A
warm welcome this month to three new writers from across the pond
joining PT for the first time. Here's hoping you enjoy both the Supercollider
syntax of the irrepressible TJ Norris and the fine penmanship of Richard
Hutchinson and Bagatellen
head honcho Alan Jones in what has turned out to be our biggest issue
to date. Thanks also go out to Signal To Noise's Pete Gershon for
financing my trip up to Amsterdam just before Christmas last year
to interview the one and only Burton
Greene.  An
edited version of our chat appeared in Signal To Noise's Spring 2004
issue (#33); here we bring you the extended remix. Thanks to Burton
for the archive photos (including the one on the right). If you
wish to submit articles to PT for use in the magazine, or discs for
review to add to the precarious pile teetering on top of our respective
stereo systems, or just moan about what you read in these pages -
Wayne Spencer's Uchiage! review last
month brought a lively response but none of the potential assassins
who wrote in were willing to have their correspondence feature on
our Letters Page :( - please
consult the FAQ page in the "Home" pulldown menu, top left.
Bonne lecture. —DW
ENHA
http://www.geocities.jp/naitokazga/enha
Tetuzi
Akiyama / Josef van Wissem
PROLETARIAN DRIFT
BV Haast 0404
Various
Artists
MEETING AT OFF SITE VOL 3
Improvised Music from Japan IMJ 515
Tetuzi
Akiyama
DON'T FORGET TO BOOGIE
Idea LP
Enha, released in a hand-numbered limited edition of 500, includes
seven individual woodblock prints by Yoko Naito and a CD containing
fifteen brief improvisations by Tetuzi Akiyama for tape-delayed electric
guitar, only two of which go beyond the five-minute mark. Connoisseurs
of Akiyama's solo projects, notably Relator on Slubmusic and
Résophonie on A Bruit Secret, will find much to enjoy in these
miniatures; not averse to extending the vocabulary of his instrument
(unlike Taku Sugimoto, who seems dead set on erasing much of his),
Akiyama is perfectly content to make a racket in the process where
necessary. The tape manipulations are discreet but gently disorientate
the flow of the music, cutting off attacks and decays here and there
and sprinkling the surface with a fine powder of acoustic grit. As
in Naito's prints, in austere black and white with a few strategic
dabs of red, the familiar becomes slightly strange, even mildly erotic.
Like both Sugimoto and his frequent playing partner Toshi Nakamura,
Akiyama has been doing some serious travelling round Europe in recent
months, hooking up and playing with a considerable number of musicians
along the way. Curious and resourceful musician that he is, he manages
to adapt his playing to suit the different orientations of his partners,
from the "soft noise" of Eric Cordier's customised hurdy-gurdy to
the frosty electronics of Bruno Meillier, while always sounding distinctly
himself. One of the most successful and surprising collaborations
he's undertaken is with Amsterdam-based renaissance lute virtuoso
Jozef van Wissem; Proletarian Drift documents their encounter
at Tokyo's Gendai Heights early last year, and is as delightful as
its cover photograph of colourful life-size straw-stuffed dummies.
Van Wissem is an unashamedly diatonic improviser (readers may be familiar
with his blues-inflected duo album last year with Gary Lucas, also
on BV Haast), and certainly not given to preparing his magnificent
instrument with dangerous looking objects, as is Akiyama. "The Golden
Mass" (in two parts, respectively 17'43" and 12'03" in length but
not indexed separately on the CD) begins with an exchange of isolated
pitches, ringing out like bells, from which the two musicians exchange
chords, and ultimately melodies, gradually defining a common language.
The leisurely pace of events recalls Taku Sugimoto's Old Fashioned
Duet with Burkhard Stangl, but the music here is more overtly
dramatic, like slowmotion flamenco. Van Wissem's resonant pedal points
draw Akiyama into the best pitch play he's produced since Relator
(there's no call here for the fearful steak knife he sometimes uses
on the instrument). It's absolutely gorgeous, and riveting to boot.
Meeting at Off Site Vol.3 is the latest instalment in an ongoing
series documenting Akiyama and Nakamura's concerts at the mythic Tokyo
venue, each of which features one or two invited guest musicians (the
visitors here are saxophonist Hakon Kornstad, trumpeter Masafumi Ezaki,
laptoppers o.blaat and Paul Hood, electronicians Sachiko M and Günter
Müller, and guitarists Oren Ambarchi and Keichi Sugimoto). Kornstad's
introverted melodic figures and multiphonics catch the locals off
guard somewhat; unlike static droners like Tom Ankersmit, he's not
prepared to sit around playing the onkyo game. Akiyama can follow
him into almost Derek Bailey-like territory, but Nakamura can't (or
won't). With Ezaki, things are more consensual (i.e. sparse). Nakamura
doesn't feature on the "July 5 2002" track, leaving o.blaat and Sachiko
M to challenge Akiyama's resonator guitar. As is often the case, Sachiko's
sinewaves freeze the music, and force both her fellow performers (and
listeners) to investigate a microcosmos of tiny pitchless gestures.
The kind of sonorous chords Akiyama floats out to van Wissem on Proletarian
Drift would be singularly inappropriate here, though about halfway
through these eighteen looong minutes one wishes something more eventful
would happen. Akiyama's guitar trio with Ambarchi and Sugimoto is
equally statuesque, but harmonically richer (thankfully). On this
and "September 6 2002", where he's joined once more by Nakamura and
visiting English electronician Paul Hood) Akiyama returns to the acoustic
guitar, counterpointing Hood's squiggles with eerie rattles, while
Nakamura's inputless mixing board hisses in the background. Despite
sporadic attempts to insert a hint of pulse into the piece, the album's
heartbeat has by now slowed alarmingly, and even the odd blast of
(unwanted?) feedback and toy twiddles from Hood fail to dynamise proceedings.
Fortunately, the album ends on a more convincing note with the appearance
of Müller (who was in town for the AMPLIFY festival, and on fine form,
as his appearances at those shows and his two Erstwhile studio sessions
with Otomo Yoshihide and Nakamura testify). The volume level remains
challengingly low, but Müller's arsenal of electronics and percussion
adds textural variety, and elicits beautifully executed responses
from the Japanese.
The odd man out of this batch is Don't Forget To Boogie, which
Akiyama openly describes as an "ego trip", and a homage to "the greatest
invention of the twentieth century" (though my vote would go for the
washing machine). Erudite readers will no doubt recognise the title
as being the same as Canned Heat's 1966 outing on Varčse Sarabande,
and therein may lie a clue as to what possible connection might exist
between the near-emptiness of onkyo and the noisy, fuzzy, scuzzy assemblage
of r&b licks and riffs on offer here. The outer reaches of improvisation
and free jazz might seem a world removed from the low-down dirty blues,
but it's worth remembering that Albert Ayler cut the immortal "Drudgery"
with Canned Heat's Henry Vestine back in 1969, that Cream's Jack Bruce
was just as interested in playing abstract free jazz as stomping rock,
that alt.sax hero Arthur Doyle cut his teeth playing r&b with Johnny
Jones and the King Casuals.. and so on. There are plenty of guitarists
who are as involved in songwriting and rock / post-rock as they are
in austere free improvisation (Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, of
course, but the list also includes Jim O'Rourke, Alan Licht and Oren
Ambarchi). What's more surprising about Akiyama's album (vinyl only
of course, and not exactly cheap) is not his choice of material, nor
even what he does with it - the repetitive nature of the music is
perfectly consistent with the textural and structural uniformity of
onkyo - but the sound of the instrument. It's as rough and sweaty
as Vestine or (early Zep) Jimmy Page or pre-Tejas Billy Gibbons.
One could wax pretentious about recontextualisation of language, the
Japanese tradition of reconfiguring artefacts of Western culture into
something quite different etc etc, but surely the point of Don't
Forget To Boogie is clearly stated in its title: music, even the
cutting edge avant-garde stuff, can be both fun to play and fun to
listen to.—DW
Susanna
Niedermayr / Christian Scheib
IM OSTEN/IN THE EAST - NEW MUSIC TERRITORIES IN EUROPE; REPORTS FROM
THE CHANGING COUNTRIES
 Susanna
Niedermayr and Christian Scheib's Im Osten/In the East started
as a feature called Nebenan ("Next Door"), a radio series broadcast
in 2001 by ORF Osterreich 1, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation's
culturally-oriented radio station. It was later published in essay
form throughout the year 2002 in the Austrian magazine SKUG, with
chapters about Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
The contributing writers are internationally renowned Austrian artists
and journalists: Niedermayr has been working with ORF since 1996,
and editing Zeit-Ton since 2000, while Scheib, new music editor at
ORF since 1992, is a trained musicologist and former music curator
for the Austrian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs who has
also lectured at California Institute of the Arts and Vienna University.
It would seem that the writers of this on-the-road research project
transcribed conversations in a kind of pidgin English, which was translated
into German for the radio and magazine, and back into English again
for the book's bilingual edition (which also comes with a CD, and
contains additional web addresses, clearly demonstrating the creative
ambition of the new countries). Not surprisingly, some mistakes have
crept in - like calling Eugene Chadbourne a British guitarist - and
some questions of method and integrity also arise, but it makes for
an interesting read - not allegro vivace, however.
In the opening chapter, "Boy Wonders And Pop Plants - The Quest Of
Musical Quality As A Fountain Of Youth For Various Generations In
Hungary", the reader encounters the format in which all the book's
chapters are written: electronica, the club scene, radio/Internet
art and, finally, contemporary music. The Hungarian language, radically
different from the Slavic, Romance, and Germanic language groups that
surrounds it, presents an additional problem - isolation. This is
something the heroes of this chapter have learned to live with and
fought to overcome. Record collections smuggled in from the West during
the 1980s shed light on the Central European love of contraband, one
of the partisan-guerrilla strategies evolved by those living behind
the Iron Curtain. Tilos ("Forbidden") Radio was founded in 1991, and
slowly evolved toward Internet streaming over the following decade.
"Boy Wonders" refers to the founding of record giant UCMG's Hungarian
branch, and especially to young musician Yonderboi, whose success
proved that Tilos' first steps weren't just marginal wanderings. Resulting
investment led to the ParaRadio joint venture, a web radio / experimental
workshop platform for new music, and the X-Peripheria Festival, inaugurated
in 2000, which enables cross-pollenation between foreign acts and
young Hungarian electronica artists. Whether CDR publication is a
continuation of the samizdat tradition (the Russian futurists'
term for self-released) or merely a cliché borrowed from Western underground
circuits is a question not addressed by the authors. The older generation
of artists, more concerned with art in relation to sound, remains
critical; Tilos engineers Zsolt Söres and Pál Tóth (Franz Hautzinger's
tabletop partners in the Abstract Monarchy Trio) explain the consequences
of "freedom from", pointing to a situation in which "forbidden" radio
"has turned into a station dedicated almost exclusively to entertainment
and DJing, and thus has lost much of its political impact." (p. 25).
Thereafter the text lapses into something that might be called PC,
with Peter Eötvös, György Ligeti and György Kurtág conspicuous in
their absence. Deliberately so, one imagines, as their inclusion would
detract from the central role the book accords to László Góz of the
Budapest Music Center, whose stated aim is to promote composers from
the "lost generation", or "composers who won a losing battle": "We
want to do whatever we can, so that these composers are no longer
forced to leave Hungary, or die in the United States, like Bartók"
(p. 30). The fact remains that the elite of Hungarian serious music
lives abroad (even if Eötvös is still listed in BMC's catalogue) but
the authors have chosen to include only artists working in-country.
Is this really the case though with older avant-gardists like Kiralyi
Erno and Katalin Ladyk, both of Hungarian nationality, yet refugees
with Yugoslav citizenship? Kiralyi explores the rich world of folkloric
string instruments, preparing them and confronting them with various
objects in a way that would definitely arouse the interest of the
New London Silence artists (if only he had better luck on Google -
check out http://www.tickmayer.com/kiraly.htm). And what about Bela
Marias, ethnomusicologist, absurd poet, and organizer of Budapest's
Big Ear Festival? Similarly, mention might also have been made of
AE Bizotsag, aka The Committee of Albert Einstein, a Hungarian art-rock
band from the 1980s, who are never mentioned internationally or historically
(not even in the same breath as Plastic People of the Universe, the
Zappa-like Czech underground heroes whose reputation lives on long
after the band's demise, maybe due to Vaclav Havel's charming PR,
both bohemian and Bohemian) but whose members now live in the US,
making experimental films in poor conditions (and not complaining
about it).
From the very first chapter, we see that the book quite easily employs
a sort of snapshot approach, a kind of historical amnesia, especially
as far as Eastern Europe is concerned, where an individual could change
countries four or five times during his life and still not be far
from his place of birth. The chapter on Slovenia is entitled "In Statu
Nascendi - A Survey of Art in Resistance on the Slovenian Way to Capitalism".
During and after the Croatian war for independence which followed
the fall of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, Slovenia was toured continuously
by a number of musicians and bands from other post-Yugoslav countries
that could not play at home. Being especially adept at promoting their
work abroad, Slovene groups like Laibach, Videosex and Borghesia are
not names that readers will skip over for lack of recognition; Laibach's
early actions and ideas, which remain a case study for theoreticians
of the postmodern, have been developed today as back-up for Slovenia's
techno output. (Wire readers might want to refer to the Teknika
Slovenika compilation published by the magazine in 2000.) Laibach's
spokesman Novak here recapitulates his prophecy: "Whatever Laibach
said in the early eighties, and it probably sounded very utopian then,
has become reality - collective production for instance: to me it
seems quite absurd to still speak of authorship. Today copy-and-paste
processes are the rule." The greatest advantage of this chapter is
that it showcases individualistic creators of world music, sound art,
and electronic music whose work enjoys great international acclaim,
while they are anonymous legends at home. Slovenia's provincialization
over the last decade emerges as the greatest problem. The homegrown
new breed is represented by Ljubljana's Radio Študent, a very well-organized
urban unit that doesn't face the same problems as Tilos, managing
instead to keep a balance between specialization and wider acclaim.
"How Glad I Am That No One Knew - The Hidden Vitality of the Slovakian
Music Scene", reveals a scene apparently unconcerned with getting
established internationally; remaining relatively anonymous is not
considered a drawback (though fans of Australian violinist Jon Rose
know from his website that he has been a frequent commuter to the
Slovak village of Violin). The group of radio program editors centered
around Radio Ragtime, founded in 1993, have forged strong links with
ORF, whose programs they had been listening to since the 1980s, and
also shown the enthusiasm necessary to build an alternative cultural
and music scene under the new conditions of expanding capitalism,
now that culture is no longer free, as it once was. Here, as everywhere
throughout Eastern Europe, techno has changed everything: even music
festivals now have to be presented as parties or no one will show
up. The rest of the article explains how enthusiasts have to fight
to make up for lost time; notably the Experimental Studio of Slovak
Radio, once frequented by the Darmstadt composers, where the spirit
of Fluxus lives on in the productions of theorist/artist Jozsef Cseres,
and DeadRED Records, which is trying to define a truly Slovak sonic
identity.
In "Of Short And Long Waves - What Happens When Polish Giant Stirs",
veteran Polish composers such as Marek Choloniewski and Krzystof Knittel
criticise the apparent apathy of younger musicians, comparing today's
situation to the dynamic scene that existed under communism when the
perpetual threat of government crackdown and persecution helped focus
the creative energy of a generation. The Warsaw Autumn festival, which
was founded back in 1956, used to be an important showcase for composers
working outside the post-Adorno lingua franca - Lutoslawski, Gorecki,
Serocki, Penderecki, Kotonski, Krauze..- but lost much of its political
significance once the wall came down in 1989. Poland's legendary Yass
scene is scantily covered in an interview with its historian Bartek
Felczak, whose observations concentrate on groups rather than individuals,
notably reed improviser Mazzoll, whose full potential was probably
never realised (despite help from Tony Oxley) and bassist / singer
Ryszard "Thymon" Tymanski. Tymanski's work with the quartet Milosc
is mentioned, but not his seminal role in Yass, whose impact on subsequent
developments in Polish new music seems to take second place here to
one-off events like Penderecki's conduction work with Don Cherry,
Peter Brötzmann and Tomasz Stanko. The current Polish electronica
scene is now hard to distinguish from that of any other Western country,
though its diverse manifestations still partake of that peculiarly
Polish chill dating back to Komeda's 1960s soundtracks for Polanski.
That said, the book also predates the emergence on the scene of Robert
Piotrowicz's excellent Musica Genera label, based in Sczeczin.
"The Multiple Palimpsest - How Even Bulgaria's Latest Trends in Music
Reflect Traces of Various Pasts" explains how individual initiative
is still marginalised, with folk groups couching New Age "mysticism"
and "genuine" folklore in the language and ideology of post-Socialist
Realism. There are some interesting developments in the software domain
(www.fdq-org.com and http://techno-orbitel.bg/esem), but Bulgarian
techno has never sought to make political capital. Those who challenge
such escapism - notably Sofia's Art Hostel community: go to http://art-hostel.com
- are considered "experimental", and experimental doesn't sell. Younger
composers and improvisers (Valentin Gerov, Rossen Zahariev, and Roumen
Toskov..) head abroad, while older established names stay behind (including
composers Vladimir Djambazov, Dragomir Yossifov, Georgi Arnaudov,
and Julia Tsenova, and musicologist Andi Palieva, who publishes the
fortnightly Musica Nova magazine). Meanwhile, the members of the Legendary
Poptones, a group that has in the past collaborated with Uchihashi
Kazuhisa and Chris Cutler, choose to remain anonymous.
"The Return From Years of Desert Exile - After Times Of War And Nationalism,
Croatia's Music And Cultural Scenes Rebuild Their Trans-National Forces"
forms the book's final chapter. The featured interviewees complain
about post-war Yugoslavia's loss of political impact, and those artists
and philosophers who chose exile during the war instead of staying
at home and silently witnessing the events also complain of battles
lost to rural guerrillas who migrated from the provinces to the cities
and took over their positions. (Concert activities in smaller regional
centres are a relatively recent development.) The Zagreb Biennale
Of Modern Music, part of the charismatic legacy of Yugoslavia, survived
its three wartime editions, and continues to this day, but since it
takes place only every other year, the gap between is filled mostly
with occasional gigs at the local KSET club by the likes of ToRococoRot,
Pita or Vladislav Delay (but also, happily, the Nu Ensemble and the
Georg Graewe Octet), none of whose appearances are covered by the
local press. Musicians involved in new music can hardly be called
active, and those involved in promoting concerts tend to be enthusiasts
who have hardly ever picked up an instrument. The New Media Lab [mama],
whose fluffy puppet symbol has luckily landed on "Im Osten"'s cover,
periodically invites foreign lecturers (David Toop, Riccardo Dominguez
and Robert Adrian, who produced a notable festival dedicated to Tesla),
but only DJs seem to receive active promotion - Zsolt Söres' criticisms
of Tilos Radio above apply equally well here.
As someone actively involved in the scene myself, I'll be the first
to admit that it's often hard and unflattering to look closely at
oneself in the mirror, but if there is to be continuing interest in
the development of a distinctly Eastern European cultural identity,
now that the region is opening up to the wider world, this book -
provided it is frequently updated and coherent in its ideological
stance - could yet prove to be a milestone.—VJ
AMM
/ People Band / Alterations
AMM
AT
THE ROUNDHOUSE
Anomalous ICES 01
People Band
1968
Emanem 4102
Alterations
VOILA
ENOUGH!
Atavistic Unheard Music Series UMS/ALP 239CD
 At
The Roundhouse is the first instalment of what will hopefully
be a series of releases documenting Harvey Matusow's International
Carnival of Experimental Sound festival at London's Roundhouse in
1972 (the story of which is told by Eric Lanzillotta in his liner
notes), and a major release it is too. Two brief extracts from this
concert, which took place on August 22nd that year, were released
as a 7" single on Incus, but this is the first time the performance
has been available in its entirety. Mention AMM to most folk today
and the names of Keith Rowe and John Tilbury will probably spring
to mind, but it's worth recalling that in the mid 1970s the mythic
English free improvisation group consisted of just two musicians:
percussionist Eddie Prevost and tenor saxophonist Lou Gare. When Rowe
rejoined AMM in 1976, Gare bowed out - "I could not go back after
the freedom of the duo", he writes in a brief postscript to Prevost's
notes to this disc. Gare continued to perform in and around Exeter
(where he moved in 1976), and even rejoined AMM briefly later, but
in recent years has tended to concentrate on other interests, notably
teaching Aikido and making and repairing stringed instruments (if
you're in Devon and your fiddle needs a twiddle, go to http://www.lgare.fsnet.co.uk
).
Prevost is right to describe the duo's work as "decidedly non jazz";
true, apart from the instrumentation itself (Interstellar Space
inevitably comes to mind), one can find certain points of comparison
- Prevost plays his snare drum like Sunny Murray uses his cymbals
(think of "Real" on the BYG Actuel album Sunshine) to set up
complex fields of vibration, extending the concept of rhythm far beyond
the traditional confines of time-keeping - but as Wayne Spencer has
pointed out, Gare and Prevost are at their most radical when not playing.
Or, rather, when the level of volume and event-density drops to something
more akin to today's lowercase improv. "In the silences and pregnant
pauses that were a characteristic of our performances you can hear
doors swinging open and closed, a child's voice echoes in the distance,
and there are other indistinguishable human murmurings and nameless
isolated clonks", writes Prevost. "At the end of our performance -
nothing. No applause, no cat-calls. Merely the empty sound of indifference."
Small audiences for improvised music are nothing new, though it's
hard to imagine music of this quality being greeted with stony silence
today - not that one could expect a tenor saxophone / percussion duet
to sound anything like this anymore. This particular incarnation of
AMM (also documented on the Matchless album To Hear and Back Again)
was neither ahead of nor behind its time, but quite simply not
of its time. The high-speed clatter of Pauls Lovens and Lytton
(not to mention Roger Turner and numerous others), which has become
the accepted - I'm tempted to say "traditional" - way of playing percussion
in a free improvised context, is notably absent from Prevost's vocabulary.
Similarly, Gare's tenor playing bears absolutely no relation either
to his immediate predecessors in free jazz (Coltrane, Ayler et al.)
or to the then emergent extended techniques of Parker and Brötzmann.
Nor is it a precursor of today's saxophone language: multiphonics,
key clicks, breathy flutters and splutters are conspicuously absent,
as are cathartic blasts of screaming noise. If Prevost had frisbeed
his cymbals at the ceiling or destroyed a potted plant or two ŕ
la Han Bennink, or if Gare had blown his saxophone through his
nose (to quote Zorn) and burst a few blood vessels ŕ la Brötzmann,
perhaps the handful of people present in the cavernous space of the
Roundhouse would have reacted. But that's not what AMM music has ever
been about. Prevost and Gare make no concessions to popular fads and
fancies. "It is perhaps difficult for people now to appreciate how
important the music was to us", Prevost writes. I seriously doubt
that anyone listening attentively to these 47 minutes of extraordinary
music could fail to appreciate the importance of this magnificent
document.
 Along
with AMM and John Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the People
Band -originally called the Continuous Music Ensemble - is one of
the pioneering groups of British free improvisation, but their work
was only documented on one album, a 1970 LP on Transatlantic (TRA
214) produced by Charlie Watts (yes, that Charlie Watts). With
his customary zeal for documenting the scene past and present, Emanem's
Martin Davidson has, for this long overdue reissue, tracked down not
the original master tapes, which remain with Transatlantic, but duplicate
versions of three tracks on the album and three hitherto unreleased
titles. These were rescued from the bin outside Olympic Studios, after
someone in the Rolling Stones office remembered seeing some tapes
marked People Band. The rest of the album has been remastered from
copies of the original LP (belonging to David Toop and Steve Beresford).
The People Band, unlike AMM and the SME, was a real group of musical
anarchists. With no overriding ideology as such, and certainly no
restrictions as to what could or could not be accepted regarding musical
content (a lot of this is furious free form jamming, but there are
several disarming major chords and even a few touches of tacky vibraphone
chinoiserie), the resulting music is dense, chaotic and fun, if not
always successful. The nucleus of the band, a trio consisting of pianist
Russell Hardy, drummer Terry Day and bassist Terry Holman, started
working with free forms as early as 1960 (Day is also arguably the
first drummer who started using a small kit - predating John Stevens).
By 1968 the group had ballooned to a ten-piece band, also featuring
Mel Davis (keyboards, trombone, cello), Lyn Dobson (tenor sax), Eddie
Edem (congas and trumpet), Tony Edwards (percussion), Mike Figgis
(trumpet and guitar), Frank Flowers (bass) and George Khan (reeds
and flute). Holman and Day also doubled on saxophones and other instruments,
and Hardy on accordion ("possibly" it says here - of course, it's
often hard to make out who's playing what). Three of the pieces were
conducted by Davis.
At its best the variety of instrumentation and diversity of approaches
to material is headscratchingly delightful. It's no surprise that
the People Band formed strong links with the Dutch - the benign anarchy
of parts of "Skip to Part 3" is not far removed from the wackiness
of the early ICP recordings by Mengelberg, Bennink and Breuker. Figgis,
who of course went on to become a rather well known film director,
is especially good at throwing spanners in the works. Unfortunately,
the ending of this track is an example of how anything goes improv
can all too easily slip into mannerist plonking and tribal jamming.
Curiously enough, it sounds more like some of today's so-called post-rock
(play 1968 back to back with Volcano The Bear or The Blithe
Sons and you'll be surprised how much they have in common). By 1970
the good people of the People Band had more or less gone their separate
ways; Day went on to explore the outer reaches of inspired crackpot
improv with Alterations (see below), while Hardy teamed up with Ian
Dury in Kilburn and the Highroads (Dury was present at this session,
by the way). Holman is still playing "with friends", including Hardy.
Flowers joined the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, Edwards worked with
Big Chief, and Kahn with Mike Westbrook (for a while). Dobson eventually
moved to Spain, Figgis to Hollywood, and Edem unfortunately disappeared
without trace. Happily, the music they made back on October 1st 1968
didn't - and very enjoyable it is too.
 Alterations
first convened in London in 1977, at the instigation of guitarist
Peter Cusack. Featuring Terry Day, David Toop and Steve Beresford
(principally on percussion, flutes and piano respectively, but also
a bewildering number of instruments, conventional and unconventional),
the quartet was active until 1986, and anyone with a penchant for
the wild and wonderful should make a point of seeking out their releases.
The group's back catalogue is, however, hard to track down, which
makes the appearance of this collection all the more welcome. Culled
from performances in Bracknell, Tilburg and Berlin in 1980 and 1981,
it's a fabulous collection of adventures, a snapshot of a chaotic
and intensely creative period in improvised music the like of which
may not be seen again for some time, since today's scene looks like
it's becoming frighteningly orthodox and hidebound.
Though all four musicians were - and still are - open to any and all
influences from musics as diverse as 1950s exotica, cheesy doo-wop,
mainstream pop, Satie, and of course the whole accelerated history
of free music itself, Beresford is especially dangerous. Even back
then, several notable musicians, specifically Anthony Braxton and
Leo Smith, flatly refused to play with him (that was reason enough
for Eugene Chadbourne to seek him out on his first visit to the UK
at the end of the 1970s). It's not hard to see why: the pianist is
able to move from vicious forearm clusters to toytown Grade III ragtime
within seconds, and, more importantly, sees no reason why he shouldn't.
It's easy to see why John Zorn appreciates Beresford's work (and has
graced him with a couple of outings on Tzadik in recent years), but
where Zorn sliced his idioms vertically and juxtaposed them with clinical
precision - the Morricone and Godard tribute pieces and especially
the Naked City songbook are ferociously difficult and require split
second timing - Alterations' modus operandi was to throw as many diverse
elements into the test tube at the same time, ending up with grotesque
genetic mutations that lived brief and colourful lives before self-destructing
spectacularly. Not that Beresford is the only culprit; Toop, Day and
Cusack are just as good at throwing spanners in the works (so much
so one wonders after a while where the works actually are). It's hilarious
stuff, but, as Toop writes in his splendid liners, "the constant clash
of idioms and personalities had its dark and vengeful side. In a sense
it was like a public x-ray of normal social relations: awkward, clumsy,
rude, embarrassing, seething with suppressed and overt anger, tender,
sentimental, nostalgic, stereotypical, surprising, supportive, undermining,
full of bathos and pathos, usually a good laugh but sometimes really
fucking horrible".
Merely describing what happens in each of these fifteen tracks, though
an entertaining exercise, hardly prepares the reader for the listening
experience. Today's improvised music (as opposed to improvisation
- there's a crucial difference) is relatively goal-oriented and straightforward
to follow in terms of its structure; "start quiet, build to climax,
fade out" still remains the standard procedure, though "start quiet
and stay quiet" is rapidly taking over. In stark contrast, Alterations'
music redefines itself from moment to moment, both in terms of its
overall structure and the material used to build it. Nearly a quarter
of a century on, its power to captivate, infuriate and have you falling
off your chair in hysterics is entirely undimmed. —DW
Various
Artists
33 RPM
23Five / SFM 903
Various
Artists
SONIC CIRCUITS X
Innova 119
33
RPM, which follows on from Ju-jikan, documenting the Japanese
scene, and Variable Resistance (idem for Australia), represents
a brief snapshot of the recent 33 RPM: Ten Hours of Sound from
France exhibition at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. The
elegant and informative booklet lists all the participating works
in the exhibition, whereas the CD features work from ten composers
/ sound artists / groups (delete where appropriate): Kasper Toeplitz,
Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe
Havel, Laurent Dailleau (who also provides the extensive liner notes,
of which more later), Mathieu Chamagne, pizMO, Jean-Philippe Gross
and Mimetic. Attempting to convey the diversity of the scene on one
disc - let alone in ten hours - is quite a task, and it's relatively
easy to find things to complain about, notably the conspicuous absence
of many older generation GRM musique concrčte pioneers and
the more media-friendly practitioners of "French touch" techno, but
the selection is rich and rewarding nonetheless. Dailleau, whose work
on theremin and electronics is well worth seeking out for those unfamiliar
with it (start with Triolid's Ur Lamento on Potlatch, with
Isabelle Duthoit and David Chiesa), has an evident familiarity with
the electroacoustic improvisation end of the spectrum, hence the inclusion
of Metz-based Jean-Philippe Gross, whose work with printed circuits
you will definitely be hearing of in the years to come. The most "traditionally"
concrčte offerings here come from Risset, as might be expected, three
superb miniatures entitled "Resonant Sound", which feature the kind
of delicate transformation of objets trouvés that the French
have long been famous for. In comparison, Topelitz's bombastic "PURR#2",
though impressively executed, sounds heavy-handed; just as well it
opens the disc, because it makes the Kristoff K. Roll offering "Zocalo
masqué" right after sound even better than it is. Lionel Marchetti,
perhaps better known to readers as an improviser, contributes an early
(1989) piece, "A rebours", that builds up ghostly strands of bandoneon
into a dense and thrilling climax, and contrasts spectacularly with
the digital roadkill of Christophe Havel's "excerpt / metamorphosis".
Dailleau's own "It Was Too Dark to Hear Anything" is more sedately
paced and beautifully mixed. Equally impressive is Mathieu Chamagne's
"On sonne", the kind of high-speed splatter/scatter that digital technology
has made possible. So, unfortunately, is the scrappy assemblage of
bloops, swoops and buzzes that makes up pizMO's "nim". At least Gross'
"Gris épais" reveals evidence of a good ear and sense of structure,
after which the closing "évolution" by Mimetic sounds oddly out of
place, being the only track included to work explicitly with pulse
in a post-techno context.
Dailleau's notes are wide-ranging and not without their merit, but
I'd like to see some documented proof of his assertion that Jean-Jacques
Perrey was the first to incorporate tape loops into popular music.
And lines like "improvisation as it is practiced today, outside the
influence of jazz, was invented in London around 1965 by the founders
of AMM" should not go unchallenged. Such glib blanket statements -
one presumes Dailleau knows about the work of Robert Ashley, Gordon
Mumma, Alvin Lucier, Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, Kenneth Gaburo
and a whole host of others, so why does he not acknowledge their input
too?- are sadly rather typical of the booklet, whose defiantly Francocentric
positioning is potentially misleading to those unfamiliar with the
history of electronic music. IRCAM of course gets a mention as the
place where Miller Puckette dreamed up Max/MSP, but the music the
Institute has produced since it opened for business in 1977 is not
mentioned (indicative as much of Dailleau's curatorial stance as it
is of the relative dearth of great new music emanating from the place).
Instead, neglecting to mention Parmegiani, Mâche, Malec and Henry
in favour of namechecking interesting but so far little known figures
like Olivier Queysanne, whose Max/MSP glitch microworld is more interesting
to read about than it is to listen to, raises eyebrows, and I imagine
Jérôme Noetinger's Revox is overheating in righteous fury at statements
like "the tape recorder has already begun to fade into memory". Such
quibbles aside, though, 33 RPM is a superbly produced document with
much to commend it.
In contrast to SF MOMA's clearly defined mission statement, Philip
Blackburn's Sonic Circuits Festival has a decidedly more catholic
notion of what constitutes electronic music. The disc documenting
the festival's tenth edition comes with three hilariously irreverent
photomontage stickers that illustrate the SC philosophy to perfection:
John Cage giving you the finger, Brian Eno in a gangsta rap mugshot
and Kraftwerk disguised as.. Kiss. Not surprisingly then perhaps,
the best piece on offer is by German krautrock pioneer Hans-Joachim
Roedelius. "Frag's Pferd" is sinister and sinuous sci-fi for the ear,
disembodied sounds culled from field recordings interleaving with
sumptuous string arrangements and distant spacey synth bleeps to great
effect. Michelle Kinney's "I Don't Like Americans" is an odd opener
for an album of electronic music, starting as it does with a voice
and a cello, but, with Cage's finger in mind, perhaps Blackburn had
his sights set on some kind of political gesture. Peter Blasser's
"The Moon Camera", despite its use of Supercollider, is nothing less
than a quirky pop ditty (imagine a Tom Waits instrumental remixed
by Cornelius), and surely the only one in history to rhyme "Topeka"
with "amoeba". In stark contrast, Malte Steiner's "Signale" is resolutely
austere and par for the course with its crunches and glitches courtesy
of Max/MSP (at least I suppose that's what's being used - seems like
Puckette's software is the latter-day equivalent of the DX7).
In his choice of artists, Blackburn has been consistently original,
avoiding household names - do we really need yet more Merzbow and
López? - in favour of lesser-known figures. Some of these subsequently
disappear without trace (I'd love to hear more from David Jaggard
after his "Mary & Ann" on Sonic Circuits VIII), others go on
to produce a substantial body of work. Sawako Kato is definitely a
name to watch out for (dedicated downloaders will have come across
her work tucked away in mysterious corners of the Web): "Crab" does
in under four minutes what a lot of electro improvisers in Sawako's
homeland take a whole album to achieve. Similarly condensed is Atsushi
Yamaji's "Petsound" - if there's any connection to the Beach Boys'
magnum opus it's not specified - a suite of twelve tiny pieces ranging
in duration from seven seconds to one minute sourced in part from
field recordings (and as most of these are distinctly urban in origin,
I'd better stop using that term). If information was lacking for "Petsound",
Christopher Coleman's "My Grandfather's Kalimba" comes with a lengthy
paragraph telling the story of the composer's grandfather's penchant
for collecting. Like the text, the piece is unassuming, respectful
and well mannered, but by no means dull. Nor is William Price's "Three
Short Pieces for Tape #3", also apparently called "Spline", which
makes one wonder what John Zorn's Godard tribute might have sounded
like if he'd had C-Sound and ProTools back in 1985. Gary Verkade,
who, the liner notes inform us with characteristic pizzazz, "lives
in Sweden and is a consummate master" - I'll leave that for you to
decide - contributes "Tenebrae 1", a suitably dark and unsettling
voice-sourced piece using texts from Couperin's "Leçons de Ténčbres"
and the Book of Jeremiah, while Jon Christopher Nelson's "Dhoormages"
consists of three brief pieces entitled "Variation on a Door, Not
a Sigh", "I Am Sitting In A …" and "Waterrun" (and no prizes will
be awarded to smartass readers who write in saying which electronic
classics they're paying homage to). The three dots in the second piece
might be replaced by the word toilet - oops, sorry to offend transatlantic
readers, restroom - as it was indeed in such a venerable theatre
of operations (in Berlin) that the source sounds were recorded. Rod
Stassick's "Q++", "for environmental, ultrasonic and electromagnetic
sound" is a splendidly recorded and evocative nocturnal soundscape
- for some reason David Dunn's "Mimus Polyglottos" (also on Innova)
comes to mind, as does the work of Eric La Casa - which, in a perfect
world, would have made a great closing track. But as we all know,
it isn't a perfect world, so instead Barry Schraderk fists a Yamaha
TX816 to pieces for just under two minutes. Great stuff, as is most
of the rest of the album - though it's really worth the price of admission
for those stickers. "Brian Eno has a Posse".. yo!—DW
Improvised
Music from Japan
Toshimaru
Nakamura
SIDE GUITAR
Improvised Music from Japan IMJ 513
Sachiko
M
BAR SACHIKO
Improvised Music from Japan IMJ 517
 The
guitar was originally Toshimaru Nakamura's primary musical instrument.
By 1997, however, he had grown uncomfortable with the personal expressivity,
physical movement and loud volume he saw as integral to the instrument,
prompting him to turn instead to the no-input mixing-desk as a more
suitable vehicle for his burgeoning interest in a relatively egoless
and still musical aesthetic. Now he has found a way back to the instrument.
As he explained in an interview with William Meyer in July 2003, "I
still don't want to play the guitar like a guitar, I want to apply
my no-input mixing board attitude to the guitar. It makes sense now"
(see http://www.furious.com/perfect/toshimarunakamura.html). Side
Guitar is the first recorded expression of this rediscovered interest.
The opening rhythmic crackles might lead one to expect that Nakamura
has simply used the guitar as another means of approaching the lowercase
quasi-beats to be heard on such discs as 2001's No-Input Mixing
Board 2 (A Bruit Secret), but a powerful sustained tone soon emerges,
taking us into rather different sonic territory. Across the three
tracks on the CD, the emphasis is very much on extended drone-like
sounds and the changes in texture that occur as existing sounds slowly
metamorphose or new lines emerge to replace or supplement them. The
music almost seems suspended in the air, given over far more to the
exploration of duration than the pursuit of change or development;
yet it is also captivating, with both tense passages of stasis and
subtle and unpredictable changes serving to open up a powerfully engaging
experience. All in all, this is an excellent CD that repays close
and repeated listening.
 Bar
Sachiko is a considerably more difficult work to like. Recorded
over two days in January 2004, it contains a single 60-minute track
featuring "two sine waves on one empty sampler". I find it profoundly
enigmatic. Confronted with what at first glance appears to a continuous
high-pitched tone that is markedly changed only twice during the course
of an hour, a series of questions comes to mind: What is the appropriate
volume at which to listen? Are the marked changes in perceived pitch
and volume that occur when you change the position of your ears relative
to the speakers intended to be part of the experience? Are the small
fluctuations that seem to be detectable within the sine wave objectively
present in the emissions from the speakers or just the consequences
of unnoticed changes in body position or variations in attention?
Should one listen intently or just let the sound flow by unattended?
What is one listening out for? Bar Sachiko offers no informative
answers or consoling explanations whatsoever, confronting listeners
forcibly with the inherently subjective and constructive elements
of aesthetic meaning and compelling them actively to engage with its
lightless surface and blank depths as best they can. At times it may
seem like staring into the abyss of a blind and indifferent universe,
but there is something to be said for the experience of letting the
mind and ears career through Bar Sachiko's crepuscular desolation
and the noises from the surrounding world that it draws into its orbit.
It is certainly a world away from the glib pleasures of mainstream
consumption, and even if it is not something one would care to repeat
every day, a confrontation with it undoubtedly raises healthily disquieting
questions about the nature of music and the art of listening.—WS
Mount
Washington
MOUNT WASHINGTON
Reify RE 001
Chris
Forsyth / Chris Heenan
CHRIS FORSYTH / CHRIS HEENAN
Reify RE 002
Jeremy
Drake / Stephen Flinn / Chris Heenan
TEAM UP
Reify RE 005
 The
increasingly fertile Southern California scene has spawned an exciting
new label in the form of Reify; these three releases all feature saxophonist
/ clarinettist Chris Heenan, joined by guitarist Chris Forsyth, guitarist
Jeremy Drake and percussionist Stephen Flinn on Team Up and,
again with Drake, a veritable gallery of improv stars on Mount
Washington: trombonist Tucker Dulin, reed multi-instrumentalist
Wolfgang Fuchs, bassist Torsten Müller, percussionist Martin Blume,
harpist Anne LeBaron and Philipp Wachsmann on his customary violin
and electronics. The octet convened at the Los Angeles home of painter
Patrick Wilson for a one-off session immediately prior to 2003's LINE
SPACE LINE festival, and the seven (untitled) improvisations here
are the result. As several of the musicians had performed together
on numerous occasions, it's not exactly a first-time meeting (Fuchs
and Blume know each others' moves rather well), but there's the expected
freshness and bite to the playing. Drake's spidery guitar and Wachsmann's
sonic scribbles complement each other beautifully, and it's always
a pleasure to rediscover LeBaron's artistry (can't let Rhodri Davies
have all the gigs, can we?). Whether there was any attempt to organise
or conduct proceedings isn't made clear; if there were, it would only
be logical, if not, then the musicians manage to coexist successfully
without stepping on each other's toes. And so they should: Fuchs,
Müller and Wachsmann have an impressive track record in large ensemble
improvising with the King Übü Örchestrü, LeBaron has participated
in numerous Company events, and Dulin knows how to go the distance
with Masashi Harada's Condanction Ensemble. When they all take off
it can produce quite a racket, but the full octet line-up is used
sparely.
 Team
Up provides an opportunity to focus in on the work of Drake (who's
credited on "amplified acoustic guitar" but spends a lot of time using
a bow - one might be excused for thinking he's playing a viola at
times), Heenan and percussionist Flinn. In contrast to the nervous
twitches of the opening "In a space of tactile familiarity", which
in feel looks over its shoulder to earlier models of improvised music
(Flinn's scattery chattery percussion extends the Paul Lovens / Roger
Turner axis impressively), "Defamiliarizing the table" begins with
an ominous rash of amp buzz from Drake and unpitched breath effects
from Heenan, a vocabulary that belongs to more recent developments
in improv. "Nearby objects leading others to recede" is equally slowmoving,
though more concerned with pitch. The album throughout aims to steer
a course between the opposite aesthetic extremes of high speed gabbiness
and near-static micro-improv (several thousand miles away a similar
schizophrenia pervades the music of Norway's No Spaghetti collective),
which testifies impressively to the musicians' breadth of knowledge
but leaves the listener unsure as to where precisely to situate the
musicians.
If Heenan had any doubts as to which side of the field to run up,
the duo set with Chris Forsyth helps him decide. Forsyth, who is amassing
a sizeable and impressive discography, has little time for standard
guitar technique, preferring to regard the instrument as a laboratory
on which to carry out various experiments with diverse preparations
(assisted, it would seem, by various effects pedals). In terms of
sheer volume, notably on "I ask questions", during which he builds
an impenetrable fortress of rough Geiger counter crackles, Heenan
simply can't compete, and the delicate nuances of his bass and contrabass
clarinet multiphonics are obliterated. When Forsyth leaves him some
space to manoeuvre, Heenan knows how to fill it - "I listen more"
is the best example (and the best title) on offer. The final track
is entitled "I like the way you use language", and when both musicians
actually speak the same one, things work just fine - elsewhere there
seems to be some need of an interpreter.—DW
On
Charhizma
Margareth
Kammerer
TO BE AN ANIMAL OF REAL FLESH
Charhizma CHA 023
Sabine
Ercklentz and Andrea Neumann
OBERFLAECHENSPANNUNG
Charhizma 024
Jimi Hendrix once said that Bob Dylan had been an inspiration to
him, in the sense that not actually being able to sing very well
never prevented him from going ahead and doing so. The history of
popular music is full of singers whose inability to enunciate words
clearly, project the voice or even pitch a note correctly became
a distinctive feature of their style and (forgive the pun) charisma
- in addition to any number of punk vocalists one could mention
Mayo Thompson, Donald Fagen, and more recently Red and Beth Gibbons.
Margareth Kammerer's voice is hardly attractive - it has something
of Gibbons' hesitancy and tremulous vibrato, but is more nasal and
grating and lacks the painful introspection - but it's certainly
distinctive. A whole album of songs featuring just that voice and
Kammerer's spare guitar playing might be a rather bald if not distressing
experience, though; the variety here comes from the input of her
various collaborators. Trumpeter Axel Dörner helps out on "I Carry
Your Heart With Me" (more impressive than "Timeshaped Face" on the
recent Charhizma compilation Labor), Ruins drummer Tatsuya
Yoshida funks up "Willow… c'est que j'aime", and Chris Abrahams
provides some sensitive piano on "As Your Nightfly Dreams 2". "Facing
It" is remixed by Charhizma's house technostar Bernhard Fleischmann,
whose glitched triphop adds depth and resonance, while Philip Jeck
uses his remix of "The Bright Stones" to superimpose layers of Kammerer's
treated voice to disturbing effect. Nicholas Bussmann imbues "Open
his head, baby" with menacing low end, Charhizma boss Christof Kurzmann
multitracks Kammerer's voice and adds a rhythm track of subdued
digital menace on his version of "I Carry Your Heart With Me", and
Fred Frith fleshes out "Somewhere I have never travelled" with additional
guitar and quiet percussive splatters. Only the final remix (by
Odot, Lamm and Lucifer Amp), the wonderfully-titled "Estimated Population
of Hell Circa 1976" - in fact another version of "As Your Nightfly
Dreams" - goes over the top, drowning Kammerer's fragile timbres
in a sludge of glitch hop and trademark eai sonic scribbles that
add nothing at all to the song. One recalls Portishead's Beth Gibbons
looking distinctly ill at ease in front of that huge orchestra in
the video of "All Mine".. of course, market forces ultimately helped
Ms Gibbons to overcome her fear of performing in public, but the
gloomy magic of Dummy disappeared with it. Let's hope Margareth
Kammerer doesn't go the same way.—DW
Berliner
Andrea Neumann is doubtless well known to many PT readers for both
her solo work and her collaborations with Burkhard Beins, Annette
Krebs, Taku Sugimoto and others. Sabine Ercklentz, a trumpet player
from Berlin who plays in both jazz groups and more "reductionist"
ensembles, is perhaps less known in this milieu, but she and Neumann
have been working as a duo on and off for a couple of years now.
Oberflaechenspannung ("surface tension"), a partly composed
studio recording from September 2002, is their debut CD release
together and features Ercklentz on trumpet (mixing breathy modulations
in the manner of Axel Dörner and slightly more conventional work
with a mute) and electronics and Neumann on inside piano (the strings
of a piano laid flat like a table-top guitar and supplemented with
electronics) and mixing desk (her sound is often somewhat cleaner
and brighter than on other of her recordings). This is music that
combines restlessness and transient order, containing both a vigorous
edginess that constantly introduces abrupt shifts in sonic terrain
and emergent patterned structures or repetitive rhythms that coalesce
out of the mutable streams of sound only to quickly decompose as
noise accumulates within the reiterations or the ground is suddenly
cut from under them. A wide range of ground is covered along the
way, including the layered ventilation system emissions to be heard
on other recordings by advanced Berlin musicians, electronic drones,
what appears to be a musical box accompanied by plangent muted trumped
and delicately plucked strings, and even a few approaches towards
the outskirts of avant-garde dance music. Not every configuration
conjured up by this enterprising pair is equally invested with intensity
and invention, and I'm inclined to lament their intermittent dalliances
with the archaic rhythmic conventions of popular music; nonetheless,
this is a recording that sounds like few other recent outings from
Berlin and helps to open up variegated veins of musical possibility
that I hope they will continue to explore and refine in the future.—WS
Andrew
Drury
A MOMENTARY LAPSE
Innova 581
Drummer Andrew Drury hails from Seattle, but is now resident in New
York. As a former student of Edward Blackwell, you'd expect him to
swing hard and fast, and you won't be disappointed; even more impressive
are his composition chops - these nine tracks run the gamut from hard-driving,
almost funky, binary ("The Schwartzes") via tight Eastern European-inflected
canons ("Växjö Kollektiv") and sleek balladry ("Copalis") to metrically
fiendish unisons ("Anniversary of a Non-Marriage"), and to play them
Drury has assembled one hell of a band: a twin reed frontline of Briggan
Krauss on alto sax and clarbone (sounds like one of those Perelmanesque
hybrids) and Chris Speed on tenor sax and clarinet, backed up by violinist
Eyvind Kang and pianist Myra Melford and bassist extraordinaire Mark
Dresser. Kang and Melford are on superb form throughout, both revealing
prodigious technique and an encyclopaedic knowledge of their instruments,
while Krauss and Speed complement each other beautifully, the former's
rough edges (Arthur Doyle's legendary blowing on Noah Howard's Black
Ark comes to mind) contrasting well with Speed's supple free-bop.
Drury's charts wisely leave enough space for everyone to stretch out,
but nonetheless retain their distinctive identity. John Zorn must
be kicking himself he didn't snaffle this one up for Tzadik.—DW
4Walls
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON
Red Note 11
Though
4Walls have been extraordinarily active as a touring band over recent
years, the group's discography has until now been limited to a brief
but magnificent half hour of music released on the French Orkhestra
imprint three years ago. All the more reason then to welcome Which
Side Are You On, recorded direct to hard drive in September 2003.
The line-up remains as ever Phil Minton (voice), Veryan Weston (piano
and voice), Luc Ex (bass) and Michael Vatcher (percussion), and the
material they perform just as eclectic: in addition to the group's
original compositions, which set texts by Paul Haines, Lou Glanfield
and Ho Chi Minh, there's French chanson in the form of Jacques
Brel's "Ces gens-lŕ" and German lied (Robert Schumann's "Im
Rhein"), not to mention the title track, a protest song par excellence
maybe familiar to readers in a celebrated cover version by Billy Bragg
recorded way back during the ill-fated British Miners' Strike. Minton's
vocal talents are legendary and terrifying, but his sense of humour
is acute: the first few verses of the Brel cover sound suspiciously
like he's impersonating Scott Walker, who after all was the first
pop singer to champion Brel's work to the English-speaking world.
The band is tight as hell, as one might expect after years on the
road - Luc Ex knows all about hard touring - and the recording as
direct and unadorned as the group's political message.—DW
Ivo
Perelman Double Trio
SUITE FOR HELEN F.
Boxholder BXH 038/039 2CD
It's
long been something a mystery why, in these days where titanic free
jazz blowing has reached a wider and more enthusiastic public (Brötzmann
and Gustafsson thanks to John Corbett, Flaherty and Shoup thanks to
Thurston Moore and Byron Coley..), Ivo Perelman still hasn't made
the splash he so richly deserves. Without wishing to comment on the
internal politics of the New York and Chicago scenes, and the influence
of major players there such as William Parker and Ken Vandermark,
Perelman would seem to have all the necessary qualities of alt.sax
stardom: he has a big, beautiful tone, he can swing like hell (samba,
rather) and, where needed, he can strip the enamel off your teeth
with stratospheric blowing easily a match for the veteran free jazz
screamers. In case you missed out on the fine series of albums Perelman
cut for Leo a while back, this double CD on Boxholder will fill you
in on what you've been missing. Appearing with a double trio line-up,
bassist and drummer Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen going head on with
Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway, Suite for Helen F. (the "F"
refers to abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler), Perelman
has signed one of the most monumental free jazz outings of recent
years, a truly Mahlerian opus in seven parts lasting 107 minutes.
As Perelman fans will tell you, the man is a talented painter too,
and, given the kind of music he makes you wouldn't expect him to turn
out squeaky clean Pop Art or nebulous Rothkos - paint seethes in thick
layers, colours, shapes and textures collide, semi-recognisable features
melt into abstraction in a frenzy of creation. The booklet to the
disc contains seven of his canvases (shame there isn't a Frankenthaler
in there too for comparison's sake), whose urgent pulsing forms match
the double trio's music admirably. Perelman's art, both musical and
visual, lives on the edge, and Suite for Helen F. is solid
proof that it's a great place to be. —DW
Mal
Waldron / Marion Brown
SONGS OF LOVE AND REGRET
Free Lance New Series FRL-NS 0302
Portions
of the Free Lance back catalogue have been returning to print lately,
one welcome reissue being Songs of Love and Regret, a duet
encounter between pianist Mal Waldron and alto saxophonist Marion
Brown originally released in 1985. It must be said that it's the kind
of disc that requires a sympathetic ear: Brown's pitching is extraordinarily
eccentric, the tempos are very slow indeed, and Waldron is minimalist
even by his own standards. The best track - the one you should cue
up first - was in fact omitted from the original LP; it's a sixteen-minute
reading of "Blue Monk" works up a far greater head of steam than the
originally released seven-minute version. Waldron takes both versions
at a similar pace, stalking around like a cat on the prowl, but his
work on the long version is more jagged and variable, with some marvellous
jabbing crescendos pushing Brown to move further outside the changes.
Each musician contributes a solo performance based on the blues -
a Waldron original, "A Cause de Monk" (though halfway through it turns
into something of a Bud Powell tribute), and Brown's reading of Clarence
Williams' "Hurry Sundown", which has a gutsiness and directness that
stands at some remove from his reticence on the rest of the album.
The remainder of the set is devoted to fragile balladry: a Brown composition
with the intriguing title "To the Lady in her Graham Cracker Window",
Strayhorn's "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing", on which Brown sounds
like a hesitant, out-of-tune Johnny Hodges, and McCoy Tyner's "Contemplation"
(it's particularly interesting to see Tyner in the set list given
Waldron's parallel development of a piano style grounded on the use
of quartal chords). Some of this music is agonizingly slow-moving
- it takes five and a half minutes on "Contemplation" before Waldron
even strings together a few eighth-notes - but there's no denying
its stubborn individuality. Not as satisfying a partnership as Waldron's
decades-long collaboration with Steve Lacy, but well worth hearing,
assuming you don't find Brown's tuning an insurmountable hurdle. —ND
Tony
Malaby
ADOBE
Free Lance New Series FRL-NS-0305
Saxophonist
Tony Malaby has been making waves for a few years now as a player
on the New York scene formidably adept in both "inside" and "outside"
contexts. He's been a useful sideman on a large number of recordings,
and made his leadership debut in 2000 with Sabino (Arabesque),
but it was in 2003 that he staked a greater claim to recognition with
the simultaneous release of Adobe, a trio disc on Free Lance
with Drew Gress and Paul Motian, and the Songlines disc Apparitions,
with Gress and the paired drums of Tom Rainey and Michael Sarin. Though
Fred Hersch's liner notes to Adobe draw comparisons with the
Rollins Vanguard sessions and Ornette's early work, there's none of
the bite and headlong momentum of those sessions here. In his sideman
appearances Malaby is sometimes more conventionally hardnosed in the
manner of so many contemporary saxophonists; here he's airy and reflective,
falling in perfectly with Motian's lustrous, slinky timekeeping (as
always, the drummer disposes offbeat accents with the economy and
beauty of Japanese flower-arranging). The opening reading of Ornette's
"Humpty Dumpty" finds a gentle radiance in it one would hardly have
anticipated from its reading on This Is Our Music. The two
originals that follow - "Main" and "Adobe Blues" - are rather less
arresting, but the album then fully hits its stride with a haunting
reading of the Argentinean song "Dorotea la Cautiva". Tucked away
near the end of the album are readings of two jazz standards - "What
Is This Thing Called Love" and a reworking of the changes of "All
the Things You Are" called "Cosas"; in each case Malaby's improvisations
have a sinuous fluency recalling Warne Marsh. Great music: you can
put Adobe next to Geoff Bradfield's Rule of Three (Liberated
Zone) as one of the landmark tenor/bass/drums discs of 2003.—ND
Leap
Seconds
HINTS
Encaustic LP
encaustic@fastmail.fm
Leap
Seconds is a duo consisting of bassists Peter Blundell and Neil Robinson,
playing both electric and acoustic instruments in nine tracks pressed
on transparent vinyl, apparently with no run-in groove on either side
- thanks lads, you owe me a new stylus - nah, just joking. Recorded
at home "and no overdubs have been used" (I wonder why so many improvisers
feel the need to make this clear, especially for home recordings)
and released in an edition of 50, it's an austere affair, hard to
pin down stylistically - imagine Werner Dafeldecker playing John White
and released by Saturn circa 1960 - but not without its charms and
mysteries, including the strange series of numbers that adorns the
press release. —DW
Sakada
UNDISTILLED
Matchless MRCD 49
Conditions:
A BRIGHT NOWHERE
Matchless MRCD 55
Undistilled includes three live recordings, from early 2002
performances in London and Rotterdam, of 21 minutes, 32 minutes and
8 minutes by Sakada, a trio featuring Eddie Prevost's percussion and
Rosy Parlane's prerecorded sounds, manipulated in real time by Mattin
on laptop. "Undistilled" it is indeed - this is raw stuff, with loud
pulsing passages reminiscent of Hawkwind, and others that sound more
like 1960s AMM. The disc opens with Prevost playing a rapid staccato
on the cymbals, almost suggesting drum'n'bass, and a gradual wave
of feedback. The energy level stays high for most of the exhilarating
hour-long recording, with forward momentum provided by the percussion.
Prevost uses his little motorized contraptions at several points,
rattling around on the tops of his drums. There are sections where
he disappears, or seems to, and the electronics come close to devolving
into unimaginative glitches and squiggles, but textures soon change
and fascination is rekindled. It's also refreshing to find references
to capitalism and its "means of seduction," "spectacular machinery"
(Situationism), "optimism of the will" (Gramsci), and Walter Benjamin
in the liner notes. The pessimism of my intellect seems to grow ever
more overwhelming, but music like this summons that old prefigurative
impulse to "build the new world in the shell of the old."
Conditions: features Prevost and his usual trio bassist John Edwards,
joined by a young "front line" of trumpet, tenor sax and piano. The
music produced in six improvisations recalls (not surprisingly) AMM
on some tracks ("Unutterable", "A Bright Nowhere") free jazz on others
("Digging"). Jamie Coleman's trumpet sounds quite Miles-like in places;
I was struck at times that this might be the first AMM/Miles-60s-quintet
fusion recording. The disc opens tentatively with Coleman playing
muted trumpet and Nathaniel Catchpole playing tenor in the Evan Parker
idiom. This opening track ("Never, Never") falls into that most basic
free improv pattern - increasing in intensity, with trumpet and sax
joined by skittering snare, and then subsiding, ending with a droning
bass pattern. The second track, "Digging," is up-tempo, Zen free jazz
with Miles, Trane via Evan Parker, and Prevost as Rashied Ali. The
piece unfolds with a piano and sax duo, followed by a bass, trumpet
and percussion trio, before the entire ensemble joins in, slows down
and gets out. The third track, "Sky Pie," is more contemplative, with
Alex James on piano opening in a high register with a questing pattern.
He is joined by bass and percussion, and then a droning sax. The near
stasis is momentarily sublime, but loses steam and goes on for about
two minutes too long. "Cuckoo Cloud" picks up the tempo again, opening
with a propulsive figure on bass and percussion. Prevost is in energy
mode again, and the track attains the high point of intensity on the
album. Once again, though, the players don't manage to sustain interest,
and the momentum subsides into a long desultory passage, after which
percussion and bass kick in again until the final decay. After "Unutterable",
featuring eerie, strangled cries on the horns, invoking a religious
ceremony of sorts, the closing title track continues in strangled
trumpet mode. It becomes annoying, invoking concern for the apparent
constipation of the musician himself, but thankfully evolves into
a pleasant contemplative piece, with notes arising like thoughts in
meditation.—RH
Kurt
E. Heyl
SURROUNDED BY FALL
CDR02
SARA COMES TO CERRILLOS AND OTHER TRAVELS
CDR03
In
a recent conversation the indefatigable American improviser Jack Wright
described himself as a "dirty" player - less concerned with pristine
multiphonics (ŕ la John Butcher) and surgically precise hiss
(ŕ la Bhob Rainey) than with the rough edges, the spit and
grit of his instruments. It's a description I imagine Kurt Heyl would
probably be happy to concur with; Heyl's work on tenor and soprano
trombones - and simultaneously voice - is a raw and exciting combination
of tight angles and grimy corners, a kind of poésie sonore articulated
through and around the instrument. Comparisons are more easily drawn
with Bob Marsh and Jack Wright himself (they have, of course, all
played together) than they are with trombone virtuosi such as Paul
Rutherford and Johannes Bauer, but Heyl's work is just as solid and
life affirming. Surrounded By Fall is a collection of nine
brief solos and thirteen duos with drummers - five with Matthew David,
four with Al Faaet, three with Dave Wayne and one with Jon Whitsell
- recorded in autumn (hence the title) 2002. At 77 minutes it's a
pretty monstrous listen all in one go, but if consumed with moderation
it offers numerous tantalising glimpses into Heyl's universe.
Sara Comes To Cerrillos and Other Travels (the title refers to
the visit of bassoonist / vocalist Sara Schoenbeck to Heyl's former
New Mexico home base) presents the trombonist in duo and trio combinations
with Schoenbeck, bassist Ben Wright, Bob Marsh on cello and Matthew
David on drums. With the exception of the duo with Marsh, which was
recorded live in Oakland, all the music was recorded direct to disc
in Cerrillos, and the honest, open (but by no means substandard) sound
of the home recording complements the freshness of the improvising
to perfection. As one might expect, the interaction between the trombonist
and the other wind and stringed instruments leads to a different dynamic
than the choppy surface of Surrounded By Fall, which makes
the final duet with David - the only track featuring his percussion
work - stick out somewhat (one wonders if this wouldn't have been
more at home on the other album). As further proof of the energy surging
through the US improvised music scene at the moment, both of these
limited edition CDRs are worth seeking out: contact kurtheyl@hotmail.com.
—DW
Kenny
Wheeler
SONG FOR SOMEONE
Psi 04.01
Evan
Parker/Stan Tracey
SUSPENSIONS AND ANTICIPATIONS
Psi 04.02
With
each release to come out of Psi's ever-spinning turnstile, Evan Parker
garners more credibility as a record producer. It was a wonder at
the label's advent two years ago whether or not the label would simply
serve as an outlet for temporarily shelved dates from Parker and his
associates. I'm glad to report that Psi's discography is shaping up
in such a way as to become a healthy organism that breathes out a
worthy, unique reissue program and new releases that are far more
often hit than miss.
One of Psi's latest reissues is a session that has been buried for
over 30 years now, since its 1973 release on Incus. At the time of
Song for Someone's recording, Kenny Wheeler was on the rise
as a very capable trumpeter and composer in some of Britain's various
improvised music circles. His early 70s music was at a point not yet
fully reconciled with its influences, but distinctive enough for fans
to know they were onto something special. Such is the case with the
big band-ish Song for Someone, which, while stirring among
the shadows of Bill Holman and Gil Evans arrangements, bears many
of the traits of Wheeler's later near-continuous string of jaw-dropping
records. "Toot Toot" swings mightily, while the balladesque "Ballad
Two" straddles a line dividing melancholy and hopeful perseverance,
Norma Winstone's vocalising establishing itself as a key component
to bring further animation to the larger group numbers. Alan Branscombe's
electric piano is welcome in the mix, aligning itself with that instrument's
worthy incorporation in some of the Mel Lewis/Thad Jones groups. Perhaps
most interesting is the inclusion of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker
on two tracks, as part of the effort to "…get special musicians from
and into different areas of jazz to play together…" to quote Wheeler's
brief liner notes. Bailey's guitar and Parker's not-yet-refined soprano
sound utterly rebellious in their contributions, almost as if they
are along to crash the party, but Wheeler's written transition from
these introspective wanderings to the structurally sound is, in a
word, seamless. It's been a long wait, but once the shock of this
record's timelessness has softened, it'll feel like an old friend
that's been around forever.
Were Psi a reissue-only label, it might be just as well, but Evan
Parker has repeatedly shown that his own new music is still as inspiring
as it was when he first learned to circularly blow arpeggios into
oblivion. Suspensions and Anticipations is a record designed
for Parker nuts who pine for more recordings of his tenor work. Not
since Chicago Solo has Parker provided us with a better demonstration
of his improvising talent on the instrument than this unlikely pairing
with British jazz piano vet Stan Tracey. Apart from a small handful
of solos (two from Tracey, one from Parker), S & A is an exceptional
series of "what-if?" duos that result in a single, "of-course!" -
Tracey's piano provides a multitude of harmonic foundations, from
improvised low-register rumblings to sparing swing and stride motifs,
which are embellished (and often undercut) by Parker's tenor. The
numbers' development is hardly predictable, though; the music is the
product of two musicians from adjacent fields of activity whose techniques
and ways of departure turn out to be uncannily complimentary. The
disc's resolve ultimately comes from a study of the three solo numbers,
whose presence lends a world of insight to the collaborative processes
of the duos. It's a set of music that will frustrate and mystify,
and perhaps best suited for those who believe Parker's trick bag was
zipped shut back in the 90's.—AJ
Z'ev
N.A.M.E. GALLERY 03.01.86
Crippled Intellect CIP 08 EP
Talk
about heavy metal.. This 10" EP comes backed in two square sheets
of steel, one embossed with the series number - it's an edition of
333-, the other with the artist's name. Certainly original packaging
(this must be the heaviest package I've ever received, and I doubt
CIP's Blake Edwards has been circulating many promo copies - unless
he's just robbed a bank), but the music is unfortunately doesn't compare.
Though in recent years Z'ev, born Stefan Weisser in LA, has moved
away from his trademark metal bashing, this performance recorded back
in 1986 is full of the old clangs and crashes. Presumably these are
supposed to be cathartic in some way - the artist has after all carried
out extensive research into Fluxus, poésie sonore and esoteric
texts (there's even a quote from Lautréamont carved into the run-off
grooves here) - but somehow one senses one ought to have been there
rather than experience the work as a mere recorded document. Z'ev
will presumably and perhaps unfortunately remain forever associated
with the Industrial movement, but since the kind of noise that was
being produced at the end of the 1970s by the likes of Boyd Rice,
Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse and SPK now sounds eminently listenable
- two decades of Merzbow and his peers has altered our perceptions
- Z'ev's metal percussion seems to have lost something of its relevance,
not to mention its clout. —DW
Basil Kirchin
CHARCOAL SKETCHES. STATES OF MIND
Trunk JBH 005
Last year's release of Quantum (my
album of the year for The Wire, for the simple reason I've never been
able to find, let alone afford, a copy of either volume of Kirchin's
magnum opus Worlds Within Worlds) came with a word from producer
Jonny Trunk promising more Kirchin to come. This is presumably the
first instalment, but one hopes that subsequent releases will be more
substantive. Clocking in at a mere 26 minutes, it consists of three
sketches for what became Worlds Within Worlds and a collection
of nine miniatures Kirchin provided as incidental music for an international
conference of psychiatrists and psychologists (!) in London in 1968.
The laid-back funk of the instrumental ensemble on "Charcoal Sketches",
which includes amongst others Kenny Wheeler, Alan Parker and Daryl
Runswick, is accompanied by recordings of birdsong Kirchin made in
Switzerland. It's pleasant enough, but somewhat inconsequential: Kirchin's
genius on WWW was to juxtapose such examples of familiar musical vernacular
with truly disturbing field recordings of autistic children. "States
of Mind" also features Wheeler on flugelhorn, along with Evan Parker
on soprano sax, Chris Karan on drums, Peter McGurk on bass and Harry
Stoneham on organ, but most of these soundbites feature a string orchestra
(mysteriously uncredited). As the pieces themselves bear titles related
to the world of neurological disorders - "Plaques and Tangles", "Face
Blind", even "Ballad of the Basal Ganglia"..- the enigmatic Mr Trunk
has seen fit to invite a doctor, Rachel Genn, to provide the liner
notes (following in the noble tradition of Charles Mingus on The
Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and, more recently, Industrial
lunatic Monte Cazazza on his Worst of Monte Cazazza compilation
on Mute). Shame he couldn't have asked a Kirchin enthusiast like Jim
O'Rourke or Alan Licht, as the notes basically consist of little more
than descriptions of the neurological disorders referred to in the
titles, Dr Genn presumably not being sufficiently well-versed in musicological
terminology to comment on Kirchin's soundworld. Not that there's much
to comment on anyway - only three of these vignettes last longer than
90 seconds. There are some nice snatches of Evan Parker, and several
well-orchestrated passages, but if you're stepping into Basil Kirchin's
world for the first time you should do so with Quantum and
leave this one for the completists.—DW
Mark Applebaum
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Innova 602
Mark Applebaum hails from Chicago and studied
at UC San Diego with, amongst others, Roger Reynolds and Brian Ferneyhough.
As well as teaching at Stanford, he is a talented jazz pianist, improviser
and instrument builder, and this release - his fourth for the Innova
label if my arithmetic is correct - reflects all these diverse facets
of his musical personality. "Plundergraphic" is an intriguing mixture
of live improvisation (two instrumental groups performing Applebaum's
graphic notation) and signal processing; live and transformed sound
is mixed in real time by a "diffusion artist" - here Ryan Francesconi
- into a complex web of activity. "Ferneyhough Remix (Affection Aphorism
1)" was written as a 60th birthday present for Ferneyhough, and consists
of pre-recorded tape collaging fragments of that composer's "Bone
Alphabet" (Ferneyhough had also provided his teacher, Klaus Huber,
with a 60th birthday present in the form of "Fanfare for Klaus
Huber") with live percussion expertly handled by Steven Schick
and Ivan Manzanilla. Not sure what Mr Ferneyhough would make of it
- though personally I'd be flattered to be the dedicatee of such a
well-written and energetic piece - but it's probably fair to assume
that he'd be more at home with it than with the album's title track,
a wild seven and a half minute long superimposed improvisation for
Yamaha Disklavier grand piano - imagine a frenetic jam somewhere between
Fred Van Hove and Oscar Peterson with Conlon Nancarrow thrown in for
good measure.
The central half hour of the album features four improvisations for
the Mouseketier, an ingenious sound sculpture of the composer's design
which incorporates elements as diverse as ratchets, wheels, bronze
rods and astroturf (!). While the sounds Applebaum summons forth from
this contraption - both in its raw state and transformed electronically
- are certainly fascinating, the composer's comments in his liners
are worth quoting: "Inventing a new instrument provides immediate
gratification: one instantly becomes the world's greatest player of
that instrument. The problem is that one abruptly realizes that one
is also the world's worst player." One wonders then if Applebaum has
hooked up with like-minded spirits in the world of West Coast improv
- the Trummerflora Collective in San Diego, the buzzing scenes in
LA and the Bay Area..- since starting from scratch and building one's
own instruments is a peculiarly (though not exclusively) Californian
phenomenon. Harry Partch of course comes to mind, but also Chas Smith
and Gino Robair (I for one would be very keen to hear the Mouseketier
go several rounds with Robair's faux-daxophone). In a more composed
environment, "Scipio Wakes Up (and Smells the Coffee)", part of the
Janus cycle of works Applebaum composed between 1992 and 1996, is
more satisfying, thanks to the virtuoso input of the Paul Dresher
Ensemble. If Ferneyhough's beard might bristle with mild indignation
at the twelve bar blues in "Intellectual Property I", he'd probably
dismiss the jolly japes of the closing "Pre-Composition" out of hand;
Applebaum's vocal work for eight track tape, each track corresponding
to the inner voices that he claims challenge his every move as a composer
("Stupid Idea Guy", "Diplomatic Guy", "Body Guy", "Critical Guy",
"Intellectual Guy", "Dumb Question Guy", "Technical Guy" and "Organizer
Guy"), is hilariously tongue-in-cheek. You may not like the idea of
composers taking the piss out of themselves, but Applebaum's work
throughout this piece and the others on the album is carefully structured
and brilliantly executed. I await the forthcoming release of his work
on Tzadik with interest. —DW
Michčle
Bokanowski
L'ANGE OST
Trace 017
Patrick
Bokanowski's 1982 film "L'Ange", available from www.re-voir.com if
you're interested, is something of a classic in the genre of experimental
cinema (though I'll admit to not having had the pleasure of ever seeing
it), but its original soundtrack composed by Bokanowski's wife Michčle
has until now not been available on disc. Throughout these 63 minutes
of music, Bokanowksi records extracts - one is tempted to say "samples",
though her work predates the advent of commercial sampling devices
by several years - of the playing of violinist Régis Pasquier, cellist
Philippe Muller and bassist Philippe Drogoz, plus on several tracks
recordings of water droplets, miscellaneous vocal noises and ticking
clocks, and reassembles them into austere, almost minimalist, compositions.
It's not without interest, though it's harmonically and texturally
a bit thin (deliberately so, one imagines) and hardly as impressive
as Bokanowski's Tabou on Metamkine's Cinéma Pour L'Oreille
series, and is probably better appreciated in conjunction with the
film for which it was originally conceived.—JB
Rosy
Parlane
IRIS
Touch TO58
Iris
is an enigma from its first inhalation. Broken into three lengthy
sections, Auckland-based Rosy Parlane plays guitar, piano and other
digital entities to craft something from another cosmos. The dreamy
electronic drone has the chill of a church organ with variable weights
and scales. Shadowy layers wander through a torrent of tiny electronic
branches chafing the peripheral tunnel of sound. Cool tones emerge,
crispy, like ice melting away to leave a vague hiss and diminishing,
translucent debris. Part two opens like a cautious winter day, the
title Iris seemingly informing the choreography of its snaking
tonalities. Its use of field recordings throughout is like some type
of reference (memory) chip reading information faster than Evelyn
Wood. It's a sheer rapturous ambient coast, with distant squirming
as if characters were repeatedly dropping silverware and ceramic saucers
on marble-topped tables in a high-ceilinged café, heightening the
sur-reality of memory, over and over again. The atmospheric light
produced becomes open, free, and lush. In the last segment of the
trilogy, dusk falls and the room darkens, bringing a peculiar sense
of dread / repose / change. Maybe a reflection of the short life cycle
of the luminous blue flower (or deep visionary inner eye) of the album
title. Depending on the space you play this in it could have a hushed,
background quality (your own lil' secret) or become an all-encompassing
surround-sound drone mutating all other ambient noise. The nearer
we come to the conclusion, the more ominous things become, until the
final few minutes when the 0s and 1s seem to be edited into something
akin to a waterfall breaking up into smaller bodies of water, broadening,
spread with sparseness. Iris polarizes its sound the way acupuncture
can completely reallocate the axis of your reflexes.—TJN
Tom
Hamilton
LONDON FIX
Muse-Eek MSK 118
To
create this album, whose 59'45" of music runs continuously - track
indexes seem designed to facilitate navigation rather than delineate
structure - Tom Hamilton collated historical chart data showing movements
on the spot gold market as defined by the twice-daily London Fix,
hence the title, and transformed it into music using software developed
by fellow composer Michael Schumacher, the result sounding curiously
like a digitised Rainbow In Curved Air - without the rocksichord,
dumbec and incense. One might be tempted to wax lyrical about information
overload, the all-pervasive influence of market forces on every aspect
of modern life, and so on and so forth, but ultimately all we're left
with is a piece of music, which is very attractive (I especially like
the "please play softly" instruction on the disc itself - that makes
a change) but about as likely to have a major impact on your life
as, er, the price of gold. —JB
Paolo
Raposo / Carlos Santos
INSULA DULCAMARA
Sirr 2013
Portuguese laptoppers Raposo and Santos used to go by the name of
Vitriol (see Sirr's debut mini CD randonée 0.06), though I
guess they abandoned that moniker to avoid being confused with some
shitty metal group. Just as well, as music of such craftsmanship and
subtlety would be lost on the Marilyn Manson fan base; these six tracks
are as elusive and elegant as their Portuguese titles (remind me to
move to Portugal someday), slowmoving and laminal though never spacey
and ambient, and packed with juicy detail enough to richly reward
repeated listening. The source material used, much of it culled from
field recordings made in the Portuguese countryside, is diverse and
evocative in itself, though astutely manipulated with Max/MSP software
and high-frequency electronic squiggles emanating from a no-input
mixer. Despite being self-declared members then of what Bernhard Günter
somewhat disparagingly described as the "Max Faction" (in his recent
interview for PT with Dan
Warburton), Raposo and Santos are not content to let that awesomely
powerful software package dictate proceedings. Insula dulcamara is
certainly one of the most musical electronica outings of recent times,
and is strongly recommended.—JB
Brandon
Labelle
CONCERT
Sirr 0017
Concert
is American composer Brandon Labelle's collection of installation
soundtracks for works created over the past few years. On "Automatic
Building" a wooden structure is assembled / disassembled, a slow dragging
sound of planks scraping on concrete structures in a 15th Century
Florentine villa (see the album cover) with organic echo full of musty
cobwebs and soot. "Transportation & Recycling (proposal to the mayor)",
the lengthiest track on offer at 22 minutes, was originally presented
at the Ybakatu Espaco de Arte in Curitiba, Brazil, and speeds with
the sounds of zooming motorcars and rush-hour traffic, Labelle's intention
being to converse with his audience by mirroring the city outside
by using sound and other elements including pieces constructed of
PVC, fabric, wood and sound devices. In Denmark, he presented "Event
and its Double" where a specially created structure replicated color
and shape elements at the local Museum of Contemporary Art in a sonically
spacious homage of sorts to Cage's celebrated "Black Mountain Event"
(1952), while "Learning from Seedbed" refers to Vito Acconci's famous
1972 Sonnabend Gallery living performance sculpture/installation.
Labelle uses the original ramped gallery floor, though allows the
viewer to get one step closer to the unknowns below the surface: instead
of Acconci's antics - mysteriously heard but not seen - Labelle contact-mikes
the meandering of the audience itself and this crawling exploration
of discovery is then relayed into the room as a broken, contorted
and minimal collection of pops and excerpts.—TJN
JARL
PARALLEL / COLLAPSING
Segerhuva Seger 9
Erik
Jarl hails from Norrköping in Sweden, and since 1999 has released
three other albums as Jarl, one cassette Wound Profile (LSDOT023)
and two CDs, Sealed Void (Annihilvs/Force of Nature 005, 2003)
and Out of Balance (Malignant TUMORCD14), which, as their titles
suggest, reflect more of an Industrial influence (crossed with early
Tangerine Dream) than Parallel / Collapsing. Mostly sourced
from analogue synthesizers, these seven slabs of sound evolve slowly
but surely in the time-honoured tradition of early minimalism; Jarl's
ear for sonority is acute, and his sense of pace excellent - the music
draws the listener in, and retains the attention effectively. If this
had been released on a more high profile Swedish imprint like Hapna
with more evocative cover art (the austere black and blue stripes
aren't very enticing), I imagine the alt.music press would have jumped
on it - as it is, Segerhuva releases are probably harder to track
down (go to www.segerhuva.se) but this one is well worth the hunt.
—JB
Alejandra
& Aeron
THE SCOTCH MONSTERS
Softl Music SOM302
On
The Scotch Monsters Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman, who
run Barcelona's Lucky Kitchen label, rework this selection for the
third time (earlier versions were presented in installation format
- "Revisionland" presented in Scotland and curated by Diskono - and
a limited vinyl run on Germany's Bottrop-Boy) in the form of sixteen
tracks. None is longer than four minutes and each is dedicated to
an individual spirit entity, and they combine to form a larger narrative.
Softl Music's Frieda Luczak creates exquisitely simplified CD sleeves
folded in and around like a brain teaser, kind of a peek-a-boo pop-up
book (here a muted Day-Glo orange) with no real way in unless you
destroy the jacket. Compellingly secretive. So was the installation,
in which, in accordance with Scottish folklore, the duo buried mushroom
shaped speakers that relayed their field recordings and atonal static
directly into the soil, a forceful electronic barrier to ward off
evil spirits with names such as The Red Caps, Trooping Fairies and
The Gray Man. There's something holistic and wise in Salinas and Bergman's
deconstruction of their work for presentation, a distance that throws
into relief the creativity of the composition, which mixes an organic,
handmade love of sound - a baby cries, water runs, random chimes tinkle,
cowbells clang - with the eerie whistling inventions of the laptop.
Call it fictional docu-audio. The primitive nature of The Scotch
Monsters is engrossing in its depth, tribally poignant and totally
conceptual.—TJN
Joel
Stern / Michael Northam
WORMWOOD
Ground Fault GF 027
Utah-born Michael Northam is often associated with what might be described
as the maximalist tendency in electronic composition (along with Seth
Nehil and John Grzinich, with whom he has often worked), building
complex systems out of basic sonic molecules; for his 2001 Absurd
release From within the solar cave he superimposed recordings
of his source material up to 512 times to create one of the most extraordinary
soundscapes of recent years (good luck hunting down a copy, though).
The textures on Wormwood are just as rich and mysterious, though
as not as dense, and the sound sources occasionally reveal their identity
(fragments of birdsong, bells, amp buzz..). Sourced from a single
late night recording session in December 2002 in East London, where
Australian electronician Stern had been living for three years, these
five (untitled) tracks use diverse objects and instruments, environmental
recordings and feedback systems, manipulated electronically to produce
a complex sonic web, generally slowmoving and reflective in character.
"What interests me is remembering that as human beings we find ourselves
constantly involved in complex and hyperviolent systems," Northam
told Frédéric Claisse in an extensive and fascinating interview in
the French magazine Revue & Corrigée 47 (March 2001). Wormwood
isn't exactly hyperviolent - mildly disturbing at times, perhaps -
but it's certainly complex. It's also eminently listenable, and another
fine addition to expanding Ground Fault catalogue.
—DW
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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