| JANUARY
News 2006 |
Reviews
by Clifford Allen, David Cotner, Nate Dorward, Lawrence English,
Massimo Ricci, Derek Taylor, Dan Warburton:
|
|
Editorial
On The Road with Aki Onda and Jac Berrocal
Reissue this: Heavy
Soul Music by Hans Dulfer and JR Monterose
On Creative Sources: Epinat,
Forge & Bertholon / Schiller & Baumgartner / Tisha Mukarji
/ Theriault & Eubanks / Werchowska, Pontévia &
Boubaker / Müller, Kahn & Wolfarth / I Treni Inerti
/ Nordzucker
Reissued! Julian Priester
Pepo Mtoto
On Elevator Bath: Colin
Andrew Sheffield / Ilya Monosov / Adam Pacione / Rick Reed
COMPILATIONS: on Spekk, PsychForm, Everest, Xing
Wu
JAZZ / IMPROV: Badland
/ Alex Ward / Cooper-Moore / McPhee, Shipp & Duval /
Fritz Hauser / 4g
/ Ettrick / ZFP Quartet / Kemialliset Ystävät
CONTEMPORARY: Guillermo
Gregorio / Simon H. Fell / Jim O'Rourke
ELECTRONICA: If,
Bwana / Tate & Liles / Piana / William Basinski / Fovea
Hex / Joda Clement / Lopez & Kiritchenko / :zoviet*france:
Last
month
|
First
up, on behalf of everyone here at Paris Transatlantic, a Happy New
Year to all our readers, whoever / wherever they may be. A warm welcome
goes out to Lawrence English, our new man from the land down under,
who's as good at writing about music as he is at creating and producing
it. January 2006 kicks off in style with Jesse Goin's fine
interview with Tomas Korber, the Swiss guitarist / composer who's
been making quite a name for himself recently, and with whom I had
the great pleasure of working on the album Conspiracy Theory (L'innomable).
Elsewhere, indefatigable jazz archivist Clifford Allen weighs in with
another Reissue This spot – btw if anyone out there has a copy
of Hans Dulfer's Jazz in Paradiso and wants to send in a
scan of the cover Clifford talks about, please do: for once trusty
old Google hasn't come up with what I was looking for (or maybe I've
been googling up the wrong tree) and Hans must be enjoying a well-earned
Christmas / New Year break because we haven't been able to get a reply
from him yet by email. Clifford's praise for J.R. Monterose also ties
in nicely with James Finn's recollections of the man in his interview
with Nate Dorward in last month's issue. Let's hope the two Heavy
Soul platters will soon be widely available again – has anyone
thought of offering these to John Corbett for Atavistic UMS? Just
a thought..
News of Derek Bailey's death arrived just as I was putting the finishing
touches to this issue. Glowing tributes are already flying round cyberspace,
and you probably don't need any more from me. Bailey left us with
a large body of work, and the best way I can think of of paying homage
to him is to
go back and listen to it again. Everyone has their own favourite DB
albums, I'm sure - I have a soft spot for the 1970s solo stuff myself,
as well as the mythic Topography Of The Lungs with Han Bennink
and Evan Parker that inaugurated the Incus label. Let's hope that
might also see the light of day again in a deluxe reissue. I wonder
if Martin Davidson at Emanem is reading this. Just another thought..
Meanwhile, thanks as ever go out to the people who have written in
to our Letters Page and those
who have sent in and continue to send in their music for review –
and as always I'm only sorry we can't feature more of it each issue
(who invented the 24 hour day, anyway?). You can put that down this
month in part to too much time on my part spent writing up the sordid
details of my recent tour with Aki Onda and Jac Berrocal – see
below. Bonne année et bonne lecture.-DW
On
The Road with Aki Onda and Jac Berrocal
 A
tour diary? How exciting! Or boring, depending on your taste. The
last tour diary I read, Mark Wastell's description of a handful of
dates he played with Bernhard Günter and Graham Halliwell, included
as a pdf file with the second +minus album A Rainy Koran Verse
(trente oiseaux TOC 043), was – well, sorry Mark old chum, more
the latter than the former. Though you wouldn't expect it to be anything
else, really; if you're the kind of reader who gets a kick out of
tour diaries for their Dionysian excess – dirty spoons, bloody
syringes, empty bottles, smashing up hotel rooms, dangling teenage
girls out of windows and doing unspeakable things to them with fish,
etc etc – you're better off investing in a copy of Danny Sugerman's
Wonderland Avenue. Face it kids, even though Mark did dedicate
one of his pieces to the memory of John Entwistle, +minus are not
The Who (though you could have some fun imagining possible tabloid
headlines – AVANT GARDE IMPROV TRIO TRASH VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT!
GERMAN ELECTRONICA IDOL GINSENG OD! HALLIWELL SMASHES PA SYSTEM IN
FEEDBACK RIOT!).
The simple fact is that most tour diaries, if they're intended for
public consumption, usually amount to little more than polite Thank
You letters. Put it this way: you're not going to complain about the
stale beer and cold chips at Jim's Café and expect Jim to give
you a gig next time you're in town, are you now? And describing your
fellow playing partners as debauched drug-addled drunken assholes
probably won't endear you to them very much and doesn't bode well
for the future of the group. So why do I bother? Three reasons come
to mind: firstly, I've been in the habit of keeping a personal diary
ever since I went off ("up", they say) to Cambridge as a
student in 1981 (it started out as a rather perverse record of how
many cigarettes I smoked each day, so that at some later stage in
life, wracked by bronchial problems, I could sit down and calculate
exactly how many minutes of my life had literally gone up in smoke),
so writing about what I've been up to during the day is something
that comes naturally. Secondly, tours are fun: the sights,
sounds, smells, the sheer pleasure of making music far away from home
with people you care for, and being paid to do so to boot, the people
you meet, the food and drink, the landscapes you travel through and
the music you listen to along the way. Thirdly, tours aren't fun
at all: the lack of privacy, the stress, the hangovers, the inevitable
problems with transportation, luggage, accommodation, roadies, mics
that don't work, showers that don't work, soundchecks that last forever,
above all, the waiting, the tedium. It all makes for a jolly good
read.
So, for better or worse, here is On The Road, my own collection of
anecdotes about the six dates I played recently in the company of
Aki Onda and Jac Berrocal. PT readers should need no introduction
to Monsieur Berrocal – you can still check out the interview
he gave me in 2004, which also formed the basis of an extended feature
in The Wire 247 (complete with some smashing photos by Frank
Bauer). And the good news is that his second solo album Catalogue
– not the group Catalogue, the album
– has finally been reissued by Alga Marghen. So buy now or cry
later. So far I haven't done an interview with Aki (though I did record
an afternoon's conversation with him a while ago), but the extraordinary
music he makes with a couple of cassette recorders, a sampler, a rhythm
box and a few special effects should be familiar to you. If it isn't,
there are only 300 or so shopping days to Christmas. Bon voyage!
CLICK HERE to continue reading
On The Road with Aki Onda and Jac Berrocal.. Photograph by Mathieu
de France
HEAVY
SOUL MUSIC by HANS DULFER AND J.R. MONTEROSE
In the annals
of contemporary improvisation, few nationalities are as routinely
pigeonholed as the Dutch. They're the jokers, the pranksters, the
Dadaists of the European jazz community (though a few Germans, Belgians
and Swedes have also followed similar trajectories), as Misha Mengelberg
would say, “having maybe a little fun” with the music
– though, as he's quick to point out, situations, games and
oddly-overlapping meters and melodies challenge the musicians as much
as they inject a dose of whimsy to the proceedings. Willem Breuker,
an early associate of Mengelberg and percussionist Han Bennink in
the Instant Composers’ Pool, has, since the early 70s, been
orchestrating eclectic mélanges of both free and straight jazz,
Kurt Weill, contemporary classical and traditional folk – and
several members of his Kollektif have followed in his footsteps to
a manic degree. As these two poles of the Dutch scene have been soldiering
on for more than 35 years, it's easy to forget that Holland has not
only produced several fine players outside the free scene (pianists
Cees Slinger and Rein de Graaff, bandleader Boy Edgar), but also a
number of free improvisers whose work falls outside the theatrical
end of the spectrum: figures like trumpeter Nedley Elstak, pianist
Kees Hazevoet, altoist Peter van der Locht, reedman-composer Theo
Loevendie, and tenorman Hans Dulfer.
Dulfer
is one of the most eclectic of Dutch jazzmen working outside the realm
of situationist music, and his recent collaborations with rock musicians
and club DJs have brought his work to a wider public (his tenor-playing
daughter Candy is also well-known in "lite-jazz" circles).
But he was an early mover and shaker in the Amsterdam jazz community,
and in the late 60s and early 70s his Paradiso Jazzclub offered performance
space and festival room to both local and visiting purveyors of the
jazz vanguard. Like Archie Shepp, his tone hearkens back to pre-Rollins
tenormen such as Coleman Hawkins and Ike Quebec, though not without
a certain Newk-like ribaldry. In Loevendie’s Consort of the
same period, Dulfer was the feral honker chomping at the bit, ready
to bust out of the atonal-Latin architecture built specially for him
(and baritonist Joop Mastenbroek) to tear apart. Dulfer’s most
regular working group of the period was his Afro-Latin-free hybrid
Ritmo-Natural, with whom he recorded two and a half LPs and a couple
of singles for Dutch EMI subsidiary Catfish in the early 70s (including
1970’s Candy Clouds and 1972’s The Morning
After the Third, as well as El Saxofon, with guests
Frank Wright, Bobby Few and Muhammad Ali). With Soulbrass, Inc. and
organist Herbert Noord, Dulfer also recorded a homage to the Ike Quebec-Freddie
Roach Blue Note LPs, Live at the Bohemia (Stichting, 1969),
which included percussionists Steve Boston and Rob Kattenburg, bassist
Arjen Gorter, and the great baritonist Henk van Es. Around the time
Loevendie assembled the Consort in 1968, one of Dulfer’s projects
was a quartet in the of the Archie Shepp-Roswell Rudd mold, a group
he called Heavy Soul featuring Han Bennink, trombonist Willem van
Manen (later of Breuker’s Kollektif), and bassist Maarten Altena.
It's hard to say whether it was these other members’ commitments
to Breuker / Mengelberg-fronted units or Dulfer’s preference
for percussive and rather psychedelic large groups that finally spelled
the end for Heavy Soul the following year, but the quartet did make
regular appearances at the Paradiso, and two of them made it onto
Dulfer’s first LP as a leader, Jazz in Paradiso, released
in a batch of 250 on his own Heavy Soul Music imprint (HSM 1501).
The album’s jacket, a nod to the saxophonist’s influences,
features a photograph of the group playing in front of a giant poster
of Ike Quebec, the same photograph of the saxophonist that graces
Quebec’s Heavy Soul (Blue Note 4092, 1960).
Structurally,
one of the most striking things about the music on this session is,
despite Dulfer’s gutbucket, bluesy tone, how much the compositions
owe to the music of Rudd and the New York Art Quartet. Dulfer and
his mates would likely have heard the 1965 radio broadcast from Hilversum
(later released on the America LP Roswell Rudd, with John
Tchicai, Dutch bassist Finn von Eyben and South African drummer Louis
Moholo), and the theme of Van Manen’s “Los Orellani”
is equal parts Tchicai’s “Jabulani” and Rudd’s
“Yankee No-How.” Of course, rather than the Africanized
rhythms that grace Moholo’s approach and propel the Rudd-Tchicai
dialogues, Bennink sounds like Milford Graves falling down the stairs,
a distracted caterwauling avant-Dixieland sense of timekeeping that
knows no peer. He occasionally stops to yell into plastic tubing or
pick up a bird-whistle, or just halts altogether to let Altena and
the loquacious van Manen and Dulfer take the reins. It's certainly
a far cry from his straight timekeeping with Eric Dolphy a few years
earlier, though more conservative than the fragmented walls of activity
he built a year earlier around Breuker on the New Acoustic Swing
Duo (ICP 001, 1967) or with Altena and Marion Brown on the latter’s
Porto Novo (Polydor, 1967, reissued by Arista-Freedom). If
you can imagine Shepp tunes like “Wherever Junebugs Go”
with Bennink instead of Beaver Harris (what a different concept of
swing those two drummers have!) you’re halfway to figuring out
the aesthetic of Heavy Soul. Van Manen is a revelation, his tailgate
certainly reminiscent of Rudd, but with a distinctly European self-absorbed
intricacy. “Bird Frog” in its 1968 take offers another
take on the fucked-up Herbie Nichols/early Cecil structures that the
NYAQ themes explore, but here it's given almost entirely over to Bennink,
whose maniacal vocals and insanely fast tom rhythms recall not only
Graves (once more), but, if you can imagine it, a free version of
Baby Dodds’ Talking and Drum Solos. Side two, recorded
in 1969, offers a tighter sidelong suite of van Manen pieces, beginning
with “The Triple,” on which Bennink's frantic ba-bi rhythms
and ride-cymbal create a dense hub on which Dulfer and van Manen’s
skronk can turn. This segues via a conch-and-horns interlude into
“Seventy-Eight,” a weighty dirge / slugfest that finds
Altena bowing furious triple-stops under surging percussion and Dulfer
glossolalia until the sing-song theme emerges. Dulfer's solo is the
strongest of the set, equal parts Newk, Shepp and a fire all his own.
An edgy swing rises from the scorching stew, a major muted tailgate
improvisation by van Manen over toe-tapping rhythm, ending with another
brief, breathless rendition of “Bird-Frog.” The free-blues
and Dixieland-funk are decidedly fire music-like, but you haven't
lived until you've heard it done in clogs.
 1969
was also the year that Utica, NY-born tenorman J.R. Monterose wound
up traveling through Holland and Scandinavia in search of fruitful
playing situations. He'd been teaching in Albany and playing gigs
in Chicago and the Midwest with little notoriety since the late 50s,
when he worked with Charles Mingus and Teddy Charles. His first LP
since 1964’s J.R. In Action (Studio 4), J.R. Monterose
is Alive in Amsterdam Paradiso (HSM 1502, the slightly easier
to find release of these two) captures the tenorman at a few gigs
in Dulfer’s club during June 1969, and it might be the most
unexpected entry in Monterose’s catalog. The set starts off
with J.R. solo on the standard “I Remember Clifford,”
a delicate, clean, and particularly moody reading of the Golson classic.
Mercurial in its quick shifts between staccato ebullience and smoky
wide-vibrato, it's not only one of the most colorful and complex readings
of the tune I’ve heard, but a classic of unaccompanied tenor
playing that merits careful study, even at only four and a half minutes
in length. It's followed by ten minutes of sonic and literal whooping
it up on “Sonnymoon for Two,” with Han Bennink conjuring
up a bizarre variant on Philly Joe and showing his bop pedigree in
a lengthy solo before Monterose returns with a series of gutsy blasts
and few oddly-placed quotes to bring Rollins' theme in to close. This
is the kind of tenor playing that rewards thorough analysis; each
half-chorus offers a completely different approach to the instrument,
and they're all stitched together with seamless logic and clarity.
“Reborn” is ostensibly a Monterose composition but more
likely his name for the two improvisations that make up side two,
the first a trio with Bennink and Ritmo-Natural bassist Jan Jacobs,
the second adding Groentjie and Steve Boston on congas and timbales.
On “Reborn One” Jacobs drops out here and there as Bennink
and Monterose continue the pyrotechnics of “Sonnymoon”,
while the second more expansive take finds Bennink, Groentjie and
Boston in a dense conversation over Jacobs’ insistent droning
vamp. J.R.'s tenor call is woven into burnished, smooth ballad teases
and steadily rides the tempo, closing phrases into rhythm units, his
trio of drummers gunning the web into forward motion. Bennink takes
a solo over the mass, hollering along with Groentjie's wails before
Monterose returns with the earthy minor theme, a setting and tone
which recalls the young Gato Barbieri.
Monterose
recorded once more at the Paradiso in 1969 (the session remains unreleased),
and in a quintet with trumpeter Jon Eardley, pianist Rein de Graaff,
bassist Henk Haverhoek and drummer Pierre Courbois (Body and Soul,
Munich Records, 1970), before returning - briefly - to the States
in 1974. Though he went on to release a series of strong hardbop sessions
in the years up until his passing in 1993, he never again recorded
with such unbridled fire and force of conviction as he did with these
four very sympathetic Amsterdam-based free jazzmen in 1969. It is
extremely lucky that Hans Dulfer’s Paradiso had the tape recorders
rolling for J.R. and for his own unique groups at the time –
without Heavy Soul Music, two slabs of improvised soul would have
remained jazz lore. It's high time both of these fine albums were
made available once more to the wider public.–CA
Cyril
Epinat / Mathias Forge / Jérôme Bertholon
DUO...
CS 044
 Taking
a look at the liner notes, which refer to the music as a "sound
track" while also providing a description of the meals eaten
by the three protagonists during the recordings, then listening to
the first sounds coming from the speakers, one gets the impression
Duo... is a single improvised field recording where events
sound accidental even when they aren't. Epinat and Forge play "objects"
as well as their conventional instruments (acoustic guitar and trombone),
while Bertholon records the proceedings, adding electric lighter and
quartz clock to the sources. Spurious flatulence and third-generation
scratches of dirty, cheap harmonics interact with environmental sounds;
fluttering, splintered nervous outbursts are followed by scraping
investigations and a rash of miniature acts of aggression. The tranquillity
of wind and insect sounds that opens the fourth movement is soon interrupted
by a passing car and Epinat knocking on his guitar body, after which
microsonic explorations resume. It sounds like The Last Supper inside
an anthill doused with sulphuric acid. The musicians smile and chow
down on the corroded remnants, loading their car without haste. But
the radiator's leaking.–MR
Christoph
Schiller / Peter Baumgartner
SAVAGNIERES
CS 045
 Peter
Baumgartner is primarily a sound poet, working with language since
1989 and active in the sound installation field (he came to the computer
in 1999), while Christoph Schiller has a fine arts/free jazz background,
having also written many pieces for voice (he's the leader of Millefleur,
an improvising vocal ensemble). Savagnières reveals
both technical finesse and a healthy dose of curiosity, but the contrast
between its laptop continuity and the unconventional acoustic source
of Schiller's spinet is somewhat atypical compared to much of the
Creative Sources catalogue. Schiller has been using the spinet in
improvisational contexts since 2002, and its plucked, bowed and struck
strings break the reassuring flux of Baumgartner's computer-generated
waves. The musicians explore a few basic concepts, as if forced to
play games in a tiny room, yet the dialogue between stasis and movement
is rewarding and fruitful; what could easily become a fine wallpaper
of digestible minimalism instead enriches and develops the introvert
convolutions of the spinet, which at times resembles some Oriental
instrument or a slowmotion version of Keith Tippett's prepared piano.
The laptop's pulsating warmth radiates constantly, despite irregular
collisions that move the surrounding air enough to make us breathe
in warped, unreal easiness.–MR
Tisha
Mukarji
D IS FOR DIN
CS 046
 My
mum would probably disagree, but from where I'm sitting there's not
much din on this debut outing from pianist Tisha Mukarji, here performing
on a Hornung Square Piano Frame dating from the mid-19th century.
All right, there are some pretty ferocious scrapes and squeaks, but
those of you who equate "din" with the likes of Sickness,
Prurient et al. will probably find this rather mild. Mukarji studied
at the Royal Academy in London (bet they didn't teach her to play
like this there though), and recorded these four pieces in April 2005
in another Royal Academy across the pond in Copenhagen. Recent years
have seen a number of impressive releases proving there's plenty of
life yet lurking in the bowels of the venerable instrument, both solo
– Frédéric Blondy's Parabase, Sophie
Agnel's Solo, Jacques Demierre's Guillevic Avec,
Andrea Neumann's Innenklavier, and of course the recent long
overdue solo debut of John Tilbury on Rossbin – and in small
groups (thinking notably of Manon Liu Winter's glacial work on Brospa
with Franz Hautzinger), and Mukarji's disc is another accomplished,
if not especially groundbreaking, addition to the list.–DW
Doug
Theriault / Bryan Eubanks
BIG CLOUDS IN THE SKY TODAY
CS 047
 Nice
to see that Ernesto Rodrigues is now casting his net further afield
than old Europe for wild and wonderful new sounds. These come from
Portland Oregon, where they were recorded live in the studio in May
2005 by Doug Theriault (Sensor Guitar controlling live electronics,
it says here) and Bryan Eubanks (Open Circuit Electronics). There
are two extended tracks, "Don't worry about the future"
(21'04") and "A majestic" (40'51"), and don't
be fooled by the slow start into thinking this is just another play-it-safe
post-AMM laminal trawl. There are some pretty nasty surprises in store,
and Theriault and Eubanks steer dangerously close to the edge (I think
we can say with some certainty then that an Erstwhile release for
this pair is sadly out of the question for the foreseeable future..).
Open circuit electronics are, as Vic Rawlings can tell you, notoriously
unpredictable, and Eubanks unleashes some particularly painful dentist
chair nightmare shrieks from time to time (having just undergone protracted
dental work myself, this stuff certainly strikes a chord, I can tell
you), but there's a sense of commitment and feeling for large scale
form that has me coming back for more. After all, it's worth several
trips to the dentist if you end up with a beautiful gleaming new crown.
Unlike much European EAI, which is painstakingly airbrushed and ProTooled
into ever more pristine composed structures, there's a roughness and
rawness here that sounds distinctly improvised. And that's also true
of the very best AMM albums, lest we forget.–DW
Nush
Werchowska / Mathias Pontévia / Heddy Boubaker
GLOTOSIFRES
CS 048
 29
minutes is a bit slight for an album – across the electric fence
in Popland that would count as a single – but there's a lot
of information to digest in these three pieces recorded in July and
December 2004 featuring pianist Werchowska, percussionist Pontévia
and saxophonist Boubaker (normally they go under the name Trio Pakos,
but not here apparently). Nush (it's "Nusch" on the Creative
Sources site but I take it that's a mistake) Werchowska is at her
best when scrabbling round inside the instrument, and Pontévia
and Boubaker follow her into some very strange undergrowth on the
opening "Bribes" – in French that means "bits"
or "extracts", by the way, not payment for services rendered
– but when actual notes come into play, i.e. when Werchowska
actually engages with the keyboard, on "Spires", things
get a little muddy underfoot. One senses pitch isn't all that important
to these guys, and thankfully the closing "Mascaret" takes
us back out into the windswept wilderness. It's uncompromising stuff,
and proof that there are strange and dangerous things going on in
the idyllic South of France. If you don't understand the album title,
by the way, go Google and, erm, practice your French. Oh yes, Boubaker
and trumpeter Sébastien Cirotteau, who recorded the three pieces
here, also have a fine duo release, Vortex, for mp3 download
at www.stasisfield.com. Go!–DW
Günter
Müller / Jason Kahn / Christian Wolfarth
DRUMMING
CS 049
 A
glance at that title and you might be forgiven for thinking that these
three Swiss percussion virtuosi (OK OK so Jason Kahn isn't Swiss but
he lives there) have come up with some kind of hip versioning of Steve
Reich's 1971 epic of the same name, but you'd be wrong. In fact, there's
very little explicit pulse at all here: Kahn (here on laptop) and
Günter Müller (ipod and electronics) are nowadays heavily
involved in the Swiss EAI scene (with Tomas Korber, Ralph Steinbrüchel
et al.), and it seems Christian Wolfarth is heading that way too,
after a number of notable lowercase outings with John Wolf Brennan.
The nine tracks on Drumming are refreshingly short by EAI
standards, none lasting longer than six and half minutes, but characteristically
dense and rich in information. Drums, as the recent history of improvisation
has demonstrated, are no longer there to be struck, but can be rubbed,
bowed and generally excited by extraneous objects in wild and wonderful
ways that would probably surprise Steve Reich, should a copy of this
fall into the hands of his lawyers by mistake. But they should make
a point of checking it out – Reich's Drumming was state-of-the-art
modernity in 1971, and this is where it's at 35 years later.–DW
I
Treni Inerti
AEREA
CS 050
 It's
been a couple of years since the debut album Ura by palindromic
minimalists I Treni Inerti, since when trumpeter Matt Davis has moved
away from I Treni's home base, Barcelona, leaving fellow trumpeter
Ruth Barberán to go it alone with Alfredo Costa Monteiro's
accordion. "Aérea" was the name of the last track
on Ura (which some high IQ wag recently noted is, unlike
the other track titles, not a palindrome) and it's here elevated to
album status as a three-movement suite. Without Davis to thicken the
plot, Barberán's sustained tones sound more exposed here, and
Costa Monteiro's wheezy squeeze box makes few concessions to good
behaviour. Draughty, gritty major seventh and minor ninth drones abound
– if the music we rescored for flute and piano ("which
every professional knows is a boring combination") it might just
pass as Feldman. But not for long. Definitely one of the more arid
landscapes in the New European Improvisation slide show (file alongside
Franz Hautzinger's Dachte Musik), but look carefully between
the boulders and you'll find some exquisite tiny flowers.–DW
Nordzucker
500 GR
CS 052
 After
a couple of recent jousts with electronics (in the form of Gino Robair's
"voltage made audible" on Sputter and Lou Mallozzi's
turntables on Landscape: Recognisable), 500 gr finds
trumpeter Birgit Ulher back in the company of "traditional"
instruments: saxophone (Lars Scherzberg) and cello (Michael Maierhof).
Though of course they certainly don't sound traditional:
all three players reveal great familiarity with extended techniques
on their respective instruments, and, more impressive still, leave
each other space to explore them. This is not so much a return to
the austere Berlin Reductionism ca. 2001/2 – there are very
few silences of more than a couple of seconds – as much as a
look further back into the history of German music: the pristine clarity
of Webern, the spiky pointillism of Stockhausen's Kontra-punkte
and the extreme compression of Mathias Spahlinger (think the Vier
Stücke). It's a terse, closely argued music, angular and
intense without being expressionistic. And certainly not sweet either,
despite the giant sugarcubes on the album cover.–DW
Julian
Priester Pepo Mtoto
LOVE, LOVE
ECM
 Along
with my son's homemade card and a bottle of 1991 Glenfarclas sherry
cask aged whisky which will probably have disappeared by the time
this particular review hits cyberspace, this is the best Christmas
present I could have hoped for – time to stop wondering why
on earth it's taken the good people at ECM so damn long to
reissue it and just pump it up up UP! Julian Pepo Mtoto Priester
(here featured on bass, tenor and alto trombones, baritone and post
horns, percussion and synthesizers) is, for better or worse, best
known as a member of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi sextet in the early
70s, but it's worth remembering that he popped up on a considerable
number of Blue Notes in the 60s and was a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra
when Herbie was still running around in short pants. With its funky-as-hell-but-just-slightly-offkilter
15/8 groove, the title track of Love, Love will inevitably
and understandably be compared to Hancock's albums of the same period
(and there's also an overlap of personnel, specifically Priester's
co-producer here, (Dr) Pat Gleeson, who also contributed such inspired
work to Sextant), but the rambling psychedelic medley of
the B side, "Images – Eternal Worlds – Epilogue"
steers the music away from the hard funk that Hancock hit paydirt
with barely a year after this was recorded in September 73 and takes
it back to the rich, ambiguous modal harmonies of late 60s Blue Note,
with a dash of Latin verve thrown in for good measure. Where Hancock
pulled on the strings and fenced the music in, replacing the irregular
metres of Mwandishi with solid Headhunters 4/4,
Priester and his boys let it fly out in all directions. As such Love,
Love is the precursor of a number of notable later outfits, including
Craig Harris's Tailgaters Tails and various early M-Base projects
(before Steve Coleman too let himself be drawn into straight quadruple
metrics, this time to accommodate his rappers). Its California sunshine
also makes for a welcome contrast with the sweatstorm of electric
Miles. Priester signed another ECM album in 1977, Polarization,
with his Marine Intrusion band (Ron Stallings, Ray Obeido, Curtis
Clark, Mark Williams and Augusta Lee Collins) – a fine outing
too but one that unfortunately suffers in comparison with Love,
Love. No disrespect to Marine Intrusion, but the band on the
earlier album is simply awesome: in addition to Priester himself and
Dr Pat (on ARP 2600, Odyssey, Moog III and Oberheim – the sound
of the 70s!), there's Hadley Caliman on flute, bass clarinet, soprano
and tenor saxes and Bayete Umbra Zindiko (aka Todd Cochran) on acoustic
and electric pianos and clavinet. The bass and drums line-up varies
– the two tracks were recorded three months apart – on
"Love, Love" it's Ron McClure and Kamau Eric Gravatt, while
on the flipside it's Nyimbo Henry Franklin and Ndugu Leon Chancler.
David Johnson adds extra flute on "Eternal Worlds" and the
scorching guitar on the title track is comin' at ya courtesy of Bill
Connors. Everyone is on superlative form, especially Bayete (time
to ask our Reissue This specialist Mr Allen to do a piece on Seeking
Other Beauty, his Prestige 1973 spacefunk outing which has been
on my want list nearly as long as Love, Love was until now..
meanwhile his later work with Automatic Man is, happily, out and about
again). So do yourself a favour and make sure that before the snow
melts this one is on your shelves alongside Larry Young's Lawrence
of Newark, Eddie Henderson's Realization and Inside
Out, Bennie Maupin's Slow Traffic To The Right and,
of course, Mwandishi, Crossings and Sextant.
It's that good. Rejoice!–DW
Colin
Andrew Sheffield
FIRST THUS
Elevator Bath eeaoa020
 In
line with Elevator Bath 's policy of packaging their discs in "elegant
printed sleeves of 100% recycled paper", the source material
for this debut album by label boss Colin Andrew Sheffield consists
entirely of brief segments of other commercially available recordings,
"contracted, expanded, layered and/or otherwise processed",
rendering them unrecognizable and ready to use for Colin's dilated-pupil
scenarios. The result is a sort of anti-harmonic architecture comprising
clustered electronics, long and winding roads to the black holes of
non-knowledge and pulses from outer space. It all amounts to a pretty
detached music, whose coldness works well at times but too often lacks
emotional content and too closely resembles other releases of the
genre. True, losing yourself in the nebulous realms of long-reverb
ambience can be a blessing, but keeping the feet on the ground is
also advisable, and when the sound is as muddled as this, my evil
little conscience wonders if there's any substance to begin with.
Ilya
Monosov
ARCHITECTURES ON AIR AND OTHER WORKS
Elevator Bath eeaoa022
 A
collection of small sounds, field recordings and idiosyncratic compositions
plus a nerve-shattering audio documentary involving CVA survivors
suffering from speech impediments, this album by sound artist Ilya
Monosov is certainly diverse and alluring. The author's vast field
of interests ranges from mixtures of concrete/acoustic sounds and
Alvin Lucier-like piercing frequencies ("Music for Electronics
and Hurdy Gurdy 2") to microsound improvisations with music box,
toothpicks, turntable and objects ("Composition A") and
lo-fi urban experiments ("Performance I"). "Untitled"
is a near-silent piece with Larry Polansky, while "Architectures
on Air" is the abovementioned recording of heart attack victims
blowing and talking into harmonicas by way of therapy. Their broken
voices and panting efforts are truly something to be heard, the deep
pain of baby demons trying to utter their first syllables. My favourite
track though is "Autonomous Guitar Music for Marc Schulz",
in which a motor is put against the wood of the guitar body, setting
off a continuous scintillation of jangling strings whose slight dissonance
sounds like a cross between Remko Scha and Fred Frith ("Water/Struggle/The
North" on Guitar Solos 2).
Adam
Pacione
SISYPHUS
Elevator Bath eeaoa023
 After
several limited edition releases, Adam Pacione's official debut has
reconciled me with that area of Ambient music that was booming at
the beginning of the 90s, when people like Jeff Greinke or Vidna Obmana
(both much more creative and original at that time) were reiterating
Brian Eno's teachings and adding their own spicy ingredients in excellent
albums like Greinke's Timbral Planes and Cities in Fog
or the Belgian's Soundtrack vor Heet Aquarium with Hybryds.
Pacione's Sisyphus is also a picture of a submerged world,
beautiful at low volume on a sorrowful Sunday morning. The music remains
pretty consonant throughout, as chains of consecutive looping melodies,
unfinished watercolours and mourning soundtracks for desolate solitude
– William Basinski's Disintegration Loops once again
comes to mind – coil around a hazy, obfuscated aura of instrumental
activity whose speed ranges from slow to totally immobile. The ingenuity
of "Cicada Lullaby", as well as satisfying my love for summer
insects, is a lesson in depth to other rocket scientists of the genre.
A consistent and pleasing album.
Rick
Reed
DARK SKIES AT NOON
Elevator Bath eeaoa025
 This
is one of those discs that I fall in love with after a few minutes.
Rick Reed is a self-taught composer based in Austin Texas who uses
sinewave generators, field recordings, shortwaves and Moog to build
crawling soundscapes in which every event is masterfully placed and
highlighted for several long minutes before being gradually replaced
by the next one. Trapped under a thick crust of sonic detritus, Reed's
frame-by-frame succession of slow, electric calls and subterranean
concentration defines its identity over the course of these three
long compositions, of which the title track is somehow the most transcendentally
"relaxing", constructed as it is upon deep drones and low-end
movements. Dark Skies at Noon is also the soundtrack to filmmaker
Ken Jacobs' recent work, described in the press release as "otherwordly"
(never having seen it myself, I can only take their word for it).
Travis Weller adds violin in the most dramatic parts (reminiscent
of Christoph Heemann's albums like Aftersolstice or Days
of the Eclipse), and another illustrious presence in "Ceremony"
is Keith Rowe. His prepared guitar is immediately recognizable, but
the track certainly doesn't sound like an AMM offshoot and Rowe works
the piece without compromising Reed's personality. The record ends
with the harsher atmospheres of "Ghosts of Energy", where
Reed's dissonant narrative zigzags across the straight streets of
logical expectation, its blurred spurts of barely repressed violence
finally rechanneled to produce positive energy.–MR
Various
Artists
SMALL MELODIES
Spekk
 As
anyone running a label realises, putting together a compilation that
represents something beyond mere marketing is an increasingly difficult
and potentially time-consuming exercise. Spekk’s Small Melodies
thankfully does achieve something more considered than many recent
label compilations, through its invitation to explore and interpret
the idea reflected in the record’s title – an invitation
tempered through the use of keywords such as "calm", "warm",
"tender" etc sent to each artist. A more poorly curated
disc would have flopped under the somewhat lightweight approach to
housing the tracks, but label head Nao Sugimoto’s selections
are as cohesive as they are diverse. He’s taken the time to
contemplate an overall dynamic for the record – one that spans
digitally produced sound (ala Taylor Dupree, Ultra Milkmaids), an
experimental centre (Naph’s field recordings are a powerful
focal point for this release) and more acoustic-oriented players (such
as Oren Ambarchi and Tape). Exploring the concept himself, Sugimoto,
under his Mondii guise, creates a wonderful delve into the possibilities
of disconnected melody – his piece setting up a hazy system
of trickling song lines that tend to unfold in parallel rather than
in harmony. It’s a fitting piece to sum up the compilation and
its shimmering sonic fragments reflect positively on the entire album.
Small Melodies is another unique release from Spekk and a
highly successful realisation of what could have been a problematic
and potentially underwhelming theme.–LE
Various
Artists
(SI’K?-DEL’IK) VOLUME ONE
PsychForm
 PsychForm
– owned and operated by Stan Reed, he of the recent smash festival
hit Wooden Octopus Skull Experimental (P)Festival – hits the
bullseye with this one, a flaming missile driven through that gas
station in front of the fireworks factory. The hit is not so much
because the tracks are perfect for rollin' in your 5.0 with your rag-top
down so your hair can blow – of course, they are – but
the point is it coaxes such atypical sounds from each of the bands
in question. I.e. the gentle ambient paranoiac suburbscapes of the
formerly-noisy Contagious Orgasm's "Don’t you move it at
the end any more?" and the spacious improvisations of the generally-loud
Noggin and John Wiese (whose track, fortuitously enough, is named
"Reversed Spells"). Conversely, some people never change
– hence the Deutscher collages of Rowenta / Khan and the miasmic
noise / silence of a landscape peppered by teargas and stun grenades
on Christian "Brume" Renou’s "Neustettin".
Frank Rowenta and Gregor Jabs’ new Grillhaus combo provides
sibilant and lackadaisical fuck music on "Diamond Elevator (Stage
One)" while The Haters are The Haters, classroom turntables with
toy shovels for tone-arms notwithstanding. Reed’s own Broken
Penis Orchestra duets with Mixed Band Philanthropist on a track full
of surrealist collage and completely unauthorized sampling (cf. the
same "Kill! Kill! Kill!" drill squad snippet that showed
up on Nocturnal Emission’s "Drowning in a Sea of Bliss",
chipper chipmunks, Aretha Franklin’s "Rescue Me",
Sinatra and Stan Freberg). A hebephrenic disc.–DC
Various
Artists
EXPEDITION_1
Everest
 The
Swiss capital Bern isn’t particularly notorious for any kind
of avant scene beyond Reitschule and its monomaniacally eclectic offerings
of rock and electronica. Cuckoo clocks aside, we're talking a small,
tightly-knit and interconnected group of individuals, the most well-known
being Bassdriver and the kinetic turntablist sculpture of Christoph
Hess’ Strotter Inst. Don’t let that sway you from exploring
the tightly-ratcheted beat-and-sample Xanadu of this latest batch
of new sounds, though. From the ambient-then-droning rumble of Herpes
ö Deluxe to Bassdriver and Filewile’s wry twists on beat-drive
electronica (the latter’s "Robinhood" has, as lyrics,
the coda "blah blah blah"), to the distressed skank and
tumble of Menu:Exit and the rubber-band bass of the locked groove
in the Strotter Inst. track, which preconfigures the slightly glitchier
vinyl sorcery of rm74 and their "Italienische Autohupe".
Also of interest: the cuts-and-clicks of Everest, the emotional electronic
robot collapse of Krankenzimmer 204 and the acoustic guitar-and-breakbeat
travelogue of Herbaljazz (a reminder that a lot of Kosmische music
came from Switzerland – cf. Joel Vandroogenbroeck and Brainticket).
It’s also a valiant, valuable reminder of how much the Internet
has impacted such formerly remote areas of the world, like, erm, Bern.–DC
Various
Artists
SHANG
Xing Wu
 After
the splendid Insight compilation, which I was very proud
to be invited to contribute a track to, here's the long-awaited second
release on the Malaysian Xing Wu label. OK, calling it a "compilation"
is stretching it a bit (but I've got to find somewhere to file all
these reviews): "three-way split" would be a better description.
What's more, the three featured artists – Tham Kar Mun, Yong
Yandsen and Yeoh Yin Pin – all play together in a group called
Klang Mutationen (with Tan Kok Hui on percussion). Look forward to
hearing something by that outfit at some stage too. In KM Tham Kar
Mun plays alto sax, clarinet, Yandsen clarinet and Yin Pin guitar,
but here they're exploring different materials. Those familiar with
Insight might recall Tham Kar Mun's "Copula" (imaginatively
"scored" for wood, glass, pen, pencil, container, paper).
Shang kicks off with a full length six-movement Tham Kar
Mun offering called "Confining Abstract in Zero", an almost
Mattin-esque juxtaposition of tiny sounds and blasts of noise. If
you're a fan of the austere stuff that's come out on labels like Antifrost,
this is for you. "Lines", on which Yandsen forsakes his
clarinet in favour of an acoustic guitar, is what you might have ended
up with if Anton Webern had lived long enough to write a piece for
Taku Sugimoto (or Morton Feldman for Arek Gulbenkoglu, take your pick).
Frozen pitches sharp as icicles hanging on a winter tree. Hard to
imagine this coming from some teeming metropolis like Kuala Lumpur,
assuming that's where Yandsen actually lives. Meanwhile, Yin Pin,
whose "Psalm 3:4" was definitely one the highlights on Insight
for this writer, takes it to the street with a largely unadorned (it
would seem) recording of a Taoist funeral in Taman Melawis, which,
contrary to what you might expect, works as perfect counterpoint to
the other pieces on the album, in terms of colour, pace and sense
of ritual. If funerals in Europe were as much fun as this I'd pay
someone to record mine. -DW
Badland
THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE
Emanem 4120
Alex
Ward, Luke Barlow, Simon Fell, Steve Noble
HELP
POINT
Copepod
POD02
 Badland,
Simon Rose's trio with bassist Fell and drummer Steve Noble, has a
user-friendly moniker full of attitude rather than the kind of terse
acronym Fell favours for his own groups (ZFP, SFQ, VHF, IST...). Their
self-titled debut disc included some unexpected nods to jazz tradition
with covers of Coleman and Ellington, which hardly prepared the listener
for the sonic chamber-of-horrors of Axis of Cavity, their
followup album, which was graced with some spectacularly migraine-inducing
work from Rose. The
Society of the Spectacle doesn't have that album's cruel surgical
precision, but it's just as potent and focussed a document. The music
has a take-your-time feel to it even in its orneriest passages, as
if the trio were building up intensities layer-by-layer or, as Rose
suggests in his liner notes, zooming in on one corner of a canvas.
Fell and Noble have by now become as empathetic a rhythm section as
Fell/Hession, and Noble in particular has never been in better form,
infiltrating metrical eddies even in the freer passages and peppering
the music with his trademark sharp, discrete cracks and clangs. Rose
is a strikingly non-linear saxophonist, more concerned with juxtaposing
niggling repetitions and quivering waves of sound in a manner that
might suggest Evan Parker (or legions of lesser free-jazz finger-wigglers)
but likely owes more to his "other" guise, as a world-music
specialist. The eight improvisations cover a wide ground from the
fluttering disquiet of "Kittiwake" and "Mia" (or
should that be "MIA"?) to the two-part jazz-inflected blowout
of the title-track, but somehow it all seems an extension of the same
mood, a fragile/fierce world-gone-wrong vibe. Call it the Guy Debord
Blues.
Alex
Ward is one of those players who seems to get interesting music out
of anything he touches. His new album Help Point features
him on clarinet throughout, though it draws equally on the rock-guitar
side of his personality: the fuzzy, retro fusion sound of Luke Barlow’s
Rhodes and organ isn’t something you usually hear in an improv
context, but it works beautifully, as Barlow throws all sorts of outlandish
spatterings and growls on top of Fell and Noble’s pungent inside/outside
grooves. Ward has a tremendous command of legitimate and extended
techniques – he gets sounds out of his instrument that would
have taken Zorn an entire tableful of duck-calls – but holds
to a strong, fine-nibbed sense of line throughout, leaving a skein
of inquisitive tracings across the music rather than (like many improvisers)
putting the emphasis on sheer texture. The result is an album that
feels surprisingly light in touch even though it sports some tremendous
bone-crunching grooves (“The Deil’s Head” and “The
Cronk”) and the occasional bit of hydraheaded mayhem (“Help
Point Shut”). Anyone whose head’s been turned by Ward’s
remarkable contributions to Simon Fell projects like Four Compositions
and Compilation IV (or who has encountered him in the
oddball noise-thickets of the Incus release Limescale) will
want to hunt this disc down, one of the first releases on Ward and
Barlow’s new Copepod label. –ND
Cooper-Moore
OUTTAKES 1978
Hopscotch
 Commercially
released recordings have always been arbitrary guides to musical careers.
Tapes sequestered in shoeboxes and milk crates or stacked at the back
of closets often reveal entirely different stories than the cellophane-wrapped
discs for sale in record shop racks. Take Cooper-Moore. At the moment
the earliest available entry in his catalogue is William Parker's
In Order to Survive on Black Saint (his work on Alan Braufman's
Valley of Search (1975, India Navigation) and David S. Ware's
Birth of a Being (1977, Hat Hut) having been out of circulation
for decades). This new collection on Hopscotch contains eleven cuts
recorded in New York City in 1978, a full quarter of a century before
the Parker date, with an eclectic line-up including Ware on tenor
saxophone, Abigail Goldman on voice, the obscure but talented Mark
Gould on trumpet, and fusion whizkid Kenwood Dennard on percussion.
The track titles are pretty utilitarian and the overall feel is of
a workshop jam session amongst friends; it's unclear whether this
was originally intended for release. The two takes of "Emancipation"
find C-M on malleted ashimba in meditative percussive discussion with
Dennard, while "Ensemble," of which there are three versions
on offer, coalesces into a slow-boiling free jazz cooker with the
leader eliciting bass lines from amplified diddley-bow. A pair of
"Trio" pieces echoes the instrumentation of Cooper-Moore's
working group of the time, with Ware blowing acetylene-torch tenor
and Dennard making a passable foray into frothing free-style traps
while Cooper-Moore himself pummels away at the piano. Brief fife and
drum cadences on "Breakdown" evoke (Booker T.) Washington
crossing the Delaware. But the album’s peak comes with "Prayer,"
a beatific Ayleresque ballad drawn by Ware and Cooper-Moore with disarming
delicacy. And there's plenty more, nearly an hour's worth in all.
The material doesn't always gel (a case in point being the disembodied
voices and gurgling twang of "In the Beginning"), but it's
never less than engaging, and prompts the question: what other treasures
are sitting in storage, waiting to be rescued from the dust and dark?–DT
Buffalo
Suicide Prevention Unit
BUFFALO SUICIDE PREVENTION UNIT
Realm of Records
 The
city of Buffalo NY apparently has the worst weather in the United
States. If it's anything like its neighbour, Rochester, where I spent
21 months of my life developing a beer gut and a taste for junk food
in 1986-87 (the gut disappeared shortly afterwards in California,
the taste for junk food didn't), I well can believe it. Winter kicks
in in October and drags on until April. There are about three weeks
of decent weather in May and again in September, between which the
city sweats under leaden skies at 90°F and 90° humidity. A
mate of mine, Californian poet Rian Cooney, was once shortlisted for
a teaching gig in Buffalo, and went there to be interviewed by Robert
Creeley, who took him on a walk through the city, stopping to point
at a third storey window along the way. "See that? That's where
the snow came up to last winter." But there's the clue
as to why Buffalo has always been a cool place (no pun intended).
The place has attracted some major league artists and writers over
the years. Creeley and Morton Feldman might have moved on to other
places now, but music lovers can still rejoice in the Buffalo Suicide
Prevention Unit, a smoking free jazz five piece outfit featuring Mike
Allard (alto sax), Steve Baczkowski (tenor, baritone, bass clarinet
and bugle), Michael Hermanson (trombone) Leif Ingvar Nicklas (bass)
and Ravi Padmanabha (drums). Baczkowski's name should be familiar
to PT readers as the third member of the trio that signed the recent
awesome Dim Bulb with Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano, and
his playing on this album is just as passionate, if not always as
wild as it was on that release (it's rather hard to think of anything
that burns as brightly as that particular bulb, with the exception
of Immolation / Immersion, the Wally Shoup / Chris Corsano
/ Nels Cline platter reviewed here a month or so ago). But BSPU is
good solid proof that free jazz doesn't necessarily have to fire on
all cylinders all the way through to hit you hard. There's great variety
here, from the gruff lyricism of the saxophonists (for whom Joe McPhee
is as much a point of reference as wild screamers like Frank Wright)
to the complex metres and occasional blasts of military march music
Padmanabha and Nicklas throw into the mix. The whole affair is as
hot and spicy as a platter of Buffalo wings, so crack open a case
of Genesee 12 Horse (or whatever the local brew is up there.. personally
I've always sided with Frank Booth in Blue Velvet –
"PABST BLUE RIBBON!") and enjoy yourself. If I lived in
Buffalo I might just have to play this album every day.–DW
Joe
McPhee/Matthew Shipp/Dominic Duval
IN FINLAND
Cadence
 Strung
together, the track titles on this concert disc read "never before,
never again, in Finland." Not exactly a resounding encomium to
the setting or scenario. But what's more surprising is that this trio's
meeting didn't happen sooner. McPhee and Shipp mostly follow parallel
paths, though they have come into direct contact on several Thirsty
Ear projects, while McPhee and Duval's working relationship goes back
nearly a decade, including their collaboration as two-thirds of Trio
X. Here McPhee sticks mainly to soprano, employing pocket trumpet
primarily as an introductory device. His tenor is, sadly, nowhere
to be found. He waits in the wings during the opening of the first
piece, wisely leaving Duval and Shipp to suss out common ground and
set the stage. Duval's credentials as Cecil Taylor's first-call bassist
might suggest that he'd be at ease complementing Shipp's keys, but
the pair's communication feels strangely tentative, full of mutual
deference rather than forward momentum. Lots of energy is expended,
but there's precious little to show for it. McPhee's arrival on soprano
parts the dense clouds of the pianist's pedal-swollen block chords
with a ray of delicately shaded melody, but the piece remains disappointingly
temperate, and even McPhee's gorgeous straight horn work sounds watered
down. The second track opens promisingly with a barrage of smeared
trumpet, arco bass and crystalline piano clusters, but soon veers
off into nebulousness with the return of McPhee's soprano. As if cognizant
that vitality is slowly ebbing, Duval kicks in with a riff from "Blue
Monk", and the three spend the remainder of the piece exploring
that evergreen. The closing track, despite its title, is a thinly
disguised "Summertime" that starts out strong (with McPhee's
trumpet threading through Shipp's grand pianistic slabs) but peters
out in another spate of drifting lassitude. Considering the enormous
potential this meeting of three master musicians holds, the results
can't help but ring up as a disappointment. Never before, never again.–DT
Fritz
Hauser
DEEP TIME
Deep Listening
 With
Hauser on percussion, Pauline Oliveros on accordion and "expanded
instrument system," David Gamper on miscellaneous small instruments
and Urs Leimgruber on ever-present (but not incessant) soprano and
tenor saxophones, Deep Time was commissioned by the Pauline
Oliveros Foundation in 1991 and features "recordings of sounding
stones (manufactured by Arthur Schneiter) and various watches and
clocks." "Deep time" indeed, for it to have been kept
out of circulation for so long. Each instrument surpasses time in
the same way that the second hand on a clock ticks almost imperceptibly
backward from the pressure of moving forward. There's no sense of
competing sounds – a race to fill up space with one ego overriding
another’s, or any overt "pushing around" of sounds
– and the 31+ minutes on each of the CDs unfold with a strange
mix of purpose and spontaneity. If, as they say, "Jesus is a
flower", this is liturgical music of the highest order. It’s
an incredibly delicate hour that passes, emphasizing the oft-forgotten
point that it’s not the time itself that passes, but how one
chooses to fill the time – kill it before it kills you. One
of the gentlest, most natural records in recent memory.–DC
4g
CLOUD
Erstwhile 046-2
 "4g"
stands for "Four Gentlemen of the Guitar", even if one of
them, Toshi Nakamura, doesn't actually play one here (he sticks to
his customary no-input mixing board.. shame, because his work with
the venerable stringed instrument on Side Guitar was cool).
The other three gentlemen concerned are Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz
and Keith Rowe, and the music on this 2CD set was recorded in concert
in France (at Musique Action, Vandoeuvre, disc 1 track 1, and Les
Instants Chavirés outside Paris, disc 1 track 2) and Canada
(FIMAV, disc 2) in May and June 2004. It's a quintessentially Erstwhile
production in every detail, from the personnel to the cover art (another
bold, beautiful Rowe painting) to the music itself, three great colourful
slabs of elegant, slowmoving EAI, less combative than Rowe and Fennesz's
previous outing together on the label, Live at the LU (you
can put that down to the calming influence of Nakamura and Ambarchi,
who's in melody mode on the Victo track – shades of his Grapes
from the Estate and Triste – and gorgeous it is)
but much more satisfying. It's also further proof, if any were needed,
that a superb bit of mastering can reveal nuances and depth in a live
recording that was not necessarily apparent to those who heard the
music in the flesh – I was present at the Instants Chavirés
gig and recall that Fennesz's Venice-like swathes of laptop
prettiness rapidly got the upper hand, but Nakamura's post-production
brings out a wealth of detail.–DW
Ettrick
INFINITE HORNED ABOMINATION
Heule
 Ettrick
is a two man outfit from San Francisco consisting of Jacob Felix Heule
and Jay Korber (no relation to Tomas, methinks) who both play saxophones
(Heule alto, Korber tenor) and drums. As you might have guessed from
the album title, these lads are coming at free jazz from Black Metal,
though I rather suspect that die-hard aficionados of those lovable
Scandinavian homicidal maniacs might find Infinite Horned Abomination
a trifle intellectual. John Zorn's flirtation with hardcore
of a couple of decades ago is a little closer to home, as is Paul
Flaherty's recent power duo with Chris Corsano. But that pair's Hated
Music is a hard act to follow, even if Heule and Korber are just
as energetic. There's a noble tradition across the pond of wild men
blowing themselves silly and giving the finger to straight ahead jazz
snobs (whom, you will recall, Mr Zorn advised to "eat shit")
– if your collection includes the aforementioned Mr Flaherty
and seasoned brain melters like Borbetomagus, this is one you'll enjoy
checking out. What it lacks in subtlety it certainly makes up for
in pure adrenalin rush. Play loud.–DW
ZFP
Quartet
MUSIC FOR STRINGS, PERCUSSION & ELECTRONICS
Bruce's Fingers
 This
recording by the ZFP Quartet (Carlos Zingaro, Marcio Mattos and Simon
H.Fell on, respectively, violin, cello, double bass and electronics
plus Mark Sanders on percussion) comes from a performance in Guimaraes,
Portugal, yet in terms of sound quality it's comparable to a top notch
studio album. It contains some of the best string playing on offer
in recent times, whose depth comes from contrapuntal energies springing
from deep within the wood of the instruments (the ghosts of Webern
and Ligeti are duly summoned forth) and is enhanced by the sober use
of processing. Individual voices remain at one and the same time audible
and coherent with the whole design, the musicians remaining fully
aware of their position and going to great pains to leave sufficient
open sky between the frequent patches of turbulence (special mention
should be made of the incredibly sensitive Sanders), never tripping
over each other's feet, completely in awe of the mysterious and bewitching
creature they've given birth to.–MR
Kemialliset
Ystävät
LUMOTTU KARKKIPURKKI (VAPAA SYSTEEMI)
Fonal
Kemialliset
Ystävät’s previous appearance was on a double 8"
picture disc released by Campbell Kneale on the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon
label in New Zealand. This one's based on a Finnish children’s
book about a boy who buys an enchanted candy jar (the album title,
translated) full of sweet craziness, eats it all to get heavier and
heavier trips but then finds the witch he’d bought it from has
vanished. Fucking pushers! "Vapaa systeemi" means "free
system" and this record has those in spades and the ace besides.
"Free system" also means an album larded up with self-indulgent
extraneous nonsense, but thankfully it all just feels so natural and
unaffected that it’s no surprise that the album came out of
nowhere (Finland) and is going straight back there (storage). Backward-masking
galore on acoustic strings plucked with cacophonous, childlike joy,
noisy torrents to wash those echoey pastoral moments away, and a hound
howling in sympathy. 25 years ago this would have caught Steven Stapleton’s
eye and made that infamous list of invisible bands included on the
first Nurse With Wound LP. And like John Gill's Sounds review of Chance
Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella,
this record gets a ????? rating too.–DC
Guillermo
Gregorio
COPLANAR
New World
 Old
school modernism is pretty unfashionable these days, especially in
the world of composition. Not many people seem to give a damn about
pitches, and scores, if they still exist, are more likely to look
like 1960s Cardew than 1990s Carter. Not that it's necessarily a bad
thing: it's cool that musicians and non-musicians alike from all walks
of life are now appreciating Feldman, and moreover appreciating him
for what his music sounds like (though if I were teaching Music History
at some Faculty somewhere I'd suggest a semester-long course on Feldman's
notation alone) – the number of recordings of Feldman's music
currently available is staggering. Of course, he also had hip things
to say, unlike Papa Boulez, who's shot himself so many times in the
foot making glib elitist put downs of every conceivable kind of music
other than the niche market he represents it's a wonder he's got any
bloody feet left at all. And that's a shame, because his music sounds
so good. Forget all that polemical tosh about "all the art of
the past should be destroyed" and sit down with Le Marteau
sans Maître and a pair of headphones and let yourself be
blown away.
The decline of fully notated contemporary composition has, of course,
gone hand in hand with the rise of improvisation. These days there
are more and more specialist new music performers who are equally
adept at improvising (I mean really improvising, not just turning
out a weak impersonation of what "improvised music" is supposed
to sound like, like the folks from the Ensemble Modern trying to play
Fred Frith a couple of years ago), and the most exciting work I've
come across lately in the field has come from two composers who are
themselves first class improvising musicians: bassist Simon Fell (of
whom more below) and clarinettist / saxophonist Guillermo Gregorio.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1941, Gregorio's late teens were spent immersing
himself in the work of cutting edge modernists such as Varèse,
Webern, Wolpe, Cowell and Crawford Seeger, as well as the music of
Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh (with whom he later studied)
and what used to be called Third Stream. There's a kind of Third Stream
connection with the title of this album, the first Gregorio release
on New World after a slew of splendid albums on HatART and hatOLOGY,
but to understand what's going on you need to read the composer's
own eight-page essay, which explains in depth the concept of the coplanar,
which a generation of Argentine artists (Tomas Maldonado, Juan Alberto
Molenberg, Raul Lozza, Juan Mele and a whole host of others) devised
as a kind of third way between the ideological poles of realism and
abstraction. Gregorio's essay also goes into some detail on how Argentine
composers of the period set about translating such concepts into music,
namechecking Juan Carlos Paz, Esteban Eitler and others I've never
heard of (but will make it my business to investigate as a result,
you bet), but remains charmingly elusive regarding the compositional
process behind the eight works on this album. The music is notated,
but the musicians are left a good degree of latitude when it comes
to making decisions about how to proceed. Improvisation is built into
the structure, and the ensemble Gregorio has hand-picked to perform
his music is top-notch, as you would expect, as it brings together
the cream of the crop of Chicago and ex-Chicago-based improvisers
– Kyle Bruckmann on oboe and accordion, John Corbett on guitar,
Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, Jim Baker on keyboards and Ken Vandermark,
who turns out an extraordinary bass clarinet concertante
performance on the closing Coplanar 5 – plus some special
guests from further afield including Swiss tuba virtuoso Marc Untermährer,
vocalist Jennifer Walshe and German piano virtuoso Steffen Schliermacher.
Gregorio's music is thorny, constructivist, bold and angular, and
makes no concessions to easy listening. There's no Naked City jump
cutting, Day-Glo minimalist chug-a-lugging or featureless impressionist
EAI daub here – only sharp gestures, a keen ear for interval
and a real feel for musical raw material. The music of Anthony Braxton
comes to mind (no surprises that Gregorio's discography includes a
splendid reading of Braxton's Compositions 10 and 16(+101),
but Gregorio's pitches are better, there's no trodding Ghost Trance
dirge and you can actually understand what the composer's on about
when you read the liner notes. It's not something you're necessarily
going to twig on first listening, but its soundworld is instantly
alluring, which means you'll find yourself coming back for more.–DW
Simon
H. Fell
COMPOSITION NO. 62 COMPILATION IV
Bruce's Fingers
 In
the age of the laptop and the small ensemble, sitting down to write
a full-length piece of challenging no-concessions new music calling
for nearly 60 musicians is a truly heroic endeavour (whether the work
is funded or not – this was, thankfully), and indeed there's
something decidedly epic about Compilation IV, Simon Fell's
"quasi-concerto for clarinet(s), improvisers, jazz ensemble,
chamber orchestra and electronics." Like Anthony Braxton, Fell
sees his compositions as, if not exactly interpenetrable, parts of
a larger work in progress, and each of his Compilations "reflects
upon ideas formulated, techniques developed and musical relationships
forged since the previous one," the reference works here being
1999's Thirteen Rectangles and the series of "Gruppen
Modulor" pieces that featured on the excellent Red Toucan outing
Four Compositions. The soloist in the quasi-concerto is once
again Alex Ward (see also above!), one of a growing number of top-notch
instrumentalists who are, as was mentioned in the Gregorio review
above, equally adept at handling the difficulties of a fully notated
score and improvising freely – and superbly. But he's not alone:
Fell's band includes, as you'd expect, the cream of the crop of British
free improvisers including Evan Parker, Clive Bell, Mick Beck, Steve
Noble and Phil Wachsmann (to name but five).
Though he favours generic numbers for his compositions instead of
fancy titles, Fell isn't averse to giving a few clues away when it
comes to naming individual movements. The references to Gruppen,
Karlheinz Stockhausen's three orchestra post-serial masterpiece from
1957, are evident enough, and "Lydian Panels" is a clear
nod to George Russell (who, like Fell, has never shied away from the
large ensemble form: his Electronic Sonata and The African
Game are spiritual godfathers to Compilation IV). The
Harrison of "Harrison's Blocks" is (Sir) Harrison Birtwistle,
of course, but the title also refers to one of Birtwistle's own works,
the 1998 piano solo Harrison's Clocks (itself a punning reference
to clockmaker John Harrison, and if you need any further info on him
go to http://www.surveyhistory.org/john_harrison's_timepiece1.htm).
And if the Modulor means nothing to you there's a clue in the liners
in the form of a photo of SHF sitting in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye.
The combination of serialism and swing might suggest a slight return
to Third Stream – and the sudden appearance of walking bass
and ride cymbals in "Harrison's Blocks 1" is something of
a shock at first – but forty years on from Schuller and Lewis's
pioneering if occasionally wooden fusion, Fell handles stylistic pluralism
with absolute mastery and a sense of humour (not a cynical
postmodern one at that). "What would it sound like if Henry Mancini
had arranged the soundtrack for a Hollywood biopic of Karlheinz Stockhausen?"
he muses. "Stockhausen Mancini Head" is the answer, and
even if you think you know what it might sound like, I promise you
it's better than your wildest expectations. If Papa Zorn had penned
this you'd have heard about it double quick, make no mistake. Despite
the aggressive modernist positioning, the sliding tempo scales, block
substitutions and retrograde inversions, there's nothing dry and fusty
about Fell's music: B.J. Cole's pedal steel guitar on "Lydian
Panels 2" is absolutely gorgeous, and it's followed by the slinkiest,
sexiest soprano sax Evan Parker's ever recorded on "Mancini Gruppen".
Great performances abound throughout: Paul Jackson is impressive on
piano (though you'd better check the track listing from time to time,
because Matthew Bourne also gives the ivories one hell of a workout
on "Interlude 2: Quartet" – imagine Tristano crossed
with Cecil), Mick Beck plumbs the depths of the double bassoon on
"Contrabassoon Concertino Construct" (and for once makes
the beast sound like the great musical instrument it is instead of
a bowel movement), Clive Bell contributes some typically elegant spacious
shakuhachi on "Lydian Panels 3", and powering it all forward
with either baton or bass in hand is Fell himself. If you're in search
of further reading on the man, I can do no better than redirect you
to the magnificent feature interview over at Bagatellen: http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/features/000781.html.
And as far as the music goes, Compilation IV is as good a
place as any for newcomers to Simon Fell's oeuvre, and seasoned SHF
hands can quite simply not afford to be without it.–DW
Jim
O'Rourke
MIZU NO NAI UMI
Headz
 Jim
O'Rourke cites the influence of Folke Rabe and Phill Niblock when
talking about this music, rediscovered in 2003 but originally conceived
back in 1990, when the composer was just 21 and still in Chicago.
Two versions of the piece are included, the first the original, the
second (which I prefer) a live recording from Roulette with Tim Barnes
on crotales and Karen Waltuch on viola. O'Rourke notes that though
the music he was making between 1986 and 1991 is not something he
values too highly these days, he appreciates the "gentle"
and "gesture-less" qualities of this particular composition,
which is indeed pretty static but certainly not immobile, full as
it is of evident currents and clearly perceptible internal patterns
whose effect is often comparable to the movement of harmonics in Tuvan
throat singing. One of the most interesting aspects of O'Rourke's
early work has always been its ability to enhance the intrinsic value
of each individual sound until it becomes the nucleus of a complex
system of detection; in this instance, a simple unadorned electronic
source gradually evolves into a multitude of resonant drones whose
spontaneous self-regeneration might lack the frightening power of
Niblock's walls of adjacent tones but casts a beam of bright light
onto the alien choirs and illuminates the path O'Rourke would take
with his more recent music. The sheer beauty of Mizu No Nai Umi
is something to cherish – though what we said and did in
the past can't be changed, it often reveals our true nature more faithfully.–MR
If,
Bwana
REX XHU PING
Pogus
 With
gluesticked scraps from an old copy of Harold Frederic’s The
Damnation of Theron Ware gracing the cover, here's another record
from one of the most criminally underrated champions of modern avant
composition working today, Al Margolis (once more with a rotating
cast of thousands – including deific pop singer Joan Osborne,
whose hit single "What If God Was One Of Us" will be rattling
around your short-term memory like a game of Mousetrap after you read
this), whose Pogus imprint is a logical evolution from his home-taping
days with his label Sound of Pig. The xylophone loops and current
events recordings of "Frog Field" are a welcome ding-dong-ditch
rejoinder to the thudding cut off so suddenly on the opening "Natraj",
and the nine-piece Orchestra d’Fou on "Oy vey, Angie"
plays everything from tuning forks to accordion to cells and trombone,
subsequently de/constructed by later treatments to become a stealthy,
slightly metallic drone hovering over the proceedings like those triangular
USAF fighter craft you've been hearing so much about. "Cicada
#5: Version Bohman" finds Margolis and Dan & Detta Andreana
re-interpreting the "talking tapes" of Morphogenesis' Adam
Bohman. Thrums and drones build behind manipulations of Bohman’s
purred everyday banalities, which are vaguely reminiscent of the old
1990s bit where David Letterman gave audience members Late Night's
predictions for the next hip catch-phrases of the year (e.g. "I’m
a sweet little cupcake... BAKED BY THE DEVIL!" or "They
pelted us with rocks and garbage!"). Finally, "Quaderni"
features Margolis on tapes and processing and Laura Biagi on Italian
whispers – now just imagine all the effort it takes to work
with tape in these times of instant digital gratification. You think
you’re bad? Take that unspooled tape you see in the gutter beside
the guy selling oranges on your commute home and make a collage by
splicing it together by hand. That’s bad.–DC
Darren
Tate / Andrew Liles
WITHOUT SEASON
Twenty Hertz
 One
of the most coherent albums to come out of Northern England, a region
that has generated some of the purest electroacoustic works in the
last two decades from the likes of Colin Potter, Jonathan Coleclough,
Paul Bradley and Andrew Chalk, Without Season fuses the skills
and the vision of two fine purveyors of egoless kneadings of therapeutic
field recordings and pellucid naive electronics, in the form of Andrew
Liles (whose solo work is well represented by his excellent Drone
Works on this same label), acting here as a "conductor",
and Darren Tate, who provides most of the sonic material, including
his trademark environmental sounds (water flowing and splendid birds
on top) plus a squeezebox and various "improvisations".
Also present is Darren's neighbour, 79-year old Kathleen Vance, whose
stuttering accordion, heavily processed and accompanied by rare piano
touches and synthetic waves, characterizes the final movement, a conceptual
continuation of Tate's recent Trees Kissing Trees (Fungal),
on which Vance was also prominently featured. Instruments mesh with
the rainbow arcs of reverberating exploration in a meeting of three
solitary souls who decided to share a little of their intimacy.–MR
Piana
EPHEMERAL
Happy
 There’s
something deceptive about this record – and it resonates from
the album title. While the nine pieces that comprise the disc might
be fleeting glimpses of digitally reprocessed songs – hinting
at passions for arranged strings, echoed visions of J-pop and contemporary
minimal electronics – their impression lingers far longer than
you might imagine. I’ve found myself being drawn back to it
for repeated listens, each one revealing another layer to the intricately
crafted electronic detail and imaginatively playful vocal arrangements.
Naoko Sasaki’s vision of pop music is unquestionably lullaby-like;
her songs are dreamy, almost nostalgic, reflecting a kind of musical
ukiyo-e, where notes, melodies and vocals are pressed through
a fine digital mesh and what remains on the sonic page is the impression
of song. The colours are gentle yet refined, spacious but never uncontained
– or for that matter overt. At its most dream like, "Muse"
with its slow muffled melody, hummed vocal lines and sentimental field
recordings is an important punctation mark for the record, acting
as a meeting point for the two ends of this release. After "Muse"
the disc opens out into "Mother’s Love" hinting at
a more conventional approach to song before exploring a wonderfully
ambient (or more aptly atmospheric) conclusion with "Moon + Cello"
and "Beginning". Joined by Minamo’s Yuichiro Iwashita,
who adds some elegant acoustic guitar and string players Seigen Tokuzawa,
Gen Saito and Sawayka Kuwabara, the intersections of acoustic and
electronic sources provide another example of how "pop"
can be redefined and arguably refined.–LE
William
Basinski
THE GARDEN OF BROKENNESS
2062
Having
inherited the burdensome title of torch-bearer for current and future
developments of the post-ambient canon, William Basinski's releases
always generate expectancy and curiosity. The Garden of Brokenness'
deceptive simplicity reveals instead a mnemonic archive of crumbling
dreams, the composer himself declaring that the piece was inspired
by the extremely desperate condition of life in this world. The Brooklyn
loopscaper translates this feeling into music with an old piano and
a handful of environmental recordings of what sounds like the traffic
noise recorded in a tunnel, which, processed until nearly unrecognisable,
wrap around the reflective sadness of the track's basic arpeggio (something
Brian Eno ca. "By This River" and "Julie With"
would be proud of). The three-notes-plus-one figure is repeated, multi-layered,
self-crossed and partially silenced in blurred fragments and spurts,
making this as good as any of Basinski's works since the celebrated
Disintegration Loops, affirming his elegantly sorrowful personal
signature and confirming that he's not a shooting star but rather
a sun in a sky that seems destined to be overcrowded by useless satellites.–MR
Fovea
Hex
BLOOM/THE EXPLANATION
Die Stadt/Janet
 The
opera prima by Fovea Hex is structured like many 70s progressive
albums – three tracks on the first side, and a suite on the
second – except that this is a limited edition double CD, not
a vinyl. This project by Hafler Trio's Andrew McKenzie and singer
Clodagh Simonds (remember Mike Oldfield's Hergest Ridge?)
is based upon rarefied superimpositions of voices and acoustic instruments
(viola, harmonium, piano) plus "organic matter" by McKenzie
himself. Bloom is the most "vocal" half, as Simonds'
transparent (glacial?) voice sings the marrow of three diaphanous
songs whose harmonic content is all dim light and near-undetectable
movements of the tectonic plates beneath the musicians' feet (Brian
and Roger Eno are "special surprise guests", even if their
presence is rather discreet, if you'll forgive the pun). The Explanation
starts from rigorous silence, gathers impalpable sounds, seemingly
from an underwater out-of-tune radio, and finally stabilizes in a
harmonious invocation recalling Pink Floyd ca. Obscured By Clouds
before being interrupted by Simonds' processed voice, and then silence.
Finely conceived and unobtrusively brilliant.–MR
Joda
Clement
MOVEMENT + REST
Alluvial
 "All
songs by Joda Clement" it says, and that word "songs"
is a clue. Strictly speaking none of the six tracks on this album,
which were principally sourced in field recordings made in Toronto,
Montréal, Paris, Guadalajara and Kabul (this latter a public
domain recording), is a song (as in "a brief composition written
or adapted for singing"), even if four of them feature additional
voice courtesy of Natasha Grace. The second dictionary definition
of "song" however does apply – "a distinctive
or characteristic sound made by an animal, such as a bird or an insect"
– provided one redefines "animal" as "man in
his environment." "My recordings attempt to blur the distinction
between electronic, acoustic and ambient sources," writes Clement,
whose list of instruments used includes harmonium, bells and a whole
battery of synthesizers and effects units. "Analog or acoustic
instruments are used because of the direct physical process with which
they generate sound. I take field recordings from sounds that habitually
go unnoticed in the daily environment (airplanes overhead, trains
passing in the night, the broken radiator at the end of the hall,
falling snow), as well as those which are less accessible for hearing
(the abandoned subway tunnels of Toronto, a muffled cab ride through
Guadalajara, contact mics on Jacques Cartier Bridge, etc.). I combine
nondescript omnipresent noises that surround us with instrumental
and vocal recordings to create a landscape of sounds that unites the
properties of both musical and everyday contexts." Those words
"blur", "muffled" and "nondescript"
are also significant here – Clement's work has more in common
with the more meditative / introspective work of Andrew Chalk and
Keith Berry than it does with that of Eric La Casa or Michael Rüsenberg.
It's beautiful and evocative, if a little heavy on the reverb (but
I'm not complaining), and I look forward to hearing more of it to
come.–DW
Francisco
López / Andrey Kiritchenko
MAVJE
Nexsound
I
recently got a rather irate email from Joe Morris complaining that
only one of his many albums has so far been reviewed on this site
(see the Letters section for
more grief). Well, sorry Joe, but I do have quite a few and love them
all, if that's any consolation (I'm sure it isn't). If Francisco López
wanted to he could bitch just as much – apart from two brief
contributions to compilations (the Antifrost Suffer / Enjoy
project and the infinitely more rewarding Lowercase Sound 2002
on Bremsstrahlung) his vast oeuvre has received little attention here
at Paris Transatlantic, ashamed to say. Which doesn't mean it's passed
me by altogether – I can count a good dozen of the slimline
informationless Untitled jewel boxes on my shelves from where
I'm sitting and I'm also the proud owner of the black blindfold that
came with Live In San Francisco on 23five – it's just
that it's.. not all that easy to write about. Of the many sound artists
that have emerged on the scene in the past decade who prefer (by and
large) to concentrate on the quieter things in life (bernhard günter,
Marc Behrens, Steve Roden, et al.) López is the one of the
most uncompromising, and I often come to the conclusion that my time
is better spent listening to his music than trying to write about
it. This particular release is a little different, though, as it's
a collaborative work between López and Nexsound label boss
Andrey Kiritchenko, collaborative meaning the former remixes recordings
by the latter (you might check out Tomas Korber's rather telling remarks
on such joint ventures in his PT
interview with Jesse Goin). It's pretty inscrutable stuff, like
the elegant but austere hard card cover it comes in, but eminently
listenable. Can't say I agree with Adam Strohm's take on it over at
Dusted, where he compares it to the opening minutes of Gaspard Noé's
Irreversible, which uses low frequencies to "discomfort
and unsettle" the viewer, but then again it's about time I upgraded
my subwoofers. I do though agree with Adam when he says that a companion
remix of López material by Kiritchenko would make for an interesting
rematch. Meanwhile, I await another irate email from Joe complaining
about me mentioning his irate email complaining about me.–DW
:zoviet*france:
MUSIC FOR A SPAGHETTI WESTERN
Klanggalerie
Recorded
in 1985-86, these posthumous tapes transport me back to a time when
:zoviet*france: (for the occasion, Robin Storey, Ben Ponton and Paolo
Di Paolo) was among the first outfits to teach this listener a thing
or two about exploring the inner self. Spaghetti Western
is a welcome addition to the :zoviet*france: discography, which includes
at least three or four milestones of the "deserted-urban-area-shamanic-trance"
genre (Shadow Thief Of The Sun and Shouting At The Ground
are not to be missed) and, in its muddy unpretentiousness, transports
our attention to that interstice between comfort and absurd fear,
the music gaining significance as timbral pimples grow inexorably
into enormous disfigurements of simple improvisation. The opening
movement is a collage of looped and processed TV dialogues (think
of a hybrid remix of "America Is Waiting" from My Life
In The Bush Of Ghosts minus the 4/4 rhythm), after which the
likely lads from Newcastle take off with a compelling series of ritual
ceremonies full of percussive round trips, distant wooden flutes and
memories of randomly plucked cheap string instruments drifting into
a destabilizing sensual haze. Economy of means notwithstanding, these
messages truly unscramble the nerves. :zoviet*france: always avoided
technical expertise to reach the heart of the matter.–MR
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
|
|