| DECEMBER
News 2005 |
Reviews
by Clifford Allen, David Cotner, Nate Dorward, Jesse Goin, Stephen
Griffith, Richard Pinnell, Massimo Ricci, Dan Warburton:
|
|
Editorial
- Interview with JAMES FINN
Reissue This! Norman Howard
Reissued! Brötzmann
& Bennink / Alan Sondheim & Ritual All 770
Label Profile: Antboy
On Rogue Art: Hamid
Drake / Rob Brown / Roscoe Mitchell
On TwoThousandAnd: Broken
Hands & Lucky Rabbit / Anthony Guerra & Nisihide Takehiro
/ Dr Quirkey's Goodtime Emporium Band
Improvised Music by Babies
JAZZ & IMPROV: String
Trio of New York & Oliver Lake / Bosetti & Doneda /
John Tilbury / Coxhill, Gjerstad,
Stephens / Gjerstad; Moholo, Poulsen,
Stephens
Graham Halliwell / Joe Giardullo / David Borgo
/ Agusti Fernandez & Mats Gustafsson
CONTEMPORARY: Xenakis
/ Radigue / Lucier / Mumma
ELECTRONICA: Omit
/ The Haters / Monos / Tape / Sickness & Slogun / Hafler
Trio / Vidna Obmana
Last month
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Thanks
go out this month to Nate Dorward for putting together one of the
best Paris Transatlantic interviews of recent times with James
Finn, to Clifford Allen for researching another one of his invaluable
Reissue This pieces on Cleveland Ohio's unsung trumpet hero Norman
Howard, and to Jesse Goin for his profile of Antboy (that's a journalist
in Minneapolis reviewing a record label owned and run by an Australian
– Will Guthrie – living in Nantes, France.. what would
we do without email, I wonder). Plus of course our other indefatigable
scribes Cotner, Ricci, Griffith and a warm welcome to Richard Pinnell
who checks in with a fine piece on Graham Halliwell's Recorded
Delivery. That's one of those albums that I played over and over
again but for some reason never got round to reviewing – Graham
was right to email and find out what I was doing – but I couldn't
have done a better job than RP. On an unrelated personal note I'd
like to thank everyone who helped put together the tour I've just
finished with Aki Onda and Jac Berrocal (that's Satoko and Kokeko,
Bernard Aimé and the staff at Le Petit Faucheux, Tours, Benoit
at Point Ephemère, Paris, Marten at Fylkingen, Kristoffer Westin
and Annan Musik at Norrköping, Sixto, Marion and Adrien at Cave12,
Geneva, Philippe and Joëlle in Nice). I'm already at work writing
up some of the more hilarious events of the tour – there were
several – into an extended piece for PT's January issue. Meanwhile,
go on tour for a couple of weeks and you come back to a mailbox crammed
full of new discs. Chouette! So if you'll excuse me, I have plenty
of work to do. Meanwhile, bonne lecture. – DW
REISSUE
THIS! Norman Howard
After
some 45 years of free jazz and improvised music, we're well-acquainted
with its regionalism – jazz, as much as the blues, is a music
of place. New York has its urbane clip, embodied by figures as diverse
as Charlie Parker and Giuseppi Logan, Chicago its wide-open spaces
and dirty blowing (from somewhere down the Mississippi, no doubt –
Joseph Jarman and Cliff Jordan are a tenor kinship if there ever was
one), while the West Coast sparkles with a bright lyricism and ebullience
that crossed over from Gerry Mulligan to Eric Dolphy and beyond. But
these three locales are only part of the story: Portland, Boston,
Memphis, Seattle, New Orleans, and St. Louis are just a few cities
that have boasted a strong free-music community since the music's
heyday – witness the talents of figures like Kidd Jordan, Julius
Hemphill, Phill Musra, Mike Bisio and Paul Gresham alongside the progenitors
and torchbearers of free improvisation.
Cleveland, though a Midwestern also-ran to Chicago and a far cry from
New York, has a higher profile than other cities in jazz history,
having produced one of the most important saxophonists of the post-Pres
era: Albert Ayler. Ayler's history is well-documented outside of the
fervent scene that Cleveland provided his young ears and lungs, but
more than one writer has noted that there must have been something
in the Cuyahoga River that the musicians were drinking – Frank
Wright, Charles Tyler, and altoist Arthur Jones all found their weighty,
wide-vibrato lyricism and earthy force somewhere in that elemental
city. Most of these figures, like Albert Ayler and his trumpeter brother
Don, found their artistic recognition elsewhere, in Europe and New
York, but in the absence of these trailblazers there was a small coterie
of musicians who expanded upon the "Cleveland sound" by
honing their research locally, and much of what the city offered in
the wake of Ayler and Wright was found in the music of trumpeter-composer
Norman Howard and his frequent alto foil, Joe Phillips.
 Howard
was born in 1941 and grew up in the same neighborhood as the Aylers.
Playing and gigging locally, he was strongly affected by the music
Ayler brought back from Scandinavia, and left Cleveland for a brief
sojourn in New York in early 1964, as the promise of recognition held
sway. With Cleveland bassist Earle (Errol) Henderson, he joined Ayler,
Sunny Murray and Henry Grimes on Ayler's first proper "free jazz"
record, the watershed Spirits, recorded for Danish Debut
in February of 1964 and later reissued as Witches and Devils
on Freedom. Ironically, what became the quintessential Ayler tune,
the haunting and massive dirge "Witches and Devils," was
a Howard composition – though it was not credited initially
to the trumpeter – and it stands out as the pivotal piece on
the album. Apparently the pace of New York (not to mention the lack
of gigs) was too much for Howard and Henderson to handle, and both
quickly returned to Cleveland, where Howard continued to work on his
compositions, honing an aesthetic of slowly-paced funerary sound-sculptures
with various local musicians, including what appears to be his then-regular
quartet with Joe Phillips (aka Yusef Mumin, alto), Walter Cliff (bass),
and Corney Millsap (percussion).
In November 1968 this quartet recorded nearly enough material for
two records in a Cleveland studio session, some of which was sent
to ESP but remained unreleased (though there is talk of Bernard Stollman's
label revisiting the music on CD in the future), the remainder later
issued as a limited-edition cassette by UK collector-musicologist
Roy Morris (Signals, Homeboy Music 1, 1989). Both the ESP
master and Signals were subsequently reissued together on
the Burn, Baby, Burn cassette (Homeboy 2), a release that
disappeared underground almost immediately. Rumor has it that Howard's
technical abilities as a trumpeter kept his music from being issued
at the time, but his conception as a soloist reveals much more. The
fat smears of sound on Albert Ayler's "Spirits" prefigure
his brother Donald's scattershot explosions and reference a school
of brass playing uniquely suited to energy music and complementary
to the fire of Ayler and post-Ayler saxophonists. And yet Howard's
playing at slower tempi is disarmingly tentative, wrought with the
wavering uncertainty of an Alan Shorter translated into a series of
pointillistic stabs. With all the conviction voiced in a weighty,
measured theme like "Soul Brother Genius", which opens Signals,
it is a tense uncertainty that Howard produces in his startlingly
brittle opening statements. Howard, Phillips and an arco Cliff voice
the minor ghetto dirge over scattered percussive rolls, the composer's
solo a series of persistently morbid and instantly shattered statements
never more than a few bars in length. "Burn, Baby, Burn"
is a manic, brief collective theme very much in the spirit of Ayler's
"Bells," in which Howard's quick, blurred solo is followed
by Phillips' first alto evisceration of the session (Arthur Jones
clearly had precursors in Cleveland), a passionate yet carefully assembled
paean to the wild leaps of Ayler and Eric Dolphy. The theme of "Haunted"
returns to the measured delicacy of the opener, yet Cliff's perversely
bent Silva-isms pull it apart into a psychoactive tone poem, mocking
and goading Howard's trumpet. Phillips' huge vibrato follows, sticking
close to the theme in a careful soliloquy before Cliff is given his
own space to sonically upend the bass, after which Millsap edges in
a rare unaccompanied bashing before the theme returns.
Norman
Howard's compositions do have their limitations and cracks –
there are only two tempi / moods as such, either excruciatingly slow
pathos or inordinately fast, raw runs on very simple thematic elements.
"Bug Out" introduces a few bars of singsong melody that
merely open into a set of screaming solos from the participants (though
Phillips's is especially strong), never quite holding the atmospheric
weight of the dirges. The exploratory openness in pieces like "Haunted"
and its uptempo analogue "Soul Resurrection" makes thematic
simplicity an asset rather than a hindrance. Most of the ESP demo,
false starts and voice-overs included, is made up of Phillips's compositions
(though "Burn, Baby, Burn" does make an appearance):"Sound
From There" offers a uniquely delicate pan-tempo ballad, unison
alto-bass drones girding and then engaging Howard's glassy trumpet
line, while "Satan's Holiday" is essentially "Bug Out"
at a slower tempo."Sadness Holiday" also resembles other
ballads in the set; though sadly marred by several false starts and
voice-overs, the Hodges-like sweetness that characterizes Phillips's
tone reveals his versatility as an improviser and his allegiance to
his colleague Arthur Jones – also a player of searing intensity
and warm delicacy.
After
these two aborted sessions, Norman Howard appears to have disappeared
from the scene, though he's still alive and well in Cleveland. Joe
Phillips, under the name Yusef Mumin, did make one other (albeit similarly
obscure) session in the early 1970s as part of then Oberlin-based
cellist Abdul Wadud's Unity Trio, which presents several thematic
similarities to the music presented on Burn, Baby, Burn.
Howard's music was recently revisited by Swedish reedman Mats Gustafsson
on The Music of Norman Howard (Anagram), an LP-only affair
with an all-star Scandinavian-American lineup of reedman Ken Vandermark,
trombonist Jeb Bishop, drummer Paal Nilsson-Love, bassist Ingebrigt
Håker-Flaten and vibraphonist Kjell Nordeson. It's sadly ironic
that this too received negligible distribution, since Norman Howard's
music, and that of his mate Joe Phillips, is a superb example of how
Albert Ayler's influence inspired musicians back in his hometown as
well as throughout the world. More importantly, it shows how vital
the free music scene was – and still is – on the local
level.–CA
Hoping these words might reach Norman, Yusef/Joe, Walter and Corney,
thanks to Roy Morris (berendes2000@yahoo.co.uk) for providing background
information and tapes.
Peter
Brötzmann / Han Bennink
SCHWARZWALDFAHRT
Atavistic/UMS FMP Archive Edition 254
 One
cold week in early May 1977, Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink
met in the middle of the Black Forest near Donaueschingen to record
an album of environmental sound-art pieces. Schwarzwaldfahrt
("A Walk In The Black Forest" – not to be confused
with Horst Jankowski's piano piece of the same name), released concurrently
with Eine Halber Hunde Kann Nicht Pinkeln ("Half a Dog
Can't Piss"), is probably the most notorious of the Brötzmann-Bennink
duo recordings from that heyday of European free improvisation, if
only for the circumstances of its recording – in nature and
ostensibly "live", but to the forest. In addition to the
array of semi-traditional instruments that both artists use, the sleeve
mentions "birdcalls, wood, trees, sand, land, water, [and] air"
as part of the arsenal. Bennink left most of his drumkit at home,
bringing just a few cymbals and drumsticks into the forest as well
as a clarinet, banjo and detuned viola. Apparently, enough material
for nearly three LPs was recorded that day, though much of it remained
in the vaults until this Atavistic 2CD reissue, which includes an
additional twelve cuts (completism aside, though, the impact of the
initial two sides and forty-odd minutes is so strong that I can't
help but think that they made the right editing choices for the initial
release).
From
the outset, a clarinet/bass clarinet duet, it's clear there's something
different afoot. Granted, Brötzmann and Bennink engage one each
other on clarinets on both Eine Halber Hund… and 1980's
Atsugi Concert (GuA-Bunge), but there's little to compare
with the sheer exuberance on offer here, which goes beyond the usual
collective flux-mania that characterizes their other dates –
the twosome are into something primal, going beyond process and concept
to the origins of music itself, a powerful aesthetic force. The fourth
track begins with Bennink shaking and rattling branches, swinging
them about wildly in a clearing (I can just visualize him doing it),
smacking and smashing sticks against logs, immortalizing on wax what
so many ten-year-olds lose to the unrecorded moment. Brötzmann
enters halfway through and both men exalt in knocking stones together,
scraping them across whatever surfaces they can find – pure
sonic research but also damn good fun. There's a touch of Evan Parker
in the piercing birdcall duet that opens track six, which inspires
what sounds like several real birds to join in until an airplane overhead
serves to remind us all that we can never truly escape the mechanized
world. Of course, it wouldn't be Brötzmann and Bennink without
the ridiculous and the trying of patience – there's an eight-minute
exploration of saxophone duets in a babbling brook (yes, the saxophones
are in the brook), which is absolutely insane and a total
gas to listen to. Confronted as we are today with so many serious
slabs of Art Music, it's all too rare to come across two people communicating
with branches, tossing stones or pummeling upended cymbals filled
with water, making music as if they'd just discovered it. In its primal
and very human way, Schwarzwaldfahrt is the highest form
of conversation: conversation between two men, and man and nature.
In the depths of the Black Forest that day, Peter Brötzmann and
Han Bennink found music.–CA
Alan
Sondheim / Ritual All 770
THE SONGS
Fire Museum
 Funny
I should have mentioned the mythic Nurse List in last month's Editorial,
because another one of the impossibly rare platters Steven Stapleton
namechecked has just resurfaced (hooray!). Google "Alan Sondheim"
and you'll come up with plenty of pages (check out "Philosophy
and Psychology of the Internet"), but not many referring to his
activities as a musician. Apart from this album, which originally
appeared – and I imagine promptly disappeared – in 1967
on a label called Riverboat, there were two outings on ESP, Ritual-All-7-70
(ESP 1048) and T'Other Little Tune (ESP 1082), then nothing
until four cassette releases in the late 80s and a CDROM from 2001
(if anyone wants to clue me in on these last five, I'd be grateful).
On The Songs Sondheim plays, wait for it, acoustic, electric
and Hawaiian guitars, violin, flute, suling, xylophone, alto sax,
clarinet, shenai, recorders, mandolin, so-na, koto, chimta, English
horn, sitar and pansari, and is joined by Barry Sugarman (tabla, dholak
and naquerra), Chris Mattheson (bass), Robert Poholek (trumpet and
cornet), vocalists Ruth Ann Hutchinson and June Fellows (Vocals) and
a certain J.Z. on "jazz drums" (presumably to differentiate
himself from Sugerman, though it doesn't sound all that jazzy to me).
Together they formed a improvised music collective, Ritual All 770,
based in Providence, Rhode Island, where this freewheeling free oratorio
was recorded in March 1967, two months after their first ESP album.
It's a single improvised performance recorded live with no overdubs
(though Sondheim added some special effects later in the mixing stage)
– this is the second of two takes. The singers were given an
eight-page libretto for Sondheim's "Oratorio on the end of illusions"
but were allowed to pick, choose, repeat and ignore sections of it
at will. "The only instruction given to the instrumentalists
was this: no playing behind the koto or classical guitar," Sondheim
notes in the liners. Musically, it's not hard to see why ESP's Bernard
Stollman decided to release Sondheim's music – it's an endearingly
ramshackle melting pot of free jazz, blues and folk (if Eugene Chadbourne
later described his work as "free improvised country & western
bebop" then this is "free improvised Hawaiian flamenco gospel
blues music theatre"), right up the same street as the other
leftfield oddballs Stollman signed up for his label: The Fugs, Patty
Waters, Marzette Watts, and The Sea Ensemble. Forget the duff sound
quality – a modest footnote informs us that "this CD was
mastered using the best available vinyl source".. Christ, I dread
to think what the worst available vinyl source might sound
like then – and go for the music: The Songs is one
of those wild and wonderful everything-goes experiences from a time
and place that now seems all too far away, but its influence resonates
(indirectly, one imagines, unless there are more copies of the original
vinyl in circulation than I imagine) in the free folk of today's New
Weird America scene. If you're OD'ed on Sunburned Hand Of The Man,
take a little trip in Uncle Alan's Time Machine and detox back in
1967. You won't regret the price of the ticket.–DW
Australian
percussionist and Antboy label manager Will Guthrie in conversation
with Jesse Goin
Born
in 1977, Will Guthrie says he came to his love of music under the
influence of his brother’s collection of Led Zeppelin and the
Who. Eventually Guthrie took up the drums, playing along with tapes
of Public Enemy and the Dead Kennedys. He would go on to study percussion
at the University at Melbourne, launching several “free rock/free
jazz” bands under the rubric Antboy. After a time, Guthrie stopped
playing drums; “…in an attempt to rid myself of predictable
habits and clichés, I started playing percussion on objects
spread out on the floor, then moved on to playing with microphones
and objects on a table.”
Guthrie moved to London in 2003, then to Paris, and currently resides
in Nantes. He has organized, promoted and presented numerous concerts
and multi-arts events, focusing on the Australian improv scene. He
has toured Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan and Europe. Guthrie
is currently interested in studio composition and group work “that
is moving more and more away from improv meetings.” Among Guthrie’s
current working projects are Charlie Charlie, his duo with Erell Latimier;
trios with Matthew Earle and Adam Sussman, and Ferran Fages and
Jean-Philipe Grosss; [N:Q] with Julien Ottavi, Keith Rowe and Manu
Leduc; and solo performances.
JG: When was Antboy launched?
 WG:
Antboy Music was launched in 2002 when I released my first solo CDR,
Rose Coded, from two live performances I did that year. It started
as I imagine many musician-run labels start, with the fact that I
had recorded material I was happy with, and I was too proud (or stubborn!)
to ask someone else to put it out, and too impatient to wait for someone
else to put it out (not that anyone was offering!), so I did it myself.
I didn't plan on starting a label at all, I just had some material
I wanted to make available. In the past I'd had bands called Antboy,
and the cover needed a contact on it, hence Antboy Music! It made
sense to call it that, as it was a continuation of other projects
I had using that name. There was no real concept at that stage of
what Antboy was going to be other than an outlet for releasing my
own music, which it still is, but that has since changed a little
with the release of the Ernie Althoff CD, the first Antboy CD without
me on it!
JG:
Ernie Althoff's work is in some ways antipodal (pun intended) to yours:
on Heliosonics he generates music with solar power, while
you compose with junk, motorized metals, Walkman and other electronic
detritus.
 WG:
We both use mainly found materials, junk, and percussion, but I don't
use many electronic gadgets except for a Walkman and, occasionally,
radio. The rest is just microphones, using the microphones as an instrument
in its own right, making the acoustic source "sound" electronic
when it isn't.. I also do this by using different little speakers.
The other similarity with Althoff (and the rest of the Antboy artists),
is that nobody on Antboy really uses electronic or digital effects.
With the exception of Greg Kingston and Adam Sussmann (guitar), none
of them really play an instrument either, or at least as it is supposed
to be played: I play junk, Ernie objects, Matt Earle an empty sampler,
the instrument itself is not so important.
JG:
You have found a label mate whose work provides a dramatic juxtaposition
to yours: Althoff's installation pieces on Dark By 6 depend
on the aleatory, while you sculpt by stealth, editing carefully constructed
shards of sound. I'm thinking of Spear and Les Respirations...
WG: Yes, but
that's my studio work. Recording in a studio is a very different thing
to live performance, and Antboy isn't so interested in putting out
CDs that simply document a concert. I use the studio as an instrument
itself, and it's more composition than improvisation, whereas lots
of Ernie's work is more visual / installation / spacial orientated.
 JG:
How did you get started in improvised music?
WG: In Melbourne
from about 1996-1999 I organized concerts of improvised music because
nobody else was doing it. There were plenty of jazz gigs at the time,
and a few improv things and festivals, but nothing regular. With a
few others we started organizing a regular Tuesday night series of
improvised music concerts, just out of a need to play, experiment,
present our music. At the time I was playing drums/junk/percussion
and coming from a more free/jazz/rock background, so there were very
few places to play. We just filled a need, it was the same idea with
the label. In this music it's pretty rare that people offer you things:
more often than not you have to do the asking or do it yourself, so
we just did it.
JG: How do you
choose the artists for your label? What distinguishes your label from
others in the marketplace?
 WG:
Well, with the exception of the Althoff CD, all the releases so far
have documented existing working relationships that I've been involved
in. However, Antboy tries to present musicians that sound like themselves,
that have their own voice or are working towards it. I've never been
interested in "stylistic correctness" in music, people following
a set of musical rules, so I guess the musicians on Antboy are kind
of in line with that. To my ears they are unique enough to present
really strong individual music, and they don't really fit in to any
prescribed format. All the releases on Antboy are pretty different
so far and I'm happy with that. That's something I want to keep up,
instead of creating a strict "musical identity" for the
label that will push it into a corner. Again, I am not so interested
in any one style or method of making music, and the label is an extension
of that. The agenda is to be as different, original and unique as
possible. However, with the exception of Charlie Charlie, Antboy has
so far released music only by Australian artists, so one of the ideas
has been to present music that is kind of particular to Australia..
This is a pretty loaded topic and difficult to describe: "What
is Australian music?" But Ernie's work is really unique in its
use of Australian materials, and I feel Greg Kingston has a very particular
"Australian" sense of humour in his playing. It's crass,
un-polite, politically incorrect etc .This may change soon; maybe
I'II be releasing stuff from musicians from other countries, so it's
not a "rule". It's just been this way so far.
JG: What would
you release if you received a handsome endowment for the label?
WG:
There have been many artists, most of them Australian, whose work
I would have released happily if I'd had the money, but it's been
financially impossible for me to invest in any projects other than
my own. This is something I really hope will change in the future.
I offered Ernie a CD on Antboy because I've loved his work for a long
time, and there are others like him that I would love to release something
by. But again it's finances that hold it back a little.
JG:
What is your distribution network looking like currently?
WG:
It's OK, probably the same as most labels! The discs are pretty much
at all the major distributors for this kind of music. And if I tour
I often take them around to local shops.
JG:
Will Antboy continue to be an outlet for your own work? How has your
perspective on the experimental music scene and its audience been
informed by label ownership?
 WG:
I think Antboy will probably always be associated with me, my music
and my tastes in music, although I would prefer it opened out a little
more to other artists. I predict that Antboy will be around for quite
a while because it started as an outlet for my own work and will probably
continue like that, not necessarily with very a regular release schedule,
quite simply because it's an outlet for my own music, it's another
aspect of what I do.
Today there's a demand (a small one!) for some of the smaller Australian
and New Zealand labels to be distributed here in Europe, so Antboy
is now doing a really low-key mail-order service for some of those
labels, basically to make and keep this music available for anyone
interested. And as Antboy is a small label it's not so much work to
keep going. The danger of it falling apart is small; there's not so
much to fall apart! I remember reading an interview with Eddie Prévost
where he talked about the idea of running a label being just a logical
extension of what most experimental musicians do anyway. Most of us
at some stage have organized concerts to present our own music, done
the CD artwork ourselves, written and printed the press releases ourselves,
etc. While sometimes I'd love someone else to do this stuff for me,
it's normal and it makes sense to do it myself. Also the situation
is really different now, as the cost of making a CD is drastically
less than it used to be, and making CDRs is possible, also the whole
downloading subject, so record companies in a traditional sense have
become irrelevant in terms of musicians needing them to release their
music. The last thing I want to do is be writing to labels all the
time (I have done it a little, not much), and asking for a release:
"Er, did you listen to my music? Did you like it? Would you like
to release it? How much will it cost me? Am I going to get ripped
off?" I do that enough to get concerts! I just feel that releasing
my own music suits the music. [Interview by email by Jesse Goin
- Go to: http://www.antboymusic.com]
Hamid
Drake
BINDU
RogueArt ROG-0001
Rob
Brown
RADIANT POOLS
RogueArt ROG-0002
Roscoe
Mitchell
TURN
RogueArt ROG-0003
These
CDs from the new French label RogueArt trigger all my collecting instincts
– my book-collecting instincts, that is, since they look like
gorgeous faux-paperbacks in the classic French style. If Gallimard
started issuing American free jazz on CD, the results would look like
this: there’s no cover image, just black Bodoni titles on radiant
white, and liner notes and a photo of the musicians are tucked inside
the equivalent of a French flap. The liner notes similarly tend towards
literariness, not to mention effusiveness – take your pick between
Alexandre Pierrepont and Steve Dalachinsky’s post-Beat gush
and Franck Médioni’s pontifications (“How to ‘be’
together? How to ‘be’ with the other?”). The music
itself on these three discs could best be described as “balanced”,
emphasizing interplay between composed materials and improvisation,
and featuring bands that are, if not working groups, at least musicians
who have frequently played together. Some labels favour one-off encounters
or eyecatchingly unexpected assemblages of players (often as much
the producer’s idea as the players’): RogueArt instead
seems to be interested in musicians’ “normal” practice,
as expressed within the controlled conditions of the studio. (Of course
this focus may change as the label’s catalogue grows.) The effect
is of thumbnail portraits of the current methodologies and preoccupations
of three notable figures on the current free jazz scene.
 Earlier
this year Hamid Drake was featured in Downbeat as a “rising
star” – a welcome dollop of mainstream recognition, though
you’d think that at the age of 50, he’d rate a little
higher than a mere up-and-comer. The keynote of Bindu, the
drummer’s first album as a leader, is the relation between drums
and the human voice, whether raised in praise, prayer or elegy. Drake
himself likes to croon or chant occasionally (as on “Born upon
a Lotus”), and on the ensemble tracks the emphasis is on the
swaying, ragged choral textures of the four horns (Daniel Carter,
Ernest Dawkins, Sabir Mateen, and Greg Ward). It’s music more
about sound, mood and collaborative jamming than about development
– the slightest of riffs is often spun out into ten-minutes-plus
– but the results are varied and alluring, whether the languorous
world-music vibe of “A Prayer for the Bardo” and “Meeting
and Parting” or the tumbling free jazz of “Bindu #2”.
Top honours, though, go to the opening duet with guest flutist Nicole
Mitchell, and the last track, 13 minutes of Drake alone at the kit.
A mixed bag, perhaps, but mostly a successful one, and Drake’s
rolling, handwoven grooves are a tonic in this age of jazz drummers
hung up on herkyjerky hyperactivity.
 Rob
Brown’s Radiant Pools doesn’t have the Don Cherryish
spirituality and wanderlust of the Drake disc, but the saxophonist
shares a similar preference for an inside/outside approach to free
jazz that finds plenty of opportunity for grooving. In the past William
Parker would be the inevitable bassist on this gig, but this time
it’s Joe Morris, and his hardbitten lines (so different from
his guitar work, which tends to verbosity) suit the music admirably.
Steve Swell, a trombonist who approaches free playing with the clipped
precision of a hardbopper, provides a much richer foil than Roy Campbell
did on Brown’s last album, The Big Picture (another
French release, incidentally, on the Marge label), and the group is
rounded out by Morris’s regular drummer, Luther Gray, a player
rarely encountered outside the Riti catalogue – a pity, as he’s
terrific here, especially on the opening “Boxed Sets”.
Brown’s leaps-in-space approach to soloing can suggest Dolphy
(especially his work here on Morris’s African-flavoured “King
Cobra”), but the mood of his work is the reverse of Dolphy’s
confident outlandishness: the way Brown’s solos reach up repeatedly
to fragile high notes gives his work an engaging feeling of vulnerability.
The album feels almost too shapely at times: a touch of wildness would
have made the difference between a very good disc and a truly memorable
one. But Brown’s alto remains one of the most appealing sounds
in the current jazz scene, and this is a characteristically fine outing,
the sort of thing you might lay on an unregenerate hard bop fan to
show him what he’s been missing.
 The
quintet on Roscoe Mitchell’s Turn is made up of players
who have been with him for some time – in the case of bassist
Jaribu Shahid and drummer Tani Tabbal, since the classic Snurdy
McGurdy and Her Dancin’ Shoes (1980), while pianist Craig
Taborn and trumpeter Corey Wilkes have taken part in his recent large-ensemble
recordings with the Note Factory. Most of the tracks here are very
short – fourteen of them within an hour – and the album
has a notebook feeling, as Mitchell works through his latest thoughts
on some favourite topoi: jingling percussion ensembles, circular-breathing
saxophone blowouts, pseudo-baroque music (the beautiful waltz “In
Six”), formally scored music labelled as “Pages”
and “Quintets” (including the ringing, shimmering “Page
Two A”, one of the album’s finest moments) and even a
warped funk number that’s over in a mere 1'24". The effect
is of an elusive formalism: even the wall-of-noise improv of “Take
One” seems to take free-jazz uproar as another mode for systematic
exploration. This is jazz rendered unsettlingly transparent or evanescent,
as if it were a shimmering surface over a more elusive interior (or
nothing at all?), and ultimately I’m reminded of a phrase from
my grad-school days: “self-consuming artefacts”. Wilkes
is largely surplus to requirements, but the rest of the band are well-attuned
to Mitchell’s aesthetic, with Taborn the stand-out player.–ND
Doctor
Quirkey's Goodtime Emporium Band
A 6
Broken
Hands / Lucky Rabbit
LUCKY HANDS
Anthony
Guerra / Nishide Takehiro
SCOPA POSSIBILITIES
 London,
as Martin Davidson will proudly confirm, boast more free improvisers
per square mile than any other city on the planet, but even despite
the noble encouragement of that most Londoncentric of new music publications,
The Wire, many still have to struggle to play for more than
five people, five quid and a packet of chips at the end of the gig.
So the scene has gone into survival mode: small venues (the studio
at Resonance FM where Lucky Hands was recorded is certainly
cosy), small groups (with the exception of the awful hydra-headed
monster that is the LIO) and small labels, including Wastell's Confront
and TwoThousandAnd, this latter co-founded by guitarists Michael Rodgers
and Australian (then resident in Britain) Anthony Guerra, who also
perform together as a duo, Broken Hands. Lucky Rabbit is also a duo,
consisting of Ross Lambert, also on electric guitar, and Seymour Wright
on alto sax. Lucky Hands is a joint venture between the two
outfits (one imagines the next one will have to be Broken Rabbit),
featuring two tracks by each as well as one Guerra / Wright duo, one
Lambert and Rodgers duo and one quartet. The influence of Off Site-style
Japanese lowercase is still discernible– Lucky Rabbit's debut
on the label recorded back in 2002 also featured, you'll recall, Utah
Kawasaki, Ami Yoshida and Tetsuro Yasunaga – and there's a whiff
of post-Fahey post-Connors take-your-time fingerpicking, but there's
also a whimsical and typically British feel to it all, a sense of
humour that harks back to second generation LMC improvisers like Steve
Beresford and Terry Day and an off-the-wall experimental purity you
can also find in Morphogenesis. The recording is so intimate it sounds
as if they're all in your front room – you almost feel you're
intruding on something simply by listening to it. Shades of Roger
Smith playing his Spanish guitar in his kitchen in the wee small hours.
 Guerra's
outing with Nisihide Takehiro, Scopa Possibilities, was recorded
in London in 2003 before the former returned down under and the latter
relocated to Japan. Guerra's on guitar and electronics here, but Nisihide
is billed as playing "various" (and as most of the links
you can dig up on him by Googling are in Russian, good luck trying
to find out exactly what that "various" means). His last
two releases on the label, Iberian Tour with Guerra, Rodgers
and Joel Stern and plastic (released under the name of Popo
and clocking in at just nine minutes) are both sold out, so I'm none
the wiser. Not surprisingly Scopa Possibilities is a pretty
inscrutable 34 minutes of soft noise, with low gloomy drones, vicious
clicks and occasional blasts of noise interspersed with threatening
silence. It's very much the Mattin aesthetic – Mattin of course
being an honorary member of the TwoThousandAnd crew, his Gora
being the label's most powerful release to date – somewhere
between Malfatti and Merzbow (nearer Malfatti, thankfully). Try setting
fire to your house while playing a Sachiko M solo album simultaneously
with early Xenakis electronic music – it might just sound something
like this.
 The
most extreme of these three releases though is A6, by the
splendidly-named Dr Quirkey's Goodtime Emporium Band, another two-man
outfit (hey, three's a crowd..) consisting of Chris O'Connor on drums
and Daniel Beban on guitar. It's a continuous 43-minute span of music
that, in a strange way, achieves the impossible, managing to be unremittingly
static – Beban's basic chord remains the same throughout –
and consistently fast-moving, as O'Connor darts around his kit, flailing
hi-hat, toms and snare with his brushes like Han Bennink on acid but
at a volume level you'd associate with John Stevens' work with the
mid-1970s SME. The music is totally distinctive – play it once
and I guarantee you'll be able to recognise any part of it again instantly
– and yet totally forgettable, containing absolutely nothing
whatsoever that could stand out as a structural defining event. At
one and the same time then it's a rather neat example of Stockhausen's
moment form and also a comment – maybe an ironic one, at that
– on improvised music's typical busy-ness. In its own quiet
yet flustered way it's an extraordinary and unique document, and,
as TwoThousandAnd's elegant hand-made packages tend to sell out fast,
I wouldn't let this one pass you by without giving it a listen. The
question is, how many listens? How many times do you need to listen
to this music? How many times would you want to? For you to figure
out.–DW
Improvised
Music by Babies
Various
Artists
KINDERMUSIK – IMPROVISED MUSIC BY BABIES
Amorphon
 I
guess it had to happen sooner or later. If I had a penny for every
time I've heard some wag propped up against the bar at an improv concert
say "My two year old could do that" I could probably buy
another Fisher Price tape recorder (my son Max, now seven, never had
much time for his, and ended up giving it away, preferring to raid
my record collection instead). Well, Yoshio Machida's gone one better
– no, wait, six months better – none of the ten
performers on this album is more than 18 months old. Just as well,
since if they could read they might start swotting up on copyright
law and suing their parents, or Machida, or whoever it was who instigated
this project. OK, so every doting parent takes far too many photos
of their mewling puking infants, at least until they stop mewling
and puking, learn to walk and start posing for the shot, by which
time it's no fun anymore, and many people record the noises they make
too (I didn't, in fact, and rather regret not being to go back and
listen with detached pleasure to the deranged caterwauling that drove
me crazy at the time) – but actually releasing the recordings
for public consumption is another matter. A cursory glance at some
of the names of the people involved in the recording – electropop
fiend Felix Kubin, installation artist Andrew Deutsch and Machida
himself – could reveal a sinister plot to exploit poor unsuspecting
tots by the trendy avant-garde (though as I stuck a photograph of
Max when he was nine months old on the cover of my own first album,
I'm in no position to talk).
"Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage Mrs Worthington",
sang Noel Coward in a famous ditty (though I bet you've forgotten
how violent it gets in verse 4: "One look at her bandy legs should
prove / She hasn't got a chance, / In addition to which / The son
of a bitch / Can neither sing nor dance, / She's a vile girl and uglier
than mortal sin, / One look at her has put me in / A tearing bloody
rage"). W.C. Fields was even more direct: "Children should
neither be seen nor heard from – ever again." But here
we have ten tracks by ten different babies playing a variety of instruments
– toys, organs, tape recorders, electric pianos, zithers and
even steel drums. They're all perfectly cute and none of them is very
long – after all, kids this age do have short attention spans
– but only a couple of them are interesting enough to want to
listen to again. Myona Sonobe sounds like she's having fun (apologies
by the way if she's a he, but I'm not all that well-up on Japanese
first names and the photo on the back of the disc is so tiny it's
hard to tell – actually sometimes it's hard to tell even if
the baby's right there in front of you) dropping what sounds like
a soft rubber ball onto a steel drum, but the track by Bela Elektra
Brillowska (is that his real name? Wow. I suppose it's never too early
to start using a pseudonym: you ask Baby LeRoy, the kid W.C. Fields
booted in the butt in It's A Gift – actually you can't
ask him because he died four years ago) is positively scary. Over
an organ loop – did the bright young thing set that going himself
I wonder or did Herr Kubin lend a hand? – little Bela gives
the old Fisher Price mic the shivers with some ghostly (ghastly) groans.
Sounds like a pre-school version of The Swans, if you can imagine
such a thing. Elsewhere Erophey Dobrovolski twangs a zither and Benjamin
Deutsch and Alyssa Elliott tinker with toy pianos and come up with,
respectively, one rather interesting descending dominant seventh (after
two minutes aimless plonking) and a few inspired seconds before Ms
Elliott switches on the hideous built-in drum machine. The rest of
the tracks feature the horrid pre-recorded jingles emanating from
mass produced kiddy toys – and even a master improvisers like
Steve Beresford and Martin Klapper often have a hard time making them
sound remotely musical.
I suppose, getting serious for a moment – though I'll admit
it's hard: this one's had me in stitches for a couple of days –
Machida is trying to make some point about innate creativity. Either
that or it's some kind of ironic dig at the snuffles and flutters
of lowercase improv (literally "my two year old could
do that"), in which case it fails miserably. The tiny vocal noises
Ami Yoshida produces might bear some superficial resemblance to Maya
Konishi's delightful little gurgles, and Alyssa's plonks very occasionally
(and hilariously) recall Misha Mengelberg, but after listening to
the kids you truly appreciate Yoshida's superb voice production and
mic technique and Mengelberg's impeccable timing and touch. As far
as innate creativity goes, I can tell you for a fact that my two year
old did things just as good and I'm sure yours could too. So if you
feel like buying a copy of this one go right ahead – the cover's
really cute – but, well, let's just say it's a novelty. And,
as the saying goes, the novelty soon wears off.–DW
String
Trio of New York with Oliver Lake
FROZEN ROPES
Barking Hoop
 The
uncompromising integrity of Kevin Norton's Barking Hoop label is once
more on display in Frozen Ropes, featuring alto sax great
Oliver Lake and three beautiful string painters, namely violinist
Rob Thomas (who's collaborated with artists as diverse as Andy Summers,
John McLaughlin and Lee Konitz), guitarist James Emery (formerly one
of Steve Reich's Musicians) and bass maestro John Lindberg. The album
consists of five tracks – four originals and a Coltrane cover
– each with its distinct personality, reciprocal active listening
generating magical interplay. Lake's opener "Shiffs" is
jazz meets modern chamber music, its score calling for timbral nuances,
a graceful entwining of slightly dissonant periods and some articulated
soloing, to the delight of those who dream of a cross between Django
Reinhardt and Alban Berg. John Lindberg penned the title track, in
which a splendid conversation leads to a thought-provoking exploration
of instrumental virtuosity and nervous rhythmic energy, Lake and Thomas
flying high over a multidimensional foundation laid down by Emery
and Lindberg, who swap roles at the blink of an eyelid. Lake's own
"Reminds Me" and Coltrane's "Lonnie's Lament"
are both classic ballads, yet the musicians approach them with reverent
savoir-faire, studiously avoiding the deadly boredom of the
conventional cadenzas heard in a million jazz clubs, thanks in no
small part to Emery's shimmering uncluttered chordal work. The guitarist
is also the author of the most peculiar track of the CD, "Texas
Koto Blues", which is divided into three parts, the first an
overcharged blues that, after three and a half minutes makes way for
a raga-like reflection on the many facets of free playing before ending
with a bold thematic statement as Lake joins the Trio in a joyously
life-affirming orchestral presence.–MR
Alessandro
Bosetti / Michel Doneda
BREATH ON THE FLOOR
absinthRecords
 I
happen to agree with that old Philip Glass quote: "People want
to like new music." Indeed they do, and the reason you're reading
this now probably has a lot to do with the fact. But does new music
want to like people? Or, more specifically, want people to
like it rather than just respect it? There's something admirable
about artists who refuse to make the slightest concession to listeners,
forcing them to challenge their own preconceptions and meet the creator
on his/her own terms, but ultimately the music I tend to return to
is the stuff I can respond to on something more than admiration level.
Soprano saxophonist Michel Doneda's album from:between (with
Jack Wright and Tatsuya Nakatani), which inaugurated Daniel Yang's
excellent SoSEditions imprint last year, was one of the most thrilling
experiences of recent times for this listener, which makes this latest
offering from Doneda and fellow soprano explorer Alessandro Bosetti
all the more puzzling. Recorded "on the floor" by Pierre-Olivier
Boulant (who also recorded Doneda and Bosetti's Potlatch outing with
Bhob Rainey Placés dans l'air and Doneda's Sopranino
/ Radio on Fringes, as well as Bertrand Gauguet's solo debut
Etwa on Creative Sources), its seven tracks present a diverse
array of New Sax Techniques from breathy rasps, flutters, splutters,
gurgles and raspberries to simultaneously-sung groandrones (and even
the occasional recognisable note), but I'm left wondering what it's
all in aid of. It's too easy to scoff at what you might suppose to
be a lack of conventional saxophone technique, as Chris Kelsey did
in his withering and misguided recent review of the Gauguet album
at One Final Note, and, unlike Kelsey, not being a saxophonist myself,
I wouldn't dare to make some dumb blanket statement along the lines
of "anybody can do this." But I am led to wonder how Doneda
and Bosetti really expect listeners – either neophytes or old
improv hands like me – to feel after 44'13" in this chilly,
humid, reptile-infested swamp. I've donned wetsuit and goggles four
times already and haven't found any buried treasure yet in the pools
of phlegm. I guess I'd better keep on trying.–DW
John
Tilbury
BARCELONA PIANO SOLO
Rossbin
 John
Tilbury was once described in a Grob press release as "the Dean
of British New Music", and there is a certain almost academic
gravitas to a Tilbury performance that justifies the description,
not to mention the pianist's track record as an interpreter of contemporary
classical music and his principled stand on matters political, notably
his much-discussed one-man boycott of the United States (you should
read his views on the subject at http://incalcando.com/tilbury). Though
he's appeared on several excellent high profile improv albums, not
only with AMM – think Absinth on Grob, with Werner
Dafeldecker, Franz Hautzinger and Sachiko M, and the two Erstwhile
extravaganzas The Hands Of Caravaggio with MIMEO and Duos
For Doris with Keith Rowe – he's perhaps best known in
the wider world for his association with the music of composers Christian
Wolff, Cornelius Cardew and Morton Feldman. And, despite the immaculately
prepared piano and a range of (for Tilbury) new playing techniques,
it's Feldman that casts a long shadow over this 36 minute improvisation
recorded in December 2003 at L'ESPAI de Música i Dansa de la
Generalitat de Catalunya in Barcelona. Most obviously because the
music is predominantly slow, spacious and quiet, but also because
Tilbury, like Feldman, spends much of his time exploring tiny constellations
of notes, or more specifically, intervals. The characteristically
gentle chromaticism of Feldman – three or more adjacent semitones
(or octave displacements thereof) and a prominent whole tone or third
– is also present here, a distinctive harmonic colour that explains
why few improvisers seem able convincingly to engage with Tilbury
on the pitch level (hence the rather disappointing three piano outing
Another Part Of The Story on Emanem a while back with Howard
Riley and Keith Tippett), while musicians who are less concerned with
pitch as a parameter – Hautzinger, Sachiko M, and of course
Keith Rowe – fare better. But there's nothing else to get in
the way here, except the audience applause at the end, which unfortunately
breaks the spell for this listener and brings me back down to earth
with a jolt. But maybe that's precisely what Tilbury intends his music
to do, after all.-DW
Lol
Coxhill / Frode Gjerstad / Nick Stephens
THIS THAT AND THE THE OTHER
Loose Torque
 This
splendid studio date recorded in September 2003 features the distinctive
soprano sax of the grand old recedent himself, Lol Coxhill, in a muscular
battle with Frode Gjerstad's clarinets and alto sax and bassist and
Loose Torque head honcho Nick Stephens. Stephens appears to have some
kind of a brush handy to thrum the strings of his bass on "That",
but apart from that there's no drummer on the date – and yet
the trio really swings, an underlying tough though never
explicitly stated groove seeming to propel the music forward. The
recording is superb, and really catches the punch and sweat of the
session, from Stephens' hefty twangs to Coxhill and Gjerstad's joyous
yelps. It's certainly refreshing to hear two saxophonists actually
playing their horns, especially since most of the folks who seem to
pick up the instrument today to play improvised music seem more interested
in huffing and puffing rather than actually blowing the house down.
(See above..) Both Coxhill and Gjerstad really know how to carry and
develop a line – you can call it technique if you like, I don't
mind – and it makes all the difference.–DW
Frode
Gjerstad / Louis Moholo / Hasse Poulsen / Nick Stephens
CALLING SIGNALS
Loose Torque
 1996
certainly feels like a long time ago from where I'm sitting. Since
bassist Nick Stephens went into Notting Hill's Dubversive Studio in
November of that year, the members of the band with him that day have
moved on: drummer Louis Moholo has added another Moholo to his name
(ancient African practice, apparently) and, I believe, moved back
to his native South Africa, Danish guitar whiz Hasse Poulsen has taken
up residence in the leafy suburbs of Paris and made quite a name for
himself kicking up a psychedelic storm behind Louis Sclavis, amongst
others, and Frode Gjerstad has slowly but surely become one of the
most original (and most often overlooked) improvising saxophonists
on the scene (see above!). But even a casual listen to these eight
magnificent tracks (whose titles might not inspire: "Fjord Deep,
Mountain High" – aagh – "Drums'n'Bass"
– now that's 1996 for ya) reveals ample evidence of
the musicians' prodigious talent. It's a lively exploration of strong
– but never bruising – free-form playing remarkably free
of standard improv dogma: there are no "thou shalt nots"
to get in the way of these four gentlemen as they explore the various
permutations of their collective instrumentation. In fact, nothing
(apart from that track title) that sounds like 1996. Calling Signals
may have taken a long time to see the light of day, but it's been
worth the wait.–DW
Graham
Halliwell
RECORDED DELIVERY
Confront Collectors Series
 Graham
Halliwell has moved away from playing saxophone traditionally, using
the instrument instead as a resonating chamber to create clouds of
feedback which he controls with remarkable precision by adjusting
his position in relation to the microphone. The tones generated have
a sparse ethereal feel to them, but retain an acoustic warmth that
clearly distinguishes them from electronically created sound. Halliwell's
work with Mark Wastell and Bernhard Gunter in the group +minus has
challenged some of the unwritten rules of improvised music in recent
times, notably that group's occasional use of pre-recorded material
as a base track to play along with, a practice Halliwell develops
further with Recorded Delivery, two of whose three duets
use extant material provided by Halliwell’s collaborators.
The opening "Beat" finds the saxophonist working with recordings
of Rhodri Davies’ e-bowed harp (and sounding remarkably compatible
with Halliwell's feedback) in a beautiful study of languorous, minimal
sound straddling the boundaries between lowercase composition and
improvisation. The liner notes, included as a pdf file on the disc,
reveal that the piece combines edited solo recordings of Davies’
harp with one of Halliwell's own recordings dating from 2002. Halliwell
cites the warm drones of Eliane Radigue’s Adnos I as
an influence, and the resemblance is clear, but the most interesting
element of the track is hinted at in its title. Tones and pulses swell
before criss-crossing almost rhythmically to create a resonating throb
of feedback that provides a ghostly third element to the music.
"Resonantlighttones" uses the track of the same name from
Steve Roden’s Four Possible Landscapes (2000), overlaid
with Halliwell’s feedback sax. Roden's clusters of slowly evolving
soft electronic chimes circle slowly in an almost hypnotic manner,
creating a mass of sparkling sound into which Halliwell's detailed
swathes of looped feedback settle, filling in the spaces with fields
of vibrant colour. As on "Beat", the two sound sources play
off each other, merge and drift apart, in a rare and haunting example
of a musical reworking that is more than just the sum of its parts.
"Vibra #3" is a real time duo with Mark Wastell, who caresses
his 24-inch hand-beaten tam tam with a soft hammer, allowing deep
looming sheets of sound to grow and then decay gently (see reviews
of Wastell's Vibra projects elsewhere). The gong is miked
dangerously close: every detail of the vibrating metal is captured,
and as the sound grows it is also tinted slightly by a natural feedback.
Halliwell twists his way into this undulating landscape, his spectral
shapes adding a dark, brooding undertone.
Improv purists may baulk at its methods of construction, but Halliwell
has set his sights on creating music that fills a void in the current
landscape of electro acoustic improvisation. It's unashamedly beautiful,
and works with sounds and structures mildly redolent of ambient musical
genres, but it's certainly not elevator music. There's a mass of activity
beneath the listener-friendly surface that greatly rewards close attention.
Recorded Delivery is an exceptional and original piece of
work.–RP
Joe
Giardullo
NO WORK TODAY: NINE FOR STEVE LACY
Drimala
 Recent
months have seen a spate of remarkable solo improv sax albums by the
likes of John Butcher, Stéphane Rives, Bertrand Gauguet, David
Gross and Martin Küchen, but apart from Sonny Simmons –
the wonderful Jewels on Boxholder – few brave hornplayers
from the jazz world have gone it alone lately. But No Work Today
is soprano saxophonist Joe Giardullo's second solo outing after last
year's magnificent Weather (Not Two) and its explicit dedication
to the memory of the late, great Steve Lacy invites direct comparison
- something not many out there are prepared to risk. Matters religious
are definitely not my speciality, but I'm prepared to bet a packet
of reeds that if the hereafter exists, Steve is sitting up there digging
this album as I write. For Lacy it was all about intervals:
no saxophonist, no, scratch that, no musician with the possible
exception of Monk (and, I'd add, Misha Mengelberg), explored the magic
and mystery of intervals so thoroughly. Transcribe any of Lacy's solos,
take it along to your local Professor of Music Theory and watch his/her
jaw drop in amazement. It's nice to know that Lacy didn't take his
know-how with him to the grave – Joe Giardullo has learnt his
lesson well, and done so without copping Lacy's licks (not that that's
easy to do). If anything, it's Evan Parker who comes to mind, especially
on checking out the circular breathing on "The Touch", maybe
along with (though this is perhaps just wishful thinking on my part)
the impish melodic somersaults of a Lol Coxhill. Giardullo's readings
of Lacy's "Prospectus" and "Hurtles" are masterly,
but all nine tracks – the other seven are credited to Giardullo
but contain hefty chunks of old chestnuts by Monk and Ellington –
are pure joy, and proof, not that any were needed, that there's still
plenty of mileage in playing the straight horn straight.–DW
David
Borgo
UBUNTU
CJR 1181
During
the 1960s jazz received a major infusion of new ideas from South African
expatriates fleeing the oppression of apartheid. Chris McGregor, Johnny
Dyani, Dudu Pukwana, Harry Miller and Mongezi Feza are sadly no longer
with us, but Louis Moholo Moholo and Abdullah Ibrahim are still making
music. Ibrahim remains a widely celebrated figure from this exodus,
even earning the praise of Duke Ellington himself, and his recordings,
ranging from solo performance to duets with Max Roach and Dyani, small
groups and big bands, have a remarkable scope and power. The influence
of Ibrahim and other South African musicians is now widespread. Saxophonist
and ethnomusicologist David Borgo (born in 1970) first became aware
of it when he was given an album by Ibrahim's band Ekaya, and subsequently
visited Southern Africa, further increasing his interest in this music.
This disc is the result of his explorations, and features Ibrahim
compositions interspersed with other South African songs and a Curtis
Clark's “Letter to South Africa”. Borgo has recruited
a line-up including two veterans, trombonist George Lewis and pianist
Anthony Davis (who also appeared on Borgo's Reverence for Uncertainty),
and some fine, less-familiar faces such as percussionist Nathan Hubbard
and pianist Rick Helzer. Helzer and Davis provide their own spin on
Ibrahim's pieces without emulating his distinctive style, and the
performances capture the spirit of the music without being note-for-note
recitations: two compositions are even rearranged sans piano. Borgo
shows impressive prowess on both tenor and soprano saxophones as well
as throwing in a sprightly pennywhistle feature on “Msunduza”,
and shares the saxophone duties on four cuts with Tracy McMullen,
another distinctive voice. When joined by Lewis, the unison horn lines
on the heads (particularly on Harry Miller's “Eli’s Song”)
conjure up the passions of the original recordings.–SG
Agustí
Fernandez / Mats Gustafsson
CRITICAL MASS
psi 05.06
After
a slew of muscular free jazz blowouts with the likes of Peter Brötzmann,
Barry Guy and, of course, The Thing (whose antics so irritated our
resident agent provocateur John Gill a couple of months back),
it's nice to see saxophonist Mats Gustafsson back in an intimate (well,
sort of) duo setting with Spanish pianist extraordinaire Agustí
Fernandez. Mats's titanic explosions are fine by me, but I've always
preferred the tight, nervous, cellular cut'n'thrust of his solo and
small ensemble stuff. Criticize the apparel, hairstyle, struts and
grimaces all you will, Gustafsson on form is a thrilling performer,
and more subtle than you might think. When it comes to split-second
timing, Fernandez is every bit his match, whether trading volleys
of tiny melodic cells or exploring the innards of his piano, which
he does with extraordinary finesse (finesse not necessarily implying
low volume either: sounds like he's got Han Bennink hidden in the
cast iron frame on the opening track). Of course, there are plenty
of fireworks too. The third track – they're all called "Critical
Mass" by the way – is the musical equivalent of a napalm
attack. Gustafsson's vicious baritone blasts and Fernandez's f(e)isty
clusters will send not only your earwax but also your hifi into meltdown
if you're not careful, and listening to Mats's tongue slaps on track
eight at the correct volume (loud) is like being slapped in the face
with a leather strap dipped in acid.–DW
Iannis
Xenakis
MUSIC FOR STRINGS
Mode
 Mode's
Xenakis edition reaches volume 6 with this splendidly-recorded set
of works for strings (and, on one piece, tape). The performances by
the Ensemble Resonanz conducted by Johannes Kalitzke are exemplary
– special mention must be made of double bassist John Eckhardt
for his reading of Theraps (more on that later) – but
those who harbour lingering doubts as to whether the brevity of the
composer's late works was somehow due to his protracted struggle against
ill health won't find much to console them here. The difference between
the magnificent swirling Syrmos (1959) – it's hard
to imagine today the furore that this music must have caused when
it was first performed – and the stodgy and decidedly slight
Voile (1995) is striking. The earlier work is vibrant, vicious,
unpredictable and utterly thrilling (so is 1971's Aroura,
which follows it up), while Voile plods along in a stolid
midtempo, making the composer's trademark clusters and glissandi sound
routine, even manneristic. "I don't need the calculations anymore,"
Xenakis told Bernard Jacobson in an interview in the early 80s, referring
to his decision to abandon the complex mathematical procedures that
his early music formalised in sound in favour of more intuitive composition.
Well, I beg to differ. Ittidra, written for the Arditti Quartet
plus two in 1996, sounds dour and grey, in keeping with the chilling
pessimism of the composer's late interviews. A bit of extra-musical
discipline wouldn't have gone amiss. But not all of the composer's
mathematics-based pieces are unqualified masterpieces: the inclusion
here of a rarity from 1959, Analogique A+B, for nine strings
and tape, is a case in point. The tape element, painstakingly generated
from sinewaves, sounds raw and experimental – as opposed to
raw and experienced on other landmark electronic pieces that came
before and after (Concret PH, Orient-Occident) –
and the fact that it only overlaps with the characteristically spiky
string music for less than a minute of the work's 6'38" duration
gives us the impression we're listening to a preliminary sketch for
a larger work. Apparently, Pierre Schaeffer didn't like it either
(though that's no recommendation). Still, Xenakis completists won't
want to be without it, especially since, to my knowledge, it's only
appeared on disc once before. Without wanting to hurt the feelings
of the Ensemble Resonanz, I have to say the most exciting work on
the disc is the solo double bass work Theraps, written in
1976 for Fernando Grillo. This should by rights be on a separate disc
of Xenakis solo string music with the two Mikkas for violin,
Embellie for viola, and the two notoriously difficult solo
cello pieces Nomos Alpha and Kottos, but as these
have popped up on a number of occasions elsewhere we'll let the matter
drop, especially since John Eckhardt's performance is absolutely stunning.
The ferocious technical challenges of the piece are evident throughout
– the double-stop glissandi and frequent excursions into territory
where violinists normally fear to tread – but what makes this
version so notable is its sheer musicality: like the greatest of Xenakis's
compositions, it's a superbly constructed and moving piece of music,
not a mere conservatory study.–DW
Eliane
Radigue
L'ILE RE-SONANTE
Shiiin 1
For
the second time this year it falls to Eliane Radigue to launch a new
French label – and if the people at Shiiin follow the path traced
with this release we can expect great things. [Label manager Stéphane
Roux's next project is a Charlemagne Palestine release, and negotiations
are still continuing with La Monte Young.. watch this space.-DW
] L'île re-sonante reaches the same intensity level
as Radigue's earlier glories. Inspired by a vision of her face reflected
in the water of a lake, this single movement opus starts with a gradual
oscillation throbbing its way through silence, wave cycles progressively
concentrating to become one with the environment in a nebulous ritual
nightmare, a mesmerizing section of looping intersections of illusory
female voices that constitutes one of the most memorable moments in
Radigue's oeuvre, maybe even in the history of minimalism at large.
You wish it would last forever, but it doesn't: instead, the basic
harmony of the mother drone shifts to another blurred picture, and
Radigue's ARP returns with a vengeance to put everything in place
again, reminding us where light and darkness meet, gently caressing
our head. Don't worry, I'll take care of you. Its quivering
synthetic tides mask additional harmonic secrets our ears and brains
try to unveil, but.. too late: the island has disappeared, together
with the image of Madame Radigue's smile, and we're left alone, trying
desperately to find words to describe what this beautiful lady has
been doing for decades, looking inside the heart of sound.–MR
Alvin
Lucier
WIND SHADOWS
New World 2CD
 my
way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to its end
my
peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts
The smallest interval available on a good old piano is, as we all
know, the semitone. But in the world of Alvin Lucier a semitone is
about as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. Over the past couple of
decades Lucier has been living the space of a door that opens and
shuts, to quote the Beckett poem above, in numerous works that have
set out to explore the subtleties of micro acoustics, both physical
and spatial, many of his works using stable pitch elements generated
by pure wave oscillators against which "real" instruments
play exquisite sustained tones. Tiny differences in pitch between
the instrument and oscillator manifest themselves in the form of acoustic
beats, and what might seem on face value to be simple verging on banal
reveals itself to be rich and elusive. Happily, Lucier fans have had
quite a lot to celebrate in recent times, with a string of excellent
releases of his music, on Mode (Navigations for Strings / Small
Waves), Lovely Music (Still and Moving Lines of Silence in
Families of Hyperbolas), Wergo (Matthias Kaul's excellent Nothing
Is Real) and New World, who follow up their recent Vespers
with this splendid double CD set, Wind Shadows, which brings
together nine Lucier pieces written between 1984 (In Memoriam
Jon Higgins) and 2003 (Bar Lazy J). The music is performed
with customary precision and dedication by the Barton Workshop –
special mention should be made of clarinettist John Anderson and trombonist
James Fulkerson for their extraordinary microtonal precision –
and the BW's co-director Frank Denyer provides excellent and pertinent
notes to accompany the set. Lucier's work, he writes, "has been
more often described in terms of science than of art, as if it were
a series of quasi-scientific experiments, but to put the emphasis
here is to miss the point, for its purpose is never 'explanatory'
(the goal of science) but, like all art, 'revelatory'."
Two of the pieces here were written specially for the Barton Workshop
– 40 Rooms, which takes pitches played by ensemble
and channels them to 40 different "rooms", simulated performance
spaces with differing reverberation conditions, and Q, which
places the instruments (clarinet, violin, cello, bass and trombone)
literally between two stable drones a whole tone apart. While this
latter is, as Denyer eloquently describes it, "an incredibly
rich dish" – from simple means Lucier constructs a work
of considerable density and subtlety – the nuances of reverberation
of the instruments in the former are often hard to appreciate. The
problem is that the notes the instruments actually play in 40
Rooms are essentially of little importance, and "only exist
for what they divulge through the quality of their decay" (Denyer).
This rather flies in the face of normal listening, which seeks –
inevitably – to create some kind of melodic or harmonic logic
between the sounding elements. It's rather like showing someone a
drawing and telling them not to look at the lines but at the impression
they leave on the paper itself. Lucier is at his best exploring long
tones, which is what the other works in the set, with the exception
of Letters, do and do very well (Letters is a charming
conceit, a literal transcription into conventional staff notation
of the letters of the alphabet – the "text" is a congratulatory
message to the work's dedicatee Björn Nilsson). The two In
Memoriam pieces for clarinet and oscillator are magnificent,
and complementary – in In Memoriam Stuart Marshall
the sinewave remains static and the bass clarinet weaves microtonally
around it, while In Memoriam Jon Higgins takes the opposite
tack: the oscillator sweeps upward in a very slow glissando and the
clarinet plays sustained tones around it, exploring the beat phenomenon.
The four works that close disc 2, the five part A Tribute To James
Tenney (for double bass and oscillator), Bar Lazy J
(for clarinet and trombone), Fideliotrio (for piano trio)
and Wind Shadows (for trombone and two oscillators) explore
the same territory with precision and patience. Patience is needed
on the part of the listener too: it's not easy to listen to this complete
set right through and maintain the concentration necessary to appreciate
the details of Lucier's compositions. So take your time –
Wind Shadows is a disc to live with, and you'll find a wealth
of new wonderful experiences each time you return to it.–DW
Gordon
Mumma
ELECTRONIC MUSIC OF THEATRE AND PUBLIC ACTIVITY
New World
 When
I was a spotty drunken undergraduate at Cambridge, I used to entertain
my friends by preparing the most lethally hot food imaginable and
inviting them round to suffer what Thomas Pynchon once memorably described
as "a Götterdammerüng of the mucus membranes".
Chili was a personal favourite. My own take on this speciality was
decidedly Tex Mex, making heavy use of pre-packaged spices in the
form of the Carroll Shelby Texas Gourmet Chili Mix ("if you're
fixing on feeding any women and sissies, forget the Cayenne pepper",
it said inside, as I recall), but I was beaten hands down every time
by my pal Stuart Atkins, a deranged and utterly brilliant alto saxophonist
and composer from Aberdeen, who'd already discovered the deadly weapons
known around these parts as Martinique bell peppers. These little
motherfuckers may look like cute miniature "normal" red
peppers, but if you're one of those precious healthfood pseuds cruising
down the aisles of some Californian supermarket in search of baby
vegetables, you're in for one hell of a surprise if you pop one of
these buggers in your carbonara. (Oh yeah, word from the
wiseguy, WEAR RUBBER GLOVES when you're chopping them up, OK? Rubbing
the eyes or other sensitive parts of the body with fingers that have
come into contact with the fluorescent red flesh is extremely
painful, take my word for it.) Eating an Atkins chili was an authentic
physical ordeal (even if he did try to insert a little exotic pleasure
into the proceedings by adding odd ingredients at the last minute
– mushrooms, carrots, even raspberries): diners were
provided with full size bath towels, lights were dimmed, candles lit
and the ritual dish of pain was traditionally accompanied by the 22
minutes and 34 seconds of Gordon Mumma's Megaton for Wm. Burroughs.
The terrifying wall of sound sculpture kicked in with the first forkful,
and the thinning of the texture after several minutes corresponded
nicely to the deadening of the senses (obliteration of the taste buds,
more like) that set in halfway through the plate. But the real triumph
was yet to come: the approach of those final few mouthfuls was accompanied
by the roar of World War II bombers and, if you timed it just right,
the plate was clean by the time the music from The Dambusters
came sailing in. La gloire! The final minutes of the piece,
in which "a lone drummer quietly rides his traps" was the
moment to wipe the tears from the eyes, drink prodigious quantities
of iced water and try not to think what damage the lethal compound
might be doing at that very moment to the stomach lining, let alone
the excruciating rectal burn to come when it made its ceremonious
exit from the body. Even today I can't hear Megaton without
sweating; its awesome power remains entirely undiminished after 41
years. But the three works that join it on this splendid disc are
worthy companions: Conspiracy 8 (1970), a "theatre of
communication under hazardous conditions" (Mumma's use of a digitally
mauled musical saw provoking much hilarity from the public at this,
its premiere on February 20th 1970 at M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory), Cybersonic Cantilevers, derived from a interactive
installation at the Everson Museum in Syracuse NY in May 1973 and
the circus hilarity of 1980's Cirqualz – from Beethoven's
Eroica to a fatal car smash in just 5'43"! – all
provide ample evidence of the composer's enormous creativity and uncompromising
experimental rigour. I'd dearly like to invite him round for a chili
supper sometime as a token of my appreciation. You out there Stuart?
If you feel like doing a spot of cooking, look me up mate.–DW
Omit
TRACER
Helen Scarsdale Agency
 You
go for a walk alone late one night in the deserted financial district
of a big city, dead leaves and discarded newspapers blowing across
your path as you gaze up at empty yet glaringly lit offices high above
you, wondering who – if anyone – might still be up there
at this ungodly hour. Somewhere, out of sight, a dog barks menacingly,
but you can't hear it, because you're listening to Tracer,
and it's the perfect soundtrack to your nocturnal wanderings in this
land of blank, impersonal ones and zeros. Imagine a cross between
the post-industrial desolation of pre-Industrial Chris Carter –
The Space Between – and the cold green reveries of Aphex
Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85 – 92, with disembodied
voices intoning security clearance codes, PIN numbers, names and addresses
of faceless financial institutions, mantra-like, over gloomy minor
synth drones and bare, crunchy rhythm loops. The work of Omit –
aka Clinton Williams, who lives in the sleepy farming town of Blenheim,
New Zealand (about as far as you can get from where you're out walking
tonight) – belongs on your shelves alongside other fabled New
Zealand dronemeisters Birchville Cat Motel, Eso Steel and Peter Wright.
Tracer, originally released as a CDR on SySecular, joins
but a handful of Omit releases that have surfaced outside of limited
edition lathe-cut singles and hand-dubbed cassettes (notably Deformed,
with Dust – aka Bruce Russell – on Corpus Hermeticum,
and Rejector, on Anomalous). The music's cold electro sense
of foreboding is far from inhuman, though; in fact, it's all too human
– as human as the chill you feel in the pit of your stomach
when waiting for the last subway as the man at the other end of the
platform turns and starts to come purposefully towards you. But maybe
he's listening to Tracer too – if he isn't, he certainly
should be.–DW
The
Haters
UNTITLED TITLE SHOT 28”
Harshnoise
 “All
sounds processed through the Untitled Title Belt, Hollywood May 28,
2005.” The aforementioned Belt is a champion wrestling trophy
– and the crackling, grumbling sounds it produced eloquently
capture the heartache of the failed Times Square WCW-themed museum
venture. I am informed that if you don't enjoy watching WCW / WWF
silliness, you just don't get it. I don't. Guess no one “got”
the XFL, either – or did we? I was so looking forward to eating
at a restaurant where I could slam the waiter through the table and
then hit my date with a folding chair doused in lighter fluid. Barring
that, we have this CD. There are three tracks, the second of which
is silent – becoming its own chill-out room – and the
third track repeats the first but may as well be the sound of the
belt worn upside-down; it’s similar to the first in the way
that a ragman = anagram, with its almost imperceptible shifts in tone
from one peak earthquake to the next. One of America’s more
underrated conceptualists, The Haters’ G.X. Jupitter-Larsen’s
career spans amplified stapling of stacks of records to a silent 7”
meant to be scratched before it’s played to “Oxygen is
Flammable” – a broken piece of plastic packaged in a small
box with instructions stating that the broken plastic is a record
and that it’s played by pouring water over it.–DC
Monos
GENERATORS
Die Stadt
 Three
longish tracks by Colin Potter and Darren Tate on the first disc,
one longlong track on the second. Plus you can order an additional
CD-R through the mail that mixes aspects of both CDs, making it two,
two, two taste-treats in one. You got your Colin Potter in my Darren
Tate! You got your hopelessly obscure English composer in my willfully
bizarre British composer! And so on. It’s a remarkably relaxing
compendium of fine fuck music with a glossy cover designed by Tate,
Helen Potter, and Jonathan Coleclough. Sometimes organic, sometimes
organ-ic, its devotional nature may simply be that of a wistful, wishful
public wanting something calm to massage overheated cerebellums. One
of the nicer side-effects of postmodernism and punk is that one need
not be classical skilled or schooled to create beauty and put it out
in the world with the blessing of top-40 on-high or the Establishment.
Case in point: this album. And, as this review is written, it turns
out that it’s the 50th anniversary of the first reading of Allen
Ginsberg’s Howl. One of our less-traveled dimensions produced
by string theory permits a line to be drawn from that poem to this,
as echoes spread from the final sound of the door closing in the gallery
where the words were read.–DC
Tape
RIDEAU
Häpna
 For
their third album, Tape – the brothers Berthling, Andreas and
Johan, and Tomas Hallonsten – outsourced (to borrow a hip and
ugly word from business) the production to one of the best pair of
ears in the business, Marcus "Pluramon" Schmickler, who
recorded the Swedish trio in his studio in Cologne last winter. The
sheer finesse of Schmickler's work – opulent without ever being
over-produced – transforms Tape's unassuming, gentle minimal
compositions into sonic objects of great subtlety and beauty. The
second track, "A Spire", with its tinkly glockenspiels and
jangly acoustic guitars and rather conspicuous lack of compositional
forward motion (one senses the Swedes are so enamoured of their material
they'd be quite happy to leave it cycling around ad infinitum) could,
if badly handled, easily become dull, or twee, or both, but Schmickler's
immaculate layering and filtering of the music's disarmingly simple
basic elements is masterly: listen to what he does with the regular
piano pulse and how it evolves through the piece. Someone should commission
him to remix the Wim Mertens back catalogue with similar panache.
If you're looking for nailbiting suspense though, look elsewhere:
Tape's music belongs in the tradition of soft post-Ambient minimalism
(think Eno, Budd, Cold Blue..) – the uncharitable might call
it coffee-table music, something to slip on in the background as you
sink into a Terence Conran sofa to sip your cappuccino. But as I have
nothing against either sofas or cappuccino – makes a change
from the padded cell and 100 proof grain alcohol of Borbetomagus,
Kevin Drumm and the Flying Luttenbachers – that's just fine
by me.–DW
Sickness
/ Slogun
THE SCARS OF HAPPINESS / ALWAYS NUMB
Troniks
 Reissuing
all of the material issued as a double 3” CD-R in an edition
of 100 for the Bastard Noise / Control / Sickness Slogun tour of Japan
in 2003, Troniks releases this shrieking, squalling, truly angry beast
into the wilds above the city, far enough to get away quickly but
near enough to witness the havoc it will surely wreak when it encounters
unassuming passersby. “Slogun is a punch in the gut, a kick
in the face to the power electronics community.” How about just
someone who has no idea what they’re in for when they hear this?
That’s who you’ve got to get to: fuck the “power
electronics community”, all 100 of them – no offense,
guys, but as our hospitals close and vanish and our cemeteries grow
taller and taller fences around them, there are precious few things
created under the banner of aesthetics today that don’t anesthetize.
Perfect example: you run an arts-and-culture magazine. Are you going
to keep it in the record shops and the coffeehouses, or get it to
the down people, the whores, hustlers, and bums who really need it?
The Los Angeles Times just broke a story on sheriff’s officers
dumping the dregs of Southern California society onto Skid Row in
downtown Los Angeles. Here's the soundtrack of the removal.–DC
The
Hafler Trio
IF TAKE, THEN TAKE.
CIP
 This
LP – the first full-length h3o LP for ten years, if we're to
believe the Crippled Intellect website – is subtitled "Tricks,
Half-Tricks and Real Phenomena", which is a rather apt description
of the world of Andrew Mckenzie. To paraphrase Frans de Waard, The
Hafler Trio asks questions and never answers them, and even if it
did, you wouldn't understand. If there's one word to describe McKenzie's
oeuvre (which shows no sign of abating – quite the contrary
– despite his recently publicized health problems), it's inscrutable.
Both the music, an austere, even chilly, assemblage of drones whose
origins are as difficult to fathom as the architectural bigger picture
they fit into, and the texts that invariably accompany it, with their
strange, slightly surreal juxtaposition of grammatical abstruseness
and tired cliché. To a certain extent, as David Cotner noted
in these pages recently, there's something almost pointless about
reviewing a Hafler Trio album in the first place. It's tempting merely
to string together some quotes from McKenzie's liners that may (or
may not) shed some light on a music that's as hard to describe as
it is difficult not to admire. There's something heroically stubborn
about devoting one's life to the production of beautifully packaged
works of art (like this one, which comes in a signed edition of 400
with a 16-page trapezoidal booklet) that will probably have sold out
and disappeared into lovingly cared-for private collections by the
time you read this. As I've managed to miss out on a number of highly
acclaimed Hafler Trio releases since the last one that came my way
(2003's The Moment When We Blow The Flour From Our Tongues
on Crouton), I'm not in a position to say with certainty exactly where
If Take, Then Take fits into the h3o canon. Nor am I able to
tell just from listening how the continuous spans of music on each
side of the LP divide into, respectively, six and four tracks. What's
in no doubt though is that it's another rare and elusive dispatch
from a singularly original figure in today's new music. Hope you can
find a copy.–DW
Vidna
Obmana
NOISE / DRONE ANTHOLOGY 1984-1989
IKON / Projekt
Pliocene
works from the noisier quarters of Dirk Serries’ back catalogue
– collaborations with PBK, Big City Orchestra, and Kapotte Muziek
(from the “Death Pact International” microedition series
of cassettes) on labels like Ladd-Frith and Merzbow’s own ZNS-Tapes
imprint. In those days, PBK (Phillip B. Klingler) was out in San Bernardino
and Projekt was stuck in Garden Grove CA, behind the Orange Curtain.
[nelsonmuntz]Ha ha![/nelsonmuntz] In those days, not many people enjoyed
this kind of craziness and even fewer composed it. This is an exceptionally
lovely clutch of messy sounds spread gracefully across untold masses
of magnetic tape, with factory rhythms, concrète pulses, de-rezzing
feedback parasites, 6th-dimensional vocal crumblings and featherlight
washes of sound that would anticipate Vidna Obmana and his latest
work under the name Fear Falls Burning. More Yo’Mama than Obmana,
it’s highly recommended if only because now you know that you
should’ve packed those old tapes safely in Styrofoam®™
in a fireproof filing cabinet but you don’t have Organum money
to bake them back to health. One nibbling quibble: the packaging seems
almost like an afterthought – i.e. cf. e.g. the CD inlay card
doesn’t even get the edges scored to fit the jewel case and
it’s noticeably smaller than it should be. However, given the
inexorable Projekt direction into cosmic dark matter, it's no biggie.–DC
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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