| MARCH
News 2007 |
Reviews
by Clifford Allen, Jon Dale, Nate Dorward, Lawrence English, Guy
Livingston, Brian Olewnick, Massimo Ricci, Derek Taylor, Dan Warburton:
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Editorial
In Concert - New York: Robert Ashley / Essa-Pekka
Salonen
In Concert - Paris: Misha
Mengelberg / Tobias Delius Quartet
Vinyl Solution: Black
to Comm / Kuupuu / Mouths / Haptic / Hal Rammel
Manuel Mota
Jason Lescalleet
Michel Henritzi
JAZZ & IMPROV: Jack
Wright / Schlippenbach Trio / Abrams, Lewis & Mitchell /
Kahn, Korber & Weber / Michael Dessen / Topias Tiheäsalo
/ Gary Smith
The Fell Clutch /
Mark Helias / Mick Barr / Uncle Woody Sullender & Kevin
Davis / Spider Trio / Lindsay, Looney, Robair / John Shiurba
CONTEMPORARY: Glenn
Branca / Richard Garet / Heribert Friedl / Bernhard Günter
/ "Blue" Gene Tyranny / Olivia Block / Compositions
for Harp and Sho
ELECTRONICA: Ben
Frost / David Daniell / Jim Haynes / Loren Dent / Richard Chartier
/ The Alps / Jefre Cantu-Ledesma / Mattin / Aemae
Last month
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Sad
news from Paris: Benoît Sonnette, founder of the wonderfully
eclectic Textile label and tireless organiser of tours throughout
Europe and numerous festivals in and around Paris, lost an 18-month
battle with leukemia in the small hours of January 30th, leaving behind
his wife Agnès and their 16-month old son Nicolas. Though his
life was cruelly cut short, the list of musicians who had the joy
of his infectious enthusiasm and boundless energy as a label manager,
promoter or close friend was surprisingly long and varied, including
Alma Fury, Oren Ambarchi, Bobby Moo, Xavier Charles, Chris Corsano,
Alan Courtis, Lol Coxhill, Documents, Paul Flaherty, Fursaxa, Hasslehound,
Jackie O' Motherfucker, Magik Markers, Mayahoni Mudra, Noxagt, Otomo
Yoshihide, Park Attack, Rats, Sun, Martin Tetreault, Ticklish, Ultralyd,
Vibracathedral Orchestra, Volcano The Bear and Bill Wells. Benoît
may be gone, but the Textile story is far from over. The label will
go on – as his friend and business partner Fabien Louis says,
"he would come back to haunt us if it didn't."
Since I penned the above for The Wire, I received this email
from Jackie O' Motherfucker's Tom Greenwood:
"Somewhere around the turn of the new century, I received a letter
in the post from Paris. It was from Benoît, asking if he could
release a record for us. It was a very warm invitation, and we responded
by going down into the basement, and shaping some dust into sound,
eventually released as a split LP with our future friends the Vibracathedral
Orchestra. This was the beginning. Benoît had the same energy
for releasing records that we had for making them, creating an abstract
community out of resonance, linking together the planet waves, making
offerings of sound and art. He offered himself completely, booking
and managing tours, releasing records, and curating a festival, all
with incredible humanity and grace. Something very rare in a
typically barbaric scene. Benoît laid down the first few
bricks of what has become a well traveled road, bringing music communities
all over the world together. Thank you Benoît, your energy
helped us realize ours, on into infinity...." Tom Greenwood,
Leeds, UK. Feb. 9, 2007
There are no Textiles in the review pile this month, but I know if
Ben were still with us he'd be reading the site as assiduously as
ever, so this month's issue is dedicated to his memory. Bonne
lecture, mon ami. -DW
Robert
Ashley
CONCRETE
La Mama Theatre, New York
17th – 21st January
 Old
age is tough to deal with. As the scions of experimental music that
came of age in the 60s begin to enter their 70s, few are bringing
to bear on that transition the same degree of careful observation
as Robert Ashley. Born in 1930, Ashley has always concentrated on
"everyday life", on the often hallucinatory layers of meaning
to be found if one peels away the skin just a little bit. Long before
David Lynch, Ashley was gently dissecting the Middle American ethos,
not with scorn but with fascination at all the unusual and contradictory
things he was able to locate in the "ordinary". In recent
works, Ashley has turned his gentle, probing eye toward the thoughts,
obsessions, misunderstandings and ruminations of the homeless (Dust)
and aged (Celestial Excursions), telling their stories in
an evenhanded, non-judgmental manner as if to say, "This is what
they are thinking and, true or not, there's beauty and wisdom to be
found." The music, though always present as a guiding hand, becomes
secondary almost to the point of negligibility; it's the stories that
matter.
Concrete,
which had its premiere in a five evening run at the La Mama Theatre
in New York in January, continues in this direction and is markedly
more straightforward than its predecessors. It's scored for four singer/speakers
(Jacqueline Humbert, Thomas Buckner, Joan La Barbara and Sam Ashley)
and live electronic music and processing (Robert Ashley and Tom Hamilton).
The setting and staging is almost severely simple: a v-shaped table
with undulating edges, open toward the audience with a similarly indented
and rounded curtain backdrop upon which are occasionally projected
muted colors and abstract designs of a cutout nature. In front of
the table is an array of Turkish rugs. The "characters"
sit behind the table, symmetrically positioned, Buckner and Humbert
along one arm of the "V", Ashley and La Barbara on the other,
with their librettos printed on oversize playing cards which they
hold fan-style, as though contemplating their next move in a poker
game. The women are in evening dress and Buckner sports a tuxedo.
Only Sam Ashley is casually attired, wearing a loud orange and yellow
shirt, rumpled black jeans and sneakers.
The
opera as a whole is also structured very regularly. Five conversational
interludes bracket and surround four solo arias, one by each character.
These conversations will sound most familiar to listeners who know
Ashley's earlier work. Though there's no absolute overlapping, the
discussion is seamlessly passed from one speaker to another with the
tail end of one line just abutting the first syllable of the next.
The speakers acknowledge each other with nods, directional gestures
and facial expressions but the viewer is left uncertain, deliciously
so, whether we're hearing the scrambled thoughts of one individual
or the remnants of an actual conversation between two or more aged
persons. The focus is on day to day trivial events and observations,
the sort of thing that occupies the time of an old man living in "concrete".
Eventually, the ramblings trigger the memory, false or otherwise,
of a person once known to the man, some unique and unusual friend
about who he begins to reminisce. At this point, one of the speakers
rises, slowly walks to the front of the stage area on the carpets
and begins a soliloquy, the other three remaining in shadow, listening.
I
mentioned the music's being almost secondary. Although this may seem
to be the case in a given performance, it might not be so in fact.
Ashley and Hamilton, we're given to understand, can vary the mood
of the music to a significant degree and the speakers are subsequently
allowed to alter their deliveries in accord with the music. Impossible
to say how much the readings might diverge but, on the evening
I attended, they were offered in a manner not very different from
that heard on "Dust" or "Celestial Excursions";
maybe a tick toward the "musical" away from the purely spoken.
Be that as it may, it was the text itself that commanded attention.
The stories were surprisingly straightforward, chronological recaps
of the old man's friends, their escapades (often outside the law),
some long gaps between visits, where they are now, if known. Humbert
was up first, giving the impression of a slightly tipsy, exaggeratedly
gestural upper class woman (that her story was that of an old man
is momentarily forgotten), recounting the tale of a promising, beautiful
young ceramicist lured into a life of crime transporting cocaine before
ditching all that to marry a fishing tycoon in Hawaii who perishes
in a disaster at sea, all the while hiding some dark secret. You quickly
get the sense of the sort of Americana, soap-opera world Ashley is
explicating, only gently mocking, regarding it with understanding.
Buckner
(whom I've had problems with in the past but who performed beautifully
here) remembers a jazz musician friend from the Army who went on to
become an expert card cheat and narrowly avoided killing the old man
in a car accident. Each of the first two accounts is filled with regret
at not having kept contact, of not getting to know the friends better.
Around this point, the listener begins to get the notion that these
events are only special, only unique to the narrator, not necessarily
to the world at large. We shouldn't expect to be "wowed"
by the narratives, but instead understand that they're important to
him, and what remains important to an aging, possibly dying
man is the true subject of the opera.
 The
extraordinary Joan La Barbara is up next. Not knowing what, if any,
"roles" were assigned beforehand, it may be unfair to say it,
but in terms of sheer, vocal profundity and skill, she just killed.
Her story was the most drolly humorous as well, again dealing with
the Army musician. "Covert operations were always funded through
the Army band, so it never had any money." The tale manages to
cover Joseph Conrad, transvestism, horse betting strategies and airline
pilots.
Having
settled in somewhat to the routine, Ashley jostles the audience with
the final aria, courtesy Sam Ashley. Whereas the previous stories
had been mundane if arguably colorful, his account touches on the
mystical, of being awakened in the middle of the night in a rundown
hotel in Italy by, he imagines, a small creature tugging the covers
off his bed. He chalks it up to a hallucination until, later, he discovers
that a close friend in the US had died at just that moment. More disorienting
still, one suddenly hears almost subliminal voices from high on either
side of the theater. They're indecipherable although you gradually
get the idea that they may be sampled directly from the character's
speech, sped up to a frantic screech on the left, slowed down to a
disturbing moan on the right. It was an eerie, moving effect, perfectly
accomplished.
The
closing conversation recapitulates parts of the stories, the singers
allowed longer lines, expounding on their own recap: "What is
this? The last act?" They lay bare the basic subject: Imagination
vs. Ordinariness. All that's left for this man to do is to conjure
up stories from his past. Are they embroidered? Are they true at all?
Who knows, but as he says, "I've got nothing else to do."
The final line is, "The old man lives in concrete." Indeed.
Concrete
takes the ultimately very successful tack of lulling the viewer/listener
into deeming the work ordinary enough itself, refusing to "wow",
preferring to dwell in the almost-everyday. It saves its wallop for
the final act and coda where things hit home, where one comes to feel
a little guilty about having "judged" the codger too severely
in his banality. Ashley, at 76, is trying to understand aspects of
aging rarely considered in the arts, much less the purported avant-garde.
His gentleness and patience get at some deep, uncomfortable truths
about what is transitory and what is important.–BO
Ravel:
LE TOMBEAU DE COUPERIN / Salonen: PIANO CONCERTO / Mussorgsky (orch.
Ravel): PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
Yefim Bronfman, piano / New York Philharmonic / Essa-Pekka Salonen
Lincoln Center, New York
February 3rd
Precision,
precision, precision! Essa-Pekka Salonen is a conductor to make Pierre
Boulez seem like a Romantic. His exacting attention to detail made
the New York Phil sound fantastic, crystalline. Undoubtedly, this
was the best performance of Tombeau that I have ever heard:
the orchestra was on top form, and Ravel's complicated and sophisticated
instrumentation came to the fore in astoundingly clear focus, as if
displaying this piece for the first time under the microscope.
Alas, the main work on the program suffered from over-lush harmonies,
over-worked historical references, and over-compensated fortissimos
which did not make up for compositional poverty. Salonen has written
some very fine pieces, but the concerto is neither a successful concerto,
nor a symphonic achievement. Even a brilliant soloist of Bronfman's
caliber (and he was magnificent) could not save the piece from its
lugubrious superficiality. Thirty-three long minutes of Rachmaninoff,
Orff, Gershwin, and bits of Ives were just too heavy. The orchestration
was far too dense (had he learned nothing from the gorgeously subtle
Ravel arrangements which sandwiched the program?), and the ideas were
far too diffused. There was no artistic impact, no clear direction,
no driving force, and no strong idea. In the program notes, the highly
articulate composer – an astute writer – claims an interest
in studying the relationship of the piano to the orchestra, and cites
his use of the instrument as both accompanist and soloist. This double-use
was blatantly obvious in the performance, but the effect was a negative
one: rather than complementing the orchestra, Bronfman (a huge bear
of a Russian who owns the piano) was often drowned out by them. Surely
not what Salonen had in mind.
My quibbles about the piece were not shared by the audience (who loved
all that noise), by the press (who enjoyed the work's enthusiastic
naiveté), nor by attendant publishers (who were positively
ecstatic). And in a certain way, who can blame them? It's what we
all dream of: a sold-out premiere performance at Lincoln Center, attended
by the cream of New York's public, dressed to the nines, and cheering
for a piece of – get this – new music! Too good to be
true. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, either: after all,
his success translates directly into further public and government
support for new music, and none of us will argue about that being
a good thing. Furthermore, to his credit, his music came across as
endearingly sincere. There was no feeling, so often encountered in
suddenly-famous composers, of arrogance. He meant what he said, even
if the language was confused and the metaphors mixed.
In both the Ravel orchestrations I heard details which, like a well-polished
diamond, set off the facets of the artwork to maximum brilliance.
But at a high price: precision suits the Tombeau de Couperin,
but is unexpected in the Pictures at an Exhibition, which
is after all one of the great Romantic works. Salonen's obsessiveness
here seemed too much, and created a brittle caramel: sweet to the
tongue, but hard on the teeth. His version was didactic, more like
a musicology lesson than a luxurious glide down romantic pictorial
vistas. What astonished me was that this brilliant conductor succeeded
in taking this all-too-well-known warhorse, and transforming it into
a stunningly enjoyable modern piece, peeling away the skin to reveal
the underlying bone structure. Now, if he could only x-ray his concerto..-GL
Misha
Mengelberg / Tobias Delius Quartet
La Dynamo de Banlieues Bleues, Pantin, France
February 2nd 2007
 The
engineers behind the state-of-the-art console in the auditorium of
La Dynamo, a smart new venue just north of Paris, probably winced
when 72-year-old Misha Mengelberg shuffled onstage and lobbed his
leather trilby nonchalantly onto the mics placed inside the Yamaha
grand piano, where it transformed the mid register of the instrument
into a gamelan smudge for the first five minutes of his half-hour
solo set. The old Misha schtick of onstage chain smoking may be a
thing of the past – the pianist kicked the habit ten years ago,
and France is now, in case you hadn't heard, a smoke-free country
(at least according to the letter of the law – we'll see about
the spirit later) – but his performances are as outlandish as
ever. To quote Art Lange, "you can hear him listening
as he works", as seemingly haphazard plonking evolves into a
stunningly sensitive reading of Monk. The spirit of Thelonious is
never far away in Mengelberg's playing, but the ghost of Ludwig Van
also hovers around, in the stodgy left hand comping and quasi-Romantic
melodies, except Misha avoids any semblance of kitsch and pastiche
by his strategically mischievous deployment of the right wrong notes.
A fondness for baroque polyphony – Mengelberg still teaches
a weekly class in the subject at Amsterdam's Sweelinck Conservatory
– was evident throughout, as the internal subtleties of contrapuntal
voice leading were pulled apart to reveal new and unexpected pathways
through well-known material. It was a pithy set, but the punters refused
to let him shuffle off without a couple of encores – the eternal
Misha chestnut "Kneebus" and a lean, mean reading of Monk's
"Well, You Needn't" – to send them out to the bar
with a smile.
 And
that's where most of them were when the second half began, as Tobias
Delius's soundcheck morphed without a break into the first of four
long medleys of his impeccably structured and sequenced compositions.
The tenor saxophonist's quartet, with Tristan Honsinger on cello,
Joe Williamson on bass and the irrepressible Han Bennink on drums
(on superb form too, and the only one of the four to have committed
Delius's cunningly complex songbook to memory), is one of the most
exciting working units in contemporary jazz, moving effortlessly from
hard swinging post-bop to New Dutch wackiness, from spare pointillist
extended techniques to woozy, cheesy waltzes, and they're as much
fun to watch as they are to listen to. Bennink's legendary antics
– mercifully less in evidence this time – contrasted well
with the deadpan but deadly precise Williamson, and, unlike the terrifyingly
intense Honsinger, perched over his cello like a bird of prey, Delius
looked so damn relaxed he nearly fell over backwards. But he was certainly
on the ball, and the whole history of the tenor sax was on display,
including Lester Young and Ben Webster – Delius's elegant velvety
tone makes a welcome change from the overkill of much fire music –
in what was an accomplished and highly enjoyable set from four master
musicians.–DW
Black
To Comm
WIR KÖNNEN LEIDER NICHT ETWAS MEHR ZU TUN
Dekorder
Kuupuu
YÖKEHRÄ
UNILINTU
Dekorder
Mouths / Haptic
1V2E / DANJON SCALE
Entr'acte
Hal
Rammel
LIKE WATER TIGHTLY WOUND
Crouton
As
we all know, the rekkid industry is "in crisis".. sales
are slumping on average more than 10% each year, and if you excluded
the money generated from sales of mobile phone ringtones (quelle
horreur), the picture would probably be bleaker than that. Not
that I'm shedding many tears for the so-called "majors",
who don't give a monkey's about music as such unless it rakes in enough
dough to keep the shareholders happy, but it's not a rosy situation
for the kind of small independent labels that readers of these pages
know and love. Even in the small world of adventurous new music, the
shift towards mp3 format is just as noticeable – and not something
to be sniffed at, either: bravo outfits like 7hings.com for their
adventurous download release programme – it seems that in a
few years we'll all be listening to music on shiny little things about
the size of a dachshund's penis, downloading this and that to make
our own mix'n'match compilations ("make your own Brötzmann's
Greatest Hits mixtape! A-and don't forget to download that Fuck
De Boere ringtone, kids!"), stepping in dogshit, falling
down open manhole covers and getting run over as we trot gaily along
the city streets eyes glued to a screen the size of a packet of smokes
trying to watch some hip noise band on YouTube. One day I suppose
you'll be able to listen to, watch, send fanmail and even talk directly
to your favourite alt.music star all at the same time on
an iPhone. Suppose I'm getting too old, but I just don't get much
of a kick out of the idea. Not that I've got anything against downloading,
especially when the album concerned is way out of print and way out
of my price bracket on eBay – you should see all the shit I've
got from Church Number Nine recently – but even if I print out
the "original album cover", convert the mp3 files to .wav
and burn the whole shebang on a brand new CDR, it's not the same thing
as a "real" disc, is it now? The folks out there who invest
their time and money in running a label for this kind of music are
certainly heroes in my book, even if it's a burn-to-order-in-yer-bedroom
operation. But going to the trouble of putting out a vinyl LP in 2007,
complete with artwork, notes, and all round beautiful design is a
real labour of love. And, if you care for the music they're putting
out, one that deserves your support.
 It's
no surprise that Wir können leider nicht etwas mehr zu tun,
the latest double LP of Black To Comm is on the Hamburg-based Dekorder
label, because BTC is the pet project of Dekorder head honcho Marc
Richter, who in addition to providing vocals plays "harmophon,
organ, tape loops, microphones, bells, feedback, kitchen gamelan,
vinyl loops and computer." He's joined on a couple of tracks
by Renate Nikolaus (vocals, guitars) and Gregory Büttner adds
a touch of trumpet on "Happy Brown Lego Star". These six
spacious tracks – the word "drone" singularly fails
to do justice to the wealth of detail Richter creates with his loops,
patches, pots and pans – could probably all fit on one CD, but
they wouldn't sound half as good. Not that I didn't enjoy BTC's Rückwärts
Backwards CD, but the warmth of vinyl seems more appropriate
for the music Richter makes (here we go, he's sounding like one of
those tedious fuckin VINYL SNOBS.. yawn gimme a break, pass the Wolf
Eyes CDR dude). And the great thing is it looks, feels and smells
as good as it sounds.
 I grew
up cursing the crackles and clicks that used to drive me crazy trying
to listen to my LP collection – most of which in the pre-CD
days was contemporary classical stuff, i.e. pretty quiet and often
badly pressed: hands up who remembers how those old Deutsche Grammophon
discs used to pick up static? My copy of Stockhausen's Mantra
still sounds like it's been trampled underfoot as part of a Christian
Marclay installation. Or who remembers the old Nonesuch vinyls? Hold
'em up to the light and they look like a 3D map of the dark side of
the Moon.. you want craters, we got craters. Thank God Mode,
Bridge and New World have reissued a lot of that American stuff –
I can finally frisbee those bloody things into the bin without a twinge
of remorse. Nowadays though most new LPs are super duper 180g affairs,
heavy enough to make you yelp in pain if you drop one on your foot,
and the quality of the pressing is immaculate (but I'll make an exception
for the sharks in Italy who re-released the BYG Actuel back catalogue..
I seriously regret trading my old original copies in for the reissued
versions.. if anyone else has had problems with their new copy of
Frank Wright's One For John let me know and we'll organise
a million man match to Florence, or wherever these characters hang
out). Just as well when the material you're releasing is highly collectable
stuff like Kuupuu's Yökehrä, a collection of Finnish
free folk rarities courtesy Jonna Karanka (cover above). These were
originally released on cassette and CDR and now apparently command
ridiculous prices on eBay (though God knows why you'd want to shell
out a fortune for a spacky old hissy cassette when you can invest
in a beautiful vinyl copy). It's a truly exquisite collection of strange,
haunting garden furniture psychedelia – and it'd be just as
strange if I could understand the words, or even pronounce the track
titles – beautifully sung and recorded on an odd assortment
of instruments, many of which wouldn't sound out of place on a Harry
Partch album.
 Actually,
I don't know why I'm telling you about this record (well that's not
true – it's because I've just received a copy of it, haha) because,
according to the Dekorder website, it's already sold out.
All the more reason for you to get cracking and find a copy of the
sequel, Unilintu, which features more of the same. In fact
I think it's even better, with its jews harps, thunderstorms and ruined
pianos. Fans of Fursaxa, Vashti Bunyan, Kemialliset Ystävät,
Colleen, Animal Collective, Lau Nau, Jewelled Antler, Wooden Wand
(I'm quoting the Dekorder website here), get your credit cards at
the ready. I almost feel like buying another copy myself just to leave
it outside in the rain for a couple of months to grow as weatherbeaten
and mossy as some of the gorgeous songs it contains.
 It's
not all snails and dewdrops in the vinyl world, though. If you've
been following developments on the British Entr'acte label you'll
know that their releases come in austere vacuum-sealed packaging with
precious little information. That's true of the CDs anyway: the vinyl
that recently came my way is somewhat more forthcoming: it's a split
LP featuring two North American EAI outfits, Mouths (Jon Mueller and
Jim Schoenecker on percussion, analogue synth, shortwaves and vocals,
joined on this track, "1V2E" by Werner Moebius) and Haptic
(Steven Hess, Joseph Mills and Adam Sonderberg). The latter's "Danjon
Scale" was assembled and mixed by Sonderberg from studio and
live recordings made last year, but you're a better listener than
I am if you can see the join, as Eric Morecambe used to say. Both
pieces are class stuff, prime rib dark, rich drone music, and the
warm fuzz of vinyl once more adds to the effect.
 PT regulars
will be familiar with the name Jon Mueller as the éminence
grise behind Crouton Music, whose fabulous packaging over the
years has attracted as much praise as the music it contains (hands
up anyone with an original copy of Keith Berry's The Ear That
Was Sold To A Fish – what did you do with those blue smally
leaves, eh? brew them up into some funky herbal tea?). And
the Milwaukee-based label has come up trumps again with Hal Rammel's
Like Water Tightly Wound, which comes in a stiff cardboard
10" pack designed to resemble an old 78rpm. The two tracks, "Like
Water.." and "On Balance Scattered" feature Rammel's
self-made Sound Palettes, customised artists' palettes encrusted with
metal rods of all shapes and sizes. "On Balance" sounds
like a cross between a Harry Bertoia sculpture and a kind of giant
thumb piano, while the title track starts out more friction than percussion.
Like Burkhard Beins cleaning out the inside of Andrea Neumann's piano.
Needless to say it's another limited edition affair – only 300
copies available, so don't hang about. I dare say one day it'll be
available as a free download somewhere and you'll be able to carry
it round your neck with about seven zillion other songs, but I'll
be happy to have the original gathering dust gently on my sagging
shelves.–DW
Manuel
Mota
OUTUBRO
Headlights
 I
think I've already waxed lyrical before about Clive Bell's long-gone
but much appreciated (by me anyway) "Freefall" column in
The Wire magazine of yore, especially the one where he fondly
imagined Derek Bailey playing to a packed football stadium. "Stadprov",
I remember he called it. Of course, it'd be lovely to think that free
improvisers (a perennially impoverished lot, unless they happen to
live in some blessed country that throws state money at them to finance
recordings and tours – Switzerland, anyone? – and even
that doesn't amount to much) could one day command rock star
fees. It'd be cool if Keith was paid as much as Keef, but it's not
going to happen. Not this year, not next year, not ever. And deep
down, we don't really want it to. The best improv gigs I've been to,
and certainly the best I've played myself, were in small places barely
half full – 50 people at an improv concert feels like a football
crowd anyway. Small houses have been the norm for years now, ever
since the apocryphal two-men-and-a-dog-in-a-Stoke-Newington-pub days,
and especially since improv went all quiet about a decade ago. Tiny
venues like Tokyo's Off Site were ideal for the music of Taku Sugimoto
and his peers. Lowercase music in uppercase performance spaces has
a lot to contend with, from the elements outside as much as inside
– remember the roof in Radu Malfatti, Thomas Lehn and Phil Durrant's
Dach?
Minimalist or not, improvisation today is, as we know, a niche market,
a tight community of like-minded souls scattered across the globe.
Not so much a wave of activity as a collection of little pools. Some
of the best musicians I've heard in recent years have come from Portugal
(thanks in no small part to the work documented by the indefatigable
Ernesto Rodrigues and his Creative Sources label), and guitarist Manuel
Mota has long been one of my favourites. So a new double album on
his Headlights label – which unlike CS has hardly flooded the
market – is, at least here in PTHQ, a major event. Outubro
("October") is a collection of 23 pieces for electric and
acoustic guitar recorded at Mota's home in Lisbon, the electric tracks
on disc one on October 11th 2006, the acoustic pieces on disc two
three days later. The electric tracks are delicate, velvety affairs,
while the acoustic pieces are miked closer, and are more spiky (there's
also more hiss on the recording). The back cover photo shows three
amps and a couple of guitar cases tossed on a sofa as sunlight struggles
in through the drawn metal blinds and dapples the scene. The music
is just as unassuming: no blurts of vicious noise, no pyrotechnics,
no excessive preparations, just a man alone playing his guitars. Comparisons
could be made with Roger Smith's late night explorations in his Wood
Green kitchen (Unexpected Turns, Green Wood and
Spanish Guitar, on Emanem): like Smith's, Mota's music is
turned in on itself, intensely focused on its own microstructure,
on a world where the tiniest nuances assume such importance that the
listener feels privileged, almost embarrassed, to eavesdrop. Unlike
Smith, however, Mota isn't afraid to explore repetition: on several
occasions the pieces get wonderfully stuck on one pitch, or one chord,
which is reiterated mercilessly (if gently) until it's time to move
on.
You can hear exactly why Derek Bailey spoke so highly of Mota: the
guitarist has quite simply created a world of his own. Unlike Bailey,
whose playing right to the end retained a fondness for the major sevenths
and minor ninths he so loved in Webern, Mota favours smaller intervals
– seconds, thirds and fourths – but where several of his
contemporaries, from Taku Sugimoto (back when he used to play more
than a note a minute, that is) to Jim O'Rourke, Tetuzi Akiyama and
Alan Licht, use those melodic shapes as way to tap into the blues,
the post-Fahey / Connors one-note blues, Mota avoids the long noodle
in favour of discrete / discreet pockets of activity, tiny controlled
explosions of notes and shapes. It's a music very much in the moment,
as they used to say, so much so that it's stepped neatly out of time;
this could have been recorded ten, twenty, thirty or even forty years
ago (ah, how I wish Manuel could beam back in time and jam with Smith
and John Stevens in the mid-70s Spontaneous Music Ensemble!). Consequently,
EAI heads who like their guitars to sound like washing machine spincycles,
electricity substations, bubble paper and steel wool will probably
scoff at the idea of a guitar sounding like a guitar, but if they
listen to Outubro with the same fanatical concentration they'll
find much to enjoy. And so will you. By the way, Manuel Mota will
be opening for Metallica on June 4th at Lisbon's Rock in Rio. Just
joking, Clive.–DW
Jason
Lescalleet
THE PILGRIM
Glistening Examples LP + CD
 What
you don't know can't hurt you. Conversely, they say a little knowledge
is a dangerous thing. Tired old clichés aside ("away with
the old clichés! let's have some new clichés!"),
there's no way to approach this work by Jason Lescalleet without knowing
something about the events that led to its creation: the story is
as much a part of it as the music. In short (as this has been discussed
elsewhere, notably by Brian Olewnick over at Bagatellen), The
Pilgrim is a tribute to the composer's father Harrison, who succumbed
to cancer in 2005, and features, in addition to Lescalleet's customary
electronics, extracts of tape recordings made at his father's bedside
in hospital, and the text of an email Lescalleet received from him
complimenting him on his Intransitive CD with John Hudak, Figure
2, recalling how it reminded him of the rumble of a 32 Chevy
driving him to hospital with a high fever when he was a child.
The LP component of the set, which comes in an elegant gatefold adorned
with the text of Harrison's email, explanatory notes by Lescalleet,
and a portrait of his father painted by his brother Todd, is a picture
disc containing two pieces of music, the first of which is entitled
"His Petition" and begins with Lescalleet's reading of the
email (in fact his spoken introduction to his performance at the first
Intransitive Festival of Electronic Music in May 2005). Side two of
the disc features the hospital bedside recordings, which, the composer
admits are "difficult for me to listen to." During one of
his visits to his father he was accompanied by his daughter Audrey,
who, at the request of her granddad, sang "Molly Malone".
This touching recording appears at the end of "My Petition",
a 74-minute composition that appears on the accompanying CD.
Beginning in a thunderstorm with the sound of falling rain and tolling
bells, it's clear this isn't going to be a cheery affair. Lescalleet
admits that in his live performance at the festival his intention
was to "transform the theater into the floor space of that 1932
Chevy". Any idea of "pure music", the "it is what
it is" aesthetic of Phill Niblock (with whom, interestingly enough,
Jason Lescalleet performed at the last edition of Erstquake), has
gone right out of the window. Lescalleet's painful baring of the soul,
intimate details and family snapshots included, is a gesture as direct
and unambiguous as Krzysztof Penderecki dedicating his Threnody
to the victims of Hiroshima. Rather than letting sounds be themselves,
in accordance with the Cageian principles that have been just as influential
in the world of improvised and electronic music as they have elsewhere,
we're invited to hear them as signifiers of something else. The warmth
of the sounds I recall enjoying enormously on Figure 2, a
live set recorded in a Cambridge church in January 2000, now seems
to have become more sinister, feverish, angry, as sweaty and uncomfortable
as a hot hospital ward. And that's only because I've been conditioned
to listen in a certain way, my curiosity having got the better of
me (I read the liners before listening to the music – not that
I wasn't aware of the background to the piece from the abovementioned
review over at Bagatellen).
That "conditioned" might sound rather sinister itself, as
if there was something suspect about the whole enterprise –
how dare you tell me what to think? how to listen? – but in
fact, Lescalleet is only reactivating a tradition of programme music
that the science-minded, graphpaper-wielding young lions of twentieth
century modernism, from Varèse to Boulez and beyond, had had
us believe was old hat, even corny. Namely the idea that music not
only can but does, even perhaps should, communicate a whole range
of human passions, and that musicians – composers and performers
alike – shouldn't be afraid or ashamed of doing so. As such,
Lescalleet takes its place alongside other tough bearded New Englanders,
Paul Flaherty and Charles Ives, who prove that the aggressively avant-garde
can appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect.
But one of the consequences of Lescalleet's reveal-all strategy is
the reaction of journalists like our own man down under, Jon Dale,
who described The Pilgrim in his Wire review as
"the most intensely personal, overwhelming release you will encounter
all year" (that's 2006, btw), and the appearance of album at
the top of or near the top of a number of folk's year-end Best Of
lists. As if they were just waiting for EAI to cry real tears instead
of sitting expressionless behind its laptops, mixing desks and customised
FX pedals. I suspect that had Lescalleet released this without explanation
in the same kind of austere packaging in which Figure 2 appeared
a few years back, we wouldn't be talking about it as much as we are.
I happen to agree with Harrison Lescalleet that the album with Hudak
is "awesome" (maybe my favourite release on Intransitive
to date, but that's a hell of a tough call), yet its unassuming appearance
and rather dry title probably accounted for the relative lack of attention
it received. The Pilgrim – particularly "My Petition"
– is indeed fine, assembled and mixed with a superb ear and
exemplary concern for detail, but for my money it wasn't the most
exciting Lescalleet release that came my way in 2006: that honour
would go to his collaboration with Joe Colley on Brombron / Korm Plastics,
Annihilate This Week. And my vote for "the most intensely
personal, overwhelming release" of the year gone by went to Loren
Connors' Night Through.
But so what if there's a bit of overhype involved here – we
scribblers are not all callous cynical motherfuckers, after all, contrary
to what you might think, and we're just as touched by the circumstances
that surrounded the creation of this music as the next man –
if the end result is more people getting to know the music of Lescalleet
and his peers, that's just fine by me. And if by chance The Pilgrim
has already sold out, as it certainly deserves to, I can strongly
recommend Annihilate This Week, Figure 2 and the
ever wonderful Forlorn Green, on Erstwhile, with Greg Kelley.–DW
Michel
Henritzi
KEITH ROWE SERVES IMPERIALISM
wmo/r
 I
love liner notes. I think it's fair to say I learned more about music
from reading liner notes than I ever did at university (I hope to
goodness my ex-Cambridge professor Alexander Goehr isn't reading this,
but if he is it'll probably only confirm what he always suspected
anyway). Sure, sometimes they don't amount to much more than a set
of potted bios, or a blow-by-blow description of what most semi-conscious
listeners can figure out for themselves, but when they're good they
can be both informative and fun. Personal favourites include Ralph
Gleason's hip wacko notes to the late 60 Miles Davis LPs ("that's
right" says Miles Davis), Byron Coley's "take the top off
your head" liners to the BYG Actuel boxset a while back, and
especially The Journal Of Vain Erudition essays that accompanied releases
on Bruce Russell's Corpus Hermeticum imprint, particularly the exchange
of letters with Alan Licht that accompanied the latter's The Evan
Dando Of Noise? One wonders whether Russell hasn't also been
something of a role model for Mattin in this regard too, as several
releases, not only by Russell, on the Basque avant provocateur's wmo/r
label (and Mattin's Going Fragile with Radu Malfatti on Formed)
have come wrapped in some serious wordage. The Licht / Russell correspondence
that accompanies the abovementioned album is indeed fascinating, but
the music can and does survive perfectly well without it. Evan
Dando of Noise? would be a cracking album even if it came in
a plain white jewelbox with minimal track info. The same could be
said of this latest offering from French guitarist / turntablist Michel
Henritzi, but the fact that he's chosen a deliberately provocative
title for it inevitably draws one's attention to the words accompanying
the disc (1600 words of them, in the original) and away from the music
on it, which is unfortunate, as the music is strong and coherent and
the text isn't.
Michel Henritzi has long been one France's most important commentators
on new music, having signed numerous perceptive articles and interviews
in Revue & Corrigée, and one of its most ardent
champions, organising several important European tours for major players
on the scene, many of them Japanese, and releasing key documents on
his excellent A Bruit Secret label (now sadly on ice, it seems). Since
his seminal noise outfit Dust Breeders ceased operations (blew itself
away might be a more appropriate description) a while back, Henritzi
has signed a couple of fine releases himself on the Absurd label with
Fabrice Eglin under the name Howlin' Ghost Proletarians. Keith
Rowe Serves Imperialism marks his solo debut, and, not surprisingly
with a title like that, it's already made a few waves.
Before we get into the polemical stuff, a few words about the music.
The album contains four ten-minute tracks on which Henritzi is joined
by, in order, Shin'ichi Isohata (guitar – Gibson Johnny Smith
1965, in fact), Bruce Russell (guitar – no make specified),
Mattin (guitar – no make needed because he always manages to
make it sound pretty terrifying) and Taku Unami (computer). The guests
recorded their improvisations separately in various locations between
September and November last year, and Henritzi his own four contributions
– on turntable, guitar, hammer / electric saw / guitar and jack
plug – in Metz in October 2006. Henritzi's material is on the
right stereo track throughout, that of his fellow musicians on the
left. (Oddly enough, this take-it-as-it-comes superimposition of music
recorded at different times in different locations is also the basic
working method behind the forthcoming MIMEO project, tentatively entitled
"Cy Twombly", the latest brainchild of the arch-imperialist
himself, Mr Rowe. But more of him later.) It's a terrific set of pieces,
starting with a spiky, colourful guitar duet – not for nothing
is the album dedicated to the memory of Derek Bailey and Masayuki
Takayanagi – followed by an awesome Russell / Henritzi feedback
battle (both musicians really understand feedback, and it shows: budding
noiseniks take note), a rough'n'ready tussle with Mattin and a delightfully
abstruse assemblage of beeps and crackles with Unami.
If Michel had left it at that and resisted the temptation to write
at length on it all, it would have been just fine. Instead, what is
one of the most varied and satisfying improv outings in recent months
has become a talking point for the wrong reasons. I don't feel like
dwelling on the text, to be honest (if I had ten free minutes I'd
prefer to listen to one of the tracks on the disc instead of re-reading
Henritzi's essay), but it's worth pointing out that the author freely
admits he hasn't read much of Cornelius Cardew's book Stockhausen
Serves Imperialism (available if you're interested for free download
at www.ubu.com/historical/cardew/index.html) and has no Maoist
sympathies. Just as well, because Mao is way out of fashion and Cardew's
book, though better written than Henritzi's essay, is just as daft.
Leaving aside the misrepresentation of Keith Rowe's remarks about
Derek Bailey in an interview he gave me in January 2001, the oblique
references to Guy Debord and Marx (double yawn), the only reason I
can think of for accusing Rowe of serving imperialism as opposed to
Otomo, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser or any other free
improvising guitar hero is to get some kind of dig in at Erstwhile's
Jon Abbey, as if he was head honcho top dog of the improv scene and
making a packet of money out of it (he isn't, on both counts). Abbey's
ferocious championship of Rowe is often the subject of conversation
amongst musicians both on and off the record, and Mattin, master pisser
offer if ever there was one, knows how to find a sensitive acupuncture
node and drive a nine inch nail into it, but next time he feels like
doing so he should engage the services of a professional translator,
as there are numerous shoddy mistakes in the English version of Henritzi's
essay which serve to make an already muddy text at times positively
opaque. What's the point of it all? If it's just to draw attention
to the disc by provoking inveterate hacks like me into devoting a
separate review to the album instead of slipping it into the Jazz
/ Improv section with all the others, bravo – it worked! In
fact, it's what I'd call aggressive marketing, and if aggressive marketing
isn't a hallmark of 21st century capitalism – which as far as
I'm concerned is the modern equivalent of imperialism – I don't
know what is. I know I know I know, the albums are there for
free download, anti copyright, creative commons, no more music at
the service of capital, fuck this, fuck that, but from where I'm sitting
it's not Keith Rowe that's serving imperialism here, but Mattin and
Michel Henritzi.–DW
Jack
Wright
THE INDETERMINATE EXISTENCE
Last Visible Dog
AS IS
Spring Garden Music
 It's
nice to see Last Visible Dog, a label I usually associate with free
floating post psychedelic avant rock drone, branching out into "the
avant-garde", as they put it (as if some of the earlier releases
on the label weren't avant-garde already.. I mean, LSD-march and Ashtray
Navigations aren't exactly household names, even if they should be).
They couldn't have chosen a better figure to inaugurate the series,
either: saxophonist Jack Wright has been putting spokes in wheels
– including his own – for over a quarter of a century,
and happily shows no sign of letting up. And yet The Indeterminate
Existence is more of a look back over the shoulder than a peer
into the future: its seven tracks – three on alto sax and two
each on tenor and soprano – were recorded between October 1988
and December 1998, which means that even the most recent material
on the album dates from eight years ago, and eight years in the life
of any improviser is a hell of a long time. Especially so for Wright,
who radically redefined his concept of the saxophone both as a solo
and ensemble instrument at the end of the 1990s in a number of landmark
collaborations with Bhob Rainey, and has continued to do so in the
company of another master saxophonist, Michel Doneda in the From Between
trio.
"Difficult listening", warns the LVD website. Indeed, for
those used to chilling out with Peter Wright and Campbell Kneale,
this must be pretty forbidding stuff: even seasoned improv heads won't
find it easy going. Jack has always described himself as a "dirty"
player, meaning not only that he cultivates a wide range of extended
techniques, spitting, snarling, and singing into the horn, but also
that he cussedly refuses to leave his own ideas alone. While the likes
of John Butcher and Evan Parker often content themselves with exploring
one musical idea or technique over the course of a piece, Wright's
music is constantly challenging itself from one moment to the next:
the music refuses to sit still. And even if – as Wright seems
to imply in his lengthy and typically erudite liner notes –
there are echoes of the furious free jazz he emerged from in the early
80s (Parker, Brötzmann..), there's no way you can just sit back
and let yourself burn up in delight as you might do listening to a
Paul Flaherty album. You have to engage with this fully or just pass
the disc on to someone else who will.
 As
Is is a clear indication of how far Wright has travelled in the
years since the tracks on The Indeterminate Existence was
recorded. These three solos, recorded last year in Barcelona and Beirut
(at the Irtijal festival), are just as uncompromising in their investigations,
but clearly have next to nothing to do with the music Wright was making
a decade ago. The sound is still dirty, maybe even more so, with extensive
use of muting – he's fond of jamming the horn against his trouser
leg to produce a microtonally-inflected stifled wheezing – but
the surface of the music, though at times busy, is less concerned
with melody than with timbre. It's as if he's climbed inside
the horn and no longer needs to blow it apart. There's still the same
tendency to worry the material, harry and herd it into a confined
space – if you believe in reincarnation Jack might come back
one day as a sheepdog – but the vocabulary has changed. In recent
years Wright, like John Butcher, has been playing more with electronics,
and, as is also the case with Butcher, it's prompted him to redefine
his technique substantially. If you're a fire music nut, this is not
for you, be warned (go for The Indeterminate Existence instead).
But if you're prepared to really put the time in and live with it,
you'll find much to reward you. Believe me.–DW
Schlippenbach
Trio
WINTERREISE
psi
 When
a near-miss Schlippenbach Trio (with Paul Lytton rather than Paul
Lovens on drums) did a road-tour of the States in 2003 the result
was a scorching two-CD set on psi simply titled America 2003.
Winterreise is a release on the same label from the
Trio proper – two tracks, recorded in Cologne in 2004 and 2005
during separate German tours – and at a single CD in length
it feels a little compressed, though what's on offer is certainly
excellent. "Winterreise 1" is the standout performance,
three-quarters of an hour that flows seamlessly and unpredictably
between the various available solo, duo and trio formations. Schlippenbach's
playing is especially mercurial and many-faceted, and the piece's
shifts of mood and texture are often signalled by his detours into
passages of solo piano: often he picks over an idea obsessively, breaking
it up with jolting two-handed back-and-forth à la Taylor,
but he's also a highly lyrical player, at times paring things down
to abecedarian simplicity. Parker leaves the soprano sax behind on
this occasion, instead drawing out typically dark, riddling lines
from his tenor, like musical questions and answers that have been
run seamlessly together. Lovens isn't quite
as ear-grabbing as on some of the trio's other recordings, but shines
on an extended duet with Parker at the piece's midpoint. Echoes of
jazz tradition abound: I've yet to hear a Schlippenbach recording
that didn't have its Monkish moments (he even sneaks in a touch of
"Epistrophy" at one point), and there's also a delightful
passage here where Lovens and the pianist do a wonky version of "trading
fours". Towards the end of the piece things get positively Coltraneish,
with Parker's drypoint-etched lines becoming more rhapsodic and Schlippenbach
opting for Tyneresque grandeur.
The incomplete "Winterreise 2" is a totally different beast.
Some early reviews of the disc have expressed perplexity at the piece's
quiet and attenuated opening (imagine what that once-mooted,
never-realized recording of AMM with Evan Parker might have sounded
like), but to these ears it's an enthralling passage that ranks with
Parker's unaccompanied solo on part 1 as the album's finest moment.
It's almost a pity when after such patient development the energy
levels rise and the piece reverts to the usual free-jazz density of
interaction. Parker eventually bows out and there's a shredded piano
solo from Schlippenbach (mostly high-energy stuff, though at the end
there's a calmer passage with a flicker of Irène Schweizer-style
waltztime). Parker re-enters just as the piece (very frustratingly)
fades out. A shame about that. This trio is now 37 years old, and
remains as potent as ever: for my money it's one of the best units
Evan Parker has ever had, his reserved intensity counterbalancing
– yet gaining warmth from – Schlippenbach and Lovens'
excitable, joyous contributions. Maybe Winterreise doesn't reach
the heights of classics like Pakistani Pomade or Elf
Bagatellen, but it's still a formidable album that rewards the ears with every spin.–ND
Muhal
Richard Abrams / George Lewis / Roscoe Mitchell
STREAMING
Pi
 There's
been no sign of a new Muhal Richard Abrams large-ensemble recording
for a while – which is a damn shame, as anyone who knows his
run of albums for Black Saint and New World can tell you – but
it's a pleasure nonetheless to hear him setting aside his composer's
hat on Streaming for a set of free improvisations with fellow
AACMers George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell. There is a productive tension throughout these five lengthy pieces between the straightforwardly
expressive elements – a point-by-point, narrative style of improvisation
– and a much stronger tendency towards an architectural/sculptural
approach, in which the improvisers balance large chunks of abstracted
sound-textures against each other. It's Abrams who often works closest
to the expressive pole, perhaps because his piano-playing is still
even in this abstracted context redolent of past styles: on the frenzied
noise-making of "Streaming", for instance, his contributions
suggest a demonic reimagining of stride piano. Mitchell is strongly
inclined towards "non-expressiveness" – in the Cagean
rather than pejorative sense – most obviously so in the layer
of jingling percussion that he adds to "Soundhear", which
remains stubbornly independent of Abrams' darkened, tremulous romanticism
and Lewis's whirlpool of electronics. Lewis's doubling on trombone
and electronics permits him an enormously wide range of response,
and you can often hear him shifting his approach as a track develops
– listen to how on "Scrape" he begins by improvising
some jaunty melodies that rub up against Mitchell's papery, Lacy-like
soprano, but quickly moves on to explore different attacks and textures
at length (while Abrams, contrastingly, concentrates on dramatically
plunging cascades and bright swirls). When Abrams sits out on "Bound"
and Lewis turns exclusively to the laptop, the shimmering, pulsing,
whispering aural canvas might almost be a previously unknown track
off Burkhard Stangl and Christof Kurzmann's Schnee.–ND
Jason
Kahn / Tomas Korber / Christian Weber
ZURCHER AUFNAHMEN
Longbox
 All
good things come to an end. After a decade in the saddle, Chicago's
Adam Sonderberg has put his Longbox label out to pasture with this
truly magnificent set of six brief pieces recorded in Zürich
in June 2005 by Messrs Kahn (percussion and electronics), Korber (guitar
and electronics) and Weber (bass). The Longbox catalogue is an intriguing
one, and it's been fun following the twists and turns in the road,
from Sonderberg's spazzed-out junk duos with Fred Lonberg-Holm (Music
of the Late Romantics) and Boris Hauf (--- -) via the
slowmoving-verging-on-the-tedious trawl of his 64 Squares (with Sam
Dellaria) to the brooding austerity of the Dropp Ensemble and Civil
War. For the record, the label might have been put on ice, but those
two fine outfits haven't, so you can expect more news here when they
next surface. Meanwhile, the spotlight shifts from Chicago to Zürich.
Kahn, Korber and Weber haven't exactly been idle in recent times when
it comes to releasing albums, as readers of these pages will know,
but this must be one of their strongest outings yet. Each of the six
(untitled) tracks displays an almost uncanny sense of poise, of capturing
a moment, suspending time, stretching it out and exploring its inner
workings before allowing it to float away into silence. Kahn teases
harmonics out of his cymbals, Korber digs in the glowing embers of
hiss and feedback, and Weber's velvety pizzicato thuds and ever so
fragile bowed work add that touch of fragility, of humanity, that's
often conspicuously absent in recent EAI. It's a truly compelling
listen, but not one to be undertaken lightly. Ambient this is not.
Most music keeps the listener at a respectful distance, able to engage
with it with some degree of objectivity, appreciating the technical
mastery of the performers, the nuances of the structure from afar,
as it were. Even the fiery excesses of free jazz and noise are ecstatic
– as in ek-stasis, going outside oneself; no need to struggle
to get inside the sound, because the sound is around you; you're bombarded
with information, with noise, noise as in information theory,
the overload / overkill / redundancy necessary to allow the message
to reach its target. Listening to Cecil Taylor, Borbetomagus, Merzbow,
Xenakis, Flaherty / Corsano, Bailey / Parker (et al.) can be an experience
as exhausting as it is exciting. But Kahn, Korber and Weber –
and we might add Keith Rowe, Toshi Nakamura, Christof Kurzmann and
any number of top-notch EAI practitioners – demand a different
focus. It's not a question of sitting back and admiring the musicians'
skill (which is not to say there isn't anything to admire: highly
skilled performers these guys most certainly are), or following the
development of a particular musical idea (of which, in conventional
terms, there are very few). It's about getting inside the sound, concentrating
on it so intently that you – the listener – and they –
the performers – simply disappear. Record labels too can, sadly,
disappear: but as Chaka Khan used to say, "the melody still lingers
on."–DW
Michael
Dessen
LINEAL
Circumvention
 Back
in 1986 when I was busting my ass to get what I still believe is the
fastest ever PhD in American academic history at the Eastman School
of Music, Rochester NY, one of the violinists in my band, Lisa Nielsen,
asked me to write a piece for her and friend and fellow fiddler Hanneke
Klein-Robbenhaar to be performed at Lisa's graduation recital. It
was also to feature Lisa's then boyfriend, a trombonist called Rob
(last name escapes me, terribly sorry and all that) and three of his
'bone playing mates. I duly obliged with a truly awful four minutes
of post-Nyman crud entitled Catastrophe Theory, which starts
off with the two violinists (and myself on piano, at their request,
though I think I'd have preferred to skulk backstage) jamming merrily
away and ends up with the stage being invaded by the trombonists,
who surround the poor damsels and blast them to pieces. They end up
on the floor, literally. As I recall, it also involved some kind of
sexually dubious costume choreography, with the fiddlers in virginal
white and the trombonists decked out in nasty biker leather, but that
was abandoned. In fact Catastrophe Theory's one and only
performance was very nearly shelved when Lisa, remembering that her
grandparents would be attending the recital, expressed the understandable
reservation that a simulated gang rape, albeit in bright, merry E
major, might just lead to some awkward questions being asked at the
Nielsen family post-recital drinks party. But we went ahead and did
it anyway, and I still have a cassette recording of the dreadful affair
somewhere which I never want to listen to again.
The reason I'm digging up all this embarrassing shit is that one of
the trombonists that fateful day was Mike Dessen, who, I'm delighted
to report, has put the whole thing well and truly behind him and gone
on to bigger and better things, namely a teaching post at UC Irvine
in California and this fine new album on Circumvention, which features
him in the company of two distinct line-ups, one with Jorge Roeder
(bass), Bob Weiner (percussion) and, on one track, Terry Jenoure (violin),
the other with Vijay Iyer (piano), Mark Dresser (bass) and Susie Ibarra
(percussion). After leaving Eastman, Dessen went on to study with
George Lewis and Anthony Davis at UC San Diego, and there are traces
of the former's furiously creative athleticism in his trombone playing,
as well as a hint of Roswell Rudd in the raw bite of his attack. The
eight tracks on Lineal are intricate affairs, packed with
detail and referencing a wide range of traditions and developments
in contemporary jazz. In fact, they're so packed with detail that
listening to the whole album in one go is quite a challenge, but a
highly enjoyable one. It's good to hear Iyer and Ibarra playing away
from their usual home ground, and Dresser is typically rock solid
on bass. But the Roeder / Weiner rhythm team is just as in tune with
Dessen's intricate compositions too. Check it out.–DW
Topias
Tiheäsalo
EYES OF A DEAD LAMB
Tyyfus
 A
few years ago I got absolutely ratarsed with a mate of mine in the
fair city of Tours and recorded a 45-minute "album" of free
improvised guitar music. I had – still have – no idea
how to play the guitar, but the recordings had, as they say, a certain
raw charm (though I'd never dream of releasing them). Oddly enough,
this debut solo recording by Finnish guitarist Topias Tiheäsalo
reminds me of my drunken twiddlings – not that for one minute
that I'm insinuating he can't actually play the instrument, mind (after
all he plays free jazz with Sir Trio and the Four Horsemen and speed
metal with Pymathon, it says here), but because there's a fresh naïveté
to his explorations that makes a welcome change. And while we're on
the subject of technique, though it's long been my opinion that the
most satisfying and accomplished improvised music is made by people
who actually have a conventional technical grounding in the instrument
they play, there's nothing wrong at all with inspired autodidacticism
– what could be more exciting than Ornette Coleman's violin
playing, for example? Tiheäsalo's explorations – eight
of them, untitled – are beautifully recorded, intimate affairs.
His tiny scratches and pings and subtle use of preparations recall
Tetuzi Akiyama, but also the quieter side of John Russell and the
filigree finery of Pascal Marzan. If you're really on the ball, you
might even recognise them from somewhere else, as Ralf Wehowsky used
the Eyes Of A Dead Lamb tapes as source material for his
magnificent Würgengels Lachende Hand (reviewed in these
pages last month).–DW
Gary
Smith
SUPERTEXTURE
Sijis
 Although
he hasn't exactly been overproductive over the years, Gary Smith is
not an alien who fell to Earth last month, as the surge of recent
reviews and articles would have us believe. His music has absolutely
nothing to do with Harry Partch, either (I fell off the chair laughing
when I read that comparison on the web). But he can sure as hell IMPROVISE
on the guitar, and SuperTexture – his latest solo outing
– showcases the off-the-fretboard logic already in evidence
when his Rhythm Guitar came out in 1991 and no one cared
except four or five stray cats. Isn't life always the same when the
world "discovers" artists who have been around for decades?
This double CD set offers a black and white contrast between Smith's
stark style and other artists' reshaping of this raw material. On
disc one, thirteen solo improvisations take full advantage of the
guitar's components, as Smith – who only uses hands, a volume
pedal and an amp – scratches, smashes, and plucks at the pickups,
the neck, the bridge (I'm sure that if he could get at the pickup
wires he'd use them, too) to bring out a series of discharges ranging
from microscopic clicks and pops to a swelling wave of massaged glissandos
that had me thinking of those pioneers – Reichel, Fitzgerald,
Frith – who in the 70s tried to open the ears of listeners with
treasures like the Guitar Solos series. And, of course, no
laptop in sight here, just flesh, nails (maybe a thumbpick too), metal
and wood.
The second CD consists of remixes by thirteen sound artists somehow
connected with Smith's work, from Bill Fay's piano-and-synth simplicity
(which, frankly, doesn't work with the mangled guitar) to vocal interventions
by David Tibet, who recites – rather than sings – over
Smith's abstractions. Elliott Sharp contributes one excellent track,
as does an unrecognizable Bernhard Günter, who uses clean if
dissonant guitar lines to pay homage to.. Derek Bailey. But my favourite
pieces are the ones by drummer Charles Hayward, who manages to insert
Smith's sound into a – well, yes – robust, bouncing groove,
and BJ Nilsen, who translates intricate webs of multidirectional shards
into murky loops that could fool you into thinking that Smith was
a founder member of :zoviet*france:. So don't be surprised if you read
that online somewhere in the future.–MR
The
Fell Clutch
THE FELL CLUTCH
Animul
 The
Fell Clutch's core consists of Ned Rothenberg (bass clarinet, clarinet,
alto sax), Stomu Takeishi (fretless bass) and Tony Buck (drums). Slide
guitar master David Tronzo is featured on three tracks, while bassist
Joe Williamson plays on the last. Those conversant with the technical
dexterity and circular-breathing virtuosity of most of Rothenberg's
catalogue will find much to like, but they're also in for a few surprises:
this trio's exquisite playing is often quite understated – but
no less effective. Rothenberg's inventive, ever-changing spirals are
given an unusual context on a couple of groove-based tracks, which
move with the elegance of a cat jumping from a tree. "Life In
Your Years" offers a concentrated, slow-motion labyrinthine minimalism,
propelled by Tronzo’s David Torn-style lines and Takeishi's
bass figurations. In "Food For A Rambling", sustained sax
harmonics and deceptive bass-and-drum intertwinings construct a transfixed
masque of obsessiveness. "No Memes, Mom" couples Tronzo's
wahwah-tinged guitar with the trio's magma of clarinet snippets and
fleeting quasi-motifs. "Brainy And Footsy" is what you get
when you put Brand X (circa Product), a snakecharming bass
clarinettist and a bionic belly dancer in a washing machine. The second
half of the album is more oriented towards undefinable cross-pollinations
of ritualistic shamanism and self-conscious inspections of timbral
expansion. The CD's best track is "Epic In Difference",
in which Takeishi and Buck create a tapestry of dismembered ornaments
– at one point, an engrossing 21st century gamelan – while
Rothenberg pulverizes your brain with a couple of truly dazzling clarinet
solos. The final track, "Ashes", pairs scattered convolutions
and incohesive regularity in a final declaration of anticonformism,
as if in revolt against the unstated rules of free improvisation.
Overall, this is an excellent outing that requires repeated visits
to unpack all its enigmas.–MR
Mark
Helias's Open Loose
ATOMIC CLOCK
Radio Legs
 Atomic
Clock was recorded at Brooklyn's Barbès club back in 2004,
though it's not clear whether there was actually an audience present
– if so, it was a surprisingly dead room that night. Having
seen these guys (tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, bassist Mark Helias,
drummer Tom Rainey) deliver a stirring performance in Toronto at roughly
the time this was recorded, I can say that Atomic Clock catches
them somewhat short of their best form, though the very plain recording
is partly to blame. That said, the disc is still well up to scratch. Helias's
compositions are lean and eventful, marked by an intriguing internal
tension that comes from the way they pack free-jazz energies and ambiguities
within tight, detailed structures; they run the gamut from the demented
"Subway" (a Warp-10 "Surrey with the Fringe on Top")
to the free-form balladry of "Zephyr" to the squeezed-and-stretched
swingtime of "Cinematic". The diversity of the material
suits Malaby, whose wide-ranging abilities have made him one of the
most in-demand players on the New York jazz scene. Hard not to admire such versatility, though at times I find his work too amorphous: it's a bit thin
on actual ideas, and instead tends to place most emphasis on mobility and on
variety of tonal effect, from pallid mellifluousness to harsh
Pharoah Sanders rasping and shrieking. That said,
Malaby's ability to go from the lunacy of "Subway" to the
dignified lament of "Chavez" is genuinely impressive –
but in the end what one remembers most about the album is the tough, imaginative
work of Helias and Rainey. Ellery Eskelin (the group's original saxophonist)
guests for "Modern Scag", a woozy free ballad rather than
the expected two-tenor showdown; the downbeat beauty of the twinned
saxophones is a treat, and it's enough to make you hope that Helias
will get around to making an entire quartet album with this lineup.–ND
Mick
Barr
OCTIS: IOHARGH WENDED
Tzadik
 Most
professional rock guitarists vie for lucrative product endorsements
from the likes of Fender and Gibson. Breaking with such predictable
and pantywaisted ranks, Mick Barr could easily qualify for a deal
with Black & Decker. His mercurial and often earsplitting fret
style mimics the sounds of power tools set to punishingly high speeds.
Even ingested at low volumes protective ear goggles almost seem mandatory
to curtail auditory injury. Octis builds on his influential
Washington, D.C.-based duo work with drummer Josh Blair in Orthrelm,
and is a set of tightly-composed high velocity solo compositions divided
into two titular suites. Nine of the sixteen tracks add drum machine
to Barr's frenetic arpeggiations and the effect is a bit like Big
Black's Roland on an electrical amphetamine binge, locked in combat
with a contingent of dentist's drills and nail guns. Despite the noisy
automatic weapons-fire intensity of most pieces, Barr's dizzying progressions
follow perspicacious vectors. There's nothing haphazard or random
about his meticulously-designed riff structures. Most curb to durations
of a few minutes or less, though two press significantly longer and
find him constructing caustic oscillating drones. Where the disc falters
is in the semblance of parity between pieces that soon creeps in even
at a relatively conservative fifty-odd minutes. Zorn's attraction
to the project is endemic as Barr's pummeling math-rock patterns are
right in line with the post-punk provinces of Painkiller, Spy vs.
Spy and Naked City. Fans of those bands and Orthrelm will probably
feel right at home, but others might find themselves racing for the
exits.–DT
Uncle
Woody Sullender / Kevin Davis
THE TEMPEST IS OVER
Dead CEO
 This
one came with a nice handwritten note from Uncle Woody saying "hope
you enjoy this more than my solo CD that you reviewed!" Attaboy,
Woody strugglin' to his feet and comin' back for more! Well in fact,
yes I did, very much more in fact, either because my tastes have cough
cough matured in the intervening years (doubtful) or, as I prefer
to think, improvisers are basically sociable creatures who produce
what I find to be their most enjoyable work in the company of other
improvisers. That's not to say I don't enjoy solo improv albums, but
if I feel like listening to, say, Derek Bailey or Evan Parker or John
Butcher (or.. the list goes on) I tend to pick up a duo or trio album
instead of a solo offering. Needless to say I haven't given Uncle
Woody's debut outing Nothing Is Certain But Death a spin
for a while, but The Tempest Is Over has been burning up
the PT soundsystem for a couple of weeks now. Banjoist Sullender is
joined by cellist Kevin Davis in seven well-recorded, fresh and creative
duets. It's clear that both lads can really play – Davis has
a splendid round tone and a mean line in doublestops and harmonics,
and Sullender is as good at finding the right notes as he is at discovering
timbres on the venerable banjo you never thought existed. Best of
all, there's not a hint of the Eugene Chadbourne wackiness I seem
to recall berating him for last time. And, thankfully, not a Johnny
Paycheck cover in sight. Good stuff.–DW
Spider
Trio
LIVE @ RENDEZVOUS / JEWELBOX THEATER
www.speakeasy.org/~wallyshp/
 Alto
saxophonist Wally Shoup seems to be heading back to his roots in the
world of ultra-limited edition collectors' item releases with this
CDR (only 50 of 'em, so move fast) recorded on 8.12.06 (I think that's
August the 12th and not December 8th btw because a) that's the way
they write the date on the other side of the pond and b) it's red
hot) on which the fire warrior is ably accompanied by Jeffery Taylor
on electric guitar and Dave Abramson on drums. I keep hoping that
the Powers That Be might latch on Shoup the way they have his East
Coast pardner Paul Flaherty and get some serious festival giggery
rolling for Wally, because he swings just as hard. Yes, swings. Abramson's
got that Ronald Shannon Jackson one-part-funk-one-part-rock-one-part-bop
groove down to a tee, and – no disrespect to Taylor –
it'd be magnificent if some mean motherfucker bassist could get in
on the act too. Personal favourite: track two (no titles unfortunately),
a kind of drone ballad that burns itself out spectacularly by the
six-minute mark only to reconfigure itself into a mighty thrashfest.
There are plenty more fireworks on offer in the other three pieces
too. Makes me wonder if Spider Trio is the right name for the outfit:
they sound more like tigers to me.–DW
Jacob
Lindsay / Scott Looney / Gino Robair
YELLOWCAKE
Rastascan
 The
cover shows a garish Pop Art piece of, well, yellow cake, but Keith
Rowe fans should beware. Even if the imperialism-serving table guitar
grandmaster is credited inside, presumably for having inspired the
artwork, the music sounds nothing like the Rowe albums whose cover
it resembles (Honey Pie and Weather Sky –
a veritable high calorie diet). Yellowcake is spiky, nervous
stuff, and none of the musicians – Jacob Lindsay on assorted
clarinets, Scott Looney on electronics and Gino Robair on "energized
surfaces / voltage made audible" (percussion and electronics
to you) – seems to want to stay still for very long. There are
some what might be described as "micro-drones" on "Discontinuous
Beings" but for the most part this is the kind of user-unfriendly
twitch hoot gargle splat crash spin-on-a-dime stuff that anyone unfamiliar
with improvised music would probably run a mile from. If, however,
you're a fan of groups like Konk Pack (whose instrumental line-up
is quite similar), this will probably be right up your street. It
sounds good to me, anyway.–DW
John
Shiurba
5x5 1.2=A
Rastascan / Un-Limited Sedition
 If
you think it sounds like a Braxton title, you're partly right: the
"A" is indeed for Anthony, and the mighty Braxton is indeed
one of the members of this smokin' quintet, but this particular project
is the work of Oakland-based guitarist John Shiurba. The other three
are Greg Kelley (trumpet), Morgan Guberman (bass) and Gino Robair
(percussion – and that's what it says this time, not "energized
surfaces"). Shiurba, Robair and Kelley were all featured on Braxton's
magnificent Six Compositions (GTM) 2001, you may recall,
and when it gets cooking 5x5 1.2=A is just as exciting. Shiurba explains
that this is "the second of five sets in the first of five groups
of five short pieces written for five players to be used as interjections
within a continuous improvisation", which means, if I've got
my maths right, there should be enough material for another 24 albums
(well, I'm sure the indefatigable Braxton would be up for it!), but
there's enough to keep you busy here for several months as it is.
Braxton himself, on E flat, F alto and E flat sopranino saxophones,
is on fine form, and gets into some splendid tussles with Kelley (and
everyone else). That shouldn't give the impression that Shiurba, Guberman
and Robair are merely some kind of "rhythm section", because
they're not: both in the composed sections and the free-ranging improv,
there's a great degree of autonomy here, and more often than not the
musicians go their own separate ways, threading their way through
a field of colourful yet prickly wild flowers to meet up miraculously
at the gateway that opens on to the next one. Shiurba's always been
a spiky player, but behind that thorny exterior there's some succulent
fruit, and he leaves plenty of room for it to grow. Here's to the
next volume. And the next. And the next.–DW
Glenn
Branca
INDETERMINATE ACTIVITY OF RESULTANT MASSES
Atavistic
 Thanks
to Atavistic, an important historical document sees the light for
the first time on record. After a performance of this piece at the
New Music America Festival 1982, John Cage fired a verbal broadside
at Glenn Branca's music, calling it "fascist" (his full
critique is contained in the second of this CD's three tracks, "So
That Each Person Is In Charge Of Himself", a conversation between
Cage and Wim Mertens recorded at the busy Navy Pier on Lake Michigan,
and ironically full of extraneous noise). Cage later reconsidered
his statements about Branca but – alea iacta est –
the damage was already done. So much for all that Zen/I-Ching open-mindedness.
"Indeterminate Activity Of Resultant Masses" is scored for
ten guitars (here Mark Bingham, Glenn Branca, Craig Bromberg, Barbara
Ess, Jeffrey Glenn, Sue Hanel, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, David
Rosenbloom, and Ned Sublette), plus drums and tympani (Stephan Wischerth).
It's quintessential Branca, 31 minutes of resonance growing inexorably
from picked-and-plucked call and response into an awesome maelstrom
of clashing overtones. Impressive stuff, despite an excess of compression
on the recording. Equally remarkable is the last track, "Harmonic
Series Chords", a seven-minute orchestral piece recorded in 1989
by the New York Chamber Sinfonia under Glen Cortese, on which the
monumental chords are framed by a slowly moving piano structure that
sounds like a hybrid of Bowie's "Neuköln" and a horror
movie soundtrack.
I don't know what Cage had in mind 25 years ago, but if I prefer Glenn
Branca to every version of 4'33" I've heard to date, does it
make me an apologist for fascism? Sure, certain frequencies can't
be handled by certain brains and, accordingly, this music might
be "harmful" to someone. Standing next to Niagara Falls
for a long time won't do your ears much good either. But Branca's sound
is a natural force just as powerful, and makes Cage's objections
seem all the more irrelevant.–MR
Richard
Garet
INTRINSIC MOTION
Heribert Friedl
BACK_FORWARD
Bernhard Günter + Heribert Friedl
TRANS~
nvo
 The
releases on Heribert Friedl's non visual objects label are dressed
for understatement: cardboard fold-over covers, suitably oblique imagery,
consistency in (mostly lowercase) font and design. It makes for canny
branding, hailing the listener conversant in quietist sound art, but
with each release 'of a piece', your response is predetermined: nvo
titles are sometimes great, but rarely surprising. And so
it is with Intrinsic Motion, Richard Garet's first disc for
the label, and an extension of his exploration into the spaces between
sound and video art and painting. The liner notes have each piece
on the disc resulting from "an empirical interaction" –
but then, what sound art isn't these days? – rather more problematic
is the content of the "four aural compositions", which belabour
their point via field recording activity (birds and cityscapes), deep
bass rumble, high pitched tone float, assorted cracklings and rustlings,
etc. It's all very quiet and understated, very much in the style of
lowercase composition, and it's genuinely engaging when it touches
on unalloyed beauty; "For Shimpei Takeda" features a small,
disengaged melody that's quite gorgeous, particularly when bedded
down amongst the usual rattle and hum. But it's not all that engaging,
which prompts the question, how much "austere loveliness" is
enough? Long may Garet quest on into near silence, but don't expect
revelation anytime soon.–JD
 The
use of single-source materials as the basis of a recorded work is
often a valuable constraint: it assures instant focus and forces the
artist to explore a given set of acoustic variables in depth. This
is the focus behind Heribert Friedl's latest electro-acoustic release,
Back_Forward. As the title suggests, Friedl seeks to develop
a two-way dialogue between his instrument of choice, the Hackbrett
(a type of hammered dulcimer), and digital treatments that radically
transform the original recordings. Friedl elicits a wealth of source
material from the instrument by bowing, plucking, scraping and generally
manhandling the instrument (albeit with the level of care and control
that you'd expect from his work). While the components of the source
recordings are transformed by electronic manipulation, the results
somehow never stray too far from the fundamental qualities of the
instrument. Whilst some of the delayed pops and clicks feel a little
too robust, the interplay of acoustic and digital elements is strong
and full of surprises.
 TRANS~,
a duo recording involving Friedl's Hackbrett and Berhard Günter
on electric cellotar, flute and harmonica, is the type of music Günter
describes as "music like weather". At the core of this work
is a humming field recording of power transformers, serving as a backdrop
for the acoustic elements as they are discreetly introduced and subtracted
– or perhaps (to keep with Günter's analogy) it's as if
the humming transformers are the sky, the various instruments the
clouds that drift across it. There's a unique sense of time at play
in this work, as the tightly wound cycles of the electrical hum interact
with the instruments' emergent slower repetitions and ebbing tone
flows. The playing is restrained but has a genuine sense of pressure
– perhaps again "music like weather" comes into play,
the piece reflecting barometric movements in the atmosphere. Though
invisible, these effects are measurable and connect with us all in
individual ways – a character shared with this composition.–LE
"Blue"
Gene Tyranny
OUT OF THE BLUE
Unseen Worlds
 For
its inaugural release, the Texas-based Unseen Worlds label has shepherded
back into circulation, authorized and annotated, the Lovely Music
debut LP by "Blue" Gene Tyranny, 1977's Out of the Blue.
Tyranny (né Robert Sheff) is a keyboardist, composer and sound
technician who spent much of the 70s at Mills College as an instructor
and electronic music guru. But along with saxophonist-composer Peter
Gordon, who also cut an LP for Lovely around the same time, Tyranny
produced a concert in 1976 at Berkeley's University Art Museum called
"Trust In Rock", and despite Sheff's ONCE Festival pedigree
and close association with the vanguard of late-twentieth-century
composition, Out of the Blue has more in common with progressive
rock à la Eno or Phil Miller, or the initial cross-genre
steps of figures like Laurie Anderson.
The meat of the disc is "Letter from Home," which took up
the entire second half of the original LP, a steady unfolding of train
sounds, clavinet, synthesizer, vocal chorus, guitar, violin, cello,
and reeds accompanying a recitation by Kathy Morton Austin of a metaphysically-directed
letter/poem. As the author's evaluations and self-awareness flower,
Tyranny's electro-acoustic tone poem clunks and plods forward to disarming
consonance. "There are so many cycles, you could just as easily
see it as random," the speaker says, which seems like a nice
idea and one that fits into a personal, nearly quaint exploratory
liberation brought forth by the steady and gently expansive movement
of the music. Yet unlike the pedigree of speech-as-sound in the work
of Tyranny's associates (notably Robert Ashley), here the words themselves
are not used to the end of an auditory concept, but self-expression
– song lyrics, in fact.
In contrast, the record's three opening tracks bounce from the unflagging
optimism of National Health (perhaps without the irony) to an earthy,
delicate fire comparable to Julie Tippetts' work on Sunset Glow.
"Next Time Might Be Your Time" is sunny folk-rock run through
a chorus of suitably mind-altering electronics, a dissonant sonic
marriage that despite some cloying saxophone conveys a sense of personality
as much as it does "purpose" – something that goes
for all four compositions – let's call them songs –
on Out of the Blue. -CA
Olivia
Block
HEAVE TO
Sedimental
 Thunderstorms
off the starboard bow, cap'n. Heave to, according to the Free Online
Dictionary, is a seafaring expression meaning "to turn a sailing
ship so that its bow heads into the wind and the ship lies motionless
except for drifting, in order to meet a storm." And there's plenty
of stormy stuff on offer in this, the fourth (only the fourth!) solo
album by Texas-born Chicago-based Olivia Block; in addition to what
sounds like the creaking and groaning of rigging (though I doubt she'd
opt for something so obvious – this is not Salt Marie Celeste
after all), there are waves galore, both literal – some of Block's
source field recordings were made in Hawaii – and figurative,
in the form of swirling tremolo clusters played by an 11-piece instrumental
ensemble, and all manner of crunches, crackles and shortwave swoops,
processed to death and painstakingly sequenced and superimposed. Eventually
the swell subsides and the instruments are left alone to end "Part
1" with a remarkably Coplandesque chorale, but the wind picks
up with a vengeance on "Part 2", and the good ship Block,
already corroded by rusty glitches and covered with barnacle bleeps,
is pummelled on all sides by eternally rising string glissandi and
sends out a Mayday signal. The brave lifeboats of American Mainstream
New Music come to the rescue, and the turbulent Penderecki clusters
settle into a 5-29 chord that wouldn't sound out of place in The
Death of Klinghoffer. "Make The Land" finds the composer
swabbing the decks and clearing up the debris, while Kyle Bruckmann's
oboe squiggles and a forlorn sinewave bleeps and stutters in the background.
Evocative and attractive stuff, but it's a shame some of the harmonic
ideas introduced in the first two movements aren't referenced and
resolved. Change Ringing, Block's 2005 outing on Jason Kahn's
Cut imprint, was more convincing. But then again, I'm a landlubber.
Give me the desert any day.–DW
Rhodri
Davies / Ko Ishikawa
COMPOSITIONS FOR HARP AND SHO
Hibari
 The
rich glowing clusters of the Japanese vertical mouthorgan, or sho,
sound wonderful in Gagaku (traditional Japanese Court Music), but
when the venerable instrument, even in the hands of Ko Ishikawa, sounds
just one note at a time it can be annoyingly grating, like a toy melodica.
And if the note, albeit mirrored by Rhodri Davies' ebowed harp an
octave below and interspersed with silence, doesn't change for a full
18 minutes, which is what happens in Taku Sugimoto's Aka To Ao,
it ends up trying the patience. But many people would say that trying
the patience is something Sugimoto is rather good at these days. Masahiko
Okura's Torso is more varied in its material, but the blank
canvas of silence that surrounds its brief sonic brushstrokes is more
empty space than pregnant pause. On Antoine Beuger's Three Drops
Of Rain / East Wind / Ocean, Ishikawa is more in the background,
and Davies' single line melody more fragile and compelling as a result.
In stark contrast to Beuger's Zen minimalism, Toshiya Tsunoda takes
the harp and sho into the lab and records them along a pair of sinewaves,
passing the result through "a gate device that cuts the audio
signal under a certain established voltage". Strings And
Pipes Of The Same Length Float On Waves is pretty astringent
stuff, admirable in its conceptual rigour (as are all of Tsunoda's
projects) but not exactly pleasant to listen to again and again. Unlike
my scratchy old Gagaku vinyls.–DW
Ben
Frost
THEORY OF MACHINES
Bedroom Community
 Without
a doubt the impact of Theory Of Machines at a first listening
is a powerful one: it's almost impeccable in its computerized imperfection.
Digital bliss vs crunchy distortion is the order of the day here,
in five tracks whose influences have been thoroughly absorbed and
well defined (one of them is called "We Love You Michael Gira",
and a Swans segment is sampled and modified somewhere in there), yet
despite the presence of striking explosions of overdriven fury and
shattered recollections bathed in currents of dejection, I'm not completely
sold on it: I can't really find anything that sounds especially innovative.
Maybe it's not intended to be, and perhaps Daniel Johnson's liners
quoting Alvin Lucier and Arvo Pärt deceived me. "Coda"
is a nice glimpse of odd-metred drum'n'bass'n'post-rock, but is disappointingly
short, and the final and longest track, "Forgetting You Is Like
Breathing Water", an endless intersection of electronic scalar
figurations gradually evolving into a wobbling chamber-music pastel,
is based on an idea that, repeated for about 11 minutes, is too simplistic
to raise the hair on the back of the neck. Some of the concepts are
nice – the insistent beeping sample morphing into a dropping
piano note and the constant stereo shift of a synthetic pulse in "We
Love You Michael Gira", or the beautiful bass line of "Stomp"
– but I've heard better things on Peter Gabriel's Up.
(Don't scoff at the comparison: listen to that album very carefully
and you'll find stronger compositional ideas behind the electronica.)
The truly splendid title track remains the best thing on Theory
Of Machines, sounding like Fennesz and his laptop nostalgia immersed
in a bowl of sulphuric acid, slowly disintegrating amidst huge bubbles
and thick fumes.. But you may get the feeling – as CSN&Y
would have it – of having all been here before, too.–MR
David
Daniell
COASTAL
Xeric / Table Of The Elements
 Four
splendid tracks from Atlanta Georgia-based guitarist / composer David
Daniell, whose principal claims to fame include his Antiopic label,
his trio San Agustin, and his work with the likes of Rhys Chatham,
Jonathan Kane, Doug McCombs and, more recently Greg Davis and Tomas
Korber. Quite what the exquisitely treated cymbals, snaredrum brush
splatters and – gaaah, that D-word again – drones on "Whelk"
have in common with carnivorous scavenging marine gastropods isn't
clear, but it's a magnificent opener, which sets the scene and settles
the ear for the 27-minute centrepiece of the album, "Palmetto"
(I take it that's the tree and not the record label of the same name).
Daniell is, as his CV makes abundantly clear, familiar with both slow,
near static minimalism – witness the magnificent Antiopic Alvin
Lucier double CD from last year – and its more pulse-friendly
manifestations, and "Palmetto" manages in a strange way
to combine elements of both; what at casual listening might seem to
be stationary is in fact full of subtle rhythmic activity. It's a
fascinating but not always easy listen, its occasional ventures into
high tessitura scree serving to distract the attention from the sub-bass
tectonic shifts.
After the at times dense soundscapes of the first two tracks, the
luminous tonality of the multitracked guitars in "Sunfish"
seems surprising, but closer listening reveals the same compositional
logic at work. Rhythmic cycles overlap, emerge from and disappear
into the mix in precisely the same way as the more abstract strata
do in "Whelk" and "Palmetto". The basic sound
material might be as direct as the music of Kane and Chatham that
Daniell knows so well, but the overall listening experience is what
Kyle Gann would describe as "post-minimalist" (though you
know my thoughts on that particular term). The final "Glasswort"
begins with a return to sizzle and crackle of electronics / field
recordings, but the guitar picking soon returns, and drifts in and
out during the piece, as if trying to haunt it. In a way it's a logical
mix of the two seemingly different worlds of "Palmetto"
and "Sunfish", but its elusive and introspective nature
raises more questions than it provides answers: are we to hear the
recognisable melodic and harmonic material as foreground, and the
more abstract electronics as background? What do the words foreground
and background mean in this kind of music? How do we listen? What
are we listening for (and listening to)? I'm not sure I can answer
many of these questions myself, but the fact that I keep returning
to Coastal must mean something. If I find the answer I'll
let you know. Well, maybe.–DW
Jim
Haynes
TELEGRAPHY BY THE SEA
Helen Scarsdale
 Those
familiar with Jim Haynes' informed comments on leftfield electronica
in The Wire will know by now where he's coming from and whose
music he likes – think Nurse With Wound, Hafler Trio, William
Basinski, and the sound artists whose work has appeared on the Helen
Scarsdale imprint (Matt Waldron, BJ Nilsen, Loren Chasse..) –
but in case you're not familiar with Haynes' work with Chasse on Coelacanth,
Telegraphy By The Sea shows he's just as good at making music
as he is at writing intelligently about it. It's a huge sprawling
piece, nearly an hour long (in fact there's an installation of the
same name that lasts six hours, which Haynes performed at the Diapason
Gallery in New York, some of whose rough recordings found their way
into this condensed version), full of the sonic rust Haynes is so
good at scraping off his source sounds. Huge swathes of grimy drone
are sprinkled with grainy shortwave static hiss and carefully twisted
into shape to form an imposing, even intimidating sound shipwreck.
"The title is mostly poetic," writes Haynes, "with
occasional references to communication technology found in the use
of shortwave throughout the composition. There's plenty of water recordings
in the piece, but my memory is foggy as to whether they're recordings
of the Pacific Ocean or not. The album seems to locate itself for
me somewhere north of San Francisco, on a craggy coastal tract of
land dappled with telephone wires, cellphone towers, etc. A barren
place, but one that has the fingerprints of technology smeared across
the landscape." Ah, remind me to play it late at night walking
down to the Point Reyes lighthouse. Ever seen The Fog? That's
where it was filmed, as I recall. Found this while snooping around
Google: "Because of incessant wind and fog on Point Reyes in
some seasons, the Point Reyes Lighthouse was plagued by 'incidents
of insanity, alcoholism, violence, and insubordination,' notes a publication
of the National Park Service, which now owns the lighthouse. One lighthouse
keeper even took to drinking the alcohol shipped for cleaning the
lens and 'was often seen lying drunk by the roadside,' the Park Service
publication added." Telegraphy would be the perfect
soundtrack. If this had come out under the Nurse With Wound moniker,
you'd have heard about it by now for sure.
–DW
Loren
Dent
EMPIRES AND MILK
Contract Killers
 From
what I can gather from the supremely non-informative pages of MySpace,
Loren Dent is 26 years old and comes from Austin, Texas, drinks but
doesn't smoke, has 162 "friends" (none of whom I particularly
want to learn more about) and likes, amongst other things, Sigur Rós,
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Tim Hecker, William Basinski and
Joy Division. It doesn't take long to find traces of their influence
in Dent's music, but they've been well assimilated and carefully channeled
into 15 tracks of considerable originality and craftsmanship. Empires
and Milk – nice title – despite appearing on a label
whose name sounds like a Quentin Tarantino production company, has
been dragged into that huge amorphous trawl net known as Ambient,
which means it gets reviews full of choice quotes like "music
that can be listened to or played in the background to create a mood"
(yeah, right – you can say that about Throbbing Gristle
and Merzbow too), "relaxing melodic overtures sweep over top
of your body" (sic) and "simply must be explored by every
single person who has ever heard music before" (now that's
a challenge). And it inevitably gets compared to early Eno. Sure,
there are things in common, but there's an undertow of complexity
here that has little to do with the cool concept chill of Discreet
Music or Music For Airports. If Dent's music reveals
Eno influence, it's Eno the producer that comes to mind – think
Passengers or Bowie's 1:Outside – the way that something
complex and ever so slightly disturbing lurks under the surface of
seemingly calm water. From strange static flutters that pepper the
opening (title) track, to steely refrigerator hum far back in the
mix of "Love Song: Kinetics and Hope", cunningly stratified
piano dissonances in "Work Song: Texas City", and craftily
reversed soundfile twitters behind "Colonial Blues", Empires
and Milk is full of strange dusty corners to explore. You can,
conversely, play it as wallpaper music, but you'll be missing out
on a wealth of fine detail.–DW
Richard
Chartier
CURRENT
Room40
 Richard
Chartier albums tend to sit quietly gathering dust on the shelves
here until an opportunity appropriate to serious listening presents
itself, invariably late at night or very early in the morning, always
through headphones, always in darkness. I don't think I've ever heard
a Chartier album in daylight. It's a music of forms and shapes barely
perceived and barely perceptible, a fantastic journey into a realm
of shadow where sounds – as opposed to musical "ideas",
a terms that seems to imply identifiable parameters (pitch, rhythm..)
which are of little importance to Chartier – appear and disappear
almost without being noticed. As Will Montgomery writes in his fine
essay on Chartier in Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken
Continuum, this is music that "pulls the ears toward its
own disappearance." But that shouldn't be taken to mean it's
depressing, even nihilistic stuff. Chartier's canvas is never empty;
silence might be implied, as something from which sounds emerge and
to which they return, but it's never used as a compositional element.
We're not talking Wandelweiser aesthetic here. There's always something
going on, often at the extremes of the audible spectrum – and
Current is one of Chartier's richest offerings to date in
terms of activity level – from fluttery sub-bass to gently muffled
clicks, tiny rips, rasps and puffs of sound sprinkled into the ear.
As if that dust that settled on the box while the disc was patiently
waiting its turn has somehow found its way into the music itself.–DW
The
Alps
JEWELT GALAXIES/SPIRIT SHAMBLES
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS
Spekk
 These
two latest releases on Nao Sugimoto's Spekk label are, as always,
blessed with truly desirable (and costly) packaging-design, but they
also suggest that the label has shifted its curatorial spotlight.
Where the label was previously concerned with the more minimal and
refined areas of contemporary sound practise, these discs point to
a shift in focus that is increasingly reflected globally – from
abstract, electronic sound-worlds towards the earthier qualities of
conventional melody and analogue goodness.
The Alps is a trio of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Alexis Georgopoulos and
Scott Hewicker. Their CD Jewelt Galaxies/Spirit Shambles is
a live recording; some subsequent editing has been done, but
it's not too heavy-handed, and there is still some audio peaking where
that always less than pleasant digital distortion kicks in. Glitches
aside, Jewelt Galaxies/Spirit Shambles flows like a post-psych
freeform jam that has been spliced with care but not precision: on
"The River Lies With The The Lilies" (sic!), for instance,
the music's drawn-out, flooded sound spaces eventually work up towards
a climactic rupture of bashed cymbals, tortured sax and submerged
guitar abuse. It's not unfamiliar or particularly original territory,
but it's still nice to hear music that's uninhibited and heartfelt.
 Cantu-Ledesma's
work on his solo disc The Garden Of Forking Paths is more
directed on the whole than his contributions to The Alps. It's a glorious
collection of lilting, gently decorated instrumental works compiled
from a variety of tape recordings. The filtered feedback waves that
pulse over "Spirits" and the sketchy high-end detail of
"Feast Of The Pentecost" demonstrate Cantu-Ledesma's abilities
as a sound-crafter. The Garden Of Forking Paths may be an
unassuming, matter of fact document of Cantu-Ledesma's sonic explorations,
but it turns out to be some of the most charming and considered work
I've heard in this area of the music.–LE
Mattin
PROLETARIAN OF NOISE
Hibari
 You
won't feel like an idiot or an "attitude fetishist" (despite
what the lyrics of the track of that name might imply), and you can
even manage to listen to it all without pressing the stop button.
Just watch your ears and keep that volume knob to hand. Proletarian
Of Noise is a good collection of compositions, richer in ideas
and more fun than any of the various chapters of Mattin's Songbook
to date. There are five pieces, beginning with "Computer Music/Post
Fordism", five minutes of soft tapping, like finger drumming.
"Attitude Fetishist" and "You Are Stuck As A Free Human
Being" find Mattin screaming anti-capitalist abuse in some kind
of self-exorcism. If you don't read the lyrics you probably won't
be able to make out what he's saying, but that's OK because I don’t
give a damn about the words as long as the music is great (I still
like Hall & Oates too), and these two tracks are. Have a good
laugh at the indecipherable lowest-of-the-lo-fi rant of "You
Are Stuck..", a "song" that makes two nerds of Johnny
Rotten and Sid Vicious. "Desecration Of Silence" is the
kind of fantastic, brutal carnage of squealing distortion that should
be transcribed and executed live by Zeitkratzer. The final track is
31 minutes of total silence, punctuated at long intervals by Lisa
Rosendahl reading the eleven "chapters" of "Thesis
On Noise." Cage would have loved this one, but if he'd heard
"Desecration Of Silence" instead he would have probably
sent this proletarian off to the same gulag as Glenn Branca.–MR
Aemae
MAW
Isounderscore
 Brandon
Nickell's last outing under the Aemae moniker came in an all black
cover (you may recall), but this one's white-on-white: you have to
jiggle it about under the light to read the titles of the five tracks.
If you associate white with stark minimalism (labels like A Bruit
Secret, Meme, the next-to-nothingness of Sugimoto and Sukora), be
warned: Maw is nasty. In fact in places it's downright
fucking vicious, especially "Spectral Psychosis", which
chainsaws its way into the inner ear with unbridled ferocity (haven't
had a good tinnitus-inducing kick like this one since Hecker –
Florian, not Tim). This is what computers do best, and what real instruments
can't do as effectively: take whatever you feed them, mash it into
a bloody pulp and spit it out all over the place. But that shouldn't
leave you with the impression that Maw is just another helping
of Noise, because it isn't: Nickell's handling of his software is
deft and impressive; where other noiseniks just let fly and often
end up with decidedly uneven results, it's clear that Nickell has
spent a lot of time living with these sounds (God help him) and has
put them together with terrific attention to detail. Even so, it's
often hard to make out how much of this spitting, scorching, hissing,
squelching molten metal is Nickell's doing or just his software (Max,
I'm guessing) running riot. Whatever it is, it makes for a pretty
tough listen, but one you won't forget in a hurry.–DW
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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