic, erstwhile founder member of the
electronic group Laboratorija Zvuka - "Sound Lab" - cursing like an
old drunk as he checks the PA. Bearded, bald, a black hat hiding a
ponytail, dressed in a black leather overcoat à la Master Crowley
himself, he quickly gets the technicians into line.)
The performance is a Teatar Jel & Friends' production, with some of
the musicians involved in Eden, Nadj's work-in-progress to be premiered
at next year's Kanjiza festival. Egyszolam stand stage right, behind
the soprano-double-bass-percussion DASE outfit, while the others sit
stage left, with Akos S. behind them. Zorz* Grujic, Belgrade's Renaissance
Music specialist, hides in the scenery. Egyszolam, a duo of wooden-flute
and gördon (a cello-like instrument which is dragged and
struck with a bow-stick, as seen at Muzsikas' concerts), and folk-singer
Berecz Andras, have been invited only for "Mud & Music". Meanwhile,
Akos S. Unit's hurdy-gurdy player, who will play in Eden, is someplace
else.
The performance begins texturally, with Robert Benkö's arco bass solo
way down yonder. Three actors are lying under white sheets, their
feet touching, forming a kind of Mercedes Benz logo (without the surrounding
circle). A sudden surprise comes with a shriek from a displaced soprano.
From the balcony behind, Akos S. calls DASE's Agoston Bela. The two
straight horns echo across the space, one strength, the other subtlety.
Szelevenyi's pushing it to the limit - his face is as red as turkey
gizzard as he comes onstage. DASE answer as an ensemble, with drummer
Gerolyi Tamas playing rims and cymbals on his Yamaha rock kit.
During the awkward silence that follows, three other actors arrive
from the mise en scène and revive the prostrate ones
with air and water blown through long thin tubes. They slowly rise.
A throaty folksong kicks in, the taps of the gördon giving
way to Agoston Bela's solo, coloured pentatonic by the loud, proud
sound of droning bagpipes. Throat singing gradually makes way for
normal arching melody lines. The closing sequence is pure joy: the
Szentmihaly brass band! Six old men enter from upstage, playing a
dance melody in a key all their own. The audience is surprised and
delighted at this outpouring of melody, an unexpected (yet perfectly
logical) ending. Quite a difference from Akos S' unaccompanied tenor
solo in the second scene.
Preoccupied with chasing up a rumour buzzing about that Anthony Braxton
might have forgotten to turn up, I miss most of Szentmihaly's set.
It is, as Alan Silva would put it, "the "vernacular": traditional
songs (even "Glory, Glory Hallelujah") for the community. As I chat
to local writer and translator Neven Ušumovic, a different sound announces
that DASE have started up. Playing harmölody, fronted by two
sopranos and a tenor, they're joined by some clarinet player who wants
to sit in - even lead! - the boisterous quintet. The old folks are
enjoying themselves very much: DASE make them feel proud, playing
their tradition in a uniquely personal yet respectful way, rounding
off the day beautifully.
Day Three
The highlight of the festival's final day is the first meeting onstage
of multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton (who has indeed arrived),
pianist Gyoergyi Szabados and drummer Vladimir Tarasov. I get to the
venue early enough to see Burany Bela of DASE soundcheck. (Most of
what he's playing is repeated later in the concert). Leaning back
with hips swinging, Bela's big fat soprano sound resembles neither
Lacy nor Coltrane as he changes repetitive arpeggios into folk motifs,
composing melody lines over free rhythm.
Saturday night in Kanjiza's House Of Culture. The lights go down and
Zoltan Bicskei ["bich'kuy"] comperes proceedings in two local languages.
Applause announces the beginning. Braxton stands with alto hanging
low. A misty ballad unfolds, Szabados's chords coming and going like
a breeze. With Tarasov remaining silent, they go for intimate conversation,
shyly addressing each other in sound. The piano becomes ever more
introspective, Szabados heading for the strings rather than keys,
and Braxton calms down. The tension breaks when Tarasov clinks his
hi-hat, vibraphone-like. Braxton's sopranino scurries over rich mellifluous
piano lines, and the climax we've been waiting half an hour for finally
arrives, with Braxton firing and shrieking polyphonically all over
his partners. Then Tarasov (who hasn't even taken off his suit) ties
things up, and after barely forty minutes they disappear backstage.
The crowd needs more, and won't let the musicians' obvious lack of
interest go, but prolonged applause doesn't change much. Szabados
sits legs crossed on his stool, head propped on elbow, looking at
us. More philosopher than comedian, he plays a quick flourish, and
turns to see Braxton and Tarasov waiting for him. They embrace, bow
to the audience, and head backstage again, until, eventually summoned
back, they return for the briefest of encores, leaving the public
in no doubt that forty minutes is all they are going to get. And time's
up. I'm off to meet the last surviving Croatian producer of wooden
barrels.
*Editor's Note: due to the inadequacies of Dreamweaver and/or
(probably or) my own ineptitude, there seems to be no character available
to spell "Kanjiza" correctly; the 'z' has a kind of inverted
circumflex above it (there's probably a name for that too, but damned
I know it). Apologies therefore to the citizens of the aforementioned
city, and to Mr. Grujic (see above). If anyone knows how to insert
this infernal character into html files, do me a favour and send a
mail in. —DW
On
Musica Genera
Olaf Rupp / Joe Williamson
KERNEL PANIC
Musica Genera mg 003
John Butcher / Fred Lonberg-Holm / Michael Zerang
TINCTURE
Musica Genera mg 004
Johannes Bergmark / Martin Klapper
58 TRACKS FROM A COMMON ORBIT
Musica Genera mg 005
Chris Burn's Ensemble
ENSEMBLE AT MUSICA GENERA 2002
Musica Genera mg 006
Poland isn't normally a country you associate with
free improv (though the place has produced some superb jazz musicians),
so it's to the credit of Robert Piotrowicz that his label Musica Genera
has, in a relatively short space of time, established itself as one
of the best and most wide-ranging improv labels around. Indeed, if
you wanted a representative cross-section of the many different trends
in today's improvised music, you could simply invest in the whole
collection: it's all here. After mg 001, Kyle Bruckmann's and
(reviewed in these pages),
documenting the fertile scene in Chicago, and mg 002, In Tokyo
- First concert second take, a representative slice of Austro-Japanese
lowercase featuring Taku Sugimoto, Christof Kurzmann and Burkhard
Stangl, mg 003 is a titanic slab of acoustic guitar and double bass
work from Olaf Rupp and Joe Williamson, the fifth track of which ("Funf"
- no prizes for original track titles, but no matter) clocks in at
no less than 37'32". Anyone taking up the acoustic guitar in improvised
music has a number of long shadows to try and dance out of, especially
British, but although Rupp's use of harmonics occasionally - inevitably
- recalls Derek Bailey, and his behind-the-bridge flourishes bring
John Russell to mind, the sheer gusto with which he tackles the venerable
instrument is closer in spirit to metal. Hans Tammen's The Road
Bends Here (Leo Lab 072) with bassist Dominic Duval is a close
relation. It's an exhilarating performance (Williamson is just as
combative) that leaves you as exhausted and sweaty as the musicians.
58 Tracks From A Common Orbit was recorded in Fylkingen in
Sweden back in 2000 and finds Martin Klapper and Johannes Bergmark
having a ball with Finger Violin, micromoog, harmonium, clavinet,
Blowfish, Whalefish, gopychand, khamak, fuzz box, Brillolin, arm trainer,
radios, Veloncell Marcel, antique corn grinder, Casio SK-5, polystyrene,
glasses, water and any other number of objects salvaged from the playpen.
It's a veritable nec plus ultra of toytown improv, hilarious
for a while but rapidly exhausting. If you've ever spent an hour with
the short attention spans of a boisterous five-year-old rummaging
through the toybox you'll know just what I mean. In small doses though
it's great fun.
Chicago's Michael Zerang (percussion) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello)
have been one of the tightest double acts in improv for several years
now, and have teamed up with British saxophonist John Butcher on a
number of occasions (notably, individually, on Butcher's Meniscus
outing Music On Seven Occasions). Tincture is improvised music
of the highest order: bright, alert, constantly surprising and technically
dazzling. Butcher also appears on Ensemble at Musica Genera 2002,
as part of his old friend pianist Chris Burn's outfit. Through his
work with Assumed Possibilities, Burn has recently become associated
with the so-called New London Silence set (Phil Durrant, Mark Wastell
and Rhodri Davies), but it's worth bearing in mind that Ensemble,
a project that seeks common ground between improvisation and composition,
has been around for some time. The line-up for this concert at Piotrowicz's
Musica Genera festival features Burn, Butcher, harpist Davies, French
clarinettist Xavier Charles, Greek cellist Nikos Veliotis and British
electronician Matt Hutchinson. Three of the pieces are credited to
Ensemble, two are penned by Burn and one ("qpdbqp") by Veliotis, reflecting
the latter's ongoing interest in predominantly static dronery. It's
an outstanding set, easily as impressive as Ensemble's last outing
Horizontals White on Emanem and, like everything on Musica
Genera, well worth seeking out. —DW
Christopher
Delaurenti
N30: LIVE AT THE WTI PROTEST NOVEMBER 30TH 1999
delaurenti.net + mimeograph.net
THE NIGHT I MET MARIA C___
Locust Met Life L34
Artemiy Artemiev & Christopher Delaurenti
57 MINUTES TO SILENCE
Electroshock ELCD 029
Readers may be familiar with Christopher Delaurenti as an insightful
commentator on new music, but his own compositional chops are equally
impressive. 57 Minutes To Silence is a collaboration with Russian
electronician and film composer Artemiy Artemiev on the latter's Electroshock
label. After the claustrophobic tightly packed loops of "Conlon's
Dub" and the ghostly upper atmosphere wails and sinister metallic
drones of "A Glimpse" and "Internal Static Bursts", the central "Transmission
from the Coalfire" descends into what Delaurenti amusingly (and accurately)
describes as "Vangelis meets bernhard günter" - it's also reminiscent
in places of the desolate sci-fi electronica of Mikhail
Chekalin. "Aboard the Coalfire", with its truncated screams and
bleak clattering, is more disturbing still, after which "Recalibration"
and "Received Through The Nebula" recall the blasted post-industrial
landscapes of Tarkovsky's "Stalker". The final "Solar Speech" rounds
off an accomplished - if unsettling - album.
Delaurenti's recent solo work with (largely unedited) field recordings
raises a major question: to what extent can or should these be considered
as bona fide works of electroacoustic composition? ("Field recording"
is a singularly inappropriate term to describe his celebrated live
DAT recordings of the WTO Protest made in downtown Seattle, or "Inside
the Wallingford Transfer Station" on the Locust album - this as part
of a series, Met Life, specifically devoted to urban soundscapes -
but be that as it may.) With the advent of affordable, high-quality
portable digital recording equipment, field recording has begun to
interest an increasing number of composers, either as a source of
sound material to be treated and sculpted into more abstract compositions,
or as simple testimony to the raw sonic beauty of the world that surrounds
us. The infamous Battle for Seattle on November 30th 1999 is now the
stuff of legend; "the world is watching", the protesters cried, and
indeed it was - but Delaurenti's mics were listening too, and "N30"
traces with unambiguous clarity how the party atmosphere at the beginning
of the protest (joyful blasts of techno and samba) soured into an
ugly confrontation with the law. The new edition of N30 comes
with a second CD featuring "N30: Who guards the Guardians?" (a reference
to the celebrated quotation from the Roman satirist Juvenal), a 56
minute collage of official and unofficial police recordings documenting
the view from the other side of the barricades. Both works raise important
political questions, questions not easily dissociated from the nature
of the work as sound art; we know those thuds and crunches are the
sounds of riot shields on human flesh and bones, those hisses and
fizzes are the sound of teargas being sprayed at non-violent protesters
- how can we hear them in a wider context as merely sound events of
a predominantly percussive nature propelling a piece of music to its
climax?
Delaurenti explains that The night I met Maria C___ is "an
aural take on waste and getting wasted." The recording of Seattle
City Dump is unedited and complete from start to finish, while the
title track was "aggressively edited from a single evening of drunken
prowling." To record the sounds of the Wallingford Transfer Station,
he "snuck in a normally locked gate and blithely strolled in, setting
up my gear right in the dump's sweet spot. Various personnel kept
wandering over to see what I was doing, so I made sure to look very
official, checking meters, noiselessly miming taking notes on a notepad
and otherwise looking bureaucratic yet bored." On "The night I met
Maria C___" Delaurenti's roving mics accompany him to and from a party
(even following him to the restroom), in an attempt to preserve what
the composer ardently believes will one day become increasingly isolated
and regulated - sound in the public space: "Mark my word, in the next
twenty years someone will release a compilation of "room tone" culled
from the archives of Hollywood sound personnel. Noise cancellation
technology will soon be able to not only "quiet" a room but hermetically
seal conversations, confining them to the person next to us." Delaurenti's
interest is in capturing speech as it is: "I'm a big believer in Partch's
"speech music" idea and hope that there is some music therein for
folks to enjoy."
"Let Life obscure the difference between Art and Life", wrote John
Cage - in Delaurenti's work it has, allowing us to appreciate the
simple beauty of a passer-by on the streets of Seattle quoting the
lyrics of James Brown's "King Heroin" (on "Cocaine", one of the bonus
cuts on N30). Though it's tempting to make comparisons with the sound-art
adventures of pioneers like Luc Ferrari and Basil Kirchin, Delaurenti's
work ought instead to be compared with photography - it's the aural
equivalent of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Sebastián Salgado, proof that
real events can be captured and relayed to the public at large while
respecting the inherent artistic beauty of their subject matter. —DW
Joëlle
Léandre's Christmas Hamper
Kevin Norton / Jöelle Léandre / Tomas Ulrich
OCEAN OF EARTH
Barking HoopBKH 007
Brett Larner / Jöelle Léandre / Kazuhisa Uchihashi
NO DAY RISING
Spool Line 21
THE | SPACE | BETWEEN WITH JÖELLE LÉANDRE
482 Music 482-1017
Jöelle Léandre / Fred Frith / Jonathan Segel
TEMPTED TO SMILE
Spool Line 20
As avid PT readers will know, French double bass virtuoso Jöelle
Léandre spent Autumn 2002 as Guest Professor at Oakland's Mills
College, which explains the appearance of that illustrious institution's
Head of Department, Fred Frith, and one of its grad students, Brett
Larner, on two of the discs reviewed below. Not surprisingly, Ms Léandre
found herself very much in demand during her stay, as a teacher, storyteller
(she has some great Cage and Scelsi tales, having worked extensively
with both) and especially as a bassist. These four outstanding albums
were all recorded in less than a month - the Norton/Ulrich and Larner/Uchihashi
on successive days (no mean feat that, as the former session was in
New Jersey and the latter in Oakland!) - and find Léandre on stunning
form throughout, jetlag notwithstanding.
Ocean of Earth features her in the company of percussionist
Kevin Norton and cellist Tomas Ulrich in twenty tracks (not all trios:
Norton takes a solo on "pour Eva B." and the three possible duo combinations
are also exploited), all of which are under four minutes in duration
with the exception of the magnificent central "Trio for the end of
time" (a titular reference to Olivier Messiaen's "Quatuor pour la
fin du temps" whose "timeless" qualities it shares), where Norton's
marimbas and bowed sonorities float free in a sea of high harmonics
from Léandre and upper register cello lyricism from Ulrich. Though
the other tracks are short, they cram enormous passion and energy
into their confined spaces; Léandre and Ulrich are especially compatible
- both are masters of the high lyrical line, but are in no way afraid
of letting the resin fly and producing some thrilling abrasive sonorities
- and Norton's ear for finding just the right percussion instrument
(pitched or unpitched) to accompany them is uncanny.
Léandre thanks Norton's wife Haewon for preparing a wonderful evening
meal, but presumably she hardly had time to digest it before flying
back to the West Coast the day after to record No Day Rising
with koto master Larner and guitarist / daxophonist Uchihashi. The
thirteen tracks run from "5.15p.m." to "5.31a.m.", presumably a reference
to exactly when they were recorded on October 28th 2002, and are left
in chronological order to tell the story of the night's proceedings.
If Léandre was feeling tired at all, it certainly doesn't show: her
bass takes on the strange growls of Uchihashi's daxophone to produce
some truly weird noises, like two mysterious nocturnal animals in
a swamp. As day breaks over Oakland, the closing "5.31a.m." is a perfect
evocation of dawn, Léandre's bass engaging Larner's koto in pentatonic
mode while Uchihashi swoops across the sky. It's not all as unashamedly
romantic; Léandre may be passionate with the bow but she can more
than hold her own when it comes to gritty extended technique and daring
instrumental exploration.
Californians have often turned their gaze westwards across the Pacific
for inspiration, and there's a touch of the Orient to be found on
the | space | between too, not only in the shakuhachi of TSB's
Philip Gelb, but in the delicate brushwork of Pauline Oliveros' accordion
and Dana Reason's piano. This is the second time TSB have invited
a guest bassist to sit in (the last time round it was Barre Phillips),
but Léandre sounds so comfortable it's as if she's been playing with
the group for years. This trio's gentle lyricism - quiet and spacious
without being dogmatically lowercase: practitioners of the ultra-minimal
variety of improv would do well to lighten up and check this group
out - has always set them apart from the rest of the crowd, even in
the improv hotbed that is the Bay Area, and Léandre, whose background
in contemporary classical music reveals itself strongly here, is in
her element. Not only can everyone play damn well, but they all know
exactly when to stop: compare the way these pieces end to the
depressingly frequent is-it-over-yet-I-think-so-but-maybe-I'll-just-wait-to-make-sure
fizzling out that's become something of a cliché in improv in recent
times.
One improviser who can always be relied on not simply to go with the
flow is guitarist Fred Frith, and despite the lousy inner sleeve photograph
of him on Tempted To Smile he's on top form, whether engaged
in furious Chadbournesque scrabbling, faux koto dronery or rooting
around in the toy box on the hilarious closer "Housecleaning At The
Beginning Of The New Year" - small objects haven't sounded so good
since Steve Beresford's early albums. Léandre's also a dab hand at
hysterical theatrics - or theatrical hysterics - when she wants to
be, and violinist / guitarist Jonathan Segel has quite a job keeping
up with the boisterous antics of his playing partners. He does so
admirably. Listening over and over again to the excellent playing
from all concerned on these albums, I feel not a little sorry for
hardcore Léandre fans (not to mention Norton, Oliveros, Frith and
Uchihashi completists), as there's really no way out of it but to
shell out for them all. The bad news, folks, is Joëlle Léandre is
likely to return to the States again, which means there'll soon be
even more albums of this quality hitting the streets; the good news
is you'll be able to enjoy this spectacular musicianship for the rest
of your life. —DW
David
Grubbs / Loren Connors
ARBORVITAE
Hapna H13
The press release is right: it had to happen. After various collaborations
with other guitarists, notably Jim O'Rourke and Alan Licht, Loren
Connors has finally teamed up with the other half of what used to
be Gastr del Sol, David Grubbs. Gastr del Sol, you'll recall, was
one of the first groups to be described as "post rock", a totally
meaningless term that basically means anything goes: not only
can any lyric go with any music (scansion be damned), but songs with
little apparent form and even less content are just as admissible
as those with it; being able not only to play your instrument but
also to play the right notes - or the right wrong notes - counts for
little. Artlessness is not only not frowned upon but actively encouraged
by journalists from high profile magazines who should know better
but apparently don't (and are subsequently followed into print by
n number of clone fanzines). Fortunately, Mr. Grubbs has proved on
a number of occasions that he's an intelligent and creative musician,
able to pen original, if abstruse, lyrics and set them to distinctive
and original stylings on his guitar. In choosing, however, to stick
to the piano for the most part of this album, presumably for fear
of upstaging Mr. Connors, Grubbs finds himself restricted to his customary
Satiesque white-note chords, apparently waiting for his playing partner
to recognise the elementary harmonic scheme he's outlining. For whatever
reason, either bloody mindedness or sheer ineptitude, Connors doesn't
- though as good voice leading and intelligible harmony count for
little in the world of "post rock", who cares?
The only way to play with Mr. Connors is, it seems, to let him do
his thing and try to make some sense out of it yourself (this is presumably
what Alan Licht referred to as "recontextualising" in his recent interview
with Dan Warburton). It's obviously asking too much of the guy to
expect him to listen to you. The fact that his work was praised to
the sky by the late John Fahey cuts little ice, either; the difference
between authentic art naïf and the daubs turned out by Montmartre
street artists is patently clear to anyone who has an eye, but, of
course, value judgements count for next to nothing in the world of
"post rock". After the rampant boom and bust of the art market in
the 1980s, most art dealers have now learned, to their cost, how to
spot a case of Emperor's New Clothes a mile off. It seems, though,
that those who exercise the critical function when it comes to music
are incapable or afraid of calling a spade a bloody shovel. Connors'
work seems immune to criticism simply because it's abundantly clear
that the man is absolutely sincere about what he does; that bleary,
tortured on-the-edge-of-fuzz sound is instantly recognisable, and
each note positively drips with sentiment, but nobody seems to question
whether they are the right ones. Connors once bemoaned the fact he'd
never had an album released on a major label, and had therefore never
made any real money; even so, he's released a significant body of
work on his own terms and acquired a solid and loyal fan base, which
is more than might be said for many who consciously choose to venture
into experimental music. Whatever the reviews say (and who reads reviews
anyway?), Arborvitae will shift a respectable number of units
for the Swedish Hapna label. —JB
Jazz
& Improv Roundup
Matt Davis / Phil Durrant / Mark Wastell
OPEN
Erstwhile 032
Though their music is often branded New London Silence
- a pretty dumb appellation, as they almost all are - there's very
little silence at all in these two extended tracks featuring Matt
Davis (field recordings, electronics, trumpet), Phil Durrant (software,
synths and treatments) and Mark Wastell (amplified textures). Compared
to Durrant's last but one outing on Erstwhile, the infamous dach,
with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn, on which the most noise came from
the plastic roof of the concert hall buckling in the heat, Open
is fairly bristling with activity. Since dach Durrant has been
concentrating his attention on his Powerbook, refining a library of
sounds and techniques that here complement Davis' disembodied field
recordings and Wastell's delicate rustlings to perfection. It's quintessential
Erstwhile stuff - all grain and texture, stately and slowmoving, and
as ever elegantly illustrated (special mention should be made of Damien
Beaton's photography) - those familiar with Jon Abbey's label (who
isn't, these days?) probably won't be surprised by the music on offer
here, but they certainly won't be disappointed. Try the Bernhard Günter
trick: play "Fist" at high volume and it's just as ear-cleansing as
a good blast of old school Japanoise (though admittedly more spacious);
it's clear that what used to be regarded as extreme opposites - noise
and (near) silence - are increasingly finding common ground in new
electroacoustic improvised music, and Open is a major landmark
along the way. —DW
Joel Stern / Anthony Guerra
STITCH
Impermanent IRE 004
Joel Stern and Anthony Guerra (who also runs the TwoThousandAnd
label featured in last month's PT)
are credited here on electronics, field recordings and electric guitar
in nine apparently untitled tracks of elegant post-Rowe laminal improvisation/composition
(delete where appropriate). There's a wide range of soundscapes on
offer, from the kind of semi-tonal laptoppery currently in vogue in
the work of Minamo, Sogar, Sebastien Roux and Tu m' (tracks one and
nine) to more abstract crunchy glitch (track three sounds like a dodgy
jack plug) and, pleasant surprise, some guitar playing that actually
sounds like guitar playing. We're never far from Erstwhile territory
though, both in terms of cover art and music; events take their time
to unfold, and when the musicians find something they like, they stick
with it. Track four is particularly beautiful, with its assemblage
of tiny guitar noises over a Toshi Nakamura-like backdrop of upper
partials. Stern and Guerra are also fond of using transformed field
recordings, and reveal a remarkable ear for both sonority and structure.
Along with Matt Davis, Phil Durrant and Mark Wastell's Erstwhile release
(see above!), Stitch is one of the most satisfying releases
of its kind this year.—DW
Ernesto Diaz-Infante / Matt Hannafin
ALL THE STATES BETWEEN
Pax PR90262
Ernesto Diaz-Infante / Bob Marsh
RAGS AND STONES
Public Eyesore 49
Let's call them "the unavoidables." If you start up
a poetry mag it's impossible to ward off the hail of review copies
and manuscripts from the likes of Sheila E. Murphy and Virgil Suarez,
short of garlic and a cross; if you set up shop as a music reviewer,
you'll be spammed with releases from characters like Mr Dorgon and
Ernesto Diaz-Infante, guys who are remarkably good at producing stuff
that just escapes being so bad that it gets thrown in the trash without
second thought, yet that few reviewers don't groan at having to write
up. But as with unsolicited junk email, every so often one impotently
wants to fight back, or at least register a protest. So here goes.
All the States Between is a long-distance collaboration-by-mail
by Diaz-Infante and Matt Hannafin; the session notes state: "Ernesto
Diaz-Infante laid down his tracks in San Francisco in late 2001 on
recycled tapes, using a Tascam Portastudio 424, turntable, Shure SM57
mic on TV screen and broken CD player, San Francisco MUNI/BART field
recordings, Sony TCM-313 cassette-corder, jack plug, violin, and voice.
Matt Hannafin added his two tracks in New York in February 2002 using
a Yamaha MT120, Samson R11 mics, percussion key, hand cymbals, stainless
steel handbells, qaraqeb, Ghanaian windmill bells, iron ankle bells,
newspaper, bentwood tambourine, and miscellaneous rattles and shakers."
Like I'm sure you care. Despite the range of source materials not
a hell of a lot happens on the album, which mostly shuffles contentedly
through the same handful of sounds over and over again, with the occasional
drizzle of percussion. A sludgy buzzing drone, rather like a close-miked
malfunctioning neon tube, is almost continuously present over the
CD's length. The occasional danger of actual moments of musical interest
is defused effortlessly by the musicians, who are both uncannily adept
at folding them back into the general dreariness.
Rags and Stones, an all-acoustic set with Diaz-Infante on prepared
guitar and Bob Marsh on violin and cello, is somewhat better, but
occupies a curious middle ground: it studiously avoids being abrasive
or terribly loud (but nor can it be described as minimalist), opting
instead for continuous low-key volubility. Diaz-Infante's fidgety
Baileyisms suggest that this death-by-a-thousand-papercuts improv
is intended as a vague approximation of UK/European improv, but it's
pretty thin fare. Though not an especially disagreeable listening
experience, there are certainly better ways to spend fifty minutes
of your life. Marsh is best sampled elsewhere, such as the fine recent
duet album with Jack Wright, Birds in the Hand (Public Eyesore
69). —ND
Mike Khoury / Piotr Michalowski / Lenni Bukowski
CLOSE EMBRACE OF THE EARTH
Abzu 001
Mike Khoury
DUETS 2001
Geocities.com/entropystereo
Violinist Mike Khoury also runs the Entropy Stereo label (if you
haven't invested in the Griot Galaxy double album he released a few
months ago, do something about it fast), and his playing partners
on Close Embrace Of The Earth, clarinettist Lenni Bukowski and saxophonist
/ clarinettist Piotr Michalowksi are also active as music journalists.
Not surprisingly then, they reveal a strong awareness of and respect
for the whole tradition of free jazz - in its open, airy instrumentation
and angular lyricism this often recalls vintage Creative Construction
Company - and have little use for the spluttering and fizzes of extended
technique that now seem to be par for the course in contemporary improvised
music. When such sounds do appear then, as on "MU2", they're fresh
and surprising. Also worth seeking out is Khoury's Duets 2001, a limited
edition CDR release (50 copies only, be warned) featuring four cuts,
three recorded live at his Michigan-based Entropy Studios, which team
him up with electronician Chris Peck, clarinettist Jason Shearer,
pianist Hans Fjellestad and the indefatigable road warrior of American
improv, saxophonist Jack Wright. —DW
Paul Smoker
DUOCITY IN BRASS AND WOOD
Cadence CJR 1155/56
Until recent years Paul Smoker's discs as a leader
were few, and mostly unobtainable due to the demise of the Sound Aspects
label and Hat Art's letting their back catalogue fall of print. Bob
Rusch of Cadence has taken up his cause with a passion and he's become
one of the most familiar faces on CIMP (16 releases to date); in addition
there's now Duocity in Brass and Wood, released on the sister
label Cadence Jazz Records. As usual with Cadence/CIMP releases, there's
no skimping: this is a double-CD release documenting two hour-long
sets from Rochester, NY's Bop Shop, each pairing Smoker with a different
bassist: Ed Schuller on the first, Dominic Duval on the second. It's
a good place to study Smoker at length: pawky and ironical, and so
tight and precise that even when he's not using the mute you'd hardly
call it "open" (he works with pen and ink where most trumpeters use
a brush); he loves crabby, angry-hornet lines and draws on a huge
array of brass effects, without its feeling like he's blitzing the
listener: one's abiding impression is actually of the tact and slender
grace of his lines. That said, the meeting with Schuller (a first
encounter) is somewhat underwhelming - Schuller tends to centre and
conventionalize the music, and the tracks go on at extraordinary length.
The best stuff here is mostly on the set with Duval, which is altogether
more whacked-out and sparky. Duval shares Smoker's preoccupation with
the half-subliminal displacement and reassembly of familiar jazz materials,
and he slips much more fluidly than Schuller between time and no-time
(cf. "Mutant Swing", or the gorgeous "On the River", which touches
on both "In a Sentimental Mood" and the duetters' chestnut "Alone
Together"). The set list is mostly freely improvised, though there's
also a superbly idiosyncratic "If I Were a Bell" and briefer appearances
of "Blue Monk" and "The Party's Over". Despite the spare format, this
is as colourful and eventful an hour of music as anyone could wish.
A pity that the discs weren't released separately rather than as a
set, but in any case the Smoker/Duval set is good enough to make it
recommendable despite some caveats about the other disc. —ND
Derek Bailey / Tristan Honsinger
TRISTAN (DUO)
Incus CD 53
Here's the story: Tristan Honsinger, born in the States
in 1949, headed to Montreal to escape the Vietnam draft, and then
in 1974 wound up in Amsterdam after a friend introduced him to some
of the early documents of the European improv scene ("I listened to
The Topography of the Lungs and I said, 'I think I can play this kind
of music..'"). Guitarist Derek Bailey ran into him in 1975 on the
streets of Massy, a small town south of Paris, where the cellist's
busking was attracting a crowd of onlookers. Bailey was there to play
at a concert devoted to solo guitar players - "a situation obviously
leaving a lot of room for improvement" - and enlisted Honsinger on
the spot for the gig. The previously unissued Massy concert is paired
on Incus CD 53 with a reissue of their subsequent album Duo (Incus
LP 20, a mixture of studio and live recordings from London in February
1976). The previously unheard material is nice to have, but it's dimly
recorded and Honsinger overdoes it with the demented vocals; the main
attraction here is the original LP, which is vintage Dadaist farce,
at once harrowing and entertaining. Honsinger's bow work is sublimely
vehement and grating; he shouts and jabbers away unpredictably, giving
a good impression of someone with an exotic speech impediment. On
"The Visit" his cries startle a dog in the studio: the track is cut
short as it collapses into barking. Bailey hacks away at the improvisations
with a similar ferocity, and on "The Shadow" there's also a welcome
showing of his "19 string (approx) guitar" (he seems to be largely
rubbing and scraping the strings) and the Waisvisz Crackle Box. Derek
Bailey is on record as saying that he'd rather record new discs than
reissue old Incus discs, but I'm glad he took the trouble to bring
this one back in print. —ND
Sachiko M
1:2
A Bruit Secret 09
This third three incher on the A Bruit Secret label (after outings
last year by Annette Krebs and Andrea Neumann) features the distinctive
empty sampler of Sachiko M in twenty minutes of uninterrupted pure
sinewave heaven - or hell, depending on your point of view. Like it
or not, there's no point listening to it through headphones: Sachiko's
piece, like its venerable forefather "Drift Study 14 VII 73" on the
long-deleted La Monte Young Shandar album, is one of those works that
adapts itself uniquely to the listening space. A nod of the head this
way or that changes the whole experience. It's a particularly extreme
aesthetic, however; compared to the richness of a work like Alvin
Lucier's "Vespers", which also sets about mapping the architecture
of the performing space, at the right volume "1:2" can easily drive
you right out of the room altogether in search of something to drink.
If this kind of stuff is up your alley though, go for "do", Sachiko's
Erstwhile collaboration with Toshi Nakamura while you're at it. And
make sure you don't forget the earplugs for the family dog. —DW
Contemporary
Roundup
Radu Malfatti
INDISCRETE SILENCES
Ilya Monosov
MUSIC FOR LISTENING
Bremsstrahlung blung004 2CD
Despite his recent rise to prominence (at least in
the niche market that is new music), thanks to a humorous sideswipe
from Eddie Prevost in The Wire and the lengthy email exchange with
Taku Sugimoto reprinted in the recent Improvised Music from Japan
book - much of which was extracted texto from my own interview
with him for Paris Transatlantic - Vienna-based composer Radu Malfatti
hasn't exactly flooded the market with new product since he abandoned
"traditional" (he'd prefer the word "stagnant") improvisation about
ten years ago, so any new release of his music is worthy of consideration.
"Indiscrete Silences" is a work for multitracked cellos performed
by Greek virtuoso Nikos Veliotis, which follows what is fast becoming
a standard plan for the composer (careful: nobody is immune from stagnation..),
the use of a random number computer programme to determine exactly
when and for how long in a predetermined time span - here twenty minutes
- sounds occur, silence occupying the remaining seconds. The sounding
element here is dense microtonal drone - Veliotis uses his custom-built
bachbow to play three, sometimes all four, cello strings at once -
but Malfatti would be the first to argue that the silences are just
as important. It's an austere experience, nicely complemented by Josh
Russell's packaging: minimal information on a separate printed sheet
accompanying the two CDs in a metal box - the German improv label
Nurnichtnur used to use the same format until they caved in and went
back to the boring old jewel box a while back.
The accompanying disc features a three-movement work by Ilya Monosov,
about whom little information is currently available despite extensive
surfing, apart from the fact that he has collaborated with Acid Mothers
Temple hirsute guitar guru Makoto Kawabata on a number of occasions.
Listening to "Music for Listening" (nice title) it's hard to imagine
Monosov going the full fifteen rounds with a psychedelic bruiser like
Kawabata; compared with the Malfatti on a sound-to-silence rating,
Radu's piece is positively Mahlerian. Monosov's work is nonetheless
arresting stuff; its gently repetitive tiny blips and beeps and sporadic
sprinklings of noise are poised exquisitely in surrounding silence
- though little happens, each miniscule event is charged with significance.
Adopting a visual arts analogy, Malfatti's grainy drones are thick
Franz Kline brushstrokes, whereas Monosov's sound events are like
tiny flecks of paint. Both pieces inhabit their blank canvases wonderfully
though, and connoisseurs of this kind of music are strongly encouraged
to check them out (as well as Bremsstrahlung's previous magnificent
lowercase-sound double CD compilations, if they haven't completely
disappeared into the welcoming arms of avid collectors). —DW
Marie-Hélène Fournier
SOLOS
ArtefaCT ARCT 02
Marie-Hélène Fournier was born in 1963 and followed the standard
path for French composers culminating in a first prize at the Conservatoire
(the same happens to be true of the four musicians who perform her
music on this disc, the Bertocchis (pianist Yukari and saxophonist
Serge) and the Sylvestres (harpist Brigitte and percussionist Gaston).
It's a family affair, then, and somehow Russian Constructivist red
and slanting typefaces seem inappropriate as graphics for such a friendly
gathering. The epithet "impressionist" comes to mind (though perhaps
the composer would not be happy with it) upon listening to the lyrical
flow of the two harp pieces "Lune rousse" and "Berceuse pour le temps
chaud (première)" - we're a long way from Rhodri Davies' grating preparations
here - and reading Fournier's brief but evocative descriptions of
the music. Scratch the skin of almost any French composer since World
War Two and you'll probably find a sub-cutaneous layer of Debussy
there somewhere. Yukari Bertocchi's athletic but sensitive pianism
recalls, obliquely, the older master's "Preludes" and "Etudes" on
several occasions. Elsewhere, Gaston Sylvestre's magnificent cimbalom
playing on "Je suis un cerf-volant chinois" ("I am a Chinese kite")
is especially worthy of mention. The only piece that verges on the
unattractive is "Le fusain fuit la gomme", but that's just because
the baritone sax is particularly suited to honking, farting ugliness;
Serge Bertocchi does a great job, though, and is even more impressive
when he puts the monstrous horn down altogether to perform the final
"Conte à musique n° 10", the kind of potty half-spoken, half-declaimed
story that Joëlle Léandre is rather good at. —DW
Electronica
Roundup
 Henry
Jacobs
RADIO PROGRAMME NO1 AUDIO COLLAGE
Locust 18
"Why are you listening, why aren't you working?" goes the theme
song at the end of "Audio Collage," a bizarre collection of odds and
ends from the radio shows that Henry "Sandy" Jacobs put together in
1954 for Folkways. It's an assemblage of hilariously perplexing parody
interviews whose subjects range from the man on the street to the
stoned jazz musician, paranoiacs to self-styled gangsters. Jacobs
play the callous, uncomprehending interviewer with deadpan humour.
It's almost impossible to tell where the groundbreaking ethnomusicological
forays end and the parodies and jokes begin. A particulat favourite
is the stoned cool-jazz interviewee (Shorty Petterstein, played by
Jacobs), who mumbles into the microphone, while the asinine interviewer
keeps interrupting and trying to get him to talk about how modern
jazz contrasts with "real music." He retorts, "Schoenberg, you know,
man, like, that doesn't swing.." At the end, they both get
frustrated with the other's stupidity and the interviewer impatiently
says, "You just go over there and sit down with Pops and we'll listen
to the music." The comic high point of the album is of Jacobs interviewing
an obviously nutty Jewish "professor" (who sounds remarkably like
Victor Borge) who's just returned from the Caribbean, supposedly to
resume his research at the City College of New York, and insists that
Calypso music originates in the Jewish scriptures, and has just written
a book called "Bahama Momma" to prove it. (Memorable quotes: "The
plantain is a Hebrew metaphor for the cosmos.") This one was a hoax,
and after it was broadcast, many listeners actually wrote in to sympathize
with Jacobs for being "taken in" by the professor (!). Comedy aside,
this is an astonishingly innovative recording for its time, and includes
many ideas about sound art and example of primitive musique concrète
(check out the "Sonata for Loudspeaker") which were amazingly ahead
of their time.—JB
J.D. Robb
RHYTHMANIA: ELECTRONIC MUSIC FROM RAZOR BLADES TO MOOG
Locust 37
Also resulting from Locust's trawl through the Folkways back catalogue
comes this intriguingly titled reissue (razor blades referring not
to some punkish act of self-mutilation but rather to the basic tools
of the trade used in early electronic music) of an album originally
released in 1970 (with the addition of one track from a later Robb
opus, 1976's Triptych..). Though some of these quirky noodlings still
sound quite modern, particularly the technoid intricacy of "Rhythmania"
itself, Robb's experiments, though doubtless audacious for their time,
have aged badly and are moreover hampered by an evident lack of any
real sense of compositional architecture. Rhythmania will no doubt
appeal to vintage electronica collectors, though there are numerous
albums now available (happily) that more effectively showcase the
timbral innovations of the early Moog synthesizers and use their sonorities
to more musical effect.—JB
Greg Headley
A BULLETIN ON VERTIGO
28 Angles 28A101
Los Angeles-based Greg Headley's inaugural release on the 28Angles
label (mail@28angles.com) uses a combination of hardware and software
(marked as such), including electric guitar routed through various
effects boxes and a collection of programs (no Max/MSP we're told,
but SoundHack, Thonk and Akira Rabelais' enigmatically titled Argeïphontes
Lyre are listed) to create nine elegant and well-structured pieces
of music, ranging in duration from 1'24" ("First step") to 11'18"
("Subliminal motion"). On the longer tracks Headley at times exhibits
a fondness for building up his textures one layer at a time, and a
penchant for using his software to explore intricate timbral shifts
using just one pitch (Carl Stone comes to mind). At its best, as on
the opening "Night blooming", it's atmospheric and captivating, but
the constant digital drizzle of tracks like "A technical rewrite"
is somewhat less enthralling. One senses that Headley's evident pleasure
at discovering the sonic potential of his equipment sometimes overrides
considerations of compositional architecture. That said, I look forward
to hearing more examples of Headley's work to see how what is clearly
a good pair of ears performs in collaboration with other musicians.
—JB
Copyright 2003 by Paris Transatlantic
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