| March
News 2004 |
Reviews
by James Baiye, Nate Dorward, Stephen Griffith, Walter Horn, Wayne
Spencer, Dan Warburton and Kristoffer Westin:
|
|
Dan
Warburton : A Working
Terminology for Minimal Music
On For4Ears: Charlotte Hug & Chantale Laplante
/ Leimgruber, Müller, ARTE Quartet / Ambarchi, Müller,
Samartzis
Présences 2004: Music
by Hersant, Asheim, Nigg at Maison de Radio France, Paris
Tomas Korber
On
trente oiseaux: +minus
OnNot
Two: Contemporary
Quartet / Sirone / Chinatown / Satoko Fujii Quartet
From
Berlin and Vienna: Martin
Siewert / Martin Brandlmayr / Stefan Németh / Werner
Dafeldecker / Kapital Band 1 / Efzeg
Golden Years of Soviet
New Jazz Volume 3
JAZZ / IMPROV: All
Time Present / Fred Hess / Daniele D'Agaro / Günter Adler
CONTEMPORARY: Robert
Ashley / John McGuire / Beth Anderson / Gamelan Son of Lion
ELECTRONICA: Mark
Wastell, Graham Halliwell, Mattin / Un Caddie Renversé
dans l'Herbe / Pop
Last Month
|
A
Working Terminology for Minimal Music
by Dan Warburton
The
following article was originally written for and published in a magazine
called Intégral (Vol.2, 1988), edited by then Music Theory students
at the University of Rochester (NY)'s Eastman School of Music. It
was extracted in part from my ESM Doctoral Thesis from the year before.
Scouting around the Internet (as one does..), I realised recently
that this article has been referred to quite frequently by graduate
students working in the domain of minimal music (which is gratifying,
as that's precisely what I intended), but as the original issue of
Intégral itself is presumably long out of print and relegated to a
dusty corner of a reference library somewhere, I'm taking the opportunity
to post it here on Paris Transatlantic. Apart from rewriting the third
footnote, I haven't had to make any changes, and it seems to be just
about as relevant now as it was nearly sixteen years ago. I hope you
find it useful. —DW
Minimal
music has come of age: it is now nearly a quarter of a century since
Terry Riley assembled an ad hoc group of friends to perform what on
paper looked a modest little composition entitled "In C", and some
twenty years have passed since the Reich and Glass ensembles played
to single-figure audiences in draughty New York lofts. By what seems
to have been a shrewd marketing strategy, Philip Glass has now succeeded
in capturing the attention, prestige, and wealth of the operatic community
on both sides of the Atlantic (and is closely being followed it seems
by John Adams), while Steve Reich has been rediscovering and redefining
the potential of the symphony orchestra. Add to this the enormous
demand for recordings of minimal music (thanks in no small part to
the efforts of prominent 1970s rock musicians like Eno and Bowie in
demonstrating its "crossover potential"), and it is easy to see why
the more reticent "uptown" community of academics and old-style avant-garde
composers have tended to view this music with mild disdain (tinged
with a little jealousy?) bordering on polite contempt.
Charlotte
Hug / Chantale Laplante
BRILLIANT DAYS
For4Ears 1446
Urs
Leimgruber / Günter Müller / ARTE Quartet
e_a.sonata.02
For4Ears 1447
Oren
Ambarchi / Günter Müller / Philip Samartzis
STRANGE LOVE
For4Ears 1448
If
you've got a portable DAT recorder and access to decent software,
and many people have these days, then in theory any recording of any
concert can be released commercially as an album, providing a) someone
can come up with the money to manufacture the discs and b) the music's
good enough. As far as the first of those points is concerned, the
Swiss government is particularly good when it comes to throwing money
at artists (remind me to move to Switzerland one day), and generous
support from the Pro Helvetia foundation has over the years helped
percussionist Günter Müller to release a significant body of work
on his For4Ears label, of which these three are the latest instalments.
Swiss violist and composer Charlotte Hug has for some time been quietly
perfecting a highly original approach not only to the instrument itself,
by developing original bowing techniques, but also to the use of live
electronics. Brilliant Days features her in the company of
Canadian composer Chantale Laplante (on computer) and its five tracks
are taken from recordings of two concerts in Glasgow, Scotland, and
Bamberg, Germany in 2002. The music is varied, colourful and often
dramatic, bridging the gap between composed contemporary music and
improvisation effortlessly, but doesn't showcase Hug's innovations
as successfully as her solo album last year on Emanem, Neuland.
Urs Leimgruber, now based in Paris, appeared on the scene over a quarter
of a century ago as a notable free jazz saxophonist, but has recently
taken to following his younger contemporaries down the path of extended
technique into the world of spits and clicks. Even so, he can't resist
letting himself go from time to time and actually sounding like a
saxophone. Recorded in concert in Lucerne in 2002, his e_a.sonata.02
(couldn't he have come up with a more imaginative title?) is more
of a concerto grosso featuring Leimgruber and a ripieno
in the form of four other saxophonists, the ARTE quartet, whose (composed)
contributions are juxtaposed with Leimgruber's explorations. Providing
the basso continuo, as it were, is For4Ears' boss Müller, playing
his now-standard arsenal of selected percussion, minidiscs, ipod and
electronics. Just as well too, as without the background depth of
his clicks and rumbles, the instrumental contributions would be somewhat
bleak. Müller is as inventive as we've come to expect, but even with
his added colour the music remains rather mournful. The activity level
increases after about half an hour, but despite some spirited blowing
from Leimgruber, the work never seems to resolve itself into a climax,
finally moving out, Ligeti-like, into extreme registers before disappearing
in a spitty rattle after 52 long minutes.
The first track, "cooler", on Strange Love was also recorded
live, in Melbourne, Australia in July 2002, where Müller was visiting
local talents Oren Ambarchi (guitar, electronics) and Philip Samartzis
(electronics). Ambarchi, if recent releases on Grob, Staubgold and
Quecksilber are anything to go by, seems to be in pole position for
the Keith Rowe Grand Prix - compared to "cooler" the Leimgruber offering
above is remarkably fast-moving. Devotees of what now seems to be
called "eai", whatever that is, will no doubt love it, but after about
twenty minutes of slowmotion creaks and bad reception TV static, I
found myself reaching for Ambarchi's Sun Remixes album. The
second track, "warmer" was recorded "at home in Sydney, Itingen and
Melbourne" and is therefore a file-swap long distance collaborative
venture. The title might refer to the crackle of what sounds like
a fire, and the incorporation of field recordings of children at play
adds a dash of human interest, but the temperature never rises enough
for me to warm to the music. Maybe I'm just as ill-informed on the
subject as the possums or whatever they are that grace the album cover,
but my well-worn copy of Nachtluft's Belle View, which Müller
recorded back in 1986 with Andres Bosshard and Jacques Widmer, still
packs more of a punch. —JB
Music
by Philippe Hersant, Nils Henrik Asheim, Serge Nigg at Maison de Radio
France, Paris February 2nd 2004
It's
fun to spend most of your time listening to what's widely accepted
as the "cutting edge" of new music, but it's always worth remembering
that behind that cutting edge there's a hell of a weight of metal,
not to mention the ornate inscriptions on the sword handle. Which
is a roundabout way of saying there's more to new music than the self-styled
torchbearers of the avant-garde, if that word means anything at all
anymore. Philippe Hersant, the featured composer at this year's Présences
Festival (a series of 21 concerts at the Maison de Radio France in
Paris - all totally free - featuring no fewer than 104 works, 76 of
them premieres, by 82 composers from 14 different countries) is a
case in point. Born in 1948 in Rome, Hersant began his studies with
André Jolivet at the end of the 1960s, by which time the heat energy
generated by the preceding generation's Darmstadt avant-garde had
drifted off in as many different directions as its original members.
Hersant describes himself quite unabashedly as "a tonal composer willing
to turn music's entire heritage - from Monteverdi to Stockhausen -
to his advantage". If that sounds a recipe for PoMo soup, think again.
True, there are (inevitable) traces of Debussy and Messiaen, and affectionate
nods to late medieval Spanish music (Hersant is a fan), but the composer
has assimilated a wide range of stylistic influences into his own
personal language, and the second Cello Concerto, a 35-minute
single movement dating from 1997, received a rapturous reception from
a full house in the Salle Olivier Messiaen on February 2nd. It's an
accomplished if at times sprawling piece of work, and was performed
with great aplomb by cellist Cyrille Tricoire and the Orchestre National
de Montpellier conducted by Juraj Valcuha.
In contrast, Wind Songs, by 44-year-old Norwegian composer
Nils Henrik Asheim, was a disappointment. Scored for two antiphonally
placed female choruses and full orchestra, this setting of three poems
by Jon Fosse was an unfortunate illustration of what often (but not
always) happens when a young composer bursting with ideas runs pell-mell
into the wall of Tradition with a capital T. The piece couldn't decide
if it wanted to be Stravinsky (orchestration), Messiaen (clattery
percussion, and lots of it) or Ligeti (mass string effects none of
which added up to much), and ended up in a no-man's land of its own
making.
The revelation of the February 2nd concert was Serge Nigg's Visages
d'Axel, a two-movement work for symphony orchestra dating from
1969 (though the composer says it was premiered in 1967 in Besancon
under the baton of Antal Dorati.. so who's right?). Nigg, who was
born in 1924 (a year before Boulez), was one of the original young
lions caught up in the serial fervour of post-war Europe, but soon
abandoned dodecaphony in favour of "neoromanticism". That term is
misleading though; Visages d'Axel is a real tour de force
of compositional skill, superbly orchestrated (Nigg knows his
Wozzeck and his Turangalîla inside out, and at times
outdoes both) and performed with surprising passion by the visiting
southerners - the contrast between this and their half-hearted reading
of the Asheim was striking. One might hope that anything that remains
of the vast budget set aside to mount the Présences festival could
be invested in a top-quality recording of this uplifting and unjustly
neglected chef d'oeuvre.—DW
Tomas
Korber / Günter Müller / Steinbrüchel
MOMENTAN DEF.
Cut 010
Tomas
Korber / Kazuya Ishigami
MISTAKES
NEUS318 NEUCD 001
 English
improviser Phil Durrant is fond of using the term "laminal" - with
its deliberate AMM connotations - to describe music such as this,
in which traditional notions of foreground / background (solo / accompaniment,
if you will) have been replaced by superimposed layers of activity,
any one of which can serve as a focus of attention or just as well
coalesce into a rich, shifting soundscape. I'm listening to this again
on a train travelling through Belgium, eyes closed, rays of early
morning sunlight flitting between adjacent trees and buildings creating
a constantly changing pattern of retinal blurs, and it's curiously
appropriate. Günter Müller is a past master when it comes to laying
down carpets of opulent and delicate digital noise, and with the occasional
muted yelps of Tomas Korber's guitar and the laptop interjections
of Ralph Steinbrüchel, "Momentan" rapidly assumes that distinct sense
of coherence associated with a well-defined musical style. To be sure,
there's a lot of this stuff about (one thinks of Müller's outings
on Erstwhile with Otomo Yoshihide and Toshimaru Nakamura and on his
For4Ears label with Cut boss Jason Kahn and electronician dieb13,
as well as the latter's work with Martin Siewert, Pure and Efzeg),
but even if you're a devotee of the genre, you'll find much to appreciate
and surprise you on Momentan Def.
The opening 25-minute track was recorded live in Zürich in November
2002 ("it was the first time we'd played as a trio," Korber explains,
"and we had virtually no audience at all" - plus ça change..),
and the three subsequent tracks, entitled "def.rmx" are remixes of
it by each of the performers (an approach also used to great effect
by Werner Dafeldecker, Uli Fussenegger and dieb13 on 1999's Printer,
Durian 011-2). Working with loops necessarily imposes an element of
rhythm, and in Korber's remix pulse is occasionally made explicit
without dragging the music into pale post-techno cliché, while Steinbrüchel's
remix freeze-frames one of "Momentan"'s harmonic-rich drones, and
sprinkles it with a fine powder of digital snap crackle 'n' pop. Müller's
mix combines elements of both approaches, with superimposed pulse
strata charting our progress through a dense rainforest inhabited
by digital insects and amphibians. All three mixes are beautifully
paced and draw the attentive listener deep into the music at each
of its many levels.
 If
Momentan Def. is a superb example of laminal improv and what
can be done with it, the wonderfully titled Mistakes is nothing
short of a revelation. Of course, nobody seriously expects that any
musician worth his salt with access to a computer and today's sophisticated
software would dream of releasing an album of unedited cock-ups; maybe
that title refers to an element of chance in the reassembling and
recontextualising of existing material into something more structurally
cohesive, but whatever its signification, the results are utterly
compelling.
Osaka-based laptopper Kazuya Ishigami met Korber during a Swiss tour
with Sunao Inami at the end of 2002 and the two agreed to exchange
recordings, which eventually resulted in this split CD on Ishigami's
NEUS318 label. Ishigami's two tracks, "ma-chi-ga-i~shippai" and "ma-chi-ga-i~ayamari",
use Korber's source material to survey the whole landscape of contemporary
electronic music, from swathes of white noise and woofer-challenging
low end drones to delicate glitched loops. The craftsmanship is evident
throughout - Ishigami studied electronic music with Satoshi Shimura
and Kazuo Uehara at Osaka University, and it shows: his music is carefully
composed at every level.
For his more austere offering, "der irrtum" - meaning "mistake" but
also, significantly, "misconception" - Korber selected a mere fifteen
seconds of source material sent to him by Ishigami, "in order to concentrate
on questions of form." The thrill of this music comes not from the
quality of the sounds themselves, exquisite though many might be,
but from the way Korber has chosen to use them in a larger composed
structure. Stasis is important, as is silence (a clear difference
between Mistakes and Momentan Def.) - but so too is
surprise. It's rather ironic that what in theory should be the most
surprising electroacoustic music - improvisation - has in recent years
become somewhat predictable, whereas, despite its fixity, composition
is still capable of bringing the listener up with a severe shock,
even after many listenings. High piercing sustained tones collapse
without warning into near void, and slowly building crescendos lead
not to apocalyptic climax but to silence and sudden recapitulations
of earlier material. It's challenging stuff, but certainly not intimidating,
and an essential document from two cats you'd be well advised to keep
an eye out for in the years to come. Mistakes is available
from the NEUS-318 website, or directly from Korber (mail to: tomas.korber@swissonline.ch).
—DW
on
trente oiseaux
+minus
[first meeting]
Trente Oiseaux TOC041
+minus is a trio consisting of Bernhard Günter, Graham Halliwell
and Mark Wastell who first met in June 2003 at the Ertz Festival,
Bera, and quickly discovered a shared musical affinity. [first
meeting] is the result a two-day studio recording session in
Norwich in November 2003 (the trio will be returning to that city,
as well as to Manchester, Leeds and London in May 2004, prior to
which they appear at the Archipel Festival in Geneva on 24th March
with Richard Chartier).
With +minus Bernhard Günter takes a few steps away from the meticulously
constructed, ultra-quiet electronic compositions for which he is
known. On two of the four tracks on [first meeting], there
are no pre-composed elements, and the music is collectively improvised
by Günter on electric cellotar (a novel five-string instrument of
his own design - see his remarks on the subject in last month's
interview), Halliwell on amplified alto saxophone, and Wastell on
amplified textures, Nepalese bowls and gong. The two remaining tracks
use similar instrumentation, but feature two of Günter's recordings
as foundations for its improvisations (the name +minus refers to
the fact that sometimes the group plays with "pre-recorded composed
basis tracks" and sometimes does not).
Regardless of the approach adopted, the music is captivating. The
particular array of instruments used allows the group to construct
a rich, multi-dimensional sound. Wastell's amplified textures and
Gunter's muffled recordings provide an at times almost subterranean
layer of scratches, rustles, reverberations and indeterminate percussive
emissions, like the partially apprehended acoustic epiphenomena
of some unknown and perhaps sinister process taking place just out
of view. Around this are arrayed the clear and alluring peals of
the Nepalese bowls and gong, the otherworldly pulses of Halliwell's
carefully controlled and modulated feedback crossing the soundscape
as if at a high altitude, and the scratches, plucked notes, sustained
bowings and undulating drones of Gunter's cellotar. The approach
is laminal; the musicians show little concern with offering instantaneous,
spasmodic responses to isolated gestures, focusing instead on the
broader process of constructing a collective musical expression
from elliptically consonant individual contributions. [first
meeting] is spacious, meditative and, I think, portentous and
mysterious: hinting at things not seen and inviting exploration,
yet providing neither questions nor answers. Enigmatic yet enticing,
the music stands seductively open to the collaborative engagement
of the listener. Coming as it does at the start of the group's life,
this excellent recording also holds out the possibility that we
shall hear even better from them in the future. The disc also contains
two pages of commentaries by the musicians in the form of a .pdf
file, a cheap and effective way for small labels with limited budgets
to provide extensive sleeve notes, and a lead I hope other independents
will consider following.
I confess to having some reservations about the use of Günter's
existing music, which the liner notes claim helped spark, structure
and define the group's music (and free Wastell's hands to play his
Nepalese bowls and gong). Leaving aside questions as to whether
a "solid structural basis" (to quote Günter) is an appropriate desideratum
for the spontaneous processes of improvisation, I nonetheless found
that on those occasions when the pre-recorded material became relatively
prominent in the sound I was often distracted from the unfolding
of the group's playing by the realization that one of the contributions
was wholly predetermined and therefore necessarily unresponsive
to the others. There was also the perennial threat that the process
of engaging with the unique music would be interrupted or distorted
by insistent and unprofitable recognition of the source materials.
This music deserves better than to be apprehended with the banal
procedures of mechanistic recognition. On a more political note,
in view of the grip exercised over contemporary Western societies
by commodified nostalgia and the imagined traditions of cultural
nationalists and others, perhaps it is now more important than ever
for improvisers radically to distance themselves from the blandishments
of the past and the claims of cultural memory. —WS
Oles
/ Mahall / Tiberian /Oles
CONTEMPORARY QUARTET
Not Two 744-2
Sirone
CONCORD
Not Two MW 751-2
Daniel
Carter / Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz / Kevin Zubek
CHINATOWN
Not Two MW 753-2
Satoko
Fujii Quartet
ZEPHYROS
Not Two 752-2
With
their slightly oversize elegant hard card packaging, they look like
Japanese imports, but they're not. Not Two is a label run out of Cracow
in Poland by jazz enthusiast (and manager of perhaps that country's
best jazz record shop) Marek Winiarski, and if these releases are
anything to go by, it's a label to watch. The Contemporary Quartet
consists of Romanian pianist Mircea Tiberian, German bass clarinettist
Rudi Mahall, and the Polish kickass rhythm section of bassist Marcin
and drummer Bartlomiej Oles. Don't be put off by the text "plays the
music of Bacewicz, Kisielewski, Komsta, Lutoslawski and Penderecki"
- this is no pale collection of oh-so-tastefully arranged Polish contemporary
classical music, but a dynamic and hard swinging treatment of the
kind of repertoire jazz musicians have usually tended to steer clear
of, at least since the heady days of Gunther Schuller's Third Stream
experiments. Taking Penderecki's 1987 "Prelude" for clarinet solo
as a bona fide head in its own right kick-starts the album in fine
style; Mahall and Tiberian turn the theme inside out, while Oles and
Oles power the music forward. Stefan Kisielewski's "Duet" (from a
1954 "Suite" for oboe and piano) segues into Marzena Komstal's "Langueur",
from a piano piece of the same name written thirty-six years later,
without skipping a beat. Penderecki's "Violin Sonata", written back
in 1953 long before the composer burst onto the contemporary music
scene with the legendary "Threnody (for the Victims of Hiroshima)",
provides the source material for the three following tracks: "Sonata
I" is a solo vehicle for Tiberian, followed - rather too abruptly
methinks - by "Sonata II", which finds Mahall negotiating the bass
clarinet's impossibly high register with frightening ease before letting
rip with some awesome multiphonics while the austere counterpoint
of the original continues underneath. "Sonata III" begins with an
accomplished five-minute percussion solo before the band slips in
with barely a minute to go to round things off with a unison flourish.
Two years after Penderecki penned his violin sonata, Grazyna Bacewicz
wrote the "Sonatina for oboe and piano" that provides the material
for following track, "Foggy", essentially a long obbligato bass solo
accompanied by some distantly menacing percussion. Drummer "Brat"
Oles provides two pieces himself for the quartet, the first of which,
"April" begins with a Mahall solo exploration before Tiberian inserts
a rolling ten-note ostinato for (partially prepared) piano, over which
Mahall and the composer trade extended technique licks. The music
remains in improv (as opposed to jazz) territory for "Per Slava",
based once more on Penderecki, this time a cello solo of the same
name written in 1986. Marcin Oles negotiates the high lyrical cello
line on bass, while Mahall twitters and flutters around him, until
Brat starts riding the cymbal like Jon Christensen and sends the music
back to the supple freebop of 1970s ECM. If I were Manfred Eicher
I'd be reaching for my phone. "Seven Hands", which also follows on
from "Per Slava" without a break (if you weren't watching the indexes
change you'd never know), is Oles' second original composition, and
inhabits the same slightly melancholy harmonic world as the Penderecki,
until once more it starts swinging furiously - Tiberian turns in his
best solo on the album, and Mahall throws in a bundle of angular lines
worthy of Eric Dolphy, until little by little he unravels the beat.
For once, you're expecting a segue into another piece, but instead
there's another rather peremptory fade. The closing track, "Bucolique
no IV" from Witold Lutoslawski's 1952 piano pieces of the same name,
concludes proceedings on a somewhat reflective note. It's beautifully
played, but once more its rather sudden ending makes one wonder if
its inclusion was absolutely necessary. Still, it's but a minor quibble
about a smashing record.
 Unless
I'm mistaken the last time bassist Sirone released an album under
his own name before Concord was 1980, and one wonders why on
earth we didn't hear more of him in the intervening years. Concord
is a quartet featuring Ben Abarbanel-Wolff on tenor saxophone, Ulli
Bartel on violin and Maurice de Martin on drums, and their playing
on these five Sirone originals is solid and convincing without being
flashy. Bartel's rich double stops support the arching melody of the
opening "Aisha's Serenade", tapping into a rich vein of European folk
fiddle. On "You are not alone but we are few" Sirone reaches for the
bow and engages Bartel and Abarbanel-Wolff in sensitive dialogue,
while de Martin adds deft touches of percussion colour. On "For all
we don't know" violin and saxophone stretch out on a simple modal
melody in two-part harmony, while Sirone and Martin roll along underneath
in fast triple time. It all flows effortlessly, and manages to be
constantly engaging, even passionate, without ever going overboard.
A boisterous drum solo leads without a break into the superb freebop
"Swingin' on a string of things / For Albert", the Albert in question
presumably being Ayler, as acknowledged by the gospel inflections
of Abarbanel-Wolff's splendidly gutsy solo, and Bartel plays Michel
Sampson to perfection. The reprise of "You are not alone but we are
few" is a fine touch, rounding off the album with another superb bass
solo from the leader. European concert promoters who fall over themselves
to book acts from New York (I'm thinking particularly of French festivals
such as Banlieues Bleues and Sons d'Hiver) should turn their gaze
to the east and sign these boys up fast.
 Talking
of acts from New York, Chinatown features one of the stalwarts
of the scene, reedman Daniel Carter, in a trio with Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz
(bass, oud) and Kevin Zubek (percussion) recorded in Brooklyn in August
2003. The opening four minutes of "Hok Zhou" find Blumenkranz and
Zubek providing a spacious, rolling clatter for Carter to stretch
out on top of, until the texture thins out halfway through the track.
Zubek's delicate wood blocks and tambourines prompt some daring arco
work from Blumenkranz, and once more Carter, without having to spar
with other horns, as is the case in Test and Other Dimensions In Music,
is able to develop his ideas at length. His serpentine motivic explorations
recall vintage Sam Rivers, but there's a refreshing fragility to the
sound, especially on alto, that makes a welcome change from the testosterone
of much NY free jazz. This is especially apparent on "Sun Dou", a
duet for Carter and Blumenkranz's oud, in which the saxophonist is
just as comfortable exploring the scalar nuances of Middle Eastern
modality as he is blowing wild on "Teng Fei". The oud returns on "Sun
Mei", which this time features Zubek's polyrhythmic bustle, while
Carter sketches delicate flute arabesques. Only two of the album's
eleven cuts go beyond the six-minute mark, and the short form - short
not being synonymous with straightforward: the music is able to change
tracks with surprising speed - suits the musicians well. Chinatown
is one of the freshest and most creative outings of recent times,
and you could do yourself a favour and check it out.
 Testosterone
certainly isn't lacking on Zephyros, the latest outing from
the prolific (though still largely unsung) Satoko Fujii Quartet. And
you wouldn't expect it to be, powered by a rhythm section consisting
of Takeharu Hayakawa, whose muscular electric bass recalls the glory
days of early 80s punk funk, and drummer extraordinaire Tatsuya Yoshida
(of Ruins fame). Yoshida can handle Fujii's gusty prog metrical intricacies
with consummate ease - hardly surprising, since he was weaned on the
stuff - and topped off with Fujii's punchy piano and Natsuki Tamura's
blazing trumpet, the band really cooks on "Flying To The South". Fujii's
stylistic influences are wide and not always easy to pin down: "First
Tango" is Carla Bley-like in its precision-engineered harmony and
bass line doubled on piano left hand and bass, while the crashing
power chords and rumbling octave pedals of "The Future Of The Past"
inevitably recall McCoy Tyner. Elsewhere there are hints of pianists
as diverse as Kenny Kirkland, Keith Tippett and Paul Bley. Tamura
is not all blood and fire, either. In the opening minutes of "One
Summer Day" his full rich tone - impeccably recorded, as is the whole
album - provides a temporary respite before Fujii comes charging in
with tight arpeggios that gradually give way to a minute's ecstatic
freakout. Yoshida's rock background and sheer volume, though impressive,
are sometimes overwhelming - his mighty snare drum thwacks in "Clear
Sky" are rather overpowering, and the deft odd number metrics sound
rather wooden. By way of antidote, the opening minutes of "15 Minutes
To Get To The Station" let rip with joyous abandon, until the metrical
magma resumes. Fortunately, Fujii has the good sense not to let the
music go out with a bombastic bang, and winds things down in the closing
minutes. It's another solid outing from a tight and impressive band,
and one more reason for you to check out what's happening on Not Two
at the earliest opportunity.—DW
Martin
Siewert / Martin Brandlmayr
TOO BEAUTIFUL TO BURN
Erstwhile 031
Martin
Brandlmayr / Werner Dafeldecker / Stefan Németh / Martin Siewert
DIE INSTABILITÄT DER SYMMETRIE
Grob 547 / dOc 008
Kapital
Band 1
2CD
Mosz 001
Efzeg
WÜRM
Charhizma 028
Too
Beautiful To Burn, a title that refers perhaps to the charred
and crumbling edifice of Brighton Pier that features as the album's
cover artwork, hails from a session recorded at Christoph Amann's
Tonstudio in Vienna in early 2003, and finds guitarist / electronician
Martin Siewert in the company of Berlin-based percussionist extraordinaire
Martin Brandlmayr. Both make full use of Amann's considerable expertise
to multitrack layers of cool liquid vibraphone and (at times) more
disquieting percussion along with Siewert's spacious drones and at
times achingly lyrical guitar work. Brandlmayr has an enormous range
of colours on his palette, but what is especially refreshing about
his playing is his evident fondness for percussion's primary role,
the articulation of pulse. The opening four minutes of "Source" flirt
with dub, but in the most oblique manner imaginable (Stefan Betke
is nowhere in sight.. come to think of it, he's been nowhere in sight
for some time now..). Brandlmayr is just as content though to let
Siewert's subtle loops and gently arching melodies sketch out the
outlines of a larger rhythm ("Is This Love?"). "Axis" is a pure gem,
refreshingly uncluttered by trademark eai computer crackle. Brandlmayr's
bowed vibes slowly and surely map out the intervallic space between
Siewert's sustained e-bow and laptop drones; anyone who dares argue
that being able to find and play the right notes doesn't matter anymore
should be strapped down and forced to listen to this one on repeat
play for several hours. Pitch, though, is just one of the relevant
parameters of music, and arguably no longer as important as it was
half a century ago; the final "Hold" is striking proof of the ever-increasing
importance of timbre and event-density, as Brandlmayr turns in cymbal
work worthy of Sunny Murray and Siewert deftly sweeps through the
harmonic spectra with consummate grace. Too beautiful to burn (a pirate
copy) indeed; go buy one.
For Die Instabilität Der Symmetrie, which he describes as "an
audiovisual project [..] strongly connected both to the performing
space and the work of video artist Michaela Grill", Siewert was joined
not only by Brandlmayr but also by Stefan Németh (keyboards) and Werner
Dafeldecker (bass), both also doubling on computer. Dafeldecker's
lowering bass is immediately recognisable in "Part 1", as are Siewert's
exquisite three-note pitch constellations. "Part 2" is altogether
more menacing, Brandlmayr's pointillist percussion engaging the computers
in a counterpoint of polymetric clicks until all hell breaks loose
at 4'39", followed by a shrill passage of alarm clock terror. "Part
4" rediscovers the dreamy resonant hues of E major - no coincidence
that Miles chose this tonality for "In A Silent Way" - with Siewert
dripping wistful pairs of thirds over a carpet of tonic drone / drizzle
that Minamo would be proud of, until the backdrop gains in intensity
and moves forward to occupy centre stage. Throughout all five parts
the development of ideas is beautifully paced, and the album as a
whole rates with the best of the genre. That it was recorded live
(though no doubt substantially reworked in post prod by Siewert) is
a testament to the exceptional complicity that exists between these
four fine musicians.
Brandlmayr's skill as a pulse generator (groove machine, more like)
is more to the fore in Kapital Band, his two-man outfit with laptopper
Nicholas Bussmann, who's just as adept at laying down sweaty, meaty
bass lines ("This Is What We Want" - damn right) as he is at rummaging
in the diginoise toy box. The eleven tracks manage to remain defiantly
experimental - no sell-outs - while at the same time clearly acknowledging
and revealing great affection for their roots in rock and pop. "Do
You Remember Sadness?" is clearly boss nova, but a severely glitched
European cousin, with Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto and Tom Jobim nowhere
in sight. In fact, until a gloomy chord rings out half way through,
there isn't a single note (though the pitches of Brandlmayr's toms
sketch out a clear whole tone). On "Wait" Brandlmayr marks time while
Bussmann accumulates menacing low-end sludge around him (Lalo Schifrin
would be proud of this). "The New Car" is guaranteed to have your
feet tapping at 112 BPM and there isn't a kick drum in sight, and
it surely won't be long before some trendy hiphopper ends up sampling
Brandlmayr's outrageous shuffle on "Survival Kit". The 2CD title,
by the way, is the gimmick - what's a pop album without a gimmick?
- the second CD is totally blank, a CDR in fact, and an open invitation
for punters to download more Kapital Band tracks from their website
(so far I've found three, and they're all on the first CD, but I'll
be going back). Or anything else, for that matter.. though you'll
be hard-pressed to find cutting edge electronica as inventive, exciting
and downright funky as this.
Following their eponymous debut on Durian in 2000 and the excellent
Boogie on Grob in 2002, Würm is the third album by Efzeg,
a quartet consisting of Boris Hauf (electronics and occasional saxophone),
guitarists / electronicians Siewert and Burkhard Stangl and turntablist
(amongst other things) dieb13. Quintet, actually, as the work of computer
graphics whiz Billy Roisz, who accompanies the group in their live
appearances, is also featured here in a Quicktime movie, "Schicht".
The group's sound palette has broadened considerably since their first
album, and there's more room than there was before in Efzeg's music
for non-abstract sound sources. A cymbal crash - heard both forwards
and backwards - and a car engine stuttering into life are all seamlessly
integrated into the music, and as sonic metaphors of motion they're
significant. Towards the end of "Günz dus", while a gently thudding
heartbeat marks the passing time, the guitarists' melancholy pitches
alternate with bursts of crackling static, both hanging in the air
like question marks, as if the music is questioning which way to look
- over its shoulder, to a time where pitch was the key parameter of
music, or forward into new territory. Without the guitars the music
would sound chilly and unprepossessing (rather like Cremaster, one
imagines); without the electronics the guitars would wander and noodle
aimlessly (like they did on the SSSD Grob outing Home a while
back). Efzeg's music reminds us that the present moment - for this
music as well as for us listening to it - sits squarely and eternally
between the past and the future, between nostalgia and anticipation,
between the memory of desire long gone and the desire of memory to
come. It's a moment to savour.—DW
Golden Years of Soviet New Jazz vol.3
Various
Artists
GOLDEN YEARS OF THE SOVIET NEW JAZZ, VOLUME 3
Golden Years 409 - 412 4CD
This
fine collection serves as a compelling documentation of the refusal
of the artistic spirit to be intimidated by a totalitarian political
system - and the ultimate triumph of the former. Russian émigré
Leo Feigin of Leo Records has once again provided us with the
raw evidence, mercifully free from Ken Burns preachy sociological
wrapping. To paraphrase John Lee Hooker: it was in 'em and it had
to come out.
The first of these four discs features a duo that was known as Homo
Liber - multi-instrumentalist (primarily keyboardist) Yuri Yukechev
and alto saxophonist and flutist Vladimir Tolkachev - whose four offerings
are wonderful mixes of composition and improvisation. Yukechev was
classically trained and recordings of his written music exist, but
has been fascinated since childhood by the "fresh artistic information"
contained in improvisation. In Tolkachev he found a kindred spirit,
and these performances (smuggled out in classic Leo fashion and subsequently
severely edited due to the sound quality) are the manifestations of
their highly focused interplay. "Opus No. 40", an extended improvisation
centered on a recurring three-note blues motif, keeps the listener's
interest at a high level for more than twenty-five minutes. The other
three tracks are thematically more varied but just as engaging. While
Yukechev plays "Opus No. 40" entirely on piano, he begins "In Memory
of Andrey Tarkovsky" with ponderous organ blasts, after which he scampers
between that instrument, piano and synthesizers. For his part Tolkachev
is featured mainly on alto, with the flute thrown in when a more delicate
tone is appropriate.
The extensive liners mention that the duo existed in the cultural
isolation of the middle of Western Siberia. Yet Novosibirsk, the third
largest city in Russia, is not just snow and wasteland; there is an
adjacent haven for academics, Akademgorodok, where the two men met.
In an interview from the period Yukechev complained about the lack
of other musicians available to take part in the creative process,
and that none could "overcome their conservatism and adherence to
standards." A pointed critique indeed of the system in which Homo
Liber existed; it's hard to believe that in an academic setting that
nobody hearing their performances approached them about at least sitting
in. More disturbing is the fact that Yukechev seems to have fallen
off the face of the artistic world - even Feigin hasn't heard from
or about him in fifteen years.
Too bad that Homo Liber didn't play in Vilnius, Lithuania, where,
as disc two reveals, there were plenty of instrumentalists willing
and able to play Vladimir Chekasin's challenging and innovative big
band charts in the early 80s. Saxophonist and trombonist Chekasin
has been featured on a series of Leo recordings with the Ganelin Trio
- the group that first put the West on alert that a few hell-raisers
existed in the Soviet Union - and while GT recordings have shown him
to be an extremely resourceful player, playing rapid-fire lines that
bristle with inventive associations, these compositions show his innovative
concepts aren't confined to small group interplay, and provide the
listener with many unexpected pleasures. The first is a two-movement
piece called "Pathological Music" which runs the gamut from Dada-esque
brass arrangements to march music, ROVA like sax interplay (but with
more horns) and an Africa Brass-ish nod to Coltrane. Invigorating
stuff, but it just serves to set the stage for "New Vitality", a positively
exhilarating journey from Rag-Time to Swing to Free time to Return
to Forever - and back again. Count Basie meets Sun Ra and Willem Breuker.
Probably recorded by someone sitting in the audience (since the applause
is really loud), this 40-minute span of sheer joy (twelve minutes
shorter than the original Leo release, New Vitality, Leo LR
142, itself shortened from 70 minutes) may offer some insight into
why Lithuania was the first country to secede from the Soviet Union.
The first seven cuts of disc three feature the highly acclaimed Tuvan
singer Sainkho Namchylak, with Pop Mechanics, percussionist Mikhail
Zhukov and Trio-O. The Pop Mechanics cut, featuring the late bad boy
of Russian keyboards, Sergey Kuryokhin, makes up with sheer energy
for its lack of sound fidelity. Is it Sainkho's voice or Kuryokhin's
keys making those soaring otherworldly sounds? Whatever the answer,
it leaves one wanting more. After the duet with hand drummer Zhukov,
who supplies a sympathetic percussion springboard for Namchylak's
vocal calisthenics, the remaining cuts feature the drum-less Trio-O,
both with Sainkho (although not on as many selections as the liners
indicate) and without her. The trio provides an interesting backdrop
for the vocalist, with Sergey Letov's bass clarinet harmonics providing
a throat singing-like tonal pairing. Also worthy of mention is the
bassoon playing of Alexander Alexandrov, whose facility on the unwieldy
instrument is striking. On the selections without Sainkho, Trio-O
provide vocals of their own which, while less striking than Namchylak's,
are nonetheless effective, although one extended piece featuring spoken
narrative leaves listeners that don't speak Russian in the dark regarding
the audience laughter.
The final disc primarily concentrates on the wonderful trumpeter Andrew
Solovyev in a variety of small group settings, all but one including
guitarist Igor Grigoriev. As a starting point of reference, imagine
Dave Douglas and Bill Frisell; "CD/FG", is what Charms of the Night
Sky might sound like with Frisell's spacious guitar sound added to
the mix. But Solovyev won't be pigeonholed so easily; alternately
sounding like Miles Davis, Bill Dixon, Rex Stewart and Leo Smith,
he ultimately sounds like.. Andrew Solovyev. The trio outfit The Roof
features Solovyev, percussionist Zhukov and Grigoriev, who ranges
from ethereal brooding to sprightly arpeggios. Electric bassist Dmitri
Shumilov is added to make up a group called Asphalt, and his playing
provides more rhythmic propulsion and gives Grigoriev and Zhukov more
latitude in their sonic explorations. The disc ends with an innovative
suite for a trumpet "quartet" (Solovyev multitracked) that serves
as further evidence of this musician's fertile mind. Sandwiched between
Asphalt and this are pieces featuring cellist Vladislav Makarov in
duets with percussionist Alexander Kondrashkin and Sergey Letov, and
a quartet, which though not as compelling as the tracks with Solovyev
still maintain the listener's interest (the Makarov/Letov duets bring
to mind Julius Hemphill and Abdul Wadud - not too shabby as associations
go). If this is your first exposure to this labour of love by Russian
émigré Leo Feigin - not to mention the first two (and subsequent fourth)
volumes of the Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz collection, I suggest
you have some serious catching up to do.
—SG
All
Time Present
DISTANT MICROPHONES PICK UP BOTH DIRECT & REFLECTED SOUND
Evolving Ear
All
Time Present is an improvising ensemble consisting of three electric
guitarists (Chris Forsyth, Rich Gross, Ethan Sklar) and two percussionists
(Toshi Makihara and David Gould). Each of the eight (or thirteen,
depending on how you count them) tracks has an eerie obsessiveness
to it; a single repeated chord or a grace-note figure by one of the
guitarists can be the basis of a ten-minute improv. Nothing may in
fact be quite the same between the first minute and the second, but
the whole is so dreamily hypnotic that you may not be able to put
your finger on just what has mutated. The first few cuts are drowsy,
twangy and seem a little unfocused, but from "Fringe 2" on, about
halfway through the recording, the intensity level begins to rise
into the red zone. We still find slow, almost gentle evolutionary
processes at work, but the creatures resulting from the single-cell
slime thingies are now predatory carnivores. The sounds and general
aesthetic on this album remind me a bit of the Parkins/Moore/Cline
outing, Live at Easthampton. Distant Microphones.. is
not as dense though, and there are more (if not quite as deep) climaxes
here. The tone is a little darker, too, making the overall effect
closer to "mildly disturbing" than to "richly psychedelic." It's an
effective recording from a group we'll hear more from. —WH
Fred
Hess Quartet
THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT
Tapestry 76006-2
Tenor
saxophonist Fred Hess remains little-known outside the Colorado music
scene, where he's been active as a player, composer and educator for
several decades, though his music has become more widely available
lately through the efforts of Cadence/CIMP (always enthusiastic champions
of lesser-known regional players) and the Colorado label Capri/Tapestry.
The Long and Short of It is thinking man's freebop in the classic
pianoless quartet format; the band includes trumpeter Ron Miles, one
of Hess's regular musical partners and fellow instructor in the Jazz
Studies program at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, bassist
Ken Filiano and drummer Matt Wilson. Hess has a pale, lean sound,
his phrases fluttering upwards to precisely targeted notes in the
highest register; his lines are rapid but never blur, and are packed
tight with musical argument and detail. As a composer he favours elegantly
serpentine compositional structures, and even the twelve-bar blues
"Happened Yesterday" crams in more musical information than most composers'
32-bar heads. A couple efforts at varying the tone - a mock-narrative
piece, "The Clef's Go to the Big City", and a brief feature for Matt
Wilson's battery-powered drill on "Gear Tips" - fall a bit flat; Hess
admires Braxton and the AACM but has none of their inspired loopiness.
The quartet plays with evident sympathy - perhaps too much so, as
the disc could use more tension and spark: Miles' demure trumpet isn't
the world's most colourful foil, and with Filiano and Wilson at their
most tasteful, it all comes off as rather tidy and reticent. Hess
is an original, however, and his thoughtful playing and distinctive,
winding compositions are well worth a listen. —ND
Daniele
D'Agaro, Ernst Glerum, Han Bennink
STRANDJUTTERS
Hatology 590
On
tenor saxophone Daniele D'Agaro has a warm, old-fashioned sound, drawing
on Byas, Webster and Gonsalves, though he isn't really one for the
overripe, swaggering romanticism you expect from a player in this
tradition. Like other avant-traditionalists - Bennie Wallace, James
Carter and David Murray, for instance - he contrasts low and high
registers rather than smoothing out the passage between them, boudoir
sensuality giving way to precarious, slightly absurd vaults into the
upper reaches. But there's none of Carter's bruising, priapic excess
and hustle: D'Agaro's readings of "Old Folks" and Johnny Dyani's "I
Wish You Sunshine" are relaxed, even rather gentle. The remaining
six tracks are D'Agaro originals, all rather slight - perhaps the
best being "Divi-Divi", the charming 3/4 shuffle that introduces the
disc - but carried by D'Agaro's full-toned and varied clarinet, ably
supported by the doggedly swinging bass of Ernst Glerum, and Han Bennink's
highly sympathetic (sic) work at the drum kit. Not an essential release,
but worth hearing.—ND
Günter
Adler
LIVE IN ASIEN
Meta 016
You
will look in vain for a Mr Adler in the personnel listings on Live
in Asien - it's merely a bemusing band name for this spirited
quartet from Germany, fronted by the twin horns of Rudi Mahall (bass
clarinet) and Daniel Erdmann (tenor saxophone) and supported by bassist
Johannes Fink and drummer Heinrich Köbberling. Günter Adler specializes
in sleek freebop with laced with humour, and it's clear from the musicians'
vocal interjections and the crowd's enthusiasm that these two concerts,
recorded a few days apart in Hanoi and Singapore, were happy occasions.
The music's excitement is diluted, though, by the erratic recording;
Mahall cuts through the lo-fi without much trouble, but Erdmann's
tenor is never clearly caught (on occasion it sounds more like a bassoon),
and is sometimes way off-mike. There are also various other sonic
problems and one very obtrusive edit, at the end of "Das Männlein",
which makes it a surprisingly scruffy release from Meta, a label whose
offerings (including Günter Adler's eponymous first album) are usually
far more cleanly presented. The music is fine, but considering the
poor sound and the disc's brevity (just shy of 42 minutes - and that's
counting the two and a half minutes of German stage patter that interrupt
proceedings at one point) it's more of a decent tour souvenir than
a compelling record in its own right. —ND
Robert
Ashley
THE WOLFMAN
Alga Marghen plana-A 20NMN048
Alga
Marghen has been digging deep into the experimental music field recently,
releasing hitherto unavailable or long-deleted recordings by Philip
Corner, Anton Bruhin, Juan Hidalgo, Maurizio Bianchi, David Behrman
and Robert Ashley, of which The Wolfman is the second outing
(following String Quartet, which contained the compositions
"String Quartet Describing the Motions of Large Real Bodies" and "How
Can I Tell the Difference"). The opener, "The Fox", Ashley's first
electronic music work dating from 1957, consists of a text, a "crime
pays" ditty popularised by Burl Ives, but rewritten here by Ashley
to be more "noir", and a pre-recorded tape. Ashley recorded piano
clusters, reversed the tape and did the same in the opposite direction,
mixing both versions together and cutting off the attacks to match
the structure of the text (and determine how it was to be performed).
The highlight of the album is "The Wolfman", composed in 1964, for
tape, voice and feedback. The tape used can either be the six-minute
"The Wolfman Tape" (1964) or, as is the case here, the eighteen-minute
"The 4th of July" (1960), in which a recording of a party in Ashley's
neighbours backyard - the composer was experimenting with a parabolic
microphone - blasts into a layer of tape loops and tape-head feedback.
The vocalist intones soft vocal sounds (not screams, as Ashley is
at pains to point out), each phrase consuming one full breath, which
produce a steady layer of acoustic, eruptive distortion. When the
singer pauses to breathe the listener is sucked into grinding feedback,
as fragments of screeching, distorted sound rush through space, breaking
new ground in direct contact with the nervous system. The Japanese
noise scene has been doing the same kind of thing since the early
1990s - but Ashley beat them to it by a quarter of a century.
"The Wolfman Tape" appears here as a separate piece (free jazz aficionados
might recognise it as the last track on Bob James' ESP album Explosions),
and its manipulated found sounds, including a hilarious beer commercial,
provide much needed light relief between the harsh, uncompromising
"Wolfman" and the quiet, sustained 43 minutes of "The Bottleman".
Composed in 1960 as music for a George Manupelli film of the same
title about a bottle-collecting vagrant wandering through a desolate
landscape (which I'd like to see), Ashley contact-miked a surface
six feet away from an open-circuit humming loudspeaker whose pitch
is raised through tape manipulations and mixed with vocal and other
found sounds and played back at various tape speeds. It's an unobtrusive
excursion where you experience the world as the Bottleman hears it
- no communication, just wandering around in circles. Years ahead
of its time, its release here is to be welcomed. —KW
John
McGuire
PULSE MUSIC III / VANISHING POINTS / A CAPPELLA
Sargasso SCD28043
Despite studies at the end of the 1960s with Krzysztof Penderecki
and Karlheinz Stockhausen, followed by a period of 27 years living
in Cologne (each of these three pieces was commissioned by WDR and
composed in that legendary studio), the pure major-key tonality of
"Pulse Music III" clearly links John McGuire's work with the music
one tends to associate these days with his native California. The
concept is clear and clearly articulated in the music itself - four
layers of superimposed pulse loops pan at different rates across the
stereo space. Now that the back catalogue of the Cold Blue roster
of artists and the long out-of-print oeuvre of David Borden are both
back in circulation, and the likes of Reich and Glass have attained
what can only be described as star status, it's about time that McGuire's
1978 work should be recognised for what it is, a major and original
document in American process music.
Ten years after "Pulse Music III" McGuire was back in the Cologne
studios to create "Vanishing Points", which like the earlier work
originated from a visual image: "I pictured driving along a road with
an unobstructed horizon in front of me: the horizon was always the
same distance away. [..] I think of this horizon as analogous to the
rhythm-to-pitch threshold, i.e. the point at which individual pulses
follow one another so quickly that the ear can longer distinguish
between them: literally the instant at which 'points' vanish." Whereas
pulse remained constant (at least from section to section) in "Pulse
Music III", "Vanishing Points" presents overlapping layers of continually
accelerating and decelerating arpeggios.
"A Cappella" dates from 1997 and features the composer's wife, soprano
Beth Griffith, whose voice is sampled (singing three distinct vowel
sounds) and reconfigured into three digital instruments, as it were
(each with its own vowel), which McGuire uses to articulate a delicate
but dynamic polyphony whose harmony looks back to the English polyphonists
of the Old Hall Manuscript.
Each of these three pieces is quite lengthy (about 25 minutes) and
the unchanging timbre of McGuire's synthesizers is a little wearing,
but the same could be said of similar work by the likes of Daniel
Lentz and David Borden (instead of the latter's chunky Moogs, here
we get the digital squeaky clean of the EMS and the Fairlight). The
sounds themselves may have dated a little, but the compositional craftsmanship
that articulates them is very much alive and worthy of your undivided
attention. —DW
Beth
Anderson
PEACHY KEEN-O
Pogus P21030-2
The
excellent Pogus label has been trawling through the archives once
more, and once more has netted a fine catch. Beth Anderson is probably
better known as co-editor of EAR magazine, but her compositions are
certainly worth checking out. In "Torero Piece" (1973) she converted
a painting-by-numbers image of a toreador into a phonetic score (by
assigning a specific sound to each number) to be performed simultaneously
with another spoken text in which the performer is asked to describe
"the most dramatic event or relationship in his/her life" (here we
hear the composer's mother talking about their relationship). The
album's closing track "Ode", a kind of companion piece to "Torero
Piece", features the voice of Kentucky tobacco auctioneer Spec Edwards
(and very musical it is too). Also from 1973, "Tower of Power" (sadly
not the Californian funk band of the same name, though Anderson can't
have been unaware of their existence at the time) calls for an organist
to "hold as many keys and pedals down as possible, using only your
body, at as loud an amplitude as possible". It's as impressive as
you might imagine, but if like me you're not a fan of the venerable
pipe organ, you might want to skip forward to the title track. This
eerie montage of women intoning fragments of speech to the accompaniment
of dithering guitars, swoony vibes, pre-recorded tapes of a Kentucky
creek and a mechanical Santa Claus singing "Jingle Bells" sounds as
strange now as it must have done back in 1973 (the recording here
is of the work's first performance). Less impressive is "Joan" (1974
- 77), originally an oratorio, in which Anderson transcribed the text
describing the trial of Joan of Arc into music, decoding the text
into pitches. The version presented here is for fifteen overdubbed
pianos, all apparently playing white notes, and the realisation is
decidedly less interesting than the concept. Fast forward instead
to 1979, and "Ocean Motion Mildew Mind", which finds Anderson relocated
to NYC and intoning a subtractive poem over the punky punch provided
by local drum whiz Wharton Tiers. "Country Time" is a rural equivalent,
with the composer (poet?) rapping merrily on about wasps and bumblebees,
while there's a distinctly African feel to "Yes Sir Ree". "I Can't
Stand It" is more hysterical, with Last Poets-like congas powering
the music forward while Anderson's breakneck Beckettian "I can't stop
it" monologue works its way inexorably forward. All four pieces were
originally broadcast as part of the National Public Radio series "Poetry
Is Music", and their reissue here is good news indeed. —DW
Gamelan
Son of Lion
THE COMPLETE GAMELAN IN THE NEW WORLD
Locust L41/42
In another spectacular raid on the Folkways archives, Locust's Dawson
Prater has succeeded in liberating two albums originally issued in
1979 and 1982 featuring the Gamelan Son of Lion, which was originally
built by ethnomusicologist Barbara Benary ("Son of Lion" in Hebrew)
in 1974. With fellow faculty members at New Jersey's Rutgers University,
Daniel Goode and Philip Corner, Benary set about writing original
music for the instrument, not without reservations at first: "I hadn't
heard anyone do it in a persuasive way [..]. I know some people, like
Steve Reich, were bothered. With Phil, I didn't think he was doing
a disservice to traditional music, because what he was doing had absolutely
nothing to do with traditional music." Indeed not - Corner, as one
of the most ingenious composers (and arguably the most musical) to
emerge out of the Fluxus movement, was determined to approach the
gamelan from an experimental music perspective. He soon discovered
that the instrument itself imposed its own conditions, and adapted
his compositional strategy to the scalar and timbral resources at
his disposition. The uncompromising minimalism of his "Gamelan P.C."
and "Gamelan II" lend themselves particularly well to the gamelan's
sonority. Only two of the ten pieces here, however, are by Corner
(three of his more extended gamelan compositions being currently available
on the Alga Marghen album 3 Pieces for Gamelan Ensemble); the
collection also includes three compositions by Benary, two by Goode
and one each by Dika Newlin, Elena Carey and Peter Griggs. Griggs'
"Solar Winds" and Goode's "Circular Thoughts" are quite close in nature
to the structure of traditional gamelan music, albeit more rigorous
in their application of mathematical process: Goode's piece inscribes
polyrhythms over the instrument's endlessly cycling heptatonic scale,
while his "40 Random Numbered Clangs" treats the instrument more like
a conventional (in the Cageian sense of the word) percussion ensemble.
Carey's "DNA" uses the four basic elements of that well-known molecular
strand as a score itself (not a very exciting one, either - but I
suppose you can't "edit" DNA). In contrast to the racket of Newlin's
"Machine Shop", which pushes the envelope further by incorporating
additional buzzes and scrapes, Benary's offerings, "Braid", "Sleeping
Braid" and "In Scrolls of Leaves" are delicate and feminine works
that augment the gamelan's metallophones with zithers and flutes.
A diverse and gorgeous collection. —DW
Mark
Wastell / Graham Halliwell
FAKTURA
Absurd #34
Belaska
VAULT
w.m.o/r 06
With
all the hoo-ha surrounding recent Erstwhile projects such as Keith
Rowe and John Tilbury's Duos for Doris and the AMPLIFY box, I wonder
how many readers out there know Erstwhile 001, Extracts, which
appeared back in 1999 and features Simon H. Fell, Simon Vincent and
Graham Halliwell. Saxophonist Halliwell has maintained a low profile
over recent years, but his release with Mark Wastell and bernhard
günter (see above) should garner him some long overdue attention.
And in the meantime here is a splendid outing with Wastell recorded
in October 2002. Halliwell is credited as playing "feedback saxophone",
which is pretty self-explanatory but hardly does justice to the enormous
range of nuances he manages to obtain with the technique. Wastell's
"amplified textures" are as discreet and well placed as those familiar
with his work as a cellist (in Assumed Possibilities and The Sealed
Knot) might expect, but rougher and more unpredictable in timbre.
His strange static rumbles on "Veshch" underpin Halliwell's Sachikoesque
sustained tones most effectively. It's easy to assume from reading
a description of work as intimate and spare as this that the music
is somehow chilly and emotionless, but nothing could be further from
the truth. Fragility becomes melancholy - in both senses of the word
"becomes" - I await the pair's collaboration with günter with great
interest.
Belaska is a duo also featuring Wastell and Spanish (he'd probably
prefer Basque) sound artist Mattin on computer feedback, and as its
title suggests, Vault was recorded in a disused safety deposit
box in the City of London. Complete with a twenty-page booklet containing
some elegant photographs of the performing space and a couple of texts
(which just manage to avoid being mildly pretentious), the disc also
consists of four tracks ranging in duration from 9'00" to 14'46".
Site-specific improv is an exciting area of new music, but the majority
of releases of the genre (if one can call it such) have so far concentrated
on outdoor spaces - the excellent series of sound postcards on the
Ouïe Dire label, the work of Afflux (Jean-Luc Guionnet, Eric La Casa
and Eric Cordier). Vault is a claustrophobic and at times scary
experience - who hasn't at some stage had a nightmare of being unable
to escape from a confined space? - Mattin's at times vicious buzzes
and feedback squeals and Wastell's disturbing scrapes and rumbles
are literally captured (shot out to Tim Goldie for his excellent recording),
and the vault itself becomes an all-too-real participant in the adventure.
—DW
Un
Caddie Renversé dans l'Herbe
LIKE A PACKED CUPBOARD BUT QUITE…
Dekorder 007
After
last year's 3" CD Now There's A Weird Taste In My Mouth here's
a full-length outing from Didac Lagarrida (who hails from Sao Paulo
but is currently based in Barcelona). The use of the balaphone, kalimba,
mbira and melodica (there's additional double bass and berimbau on
a couple of tracks too), discreetly but deftly enhanced by software,
imbues the album with a mildly exotic flavour, which, in conjunction
with the extreme simplicity of the basic material and some surprising
accompanying samples, is striking, especially in the current climate
where laptoppers are all too often tempted to go for all out sensory
overload. "homepages.gold.ac.uk/hutnyk" (all eleven track titles
are Internet URLS - the listener is presumably cordially invited to
visit the sites listed) engages in simple block additive and block
subtractive process, in time-honoured Steve Reich fashion (though
one could also cite Gilberto Gil's "Bate Macumba", to choose an example
closer to home base for Lagarrida..). One might be tempted snobbishly
to dismiss it all out of hand, but these deceptive little tracks -
only five out of thirteen go beyond the three minute mark, the longest
clocking in at 5'00" - can't be brushed aside that easily. If Lagarrida
had been active in the 1970s you can bet your Rolex his music would
have appeared on the Nurse With Wound list. There's something undeniably
kooky about it all, but, like several of the younger acts that have
grown up with one ear cocked to Steven Stapleton's alt.universe (Volcano
The Bear comes to mind often here), there's a sense of self-assuredness
and commitment to the material that won't be denied. Check it out.
—DW
Pop
WORK HARD PLAY HARDER
Absurd #31
Pop, indeed. This is hardcore laptoppery at its finest and noisiest
courtesy of Peter "Pita" Rehberg and Zbigniew Karkowski, recorded
at (of all places) the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens in
November 2002. Well, the first twenty minutes were anyway (twenty
minutes is about all you get at a Karkowski gig - and if it's as good
as this, it's about all you need too); tracks two and three are remixes
of that performance by each of the participants. Slabs of furious
noise are atomised into exhilarating shards and slammed remorsely
through banks of effects - the cumulative effect is overwhelming,
and fantastically enjoyable. Karkowski's remix stays close to the
exfoliating thrill of the original, while Rehberg's "Pita version"
goes heavy on the filters. Tinnitus sufferers are cordially invited
to abstain. Talking of suffering, my downstairs neighbour has an intensely
annoying habit of opening his windows, plugging in his electric geetar
and treating everyone within earshot to the first bar of "Voodoo Chile";
it's all the poor bugger knows how to play, but after about forty
minutes, pity usually turns to desire to retaliate. Track one of this
album is perfect (so is "The Inferno" from Kevin Drumm's Sheer
Hellish Miasma, but you probably know one that by now) - I've
tried it twice and it works like a fucking charm. Whether you have
problems with your neighbours or not, this is the one to get.—DW
Copyright 2003 by Paris Transatlantic
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