| JUNE
News 2004 |
Reviews
by Nate Dorward, Stephen Griffith, Walter Horn, TJ Norris, Wayne
Spencer, Dan Warburton:
|
|
Editorial
Freedom Of The City 2004
Alvin Curran
Matt Davis
What Next? Elliott
Carter
Alexandre Bellenger
On Sedimental: Tonalamotl / Seth Nehil & Olivia
Block / Giuseppe Ielasi / Reynols / David Gross & Liz Tonne
JAZZ / IMPROV: Songs
of Norway / Zach & Grydeland /
No Spaghetti Edition / Eskelin, Parkins, Black / Rich Halley
/ Craig Taborn / Steve
Lacy / Derek Bailey / Jon Mueller, Bhob Rainey, Jim Schoenecker
/ Sophie Agnel & Olivier Benoit / Mike Hansen & Tomasz
Krakowiak / Steuart Liebig & Mentones / Free Fall
CONTEMPORARY: Glenn
Branca / Paul Zukofsky performing Cage, Loos, Babbitt, Feldman
ELECTRONICA: B Fleischmann
/ Invisible Structure / Alex Keller & Meri von KleinSmid
/ Steve Barsotti / Paolo Raposo & Marc Behrens
Last month
|
To
keep this on the brief side (as monthly issues of this magazine are
getting bigger and bigger, thanks to the enthusiastic participation
of our new correspondents), I still receive numerous mails enquiring
whether this or that album submitted for review has indeed been covered.
The answer to that is quite simple - anyone whose work is reviewed
here is individually notified immediately prior to publication. The
home page each month features direct links to all material reviewed
in the previous twelve months, and if the review is over a year old
it's still easy to find using the inbuilt search engine, and/or the
pulldown menus. If you spend a bit of time scouting around you'll
find all kinds of odd things buried away. So, on with the party -
thanks this month to Wayne Spencer for covering FOTC in London, one
of improvised music's most important annual meetings (whether correctly
funded or not). As Martin Davidson is fond of reminding us, London
is home to well over a hundred free improvisers, not all of whom can
be squeezed into the Conway Hall in three days, so I'm also happy
to be able to profile the work of Matt Davis in the same issue. And
lots more stuff - read on. Bonne lecture.—DW
FREEDOM
OF THE CITY
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London
Saturday 1 May - Monday 3 May 2004
London
is an important international centre of musical activity, with music
in the city providing the equivalent of 34,000 full-time jobs and
sustaining a market in which approximately Ł1.1 billion is spent annually
by London consumers and London based companies. One relatively esoteric
field of musical endeavour in which the city has been important in
recent decades is that of free improvisation. The history of free
improvisation in London can be traced back to the 1960s, the decade
in which John Stevens (of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble) established
an important venue upstairs at the Little Theatre Club in Monmouth
Street and the group AMM (formed in 1965) played frequently in the
city, exemplifying an even more radical repudiation of the jazz paradigm
than that pursued by the players associated with, or influenced by,
the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Subsequently, new focal points for
free improvised music arose, including the Old Place in Gerrard Street
(formerly the premises of Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, made available
to free improvisers when the club moved to Frith Street) and the London
Musicians' Collective building at 42 Gloucester Avenue (see Clive
Bell's Brief History of the LMC at http://www.l-m-c.org.uk/archive/history.html).
Today, free improvised music is played almost every night in London,
utilizing both ad hoc venues and the array of clubs and other establishments
that host the music on a more or less regular basis, including the
Bonnington Centre in Vauxhall, Free Radicals in Stoke Newington, the
Klinker Club in Dalston, the Red Rose in Finsbury Park and Sound323
in Highgate. Festivals of the music, however, are still relatively
rare. One such is Freedom of the City, an annual festival curated
by Martin Davidson, Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost. The 2004 festival
was held at the Conway Hall in Holborn, a rather austere remnant of
nineteenth century humanism owned by the South Place Ethical Society.
As with the first three festivals, state funding was denied by the
Arts Council of England; indeed, the festival benefited from no official
funding at all this year, a fact publicly lamented by the curators.
Parker in particular expressed bitter regret that the paucity of funds
prevented the same hospitality being given to overseas visitors as
senior British players experience when travelling in mainland Europe.
None of the organisers seemed inclined to take the view that a position
outside of the self-justifying cultural discourse of the state was
sufficient compensation for the indigence in which the festival found
itself.
Saturday 1 May 2004
The
music began on the Saturday afternoon and was curated by Prévost and
Seymour Wright, a London-based saxophonist who has recorded for Prévost's
Matchless Records and is part of a group of younger musicians associated
with the TwoThousandAnd label. Due to the Communist Party of Great
Britain's standing booking of Conway Hall for the evening of May Day,
there was time for only three ensembles. First onstage was AMM. After
an opening series of sharp block chords from pianist John Tilbury,
the group largely worked with quiet dynamics and spacious textures,
Tilbury contributing haunting short phrases and subtle inside-piano
sounds, Prévost working mainly working with bowed cymbals, and guitarist
Keith Rowe insinuating drones and snatches of radio (including a startling
visitation from a thundering drum'n'bass group and jabbering DJ) into
the spaces in-between, before falling into silence for perhaps the
last five or ten minutes of the set. It was a beautifully nuanced
performance, a spare but arresting field of recondite extemporisations
full of undemonstrative mutuality and amply repaid the attention it
demanded.
 The
second set of the day was by The World Book (photo, left), a trio
made-up of Ross Lambert (guitar), John Lely (computer) and Seymour
Wright (alto sax). The group distributed in advance copies of a set
of encyclopaedia entries on the subject of 'freedom'. These texts
seemed to be Cold War-era ideological apologies for liberal capitalism.
What relationship they had to the music was unclear. Also unclear
were the links between the music and the still photographs projected
onto a screen behind the group. As for the music itself, this was
sadly disappointing. The group clearly aspired to explore sonorities
and principles of construction falling outside of the established
pathways of acoustic free improvisation, but what ensued was too often
an undisciplined rummaging through sonic hypotheses entertained with
scant regard to their potential as profitable avenues for musical
expression and pursued with too little attempt to combine the individual
players' efforts into a meaningful collective whole.
 The
day ended with a rare London appearance by Musica Elettronica Viva
(MEV), a band formed in Italy 1966 of expatriate Americans whose pioneering
explorations of live electronics and improvisation have often prompted
comparisons with the coeval work of AMM. According to Eddie Prévost's
introduction, MEV and AMM have just recorded their first CD together,
but for this live performance MEV (Alvin Curran on electronics and
horn (photo, right), Frederic Rzewski on piano, and Richard Teitelbaum
on electronics) played alone. The sound they created was a curious
one, featuring both elegant and often tonal piano work, cheesy keyboard
sounds, and rapid-fire, gnarled aggregations of electronics and samples
(which included animal noises, Frank Sinatra, breaking bottles and
much else besides) - with Curran's gleeful and rather selfish torrents
of electronics often submerging everything else. While there was undoubtedly
something exciting in all this, at times it rather resembled an Alfred
Brendel masterclass conducted in an unruly special effects workshop.
It left me wondering in melancholy fashion as to the distance MEV
has travelled from its original revolutionary social and musical aspirations
(in his Parma Manifesto of 1968, Rzewski aimed high, regarding the
group's music as a dialogue that sought to "create a new form of communication
through which human sensitivities can be awakened to presence of danger
on the highest level and to the necessity for creation in order to
avoid it efficiently"). I fear that MEV's current juxtapositions are
far closer to entertaining sonic vaudeville than any process of creative
critique or subversion of the sounds and values of the wider society.
Sunday 2 May 2004
The
second day of the festival, curated by Martin Davidson of Emanem Records,
began with the first appearance by the group Quaqua as a quintet.
Made up of John Russell (guitar), Stefan Keune (sax), Phil Minton
(voice), Phillip Wachsmann (violin) and Georg Wolf (double bass),
the ensemble adopted the pointillistic style that emerged as one of
the characteristic voices of British free improvisation at the end
of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. It was a superlative performance,
as tightly knit undulations of small gestures ebbed and surged with
a serrated grace, exemplifying the virtues of close listening, acute
responsiveness and genuinely collective improvisation. My one regret
was that Quaqua did not engage with the new instruments, timbres and
textures that have been embraced by younger improvisers in recent
years, for without such an engagement there is surely a danger that
the basic notions of collective improvisation will come to be associated
in the minds of younger musicians and listeners with stagnant and
irrelevant antiquarianism.
After Quaqua, the quartet of Alex Ward (clarinet), Luke Barlow (electric
piano), Simon H. Fell (double bass) and Steve Noble (drums) struck
me as a disappointment. Too often the group's rather colourlessly
frenetic playing fell into well-worn free jazz furrows, giving its
interplay an unhappy air of the stereotypical.
Next up was the duo of Roger Smith, the elusive acoustic guitarist
who was a member for many years of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble
(see PT interview) and drummer Louis Moholo, one of a number of exiles
from apartheid South Africa who graced the European scene from the
second half of the 1960s onwards. Smith has recently worked largely
solo and unfortunately his long withdrawal from collaborative playing
seemed evident in his playing, which was nervously virtuosic but rather
unheeding of his partner. For his part, Moholo initially sought to
provide Smith's guitar with a percussive foundation of rapid taps;
later he evidently attempted to exercise a greater influence on events
through more contrastive playing. This process of slightly one-sided
negotiation and adjustment was fascinating to watch, but in the end
I regretted that more room for genuinely mutual musical discourse
had not emerged.
The final act of the afternoon session was Clive Bell and Sylvia Hallett.
Using violin, amplified bicycle wheel and saw (all three played with
a violin bow), Hallett set up shifting looped samples of her own playing,
over which Bell played a succession of woodwind instruments taken
from various musical cultures. It was refreshing to see the resources
of non-Western music explored with none of the pietism or commodified
assimilation to Western popular music endemic to so-called World Music.
The unique juxtaposition of Bell's alternately piercing and floating
woodwind sounds and Hallett's metallic rotations was striking, and
their encore, one of only two during the entire festival, was richly
deserved.
Proceedings resumed in the evening with a set by Planter Box (Gail
Brand, trombone, and Morgan Guberman, vocals). It was quite a tour
de force, as a swaying and gesturing Guberman emitted streams of strange
quasi-linguistic utterances like a person with a motor speech disorder
struggling to communicate, and Brand, stamping her foot from time
to time for emphasis, ran through a gamut of extended trombone sounds.
Within and across the two tracks in the set, the music shifted effortlessly
through moods and textures, both players showing a keen ability throughout
to live off their musical wits and follow each other down some very
anfractuous paths.
Chris Burn's Ensemble is a group that has existed in various configurations
for some 20 years; the line-up on this occasion featuring Burn (piano),
John Butcher (sax), Clare Cooper (Gu Zheng - a Chinese harp), Jim
Denley (flute and sax), Will Guthrie (amplified percussion) and Matt
Hutchinson (synthesizer). The group often used "reduced" instrumental
gestures and quite a busy, pointillistic style, but there was a tendency
to fall into monotonously regular rhythms and rather unvarying textures.
I came away disappointed.
Ensemble was followed by the festival's only solo performance, by
Paul Rutherford on trombone. It seemed that this was structured around
a clearly articulated improvised melodic line, with fairly conventional
notes and at least loosely tonal progressions, periodically interrupted
by slower passages of groans and slurs, accelerations into rapid microtonal
flurries, and quasi-speech and growls through the instrument. Rutherford
moved through this engaging improvisation with great skill, yet it
has to be said that it added little to the work documented on the
seminal 1974 recordings released as The Gentle Harm of the Bourgeoisie
(Emanem). His undoubted fluidity and skill sadly seems to have
purchased at the price of abandoning further innovation and confining
himself within a closed musical terrain.
The second day closed with a session of free jazz from Tony Bianco
(drums), Paul Dunmall (tenor sax) and John Edwards (double bass).
Almost from the start, Bianco's unremittingly thunderous drumming
propelled the group into a fast and furious workout, with Dunmall
firing out a mutating series of powerful short phrases and Edwards
plucking and scraping with considerable force. A slower but still
intense piece followed as the second and final encore of the festival.
As the enthusiastic reception by the audience attested, this was well-played
music of huge power; however, as with much of the other music in the
festival, it was also a reiteration of a form that is over 35 years
old. To arrest the music in this condition surely requires disavowal
or ignorance of multiple lines of musical discovery and elaboration
that have occurred in the decades since free jazz reached maturity.
Why has the pursuit of broader horizons of musical possibility characteristic
of the great jazz innovators been abandoned? What functions does a
music that has been reoriented towards retrospection in this way serve
for audiences, players and society? I found these to be troubling
questions.
Monday
May 3 2004
 The
final afternoon of the festival was curated by saxophonist Evan Parker,
and was ushered in by the first London appearance in some 8 years
of his trio with Barry Guy (double bass) and Paul Lytton (percussion).
Lytton was in rampant mood, helping to bring a strongly propulsive
quality to the trio's playing. Parker mainly responded with some forceful
playing on tenor, twisting out his usual avian involutions, although
he also produced a fine circular-breathing passage on soprano during
one of the intermittent quieter interludes. For his part, Guy raced
across the length and breadth of his double bass, plucking and bowing
in jagged accompaniment, and occasionally inserting objects to be
oscillated between the strings. It was a good instance of the trio's
music, but one that conformed quite strongly to a pattern (especially
in terms of cadences) that has long been evident in their live and
recorded performances.
Brono Nettl observed in a 1974 article in The Musical Quarterly that
an improviser always has something to work on, "certain things that
are at the base of the performance, that he uses as the ground on
which he builds". This foundation he calls a "model". According to
Nettl, an improvisational model has two key components: "points of
reference, [..] a series of obligatory events which must be observed,
either absolutely or with some sort of frequency, in order for the
model to remain intact" or any given performance to be regarded as
a legitimate instantiation of the model, and "building blocks" or
the tones, melodic motifs, harmonic intervals, interval sequences,
etc that "the tradition accumulates, and which musicians within the
tradition make use of, choosing from among them, combining, recombining
and re-arranging them". As Sutton and Nettle and Riddle's studies
of Javanese Gamelan and Arabic musicians (both published in the 1998
collection In the Course of Performance: Studies in the World of Musical
Improvisation) respectively suggest, a model may be such that a musician
can display a marked degree of uniformity in his or her playing across
different performances. Can the same be said of Parker, Guy and Lytton?
In the case of free improvisation, Nettl's notion of obligatory "point
of reference" might have to be supplemented or replaced with one of
habitual or preferred combinations or responses, but it does seem
that there is a prima facie case for saying that over the years Parker,
Guy and Lytton  have
developed a set of building blocks, principles of combination/development,
and types of response that is sufficiently narrow and fixed as to
impart a marked degree of similarity to each of their performances,
even performances that might be quite distant from each other in time.
Of course, at any given moment, even the most radical of improvisers
may well utilize a relatively small and consistent "model": after
all, few if any players play completely differently from one performance
to the next. It does however seem problematic when a model for an
individual or group becomes so immune to change that it adheres unaltered
over the course of many years, especially when there is considerable
change and unexplored possibility in the wider musical world. Is such
a refusal to change not an inherently conservative inclination - a
deliberate preference for the already known and the habitual?
The next set was by two visiting Swedish musicians: Sten Sandell (piano)
and David Stackenas (guitar). During two long improvisations, they
covered a considerable amount of ground. Stackenas' work at different
times resembled both that of Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey, and Sandell's
playing (which included direct playing of the inside the instrument
and electronic modification) seemed strongly influenced by contemporary
classical models. It was all expertly played and warmly received by
the audience, although I found it rather disjointed and lacking a
strong individual imprint.
 To
end the afternoon, Parker's trio and the Sandell Stackenas duo joined
forces as a quintet, finding common ground in an egalitarian pointillism,
a music of modesty and restraint full of fine-grained changes in the
flow of contrasts, accentuations, punctuations and parallels through
which each player acted on, and reacted to, the others. An excellent
set.
The evening session was dedicated to a performance by the London Improvisers
Orchestra (who performed conductions by Dave Tucker, Steve Beresford
("A Concerto for B.J. Cole"), David Leahy, Terry Day (a
song in praise of Liberace) and Philip Wachsmann), Maggie Nichol's
open-to-all collective known as The Gathering, and finally members
of both groups. As I have little taste for large group performances
in any field of music, I had better leave commentary to those better
qualified to do so.
Overall, I enjoyed the festival. The atmosphere was casual, unpretentious
and friendly, and the music often displayed some excellent improvisational
skills. My reservations concern the advancing age and perhaps staleness
of the musical paradigms in which the featured groups tended to embody
their improvisations. Newer currents of improvisation do exist in
London, being regularly presented in the basement of Mark Wastell's
Sound323 shop and elsewhere in the city, but have never been strongly
represented at Freedom of the City. This is no doubt a reflection
of the tastes and preferences of the organizers, who are of course
under no obligation to put on performers who do not appeal to them.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that the main festival dedicated to
free improvisation in London is largely given over to the music that
established the city's reputation as a centre for free improvisation
in the late 1960s and early 1970s and not the cutting-edge developments
that will keep the music alive as a radical force in the twenty-first
century.—WS
Alvin
Curran
LOST MARBLES
Tzadik 7097
 "[B]ehind
my attempts to transform the earth's entire landscape into a concert
hall, there is and always has been a steadfast composer of notes and
benign anarchy," writes Alvin Curran in the liners to this compilation
of "selected fragments of orchestral, choral, solo keyboard, electronic
and installation works created between 1987 and 2003." Benign anarchy
makes its presence felt right away in "Toto Angelica", billed as a
"live sound portrait for the celebration of ten years of the Angelica
Festival, Bologna", 89 seconds of sampladelic madness which sound
as if Curran has loaded up a MIDI keyboard with samples of just about
everything imaginable and then proceeded to play one of Liszt's transcendental
studies on it. In stark contrast, "Music Is Not Music" is a slow moving
(and, paradoxically, extremely musical) setting of extracts from John
Cage's Norton Lectures for four-part chorus, trumpet, tuba, piano
and percussion. While the exquisite chromatic movement of the inner
voices recalls (curiously) John Tavener, standing in the shadows are
Stravinsky and Satie.
After such delicate beauty, "Maritime Rites - Wasserkorso" comes as
something of a shock. Extracted from one of Curran's large-scale environmental
projects, in this case for the 750th anniversary of the City of Berlin,
it's scored for computer-controlled ship foghorns, which must certainly
sound impressive in situ but come across on disc as rather
crude beasts. "For MG" was originally created for the Trisha Brown
Dance Company - Curran's involvement with contemporary dance has been
major and longstanding - and is scored for piano (a deliciously old-fashioned
sounding one at that) and tape. The string of juxtaposed yet seemingly
unrelated consonances once more recalls Rosicrucian period Satie,
and one imagines, were he listening to it, the maître d'Arcueil
might let slip a sly smile at the arrival after about one and a half
minutes of a burst of field recordings, specifically what sounds like
a lawnmower trying to start up. The piano returns, and the tape recedes
into the distance, only to return later - more ship foghorns, apparently.
It's certainly an eventful journey, though I'm not quite sure where
to.
"In Hora Mortis", heard here in a 1996 recording from the Schwetzingen
Festival, is a chamber orchestra work written for the Achim Freyer
theatre company, and if Stravinsky is still lurking in the background,
it's a distinctly Mengelbergian reincarnation, complete with aimlessly
tootling ostinati, snatches of tango overlaid with swirling Xenakis
glissandi, circus guffaw trombones and decidedly cheesy organ. It's
not hard to see why such a wacky polystylistic collage would appeal
to Tzadik head honcho John Zorn. The same might be said of "Endangered
Species" (not a Parliament cover version, unfortunately, but another
wild cocktail of improvised piano, vocal fragments, pop samples and
diverse field recordings whacked into Curran's blender, shaken not
stirred and hurled into your earhole), and "Pittura Fresca", billed
as a "concerto for violin", here ably performed by David Abel. The
Paul Dresher Ensemble's long experience playing their musical director's
elegant minimalism serves them well in the tightly pulsing rhythms
of the opening section, which nevertheless avoid the Day-Glo tonality
associated with the genre in favour of more decidedly chromatic harmony.
Once again though, the (intentionally?) dreadful wobbly keyboard patch
at the two minute mark, not to mention a hefty chunk of a Mozart's
"Requiem" and, apparently, the sound of a basketball, seem designed
to throw the listener off the scent. As Zorn once famously asked,
"So what kind of music was that, anyway?"
If Stravinsky, Satie and maybe even Zorn himself come to mind on several
occasions, "Inner Cities 2", a solo piano work dating from 1990, recalls
Morton Feldman, not so much in its dynamics - the piece opens with
a series crashing sforzandi, something hardly ever found in
Feldman's output, and spends much of its time far from that composer's
trademark pianissimo - but in its obstinate exploration of
four-note cells, spaced widely in rising arpeggio configurations that
allude to the kind of voice leading explored elsewhere in "Music Is
Not Music". What is most definitely not Feldman-like is the unexpected
- but on further listening beautifully prepared - slide into a smooth,
Bill Evans-inflected "Body and Soul" towards the end of the piece.
According to the liners, "Erat Verbum John", a "sound portrait of
Cage", also features the composer on piano, though unless it's a sampling
keyboard (or Curran is simultaneously performing 4'33"), I can't hear
any. Instead it starts with what sounds like a cat purring in your
earhole, followed by a tape montage of fragments of laughter and various
field recordings - cries of wild animals, passing traffic, footsteps
and police car sirens. Fun as far as it goes, but it definitely sounds
like little more than an extract from a larger work. As does "Romulus
and Remus Make A Ruckus", originally a sound installation. In this
version, curated by Domenico Sciajno, its superimposition of howling
wolves and snarling improv bass clarinet is surprisingly close in
sound and concept to Basil Kirchin's groundbreaking "Worlds Within
Worlds" projects. But at this stage in the album, we're on our guard,
so the inclusion of what sounds like snippets of violin music remixed
by Christian Marclay and spluttery trumpets (imagine a Franz Hautzinger
solo album fed through Max/MSP) comes as no surprise. Closing the
album with a flourish is "Return to Sender", performed by the rather
grandiosely titled Alvin Curran Filharmonia (in fact an all-star band
featuring Shelley Hirsch, Joan Jeanrenaud, Fred Frith, Domenico Sciajno
and William Winant). Hirsch is particularly impressive, running the
gamut of multiple vocal personalities as successfully as the late
Cathy Berberian. Jeanrenaud plays a disarmingly simple folk-like theme
as if it was unaccompanied Bach, layering versions on top of each
other, while Curran sketches out the theme and Hirsch and Frith wail
and slide in the background. Eventually, Curran's sampler takes over,
once more smashing the music into pieces and frisbeeing them around
to create a crazy pavement crossing a veritable compost heap of sound,
from shattering crockery to Stéphane Grappelli.
In his liners, Curran acknowledges that "most of these pieces had
durations spanning a minimum of thirty minutes to over five hours,
but here the chosen snippets are presented as the antipasti and the
main course all in one." Coming from someone who long ago adopted
Rome as his home, it's an appropriate image, and while it's true that
one could happily gorge oneself on antipasti and forget the primi,
secondi and dolci, the overriding effect of listening
to Lost Marbles is one of information overload. Curran does
indeed provide evidence of a clearly defined personality as a composer,
a fondness for predominantly diatonic pitch cells and an open affection
for jazz and other forms of popular music, but the persistent inclusion
of sounds from the world at large and the tendency of pieces to self-destruct,
or at least metamorphose into something completely different (I imagine
the composer would approve of the Monty Python reference) is mildly
disconcerting. It in no way detracts from the listening pleasure -
Lost Marbles is one of the most fun packed outings on Tzadik
in recent years - but does raise the question as to where Alvin Curran
himself is to be found in the midst of this joyous, sonic pandemonium.—DW
Matt
Davis / Rosa Munoz
MUTE CORRESPONDENCE
Field 002
Ladder
(Matt Davis / Ben Lancaster)
SEEN
Field 003
Matt
Davis / Joel Stern
SMALL INDUSTRY
L'innomable
[linnomablerec@yahoo.com / matthdavis@btopenworld.com]
 Matt
Davis' solo trumpet CD Mute Correspondences was originally
released four years ago on the Confront label back when it was a CDR
imprint whose ridiculously limited editions sold out far too quickly,
so its reissue is cause for some celebration. This new edition on
the trumpeter's own Field imprint - slim transparent boxes and text
and visuals on pale grey onion skin vellum - is in fact credited to
Davis and Rosa Munoz, who is in fact a dancer (but dancers make noise
too) performing with Davis on four tracks recorded in Salamandra Dance
Studios in Barcelona in October 2000. For the reissue Davis has selected
just seven of the original eleven cuts, dispensing with four multi-track
pieces (shame, as they were rather wonderful: all the more reason
to search out an original Confront if you have the patience) and also
apparently changed round some of the titles. As a solo trumpet outing
(no disrespect intended to Ms Munoz), Mute Correspondences certainly
ranks alongside Franz Hautzinger's Gomberg, Axel Dörner's Trumpet
and Greg Kelley's, erm, Trumpet (well, what's in a name?).
It might not push things to the same extreme limits as Dörner, whose
aforementioned offering on A Bruit Secret sounds more like an industrial
ventilation system, studiously avoids the raw testosterone blasts
that characterise much of Kelley's Meniscus album, and sure as hell
doesn't come with a ranting set of liner notes by Bill "Trademark"
Dixon like Hautzinger's, but for sheer musicality and, excuse the
tired cliché, listening pleasure, Mute Correspondences has
my vote. Extended tech trumpeters now seem to be all over the place,
so high pitched whistles, barks, flaps, snaps, gurgles and plops might
be familiar to several listeners, but what makes the difference here
is not the vocabulary itself but how Davis puts it together to create
organic and intricate pieces of music that richly reward repeated
listening. It's been one of my favourite solo albums ever since I
got hold of a CDR copy, and I can't recommend it too highly.
 Compared
to the arch lowercase austerity of his subsequent work with the so-called
New London Silence scene (correct me if I'm wrong but I think we have
Ben Watson to thank for that label), notably with Mark Wastell and
Rhodri Davies in groups like Broken Consort, Davis is in remarkably
chirpy form on Seen, putting the trumpet to one side to concentrate
on field recordings and electronics in the company of Ben Lancaster
on sampler and electronics. Ladder's music is certainly lively stuff,
positively fizzing with activity. I've long been of the opinion that
the incorporation of field recordings into improvised music - or recording
improvised music in the field itself - is one of the next avenues
to follow, and Davis reveals that even distinctly recognisable source
sounds such as barking dogs, motorcycles, footsteps and tin cans being
kicked along a street can be combined with more "standard" electronica
material (stuttering soundfiles, queasy drones and all manner of not
particularly pleasant clunks and rips) to build rich and rewarding
sound structures. These eight untitled pieces are fine examples of
what Jérôme Noetinger would call "cinema for the ear" (hence the title).
Small Industry is another limited edition outing, this time
on the new Slovenian label L'innomable. Joining Davis (on electronics
but also back on trumpet this time) is Joel Stern, who provides "concrete
sound, feedback and electronics". It's a single 33-minute span of
music recorded in Hackney (London) in January 2003 and mixed and edited
by Stern after he returned to Australia later that year. Compared
to the crackle of Seen, it's more sedate - perhaps it's the
breathy blast of the brass instrument, or Stern's chilly drone - but
much more dramatic. There's a distinct sense of tension, even menace,
here - what is happening at the six-minute mark? It sounds as if Stern
is tearing up and setting fire to a polystyrene box (which he most
likely isn't, as the musicians would probably have asphyxiated themselves)
with Davis lurking in the background like some heavy breathing monster.
Despite the stated intention of several notable contemporary improvisers
to avoid expressivity - Keith Rowe's observations on atmosphere, the
empty turntables of Otomo, empty mixing board of Nakamura and the
empty sampler of Sachiko - music still communicates on an emotional
level, and its inexplicable capacity to make the hair stand up on
the back of the neck is not something to be sniffed at. The fragile
strands of birdsong and wonderful distant cloud of Ligeti-like harmony
that float into earshot about the 23-minute mark are simply gorgeous.
As we all know, the world of the trumpet also includes another M Davis,
and if you file away your albums in alphabetical order, Matt sure
enough ends up next to Miles. Alphabetical proximity apart, the two
have more in common than you might think - impeccable timing, a tendency
to compress and understate rather than go over the top (several early
70s Miles outings excluded, perhaps), a deceptively fragile sound
that belies rock solid technique and understanding of what's going
on in the music at micro and macro level. Each one of these albums
is as worthy of your undivided attention as Davis' excellent Erstwhile
outing last year, Open,
with Mark Wastell and Phil Durrant. Check them out.—DW
WHAT
NEXT?
ECM New Series 1817
 There's
a lot that is mysterious about Elliott Carter's 1997 one-act opera
What Next?, even if we exclude questions about how a nonagenarian
could have created it. To begin with, have the five characters in
the work (along with boy alto Emanuel Hoogeveen as "Kid") actually
had an accident on the way to a wedding (possibly between "Rose" and
"Harry or Larry")? Did they lose their memories/identities, or are
they Pirandello-style ghosts that never had either and are waiting
for author or audience bestowal of such goods? Whether or not these
specters exist in the manner their words imply, are there actually
corporeal, if silent, "Road Workers" that "Mama," "Rose," et al. at
some point try to convince of their (apparent) predicament, or is
someone just imagining that others later appear on this bizarre scene?
The ECM packaging, which includes Paul Griffiths's complete libretto,
as well as an essay by David Hamilton and a "Gee-Whiz!-I'm-Actually-Working-Knee-to-Knee-With-My-Long-Time-Hero"
journal by the librettist isn't terribly helpful on these matters.
The printed "Situation" that precedes Griffiths's libretto says: "There
has been an accident. Of the six 'victims,' all quite unhurt as far
as we can see, the five adults have different views of how they are
related and how they have come to be in the same place at the same
time." The Hamilton piece adds that "[t]he arrival of Road Workers
(played by percussion players) reactivates the sonorities of the opening
until they leave." However, the libretto proper, at least as it appears
here, has nothing whatever about the entrance of any characters at
all after the curtain rises. (Further confusing this matter for me
is a review of a live performance I've seen that suggests that the
ensemble comes to be confronted not by paver/percussionists but by
a policeman!) For its part, the Griffiths journal focuses almost exclusively
on what seems like an intent to convince the reader that very significant
work was contributed by the librettist (sometimes even during meals
with the great maestro himself!!). For example, Griffiths informs
us that he picked up some reference materials relating to the names
of celestial bodies, that he wrote several drafts, that he thought
or worried about the work while in bed on occasion, that he received
25% of some commission fee or other from Boosey and Hawkes for his
efforts (half in advance), etc. But as to whether we may at least
take the "Situation" literally, and so rule out any Malone/Unnameable
"brain-in-a-vat" theories - whatever may be the case about the veracity
(or sanity) of any or all of the characters - there is nothing. A
Robert Craft journal this is not.
I hope the reader won't take the foregoing as the foundation or prelude
to an attack against the opera, the libretto, or even the packaging.
The Beckettesque aspects of the work must preclude puzzled opera-goers
from expecting answers to such mundane questions as "What the hell
is actually happening here?" On the contrary, the fundamental haziness
of the ECM booklet allows us the fun of focusing on other sorts of
internal clues, both musical and literary, in order to develop our
theories regarding the "story." Here's my current take…subject to
later amendment, of course.
The piece opens with some raucous percussive banging. Naturally, this
could represent a physical accident, like a car crash, but
the first words uttered are:
MAMA: Sh - Ss - Sh - Sh
STELLA: SS - SH - Shh - tar
HARRY OR LARRY: Sh - Sh - St
ROSE: Ss - Sh - arr
KID: A
STELLA: Star
HARRY OR LARRY: Star
ZEN: Star
ROSE: Star
MAMA: Star
KID: Star
ZEN: Starts
HARRY OR LARRY: Startle
ROSE: Starlings
MAMA: Starch
STELLA: Starkest
KID: Starve I'm Starving
The entire crew then goes on to talk about stars, starts and startles,
and there are numerous references to various celestial bodies (Alpha
Canis Major, Sirius, etc.) as the piece proceeds. "Stella" even claims
to be an astronomer on her way to the observatory at the time of the
"accident." I take from this - and from the fact that the percussion
blasts opening the work go on too long to be representative of a discrete,
crash-type event - that these people (I'm not quite willing
to make the leap to each singer representing one or more aspects of
a single person or some other entity, like humanity as a whole) are
"seeing stars." I concur, that is, that they are awakening confusedly
from something (anesthesia, or coma or nothing at all), or perhaps,
like the characters in one of Sartre's plays, they have just died.
The point is that the proximate cause of these "stars" is as likely
stroke or congestive heart failure as a pile-up on Route 9. This interpretation
makes the subsequent non-responsiveness of the "Road Workers" more
sensible - to me, anyway. Whether they're physically present or not,
they simply can't see or hear our heroes. Of course, they could be
deaf and blind - or just uncaring representatives of an overly bureaucratic
world. Was there going to be a wedding? Was someone on her way to
work? Quien sabe? Finally, before I turn from the narrative
(such as it is) to Carter's music and its performance, it is worth
noting that the above excerpt from Griffiths's libretto should not
be taken as representative of the work as a whole, which actually
contains any number of complete sentences and even a few jokes. For
example, in response to Rose's questions: "Do you believe in God?
Do you believe there is a creator? Do you believe we are in the hands
of another being?" "Zen" answers, "It depends on what you mean by
'believe'." Keeping in mind that this response is from a character
whom the "Situation" strongly suggests is a megalomaniac fraud, it's
hard not to find this cutely anti-Clintonian.
Speaking of Canis Major, after about ten times through this knotty
40-minute work, I began to wonder why there isn't more in the text
about Ursa Minor. The rising minor third (along with a rising tritone)
seems the most prevalent musical motif in the work - making its appearances
apparently unrestricted to any particular instrument, ensemble or
character. At any rate, those two pitch shifts are what now cling
to me most doggedly after the last note of the work is heard. As is
his wont, Carter has linked particular instruments/groups with specific
characters or ideas. Here, the easiest coupling to discover is the
pairing of flowery soprano, "Rose," (who may or may not be a singer
still buzzing from audience cheers after a recent concert) with piano.
If these sorts of associations sometimes seem only half-hearted in
Carter's mature scores, it is largely because there are always at
least forty other intervallic, rhythmic, timbral and dynamic associations
simultaneously being developed, any number of which can obscure the
connections we've noticed. What I'm referring to can be described
(with only a dollop of exaggeration) along these lines: "When the
second flute repeatedly plays dotted-eighth G-sharps in its lower
register, one can expect a reference to early Blake - except, of course,
when this pattern is accompanied by a lightly trilling oboe and celli
sul ponticello an octave down, when these instruments together
imply either the tragedy of the commons, or, if flutter-tonguing is
used, Leonardo's prefiguring of such tragedy." That level of nearly
insane complexity has always been Carter's stock-in-trade, so one
shouldn't expect Wagnerian leitmotifs or Peter and the Wolf
instrumentation schemes. What's most amazing about Carter, however,
is that this extreme multi-level approach has never been pure gamesmanship
or allowed to spiral into unintelligible muck: it has simply provided
rich rewards to repeat listeners. While there is almost no end to
the depths of understanding one may reach regarding many of his works
(Ph.D. theses no doubt proliferate), they are also often very beautiful
to those who have no use at all for that sort of analysis-so long
as these listeners are willing to let a fair measure of dissonance
flow into their lives. Carter's works are thus like forests, or oceans,
or life itself. In What Next? Carter's ability to create gorgeous
and intensely moving surfaces is perhaps best heard in the orchestral
interlude entitled "The Singing Stage." This brief, wordless scene
is filled with longing and nobility and is lovely, whatever connections
we mortals are likely to be missing. (His facility is also made quite
clear throughout the dizzily spinning Asko Concerto, a 12-minute
piece for chamber orchestra from 2000 included on this ECM disc. I
won't discuss that work here except to say that it is lovely, a good
deal lighter and more quicksilver than the 1970 Concerto for Orchestra,
and that it is brilliantly performed here by Eötvös and
his Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra.)
In discussing the performance of a work as obviously difficult as
What Next? I want to stress that I have not seen the score,
and, even if I had one handy, would need to take a tremendous amount
of time and trouble before I could comfortably make any assertions
regarding accuracy. Anyone can hear, however, the beauty of tone of
both singers and instrumentalists as well as the apparent effortlessness
of the production. I remember a time when only one pianist in the
world could perform Carter's Piano Concerto - and then once
a year. Times have obviously changed: Eötvös and his Dutch
masters toy with Carter's metrical modulations, cross rhythms and
other former near-impossibilities as if they were Flemish folk tunes
for children. Everyone in the orchestra is perfectly wonderful, but
I'd feel remiss not singling out the English hornist, the four percussionists,
and the pianist for special praise. The cast is just as good. It includes
the nervous, here-and-now "Mama" (soprano Sarah Leonard); cynical
wiseguy "Harry or Larry" (baritone Dean Elzinga); Con man guru "Zen"
(tenor William Joyner); narcissistic coloratura "Rose" (Valdine Anderson)
and the tough, stargazing "Stella" (contralto Hilary Summers). All
seem entirely undaunted by the rigors and difficulties of the Carter/Griffiths
approaches to melody, rhythm, prosody, and expression. Further, words
are always clearly enunciated, despite the score's demand for consummate
athleticism, and they deliver their lines with just the right balance
of emotional involvement and dreamy detachment.
It is amazing to me, as it must be to so many others, that, even at
90, Carter was able to create a first rate work in a genre new to
him. Perhaps even more striking, however, is that What Next?
is radical in ways that many supposedly avant-garde operas by younger
composers are not. To give a couple of examples, Ligeti's Le Grand
Macabre and Rihm's Die Eroberung von Mexico are delightful
and original pieces, utilizing such devices as car horn choruses and
"coloraturas of the sea," but both also contain, if not traditional
arias, at least "set pieces" in which particular instruments or easily
identifiable themes, rhythms or sonorities are relied upon for significant
periods during discrete scenes. There are "hooks," or at least footholds.
As indicated above, that's not Carter's way. Nor is he the type to
include dancing Maoettes or references to languid Brando movies in
his works. (Still, What Next? demonstrates that he's not completely
arid: he didn't keep Griffiths from throwing in a reference to Big
Macs..) There's no question that the composer is more at home with
Ashbery than with South Park, and his opera is no exception.
What Next? fits comfortably into his heady vocal catalogue
alongside A Mirror On Which To Dwell and Syringa. By
now, I suppose it's pretty clear that Carter, like Cecil Taylor, Pierre
Boulez and Derek Bailey - to name three other 20th Century icons of
stubbornly difficult music - is not a crowd-pleaser. By his own admission,
he was never quite at ease during his brief 1940s foray into the world
of consonance and relatively easy tonality. He preferred to follow
Ives. But it wasn't Foster or Sousa or "Nearer My God To Thee"
that he wanted to bring to the contemporary concert hall, it was Donne,
Milton, Bowen and Einstein. Carter has always been an intellectual's
intellectual, ever refining his page-long algorithms, consistently
offering layer upon layer of meaning for those interested in diving
deep. Even so, Elliott Carter has never sacrificed the beautiful to
the lesser divinities of the intricate or the cerebral. His priorities
have invariably been flawless. As a result, he is one of the most
prolific creators of profoundly beautiful art - not only of our time,
but of any time.—WH
Alexandre
Bellenger / Quentin Dubost
REQUIEM FOR THE SELF
ARR09
Alexandre
Bellenger / Olivier Queysanne
4X 7 MIN 30
ARR10
Alexandre
Bellenger / Quentin Dubost / Olivier Queysanne / Romaric Sobac
TOP CHEAP REALITY SHOCKS!
ARR13
Woom
(Alexandre Bellenger / Miho)
DIARY
ARR16
MISTER RUN RUN VERSION 2
ARR19
DRING DRING GUITARS
ARR21
Various
Artists
NEAR ACOUSTIC EXTENSIONS LIVE
ARR22
Alexandre
Bellenger / Jean-Philippe Gross
AFTERNOON RIDE
ARR23
arr_infos@yahoo.fr
Some
musicians - composers, primarily - seem to function best in glorious
isolation from what is going on around them, but I happen to agree
with Steve Lacy, who once said that it was nothing less than a musician's
duty to be aware of the work of his/her contemporaries. If that is
the case, then the frequent presence of guitarist and electronician
Alexandre Bellenger, one of the younger generation of French improvisers,
at concerts here in Paris is a sure sign that he's doing his duty.
Moreover, like many others, he takes full advantage of the availability
of the latest home studio technology to document his work on self-produced
CDRs on his ARR imprint (which retail at the bargain basement price
of 6€ and are available from the email address above), of which these
eight (eight!) represent but a selection.
As might be expected from such an avid follower of the new music scene
in all its forms, Bellenger's work reveals evidence, direct and indirect,
of numerous influences. One can hear echoes of Niblock and Conrad
in Requiem for the Self, a four-movement graphic score interpreted
by Bellenger on DR5, SP303 and A100 synths and Quentin Dubost on bowed
electric guitar and engine. 4 x 7 min 30 is precisely that:
Bellenger, on A100 and Ineko, is joined by Olivier Queysanne, who's
credited as playing "Osc.Num.Mod./data-crash sur Mac iBook". Queysanne's
penchant for pushing the laptop over the edge recalls Mattin, and
the resulting scrimmage is far more engaging than his (Queysanne's)
previous solo outing on Pricilia. Top Cheap Reality Shocks! (not
too sure if that last word is a noun or verb) also features Queysanne,
in characteristically more lowercase mood, and Dubost, whose onkyo
fingerpicking graced the recent Japanese / French collaboration from:/to:
Bellenger sticks to acoustic guitar here, and Romaric Sobac (on objects
and radios) makes up the team. The point of reference here is more
obviously recent Keith Rowe (those radios..), or maybe Annette Krebs,
and the two extended pieces respectively lasting 32'54" and 20'05"
need patient and concentrated listening to yield their secrets.
Woom is Bellenger's duo with his partner Miho (on "Tascam, etc."),
who also performs in the trio Bobby Moo with Bellenger and Arnaud
Rivičre - watch out for a forthcoming album on Textile - and Diary
is altogether more active and chirpy, despite some rather ugly
synth patches. Pursuing the erstwhile / Erstwhile analogy, if Reality
Shocks is the bastard child of Weather Sky, then this belongs
to the same hyperactive world as Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler's
Bart. Mister Run Run Version 2 is a solo project featuring
Bellenger on synths, percussion and turntables, the result of several
months work in the N28 Studio in La Varenne outside Paris. Sounds
come thick and fast, piling up in logjams only to be smashed apart
by waves of Kevin Drumm-like noise. In stark contrast, the beautiful,
clear and unashamedly diatonic, nay tonal, guitar on Dring
Dring Guitars would seem to indicate that Bellenger's been listening
to Grubbs, Fahey and Connors too, not to mention Siewert and Stangl.
If the music has picked up something of the pale beauty of the aforementioned
fingerpickers, it has though also inherited something of its aimlessness,
particularly the second 21 minute cut. Near Acoustic Extensions
Live is, as its title suggests, a concert recording from La Guillotine
in Montreuil, and features Bellenger with Olivier Brisson (bass drum
and cymbals), Thomas Charmetant (cello), Quentin Dubost (guitar and
objects), Jacques Pochat (tenor sax), Arnaud Rivičre (cymbals and
feedback) and Romaric Sobac (guitar frame, turning objects (!) and
rubbings (!!)). The two pieces, entitled "Satique 3" and "Satique
2" - a pun one imagines on "statique" and "Satie" - return to the
sombre slowmoving dirge of Requiem. If the furniture music
of Satie is intended to be a reference point, one can only say that
the furniture concerned must be as grey and dusty as the identical
suits discovered in Satie's Arcueil apartment after his death.
Each of these discs has much to commend it, but for my money the pearl
of the collection is Afternoon Ride, with Metz-based Jean-Philippe
Gross on electric conductors and mixing board and Bellenger on "dj
stuff slightly modified" (I should point out that the fact that Bellenger
healthily abuses one of my own albums on his turntables has in no
way coloured my judgement..). Once more, Mattin comes to mind in the
extreme juxtapositions of noise and silence - one recalls the Basque
laptopper's equal admiration for artists as diverse as Radu Malfatti
and Whitehouse - culminating in some spectacular and thrilling sonic
train wrecks. It's no coincidence that this is also the most recent
recording of the set, as it's solid proof that Alexandre Bellenger
is evolving rapidly into an artist to watch. It's clear he's quite
at home wearing several different hats, and at some stage one imagines
he might have to choose which one of these distinct voices he really
wants to develop. That is in no way intended to sound haughty and
demeaning - Bellenger is, after all, doing his duty. It's worth bearing
in mind though that the abovementioned advice comes from none other
than Steve Lacy, a truly distinctive voice in recent musical history
if ever there was one. Meanwhile, if you have any € to spare, you
know right where to go.—DW
Tonalamotl
MO(VE)MENTSUM
Sedimental SEDCD 033
Seth
Nehil / Olivia Block
SUNDER, UNITE
Sedimental SEDCD 034
Giuseppe
Ielasi
PLANS
Sedimental SEDCD 035
Reynols
THE WHISTLING KETTLE QUARTET
Sedimental SED1LP
David Gross / Liz Tonne
PERFORMING SUNDAY 7:30
Sedimental SED10in01
 Having
made some spectacular mistakes in the past while reviewing discs,
I now spend some considerable time cruising round Google for background
information before committing pen to paper (a dumb expression, that,
considering I only ever pick up a pen these days to sign a rent cheque).
With Texas-based Tonalamotl, the web search is as long, multidirectional,
occasionally frustrating and occasionally hilarious as their music
- these three extended pieces of improvised music were originally
recorded back in the happy days of 1997 and 1998, when Blur and Oasis
were battling in Britain, Tony Blair was actually popular, and the
only people who knew shit about George W. Bush were the good people
of Texas, presumably including the musicians featured here, who include
Andy Beta, Chris Branca, Sam Sanford, Ryan Sawyer and Jeffrey Filla
(contrary as to what might be gleaned from the sleeve, Rick Reed does
not play on this recording). How the world has changed in six years..
Leaving Bush and his cronies out of it, now we have something called
"eai", which is more or less what Tonalamotl are engaged in producing
here (though I imagine they'd be happier just to call it "music"):
spacious, predominantly slowmoving, laminal improvisation featuring
a wide range of colourful instruments and techniques, acoustic and
electronic. It's tempting to play the "American primitive" card here,
the paucity of information on the group conjuring up images of bearded
marginal loons living in isolated shacks, but if you did so you'd
be in the wrong casino. One only has to read through Andy Beta's favourite
albums of 2002 (go Google) to discover the guy has a wide knowledge
of the field and exquisite taste to boot. It's not surprising he digs
Jac Berrocal's Musiq Musik, one of the freshest, weirdest,
wildest and least pretentious albums of improvised music ever released.
Branca and Filla, who appeared with Sedimental's Rob Forman on the
splendidly titled Abrasion Ensemble's "Music for the Same 50 People"
on Beta Lactam Ring know their onions too. The music on these three
tracks manages to reference a wide range of influences while remaining
stubbornly original and not slipping into improv cliché. Nonetheless,
that funky triangle kicking in at the opening of "I35" comes as a
surprise (what is this? Latino impro?). Over a grisly pedal point,
layers of sound pile on top of each other - passing police car sirens,
birdsong, a set of claves, what sounds like a bicycle bell (Beta playing
Berrocal again?), until the piece begins to pull itself apart after
about eight minutes, with a flurry of footsteps, furniture being dragged
across the floor (homage to La Monte Young?) and various things being
thrown to the ground, until someone finally calls for the machines
to be turned off. But the tape continues to roll throughout the band's
post mortem discussion: "You can't just end a piece like that!" "It
was over.." "Maybe for you, but.." "It's too late now.." Indeed it
is too late, because "I35" is out and about - and has been for a while
now - and well worth hunting down.
 So is
Sunder, Unite, Olivia Block's third outing on Sedimental (after
2001's Mobius Fuse and 1999's Pure Gaze). The music
is recognisably Nehil and Block, in that it shows their habitual concern
for building huge mass effects out of hundreds - maybe thousands -
of tiny shards of sound, often sourced from recognisable materials
(stone, wood, fire..). As the title suggests though, the surface is
more discontinuous, sprinkled with sonic sawdust originating from
material Nehil and Block recorded in concert, as well as from contributions
from guest musicians including Michael Northam (on "objects") and
reed players Kyle Bruckmann and Michael Shannon. Don't expect instantly
recognisable blasts of Bruckmann multiphonics, though - his material
is just as subject to the same process-heavy manipulation as the field
recordings. Shannon is more recognisable in the final track, but just
when you think you're getting a handle on things, the music stops
without warning at 1'50" only to reappear for one second at 2'07".
The effect, coming as it does at the end of the album, a moment when
one normally expects if not a sense of resolution at least one of
closure, is quite disturbing. Further listening only deepens the mystery.
 There's
a fair amount of sundering and uniting to be found on Plans,
a single 31 minute span of music recomposed from music apparently
recorded live at various venues in Europe, including our local watering
hole Les Instants Chavirés, by guitarist / electronician and Fringes
label manager Giuseppe Ielasi. Here he's at his most accessible: there's
even an odd backbeat and some unambiguously tonal harmony in there,
though it's often buried under a moss of field recordings and trademark
eai crackles, crunches and wheezes. There's also a lot of percussion
(it may be my imagination, but it sounds like Ingar Zach), though
it too has been mulched into a thousands of tiny fragments and scattered
across the stereo space. It's curious that the inner sleeve art shows
a handful of people standing on a seashore in front of an expanse
of blue grey sea, as many of the disc's most memorable moments are
distinctly inland, and predominantly urban - a montage of slamming
doors, a garden full of a birdsong - but the hazy, slightly sepia-inflected
photography suits the music's spacious feel rather well nevertheless.
 The
exploits of the Argentinean band Reynols are no doubt familiar to
readers of this site (if they aren't, go check out last year's interview).
"Everyone deserves a Reynols gig," Roberto Conlazo famously observed,
and by the same logic, every record label in the world deserves a
Reynols album. Looking at the group's enormous discography it seems
many already have one. Sedimental's release, a one sided LP (side
two sounds great too until the needle skids into the label at the
middle) released in a limited edition of 500, was recorded in Buenos
Aires in mid 2002, when the group still officially existed (technically,
Reynols no longer exists - at least not with its original founder
member / guru Miguel Tomasin - but as the group claimed never to have
existed in the first place, this is open to discussion). It features
a quartet of differently pitched whistling kettles, humorously described
as baritone, tenor, contralto and soprano instruments, a classical
music allusion pursued in the work's subdivision into three movements
- Andante Mogal, Moderato uno Surido Fermo and Allegro Repuliom Lanidelo.
Gerard Hoffnung must be chuckling in the hereafter. But as was the
case with Reynols' most notorious projects - the 10,000 Chickens
Symphony and Blank Tapes - the musical substance behind
the tongue-in-cheek anarchy is more than compelling. The use of whistling
kettles is not only perfectly coherent with Reynols' exploration of
the drone in its many diverse forms, but is eerily moving. As anyone
who has a whistling kettle will tell you, the pitch of the whistle
when the water comes to the boil is never stable, but fluctuates erratically
in a manner very close to the human voice. When transposed up - as
in the finale - it becomes a penetrating screech. What might seem
on face value as a mere joke is in fact a coherently structured and
rewarding piece of music.
 Based
as they are in Boston, it's only natural that the Sedimental catalogue
should prominently feature the music of the city's improvising community,
of which saxophonist / clarinettist David Gross and vocalist Liz Tonne
are important members. Gross' playing has certainly come a long way
since the earwax melting assault of 1999's Fetish (Tautology),
and Tonne's vocal talents, already eloquently featured on another
fine and strongly recommended Sedimental outing, James Coleman's Zuihitsu,
are most impressive in this two all too brief extracts from concerts
the duo gave in Houston and Atlanta in November 2001. Curiously enough,
it's Tonne who often sounds more like a saxophone, indulging in some
bloodcurdling multiphonics (Diamanda Galas would be proud) on "Houston".
Gross' horn meanwhile sounds more like a grainy tape loop. It's a
shame there isn't more of this amazing stuff on offer, but there is
something to be said for choosing the 10" format. There's a distinct
sense of overkill in today's improvised music, an apparent need on
the part of many artists (one might, unfortunately, include my friends
Reynols in this) to release as much as possible into an already saturated
market, instead of taking the time to select only truly exemplary
material for release. And exemplary the music certainly is, not only
on this EP but throughout the Sedimental catalogue.—DW
Songs
of Norway
DESPITE THE CLOAK
Beta-lactam Ring mt058a LP + 7"
 No,
don't worry, we haven't branched out into Norwegian folk music at
PT - yet.. though I do have a rather wonderful album of Hardanger
fiddle music - a quick glance at the personnel involved here (Nick
Mott, Aaron Moore, aided and abetted by Daniel Padden and Stewart
Brackley on a couple of tracks) reveals that Songs Of Norway, which
is indeed the name of the group, is another incarnation of Leicester's
finest alt.rockers, Volcano The Bear. Or rather pre-incarnation,
since, as percussionist Moore points out by email, SON started up
in 1995, six months before Volcano The Bear. VTB, of course, went
on to become rather well-known, especially after they released the
deliciously weird Five Hundred Boy Piano on United Dairies,
the mythic label curated by Steven "Nurse With Wound" Stapleton, to
whose isolated Irish homestead our intrepid Leicester lads were duly
driven to say hello. SON, meanwhile has continued in the shadows ("we've
only played about a dozen gigs so far", confides Moore). Now that
Daniel Padden has relocated to Glasgow (or thereabouts) and Laurence
"Earth Trumpet" Coleman seems to have withdrawn from circulation
somewhat, VTB have recently taken to appearing as a Mott / Moore duo,
which is effectively what SON has been since it started. "I think
we were trying to be a jazz improv band," Moore continues. "Imagine
a couple of ex 'rock' musicians and a standard jazz musician undoing
what they knew and creating a new way to play. I suppose we were quite
naďve, Leicester not being the free music capital of the world, but
we stuck to our guns and came up with Despite The Cloak."
The album title as it appears on the cover of this glamorous and wonderfully
heavy vinyl is peppered with accents, not only the de rigueur umlauts,
but even a stray circumflex and cedilla too. It's a typical VTB/SON
gesture, an affectionate nod towards a seemingly inexplicable tradition
(why did metal bands start sticking bloody umlauts on every
available vowel? Who started it? Blue Oyster Cult? Write in and tell
me, I'm curious). So is the music - what makes Mott and Moore's work
so refreshing and enjoyable is its avoidance of just about any and
every standard improv cliché. Mott's guitar and violin playing are
about as far from a Bailey or a Wachsmann as you could probably hope
to get, and Moore's percussion work steers well clear of the clatter
/ splash of improv legends like Bennink, Lovens and Turner. And though
both intone vocals from time to time, their throaty droning seems
to have beamed down from an alternative solar system. Nor is the music
a conscious attempt to be weird for its own sake - in fact it doesn't
sound weird at all - or a subversive Alterations-style anything-goes
anarchic melting pot. This is remarkably lyrical, even melancholic,
music, and has more in common with the more bucolic fringes of early
1970s free jazz (Marion Brown, Sea Ensemble..) than with "traditional"
improv.
In concert - witness Mott and Moore's recent appearance under the
VTB moniker at the Textile Festival - these guys are just as original.
Avoiding the dully matter-of-fact stage presence (non-presence, rather)
of "serious" improvisers, especially the new species of laptoppers
who stare fixedly into Powerbooks as if they were dealing intra-day
corn futures for Goldman Sachs, Moore rolls his cymbals and round
the stage, stands on chairs and toots his trumpet into Mott's earhole,
before scurrying back to the kit for a passionate volley of splattery
post-prog percussion. And the great thing is that throughout such
antics the quality and creativity of the music they make remains consistently
high. Of course, improv snobs better steer clear - you could even
sing along with some of this, and that just won't do, will it? - but
if you're in search of a fresh take on free playing, seek this out
(this and the recent VTB outing The Idea Of Wood on Textile).
Some of the deluxe heavyweight LPs come with a 7" single tucked away
inside containing two songs entitled "Freddie" and "Hubbard", but
all come decorated with Mott's gently surreal artwork - somewhere
between Chagall, Picasso, Keith Haring and prehistoric cave painting.
All in all, a splendid outing from a team of real originals.—DW
Ingar
Zach/Ivar Grydeland
YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN ME BEFORE WE FIRST MET
Sofa 515
No
Spaghetti Edition
REAL TIME SATELLITE DATA
Sofa 513
My
previous exposure to the Zach/Grydeland duo was "Dog," a track off
their previous Sofa CD Visiting Ants included in a label compilation.
It was cut-and-thrust guitar/drums improv, in direct descent from
the Derek Bailey/Han Bennink encounters of the past. On You Should
Have Seen Me... they decamp for the minimalist-improv zone. There
are just two long tracks, recorded a few months apart in 2003 but
very similar in texture and pace. Grydeland works thoughtfully away
at his acoustic guitar; Zach bows cymbals, uses mallets or strokes
bells, or elicits from a sruti box a gentle, ever-changing drone (somewhere
between a harmonium and the whine of a distant lawnmower in the summer
heat). It's a very small palette, but Zach and Grydeland make the
most of it, and at 48 minutes the disc doesn't overstay its welcome.
Very nice - maybe too nice.
No Spaghetti Edition is the name given to a series of large-ensemble
projects on Sofa which bring together a core trio of Norwegian players
(Zach, Grydeland and bassist Tonny Kluften) and an ever-changing battery
of European improvisers. For the concert on Real Time Satellite
Data, recorded last June in a church in Oslo, the European contingent
contains many of the usual suspects from the more astringent end of
the improv scene: Axel Dörner, Xavier Charles, Michel Doneda, Rhodri
Davies, Andrea Neumann. Someone with a dry sense of humour seems to
have been responsible for the track titles (the two longest pieces
- 21 and 30 minutes, respectively - are called "In Gasping Death"
and "Who Is Changing Places") and for the digipak design, whose only
image is a snazzy red piechart that graphs how much of the album's
running-time goes to each track. The music is similarly far from austere:
the volume level is generally low and the pace leisurely, as is the
fashion nowadays, but the activity level is nonetheless quite high,
which is good for impatient finger-drumming types like myself. There's
an intriguing range of musical approaches here. The idioms of players
like Davies, Neumann and Dörner are so abstracted from recognizable
instrumental sounds that most of the time it's pretty hard to pick
out their contributions, while the Norwegians' drums, guitar and bass
mostly sound like drums, guitar and bass. Doneda and Charles are somewhere
between these poles of abstract sound and more familiar instrumental
sound. Just about every branch of improv is delicately broached: scrape/pling
guitar; scrims of neutral electronic hiss and fizz; guess-who's-playing
puzzles; scaled-down twittering Evan Parkerisms; stretches of near-inaudibility;
rummaging-in-a-drawer percussion; microtonal drones; the odd barnyard
squabble. Despite the size of the ensemble the general tone is light
and silvery, and it makes perfect sense when Zach's chimes ring out
midway through "Who Is Changing Places". Good stuff, from a particularly
strong edition of the No Spaghetti Edition.—ND
Ellery
Eskelin with Andrea Parkins & Jim Black
ON THE ROAD WITH
Prime Source DVD 3010
One
of the more reassuring constants of the jazz world over the last ten
years has been tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin's trio with Andrea
Parkins on keyboards, sampler and accordion, and Jim Black on drums.
Although all three play in other settings, there's a certain synergy
to this group that makes each new release a cause for excitement.
Seven albums, starting on Songlines with Jazz Trash and continuing
on Hatology, document their growth as a group that doesn't run out
of new things to explore with passion and integrity. In that regard
they recall the George Adams / Don Pullen Quartet, another outfit
that never lost its edge throughout years of performing.
Although Eskelin, Parkins and Black tour regularly, some of us off
the beaten path haven't had the pleasure of seeing them perform, so
the release of a DVD documenting their 2003 European tour as the players
work their magic throughout France, Poland, Germany and the U.K. should
be cause for celebration. But a few caveats are in order. First, anybody
expecting to see footage of the quality of Talking Heads' Stop
Making Sense is in for an unpleasant surprise. Shot with a camcorder
seemingly thrown in on a whim, this provides few interesting views
of the band. Moreover, because of either the varying quality of the
video or other considerations, no song is shown in its entirety -
as the DVD lasts an hour time should not have been a factor - and
concert footage of the trio in action is interspersed with solo performances
from the Festival Les 100 Ciels in Nancy which, although interesting
in their own right, lack the group dynamic that the trio sustains
so well. Also jarring to the group dynamic is the inclusion of vocalist
Jessica Constable, who joins the trio in Paris (we see her penning
in her name in on the list of groups appearing at the club). In between
concerts, the group is shown in vignettes illustrating the DVD title,
with each of the players maintaining likeable if clearly sleep-deprived
personae. Taken as a whole, On The Road With pales in comparison
to any of the group's albums, which can be recommended without any
reservation.—SG
Read Ellery Eskelin's response to this review on the PT
Letters Page —DW
Rich
Halley
OBJECTS
Louie 025
THE BLUE RIMS
Louie 030
Rich
Halley is a veteran but largely unheralded saxophonist from Portland,
Oregon. Objects is classic sax/bass/drums blowing, and it's
tremendous stuff all round. Halley's tenor-playing is stern and carefully-weighted,
his lines so definite they sound like they're carved on the air; his
soprano playing has something of the genial detachment of Steve Lacy.
This is a group which often reverses roles: here, the horn is often
the most stable element of the music, while bassist Clyde Reed and
drummer Dave Storrs are the quickchange artists. There's one standard,
a gorgeous, tumultuous "Over the Rainbow": Halley's tenor statement
is full of echoes of gospel and spirituals, while Reed's solo comes
straight out of Charlie Haden's book. The other five pieces take their
bearings from simple but effective heads by Halley, though the performances
are sufficiently freewheeling that there's no telling where they'll
go. The tour de force is the 16-minute "Thickets/Pavements",
which starts in exotic territory familiar to listeners of the Lloyd/Higgins
Which Way Is East (wood flute and teeming percussive undergrowth)
before Halley's tenor pierces its fabric. Reed and Storrs are particularly
unguessable, from moment to moment holding back and letting fly, swinging
and not swinging. The piece seems to draw to an end as its return
to the opening thickets of percussion, but there's an unexpected coda,
a strutting blues groove that brings the album to a satisfying close.
A year later Halley's group returned to the studio again to make The
Blue Rims in the company of veteran trumpeter Bobby Bradford.
The results are cooler and more linear than Objects. Bradford
plays measured, lemon-ice trumpet, spinning solos out of small melodic
cells - anything from a snippet of "Petite Fleur" to a "momma done
told me" blues phrase can provide him with the basis of a solo. Reed
and Storrs play well but without the whirling energy of the earlier
disc, and typically gravitate towards loping mid-tempo grooves. It's
when Halley steps to the mike that things begin to heat up - check
out his winding, inflammatory solo on "Old Fields". Even that track,
like others on the album, has its dead spots, though: the bass solo
that follows is uneventful, but things perk up when Bradford gets
off a good, cooled-out trumpet solo before the piece fades out rather
weakly with a long drums and hand-percussion episode. It's nice to
see Bradford back in front of the mics - every addition to his sparse
discography is welcome - but if you want to hear Halley and his cohorts
at their best Objects is the one to go for.—ND
Craig
Taborn
JUNK MAGIC
Thirsty Ear Blue Series THI 57144.2
"Craig
Taborn Is The Future Of Jazz", reads the little sticker on the album
cover. It's the kind of statement that, despite the cool blue plastic
of the jewel box, makes at least this reviewer see red, the problem
being the use of that definite article - as if no other future of
jazz were imaginable. At least Junk Magic is more interesting
than the insipid McJazz of other recent Blue Series outings, which
feature major league musicians like William Parker and Matthew Shipp
playing down to the level of uninspired / uninspiring collaborators
from the world of hip hop. In addition to playing keyboards, Taborn
is responsible for programming here, and is joined by Mat Maneri on
viola, Aaron Stewart on tenor sax and David King on drums. While the
surface of their music is attractive, managing to combine the laidback
and spacious - Stewart and Maneri complement each other well on the
wan, pastel "Shining Through" - and the propulsive, the tracks are
too often hampered by a conspicuous lack of harmonic movement. This
is par for the course for a group like The Necks or Trapist, but somehow
one expects something more flashy and impressive from a virtuoso pianist
such as Taborn. The opening title track is a cunning seven against
five polyrhythm that trucks along admirably until he unfortunately
pulls the plug after just six minutes. Similarly, "Mystero" seems
to kick up a head of steam without ever actually going anywhere, like
sitting in a car and revving madly without ever shifting out of neutral.
"Prismatica" starts out more openly funky, but its spiky post M-Base
rhythmics are overlaid with so much reverberant programming finery
that it the feet gradually stop tapping. "Bodies At Rest And In Motion"
is more engaging, taking the technology out into more open pastures,
but the crude binary drum machine slash of "Stalagmite" (comparing
it to late 70s Brecker Bros and Doo Wop style Miles is doing
both a disservice) manages in just 69 seconds to erase its subtlety.
The closing "The Golden Age" sits on a pedal point throughout, taking
the album out in more contemplative ECM mode. Terje Rypdal could come
sailing in and one wouldn't be surprised, even though Taborn's keyboards
sound more like Eno on the B side of Bowie's Heroes. Digital
squiggles and swoops gradually cloud the clear blue sky, prompting
Maneri to rise above mezzoforte (for once) in a beautifully paced
performance. It's a satisfying end to a good album - if not the future
of jazz, but certainly a future, and one for these musicians to explore
further on subsequent outings.—DW
Steve
Lacy
THE HOLY LA
Free Lance New Series FRL NS 0201
Since
the mid-1990s Steve Lacy's preferred group format has been a trio
featuring his long-time companions, bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and
drummer John Betsch. The Holy La was recorded in 1998, as something
of a follow-up to Lacy's previous disc on the label, Bye-Ya
(1996), though it took some time to emerge: it was eventually released
in 2001, after Irene Aëbi completed it by overdubbing vocals onto
two tracks; a new edition was released by Sunnyside in 2003, with
different cover-art. The disc begins with a slightly sub par reading
of his preferred latter-day set-opener, Monk's "Shuffle Boil": Lacy
glides unemphatically over the changes, as if running his fingers
over the tune's contours rather than pushing against them. Comparison
with the brisk, acerbic version of the piece on his 1992 date We
See (recently reissued on Hatology) reveals how wistful Lacy's
sound has grown in recent years. The rest of the album - a set of
eight Lacy originals, some old, some new - is fortunately well up
to scratch. Beneath the music's angular surfaces and friendly trio
interplay, the mood is full of autumnal echoes. The three new tunes
are "Blue Jay" (dedicated to bassist J.F. Jenny-Clark, who died shortly
after this recording was made), "Inside My Head" (a new setting of
Robert Creeley), and "The Holy La", dedicated to Leonard Bernstein.
Its title refers to A440, the standardized reference-point for pitch
in Western music: the melody is echt Lacy - each phrase a musical
question, which can apparently only be answered by repeating the question
- and Lacy's solo is snaky and hypnotic. Of the readings of older
material, one highlight is a shivery, radiant version of "Flakes",
a piece inspired by the art of Mark Rothko and the pleasures of ice
skating ("which I can no longer do", Lacy sadly remarks in his liner
notes). It is marked by Avenel's extraordinary pizzicato bass solo
which closely imitates the sound of a thumbpiano; as Lacy returns
the music gently breaks apart, like breath dissolving in winter air.
Skeptics about Steve Lacy's music generally fall into two camps: those
who find his music rather chilly, and those who frown at his wife
Irene Aëbi's singing. Both sides would do well to listen to "The Retreat",
Lacy's setting of Thomas Gainsborough's words about retirement and
approaching mortality. It is one of his most affecting performances.
—ND
Derek
Bailey
POETRY
& PLAYING
Paratactile PLE1116-2
If
you missed out on the obscure Rectangle single a couple of years ago
which featured Wire and STN journalist and poet Ben Watson reading
his verse along with Derek Bailey's guitar, and are still waiting
for Watson's forthcoming Bailey biography to provide more details
on the numerous links that exist between British improv and the so-called
Cambridge poetry scene, here is another brief helping of poetry plus
improv, this time read by the guitarist himself. The choice of poets
is contemporary and music-related (somehow I can't imagine Derek reading
"Elegy in a Country Churchyard"...): Steve Dalachinsky's contacts
with eminent American jazz musicians are well known, Lyn Hejinian
is married to ROVA's Larry Ochs, and is a friend and collaborator
of John Zorn, while Peter Riley is a friend of Bailey's of long standing,
and was responsible for the first published interview with the guitarist
back in 1974. His "Company Week" and "The Musicians, The Instruments"
are worth seeking out as some of the few worthwhile instances of what
Nate Dorward describes as "hybrid poetry/criticism on free improv".
Those familiar with Bailey's spoken voice in the hilarious "George"
on Play Backs and the more recent Chats (available from
Incus as a CDR), might have difficulty associating his laconic delivery
with the so-called serious world of poetry, or at least the received
notion of what poetry ought to sound like when read - declaimed, rather
- in public (the ranting melodies of Dylan Thomas, the taut emotion
of Robert Lowell...). It's a shame the good people at Paratactile
- RIP the label's executive producer Trevor Manwaring, by the way
- couldn't have come up with extra cash to print the texts in a decent
booklet, as the appearance of the poems on the printed page might
suggest more structural cross-connections between the structure of
the poetry and Bailey's inimitable guitar phrasing. (Maybe it's just
as well they didn't, though, as Bailey does misquote the poems on
occasion...) Whether he memorised the texts or had them in front of
him while recording is unclear, but hearing Steve Dalachinsky's tales
of junkies and jones read in the guitarist's inimitable Northern English
accent sounds about as culturally mismatched as Kenneth Branagh reading
"The Basketball Diaries", or Ginsberg reading Rupert Brooke. —DW
Jon
Mueller / Bhob Rainey / Jim Schoenecker
Crouton Music Crouton 23
The
problem of coming up with a satisfactory term to describe certain
recent trends in improvised music is one we've been grappling with
for a while - saxophonist Bhob Rainey's eloquent refusal to accept
"reductionist" (in a letter published in Signal To Noise) is no doubt
familiar to many readers, as is my own preference for "lowercase"
(referred to elsewhere). The problem with "lowercase" though is that
it not only implies that such music that is predominantly slow and
quiet, but also that it somehow might lack intensity, that it's somehow
cool - in the temperature sense of the word. But anyone listening
to Rainey's work with Greg Kelley in nmperign, or recent outings on
labels such as Creative Sources and Charhizma cannot fail to notice
the terrific intensity of much of this music, its sheer heat. The
cover of this latest outing on percussionist Jon Mueller's elegant
Crouton label is a drawing of a toaster (with a Simon Templar halo
floating above it), and even if you didn't know it was recorded "with
one mic in a small room at Bhob's house, no ventilation, blazing hot
out/in, sweating, and huddling around the a/c in between takes" (to
quote an email from Mueller), you can practically hear sweat dripping.
On "[here teething moths have passed]", Jim Schoenecker's synthesizer
interfaces with Mueller's short-circuit driven snare drums and Rainey's
molten saliva splutters to produce something that sounds like a Heftybag
full of locusts being slowly grilled on a barbecue. As in the legendary
AMM Crypt recordings, the acoustic of the space is the invisible
fourth member of the quartet - had these three set up shop in one
of those old, resonant Massachusetts churches the music quite simply
would not have come out the same. Mueller's work at the beginning
of "[holes]" sounds like a secretive nocturnal mammal rummaging in
a garbage can after dark, but without reverberation, his swipes in
the middle of the piece are suffocated in Schoenecker's warm drone
blanket. Rainey even manages to sound like he's actually inside
the snare drum, and it's hot in there. The two slowburning central
tracks are bookended by brief squirts of lighter fluid, "[shredded
paper, but]" and "[too tattered to read]". Be sure to use oven gloves
to remove the disc from the sleeve in case you burn your fingers off:
maybe it's not a halo after all, but a smoke ring.—DW
Sophie
Agnel/Olivier Benoit
RIP-STOP
In Situ IS237
On
the cover of Rip-Stop is a sculpture resembling a translucent
bale of hay made out of wire, or the world's biggest steelwool pad.
It's a fitting image for this encounter between two musicians who
specialize in coaxing sounds out of metal under tension. The instrumentation
- piano and guitar - recalls the AMM-minus-one of Duos for Doris,
though Agnel and Benoit's palette is less colourful; they are similarly
patient improvisers, constructing long improvisations through the
patient addition and scraping-away of acoustic layers. Passages of
violent activity are comparatively brief; on the whole, both the white-noise
climaxes and the drawn-out near-silences transpire slowly and calmly,
like snowdrifts piling up or vapour trails evaporating. Agnel's piano
flecks and dots the dense, overtone-rich haze, on occasion rupturing
it but more often just giving it a gentle stir. Despite the album's
wide range in levels of volume and activity, it does come across as
somewhat monochrome. It also tends to skirt moments of genuine uncanniness
or of poetry, making this a much less rich and strange experience
than Rouge Gris Bruit, Agnel's earlier trio disc with Lionel
Marchetti and Jérôme Noetinger on Potlatch. On its own terms, though,
Rip-Stop is a successful album, as elegant and astringent as
that wire sculpture planted on the art-gallery floor.—ND
Mike
Hansen/Tomasz Krakowiak
RELAY
Spool Field 4
Mike
Hansen is a visual artist and sculptor on the Toronto scene, and the
host of WhyNot Jazz, a radio show devoted to free jazz and improv.
The music on the show has shifted over the years from upper- to lowercase,
and as a player Hansen has shifted with it, from drums to turntables
and electronics. One of his regular playing partners is percussionist
Tomasz Krakowiak, who uses a set-up similar to Lę Quan Ninh's: "amplified
drum table" (i.e. an upturned drum used as a worktable for assorted
percussion and small objects). Krakowiak is a very quiet player, sometimes
to a frustrating degree. On Equation,
an earlier trio album on Spool with Hansen and John Butcher, you could
barely detect him at all (though the recording engineer may well have
been at fault). Relay is better recorded, fortunately, and
Krakowiak's contributions to the music are clearer. These four long
improvisations were recorded at Hansen's studio space - there's even
a contribution or two from passing Spadina traffic - and they have
a suitably relaxed quality, rather like a slowed-down conversation.
New material - a gentle scrape (a tap, a pop..) - is introduced and
immediately looped; it's joined by another answering scrape (a tap,
a pop..), which becomes a second loop with a slightly different periodicity.
A few minutes go by, with some minor readjustments or additional layers,
before the musical slideshow moves on. Eventually you begin to long
for more singular events and less looping, or at least a subtler use
of the technique: too much of this is machines murmuring gently but
volubly to themselves. The encouraging thing about Relay is
that it's entirely lacking in the doctrinaire chilliness of certain
areas of the electroacoustic scene, but its actual musical processes
are too predictable to hold the attention for the length of the disc.—ND
Steuart
Liebig / The Mentones
LOCUSTLAND
pfMENTUM CD017
After
Ornette's Free Jazz and Sir Joe Quarterman's Free Soul, here
comes free R&B - if that isn't a contradiction of terms - in the form
of a four-piece band from LA fronted by the alto sax of Tony Atherton
and the harmonica of Bill Barrett, and directed from the rear of the
limo by bassist Steuart Liebig. At the wheel is testosterone-dripping
drummer Joe Berardi, who, if he isn't quite Ronald Shannon Jackson
(who is?), was probably weaned on the Decoding Society like the rest
of them. Liebig's rubbery bass lines when things get funky certainly
recall the finest moments of the Rev Bruce Johnson, but the real revelation
here is Barrett, eloquently described by GE Stinson in his liners
as "Little Walter crashing his Coupe de Ville into Ornette Coleman's
harmolodien". Track titles like "Drifter", "Nighthawk" and "Gasoline
Jelly" say it all; unless you're lucky enough to catch these guys
live, and I would certainly like to do so, this is one to slap into
the car stereo and cruise the streets to. From the Naked City style
surf of "Burnt Umber" to the harmolodic punk funk of "Nowhere Calling",
it's one fun drive.—DW
Free
Fall
FURNACE
Wobbly Rail 013
Ken
Vandermark must enjoy having multiple irons in the fire: his Website
reveals that since the end of February he's appeared with the DKV
Trio, Tripleplay, Vandermark 5, School Days, Peter Brötzmann's Chicago
Tentet, a trio with Erik Friedlander and Tim Daisy, not to mention
this current trio. And that is far from the full catalog of his musical
groupings and associations. Free Fall was the title of the
third and final recording by the 1961-62 Jimmy Giuffre Trio (with
Paul Bley and Steve Swallow), a truly seminal album despite its intermittent
availability over the years. Vandermark's trio replicates the instrumentation
of Giuffre's group with pianist Hĺvard Wiik (who has previously appeared
in Atomic and Element) and bassist Ingebrigt Hĺker Flaten (also in
Atomic as well as Vandermark associations in the AALY trio and School
Days). The liner notes make it clear that this is not a Giuffre tribute
band and the results of this October 2002 appearance at the Festiviteten
in Eisvold, Norway (oddly bereft of any audience sounds) bear this
out. On Furnace the trio plays throughout whereas half of Free
Fall's tracks were solo Giuffre improvisations, and Vandermark
employs an atypically loose and airy tone on his clarinet and bass
clarinet (an instrument Giuffre didn't employ on the original) which
is at odds with Giuffre's more piercing tone. Even so, the compositions
recall the floating tempi and quiet fragmentation of the earlier disc.
The majority of the compositions are by Vandermark, with each dedicated
as usual to an artist that he admires; pianist Wiik contributes three
selections and Flaten just one. I find the bassist's and pianist's
compositions to be better suited for this type of music, with their
employment of quirky melodies that sound at once familiar but unusual.
Though Vandermark's compositions and playing are more enjoyable more
in other settings, he still acquits himself very well. With the exception
of the frenetic title track, the pieces are quite languid in pace,
and nobody engages in ostentatious displays of instrumental prowess;
the emphasis is on understated group interaction. It's very much in
keeping with the spirit of the original Free Fall and represents
a job well done. —SG
Glenn
Branca
LESSON NO.1
Acute ACT 005
This
isn't the first time Glenn Branca's "Lesson No.1" and "Dissonance",
originally released in 1980 on Ed Bahlman's mythic 99 Records label,
have appeared on CD, but even if you did invest in the first reissue
you might want to consider picking this up too, since Acute's package
also contains "Bad Smells", Branca's 1982 ballet score for Twyla Tharp
(originally on a split LP called Who Are You Staring At? with
John Giorno on his GPS label) and a 17-minute Quicktime movie of Branca
conducting (if that's the word) his "Symphony No.5" in 1984. Moreover,
the music has been remastered by that doyen of No Wave connoisseurs
Weasel Walter and comes with a snazzy set of liners by mainman Alan
Licht. I make that four damn good reasons to get your wallet out and
your earplugs in.
I've only seen Branca's band once in concert, but won't forget the
experience. As the guitarists filed onstage and plugged in, the amp
buzz alone was as loud as most of music that ever gets performed in
Paris' genteel Théâtre de la Ville; once Branca brought his fists
down and the whole band kicked in, the sheer volume was absolutely
terrifying. Thank God we were sitting near the back of the hall, an
excellent vantage point from where we watched well over half the packed
house run for the exits, fingers stuffed in bleeding ears. Two other
events from that evening stick in my mind, one the sight of Branca
anointing himself with the contents of a Coke bottle, the other that
I couldn't hear a fucking thing for three days. Goodness knows what
they were playing, but it wasn't "Symphony No.5", because that piece
starts quietly before building to its inevitable surging climax. The
sound quality on the Quicktime video isn't all that wonderful, but
there are plenty of shots of Branca in full swing. Literally. And
I used to think Lenny Bernstein overdid it.
Back in 1979, after formative experiences in No Wave outfits Theoretical
Girls and Static, Branca's music was more angular and rhythmically
defined. "Lesson No.1" is defiantly tonal (well, if tonal means sitting
on one major chord throughout) and rocks out. In a recent email Branca
took issue with Alan Licht's mentioning an anecdote of keyboard player
Anthony Coleman to the effect that the composer at the time was "listening
heavily to Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" ("you can almost
sing Ian Curtis' melody over it", Licht states.. well, yes, along
with several Velvets, Ramones, Voidoids and Stooges songs if you give
the matter some thought), but put that down to Licht's mission statement
in the liners that Branca was (is?) "the first post modern composer".
"Dissonance" is much more, erm, dissonant, but what became the trademark
ugly clusters of late 80s Branca were still intercut with more varied
rhythmic patterns, including a part for sledgehammer. As Licht points
out, it doesn't quite compare to Z'ev's sheet metal bashing on Branca's
"Symphony No.2" - in fact it sounds more like someone playing a contact-miked
metal ashtray with a ballpoint pen - but its irregular punctuations
open up the structure and make "Dissonance" one of Branca's more accessible
works. Accessible, yet uncompromising. The same can be said of "Bad
Smells", which kicks off with a raucous gallop sounding like a cross
between Ennio Morricone and Phill Niblock. Change comes thick and
fast, huge slabs of punk drum power (courtesy Stephen Wischerth) slammed
into your earhole. Shame they couldn't have dug up a film of the Tharp
ballet - I'd love to see this kind of thing danced - instead of the
"Symphony No.5", but I'm certainly not complaining. I don't know whether
I'd qualify it as "post modern", but I sure love the way it kicks
ass.—DW
Milton
Babbitt
SEPTET BUT EQUAL / FOURPLAY
Morton Feldman INSTRUMENTS 1 / THREE CLARINETS CELLO AND PIANO
CP˛ 111
John
Cage
SIXTEEN DANCES
Armin Loos
SONATA NO.2
CP˛112
Paul Zukofsky is best known as a violinist - pick up a pile of old
CRI or Nonesuch contemporary pieces featuring the violin and the chances
are you'll come across his name pretty quickly - but, with the exception
of the "Sonata No.2" by Armin Loos, it's as a conductor that he appears
here. Cage's "Sixteen Dances" date from 1951, a critical turning point
in the composer's career just before the composer wholeheartedly embraced
chance procedures. Several of the movements look back to the rhythmic
structuralism of the composer's 1940s work - dividing the piece into
x sections of x measures duration - others can be seen as precursors
of the I Ching inspired works of the later 1950s. The diversity of
the work's compositional procedures comes across in performance: some
of the dances (numbers 4, 8, 9, 12 particularly) jog along with the
jauntiness of Cage's Satie-inspired piano music, or partake of the
gentle diatonicism of the first "String Quartet", others are more
angular, sparse and surprising. The recording dates from 1982 and
was originally issued on an LP co-produced by, amongst others, the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but still sounds remarkably fresh.
As a violinist Zukofsky has always been an enthusiastic champion of
composers both well known and unfairly neglected, Armin Loos being
one of the latter. Born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1904, Loos settled
in New York at the end of the 1920s, where he worked in the family
banking business until ill health forced his retirement in 1962. Like
Charles Ives, composing music was not a principal source of revenue,
but was nonetheless something far too important to be cursorily dismissed
as a "hobby". Unlike Ives, who wrote practically nothing during the
last three decades of his life, Loos soldiered on, producing a substantial
body of orchestral and chamber music. The second violin sonata was
the last work he completed before his death in 1971. Bearing in mind
when it was written, its mixture of earnest dodecaphony, tough lyricism
and occasional motoric rhythms sounds rather dated at times, but Zukofksy
and pianist Michael Torre perform it with love and conviction, and
it makes for a satisfying contrast with the detached elegance of the
Cage dances.
In July 1997 Zukofsky was in London to record with the Composers Ensemble
work by two of the most distinctive characters in post-War American
music, Milton Babbitt and Morton Feldman. Though both ended up in
influential teaching positions - Babbitt at Princeton, Feldman at
Buffalo - a glance at their respective discographies reveals both
a shocking dearth of available Babbitt music on record and an equally
alarming surfeit of Feldman. The standard explanation for this is
that Babbitt's music is too "difficult" - presumably to listen to,
since for performers it's tricky but no more technically challenging
than Carter and arguably easier than a lot of Ferneyhough - but the
Composers Ensemble's limpid and delightful readings of "Septet But
Equal" (1992) and "Fourplay" (1984) give the lie to that notion. As
I have written elsewhere, Babbitt has been something of his own worst
enemy, having become almost as well known for the thorny technicalities
of his prose and his rather cringeworthy titles (is you thought "Fourplay"
was limp, try "The Joy of Sets") as he is for his compositions. I
am tempted to ask those listeners who scratch their head saying "I
don't understand it" (the "it" in question being not just Babbitt's
music but the serial procedures he has so enthusiastically championed
throughout his career) whether they really "understand" more outwardly
accessible examples of late twentieth century music, or for that matter,
Mozart, Bach and Monteverdi. (As young Heinrich muses in Don DeLillo's
"White Noise", "Can we make a refrigerator? Can we even explain how
it works? What is electricity? What is light?"..) You could probably
put the number of people out there in the world who fully understand
Babbitt's pitch and rhythmic procedures on a suburban commuter train
and have a carriage or two to spare. True, the music is dense, multilayered
and doesn't make many concessions to you, but listen closely to individual
details, how tiny details - a couple of discreet pitches here, a recognisable
interval there - are taken up and transformed by the other instruments,
and little by little the work's architecture reveals itself.
Feldman's music, on the other hand, is mistakenly assumed to be "easy"
listening in comparison. Sure, it's predominantly slow, ideas tend
to be repeated and thus manage to impress themselves in one's consciousness,
and, after all, wasn't Feldman one of Cage's buddies who abandoned
all that twelve tone crap and just wrote music starting at the first
page of the score and stopping when he reached the last page? Indeed,
but considering the composer's oeuvre as some kind of new age mood
music for high IQ snobs who wouldn't be seen dead listening to a Windham
Hill album but approach Feldman in exactly the same way is a grave
mistake. Unlike several recent Feldman outings that seem to treat
the music with kid gloves - pianissimo is not synonymous with wimpy
- Zukofsky's readings of "Instruments 1" and "Three Clarinets, Cello
and Piano" engage with the notes in a direct and refreshingly unpretentious
way, a perfect illustration of what Feldman refers to in his essay
"Crippled Symmetry", quoted in the liners: "the degree to which music
notation is responsible for much of the composition itself is one
of history's best kept secrets." —DW
B.
Fleischmann
WELCOME TOURIST
Morr Music 2CD
http://www.morrmusic.com/
Morr
Music and Charhizma recording artist, twenty something Vienna-based
multi-instrumentalist Fleischmann is no stranger to cross-bending
territory where traditional themes are intercut with uptempo glitch
and fuzzy overtones (cf "Guided by Beats"). Microfunk-laden tracks
give way to pale harmony and German narrative on "02/00", and Fleischmann
permeates his work with lush and dreamy piano and vibes discourse
on "Pass By" (otherwise a bit of fluff with rambling tightfisted drumming).
There are even moments of Sigur Rós in the forlorn "Grunt." Welcome
Tourist is a vacillating narrative that's as sonic ("The Blessed")
as it is cute on the Lou Reed-y "Le Désir", where he sings as proletarian
"have you ever tried to reach the sky on a sunny afternoon...we have
dreams and we want them to come true". Disc one falls to "Sleep" with
Fleischmann's awkward vocal about thinking about a sleeping girl,
buying milk and bread and other sundry items. Love the line "don't
get me wrong, it's just a song." Drowsy travelogue synths graze over
a syncopated backing track like a contemporary update of Charles Schultz's
Peanuts theme. Disc two is a single forty-five minute long track,
"Take Your Time". If static's what you came for, let Fleischmann reshape
it for you. The bent buzz and lapping rhythmics open this long player
with blurted, bleached, censored art house vocals. Adding some light
guitar strumming and the signature piano, which could be excerpted
from anything from a Carpenters love song to the latest opus by Mum,
and the mix becomes fuller. It's something of an urban rodeo record,
complete with dust and twang, basking in a midday afterglow like there's
no tomorrow, upright fat jazz basslines and all.—TJN
Invisible
Structure
MO99 CONCEPT SERIES / DADA M' N' SOUND ARCHITECTURE REPETITION
Monotype
To
be frank I'm not sure this is the title of the (mini) album (less
than 19 minutes long), since I haven't got round to Googling out the
answer, having spent most of my time trying to get the CD to stay
on the little transparent plastic mounting thing inside the cover
(without success). Nice packaging apart from that, complete with punched
out holes on the outer cover, which nearly made me want to go back
and listen to OMD's Dazzle Ships. I fortunately resisted the temptation,
but have a sneaking feeling this one will age just about as badly.
The "concept", and hardly an original one at that, is to have the
99 tracks play on random shuffle. Or, if you have a programmable CD
player, in an order of your choosing ("I strongly wish the person
receiving the sound not merely to receive but also to participate
in this sound revolution", it says here). Fine, but if you manually
programme all 99 tracks it'll probably take you longer than the CD
does itself to play. As for the sounds, they're par-for-the-course
buzzes, crunches, glitches and all manner of digital ejectamenta.
With some elementary software you could use them to make your own
piece(s), but that's something I would have preferred Koji Takagi
to have done for me.—DW
Alex
Keller / Meri von KleinSmid
SEARCHING FOR THE INVERSE SQUARE
Mimeograph MIMEO 001
This
album documents four site specific sound installation projects organised
by Alex Keller and Meri von KleinSmid in and around Seattle between
November 2001 and October 2002. "Phar Lap" was recorded in Seattle's
Vital 5 Gallery and features a Texas Instruments Speak'n'Math and
five toy parrots, while "The best station is no station" finds our
two protagonists armed with transistor radios in an old gasworks (and
also features the sounds of a family playing hide and seek nearby).
Ten minutes of such random dial twiddling would have been sufficient,
but the piece is twice as long and drags horribly. So does "Focused
on the conflict at hand", whose novelty bleeps and buzzes sourced
from old Ataris wears off as quickly as the toy parrots. "Messages
from Bunker 23" is sonically richer, being a location recording in
an old Navy bunker, but one wishes the performers would stop fucking
around with their cassette players and just listen to the sound of
distant aircraft and local seabirds, which is far more interesting.
I can imagine that these events would have been fun to attend, but
seriously question the necessity of releasing a compact disc of such
proceedings.—DW
Steve
Barsotti
SAY "TIN-TAH-PEE-MICK"
Mimeograph MIMEO 002
Formerly
a sound engineer at Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio, Steve Barsotti
is now a sound artist based in Seattle. This CD presents two of his
studio works, "noise reduction on back porch" and "tintapemic", and
two excerpts from live performances, one from a show entitled "Threshold
of Hearing", the other "Threshold of Pain" (which gives you a fair
idea what to expect). The two openers are less predictable - on "noise
reduction" Barsotti weaves together numerous and diverse field and
studio recordings into a heavy tapestry of sound, where in yer face
square wave buzzes are intercut with all manner of strange rattles
and crackles, as well as more recognisable elements (bird song and
the tinkle of a music box). It sounds almost as if it could be improvised
- there are quite a few Berliners whose music sounds remarkably similar
- but it isn't. In fact Barsotti has been tinkering with this and
"tintapemic" for about five years. The second track explores the same
territory, Barsotti playing expertly with depth and drama in the mix
- close-miked sounds inhabit the same space as distant, echoing crashes
- eroding the idea of foreground and background. The two live tracks,
entitled "hey" and "HEY" (no prizes for guessing which is loud one)
are less successful, but are interesting examples of sound art's increasing
preoccupation with positioning itself at one or the other end of the
spectrum: it's either noise meltdown or ultra lowercase, Merzbow or
López (though one shouldn't forget the latter's spectacular blast
of metal a couple of years back). In both categories, there are more
interesting offerings than this, though; "hey" can't hold a candle
to bernhard günter, and "HEY" is far less exciting than a good old
Japanoise brainfry. But as both are extensively sourced from the two
other works, it is interesting to hear how Barsotti has reconfigured
his composition in a live context. That said, you're likely to return
to the sophistication and mystery of "noise reduction" and "tintapemic"
in a hurry. Now I know how to pronounce it, Steve, what does "tintapemic"
actually mean?—DW
Henrik
Rylander
TRADITIONAL ARRANGEMENTS OF FEEDBACK
Ideal Recordings IDEAL 016
Former
drummer for Union Carbide Productions, Henrik Rylander takes his percussive
interpretations to task on this absolute blockbuster: Traditional
Arrangements of Feedback is the experimental record of the year
(so far). Plug it in, tune up and go-go-go. The funk-industrial "Formations
of Feedback" proves hard sounds can have beat without dipping into
the vestiges of Goth. Göteborg-based Rylander uses the "Repetition"
of saw-toothed pulse-beats and a rocking underbelly to form these
techno haikus, part Einstürzende Neubauten, part Peaches (sans four-letter
words and no hole in the middle), but wholly enormous walls of controlled
sound to be reckoned with. Through the fuzz of it all, like collecting
individual hair strands of static pulse, Rylander harvests something
gem-like, something awkwardly infinite. There's instant elation when
he tools with materials that could easily lead to haphazard mistakes
but which make great sound effects, proving that such obstacles can
be both overcome and controlled. "Destroyer" sounds like a small digital
press with spikes and loose metal objects that have gone awry inside;
the mechanism keeps going, pulping what's in its path, slowly rolling
on with the precision of a diecut machine running over the same tracks
with a few imperfections along the way. The post-op version of "Warm
Leatherette"? No, "Flange" is like one of those giant Lego robots
turned into a smiley-faced clown menacing a Mumbleboy video. Massive
and graceless and twice as happy as any Avon lady that may have stepped
cross your threshold lately.—TJN
Paolo
Raposo / Marc Behrens
FURTHER CONSEQUENCES OF REINTERPRETATION
Cronica 008
As
my Wire colleague Keith Moliné puts it rather eloquently, "remixed
remixes of the inaudible" - based on remixes of Nosei Sakata's 0.000
(which consists solely of frequencies outside the range of human
hearing, but must be a smash hit with the worldwide bat community)
by Taylor Deupree, His Chuang Cheng, Aube, Richard Chartier, Akira
Rabelais, John Hudak, bernhard günter and Steve Roden (bring on the
usual suspects), Further Consequences of Reinterpretation consists
of 21 tracks crafted by Marc Behrens and Sirr Records label boss Paolo
Raposo. Gloops, glitches, beeps and crackles abound, but - excuse
me for being particularly unoriginal and quoting Moliné once more
- the overriding impression is that of "impressive software playing
with itself". What on first hearing comes as a welcome surprise, i.e.
the refreshing brevity of tracks, ends up as frustrating, leaving
the distinct impression of unfinished sketches and scribbles rather
than the kind of finely crafted soundscape we have come to expect
from Behrens and Raposo. Perhaps it's meant to give that impression
- this is, after all, on the concept-heavy Cronica label - but it's
far less satisfying that Raposo's recent outing with Carlos Santos,
Insula Dulcamara, recently
reviewed in these pages.—DW
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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