| SUMMER
News 2009 |
Reviews
by Clifford Allen, Paul Baran, Nate Dorward, John Gill, Massimo
Ricci, Michael Rosenstein, Dan Warburton:
|
|
Editorial
On Another Timbre: EKG / Max Eastley / Rhodri
Davies / Annette Krebs / Octante
FILM: Les Grandes
Répétitions / Trans Und So Weiter
Asylum Lunaticum
VINYL SOLUTION: L'Autopsie..
/ LCDD / Bhob Rainey & Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase / Raionbashi
/ Talibam! & Daniel Carter / Christmas Decorations / Nick
Forte / Zaïmph
POST(?)ROCK: Maher Shalal Hash Baz / Christof Kurzmann
& Burkhard Stangl / Tortoise
JAZZ & IMPROV: Akiyama,
Corcoran & Kiefer / Baars, Henneman & Mengelberg / Brötzmann,
Kondo, Pupillo, Nilssen-Love / Marc Edwards & Weasel Walter
/ Peter Evans / Graham Halliwell & Lee Patterson / Hayward,
Davies & Unami / Marteau Rouge & Evan Parker / Oceans
of Silver & Blood / Old Dog / Evan Parker / Evan Parker
& John Wiese / People Band / Respect Sextet / Gino Robair
& Birgit Ulher / Jason Robinson
Domenico Sciajno
& Gene Coleman / Domenico Sciajno & Kim Cascone / Julien
Skrobek & Miguel Prado / Günter Baby Sommer / Splinters
/ Stasis Duo / Storm of Corpses / Ton Trio / Michael Vlatkovich
/ Weasel Walter, Henry Kaiser & Damon Smith / Jack Wright,
Hell&Bunny / Ami Yoshida & Toshimaru Nakamura
CONTEMPORARY: Tom
Hamilton / Erdem Helvacioglu / Radu Malfatti / Will Montgomery
(Brian Marley) / David Rosenboom
ELECTRONICA / NOISE: Alexandre
Bellenger / Thomas Bey William Bailey / Seijiro Murayama &
Michael Northam / Nana April Jun / Novi_Sad / Pimmon / Yui Onodera
/ Rice Corpse / Sébastien Roux & Vincent Epplay /
Tamaru
Last issue
|
One
of my favourite albums in the last couple of months, which Clifford
Allen reviews in this issue's Another Timbre round-up, is Rhodri Davies
and Max Eastley's Dark Architecture, a live improv set recorded
in Berkshire wonderfully transformed – détourné
– by a firework display which takes place outside the venue
at the same time. For the non-French speakers out there, détourné
means both "hijacked" and "reappropriated", and
is a deliberate reference to the activities of the Internationale
Situationniste (yes, feeling somewhat guilty about taking a swipe
at Guy Debord in a recent Wire review, I'm re-reading his
writings and rediscovering his films in a splendid triple DVD + book
boxset, and very good they are too). It also crops up on several occasions
(as does Debord himself) in this month's interview with Mattin,
which was itself hijacked and reappropriated several times during
the course of its elaboration, as you'll no doubt see.
 It's
firework season here in France at the moment, too; the 14th of July
Bastille Day national holiday is usually celebrated by kids running
around throwing pétards (bangers, not joints, sadly)
at passers-by on the Champs-Elysées. I steer well clear of
the Champs-Elysées at the best of times, and this year on Bastille
Day I'm going one better and leaving the country, but if
you happen to be in Paris on the 14th of July and feel like a dose
of (ahem) French Culture, try the free Johnny Hallyday concert at
the Eiffel Tower. Yes indeed, the French love their ridiculous, airbrushed,
drink-ravaged, burned-out 66-year-old "rocker" (who recently
threatened to leave the country himself and relocate to Gstaad for
fiscal reasons – clearly, saving a few thousand € on one's
tax bill is more important than one's national identity), so much
that the Ministry of Culture is apparently footing (part of? all of?)
the bill for next Tuesday's extravaganza. I have heard the sum of
one million euros mentioned (yes, that's 1,000,000€). And this
at a time that the Instants Chavirés, the only remotely decent
subsidized venue for experimental / improvised music in the Paris
region, is closing its doors for lack of funding. It's enough to make
you want to cry. Or take to the streets yourself, as Mattin advocates
in his interview.
Mattin's not the only featured interviewee in this issue, though –
there's also trumpeter Nate Wooley,
whose music I've been enjoying for several years (and who, oddly enough,
has also been talking to Clifford Allen for Bagatellen recently, so
Wooley fans will have not one but two interviews
to enjoy). And the usual dogpile of film, LP and CD reviews from the
usual suspects. Bonne lecture.-DW
EKG
ELECTRICALS
Another Timbre
 A
few years ago, a reintroduction to EAI for this writer resulted in
some aesthetic head-scratching. Weaned on AMM, MEV, David Behrman
and the like, I found recent "reductionist" EAI wanting.
For me, those earlier explorations undertaken as "live electronic
music - improvised" offered freedom and self-discovery in spades,
even if they resulted from the painterly application of a bow to strings
or the crackling of homemade instruments and contact mics. Something
physical and immediate was represented in those divergent strands
of work, a classical confrontation and gestural form purposely missing
from the quiet rumble of much recent EAI.
Across nearly twenty discs in a fairly short time, Simon Reynell’s
Another Timbre has presented the work of a number of electro-acoustic
artists. If there is a vein running through the label’s output,
it is that of materialist directness and profound immediacy. EKG is
the duo of Bay Area oboist Kyle Bruckmann and German trumpeter Ernst
Karel; of the two, Bruckmann is the more familiar figure, spanning
the worlds of non-idiomatic and electro-acoustic improvisation as
well as prog and noise-rock. "Field" is measured in its
approach, its long humming tones permeated by mixing-board glitches,
rattles, and unruly percussive shorts. It’s somewhat traditional
in organization despite untraditional means, as fuzzy patches, blips
and rumble merge into a minor crescendo and fall away by piece’s
end. "Drift" is despite its title highly focused –
an orchestrated unity of mournful hum punctuated by cantankerous,
mealy circuit clatter and brief pulses. "Current" begins
with waves of queasy whirr and stuttering, the violence later subsiding
into a tense face-off of held tones. Though both players are accomplished
acoustic improvisers, the emphasis is squarely on electronics, though
snatches of traditional instrumentation emerge to color the canvas
– a daub of chortling trumpet here, sinewy reeds there. The
improvisations here are fairly uniform in character, but that quality
gives a suite-like feeling to Electricals: there’s
a broad range of gestures and effects despite the narrow palette.–CA
Max
Eastley / Rhodri Davies
DARK ARCHITECTURE
Another Timbre
 Dark
Architecture is a single 34-minute improvisation by Max Eastley
and Rhodri Davies on invented instruments (most of them contact miked)
and amplified harp, respectively. Eastley, a visual artist and inventor,
was at the heart of non-idiomatic improvisation in the late 70s, working
with Alterations' Peter Cusack and David Toop as well as the London
Musicians' Collective. Here, he plays his "arc", a wire
and wooden sculpture bent and bowed, as well as motorized objects
and incidental bits of metal, wood, and the like. The focus is on
environment, as the players' enveloping, discrete yet interconnected
occurrences produce a landscape of unfamiliar sounds. It's not always
clear who's playing what at the outset, though Davies' electric tabletop
harp could be the generator of low-toned feedback amidst the rattling
wood, odd-interval clacks, and unearthly bowed rumble.
Dark Architecture was recorded on November 1, 2008 in Bracknell,
not long before Guy Fawkes Day, and about ten minutes in the subtle
cracks of fireworks outside the venue enter into the sonic environment
– at first delicate snaps, but soon building into pops and bangs
impossible to avoid. Where previously the duo had focused on small
sounds and space, they found themselves confronted with a prominent
"third member", and rather than quit playing, they integrated
the sounds of the fireworks into the proceedings. As soon as the first
isolated outdoor pop is heard, the landscape changes – dissociated
knocking becomes subtly rhythmic and, as strings of fireworks are
set off, Eastley's arc rumbles throatily and jumps into furious high-pitched
whinnies. As bow and feedback wail, bells clink and explosives shuffle,
one gets a sense of progression – the minimalist harp tapping
and furious plucking seems somehow composed, as if accident may have,
in fact, begotten structure. Even as the musicians return to their
taps, bells and rolling marbles in the closing ten minutes, one senses
the whole event has subtly shifted. On its own, Dark Architecture
is certainly a beautifully-realized recording, but it requires a stretch
of imagination to visualize the proceedings – we're lucky to
be even a fifth of the way there with a disc like this.–CA
Annette
Krebs / Rhodri Davies
KRAVIS RHONN PROJECT
Another Timbre
 Annette
Krebs has always been careful about choosing recording projects. After
a handful of strong releases around 2001 and 2002, there was a long
period where she barely recorded at all. Over the last couple of years
she's returned to recording, coming out with some startling documents
– a duo with Robin Hayward (Sgraffito), an untitled
quartet with David Lacey, Keith Rowe, and Paul Vogel, and a solo submission
on the Absinth Berlin Electronics collection (all tiny-run
CDr releases). A bit easier to find, and well worth searching out,
is her duet with Toshimura Nakamura, Siyu, on the SoSeditions
label. Add this duo with Rhodri Davies to her commanding run. For
this project, Davies took his table-top electric harp and electronics
to Krebs’ flat in Berlin, Krebs pulled out her guitar, sampled
recordings (some of which she'd used on her Berlin Electronics
piece), and mixing board, and the two spent a day improvising together.
Krebs spent the next year editing, mixing, and mastering the recordings
into three pieces which exist as a sort of spontaneous musique
concrète. Each establishes a distinctive presence through
carefully paced trajectories and transitory, shifting layers of detail.
It is as if Krebs was tuning in beamed fragments of an improvisation
as they drift in and out of focus across the active sonic plane. The
essence of guitar and harp resonance is shot through with warped voices,
field recordings, wafts of pop songs, and the hisses, flutters, and
spatters of electronics. Davies’ singular scrapes, variegated
attack, and electronic modulations counter Krebs' discrete placement
of guitar and sampled sound, balancing breathless delicacy with the
physicality of amplified strings.–MRo
Octante
LÚNULA
Another Timbre
 The
Barcelona-based trio of Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, and Alfredo
Costa Monteiro have created a handful of strong releases as a trio,
surveying the outer timbral frontiers that can be created from trumpet,
accordion, and resonant objects. They've also collaborated with bassist
Margarida Garcia, releasing their eponymous recording six years ago
on the l’Innomable label. While on the earlier release it was
almost impossible to tell the sound sources of the various threads,
the players are more at ease letting the intrinsic nature of their
instruments come through on the two half-hour long improvisations
captured here. Barberán’s trumpet can sputter or screech
with a scrubbed brassiness, Costa Monteiro pushes his instrument to
reedy overtones and lets its air-driven organ-like drones shake through
the group, Fages's oscillators and pickups send out skirling sine
waves and buzzing groans, and Garcia’s electric double bass
accentuates the dark, full tones of her instrument, using electronics
to subtly extend the textures. There is a restless intensity to this
music, but the performers never lose the collective thread. The second
piece is a bit more open than the first, and the four let long tones
and drones hang and reverberate off each other, slowly gathering force
and density. The pristine recording lets every nuance come through.
It's another compelling entry from these musicians and yet another
in an incredible line of winners for Another Timbre.–MRo
Gérard
Patris / Luc Ferrari
LES GRANDES REPETITIONS / TRANS UND SO WEITER
Paris, Centquatre June 2009
Les
Grandes Répétitions was a series of five documentaries
on contemporary music made for French television in 1965 and 1966,
produced by Pierre Schaeffer and directed by Gérard Patris
and composer Luc Ferrari, two of which received a rare airing as part
of Filmer La Musique #3, a festival co-organised by Paris's
new hip artspace, Centquatre, in association with MK2 Quai de Seine
and Point Ephémère.
 De
L'Autre Coté du Chemin de Fer ("Across the Tracks")
is a rare document of Cecil Taylor in action in December 1966, a week
after he recorded Student Studies aka The Great Paris
Concert with Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Alan (curiously billed
as Ron in the film credits) Silva on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums.
For some inexplicable reason the quartet set up in a room in the Place
des Vosges, built by Henry IV in the Marais district of Paris in the
early years of the seventeenth century. A long way indeed from the
ghettos hinted at in the title of the documentary, where Taylor claims
much of his musical education took place (though we all know he was
also well-versed in twentieth century mainstream classical music,
thanks to his studies at the New England Conservatory). Pressed for
his opinions on Stockhausen, Bach and Cage, the pianist responds drily,
"they were not of my community", at which point the film
cuts to some gratuitous not to mention incongruous archive footage
of coloured folks tapdancing. By the end of the session Taylor is
clearly getting fed up at being prodded for a definition of improvised
music. From "the problem with written music is that it divides
the energies of creativity" to "music does not exist on
paper" he finally comes up with "improvised music is one
thing, and other things are.. other things" (!) before calling
a halt to proceedings with a cursory "you're welcome."
The music, fortunately, tells another more exciting story, but not
without casting doubt on some of the pianist's statements –
the presence of music stands and manuscript paper certainly testifies
to the existence of some kind of score; Alan Silva has always maintained
that Taylor's music in 1966, not only on Student Studies
but also Unit Structures and Conquistador! was notated
with considerable precision, and the exchanges here between Lyons,
curiously framed in a huge empty fireplace, and Taylor, huddled over
his piano, bear that out. Forget the silly question and answer session,
the washed-out colour and strange home movie montage, and experience
one of modern music's greatest working groups in full flight.
 Karlheinz
Stockhausen's status as enfant terrible of new music was
as assured as Cecil Taylor's in 1966, when Patris and Ferrari caught
up with him in Cologne to film rehearsals for Momente with
soprano Martina Arroyo and members of the West German Radio Chorus
and Orchestra. Momente is a curious transitional work in
the composer's oeuvre, spanning the gulf between the serialist rigour
of the early years (it was first performed in 1962) and the hippy
trippy Sri Aurobindo-influenced Stockhausen of the late 60s (he went
on tinkering with the piece until the Europa Version of 1972).
Its combination of an intricate formal scheme with highly personal,
often erotically-charged texts from the Song Of Solomon and
letters written to the composer by his future wife, artist Mary Bauermeister,
is reflected in the film, which alternates rather dry technical discussion
of the composer's beloved "moment form" with garish close-ups
of Arroyo's sexy gurgling and giggling. The camera work is daring,
panning brutally from the Kontarsky brothers fisticuffing their Hammond
and Lowery organs to the rather starchy ladies of the choir, evidently
embarrassed at being asked to perform unconventional (and non-union)
activities like shuffling their feet and clapping their hands. Two
commentaries from the composer are intercut, one a rather self-aggrandizing
autobiographical monologue as he wanders round the rehearsal space,
the other an interview with a woman (off camera) who catches him off-guard
with some rather personal questions. Filmed in alarming proximity,
the twinkle in his eye and twitching at the corner of his mouth are
as revealing as they are endearing.
 Following
Momente Stockhausen and Patris struck up a firm friendship,
and seven years later the director was invited (without Ferrari this
time) to make a documentary on the composer, Trans Und So Weiter,
for German television. Stockhausen in 1973 was a different creature,
no longer the serial hipster but, post-Sgt. Pepper's album
cover appearance, a kind of interplanetary visionary weirdo, still
married to – but living apart from – Mary in a dreadful
modern villa in the hills outside Cologne. Patris and his crew were
admitted to the inner sanctum of the Stockhausen ménage,
and the images of the maestro saying grace before dinner, reading
American Indian bedtime stories (cut to rehearsal footage of An
Himmel Wandre Ich, in a stunning reading by Karl Barkey and Helga
Hamm-Albrecht), sweating it out in the sauna, skinnydipping and splashing
around in his wellies with his kids are touching. On a crowded train
heading across Germany to Metz, the children, Julika and Simon, aged
seven and six respectively at the time, are everywhere, throwing balloons
at the Great Man as he attempts to talk about politics ("I am
not political – my music is for all men") and asking him
where the toilets are just as he's about to address the thorny question
of whether or not he is a reincarnation of Mozart ("I haven't
considered that possibility yet"). It's an affectionate portrait
of the family man, but also a precious document of a great composer
during one of his most fertile and exciting creative periods. There's
priceless footage of rehearsals for Mikrophonie I (the bizarre
and wonderful sight of the performers wearing Japanese (?) masks),
Refrain (Karlheinz plays some mean celesta), "Region
Three" from Hymnen (in which a frustrated composer warns
the members of his student orchestra to stop fucking about and playing
their own looney tunes or else) and Trans. This
extraordinary 1971 orchestral composition, the idea for which apparently
came to the composer in a dream, calls for the strings, bathed in
violet light, to be seated across the stage playing a dense Niblock-like
wall of sound, behind which woodwinds and percussion play out of sight,
while the sound of giant shuttle from a weaving loom hurtles back
and forth across the stereo space. From time to time strange Freudian
tableaux take place – a drummer boy marches on stage
and kickstarts a viola cadenza, a trumpeter pops up from behind the
curtain like Punch and tootles merrily – utterly surreal, and
totally crazy. Here, unlike in the earlier Momente documentary,
Patris refrains from commentary, allowing this amazing music-theatre
to speak for itself.
Back in 1973, nobody was producing music as strange and original as
this, which makes Trans Und So Weiter essential viewing,
all the more so now that Stockhausen's work is only available on demand
through the Stockhausen Verlag, since the composer fell out with Deutsche
Grammophon and withdrew his entire back catalogue from the major label
in 1989. To date, no DVD release of this splendid documentary is forthcoming,
though Eve Patris-Schaeffer, the director's daughter, is working hard
to remedy that. Happily, the Grandes Répétitions
– all five of them, including Ferrari and Patris's profiles
of Hermann Scherchen, Varèse and Messiaen – are scheduled
to be released as a 5DVD set (later this year?) on K-Films. Watch
this space.–DW [An edited version of this review appeared
in The Wire magazine #306. Reproduced by kind permission of Tony Herrington]
Kommissar
Hjuler / Mama Bär
ASYLUM LUNATICUM
Intransitive
 The
quiet German town of Flensburg, just a couple of miles below the border
with Denmark, was founded about 800 years ago by Danish settlers who
took advantage of its sheltered harbour to found a thriving local
economy based on kippers (that's smoked herrings, if you don't watch
Fawlty Towers). A Danish city until as late as 1864, and
the second largest Danish port after Copenhagen, Flensburg became
part of the Kingdom of Prussia after the Second Schleswig War (which
I once had to write an essay on back in high school and have subsequently
forgotten everything I ever knew about – my apologies to offended
locals), and oddly enough was the capital of Germany for a few weeks
in 1945 after Karl Dönitz, appointed to succeed Adolf Hitler
before he killed himself, fled there with what was left of the government
of the Third Reich. Just one year later, former Luftwaffe pilot and
local entrepreneur Beate Uhse-Rotemund founded Beate Uhse AG (still
the leading player in the German sex industry, listed on the Frankfurt
Stock Exchange since 1999), and the world's first sex shop was opened
in Flensburg in 1962.
Whether or not linguistic identity crises, Nazi atrocities and sex
toys have anything to do with the extraordinary (and extraordinarily
disturbing at times) puppe ("dolls") sculptures
made by local husband and wife artist team Kommissar Hjuler and Mama
Bär is open to debate. Make up your own mind by checking them
out at http://www.asylum-lunaticum.de/ (you can buy a few if you like,
too, it seems), and while you window shop, listen to the album of
the same name, which must be the weirdest thing that's come my way
this year.
It
starts off in style with HJCVGrimmelshausen, a savage cut-up
of Hjuler reading extracts from Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen's
picaresque novel Der Abentheuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch
(1669), but breathing in when speaking (don't worry if you're
not fluent in 17th century German, because you won't be able to make
out much of what he's saying in any case). Like all the seven tracks
on offer here, it was originally a limited edition release on Hjuler
and Bär's SHMF imprint – check that website for availability.
Things calm down a bit with Mama Bär's Lichtblicke,
a queasy time-stretched monologue accompanied by delicate singing
and what sounds like a distant burglar alarm, before the album's centrepiece,
the sublimely banal Ehrfucht, a 25-minute recording of Mama
taking her son Cy out for a bicycle ride (actually, the first time
I heard this I was cycling round Paris myself, and it blended remarkably
well with the local traffic). Ever found yourself with a tune stuck
in your head that won't go away? That's exactly what happens here
– and hearing the same little ditty over and over again, along
with the strange clatter of the field recording, is an oddly compelling
if supremely frustrating listening experience. Equally bizarre is
Meine erste Zeitmaschine, recorded "in the cellar of
K.Hj.'s police building" (?), in which Hjuler describes how he
created the world as we know it by travelling back in time. Right
on, maan! Goodness knows what else he's doing in that cellar, but
after about ten minutes of strange unexplained thumps and bangs, you'll
probably feel like storming the place yourself and locking him inside
his own time machine.
A bit of light relief comes with de nye Rigspolotichefen,
whose text (in Danish as far as I can make out, not that that helps
me understand anything) deals with reforms of the local police system.
Not exactly hilarious reading material, you might think, but just
check out how it's cut up with Punch and Judy shrieks, squeaky toys
and a Baa Baa Black Sheep music box. I nearly fell off the bike laughing
when I heard this one. Honest. You ask the guy driving the taxi that
nearly ran me over (Pont de Grenelle, Saturday June 13th, about 9.30am.).
The next track, Lauf in Eine Herde, doesn't sound all that
funny, but when you learn that it was recorded when Hjuler ran into
a herd of cows wearing a red shirt (and the bovines, instead of trampling
him to death, ran off) you might smile at the embarrassed silence.
The closing title track, once more credited to Bär (dare we say
the more, er, musical of the two?) is another head scratcher..
what on earth was she doing when she recorded these strange wows and
flutters, and where was the mic? Maybe we're better off not
knowing.
Asylum Lunaticum is a clumsy, sprawling mess of a disc, technically
inept and often frankly tedious – everything a conservatory-trained
composer and so-called experienced music journalist should scoff at
– but I can't for the life of me explain why I love it so much.
Treat yourself to a copy and see if you feel the same way.–DW
L'Autopsie
a révélé que la mort était dûe à
l'autopsie
L'AUTOPSIE A REVELE QUE LA MORT ETAIT DUE A L'AUTOPSIE
Koma Null / Chienne Secrète
 Normally
a four-man free rock/noise supergroup featuring Franq de Quengo (Dragibus),
Nicolas Marmin (Aka_Bondage / Osaka Bondage), Sébastien Borgo
(Sun Plexus) and Alan Courtis (formerly Reynols), LAARQLMEDALA, the
bastard offspring of one of Damo Suzuki's numerous hydra-headed pickup
bands a few years ago, is augmented here by a double-barrelled percussion
assault from Jean-Yves Davillers and Edward Perraud in seven sonic
breeze-blocks recorded in various venues throughout France (Mulhouse,
Paris, Grenoble, Toulon, Lyon and Marseille) during a 2007 tour of
"squats, bookshops and jazz clubs." As you might expect
from musicians who are credited with providing "electrification,
mesmerising, atom chickpeas, anti-fog guitar, ear cleaning, mycology,
tam tam and polyrhythmic jipetambo arkhestra", it's a collection
of psychedirgeic drone-heavy dirty jams (not all of them ear cleaningly
loud but many quite mesmerising), lovingly packaged along with a grinning
grim reaper poster, info insert and postcard. Vive l'underground.–DW
LCDD
LCDD
Bimbo Tower Records / Alehop!
"Alehop"
– I suppose that should be pronounced "allez-oop",
but as it's spelt here it evokes fond memories of undergraduate pub
crawls – and Bimbo Tower (essential pitstop for new music junkies
passing through or based in the French capital) have teamed up to
release the second album by Los Caballos De Düsseldorf, a loose
collective of Spanish punks and anyone else who wants to jam along
with them playing a collection of Olaf Ladousse's customised toys
known as "doorags". It is indeed "the perfect soundtrack
of a crazy bedroom full of demented broken toys going insane"
– hence no doubt its appeal to Bimbo Tower head honcho Franq
de Quengo who makes much use of children's playthings in his cult
avant kiddiepop outfit Dragibus – and is, it says here, "totally
improvised" (ha, that's a joke, I'd like to see anyone try and
compose music as potty as this). This is the aural equivalent
of the mutant toys that live under Sid's bed in Toy Story,
and we can only live in hope that LCDD will be called upon to provide
the soundtrack to Toy Story 3 (due out next year), but I
doubt it's likely to happen. I see from IMDB that Randy Newman's landed
the gig again. Sigh. As if to illustrate how utterly obscure and fucked
up this is, there isn't even a jpg to swipe online to show you the
album cover (such as it is). Every time I do a Google Images search
for "LCDD" I end up with "LCD Soundsystem". And
they need about much publicity from me as Randy Newman does.–DW
Raionbashi
IN TEUFEL'S KÜCHE
Absurd / Ignivomous
 On
this beautifully produced ten-incher, Tochnit Aleph / Rumpsti Pumsti
head honcho Daniel Lowenbrück is credited on "voices, noises,
instruments, body-functions and apostrophes", and if you ever
wondered what an apostrophe sounded like, now's your chance to find
out. Don't be put off by those "body-functions" either;
although Lowenbrück has often taken it to the stage with the
likes of Dave Phillips, Joke Lanz and Rudolf Eb.er, whose performances
you might think twice about taking your granny along to see, the sounds
he comes up with on In Teufel's Küche are absolutely
exquisitely worked and placed with extraordinary attention to detail
(check out the tasty bottom octave piano reversed soundfiles). Though
not a little disturbing in places – Dylan Nyoukis comes to mind
– it's a real treat. Despite a very enjoyable weekend in Herr
Lowenbrück's home base Berlin recently, my German still won't
get me much further than ordering a beer and a sausage (which, after
all, is quite useful in the German capital), but I think the title
translates as "In The Devil's Kitchen", which also seems
to be the name of a satanic board game (go Google). I guess that makes
Lowenbrück, like Milton, a true Poet. Go on, be a devil. Indulge
yourself.–DW
Bhob
Rainey / Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase
AIN'T IT GRAND / JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF SOMETHING OR ANOTHER
Sedimental
 It's
up to you to figure out which side of this seven-incher is the work
of Bhob Rainey and which belongs to Chris Cooper aka Angst Hase Pfeffer
Nase. "Those who know the respective artists' work well enough
should be able to suss the jig," trumpets the label press release,
"and despite a label-less disc there are other ways." Yeah,
try reading the initials scratched into the vinyl for a start (unless
that's a deliberate hoax hahaha). Not that it matters who does what
anymore. Enjoy the music for what it is: "Concise. Humorous.
Kick-ass. Classic," the blurb continues. I'll go along with those
first three – these two chunks of action-packed, sludgy, swirling
musique concrète, with the odd (analogue?) synth lurking in
Cooper's undergrowth, and vintage blues harp and (I suspect) a seriously-disfigured
saxophone in Rainey's – are pungent indeed, but.. classic? Leave
the "classic" albums (or singles) on your mum and dad's
dusty shelves.–DW
Talibam!
with Daniel Carter
THE NEW NIXON TAPES
Roaratorio
 The
seemingly unstoppable duo of Matt Mottel (synth) and Kevin Shea (drums)
team up with free jazz maestro (in the light of that Steve Beresford
letter to The Wire recently I'm now officially boycotting
the word "veteran") Daniel Carter (flute, trumpet and alto
sax) for two more mighty slabs of.. well, music. Though Carter's nominally
a jazzman, he has played in the past with the likes of DJ Logic, Thurston
Moore and Yo La Tengo, so he's no stranger to cross-border forays
into leftfield rock and alt.hiphop, and Mottel and Shea move so effortlessly
across the musical map, from ESP/BYG brainfry to psychedelic drone
to truly evil boogie (try side two), there's no point even trying
to pigeonhole what they do anymore. The track titles – wait
for it, wait for it: "The Man From Plato 3000, Whose Resource
Efficiency Ear-A Rounded The Antiquity Pixel" and "Organist
Dick Hyman, Whose Art Tatum Studies Crowdsorcerers Swallow The Cornucopian
Logic Of..." – bear the stamp of Shea's inimitable logorrhea,
and he plays drums just the same way. It's exciting stuff, but not
as much fun as the track they contributed to the split ten-incher
with Jealousy Party (see last issue). It's not that Carter can't compete
in terms of lungpower (though he's never been a screaming headless
torso) – it's rather that you'd like some of his intricate lines
to be picked up and developed by Mottel, instead of chucked into the
blender. But this is a minor quibble; there's enough going on here
to keep your ears busy for a month or two, by which time Talibam!
will, the way they're going, probably have another crateload of vinyls
out on the market.–DW
Christmas
Decorations
FAR FLUNG HUM
Nick Forte
DEFEATED
Wodger
 Wodger
is a recent New York-based label focusing on American electro-acoustic
improvisation and sound art, and what sets them apart from the crowd
is their vinyl-only predilection. So far there have been four releases
from the label, each a striking letterpress edition in 200 copies.
Christmas Decorations' Far-Flung Hum is the label's first
release, featuring Nick Forte, Kirk Knuth, Steve Silverstein and Peter
Karlin on six improvisations using analog electronics, percussion,
guitar, banjo, melodica, and lord knows what else. The session was
recorded in the Catskill Mountains, some of it outdoors, which lends
an interesting cast to the proceedings – surging mixing-board
goop and garish looped collages mate with banjo, hand percussion,
a trap set played with brushes, chirping birds and creaking floorboards.
The music is, for the most part, noisy – though the sparseness
of "Turning into Birds" allows the sounds of the environment
to register momentarily, they're then buried in electronic clatter.
The idea of creating electronic improvisation with a "folksy"
feel is not something most people would have contemplated. Nevertheless,
Christmas Decorations have made a rather tasty peanut butter-pickle-mayonnaise
sandwich.
 Nick
Forte's own work is represented on Wodger by Defeated, his
fifth (give or take) solo disc in a lengthy discography that includes
his work as a guitarist in the '90s hardcore band Rorschach. "I
Exaggerate My Own Defect" is pure gesture, stabbing percussion
and guitar plinks molested by electronic fuzz and grungy blasts of
indeterminate origin. Whereas there's a communal lilt to Christmas
Decorations' music (even at its most extreme), Forte's solo art is
wobblingly confrontational. Defeated has a primitivist aesthetic
to it – clunky discovery, a seeming lack of interest in allowing
sounds to merely "be themselves," an insistence on instead
using and discarding them at will. Snippets of saxophone, voice, and
guitar don't really add any sense of acoustic instrumentalism to the
proceedings – even when a drum fill appears, it's just part
of the irreverent and somewhat unhinged imaginary landscape Forte
has created.–CA
Zaïmph
DEATH BLOOMING PLEASURE
No Fun
 Good
old Carlos (Giffoni) – he's keeping the PT Vinyl Solution column
going all by himself, it seems. This latest platter of No Fun features
the work of guitarist / vocalist Marcia Bassett, who describes herself
as a "drop out from the music school elite" – hey,
join the club! – currently living in "an ill-coded building
perched above the streets of delicately arranged trash in New York
City." You'll probably be more familiar with her work with Double
Leopards and with Matthew Bower in Hototogisu, but here she's all
alone. She can still make quite a racket though, blasting a hole through
the flimsy wall that separates "dark psychedelic" and "free
drone-rock", and chipping off the beginnings and endings to the
tracks in the process. Just pull the plug and watch the needle drop.
The distressed vocals on side two ("As Well In Death") sound
like they were recorded somewhere in the dusty corridors of Château
Bassett on a microphone carefully concealed in a hefty bag full of
that delicately arranged trash. Not exactly pleasant all the time,
but then again, neither is life.–DW
Maher
Shalal Hash Baz
C'EST LA DERNIERE CHANSON
K Records
 When
Jac Berrocal and I got off the train at Gent-Sint-Pieters station
on the 9th of June 2007, at the kind invitation of the K-RAA-K festival
who'd invited us and Aki Onda to warm up the Nurse With Wound fans,
the bloke who came to pick us up was still waxing lyrical about Maher
Shalal Hash Baz the night before. Not the music Tori Kudo and his
merry plundering pranksters had made, but the band's ability to consume
truly phenomenal amounts of the local alcoholic beverage (a trap I
later fell into myself, discovering that Gentse Tripel was selling
for the same price as a normal boring demi here in Paris
and conveniently forgetting it was twice as strong.. Saturday 10th
June 2007 is best left forgotten). Listening to the 177 – that's
right, one hundred and seventy-seven – "songs" on
C'est La Dernière Chanson, I wonder if they aren't
still feeling the effects. The vast majority of these pieces, scored
for clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, guitar, organ and percussion,
mostly MSHB-trademark sub-bossa nova with a hint of Bacharach (though
that might just be the trumpet), don't get much further than the first
few bars (pun intended) without collapsing into a heap. Only 65 of
them get past the thirty-second mark. On reading the "serene,
dissonant, enchanting, crisp, spacious and maddeningly catchy"
description in the label press release, I seriously wonder if I'm
listening to same album. Only "maddeningly", without its
adverbial suffix, seems to apply. Maybe Kudo's making some Serious
Artistic Statement About The End Of (Pop/Rock) History As We Know
It, but if the wondrous child of pop is indeed dead, I'd sooner read
a well-written obituary by the likes of Lester Bangs than parade past
177 abortions.–DW
Christof
Kurzmann / Burkhard Stangl
NEUSCHNEE
ErstPop
 The
fact that this album appears on ErstPop – as opposed to Erstwhile
proper, as was the case with Christof Kurzmann and Burkhard Stangl's
first outing for the label, 2000's Schnee – earmarks
it for comparison with The Magic I.D.'s Till My Breath Gives Out,
itself a continuation of a line of research Kurzmann and fellow Magic
I.D. bandmembers Margareth Kammerer, Michael Thieke and Kai Fagaschinski
had been pursuing for a while: namely how to reconcile the seemingly
irreconcilable worlds of EAI and pop music. Can the two be successfully
fused? Yes, if Till My Breath is anything to go by (but it's
a tentative yes, a fragile, bruised songwriting delivered in intimate
pain by vocalists Kurzmann and Kammerer); "yes" in the case
of Neuschnee.
You don't have to be a weatherbeaten, mildly cynical and at times
blasé mid-40s music fan like me to realise that pop music is
dead in the water. Video killed the radio star all right (Buggles,
anyone?), but successive waves of technological ware hard and soft
have been digging up the corpse and giving it a good stoning ever
since. It's no coincidence that none of the songs Kurzmann quotes
from either verbally or musically on Neuschnee dates from
after the mid 1980s, and a few of them were growing whiskers before
he was even born. Notably "Taking A Chance On Love", which
receives a curiously (and supposedly intentionally) detached reading
on "Homeless Dogs", as if CK had stuck a tattered poster
of Ol' Blue Eyes on a lamppost and waited for the neighbourhood hounds
(in this case local Chile-dogs Eden and Nicolas Carrasco, joining
Stangl) to pee all over it.
The distance, alienation even, is felt even more strongly in the closing
"Song Songs", which, after an extended section during which
Kurzmann's plaintive clarinet and Stangl's clanging vibraphone (not
exactly pop instrumentation, but that wasn't a problem on the Magic
I.D. disc and it isn't here) try without success to engage with a
remorseless computer backbeat, settles into a "song" consisting
of quotations from other well-known songs featuring references themselves
to song. No point listing the famous names (as the bloke who reviewed
this over at Dusted wrote, presumably without a hint of irony,
"it makes for a nifty 'name that tune' contest"), but Neil
Diamond's "Song Sung Blue" comes out the winner, and gets
a full-length rendition. Well, nearly.
What are we to make of this? It's touching, for sure – I've
always been a great fan of Kurzmann's singing, even at its most Lou
Reed-ish – but ultimately depressing, tantamount to an admission
of failure (writer's block?) after Till My Breath Gives Out,
whose originals were indeed memorable enough to stick in the mind
long afterwards. Superimposing an archive recording of Austrian yodeller
Maly Nagl, made back when songs were perfectly content being songs
and not "songs", only serves to show how far we've travelled
in a century of recorded popular music. Looking back over your shoulder
to happier, more innocent times is natural enough (hence the Mao Tse
Tung poem in the gatefold?), and as an exercise in nostalgia –
or maybe "nostalgia" – Neuschnee is accomplished
and enjoyable (and certainly more convincing than Margareth Kammerer's
recent album of pallid jazz covers on Zarek); but it takes more courage
to face the dangers of the dark road ahead.–DW
Tortoise
BEACONS OF ANCESTORSHIP
Thrill Jockey
 Thirteen
years on from their signature statement, Millions Now Living Will
Never Die, Tortoise face the complex quandary of approaching
middle-age while being dragged in two directions simultaneously: the
first being that celebrated by those who see "post-rock"
as a logical extension of the liberation of post-punk, the second
being that of the legions of the undead who want to claim them as
latter-day versions of Yes or King Crimson. Really, at this juncture
in their career, you wouldn't want to be in their shoes for all the
tea in Daevid Allen's flying teapot.
As witnessed on their current tour, Tortoise are still a smokin' groove
band, pummelled along by twinned drummers John McEntire and John Herndon,
sometimes playing in unison, sometimes clattering against each other
in brutish counterpoint. The opening "High Class Slim Came Floatin'
In", elucidates the dilemma. It could indeed be The Gang of Four
jamming with The Jimmy Giuffre Trio or Henry Cow crossed with Steve
Reich, but just as easily it could be a jazzier version of The Doors
in their later incarnation, or perhaps even The Grateful Dead after
being told to behave themselves. And whatever the actual instrumentation,
the buzzing Moog-like synth settings and spiralling oscillators anchor
their leanings somewhere near the early 1970s, and on either side
of the Atlantic; to Return to Forever and the solo Stanley Clarke,
say, or, equally, to Hatfield & The North, or National Health.
But not, it should be stressed, to the cod-classical excesses of either
Yes or King Crimson, less still *m*rs*on, L*k* and P*lm*r . Which
sites them still in the land of the living rather than the undead.
The barely pronounceable "Yinxianghechengqi" is obviously
born of a love of antisocial punk squawk, "Northern Something"
could be Kraftwerk with a hangover, and "Gigantes" sounds
like flamenco from Mars. When they slip up, as they have done before,
it's on ballad-tempo pieces such as "Minors", which verges
on the torpid. If there is a basic flaw to their "math-rock"
– a lazy north Americanism for anything not in 4/4 – it's
an overabundance of clever ideas that are not always pursued to their
resolution. Clearly, they're playing an intertextual game here, straddling
pastiche and paean, in which they mostly succeed, with muscle and
imagination. It would be nice, however, to see bands making similar
music from a jazz perspective, such as Fraud, Spin Marvel or Zaum,
receiving even a tenth of the recognition afforded the noisy Chicagoans.–JG
Tetuzi
Akiyama / Kevin Corcoran / Christian Kiefer
LOW CLOUD MEANS DEATH
Digitalis
 "Under
the cloud ring are the dangerous fogs. These are the horse latitudes,
in which past centuries sailors threw horses into the sea, with the
object in stormy weather of lightening the ship and in calm weather
of husbanding their water. Columbus said: 'Nube abaxo es muerte.'
Low cloud means death." – Victor Hugo, The Toilers
of the Sea.
Bet that's the first time you've come across a quotation from Victor
Hugo on an album of improvised music. Especially one hailing from
Tulsa, Oklahoma, a long way indeed from the windswept coasts of Guernsey
which inspired Hugo's 1866 novel (and talking of horse latitudes,
there's more to get your teeth into in Hugo's book than there is in
Jimbo Morrison's "song" of the same name). But surprises
abound in the discography of Captain Akiyama, who's successfully navigated
a passage between the icebergs of reductionism out into the warmer
waters of acoustic psychedelia in the company of Christian Kiefer
(here on piano, accordion as well as guitar) and Kevin Corcoran (percussion).
He sounds perfectly happy, becalmed in these subtropical regions,
even throwing in a cheeky quotation from "Misty" (in "The
Pressure Of The Current"), drifting lazily in and out of tiny
eddies of tonality (Kiefer can't resist repeating his delicate piano
lines) and finally arriving at what can justifiably be called a song
without words, the closing "A Prodigality Of Light", on
which he picks out a delicate melody over Kiefer's rocking guitar
arpeggios and Corcoran's discreet bowed metal. As is often the case
with this free folk New Weird stuff, the music hovers between background
and foreground, eternally quiet and discreet, but with just enough
odd twists and turns to keep it on your radar.–DW
Ab
Baars / Ig Henneman / Misha Mengelberg
SLIPTONG
Wig
 It's
always a pleasure to hear Misha Mengelberg in small ensembles away
from the hustle and bustle of the ICP Orchestra, where he's often
better at playing Misha than he is at playing piano. This trio outing
with ICP stalwart Ab Baars (tenor sax, clarinet, shakuhachi) and Baars's
partner – in life as in music – Ig Henneman (viola) is
the best Mengelberg to come my way since 2006's vis-à-vis
with Frank Gratkowski (Leo).
Sliptong, Kevin Whitehead informs us in his liners, is a
Dutch fish dish consisting of baby sole (Kevin's always had a thing
about food.. I remember a splendid description of Mengelberg frying
pork chops in New Dutch Swing), and that's what Ab, Ig and
Misha had for dinner just before they recorded in the Bimhuis –
not in front of an audience though – on December 8th last year.
Sliptong, the album, is a great example of what Mengelberg
does best: find the right notes (or the right wrong notes), put them
exactly where they should go and leave the doors open to adjacent
musical idioms (jazz, classical, whatever) and plenty of room for
his playing partners to move into them. Baars is a thorny player,
with a distinctive sound on the tenor that can't always be described
as pleasant, a disturbing Ayleresque wide vibrato coupled with a detuned
rubbery honk vaguely reminiscent of Von Freeman, and his duo with
Henneman, a similarly uncompromising violist, can sometimes be tough
going (witness 2006's Stof). But Misha knows just how to
soften the blow, adding the odd exquisitely-voiced Monkish bop sequence
or delightful flurry of baroque counterpoint just when appropriate.
He also resists the temptation to corral the improvisation into one
of his own compositions – the title track contemplates "Romantic
Jump Of Hares" but thankfully doesn't take the plunge –
and when he really pares things down to the basic musical building
blocks it's spellbinding: "Zee-engel" explores the possibilities
of a single semitone with a rigour Steve Lacy would have been proud
of. Baars' control over the usually shrill upper register of the clarinet
is impressive, as is Henneman's bowed work (check out the spiccato
on "Is that Solly?" too). Can't say the fish and mashed
potatoes sounds all that thrilling, but the music is delicious. Bon
appétit.–DW
Brötzmann
/ Kondo / Pupillo / Nilssen-Love
HAIRY BONES
Okkadisk
 Peter
Brötzmann’s been on a roll lately. His scorching trio with
Marino Pliakas and Michael Wertmüller has been one of his most
energized collaborations in recent memory, and now comes this new
group with long-time musical partner Toshinori Kondo on trumpet and
electronics, Massimo Pupillo on electric bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love
on drums. While the pairing of Brötzmann and Kondo may conjure
memories of the Die Like A Dog quartet, this is an altogether different
affair, thanks in no small part to Pupillo’s forceful, overdriven
electric bass playing and Nilssen-Love’s caterwauling energy.
Their head-over-heels momentum drives the group with a bracing intensity.
Kondo’s distinctive, shredded electric trumpet is molten here.
At times his thrashing, skirling screams sound almost like an electric
guitar, but he can just as easily flip into a burred, muted lyricism.
Brötzmann moves through his arsenal of alto, tenor, clarinet
and tarogato, from muscular bellowing to pensive musing. When the
two pair their lines, they’re one of the most potent forces
going. Pupillo gets plenty of room to step out too, playing with spirited
abandon, even if his solo spots tend to meander a bit. Nilssen-Love
provides just the right balance of propulsive momentum and lithe freedom.
While there is plenty of flat-out roar, the group knows how to build
density and volume and then release to open sections pregnant with
charged tension. Recorded live at Amsterdam's Bimhuis, the sound is
a bit raw at times, but this is clearly a band to hear live and that
chemistry is captured here. Add this to the list of Brötzmann
discs to keep an eye out for.–MRo
Marc
Edwards / Weasel Walter Group
MYSTERIES BENEATH THE PLANET
ugEXPLODE
 It's
probably no surprise that four or five decades in, free playing has
become somewhat safe, a compositional tool as well as a method for
exploring sound and fostering communication. Both worthwhile approaches,
but sometimes it's good to hear a group of players just going
for it. Bay Area-based drummer Weasel Walter is one musician
who continues the noble tradition of go-for-broke music in various
aggregations that span cities and continents, and Mysteries Beneath
the Planet features two cooperative groups directed by him and
New York drummer Marc Edwards across four serious slices of free music.
On "Luminous Predator" and "The Coral Reef," they're
joined by a third drummer, Andrew Barker, along with reedmen Ras Moshe
(NY) and Mario Rechtern (once a member of Austria's Reform Art Unit).
The two leaders have very different approaches – Edwards' big,
lumbering polyrhythms suggest a more syrupy Elvin Jones, while Weasel's
active, gestural work is incredibly detailed, even at warp speed.
Right in the middle is Barker's crisp skimming. Naturally, it's a
morass of sound when all three are carrying on at once, but one can
pick out tendencies and complementary rhythms, and all three are surprisingly
supple, dropping out to let Moshe's tenor sing, or gently sashaying
to keep Rechtern's sinewy alto coasting. Much of the time, the saxophonists
overblow fiercely though, and Moshe's "Ghosts"-like phrases
almost seem out of place among the quintet's sound-rhythm projections.
But the opening minutes of "The Coral Reef" are sublime,
Moshe's flute work darting and toying with Rechtern's zurna among
concentrated percussive caresses.
The other two tracks feature a sextet with trumpeter Peter Evans,
saxophonists Paul Flaherty and Darius Jones, and bassist Tom Blancarte.
"Book of the Dead" is a celebratory maelstrom, reeds in
full-squawk mode and Evans's subtonal growls and piercing calls matched
by vocal hooting and hollering. The "chorus" of vocal bellowing
returns even more potently ten minutes in, recalling passages on Frank
Wright and Noah Howard's series of albums for BYG, America and Calumet
in 1969–70. At times, things roll along with a degree of (perhaps
unintended) swing, Blancarte plucking along underneath a sea of snare
and tom accents and swaggering brass cadences, giving a sense of pace
and color to music that can at times be nearly impenetrable.–CA
Peter
Evans
NATURE / CULTURE
psi
 Peter
Evans must be getting pretty pissed off with all the superlatives
being thrown in his direction, but he has only himself to blame. The
title of his first solo album – also on Evan Parker's psi imprint
– 2005's More Is More, says it all. Many of the trumpeters
who've taken the instrument to the next level in terms of new sounds
in the last dozen or so years (Axel Dörner, Greg Kelley, Franz
Hautzinger..) have got their chops down when it comes to playing jazz,
both straight and free, but have tended to keep their "legit"
work at a safe distance from the more "experimental" stuff
(true, Axel gets into a bit of sub-bass gurgling on Schlippenbach's
Monk's Casino, but it sounds oddly out of place in context).
In Peter Evans' work the barrier's often harder to find; his exuberant
jazz / free jazz blowing with the likes of MOPDTK and Weasel Walter
incorporates many of the extraordinary split tones, breathy blasts
and circular breathing extravaganzas you'd usually associate with
hardcore free improv.
That's not to say that the 13 tracks recorded last year – seven
in Gallery Studio, six live at I-Beam, both venues in Brooklyn –
are in any conventional way "jazzy", but in his own crazy
way Evans can, when he gets going, swing like hell. (Get your feet
tapping to "full" on CD1). Throughout, the trumpeter's virtuosity
is simply staggering (and it's nice to be able to use the word virtuosity
without feeling guilty, especially in these times when just about
any gormless psychedelic / New Weird doodling seems to get rave reviews
from the music press, almost as if actually being able to play your
instrument properly is somehow passé, even reactionary), but
mere technical prowess doesn't mean much if it doesn't produce great
music. And on that front, Evans doesn't disappoint. If you these solo
improvisations were transcribed – transcribable, more like –
they could stand as coherent compositions alongside any Berio Sequenza
or solo instrumental tour de force you care to mention by
Xenakis, Lachenmann or Ferneyhough. And if Giacinto Scelsi had written
a piece for multiple trumpets (Evans overdubs), I doubt he'd have
come up with anything better than "five". But enough of
the praise. Here in France they say your ankles swell up if you get
too much of it. By now Peter Evans should be going around in a bloody
wheelchair.–DW
Graham
Halliwell / Lee Patterson
TERRAIN
Confront Collectors Series
 Over
recent years Graham Halliwell has been developing and refining a distinctive
approach to improvisation, recording, looping, and processing saxophone
feedback to create luminous, complexly nuanced layers. Lee Patterson
creates soundscapes from processed field recordings, using contact
mics and electronics to capture and manipulate diverse sound sources
– ranging from domestic appliances to wind, traffic, and rain
– often augmented with hyper-amplified home-made resonators
built from everyday objects. On Terrain the two musicians
work together brilliantly. Recorded during a week that Patterson spent
at Halliwell’s home in North Norfolk, the four pieces slowly
coalesce around shimmering strata of textures and gossamer details.
Hints of Halliwell’s breath and reedy overtones are revealed
against a moiré of oscillating timbres. Overtones flutter against
subtle looped pulses and chirrups of clicks and quavering tones. While
each draw from similar palettes, the pieces develop their own internal
sense of pace and trajectory, carried along by eddies and countercurrents
of buzzing densities, chiming resonance, and pools of activity. The
entire project is contemplatively plotted by the two and is one of
Halliwell’s strongest yet.–MRo
Robin
Hayward / Rhodri Davies / Taku Unami
VALVED STRINGS CALCULATOR
Hibari
 Recorded
live in Japan in February, 2007, Valved Strings Calculator features
Robin Hayward, Rhodri Davies, and Taku Unami on four spare improvisations
which focus on situating discrete events within collective interaction
rather than on the development of conversational flow. Each of the
musicians has developed a specific vocabulary toward group playing.
Hayward has taken the tuba and morphed it in to a low-end reverberator
for whispers and blasts of breath, Davies distills the elemental resonance
and harmonic overtones of the harp, placing each detailed gesture
with astute deliberation, and Unami uses his collection of electro-mechanical
devices to create sputtered sprays of activity placed against spare
backdrops of sound and silence. What shapes this music is both a sense
of pacing and of a control of densities of sound in collective playing.
It might appear that events move between the three asynchronously,
but closer listening reveals a measured approach to the massing of
both activity and volume against the framing element of silence, as
Hayward, Davies and Unami build contrast and tension out of the juxtaposition
of the timbres, collectively navigating their unfolding forms.–MRo
Marteau
Rouge & Evan Parker
LIVE
In Situ
 Even
if you didn't know that the name of the group means "red hammer",
you might be able to guess if you listen carefully, as, believe it
or not, Evan Parker actually quotes "The Internationale"
51 minutes into this live set recorded at Sunset, which is just about
the only real jazz club in the centre of the French capital still
prepared to programme the kind of music that usually only gets an
airing across the Boulevard Périphérique at Les Instants
Chavirés in Montreuil. Maybe that's why he showed up with just
his tenor sax (which has always sounded more "jazzy" than
his soprano to my ears) to blow merrily along with Jean-François
Pauvros (guitar), Jean-Marc Foussat (VCS3) and Makoto Sato (drums),
who've been hammering away in the red for well over a decade now.
(The first gig I went to see shortly after moving to my present address
in June 1999 was a scorching MR set with Joe McPhee, which I'd dearly
love to travel back in time to and hear again.) But – gee, what
with my reservations about that disc with Wiese (see below), Evan's
going to think I'm a real grouch this month – I'm somehow underwhelmed
by this particular outing after a first few listens. Hard to put my
finger on exactly why, and with hammers swinging around I'd better
watch my fingers anyway: the recording – mixed and mastered
by Foussat and Dominique Pauvros – is splendid (though I would
have liked a bit more VCS3), and the playing from all concerned strong
and focused, but I suspect it hinges on the relationship between the
guitarist and the tenor saxophonist, especially since Foussat and
Sato seem content to paint washes of colour rather than draw sharp
lines of their own. Both Parker and Pauvros are strong personalities,
and take turns in pulling each other into their own worlds –
Pauvros's four-note melody line in "Trois, Tourne mon Coeur"
nudges the saxophonist into some of the most unashamedly tuneful playing
he's committed to disc in years, and he bounces back in "Quatre",
drawing the guitarist (and everyone else) into the kind of wiry tussle
he's been relishing with his longstanding trio outfits since the 70s
– but there's something dry and flinty about Parker's sound
that somehow doesn't always fit with Pauvros's whammy bar, reverb
and bowed guitar (and I've never been really convinced by anyone's
bowed guitar, to be honest). And when Foussat adds a few electronic
effects of his own to Parker's saxophone, notably a harmonizer on
"Six, Au temps des cérises", it sounds rather odd,
even a little cheesy. But the gruyère rapé
doesn't sit around long before the local chefs beat it up and cook
up a fine soufflé. And with a good bottle of Sancerre
I'm sure it's delicious – remind me to try that when I listen
to this again. For, make no mistake, listen to it again I certainly
will.–DW
Oceans
of Silver & Blood
OCEANS OF SILVER & BLOOD
Confront
 On
this follow-up to last year's eponymous LP on Nosordo, Swedish noise
artist Joachim Nordwall (synthesizers and modular tone generators)
carves out enveloping waves of low-end drone and rumble, while Mark
Wastell (tam tam) conjures up hissing shimmers of metallic sheet lightning
which flash through his playing partner’s ominous thunderheads.
Wastell’s hot overtones and pulsations blend seamlessly with
Nordwall’s bass-heavy roar, and this live recording from London's
Café Oto does an effective job of capturing the thrumming miasma
which gradually unfolds over the course of the 45-minute set (though
there can be no doubt that a live performance from these two creates
a palpable experience that is only hinted at in a recording). There's
a great feel for pace and shape, and by the time the music subsides
into shadowy flickering pulse, you feel you've been on a real sonic
journey.–MRo
Old
Dog
BY ANY OTHER NAME
Porter
 In
writing about the state(s) of improvised music, it's easy to fall
into one of two camps – either that the unassailable history
of the music is its life force, or that in order to keep the music
going, only the young and hungry matter. Falling prey to either of
these mindsets leaves out a significant swath of the music being made;
consider the multigenerational quartet Old Dog, for example. Along
with New York tenor powerhouse Louie Belogenis, the group features
bassist Mike Bisio, drummer Warren Smith and vibraphonist Karl Berger.
Avoiding comparisons to entries in the hallowed canon would be impossible
with such a line-up: Berger and Smith have lengthy histories of their
own, both as leaders and sidemen, Bisio, when based in the Pacific
Northwest, worked with fire music luminaries like pianist Ed Kelly
and reedman Bert Wilson and Belogenis has been a torchbearer for post-Coltrane
free music for the better part of the last two decades, while placing
his own valuable stamp on that language.
"Swa Swu Sui" jumps almost immediately into territory usually
associated with Berger's mid-60s quartet (with Carlos Ward, Ed Blackwell
and a series of bassists). Tenor, bass and drums navigate a slick
series of cells before the vibes are off at a frenetic clip, Berger
creating ebullient explosions of interleaved, vibratoless sound capsules
as Bisio and Smith rumble and ricochet off one another. Belogenis
steps in with a scorching run, abstracting from Newk into Pharoah-like
peals; his language certainly is in the tradition, but it's economical
and exhilarating too. On "Round and Round," taut grumbling
bass and fluttering tenor multiphonics are the bedrock for a temperature-elevating
exchange, drums and vibes adding harmonic detail to a scorched landscape.
Smith's repetition and reconfiguration of extraordinarily dry press
rolls secures "Living Large," a brief tenor-bass-drums foray
that finds Belogenis at some of his most gentle and caressing, even
as the pace quickens. Puns aside, there's little need for nouveau
trickery in this program – Bisio, Berger, Belogenis and Smith
are top-notch improvisers doing what they do best.–CA
Evan
Parker
SAXOPHONE SOLOS
psi
 This
is a straight reissue of the 1994 Chronoscope CD of Parker's earliest
solo soprano recordings, a pair of sessions from June and September
of 1975. (Most of the original Incus LP was from the earlier session;
aside from one brief track, the September date only surfaced much
later, as a bonus cassette in the 1986 Collected Solos boxed
set.) The 7-minute "Aerobatics 10", omitted from the Chronoscope
compilation for reasons of space, is unfortunately still absent here,
which means that if you really want to hear every last scrap you'll
still have to seek out the boxed set (edition of 200: good luck!).
Meanwhile, though, there's plenty of extraordinary music here to digest
at leisure, not to mention Paul Haines's typically inscrutable liner
notes ("A music of subsequent-to-none accurate lack of all such
double that is less, wherein much is admired and what is admitted?
No, it didn't did not.") and an updated version of Francesco
Martinelli's excellent retrospective essay.
Anyone familiar with the sublime, multi-tiered burbles of Parker's
latterday solo performances will be taken aback by the cochlea-scraping
harshness of this stuff; the saxophonist's favourite circles-within-circles
pacing sometimes emerges on the second session in particular, but
it coexists with scribbly gabbling improv and moments of terrifying
stasis, where he draws out a ferocious tea-kettle squeal to incredible
length (though the effect is strangely lyrical, too). It's fascinating
to hear him delve into vocabulary that he later discarded -- microphone-popping
plosives, rich oboe serenades, hoarse buzzes and muezzin calls, high-pitched
wiggles and wriggles, curiously jigging rhythms, and (most importantly!)
lots of rests; I'm especially fond of the didgeridoo singing and growling
that opens "Aerobatics 9", a reminder of Parker's admiration
for Dewey Redman. Nowadays there's a distinct trend among acoustic
improvisers to draw for inspiration on electronic music, but certain
passages here suggest that Parker was on a similar path several decades
earlier. "Aerobatics 11" (subtitled "Shadows of the
Opus...magnum"--like all the subtitles here, it's a quote from
Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape) certainly moves in that direction,
its first two-thirds drenched in whirling freak-notes suggesting feedback,
and ending with a brutal sine wave riff.
The music's intractabilities are given added punch by the dry, close-up
recording: these sessions precede Parker's longstanding relationship
with the recording engineer Michael Gerzon, whose role in the albums
from Monoceros on [stop press: Evan Parker writes in
an email 10/07/09: "Michael did not record Monoceros,
that was done by Gerald Reynolds at Nimbus and Six of One
was recorded by Adam Skeaping, who I am pleased to say I have hooked
up with again over the last year.." DW] is hardly less collaborative
than Lawrence Casserley's or Walter Prati's on Parker's sax-plus-electronics
projects. Gerzon favoured natural room acoustics, to a degree that
can be offputting for recordings of full-group performances (see Tony
Bevan's excellent but idiosyncratically balanced Bigshots
to see what I mean), but which exactly suited Parker's later solo
music, with its incremental shifts of perspective and emphasis over
long durations. No such 3-D effects on Saxophone Solos: this
is more like a one-to-one stare-down with the head of the Medusa.
Listening to it is still an extraordinary (if alienating) experience,
even after 30-odd years of solo performances by Parker and countless
others.–ND
Evan
Parker / John Wiese
C-SECTION
Second Layer
 2007's
Free Noise Tour, which took British improv heavyweights John Edwards,
Paul Hession and Evan Parker on the road round the UK in the company
of visiting noisyboys, mostly from across the pond (Yellow Swans,
C.Spencer Yeh, Metalux and John Wiese..), was hailed as a major event
of sorts, a coming together of two musical worlds which normally have
little to do with each other. Listening to C-Section, on
which Evan Parker takes his saxophones (soprano, mostly) into battle
with Wiese's electronics, tapes and Max/MSP, it's not hard to see
why. Though Wiese's work recently – think the Sissy Spacek French
Record, or his recent duo outing with Yeh, Cincinnati
(reviewed here last time round) – has been showing signs of
"traditional musicality" (a greater feel for overall structure,
an increasing concern with development of motives and ideas, and a
careful ear for timbre, register and dynamics), it still doesn't seem
to be on the same wavelength as Parker's. And playing with Parker
means coming over to his side of the electric fence separating improv
and noise – you won't be hearing the maestro shooting nailguns
into planks of wood, throwing up in a bucket full of contact mics
or slicing his beard off with an amplified piece of broken glass.
Wiese can move fast, but Parker is still quicker on the draw, and
hits his targets more often. Even so, his soprano often has a hard
time dodging the volleys of sonic junk his playing partner hurls at
him. It's all fine if your idea of improvisation is about action rather
than interaction, and pump up the volume accordingly (when it's loud
enough, you don't care about interaction anyway – everything
becomes an exhilarating blur), but this music's attention span is
short. The two central tracks, "Little Black Book" and "No
Shoes", are more satisfying than the longer ones that bookend
them, in which many of Parker's ideas (and Wiese's too, to a lesser
extent) are trampled underfoot before they get a chance to take root.
Still, it's a step in an interesting direction for John Wiese, and
it'd be great to hear him go the distance again with another firebreathing
horn player. I vote for Alan Wilkinson next time round.–DW
People
Band
69 / 70
Emanem
 Five
years after Emanem's reissue of the People Band's one and only commercially
released album, a 1968 date for Transatlantic produced by Rolling
Stone Charlie Watts, Martin Davidson has been rooting through the
archives and has gathered together enough previously unavailable material
for a double CD follow-up: a studio session from Gooseberry Studios
in London ("circa 1969/70" is about as clear as we get regarding
dates), an eight-minute session at Mel Davis's Palmers Green house
from around the same period, a 23-minute live track from Amsterdam's
Paradiso (March 11th 1970, for a quintet subset of the PB) and two
open air recordings made in Trent Park woods, Middlesex.
Percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Terry Day proudly informs
us that the People Band was once ejected from the Anarchists Annual
Ball for being too musically anarchic, which should give you a good
idea of what to expect. If ragged, anything goes jamming is your thing,
with screaming saxophones-a-plenty, fisticuffs piano and plenty of
extraneous background chitchat, you'll probably enjoy yourself with
69/70, but for some reason I'm still trying to figure out,
I'm far less taken with it than I was with 1968. Maybe it's
because the past five years have seen such a huge number of DIY, lo-fi,
new weird, home made, n'importe quoi releases come my way
and I've just OD'ed on this kind of stuff, or maybe it's just simply
not as good as all that. There's too much of it too (a frequent gripe
about Emanem): disc one could quite easily have remained in Mel Davis's
wardrobe, or wherever it came from: the studio session is a sprawling
mess – and it's not particularly well recorded either –
and the Palmers Green jam an embarrassing beery brawl.
The outdoor recordings are fun (but not a patch on Bennink and Brötzmann's
Schwarzwaldfahrt, or more recent examples of environmental
improv – Matthias Forge, Cyril Epanat and Jérôme
Bertholon's Duo (Creative Sources) or Benjamin Bondonneau
and Fabrice Charles' Dordogne (Amor Fati)), and the Paradiso
set has its moments, but while one can admire, if not necessarily
agree with, the revolutionary attitude – "the PB sought
to act as agent provocateur, to agitate; to foment social
change... [..] it believed music can foster a collective / communal
/ social spirit... [it] accepted rebellion, chaos, anarchy, change
as part of life, as part of music, as part of creativity" –
one longs for someone to take the initiative, to steer the discussion
in a particular direction. But without strong personalities to shape
it – a Bailey, a Parker, a Mengelberg, a Bennink – the
music scatters in all directions. It's exhilarating for about five
minutes, exhausting after ten and positively exasperating after twenty.–DW
The
Respect Sextet
SIRIUS RESPECT: THE RESPECT SEXTET PLAY THE MUSIC OF SUN RA &
STOCKHAUSEN
Mode
 The
Respect have been going strong since 2001, having transferred their
base of operations from Rochester to New York with the odd personnel
change along the way; currently the band consists of Eli Asher (trumpet),
Josh Rutner (tenor sax), James Hirschfeld (trombone), Red Wierenga
(piano/keyboards), Malcolm Kirby (bass) and Ted Poor (drums). Their
perpetual fondness for clunky puns in their CD titles disguises their
increasingly distinctive performance style and serious delvings into
the alt.jazz canon. Their earliest proper CD release, The Full
Respect, was imaginative, fun, but rather glib; the follow-up
live Respect in You was much more like it, and gave a taste
of their real forte: long, slow-burn performances unpicking a single
tune at leisure, as recognizable themes slip in and out of a conspiratorial
haze of activity. Their affection for the ICP is often evident (they
once celebrated Misha Mengelberg's birthday with an evening of his
tunes), and like the AACM they make frequent use of toys and homemade
instruments.
Sun Ra has been a Respect touchstone for a while: one of their occasional
mini-CD bulletins was a 20-minute performance of "A Call for
All Demons". So it's no surprise that this disc, their third
full-length release, is in large part devoted to the Saturnian One's
compositions. It's a lovely, gutsy idea to pair him with Karlheinz
Stockhausen for this program. The connections between the two men
are clear enough – notably, a grandiose self-created cosmology
delivered with a straight face, and the somewhat cultish leadership
of a clan/family of dedicated interpreters – but it's still
quite a stretch for a jazz group to deal with Stockhausen's output,
and the Respect have been very selective in what they tackle: mostly
brief melodies from Tierkreis, plus "Dienstagslied"
and the text-piece "Set Sail for the Sun" (given a luminous
but far too short reading at less than six minutes). In point of fact,
the Ra portion of the program far outweighs the other in terms of
sheer running time, though at least the two streams converge briefly
with the final track, a live performance collaging "Capricorn"
(Tierkreis) and "Saturn" (classic late-1950s Ra,
best known from its appearance on Jazz in Silhouette).
What seems to attract the Respect most with Ra isn't the farthest-out
stuff from the 1960s and beyond, nor his homages to Fletcher Henderson
or Duke Ellington, but instead the areas where he seems prescient
of the sharp end of the current jazz mainstream: a cutting-edge harmonic
sense pushing bebop line-spinning into atonality, the use of electronic
keyboards, experimentation with exotic time-signatures and percussion
overlays. Some tracks are quite short and pointed – the opening
blast through "Jet Flight" and the epigrammatic reading
of "Velvet" – but others take longer durations to
pull together their elements, offering something of the flavour of
the group's live performances (though this is mostly a studio album).
The churning 7/4 line of "Shadow World" especially suits
the Respect's love of collagist mayhem, and their favourite strategem
of letting a tune emerge sidelong from very oblique beginnings is
evident on "El Is the Sound of Joy" (though when they finally
lock into the stomping groove you wish it lasted longer). Perhaps
the best compliment one can pay to their use of the Stockhausen pieces
is that they fit right in--indeed, the staggering horn fanfares of
"Dienstagslied" offer the most Arkestra-like moment on the
disc.
Sirius Respect isn't the group's most impressive disc in
terms of soloing – I'd direct you instead to Respect in
You for some monstrous solo work by Asher, Rutner and Hirschfeld
– but at least you get a better representation of their excellent
pianist/synthesist Red Wierenga, who mostly stuck to the background
on the earlier CD (probably because he was also responsible for the
live recording). In any case, this is still a courageous, thought-provoking,
and thoroughly enjoyable attempt to foster a dialogue between the
musical legacies of its two dedicatees.–ND
Gino
Robair / Birgit Ulher
BLIPS AND IFS
Rastascan
 This
is the second release by West Coast improv luminary Gino Robair and
German trumpet mangler Birgit Ulher. Like Sputter, their
first outing on Creative Sources, Robair is credited as playing “voltage
made audible.” Always a master at picking up any detritus at
hand and turning it into an unanticipated sound source, here he sticks
to analog synths. Ulher’s flayed trumpet technique is further
modulated through the use of mutes with tiny radio-driven speakers.
Over the course of seven improvisations, the two deliver spontaneous
dialogue shaped by charged attentive interaction and micro-nuanced
gestural activity. Like many of her peers who use trumpet in electro-acoustic
settings, Ulher seamlessly blurs the line between breathy pinched
overtones, percussive blats, and burred vocalizations, extended by
shadings of synths and electronic manipulations. Robair’s lithe
touch and lightning reflexes allow him to tint and shape the pieces,
never disturbing the balance. He’s more focused here on gesture,
timbre, and velocity than on more overtly percussive textures. Interestingly,
it's Ulher’s playing that is more percussive in the mix. There’s
a light-heartedness that comes from two fine musicians who are clearly
having a ball bouncing ideas back and forth, weaving them into a conversational
flow.–MRo
Jason
Robinson
CERBERUS RISING
Circumvention
 Jason
Robinson is the saxophonist from Cosmologic, a sterling freebop quartet
from the West Coast who have gained a wider audience lately on the
strength of their excellent Cuneiform release Eyes in the Back
of My Head. His occasional releases under his own name have mostly
flown under the radar; the most recent, 2008's Fingerprint,
was a surprisingly mainstreamish outing in a territory somewhere in
the vicinity of Maiden Voyage, though Robinson's meaty, avant-traditional
tenor playing brought a Sam Rivers edge to the music.
Cerberus Rising is the first of a promised trilogy of solo
saxophone discs – hence the title's allusion to the three-headed
dog guarding the gates of hell, I guess. Robinson's liner notes mention
the revelatory impact Roscoe Mitchell's Nonaah had on him,
and he pays homage here with the seesawing "Nonaah Variation";
its abrupt, hiccupping lines, at once ludicrous and intense, find
echoes in the leaping intervals of several other tracks, such as "Three
Sphinxes of Bikini", "Chimera" and "Refractions".
Indeed, he's a subtle exponent of play between different registers:
one of his favourite techniques involves thinning out a rich lower
note until only upper harmonics remain. You can hear the influence
of John Butcher and Evan Parker in Robinson's buzzy extended trills
and bubbling recirculations of notes, and his love of yearning melody
harks back to Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, but ultimately what stands
out is the saxophonist's instinct for form. It's rare to hear an improviser
with multiple approaches to structure (more usually, the focus is
on the choice of vocabulary elements), but Robinson's disc shows a
genuinely imaginative range of approaches. Some pieces focus manically
on a single idea for a considerable duration; some, such as "Creator
Variation 2" or "Palimpsest", work according to a kind
of modular polyphony where different chunks of material get swapped
around and progressively extended; others have a streaming improvisational
linearity, such as his reading of Coltrane's "After the Rain",
which unfolds as a highly ornamented, almost angrily insistent cadenza.
His ability to pull diverse elements together without succumbing to
one-thing-after-another syndrome is evident throughout – listen,
for example, to the way he puts the wildest Aylerian moments of "Creator
Variation 1" first, then damps things down into soft, throttled
lyricism. This sets the stage for the track's main business, as he
works with increasing fierceness back up through the singsong thematic
material (derived from "The Creator Has a Master Plan")
into the graceful ascending cry that ends the track and the disc.–ND
Domenico
Sciajno / Gene Coleman
DIOSPYROS
Bowindo
Kim
Cascone / Domenico Sciajno
HYALINE
Bowindo
 Three
studio tracks and a live segment offer complementary perspectives
on real-time improvisation, the outcome at once logical and –
yes, it's an over-used adjective – organic. Sciajno (Max/MSP-cum-processing)
and Coleman (bass clarinet) have been collaborating for several years
now, yet Diospyros is the first disc they've recorded together.
The initial impression is one of extreme meticulousness. Coleman strives
for total control, cuts and slices, unseams and destroys, incessantly
hunting the ultimate atonal snippet for remorseless extension and
metamorphosis, his spectacular timbral panache obliterating whatever
hint of kindness the instrument might have left inside. Sciajno's
treatments clone, reduce and lyophilize his comrade's playing into
a bunch of miniature mad scientists. His wobbly fluctuations, disabled
harmonies and resonant waves wrap Coleman's inventions with a fine
mantle of alien charm. The final track, the splendid "Chloroxylon",
is the perfect synthesis of their approaches: the clarinetist finally
succumbs to tranquil meditation, prompting him and Sciajno to reflect
(with mild-mannered subversiveness) on the possibilities of droning
themselves out of humdrum existence.
 Cascone
and Sciajno's previous record, A Book of Standard Equinoxes
on (1.8)sec, was released about three years ago. This second chapter
in their collaboration is a live recording from a 2008 show in Palermo,
which was left untouched, without post-production or editing. They
demonstrate a fine ability to manage instantaneous events, often letting
raucous intrusion emerge from reasonably static foundations and savouring
the exhilaration of a more violent unruliness. At times the disquieting
elements cohere uneasily, but on "Cleistogamia" they completely
fuse with the music's laptop-generated lattice. The 21-minute marathon
opener "Satyrium" might, despite its underground disturbances,
induce dark ambient aficionados to entertain hopes of arcane entrancement,
but the sudden dynamic shifts and noncompliant emissions on the remainder
of the album will cause incense sticks to burn faster and detune "bought-on-my-last-holiday"
monochords. The music is a peculiar blend of acousmatic intolerance
and detailed investigation by two expert manipulators who seem determined
to keep the listener at bay. The technical expertise, notably on the
final "Glove Box", keeps the record well above average,
but Cascone and Sciajno's best work is still found on their separate
releases.–MR
Julien
$krobek / Migu€l Prado
AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
Why Not
 When
this limited edition (ridiculously limited edition, like
all of Goh Lee Kwang's Why Nots) CDR was released a month or two ago
it provoked a teacup-size storm of protests from certain quarters,
who were "offended" by its accompanying text (which I won't
bother to quote, for I don't find it particularly provocative), but
musically it's about as offensive as Music For Airports.
Indeed, I'd argue that much of this post-Malfatti stuff – music
where the silence to sound ratio is tilted heavily in favour of the
former – is the new Ambient music. It works perfectly well in
the background while you busy yourself with various sundry domestic
tasks – the less noisy ones, that is: hoovering the apartment
and using the spincycle on the washing machine aren't recommended
if you want to catch all the delicate sprinkles and squiggles of prepared
cello and piano (Prado) and synthesizer (Skrobek) – but it's
also satisfying enough to sit down and give your full attention to.
The sounding events, when they appear, are carefully constructed and
beautifully paced across the album's two tracks, which last respectively
14'53" and 24'58". Forget the silly "politics",
and just use your ears. There's much to enjoy.–DW
Günter
Baby Sommer
LIVE IN JERUSALEM
Kadima Collective
 Bassist
Jean-Claude Jones and his wife Judy Posner have been running the Kadima
Collective label from their Jerusalem home since 2005, and this ebullient
set by visiting percussion virtuoso Sommer is the latest welcome dispatch
of Improvised Music from Israel. Welcome not only because 66-year-old
Dresden-born Sommer, mainstay of the FMP label since 1973, is an outstanding
performer who deserves to be mentioned as often as his peers Bennink,
Lytton and Lovens, but also because it features splendid work by two
saxophonists we haven't heard so much from in recent years, Steve
Horenstein and Assif Tsahar (spelled "Tsachar" on the album
but not on the label website – should I change my address book
or what?). Also taking part in this July 2008 jam, on one relatively
brief quartet track, are bass clarinettist Yoni Silver, tenor saxophonist
Yonatan Kretzmer and guitarist Yonatan Albalak. Jean-Claude Jones
himself provides bass on the opening couple of tracks, the first a
trio with Horenstein on baritone sax, the second a quartet adding
Tsahar's tenor with Horenstein switching to soprano, while Sommer
races around his kit with the energy and enthusiasm of someone a third
his age, swinging hard and fast to boot. Again, Bennink comes to mind,
but unlike his Dutch near-contemporary, whose titanic force can sometimes
push his playing partners into the shadows (if not pummel them into
the ground), Sommer often seems happy to take a back seat. But he's
one hell of a back-seat driver.–DW
Splinters
SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE
Reel Recordings
 The
idea of a blowing session – players taking lengthy solos on
familiar sets of changes – has long been a part of the recorded
history of this music, replicating on wax the cutting contests of
the 40s and sometimes allowing a shared spotlight to players who didn't
usually work together. A good example is Tenor Conclave with
John Coltrane, Hank Mobley, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims (Prestige, 1956);
I'm also partial to the invigorating collision of Mobley and Archie
Shepp in 1969 for BYG (Yasmina, a Black Woman and Poem
for Malcolm). Recorded in 1972 at London's 100 Club, Split
the Difference follows a similar model, though Splinters was
apparently not a one-off aggregation. For followers of the scene in
the late 60s and early 70s, the lineup here induces a serious double
take: saxophonists Tubby Hayes and Trevor Watts, drummers John Stevens
and Phil Seamen, pianist Stan Tracey, bassist Jeff Clyne and trumpeter
Kenny Wheeler stretching out on two tracks over nearly eighty minutes.
It's easy to see why Splinters was a semi-regular collaboration, for
the level of musicianship and open-heartedness here is cross-boundary
and inter-generational. "One in One Hundred" starts off
with limber pacesetting by Stevens and Clyne; the other members of
the septet amble in gradually, hitting a pedal point and spiraling
off into loose, parallel (almost jovial) conversation. Wheeler takes
the first solo, his stately clarion accelerating rapidly into crammed
runs and shrieks as the trumpeter shoves his breath and plenum of
ideas through the instrument's short span of tubing. Next, Tubbs and
Watts swoop in like hawks, skimming the charcoal-shaded rhythmic floes.
Stan Tracey fills in the bottom with stark low-end roiling; these
days he's the elder statesman of British jazz, but back then he was
also a semi-regular contributor to Harry Miller's free-kwela group
Isipingo, and free music is clearly well within his comfort zone.
What's interesting about this performance is that passages of dense
group playing and sparser moments carry equal weight; Clyne's lengthy
pizzicato exploration, at first backed by Seamen's brushes, is incredibly
concentrated, brilliantly distilling the rhythm and color of the whole
Splinters canvas. It's a particular treat to hear Tubby Hayes and
his own brand of free playing as he digs into the low end of the tenor,
chewing on phrases and spitting out brief, Coltrane-like flurries
in steely response to Watts' quixotic cadences. Hayes switches to
flute in the latter ten minutes of the improvisation, birdsong and
metallic flutters suggesting a strong Dolphy influence. Presented
with the usual fine mastering job from Reel's Mike King, Split
the Difference is an absolute treasure of modern British jazz.–CA
Stasis
Duo
3
Organized Music from Thessaloniki
 So
far everything that's come my way from Kostis Kilymis's bijou EAI
imprint has been excellent, and this latest offering from antipodean
lowercasers Adam Sussmann and Matt Earle is no exception. Just don't
make the mistake I made and take it out on the streets on your mp3
player because you won't hear a bloody thing: these three tracks are,
for the most part, extremely quiet, but there's an enormous amount
of detail in what Sussmann and Earle conjure forth from empty samplers.
On the first track, against a harmonic backdrop of a glistening phantom
diminished triad, tiny disturbances at the limit of audibility, both
in terms of frequency and dynamics, trace ever so delicate lines in
the inner ear, drawing the listener in to a micro world of breathtaking
subtlety and beauty. What a shame it stops dead just before the nine
and a half minute mark – I could listen to this all day. But
tracks two and three are just as impressive. "Recorded between
2003 and 2009", says the label website – let's hope that
means there's more where this came from. Limited edition, exquisite
handmade paper covers, move fast, don't miss it.–DW
Storm
of Corpses
BITE YOUR TONGUE
Bug Incision
 Well,
with a name like that you know you're not in for a leisurely stroll
through the sunlit uplands of EAI, don't you? This rough-and-tumble
live set recorded in concert at the appropriately named Art Damage
Lodge in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the work of a seven-piece local supergroup
(I was recently warned against using this word by the powers that
be at Wire HQ because it was too "rockist", though I don't
think anyone is likely to confuse these cats with the Travelling Wilburys,
somehow) starring C. Spencer "Burning Star Core" Yeh, Ryan
"Psychedelic Horseshit" Jewell, Jacob Felix "Soft Teeth"
Heule, Jay "Ettrick" Korber, Tony "Basshaters"
Dryer and Jon Lorenz and John Rich, aka Wasteland Jazz Unit (who,
you may recall, caused my neighbours no end of grief a month or two
with that split disc with Talibam!). Large ensemble improv, if it
isn't conducted or pre-planned in some way, is a notoriously hit-and-miss
affair, and this 25'30" adventure has its ups and downs, the
ups not necessarily being the loudest and wildest bits either (though
it's a shame they couldn't have pushed a bit further with what they
were doing about the fifteen-minute mark). If you only buy two Bug
Incision discs this month (haha), this one and the Jack Wright trio
reviewed underneath are the ones to get.–DW
Ton
Trio
THE WAY
Singlespeed Music
 Tradition
can be a perilous thing, especially when one is compelled to both
clearly follow one's forebears and express oneself in a very personal
manner. Alto saxophonist and clarinetist Aram Shelton is a young improvising
composer who has called the Bay Area home for the last several years,
though he came up in Chicago's jazz hotbed alongside cornetist Josh
Berman, drummer Frank Rosaly, and tenorman Keefe Jackson. The
Way finds Shelton in the company of bassist Kurt Kotheimer and
drummer Sam Ospovat on six originals. In the liner notes to last year's
self-titled Dragons 1976 disc, Shelton professed a kinship
to Ornette, Ayler, and Shepp – and it is a testament to the
reedman's conviction in his own work to acknowledge his influences
and yet (judging from recorded evidence) forge a distinct path.
Opening the set is the title track, a warm singsong melody that recalls
mid-1960s Ornette as well as some of Steve Lacy's nursery-rhyme tunes.
It's here that the similarities to 1965 end, though – Shelton's
alto, while hitting tartly rounded contours, moves into areas of severe
repetition and abstraction, sort of like a self-contained albeit folksy
"Nonaah." Ospovat is bullish and thrashing, mining Shelton's
theme for explosive rhythmic nuggets. The bassist's supple pizzicato
underpins it all, his gauzy melodic shading offering just enough resolution
to keep the triangle equilateral. "One Last Thing" has an
incredibly infectious roiling groove, at slight odds with Shelton's
concentrated behind-the-beat cells. His solo elongates and circles
back in on itself, Ospovat and Kotheimer hacking away at overlaid
tempi yet never losing a profound sense of swing. "Switches"
is one of two pieces featuring Shelton's bass clarinet, an instrument
he plays with precision and delicacy. Beginning with a husky duet
of low reed and plucked bass, the pair move quickly into a stuttering
theme before Shelton's solo emerges, filled with wry, teasing snatches
of phrase. The Way is an excellently-paced set, its quizzical
themes dispatched quickly and engagingly – the disc clocks in
at just under forty minutes. Shelton, Kotheimer and Ospovat comprise
a trio of utmost conviction.-CA
Michael
Vlatkovich / Chris Lee / Kent McLagen
THREE3
Thankyou
 Michael
Vlatkovich's snappy West Coast trombone-bass-drums trio visited Denver
in 2007, and the result was this fine live disc. The musicians feed
joyfully off the tunes' lean, pocket-size grooves, occasionally pausing
for a little elastic balladry: maybe this is old-school stuff compared
to the mindbending mix of post-M-BASE conceptual funk and electronics
on Michael Dessen's recent Between Shadow and Space, instead
hewing a lot closer to the sound of the venerable BassDrumBone (Anderson/Dresser/Hemingway),
but it's still a delight to hear it done this well. Come to think
of it, BDB never quite managed to put together an album as consistently
brilliant as you'd expect, given the players concerned; this one,
by contrast, with its much less starry cast, doesn't have a dead spot
among its seven tracks. Bassist Kent McLagen and drummer Chris Lee
deal lightly but decisively with the teasing loops of melody and rhythm
that Vlatkovich likes to build into his pieces (all the better for
his lines to dodge around). Lee has a sweet, truly melodic approach
to the drums, pattering out tapdance rhythms and countermelodies (you
can pick out the pitches quite easily); it's a style that can be distractingly
cute in the hands of some players – Matt Wilson comes to mind
– but here it's entirely channelled into the music, and on tracks
like "The Man Who Walks..." and the insanely catchy "Where
Is Wanda Skutnick?" the results are like a comic three-way conspiracy.
But the trio also has its dark, rhapsodic side, which comes out on
"Model Plantation", a free ballad that slowly courses through
the trombone and arco bass lines, folding back in on itself in layers
of overlapping dialogue; at the end Vlatkovich is left softly humming
to himself, as the rhythm section's tide gradually recedes.–ND
Weasel
Walter / Henry Kaiser / Damon Smith
PLANE CRASH
ugEXPLODE
 Don't
be alarmed by the back of the CD box, which lists the artists as "Henry
Kaiser (1952-2008), Damon Smith (1972-2008) and Weasel Walter (1972-2008)"
– to misquote Mark Twain, rumours of their deaths, circulated
of course by Mr Walter himself, have been greatly exaggerated. There
are some cute obituaries in lieu of liner notes, too. "Mr Walter
loved cats.." yeah, right. Jonathan Cott once asked
Karlheinz Stockhausen what piece of music he'd like to be listening
to at the moment of his death, and he opted for Boulez's first Piano
Sonata ("Bang!"). Well, if it's bangs you're looking
to go out with, Plane Crash will do just fine. But it's not
all twisted metal and charred bodies – on "In The Field"
Weasel is just as good at flicking round the lighter elements of his
kit (with knitting needles à la Sunny Murray, I wonder?)
as he is at pummelling it through the floor of the cabin into the
luggage hold, and when Kaiser picks up his acoustic guitar, there's
plenty of room for Smith to explore some subtle lines and harmonics.
But it's the punishing electric stuff like "Untamed Talents"
and, yes, "The End", that you'll want to crank up in your
headsets as you plunge to a fiery death. Fuck the tray table and the
seatbelt too – just head to the back of the plane where they
keep the booze and fix yourself a double before it's too late.–DW
Jack
Wright with Hell & Bunny
OVER THE TRANSOM
Bug Incision
 "Hell
& Bunny" sounds like something you might come across over
at engrish.com, but in fact it's an improv duo consisting of cellist
Hans Buetow and percussionist Ben Hall (I'm not sure who's hell and
who's bunny but I guess it doesn't matter), who might be more familiar
to readers as two thirds of Graveyards, with ol' Wolf Eye himself
John Olson. On this splendid CDR release on the Alberta-based Bug
Incision imprint they're joined by another prowling wolf of American
free music, saxophonist Jack Wright, and it's the most impressive
Wright release I've heard since the two trio dates with Michel Doneda
and Tatsuya Nakatani, from between (SOSEditions, 2003) and
No Stranger To Air (Sprout, 2006). At the turn of the century,
Jack Wright took a decisive step (every step Jack takes is decisive)
into lowercase territory, generously acknowledging the influence of
Bhob Rainey, but throughout the decade his playing, especially solo,
has gradually been getting more combative again – though it's
nowhere near as fiery as it was back when he started out in the early
80s. On Over The Transom, Hall's soft mallets and Buetow's
elegant micromelodies and delicate pizzicati pull him back into more
restrained territory, but you can tell he's just itching to burst
into flames. Wright has always taken the line of most resistance as
a player (I still think he should team up with his English namesake
Seymour), exposing himself to as much risk as he can find. Just as
well he's not a Wall Street trader. Listen to how he jams the horn
against his thigh and really goes for – and gets! – those
awkward multiphonics, just when the music is quiet enough to show
up the tiniest mistake. This stuff is as poised as gagaku,
as focused as shodo and as intense as butoh.–DW
Ami
Yoshida / Toshimaru Nakamura
SOBA TO BARA
Erstwhile
 I'm
sure that when you were a kid you used to explore the strange outer
limits of your own voice, gargling in the bath, blowing raspberries,
teaching yourself to whistle (my son's ten, and still working on it)
and, when nobody was listening, pretending that somebody was trying
to strangle you. Bet you never thought about making a career of it,
though. Pretending to be strangled is something Ami Yoshida does remarkably
well, and, when amplified closely enough – judging from the
presence and clarity of the extraordinary sounds she squeezes out
of herself on Soba to Bara, you'd think the mic was down
her throat – you'd be hard pressed to identify it as a human
voice at all. Which I suppose is the point. In any case, it sounds
just fine alongside the rough fizzes, harsh buzzes and raw crackles
of Toshi Nakamura's inputless mixing board. Not really alongside as
much as on top of, to be more precise, as the two performers,
who'd never worked together prior to this recording (surprising, but
true), opted for a blind overdub approach rather than going into the
studio together. A strategy perfectly in line with EAI's laminal ideology
(cf. Keith Rowe's oft-misunderstood remarks about not listening) perhaps,
but a risky one. There are many magical moments where the two instruments
are remarkably complementary in terms of timing, timbre and register,
but plenty of near misses too, of the kind that presumably would not
have occurred had the pair been recording together and able to, if
not listen to, at least hear each other. The end result is an enthralling
but often frustrating (and, at high volume, mildly distressing) 48-minute
span of music, intense and impressive, but rather hard to love. Fortunately
there's a little light relief in the liner notes, which are available
in English translation here
(on the disc they're in Japanese only) and make for an entertaining
if not essential (in order to appreciate the music, that is) read,
Yoshida's comma-sprinkled Beckett-like gasps contrasting nicely with
Nakamura's downhome musings on buckwheat noodles. I like the bit where
he imagines a restaurant that only serves the water the noodles were
cooked in. There must be some connection to his music there, if I
could figure out what it is.–DW
Tom
Hamilton
LOCAL CUSTOMS
Mutable Music
 Local
Customs, whose five movements follow each other without a break,
uses an "electronic harmony generator" developed by the
composer during a residency in Italy in the summer of 2005, to, as
the press release puts it, explore "some obscure notions about
music theory and performance practice, leading to sound combinations
that are at once unsettling and yet somehow familiar." Scored
for an ensemble consisting of Hamilton's keyboards, along with flute,
clarinet, trombone, bass and percussion, the result manages to be
curiously arresting and forgettable, restful and restless, satisfying
and frustrating, all at the same time. The ear constantly wants things
to resolve a certain way – they never do – and each time
it gives up trying it's called upon to make another attempt. Cage's
reworked Satie (Cheap Imitation) and partially-erased William
Billings (Hymns and Variations) come to mind, but even there
you can guess (just about) where the music's going, or should be going,
or what's missing. In Local Customs a tonal centre is often
hinted at – long stretches of "Counterpoint Four"
feel like they're in C# minor, thanks to the frozen pitches and predominance
of the C#-E minor third, but of course they're not really in any key
at all. Diatonic intervals abound, but we're a long way from the "non-tonal
diatonic music" of late Ligeti, too. Rich O' Donnell's spare
percussion work often recalls Cesar Burago's inspired playing with
Sei Miguel, but Hamilton's music doesn't swing in anything like the
same way. In fact it doesn't swing at all. Rhythmically, it's quite
regular, slightly stilted at times ("BRQ Ten"), and even
when it appears to loosen up ("All The Mapping Shifted")
it's clear it's still being held in place by a severe compositional
logic somehow beyond our comprehension. Or is it?–DW
Erdem
Helvacioglu
WOUNDED BREATH
Aucourant
 "A
diving crew. The Arctic Ocean. The rhythmic push and glide of steel
blades on frozen water. The click and clack of the ice. The blowing
wind and the bitter cold. The moment of diving. The feel of freezing
cold water. The atmosphere. The water all around us. We are also there."
It's probably not all that surprising that a composer such as Erdem
Helvacioglu, who's worked with a wide range of musicians, from Elliott
Sharp to Mick Karn (remember Japan?), and on numerous mixed-media
projects, from gallery installations to music for dance and film,
should choose to associate his sounds with extra-musical images and
sensations. After all, if he'd named these five pieces of meticulously
crafted electronic music after something in a high school physics
textbook, you'd probably feel like leaving them well alone, and in
doing so would be missing out on some impressive stuff (assuming,
that is, you like the chilly technical wizardry of computer music).
Some folks feel they have to be told how to listen, and what to listen
for, but if you trust your ears and just pay attention you'll find
these pieces tell their own stories very well, and it's much more
interesting and complex than the ones the composer provides. "A
painful journey into his inner self. Search for the meaning of existence.
Salvation. Atonement." Crikey.–DW
Radu
Malfatti
DÜSSELDORF VIELFACHES
b-boim
 Recorded
in Düsseldorf in July 2007 by a large (15-piece) ensemble, a
kind of Wandelweiser All Stars, in fact (the performers also include
Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey, André O. Möller, Michael
Pisaro and Burkhard Schlothauer), this 38'35" composition seems
to mark something of a shift in Radu Malfatti's recent output, in
that the long stretches of silence between notes have gone, and we're
left with a continuous span of music. Perhaps that's simply due to
the size of the ensemble and the inevitable overlapping of events
specified by the score, which is notated along similar lines as Cage's
number pieces, arrows indicating when sounds are to begin and end,
and how long they last – but it does make a welcome change,
allowing the ear to focus more on what the composer has written than
on how it relates to the acoustic environment in which it's performed
(though this rather distant recording does capture the resonance of
the hall, and a few odd coughs and splutters).
Of course, with Malfatti's music there's little point in discussing
changes in dynamics or individual instrumental timbre ("all sounds
are calm and very quiet", states the score), so we're left with
pitch. And that's what makes Düsseldorf Vielfaches so
compelling: its unique harmonic world, a strange, microtonally-inflected
pale glow; listening to it is like watching embers in a dying fire.
The individual tones played by the musicians remain more or less the
same (in fact each of the six instrumental groups specified in the
score moves their note up a semitone over the course of the piece),
but overlap to form ever-changing configurations, creating an overall
sonority that seems to be the same throughout – once you've
heard the work I guarantee you'll recognise it instantly second time
round – but which in fact is constantly on the move, albeit
very slowly and in a direction almost impossible to determine.
The crucial difference between Malfatti's recent music and (late)
Feldman (just in case anyone still wants to compare them, since the
latter is often seen, along with Cage, as a precursor of the Wandelweiser
Group) is the openness to microtonality. In this case not by design
– unlike L'Instant Inconnu, the violin and piano piece
Frédéric Blondy and I premiered a few years ago, whose
(violin) microtonal inflections were precisely notated – but
more by accident, as the musicians in Düsseldorf Vielfaches
are requested not to tune their instruments. And, although each part
specifies precise start and stop times for the notes, individual performers
can start their stopwatches ("important: no beeps"!) "within
about eight minutes" of each other. The pitches in the score
are all notated in the treble clef, but the performers are requested
to transpose them down to appear in the bottom octave of their instrument,
hence the harmonically rich low tessitura.
Until the release of this piece, Malfatti's b-boim catalogue had only
featured one other work for large ensemble, 1997's raum-zeit I,
originally scored for 36-piece string orchestra (the disc contains
a version realised using sampling keyboards, unfortunately). On the
strength of Düsseldorf Vielfaches, a full-length orchestral
piece by Radu Malfatti would be a wonderful thing. Cross fingers.–DW
Will
Montgomery (Brian Marley)
LEGEND
Entr'acte
 I
think Rafael Toral was on the one when he described Alvin Lucier's
I Am Sitting In A Room as "among the great artistic
achievements of mankind." It's a piece whose underlying concept
is as remarkably simple as its ultimate realisation is astoundingly
complex, a benchmark against which any musical work produced since
that takes human speech as its starting point has to be measured.
As such, Will Montgomery's Legend fares pretty well, but
Lucier purists might be bothered that his source material –
a text written and recorded by Brian Marley, itself a commentary on
a photograph taken by Rhodri Davies showing an empty cabinet –
is impossible to make out from merely listening to the music (of course,
if you listen just to the last few minutes of I Am Sitting In
A Room you won't be able to make out a word either, but by that
stage of the piece you're supposed to know what they are, the whole
point of the composition being the process that transforms simple
speech into complex music, a process the listener follows from beginning
to end). In any case, Marley's amusing five paragraphs are available
for consultation in the liners, if you're interested. Nothing here
now but the recordings, as William Burroughs would say. Montgomery's
ear is impeccable, as always, and the ten tracks (eleven in fact,
the last one being a filtered recording of the empty room in which
Marley's reading took place), each lasting 3'52", the duration
of the original reading, are beautifully crafted and rich listening
experiences, either individually or taken together. I now await the
next stage of the conceptual translation process – cabinet begat
photo begat text begat music begat disc begat.. review? If Will feels
like recording someone reading this and fuck around with it in the
same way, that's just fine by me. And if nobody can understand a word
I'm saying, so much the better.–DW
David
Rosenboom
HOW MUCH BETTER IF PLYMOUTH ROCK HAD LANDED ON THE PILGRIMS
New World
 Composed
and elaborated between 1969 and 1971, Plymouth Rock is an
ambitious work in nine sections which sprawls over this handsomely
produced double CD, most of which was recorded in the Herb Alpert
School Of Music in the California Institute of the Arts, where Dean
David Rosenboom sits in the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair. Fellow
faculty members Aashish Khan, I Nyoman Wenten, Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick
and William Winant are among the performers. Minimalism is the name
of the game here – and, as we all know, that means different
things to different people, from La Monte Young, with whose Theater
of Eternal Music Rosenboom performed in the late 60s, forward via
Terry Riley to Rhys Chatham and backward (outward?) to Indian and
Balinese music. If your record collection includes several platters
by any or all of the above, you won't want to miss out on this.
"Start with one tone. Proceed to the next one when you know what
it should be," runs the cryptic instruction for Section I
(essential tension to universe). The realisation here features
twenty tracks of Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick's cello sitting on middle
C for a minute and than glissandoing out both upwards and downwards
until they reach what Rosenboom calls "the universe chord"
combining notes from the harmonic and subharmonic series, i.e. overtones
and undertones (and if your knowledge of undertones stops at Feargal
Sharkey you'd better go and google yourself some information because
I don't have time to go into the subject here – or, better still,
buy this album and read Chris Brown's clear explanations in the liner
notes). The score extract included in the booklet includes the words
"continue holding for a very long time", but the track is
over and done with in two minutes and 22 seconds, which is a shame.
Phill Niblock would have let it run on for a good half hour, which
it really needs to do. You have to "get inside" a drone,
as Young would say, let your ears accustom themselves to the constituent
tones before you can surf the spectra.
Instead, we head out to symmetrical harmonies in chaotic orbits,
the subtitle of the work's second section, which in performance, Brown
informs us, would also "go on for hours." Here it consists
of a collage of Rosenboom's electronics, old (frequency divider circuits,
waveform generators, analog computer and three-deck tape accumulation
system) and new (computer), over which excerpts from early performances
of the piece in 1970 and 1973 appear and disappear. Back in the late
60s the composer's experiments with frequency-divider circuits led
him to explore the secrets of the subharmonic series of the humble
sine wave. "Fascinating instability regions were obtained around
particular reference voltage thresholds," he recalls, "for
which the output signal would become chaotic... the output would flip
from one integral frequency division to another in a complex fashion."
Feed the resulting squiggles through tape delay systems and you soon
end up with the piece's characteristic thrilling harmonic swirl, which
would have been rich and rewarding enough without the dusty archive
material (pleasant but rather quaint and very much of its time –
the lazy jamming on wah wah piano, Vox organ, dumbek and tambura is
the aural equivalent of wearing a tie-dye shirt).
If the instructions for Section I read like one of those
Wandelweiser text scores, then Section III (world)'s, which
call for a piece tuned to "ecological and geographical resonances
of the areas in which they are to be placed" seem like a perfect
description of some of John Butcher's site-specific recent work. Here
it's heard in a version recorded in a giant underground water cistern
(the kind of acoustic John B would no doubt approve of) by Vinny Golia
(JB would probably approve of him too) on multitracked contrabass
saxophones, which are perfect for exploring those subharmonics. The
sound is extraordinary, but once more, frustratingly, it's over and
done with before you have time to get into it. Why it lasts just 2'17"
is beyond me.
In Section IV (life) Rosenboom transcribes the sounds of
wildlife recorded "near where he lived back in 1969", the
resulting music played by Kirkpatrick and Golia (here on an arsenal
of wind instruments including various flutes, clarinets, saxophones
and shakuhachi) and overlaid with a field recording made in Central
Park, of all places. As well as the inevitable birdsong and traffic
noise, you can hear a jogger trot by at one point. One wonder whether
a more, umm, field-like field recording might have worked better;
this music should be breathing the open air, not the exhaust fumes
of Manhattan taxicabs. Whatever. At just over nine minutes, it's fine
by me.
If we got shortchanged on the first and third sections, Section
V (humanity) makes up for it by running to 34'38". Here
we're very much back in the world of Riley's Rainbow In Curved
Air, overlapping riffs and loops all drawn from the glowing pentatonic
scale (think dominant seventh plus added fourth) that became the hallmark
tonality of much 70s minimalism, along with a whiff of raga and gamelan
– in addition to the composer's piano, his son Daniel's trumpet
and Golia's flutes and soprano sax, the instrumentation includes tabla,
sarode and pemade. The version also incorporates extracts from another
"historical" performance of the piece, this time from 1979,
featuring the composer and Donald Buchla on a couple of the latter's
Series 300 Electric Music Boxes. If you've worn your copy of Shri
Camel out and need something else to get high on, this will do
nicely, but you don't need to be stoned immaculate to appreciate the
virtuosity of the musicians, and the speed and skill with which they
pick up and develop each other's ideas. Great stuff.
Opening the second disc, the work's sixth section, subtitled culture,
moves us forward into another slightly later generation of minimalism,
one where the regular metrics and clear diatonic harmonies met the
energy and instrumentation of rock, the version here featuring not
one but two rock groups, Plotz! and DR. MiNT. Think Rhys (Chatham),
not Riley. Indeed, the trochaic hi-hat is right out of Chatham's Guitar
Trio, but the six-string solos are right out of Guitar Hero.
Fortunately, Rosenboom lets fly on the piano, but the piece begins
to drag after a while. Ten minutes would have been just fine –
the other seven could have been redispatched to sections I and III.
The sudden shift from blatantly equal-tempered harmony to the pelog
tuning of Balinese gamelan in the seventh section, impression,
which features Rosenboom's piano along with I Nyoman Wenten's pemade
and William Winant's jegog and calung, is alarming at first, but the
ear soon settles in, even if those left hand piano arpeggios sound
a little too Glass-like at times. Back across the Indian Ocean, Section
VIII (unification) is described by Brown as "an extended
alap improvisation" featuring Rosenboom Jr's trumpet,
plenty of tape delay and a resonant pedal point from the composer
on organ, which lasts until the seven-minute mark when it turns into
a I-V-VI-V chord sequence. If, like Sydney Smith, your idea of heaven
is "eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets" then you'd
better head for the local delicatessen and prepare yourself for paradise,
because there are plenty of trumpets here.
The grand finale, subtitled links aka Piano Etude I, is a
virtuoso piano study once more featuring the composer and his percussionist
pals Wenten and Winant, here on kendang (double-headed Balinese drum)
and marimba respectively. Originally written for J.B. Floyd, it's
an attempt (and a successful one) to apply tabla techniques to the
piano keyboard.
As usual for New World, there's a classy 32-page booklet containing
useful analysis and background information on the piece itself, courtesy
Mills College's Chris Brown (see above) and a more wide-ranging essay
by CalArts philosophy professor Sande Cohen which is full of quotation
marks and seems to mention Deleuze, Guattari and Baudrillard more
than David Rosenboom, which is one good reason for not reading it.
At least while listening to the music, which works perfectly well
without it.–DW
Alexandre
Bellenger
PERLABORATION
Appel Music
 Turntablist
/ guitarist Alexandre Bellenger is one of the more colourful and delightfully
unpredictable improvisers on the French scene, but for this debut
solo release under his own name (excluding of course the dozens of
CDRs he's put out on his own ARR
label over the years) he's produced a deadly serious, carefully
structured 31-minute composition for modular analogue synthesizer
(Doepfer System A100 for the technerds amongst you), complete with
title referencing the world of psychoanalysis (perlaboration
is the French translation of the German durcharbeitung, if
that's of any help to you – I'm still struggling to understand
the difference between id and ego, so don't ask me to perlaborate).
A rather long pamphlet describing how the work was inspired both by
the narrative techniques of Philippe Sollers and Eliane Radigue's
Arthésis (though it sounds nothing like it) has been
condensed into an all too brief, rather opaque and uninformative liner
note, which I strongly recommend not reading before listening to the
music, which is everything the text isn't: majestic, spacious and
beautifully paced, moving from apocalyptic upheaval to chiming stasis.
Those familiar with Bellenger's turntable torture in Bobby Moo, his
trio with Miho and Arnaud Rivière (another trio with Rivière
and Roger Turner has recently been doing the rounds, and I want an
album from them right now) will be pleasantly surprised by
the maturity and precision of this fine piece. I hope he's sent a
copy to Madame Radigue. No point sending one to Monsieur Sollers,
though – he'd probably use it as a beermat.–DW
Thomas
Bey William Bailey
STRANGELET
Belsona Strategic
 Previously
active as The Domestic Front, Thom Bailey is an intensely thinking
man who seriously questions himself before the emission of any sound
or word (check out his recent book MicroBionic, a fascinating
read about the farthest fringes of sonically alternative design).
For the first CD under his actual name, he chose a title taken from
particle physics, "a strangelet being a hypothetical object which
converts ordinary matter into 'strange matter' through liberating
the energy of nuclei that it comes into collision with". It would
take some balls to classify these tracks as "noise", although
Bailey utilizes sounds at the very extremes of audibility. Large chunks
of this music work by dredging up the listener's memories and associations,
though the composer – intelligently and somewhat heartlessly
– tends to cut away at the exact moment one starts getting used
to things. What begins as disturbing interference becomes a blurred
remembrance in few instants; by the time another minute has passed
everything has become thoroughly garbled, reduced to infinitesimal
granules of distortion. The record shows discipline and logic at the
same time that it constantly displaces itself, existing in a state
of "perpetual becoming" (in Bailey's words). Rarely has
a concoction of bewildering electronic sequences, unsympathetic intermissions
and catatonic underground chorales sounded so coherent. Keep an eye
on this guy.–MR
Seijiro
Murayama / Michael Northam
MORIENDO RENASCOR
Xing Wu
 Moriendo
Renascor was recorded and mixed in 2003 and 2004, yet it sees
the light of the day just now. The result was well worth the wait:
capturing sounds from areas as diverse as Portugal and the Swiss Jura,
the artists have managed to reach an intense state of "material
suspension" which permeates the record, a sense of mystery only
increased by the text penned by composer Lionel Marchetti that is
hypothetically printed on the inner sleeve of the CD. The ink is so
pale that the handwritten scribbling is all but indecipherable, a
suitable symbol of the music's elusive nature. This kind of ambience
is par for the course when Northam is involved: working on the borderlands
of environmental/concrete music – influenced, first and foremost,
by long childhood journeys through the deserts of Utah – and
performing on self-made instruments, he creates marvelously unfinished
aural matters that demonstrate his perpetual attentiveness to sounds
at the edge of perception. The pairing with Murayama, who has worked
with Fred Frith, Tom Cora, KK Null, Keiji Haino and Jean-Luc Guionnet
among others, is entirely sympathetic given the percussionist's interest
in the phenomena of "phantom resonance" – his performances
sometimes consist exclusively of pure gestures. Roles are decentralized
– no more "composers", only "generators"
or "unintentional bystanders" – as these four tracks
explore the spellbinding qualities of resounding metal and natural
phenomena, delivering the arresting coalescence of involuntary coordination
and raw magnificence that apparently inanimate objects reveal when
exploited with the intent of making us aware of the relation between
our physical being and its function as a receptor for sounds.–MR
Nana
April Jun
THE ONTOLOGY OF NOISE
Touch
 "The
Ontology of Noise researches the dark associations of post-black
metal," states the brief liner note bluntly, before announcing
proudly that "no traditional instruments were used [..] and all
technologies are digital in their application." Well, it is
on Touch, so it's not as if I was expecting an album of unaccompanied
banjo music or something. A little clarification is in order: 1) Nana
April Jun is the nom de scène (nom de plume? nom de
souris?) of Christofer Lämgren, who hails from Gothenburg,
Sweden, which might explain the fondness for metal. (Funny, I thought
Gothenburg was more associated with death metal than black metal..
and what is post-black metal? Not that it matters, because
I've never understood the attraction of either to be honest.) 2) My
online dictionary defines ontology as 'the branch of metaphysics that
studies the nature of existence or being as such", but it's also
widely used in computer science (have a read at this over your cornflakes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(computer_science)). 3) Despite
the pretentious album title this is one of the most convincing and
beautifully executed albums to come my way all year. Lämgren's
ear for detail is as good as his feel for overall shape. It's grey,
cold and austere (like Gothenburg, actually) and certainly on a par
with the best offerings of Francisco López and Mika Vainio,
both of whom are namechecked on the Touch website. The closing track,
"Sun Wind Darkness Eye", is particularly masterly, building
impressively before slipping into Gas-like pulse. Forget the black
metal association (especially the album Lämgren himself mentions;
Burzum's Filosofem, which is simply fucking awful) and check
out one of the most accomplished releases of electronic music this
year.–DW
Novi_Sad
JAILBIRDS
Sedimental
 Though
Thanasis Kaproulias is based in Athens, several hundred miles south
of the Serbian city that he's chosen as his moniker, my trusty (?)
Wiki page informs me that "novi sad" means "new furrow",
and that's a fair description of the two impressively crafted pieces
on offer on Jailbirds. The field – contemporary electronica
– isn't new, but Kaproulias is certainly ploughing it his own
way, and it makes a welcome change from the all-too predictable fare
that seems to be flooding the market (or at least flooding my mail
box) at the moment. Nosing about further online, I see that Kaproulias's
music is "published by Touch Music", which figures –
his skilful blend of natural and man/machine-made sounds (hooting
owls meet digital static scree) and discreet use of recognisable harmonic
and rhythmic material (yes, there are subtle bass lines and backbeats
lurking in there, if you care to investigate) make him an ideal labelmate
for the likes of Oren Ambarchi, Rosy Parlane, Biosphere and BJNilsen.
But while we wait for a full length follow-up to the TouchRadio piece
Dramazon, Sedimental's got in there first this time (Rob
Forman's always had a knack for finding exciting new talent –
Kaproulias joins recent discoveries Riccardo Dillon Wanke and Kyle
Bobby Dunn). What's particularly impressive about this music is its
ability to move across the map, from subtle field recordings to brutal
blasts of harsh noise, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly, but
always convincingly. Impressive work from a name to watch out for
in years to come.–DW
Pimmon
SMUDGE ANOTHER YESTERDAY
Preservation
 Pimmon,
aka Paul Gough, has been fashioning electronic soundscapes since 1982,
and is in many ways the precursor to the likes of fellow Australians
Lawrence English and Oren Ambarchi. Back then he had a burbling Korg
Ms20 and "bad drum machines" to keep him creative company,
as well as an adolescent fixation with Australian New Wavers, Severed
Heads. But through successive releases over the years, he has gradually
polished and refined his methodology, releasing albums on high quality
electronica labels like Tigerbeat6, Sirr, and FatCat, and reaffirming
his status as a pioneering figure in contemporary electronica. Too
haphazard in his intuitive methods for the pristine soft edges of
Taylor Deupree's 12k, and too obsessed with process over product for
the Mego camp, Gough has fine-tuned an approach to sound art that
sits somewhere between a mad professor cut loose on the machines and
a glitch connoisseur in full command of his stockroom of found sounds
and drones.
Smudge Another Yesterday is his thirteenth release and his
first for an Australian label, Preservation Records, and it sees him
on fine form. An amnesiac atmosphere settles on you from the outset,
as if dislocated chords, tones, and pitches are tugging at the listener's
memory, with titles further alluding to this feeling of auditory misperception:
"Hidden", "It will never snow in Sydney", "Don't
remember". These pieces could be seen as sonic reflections of
what anthropologist Marc Augé describes as "non-places"
– large venues such as airports, terminals, and busy internet
cafes where information and consumerist overload assists in the submersion
of identity.
"Come on Join the Choir Invisible" owes something to Gough's
work as a sound engineer for ABC radio, its swirls of choral voices
at times recalling Berio. Voices come and go on this album, like unwanted
immigrants forced to graft themselves onto the music; on "Don't
remember" processed voices seesaw in and out, while a backing
vocal a tad reminiscent of a youthful Peter Gabriel rises upwards.
On "It will never snow in Sydney" smooth but arid glissandos
open up a vista of auditory hallucinations and sunbaked gradations.
"Evil Household Ceremony" is particularly unsettling, its
filtered oscillations providing a menacing lo-fi feel to the drones.
"Hidden" begins with geothermal abrasions burying a symphonic
movement, and turns into a threnody for a consumerist hyperworld in
meltdown. In perhaps his most personal album to date, Gough has provided
the perfect soundtrack for a world that has too little space and too
much sound to contemplate.–PB
Yui
Onodera
ENTROPY
Trumn
 Still
relatively young at 27, Yui Onodera has recently made a discreetly
decisive impact on the scene of modern-day ambient with a series of
absorbing outings on labels such as And/OAR and Mystery Sea. Entropy
is described by Trumn head honcho Hideho Takemasa as "the most
sought-after item of all his releases" and this reissue of the
2005 Critical Path album comes in a gorgeous gatefold package adorned
by a splendid photograph of a remote mountain area immersed in mist.
The pieces were entirely realized using electric guitars, field recordings
and electronics, all subtly yet effectively treated. What I've always
liked in this artist's work is its absolute lack of that arrogance
which transforms much of this music into pretentious "look-at-my-holiness"
void. Onodera makes undemanding suggestions, eradicating the bell-and-whistle
factor from the approach to the composition and deploying his materials
more or less as they are, leaving us to contemplate them in their
almost total nudity, Jesus on the cross barely touched by the sunrays.
Certain segments vaguely recall another master distiller of six-stringed
perfumes, Paul Bradley, whose methodical seriousness the Japanese
shares, but the evocative two-chord sequence of the sixth and the
seventh chapters of this cycle is pure Onodera, a mixture of childlikeness
and dedication that makes me smile in acceptance.–MR
Rice
Corpse
MRS RICE
Dual Plover
 There's
some shit missing between the "Rice" and the "Corpse"
of the band name above. Literally: the Chinese character for "shit",
no less, which is a combination of the characters for "rice"
and "corpse". Nifty. Wonder if it appears on Chinese computer
keyboards. Could anyone currently reading the Marquis de Sade's One
Hundred And Twenty Days Of Sodom in Mandarin translation write
in and let me know? I'm intrigued.
As it so happens, much of this "despondent attempt at musicality"
(I can't resist quoting the amusing press release) would make a rather
appropriate soundtrack to another film adaptation of Sade's perverse
epic (not that anyone's likely to follow Pier Paolo Pasolini down
that dark path in the foreseeable future, mind). It's the work of
a Beijing-based trio consisting of Li Zenghui, normally a "mild-mannered"
saxophonist but here pummelling a piano with superhero brutality,
Yang Yang, who beats the ricecorpse out of a drum kit, and visiting
"cultural ambassador" Lucas "Justice Yeldham"
Abela, whose speciality is miking up a pane of broken glass and slicing
his face to shreds with it. (No shit – oops, sorry, no ricecorpse.)
This exhilaratingly ferocious aural fistfuck was "made possible
with the kind assistance of Asialink and the Australia Council for
the Arts", it says here. One imagines that, if played to the
wrong people at the wrong time at the right volume, it could set relations
between China and Australia back several decades.–DW
Sébastien
Roux / Vincent Epplay
CONCATENATIVE MU
Brocoli
 The
discs Sébastien Roux was putting out a few years ago were lovely,
oneiric affairs, all gentle guitar and glitch (think Apestaartje,
12K..), but since he got his paws on all that IRCAM gear he seems
to have turned into Richard Barrett. Drop the needle (as it were)
just about anywhere in this latest collaboration with Vincent Epplay,
and you'd be forgiven for identifying it as Furt. Sounds – pretty
and not so pretty, though they're often chopped up so finely it's
hard to say which is which – are splattered around the stereo
space like that proverbial can of spam. And with titles like "Wu***Rap**Tang
Klaus Sod**" and "**Echo Plasme From Hell", it's clear
we're not talking Minamo any more. Concatenative Mu is a
thrilling if exhausting ride, but you wonder whether you're supposed
to admire its dazzling technical virtuosity as much as enjoy its musical
substance. For you to decide.–DW
Tamaru
FIGURE
Trumn
 Improvising
bassist Tamaru has been playing solo performances since the early
90s, when he acquired his current sonic tool on a November morning
famous in Japan for the social turmoil stemming from the bankruptcy
of a major national securities company. Why he mentions this detail
is a mystery to me, though one could surmise that the comforting quality
of most of the music was (is) a sort of reaction, the search for a
means to calm down a bit after experiencing the feeling of inner unsteadiness
elicited by (further) bad news in times of economic shrinkage. The
technique applied by Tamaru is pretty basic: with the bass tuned standard
for a "good affect [sic] on the overtone layers emitted
by the instrument", he sits with his right foot on a volume pedal
and his left changing the parameters of a digital delay system in
real time, the results unedited. The most beguiling side of Figure
manifests itself when gracefully curved tones are left alone
to resound for long periods, circling and spiralling in pleasant semi-static
velvetiness, quivering lows rubbing the auricular membranes and the
nape of the neck. When delay is used to alter the sound more decisively,
notes superimposed to generate a little harmonic thickness or even
minor dissonance, that mesmerizing aura gets somewhat tarnished. Providing
you're not expecting miracles, this remains a fine enough recording
if approached at an ideal moment.–MR
Copyright 2004 by Paris Transatlantic
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