APRIL
News 2005 |
Reviews
by Clifford Allen, Nate Dorward, Vid Jeraj, TJ Norris, Nicholas
Rice, Massimo Ricci, Dan Warburton:
|
|
Editorial
Improvised Music from Japan
2004 / Haco
If,
Bwana
On ESP: Sun
Ra / Albert Ayler
On ErstLive: Keith
Rowe & Burkhard Beins / Rowe, Nakamura, Lehn & Schmickler
/ Burkhard Stangl & Christof Kurzmann / Fennesz, Sachiko
M, Otomo, Rehberg
Reissue This: Keith
Tippett
At Carnegie Hall: Boulez, Birtwistle, Dutilleux,
MacMillan
JAZZ: Nathan Hubbard's
Skeleton Key Orchestra / Sirone Bang Ensemble / Wally Shoup
/ Frieze of Life / Dominic Duval & Joe McPhee / Peggy Lee
Band /
IMPROV: Freedom of
the City 2004 / No Idea Festival / Günter Müller &
Steinbrüchel / Sinistri / Franz Hautzinger / Manfred Hofer
/ Rodrigues, Rodrigues, Thieke & Santos
ELECTRONICA: Asmus
Tietchens / Anti Group / Mirror / Beequeen / BJ Nilsen &
Stilluppsteypa / Xabier Erkizia / Dave Phillips / L/A/B
Last month
|
At
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie
Hall has recently organised several birthday celebrations for the
older modernists, among them Harrison Birtwistle and Pierre Boulez.
The three concerts of their music at the end of January demonstrated
why the two composers have formed a strong alliance in recent years;
both are deeply concerned with revolutionising the classical tradition,
but whereas Birtwistle’s music is dominated by distance and
separation, Boulez’s output is controlled by a sense of overarching
unity. In terms of thematic development, both approaches have their
advantages and disadvantages: Boulez’s unity can lead to monotony,
but also to a searching development of the material, whereas Birtwistle’s
distances create quirky exchanges occasionally lacking in dramatic
direction. Both the Boulez works featured by the London Symphony Orchestra
on January 27th in Stern Hall unfortunately failed to showcase the
more interesting aspects of his approach, despite the composer’s
formidable presence on the podium. Livre pour cordes is an
arrangement of a piece Boulez wrote in his early twenties, Livre
pour quatuor, itself an adaptation of Webernian techniques revealing
little of Boulez’s mature stylistic voice. As in the earliest
Stockhausen pieces, complex gestures succeed one another with no real
attempt at dramatic coherence. Dérive 2, performed
on January 29th in Stern Hall, is infinitely more masterful and personal,
but, as its title suggests, feels too derivative of the composer’s
previous work. Composed as a belated 80th birthday present for Elliott
Carter, it features an extremely flexible serial technique in which
rhythmic and melodic cells contract and expand, allowing for a broad
range of development throughout its 25-minute duration. Carter’s
procedures are obviously very much to the fore, but the use of rhythm
and polyphony also recalls Ligeti, another recognizable influence
on Boulez’s music since the 1970s. However, Dérive
2 takes few real steps forward, unlike the electro-acoustics
in Anthèmes 2 or the all-encompassing drama of Sur
Incises. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the piece is
the ensemble it's scored for: trios of winds and strings play off
a combination of two percussion instruments (marimba and vibraphone)
and two other instruments with strings (piano and harp). The dialogue
between them opens and closes with a single note on a horn, which
is the only independent element in the piece.
Like
much of Boulez’s work, timbre is organized according to strict
oppositions, which is certainly not the case with Birtwistle, as the
concert devoted to his music on January 31st in Zankel Hall sought
to demonstrate. In fact, the first item in the program was entitled
Five Distances for Five Instruments, which instantly betrayed
the composer’s anarchic personal stamp. The combination of flute,
oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn was handled in a deliberately rough
and somewhat inconclusive manner, developed in the beautiful word
painting of the second item, Nine Settings of Lorine Niedecker,
scored for soprano and cello. If Five Distances was closer
to Ligeti, Nine Settings was a definite homage to Kurtág.
Both are recent works, and now that Birtwistle’s style has mellowed
slightly his debt to the vocal music of Britten is all the more clear.
This was heard to best advantage in the third item, The Woman
and the Hare, partly because the players who took part in the
concert were clearly more comfortable working in larger groups: some
of the runs in Five Distances were fairly hit-and-miss, while
the performance of the Nine Settings lacked the delicately
differentiated character which a work of this type needs more than
anything else. The Woman and the Hare, however, was beautifully
coordinated by conductor Brad Lubman and performed with real verve
by every member of the ensemble, including soprano Susan Narucki,
who had seemed a little exposed during the Settings. The
fourth and final item in the program, Tragoedia, the piece
that made Birtwistle’s name during the 1960s, was played as
naturally as if it were Beethoven.
These
three events could not have contrasted more sharply with two performances
of symphonies by Dutilleux and MacMillan by the Cleveland Orchestra
and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s respectively, on February 4th
and 10th in Stern Hall. (Donald Runnicles’ conducting in the
MacMillan was superior to Franz Welser-Möst’s in the Dutilleux:
despite the latter's attentiveness to rhythm and balance and the excellence
of the Cleveland, Runnicles proved a far better motivator and clearly
relished every moment of colour and melody.) Dutilleux represents
the opposite end of mainstream French music to Boulez, just as MacMillan
represents the opposite end of British contemporary music to Birtwistle,
so it was fascinating to observe that the differences between the
two bore certain similarities to the differences between their avant-garde
compatriots. Once more, the principle of unity in Dutilleux in critical:
both he and Boulez have been influenced by Proust in their use of
recurring features and in “doubling” features which already
exist, either through echo or opposition. Hence the title of Dutilleux’s
Second Symphony, “Le Double”, which pits a twelve-piece
ensemble against a larger orchestra of twenty instrumental parts plus
strings. The larger orchestra itself contains doubles (for instance,
the flutes are divided into two parts and also manage to double the
piccolos) but the result is far more traditional than the ultra-modernism
of Boulez. Ultimately “Le Double” is more a descendant
of late Honegger than of late Stravinsky. This doesn't prevent the
strong influence of Russian culture emerging, most notably in the
title, taken from Dostoyevsky, and in the mournful slow movement,
in which Dutilleux quotes Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind
Instruments and echoes some of the ghostlier harpsichord sequences
in The Rake’s Progress.
Similarly, it is difficult to accuse the MacMillan Second Symphony
of lacking contemporary relevance, but this is generated by a more
retrospective aesthetic than Birtwistle’s (there is even a microtonal
pastiche quote of Tristan towards the end). Like the Birtwistle
selection, the piece is entertainingly episodic, but, unlike Birtwistle,
it's fairly incoherent: MacMillan himself states in the program note
that “Taking my lead from composers such as Boulez and Berio
I have built this work on an earlier, shorter piece” –
but so did many composers before Boulez (Bach’s B minor
Mass being a critical example). References to the avant-garde
can't disguise the fact that this symphony, like the Dutilleux, is
entertaining but unadventurous.—NR
Nathan
Hubbard
SKELETON KEY ORCHESTRA
Circumvention 039A-B 2CD
Any large ensemble recording is an ambitious undertaking, but a double
CD featuring no fewer than 36 musicians (on instruments as diverse
as prepared pianos, pipe organs, harps, laptops and dopplerophones,
whatever they are) is nothing less than heroic. Not only that, but
this one cooks from beginning to end, and stands as one of the most
vibrant documents of the lively San Diego new music scene. Nathan
Hubbard shares percussion duties with, amongst others, Harris Eisenstadt,
Curtis Glatter, James Burton and Jon Szanto, but he's no slouch when
it comes to writing and arranging. The eight extended – I mean
extended: "Raincastle" lasts 34'19" and "A Murder
Of Crows" 36'22" – compositions are superbly crafted
and performed with great musicality and attention to detail. The whole
history of jazz / improvised music large ensemble work is referenced,
from the filigree flutes of Gil Evans to the epic arching lines of
Alan Silva's Celestrial Communication Orchestra (comparisons might
also be made with Globe Unity, Scott Rosenberg's Creative Orchestra
Music and Coat Cooke's NOW Orchestra, not to mention Harry Partch
and the early Mothers of Invention), but this is no mere exercise
in stylistic homage. Incorporating field recordings, poetry (Shannon
Perkins on "Sleeping Against Other Warnings" and Hubbard
himself on "Poltergeist - for Albert Ayler") and the electronics
of Trummerflora mainstays Marcelo Radulovich and Marcos Fernandes,
not to mention some highly creative post-production – damn,
you're paying for a studio, you might as well use it –
Hubbard provides not just a snapshot but a whole photo album of today's
American creative improvised music. Unlike Silva's epic 4CD HR57
Treasure Box, which inevitably comes across as an All Star Band
(you find yourself constantly referring to the liners to find out
who's blowing, if it isn't immediately apparent), nobody's out to
showboat in the Skeleton Key Orchestra, though there are some wicked
solos: Gabe Sundy's gritty baritone in the opening "Is That You
(Earl)?", Ellen Weller's slinky flute on "Sleeping.."
and Ward Baxter's sexy sandalwood tenor on the same track, to name
but three. Sure, like life, there are some longueurs –
"A Murder of Crows" in particular goes through a sticky
patch (not surprisingly given how strongly it kicks off) – but
there are some truly delicious moments along the way. Check out how
the gnarly double bass trio towards the end of "Raincastle"
segues into Jon Garner's exquisite guitar solo, or how the raw jungle
funk that opens "East on 53rd Street" slips into some polished
studio funk (yo! Eddie Harris eat your heart out!). It's a huge, dense
set and one that will keep your ears busy, your feet tapping and your
neighbours howling with joy until summertime. Reach for the key.—DW
Sirone
Bang Ensemble
CONFIGURATION
Silkheart SHCD 155
"Jupiter's
Future" reads the title of the first of the six tracks on this
fine recent outing by violinist Billy Bang, bassist Sirone, Charles
Gayle on alto and tenor saxes, and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, but you
don't need to have a degree in Sun Ra to identify "Space Is The
Place" (interesting how several members of the first and second
generations of free jazz musicians are quite good at "adopting"
other people's work.. "Lonely Woman" pops up on a soon-to-be-released
Sunny Murray set on Eremite, and fans of Arthur Doyle might be forgiven
for thinking he wrote "Nature Boy"). The Ra thing doesn't
last long: after a brief solo from Sorey, a new theme kicks in, before
the band lays out again to let Gayle get on with business. Configuration
marks a welcome return to form (return full stop) for Gayle, and it's
a shame Bang couldn't have got this band on the bill at the recent
Sons d'Hiver festival (reviewed here last
month) instead of those sweet but sorry-assed Vietnamese and the
stolid rhythm section he brought along. Anyway, enough of that. This
session was recorded live on November 9th last year at CBGB's Gallery,
and from the sound of it all four gents are happy to be down on the
Bowery, especially Bang, who delights in the kind of rough extended
techniques playing that he studiously avoided in that aforementioned
gig. Which in no way means Configuration is hardcore avant-garde
– far from it: "Freedom Flexibility" swings wickedly
(you'll even forgive Bang for quoting "I Got Rhythm"), and
Sirone's "We Are Not Alone, But We Are Few" joins a line
of melancholy free jazz ballads stretching back to Ornette's Town
Hall Concert. And as the set progresses it gets better and better:
Bang's solo on "I Remember Albert" might be the most powerful
thing he's ever released, the interplay between the musicians on the
following "Notre Dame De La Garde" is magnificent, and things
get so seriously funky on the closing title track you might be forgiven
for thinking it was called "Conflagration."—DW
Wally
Shoup
BLUE PURGE
Leo CD LR 412
In
David Keenan's recent brief but informative article on Wally Shoup
in The Wire (nice to see that Shoup is still regarded as
an up-and-coming youngster like most of the other characters who are
accorded one of that magazine's shorter features), the alto saxophonist
recalls his childhood in the South during the 50s and 60s, listing
his formative experiences – Little Willie John, James Brown,
Wilson Pickett and other "screamers and shouters" –
and influences: Coltrane, Sanders and Ayler, of course, but also electric
Miles, the Stooges and even, hell yeah, the Hampton Grease Band. Though
there's no direct reference to the 12-bar blues anywhere in the eleven
tracks on offer on Blue Purge, Shoup's latest outing on Leo
after the splendid Live At Tonic and last year's Confluxus,
and not the slightest hint of a blues licks or groove in the fragmented,
tight splatter of rhythm section Reuben Radding (bass) and Bob Rees
(drums), the music's direct from-the-hip-to-the-gut approach is very
much in line with the music Shoup grew up with. Shoup, like his fellow
road warriors Marco Eneidi, Mark Whitecage and Paul Flaherty (one
could also include Jack Wright, though Wright turned his back on free
jazz as such some while ago), has had the good sense to follow his
own no(i)se throughout his career, the result being his music, in
steadfastly avoiding to be neatly pigeonholed, packaged and marketed
like some high fat trashy snacks, has stayed fresh. The downside to
that is that it's not Shoup who's playing the major league festival
circuit but other so-called free jazz giants who have quite happily
sold themselves at least half way down the river, producing cheesy
HipHop crossover rubbish with second division rappers. Not naming
names, you know who you are. Strip away the flashy production and
the "slammin' beats" and there's little left to chew on,
though, whereas there's enough protein on Blue Purge to keep
you going strong until the next Wally Shoup outing, whenever that
is. Buy one of those CD players that can take four discs at a time,
load this baby up with Cold Bleak Heat's It's Magnificent But
It Isn't War, Marco Eneidi / Lisle Ellis / Peter Valsamis' American
Roadwork and Mark Whitecage's No Respect and let all
four play on eternal loop until the summer solstice and see if your
life isn't better for it.—DW
Frieze of Life
NUCLEAR FROG POND
FOL Records (no catalogue number)
I’m not sure where on earth the phrase “nuclear frog pond”
comes from – probably leader Greg Sinibaldi’s own head
– but the band name is a lift from Edvard Munch, which perhaps
explains the music’s surprising darkness of texture and mood,
very different from what one might expect from a four-horns-plus-bass-and-drums
jazz ensemble. Listeners may be reminded of Dave Douglas’s jazz-goes-to-the-Old-World
aesthetic, and Sinibaldi, like Douglas, includes a few modern-classical
arrangements in the program (in this case, some Bartók). Pieces
like “Desire” and “Code Name 6” are built
up layer by layer in the manner of a round, until all six instruments
are present and accounted for; and even the collectively credited
pieces – wholly improvised, I assume – tend to be slowmoving,
close-voiced canons, each horn taking turns to throw a new note into
the pot. It’s a strong and unusual disc, with excellent work
from all concerned (Sinibaldi on tenor sax and bass clarinet, Mark
Taylor on soprano, alto and tenor, Chris Stover on trombone, Jay Roulston
on trumpet, Geoff Harper on bass and Byron Vannoy on drums). These
are players who really listen to each other – it’s impressive
how they spin intricate chorales out of thin air. But I’m also
left feeling the music’s not quite there yet, for several reasons,
first and foremost being the concentration on sonorous, melancholy
canons to the point of redundancy – I could have used more explosive
moments like “Moose Knuckles”, “Hitler’s Café”
and the last half of “Claude et Eric”, where the tasteful
after-you interaction is ditched and they all just jump in. Elsewhere
the emphasis on the horns makes the bass and drums seem underused
and occasionally superfluous – on “Consolation”
for instance the drummer isn’t really given enough to do –
and many of the pieces lack internal contrast, or don’t go far
enough past their initial premises. That’s a long list of cavils,
yet on balance I’d still recommend the disc: such weaknesses
are apparent cumulatively over the course of the album, but make little
difference to individual tracks’ success. This is smart, unhackneyed
music from a band whose future progress will be worth following.—ND
Joe
McPhee/Dominic Duval
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, VOL. 2
Drimala DR-04-347-05
Rules
of Engagement, Vol. 1 was a set of duets between bassist Dominic
Duval and saxophonist Mark Whitecage; for this return match Duval
is partnered with veteran saxophonist Joe McPhee. (A third volume
of Rules pairing Duval with trombonist Steve Swell is slated
for release later in the year.) As you’d expect from these longstanding
musical partners (together they comprise two-thirds of the hardworking
free-jazz ensemble Trio-X) this is a thoroughly sympathetic encounter.
The album can be thought of as a loosely organized suite concerning
the black American experience: the program includes two improvisations
around Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” a reading of the
hymn “Amazing Grace,” and “Birmingham Sunday,”
a memorial to the four children killed in the 1963 bombing of a black
Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama. The same incident inspired
Coltrane’s “Alabama,” and it’s no accident
that the one “standard” here is the rarely covered “While
My Lady Sleeps,” which Coltrane once cut for Prestige. But despite
featuring the odd moment of scrabbling activity, Rules of Engagement
has little of Coltrane’s turbulence; it’s quietly thoughtful
music, its drama confined to the stark contrast between McPhee’s
sombre, plainspoken work on soprano sax and Duval’s slip-sliding
bass.—ND
Peggy
Lee Band
WORLDS APART
Spool Line 24
Any investigation of the new music scene in Vancouver will soon turn
up the names of the husband and wife team of Dylan van der Schyff
(percussion) and Peggy Lee (cello), and Worlds Apart, the
latest offering from the Peggy Lee Band, featuring Brad Turner on
trumpet, cornet and fluegelhorn, Jeremy Berkman on trombone, Tony
Wilson on guitars (joined by Ron Samworth on four tracks) and Andre
Lechance on bass is as good a place to start such an investigation
as any. Lee and van der Scyff are active as free improvisers, as any
John Butcher completist will tell you, and bring its freshness and
looseness to bear on nine compositions (all by Lee except for a brief
guitar spot by Wilson on "Old One Knows") that marry a fondness
for space and texture to elegant and discreet use of complex metres
– none of that Ivo Papasov-style blind-'em-with-science flashy
stuff here. The music breathes the same country air – that's
country as in out of town, not Country as in musical genre –
as Bill Frisell and Kenny Wheeler's ECM outings of way back when.
The occasional flurries of extended techniques playing nestle comfortably
within the composed structures. Perhaps too comfortably –
most of the tracks opt for midtempo grooves, and angles tend to be
rounded off, with the result that some tracks lose their bite somewhat.
The pieces that work best are those that don't bite at all, remaining
calm and lyrical instead ("Spells" and "Beekeepers'
Club").—DW
Various
Artists
FREEDOM OF THE CITY 2004 SMALL GROUPS
Emanem 4215 2CD
Another year, another Freedom Of The City festival, another Emanem
best of compilation of the proceedings.. The quality is as uniformly
high as in preceding years, with fine performances from all concerned,
but a cursory glance at Gordon Humphrey's photos reminds us that these
guys - and gals, though there are only three of them -aren't getting
any younger. Has free improvisation become a music for grown-ups,
for "those who know", pipe-smoking father figures peering
over their spectacles at their spotty pierced offspring's dirty Marilyn
Manson T-shirts and sighing "one day you'll understand, my dear.."?
Maybe the role model for today's avant-garde teen is Christian Fennesz,
in which case FOTC organisers – Emanem's Martin Davidson, Eddie
Prévost and Evan Parker – better give up hope of ever
filling the Conway Hall to capacity. Anyway, it's something to ponder
while you re-read Wayne
Spencer's review of the festival while checking out John Russell's
Quaqua quintet with Philipp Wachsmann, Phil Minton, Georg Wolf and
Stefan Keune, in an entertaining 22'22" slab of vintage quality
improv. Similarly, the three solo offerings from Paul Rutherford are
as good as they always are, the duos featuring Clive Bell (on sipsi,
shakuhachi, pi saw flute, mini-khene and Cretan pipes) and Sylvia
Hallett (on viola, bicycle wheel, saw, jews harp, digital delays and,
er, breath) are as colourful as their instrumentation, and Morgan
Guberman (vocals) and Gail Brand (trombone) provide more of the fun
and games that characterised their acclaimed Ballgames & Crazy
(Emanem 4103). Pianist Chris Burn convenes a half-Australian
version of his Ensemble, with Jim Denley (flute), Clare Cooper (guzheng)
and Will Guthrie (amplified percussion) joining regulars Burn, John
Butcher and Matt Hutchinson in two elegant if somewhat restrained
offerings. So far so good – but the best is yet to come, in
the form of 35 minutes of free flamenco folly from guitarist Roger
Smith and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo (since when did the Moholo
double up?) who took everyone by surprise, including recording engineer
Sebastien Lexier, by launching into action right after their soundcheck.
Moholo might be best known as the muscle behind the great South African
expat jazz groups of the 1960s and 70s, but his lightness of touch
is just as impressive. Hats off to Davidson for luring the elusive
Smith out of his kitchen and setting up a full-length date with Moholo,
The Butterfly And The Bee, to be released on Emanem in the
near future – watch this space.—DW
Various
Artists
NO IDEA FESTIVAL
Coincident NI 001 / Spring Garden Music 011 / Ten Pounds To The Sound
002 2CD
There's a tendency for some people back here in Old Europe to get
all snobbish about free improvised music, in the same way that certain
older American musicians look down their noses at Europeans who play
free jazz (or any kind of jazz, for that matter). Over the past decade
pedestals have duly been erected to European Improv Grandmasters,
some of whom sit on them quite happily (Evan Parker), others apparently
not giving a toss about the idea (Derek Bailey) or too busy to bother
with it at all (Peter Brötzmann). Dying was certainly the worst
thing that could have happened to John Stevens, because he can't jump
off his anymore; well-intentioned and honest tributes to his pioneering
work at the Little Theatre with the SME have helped reinforce the
myth that Stevens was not only an important figure in the music but
that without him it wouldn't have happened at all. I never met the
man but I can imagine him coming out with a tasty mouthful of local
expletives in response to that.
Across the pond, the idols of free jazz – Coltrane, Ayler, Taylor,
Ornette – are placed so securely on their plinths that not even
an 8.9 quake followed by an Indian Ocean tsunami could knock them
off. American free improvised music, on the other hand, has never
really had one (or more) central heroic father figure, nor has it
been specifically associated with one (or more) particular city in
the way that jazz has – think New York, Kansas City, New Orleans...
As Ned Rothenberg explains in his recent PT interview with Sasha Burov,
the musicians associated with NYC's Downtown scene remained not only
open to but wildly enthusiastic about music other than free improv,
and felt no compelling need to push against the ideological and historical
weight of contemporary composition, Great Black Music, or any other
kind of music by spouting quasi-purist dogma about non-idiomatic improvisation.
In direct (and curious) contrast to the all-encompassing conformity
associated with the globalism of American multinationals, improvised
music in the USA has consistently sought out the margins, remaining
steadfastly and proudly underground, a guerrilla operation par
excellence.
"No Idea 2004 began on a Thursday night, ignoring the usual rule
that there should be at least as many in the audience as on the stage,"
writes alto and soprano saxophonist Jack Wright about the improv festival
whose highlights make up this double CD set. One imagines that Wright
has ignored that rule many times in his career as an improviser –
his indefatigable enthusiasm for playing and his apparent willingness
to jump into a car and drive hundreds of miles just to do so (something
not many Europeans have ever understood, the late Peter Kowald being
a notable exception) has certainly made him a hero for the emerging
generation of American improvisers. Wright has recently been reestablishing
contacts with European improvisers too, notably the French saxophonist
Michel Doneda (if their album from between on SOS with Tatsuya
Nakatani isn't on your shelves already, for Chrissakes do something
about it), not to mention dozens of younger improvisers in France
and Germany, two of whom, percussionist Michael Griener and flautist
Sabine Vogel, crossed over the pond to take part in the splendidly-named
No Idea festival, two legs of which are documented here, recorded
in Austin TX between May 20th and 22nd, and the following day down
the road in Houston. They joined 21 other American musicians, including
Wright, for the kind of event the saxophonist revels in. "Most
sets were put together ad hoc, based on the assumption, somewhere
carved in stone, that any two or more improvisers thrown together
should be able to have and communicate a musical experience."
Amen. Wright is spot on when he describes the ad hoc groupings
as having "real sparkle and freshness, and evolution within the
piece." Examples of it abound throughout this 2CD set, from the
crackly scrabble and squiggle of the electronics in the opening "Beach
Party" (featuring Linda Gale Aubry on electronics and samplers,
Maria Chavez on turntables, Chris Cogburn on percussion and Bryan
Eubanks on soprano sax and analog tape) to the grey granite of bassist
Mike Bullock's trio with trombonist Tucker Dulin and percussionist
Nick Hennies (three other cuts from their set have been released on
Manifold). Griener and Vogel import a touch of Berlin-style reductionism,
and Wright plays along but soon muddies the water in classic Jack
style with some dirty growls and gritty multiphonics. Guitarist Kurt
Newman leads Dulin and Vogel back into more traditionally busy improv
territory, followed by a fabulously inventive quartet featuring the
four percussionists present – Cogburn, Hennies, Griener and
Brian Ramisch. Bay Area-based clarinet virtuoso Matt Ingalls teams
up with Newman and trombonist Dave Dove (let's not get all droolingly
nostalgic about mid 1970s Rutherford and Bailey – that was then,
this is now and this rocks too), before revealing more of his devastating
chops in another trio with Wright and Eubanks. No kittens being born
in boxes here, as Tom Djll memorably described 2000's Signs of Life,
on which he played with Ingalls, Wright and Bhob Rainey – instead
a fluidity and freshness that many Europeans would do well to pay
attention to, all too often snagged as they are in reductionism's
net of whooshes and gargles interspersed with long pregnant silences.
There's plenty of space on the two tracks Ingalls appears on with
the Bullock / Dulin / Hennies trio (opening the Houston disc, though
it was actually the final set played that evening, which began with
the Dove / Griener / Newman / Wright quartet and continued with "Strand
Party" – take the personnel of "Beach Party"
above and add Sabine Vogel's flutes), but there's also an intensity,
a sense of drama that Americans openly embrace and Europeans often
snootily dismiss. Of course, that's a horrifying generalisation –
there's as much passion and fire in European improvised music today
as there is austerity and clinical precision in some areas of American
improv – but the cumulative effect of listening to these two
discs tends to reinforce it. Compared to the music on the Freedom
Of The City set reviewed above, which one instinctively feels
was handpicked to showcase the "best" (i.e. most rounded,
mature, structurally coherent and technically impressive) music performed
at that festival, No Idea is more endearingly chaotic and
sprawling, willing to accept a few lows along with the many highs.
It's a great set, and one that anyone interested in trying to chart
the future course of improvised music – on either side of the
Atlantic or for that matter the Pacific – should check out at
the earliest opportunity.—DW
Günter
Müller / Steinbrüchel
PERSPECTIVES
List L6
They call this stuff "EAI", which stands for "electro
acoustic improvisation", but, as if to illustrate how dumb that
is as a label (looks like we're stuck with it though), there's as
much composition – i.e. post-production reworking – as
improvisation involved on this latest splendid outing from Günter
Müller (who, if you wanted to carry on playing silly buggers,
you could probably describe as the Godfather of EAI, since they've
already found someone to occupy the Pope and Messiah slots) and Ralph
Steinbrüchel, one of a number of young Swiss lions in the field.
Come to think of it, are there any lions in EAI? Large pussycats
maybe, since the music never really roars so much as purrs most
of the time. By now you're supposed to know that Müller plays
iPod, Minidiscs, selected percussion and electronics and Steinbrüchel
laptop; if you don't, I'm telling you, because this info doesn't appear
on the disc itself, the outer cover of which is a Taylor Deupree photograph
of the kind of building His Royal Earness Prince Charles used to describe
as "a monstrous carbuncle". It seems like shots of dull,
functional, rectilinear modern architecture are in fashion these days,
but fortunately the music on Perspectives (not the most imaginative
title in the world either, but never mind) is much more rewarding.
Messrs Müller and Steinbrüchel went on a little tour together
and recorded concerts at Cave 12 in Geneva (two sets), Stralau 68
in Berlin, Confluences in Paris, Gare du Nord in Basel and the Angelica
Festival in Bologna. Each then reworked the recordings into finished
pieces – Müller handles the odd-numbered tracks, Steinbrüchel
the even, which gives listeners an opportunity to explore the similarities
– or lack thereof – between the versions. Completing the
baker's dozen, a thirteenth track recorded in Paris adds List boss
guitarist / laptopper Hervé Boghossian, who also handles remixing
and reworking. Both Müller and Steinbrüchel are pretty prolific
these days, so if your budget doesn't stretch to investing in their
complete discographies, you might like to know that Perspectives
is perhaps Steinbrüchel's strongest outing to date. Then
again, having just written that, I'm forced to ask myself why I actually
believe it to be the case, since on the surface there's very little
difference between the music here and other similar recent outings
from the same musicians (thinking of Steinbrüchel's ATAK release
with Jason Kahn and Kim Cascone reviewed here last month, or Müller
and Kahn's Blinks on For4Ears, or, going back in time a bit,
last year's Momentan.def on Cut featuring Müller, Steinbrüchel
and Tomas Korber). Taking its time to evolve, wrapping the listener
in blankets of warm, rich layers, it's a kind of sonic hotel bed,
always freshly made with crisp white sheets and impeccably folded
pillowslips and invariably a little too big and far too soft. Nope,
can't quite put my finger on why (can YOU recall the most comfortable
hotel bed you've ever slept in? the largest, sure, but I'm talking
most comfortable – the point is they're all comfortable..)
but I like this one. Nice to see that Hervé Boghossian has
abandoned those pesky jewel boxes too, since I'm running out of shelf
space here.—DW
Sinistri
FREE PULSE
Hapna
Changing your name is a risky business if you operate in a niche market
that depends on a small, faithful following of fans, but sometimes
groups have no choice in the matter. Panasonic dropped that second
"a" when lawyers representing that well-known Japanese multinational
starting breathing down their neck, Berlin improv trio Perlon had
to add an "-ex" to avoid being confused with a techno outfit
of the same name (also German, as it turned out), and I still treasure
my LP copy of Massive Attack's first album Blue Lines on
which the "Attack" was dropped altogether, lest anyone get
the idea that the loose collective of Bristol triphoppers were somehow
condoning the Gulf War (the first one). Until recently, Manuele Giannini
(guitars, mostly), Alessandro Bocci (computer, sampler), Roberto Bertacchini
(drums) and Dino Bramanti (live processing) used to go by the name
of Starfuckers, but as the music they make has more to do with improv
and free jazz than the grungy irreverence suggested by the venerable
expletive, they've recently opted to go with Sinistri instead, replacing
the provocative "F word" by a more erudite and subversive
allusion to the witchcraft and wizardry traditionally associated with
the left-handed. There's nothing sinister about the music, though;
never was an album more aptly titled than Free Pulse, because
that's exactly what you get throughout, but just try tapping your
feet to Bertacchini's disarmingly infectious drumming while you dig
the irregular hiccupping, chirpy blasts of wah fuzz and electronic
squiggles. The problem is though that that's all you get, all ten
tracks following the same pattern, the cumulative effect being a kind
of unfulfilled foreplay, a solo or song waiting to happen. Still,
it's an enjoyable wait.—DW
Franz
Hautzinger
ORIENTAL SPACE
aRtonal aRR08
Back
in 1996, trumpeter Franz Hautzinger and sampler virtuoso Helge Hinteregger
recorded Bent, a quartet record with London improvisers Oren Marshall
and Steve Noble released on Extraplatte. After losing a tooth, Hautzinger
took up the ¼-tone trumpet and turned the loss to his advantage,
starting a number of distinguished projects ranging from his highly
acclaimed solo Gomberg to Regenorchester XIV. Recently, Hautzinger
and Hinteregger have founded another quartet, this time with Lebanese
improvisers Mazen Kerbaj on trumpet (and uncredited small objects)
and Sharif Sehnaoui on guitar. Oriental Space starts with “In
The Afternoon”, Sehnaoui’s creaking chilly drone unfolding
into the trumpeters' textural duo improvisation. Kerbaj’s long
tube trumpet preparations – Rajesh Mehta's solo on HatHut comes
to mind – are as compelling as the thick, dense clouds of air
Hautzinger pulls through his instrument. Hinteregger’s sense
of humour is surprisingly appealing, using samples of Oriental singers
and World music. “Goulash” and “Papers from Damascus”
are entertaining excursions into space and the details that fill it,
with ensemble playing low and reserved; Sehnaoui even plays some chords
at the opening of “Noujoum Funk” while the trumpets create
a communal passion enriched by naïve Eastern sampledelia. On
“Courant d’Air”, however, the trumpets sound as
they're attached to Black & Decker saws, and the following “Snow
Sensitive Skin” is interrupted by slap-tonguing and noise as
Sehnaoui’s trick bag overflows in the background. The Lebanese
new breed may be even more experimental than their prolific partners.—VJ
Manfred
Hofer
NUORS
aRtonal aRR09/cha031
Manfred
Hofer’s debut CD, on which he plays acoustic double bass, two
electric bass guitars and amplifier (!?), is co-released by aRtonal
and Charhizma, both labels being enthusiastic champions of new blood
in Austrian contemporary music. The liner notes mention that these
13 recordings, mastered in Christoph Amann's studios in Vienna, sometimes
gloomy, sometimes naïve but all resolutely minimal and often
repetitive (cellist Arnold Haberl, aka Noid, is a frequent Hofer collaborator)
are a starting point in finding vocabulary for a work in progress.
Which means it will probably take another CD to find out what that
story is, as many pieces end just when things are becoming interesting
and the tension starting to rise. It's refreshing that Hofer knows
when to stop, but we’ll have to wait till volume two before
passing judgement.—VJ
Ernesto
Rodrigues / Michael Thieke / Guilherme Rodrigues / Carlos Santos
KREIS
Creative Sources CS 020
Laptopper Carlos Santos is perhaps best known for his work with Paulo
Raposo on the Sirr label, as part of the group Vitriol and on Insula
Dulcamara. Kreis marks his debut on another Portuguese imprint
with which he's become closely associated, Creative Sources. He's
joined by CS boss man Ernesto Rodrigues on violin and viola, his son
Guilherme Rodrigues on cello and pocket trumpet and Michael Thieke
on clarinets on seven tracks of dense (but never muddy) improv. The
most striking quality of the album is the uncompromisingly claustrophobic
mix, courtesy Santos and Ernesto Rodrigues – Thieke's clarinet
isn't so much in yer face as in yer earhole, and the rigorous hardcore
extended techniques of Rodrigues père et fils mesh
with Santos's electronics to create a seething web of information
overload strangely reminiscent of Brian Ferneyhough's Time and
Motion Study II (panning the cello to the left and the violin
to the right makes a welcome change). Like their fellow improv travellers
from the Iberian peninsula, Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Ferran Fages,
aka Cremaster, with whom of course they've performed frequently (the
world of improvised music is a very small one), the four musicians
here have escaped from reductionism's eternal pianissimo cul-de-sac
by climbing over the wall into an area of deserted wasteland once
described by Eric Cordier as "soft noise". And there's lots
to explore there.—DW
Asmus
Tietchens
LITIA
Die Stadt DS80
The Anti Group
PSYCHOEGOAUTOCRATICAL AUDITORY PHYSIOGOMY DELINEATED
Die Stadt DS67
Mirror
STILL VALLEY
Die Stadt DS78
You
wouldn't believe how fascinating ugliness can be, sometimes. This
becomes brutally clear when listening to the old-fashioned drum machines
that constitute the skeleton of much of Asmus Tietchens' Litia,
originally composed in 1982 and 1983. At that time, Tietchens' interest
in synthetic structures was nearing its end, yet even so this album
is spectacularly weird: fake disco rhythms go on for minutes lodging
robotic melodies full of ironic twists, pulses and pseudo riffs à
la Devo coupled with flows of dissonance, bass lines predating Tietchens'
dive into Industrial territory that immediately followed this last
release on Sky. The extreme contrast between Tietchens' creative overflow
and the limitations of the machines he used (which he describes in
the liner notes) led to an apocalyptic warp of conventional synth
music: there's no lyricism or serene meditation here, only a cold,
detached look at the pointless beauties of pop – don't forget
this came out at the beginning of the MTV era when Simple Minds, Depeche
Mode and the New Romantics ruled the charts. The bonus tracks –
always a thrill on the Die Stadt reissues – include music from
the rare 10" Rattenheu and other archival material,
contributing to 64-plus minutes of utterly destabilizing, abnormal
yet highly intelligent music in which, as is often the case with Asmus
Tietchens, substance prevails over appearance.
Also up to Die Stadt's usual high standards is the 16'30" CD
EP by the Anti Group (it says in the press release that Andrew McKenzie
aka Hafler Trio, M. Hogg and R. Baker "may" be the operating
brains behind it all), which could just as well have borrowed the
title of an old Djam Karet record, Suspension and Displacement.
Starting from silence, an incomprehensible murmur moves the still
air around the ears while a repeated muffled piano chord establishes
a slow pattern over which alien funeral choirs, blistering frequencies
and schizoid electronic oscillations become more and more dazzling,
until everything stops in time to leave the last 30 seconds to a series
of belchy outbursts that have absolutely nothing to do with the pretty
ethereal atmospheres heard up to that point.
Equally dedicated to thorough decentralization of any known procedure,
Mirror's Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk are once again joined
by Jim O'Rourke on Still Valley, a new magic potion of illusions
(vinyl only, soon to be followed by a different CD version), whose
flux is centred on a cyclical figure, a sort of flanging chorus made
from undecipherable sources – a synthesizer or just looped guitar
harmonics? The musicians scrutinize silence while gently padding the
surroundings with electronic lumps of morphing drones, swells and
voids that take up residence in our cerebral waiting rooms, trying
to communicate something that our intelligence struggles to understand,
converting them instead into broken codes cancelling meaning and feeling.
Inscrutable and magnificent.—MR
Beequeen
THE BODYSHOP
Important Imprec 044
My
eyebrows are in a twist. Is this Beequeen? The sleeve says so, and
the players are the usual suspects, Frans de Waard and Freek Kinkelaar,
though what's up with the feathery vocals (by Malou Houtman) and the
folky guitar lines on "Sad Sheep"? Essence of Cocteau Twins,
Lush and other 4AD acts of yore inlaid with warped sinewaves and other
layers of familiar percussion.. in the oasis I hear dizzying church
organs and hairy things going bump in the night. Marie-Louise Munck,
whose heavenly voice recalls the more sentimental moments on Sinead
O'Connor's debut album, ushers in Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog"
as if it were the sequel to Kum Ba Ya. For a moment, you think there
may be a contact mic in her mouth, capturing her swallowing between
words. De Waard and Kinkelaar are up to something here, something
far removed from the rest of their catalogue, but still in line with
other experiments, distilling fine spirits in their noise mill: the
beautiful cello on the title track rendered palely by Feiko Halbertsma
like a future standard in the making, the surprisingly perky tribal
percussion on "Blackburn" fading quickly to a jangly stretched
reverse rhythm. The biggest surprise is the bloated beat of "Buzzbag
Drive" with its jazzy frills and funky olde Steely Dan-ish laissez
faire cheekiness. This has to be the first Beequeen that I may need
to listen to a dozen times before I can truly warm to it – but
there's something there behind the layers of melancholy, a kind of
tease, a hazy sunshine just ready to break.—TJN
BJ
Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa
VIKINGA BRENNEVIN
Helen Scarsdale HMS004
The first edition of this album is already something of a collectors'
item, as Helen Scarsdale's in-house designer (and frequent Wire
contributor) Jim Haynes prepared just 300 handmade copper foil
inserts with the album title and track info silk-screened on them.
They look very nice indeed, even if they're stuck in a standard jewel
box, but to be honest I'd have preferred a free bottle of Brennevin
myself, Brennevin being a seriously headfucking potato alcohol normally
bottled in suspicious-looking black glass and highly popular in Iceland,
which is where electronicians Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi
Thorsson aka Stilluppsteypa come from. They're joined by BJ Nilsen,
who hails from Sweden – where they also produce some pretty
wicked liquor, but that's probably beside the point – on five
(there only seem to be four marked on the copper plate) tracks of
utter majesty. Don't you dare say electronic music can't move you
to tears; these huge, spacious glowing structures are sombre, magnificent
and exquisitely constructed (and I haven't got the faintest idea what
their titles mean.. something to do with the booze, who knows?). And
I thought that irr. app. (ext.)'s Ozeanische Gefühle
was a hard act for Helen Scarsdale to follow. Like Matt Waldron (irr.
app. (ext.) to you), our three protagonists here have something that's
all too often lacking in today's boot-the-Mac-click-open-soundfile-and-let-it-rip-and-while-it's-playing-I-can-answer-email
(just joking) electronic music culture: damn good ears. They probably
don't have much liver left if the press release is to be believed,
so make sure you get your copy of Vikinga Brennevin before
stocks dry up altogether. (If you miss out on Jim's copper plate,
don't worry – the music will be the same on the second edition.)—DW
Xabier
Erkizia
ENTRESOL
Antifrost Afro 2026
If you use that little "find it" search engine box thingy
on the home page of this site and type in the word "austere"
don't be surprised if your computer crashes. Seems like it's one of
the words I end up using all over the place, far too often. Don't
think I haven't tried scouting round thesauruses (thesauri?) for alternatives.
Austere's a cool adjective though, meaning abstinent (abstemious,
ascetic, chaste, continent, economical, puritanical, refraining, self-denying,
self-disciplined, sober, straight-laced, strict, subdued, unrelenting),
grim (bald, bare, bare-bones, barren, bleak, clean, dour, plain, primitive,
rustic, severe, simple, spare, Spartan, stark, subdued, unadorned,
unembellished) and severe (ascetic, astringent, cold, earnest, exacting,
forbidding, formal, grave, grim, hard, harsh, inexorable, inflexible,
obdurate, rigid, rigorous, serious, sober, solemn, sombre, stern,
stiff, strict, stringent, unfeeling, unrelenting.. thanks Mr Roget
for all that), and, overused though it might be, it's spot on to describe
the music released on Ilios's Antifrost label. Xabier Erkizia's
Entresol is a slab of vintage Antifrost user-unfriendly electronica,
whose harshness often recalls the work his fellow Basque laptopper
Mattin (yep, it's a small world, and the two have performed and recorded
together). Coming in a plain cover, uniformly dark grey except for
the name and album title which are in light grey (the inside reverses
the trend.. my copy came with a "Promotional Copy Not For Sale"
stamped across the inner spine, as if anybody would ever feel like
buying such an austere – there I go again – looking thing),
its 39 minutes seriously challenge the label name: it's –5°
here today with a dull, cold leaden sky and this music's frostiness
is absolutely perfect. Questions of temperature aside, it's right
in line with the Suffer / Enjoy aesthetic of the label. If
you're already familiar with other releases on Antifrost by Ilios,
Mattin, Daniel Menche and especially the magnificent North &
South Neutrino (Lasse Marhaug and Alan Courtis), you'll know
what to expect. If, however, you need some bright chirpy techno to
accompany the alcohol-free party you're throwing to celebrate your
17 year old sister's passing her driving test, you'd better leave
this one well alone. Pass the Brennevin, motherfucker.—DW
Dave
Phillips
IIIII
Ground Fault GF 031
There's
something instantly intimidating about popping a CD into your player
and seeing 99 tracks flash up, especially when the first of them (called
"wec") is completely silent. Quiet rain begins to fall during
track two ("an"), but that distant thunder should put you
on your guard. The deluge subsides a little, but all hell breaks loose
on track 4 ("rut") – for 11 seconds. The first sign
of retching appears in track 6 ("zeo"), and it returns on
track 9 ("ti"), alternating with some particularly vicious
bangs and crashes. Par for the course for Phillips, whose previous
work with Fear Of God and the actionist activists Gruppe Schimpfluch
is ideal for anyone who needs to be forcibly evicted from their apartment
in a hurry. The novelty of IIIII is the element of surprise,
as there's at least as much silence as noise on the disc, but the
novelty soon wears off and you wish that Dave would just finish emptying
his stomach once and for all and go get himself a Milk of Magnesia.
Doubly frustrating is the fact that what noise there is tends to come
in short sharp bursts – no chance of a good ol' Merz-style extended
blowout here. (There are a few exceptions, notably the final track
"is" and number 78, "po" – incidentally,
if you're wondering about the cryptic track titles, you need only
put them together and they read as follows: "we can scrutinize
our motives and impulses we can know why we act as we do we can approach
a point at which our actions are the results of our choices when we
are conscious everything we do will be done for reasons we can know
at that point we will be authors of our lives this may seem fantastical
and so it is".) If the idea of the disc is to antagonise, it
deserves five stars; if, though, the name of the game is enjoyment
– ah, how old-fashioned that sounds – you might want to
steer clear, unless your idea of enjoyment is having someone vomit
in your ear before shooting you in the head with a nail gun.—DW
L/A/B
PSYCHOACOUSTICS
Ground Fault GF 032
"Live
improvisations on electronics and mechanics treated with scientifically
approved methods; together with composed sections interpolated with
sounds of science; illustrates the musical sounds of the human psyche."
Hmm, sounds like L/A/B – that's Laukka (Petri), Aneheim (Jonas
D) and Bjorkk (Henrik N) – have got a thing about science, described
elsewhere as "the dominating mythology of our time". What
are those "scientifically approved methods"? Approved by
whom? The trio's quest for the "darker form of beauty that we
associate with profundity and truth" certainly raises as many
questions as answers, first and foremost being what drugs are these
chaps using? The music is a curiously accelerated history of electronic
music from 1950s sci-fi to post-Pole dub, via Pierre Henry's Futuristie,
Tenney-like simulated Shepard tones, the 1980s cassette underground,
Merzbow and Ziggy Karkowski. It's not an unpleasant journey, though
there are as many flops as good tracks (the best being "Voie
IV"); strong ideas tend to get bogged down in loops too soon,
as our intrepid explorers get lost somewhere "along the continuum
toward greater pleasure."—DW
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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