I
was amazed I could actually open the mailbox on returning
from holiday recently. The postman – actually I think it's a
postwoman, but never mind – had obviously spent a considerable
amount of time packing no fewer than 87 CDs (not to mention letters
etc.) in such a way that the door could be closed. Needless to say
I haven't listened to them all yet, but I'm happy to report that many
of our roving reporters have reviewed several of them for this latest
(the biggest and best?) issue of Paris Transatlantic. This
month I'm delighted to welcome aboard Roy Morris, one of free jazz's
mythic expert collectors (who's been plying me with numerous tasty
bootlegs of 70s fire music ever since we ran Clifford Allen's review
of Norman Howard a while back), who makes his PT debut with an interview
/ article on one of free music's many unsung heroes, Joe Rigby. I
should also say here and now that I tried to get permission to use
Peter Gannushkin's photos of Rigby on the Downtown Music Gallery website–
the only two I could find online – but didn't hear back in time,
so I took them from the Google Image page, hence the rather lousy
definition. But chapeau to Peter for taking them: and be
sure to check out his fabulous photos online when you can. Also joining
the crew this month is Jon Dale, whose fine writing readers will no
doubt already know from The Wire and Signal To Noise.
From what I can glean from our exchange of emails, Jon's as overwhelmed
as I am with new stuff to listen to and review, but I'm delighted
he's found the time to cover the latest offerings from two of today's
most exciting labels, Formed and Cut.
But, as you'll see, our regular contributors have been nothing if
not busy too. Massimo Ricci has come up trumps this time round with
no fewer than eleven reviews, and Marcelo Aguirre has taken time out
from preparing his forthcoming PT interview with Maurizio Bianchi
to dig up some Fluxus treasure on the Slowscan label. Meanwhile, Walter
Horn may have given up reviewing albums (sometimes I have to say I
envy him) but he's certainly not retired as a book reviewer, as his
piece on Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum shows.
(I'm especially happy that this bijou book / DVD has been covered
in these pages, because I was rather wanting to do it myself but as
a contributor to the book I considered myself disqualified.) And shots
go out too to Clifford Allen, Stephen Griffith, Lawrence English and
Nate Dorward, who, as if all this wasn't good enough, has kindly provided
us with a superb interview with guitarist Jim
McAuley. Never heard of him? You'll want to after you read the
interview.
The PT letters page has seen
some action this month too, in the form of a passionate defence of
Evan Parker by Jean-Michel van Schouwburg, and some choice nitpicking
by Josh Ronsen. On a Bailey-related note, Dominic Lash wrote in to
draw my attention to a fine piece of his on Bailey, which I strongly
recommend you check out (after you've read all this, of course, heh
heh..) at http://www.dispatx.com/show/item.php?item=1023
Meanwhile, on a bitchy note, here's another heartfelt plea to those
labels who are kind enough to send in material for review to send
REAL albums and not generic CDR promo copies (even if liner notes
and what have you are available online elsewhere for consultation).
I understand perfectly well, after numerous passionate exchanges with
Clean Feed's Pedro Costa, that this is done quite simply to prevent
"unscrupulous" journalists from just nipping off to the
local record shop, selling them and pocketing the cash without reviewing
them (maybe even without listening to them), but let me remind you
out there that Paris Transatlantic is, like many similar
new music sites, a totally non-profit making ad-free affair, where
NOBODY gets paid. The records that we love so much we want to write
about are in effect the income we receive. And a slimline cardboard
or plastic slipcase with a CDR jammed inside isn't exactly something
you want to take off the shelf and cuddle, believe me. Bonne lecture.-DW
From
The Chantels To Milford Graves
The music of Joe Rigby
Photographs
courtesy Peter Gannushkin
 Does
the name Joe Rigby ring any bells? You may have seen him playing without
knowing it. Maybe at a wedding in Brooklyn, or perhaps on a cruise
liner sailing out of Miami. On the other hand, if you'd seen him playing
with Milford Graves, you'd most certainly remember. Graves may not
perform in public very often, but every single gig is an unforgettable
experience. The forays into the crowd, the nuclear blasts from his
enormous multi-coloured kit, the hand signals, switching on and off
the intense screaming from his sidemen, usually saxophonists. And
usually, Joe Rigby has been one of them, on and off, since the 1960s.
With Graves, Rigby and his sparring partner Hugh Glover play music
which at first shocks, then overwhelms, and finally converts the audience,
Glover providing a raucous bridge between Rigby's often stratospheric
sounds and Graves's earthy dynamism.
"I met Milford in my junior year of high school," Rigby
recalls, "although we went to different schools. We had a mutual
friend who had an idea of forming a social club of guys primarily
to meet girls. That was the birth of the Zeusinians. I was the only
non-jock." (Even so, Graves remembers Joe, who is well over six
feet tall, as a great high jumper.) "Everyone else was very athletic.
Milford was on his school track team, as were most of the Zeusinians."
Rigby remembers their first gig together well: "It was a Latin
gig and Milford was one of four percussionists. I was playing flute,
but I couldn't hear myself. That might be what started my interest
with the tenor sax."
But
let's start at the beginning. Joe Rigby was born in Harlem on September
3, 1940, and his family history is nothing less than fascinating:
"My mom's name was Catherine Fedder Harding, and her father,
my grandfather, was the illegitimate son of President Warren Harding.
My mom was born in New Bern, North Carolina. My father, Joseph Benjamin
Rigby, was born in Haiti. His father was Haitian and his mother was
Dominican. The word is that my father came to the U.S. with his mother,
where they met an Englishman named Rigby and adopted the name. I have
two sisters from my father's first marriage, but to my knowledge they
aren't musical."
Joe, however, began music young. "My first musical memory was
playing at a piano recital when I was six years old. I wasn't too
bad!" There were lessons at the New York Schools of Music with
a Mrs. Fuchs for 35 cents a time. His father loved jazz. "He
played boogie woogie piano by ear. I don't think he was too happy
when, as a teenager, I was into R'n'B. I was in the neighbourhood
where a lot of R'n'B acts started, like the Moonglows, the Chantels,
Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Valentines, the Charts, the Paragons,
the Harptones and Leslie Uggams. I played piano for the Chantels.
We won three Apollo amateur nights. If you won four, you got a week's
engagement. But the fourth week they threw a young Jerry Butler at
us and we lost!"
There was a lot of jazz in the family house and Joe remembers hearing
Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Meade Lux Lewis, Art Tatum and Frank
Sinatra. The Sugar Hill neighbourhood of Harlem where he lived was
also home to Duke Ellington (and most of his band), Count Basie and
Billie Holiday. Billie Strayhorn lived for a while in Rigby's aunt's
house, and Joe's father also worked as a waiter on the Pennsylvania
Railroad and "met many celebrities of film and music."
Surrounded as he was by music, it's no surprise Joe was smitten. "I
went to high school at Power Memorial at the same time as Lew Alcindor
(later known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar and soon to become a New York
legend). When I went there, I would often hear Thelonious Monk practising
the piano because he lived near the school." It was there that
Rigby picked up the flute, playing with the marching band and orchestra.
"Piano was out! I was drawn to the saxophone because I had started
playing flute and then I heard such great saxophonists as Johnny Griffin,
Charlie Parker and Johnny Hodges, and decided I'd be better on saxophone.
My best friend Paul Kappes also played tenor sax. (This was after
high school, but he didn't play professionally. Around 1965 he moved
to Mexico where I heard he became a millionaire drug dealer.) There
was a music store on 48th. St. in Manhattan called Jimmy's. I was
able to try five Selmer tenor saxes and make my choice. During the
Beatles' invasion, the store stopped selling wind instruments and
concentrated on guitars. The owner made a lot of money and moved to
Florida."
"Other musicians I was listening to at that time included Sonny
Stitt, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Lennie Tristano,
Paul Chambers, Horace Silver, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans and
Miles Davis." But there was one musician above all others who
inspired Joe. "I knew I wanted to be an improvising musician
when I heard John Coltrane with the Miles Davis Sextet at the Apollo
Theater. He was playing harmonics, and the crowd actually booed
him. I thought he was fantastic, and wanted to play like
him."
It was the start of a long journey. "Improvising is very hard
work, and I don't think I got it naturally. It's a part of your life's
experiences, and I've had a long and interesting life. I've lived
in New York all my life, been married three times, and have four sons
and two grandchildren." (Fortunately for Joe, his wives have
all been very supportive of his musical career.) "It was the
womanizing that they didn't like.. Old age, or better yet maturity,
has changed that !" At the height of the Civil Rights movement,
there was little enthusiasm for America's colonial pursuits. "I
was in an age sense too old for Vietnam, but I was drafted during
the Korean War," Rigby recalls. "I got married to keep from
going in. I was also going to live in Canada, and had met a family
I was going to stay with, but it didn't come to that."
 It
was impossible to survive from music alone, though. Over the years,
to support his family, Rigby has worked as a postal letter carrier,
bus driver, United Parcels carrier, liquor salesman, taxi driver,
garment buyer, and nursery school teacher. He eventually became a
music teacher for the New York Board of Education for 14 years until
he retired in 2004. "I hope when people hear me they can get
a little, actually a lot, of my life experience in my tone. My tone
is what makes me me. I developed my own approach primarily because
Milford [Graves] was my friend, and he was always searching himself.
I learned from him."
But Rigby played a significant part in Graves's development too. Graves
(photo, right) recalls he "didn't get into jazz until 1962. It
was John Coltrane who did it. There was this place out here on Merrick
Road called Copa City. A little Queens club. Joe was a Trane man.
He said 'hey man, get your head out of the sand, the greatest saxophone
player who ever lived is playing out in Queens, right by your house,
and the greatest drummer is with him.' We went down there, young guys,
got a front seat. That was the first time I ever saw Elvin Jones,
he was so loose... and I said to myself, that's it. I went out and
bought myself a trap set."
Graves played some gigs with Giuseppi Logan, and the New York Art
Quartet, but then withdrew from the commercial scene. He decided to
play the New Music for "the people on the block", confining
his activities to the Black community, winning over ordinary listeners
to a music that was regarded as way-out and extreme in the jazz world.
Joe remembers their first real job together was with Don Pullen on
piano and Arthur Williams on trumpet at the Renaissance Ballroom in
Harlem. "I think Arthur Doyle was playing tenor sax on the gig
too. We played a lot in Harlem. Rockland Palace and the Renaissance
Ballroom were just some of the venues. People were very receptive,
and we were playing music that fit the period. Even when gigs were
thin on the ground we rehearsed up to three times a week. Milford
was always coming up with something to keep you interested. He connects
with stuff you don't know is there, then you hear it and that's like
the way it's always been." The group always featured a core of
at least two saxophonists, including Doyle, Rigby and Hugh Glover,
who Milford first met at 1964's month Revolution. Sometimes all
three saxophonists played together, but unfortunately, no recordings
of this awesome gathering have ever emerged.
They were volatile times, and the New Music seemed inseparable from
the politics of the day. "Milford's groups played for a lot of
political events. I met H. Rap Brown, Ron Karenga, Eldridge Cleaver,
Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael and others. Angela Davis was also
around a lot of the music. A little later I dated a woman who was
a Black Panther. I was in the audience when Huey Newton was released
from jail. There was a party for him in North Philadelphia... I remember
is that he wasn't such a good public speaker, but he had some very
good ideas. In 1969, I was president of the Black Students' Union
of Bronx Community College. When Kent State University's security
guards killed a student, we were the second college to close in sympathy,
after Kent State itself. This caused a ripple effect that closed most
schools across the country. I'm very proud of my involvement in that
protest."
By 1973, Arthur Doyle was in the throes of a nervous breakdown and
Don Pullen was swinging the Charles Mingus Workshop. Graves played
with Arthur Williams, Glover and Rigby at the Newport in New York
festival, and also briefly in Europe before returning to the shadows.
There was the occasional gig in the basement of Graves's home in South
Jamaica, Queens, over the following years, but it wasn't until 1997
that he, Glover and Rigby re-emerged, to great acclaim. "Milford
still tells me I sound too much like Coltrane," Rigby smiles,
"but he was my influence, and I'm proud of that. Until recently,
he wanted another saxophonist with me." But for the most recent
gig, Glover wasn't there. "He had obligations with his family,
and it was hard for him to rehearse." Graves has been recording
his and Rigby's heartbeats and incorporated them into the performance.
As of now, the group still hasn't been recorded. "The record
people haven't been knocking the door down. Qbico Records has shown
a lot of interest, but they want me to do a duo with Milford, and
they're not paying enough money to get him too!" Rigby lives
for music, but occasional gigs with Graves, albeit unique and incredibly
stimulating, could never be enough. Playing with Graves is just the
icing on Joe's musical cake.
 Joe
Rigby was once described as "the spectacularly ambitious Mr.
Rigby with his myriad reeds and flutes". "I started exploring
the saxophone family almost immediately after hearing Coltrane play
soprano. I was attending Hartnett School of Music in Times Square.
I didn't hear Trane's first night at the Jazz Gallery when he first
left Miles. Some of the students did make the first night, and the
word was that he was playing soprano. I went the second night and
I was blown away! I got a soprano, and then I wanted to play the alto.
Baritone and sopranino followed. I had someone give me a C-melody
but a couple of days later they realised that it was worth something,
and took it back!" he laughs. "I've never had the desire
to play the bass sax. I did try to trade my Selmer baritone for a
bass clarinet, but it wasn't an even trade, so I declined. I tried
a bassoon for about three months, but my heart wasn't in it. I would
like to try the bass clarinet again. Each horn has its strengths and
weaknesses, my weaknesses of course. I feel that there's
a time and place for each of them." If asked his favourite, Joe
will say the tenor, "but at times it can be the alto, or when
I was playing the blues, it was often the sopranino.
Living in New York has always enabled Joe Rigby to immerse himself
in music. "My most memorable concert-going experiences include
seeing Trane at Olatunji's in Harlem, and Freddie Hubbard with Herbie
Hancock at the Beacon Theater. I also can't forget seeing Coltrane
with Booker Little at the Five Spot. It was in between his leaving
Miles and forming his own band with Steve Kuhn, Steve Davis and Pete
LaRoca. I was fortunate to see Coltrane perform at least 200 times,
and most of those performances were notable. And I must include Ornette's
concert appearance at Town Hall. Carmen McRae opened, and Ornette
and Dizzy played together. Sonny Rollins at Lincoln Center was also
tops."
"I became aware of the New Music, probably because of my associations
with Milford, Pharoah Sanders and Steve Reid. The Cleveland contingent
was happening. There were the Ayler brothers, Mustafa Abdul Rahim,
Charles Tyler and some folks I've probably forgotten. I remember playing
with Norman Howard once at a jam at Steve Reid's house, so I have
fond memories of the days with the great Cleveland musicians. Albert
Ayler showed me how to play harmonics in a room at the Theresa hotel
in Harlem. I remember Fidel Castro was staying there too. At the beginning
Ornette's music had virtually no impact on me. I knew how important
he was right away, but I didn't really listen to him until the 80s
and the 90s. I wasn't really a Sun Ra fan either, but John Gilmore
was excellent. I liked Booker Ervin a lot. I was exposed to him before
Trane and Rollins." Rigby feels his major artistic achievement
to be his "friendships and musical sharing experiences with Milford,
Pharoah, Carlos Garnett and Eric Dolphy, who turned me on to one of
my teachers, Garvin Bushell." A major performance achievement
was with Ted Curson's band where he was able to develop more continuity
in his phrasing. "Playing with Ted, who hired me over David Murray,
made me concentrate more on my phrasing because I was playing alongside
legends like Bill Barron and Nick Brignola. Both Bill and Nick played
with such beauty and drive, I had to listen more to what was coming
out of my horns."
The so-called Loft Era opened up many opportunities for the practitioners
of the New Music to play, even if there wasn't much money involved.
Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea opened in June 1972. "I did a lot of
gigging there," Rigby recalls, "and Sam gave me all the
freedom I needed. I had the pleasure of playing with Sonny Sharrock
there." Other musician-operated lofts included Artists House,
the Tin Palace, Studio We, Ali's Alley, the Brook, the Ladies' Fort
and Studio Wis. Not only were these lofts leased by the musicians,
but musicians made up a large part of the audience, supporting each
other, even working the door. And if one got a grant by filling in
the right bits of paper, others would benefit from the gigs that followed.
Sometimes a group could last for years, sometimes for just one gig.
But rehearsals were plentiful. Rigby was involved in several outfits
of note, including Ted Daniel's Third World Energy Ensemble ("Ted
had close to 20 musicians in the ensemble, and we've remained good
friends ever since, and I can say Ted is probably my closest friend,
along with Milford Graves. Ted gave me the opportunity to be one of
the main contributors in his band"), The Master Brotherhood,
with Steve Reid, Ahmed Abdullah, Les Walker, Mustafa Abdul Rahim (who
didn't record with the group but who was an important member) and
Arthur Williams ("my best musical friend until he died of what
was called a drug overdose"), Carlos Garnett's Universal Black
Force ("Carlos and I had a mutual admiration for each other.
I think he's back in New York now [from Panama] and sometimes performs
at the Lenox Lounge in Harlem, though I haven't seen him yet")
and Charles Tyler's New World Ensemble ("it was more usually
a sextet when I was in it... the only time I ever had a problem being
a sideman, was with Charles. He tried to tell me what instrument to
play, and when to play it. We almost came to blows!").
Finally, early in 1978, thanks to Rashied Ali, Joe got the chance
to lead his own group, which he called Dynasty, at Ali's Alley. He
brought in a powerhouse band with Marty Cook, trombone, Amina Claudine
Myers on piano, Jerome Hunter on bass and Steve McCall on drums. Stanley
Crouch reviewed a subsequent gig, writing: "Rigby plays a lot
of saxophones but the tenor is his instrument. He played solos that
swung, shouted, made brilliant uses of harmonics and built with an
ordered and swelling passion that let you know he is an important
voice, in any direction.... I will always remember the way Rigby walked
off the bandstand and remained audible as he traveled through the
audience, inventing and swinging with an ecstatic mastery." But
somehow Joe wasn't able to break through with this group. "There
were no recordings with Dynasty. I didn't really know how to do a
press kit, and that cost us some bookings. I never applied for grants,
although I should have. There was a change in personnel too, with
Joe Bowie on trombone, Sonelius Smith, Brian Smith and Rashied Sinan."
By the end of that year, the golden era of the lofts was coming to
a close. As suddenly as they had opened, lofts began to shut down.
Rents had increased tremendously, so the musicians who ran them lost
their leases.
However, as one lot of venues disappeared, others emerged, including
Soundscape, the Squat Theater, TR-3, Hurrah, Irving Plaza, CBGB's,
many aimed at the new sounds of punk, funk and No Wave emerging on
the pop scene. This led to a short-lived synthesis in the New Music
(as there had been a quarter of a century earlier when bop musicians
had looked for a closer connection with the blues and soul, eventually
becoming hard bop), with Ornette Coleman's electric Prime Time and
the emergence from James Chance's backing group of Joe Bowie and Defunked
(soon to be Defunkt). The driving forces were blues, funk and rock,
reflecting the influence of James Brown and George Clinton, as well
as a desire to reach a bigger audience. Major players included Joe
Bowie, Luther Thomas, James Ulmer, Oliver Lake, Ted Daniel, Henry
Threadgill and Steve McCall with LeftHand Frank on a blues tip, and
Arthur Doyle and Beaver Harris with Rudolph Grey riding No Wave. But
only Joe Rigby did it for real, and did it for keeps. "Johnny
Copeland's manager Dan Doyle got in contact with me because he wanted
a saxophonist who 'didn't sound like most of the blues saxophonists'.
Johnny also gave me all the freedom I needed. I think that the experience
working with Johnny's blues band, and briefly with B.B. King, helped
make me the musician I am today. B.B. hired me to replace his baritone
sax player for three gigs in jails. But I didn't want to just play
the baritone so I left." Through the 80s, while Rigby was with
him, Copeland's searing guitar enjoyed a surge of popularity. But
it was not a good time for jazz musicians, and there were many casualties.
Some managed to survive by entering the education system, and Rigby
eventually followed suit, going back to college and slipping off the
jazz radar screen almost completely.
"I graduated in 1989. Soon after Russell Simmons of Def Jam Records
offered me a job. It would have involved a lot of travel, and I was
a newly-wed, so I chose to become a New York City teacher instead.
The Def Jam job was with hip hop, and I probably would have been more
connected with the music scene than I was as a teacher of grades 6,
7 and 8, but I don't regret the decision. But it would have been interesting
to see what would have happened." Indeed, Rigby might have become
a millionaire, or ended up in jail. Or both, like Death Row's Marion
"Suge" Knight! His boys would most certainly have been impressed,
though. "My sons, all four of them, are into hip hop. At the
time I wasn't, and I'm still not now, although I do listen to it."
Rigby wasn't entirely off the scene during these years, "I was
gigging around with a harpist called Karen Strauss, and I was part
of a group called The Teachers. We were all teachers, and not too
bad! I also worked with a couple of pop singers who had high hopes
but didn't manage to reach stardom. Before we appeared at the Vision
Festival in 1997, Milford, Hugh and I performed at the Knitting Factory.
I played a lot of wedding gigs, too. They paid the bills very often."
Was he ever tempted to be a studio musician? "No. I've known
a few who've made an excellent living, but I never explored it".
Nowadays, Joe can dedicate himself totally to music, and the different
approaches he has to adopt, depending on whom he is playing with,
are a constant stimulus. "The contrast of playing spontaneously
[with Milford], and playing a more structured format is something
that I really like. I don't hardly think of myself as a be-bopper,
but one of my favourite play-along, Jamie Abersold, books is a Tadd
Dameron volume that I really enjoy playing. That is full of be-bop,
and I find my alto sax can handle the uptempo tunes. The tenor is
OK, but the alto is faster. I do think that the fact I like to play
both [free and structured] is, or could be, a way of critics saying
I don't really have a definite style. But I feel that kind of approach
to my music. Playing with Johnny Copeland made me really appreciate,
and enjoy playing, the blues".
More recently, Rigby is "trying to get a working group that are
willing to stick together through thick and thin, much like David
S. Ware's quartet. It won't be easy, but I'm optimistic. I've played
a couple of gigs with Roy Campbell. One was the closing of CBGB's
jazz series. I also played with a quartet of Ted Daniel on trumpet,
Ken Filiano, bass and Lou Grassi, drums. We had a few gigs. Then I
went to Florida to play on a cruise ship. I came back just in time
to fly to London to play with Steve Reid at Cargo. That went well.
We were warmly accepted by a primarily 20s to 40s age group. That
gig comes right behind a Newport Jazz Festival performance with Milford
in 1968 and a Bard College gig with Beaver Harris, Dave Burrell and
Jimmy Garrison as my most memorable performance ever! I guess I prefer
performing in concerts, but touring the UK playing rock clubs in November
2005 with Steve was a very positive experience. We played on a couple
of occasions for more than 1200 people!"
Rigby is also working with pianist Chris Chalfant, playing in a trio
with Ken Filiano and Lou Grassi, and working with Rashid Bakr's group
with Mark Hennen. "Roy Campbell and I have talked about playing
some more together, and I'm also playing with [drummer] William Hooker's
group. I might even be doing some things with Cecil Taylor, who I
saw recently." And there's his own group, which currently features
Charles Eubanks on piano, Hill Greene on bass and Warren Smith on
drums. "Maybe there'll be a trumpet too. I've just had a rehearsal
with Ted Daniel and Charles and it went well."
 What
about recordings? "I just found out that there is a record on
Utech of a performance I did at the Stone in January," says Rigby.
[Live Spirits Vol. 3, also with Walden Wimberley, Matthew
Heyner, Todd Nicholson and Jackson Krall - DW] "This
is an unauthorized recording as far as I'm concerned, since I didn't
know it was happening. It was with Ras Moshe. You might have trouble
telling us apart. Ras has just appeared at the latest Vision Festival,
and I wish him well. He seems to be on his way, and I feel very good
for him."
But after all these years Rigby must have a lot more than one recording
in him. "I've written a few new tunes. I'll have to do one [recording]
focusing on the New Music. And definitely a blues. I absolutely love
ballads and standards. I would love a live recording. I'm okay with
focussing on all my instruments. I try to practice every day. Right
now, I think my music is stronger than ever. What sustains me both
artistically and personally is that through my life, I've had people
who have shared their love with me (not necessarily in a romantic
sense, but that helps too!). Love is what propels us all. That has
kept me going, and will in the future. I have never given up hope.
I am very glad to have my health and my ability to play the music
that I love. I am a strong individual, and I thoroughly believe in
my ability to reach people musically, and I will do that. My ultimate
goal as an artist is to play music that makes the listener want to
hug the person next to him or her and tap their feet. If everyone
were exposed to music, I do believe the healing aspects of music could
take over our doubts and fears. War is big business, at least in the
United States, but he bottom line is that people can save people...
You just have to want it." Amen.–RM
Henning
Christiansen
SYMPHONY NATURA OP. 170 (1985)
Slowscan vol 21
Al
Hansen
JOSEPH BEUYS STUKA DIVE BOMBER PIECE AND OTHER STORIES
Slowscan vol 20
That
the Internet is still regarded by some with scepticism is beyond doubt.
Darren Bergstein, editor of the now sadly defunct (and soon to be
sorely missed) e|i + music electronic and otherwise+ publication,
reflects bitterly in the editorial-cum-obituary of his final issue
(#7) on the changes the Net has wrought in the world of independent
publishing, its unstoppable war machinery digitizing the frontierless
world. One is hardly able to digest all the information out there;
doubtless many of you reading these (virtual) pages have been puzzled
by the plethora of voices on a certain topic when confronted with
the multiplicity of links provided by search engines. In one of these
détournements, grabbing at catalogue comments of vendors
(those who dignify their goods by taking the task of "reviewing"
them instead of merely quoting the press release) in search of data
on Fluxus related artists, I came across former Wolf Eyes turned extreme
solo performer Aaron Dilloway's comments on the catalogue of Italy’s
finest Alga Marghen label. Here he is on David Behrman’s Wave
Train: "Wikkid CD of Early Electronic and Freaked out sound
recorded 1959 - 1968. Dude was a member of the KILL ALL group the
SONIC ARTS UNION along w/ Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, & Gordon
Mumma Who all make appearances on this CD...along w/ David Tudor and
Christoph Caskel. Electronics, Feedback, Prepared Piano, percussion,
home-made synthesizers, photocell mixers, field recordings... SHIT!!
CD has it ALL! AMAZING... Just look at all that fucked up gear on
his table!!!!!" He's even better on Phil Corner’s Word-Voices:
"Track one: dude quietly mumbling, Track 2, maybe a couple dudes
mumbling...while someone moves some furniture around the room, Track
three: Full side of dudes honking on some horns, dudes talkin’
gibber jabber, women yelping like dogs... fucking RULES.. Fans of
SMEGMA would dig this shit. KILL!" And so on. It's hard to say
how Fluxus is perceived nowadays, with so many noise / nonsense outfits
everywhere. To be sure, it shows the new generation is ready and willing
to soak up the Fluxus legacy like sponges, seemingly indiscriminately,
but there'll always be something that slips between the cracks. Like
's-Hertogenbosch Holland-based Jan van Toorn's Slowscan label. Van
Toorn: "Back in 1981 I could not find much interesting stuff
and thus decided to publish my own thing and started to invite artists
to participate. The label was finished in 1993, re-started in 2000
as a series of LP recordings of which now 12 have seen the daylight.
The sound material of the LPs was originally published on audio cassette
in the late 80s and early 90s. The label started as a audio cassette
magazine, of which 10 volumes have appeared in various edition sizes
(100-300 copies)". Quite a apart from the frenzied hunt for copies
before they disappear, what makes these records so elusive is often
the sheer lack of information on the artists and their works.
 Danish
Fluxist Henning Christiansen has been all too often overlooked (or
ignored) – he's often conveniently tagged as another "obscure
European" artist, just for the glory of obscurity’s sake
– despite the fact that he has produced a vast body of work
and has been distinguished with honours for the groundbreaking magnitude
of his contributions to Danish art and music, all the while retaining
a special resonance in Fluxus-related circles in and around Germany.
His work has been reasonably well documented, notably in the catalogue
published on the occasion of the 2001 Venice Biennale when he represented
the Danish Pavilion with his wife, German feminist-engaged visual
artist Ursula Reuter Christiansen. This contains a copious amount
of essays, photographs and manifestos, but little on Christiansen's
musical output. Christiansen studied composition at the Royal Conservatory
of Music in Copenhagen between 1950 and 1954, played clarinet with
the Royal Guards from 1955 to 1960, and went on to take lessons with
composer Vagn Holmboe. In 1962 he attended the Darmstadt Summer School
and went on from there to Wiesbaden, where he became involved with
the George Maciunas's Internationalen Festspiele Neuester Musik, which
paved the way for the Fluxus anti-art movement. Christiansen became
disillusioned with the direction in which composition was heading
and made a radical break, embracing a multitude of disciplines verging
on the political, including performance, painting and making music
with stones, buckets of water, glass bowls, sheep, birds and tape
delay. As well as his activities with the Fluxus branch in Copenhagen
along with Arthur "Adi" Køpke, Eric Andersen and
the "Ex-School" around Paul Gernes, Bjørn Nørgaard
and Per Kirkeby, Christiansen became known for his collaborations
with Joseph Beuys, co-signing 12 performances in all between 1964
and 1985. In such works as Manresa, Hauptstrom, Eurasienstab,
Scottische Symphonie, Celtic or Abschiedssymphonie (featuring
Nam June Paik – go to: ubuweb.com for aural brainwash) he provided
the sonic elements without which Beuys' action-based happenings would
have remained naked. By 1985 Christiansen had already reached his
Opus 170, and now, approaching 74 years old, he has over 250 works
to his name including chamber music, film soundtracks and electronic
soundscapes.
This reissue is a truly fascinating journey into the world of slowly
evolving and chance-propelled sound production. Released on green
vinyl (green being Christiansen’s preferred colour throughout
his career, hence the album cover photograph of him – in bright
green pullover – with his Stone Age Gramophone.. yes, it plays
stones), Symphony Natura carries the subtitle Spazio
Musikale con Animale. MUSICA dello ZOO, having been recorded
at the Roma Zoo in collaboration with Lorenzo Mammi. As with many
Fluxus pieces, there are open references to previous works cited and
reframed, and listeners familiar with Christiansen’s work might
recognize traces of Abschiedssymphonie and later incarnations of Verena
Vogelzymphon/ Schafe statt Geigen in the singing bowls that ritualistically
introduce Symphony Natura. An openness to field recording
of animals – gibbons, bears, seals, monkeys, red deer, wolves
and birds – brings unexpected elements into the mix, and a certain
amount of indeterminacy. "We were of course very impressed by
Cage when we were in Darmstadt," the composer recalls, "but
he has his house and I have mine." Aficionados of Acoustic Ecology
might find the overlapping of wolves howling with tape delay and sombre
low register piano and the organ-accompanied birdsong somewhat intrusive,
but the air Christiansen breathes is rarefied, animal voices superimposed
on loosely structured soundscapes of archaic plasticity. As the graphic
scores that accompany the edition indicate, the multiplicity of voices
superimposed in time frames add drama, underlining the gentle yet
omnipresent grain and hiss of tape-work construction.
 American
artist Al Hansen (b. 1927, Queens, NY, d. 1995 Cologne) was another
Cage alumnus who fell in love with Fluxus at first sight. As both
performer and Pop Art practitioner (it's claimed that his grandson-turned-superstar,
the almighty Beck, has been influenced by his grandfather's teachings)
famous for his series of Venuses with large breasts and pubic hair
made from cigarette butts, matchsticks and candy bar wrappers, Hansen
was hanging around Andy Warhol’s Factory on the fateful day
Warhol was nearly assassinated, and also claimed to have introduced
Yoko Ono and John Lennon to the loft scene of 60s New York. The remarkable
publishing company Something Else Press (Dick Higgins) published Hansen’s
account of the performance scene’s formative years, A Primer
of Happenings and Time Space Art, in 1965.
In her insightful book Fluxus Experience, Hannah Higgins
recalls the ideas Cage exposed in his experimental composition classes
in 1958 and 1959, which were attended by Hansen, George Brecht, Allan
Kaprow, Dick Higgins and Jackson Mac Low among others: "For Cage
direct perception meant depersonalizing the composer’s work,
such that sound itself became unmediated in the extreme. The expressive
interpretation of musicality by a composer or performer was unacceptable."
On this Slowscan album at least, Hansen takes Cage’s "radically
empiricist" connotations to heart. Unlike Christiansen, Hansen
was more of a visual and performance artist than a proper composer
or even musician. Whether that's a point in his favour or not depends
on your point of view, but the impact of the recordings presented
here is diminished in the absence of additional information explaining
what the pieces set out to deal with, which is not only relevant but
necessary given the fact that audio documents of happening-related
art can capture but a part of a piece's essence. The earliest piece
included is Car Bibbe, conceived in 1958 and named after
Hansen's daughter, who was involved in his father's work at an early
age (she also starred in Warhol’s Prison and several
films by Jonas Mekas, and to this day curates the Hansen legacy, organising
exhibitions and performances and running the web site with his archives).
Conceptualized in the manner of the early event score-card pieces
by George Brecht, i.e. by giving written instructions to consummate
a determined action ("Car Two – no lights – 1. Knock
on hood two times; 2. Enter car; 3.Toot horn three times; 4. Count
to fifteen; 5. Toot horn one time; 6. Slam door one time" and
so on), Car Bibbe was originally scored for ten or fifteen
cars and was a signature work Hansen developed over the years. Though
Dick Higgins remembers one early American performance as "a wild
affair", this version recorded in Bonn in 1989 amounts to little
more than car horns tooting in the air. Balloni Brothers Balloon
Work (1987) is almost as straightforward, with its randomly orchestrated
weird squeaks of deflating and bursting balloons. Influenced by both
Beat poetry and the visual and word constructions of Kurt Schwitters,
two further pieces exemplify Hansen's crude delivery of sound poetry.
Joseph Beuys Stuka Divebomber Piece (1987) scrapes the bare
bones of linguistic absurdity, recreating the roar of a fighter plane,
various vocal explosions and a radio dialogue the trouble-stricken
pilot has with the military base, all with a quota of witty humour.
Legend has it that Beuys was a Stuka radio operator for the Luftwaffe
during World War II and was shut down while flying over Crimea. (Beuys
went on to mythologize the event by claiming he had been rescued by
nomad Tatars who helped him recover by covering him with fat and wrapping
him in felt.) Around the same time Hansen himself was a paratrooper
with the Allied forces. Beuys went to become an influential and much
respected artist for Hansen, who conceived his piece as an indictment
of war’s absurdity, pointing out that Beuys was shooting at
the Allied forces. Meanwhile, The Futuristic Chattanooga Choo
Choo in the Mongolian Desert (1989) is a rough recitative over
a backdrop of psychedelic, Jerry Garcia-like guitar, embellished by
the singing of Janet Kramer (in Latvian), which gives the piece a
volatility and spaciousness through which resonates, to quote Allan
Kaprow, "the image of the wandering artist, the hobo avant-gardist
Al Hansen cultivated with great style and charm."–MA
[Thanks to Bibbe Hansen for generous help in the preparation of this
article.–DW]
BLOCKS
OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE UNBROKEN CONTINUUM
Brian Marley & Mark Wastell (eds.)
Sound 323 (book + DVD)
 This
compilation of musician statements, profiles, and mini-histories/“think
pieces” will, for a number of reasons, be considered a valuable
companion for many followers of contemporary improvisation and the
sounds and silences formerly called “EAI.” First, and
perhaps foremost, there’s its inclusion of a David Reid DVD,
which contains fascinating audio-visual recordings of improvisations
by, among others, Tetuzi Akiyama, John Butcher, nmperign (in its Rainey/Kelly
incarnation), Evan Parker, Keith Rowe, and John Tilbury. As a retiree
from the music reviewing business, I won’t comment on the DVD
except to say that some of the astute camera work allows impressive
detail regarding how the musicians are actually producing their sounds,
and that I quite like several of the performances. The book proper
is fascinating too, largely, I think, because of its focus on various
“unbroken continua”: between sound and silence, improvisation
and composition, performer and listener, noise and music. The reader
may also find evident within the pages of Blocks of Consciousness
a struggle between the poles of comprehensive analysis and what I
believe Ernst Bloch once described as the appropriate reaction to
the offer of a chicken dinner—just eating it.
One
can certainly glean a strong scent of reluctance to cerebral mining
from some of the twenty-three contemporary music-makers who responded
to Rhodri Davies' apparently simple question, “What are you
doing with your music?” Andrea Neumann says, simply, “A
lot of the time I’m carrying musical equipment from one place
to another. Sometimes on the street while pulling one or two trolleys
I feel like a very old person who can only move very slowly. Time
passes slowly, the speed in the head slows down.” But then,
as if she doesn’t want to sound like she’s complaining,
she adds, “This is a very good moment in my life as a musician.”
Otomo Yoshihide’s reply consists only of this: “Listen
to the non-existent things that may exist in the future.” But
others were not so reticent. One respondent, West Coast sound artist
Steve Roden, actually felt there would be utility in parsing Davies’
query into 1. What are you doing with your music? 2. What is the
purpose of your music? 3. What is the intention of your music? 4.
What is the meaning of your music? 5. What is the reason for your
music? and providing detailed answers to each variation on Davies’
theme. Spanish trumpeter Ruth Barberan expresses the discomfort many
musicians seem to have with the analysis of art when she says, “Some
time ago, when I asked myself what I was doing, I was unable to answer
and it worried me. Later on, I realized that one of the principal
elements of my work was not knowing what I was doing.” British
violinist Angharad Davies muses, “When I’m playing my
music I know what I’m doing, but when I have to talk about it
I don’t.” This uneasiness also reverberates through any
number of musician “field quotations” collected by Bertrand
Denzler and Jean-Luc Guionnet. Someone grumps, “There shouldn’t
be a post-concert autopsy, ever. What’s happened has happened.”
Another opines, “You know when it’s good or not. You can
talk about it out of politeness, but in fact the real discussion occurs
while playing.” But a possibly more curious musician confesses
that, “Sometimes I also like it when music makes me ask myself
questions. ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’
is too limited.” For this reader, the most endearing response
to Davies’ question was made by Takehiro Nishide. After admitting
surprise when “musicians cite theories or reasons for playing
music” and noting a strong reluctance to “define my music
in a certain way,” Takehiro uses his space to give us a short
history of his involvement with cassette recording. He writes, “The
inexhaustible source from which I draw my material is the most important
thing about this process. As I develop my sound using this approach
where there are no clear boundaries, I find myself exploring areas
beyond the predetermined definition of the medium I choose to work
within.” His reflections are both informative and sweet, like
a love letter to a technology that may seem anachronistic to some,
but has never lost its infinite capacity to surprise for Takehiro:
“I have no idea whether I will continue to make music with tapes.
They sometimes bring me an invisible something, like smell; in a minute
it’s gone, leaving me with new questions for my life. Life seems
to be one long day since I was born. This long day is confused by
the magnetism of tape, and still has not shown me a sign of the end.”
 The
historico-theoretical pieces in the collection are also thought-provoking.
Brian Marley’s essay on Cage carefully refutes all suggestions
that 4’33” was some sort of a joke, or that the
composer was trying to put something over on somebody. According to
Marley, the real importance of the work lies in its destruction of
the proposition that silences are actually bereft of sound. For Marley,
this is crucial because it opens up the possibility that music may
be silent. If, when closely attended, silences can be observed actually
to contain sounds, then since, on Marley’s view, music consists
of any sounds which, when closely attended, may be considered “fascinating,”
“intensely irritating,” “poly-cacophonous,”
or even boring, then, therefore, many silences will indeed be music.
Cage’s revolutionary piece forces the audience to pay attention
to noises they normally would push out of consciousness—and
once they receive the proper focus, on Marley’s definition,
they can’t fail to be music. They may, I think, constitute only
bad music (Marley talks of various performances of 4’33”
being more or less interesting or even “lackluster”) but
they will, from this perspective, be music, whatever their quotient
of aesthetic merits. Marley obviously formulated his thesis with precision;
it seems coherent to me, at any rate. Not all the writing found in
this book is quite so clear on this matter, however. Annette Krebs,
e.g., in her answer to Davies’ “What are you doing”
question, says both that everything that comes out of her instrument
is music and that she hopes that (and is very happy when), after rehearsing,
traveling, organizing, etc. it’s music that is actually produced.
And not all the commentators share Marley’s outlook. For example,
Clive Bell’s revealing profile of Sachiko M. contains a quotation
from Tomokiyo Yoshisane (1888-1952) that indicates that the Shinto
writer was fussier about what constitutes “music” than
Marley when he wrote, “Simply listen to a ‘sound’...you
do not have to listen to music.”
There’s
an important sense, of course, in which this whole “Is it music?”
question is nothing more than a linguistic quibble. So long as they’re
consistent (and don’t fly in the face of everybody else’s
usage), people may define their terms as they wish. One may, with
Marley, use "music" to describe any sounds attended to in
a particular way (not, e.g., as political speech or as a request for
a glass of water). Or, one may prefer to restrict the term’s
use to some subset of such sounds (or even an overlapping group, as
would those who would include some abstraction, like a score, which
is never heard at all). In any case, it’s good to know how a
particular person is using the word, if we want to avoid hollow, pointless
controversies. It is interesting to note that a traditionalist who
uses ‘music’ only to describe sounds that can be transcribed
using conventional ‘musical notation,’ may consider the
(to him/her non-musical) sounds of jackhammers and cement mixers at
a construction site transcendently beautiful, while Marley, who prefers
to calls these sounds ‘music,’ may detest them. This is
true simply because, for Marley, the existence of the concentrated
listening, not any aesthetic value, is the critical factor in determining
whether or not something is music. “Sonic artist” Lee
Patterson seems to agree with this perspective when he talks of the
importance of “acute listening.” To him this requires
“relative quietude, attention to detail, and considered response.”
It is those, according to Patterson, that change the sound of an egg
frying into music. Indeed, he claims, “to listen is to compose.”
PT
Admiral Dan Warburton (readers take heed: the same DW may have edited
this paragraph beyond all recognition [actually I haven't touched
it, promise!-DW]), in his discussion of the historical
relations between writing and playing music, is also wrestling with
a continuum. More than one, in fact, since he even explores the border
between improvising music and playing improvised music. Warburton’s
main point is that if you think there aren’t many good composers
around any more—or in any event good young ones—it
may just be because you’re being too restrictive in how you
understand the term “composition.” Why, he asks, shouldn’t
an improvisation count as a sort of instant composition? (Especially
if painting or sculpting a graphic score counts as making music.)
My main reservation about this instructive article is that I would
have liked to see more discussion of critiques made by those—like
Elliott Carter and, as a recent interview right here in PT shows,
Tristan Murail—who complain that improvisers are doomed incessantly
to repeat themselves, while writers of music can find ways
to avoid this pitfall. We might even have been treated to speculations
on the relative merits of conscious censoring devices (with or without
the embracing of historical forms, serialism or alea) as
compared with the "freer" workings of the mighty id.
The
other mini-histories/think pieces here—the editors’ introduction
(with its helpful digression on early manifestations of “machine
music”) and David Toop’s discussion of sonic atmospheres
and how they’ve grown—are also engaging, and each demonstrates
the extensive knowledge of its author(s). I would, however, have been
interested in hearing their thoughts on the extent to which music
may have gotten less abstract as it’s gotten more concrete.
For example, even a child can tell that certain contemporary works
depict nature (they can hear the cicadas and the thunder, for heaven’s
sake!), while the inspiration behind Beethoven’s Sixth might
not be so obvious. Could it be that Bell’s undefensive, even
proud, assertion that—at least at first—Sachiko M. was
“not a musician” puts her at least as far into the primitivist
camp as Grandma Moses? Is there any truth to the proposition that
a healthy portion of what used to be called ‘EAI’ is thus
a species of anti-intellectualism, replicating, often with little
or no abstraction, such processes as eggs frying, sea-side sunrises,
human brainwaves, or concert hall room tones? In any case, my main
(if small) regret as I read those enlightening reflections on how
the current the incarnation of music came to be, was that that neither
Ruth Crawford Seeger nor Harry Partch made it into any of the lists
of iconoclasts.
John
Wall, Richard Chartier and The Necks are, with Sachiko M., awarded
detailed individual profiles here. All are well-written and packed
with info, but the choice of these particular artists seems somewhat
arbitrary to me, causing the anthology to shift slightly in the direction
of a big (say, annual or biennial) magazine, and away from treatise
land, where resource books are made to be kept around the house or
library for many years to come. For those, like me, who will wish
to hang on to it anyways (and maybe even have a coffee table in mind),
I should say that its design, by Damien Beaton, is strikingly original
and quite lovely, in spite of the fact that its shifting internal
hues may sometimes present insufficient contrast between word and
background—at least for some of my ancient contemporaries.–WH
Dennis
González’s Boston Project
NO PHOTOGRAPH AVAILABLE
Clean Feed
Whit
Dickey
SACRED GROUND
Clean Feed
Portuguese independent
label Clean Feed has cast a wide net over its three-year existence
and sixty-odd discs, ranging from homegrown post-bop to gritty vanguard
European and American free jazz and, on some of the more curious offerings,
strong cross-cultural meetings. Lately their unabated barrage of releases
has concentrated more on the American jazz underground, including
sessions by the longstanding Ken Filiano-Steve Adams duo and bassist
Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra, and these two fine freebop
offerings from Dallas-based trumpeter Dennis González and stalwart
New York free-time architect Whit Dickey.
 Well-traveled
trumpeter and composer González has long been a leading light
of harmonically liberated swing, upholding the dusky urbanity of Bobby
Bradford, Ted Curson and Booker Little in a series of highly-regarded
pianoless groups. His latest, a quintet culled from Boston improvisers,
brings reedman Charlie Kohlhase, drummer Croix Galipault and bassists
Nate McBride and Joe Morris into the mix on five originals. González
often finds himself paired with extraordinarily versatile reedmen
– past sparring partners have included tenorman Charles Brackeen
and altoists Prince Lasha and Oliver Lake (Spirit Meridian,
also on Clean Feed). Kohlhase triples on alto, tenor and baritone
here and brings a defined sensibility to each – a surly huskiness
on baritone and an earthy blues tenor somewhat removed from free-gospel
Trinity, especially evident on “Hymn for Julius Hemphill.”
“Hymn”
is slinky and stately, a terse trumpet call signaling the sketch of
a theme. González solos atop a plastic near-rumba, fat phrases
open and round, while Kohlhase provides unfettered down-home funk
“up through the ground and out through the bell,” capturing
Hemphill’s gritty strut and rhythmic nuances perfectly. “The
Matter at Hand” is a nod to Bill Dixon, its time-spanning contrast
of walks between two basses recalling Dixon’s “Winter
Song” (see Savoy MG-12188, Bill Dixon 7-tette). McBride’s
throaty, Grimes-like arco and Morris’s deft pizzicato open the
piece in oil-and-water dialogue, Galipault erupting into vicious forward
motion as trumpet and alto perch “Lonely Woman”-like atop
an emerging pulse. Kohlhase’s alto recalls Carlos Ward in its
acrid ebullience, while Gonzalez’ trumpet is poised, deliberate
and liquid even as it growls, slurs and darts above the thrashing
rhythmic stew. A bright and assured performance, a tune like “The
Matter at Hand” would not have sounded out of place on the bumpier
ride of prime early ‘60s wax.
 Since
leaving the David S. Ware Quartet, drummer Whit Dickey has come into
his own as a bandleader. Sacred Ground is his third date
for Clean Feed, featuring regular foils altoist Rob Brown, trumpeter
Roy Campbell, Jr. and Joe Morris (again on bass) on five originals.
Dickey is a unique drummer, his approach only tenuously traceable
to figures like Graves and Cyrille; at times he recalls Turkish enigma
Huseyin Ertunç, particularly in his oddly suspended cymbal
work, which hangs above the music, almost outside time. Dickey's themes
alternate between singsong melodies and ominous out-of-tempo mash-ups,
and the pieces tend to hinge on the seamless working relationship
between the arch Dickey and explosively articulate Brown. Campbell’s
condensed fires perfectly complement Brown’s biting, joyous
alto work on “Vortex” (I’m starting to think the
latter is the Dolphy of our time). On “Soldier of Uncertainty,”
Dickey flexes his rock chops as the horns dance in suspended dialogue;
Campbell effects a merger between bebop facility and the guttural,
painterly smears of Dixon, McPhee et al, while the leader’s
solo becomes a profound exploration of mass, space and copper. Sacred
Ground shows Dickey’s group and approach becoming tighter
and more refined, even as the music gains in nuance and unpredictability.–CA
Bruckmann
/ Dafeldecker / Hauf
WANE
Formed Records
Jon
Mueller / Jason Kahn
SUPERSHELLS
Formed Records
Gabriel
Paiuk / Jason Kahn
BREATHINGS
Cut
Seth
Nehil / jgrzinich
GYRE
Cut
 Whatever
your expectations might be for a Bruckmann, Dafeldecker and Hauf trio
– quiet intent, abstract revelation or leftfield creativity
– you should probably steel yourself for disappointment when
you first listen to Wane. Boris Hauf’s gurgling electronics
aren’t problematic as discrete sonic "objects", but
they do pose a dilemma for Werner Dafeldecker and Kyle Bruckmann that
is never quite resolved: how to work around such concrete blocks of
texture/tonality while avoiding both predictable drones or "three-men-in-three-rooms"
disjoint? Though he's an agile and adept player, Bruckmann’s
rasping, puckered interjections often dry out before the saliva leaves
the bell. Dafeldecker tag-teams along, inserting various laconic phrases
or paced clangs and strums; he sounds sure-footed, yet somehow uncommitted.
It’s at times beautiful, but is somehow more interesting if
listened to from the next room, which at least makes sense of the
song titles: going, going, going, gone… Wane is best
when trailing off into the distance.
 Someone
recently tried to tell me that Jason Kahn was a predictable artist,
but though his lexicon is quite specific, this has never been a limitation:
rather, he stretches moments into eternities, setting parameters for
his recordings and steadily mapping all of the possibilities within
the space. Collaborations might suggest friction, but on Supershells
he and Jon Mueller fold their percussion, tapes and synth together
in laminal constructs. There are few points of punctuation here –
one example of a rising cymbal drone rudely cut by a snare hit seems
out of place – but the duo are attuned to each other’s
aesthetics, resulting in a performance that repeatedly reaches plateaus
of gorgeous evacuated tonal drift. Nothing here is exactly surprising,
but it's eloquent. One example of sublime incongruity: that such relative
austerity was recorded at the exquisitely named Hotcakes Gallery.
 Kahn’s
own elegant Cut label is one of the most quietly convincing imprints
of its kind. The duo with pianist and composer Gabriel Paiuk sees
Kahn scratching away quietly at the edges of your hearing, digital
dust collecting around Paiuk’s poised, dampened chords, stray
notes and shy preparations like sediment gathering on riverbanks and
in rock pools. It takes a minor leap in thinking, at first, to frame
Paiuk’s interjections as more than polite commentary, but closer
listening reveals strength and patience in his playing: every note
is carefully weighed and measured, but not at the expense of the natural
tenor of each piece. Kahn’s needling computer manipulations
eat away at the body of the piano like glacial striation on surfaces
of rocks, marking out patterns of weathering. Paiuk may well have
the last and best word, though, when he observes "each piece
seemed…like an extended ‘breathing’, each piece
as one single breath."
 Gyre
was originally presented as a four-channel sound piece for Correnti
Sonore 05, Tarcento Italy. Seth Nehil and John Grzinich recorded the
source material in New York and Estonia through 2005, and the resulting
three pieces all cleave fairly strongly to post-processed, gently
dislocated field recording "composition." It’s not
exactly an under-populated field, and at times Gyre struggles
to distinguish itself from similarly-minded recordings. The duo are
fascinated with resonance, tracing and testing the properties of spaces
through "sound actions" and then building new architectures
through juxtaposition and a cool editing hand. These recordings offer
a kind of psychogeographic hauntology, the displacement caused by
manipulation rendering the original spaces somehow absent, yet present:
you’re constantly trailing an idea of an origin without recourse
to any "real" referent. Nehil and Grzinich are smart composers,
though they do often rely on wind-tunnel atmospherics as scaffolds
for their compositions: not a bad thing, but they sometimes risk over-homogenising
their creations.–JD
Frequency
FREQUENCY
Thrill Jockey
 Am
I just behind the times as ever or has George Lewis's long-awaited
book on the history of the AACM still not appeared? That and the Tilbury
biography of Cardew are definitely at the top of my Books To Read
list (there are others, but this is not the time and place to start
discussing the final volume of Harry Potter). Most folks reading this
scribble will, I imagine, have a good few albums in their collections
by the Art Ensemble and Anthony Braxton, as well as (hopefully) Henry
Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams and Mr Lewis himself, but it's high
time we learned more about and heard more from some of the lesser
known figures in the AACM. Thinking here of Douglas Ewart, Ari Brown,
Ernest Dawkins and Edward Wilkerson, to name but a few. So while we
wait for Lewis to dot his i's and cross his t's, here's some music
to listen to. Frequency is a quartet consisting of AACM former president
Wilkerson (tenor sax, clarinet, wood flute, bells) current co-president
Nicole Mitchell (flutes, piccolo, melodica, Egyptian harp, vocals
and, erm, plastic bag), Harrison Bankhead (bass, cello, wood flute,
bells) and Avreeayl Ra (percussion, kalimbas, Native American flute,
vocals), and this debut album, also called Frequency, is
a real treasure. Wilkerson and Mitchell complement each other splendidly,
especially on the angular freebop of the openers, Wilkerson's "Pitiful
James" and Mitchell's "Take Refuge", and the Bankhead
/ Ra rhythm team is outstanding throughout. Google Bankhead and you'll
come up with an article entitled "Bassist with the Mostest",
which is a pretty good description of him, in terms not only of breadth
of repertoire but also sheer physical power, but Frequency
also presents the more intimate side of his playing – and his
composition. "Portrait of Light" is delicate and beautiful
without ever lapsing into sentimentality, and the scoring –
bass clarinet, alto flute, cello and kalimbas – truly exquisite.
Sadly, concert goers rarely get treated to this more introspective
vein of today's jazz, perhaps because they – or festival promoters,
or maybe even the musicians – think that a titanic orgasmic
blowout is somehow better value for money. Maybe the presence of a
woman in the group (and here IS the time and place to lament once
more how few of them there are in cutting edge new jazz) mitigates
against the kind of vulgar testosterone that characterises groups
like the Brötzmann Tentet, but don't let that give you the impression
Ms Mitchell is a dainty, fragile little thing who might snap in two
if you pat her on the back. That piccolo playing on "Fertility
Dance" is as fiery, spiky and daring as Sam Rivers. Nor should
you assume the opposite, that tough guys like Wilkerson, Bankhead
and Ra aren't capable of producing music of extraordinary tenderness
and subtlety. But such going against the grain and challenging established
preconceptions is what the AACM has always been about. Let's hope
George finishes that book soon.–DW
ROVA
TOTALLY SPINNING
Black Saint
 Out
of idle curiosity I just looked in the Oxford Companion to Jazz,
an 852-page tome edited by the estimable Bill Kirchner, to see how
many references there were to the World Saxophone Quartet. Answer:
four, spread over seven pages, including a central section of Peter
Keepnews' survey of "Jazz since 1968." How many entries
for the ROVA sax quartet or its individual members? Answer: none.
Perhaps this is just a sign of how the WSQ has become primarily a
matter of jazz history (even if the post-Hemphill band continues to
plug away), whereas ROVA is if anything in its prime right now, spitting
out discs like Resistance and Electric Ascension
which continue to break new ground. Totally Spinning is a
more modestly scaled offering than either of those albums, a post-Mingus
exploration of blues and roots (actually, you could imagine WSQ fans
responding to this one), though the Piranesian structural complexity
is echt ROVA. Jon Raskin and Steve Adams composed all but two pieces
and get most of the major solo space; Raskin’s work on the baritone
is particularly impressive – check out his Harry Carney/Pepper
Adams balladry on "Cuernavaca Starlight (For Charles Mingus)",
for instance, or the marvellous unaccompanied solo on "Let’s
Go Totally Spinning", in which he maintains both "lead voice"
and "accompaniment" on a single horn in kind of a crazed
internal dialogue. There’s also a cheeky miniature by Fred Frith,
"Kick It", and (most significantly, for those listeners
interested in following ROVA’s preoccupation with game-pieces
and cued improvisation) two performances of "Radar", Larry
Ochs’ "arrangement" of ROVA’s many cued-improv
strategies. The second piece in particular shows how "Radar"
permits themes and textures to be "stored" and later returned
to: the piece includes a raucous exercise in neurotic repetition,
a round-robin of face-pulling exercises, and a brief murmuring interlude;
the coda rapidly juggles all three textures. My favourite piece, though,
is Raskin’s "It’s a Journey, not a Destination",
a long seriocomic narrative piece – the absurd contrast between
Raskin’s monstrous baritone and Bruce Ackley’s prim soprano
is put to good use – that eventually winds its way to a stately
passacaglia. Totally Spinning seems to have been sitting
around for a while, presumably because of Black Saint’s difficulties
in recent years – the first two tracks are previously unreleased
material from the 1996 Bingo sessions, and the rest of the
album dates from 2000 (according to Ochs – the liner notes get
this wrong). It comes off almost as a holiday compared to the sterner
restructuralism that populates ROVA's catalogue, but there’s
nothing wrong with that – and the musical intelligence and playing
are as sharp as ever.–ND
Jorrit
Dijkstra/John Hollenbeck
SEQUENCE
Trytone
 A
leftfield disc for Dijkstra, a saxophonist from the fertile Dutch
jazz scene now based in Boston: Sequence is about as far
as you can go from his screwy cool-school alto sax work with Sound-Lee!,
and in fact there’s barely a recognizable sax sound on the album.
He's been working with polymath drummer John Hollenbeck since the
late 1990s, and they have developed a cut-and-paste aesthetic that
mimics the sound of overdubs, edits and studio trickery even though
the music is created in real-time. Who knows what to call it –
improv electronica? grotesque minimalism? cyborg jazz? soundscapes
for human drum machine and autoharp? – but what’s most
striking is how Dijkstra and Hollenbeck’s rhythmic layerings
find common ground between postmodern glitch-and-loop and the polyrhythms
of African musics. The extraordinary 11-minute "Rubber Mitten",
for instance, comes off like a post-colonial ritual dance collaged
out of whatever sonic detritus is to hand: thumb piano rubs up against
clunking robot beats, ticking-clock percussion against cartoon fwips
and off-key melodies that sound like a computer's idea of a lullaby.
The general principle here seems to be to create textures that never
existed before and will never be heard again: "Bubble Wig"
sounds like the work of a creature half-animal, half-typewriter, being
gradually drowned out by mournful koto thrums and twinkling-star electronics;
"Neuron Ringer" is a duet for droning ambient electronics
and hyperactive drumset clatter, spiced with computer burps; "Whistle
Baby" is an electronica nursery rhyme, complete with wind-up
music-box. Weird and wonderful stuff: Sequence suggests that
the distance from "Subconscious-Lee" to musical rummaging-around
in the subconscious is not as far as you’d think.–ND
Paul
Flaherty
WHIRLS OF NOTHINGNESS
Family Vineyard
 "Nothingness"
isn't exactly the word that comes to mind when you think of Paul Flaherty,
as anyone who's heard him on record – and seen him in the flesh
(could this be the most famous beard since Castro?) – can no
doubt confirm. After ploughing his lonely furrow far too long in relative
obscurity, the alto and tenor saxophonist has been riding high lately,
thanks in no small part to his teaming up with firebrand percussionist
Chris Corsano (whose Byron Coley / Wire magazine connections
have certainly been useful), and other notables including Joe McPhee,
Thurston Moore, Greg Kelley. But they're nowhere to seen on this date.
It's just Flaherty on eight intense solo improvisations dedicated
"to all the victims yet to come" and accompanied by a characteristically
passionate set of liners referencing Hindu guru Paramahansa Yogananda.
"We have pain and suffering as part and parcel of our existence",
writes Flaherty, but don't let all that give you the impression that
Whirls Of Nothingness is a bleak torture chamber of an album,
a kind of New England version of Masayoshi Urabe, because it isn't.
What many Flahertyphiles all too easily overlook in their effusive
YO FUCK SHIT KILL MAN CAN BLOW rhetoric (the liners to Flaherty's
latest offering with Corsano and Spencer Yeh on Important are a choice
example) is that underneath that wild white beard is soft, tender
skin. There's as much lyricism on offer here as there is fire and
brimstone – check out that delicious vibrato, you new musick
macho dudes – a beauty that's as fragile as sensitive as it
is raw and passionate. "Abstract freeform music to express our
joys and sorrows... and ease the pain?" Yes indeed.–DW
Paul
Lytton/Ken Vandermark/Phillipp Wachsmann
CINC
Okkadisk
 This
limited-edition release issued at the start of a brief US tour earlier
this summer features music recorded in concert in France and Slovenia
in month 2004. This is collective improvisation, rather than Vandermark’s
usual composerly free jazz, and he deserves particular credit for
fitting in well with the unique talents of Lytton and Wachsmann. I've
often found Vandermark more of an R&B honker than a jazz player
per se, meandering around until he happens upon a motif that fits
into a groove, then pounding the sucker into submission. What he does
very well is find rhythm partners who support his approach, bandmates
whose greater fluidity serves as a complement to his soloing. Here
there's no Dave Rempis or Jeb Bishop to pass the baton to, and Vandermark's
dealings with these wizards of improv are exposed, but they come through
effectively even if more understated than usual. There are still times
when he'll latch onto riffs and repeat them far more than, say, Evan
Parker would, but Lytton and Wachsmann respond in kind, using them
as foundations for brief forays of their own. All but one of the selections
begin in ethereally amorphous fashion, the exception being the third
cut, on which Vandermark plays a growling baritone as Lytton attacks
the drums with zeal. Wachsmann is wonderful whether bowing, plucking
or electronically enhancing his violin, at times making it sound like
a harp. The recorded sound is extremely quiet, perhaps a bit too much
so, and there are times in the long fourth cut where things seem to
come to a complete halt. But that's a minor quibble about an otherwise
very satisfying release.–SG
Vinny
Golia
MUSIC FOR LIKE INSTRUMENTS: THE CLARINETS
Nine Winds
 Saxophone
quartets have been wearing out their welcome with me recently; it’s
not that what they’re playing is bad, it just doesn’t
sound fresh any more. But when I started to listen to Vinny Golia's
new clarinet-quintet disc, it took me back to the days of the WSQ’s
Steppin’ : it’s that good. Golia is
the first among equals, but his four partners, Andrew Pask, Cory Wright,
Jim Sullivan and Brian Walsh, are deserving co-stars. The disc starts
off with the ROVA-like "Clown Car Syndrome" with the quintet
playing the more "normal" clarinets - it's a track that
makes you wonder why Golia and Braxton have never teamed up. On the
rest of the album Golia characteristically draws on just about every
conceivable member of the clarinet family plus tarogato while the
others confine themselves to a mix of bass clarinets and standard
B-flat models. (The liner notes helpfully keep track of who plays
what when.) In his arrangements Golia does an outstanding job of using
the dark, woody sounds of the alto, bass, contra-alto and contra-bass
clarinets. The unison playing has a stunning timbral depth, and the
results are often beautifully moody and resonant. It’s a pity
this ensemble is presumably a one-shot affair, just another one of
Golia’s series of "like instruments" projects, as
the results here are memorable enough to suggest this is a group worth
keeping together for more than one disc.–SG
Bobby
Zankel and the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound
CEREMONIES OF FORGIVENESS
Dreambox Media
 Zankel
and his thirteen compadres come hard out of the gate with "Choose
Hope," a rousing tribute to Nelson Mandela, and never let up
for the rest of this album. Ceremonies of Forgiveness is
a mix of hard-hammering backbeats and inspired big band charts: think
Africa Brass gets harmolodics. These Philadelphia warriors
have been playing together since 2001, putting Zankel’s songs
through their paces at a steady gig at the Club Tritone. Despite the
large group, solo features are kept at a premium, the accent falling
just as much on the ensemble behind the soloists. Pianist Tom Lawton
deservedly gets a lot of the spotlight, leading off three of the album’s
four cuts, and it's difficult to overpraise the rhythm section of
drummer Craig McIver, bassist Dylan Taylor and master skronk guitarist
Rick Iannacone. But the star of the show is really Zankel. His songs
just keep building and building from one idea to the next, effortlessly
sustaining interest across the relatively long (13'-15') tracks and
typically ending with a climactic feature for his biting yet smooth
alto lines. The album's only flaw is the awkward transition between
Elliot Levin's excellent flute solo and Taylor's bass solo on "Infinite
Potential of a Single Moment" – sounds almost like a bad
tape splice. That minor blemish aside, this is an outstanding album,
guaranteed to shake you out of your musical doldrums.–SG
Joëlle
Léandre
CONCERTO GROSSO
Jazz'Halo
 One
of the most extraordinary double bassists of the last thirty years
was recorded by Jean-Marc Foussat on January 29 and 30, 2005 at Gasthof
Heidelberg Loppem in Belgium, and the resulting double album is simply
magnificent. Over the years, Joëlle Léandre has developed
a unique style fusing edgy instability with an astonishing adeptness
at determining the focal point of a phrase and building a whole instantaneous
discourse thereon. Technical virtuosity is stripped of useless gimmickry,
and our ears are revitalized by Léandre's peculiar blend of
instrumental activism and ferocious irony. On "Parlotte"
the call-and-response game between her uttered articulations and the
multitude of thumps, plucks and bowed notes that she brings forth
from that "great, big, upright, impossible object" (to quote
Ms Léandre's Invisible Jukebox in The Wire a while
back) is both dialogue and monologue, and fantastic music to boot.
Not to mention the physical effects of the bass on the nervous system:
Léandre's imperious growl is an experience to be savoured with
mucho gusto, a surround sound low-frequency fecundation of the skull.
But if I had to choose a single track, I'd say "Spirale",
on which Léandre revolves around a barely determined tonal
centre like a nuclear powered hurdy-gurdy, playing in and between
the harmonics, adding accents, subtracting notes, and letting us gaze
at a continuum that leaves us buzzing and reeling.–MR
Irène
Schweizer
FIRST CHOICE
Intakt
 For
this writer, the piano playing of the great Irène Schweizer,
that simultaneously angular and sweetly sensuous animal radiance corroborated
by the lucid brain of an 88-key mathematician, is a major influence
in terms of the way music should be conceived and played. And First
Choice, a live recording made in the Kultur und Kongresszentrum
Luzern (Switzerland) on month 8, 2005, is a further tribute to the
pianist after the Gitta Gsell movie recently released on DVD by this
same label. According to the liner notes, the ever-shy Schweizer was
initially reluctant to accept the invitation to perform in this 1500-seat
concert space, but the wonderful acoustic of the huge hall was the
deciding factor in making her accept the challenge. She needn't have
been afraid. "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Piano Player"
pokes fun at the pianist's difficult situation in this world-famous,
intimidating concert hall, but Schweizer's Debussyesque whole tone
runs and ostinato chordal spinning elicit enthusiastic applause from
the audience. As she advances through her impromptu figurations, Schweizer
sees and hears something that's already precisely
delineated and shaped; all she needs to arrive there is that monstrous
technique developed over decades of friendship and collaboration with
the likes of Henry Cow, Joëlle Léandre, Maggie Nicols,
Han Bennink, Andrew Cyrille, Marilyn Crispell.. the list goes on.
The long opening improvisation links the distant points of a complex
harmonic network in a kind of luxurious primitivism, an exquisite,
introspective analysis that opens up revealing progressions that could
just as well appeal to fans of Gordon Beck and Keith Emerson (I'm
not being ironic at all), after which the three minutes and fifty-seven
seconds of the poignant, reflective "Ballad of The Sad Café"
(also on Piano Solo Vol.1 on Intakt) should consign the peacock
moves of Mr Jarrett to the trashcan once and for all. The rest is
for you to discover, and don't be surprised if you find yourselves
smiling when it's all over.–MR
Anthony
Braxton & Fred Frith
DUO (VICTORIAVILLE) 2005
Victo
 Accommodating
difference comes quite easily for recognized masters of improvisation;
Anthony Braxton and Fred Frith are two poles of a globe whose rotation
can alter, if not subvert, the order of things, and both studiously
avoid bathing in the waters of simplification during these five conversations.
But there's also plenty of room for playful free-punk-jazz exchanges:
the third track commences with Frith drumming on the strings, Braxton
joining him in a destructive heartache of microtones and garrulous
fuzz anarchy which, at times in its almost 23-minute length, transports
the couple to pre-delirious, divertissement mode in between
inquisitive (and more peaceful) intertwining lines. When Braxton travels
to rhapsody city, he finds a committee of limpid harmonics, glissando
chords and looped fragments waiting to welcome him; Frith's peculiar
set-up allows for a continuous shift of the guitar sounds, both real
time and delayed, across the stereo space, facilitating dialogue (and
argument) within constantly changing frameworks. Sudden dissonant
heads ups remind the audience that they're not attending a country
wedding. The final track begins with a whirlwind of apparent nonsense,
Braxton's spiralling atonality scratched by Frith's nasal mosquitoes
and detuned bumps until everything becomes linked in a logical, yet
still perplexing amalgam. Duo is a fine example of the way
great artists keep us on our toes with music that's hard-headed, stimulating,
impregnable but never predictable. Your final judgement depends on
where you draw the line between expectation and fulfilment, but to
do that accurately you'll have to listen many times. I'm still studying.–MR
Keith
Rowe/Mark Wastell
LIVE AT THE I-AND-E FESTIVAL 31 MARCH 2006
Confront Performance Series
 The
second outing of this intriguing limited edition series finds Rowe
and Wastell playing guitar, amplified textures and electronics over
the course of about 28 minutes of rather surprising music, at least
in view of both artists' recent work. Not that one should expect something
even remotely resembling a "canon" from these people, but
after the ominous hum that opens the disc you could have been justified
in expecting another exploration of charged stasis in the vein of
"Amann", the fabulous closure of the recent and already
much discussed Between by Rowe and Toshimaru Nakamura on
Erstwhile [see MR's review of this at www.touchingextremes.org
archives section – DW]. While there are hints of that
kind of sonority throughout, Wastell and Rowe concentrate instead
on the kind of aggressive dynamics and sudden alteration that will
frustrate and exclude those who revel in continuity. It's a world
of electrostatic incompatibility, air escaping from a narrow conduit
juxtaposed with passing cars on a distant road, helicopters and jets
powered by dentists' drills falling between the rotating brushes of
a car wash. The final minutes are defined by a fixed pulse over which
the mutilation of the sources is consumed like a final sacrifice,
so that the return to quiet is perceived more as a punishment than
a reward, although an overall sense of accomplishment lingers on.–MR
Norbert
Möslang/Günter Müller
WILD SUZUKI
For 4 Ears
 In
both their collaborative and solo projects, Norbert Möslang (cracked
everyday electronics) and Günter Müller (iPod and electronics)
have fathered an instantly recognizable sound that one perceives as
familiar after no more than half a minute of careful listening. There's
a constant square-or-spastic rhythm in Wild Suzuki, recorded
during a brief Japanese tour in 2004 organized by the late Koji Tano,
to whom the CD is dedicated, something that crawls under the skin
and penetrates the skull to spread in cancerous fashion. This continuous
minimal stimulation elicits myriads of quietly piercing timbres, tranquillity
somehow restored only to be sweetly raped time and again. In the uplifting
succession of "Fukuoka 1/2", "Yamaguchi 1" and
"Tokyo 1" the subsonic pulse and bubbling patterns are perfect
complements to a recurrence of (heaven forbid) pseudo "tonal"
aurorae disfigured by a phalanx of electric razors in a multidimensional
apocalypse of abrasive frequencies and corroded metal. This music
has too much energy and intrinsic movement to be used as a background,
yet drowns its details in an organic totality where interference and
abnormality are needles stuck in the dying body of contemporary electronica.
Silently attentive, working at the margins of non-commercial hazard,
these seekers have grown a fruitful tree without an ounce of compromise.–MR
Adam
Linson
CUT AND CONTINUUM
psi
 Releases
on Evan Parker's psi label can be broadly divided into three categories:
reissues of long out of print material formerly on Incus, the label
he used to co-curate with Derek Bailey, showcase projects for friends
of long standing (Alex von Schlippenbach, Aki Takase, Gerd Dudek,
Kenny Wheeler, Stan Tracey) and albums that continue along the path
of exploration Parker's own Electro Acoustic Ensemble has helped open
up, i.e. live electronics and the incorporation of real time electronic
transformation of acoustic instruments. These include Furt's Dead
or Alive, Paul Rutherford's Iskra3 and now Adam Linson's
Cut and Continuum. Bassist and software whiz Linson hails
from California, where he studied with, amongst others, Bertram Turetzky
and George Lewis before relocating to Berlin in 1999. Parker completists
(poor penniless wretches that they must be) will know him as the bassist
on the latest EAE outing The Eleventh Hour. Cut and Continuum
is the kind of huge, dense sprawling beast of an album (complete with
de rigueur quotation from Gilles Deleuze, p'tain d'merde)
that inevitably recalls Radu Malfatti's criticism of Parker in his
old PT interview: "I know Evan hates Ferneyhough on the grounds
that he just can't see the point of writing music which is completely
unplayable. But if you have a close look at Evan's own work, you realize
that he is moving around in exactly the same category. His work also
is 'unplayable' – at least for others – and he seems to
be as interested in virtuosity as good old Brian is. Neither of them
can get rid of the old structures, the density, the mobilmachung
and they both quite willingly follow the path of Beethoven, Boulez
and the rest." It would probably take me about as long to figure
out what Linson is trying to do here – let alone come to love
it – as it would to read all 360 pages of Deleuze's Cinéma
2 (in the Editions de Minuit edition), and neither course of
action is particularly appealing. I'll take Trittico per G.S.
instead if that's OK with you.–DW
Michael
Renkel
ERRORKOERPER III
Absinth
 Guitarist
Michael Renkel might be best known as a member of Berlin Reductionism's
most famous outfit, Phosphor, but even the briefest of dips into his
discography reveals that his energies go in many different directions,
from the leftfield electronica of Urbano Mistica Amplitude
and Möwen und Moos Remix to the chatter and splatter
of Activity Center, which finds him (and Burkhard Beins)
in the company of that most resolutely non-reductionist improviser
Phil Minton. Fine though these projects are, Errorkoerper III
is Renkel's finest work to date, an extended (67-minute) (instant)
composition for electric guitar, fx processor and laptops. Renkel's
website explains that "the guitar is not treated as a traditional
instrument but as a kind of 'nondirectional loop antenna' transmitting
the spatial sound to an effects processor which alienates, boosts
and distorts the filtered parameters. On a second layer the musical
signal is sent to two notebooks, also the guitar is now being played
in a percussive way and with an e-bow, by microphone additional musical
material comes into play: wood blocks, stones, harmonica, metal objects,
ruptured [sic] paper, etc.. The musical signals are held in a constant
state of flux, constant motion and alienation as all elements can
be connected / correlated simultaneously or alternatively." Despite
such detailed description, it's not always easy to figure out what
is going on here: Renkel's processes are at times linear, but more
often than not superimposed and interleaved, but the piece evolves
with extraordinary coherence and sustains attention and interest throughout
its considerable duration (no mean feat, that). And, coming out as
it does on Marcus Liebig's bijou Absinth label, you know it looks
as good as it sounds. As always, there are only 500 of these, so look
sharp.–DW
Okura
Müller Yoshida
TANKER
For4Ears
 The
first of these four tracks featuring Masahiko Okura (alto sax and
tubes), Günter Müller (iPod and electronics) and Ami Yoshida
(voice) was recorded live on April 30th 2004 at Koendori Classics
in Tokyo, while the remaining three are examples of what's becoming
an increasingly frequent practice these days in improvisation, the
long distance remix: Okura and Yoshida sent their contributions to
Müller to add his contributions to back home in Switzerland.
As Massimo Ricci has pointed out above, Müller's tremulous electronic
mirage is instantly recognisable, as is the extraordinary noise Yoshida
produces (in the latest Wire Clive Bell describes it rather
well as the sound of "hatching baby reptiles", but it could
just as well be a young seagull being smothered to death inside a
sleeping bag or a defective whistling kettle, take your pick). The
breathy flutters and tubular gurgles of Okura are perhaps less original,
in that there are dozens of horn players these days working in more
or less the same territory, but that's not the point: Tanker
is not about breaking the mould or rewriting the rules of EAI. When
you invest in a Müller album you have a pretty clear idea of
what you're in for: predominantly quiet, leisurely yet intense investigations
into the nuances of timbre articulating a slowly evolving structure
with delicacy and precision. Tanker isn't exactly a surprise,
but it is yet another example of accomplished work by three fine musicians,
and devotees of this kind of improvised music will find much to appreciate.–DW
Moebius
/ Mueller / Schoenecker
AMALGAM
Utech
 That's
Werner Moebius, not Dieter, by the way. Though if you're
old enough to remember Cluster (I am! And the cover of my old vinyl
copy of Cluster & Eno still has a cigarette burn on it
from my student days to prove it.. at least I think it was
a cigarette) and have been following developments in electronic music
ever since, you won't be disappointed. Anyway, who says all that old
German stuff is old hat anyway? Conrad Schnitzler is still going strong
and gracing the pages of The Wire, and how about those wiiiild
Asmus Tietchens Sky reissues on Die Stadt, eh? Talking of Asmus
Tietchens, there's a link there to Amalgam (bear with me,
this is brilliant) in the form of percussionist extraordinaire Jon
Mueller, whose own collaboration with Tietchens, 7 Stücke
(Auf Abwegen) is well worth a flutter. Mueller, who also runs the
Crouton label, also invited Tietchens to remix the three volumes of
that label's Folktales project, but that's another story.
Like all the releases on the magnificent Utech label, Amalgam
is as uncompromising as the brown cardboard cover it comes in, 27
minutes of hard-nosed post-Industrial doom drone in which Mueller
and Moebius (on computer) are joined by the shortwave radio and synth
of Jim Schoenecker. Gloomy and magnificent. 200 copies only. Buy now
or cry later.–DW
Sunshine
Has Blown
SUNSHINE HAS BLOWN
MYMWLY
 The
suburbs of Brisbane, one of Australia's northern and most tropical
capital cities, often produce strangely intoxicating sonic fruits
and this edition offers some recent blooms from a few local emerging
crops. A combined effort of Adam Park and Joel Stern (with additional
sounds from Velvet Pesu, Joe Musgrove and Scott Sinclair) the sound
collected here catalogues a series of unstructured improvisations
that, with a little editing, have offered a uniquely sculpted excursion
through the fringes of Brisbane's growing sonic underbelly. Each piece
moves at a reflective pace, a willingness to unpack its sound worlds
with patience and care, and it's this quality that perhaps makes this
improvised session something more than many of the others issued under
similar circumstances. The cicadas featured in the first piece offer
a homely backdrop to sounds that swirl and meander through fragmented
melodic pastures, occasionally surging into more coarsely textured
terrain. This is offset nicely by the second track, which drones and
squeals away, tainted with a drowned trumpet that splutters to stay
within the auditory waves. The other two pieces again splay out into
the sound roads less travelled, with strong and welcome results; the
sunshine may be blown, but the light seems to be working that audio
chlorophyll just the same.–LE
La
Grieta
HERMANA HOSTIA
w.m.o/r
 I've
been listening to Hermana Hostia, a joint venture by the
duo of Mattin and Iñigo Eguillor, in different conditions and
settings, each time finding a way to better appreciate the sneering
rants and dyslexic distortions of this bunch of "songs",
recorded by the protagonists on a computer using free GNU/Linux software
but sounding to all intents and purposes like the cheapest cassette
left in a car in a Las Vegas parking lot at 1:00pm in mid-August.
On the train to Rome, gazing out at the sad landscapes of the urban
peripheries I travel across every morning, La Grieta’s mumbling
vocal impasse represents a sort of desperate, anti-social commentary
by zombie-like presences that not even a brutal, pluri-overdriven
guitar electroshock can revive. And it's a shame that many people
won't be able decipher the lyrics: despite my own limited knowledge
of Spanish/Basque idioms, there are some nice lines in there, my favourite
one being "40 horas a la semana durante toda una vida pueden
ser muy destructivas" ("40 hours a week a lifetime can be
very destructive" – indeed it can, my friends, and it doesn’t
even take a lifetime to realise it). Impregnated with bitter Velvet
Underground-ness, abraded by gnarled swing (“Porvenir Desierto”
remains fabulously repugnant) and ending with macabre exhalations
of feedback poison, Hermana Hostia ("Sister Host",
for those who really need to know) is the goodbye letter of a clown
who's just lost his job and is about to self-destruct by drinking
himself to death.–MR
Barbara
Lüneburg
THE REFINED EAR
Coviello
 Barbara
Lüneburg is one of an apparently increasing number of outstanding
violinist / violists based in Amsterdam, a founder member of the Ensemble
Intégrales as well as a soloist equally home with classical
and contemporary composition, not to mention improvisation (not surprisingly,
she's appeared with local notables Anne La Berge, Yannis Kyriakides,
Cor Fuhler and, inevitably perhaps, The Ex). The Refined Ear
– and you need one to appreciate the music on offer here –
features four compositions, two by Austrian composer Georg Friedrich
Haas (...aus freier Lust... verbunden... and de terrae
fine) and one each by Manfred Stahnke (Capra) and Salvatore
Sciarrino (6 Capricci). The Sciarrino piece isn't exactly
new – it was written back in 1976 for Salvatore Accardo –
but is, or rather should be, a staple of the contemporary violin repertoire.
Its shimmering harmonics are as difficult to execute as they are fleeting
and translucent, and Lüneburg's outstanding reading makes it
all sound as if it was improvised, which isn't all that far from being
the case, since Sciarrino apparently wrote four of them on four consecutive
days.
The Haas pieces are tougher nuts to crack, due in part to their rigorous
exploration of microtonal inflections; the solo viola work ...aus
freier... – the title comes from Haas' beloved Hölderlin
– dates from 1996 and de terrae fine (for solo violin
this time) from five years later. Haas might be best known for his
ensemble works – notably the stunning in vain –
and the viola piece in fact derives from an earlier piece for 10 instrumentalists
entitled ...Einklang freier Wesen, but if Bob Gilmore didn't
tell you that in his ever excellent liners, you'd probably never guess.
Dark and intense, this is probably what Thomas Bernhard would have
liked to listen to while doing his ironing, had he lived long enough.
de terrae fine ("about the end of the world") was
written in Ireland (which is, as Irish-born Gilmore reminds us, "on
the edge of Europe" – though not exactly the end of the
world.. ever spent an afternoon in Rochdale, Bob?) but if you're expecting
any "local colour", forget it. It starts out as a slow,
sometimes agonisingly slow, and fearsomely difficult study in intonation
– at times Lüneburg has to handle sixth tones, and she
does so with breathtaking accuracy (forget Mat Maneri, check this
out) – but ends up with some mindblowing triple-stopped glissandi.
Hamburg-based Manfred Stahnke is also concerned with microtonality,
having studied in Illinois with Ben Johnston at the end of the 70s,
but prior to that he worked with Klaus Huber, Brian Ferneyhough and
György Ligeti (and wrote his university dissertation on Boulez's
Third Piano Sonata). Despite that heavy duty Euro-modernist
baggage, Capra (1987) sounds like folk music from another
planet. The four violin strings are tuned down to F-C-F-C (as opposed
to the normal G-D-A-E), giving a whole new colour to the higher strings.
When plucked it sounds remarkably like a mandolin, when bowed (once
more Lüneburg has to get her fingers round some tricky double
stops) it resembles a viol consort. Quite what Ferneyhough would make
of it is anyone's guess, but from where I'm sitting it sounds magnificent,
and makes for a spectacular ending to a superb disc.–DW
Peter
Lieberson
RILKE SONGS / THE SIX REALMS / HORN CONCERTO
Bridge
 Peter
Lieberson, a former stalwart of the New York music scene championed
by such conductors as Oliver Knussen and Seiji Ozawa, has had a somewhat
checkered career as a composer. After studies with Charles Wuorinen
at Columbia University, he turned to full-time composition after winning
recognition in the 80s with such dazzling post-Schoenbergian showcases
as his orchestral "symphony" Drala, inspired by
his prominent membership of the Tibetan Buddhist community. By the
late 90s, however, Lieberson's style was drawing closer to Shostakovich
than Boulez, thanks in part to the melodious influence of his second
wife, the celebrated mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, whom he
met when she played the Buddhist philosopher king's second wife in
Lieberson's 1997 opera Ashoka's Dream.
The results of this shift are on display on this disc, which features
The Six Realms, a six-part suite for amplified cello and
orchestra, along with the horn concerto and five Rilke Songs,
performed by Lieberson's wife. Though not intended as such, it's also
a memorial to the singer, after her death from cancer a few months
ago. Hunt Lieberson's singing here is rich and passionate, but unfortunately
most of the music isn't. Late Shostakovich cliches are everywhere,
with little recompense from either the Odense Symphony Orchestra or
the soloists (William Purvis on horn and Michaela Fukacova on the
cello). One feels that Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, for whom The
Six Realms was written, would have toyed and teased more with
their portrayal of the six Buddhist aspects of human consciousness
(with titles like "The Hungry Ghost Realm", how could you
go wrong?). Similarly, Bill Purvis's horn-playing could certainly
have given the straight-laced Horn Concerto a forceful kick,
or at least a quirkier rendition of the unusually abrupt final bars.
The strongest pieces on the disc are the songs, whose Hugo Wolf-like
Austrian pre-abstract expressionism chimes with some of Rilke's early
work, creating an effect not unlike a musical equivalent of a Freudian
flower by Georgia O'Keeffe. Lorraine admirers in particular will enjoy
the slow, pearly syncopations that pianist Peter Serkin spreads out
before she enters with the following lines in German: "Flower-muscle,
that slowly opens back the anemone to another meadow-dawn, until her
womb can feel the polyphonic light of the sonorous heavens pouring
down" (translation courtesy of Stephen Mitchell).
There is an interesting analogy between ideological and musical repression
in Communist Russia and the repression of Tibetan Buddhism in Communist
China, or, in James MacMillan's case, the repression of Catholicism
in Scotland or Christianity in Japan, and Shostakovitch's music can
certainly be pressed into service as a powerful symbolic device. But,
as György Ligeti and Franghiz ali-Zadeh have demonstrated, transforming
Shostakovich with unusual rhythms and microtonal harmonies is a good
deal more interesting than following Lieberson's lead and serving
it up straight.–NR
Pierluigi
Billone
ME A AN ITI KE MI
Stradivarius
 A
pupil of Helmut Lachenmann and Salvatore Sciarrino, Pierluigi Billone
is a musical Actionist to whom the entire microtonal spectrum is by
now second nature. He gained acclaim in the 90s for ferocious deconstructions
of traditional language and instrumental color like ME A AN
and ITI KE MI ("Measure. Two Heavens" and "New
Moon. Mouth. Feminine" in Sumerian – any link to the archaeological
interests of the late Giuseppe Sinopoli?), which appear here in a
suitably pummeling recording by the Ensemble Recherche. The precursor
is clearly later Nono, but unfortunately of the long-winded variety.
After ten minutes of whistling, whooping and squeaking (at times you
think you can’t tell whether it’s computer-manipulated
or pre-recorded sound effects, but it’s actually neither; the
ensemble does a mean imitation of a rusty gate), you feel ME A
AN could come to a suitable close, but it goes on for a further
25 without batting an eyelid, or adding anything of significance.
ITI KE MI, a tour-de-force for the viola with an
obvious kinship to Nono’s "violin concerto" La
lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, at least extends for a
quarter of an hour, multiplying its repeated notes from duplets to
triplets and tossing around its shards of sound, before settling back
to familiar techniques. Like a particularly brutal appointment with
the dentist’s, Billone’s music is likely to stick in the
memory, but if you’ve already had a double root canal at the
hands of Dr. Nono, the novelty should wear off the second time round.–NR
Robin
Holcomb
JOHN BROWN'S BODY
Tzadik
 After
several intriguing and somewhat unsung albums on which Robin Holcomb
revealed her skills as the author of refined songs characterized by
her tremulous, meagre yet inimitable voice and by heartfelt homages
to her influences, John Brown's Body is a precious collection
of piano-based compositions, occasionally with telling contributions
from Eyvind Kang (viola), Dave Carter (trumpet), Steve Moore (trombone
and glockenspiel), and, on the disc's best track, the Koehne String
Quartet. It's Holcomb's most rounded album to date, with music illuminated
by the kind of compositional brilliance associated with artists at
the height of their powers. The disc's highpoint is "One",
a splendid example of contemporary chamber writing that postulates
a four-dimensional contrapuntal spell for those of you fed up with
the easy-to-peep-into décolletés of famous
string quartets transformed into parodies of themselves (if you're
thinking Kronos, you guessed right). As one becomes acquainted with
the music – it requires concentration and clear-mindedness,
because it's deceptively alluring stuff – every single note
constitutes a small step along the way to a long-awaited communion
between Monk and Satie, not without reference to traditional American
music, which Holcomb refreshes with harmonic substitution, beat subtraction
and subtle, continuous modal shifts. The "famous" title
track is just that, a sublimely (in)formal rearrangement and oblique
vocal rendition Mr. Brown would surely approve of. This gorgeous album
ends with two attracting opposites, short fragments of Holcomb's literate
sensitivity: "Maybe You One Day" is a complicated equation
(solved in less than one and a half minute) containing impossible-to-sing
melodic configurations amidst spotless modulating equilibrium, while
"Pretty Ozu", part of a soundtrack written to accompany
Yasujiro Ozu's That Night's Wife, is a relieving, sweetly
melancholic half-theme closing the door of this exquisite gallery
with a gentle touch of pure class.–MR
Main
SURCEASE
N-Rec
 "The
end is important in all things". These, besides the track names
and the few credits, are the only words to be found on the cover of
Surcease, which, in case you still don't get it, represents
the final word on Robert Hampson's Main alter ego, as the Englishman
has announced that future releases will forthwith appear under his
real name. A long road has been travelled since the early 90s, when
Main was a collaborative venture. To this day, the Firmament
series and the masterpiece Hz are considered (by this reviewer
at least) as fundamental pieces in the hypnotic game of looping and
droning, which back then was mostly accomplished via opportunely treated/stretched
guitar sounds. The other group members eventually moved off until
Hampson, whose work had already surpassed the average shamanism of
that era, was left alone. After a while, he went acousmatic, first
with a growing computer presence haunting his progressively "colder"
soundscapes, then by adding found sounds and environmental recordings.
Somehow, Surcease's two tracks seem to depict both sides
of the coin. "Parallax" shows traces of human activity (voices,
urban noises) immediately sent to sleep by electroacoustic vapours.
You'll have a hard time figuring out what's electronic, laptop-generated
or just concrete sounds undergoing remake / remodel therapy, but the
resulting increase in tension is this music's best resource. Imagine
a cross between Pierre Henry and the Hafler Trio at its most inspired.
Hampson's studio knowledge makes his dynamic overload and quasi-industrial
prismatic refractions shine, a major highlight being the extraordinary
pregnant stasis about 14 minutes into the piece. "Moraine"
is all perturbed rapture and subsonic motion, recalling Main's magnificent
past (Transiency, Deliquescence... time for you
to dig them out again, dear reader) in some of the more subdued sections,
yet it's still new ground for Hampson, who channels his sounds into
the centre of a slow rotation of events. The impressive subharmonic
pulse heard in the second half of the piece, at times like a muffled
bell, announces the definitive detachment: no more a foetus, this
creature has evolved its own systems, and just when you think you've
understood something, it vanishes.–MR
Philip
Samartzis
UNHEARD SPACES
Microphonics
 "Absence
And Presence" represents a new mode of working for Philip Samartzis:
an engagement with musicians in a semi-composed capacity. With parts
of the work completed in 2005, he set about creating using a slightly
"random" approach, calling on musicians involved to play
from memory in various acoustic spaces. Rather than feeling arbitrary
or disjointed, these separate passages of audio are impeccably guided,
editing clearly being one of Samartzis' compositional strong points.
As one might expect from a Samartzis work, there's a good deal of
detail and motion across the stereo field; when the sounds are centred
and static, the tension created in the expectation of their disruption
is quite sublime. Contributions from players such as Dave Brown and
Anthea Caddy remarkably maintain much of their individual character,
while still serving Samartzis’s overall compositional plan.
This is a welcome result, given the abilities and divergent personalities
of each of the five additional performers. By contrast, "Unheard
Spaces" revolves more solidly around the use of field recordings
collected in 2000 in Venice. The piece seeks to create a sonic portrait,
defining and redefining the iconic city through a tour of the ear.
The results are, in comparison with the first piece, more sonographic,
the qualities of the city caught and collaged into a document that
ought to become an important sound-archive for future citizens of
Venice.–LE
Giuseppe
Ielasi
UNTITLED
Häpna
 Such
a haphazard, perhaps under-inspired, title might suggest a sub-par
release – thankfully this is anything but. Rather the notion
of "untitled" here suggests a freedom from thematic engagement,
a chance to sidestep focus on content but not compositional process.
The clear lack of relationship between the choice of instruments and
sounds tracked, offset by the unified approach to composition, mark
this record as a welcome change of pace. Ielasi’s work generally
conveys a sense of loose cycles and gently familiar, yet refreshing
melody, and on this record he toys with these notions generating a
sense of intimacy and patience. Each of the pieces is quite frankly
beautiful – the fourth, for example, matches slowly cooking
electronics against descending tones and a glorious looping ambient
mode that eventually gives way to a broken almost post hip-hop groove.
It’s a piece that gives and takes with equal vigour and the
results are a wonderful flowing sensibility that rewards with every
passing bar. By contrast the second track maintains a dub like approach,
shifting delays marking out various impressions of time against a
churning pulse with a pace resembling clothes spinning on slow cycle
in the dryer. Another rewarding offering from the Häpna folk.–LE
Darren
Tate
CLOUDS UPON CLOUDS
Fungal
IN A BREEZE
Fungal
 Believe
it or not, Darren Tate's very first live performance was at the beginning
of this year, a Monos concert in Preston which Colin Potter described
as a great personal success for our hero, who was jokingly renamed
"Mr. Guitar" after the set, given his (previously unknown)
ability in bringing unusual sounds out of the instrument. It's not
a surprise, then, that these two recent releases by Tate make good
use of the six strings in completely different settings. Clouds
Upon Clouds employs three basic sources: a held organ chord,
a few touches of electric piano and the guitar plus various effects.
The organ's harmonic drone remains static throughout, even if its
intensity and mix position change according to the different sections.
Tate tortures and caresses the strings in total freedom, confirming
his Dadaist approach to guitar playing (and to music at large): distortion,
hiss and hum are all part of the equation. In the second movement,
chordal shapes are muffled by some kind of compression that transforms
their timbre into a choked utterance, while the introspective candour
of Tate's art is best showcased in the third and final movement when
simple electric piano touches are added to the recipe, spiced up by
a short-repeat delay. In a Breeze features an electric toothbrush
setting the guitar strings in perennial vibration, the resulting drones
filtered by heavy effects (with flanging to boot) in one of the Yorkshireman's
best albums to date. Slowly drifting harmonics and gradual morphing
of faint auras around the fixed chords are the key to enter a world
of pure inner resonance in which Tate's gentle frequency beats are
like small angels fluttering, frail wings spreading a magic dust of
protective comfort.–MR
Peter
Wright
UNVARNISHED, UNTREATED, UNZIPPED
Pseudoarcana
 As
the title suggests, this is a stripped-bare document recorded directly
to minidisc of concerts by Peter Wright in Merry England (the 12 Bar
Club in London) and Bonnie Scotland (Aberdeen's "The Tunnels")
in March 2005. "Audience noise courtesy of the audience",
adds Wright on the sleeve. The music is generated by guitar, various
effects and pre-recorded sources (birds, children's voices..), filtered
and phased intensively and intensely in two extended tracks slowly
crafted into huge consonant buzzing drones. Over this bed, the London-based
New Zealander lays a few selected notes to enhance the half-bucolic,
half-industrial vibe, leading the music, in the case of the Aberdeen
track, to a sheer paroxysmal consecration of the drifting "mother
chord". Probably due to the low-budget live feel, this is a slightly
different Wright (compared to his most mesmerizing releases): the
sound is rawer, at times more distorted, less "suspended"
and more "affirmative". But it works fine nonetheless, as
the enthusiasm of the crowd clearly demonstrates. Repeated plays at
medium volume will help your listening space resonate and erase odd
technical flaws and the above mentioned audience noise (with a title
like that, don't say you haven't been warned).–MR
Coleclough
& Murmer
HUSK
ICR
 Besides
the evocative photos by Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) adorning the
sleeve, no clue is given about the origins and the meaning of
Husk, which signals Jonathan Coleclough's return after Long
Heat, his 2005 release with Lethe. The initial title track is
a classic of obscure droning resonance, trademark Coleclough, all
growing pressure, dark currents and menacing thunder. "Approaching
Pucara" is a simpler collage where an agglomerate of low frequencies
is disturbed by an irregular emission, while "Fieldwork"
is almost musique concrète, a detailed fresco of traffic
noise and natural sounds, with some object rustling for good measure.
"Germ" is a slow, deep pulse enhanced by the passage of
dazzling aural clouds, an addictive track with subsonic refractions
changing with our movement in the room, like listening to a ghost
choir accompanied by a distant aeroplane. Put your smart money on
the special limited edition, though, because it features a bonus CD
whose music is just as good, maybe even better. After the humming
subterranean energy, irregular pulse and scraping of "Wend",
"Freon" juxtaposes an ever-present rumble with fumes of
flanged waves extinguished by strings and tiny percussive clatters.
The almost ritual percussive pattern about 12 minutes into the piece
rings distant bells of early Jeff Greinke. "Pucara" closes
the show with more metal percussion over another haunting chorale
of undecipherable origin – voices, a processed/looped traffic
jam or what? For you to discover.–MR
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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