| AUGUST
News 2006 |
Reviews
by Clifford Allen, Nate Dorward, Nick Rice, Massimo Ricci, Dan Warburton:
|
|
Editorial
Between the Notes: Tristan Murail
Reissued: Robert
Fripp
Reissued:
The Topography of
the Lungs
On Die Stadt: Aidan
Baker / Asmus Tietchens / CM von Hausswolf / Fovea Hex
nmperign / Jason Lescalleet
JAZZ & IMPROV: Harry
Miller's Isipingo / Eneidi, Kowald, Smith, Spirit / The Mentones
/ Aaron Moore / GOD
Alfred Harth / Bruce
Russell / Wright, Djll, Rainey, Feeney / Hans Tammen & Christoph
Irmer / Spiderwebs
CONTEMPORARY: Ben
Johnston / Pioneers of Electronic Music
ELECTRONICA: Maurizio
Bianchi / Jorge Haro / Ronnie Sundin / Sudden Infant / M. Holterbach
Last month
|
To
tell the truth, I wasn't planning on an August issue of PT this year.
A holiday – no email! no website! – seemed more interesting,
and I wasn't sure I'd have enough material ready before I left. But
thanks to our roving correspondents, especially Nick Rice, who's come
up trumps this month with a full length piece on Tristan Murail and
an interview with New York music journalist John
Rockwell, there's at least a little something for you to read
on the beach if you haven't had your summer holiday yet. Or vacation,
if that's what they call it where you are, he said, in recognition
of the fact that well over half of the people who visit this site
are on JR's side of the pond. Personally, I rather doubt Mr Rockwell's
stories will mean very much to anyone not familiar with the Who's
Who and the Ins and Outs of New York classical music scene (that certainly
doesn't include me), but as Paris Transatlantic often been accused
of being a specialist "improv only" magazine – foutaises!
– I thought it was about time we redressed the balance. OK,
one of our featured reissues is the long unavailable Topography
Of The Lungs, the first ever release on the mythic Incus label,
which has now, it seems, become an Evan Parker album – though
my old vinyl copy credits it jointly to Parker, Derek Bailey and Han
Bennink – but Robert Fripp's Exposure certainly isn't
what you'd call free improv. And even the Improv section below features
some names not normally associated with the genre, including Volcano
The Bear's Aaron Moore and Charlambides' Tom Carter. All in all, I
think there's a wide range of stuff on offer, from Harry Miller to
Sudden Infant. I hope you find something to enjoy. Bonnes vacances.
- DW
A
profile of Tristan Murail
 The
quiet French composer and computer music pioneer Tristan Murail has
a large house on Long Island in the hills overlooking Woodbury Common,
a shopping mall designed like a small village or theme park that has
become one of the most famous of its kind near New York. The mall
and the house are almost total opposites. One is preoccupied with
the public dissemination of commodities, the other with the transmission
of a deeply private aesthetic to a far smaller but equally passionate
audience. One offers bargains, the maximum for the minimum; the other
offers intensities, demanding attention and effort. Murail, 59, is
calmly seated on a white rug as plain as the T-shirt he is wearing,
which is draped over a plain wooden couch in the house’s main
studio. It is clear that today he is not focusing on pop culture,
nor, by his own admission, does he often engage with its music, which
he softly dismisses as “these little things that have to be
formatted for TV clips”. Instead, his silvery forelocks falling
over his large glasses, he is taking a break from his duties as professor
of composition at Columbia University to watch two of his doctoral
composition students edit their commercial recording of one of his
scintillating 1970s landmarks, Éthers. The students
are working at a mixing deck that is sandwiched between the couch
and a pile of black cases and cardboard boxes. The studio was an expensive
extension to the second floor of the house, and not all of its accessories
have been shelved or unpacked. It is the first and only house that
Murail and his wife have bought in the U.S.; they own another in the
south of France, near Avignon. The sounds that are coming from the
mixing deck at first remind the listener of a more southerly, but
definitely American, environment. Maracas keep shaking like the hissing
of rattlesnakes; high strings glisten as piercingly as the sun, then
flow through the middle register like hot sand in a desert; flutes
wobble in and out like a mirage. A desperate chorale bursts out in
the middle, almost like a traveller staggering for water, but soon
it subsides and the piece meanders into silence. On a winter’s
Sunday like today, the music suggests different images. The rattlesnakes
transform into chattering teeth; the piercing sun is chilled by the
clouds; the desert darkens into earth and bare trees; and the flutes,
far from conjuring a dazzling mirage, wheeze and cough like the dull
greys on the broad lake which Murail can watch from his wooden studio
balcony.
Murail’s music represents nature so vividly that one might mistake
him for a film composer, or one of the musicians who accompany wildlife
clips on television with the type of piece that interests him so little.
The distinction is that this explorer in sound, described by one of
his other students as a “composer’s composer”, treats
music not as a side dish to a visual or lyrical main course, but as
a feast in itself, with infinite flavours and odours. In order to
approach this infinity, Murail has made it his task to investigate
the inner processes of music: not just the crudities of notes on a
page, but the numberless ways in which they can resonate in performance.
He sees a black dot in a score not as many musicians do, as an instruction
for a note should be held for a particular period, but as an indication
for a movement to be made on an instrument, producing a particular
series of vibrations that reverberate and escape into space. In practice,
these vibrations do not conform to a single note, although the score
usually indicates otherwise. They do produce a primary note, or pitch,
but they also produce countless secondary pitches, or harmonics. Murail’s
task is to exploit not only the primary pitch, but also the full spectrum
of secondary pitches, which has given his approach to composition
an international label: spectralism.
Spectralism came of age in the Paris of the 1970s, when many composers
fled the dominant atonal aesthetic of the period. Like abstract art,
atonality had emerged in central Europe in around 1910, when the Austrian
composer Arnold Schoenberg and the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky
broke with the tonal, representational dictates that had controlled
music and visual art in Europe for two and a half centuries. Schoenberg’s
early atonal pieces abandoned the traditional major and minor keys,
and even scales that were more rarely used in Europe at the time,
such as the seven-note medieval modes derived from sequences of white
notes on the piano and the exotic eight-note modes invented by Murail’s
teacher, the late Olivier Messiaen.
While Schoenberg proclaimed that atonality would lead to a new hegemony
for Germanic music, Messiaen was one of a band of young French composers
who pleaded for a more colourful musical language. Schoenberg’s
authoritarian serial system, for instance, demanded that music should
consist of groups of 12 notes that cannot be repeated within the group’s
duration, preventing composers from leaning towards a particular scale.
In Messiaen’s more diverse modes, by contrast, notes can be
repeated endlessly. Comparing Messiaen’s work to Schoenberg’s
strictest serial output is in fact rather like comparing the religious
extravaganzas of Dalí to the Neo-Plasticist works of Mondrian,
which feature nothing but lines and squares against a plain white
background.
In 1953, Schoenberg was dead and Messiaen turned 45. Provocatively,
some of Messiaen’s most important post-war pupils had started
taking a leaf out of Schoenberg’s book. In particular, the 28-year-old
French wunderkind Pierre Boulez and his 25-year-old colleague Karlheinz
Stockhausen were developing an aesthetic known as total serialism,
which demanded that Schoenberg’s laws about groups of musical
indications apply not only to notes, but also to rhythms, volumes
and timbres. They did not always apply the approach with absolute
rigor, but its impact on their work was as seductively alienating
as the philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. With support
from aesthetic theorists such as Theodor Adorno, the apostle of high
modernism, their compositions were to become as chic among the European
avant-garde as Abstract Expressionism had become in the U.S.
By the time Murail began his studies with Messiaen in Paris during
the late 1960’s, other new techniques had gained publicity in
France. One of them was the composition of random sound, which attracted
greater attention after John Cage introduced it exhaustively in his
European tours with pianist David Tudor. A prominent and, to Murail’s
ears, superior alternative was a fragmented movement from Eastern
Europe that is commonly described as texturalism. In reality, texturalism
dealt not only with texture, but also with liberating music from all
absolute strictures, serial, tonal, random, or otherwise. Perhaps
the most revealing literary equivalent was the Theatre of the Absurd,
which some of the leading texturalists tried to recreate through opera.
The three most prominent figures within the movement – the Hungarian
composer György Ligeti, the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki
and a Greek pupil of Messiaen’s, Iannis Xenakis – were
total individualists who bore no allegiance to any international “school”.
All were contemporaries of Boulez and Stockhausen and were therefore
about 20 years older than Murail, who was born in 1947.
Murail identified with the texturalists’ new direction. A student
of politics and economics as well as of music, he felt the serialist
establishment in France at the time was as constricting as the country’s
Gaullist government and saw that his teacher was as musically oppressed
as himself. “Boulez was not in France at the time, but in a
way that was worse, because there was a court around him, and courtesans,
as we say in French, are more royalist than the king. Even Messiaen
was influenced by that. He was frightened not to be modern enough,
so he wanted his students to be very advanced.” As a consequence,
Messiaen introduced Murail to his own version of the serialists’
mathematical rigor, including systems that generated permutations
and combinations of rhythm. Murail remarked on Messiaen’s later
attitude to his pre-50s work: “He was a little bit ashamed of
pieces like the Turangalîla-Symphonie, these pieces
that are played all over the world, but he never spoke about that.
He would rather speak about permutations, or combinatorial rules,
but not about his older style.” As pupils such as Luc Ferrari
attested, Messiaen felt freer in his earlier classes to discuss the
personal inspirations for his compositions, among them his Catholicism
and his obsession with birdsong. In particular, his treatment of nature
had a huge impact on Murail, as early as the piano piece Comme
un oeil suspendu et poli par le songe…, which he wrote
as a student in 1967. The title, which means “Like an eye suspended
and polished by dream…”, sounds more like the name of
a delicate Surrealist canvas than of a rip-roaring Abstract Expressionist
action painting. At the time, Messiaen and Murail were searching for
a way back to representing concrete images in music, albeit through
techniques that were considered outmoded.
In the later 1950’s and early 1960’s, the texturalists
led the way in updating this perspective on nature by linking it to
contemporary scientific developments. Penderecki portrayed the agonies
of the atomic age in his burning string requiem Threnody for the
Victims of Hiroshima; Ligeti, interested in science from an early
age, used microanalysis to layer the barely perceptible tissues of
his ghostly masterpiece Atmosphères; and Xenakis,
an architectural assistant of Le Corbusier’s who claimed responsibility
for the design of the Philips Pavilion, converted some of its audacious
curves into the austere violin glides of Metastasis. Murail’s
idea of music as a series of formal processes or, in his own words,
as “the architecture of time”, must have found a kindred
spirit in Xenakis, who believed he composed to illustrate the processes
of nature.
 How
to order the notes that result from these structures, or rather the
resonances in between, is a constant point of contention at Murail’s
Long Island studio. The students sitting in black leather designer
chairs at his mixing desk, for instance, are trying hard to correct
the tiniest flickers in their performance. But they have still not
edited as fully as they would like, although they admit that it was
recorded over two years ago. They have yet even to come on to the
issue of whether it should be formatted in Surround Sound; that, they
say, is up to the producers at their record label, AEON. In a dash
downstairs for coffee, the conductor, Michel Galante (photo, left,
with Murail), explains that he was ill last summer when they were
offered an excellent studio in Marseilles, and that their schedules
would not permit them more time to work on it. Tall, well-built, with
a shock of black hair, he is a large, friendly presence in this frustrating
process, which forces him to close his eyes more than once in an effort
to block out everything except an offending glitch in a take. His
smaller, brown-haired electro-acoustics specialist, Michael Klingbeil,
jokes more than he does about the problems of mixing effects as refined
as this. But when Murail makes another suggestion he too is forced
to stare through his strong glasses at the computer screen in front
of him and spend up to half an hour implementing it, sometimes without
much initial progress. One maddening difficulty that is swallowing
over 20 minutes of the session is a messy maraca fade-out at the end
of the piece. The volume controls have to be adjusted endlessly. The
little mountain ranges on the screen in front of Klingbeil, which
show the progress of the individual instruments through time, have
to be scrutinized to ensure that they end in the right place; little
tags have be added to the corners of the boxes around the mountains
because otherwise the sound is unlikely to fade smoothly enough. Before
the problem can be resolved, the sun is already beginning to set.
Aside from the equipment needed for recording purposes, the studio
is uncharacteristically disordered. A score of Éthers with
wavy notation sits open on a stand beside the computer, but much of
the sheet music is lying on the silvery-blue carpet. The most elegant
items in the room are positioned near the balcony, where Murail’s
Pleyel piano crouches near a pair of electric double keyboards and
a series of black sound decks with a printer on the back. A clear
glass sideboard curls around a brown pinstripe chair behind one of
the keyboards, while another one embraces a small bar with a sink.
Next to it a model of the three-headed Indian elephant god Ganesh
gazes at anyone who comes to drink or wash up.
Like Messiaen, who frequently incorporated Indian rhythms into his
music, Murail is fascinated by non-European cultures, and he has collected
artefacts from his trips to various unusual destinations. One of them
is Java. As you pass his 11-year-old daughter Doriane’s bedroom
and descend the stairs to the main room on the ground floor, you see
Javanese shadow theatre marionettes hanging on the walls, illuminated
by a huge, cathedral-like window over the front door at the end of
the staircase. Beyond a baby grand piano and a Christmas tree, the
main room opens out into a view of the lake, with a simple kitchen
behind it leading back to the study of Murail’s wife, Françoise,
which is neater but full of electrical equipment. Madame Murail plays
various electric instruments professionally and has directed ear training
at Columbia University’s music department since her husband’s
arrival. In fact, it was Murail who in the early 1970s introduced
his wife to the Ensemble Itinéraire, the group that later in
the decade was one of the first to première fully-fledged spectralist
works. Like New York’s Argento Ensemble, which Galante founded
and which made the recording of Éthers in question,
Itinéraire was a crack band of contemporary music enthusiasts
that promoted the music of Murail and his fellow spectralists-to-be,
Gérard Grisey and Hugues Dufourt.
By the mid-1970s, Murail had discovered that he was fascinated not
only by the scientific analysis of the full spectrum and perception
of harmonic sound, but also inspired by the technologies, including
computers, which enabled the full spectrum of sound to be analyzed
and reproduced. These technologies transformed the isolated achievements
of the texturalists into the systematic exploration of resonance now
known as spectralism. For instance, in Mémoire/Érosion,
one of the pieces that announced Murail’s breakthrough a few
years before Éthers, a horn triumphantly announces
a single note, which is passed like a rumour around the string section
and fed back into the horn part, creating a re-injection loop. A re-injection
loop occurs when tape A plays a sound that is recorded along with
any other background noise by tape B, which plays it back to be recorded
along with any other background noise by tape A, causing the original
sound to deteriorate. At first, explained Murail, the serialists branded
such compositions as scale-oriented and reactionary. But soon it became
clear that their exploitation of spectra allowed for infinite flexibility
in harmonic development, whereas serialism, with its straitjacketing
rules, produced far more static results.
Murail soon followed Mémoire/Érosion with longer
pieces, such as Territoires d’oubli for solo piano,
a virtuoso battering ram that resembles a sea in a tropical storm.
In the trembling figures of the opening, the listener can hear birds
wailing as the first turbulent waves swirl and crash into the beach.
Then for 25 minutes the pianist’s assaults on the keyboard are
submerged in an ocean of sustained resonances that evoke a drowned
paradise. Oliver Schneller, a former pupil of Murail’s at Columbia
who lives in Berlin, recalls how Éthers and the oceanic
Territoires d’oubli helped spark his interest in Murail’s
output. “There’s more experience of this music in Europe
than in the States, and perhaps more good will,” he observes.
“He’s not a very pushy fellow, he doesn’t really
go around telling people how great spectral music is.” As Schneller
admits, Murail also shuns academic norms, failing to encourage his
students to study traditional harmony and counterpoint to an extent
that would even baffle some of his avant-garde colleagues. At the
heart of this is Murail’s abhorrence of repetitiveness, to which
he readily confesses. “It is hard for a creative artist not
to repeat himself sometimes. I really try not to, though in fact it’s
not completely possible. In the case of Messiaen, in the last pieces,
it was like imitations of things he’d done in the past that
he’d put together from different periods, starting with this
opera [St. François d’Assise], where you have
little bits of Turangalîla-like music. It’s a
great piece, but…” As a result, he explains, he has no
interest in the minimalism of Philip Glass or Steve Reich, or in jazz
and other forms of improvisation. “I think most of the time
it’s just organizing clichés that you’ve learned.
Once I listened to Messiaen improvising an entire concert, but he
was pastiching himself. What else could he do!”
Murail’s very particular tastes sometimes cause disagreements
with his students, as everyone concerned is quick to point out. Schneller
opines that he is likely to respond from a spectral point of view,
but that this in no way invalidates the strength of his arguments.
“He does have a certain charisma. People are willing to give
him the benefit of the doubt, even if they do not initially agree
with him.” A major part of this respect stems from Murail’s
erudition, which is not only confined to Western music. When Schneller
first came to his class in 1998, he remembers bringing along a traditional
Japanese song he was having difficulties in transcribing. Murail apparently
recognized the melody and arrived at the next session with a full
transcription in hand.
 Perhaps
the chief reason he is regarded with such veneration is his place
in the history of music technology, which was fully secure by the
time he moved to the U.S. to teach at Columbia. Murail helped oversee
the transition between an age where computer music was created on
huge machines in a studio to a more accessible period where music
could be created and analyzed efficiently on a laptop. In order to
achieve this, he had to perform extensive consultations in an institution
that has been run since its inception by France’s senior serialist,
Boulez. The Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musicale,
or IRCAM, as it is generally known, was founded in 1969 by Georges
Pompidou and established its residence in the Place Stravinsky, which
is situated on one of the corners of the Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris. Since then, many of the world’s major composers have
come to work at it or have been hired by its administrators as research
consultants. Working with composers like Murail at IRCAM has helped
to soften Boulez ideologically, so to speak. Murail respects Boulez,
but he is not entirely convinced by Boulez’s work with computers,
which he maintains is unsuited to Boulez’s Schoenbergian harmonic
language. In fact, Murail’s investigations into harmonics and
computer music, where pitches are not limited to Schoenberg’s
twelve notes, but can cover an infinite array of frequencies, helped
undermine Boulez’s influence over the course of the 1980s. Texturalists
like Ligeti discussed spectral harmony with Murail and later incorporated
it into their own work. As a consultant composer, Murail co-developed
user-friendly computer programs, like PatchWork (the image above is
one of his patches) and later OpenMusic, which helped the most sophisticated
and subtle techniques reach the widest possible audience.
By the early 90s, even U.S. students were detecting his influence.
Joshua Cody, now a doctoral student of Murail’s at Columbia
and artistic director and conductor of the contemporary music group
Ensemble Sospeso, took a year out from his undergraduate degree at
Northwestern University in the early 1990s to live in Paris, where
he says he took lessons with Murail because, like Messiaen before
him, Murail was renowned as the city’s best teacher of composition.
Thanks partly to his courses in computer music at IRCAM, Murail’s
list of students reads like half a Who’s Who of the younger
generation of contemporary musicians. Whereas Messiaen’s pupils
included such luminaries as Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen, Xenakis and
Ligeti’s Hungarian friend and equal György Kurtág,
Murail’s encompass the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, as well
as Austrian whizzkid Olga Neuwirth and some of the French post-spectralists,
especially Marc-André Dalbavie.
The waning of Paris as the major trendsetter of Western culture has
inevitably shifted attention from the city’s conservatories,
and Murail’s move to New York may allow him to reach out to
a different kind of talent. Cody observes that although Murail has
strong tastes, he does not react dogmatically to his pupils’
artistic choices. Murail once recalled telling a student who brought
him a minimalist composition to make it even more minimal, partly
in order to enhance its dramatic effect but partly because he reportedly
refuses to impose own anti-minimalist tastes on what he perceives
to be the logic of someone else’s work. The opposition to Murail’s
move to the U.S. is less likely to come from students than from academics.
Battles between various sections of the avant-garde engulfed U.S.
academia in the post-war years, with serialism frequently emerging
triumphant. Now spectralism faces new threats, to a certain extent
from New Complexity, a movement dedicated to exploring the outer limits
of performers’ virtuosity, but mainly from New Simplicity and
other forms of Neo-Expressionism that combine throwbacks to the music
of the early 20th century with a keen awareness of contemporary culture.
Even spectralism has fragmented in recent years, with the emergence
of post-spectralists such as Marc-André Dalbavie who fuse it
with influences as diverse as American minimalism and theories of
how to arrange an ensemble in space. Murail’s most recent work,
Terre d’ombre, places four speakers at different points
around a central orchestra, but he complains that such tricks are
too venue-dependent. In this case, the première occurred at
a Berlin concert hall whose acoustics projected the orchestral playing
to every area of the auditorium and thus impeded the realization of
the spatial arrangement in sound. Such practical problems in performing
spectralist and post-spectralist music are diminishing as performers
become accustomed to the strange harmonies and tunings involved, but
they have by no means vanished. Computer technology has improved to
the point where Klingbeil claims you can play a computer as you would
any other instrument, but sceptics like Cody would maintain otherwise.
In particular, Cody complains that computers freeze more often than
humans in performance, wearying of the constant stopping and starting
that is required during rehearsals if the computer does not play its
part as automatically as it should.
Murail has tried to counteract some of these difficulties. His experience
as a computer music pioneer has taught him to avoid programs that
he considers interesting but undeveloped. One of the many such techniques
that fascinate him is physical modelling, a computerized genetic modification
of instruments that can simulate sounds made by, say, a kilometre-long
oboe, or a violin with strings five inches thick. He prefers, however,
to pay closer attention to refining his writing for classical instruments,
which he thinks still have hidden resources to offer if they are played
in a relatively traditional style.
 Nowhere
is this more evident than in his latest piano composition, Les
travaux et les jours (translated as “Works and Days”),
which was commissioned by the young pianist Marilyn Nonken. Like a
metamorphosis by Escher, its figurations alter very gradually, revolving
like a miniature planet in space. The only sign of radicalism is in
the faintest of sustained resonances, and the overall impression is
one of quiet, steady labour, plodding exquisitely to rest deep in
the bass. The effect, in fact, is reminiscent of Murail’s current
persona. Calm, rational and slightly otherworldly, the piece does
not lend itself to an impatient interpreter, as Nonken herself was
the first to explain. “What he’s after is very specific
acoustic phenomena. His notation is specific, but when you work with
him you realize that what he wants is so much more specific than what
can be possibly notated, although in a live performance, on a real
instrument, in a particular kind of hall, you can make each of these
variables happen in real time.” She praises “his gorgeous
piano writing, his incredible sensitivity to the instrument,”
although she expresses greater awe at his earlier achievements, such
as the brutal Territoires d’oubli.
“He’s very much a perfectionist and an idealist,”
she notes, in circling phrases that demonstrate how frustrating Murail’s
music can be to perform. “The playing usually requires an extreme
focus on dynamics and touch. It’s not so much about these absolute
dynamics as about dealing with the sound as you’re creating
and responding to it, so there’s a degree of spontaneity when
you’re playing it, which is very painful in some ways, because
you’re very prepared to do what you have to do, but when you’re
in the hall on a particular instrument, you might have to do very
different things to get the effects. If the instrument has a very
bright treble and it doesn’t have any resonance in the middle,
you have to change everything to try to get the same types of sounds,
or if the tuning is out, then some things can’t even happen,
and then you can’t do anything at all.” As a result, she
recalls, recording Murail’s complete piano works for Métier
presented her with a completely new kind of technical challenge. “When
we were recording, I wanted to make sure we had a very particular
type of sound to start with, in terms of the balance between the registers.
In terms of the editing, we didn’t do any kinds of fancy effects.
In a way, you sometimes wish you could, because a piece like Territoires
is so inspired by electronic music. With Territoires, you
can’t do so many cuts because of the build-up of resonance.”
When she first performed the complete works at Columbia’s Miller
Theatre during the Sounds French festival in 2003, the audience favourite
was the student piece, Comme un oeil poli par le songe…
“There’s no accounting for taste. They were, like, ‘It
was all downhill from there.’” Although she herself is
clearly in love with Territoires, she admits that most audiences
prefer more soothing music, like Les travaux et les jours.
It is easy to imagine Nonken, an anti-Bush protester, being fired
up by the political circumstances under which the Sounds French festival
took place. Organized by Éric de Visscher, the former director
of IRCAM, and Emmanuel Morlet, director of music at the French Embassy
in New York, Sounds French was designed to unite the gamut of French
contemporary music talent. Little did Morlet know that one of its
most star-studded receptions would fall on the night that U.S.-led
forces started bombing Baghdad, or that his U.S. sponsors would have
to show a particular display of enthusiasm in order to counteract
France’s opposition to the U.S. over Iraq. Morlet said he contacted
the participants beforehand with the following message: “‘Everything’s
ready, but no doubt the situation politically is going to be awful.
Do you still want to do it?’ And all the main partners in New
York said, ‘Not only do we want to do it; we especially want
to do it.’” He admits that he had his qualms before the
festival began, but that they were soon dispelled by solid ticket
sales and by signs of a genuine festival spirit. As expected, students
and composers formed a large proportion of the regular attendants,
but there were also members of the downtown arts scene who emerged
for the more conceptual or experimental events. The festival has even
generated enough good will for Morlet to be able to set up a future
source of money for such cultural exchanges. The French-American Fund
for Contemporary Music not only aids French musical projects in the
U.S., but also U.S. musical projects in France, and as such will encourage
musicians like Murail to cross a few borders.
Murail, now the unofficial head of the spectralist movement, has time
to wait until he is more generally recognized here. His wife says
she is happy at her post in Columbia, despite missing friends and
family in France; their daughter, Doriane, has practically grown up
in the U.S.; and Murail himself has obtained the type of lucrative
professorship that his wife claims is non-existent in French universities.
If he reverts to the voyaging of Territoires d’oubli,
he may eventually find some new project or country that takes his
interest; or if he sticks with the patient cycles of Les travaux
et les jours, he may simply toil until his career sinks into
restfulness. Whatever the outcome, the chief goal is clear: that,
between the notes, Murail’s search for a new intimacy is still
on.
In a solo piano homage to Messiaen written on his death in 1992, Murail
hinted at the kind of whimsical, lyrical tributes that may be accorded
to him by his own pupils on his 60th birthday next year. The score
has no bar-lines, no absolute rhythmical notations. Chords hang like
icicles in an ethereal space, bound only by horizontal lines which
streak across the page like a sunset. The repeated tolling of single
notes remind the reader of the title, Cloches d’adieu, et
un sourire…, translated as “Bells of Farewell, and
a Smile…” Murail adapted the title from one of Messiaen’s
early Preludes for solo piano, Cloches d’angoisse
et larmes d’adieu. Messiaen would doubtless have appreciated
the affection, but Murail’s smile in this piece seems more dispassionate:
the smile, perhaps, of a Himalayan monk, his ear constantly retuning
the harmony of the spheres.–NR
REISSUED!
Robert Fripp
EXPOSURE
Discipline Global Mobile
 No
more excuses: even if you've just beamed in from Jupiter and never
heard "the first and only (proper) Robert Fripp solo album"
released in 1979 on EG, now's the time to grab a copy of this special
two CD set containing the original Exposure and its remixed
/ remastered edition from 1985, now called the "third version"
because of some (mostly vocal) modifications, plus five previously
unreleased bonus tracks, all alternate renditions of pre-existing
pieces. This album, which appeared two years after Fripp's return
to the music business after a long hiatus that ended with his appearance
on David Bowie's Heroes, is a wonderful trait d'union
between the post-punk tendencies of that era and the masterful technical
command of the guitarist, whose acute (if at times a little brash)
sensitivity and ferocious digital dexterity always carried a lot of
weight in the wider rock scene. On Exposure he managed to
spread a virus of open-mindedness among musicians who were at the
time considered as good as dead (to say the least), bringing them
back to their enthusiastic best. The most notable example is Daryl
Hall, the veritable protagonist of this reissue, whose problems with
RCA stemming from his collaboration with Fripp on this and his fantastic
Sacred Songs are well known: his management feared Hall's
commercial appeal would sink once marked by the guitarist's feral
touch. The alternate take of "Mary" here is Hall at his
very best, his voice transforming the melancholic song into a delicate
thing of beauty to rival the already excellent, gently heartfelt version
sung by Terre Roche in 1979. Hall is also highly emotional on "North
Star" (a ballad whose structure would later form the backbone
of "Matte Kudasai" on King Crimson's Discipline),
but when one compares the different interpretations of "Chicago",
a great oblique blues if ever there was one, he stumbles somewhat,
seemingly uncertain about which path to follow. Peter Hammill's vintage
roar on the original wins by a TKO; the same can be said of "Disengage".
The oldies prevail on the title track, too: I love the contained anguish
in Hall's approach to "Exposure", but Roche's looped screaming
on the original edition still gives me goosebumps, gut desperation
uncoiling out of her throat to wrap round your neck like a boa. Incidentally,
this song is also featured in Peter Gabriel's second album, in an
adaptation I always considered a little tame. Talking of Gabriel,
both discs contain "Here Comes The Flood", in two different
mixes: apparently, the more recent one avoids compression and sounds
more spontaneous and sensitive (you can even hear the creaks of his
piano stool). Overall, the later mixes emphasise previously unnoticeable
"extraneous" particulars – the preliminary deep breath
by Roche before "Mary" is so beautiful – the separation
between the instruments is clearer, with Fripp's scorching dissonances
and enigmatic Frippertronics further forward in the audio picture.
A case in point is the classic "Breathless" – one
of Red's many bastard children – with its muscular
interplay between Tony Levin and Narada Michael Walden igniting the
odd minimalism and fractured (pun intended) rhythm of Fripp's guitars.
Amongst the things that remain more or less the same are the spoken
snippets courtesy Gurdjieff scholar J.G. Bennett, Brian Eno, Peter
Gabriel and Fripp's own mother Edie, the opening "Preface"
(which I've now learned is a superimposition of Daryl Halls, whereas
I'd always thought it was a real choir) and the ever-enthralling Frippertronic
stasis of "Urban Landscape", "Water Music" and
"Haaden Two" (the latter was later used as the intro to
"Neurotica" on King Crimson's Beat). Finally, my
personal focal points: "I May Not Have Enough Of Me But I've
Had Enough Of You", a brutally acid attack of guitar and organ
(Barry Andrews) supporting a great duet between Hammill and Roche
singing a wordgame text by Joanna Walton, culminating in a slow elegy
of distorted chords. I prefer the first translation of this song,
which was also tackled by Hall in Sacred Songs under the
name of "NYCNY". But on the alternate take of "NY3",
entitled "New York New York New York" and once again sung
by Hall in the 1985 version, the absence of Andrews' organ somehow
highlights the music's merciless drive; the family row surreptitiously
taped by Fripp reflects a state of angry acrimony and disrespect for
the basics of human relationships that's all too familiar in today's
life. "Your house/My house." "Well get out, there's
the door". These anonymous voices still burn, and Fripp's bloodthirsty
lines just add fuel to the flame.–MR
Evan
Parker / Derek Bailey / Han Bennink
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE LUNGS
Psi
 At
the end of the 1960s, for some inexplicable reason, A&R types
at the major labels thought free improvisation might be The Next Big
Thing. John Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Tony Oxley, Howard
Riley and others were duly signed up, shafted, and dropped like hot
potatoes, their albums deleted virtually as soon as they were released.
Hence the formation, by Oxley, Evan Parker and Derek Bailey, of Incus,
the UK's first musician-owned imprint, which was still going strong
under Bailey's sole ownership until the guitarist's death last year.
The Topography of the Lungs was the label's first release
in 1970, and it's one of the legendary free improv discs, often more
talked-about than heard owing to its prolonged unavailability (after
Parker and Bailey’s acrimonious 1980s split the guitarist requested
that it not be reissued during his lifetime). But here it is at last
in a spiffy new edition, remastered from vinyl rather than the original
tapes, alas (one of the downsides of the 1970s small-label efflorescence
seems to be a surprising number of misplaced masters), and augmented
with two extra tracks from an original "three hours of acceptable
tapes" (is this all that’s left? what a shame!). For some
reason the CD is now credited as an Evan Parker album [not on this
site it isn't – DW] rather than a collaborative trio,
but if you want the original artwork and credits, fold the booklet
inside out and contemplate Alan Johnston’s memorable collage,
featuring a nude 19th-century chap with lungs neatly labelled, and
a pageful of miscellaneous Victoriana dotted with a few new phrases
(you may need a magnifying glass), my favourites including "Frederick
Rzewski writes about free improvisation and makes sense” and
"Real tortoiseshell plectra".
The original album contained four tracks: the 21-minute "Titan
Moon" (itself a collection of brief episodes) on Side A, and
three shorter cuts, "For Peter B and Peter K", "Fixed
Elsewhere" and "Dogmeat", on Side B. This is prime-cut
Bennink, the all-out trash can thrash rivalling his best work with
Brötzmann, his triumphant foolery perfectly integrated into the
music (I love the cymbal clangs that ironically mimic a boxing match
bell on a couple tracks). Parker and Bailey are at their most radically
atomistic, seeking out some kind of limit-point of the smallest possible
sound still individually perceptible and manipulable. It’s a
particularly good example of how Bailey treats sonic detritus –
tiny scratches, chokings, near-pitchless attacks and plings –
not as expressionist noise but as units as precise as traditionally
pitched notes. If his playing seems centripetal, constantly folding
its material back on itself, working self-negation into the heart
of the music, Parker’s is centrifugal, more inclined to violent
flare-ups and excitable feedback-loops, conveying an at times brutal
emotional and physical force. It’s probably superfluous to say
it – I’m sure most readers added this to their shopping
list the moment it appeared on the Psi reissue schedule – but
The Topography of the Lungs is a disc every self-respecting improv
fan should have, not simply for its historic import but because of
its undiminished strength. For sheer spine-chilling power –
not to mention as an early instance of Bailey's ability to rock out,
decades before Saisoro and Mirakle – the closing
moments of "Dogmeat" are hard to beat. Even Sergio Leone
couldn't have dreamed up a three-way showdown as gripping as this.–ND
Aidan
Baker
ONEIROMANCER
 In
recent years, Aidan Baker has gained in stature in the mind of loop-based
trance music lovers, thanks to the evolution of his considerable compositional
skills and also to a willingness to experiment new paths without abandoning
his basic nature of ear-bewitching guitar shaman. Oneiromancer
is Baker's first release for Die Stadt, and in its mail order
edition comes with a bonus CD featuring a solo live concert recorded
in 2005. The five studio pieces presented by the Canadian artist add
an increasingly psychedelic touch to the mantric gradations and delicate
visions of his previous albums. The most striking new factor is the
use of tapes, not for the first time in Baker's work but much more
evident; urban noises, industrial clatter and terrified screams contribute
to a haunting, ambivalent atmosphere as his trademark shimmering and
drone-based environments are submerged in an enthralling mass of undecoded
signals and percussive sequences that (especially in the concluding
"Bêtes Noires") could teach a thing or two to those
who believe that merely a few sampled crows and voices lowered two
octaves make for "scary" music. Of course Baker is perfectly
at home on solo guitar, too, and his performance on the live disc
is both masterful and a little eccentric – he uses the instrument
as a tuned percussion/sequencer at one point – but contains
several heartbreaking moments, revealing once again that there must
be something truly consistent within an artist's soul, for want of
a better word, in order to elicit such intimate emotions from those
who listen. Aidan Baker succeeds on all accounts and Oneiromancer
is yet another keeper.
Asmus
Tietchens
GEBOREN, UM ZU DIENEN
 20
years on from the release of this album on the Esplendor Geometrico
label, this remains one of the harshest-sounding releases by Tietchens,
who was at the time deeply involved in the infamous "post-Industrial"
scene which brought us many of his finest works and encouraged a whole
host of imitators. While some of them deserve some credit (Cranioclast,
Werkbund to name but two), most were utter parasites who swamped us
with a mass of shit camouflaged as Futurist-inspired uneducated noise,
enhancing their status by cryptic declarations of anarchy in the liner
notes (later replaced by odes to God and Inner Peace when that became
the trend to follow.. Italy holds the world record in this domain).
Anyway, back to serious music. Asmus Tietchens is the master of ironic
synthesizer melody riding inhuman machine-like rhythm, and Geboren
is a prime example, with 110% flanged tracks sounding Kraftwerk being
gang raped and doused with sulphuric acid. "Gliim" is pure
B-movie soundtrack paranoia, while "Zweites Maschinentraining"
would try the patience of a saint with its absolute lack of melodic
(???) control. The set is rounded out with three bonus tracks, which
if anything sound even more "modern" than the original.
Like everything else served up by the Cioran-influenced sceptic from
Hamburg, it's highly recommended, especially for those not always
looking at the bright side of life.
CM
Von Hausswolff
OPERATIONS OF SPIRIT COMMUNICATION
 Although
eternally busy with installations and multimedia projects all over
the world, alone or in cooperation with renowned colleagues such as
John Duncan and Andrew McKenzie/Hafler Trio, Swedish soundscaper Carl
Michael Von Hausswolff is still something of a "best kept secret"
in the ever-too-densely populated world of drone-based music. Operations
Of Spirit Communication was originally released in 2000, and
reappears now as a very limited edition on transparent vinyl accompanied
by an additional 7" containing two rather splendid short pieces
composed this year. Von Hausswolff dedicated this work to the man
who recorded the "voices of the dead", Friedrich Jürgenson,
setting up a mechanism of static vibrations and drifting, skull-massaging
frequencies gently blemished by taped voices and barely audible extraneous
sounds. Apart from these prolonged waves of uneasy pleasure, perfectly
in line with the consistently excellent level of this artist's work,
nothing much happens . The two pieces contained on 7", "12
Sine Missing One" and "1 Sine Missing Twelve", are
four-minute pure sinewave thrillers which will have you totally immobilized
at the end, waiting for someone to point a remote control between
your eyes and zap your nervous system. Fans of the abovementioned
h3o will love this album, one of the best examples of the genre.
Fovea
Hex
HUGE/THE DISCUSSION
 Bloom,
the first chapter of the Fovea Hex saga, was a nice surprise, but
Huge exceeds expectations with its alien-morphed traditional
melodies and delicate counterpoint. Once again the mail order edition
contains a double CD EP, one with three songs (a reductive definition,
if you ask me), the other The Discussion, a long, mysterious
remix of Huge material cooked up by Hafler Trio. As far as
the songs are concerned, their general coordinates remain more or
less the same as in Bloom: Clodagh Simonds, her sweetly freezing
voice halfway between Nico and Clannad's Maire Brennan, paints light-grey
clouds and mourning solitude highlighted by a beautiful use of found
sound and peculiarly mixed instruments. Colin Potter is credited with
"shifting and sieving" on the wonderful instrumental "A
song for Magda", with Simonds creating a hypnotic tapestry of
psalteries. Better still, one of my childhood heroes, the vastly underappreciated
Percy Jones, appears here on "subaquatic fretless bass".
In "While You're Away", probably the highpoint of the set,
Cora Venus Lunny's gorgeous arrangement of viola and violin plants
a stiletto right in the heart. The title track features Brian Eno
on keyboards, and elsewhere Irish composer Roger Doyle (of Babel
and Oizzo No fame) deals with glass and treated voices.
This is just what the doctor orders when you need escape from reality
without making a noise (don't forget the series is aptly titled "Neither
Speak Nor Remain Silent"): try it at the right moment and you'll
be hooked. The recording quality is magnificent, the songs are perfect.
What else is there to say?–MR
nmperign
/ Jason Lescalleet
LOVE ME TWO TIMES
Intransitive
 Before
you get the wrong idea and think that this is some kind of sicko tribute
to James Douglas Morrison (1943 – 1971), let me reassure you.
This double CD – and for once the press release isn't far off
the mark when it describes it as "epic" – has about
as much to do with the Lizard King as Thanks, Cash did with
the late lamented Johnny of the same name. But then nmperign –
aka Bostonians Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) and Greg Kelley (trumpet)
– have always liked those snappy album titles.. Well, maybe
not always. We Devote Every Effort To Offer You The Best That
You Deserve For Your Enjoyment was a bit of a mouthful, even
if it was pretty clear, but how about Which the Silent Partner-Director
Is No Longer Able To Make His Point To The Industrial Dreamer?
That long since deleted album also appeared on Howard Stelzer's wonderful
Intransitive label way back in 2000, when fellow Bostonian James Coleman
was beginning to use the term "lowercase" to describe the
pared-down kind of improv that was then flavour of the month (at least,
as Rainey astutely observed in the pages of Signal To Noise,
it was better as labels go than "reductionist"). The music
of nmperign, which as names go is about as easy to remember and as
hard to pronounce as "Bhob", was quickly filed under "lowercase"
by over-enthusiastic journalists, myself included, but Rainey and
Kelley's work, though displaying certain structural and aesthetic
similarities with similar developments in improvised music in Berlin,
Vienna, Tokyo and the quieter suburbs of North London, has never been
that easy to pigeonhole. Nor has it always been a simple duo project:
1998's debut album 44'38"/5 on Twisted Village featured
the percussion of Tatsuya Nakatani, and the following year found Bhob
and Greg teaming up with Philip Gelb (shakuhachi) and Jason Lescalleet
(tapeloops), who became a fully-fledged third member of nmperign on
Which the Silent Partner-Director. And Lescalleet, despite
moving away to the wilds of Maine a while back, is back in force on
Love Me Two Times.
In recent years, Rainey and Kelley have diversified somewhat into
other areas of music, with the former collaborating with Ralf Wehowsky
on a forthcoming electronic project, and the latter continuing to
explore the noisier end of the spectrum with a number of searing free
jazz outings with Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano and Moog manglings
with Heathen Shame, so if you're expecting the same exquisite balance
between sound and silence that characterised nmperign's eponymous
release on Selektion, forget it. There's precious little information
on how, where, when (or why) these 23 tracks were created, but there's
certainly enough here to keep your neighbours annoyed until Christmas.
Christmas 2008, that is. "Join the group as they visit art galleries,
rock clubs, living rooms, at least one church, and the kitchen of
a famous chef, before finally putting a fist through an amplifier.
Fans will find the usual ingredients here: crusty old reel-to-reel
tape decks, cheap keyboards, amplified and acoustic horns… but
rude tape splices, violent humor, and confusingly degraded fidelity
push the music far from safe territory," runs the upbeat press
release.
It's tempting to think that Lescalleet is the wild card here, and
those familiar with his discography (which includes the splendid
Forlorn Green with Kelley on Erstwhile, as well as collaborations
with sound artists as diverse as Joe Colley, Jason Kahn, John Hudak
and RRRon Lessard) will recognise the distinctive hi-fi lo-fi of his
tape loops: the man has a knack for taking just about the most fucked-up
sounds imaginable and transforming them into pure gold. But I suspect
(and in the absence of any documentation it'll have to remain a suspicion)
Rainey and Kelley, perfectionists that they are, have also been twiddling
and tweaking at the material quite a bit. In any case, this is without
a doubt one of the releases of the year, and probably should be slipped
discreetly into Doors Greatest Hits jewel boxes and foisted
off on unsuspecting tourists trooping through the Père Lachaise
in search of Jimbo's last resting place.–DW
Harry
Miller's Isipingo
WHICH WAY NOW
Cuneiform Rune
 With
as many as nine horn players in its regular line-up, Brotherhood of
Breath, was especially apt as names go for South African-born pianist
Chris McGregor’s legendary big band. But when those nine horns
took off into blistering, cathartic and seemingly chaotic collective
improvisation, what anchored the music was the unflinching but ultimately
pliable rhythm section of drummer Louis Moholo and bassist Harry Miller,
whose expanding and contracting superimposed polyrhythms never swayed
from the inhaling and exhaling of their singular force. Harry Miller’s
name doesn’t crop up often in the ranks of bassist-bandleaders,
but his groups were among the highlights of European jazz in the fertile
early 70s. Isipingo teamed Miller and Moholo up with altoist Mike
Osborne, pianist Keith Tippett, and, in this particular incarnation,
trumpeter Mongezi Feza and trombonist Nick Evans. Given the ensemble
size and personnel, you might expect Isipingo to be a pared-down Brotherhood
of Breath, and you'd be half right. But where the Brotherhood is weighty
and belligerently joyous, Isipingo – despite Feza's brittle
smears and shards and Osborne’s barely-contained caterwauls
– is decidedly more concentrated in its buoyancy. Recorded by
Radio Bremen in November 1975, this performance features Isipingo
on four Miller originals. “Family Affair”, the title track
of the group’s lone Ogun LP, begins with a delicate minor-key
head that quickly develops into spiraling rhythm-section slink, Tippett’s
pointillist montuno a far cry from anything McGregor might have applied
and a welcome reminder of his infectious rhythmic talents. Evans’
slushy, boisterous trombone work recalls the Brotherhood, as do Feza’s
glottal flurries, but as Tippett pulls out fragmentary filigree in
response to Feza’s continual chipping, the music moves in its
own circles. The Miller-Moholo juggernaut, even as the music becomes
pliable and free, steamrolls in swinging eddies. “Eli’s
Song,” beginning with a brief collective improvisation, appears
to settle into an easy rhythm-section walk. However, real-time dismantling
of what they're doing reveals the band to be one hell of a jazz lab
as Tippett, Miller and Moholo fracture and layer in continual response
to one another. Tippett's solo on "Family Affair" is one
of his most architecturally clear, and Which Way Now might
contain his most completely-realised piano work, dense repetitions
arching out into an entire range of influences and interests: thick
tone clusters, Latinate grooves, minimalist layers and phases, and
kaleidoscopic temple silences. But as with “Children at Play,”
it's a question of logical thesis rather than pyrotechnic display.
Previously a fantasia for solo bass, this particular track is given
full-band treatment, but there's quiet tension lurking underneath
these aural children's games, particularly in the traded barbs of
fire between Feza and Tippett, elemental rage and joy building into
improvisational colour fields. Which Way Now is one of the
finest examples of the South African-European contingent working their
cross-continental whiles – let's hope the archives haven’t
been cleaned out just yet.–CA
Marco
Eneidi / Peter Kowald / Damon Smith / Spirit
GHETTO CALYPSO
Not Two
 This
collection of 17 tracks recorded back in May 2000 is intriguing for
a number of reasons. Firstly, it's another posthumous postscript to
the already huge Kowald discography, and another chance to hear him
in the company of fellow bassist Damon Smith (following on from their
earlier duo outing Mirrors – Broken But No Dust on
Smith's Balance Point Acoustics imprint, which was in fact recorded
at the same time as this). Secondly, it's an opportunity to hear alto
saxophonist Marco Eneidi try out a few techniques more usually associated
with the younger generation of free improvisers – though to
my mind he's still at his best when he plays the horn more conventionally,
but then I've long been a fan of the Jimmy Lyons tradition that he
extends so successfully. Thirdly, the album is also notable for the
drumming of Spirit (whose real name Smith claims to have forgotten):
"I have been waiting to play with you ever since I heard Machine
Gun," the drummer reportedly said to Kowald. But there's
no question of him trying to outgun Bennink and Johansson –
his playing here is nothing if not subtle. Finally, Ghetto Calypso
is an example of something rather rare in today's free jazz / improv,
a series of diverse and genuinely experimental forays into different
stylistic regions rather than a grand unified concept album (as it
were). As such, it can feel rather loose and unfocused – one
wishes several tracks had been allowed to develop to considerable
length, and I wonder if the order in which the pieces appear couldn't
have been improved in the interests of large scale structure –
but in the process gains a freshness and an element of surprise.–DW
Steuart
Liebig / The Mentones
NOWHERE CALLING
pfMentum
 It
goes without saying that where and when you listen to an album determines
to some considerable extent how you react to it. Crossing the Golden
Gate Bridge (southwards) in a convertible 1974 Alfa Romeo Spider with
Steely Dan's "Glamour Profession" at high volume has to
be one of the greatest experiences known to man, only topped –
or bottomed – by listening to Joy Division's Closer
waiting for a grimy suburban train on platform three at Manchester
Oxford Road station on a rainy late November afternoon. But I can't
think of a place less appropriate for the music of Steuart
Liebig and the Mentones than the Second Empire gilt, stucco and wood
panelling of Le Train Bleu in the Gare de Lyon, Paris, which is where
I happen to be at the moment. I can't help thinking this would be
better in some sleazy motel out of a late 70s Tom Waits song, driving
dangerous curves across a dirty sheet, but even so this sequel to
2004's Locustland is still sounding pretty good. Though I've
been a sucker for Bill Barrett's dirty chromatic harmonica and Tony
Atherton's sweaty alto ever since I popped Locustland into
the machine. That Liebig / Berardi rhythm team cooks too. As well
as finding the perfect listening place, I'll bet Nowhere Calling
would also go better with a fifth of bourbon and a packet of
smokes – but as you can't smoke anywhere in the state of California,
apparently (unless you happen to be Arnold Schwarzenegger), you'll
just have to get into your car and drive across the desert to the
Nevada stateline. This will be great music for the trip.–DW
Aaron
Moore
THE ACCIDENTAL
Elsie And Jack
 Volcano
The Bear percussionist and sometime vocalist Aaron Moore's debut solo
album started out as a collaborative venture with Australian guitarist
and gastronome Oren Ambarchi. That, alas, didn't see the light of
day (or at least hasn't yet), so Moore decided to use what was left
from the aborted project to craft this solo offering of bowed and
beaten percussion – gongs, vibraphones, and cymbals –
and piano. While the sustained sonorities of "The Scars On Her
Cheek Bring Dreams To My Eyes" (great title!) would be perfectly
at home on one of the more accessible EAI imprints, such as Häpna,
the reedy drone of "Crayo" is closer to Birchville Cat Motel
territory, and the Satie-esque piano of "Three Guineas"
could have been slipped quite easily on to the last wonderful double
CD Volcano The Bear outing on Beta-Lactam Ring, Classic Erasmus
Fusion, without anyone noticing. VTB are after all pastmasters
when it comes to crafting songs from a minimum of deceptively simple
material, and Moore brings the same concern for economy to bear on
his own improvised music projects. The first 100 copies of The
Accidental (which have probably all disappeared now, since I've
been so long in getting round to writing this review, for which apologies
to all concerned etc. etc.) come with a DVD, in which Italian filmmaker
Francesco Paladino sets Moore's music to grainy supposedly "poetic"
images ("Three Guineas" is shot through the windscreen of
a car driving down along a road at twilight). Paladino's pink and
blue pylons, eyelids and branches are pretty enough but don't really
add much to the music – Moore's seven compositions stand perfectly
well on their own.–DW
GOD
ANTI-SEX ANTI-WIRETAPPING (MADE IN TAIWAN)
Collective Jyrk / Gameboy / Little Enjoyer
 Given
this magazine's phenomenal success (ouch I've just bitten
my tongue trying to extract it from my cheek) I knew it wouldn't be
long before we received an album for review by The Almighty in person.
Though it turns out on closer inspection that GOD (capital letters
in the text please) is a Portland Oregon-based duo of Leif Erik Sundström
and Bryan Eubanks, the former sculpting feedback from trashed record
players, the latter manhandling a circuit board and effects pedals.
Eubanks is one of post-Erstwhile EAI's (Christ, I can expect another
irate email from Jon Abbey on that one) more interesting figures,
having released a handful of tasty three-inchers on EMR with David
Rothbaum and David Kendall and a splendid, sprawling duo with Doug
Theriault on Creative Sources, but if you're not comfortable with
this kind of ultra-austere, user-unfriendly kind of noise you might
want to stick with something more, umm, accessible than this forbidding
45-minute trawl through the netherworld of howls and crunches. "Music
based around the phenomena of psycho-acoustic structures" (to
quote Eubanks' mini-bio on the CS website) is fine by me, but it's
often easier to admire than it is to love. Bit like God, really.–DW
Alfred
Harth
SEOUL MILK
Slowalk
NUN
0 Back
New
music collectors must be having a hard time keeping track of the constantly
changing vision of Alfred 23 Harth, whose career is now approaching
its fifth decade and still showing no sign of "stagnation".
Harth has played with virtually everybody, although he's best known
for his work with Cassiber and his contribution to Lindsay Cooper's
Oh Moscow, and his own music is a fertile ground where jazz,
improvisation, techno and acousmatics rub shoulders, often with stunning
results, enriched by the mind-boggling reed technique that's made
him one of the most inventive and recognizable saxophone / clarinet
players on the planet. For several years now this German utopian has
been living in South Korea, where, besides collaborating with the
best local talents and joining Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra,
he's produced a sizeable body of work in very limited, often "print-on-demand"
CDR editions: go to alfredharth.de for direct inquiries. His "Mother
Of Pearl" albums are characterized by gorgeous artwork and (it
goes without saying) magnificent music, and these two titles are a
perfect testament, concluding the series.
 Seoul
Milk dates from between 2002 and 2005 and is subtitled "a
sonic bouquet of Seoul broadcast all the way to Europe". Its
three movements present a paradoxically well-conceived, ordered chaos
of shortwave radios and TV sets emitting kaleidoscopic signals that
mesh with fragmented drum machine patterns and flanged vocals from
the streets, as Harth's assemblage follows the convulsive evolutions
of his individual sources, which include folk songs, children's voices,
creaking metal, subsonic pulse, snippets of languid pop songs and
a vision of downtown hell. Imagine a Korean version of a souk;
the local male voices captured by Harth sound like disguised muezzins.
The third and final section fuses all the different perspectives into
a disjointed, oscillating quasi-disco pattern leading up to the ironic
ending, culled from the opening ceremony of the 2002 World Cup, all
pompous music and official announcements, wiping out the remnants
of our cerebral comfort. If you enjoyed Jess Rowland's Scenes
From The Silent Revolution on Pax Recordings you'll love this
too.
 Nun,
explains the author, is a one-word poem with multiple meanings (including
"eye" and "snow" in Korean). Harth applies a precise
choice of subjects, times and past collaborators in what, like Seoul
Milk, is a multilayered, undefinable work whose aesthetic is
unquestionably and thoroughly "23". "Dog", based
on a short poem by Yun Dong-Ju, is high-level electroacoustic chemistry,
a soundworld mixing fragments of compositions dating from 1967 and
1984 as well as current sources and Harth's own lines. "For Taran"
is a monstrous bass clarinet solo (dedicated to Taran Singh "who
runs a free jazz program broadcast in France"), a virtuoso reminder
of how good Harth is at improvising for long stretches without ever
sounding pretentious or boring. "Bref", recorded in 1998
in Frankfurt and featuring Micha Daniels, is another specimen of surreal
anarchy on which guitar, mandola and percussion form strange patchworks
with a deranged primordial drum machine and a delirious Farfisa organ,
reaching its apex in a strident bagpipe solo (a mizmar, I guess from
the notes) over a psychedelic background. After "Test for Tokyo",
a "percussive and dirty" solo for sax, contact microphones
and Kaoss pad, Harth gives us the dulcis in fundo treatment
with "Leasing a Straw Hut" and especially "108".
Both pieces are surrounded by an ominous aura, their complex development
built on masterful juxtapositions of reeds and excerpts from past
projects. "Leasing", like "Dog", is based on a
poem, this time by Yi Kyu-Bo and features the sound of the sea from
Hakdong on the South Korean island of Namhae, while "108",
named after the "108 grievous and troubled thoughts counted by
the Buddhists in order to become aware of and finally get over them",
is a stirring potion reverberating with (involuntary?) echoes of Roland
Kayn. This menacing dark current brings Nun to an end, and
though it's a disheartening way to go out, you do so safe in the knowledge
that you've experienced artistry of the highest order.–MR
Bruce
Russell
21ST CENTURY FIELD HOLLERS AND PRISON SONGS
wmo/r
 Though
the entire wmo/r discography, complete with liner notes wherever necessary,
is available for free download, in accordance with label boss Mattin's
views on copyright (which can be neatly summarised as follows: bollocks
to it), there's something special about a CD(R) that comes along with
an elegantly produced 20-page booklet. Especially when the words it
contains have been written by Bruce Russell, who, in addition to being
one of new music's most original and consistently impressive guitarists,
is an articulate and intelligent commentator on his own work (not
to mention that of others). For his second release on Mattin's label,
after 2004's broodingly magnificent Los Desastres de la Guerras,
Russell has "versioned" some of the recordings he made with
Ralf Wehowsky for the A Bruit Secret album Midnight Crossroads
Tape Recorder Blues into an austere and moving homage to the
Mississippi Delta and Jamaica. But though the liners namecheck Muddy
Waters, Winston Rodney and Jack Ruby, this is no cheap pastiche of
Delta blues and dub, but rather an attempt to understand not the technique
itself as much as the meaning of the technique that revolutionised
late 20th century popular music, and apply it to his own work. Those
familiar with the Bruit Secret album will recognise the soundworld,
with its dusty, grainy analogue tape hiss, but will have a hard time
working out how Russell has crafted the nine fine tracks on offer
here. But that's all part of the mystery and beauty of the disc. Backwards
guitar hasn't sounded so damn good since Fripp.–DW
Jack
Wright / Tom Djll / Bhob Rainey / Tim Feeney
ROAD SIGNS
Soul On Rice
 Jack
Wright's recent assertion that reductionism has had its day is certainly
borne out in the quasi-sequel to 2000's Signs Of Life (Spring
Garden Music), one of American reductionism's landmark recordings.
Clarinettist Matt Ingalls is, sadly, not playing on Road Signs,
having been replaced instead on one of the three tracks by percussionist
Tim Feeney, but the other three protagonists of Signs Of Life
are here in full effect. Joining Wright are trumpeter Tom Djll and,
on tracks one and three, the man who arguably kindled Wright's interest
in a more lowercase approach to his instruments, soprano saxophonist
Bhob Rainey, though five years down the road it's a very different
music. Djll memorably described the earlier album as sounding like
"a kitten being born in a shoebox in a dark closet"; on
Road Signs that kitten's clawed its way out of the box and
grown up into a tough, street-fighting tomcat. This is combative stuff,
both for the musicians – a muscular and not always polite exchange
of strong ideas – and for the listener: if you're looking for
easy listening you've come to the wrong place. But Jack Wright's been
throwing himself into this particular briar patch (his image, not
mine) for over a quarter of a century, and you wouldn't expect him
to slow down and stop now. In fact, in the past couple of years he
seems to have been more active than ever, especially over here in
Europe. So if you have a chance, go check him out. But if your family
cat is in heat you'd be well advised to leave her at home.–DW
Hans
Tammen / Christoph Irmer
OXIDE
Creative Sources
 Guitarist
Hans Tammen, born in Germany and now resident in New York, has over
the past few years developed a highly individual and effective method
of interfacing his "endangered" guitar with electronics
(i.e. a laptop), but until now it hasn't been well documented on disc.
A slew of Tammen albums appeared just prior to and shortly after his
relocation to the States – including The Cat's Pyjamas
and The Road Bends Here (on Leo) and Billabong (on
Potlatch) – but his laptop experiments were at the time some
way away. Oxide gives a good indication of what he's been
up to, but – no disrespect to violinist Christoph Irmer who
partners him here – one wonders whether a solo album might not
have been a more appropriate to showcase the guitarist's considerable
talents (would have made a nice follow-up to the magnificent Endangered
Guitar on Nur Nicht Nur, too). Irmer is by no means slow on the
uptake when it comes to responding to musical ideas spat out in all
directions by Tammen and his gear, but he nevertheless does at times
find himself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information thrown
at him. It all makes for a rather nerve-wracking experience; not unenjoyable,
but often dense and exhausting.–DW
Spiderwebs
AWAY, AWAY
Jyrk
 Spiderwebs
is the duo of Charlambides guitarist Tom Carter and Weird Weeds guitarist/vocalist
Sandy Ewen, who have worked together in some form or another for the
past three years. Away, Away is culled from some of their
earliest recordings and was released in a small CD-R edition. The
tracks they recorded about the same time for the Strands Formerly
Braided comp recently released on Music Fellowship were mellower,
but these recordings show a rawness not always present in either of
their current main outlets, and look to an aesthetic of playing that
imbues the textural with a restless foreground. Away, Away
features five untitled improvisations clocking in at just under an
hour. Far from the Weeds’ quiet tension and Charlambides’
reverb-heavy folk, Spiderwebs create an arresting slab of skronky
guitar noise underpinned by central Texas twang. The first piece begins
with a shot of feedback, dusty lap-steel making inroads into spindly
frameworks of bowed racket. The guitarists (even Ewen’s not
sure who is playing what) are completely cohesive, and despite differing
approaches, the result is intense dialogue and warm rapport, melding
Agitation Free, Fred McDowell, David Roback and Hugh Davies. Throaty
slide mingles with glitchy, scattershot frequencies in moth like dance
and barroom swagger. Spiderwebs is a rather accurate name for the
pair; on the second piece delicate, shimmering strums telescope upward
catching light, dewdrops and unwary ears in tenuous, mighty architecture.
At times the guitars take on other forms altogether, sounding like
contact miked, bowed and rattled metal, crotchety front-porch vibes
cutting through only to be dropped beneath the floorboards. It's a
hallmark of music-making here in Texas that great spaces can seem
ultimately claustrophobic even as they open up psychedelic vistas.
Carter and Ewen have created one of the most nuanced and constantly
surprising guitar duos I’ve heard in a long time. Away,
Away is a strong indication of things to come.-CA
Ben
Johnston
STRING QUARTETS NOS. 2, 3, 4 & 9
New World
 This
is the first of three projected discs devoted to the complete string
quartets (ten of them) of Ben Johnston (born in 1926 in Macon, Georgia),
and brings together Quartets no. 2 (1964), 3, (Verging,
1966), 4 (The Ascent, "Amazing Grace",
1973) and 9 (1988), all superbly performed by the Kepler
Quartet and accompanied by a typically perceptive and informative
essay by musicologist Bob Gilmore. Though Johnston's name is often
associated with Harry Partch, to whom he was apprenticed in 1951 and
whose Genesis of a Music sent him off on the path of investigation
into tuning and temperament that would preoccupy him throughout his
career, his music also reflects the influence of other major 20th
century developments, notably neoclassicism – he also studied
with Darius Milhaud at Mills College – and serialism. If the
combination of strict serialism and just intonation sounds odd, the
Quartet no. 2 is proof not only that it can be made to work
but can also result in music that is at one and the same time structurally
complex yet comprehensible for the listener. The compositional artifice
of Western classical music – the third movement is a strict
palindrome – adds clarity and coherence, and the piece sounds
fresher and more natural today than other more "experimental"
works written about the same time.
The one-movement third quartet, Verging, had to wait a full
ten years before it was first performed, during which time new music
(and the world in general) changed considerably. Johnston always felt
it needed a second movement, and the deceptively simple set of variations
on the old chestnut "Amazing Grace" he wrote in 1973 became
just that. The two quartets are often performed as one work, Crossings,
and separated by The Silence, which is between one and two
minutes of exactly that. As Gilmore astutely points out, this is much
more than a pregnant pause. The questions raised by the third quartet
– how far can music go along the path of complexity without
losing its public altogether? how is the combination of strict serial
technique and a 53-note scale to be performed, let alone perceived?
– are allowed to resonate before the answer comes. It's not
for nothing that The Ascent is Johnston's best known work
(and has been recorded twice before, by the Fine Arts and Kronos Quartets):
it's a veritable masterpiece which combines harmonic rigour and structural
intricacy and yet remains instantly accessible – what could
be more accessible than "Amazing Grace"?
Similarly, in the later Quartet no. 9, Johnston manages to
write a work that openly acknowledges the influence of the pastmasters
of the genre – Haydn and Bartók are never far away –
by breathing new life into supposedly outmoded forms such as scherzo,
slow movement, rondo. Let's hope Bob Gilmore is right when he states
that Johnston's time has come; meanwhile, while you're waiting for
the second and third instalments of his quartets, why not read Derek
Bermel's 1995 interview with the composer elsewhere on this site.–DW
Various
Artists
PIONEERS OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC
New World
 Odd
that "the first electronic music compositions played in the United
States" (unless you want to make a claim for John Cage's Imaginary
Landscape No.1, which calls for a pair of variable speed turntables)
should be the work of an exiled Mongolian prince and gifted concert
pianist. Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911 – 1990) fled to California
shortly after the Russian Revolution (his father wasn't so lucky,
and was imprisoned and subsequently executed in Siberia), studied
at Pomona College and the Eastman School of Music and joined the staff
of Columbia University Music Department in 1947. The department purchased
a tape recorder for teaching purposes in 1951, but Ussachevsky soon
began to experiment with it, using recordings of his own piano playing
as source material. Engineering student Peter Mauzey, who also ran
the college radio station and designed and built its mixing desk,
introduced Ussachevsky to the delights of feedback. Ussachevsky was
hooked, and once Mauzey had provided him with a box that would allow
him to modify the amount of feedback, he set about recording in earnest.
His compositions Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment,
Composition and Underwater Valse were premiered
at a Composers' Forum concert on May 5th 1952. Virgil Thomson described
them as "utterly charming and delighted the audience no end."
Utterly charming? Delighted the audience no end? Are we talking about
electronic music here? What about that legendary impenetrability
and user-unfriendliness (who wants to pay money to sit and look at
a pair of loudspeakers?). Well, there's a bit of that too on this
selection of music created by Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Pril Smiley,
Bülent Arel, Alice Shields and Mario Davidovsky between 1952
and 1970, previously released on CRI (three cheers for New World for
reissuing it), but the early 50s stuff – Ussachevksy's Sonic
Contours, Luening's Low Speed, Invention in Twelve
Notes and Fantasy in Space, and their collaborative
venture Incantation – is certainly attractive, if a
touch primitive to our ahem sophisticated modern ears. Luening (1900
– 1996), like Ussachevsky, also came from a classical background,
and distinguished himself as a flautist and conductor. But he also
studied composition with Busoni during the First World War, and was
doubtless familiar with his teacher's prophetic Sketch of a New
Aesthetic of Music – it was only logical then he should
have felt the need to break new ground in music. Each of his offerings
here explores the sonorities of his flute; that spacey echo might
sound a bit dated to our post-psychedelic ears, but it must have seemed
mighty strange back in 1952. By the time we get to Moonflight
in 1968 (a prophetic title perhaps?) the technology has advanced and
the mix is cleaner, but the music remains just as lyrical.
Ussachevsky's later work is more exploratory, from the cut'n'splice
fun and games of 1956's Piece for Tape Recorder (a fine example
of a piece that is as creative and exciting as its title is deadly
dull) to the later forays into the brave if frosty new world of computer
music (care to guess the title? yep, that's right: Computer Piece
No.1). By the turn of the 70s though Ussachevsky and Luening
had acquired the status of elder statesmen / teachers, and their influence
is to be felt in the featured works by three of their students / research
assistants, Istanbul-born Bülent Arel's Stereo Electronic
Music No.2 (seems he inherited Ussachevsky's penchant for imaginative
titles), Pril Smiley's Kolyosa and Alice Shields' The
Transformation of Ani. Their music is often complex but never
forbidding, remaining colourful, dramatic and even poetic. But the
most convincing piece on the whole disc is by the man who took over
from Ussachevsky when he retired in 1980. Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms
No.5 (1969), "for percussion ensemble and electronic sounds",
is a veritable tour de force of thorny modernism that still
sounds crunchy and challenging 37 years on. Isn't it about time some
enterprising label – New World, perhaps? – released a
complete set of the Synchronisms? Ten so far and a couple
more in the works, I'm told. Just a thought.–DW
Maurizio
Bianchi
GENOCIDIO 20
wmo/r
 This
is a real puzzler, as there's practically no information whatsoever
about it on the wmo/r website, which leads me to guess that it dates
from the early 80s, Bianchi's "nasty" period, before he
became a Jehovah's Witness.. see Marcelo Aguirre's Bianchi roundup
from a couple of months ago. But further enquiries by Marcelo, who's
hard at work on an extended interview with MB for these pages (I'm
told), prompted a response from Bianchi – curiously enough in
Spanish – to the effect that the archive sound recordings from
Nazi Germany (who's speaking? Rudolf Hess?) are nothing at all to
do with him and have been grafted on to the music by someone else.
Curiouser and curiouser. Marcelo also reminds me of a quotation from
Nigel "Nocturnal Emissions" Ayers: "[Whitehouse's]
William Bennett told me, in 81, the first and last time I met him,
that Steve Stapleton drew up a 'joke' contract for him [Bianchi] giving
Maurizio absolutely no rights to the recording in any way whatever
ever, which Maurizio happily signed. Bennett added overdubs of Hitler
speeches, Nazi martial music etc. from one of those tapes they used
to sell at the lunatic right wing shops." Frans de Waard over
at Vital Weekly speculates that this might also be Bianchi's Weltanschauung
album (maybe someone could confirm this?) but Bianchi has neither
confirmed nor denied that rumour. In any case, whoever did it and
whenever it was done, it's pretty unpleasant stuff, even without the
speeches and military music (which only feature on the first –
and longest – track). I can understand that some folk might
still get some kind of perverse kick out of Nazi imagery, even a quarter
of a century down the line, but it's hard to imagine anyone saying
they actually enjoy the rest of this miserable, sludgy mess.
And that presumably includes Maurizio himself, now that he's found
GOD – the Supreme Being, that is, not the group of the same
name (see above).-DW
Jorge
Haro
U_XY
Fin del Mundo
 Jorge
Haro hails from Argentina, where he's currently Professor in Audiovisual
Design at Palermo University (Buenos Aires), but these six "real
time sound constructions" were recorded in Barcelona, Cracow,
Hamburg, Porto, Lisbon and Huelva in early 2005. U_xy is
Haro's first full length CD release (his website lists a couple of
earlier CDRs and appearances on half a dozen compilations), and it
comes with the instruction "please do not alter the volume level
during playback". That leads me to suspect some kind of nasty
trick, like starting out pretending to be bernhard günter and
suddenly metamorphosing into Merzbow about halfway through (I mention
this because I did it myself once, heh heh), and reading that Haro
has worked with the likes of Zbigniew "Schopenhauer" Karkowski
doesn't augur well for the eardrums either, but in fact the six "real
time sound constructions" (hmm, isn't all music "real
time sound construction"?) are elegant, almost clinically precise,
and a long way from the sweaty screaming bombast of yer average Noise
album. That said, about halfway through "Porto" you might
be tempted to rush to the hi-fi and turn it down.. but don't –
the fear subsides and you're left with a very accomplished and enjoyable
piece of music. Or real time sound construction, if you prefer.–DW
Ronnie
Sundin
THE AMATEUR HERMETIC
Komplott
 Despite
a rather colourful press release that raps on about monoliths, angels,
queens, peasants, Persian (?) bread with peanut butter and lingonberry
jam (that's Vaccinium vitis-idaea, an uncultivated member
of the cranberry family primarily used in northern Europe to make
jams and preserves, btw), The Amateur Hermetic starts out
as another one of those Bolero-type pieces that starts out
quiet and gets louder. But not for long. From what I can glean from
the press release it seems the source material for this 41-minute
span of music is Sundin's own voice, though there are some terrific
thunderclaps, screes of white noise and some angry metallic drones
in there too, as well as some pretty ominous gurgles (maybe the composer's
digestive system hard at work on those lingonberries). Sundin's work
is consistently evocative, if not always easily accessible; this is
a little more so than his Antifrost outing, Hanging, but
it's pretty dark stuff. Occult references, religious doubts, growing
a beard. Isolation. The Philosopher's Stone, indeed.–DW
Sudden
Infant
RADIORGASM
Blossoming Noise / Harbinger Sound
 You
get used to it. You can get used to just about anything if you live
with it long enough. Remember your first cigarette, how vile it tasted?
How your head started spinning and you felt like throwing up? God
knows why you went back for a second one. And now look at you. Remember
the first time you had a glass of wine? Bet that tasted fucking horrible
too. The old argument about the decriminalisation / legalisation of
soft drugs is that "one eventually graduates to more dangerous
substances." Noise is the same. I'll bet the first time you heard
a Merzbow album you ran screaming for the exit. And now it sounds
positively pleasant – damn, you could almost dance to
some of the recent stuff. It's also easier, with the benefit of hindsight,
to appreciate why Merzbow, Hijokaidan and Masonna are a cut above
the rest; there is – dare one say it – real musicality
(i.e. concern for structure and material, an ear) to the best noise
albums. This reissue of Radiorgasm, the extremely recherché
debut album by Sudden Infant (aka Joke Lanz, B. Lingg, Inzekt and,
Dave P.), recorded in Zürich way back in early 1990, is a splendid
example. Once you get beyond the initial shock of "blasphemy,
obscenity, charlatanism, sadistic excess, orgies and the aesthetics
of the gutter", the paroxysms of screaming, retching horror,
the viciously penetrating extreme frequencies, it all becomes quite..
listenable. Of course, you probably shouldn't play it to impressionable
seven-year-olds immediately before bedtime, but then again you wouldn't
give them a packet of Gitanes and a fifth of bourbon either. Or would
you?–DW
M.
Holterbach
AARE AM MARZILIBAD
Erewhon
 Manu
Holterbach is, in addition to being a fine writer on new music (if
your French is up to it, check out his work in Revue Et Corrigé),
currently working on a biography of Eliane Radigue. But it's not Radigue
who comes to mind on listening to Aare am Marzilibad as much
as Toshiya Tsunoda. Holterbach sealed a microphone inside a bottle
and tossed it into the river Aare, where it got wedged between a couple
of rocks and was gently pummelled by whatever came into contact with
it. Of course, if he didn't tell you this in the liners you'd probably
never be able to guess, but these days describing how a particular
piece of sound art is made is obviously almost as important as listening
to it (Tsunoda too likes to provide copious notes about how, where
and when his pieces were made). So this is 21st century sound art's
response to The Police's "Message In A Bottle". Which reminds
me, I could never quite work out what ol' Gordon Summers was going
on about in that song; I was sure it was "a year has passed since
I broke my nose" instead of "a year has passed since I wrote
my note". Oy vey, I just have to listen more carefully in future,
that's all. And I'd much rather listen to Manu Holterbach than Sting.–DW
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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