THE WEBSITE FORMERLY KNOWN AS TOUCHING EXTREMES

WE'VE MOVED

2010-09-15T02:24:00.000-07:00

Please direct yourselves to www.touchingextremes.wordpress.com and bookmark it. All the reviews that were published here have been transferred on the new website, though they're still archived here to make things easier for everybody who linked them. See you there!

JOHN KING – 10 Mysteries

2010-08-28T22:03:00.000-07:00

Tzadik

“What I’m seeking to discover”, writes composer and violist John King, “is the unity of, rather than the distinction between, determinate, indeterminate and improvised music”. He refers to this as “trilogic unity”, employing any necessary means to reach a satisfactory interaction of the separate components. 10 Mysteries – performed by King as a member of his Crucible String Quartet (the other names being violinists Cornelius Dufallo and Mark Feldman, and cellist Alex Waterman) – offers an interesting portrayal of the essential concept. These are sounds that cooperate with the mind, exclusive of unwarranted laissez-faire despite the partial randomness of the events.

The three works comprised by the program were in fact written by following directives dictated by “chance and improvisation”, the scores strongly informed by the results of an I Ching-based symbol generator furnishing the musicians with a series of indications to follow, the interpretation rendered according to each one’s sensibility and intuition. The nine movements of the title track are, as a result, most significant. Their place changes constantly amidst momentous amassments of nervously deployed clusters and whirlwinds, and more propitious tendencies to consonance that, in any case, are too short for actual respite, unsystematic proliferations of phrases overwhelming the listener after brief pauses of relative stillness.

Both the remaining pieces – “Rivers Of Fire” and “Winds Of Blood” – apply the same logic to a system consisting of acoustic tones and live electronics. The former juxtaposes seagull-like glissando, anxious climaxes and deceptive falls of tension in a fairly intelligible mixture of involving realism and inextricable meta-phraseology. The latter is presented in two versions - the outcome again deriving by underlying principles linked to possibility – that magnify the effectiveness of King’s methods, the gathering of apparently conflicting suggestions under the umbrella of harmonically advanced congeniality.

PETER WRIGHT – Bright Failing Star

2010-08-27T01:47:00.000-07:00

Release The Bats

Two sides (yes, it is a vinyl) of chiming-and-droning grace, a modicum of found sounds and voices from the street – a matter of minutes, really – and even fewer piano notes in the closing stages of the first half. A sinisterly gentler side of Wright, already perceived on his previous An Angel Fell Where The Kestrels Hover (on Spekk), which in any case will put lovers of guitar-driven blissful ecstasy in a pre-orgasmic state as usual.

The music unfolds deliberately, either via a reiterative pulse (Reichian echoes at the very beginning…) or with minor variations, plus a few milligrams of essential melody. The rest is complete inertia, nearing lethargy. What changes is the thickness of the sound, progressively emphasized or decreased by different kinds of equalizations and superimpositions. Feedback is always lurking there, ready to jump on the somnolent tranquillity and transform it into utter misery. It’s all so beautifully planned and constructed, so visibly liquefied, that one’s willing to accept whatever consequence the initial immobility might threat of bringing on. But it basically ends as violence unexpressed (apart from the glare of acrid chords appearing towards the end of the album), leaving us prepared for the next round of ringing harmonics, desolate jangle, tormented rapture. This lexicographer of six-stringed beatitude has grown his followers used to these gifts over the years, and we’ve become addicts by now.

The limited edition in my possession contains an additional CD comprising a live performance from Paris, recorded in 2007, which starts with the same preaching drunkard heard in the Snow Blind album and continues with one of the most gorgeous pieces of recent remembrance, halfway through divine quintessence and stoned imperturbability, until thorny shards of jarring clangour gradually annihilate any propensity to contemplation. Yet the set is sealed by birds and flies in between the country’s silence, before a polite applause by the meagre audience concludes the whole. Latecomers, get your eBay search alerts going.

OREN AMBARCHI / JIM O’ROURKE / KEIJI HAINO – Tima Formosa

2010-08-27T01:46:00.000-07:00

Black Truffle

In this concert, recorded at the Kitakyushu Performing Arts Centre in 2009, three distinct and very strong personalities construct a sonic edifice derived by a combination of experimentation, intensity and desire to abandon any inclination to affirm a status or define a genre. Ambarchi manipulates the guitar according to his renown, amassing imposing subsonic throbs and quaking bumps, generating a sense of profound vastness which reminds of human impotence in front of certain phenomena. O’Rourke plays the piano in all its components, eliciting clattering sounds, drones, percussiveness and atonal twinkle depending on the circumstance, seemingly content of remaining in the mid-background and simply contribute to the formation of the vibrational tissue.

On the other side, Haino utilizes electronics, a flute and a drum machine; needless to say, he’s better recognizable when the voice is a part of the equation. He delivers the goods impressively – scarily at times – through vocalizations that may start as invocations but, in “Tima Formosa 3”, end sounding like a desperate attempt to push back some sort of ferocious demon trying to steal the good vibrations that the music had generated until then. It is in those moments, where the full force of the collective vibe becomes substantial, that an expert listener realizes how this mixture of beguilement and violence involves artistic backgrounds and spiritual implications that the hundreds of wretched imitators can only dream of, despite glowing praise by bandwagon-jumping reviewers who acclaim stuff that has no actual grounding, similarly to their listening experience.

THANOS CHRYSAKIS / WADE MATTHEWS / DARIO BERNAL-VILLEGAS – Enantio_Dromia

2010-08-27T01:43:00.000-07:00

Aural Terrains

By disregarding any potential concern for manifestations that might be loosely associated to a notion of “tonality” (or just consonance), Chrysakis (laptop, electronics, rototom), Matthews (digital synthesis, field recordings) and Bernal-Villegas (percussion) gave origin to six very interesting and uniquely sounding improvisations. The kind of interaction that one gladly listens to, immediately appreciating hues, noises and impressions elicited, without finding words to pigeonhole the result. Which, of course, is great.

The shapes generated by the instrumentation are heterodox and with a tendency to the disintegration of compactness; all are characterized by timbral qualities that make them aurally attractive under many points of view. The mixture of computerized and synthesized emissions works perfectly, remaining halfway through piercing-and-stinging, sweltering and steamily chaotic; unpredictable discharges that replenish vacuums and suggest combustibility. The percussive designs - which, in a way, dominate some of the hypermodern vistas offered by the trio – are informed by a welcome non-invasiveness despite an obvious fractal temperament. It’s beautiful to hear the sound of a real drum skin amidst bubbles, sizzles and hisses, and also noteworthy is the musicians’ ability of letting decipherable human echoes (aircrafts, old records) mix seamlessly with the most erratic electronic activities. The resulting concoction, as heard in “II”, represents the ideal fusion of diverse sonic universes, revealing both the artists’ sensibility in manipulating machines differently and their finely tuned ears towards what surrounds them.

A satisfying release, defined by atypically stimulating sonorities, which deserves the worn-out compliment: “rewards repeated spins”.

ASHER / FOURM – Selected Passages / Set.Grey

2010-08-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Nonvisualobjects

Asher’s “Selected Passages” is fashioned after the ultimate residues of a research on acoustic materials gathered in 2008 (partially heard in the Intervals album). Following the investigation of field recordings, radio snippets and the sounds of a piano found in a room of his Vermont residency at that time, he focused himself on the latter. The five movements included in this CD consist of a choice of simple chords, extremely thoughtful and melancholic and dirtied by a patina of static dustiness and distortion that alters the essential qualities, highlighting the traits of the composer’s renowned perceptive intensity. Generated from a sheer instrument, they’re transformed in a classic late-autumn soundtrack of dejected recollection, slowly deteriorating as the minutes flow.

Fourm is interested in erasing the typical structural elements of what’s commonly intended as “music”, to leave us with something that is as intangible as a ghost. The question – given the unfeasibility of listening to these asymmetrical subterranean murmurs if not in a completely silent setting or in an installation – is: how many people will be able to actually grasp the logic of this representation? An iPod, or the regular noise of a familial environment, are going to utterly suffocate this work. And it would be a shame: the amorphously nebulous manifestations detectable by raising the volume in absolute muteness – vaguely recalling some of Asmus Tietchens’ most abstract conceptions at times – are frequently riveting in their subsonic constituents, complementing the stillness (both inside and, eventually, outside) quite powerfully.

MOSTLY OTHER PEOPLE DO THE KILLING – Forty Fort

2010-08-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hot Cup

If “smooth” jazz (by the way, what the hell does that mean?) is comparable to a classic seduction in lingerie frequently ending in a "sorry-darling-it-was-not-my-night" failure, Mostly Other People Do The Killing are the big-bosom freckled girl that plops on your pelvis and proceeds to teach you everything in a single lesson. Arrived at the fourth release, this quartet stuffs such a number of influences, quotes, ideas and parallel dimensions in the hour of Forty Fort that following its totality might become an arduous task if the concentration is not on ten. That’s right, a brain can absorb only that much; yet the difficulty of assimilation is compensated by the amazing musicianship of the members, all recognized masters of their trade. The old commonplace according to which “the improvisation is so well executed that it sounds composed” is here totally subverted: Moppa Elliott’s scores (he wrote eight of the nine tunes) are a concoction of bent normalcy and unexpected incidents where even the notated parts sound unrehearsed. Maybe they are, who knows.

Stax, Weather Report, Albert Ayler, Brazilian Bossa, Sheena Easton, Spike Jones. These are names – some of them suggested by the press sheet, others by my own fantasies and associations – that flash in the mind while listening. The guys are enthusiastic in their proposals but not exactly attached to anything. Peter Evans, the greatest trumpeter around independently of the genre, has the chance to show both his scary technical command and the capacity of exchanging lines, noises and paradoxes with the fellow unprincipled virtuoso who goes under the name of (tenor and alto saxophonist) Jon Irabagon, the latter’s motley visions of contrapuntal partnership symbolizing the mutilation of the conventional role of a reedist in a combo. Indignation and joy advance on matching terms, often generating veritable sparkles of dissolution, ultimately returning to an easy theme in the flick of a switch. The couple meshes grippingly with Elliott’s arco too, the frenzy crescendo at the end of “Blue Ball” a typical example of cantankerous discharge flowing into an abrupt, or plain absurd conclusion (which the record definitely doesn’t lack). Kevin Shea’s torrential drumming is perfect for the scope: the man’s categorical antipathy against whatever resembles an ordinary fragmentation of a pulse corresponds to a fundamental engine for the music’s bouncy mocking of idioms. Not to mention the preposterous “drum solo” before the finish of the closing track, Neal Hefti’s “Cute”.

Elliott – a teacher by day, an excellent bassist and composer by night – achieved what not many artists are entitled to brag about: writing complex and humorous music that occasionally throws us in mild puzzlement, nonetheless energized by the infectious joie de vivre of these instrumentals. MOPDTK confirm themselves among the cream of multi-nourished musicians whose disapproval of fossilization is expressed without reticence, politeness be damned. This is a great CD that deserves recurring spins, and the liner notes (written by “Leonardo Featherweight” – pure genius!) are another curve ball to unsuspecting consumers.

GARETH ROBERTS QUINTET – Go Stop Go

2010-08-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

Killer Penguin

After four years from the great Attack Of The Killer Penguins, Welsh trombonist Gareth Roberts and his comrades – trumpeter Gethin Liddington, pianist Paul Jones, bassist Chris O’Connor and drummer Mark O’Connor – come back to help us forgetting the hard times in which we live, at least for 53 minutes. The fusion of constructive melancholy and detailed vibrancy characterizing these pieces – entirely penned by Roberts – is especially influenced by Charles Mingus and the Blue Note albums of the 60s. This retro mood is probably the winning card of Go Stop Go, a solid outing under every aspect.

The quintet’s mastery in maintaining the fluidity of the swinging energy even upon composed meters – the guys like to express themselves in seven, thirteen and the likes – is a thing to respect. Composing stuff whose pulse is not necessarily suitable for idiotically nodding with the head – jazz club style - is a rare feature these days, and there’s plenty here to rejoice for in that sense. Cock-a-hoop enthusiasm and profound eloquence are alternated in technically grounded, yet absolutely unsophisticated and unpretentious fashion. Singling out the musicians and what they do throughout the album is practically useless, for this is a record in which the collective orchestration and the overall instrumental yield are the features to admire. The playing is brilliant all over the place, be it enthusiastic or meditative. It’s human, for lack of a better adjective.

Any given track is convincing, but – should this writer be forced to choose only one – “Unlucky-Lee” would maybe win the contest: a frisky tune where each member has a chance to excel – either as a soloist or by becoming a fundamental element of the counterpoint - while the piece’s structure remains totally cohesive and engaging. The piano solo at the end of the last chapter - “Cwyn Mam-Yng-Nghyfraith” - is another favourite. In essence, this is a fine release by a self-propelling group led by an artist who, born as an engineer and math teacher, decided instead to leave cold numbers aside and let someone’s world spin slightly differently by managing to make those people smile, or just ponder about beautiful memories through his music. You have to be appreciative of this.

CREMASTER - Noranta Graus A L'Esquerra

2010-08-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

Monotype

Turbulently logical as always, Ferran Fages and Alfredo Costa Monteiro organize a palette of noises generated by “feedback mixing board, pickups and objects on electric guitar” brilliantly, the resulting concoction qualifying more as composition than improvisation given the level of intricacy of its spontaneous design. The “interplay” has reached a point of reciprocal perceptiveness and instant reaction, warranting a rational temperament that’s often lacking in the work of other exponents of the extreme manipulation party. Fages and Costa Monteiro have been playing together for a very long time, and this bond is clearly perceptible. The music they present in Noranta Graus A L’Esquerra (Catalan for “Ninety Degrees To The Left”) definitely corresponds to the most mature that Cremaster have released to date, gifted with the same animated zest driving their research for new types of acoustic disintegration, yet devoid of that ear-torturing magniloquence exalted by the avant-garde (ha!) regime hyping theoretically radical “creative” phenomena.

The work is complex, sharp and hard-hitting, following a dynamic arc of events that starts at the extremities of auditory tolerance (careful with these frequencies when wearing headphones) and gradually shifts the mass towards places where the skilled monster even enjoys some moment of tranquillity. It’s there that one (barely) notices the existence of tiny purrs and infinitesimal hisses, realizing that the calmness is just momentary before the action resumes. The duo constructs a whole network of interconnected idioms, staying in the realms of lucidity without sounding domesticated. The crunchy discharges that might appear as excruciating at the beginning become a warmly greeted presence with subsequent listens, and trained brains will receive the following dispatches without problems, fusing crackles, rustles, munches and hums in a kinship with the physical equipment they manage. There’s nothing aberrant in this smartly dissentient record, terminated by the artists via the squeezing of the last droplets of the thinnest micro-feedback you can imagine, until silence falls. The lingering buzzing is now coming from the insides of your head.

ORGANUM - Sorow

2010-08-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Siren

In keeping with the unlimited consistency that has characterized his craft over the decades (regretfully overlooked by certain specialized press when they reviewed the Sanctus / Amen / Omega trilogy: alter your course of action against a critic’s expectations and a bad reaction is guaranteed) David Jackman continues to exercise a deep interest in new forms of droning superimposition, having abandoned – for the moment, at least – the harmonious brutality of the earlier works in favour of scores that exploit a different kind of acoustic power, that coming from the layering of richer, if somewhat simpler qualities of instrumental resonance. This recent concern derives from studies on early sacred music, mostly evidenced by the extraordinary male choir singing in the above mentioned Amen, among the artist’s supreme masterpieces.

Although it’s not meant to “expand the trilogy still farther, but opens a new chapter in Organum’s career”, a vaguely comparable architecture characterizes the 41 minutes of Sorow, dedicated to Daisuke Suzuki. A static ground of organ and Indian tanpura is interspersed with brass-ish stabs (organ again? A harmonium, perhaps?) and compelling gongs and/or Japanese temple bells, maintaining a strong influence throughout. There are just minor variations on this essential score: loops seem - and I stress seem - to have been utilized (especially in regard to the tanpura parts), thus attributing an even more entrancing aura to the whole, the movement of an inner slow rhythm caused by the pulse itself. For all these reasons, you have to give room to this combination of frequencies by listening to it at significant volume: only then one realizes about the composition’s authority, established in a mounting wall of slight contrasts between placid sea-like chords, massive vibrations and imposing tolls.

After a mere couple of listens we’re already set to define the record as the logical continuation of a research that’s interestingly becoming analogous to an emblematic ascension: a substance born from amassed sonic detritus, transformed into ear-challenging infected wholesomeness, ultimately sublimated in an immaculate vision. When Jackman decides that the time is right for releasing a statement, preconceptions and agendas should be left aside, in the (perhaps pathetic) hope that those sounds are able to locate a small font of responsiveness in cold-hearted “professionals”. This, though, is a problem concerning other kinds of people; I’m comfortable on the opposite side, laid out by the glory of another hymn to the might of stillness.

IRON KIM STYLE – Iron Kim Style

2010-07-31T13:46:00.000-07:00

Moonjune

Iron Kim Style is a quintet consisting of a couple of guitars (Dennis Rea and Thaddaeus Brophy, the latter on 12 strings), plus trumpeter Bill Jones, drummer Jay Jaskot and bassist Ryan Berg. The “inspiration” might reside in the figure of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il (who is even present, via pictorial superimposition, in the group’s photograph on the cover), yet the phrase “your boxing has no power” used as caption reminds of another Iron, namely the one and only Mike Tyson.

The music: not exceptionally original but, to remain inside the pugilistic ambit, still packing a punch and brisk enough. Technically evolved to a good degree – not to the point of resemblance to a series of exercises – the pieces range between many obvious influences, which you will find listed in other reviews of the same album. 70’s Miles Davis with aromas of Bill Frisell and Terje Rypdal, and – occasionally – tunes constructed upon a single bass riff à la Hugh Hopper. Some of the tracks sound like a pretext for jamming rather than real compositions; the problem is that those improvisations are not always at the maximum level of freshness, at times becoming quite wearisome.

Overall, the record’s liveliness is respectable - especially when we don’t want to think too much, just tapping the foot for a while. If the Tyson association stands, though, this group is comparable with the boxer’s post-incarceration version, circa 1995: the menace and the clout were not sustained anymore by the once-decisive speed and the bob-and-weave approach, and Evander Holyfield was lurking behind the corner.

STELLARI STRING QUARTET – Gocce Stellari

2010-07-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

Emanem

The title (Italian for “stellar droplets”) comes from Orion Nebula’s newborn stars, generated by the nuclear fusion of huge globules of gas and dust; stars are also the origin of the seven tracks’ names. Thus, associating the adjective “stellar” to the playing heard in this CD becomes commonplace. Philipp Wachsmann (violin), Charlotte Hug (viola), Marcio Mattos (cello) and John Edwards (double bass) conduct business with a combination of formal respect for the configurational clarity of a hypothetical composition: these pieces, recorded at the 2007 UNCOOL festival in Poschiavo, Switzerland, impressively resemble the upshot of written scores - with more than a hint to XX century’s literature - exalted and enriched by the kind of impulsive improvisation that one expects from musicians at this level of instrumental command.

In the liner notes, Caroline Kraabel makes a very good point about the initial trouble in recognizing the single voices even after many years of listening to them. Here lies the reason of this record's accomplishment: the global yield of polychrome pitches, fractal percussiveness and structural multiplicity overcome the difficulties elicited by the thorny convolutions and atonal spirals - permeated by a measure of intransigency - that the quartet constantly delivers. The performers apply a logic of intelligibility to everything they play, dividing the stereo space in well-defined sectors, remaining disengaged from rigid rules yet appearing solid all along. The typical characters connected to contemporary music for strings - including the exploitation of rarely attended parts of the instruments - are astutely employed, proof of a technically enlightened maturity. Serialism, lyricism, dronage and the average reviewer’s pet quote - Lachenmann (yeah, let's go and join the name-throwing party…) - get evoked and instantly disposed of in a matter of seconds.

Ultimately, the best way to tackle Gocce Stellari is absorbing it little by little over repeated listens, at first being flattened and somewhat pushed back by its bittersweet vigour, then dissecting the components to individuate and separate nuances and details. Both acts lead to the same conclusion: this is a persuasive record.

ROSS BOLLETER – Night Kitchen

2010-07-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

Emanem

The pathos of intemperate resonance that transpires from a ruined piano is nearly visible in the work of Ross Bolleter, who makes of this kind of tool a way of living. He has amassed a number of wrecked pianos over the years, five of them occupying his home's kitchen for the occasion; this fact and the choice of improvising during the night or at dawn ("at the latest") give this album its title.

Without recurring to the umpteenth quote of Bolleter's theory, we'll only invite the reader to consider this music similar to existential deterioration - not necessarily the progressive tarnishing of metal parts, or strings. The crumbling of a musical machine appears as the pictogram of a microcosm amidst superior forces, like a person gifted with an extraordinary potential that remains unexpressed and ultimately falls to pieces due to a combination of adverse circumstances. Listening to these weird radiations of huddled harmonics and detuned reverberations, and to the tangled rhythms generated by that peculiar hybrid of intoxicated gamelan and urban junk, you can't help but compare the original scope of that apparatus with what it embodies at present. Nobody in the real world would think of performing with a decayed instrument; no one stops a poor man in the street to ask for the story of his life.

On the contrary, this is exactly what this Australian artist does, eliciting incomparably awkward sounds - at times ironic, elsewhere severely introspective. We sit in front of a manifestation of uncompromising discord, born from a sonic organism that was originally created to be divided in small fractions of acoustic ordinariness. Now everything is fused in an unbreakable aura of dissonance whose morphology is nevertheless totally congenial to these ears. It's an inspiring experience that leaves us pondering about the pointlessness of perfection while appreciating the influence of mutability on what humans call "music" after having injected a good dose of customary triviality to an otherwise unstructured radiance. Yet the upper partials emitted by Bolleter's perished boxes need no intervention, shaping the surrounding environment with their past glory transmuted into transcendental tolls and glowingly malformed heterogeneity.

LISA MEZZACAPPA’S BAIT & SWITCH – What Is Known

2010-07-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

Clean Feed

Bassist Lisa Mezzacappa is a liberal participant in lots of different situations gravitating around new jazz, her recognized “honorary musical godfathers” (Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Sun Ra, Coleman, Ayler, Dolphy, Kirk) constituting the primary source of inspiration for this debut as a boss, particularly in regard to the energy and the focus that those masters have transmitted to Lisa over the years. She was already involved in the “metal jazz” band Go-Go Fightmaster, whose members are a part of this recording: tenor saxophonist Aaron Bennett juxtaposes paradox and hostility in a confrontational style where romanticism is the last memory before dying, guitarist John Finkbeiner is a fissure-filling achiever of impractically skewed lines of exploratory modernity, and drummer Vijay Anderson is proficiently concerned with the guardianship of the pulse, yet he shows the impatience of a percussionist for what’s square, inserting rhythmic traps and shifting accents whenever the occasion calls.

The fact that Mezzacappa produces a cover of Captain Beefheart’s “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” gives the idea of a broadminded approach – you won’t find Van Vliet covered by many people these days. Instead, on “The Cause & Effect Of Emotion & Distance” the whole quartet seems to rise from the ashes of a previous thematic disintegration to turn into a cloud of aromatic scents. In general, the architectures conceived by the leader are characterized by sharp steadiness rooted in contrapuntal verisimilitude. She’s a credible instrumentalist, precise and solid but also able to extract a degree of passion from the most exsiccated, skeletally linear conception. The band’s ability in reciprocally trusting their instant choices and avoiding excesses of discordance is a major plus – everything sounds intelligible (including the tense blowout heard in the title track) and the potentialities of this wise frugality are evident in the acute lucidity defining the entire record.

KEITH BERRY – The Cartesian Plane

2010-07-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

Elevator Bath

The fallibility of a human mechanism is inversely proportional to the illusions from which it absorbs nourishment. Confidence and unsettlement, inflexibility and hesitancy are but two of the infinite contrasts that perceptive beings meet while assembling a buried universe of personal inclinations alimented by their deepest wishes. Accordingly, another remarkable manifestation of necessary imperfection is the disproportion between the latter – meaning “any aspiration” - and the lack of occurrences that might help in fulfilling those expectations. This is the starting point of that kind of silent, inexplicable interior grief that can devastate a psychically fragile person, or fortify that individual’s awareness if the process of growth was accurately carried on.

Intent in listening to one of the five movements comprised by The Cartesian Plane, I notice a fantastic image cut by the frame of an open window: a perfect blue sky spotted by white clouds in a corner, and a wealth of green given by fully flourished branches. All around, a nearly scary quietness is fought by the incessant chant emitted by thousands of cicadas, in turn overwhelming uncommonly infrequent chirps - even birds seem to look for answers this afternoon. A typical flash during which I found myself asking “why”, not focusing on the cause of my controlled qualm. The reasons behind strange phenomena and dubious behaviors, I’ve stopped searching for them since ages. The rightness of certain combinations of sounds and colours is something that must not be rationally examined. At least not neurotically. That left me alone with the mere question. Why?

Still no response. The music is repeating its course for the third time, the reconnection with Keith Berry’s vision turned on via indiscernible hues and infinitesimal details. A side of this 12-inch picture disc (a limited edition of 233 copies) contains a pair of segments that are harmonically permanent, though we detect subliminal modifications in the fundamental matter of the droning formation, characteristically not specified by the composer. The other face of the album features a slightly different approach in terms of change: somnolently elliptical pictures of desolation are outlined in blurred stupor over the remaining three subdivisions, letting us intuit the vague presence of corporeal entities. It could be a sluggish orchestral fragment or a moribund choir, voices in the wake of the eternal issue. Why?

Following a lengthy stretch of almost complete silence, all it takes for Berry to put together again the threads of his resounding solitude is 47 minutes of merged tones that are both majestically entrancing and soul-consuming. Finding comparisons is a hopeless exercise reserved to pen-pushing bureaucrats. On the contrary, we will keep raising questions without receiving a solution. There’s a reason why people don’t really want to know that explanation, staying within the borders of a self-styled reality. When the truth finally materializes, it’s going to be terribly late for a dull analysis.

CURLEW – A Beautiful Western Saddle / The Hardwood

2010-07-25T06:08:00.000-07:00

Cuneiform

This CD/DVD double whammy reclaims important documents by my favourite embodiment of Curlew (George Cartwright, Davey Williams, Ann Rupel, Pippin Barnett, Tom Cora) from unjustified shadows. A Beautiful Western Saddle introduces, for the first time in the band’s existence, a set of lyrics penned by poet Paul Haines (an old objective for Cartwright’s admiration) and sung by Amy Denio. Leaving the analysis of the texts to those who are fascinated by this sort of revisionary act, let me tell you that the music was, and still is, fairly atypical in the quintet’s history. It does preserve all the fundamental features of classic Curlew: the awkward antagonism of the main themes, the incapability of missing a beat even in the most rhythmically tortuous fragments, the extreme flexibility of players who switch from composed parts to improvised sections with confidence and genius (hats off Tom Cora, wherever you are).

Denio’s charming yet vigorous accents, in union with a higher degree of structural straightforwardness, adjust the usual guidelines by attributing a distinct American flavour to the songs while magnifying orchestrations that sound - for lack of a better definition - rurally urbane. There’s more melodic open-mindedness in this record than anywhere else in the ensemble’s curriculum, and I bear in mind that this turn of events was reasonably startling for yours truly when it appeared on the market. Heard in the present day the project is warmly greeted and fresh-sounding, a one-of-a-kind experiment that deserves appropriate recognition (not to mention the elegiac magnificence of tunes like “Today” and “Human Weather Words”, or the hypnotic consequence of the minimalist “Paint Me!”). This writer stresses that the very best of Curlew lies elsewhere (Bee or Paradise being the personal suggestions, should someone need a first course). Make no mistake, though: we’re talking outstanding stuff here - no question.

If there were residual doubts about buying this thing or not, the “fuck yeah!” response might be brought out by the addition of the video material. The initial half includes The Hardwood – originally issued on VHS – shot at the Knitting Factory in 1991, a testimony of the tightness and energy of the original lineup, caught executing evergreens such as “Gimmie” and “To The Summer In Our Hearts” with the habitual perspiring ability of keeping the blood boiling and the fractured metres going (Rupel’s head-shaking trance and agile fingers are a must-see; she’s not playing nowadays, an awful shame for a great bassist and composer. Please come back, Ann!). The rest was recorded at Washington’s D.C. Space – also in 1991 – and is mainly based on Western Saddle’s repertoire, naturally with Denio joining on stage (and recklessly dancing with Williams in one of the DVD’s funniest spots). Given the rarity of the footage and the chance of appreciating the difference between the studio and the live renditions of the pieces, the somewhat rough quality of the picture is easily forgotten (it’s been almost 20 years, remember). This is the only way to observe this unique group in action from a comfy sofa, and that’s enough to warrant happiness.

DARREN TATE – The Night

2010-07-20T01:33:00.000-07:00

Fungal

Tate goes a little backwards in his own era, presenting a new work that closely recalls some of the earliest outings on Fungal, the ones where the untailored quality of the assemblages seemed to be more important than any sort of structural design, thus confirming an often acknowledged worship for Dadaism. This particular record consists of a single 39-minute piece starting with gradual synthetic glissandos, continuing with a few electronic touches and a little spacey wavering, ultimately stabilizing (so to speak) into a coalescence of nocturnal urban ambiences - cars passing by are the predominant colour – that, as the time elapses, is progressively defined by nearly insubstantial splashes of guitars and keyboards, played with the same candor of a young kid having an initial approach on the instruments, with a modicum of echo. At about 23’30” a splendid droning undercurrent appears, and the earth loop’s hum is also very “in your face” over the final minutes, utilized – like all the rest – as just one among not many hues in a basic palette. At first, the resulting music sounds almost unimposing; already at the third listen, we’re finding ourselves once again enraptured by this man’s tenuous yet incomparable visions. If there is a musician who engendered a style definable with just that person’s name, that must be Darren Tate.

MARTIN KÜCHEN / ERNESTO RODRIGUES / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / CARLOS SANTOS - Vinter

2010-07-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

Creative Sources

A crepuscular cooperative of alto sax, viola, cello and electronics with some concession to throaty droning and a clear tendency to unveil buried aspects of the instrumental combination to turn them into relevant traits. In “Mörkertid” a preliminary static exposition is subsequently splintered in parallel singularities, each instrument gently wheezing and rasping until the piece’s natural demise. “Kyla” is intermittently characterized by a chugging pulse over which the other voices try and find a place to exist without being noticed. This includes unpolished upper partials, barely hinted sibilance, pitches that oscillate between full tone and dispirited sighing. These sounds are nothing previously unheard of, but an optimal integration makes them appear more beautiful than they really are. The segment’s overall yield is a valuable one, especially when the quartet starts moaning and groaning around the thirteenth minute. The lengthy “Barmark” is definitely the most difficult track to translate, informed as it is by cyclical shrieking highs and “classic” tampering with strings and bridge in several of its parts. Accordingly, this is also the least involving chapter in terms of sheer timbral attractiveness; except for a couple of concentrated surges and a handful of captivating buzzes, it’s not excessively momentous in the economy of an album that nevertheless remains a valid alternative to futile silence.

ANDREW CHALK – Ghost Of Nakhodka

2010-07-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Siren

Except for the persistently enticing title track, opening the CD at about 20 minutes of duration, Ghost Of Nakhodka is a collection of rather short sketches – seemingly cut off longer sessions, abrupt fadeouts characterizing several of them – which confirms Andrew Chalk’s matchless aesthetic, adorned with a continuous sense of yearning for something that’s passed and given up for lost by now, a not-too-latent regret permeating the large part of the music album after album. Yet this time we must also take note of a somewhat easier detection of the sounds obtained – strings in particular – in some of the tracks.

Although Chalk has grown the listeners used to the lack of lists of sources, thus attributing an additional layer of secrecy to his creations, in this circumstance the emergence of acoustic guitars and other related instruments (perhaps a balalaika, somewhere else a cimbalom or a hammered dulcimer) lets enjoy a previously unheard kind of melodic tactility amidst an otherwise nebulous-as-always gathering of aural landscapes replete with backward tapes, stratified chordal elongations, disembodied harmonies and smile-inducing juvenile memories. There’s no actual indication of a way to follow in these touching pieces, and the individual response to the combinations of frequencies is the only correct method to assess this heartfelt work. As a general rule the sound is deceivingly timid, revealing its pale grace through repeated spins. Long-ago reminiscence and fragments of tunes mix effectively in the weak flickering of a sheltering pensiveness.

Chalk’s segregation from the rest of the world, both artistically and in any potential alternative meaning, is clearly dictated by the need of finding answers to issues that would generate depression in less intelligent human specimens, and that instead get transformed in vehicles for the propagation of evolutional resonance by a man who, despite living in a sea town, exclusively sails across reticent hopes permeated by extracorporeal vibrations.

DANIEL LEVIN QUARTET – Live At Roulette

2010-07-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

Clean Feed

Is writing that a music can’t be retained in the memory a compliment or a reprimand? The crow keepers of official criticism might find lots of “authorized” terms to describe and classify the kind of interrelations occurring in Live At Roulette, but what remains in this writer’s mind following several thorough listens is a vague difficulty in accepting its imperfect, chamber-tinged arduousness. As if the instinctive connections that attribute naturalness to a creative stream had been severed by a malevolent entity, the musicians feverishly attempting to put scattered pieces and ideas together. Now and again successfully, otherwise rather inconclusively.

Cellist Levin decided to tape the material after noticing that the most remarkable occurrences between him and his comrades were situated “off the map into uncharted territory”, as opposed to the prearranged frames that he was trying to set for them to improvise upon when the group started in 2001. Including Nate Wooley on trumpet, Matt Moran on vibes and Peter Bitenc on bass, the potential and the actual technical yield of this collective is quite high. The dynamics at work are indeed many and multidirectional, the alternance of soloist spots, duets and sudden crescendos a memo of the theoretical highs that we were anticipating.

Ultimately, what’s lacking is exactly the sort of snapping break, of excogitative coup that characterizes the unforgettable chapters in the book of improvisation. When something comes that, at least for a while, reinforces our conviction of having individuated the right way, it sounds more an accident than the crop of instantaneous research. And usually it lasts for a too short moment in time, before the general sense of uncertain direction returns. To summarize, this is a record made by outstanding players that in this circumstance didn’t manage to reap the expected fruits, remaining at a midway point along the various paths.

ANTHONY BRAXTON / JOËLLE LÉANDRE – Duo (Heidelberg Loppem) 2007

2010-07-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

Leo

What is immediately noticed after listening to this double CD, marking a rare duo encounter between two masters, is that Léandre doesn’t seem all that much interested in her distinctive theatrics and operatic vocalizations. She does use the voice, but in a subdued way during a number of severe exchanges. One is brought to think of a sort of concentrated inviolability without the pomp, the musicians perfectly aware of the fact that this an occasion in which what’s stated will not be amended or retracted, and that the ensuing recording should be as clear as possible in terms of instantaneous creation of art and discernible intuition.

Braxton’s intelligent pressure (explicated through sopranino, soprano and alto saxes and contrabass clarinet) is garrulously foresighted. The exceptionality of his spiralling voraciousness is highlighted by a unique capacity of remaining confined within the limits of essentiality, so that a swarm of notes is perceived as a wholeness, not as a demonstration of technical dexterity (because, let’s face it, remarking about the latter would be hopelessly pathetic). Léandre builds upon grounds of guttural timbres and outstanding flights across both the pure and impure frequencies of the bass’ strings, a plain-spoken individuality cooperating with Braxton in the joint despoliation of improvisational compatibility from superfluous lustre and less-than-deep meanings.

This is a traditional example of the near-uselessness of a review given the names involved, alone enough to certify the virtual impossibility of expressing artistry under the level of excellence. You just need to relax and unfasten the mind’s locks, welcoming discursive whirlwinds, profound ruminations and atypical explorations of the instrumental registers with equal attentiveness and pleasure.

NOAH CRESHEVSKY – The Twilight Of The Gods

2010-06-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

Tzadik

Difficult to find a composer today whose music evolves with the same rapidity of Noah Creshevsky’s. With each new record, his painstaking assemblages of samples – aptly seamed to bring “hyperrealism” into being – acquire a progressively superior degree of complexity, nearer to a kind of perfection that even a non-expert ear can accept as a natural occurrence. The distinguishing feature that separates this artist from the “wild sampladelic bunch” is the terrific musicality of those hotchpotches: one individuates and incorporates an element – if just for fractions of seconds - before receiving the successive message, so that the logical sequence of mercurially quick reasoning that these works elicit is respected at all times. As a rule, this doesn’t happen with the gazillion of disjointedly incoherent minute snippets that are typical of other entities active in similar areas. Instead, by standing in front of these multiform beasts, body and mind behave according to nature’s law amidst thousands of pitches, keys and modes. An utterly galvanizing practice.

There’s serious omnivorousness involved as far as influences are concerned, an additional reason to eagerly welcome the effort. The opening Götterdämmerung” utilizes Klezmer ingredients (provided by The Klez Dispensers) to conceive a virtual hybrid of scatting women, agitatedly swinging wisecracks and hopping cadenzas. Contrariwise, Creshevsky quotes “Brother Tom” - an effective construction of transposed vocal tones by baritone Thomas Buckner - as a “mature” piece that “he would not have written as a young man”. “Estancia” manufactures an awfully intricate, and yet absolutely charming ensemble of nylon-stringed guitars in an implausible counterpoint, an abstemious magniloquence that leaves open-mouthed. “Omaggio" (its components, for unknown reasons, causing this writer to erroneously perceive the presence of morsels of Frank Zappa’s Studio Tan and The Yellow Shark on a first listen) is dedicated to one of Creshevsky’s teachers, Luciano Berio. The cleverness of this dissentient but fulfilling juxtaposition is among the most admirable features of the disc. Another track that I wouldn’t hesitate in using to symbolize the visionary brilliance of this artist’s aesthetic canons is “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now”, a sonic edifice possessing the advanced characteristics of a sophisticated architecture while maintaining traits that connect a listener to the past (ideally represented by snatches of opera and pompous orchestral turnarounds interspersed by absurdly efficient voices of all genders and registers).

Perhaps the deus ex machina’s favourite might be “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, a manipulation of strokes of Ellen Band’s voice generating “exotic, possibly somewhat Middle-Eastern” sonorities without recurring to clichés. The finale - closely recalling a Jewish chant - is a strangely touching moment: a sort of humanoid acknowledgement of the composer’s family roots that once more shows how idiosyncrasy is capable of pushing electroacoustic art a long way from the misery of detestable stereotypes. The Twilight Of The Gods is a rewardingly inventive statement from the sphere where those who work quietly, ignoring the glittering lights of popular reception, usually produce stirring treats for the ears of truly sentient addressees.

DAVID MAHLER – Only Music Can Save Me Now

2010-06-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

New World

David Mahler is not the kind of musician interested in belonging to an elite or appearing as an icon, preferring to mix with regular people – specifically, within neighbourhoods and local communities where he teaches, plays, sings and organizes joyful events such as assemblies of amateur instrumentalists and children choirs. In fact, singing is the fundamental nucleus around which this man’s vision revolves, and a recurrent element amidst other important qualities: unfussiness, virtuosity and sentiment, all amalgamated in a brilliant artistic individuality. This collection presents a wide panoramic view on Mahler’s talents, articulated through different kinds of score masterfully executed on piano by Nurit Tilles (who shares with him a passion for ragtime) and – when applicable - sung by the composer, alone or with his wife Julie Hanify and the pianist herself. The four versions of the (unfortunately) short “Chorale” interspersing the 37-minute cycle “”Day Creek Piano Works and The Teams Are Waiting In The Fields” are alone worth of owning the record: as a charming vocal counterpoint as you could wish for.

I’ve always been inclined to define recordings that cause evocative reflection as “afternoon music”. Several pieces here elicit that feeling: the initial “An Alder. A Catfish” and the magnificent “Frank Sinatra In Buffalo” stand out in that sense. Chords that call to mind summer scents, solitary walks, revealed secrets, the sorrow linked to an unsympathetic object of love. Then there is the mathematic aspect expressed by selections like “Cascades”, for sure the most reiteratively dissonant segment in the program, presumably requiring extraordinary concentration (not a problem for a performer of Tilles’ calibre), and “IV. Three Against Two” that made this writer think “Charlemagne Palestine”, if only for a few instants. The conclusive and utterly splendid title track represents the ultimate synthesis of the above mentioned themes, combining minimalist tendencies and sober melancholy over the course of almost sixteen minutes. As the time elapses, one thinks that Mahler is a wonderful person. A man who just gives, seemingly wanting nothing in exchange. That’s possibly the reason behind the still insufficient recognition of his opus, which is a veritable shame. Right now I’d pick Only Music Can Save Me Now in a sizeable quantity of celebrated contemporary releases lacking the same modest luminosity, intelligence and warmth. The record’s name alone should be everyone’s dogma.

THOMAS KÖNER – La Barca

2010-06-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

Fario

Firstly released on compact disc in 2009, La Barca (also an audiovisual performance) was reissued in a limited 2-LP edition comprising the entire content of the first as well as a selection of previously unpublished tracks, perfectly complementary and functional to the rest of the program. Having followed Köner’s output since the very beginnings, and enjoyed masterpieces such as Permafrost and Unerforschtes Gebiet I think I’m entitled to say something not entirely encouraging. In fact, although this record is instilled with evocative poignancy and impressive reverberations, a completely positive response to it is delayed by a series of question marks arising every once in a while during the listening session.

For starters, the sonic foundation is principally derived from sluggish looped fragments of grief-stricken melodies and orchestral snippets. Whereas the emotive consequence is incontestable, this working method puts a musician who made of his originality a trademark too close to other realities who do this kind of job better than the German. Specifically, certain sections seriously summon up ghosts of William Basinski and, especially, Keith Berry. Not exactly what we were looking for.

Then there is the thorny matter of field recordings. The whole work is defined by the echoes – manipulated or less – of various levels of people across the world speaking in their native language. Some of those idioms are comprehensible, others are more obscure and fascinating. To this, the composer adds touches of spiritual exoticism and daily life routine that risk to drag the music down to a lesser level. Muezzin calls are a dime a dozen these days, and the intercom messages captured in Rome’s subway reminded me that tomorrow I have to take those awful trains again. What this reviewer means is that nearly two hours reiterating the same concept can be excessive, even if a master like Köner is doing it. It’s still relevant enough stuff, mind you; but the man has definitely delivered superior opuses.

Last but absolutely not least: if a label decides to publish music by an artist who is celebrated for the use of low frequencies on vinyl, the latter must be of the highest quality. The copy in my possession – not a promo, it was bought – thrice emits horrible farts due to that black substance’s inability to contain the above mentioned lows, and in the fourth side (the one with the unreleased sections) there’s a lengthy section that’s impossible to listen to because of the constant sticking of the needle on defective grooves. An objectionable way of enjoying loops. The right solution would be publishing a third version of La Barca – on double CD at the price of a single.

SAM AMIDON - I See The Sign

2010-06-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

Bedroom Community

Being a reviewer becomes an unenviable situation when a record like Sam Amidon’s I See The Sign appears, completely changing a day (or a whole phase of existence) by helping to bear with escalating difficulties, and – maybe in a perfect dream – throwing a heavy stone in the stagnant waters of popular music. This is exactly the type of release that might revolutionize the current unrecoverable state of things, if just people started to listen a little more attentively. Everything points to the “epochal masterpiece” status – because this IS an epochal masterpiece – placing it side by side with the finest albums of the last four decades, independently from the genre. Everything. Memorisable tunes, impressive arrangements (by Amidon himself and Nico Muhly), a welcome female counterpart (Beth Orton). Sorrow, fun, grace, any kind of emotion. And that unique voice. Mark these words: one day, the kid’s detachedly non-virtuosic accent will be filed among the immediately recognizable timbres of celebrated songwriters such as James Taylor or Tim Buckley (or – why not – Antony Hegarty). He may be working on traditional songs, ballads and hymns, yet the pieces are perceived as personal statements. And they strike the bull’s eye of your individual essence.

That would be sufficient already. Let me mention a few episodes, though, many of which linked consecutively in the program. “You Better Mind”, a deliciously pop tune - sang in duet with Orton – that’s going to put eternally overhyped Prefab Sprout to shame; the title track, a symbol of the infeasibility of describing our sentiments if not through someone else’s music. “Johanna The Row-di” is enough to transport yours truly back to the primordial eras of private fingerpicking studies (breaking his heart in the meantime) while the orchestration of “Pretty Fair Damsel” is alone a lesson in the harmonization of a melody. “Kedron” is another of the countless highs, Amidon’s solitary frail tone accompanied by an acoustic guitar’s arpeggio and meagre touches of strings.

There are instrumental solutions whose quality is also instantly acknowledgeable: in “Rain And Snow”, for example, a drum roll seems to prelude to a powerful opening at one point, only to leave room to a melancholic sequence of rarefied piano chords. The bump-on-wood pulse characterizing “Climbing High Mountains” sustains an effortless song marvellously enriched by contrapuntal lines of horn and bassoon and – again – subtle piano and guitar. The record is chock full of these gems: distant references to Jim O’Rourke and Van Dyke Parks come easy, but this young man is in a class of his own. Two additional fundamental presences help elevating the rank: producer Valgeir Sigurđsson and multi-instrumentalist wizard Shahzad Ismaily, a former collaborator of Tom Waits, Laurie Anderson and Rage Against The Machine.

In the equally gorgeous “Relief”, the lyrics recite: “What a relief to know that there’s an angel in the sky”. Judging from the emotional response that both myself and my life companion experience every time we’re listening to this album, that feeling is substantiated by having actually heard that angel sing. You could do it, too, letting this disc spin incessantly in your homes. Rewind to the initial sentence: what about the objectivity of a write-up, I hear somebody asking. Who fucking cares, is the answer. Sam Amidon gained a ticket to the pantheon of the greats, and watching this happening three years after intuiting something (when reviewing the previous All Is Well on the same label) feels great. Now let’s see if a clever dissemination of this work can educate the masses at least a bit by eradicating the concept of “disposable product” from those brains.

TOM JOHNSON - Rational Melodies

2010-06-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

New World

Tom Johnson's Rational Melodies had been released twice already in the past, both times featuring a solo instrumentalist (flutist Eberhard Blum and clarinettist Roger Heaton respectively). This edition constitutes the first recorded version of the piece performed by a chamber group, for the occasion France's Dedalus. The painstaking study of the material and the zeal shown in tackling it caused an encouraging response from the composer, according to whom "the interpreters have added so much insight to the music that the music itself has grown". Saying that after 28 years from the initial sketching means a lot, but Johnson is quite right. Although the work is incontrovertibly influenced by his typically minimalist mathematic designs, different stylistic factors and a sense of dry humour are astutely brought to the fore by the performers.

It's difficult to trace elegiac tints or emotional resonance in a score that consists of reiterated straightforward figurations, only altered by adding or subtracting notes, shifting the pauses and challenging the instrumentalists with the juxtaposition of diverse metrical sequences. Dedalus execute all of the above with a mix of technically superior acuity and visible paradox: one can't help but think about Sylvester the Cat tiptoeing behind a wall as cyclical string pizzicatos distinguish certain sections, and some of the chromatically melodic passages might be useful for an Arabian parody. The way in which the events - and absences thereof - are calculated to succeed allows each movement to engrave the memory enough for a transient positive reception. Yet what ultimately lingers on is the sonic core of a conception which still sounds strikingly effective, perfectly in line with this man 's musical interests over several decades.

JOACHIM GIES & SOUND / BODY / CELLS – Shimmering

2010-06-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

Leo

Rather appealing things and a clutch of good vibrations come from this trio formed by saxophonist Gies (alto and tenor plus glockenspiel and rattles), soprano vocalist Ronni Gilla and percussionist Denis Stilke, recorded at Berlin’s Johanniskirche in 2009. The church location is ideal for this music, the acoustic properties of the sacred edifice exalting a type of interplay which – quite intelligently - leaves a lot of breathing room for the single elements to reveal their nuances. So, what are these people doing? Picture a cross-pollination of leisurely unfolding ceremonials, a few ECM echoes (this being told with optimistic intent) and a female voice whose gamut comprises influences ranging from native American chanting to Meredith Monk, technically grounded in impeccable fashion. I don’t know exactly why, but certain accents from Gilla – who’s not really a revolutionary singer, yet her performance is outstanding throughout – transported my imagination across territories bordering with Arvo Pärt’s work, at times influenced by African currents. She interacts with Gies’ conscientious dissection of multiphonics and reliable phrasing adequately, Stilke providing the right percussive gradations for any setting with expert hands and caring ears.

SYLVIA HALLETT & MIKE ADCOCK - Reduced

2010-06-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Orchestra Pit Recording Company

After acknowledging the wonderful name of the releasing label, let’s take a look at the tools. Violin, saw, bicycle wheel, lentils, FX pedals, voice (SH); accordion, guitar, autoharp, marble chute, percussion (MA). The instrumental array is more or less what was expected from these artists, the duo’s brilliance lying in the unremitting exploitation of the consequent nuances which in Reduced are plentiful, vivacious and, in various instances, surprising in peculiar ways. Hallett and Adcock embody the concept of instant creativity informed by an innocence comparable to that exuding from children at play (check “Only Tulle” to have an idea). The outcome is an album that offers episodes of wholesome evocativeness together with others that sound a little timid, if equally imbued with earnestness. The very first tracks appear in fact as a sort of reciprocal questioning between players intent in finding useful ideas through the exploration of timbres that may lack an actual weight, but still make sense in the grand scheme of things. The initial “Gewgaws” – an indescribable “acoustic sci-fi” atmosphere with wavering pitches and percussive droplets – is a virtual miniature portrait of the pair’s untainted quintessence.

Several are the outstanding qualities in this music, features that the memory gladly retains as orientation points over the course of mandatory repeated listens. The clever use of loops is a welcome reminder of how a typically useless trick that, in other circumstances, hides an absolute creative poverty becomes instead a means to transcendence in the right hands. Hallett uses the device as the basis for the engrossing harmonic motionlessness of “Strange Power! I Trust Thy Might”, whereas in “Betty Martin” - another favourite of mine - the magnificent conversation of a seagull-like violin and a melancholic accordion gradually morphs into a mild hallucination, overlaid amassments of whirling figurations generating huge masses of grainy vibration. The conclusive “Shudder To Think” is characterized by a sinuously oscillating acute tone – supposedly Hallett’s processed vocalizations, yet it actually resembles a Theremin – against Adcock’s clusters in the high register. It leaves us suspended in doubt, once again confirming that excessive certainties eradicate purity from naïve inventiveness.

Despite the simple components, this is a record that requires persistent attention, ready to repay our absorption with lots of uniquely charming sounds and curious improvisational concepts. A cloaked gem, really.

PER ANDERS NILSSON / STEN SANDELL / RAYMOND STRID – Beam Stone

2010-06-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

Psi

“Each sound has its own narrative!” is the original motto of Beam Stone, the trio of Per Anders Nilsson (computer, synthesizer), Sten Sandell (piano, prepared piano, electronics and voice) and Raymond Strid (percussion). Formed in 2006, the group plays intensely through a cycle of electroacoustic prospects that seem to defy whatever logic people might try to relate to the resulting music. It is indeed a type of improvisation that is “viscerally cerebral” and essentially textural, not linked to any kind of universally intended linear or harmonic concept, if not in a futuristically brutal form linking these investigations to the analysis and subsequent decomposition of a defined timbre. According to that, the record offers more than a moment of illumination to those who are growing tired of listening to pre-digested “free formats” typically informed by repeated visits to the extremes of jazz and its derivative ramifications.

Obviously the conspicuous effect of synthesizers, computers and electronics on the listener’s consideration is a primary factor, and one of the most attractive ones. The clouds of gaseous matters elicited in “Peneplain”, for example, are underlined by a constant hum that almost defines the track as a drone piece, despite the presence of divergent noises and other forms of eccentric propagation. The preposterous morsels of detuned rarefaction heard at the beginning of “Luster” blend admirably with the piano in an overall mood of alien anarchy, leading to next-to-incongruous modifications of pitches and chords. The acoustic explorations are handled with the usual cold efficiency by Sandell, an idiosyncratic pianist like few others. He chooses a series of notes, builds entire castles upon their obstinate repetition, bringing the harmonics out and fusing those characteristics with Strid’s individual indeterminacy (although perennially immersed in concreteness). This uncontainable whole is swallowed and regurgitated in triturated protrusions by Nilsson’s computerized setup. Periodically we find ourselves looking at a partial dissolution of common sense; that’s also the exact reason for which this set shines of an absolutely distinctive identity.

BOB MARSH / JIM RYAN / SPIRIT – The Spirit Moves Us

2010-06-16T12:46:00.000-07:00

Edgetone

The Spirit Moves Us fuses three chief practitioners of free interplay of San Francisco’s Bay Area in a completely spontaneous session recorded in May 2009. The recording gives the idea of a single microphone take, lots of natural reverberations surrounding the ceaseless spurts and fluxes generated by these stray combatants. The title is obviously borrowed from percussionist Spirit, who characterizes the procedures quite effectively via a complete redesigning of the essential concepts of rhythm, which gets literally pulverized into minuscule scraps useful for every occurrence. Over this extreme fragmentation, Jim Ryan confirms a typically wide-minded approach to phrasing, inserting zigzagging splinters of serenity, reflective quirkiness and slight scents of primitive rites amidst a continuous melodic fluctuation that – either through saxophone or flute – keeps defining him as a singular reed player not easily fitting in categories (unless we want to include “semi-principled liberty” among them). Marsh's cello often sounds deep and cavernous like a double bass. I don't know if this comes from the use of pitch transposing devices (the trio seems to recur to digital delay regularly and gladly), but the result makes one think nonfigurative painting rather than chamber music. His arco discernment locates supplies of interesting colours mating with the rest of the timbral palette well enough to sustain our interest for a fair while. Infrequent spots of improvisational tiredness are present, yet they get negated by the artists’ irrefutable integrity.

JEAN-LUC GUIONNET - Non-Organic Bias

2010-06-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

Herbal International

I’m not the kind of person who squanders precious time in decoding people’s visions when they’re expressed via written concepts that, even after an accurate translation, bury the exact aims and grounds of an artistic statement under the dozens of question marks engendered by a (willingly?) unclear explanation, or the transliteration of a daydream. This happens when I try and read Jean-Luc Guionnet’s notes to the three pieces comprised by Non-Organic Bias, which make your purple prose merchant resemble a hieratic minimalist in comparison.

Therefore this writer reverted to the more palatable food. That means the music which, in this occasion, was born from the sound(s) of organ(s), subjected to various types of alteration, granularization and dismemberment. It was not an easy mission to accomplish, despite the hypothetical unfussiness of the music’s gestation and overall structure. The main motive: a big discrepancy in the results generated by the two traditional methods of enjoying the content of a disc. In fact, the frequencies privileged by Guionnet are so damn near and below the ground that, from the speakers, the large part of this double album behaves like an all-engulfing gathering of humongous purrs and potent winds as heard from within a padded room, sporadically interrupted by jarring clusters in the higher registers, or rendered totally awesome through the use of sloping slow motion and other kinds of techniques. In those circumstances, the composer nears some of our favourite masters’s expressive nuances. Xenakis (mais oui!), Kayn, a smidgen of flanged-out Palestine and Niblock in a few brief instances. I’m shivering at the thought of the nonentities who might have the guts to sample parts of this record and reprocess them for their own worthless businesses.

But if you need to assess the actual compositional value of this outing, headphones turn out to be necessary. Also, they must be able to tolerate the centre-of-the-earth throbbing grumble that a piece such as “Espace Bas” constantly elicits, otherwise what you’re hearing is going to be inexorably blemished by the gnarly rattle of earphone membranes unable to perform a truthful conversion of the acoustic mass (in this place a recent cheap Philips worked much better than an old expensive Beyerdynamic). Only at that point one is in the condition of acknowledging Guionnet’s subtle craft, his finely tuned superimposition of roar, wheeze and flutter, the diligence in placing slight substrata and virtually inconspicuous details in the mix. And become acquainted with the presence of extremely acute pitches and foreboding virtual choirs (“Estuaire” is fantastic in that sense). We’re as distant from “ambient” as a metropolitan inferno is from an airport’s waiting hall, regardless of what can be peeped around the web. These are the organ’s bowels screaming, get the picture?

This stuff should be experienced intensely, differently and continually to merely break the external ice of its impenetrability. Success is not a given, which is one of the many reasons behind my attraction towards this thick slab of a release. Consequently, let me join the admiring queue and declare that a copy of this item is mandatory in a serious listener’s collection. The verbal contortions are entirely forgiven.

MARILYN LERNER / MATT BRUBECK / NICK FRASER – Ugly Beauties

2010-06-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

Ambiances Magnétiques

Ugly Beauties is the first CD for the threesome of Lerner (piano), Brubeck (cello) and Fraser (drums). Difficult to place this music in a context without resorting to typical definitions. There is a lot of improvisation mixed with carefully trimmed material; there aren’t surpluses of extended techniques, although the musicians do explore more peripheral regions of the instruments when the time is right. Definitely it’s not something linked to reductionism, for the interplay mostly generates rather dense textural interconnections and clear phrases that, even when a rarefaction of events prevails, glow as luminous stars in a summer sky. Ultimately, what’s this record like?

The answer is “nothing that I can call to mind at this instant”. The trio is nimble and precise in the exposition, the playing revealing a degree of contrapuntal poetry – atonal romanticism, if you will - quite frequently, letting us catch glimpses of untainted ability that never figures as the motivation for germ-free exercises. The improvisations may appear nonchalant in their manifestation but consequential as far as technical grounding and plausibility of creative choices are concerned. A concession is made to a couple of stylish digressions, and there’s a swinging interlude in “Harold Lloyd” that sincerely was better left out. Fortunately, these are rare occurrences: for the large part, the quality of the instrumental interaction is so rewarding – just check the gorgeous “Ding An Sich” - that one’s immediately pushed to listen to it again, in order to comprehend the actual reasons behind a work that doesn’t strike that hard, yet digs deep enough to warrant a laudatory mention. A gracious treat to the ears, full of great tones and distinctive acoustic perspectives, in spite of the impermanence of a proper characterization in our memory.

DAWN OF MIDI – First

2010-06-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

Accretions

This is the debut album by Dawn Of Midi which, despite the name, is an entirely acoustic transcontinental group consisting of Amino Belyamani (Morocco, piano), Aakaash Israni (India, contrabass) and Qasim Naqvi (Pakistan, percussion). Dissipating any doubt about the possible incidence of electronics - there isn't any - and mostly avoiding the typicality related to a supposed synthesis of local influences (apparently absent, yet still detectable in certain scales and moods) the musicians set themselves in a specific field, namely that of the freely expressing trio slightly influenced by jazz-tinged reminiscences.

Belyamani is a sincerely restrained improviser, presumably familiar with Bill Evans but also Claude Debussy (the press release got it right this time), his gestures on the piano keyboard eliciting an aura of redemptive reverberation or instigating mild minimalist obsessions when the moment comes (the conclusive “In Between”, for instance). Israni's work is elegantly discreet, characterizing the music with a substantial economy of movement concealing a remarkably immediate understanding of the ongoing contrapuntal processes. Naqvi looks like the most open-handed among the three, a rhythmic multiplicity at the basis of the only moments in which the interplay sounds constellated with welcome accidents.

In general, there's a sense of unplanned dilation of the spaces around the notes, whose relative scarcity does not subtend to easy contemporary posturing, being instead perceived as a necessity for the pieces to evolve and self-define. Even when the reciprocal instrumental responses cause the mix to become a little more populated, intelligibility ultimately prevails in this crystal-clear album.

RAYMOND MACDONALD / SAKOTO FUJII / NEIL DAVIDSON / NATSUKI TAMURA / TOM BANCROFT – Cities

2010-05-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Nu-Jazz

MacDonald (saxophone) and Davidson (guitar) met Fujii (piano) and Tamura (trumpet) at the Centre For The Contemporary Arts in Glasgow in 2005, drummer Bancroft acting as the percussive link between the pairs. The technical combinations are surprisingly diversified from a piece to another. The initial cyclical jumpiness of "Navigation" and the calm rarefaction of "Parallel Shapes" are but short introductions to a string of distinct images that, however, appear as entirely corresponding. Openings towards a roominess nearly approaching ECM-derived moods are not absent ("Overload" a fulgent example in that sense, Fujii and Tamura generating austere waves of acoustic entrancement). "A Strange Prediction" is somewhat inexplicable, played as it is around scattered piano chords and silently accurate choices of involvement from the other instruments, the trumpet intermittently caught in autistic replication of a fragment.

"Two Blocks East" features an odd concurrence of instrumental nonattendance and call-and-response desirousness in what's perhaps the only concession to literal EAI, before summoning forth the regular timbres in all connotations, shifting the focus on increasingly angrier free jazz until a quiet ending. "Into The Diversion" makes good use of power-driven appliances à la Rowe on Davidson's axe then grows in intensity, MacDonald adopting a confrontational stance through his arresting voice. After the tonelessly brief, quirky "Oxygenitis", "How Did I Get Here" meshes Schweizer-esque instances and guitar-based deliberateness in total coolness, Bancroft suggesting hypothetical pulses in the background prior to the sax remaining alone again. "Euphoria" concludes the program with a pinch of sadness, once more placing Fujii and Tamura's fragility at the basis of the improvisation.

Throughout this brilliant album the participants can be seen reinforcing their personalities under the dim yet inextinguishable light of collective artistic integrity. Please rescue Cities from an unmerited anonymity.

WALTER & SABRINA – Two Tales

2010-05-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

Danny Dark

Just in case you weren’t attentive, Walter Cardew and Stephen “Sabrina” Moore parted ways last year. The email exchanges subsequent to the decision – apparently due to Cardew’s will – constitute an essential part of the libretto that comes with this edition, comprising the Two Tales CD and a book called Amalgam, Gotta Get A Shag. We are also introduced to the script to an unrealized short movie, Cor Blimey, You’ll Never Get Rid Of That. Add to this the thorniest music you’re likely to hear in half a decade and realize why the duo was first dignified, then abruptly thrown amidst the pariahs by the erstwhile “specialized” avant-garde press. As Cardew wrote in the accompanying letter, “there’s plenty here to get your teeth into, I hope”. Provided that one doesn’t break them, of course.

The poetry of human dissipation that has characterized the story of WandS is exalted at the maximum degree. The graphic description of sleazy sexual acts and the overall aura of grimy desperation surrounding the wretched lives of the persons involved in the “plots” is set in a typically perplexing literary style that lets the listener confused in between warped glimpses and nightmarish flashes, similarly to the by-products of the mind of a drunkard fallen asleep in front of a C-level hard-core flick. Everything is fragments, snippets, indistinct details, lewd memories, obliteration of eroticism, sanctification of the most absolute immorality. And yet we’re listening and reading assiduously while thinking what’s wrong with us, still interested in analyzing the reasons of a stimulus that, in its purest form, should cause a levitation towards the highest levels of communion and instead is very often the origin of trouble and, at worst, of psychic degeneration that occasionally leads to excessive gestures. Fascinating issues that Cardew and Moore are, as usual, unafraid to toss in our face without ointments.

The sonic substance is typified by a choice of conspicuous aspects, beginning with a severe fragmentariness. The obstinate permanence of the voices in the extreme registers of soprano (both female and male performers are utilized in that sense) defines the whole program. Some of them are processed with distortion, if in selected tiny parts; a complicatedness which is exhausting only to imagine during the realization process. One can envision poor Celia Lu’s strained vocal cords after many hours of session to execute what sounds like Schoenberg’s Sprechstimme squeezed with a sponge imbued with acid. The non-superficial ear realizes that solemn counterpoints are applied to these Pindaric flights through depravation. The arrangement of “Tale Two” is splendidly enriched by Chris Edwards’ oboe and Kati Lawrence’s bassoon – not to mention Androniki Lioukura’s exceptional performance on piano. Written pieces and improvisations are practically indistinguishable; when the engine gets going, radically remarkable stuff arises. A comparison to Crass – yes, the punk group – found on another write-up had me smiling in resignation. Do these individuals really listen to the records they’re sent? There are more intricacies in these scores than in the entire careers of certain geniuses. Have a taste of the absurdly jumbled “Untitled” – the album’s lone instrumental – to drown alone in cerebral disintegration.

A sheer summary cannot say that much, and it’s too late anyway. The couple is broken up, the final chapter of their life containing the kind of art that equals rare commodity these days. Music that gives the finger to the shallow-minded unfortunates who can’t read between the lines, that is excessively complex for the average critic to assimilate, and that causes people who didn’t understand it, but are afraid to appear dumb, to review it with discouraging superficiality. Heaven knows if Walter & Sabrina were truly aware that this couldn’t go far, artistically speaking, in today’s world. What I’m sure of is that their attempt won my utmost respect, besides causing the re-evaluation of all those horrific pseudo-erotic movies watched lots of years ago, forgotten masterpieces of supreme mediocrity that nevertheless possess the great merit of showing the reality of things. The type of ascension that starts from the slimy waters of filth. The holiness of squalor – now that’s a title.

LIZ ALLBEE – Theseus Vs.

2010-05-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

Resipiscent

The woman has dabbled with people of the calibre of Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Gino Robair and Rova, usually expressing herself through voice, trumpet and electronics. She’s also known as Luz Alibi (the card inside the silkscreened box says “Luz Alibi – Theseus Vs. The Ship Of Fools”). Oh, well. The work lasts circa 35 minutes subdivided in twelve tracks, some of them extremely concise at less than a minute. A slightly twisted absurdist mood constantly affects the songs – because these are songs, apart from a handful of anarchic digressions – so that the overall feeling is one of undeniable originality, something that is indeed difficult to compare to theoretically related stuff that I’ve heard (a whiff of Residents, perhaps?).

My problem is that this semi-perverted amusement runs parallel to a lack of really momentous intensity; maybe this is the artist’s actual intention. Mostly revolving about trouble-free rhythmic scansions, electronically misshapen small noises and not excessively challenging instrumental configurations - repeatedly subjected to additional transformations via pitch-shifting devices and other cheaper kinds of effect - this music belongs to the colourful list of materials that sound aurally enjoyable for a change, without remaining engraved in the memory. When the hyper-processing deforming mask comes down, what’s visible is enough for pronouncing the word “oddity”, but that’s all. The talent is definitely there, though, and we would love to see it utilized for more substantial projects.

PÅL ASLE PETTERSEN – Komposisjoner 2005-2008

2010-05-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

Zang

Pettersen, born in 1975, is a Norwegian electroacoustic assembler and a renowned activist of the local avant scene. He achieves most of his stimulating sounds via regular objects and homemade stuff, apparently randomized in unpredictable fashion. Yet, if one’s attentive enough, the man also provides a structural intelligibility that facilitates the act of listening from beginning to end. There are no actual titles to these pieces, since they’re distinguished only with numbers; this tells a lot about the composer’s will of presenting the audience with factual concreteness as opposed to ineffectual drifting.

If something must be said a propos of these materials is that they sound extremely good: carefully assembled and masterfully mixed, each plot putting both the fine details and the general development under an ideal light, the single elements logically connected for brains attempting to take an overall aural impression in. In terms of timbre, we’re often spanning through a distinctive sort of granular disintegration of particles that never degenerates into stupid chaos and the presence of secretive extra-low hums from the underground (a wonderful one is heard at the start of “Komposisjon 20”) and faintly vacillating static essences (“Komposisjon 16”), probably derived from something more normal than we think, opportunely processed in the studio. Seemingly, some work on pre-recorded tapes was done, too. A cold-blooded potion of altered regularity and unhinged meticulousness characterizing this excellent release in its entirety, a unique musicality living in misleadingly unmusical matters.

ACTIVITY CENTER – Lohn & Brot

2010-05-23T02:49:00.000-07:00

Absinth

Michael Renkel and Burkhard Beins run Activity Center since 1989, working over the years with a bunch of instruments, gadgets, devices and disparate treatments - usually placed on tables - so we’re not terribly wrong when we define their fields of exploration as heavily influenced by the preparations they love to use. For this recording, which follows 1999’s Möwen And Moos, the “orchestration” is mainly characterized by Renkel’s nylon string guitar played with hundreds of atypical techniques and Beins’ usual array of astutely utilized percussion, stringed stuff such as an “eBowed and propelled zither” and electronics (also manipulated by his companion).

Lohn & Brot is a long-lasting record at 70 minutes, yet the adjective that keeps remaining in the mind for this music is “fresh”. This derives from several factors. The first is that both the whole program and the single pieces do not remain stuck on the same ideas until corrosion but – either via surprising discoveries or plain aborted experiments – the scenario is changed after a few instants. In that sense, the continuous dynamic shift of the opening track “Arbeit : Material” epitomizes the duo’s researching spirit and open-to-instant-suggestion ears. Small bumps on wood weigh similarly to a series of glittering rasgueados on the zither, microscopic clattering and carillon fragments preceded or accompanied by unyielding harmonics whose duration is manually prolonged through the electric gadgetry. A mixture of luminousness, grubbiness and pulse that results extremely sympathetic, its acknowledgement unproblematic.

“Passage” and “Transit” are two short links between extensive improvisations. They’re infused with a sounds-from-a-forest quality that makes them welcome even as autonomous statements. “Zone : Produkt” – the longest chapter at almost half a hour - starts with deeply resonating, sparely percussive touches then mutates to become a determined analysis of molecular improbability, lengthy acute frequencies and swift stops maintaining our attention busy throughout. The auditory channels are constantly stimulated: initially quite gently, then more vivaciously, the junction of motionless stability and noisy intoxication basically faultless. Time flies and still no tiredness, especially in virtue of the artist’s irrefutable talent in placing the sonic incidents, further enriched by a peculiar combination of sincerity and incongruity, the best example being the succession of minimal shimmer and synthetic farts found around the 20th minute, flowing into a splendidly organic blend of drone and acoustic mayhem in what’s perhaps the disc’s finest moment.

The conclusive “Station : Prozess” is a cross-pollination of toneless emissions, speckled overtones and hallucinated serenity caused by obliquely sliding strings and glissando insanities of the third kind, mixing – at the very point in which I’m writing - with the faraway echoes of a ceremony taking place on the opposite hill, marching band and firecrackers included. A bizarre, entirely human concoction that ultimately leaves us ready for another spin, like if what was just heard had never occurred.

JASON KAHN – Timelines Los Angeles

2010-05-15T02:08:00.000-07:00

Creative Sources

Subsequent to an invitation by Mark Trayle – one of the four musicians active in this recording, specifically on laptop-driven guitar – Jason Kahn composed Timelines Los Angeles as a graphic score destined to the 2008 edition of the Cal Arts Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology Festival. Having both the possibility of choosing the participants to the performance and the intention of designing the parts exactly for those executors and their respective personalities, the composer decided to employ Olivia Block on prepared piano and Ulrich Krieger on saxophone and electronics, whereas he is featured on percussion and analog synthesizer. Still, if a record exists that doesn’t ask for excessive deliberation about the timbral individualities this must be it, although we do identify and separate the sources (well, sort of) as the whole flows.

The best method to describe this full hour is partitioning it in sections corresponding to a general dynamic appearance. The beginning is dominated by Block, which generates a reiterated scraping first, a rumbling substratum of thick string resonance later, upon which a rarefaction of synthetic emissions and diminutive reed noises are heard. Gradually, the interferences become a series of more consistent blotches – it is actually complicated to differentiate what comes from Trayle and what from Kahn in certain instances – then, all of a sudden, an extensively violent surge (especially enhanced by Krieger’s next-to-collapse drones on the sax) keeps us on the seat of our pants for long minutes. Imagine an extract from a Phill Niblock piece, deprived of the precious components: just harshness and unfriendly frequencies, stimulating nevertheless. Everything stops suddenly, leaving the listener alone with some variety of infected steam hissing around, finely complemented by repetitive hits on a cymbal, in classic Kahn fashion, until conclusion.

It takes time to agree to this music. It’s definitely uneasy on the ears - despite the whispered attributes defining its large part - and the structure is so evidently subdivided that a lightweight mind might find hard to follow the fluctuation of events in its entirety. Once the initial coat of unfriendliness is melted, though, there’s no stopping in enjoying it completely; that’s why I’d classify this CD as “wisely unwelcoming”. Then, as usual, it depends on what you expect from the act of listening. If a background is needed, look somewhere else. If attentiveness and breakdown are your forte, a lot of meat is here to chomp on.

ALBERTO PINTON / JONAS KULLHAMMAR / TORBJÖRN ZETTERBERG / KJELL NORDESON – Chant

2010-05-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

Clean Feed

Unlike your reviewer, smart Italians know that the sooner they’ll leave the native country, the better their lives will turn for, in a direct proportion to the chances inevitably gained. In the case of baritone saxophonist and composer Alberto Pinton, Sweden has been the land in which his musical conceptions started to get the proper diffusion. This quartet – recorded in Coimbra, Portugal, during the month of July in 2008 – comprises musicians who collaborate together recurrently in a multitude of different combinations, gathered in this particular configuration upon incitement of Clean Feed’s honcho Pedro Costa.

The sense of enthusiasm, divertissement and satisfaction manifested by the players throughout the extensive program is literally touchable. The group performs superb contrapuntal themes neatly, obeying to the rules of respect when necessary, at all times ready to self-fragment and become four separate lady-killing units. Eloquence devoid of affected postures, the artists intent in establishing the truth transiting in the mind at that very moment. The double sax attack brought by Pinton, who also plays clarinet, and Kullhammar – on baritone, besides a mean tenor - is extravagant at best, elegantly moderate (so to speak) at worst. They’re aware of where they are at every minute, displaying methods for audience gratification through brilliant samples of erudite instrumental irresponsibility. Bassist Zetterberg and drummer Nordeson (featured on vibes, too, in “Let Ring”) form a proactive rhythm section that contributes to add fuel to the fire in more than one occasion; just check “Chantpagne” to realize how agitation and lucidity can sometimes coexist without damage.

Obstinate, efficient and often amusing, this music is destined to keep you heart-warming company for a good while. An excellent attempt of tearing down the walls that divide free jazz from predetermined composition, minus the excesses of diligence that would transform the whole in a sterile exercise. On the contrary, these pieces approach a combustible status quite frequently, but never deflagrate into cheapness.

SYLVAIN CHAUVEAU – Touching Down Lightly

2010-05-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

Creative Sources

A well-mannered, gently resonating, partially Feldmanesque (or “post-Grubbs”, as one sneering friend of mine put it) offer for solo piano that doesn't necessitate a huge lot of absorption, though the latter surely helps in discovering a bit of deeper feelings in the interstices between notes and silence. Appreciable for its delicate thoughtfulness and accuracy of rendition, this is another of those releases – several were sighted on these shores in recent times - that fit in numerous kinds of categorization without the urge of going astray with words. Minimalism, improvisation, soundtrack, nearly ambient (ahem) in occasional instances - almost anything will do (“New Age” would indeed be a little excessive/offensive).

At various degrees of listening volume the CD works fine, warranting long moments of tranquillity. Quite honestly, it’s preferable when it slips along, and even behind, your evening activities, leaving a chance of enjoying the clear resonances generated by Chauveau's fragments of chords, skeletally repetitive melodies and single tones. Now, I like to think that something extremely insightful is implicit in the consecutiveness of these simple gestures; still, the sonic outcome does not encourage disproportionate analyses. Not many comparisons are available, too, if not the vague references quoted at the beginning. Let’s leave it at this: definitely a pleasurable listen, but not an extraordinary artistic announcement. When in need of giving yourselves some relief after a hard day, Touching Down Lightly performs the job admirably. If you're looking for a solipsist masterpiece, the search isn’t over.

CHRISTOPH GALLIO / OLAF RUPP – Fasane Hula Punk

2010-05-09T12:07:00.000-07:00

Rapid Moment

Fasane Hula Punk (don't ask) combines a saxophonist (Gallio, on soprano throughout) with a guitarist (Rupp), players of whom I've been deepening my knowledge quite sparingly, but also regularly – with a declared preference for the former's output, to be honest. Nonetheless, this meeting is really one of a kind - and a complete success - for a series of reasons. The first is the totally unadulterated quality of the music produced in the thirteen (unnamed) tracks. No hint to pre-constructed itemization, or to any sort of genre characterization; yet the lucidity with which these dissertations occur is beyond belief, the artists’ timbral unambiguousness and clearness of intents manifest in every single minute of the CD. Secondarily, there's the extreme democracy shown by both participants, who let their instruments do the talking without sounding despotic, always respecting the reciprocal needs of space while limiting conceptual annihilation intelligently, a bright zaniness defining the more squawking utterances. In a word, a strong sense of integration exists between the spontaneously emitted parts, be them notes or noise; this is something from which the listener benefits enormously. Lastly, the absolute clarity of the instantaneous statements, mainly expressed through sparkling string timbres (Rupp is unquestionably capable of muddying up the whole in a second, though) and show-stopping articulations of reed phraseologies, revealing Gallio's utmost command of an untainted instrumental virtuosity. The cover – among the most absurd artworks seen in a long time – is the ideal container of an entirely satisfying, ear-restorative release.

COLIN POTTER / PHIL MOULDYCLIFF – Grey Skies On Ashpalt

2010-05-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

Beta-Lactam Ring

The title, first. Is that “Ashpalt” or “Asphalt”? I wasn’t persuaded, and googling around didn’t help that much. The spelling, on both the cover and the disc of this limited edition (100 copies) – and, especially, on the label’s website - corresponds to the former. That will remain. (STOP PRESS May 11, 2010: Colin Potter just informed me that it's a case of dragged-along typo - it was supposed to be "Asphalt"...)

Let's stick to what's ascertainable – that is, the sonic content. This is a delightfully soothing release, constructed with recordings that principally derive from echoes of urban and rural zones which were entirely gathered by Phil Mouldycliff, who calls them “audio debris field”. The choice of sources might be well known, but something digs deeper in this collection of talking people, bell towers, blackbirds, cars and related – and never toxic – emissions. I can't put my finger on the rationale behind the following affirmation, however a number of artists active in this area seem to gift the most obvious human manifestation captured on tape with a spiritual essence, a familiar character, a sensitiveness that elsewhere is totally unknown. Mouldycliff is definitely a member of this restricted group, all his materials heard in this place having always met total approval. No bombast, no protrusions, just regular sounds carefully chosen and deployed. Quite often, that's enough.

This notwithstanding, after Potter's processing and mixing measures kick in, daily reality turns into a striking form of semi-abstract acoustic art. A slight deformation of the overtones here, a few gentle touches of echoing shimmer there, more mildly warped gurgling treatments over there, and even the unfriendly materializations (not many, indeed...) become reasons for merriness. We couldn't really compare the totality of these elements to analogous memories: a little bit of everything - at least partially connected to the genres touched by these men through the years - is visible, synthesized in a completely personal statement. One that gives pleasure in abundant doses without making us feeling guilty of appreciating an easier-to-swallow record for a change.

SUM – Invenio Ergo

2010-05-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Matchless

Sum is the trio of Eddie Prévost on drums plus North Ireland’s guitarist Ross Lambert and alto saxophonist Seymour Wright, the latter’s Seymour Wright Of Derby among the most interesting solo saxophone recordings heard in the last years. This double CD comprises a live set recorded at London’s Café Oto on February 8th, 2009. Considering my decent level of knowledge of the work of at least two of the involved musicians (Lambert representing the less notorious quantity in this circumstance), I approached this outing with a degree of certitude regarding the presumable quality of the resulting product. A delusion was waiting around the corner.

Although the trio’s technical and cultural grounding is out of question, the bulk of this music is somewhat negligible and uninspiring. There’s no background analysis or historical/intellectual reference that could alter this belief, maintained even after following someone’s advice of giving the record additional chances (done, to no avail), as if three thorough listens weren’t enough. One can circumnavigate the bitter reality at will, either by disserting on the thematic quotes scattered all over the program and the dismemberment of renowned tunes, or summoning forth improbable similarities. James Blood Ulmer - whose style was defined harmelodic (sic) in another review of this very item on a famed magazine - is a particularly amusing case in point. But the noticeable separation in the stereo field – Wright on the right, Lambert on the left, Prévost central – is the same that is perceived in terms of lack of synthesis and overall character.

The only events that raise a modicum of curiosity are Wright’s sporadic attempts to explore the extreme registers of his instrument by alternating undersized spurts, kernels of notes and well-placed single squeaks to fairly traditional phraseology. In general, though, everybody remains confined within the borders of an abortive, jazz-tinged tearoom improvisation that, on the whole, fails to engage. Even when the artists go for a visit to the regions of rarefaction, the shortage of meaningful interaction is astounding. More than evoking uncontaminated types of bare-boned interplay, the acoustic imagery at large appears instead pretty ordinary, when not plain run-of-the-mill. And this happens over the course of two discs, for good measure.

Significantly, Brian Morton’s liners recite “None of these players would claim to be making a historic document, and one senses in them different kinds of diffidence to the act of making a record in the first place” and, at the very end, “They create, therefore we are”. You’d want to accept as truth that the affirmation is ironic, as Invenio Ergo might represent, in the opposite case, a manifesto for the aspiration to doing nothing. Given this hypothetical hesitancy about the idea of such a release, I’m not mincing words: this concert was best left in the attendees’ short-term memory, its artistic impact definitely not on a par with Matchless’ customary standards. And the “Invenio Ergo Sum” pun sounds forced, too.

AGUSTÍ FERNÁNDEZ – Un Llamp Que No S’Acaba Mai

2010-04-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Psi

Instantly manufactured during a December 2007 concert in Sigüenza, Spain, this album (whose title translates as “a lightning that never ends”) sounds quite distant from a conjectural sonic translation of that phenomenon. The recording introduces us to a volatile temperament that tends to shed some light over the unknown corners of certain registers, or inquire about assorted aspects of dynamic correlation, ultimately rendering the experience akin to walking across a country area before a storm: the moment in which the sky begins to look threateningly grey, the first crackles are heard and whirlwinds of fallen leaves and pieces of broken branches cause that typical whoosh-and-rustle manifestation that pushes ordinary people to hurry the pace to get home early. On the contrary, it’s right there that this particular set becomes more fascinating. And, in due course, the tempest does arrive (though not unending).

Fernández is not scared of exploiting the uncomfortable traits of the piano. He gives a free rein to bewildering outbreaks that, under an apparently uncongenial structure, hide instead a clarity of vision that’s immediately measurable by proficient ears, which in turn complete elaborate geometries often merely hinted, but fully visualized in advance by their engenderer. The reciprocal behaviour amidst the companions is impeccable, a veritable seminar on how a trio recital should be carried on when the intention is that of making serious music - and a sizeable bit of invigorating noise, too. A fabulous Mark Sanders maintains total control on now bubbling, now mottled percussive textures in an olla podrida of neatly deployed fickle figurations, deliverable only by truly sensitive drummers. John Edwards figures as a catalyzing presence, joining the conversational flow with impious rewordings of the commonly known literature associated to the double bass yet, at the same time, using extended notes and droning clusters to dictate the coordinates of the calmer places where the protagonists occasionally land, intelligently releasing the listener from the grip of unwarranted pressure.

MANU HOLTERBACH & JULIA ECKHARDT – Do-Undo (In G Maze)

2010-04-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

The Helen Scarsdale Agency

Over several years violist Julia Eckhardt - an artistic director at Brussels’ Q-O2 Werkplaats sound laboratory - has been amassing an extensive number of long-form pieces for solo viola, all of them rigorously in G. These are part of an archive which is available to artists willing to exploit the droning character of that music in heterogeneous settings, differently established each time. After a meeting during a residency, French artist Manu Holterbach decided to use Eckhardt’s drones as the basic constituent for his work, mostly originating from field (and “tubular”…) recordings that include, in this particular occasion, trees, wires, crickets, wind and different kinds of electric manifestation besides instruments like gong, eBowed banjo, other musicians’ rehearsals and Tonton Macoute’s “drone experience for cheap organ”.

The press release mentions Phill Niblock and Andrew Chalk as influences to consider when thinking about who should be the ultimate recipient of this beautiful CD. There’s an inherent static component, of course, but also a factor that partially distances Do-Undo from those names: consonance. This work’s vastness derives in fact from the almost perfect correspondence of the natural sources with the instrumental nuances around the fundamental pitch, devoid of post-processing or transposing. The mixture resonates very naturally: a life-enhancing current, a rehabilitation against the excess of nervous tension. The events succeed without a solution of their continuity, the ears neither capable of deciding what to highlight, nor anxious to focus on a determinate direction of the layered pulses. This goes on for the whole extent of the album, with nary a moment of weariness – which, in this genre, is quite an achievement.

In actuality, the defenselessness characterizing the pseudo-stationary structures of “Julia’s Ecstatic Spring Phenomenon” – which nonetheless remain stable throughout – and the sensitiveness shown in the overall sonic flow’s groundwork had me recalling, at one point, Richard Skelton’s pastorally plangent ebbs and flows. Except that there is no ebb and flow here. The association with maverick minimalists such as the aforementioned Niblock and La Monte Young comes easier in the record’s second half, “Two Stasis Made Of Electricity” (a Young title is even quoted in a sub-chapter). Still, Holterbach and Eckhardt’s gatherings show enough personality for carving a niche of uniqueness in your spirit as they actually did in this writer’s, ever since the first of a series of listens that’s meant to go on.

MIKE SHIFLET & DANIEL MENCHE – Stalemate

2010-04-15T04:32:00.000-07:00

Sonoris

Despite his role as a mastermind behind the Gameboy label, the considerable quantity of releases and the abundance of collaborations entertained (including artists respected from yours truly, such as Brendan Murray and Francisco Meirino aka Phroq), this is the first time, if the memory is not failing, that I hear sounds produced by Mike Shiflet. Bad for me, especially in view of the brilliance of this collaboration with Daniel Menche, my impartiality towards the latter well known (sorry, gimme a second as I go lighting up another candle under the Portlander’s icon, heh heh). The sources used were Hammond organs and electronics; the material was recorded between 2007 and 2008. OK, all ready for an amassment of crabby drones? Hold your horses.

The opening movement is constructed upon acute frequencies (initially similar to radio waves, then fusing in a single painful flux), irregular crackling/purring and a low rumble underneath – picture the sound of heavy wind hitting a microphone’s capsule. Factors that appear independent yet mesh with no trouble, providing a tense expectancy tinted with insubstantial colours. No ornamentations, no conjectures, as directly affecting as you can get. The increasing hostility of the subsequent chapter is characterized by the anticipated massive droning – of the flanging / metallic / industrial kind, very threatening indeed – and by an implicit pulse giving an idea of unavoidable virulence. The organ timbre - here as everywhere else - is often hard to distinguish, but one couldn’t really care less: this is sunless music, utterly absorbing and entrancing. Myriads of micro-rhythms and illusory patterns are detected, a magnificent underworld of inappropriate presences gradually turning into the verses of a post-metropolitan poem. The final third comprises bottomless booming, mangled fragments of – again – radio-like emissions, a sense of boiling grimy liquids, additional crackle-and-pop activity. We envision mechanical seagulls fighting for food at one point, then Father Drone comes back with a vengeance and it’s guerilla warfare: vicious ferociousness until the record’s conclusion, signaled by a humongous throb generated in the keyboard’s low-register area.

An outstanding work, heterogeneous and smartly crafted, mixing violence and brainpower in equal doses. Mental purification dressed in timbral infectivity.

MARSFIELD – The Towering Sky

2010-04-15T04:22:00.000-07:00

Faraway Press

This record - a project involving Andrew Chalk, Vikki Jackman, Brendan Walls and Robin Barnes – features music recorded in 2005, slightly different from what a superficial listener could expect from this label which traditionally releases works trademarked by temperate nebulosity. Still, if one’s ears are open as required, lots of familiar factors that establish the belonging of The Towering Sky in the same area of sonic investigation are unearthed.

The album is divided in two tracks, a total of circa 37 minutes. The first – “Marsfield Cathedral” – is a wonderful improvisation whose reverberant qualities possess an innate influence that furnishes a suitable environment with a soul of its own. The predominant timbres seem to derive from bowed metals – glass, too? - and resonating bowls, yet I wouldn’t be surprised if processed strings (guitar and piano’s lowest regions, perhaps) had been put in the recipe somewhere. The immediate reaction deceivingly sets us in “expected comparison” mode: one immediately thinks Organum and Mirror, since the room’s corners help those incredibly booming frequencies to morph, ricochet and affirm as it happens with those marvelous entities. There’s a section in which you may be tempted to bet some money on the existence of voices: ghostly undulations, almost disquieting if you will, that make their presence heard for a while and then just disappear. It might be a trick of the mind, though. Better remaining with an attractive doubt, sometimes.

As dramatic as the previous episode is, the group's unique personality is established by “Marsfield Common”, which is centered around a tentative exploration of a large ambience through the use of regular instruments; we guess a harmonium or an accordion (both?) are in there, and maybe a plucked cello, or a viola. What gives the piece strength is not the affirmation of those sparse pitches and stabs amidst a blur of indeterminate details, but that very intangible background going on continuously. Possibly they are tapes reproducing remixed snippets of priorly emitted sounds, or treated field recordings. Whatever it is, this creates a bed for the stream to flow, so to speak. And flow the river does with occasional surges, repeated bumps and, in general, a certain degree of irregularity that, curiously, push the sound towards lands that are usually inhabited by Chalk’s former partner in Ora, Darren Tate. Fairly inexplicable and engrossing, including the splendid conclusion: decreasing intensity and progressive instrumental rarefaction, accompanied by thunder and rain. And, once again, we feel deeply grateful at the end of the experience, not the least for the stunning poetry of the cover artwork: the photo of an ancient bucolic setting with children and sheep that literally defies description.

THE NAKED FUTURE – Gigantomachia

2010-04-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

ESP-Disk

Debut release - issued over a year ago, but WTF - for a hard-hitting quartet formed by Arrington de Dionyso (bass and contralto clarinet), Thollem McDonas (piano), John Niekrasz (drums) and Gregg Skloff (amplified upright bass). “All pieces recorded as improvised according to the conceptual direction of Arrington de Dionyso”, the cover says. The latter’s feverishly vibrant utterances gasp and sizzle in a kind of anti-technical way, as if he preferred his own guts to speak in lieu of the instrument. A courageous choice, given the man’s evident facility. But there’s actually no person in charge here: this is a collective (with a capital C) effort mostly feeding on outrageous conflagrations, memorable torments destined to rape the silken ears of those who usually look for easy ways out when caught up with overly imaginative (for their mind) recordings.

One of the first thoughts during the initial spin was “McDonas at his most Cecil Taylor-esque”, therefore I was happy to read about the same reference at the very beginning of David Keenan’s liners. It’s called “solidarity among writers”. The pianist provides mercurial harmonic shifts, autistic ostinatos and characteristically uncomfortable digital activity as per the norm: still, he occasionally stops (the others do so, too…) and contemplates the past or – ironically - quotes popular styles despite the fact that there is havoc around. The sound of Skloff’s valve-augmented groans puts its box’s timbre in an alley situated halfway through William Parker Drive and Jack Bruce Street, the unquestioning enthusiasm and raging cantankerousness of Niekrasz furnishing the music with a supplementary dose of fickleness that, on the other hand, makes the sonic mass appear even more unyielding. When the boys decide to go pedal-to-the-metal, they reveal themselves to be punker than me (…than Sid Vicious for sure). Great record: play loud, put up the shutters, get wall-knocked by the neighbours, crash your car against a barrier if you are stupid enough to listen to this while driving. Keep living.

TERESA RAMPAZZI – Musica Endoscopica (Vinyl Edition)

2010-04-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

Die Schachtel

This is the first release ever to diffuse the work of Teresa Rampazzi (1914-2001), a pioneer of electronic and computer music who was among the founders of the Centro Di Sonologia Computazionale in Padua, an important association of experimental composers active in Italy. The vinyl copy in my possession differs from the digital version. The alternative track is also the most recent material on offer: 1981’s “Metamorfosi” is an intriguingly ringing sonic cloud, born from the wish of “expressing the continuous mutability of all parameters”. What's missing instead from the CD is "Atmen Noch". Most sincerely, this kind of collector-enticing tactic is absurd, also because the quality of the vinyl is not exceptional - pops and bumps a go go.

In truth, the notes and the excerpts from Rampazzi’s writings and interviews constitute the really interesting ingredient of this edition. We become aware of the composer’s artistic path: primarily an avant-garde pianist and choir member, she remained totally fascinated by a small frequency generator shown to her by Herbert Eimert during a course at Darmstadt. From there, this firm-minded lady went on to analyze and exploit the possibilities of similar instruments, early synthesizers and primordial computers that certainly weren’t designed for interfacing with musicians. A passionate quest for new methods of audio-making, whose fruits and testimonies were donated to the Department Of Visual Arts And Music at Padua’s University two years prior of her death.

Do not be too hopeful for unfathomable sonorities, despite the unconventionality of this woman’s spirit. The record should be played loud, in order to better enjoy at least the essential consistency of unstructured masses of frequencies and noises that don’t sound like compositions, more a series of casual occurrences without a significant impact. Some of these flashes are pretty beautiful and vaguely fascinating, others are merely subsidiary presences, lacking any kind of mystery and interest. The whole first half is dedicated to “Musica Endoscopica”, originally a soundtrack for a documentary on – that’s right – endoscopy. The other side comprises the spacey “Environ” and the fairly unformulated “With The Light Pen” – rather forgettable episodes, if you ask me. The above mentioned “Metamorfosi” is not enough to transform what’s just a somewhat weird document into a must-have. Deep respect goes to Mrs. Rampazzi’s vision and stubborn inquisitiveness, but for sure we’re not talking about a female embodiment of Roland Kayn.

CROMAGNON – Cave Rock

2010-04-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

ESP-Disk

I gave my attentive ears to Cave Rock today for the first time. The record was originally released in 1969 and has been repeatedly reissued, also under the name of Orgasm. It is even featured in the world-famous Nurse With Wound list (apparently, everything contained therein represents some sort of must for easily influenced collectors). The “music”, performed by Austin Grasmere, Brian Elliot and the so-called Connecticut Tribe, is not totally horrific per se: absolute mayhem and disregard for any rule and scheme, warped tapes, bagpipes, radio, bizarre electronics, two-chord steel-stringed strumming, heavily distorted electric guitars, huge percussive slabs. However, nothing so exceptionally ahead of the future as the hype would have it.

The real troubles arise when Cromagnon open their mouths, which is more or less always: it’s there that the whole thing melts down in a huge splodge of incoherent mental diarrhoea. What many critics love to categorize as “freaking out” is in point of fact utter stupidity: awfully exasperating gargling and yelping, drunken/drugged choirs, strained laughter and - the lowest point – a piece called “Ritual Fest Of The Libido”: namely, the sonic equivalent of a retard screaming in agony while strapped to a mattress on fire. Initially this is quite unsettling, but already at the second listen it has become merely pathetic, exactly as the large part of the “vocal work”. There’s a not-so-subtle difference between freedom and uselessness, and the majority of this stuff goes well beyond the limit of art to land in the area where “dada” borders with “doomed to failure”. I picked these extracts from a 2009 write-up (originally published on Dusted):

“…Most of the bands that Cromagnon recalls – Faust, Throbbing Gristle, Nurse with Wound, etc. – didn’t exist in 1969. (…) The critical reaction always seems to be the same: how could anything this weird, this prefigurative of industrial out-rock and experimental psyche have possibly been produced in 1969?”

An answer might be “probably because Cromagnon (and Faust, and…) had listened to Frank Zappa’s Freak Out, Absolutely Free and We’re Only In It For The Money” (1966 and 1967). The problem is that they lacked Zappa’s intelligence, acute sense of satire and – of course – technical grounds. The history of “alternative” music didn’t start with Throbbing Gristle or NWW, you see. Give me “Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet”, “Help I’m A Rock” or “The Chrome-Plated Megaphone Of Destiny” over this article for psychologically mired individuals any time. “Industrial out-rock”? “Dadaist psychedelic folk”? To quote Zappa again, this disc is just “a puddle of piddle that used to be little” but has somehow grown to be a cult item. Hours and funds utterly wasted, then like now.

(P.S. There is a new ESP roundup review on Temporary Fault, comprising much better releases than this one).

ZIMOUN / HELENA GOUGH – Zimoun Featuring Helena Gough

2010-04-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

Leerraum

This 20-minute piece is part of a fresh series by Leerraum, juxtaposing stimulating sounds and equally remarkable visual metaphors; all materials are to be found at the label’s website. In this particular case, the audio track accompanies Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand's exploration of complex interactions deriving from “upwardly sonicated silicone oil”, a process (described in detail in the liners) that I really didn’t manage to truly understand, but totally fascinating to say the least.

The electroacoustic materials will most evidently appeal to the many listeners who have welcomed the work of Asher Thal-Nir over recent years. In fact these symptoms (concocted by Gough and elaborated by Zimoun) openly call to mind the conversion of urban landscapes altered by a patina of digital griminess typical of the Bostonian. The DVD that Zimoun was so kind to send for review has been endlessly spinning for hours on repeat mode. This is undeniably the best way to get encircled by the mass of incidences, sonic substances active at the unintentional level even as they stuff the ears with clogging rumble, hardly audible yet effectual acute frequencies and layers of hiss and digital rubble that, amazingly, are perceived like a beneficial palliative by an overstressed brain (such as mine these days). However, when we decided to stop the playback the lingering sensation was one of tinnitus, obviously depending on the volume implemented.

There’s not much more as far as descriptive comparisons are concerned, since the whole affair is erected upon these grounds. What’s definitely to recommend is listening to it in diverse ways. Headphones are going to help in unearthing internal micro-rhythms and changes in the equalization that the massive murmur heard in the room via the speakers keeps fairly undisclosed. This lets us appreciate the compositional endeavor, while the “environmental” diffusion is still an excellent means for separating ourselves from the rest of the world and concentrate on the small things that define our physical subsistence.

PETER GARLAND – String Quartets

2010-04-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Cold Blue

Discursiveness is not an option in Peter Garland’s music for string quartet. In the 51 minutes of this graceful record, finely played by Apartment House (Gordon MacKay and Hilary Sturt on violin, Bridget Carey on viola and founder Anton Lukoszevieze on cello), you won’t find an unnecessary note or phrase. All events appear as predisposed to symbolize a state of near-perfection, the kind of harmonious mental condition people rabbits on ceaselessly, hypothetically conquerable with years upon years of “meditative activity” but, in truth, only achieved through other kinds of harmonic processes – the ones instigated by a different, deeper practice of fine tuning.

Indeed, the first sensation experienced as soon as “In Praise Of Poor Scholars” begins is one of accomplishment, of inner quietude. The last verses of T’ao Ch’ien’s poem from which the piece’s title originates recite:

“Know your strengths, keep to trodden ways. Who hasn’t known cold and hunger? Those who know me: if they are no longer here - that’s it then. Why complain?”

The musicians perform Garland’s tantalizing score with agile susceptibility and ecstatic sentiment, transforming the act of listening in a peaceable commemoration, the acknowledgment of an order of things that might seem casual, yet is going to be understood as ideal as we grow older. Counterpoints and intersections are rather logical – even by non-expert standards – though we’re very far away from the obtuse luxury of certain renowned composers who blend Buddhism and budgets before releasing sterile exercises for ready-to-roar, auditorium-subscribing simpletons. The luminosity and the humble purity of these gentle constructions represent the perfect antidotes to that sort of vulgarity, an authentic compensation for ears tired of humdrum cadenzas and opulent chords that turn an unearned ovation into a mandatory response.

“Crazy Cloud” is a reference to “the pen name of poet-priest Ikkyu (1394-1481)”, and was composed during a residency at the Koninji Temple in Hamochi, on the Japanese island of Sado. This particular Quartet is slightly more affirmative, authoritative in rare occasions, with barely hinted allusions to quasi-Reichian minimalist structures alternated to moments of collected reflection and reserved spirituality (factors influencing the whole album, in case someone is still uncertain). The performance is again flawless, technical exactness manifest but never, ever transcending the limit of a level-headed equanimity bathed in poignant awareness. As always, no useful words exist to convey what the vibration of juxtaposed strings communicates. It’s an undisclosed bliss that will remain forever contained within; the luck of being able to taste it embodies a veritable gift, which a truly conscious individual must demonstrate of actually deserving.

THE MILO FINE FREE JAZZ ENSEMBLE – The Untenability Of Sentience + More Wistful Tunes For The Sincere

2010-04-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

Shih Shih Wu Ai

Milo Fine is as pure an improviser as we might hope to find. After having listened to his beyond-genre, untainted playing over a number of releases - especially on Emanem - I was very pleased to relish more of that spontaneous craft thanks to this item, a double whammy containing two live exhibitions that let us see different facets of this artist’s unlabelled sound world. Both CDs contain efficiently genuine instrumental sociability informed by a variety of creativeness that comes out unsoiled, not hyperbolical or, worse still, verging on the ridiculous. The records are issued on Fine’s private label and require firm concentration. This is not background stuff: the utmost attention is necessary to make a way throughout the various layers and catch the minute details that define the collective effort’s best traits.

The Untenability Of Sentience was recorded at the West Bank School Of Music, August 2009, by a trio consisting of Fine on M-drums II (electronics), piano, electronic piano, clarinets and voice, plus guitarists Steve Gnitka and Charles Gillett. The atmosphere that one breathes across an assortment of situations is prevalently exemplified by a state of extreme relaxation. The reciprocal listening is regulated by a significant attentiveness with rooms available for sixth sense, preferably transformed in unstinting gestural freedom. Clattering eruptions, unmanageable discharges and atonal ungrammaticalness produce constant surprise under the guise of shapeless electroacoustic matter, Gnitka and Gillett doing their best to maintain a semi-acoustic vibe through the usually polite, occasionally biting timbre of the axes. During short pauses we just hear the amplifiers’ hum, soon replaced by additional extravagant combinations of implausible sounds that, once locked together, appear as ideal complements to a play-now-forget-later kind of liberation. The highest point must be Fine’s hammering of the piano’s peak registers at the start of “87092”, which is invigorating to say the least: a cross of Nancarrow and a spastic version of Sergei Kuryokhin attributing further luminosity to an already brilliant performance.

More Wistful Tunes For The Sincere was captured on tape at Homewood Studios a month afterwards. Fine (drum set/bowed cymbals and clarinets) and Gnitka (guitar) are still in the party, this time with Scott Newell (tenor sax, voice) and Stefan Kac (tuba). This record tends to (hardly) justify the “Free Jazz Ensemble” name but don’t you ever think that hints to Ornette Coleman or Archie Shepp are going to be found. Basically, there’s a lot of high-quality interaction between the reeds when Fine decides to switch to clarinet and swap blows with Newell, and sturdily disjointed mayhem when the home’s owner goes back behind the drums, where he unleashes unsympathetic anti-patterns and eccentric rolls while the guitar/tuba/sax discussion becomes animated enough to recall - well yes – some pages of discordant jazz. Despite the innumerable parts in motion, the music always stays in the “unassumingly sane” pen (let’s pretend to ignore Newell’s willingly disconnected crooning); the anarchic sparkle that ignited the first CD’s restrained abstractions is a tad less vivid. On the other hand a tangible irony permeates the act, and what’s lost in impulsive lawlessness is instead gained in terms of hilarious blasts and revisionist – and not so wistful - “tunes”. Additional spots for Gnitka's virtuoso destruction of six-stringed common jargons and Kac's imperturbably lyrical serenity are also granted.

There are ways of sounding dissenting without appearing stupid – something that not all the self-styled “improvising musicians” on the market are able to achieve. These recordings show that on-the-spot inspiration, clever absurdity and a degree of internal sensibility work wonders in exploiting flexible structures inhabited by unblenching originality.

ADAM PACIONE – Dobranoc

2010-04-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Elevator Bath

There are artists that look into the subconscious aspects of perception through plain coincidences generated by even simpler sonic architectures, achieving results that are unequivocally inimitable. Without a doubt, Adam Pacione can proudly stand among them. Dobranoc (Polish for "good night" - thanks, Adam!) comes on a limited edition picture disc – the vinyl is adorned with the artist’s experimental photographs - and constitutes an amazing illustration of his sound art, destined to generate extensive stretches of what I love calling “silence of the mind”.

The record contains two long segments, one per side, called “Dobranoc” and “Always”. Basically, not many differences subsist in their temperament, the impression of extremely gradual movement toward an inestimable stasis definitely felt throughout both pieces. Pacione utilized field recordings, guitars, shortwave radio, analog keyboards and Moog filters to craft the music, yet you’re not going to identify any of these instruments, as unremitting as your probing might be. What’s detected is only a massive accumulation of murksome clouds with very few openings, from which pale lights transpire amidst superimpositions of acutely poignant monochromatic harmonies. Frequencies that could induce someone to think of a concealed choir, quasi-frozen loops activating a sense of acquiescence to occurrences that can’t be possibly be controlled by our strength of character.

The spellbinding quality of these forward-inching masses makes sure that thoughts are left aside, and that any kind of overheated reaction is all but discarded. As the hiss, the unspoken throbbing and the private fluctuation set in motion by the composer’s vision keep smiling to uncompromisingness, we realize about the merits of this not-enough-lauded musician, a master of beneficial rational inertia.

TOM ABBS & FREQUENCY RESPONSE – Lost + Found

2010-04-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

Engine Studios

“All music derived from 22 numbered melody fragments, randomized and paired with visual, audio and narrative score structures”. I adore artists akin to Tom Abbs - here switching between bass, cello and tuba - who deliver a poor reviewer from the task of trying to explain how a creative model is conceived. Assisted by Brian Settles (saxes and flute), Jean Cook (violin) and Chad Taylor (drums), the leader gifts us with a singular variety of modern-yet-ancient “comprovisation” which takes into account prearranged machinations - frequently bordering on the minimalist side with a high percentage of grittiness - but pretty often sounds like classic free jazz, including a recording quality that pushes all the way back to the sixties.

Indeed the lucidity at work in the seventeen tracks of this album is tremendously concrete, all instruments behaving rather considerately and expressing without restraint at once. The compositional schemes appear to be a sort of excuse, something made to be respected first and broken later; but even when the music emerges a little bit hard-hearted, there’s always some kind of handgrip – a rhythm, a circular pattern - to which one can relate without getting lost. Each member’s improvising skills are top-rank, the ears gratified by technically advanced manhandling of commonplaces. Valuable stuff, needing quite a few spins for a thorough understanding.

GLENN BRANCA – The Ascension: The Sequel

2010-03-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Systems Neutralizers

You’re in a wretched condition: things don’t go well, there is no work, much less money, and the perspectives of living decorously appear bleak whatever angle you try to look from. While pondering about the kind of miracle that needs to happen to rescue what’s remained of a healthy fortitude from a progressively cadaveric existence, the button “play” is pushed and The Ascension: The Sequel welcomes the lucky victim, a Kalasnikov shooting bullets of pure vibrating energy.

Glenn Branca is back, conducting a sextet of young performers including four guitarists (Eveline Buhler, Eric Hubel, Reg Bloor, Greg McMullen) plus bassist Ryan Walsh and an extraordinary drummer responding to the name of Libby Fab, an incredible rhythm machine gifted with a gorgeous snare accent. The group is able to sustain any type of cross-examination and respond with the sort of impolite solidity - regulated by a remarkable discipline – which transforms the composer’s ideas into radiant shimmering, iridescent chords systematically overlapping over a monstrous pulse to engender overcharged harmonies that lull the brain until one’s out to the world, willing to accept every consequence that the excess of volume and the weight of significance will bring. This is achieved through peculiarly tuned instruments – Branca knows something on how a cluster should sound celestial to the ears of the cognoscenti – that get masterfully intertwined and superimposed, thus immortalizing the man’s furtherance of an acoustic research that’s probably too spiritually advanced for the intelligentsia, content to pointlessly disparage and arbitrate without realizing that under these implausible sonic floods lies the key that unlocks the doubts of many of us. At least, those who have realized that words are an inadequate method of expression for theories that exist just in terms of physical manifestation.

If one listens to the paroxysmal crescendo of “Lesson N°3 (Tribute To Steve Reich)”, or to the superb resonances elicited by the juxtaposition of the different parts in the amazing “Quadratonic”, and remains unaffected – or, even worse, irritated – that means that there’s a problem with that person. This is a record that consists of violent natural phenomena more than sheer music. Scorching rage hiding a blissful beauty, only revealed if we put forward a nude soul. One of the best Branca albums ever, the accomplishment of a sacred wholeness, the synthesis of decades of investigation delivered by an ensemble that looks lean and mean as an Asian junior lightweight. I’m ready to be taken, I’ve always been. The rest doesn’t matter anymore: this is the glorious clangour of life.

MIRIODOR - Avanti!

2010-03-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Cuneiform

The Italian word baptizing the CD translates as “forward!”, and apparently Miriodor are not intentioned to stop their march anytime soon. With this outing, the multi-instrumentalist Canadian quartet comprising Bernard Falaise, Pascal Globensky, Rémi Leclerc and Nicolas Masino (helped by saxophonists Pierre Labbé and Marie-Chantal Leclair and trumpeter Maxime St-Pierre) confirms that there’s still room for aggressive intelligence on the cloth of progressive rock stained by RIO liquids. The band’s tight as a tourniquet (as Roger Waters would have it) and my feet keep attempting to tap behind impractical metrical scansions.

Titles are shown both in French and English language on the cover; I chose the latter to indicate them. “Bewitchment” introduces a measure of uneasy diffidence in businesslike fashion through frightening riffs and power chords, yet it also flourishes in elegant outbreaks where the geometries of the single parts represent a distillation of instrumental discipline. The angular “Dare Devil” is an expression of hyperactive chiselling of a familiarly bizarre sonic matter, mixing adventurous counterpoint and recognized structures with Pygmy echoes and choking distortion. “Meeting Point” utilizes elements recalling Philip Glass, Goblin, Conventum and Lars Hollmer quite masterfully, the main theme a folk nightmare in its melodically skewed sarcasm (your scribe has been mentally singing it for days now), not to mention the excellent use of pre-recorded tapes to add further weirdness to the recipe.

“Standard Deviation” begins with another great ancient-sounding spirit followed by absurdist dissonance, then shifts the focus on a deranged dance replete with disturbing juxtapositions. Each part sounds completely unambiguous and pretty distinct to the ears yet, at the same time, a fantastic sense of stability permeates this chapter. “To Be Determined”, the longest selection on offer, remains unusually calm with rarefied synthetic scents and a National Health-like outer shell (including a characteristic electric piano and several semi-acoustic interludes). Nevertheless, under the apparent tranquillity a few winks to fractured tempos and intricate interconnections amidst warped faces and ghostly voices do appear. The title track transmits additional messages from the office of utopian mercilessness, sampled utterances used as rhythmic basis in between chromatic roundabouts that might look reachable for the memory to retain but are instead extremely problematical. “Shadow Of The Alarm Clock” is the final episode, once more characterized by a mixture of substantial riffage and resolute blackness just slightly broken by those splendidly intertwining guitars, a recurring element of transparency among the numerous complexities that the record presents.

Outstanding stuff all the way, we need albums like this every six months or less.

ALAN COURTIS / JAIME GENOVART / CHRISTOF KURZMANN / PABLO RECHE – Palmar Zähler

2010-03-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

Mikroton

The six tracks comprised by Palmar Zähler were recorded in 2008 in Buenos Aires, Kurzmann being the only European member of the quartet amidst three Argentineans (including a new name for yours truly: Genovart, credited with “recording, synth, soft”). The instrumentation also comprises homemade violin, contact mic, mp3, tapes & processing (Courtis), lloopp, clarinet and voice (Kurzmann), minidisc, iPod, Alesis Nanoverb, Korg MS10 (Reche). This is a classic case of music that literally shuts its doors in the face of the listeners, preventing them to come in easily. Although all parts are layered with a neatness that contrasts with the generally unfriendly tones of which the whole is permeated, the general impression is one of difficulty in abandoning ourselves to the flux of the events, repeated listens not so helpful in unlocking the mechanisms revealing the secret beauties hypothetically lying in.

Most colours tends to the ashen side of the spectrum, revolving around sonorities ranging from bleeping signals and shrilling highs to intrusions of harsher, almost molesting flurries that cause a sense of indistinct distress. Droning elements are used with conscious care, without exaggeration. The ideas are mainly compatible, the unfolding of the improvisations unwelcomingly natural; points in common with the work of other artists operating in the same field are present (Günter Müller is a hovering ghost throughout). Some components do work very efficiently, others less (I don’t like when vocals are involved , to be entirely honest). Overall, a complicated evaluation. For sure this is a well planned recording, executed with intelligence except for a couple of short segments; yet it’s also very difficult to accept in terms of sheer aural gratification. An interesting experiment from serious explorers, but not gifted with the intrinsic radiance that characterizes the memorable episodes of the genre.

MARIO DIAZ DE LEÓN – Enter Houses Of

2010-03-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Tzadik

A multi-instrumentalist composer born in Minnesota but residing in NY, Mario Diaz De León’s music has been thoroughly inspired by numerous experiences, starting with his role as a guitar player in hardcore punk groups and culminating in studies with the late Maryanne Amacher and George Lewis. Declared influences are - among a number of other things and humans – Scelsi, Ligeti, Dumitrescu and Radulescu. Not bad for a 31-year old who started to write for classical instruments only in 2001, and today is able to keep us on the edge of our pants with a vibrant synthesis of drama and idiosyncratic creativity.

The opening “Mansion” alternates obsessive flutes and unfeeling computerized appearances in a series of pre-constructed scenarios in which noise and percussion establish an environment of shifting balances and hardly bearable tensions, a sense of perilous imminence characterizing the entire piece, which sounds more improvised than composed in a rather fresh way. “The Flesh Needs Fire” - for flute, clarinets and electronics - is a juicy taster of the composer’s unique identity, explicated through assortments of glistening juxtapositions and climactic crescendos of morphing harmonics amidst granular ruggedness which, later on, give room to rhythmically challenging contrapuntal appropriations.

“II.23” - Wendy Richman’s viola at the same time fighting and courting an array of murmured menaces and ungentle intrusions - is one of the most emotionally charged tracks on offer, the demonstration of what’s possible to accomplish with a correct dosage of coldness and passion in a sublime fusion of acoustic and electronic. The subsequent “2.20” unites a string trio and the ever-present abstractness in a concentrated inflammation which does not preclude the possibility of entering the sonic picture almost concretely, such are the vividness of the narration and the brilliance of the concept. The final portion of this score comprises some seriously engrossing intuitions - please go and check yourselves.

The album is sealed by “Gated Eclipse”. The pedestrian dulcis in fundo commonplace would be appropriate enough, hadn’t the excellence of the preceding material already alerted about this man’s potential. A complex combination of effective sharpness and poignant stability is generated by a magnificent sextet – flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin and cello – tuning the music to impenetrable auras while leaving us catch a vague glimpse of superior levels of understanding. Now, think of the endless ages spent by many poor souls to “interpret” the compositional mechanisms of “illustrious geniuses” – you know, Vivaldi, Mozart, Strauss and the likes, people who churned out petite playgroup songs adorned by orchestral bric-a-brac upon commission for the ecstasy of spiritually undersized aural illiterates. As one sees all of this rendered null and void by a synthetic sublimation of cosmic harmony lasting just over 13 minutes, sneers of irony and tears of compassion are equally justified.

SLW – Fifteen Point Nine Grams

2010-03-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

Organized Music From Thessaloniki

This is the second CD released by the quartet of Burkhard Beins (selected percussion, objects), Lucio Capece (soprano sax, bass clarinet, preparations), Rhodri Davies (electric harp, electro-acoustic devices) and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board). It features a live recording from 2007 at the NPAI Festival in Parthenay, France, yet it sounds – for any purpose and effect – like a studio session.

The duration of less than 45 minutes is ideal for the music to expand without unnecessary elongations and repetitions. An event is given the right time to manifest, get understood, acknowledged and – possibly - assimilated. The developing of the various phases is based upon primary colours belonging to two main categories: extensive tones – generally ruthless and quite sinister, now and then subtly stimulating – and transliterations of cryptic messages from some space between expected sound and sheer physicality of a particular vibration. The latter type of manifestation is what mostly outlines our concentration in the performance, the aims that the musicians had set achieved through motorized mechanisms, abrasive procedures or mere sensitiveness when corporeal issues – air, liquids – are a part of the test.

This is not a jovial work waking up a sense of merriment, nor it’s supernatural enough to cause the classic feeling of not belonging to reality in a certain moment. The aural symptoms are all very present, in your face, substantial even in their quietest aspects. The rare occasions in which cogitation is allowed are instantly wiped out by powerful surges, the compositeness of the sonic tissue ominously remunerative. Accordingly, the fragment from the 17th to the 21st minute - a potently collective, almost tribal massive growth - is enormously significant. One is afraid that the memory of Beins’ monstrous clatter and Capece’s piercing squeals will keep the addressee awake and overwrought for many nights to come.

Distress and deduction, explicitness and inquisition, hostility and gratification. The stability of these contrasting elements is utmost, the timbres generated an expression of enthralling cold-heartedness that nonetheless reveals a perceptive intellectual capacity. It’s something that transpires continuously from these unwelcoming blends, and becomes clearer - in different points - with each new listen.

SLOWCREAM - And

2010-03-12T12:17:00.000-08:00

Nonine

In my time-honoured listening practice I have encountered a lot of musicians using sampling to construct their works. Some of them brilliant, the large part unmemorable. Well, listen to what your mature brother is going to tell now: ME Raabenstein – the Berlin-based artist who published this masterwork under the Slowcream nickname – might be one of the finest assemblers of orchestral snippets and concrete materials ever heard by this appraiser. And is spinning endlessly, never ceasing to amaze with its magnificence, exactness and intelligence. It’s been two days, and nothing else was accepted as the house’s soundtrack.

What started as a commission from an unspecified modern dance project has developed into five tracks of impeccably constructed bionic creations, pieces where a mood – usually quite dramatic – is immediately established with just a couple of touches. From there, the music evolves without looking back: either looped or seamed in diverse permutations these fragments leave enraptured, halfway through a desolate sense of broken-heartedness and the awe that children feel during the first evening at the auditorium with their parents. There’s something in Slowcream’s approach that renders the whole event majestic, minus the pomposity. Overwhelmingly simple, one would say, with peculiarly resounding reverberations and occasional dissonant factors that add to the mystery.

The samples are meshed with live improvisation, the culprit being Greg Haines who adds cellos and organs in three episodes. His suggestive contributions provide the definitive coup de grace for any latent resistance, adding a dose of ambiguity to atmospheres solemn enough to cause the rational activity to completely stop, in order to focus to the acoustic intensification. In particular, “Moisture” – built upon a pizzicato background – elicits unspeakable memories via the juxtaposition of a hummed low-register melody amidst marvellous string glissandos and sparse hints to pianistic moderation. This discipline of the unexpected is signified by compositional shapes that may give the impression of typicality at the outset but, on the contrary, represent splendidly amorphous examples of cut’n’paste creativity. The entire album is replete with this kind of sensibility, the attention to every detail perceptible in each of its 40 minutes, the emotional level always high.

I had not met Slowcream until yesterday, yet am willing to bet that as soon as your copy of And starts spraying these substances in the room you’ll be instantly hooked. This is an extraordinary release which will appeal to open-minded classical lovers, minimalism, sampladelia and – in general - those who are able to distinguish a serious craftsman from a dabbler right away. No reason exists to miss it.

GROSSE ABFAHRT – Vanity

2010-02-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

Emanem

If a successful improvisation is based on the listener’s impossibility of remembering details at the end of the program, having been left with a merely essential idea of what the music intended to investigate, then Vanity is one of the most significant albums released in recent times. Grosse Abfahrt’s core members - trumpeter Tom Djll, clarinettist Matt Ingalls, guitarist John Shiurba, energized-surface-and-voltage-made-audible manipulator Gino Robair and electronic wizard Tim Perkis - were joined by a string trio consisting of cellist Theresa Wong, bassist David Chiesa and violinist Matthieu Werchowski in this performance recorded in Oakland, April 2008. The latter two musicians are featured in a gorgeous duo – the only track which doesn’t feature the rest of the group – called “Hang Bat5 Over”; all the titles, in Djll’s words, derive from “vanity plates, the curious stamped-metal bumper-culture expressions of people who like to broadcast their character and proclivities via licence plates”. The curiosity resides in the harsh contrast between the multifaceted intelligence that transpires from the musical interaction in comparison with the sociological misery generated by the concept of calling people’s attention on oneself through such a stupid thing.

The kind of sonic tampering utilized by Grosse Abfahrt in this particular occasion lies well below the calamitous level, privileging temporary conjunctions of carefully sculpted timbres and deviations from typical instrumental colours to fuse the distinct instances into an “incompletely collective” aggregation that leaves the single parts always perfectly visible. A slightly outlandish diversion might be represented by the opening of “Zoundz – Yours To Discover”, a nearly human raucousness introducing a sort of regulated randomness that mixes reed-cum-electronics high register ramifications and the atonal elegance of Webern-reminding combinations of strings. “Live Free Or Die Delphi2” is perhaps the place in which semi-solid abstraction and elemental concentration are more effectively balanced, and also where ruptured silence becomes an important factor. Overall, the players maintain a degree of conscientiousness during repeated cross-examinations, applying a fine blend of ever-present awareness and recombined disorderliness, voluntarily restraining themselves in a power reduction that increases gestural gravity, ultimately leaving the appealing qualities of these small conglomerates in evidence, but not necessarily accessible to everybody. If you didn’t understand a word of what I just wrote, try this: a great record.

BEN FROST – By The Throat

2010-02-26T01:34:00.000-08:00

Bedroom Community

Overwhelmed by a tidal wave of magna cum laude exaltations of Frost’s previous CD – 2007’s Theory Of Machines – this writer had managed to swim away from all that groundless hype (that was a well-masked lightweight record, if you ask me). Exactly for this reason, the immediately perceivable artistic disparity established with By The Throat is astonishing, the words from the press release summing it up perfectly: “Where Theory Of Machines came sterilized in fluorescent light, By The Throat is blood red and cloaked in shadow”. Essentially, the latter is a commanding statement exuding personality via a power that could be described as “charismatic”, its legitimacy verified (six spins in a lone day are indeed telling) and indisputable.

Aided by a few collaborators – Amiina, Jeremy Gara, Crowpath and “Midas Touch” Nico Muhly – Frost kidnaps the audience with awe-inspiring environments in flawlessly structured sequences of events and dramatic changes of scenario, mixing the harsh and the nostalgic, the spectacular and the manipulated, the (menacingly) pastoral and the sheer hellish. The alternance of acoustic melodies and computerized deconstructions of reality is the most prominent feature, typifying the whole album. In particular, episodes such as the superb “Hibakúsja” (its evolving circularity a clear hint to typical Ennio Morricone modulations, and I would be very surprised should Frost declare that it was involuntary) and the second half of “Peter Venkman” represent the manifestation of the high degree of theatrical effectiveness a composer can reach by allowing personal sensibility and responsive alertness to peripheral influences to come in.

There’s some discrepancy between the blurb’s descriptions and the track numbers of the promo copy in my possession, so the sureness about certain selections’ title is not literal. Anyway - the wolves moaning and yelping at the beginning of “The Carpathians” are fantastic, the sense of isolation and anxiety generated by the above mentioned “Hibakúsja” practically touchable. The minimal piano patterns and the marvellous strings defining “Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes” put the listener in a somewhat misleading condition of respite, but you have to remember that after every relieving circumstance there’s always something bad behind the corner, waiting for pathetic illusions to rape; the howling beasts are still there, at the end of the piece, to remind everybody. The crucial ominousness of the conclusive “Through The Mouth Of Your Eye” is a memento of the kind of punch in the stomach from which ordinary people struggle to recover. It’s 5:00 AM as I write, next to 24 hours completely dedicated to the thorough analysis of a disc that punishes the distrust derived from my disliking of the preceding one. Make no mistake: By The Throat is made of excellent stuff, no ifs and buts. This time, the massive raving finds a justification. Nevertheless, regional “experts” should take notice: not all crunchy emissions are necessarily relatable to or influenced by Pan Sonic. Find a useful name to quote, use it for decades. That’s how it goes in the age of counterfeit knowledge.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / CARLOS SANTOS / ANDREW DRURY – Eterno Retorno

2010-02-24T22:12:00.000-08:00

Creative Sources

The somewhat stable trio composed by the Rodrigueses (as usual, Ernesto on viola and Guilherme on cello) and electronic wizard Santos is joined by percussionist Drury in this recording dated October 2007. The first track “Street Food” begins with an almost silent interchange of plucking, scraping and clicking activities, soon evolving in a growingly powerful amassment of rattles, roars and growls that express a sort of extremely nervous joie de vivre. Initialy, “Good Dog, Cookie” – great title, by the way – privileges slightly perceivable string harmonics caressed by Drury’s bowed tuned instruments and pierced by Santos’ ultrasonic methods. The attractiveness of these intricacies is directly proportional to a degree of politeness, which informs the interplay even in the timbral extremities analyzed by the participants. The subsequent shift to mutable soundscapes characterized by unquiet stasis and involuntary mesmerism appears as a natural development.

“Adamant Distances” features a splendidly evocative juxtaposition of distantly fragile glissandos, a seesaw of perturbed melancholy and profanation of silence sounding like the scattered remnants of an orchestra whose members have been engaging in a battle for survival, this time won by the deepest, not by the smartest individuals. The “minimalist” pattern rising around the fourth minute onwards seems to mock Michael Nyman but is immediately replaced by a cross-pollination of droning arco and irrepressible uproar, the improvisation landing in the unfathomable enthralment generated by the chiselling of unusual tones. “Many Happy Returns” ends the display with a gathering of whispers, murmurs and infinitesimal pecking, forgetting pitch in favour of something more akin to rain drops in a quiet forest, subsequently substituted by handfuls of atomic tremolos and zippy cracklings, the whole secluded in rasping-and-whirring remoteness.

Once again, the art of unrehearsed spontaneity gives birth to a refined object for the merriment of ears that don’t grow tired of listening to musicians who, despite lots of unwarranted criticism (mostly aimed at the appropriation of the market chunk occupied by their releases), are still unafraid of showing what they’re made of, including weaknesses and - above all - strengths.

GINO ROBAIR / BIRGIT ULHER – Blips And Ifs

2010-02-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

Rastascan

Enhancing the correlation linking illegitimate sonic excrescences and inquisitive craftsmanship seems to be the main objective of Robair and Ulher, who recorded this excellent music in the summer of 2008. Through variegated combinations of voltage-induced electroacoustic manifestations and incessantly morphing agglutinations generated by a trumpet with the aid of a radio and a speaker, the couple cogitates about the flexible possibilities of brilliant individualities in comparison, fusing the respective fields of research into a little world of exhalations, utterances and micro-transmissions perfectly defined – almost onomatopoeically, you might say – by the record’s title. The rendezvous between these minds is a productive one, the results thoroughly interesting, aurally enjoyable in their weird joviality and – especially – very distant from the heap of commonplace tricks and tedious attitudes that EAI has been showing in recent times.

The seven tracks comprised by Blips And Ifs are endowed with a biotic quality, the experience frequently equalling that of watching worms writhing in a bubbling liquid. The distinctive percussiveness and the tanginess of the acoustic gamut are, in a sense, balanced by the clever restraint that the musicians choose to privilege throughout these insidious misapplications of creative instinct. Unpremeditated spurts, juxtapositions of tiny obnoxious creatures and putrescent residues, elegant unkindness and pseudo-voices are all parts of an absurd omnium-gatherum that - seen from a distance - is not too dissimilar from the many facets of an ordinary meeting of diverse-minded people. With a big discrepancy: in this place, nobody wants to force a view on the other(s). On the contrary the cooperation to achieve the aim of intelligent impulsiveness is total, the outcome being an album that offers countless angles and alternatives, never failing to suck us up every time we have a new go at it.

TOM CHANT / ANGHARAD DAVIES / BENEDICT DREW / JOHN EDWARDS - Decentred

2010-02-21T10:39:00.000-08:00

Another Timbre

Releasing long-term opinions in relation to certain types of music is getting increasingly difficult, especially when dearth of events and undetermined scores are parts of the equation. On the one hand, there’s nothing but the utmost respect for the restricted core of musicians and composers who constitute the veritable spirit of a scene; and nobody more than this author appreciates – make that “needs” – peacefulness, an absolute rarity in a world where the noisiest or, at the very least, the most grandiloquent characters get followed (which, unfortunately, seems to be an ideal tactic for the feeble mind of easily influenced individuals). Yet it’s become obvious that canons and formulas have been quickly developing even in such a supposedly unpolluted area and that, amidst the few legitimate artists, nondescript bandwagon joiners find using a note (or two, or total inactivity) irresistible, not in response to a genuine instinct but because this Zen-ish attitude is cool (incidentally, is there anyone around who’s not an alleged Zen practitioner yet?) and, furthermore, saves a lot of time and mental exhaustion when the acts of composing, practicing and performing a piece are hypothesized. Not to mention costs. Numerous debates about names from this circle of sound art flourish in well-known forums and magazines, which is both positive and negative. The feel here is that a mere handful of significant entities (and recordings) are worthy of consideration.

As of now, Simon Reynell’s Another Timbre belongs, without hiding feelings, in the tiny pool of my favourite labels. The sonic aesthetics and the sheer quality of the published documents speak for themselves. This notwithstanding, after spinning Decentred for six times in resolute isolation, the rave reviews read everywhere didn’t receive a complete authentication under this roof. Not for defects of the instrumentalists, who behave splendidly throughout; and not due to excess of hush, for this disc is mainly made of concrete occurrences. The instrumentation (reeds, violin, objects, electronics, double bass) is practically perfect for the scope, juxtaposing the warmth of wood, the thin-skinned liveliness of fingers and the droning capacities of an arco on diverse string gauges, the strength and the suggestions of an instrumental/human air circulation system and the merciless chilliness of an electronic apparatus (which Benedict Drew manages to interleave in the ongoing acoustic conversation with appreciable intelligence ). The rendition of John Cage’s “Four 6” is a valid reason for owning the CD, a fantastic amalgam of dynamically fickle insertions and decisive, if respectful gestures underlining the magic of sympathetic interplay. The factual improvisations – “Activation” and “Decentring” – don’t represent a truly devastating affirmation of originality, nevertheless are an indication of the stability of the distinct voices and their collective connection, a symbol for the constant attempt of avoiding the musty aroma that systematically creeps through when even a single member of a group is not in full control of his/her lucidity in a specific creative frame.

That leaves us with the bitter root of the matter, directly linked with the “silent” issue in the opening paragraph: what lowers this record’s overall value is the trio of excerpts from Michael Pisaro’s Harmony Series. Episodes that, putting it mildly, do not stand at the same level of the rest of the program: excessively simplistic, almost insubstantial. I couldn’t manage to sense any sort of enlightenment in the placement of those notes into utter quietness, the outcome of basic combinations (three duos: violin + double bass, violin + bass clarinet and double bass + electronics). The care applied by the players struggling to attribute a minimal degree of weak grace to the (rare) succeeding pitches represents the lone commendable aspect of otherwise inconsequential music, destined to last in the memory exclusively for the limited duration of each track. That won’t prevent your reviewer from celebrating this composer’s materials in different occasions, when they will hopefully result better adjusted to the need of unspoken intensity that these scaled-down drawings absolutely failed to fulfil. I won’t forget, for example, that selected chapters from Harmony Series 11-16 on the Wandelweiser imprint are nothing short of breathtaking, much more satisfactory to these ears than the bulk of, say, Radu Malfatti’s reductionist output heard in the house. In spite of everything this particular instance - in conjunction with various exalting write-ups seen on the web - generated a classic case of “overhyping doubt” in this head-scratching complainer; conversely, my positive reaction to Pisaro’s sounds in the aforementioned circumstance is also a valid rationale for distrusting a review’s contingent judgement. Conclusion: following this set of substandard instalments, the jury is still out.

However, the musicianship is first-class; that alone is a good motivation for stamping Decentred with a good mark. It might not be a new Another Timbre’s milestone, but does feature a number of incontestably fascinating sections, enriched by the participants’ heartfelt concern. Fine enough, in the zone where pseudo-inventive mannerism remains a perilous common denominator, frequently overcoming our interest in listening to the tangible tones - or lack thereof.

THE REMOTE VIEWERS – Sinister Heights

2010-02-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

Self Released

Apparently, The Remote Viewers need no less than two CDs to express their, um, views. This time we, as writers, got pretty lucky as the last messages from the band heard in this house were burnt across Control Room’s five (!) discs. Sinister Heights is a much appreciated demonstration of intelligence still existing on the planet of new music. It touches a number of issues with evident compositional competence, advanced musical taste and the right degree of technical difficulty; the result is a highly gratifying, truly brilliant album without weak points or “barely acceptable” stickers. Although the records are titled separately, this release sounds as an absolutely coherent whole.

The wealth of reeds characterizes the arrangements quite heavily: besides the project’s prime movers David Petts and Adrian Northover, Sue Lynch, Caroline Kraabel, Ken Butcher and Rachel Bartlett are also featured in different tracks. In Time Flats there’s a stronger rhythmic component at work, and drums – either real or programmed – characterize several exciting pieces such as “Terminal City” (which features Lou Ciccotelli’s percussion ensemble Eardrum) and my own favourite “Souls And Cities”, sort of a cross between Curlew and Muffins with a funky feel enhanced by Dave Tucker’s electric guitar. The majority of the scores calls for complex intersections of uneasy designs and clustery parallelisms in the higher registers, to the point that certain chords - in actuality formed by a multitude of saxophones - almost sound like synthetic presets. This should be intended as a compliment, a hint to the extreme rationality of compositions that do not admit unjustified poignancy while remaining perfectly decipherable and often remarkably vigorous. A darling track, “Villages Drowned By The Sea”, is distinctly RIO-tinged, anomalous angular figurations highlighting the closeness of the contrapuntal lines in total absence of unwarranted accoutrements and futile sonic bijoux. It is not only reed galore, though. The release’s second half, Mirror Meanings, includes “Headstone In Love”, a marvellous piece for four basses handled – as everywhere else – by John Edwards. Electronic contributions, when present, are provided both by Northover and Darren Tate, a peculiar presence in this Remote area. Another one is Adam Bohman, whose amplified objects define the otherwise "regular" sombreness of “Black Thoughts In A Black Mood”, the first disc's conclusion. But it’s always the stridency generated by the juxtaposition of bunches of saxes that gets noticed best, as shown in the brain affecting “Spring Flood”. And again: layered mbiras (“The Land Of The Blind”), entrancing vapours of darkness (“Personal Hour”, once more with a splendid Edwards in full low-frequency solemnity), incessant challenging of our sense of mental restfulness. These people won’t let you take a siesta when this thing is spinning.

A mix of mathematic exactitude, dappled swiftness and ingenious turns informed by artistic rigour and tight event management yet sounding completely natural, Sinister Heights belongs among the most satisfying albums I’ve met in recent months, confirming The Remote Viewers as the “logically odd” group to constantly keep an eye on when looking for auditory fulfilment.

PETER EVANS – Nature / Culture

2010-02-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

Psi

1) Peter Evans is an impenitent sonic animal, endowed with an inexhaustible physical force that allows him to maltreat his trumpets without excessive consideration of terms like “pause” or “silence”, even if completely aware of their implications. The kind of squeals, blasts and yelps (yes, he does use the voice) that we get to listen to along the two discs of Nature / Culture demonstrates the inner determination that ordinary men can only fantasize about, ungraceful hymns to the ungodly characteristics of a brute strength that blows away whoever tries to fight it. It’s portentously muscular, impulsive playing that will knock the shit out of reductionism’s pants, more akin to a natural phenomenon or a primeval energy than to the easy-to-read accents chosen by numerous jazz principals. Also, a landslide win over the spineless odes to coughing audiences and outside traffic released by those who leave a fundamental nature lying in a readily forgotten past to embrace the culture of à la mode inconsequentiality. The pun is definitely intended.

2) Peter Evans is a refined practitioner of the art of improvisation, regardless of the means of expression. The proprietor of an extraordinary technique, he’s capable of chewing up and spitting out the remnants of an impractically fast kerfuffle and, at once, maintaining the emitted pitches absolutely intelligible. That trumpet becomes, at the right moment, an outrageous broken mirror refracting every kind of tonal infringement, either sheer instrumental traits or related enhancements via perspicacious – yet never abused – utilization of extended techniques, besides a modicum of processing (through a guitar amplifier, of all things). The man pulses inside, screams remorselessly, narrates a hundred stories in the space of a minute. A maximalist minimalist focusing on the kernel of a single phrase for a long time until that very combination of notes is fed up with us, who keep waiting for it to explode in a thousand shards. Instead we reel as drugged, the skull entirely saturated, quivering from hundreds of impacting vibrations. Just fantastic.

3) Peter Evans is, purely and simply, one of the greatest free – and I mean free – musicians that I’ve heard in almost 46 years. Nature / Culture is merely a pretext, superb as it is, to invite everybody to understand the actual meaning of too lightly employed classifications such as “artist” and “musician”. In front of the mass of amazing sounds this gentleman inundated your humbled reporter with in this circumstance, a “hats off” is not enough. I’d rather kneel at the feet of infinite creativity, lowering my head in awe. Or, at least, what remains of the head. This music comes from the bare soul of a being, symbolizing its deepest aspirations while delineating a positive anger that goes well beyond words - which ultimately is what keeps our personal progress going. A chunky middle finger raised against the presumed equality professed by those unable to accept that there’s someone who’s at the forefront, barely having time to observe cheapness with paternal resignation but eventually establishing what’s best for everybody else, inclusive of the worthless ones. That "best" is located far away from enforced socialization.

Twenty stars for an epochal masterpiece.

CHRISTINE WODRASCKA / RAMON LOPEZ - Momentos

2010-02-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

Leo

This duo between pianist Wodrascka and percussionist Lopez follows their first recording Aux Portes Du Matin (also on Leo) of seven years. Theirs is a particularly stimulating combination, a form of musicality informed by a mix of slight aggressiveness and refinement. In many occasions the pairing of piano and percussion gives life to idioms tending to generate unconquerable, often unjustified complications for those who listen. On the contrary, there’s a definite will of letting people see what’s happening in Momentos, a natural exuberance rendering the knottier segments much lighter and, at the same time, an ever-present integrity – in fact underlining the entire work - characterizing the sections in which obstreperousness is left aside in favour of an intense investigation of the timbral gamut that constitutes the keystone of the artists’ acuity.

Wodrascka is indeed a clever analyst of the possibilities of her instrument. She delivers clearly decipherable outbreaks and tolerable incongruities, silver-tongued figurations that could be defined as a Cecil Taylor/Irene Schweizer hybrid, still maintaining a critical uniqueness. Once the insides of the piano are deemed useful for certain peculiar illustrations, the task is performed by leaving abundant space around the nutritive aural substance leaking from an attentive arrangement of scraped, plucked and hammered elucidations . Lopez listens carefully and responds accordingly, a never-invasive liberality explicated by the use of an extremely rich palette (including bizarre melodic sources such as xylophone and steel drums) that - at least in the 70% of the cases – is perfectly responding to his partner’s requests. The deriving music is an expression of reciprocal regulation, achieved through unambiguous gestures revealing recurrent cross-questioning in not-too-contradictory heteromorphy. The whole is summed up by the sense of curiosity lingering on after the program’s over, the playback restarting right away.

PETER VAN HUFFEL QUARTET – Like The Rusted Key

2010-02-08T01:52:00.000-08:00

Fresh Sound New Talent

The music of Canadian saxophonist Peter Van Huffel does not ask to be loved at a first sight. On the contrary, the approach with the many-sided look typical of his compositions initially tends to throw the listener in a state of suspicion about the directions that might be investigated and, in due course, taken by its creator. But after a few listens the precise scope of Van Huffel’s creativity becomes evident, each of the ingredients meant to be there for a reason. The sum of these motivations is what attributes a specific individuality to the final outcome: Like The Rusted Key – recorded in the summer of 2009 at Cologne’s Loft Studios – appears as an interesting demonstration of the axiom according to which revolutions are not always necessary to make a statement worthy of consideration in nowadays’ jazz.

As previously hinted, the tracks span across an ample gamut of moods and intentions. Besides the leader’s alto sax - a voice that appears elegantly tantalizing more than impulsively edgy - the main presence is that of Jesse Stacken, whose pianism is acutely complementary to Van Huffel’s thematic sketches and, just occasionally, slightly biting improvisations. The mix of liquidness and synchronized dissection of otherwise reasonably regular materials – not infrequently tending to resemble certain pages of the ECM book, think Rainer Brüninghaus – is the factor that determines a rise in our level of interest. Elegiac paragraphs and nervous harmonic transactions are both faces of the same coin. Bassist Miles Perkin and drummer Samuel Rohrer seem to strengthen a kinship within the quartet, figuring as an accurate rhythm section when the moment is right but also actively contributing to the contrapuntal grain via expert splashing of percussive hues and lenitive arco passages that depict an unsuspected nonconforming romanticism.

Amidst all of this, the track that stands out is “Melancholic”: caressing silence in between rarefied single chords left to resonate for a while, giving time to the musicians to prepare their next move, allowing us to concentrate without a necessity of anticipating what will follow. The piece is emblematic of the quartet’s responsiveness, also visible in erratic episodes such as the dissonantly energetic “Enghavevej”. Ultimately, this ability in jumping queues, avoiding strict definitions and immediately defining the object of a particular tune is the winning card of this unpretentiously intelligent CD.

JOE MORRIS BASS QUARTET – High Definition

2010-01-28T12:33:00.000-08:00

HatOLOGY

“To me jazz is a liquid thing – never fixed or concrete”. Joe Morris has a very clear vision of the places he wants the music to go to, and High Definition – which sees his bass legerdemain and compositional skill augmented by three extraordinarily responsive companions – unquestionably shows that attempting something different whilst maintaining the roots of prior historic movements visible is a remunerative decision when one understands the meaning of “respect”.

The project was conceived as a spiritual union of men working – to quote the nominal leader again – “as a playful folk-like setting”. At first, its temperament is occasionally grumpy and not exactly easy to welcome, a hypothetical finger given to those who think that a jazz record is necessarily meant for relaxing. This is an utterly positive quality, if you ask here: there’s nothing worse in this area than a set of sketchy pretexts without any degree of difficulty, sheer means to “tiresome blasting” ends. Then again, it is fantastic when an improvisation sounds as a natural flow even if the listener is still able to see the artists’ fangs. There are several times in which this happens here, the reward right behind the corner, dressed as compositions that appear seriously dissonant yet completely natural and – especially – informed by instrumental virtuosity gifted with unusual humanity.

Taylor Ho Bynum’s work on cornet, trumpet and flugelhorn is impressively ebullient, non-prosaic confidence and a logic of immoderately unrestricted melody characterizing the solos. The guy’s prominent vivacity is barely containable even when forced by a theme (Morris definitely does not help in that, angular melodic jumps and intervallic dispersions being the norm in almost all the tunes). Allan Chase, correctly described as a musician “who deserves more recognition than he gets” by Michael Rosenstein’s liners, is rational or daring depending on the circumstance – and an utter badass on the baritone saxophone. In “Topics”, among the album’s highs, dauntless aggressiveness and peace of mind seem to proceed simultaneously, the polychromatic sparkles coming out of his trade with Bynum alone worth of a tip of the hat.

It’s not all fire and liberation: in the subsequent “Bearing”, the foursome work on an “intuition-of-the-next-move” level, each protagonist sensitively vigilant, the music’s dynamics confined well below the blowout threshold. At that point, both Morris’ and drummer Luther Gray’s reciprocal sixth sense and probing restraint can be appreciated, their participation to the overall texture of the piece defined by a complete disintegration of the typical roles of a quartet. Morris’ command of so many idioms is amazing, the tone gorgeous to say the least. Finding renowned musicians whose voice on two dissimilar instruments (bass and guitar, in this case) is at such a stage of distinctiveness is quite rare today. Hearing those vigorously plucked figurations saturating the aural field while orienting the sonic tissue towards the territory of uncluttered freedom is a constant source of satisfaction for this listener.

After these undoubtedly ineffective words - heaven knows how difficult talking about jazz without sounding ridiculous is - the only thought that lingers on is “replay”. This is a somewhat thorny, ever-valuable, entirely gratifying release that confirms Joe Morris’ incredibly fertile period as a player and composer. This man’s quest for renewing that “liquid thing” and, at the same moment, not forgetting where we come from is a significant event in nowadays’ non-commercial music. Time to give it the proper importance, once and for all.

RADU MALFATTI / KLAUS FILIP – Imaoto

2010-01-23T02:44:00.000-08:00

Erstwhile

Trombone and sinewaves, splendidly recorded - as usual - by Christoph Amann (by the way: is this man going to release something himself one day? Given his fabulous ear, I’m convinced that it would be a great outing).

As much as my body loves the kind of frequency that Malfatti and Filip produce thoughout the 50 minutes of Imaoto, it must be admitted that the inside struggle to find a response beyond the merely mental is still ongoing. Someone whose words are trusted had alerted me: it grows little by little, you need four/five listens before understanding its full value (this is valid for all serious music, we should add). Sure enough, I tried to spin to the CD time and again in a quiet setting (namely at home: listening to this type of music in a different context is totally pointless, except when it is played live and the audience is respectful) but, although undoubtedly a well-conceived work, it doesn’t generate an emotional commitment here. Not that this should be considered as an obligation yet it is always nice when it happens; in several previous Erstwhile releases it certainly did.

It must also be noted that the headphone test resulted in a double-edged knife. One’s able to detect any single droplet of Malfatti’s saliva as he dampens the mouthpiece, and his deep, if restrained breathing amidst the emitted tones (we’re approaching sonic voyeurism, such is the quality of the details). These things are more difficult to catch without a headset. The preventable scraping on the instrument’s bell, which sounds out of place for this writer, is a tiny blemish. On the other hand, the purring undertones generated by the trombone and the powerful humming surges of Filip’s sinewaves are difficult to manage at their most effective due to the structural buzzing altering the actual sound of the instruments, which is detestable. Therefore, stick with the speakers: this stuff needs to diffuse, ricochet and make the skull tremble, not to clutter your ears with extraneous presences.

Basically, if you’re willing to be subjected to some serious ultrasonic/subsonic emanations, a tad of explorative whispering/delicate boiling, a few humid oral nuances and, ultimately, to forget about emotion for a while, then Imaoto is nearly perfect. Especially at a very high volume. As far as the album’s overall artistic significance is concerned, I’m inclined to thinking that the level is not the same of, say, a (Rowe & Nakamura’s) Between. Admittedly, though, not many records can reach that complexity.

DARIUS JONES TRIO – Man’ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing)

2010-01-21T11:28:00.000-08:00

AUM Fidelity

A strong, passionate, soulful representation of the vicissitudes of life transpires from every minute of the impressive first album (as a leader) by alto saxophonist Darius Jones. Flanked by masters Cooper-Moore (piano and diddley-bo) and Rakalam Bob Moses (drums), Jones achieves the difficult aim of presenting a self-portrait which is at one and the same time visceral and fragile, and – in essence – achingly beautiful for its large part. Grown in Virginia in a poor family, this man’s existence has been influenced by the presence of music since a very tender age, and it clearly shows. The manner of speaking of Jones’ reed is never formulaic, or just based on a set of rules to follow. His instrument can sound as a natural whirlwind of uncontrollable overtones (“Salty”) or the means for an invocation to superior entities (“Meekly” and, especially, “Forgive Me”). He’s able to draw gorgeous linear melodies while voluntarily keeping the notes at the margins of the correct pitch, sounding absolutely terrific nevertheless.

A profound spiritual empathy inevitably seems to exude from these pieces and adapt to our receptiveness: volatility, transcendence, heartbreaking awareness, undying hopefulness. It’s all there, even a degree of rage - check the power of “Chasing The Ghost”, in which Cooper-Moore and Moses shoot probationary bullets of anarchic interdependence as the protagonist keeps blowing your socks off with sterling tone and visionary vehemence. The bonus track “Chaych” features customary comrades Adam Lane and Jason Nazary pumping hard and exciting blues-tinged iron. Basically, Man’ish Boy is one of those albums whose constructive vigour is so vividly perceivable that a description causes more damage than good. Translation: get a copy soon and play it loud and often, as this debut is worthy of being called a classic.

ROBERT SCHECHTMAN – Moons And Ancestors

2010-01-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

OgreOgress

Robert Schechtman (1939-2002) - a professor at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University until an untimely death caused by a heart attack - was a prolific yet unrecorded composer, his work influenced both by minimalist tendencies and high spiritual standards. Once again, the good people at OgreOgress come and remove the shroud of our ignorance from a hitherto mysterious figure, Moons And Ancestors being another ear-catching chapter in the label’s unpretentiously essential saga.

“Ancestral Songs”, performed by Paul Austin (horn) and Gregory Crowell (organ) at the same time involves and leaves perplexed through a mixture of inscrutability and melodic straightforwardness sounding unquestionably unique – in that there’s no available comparison – but with a lingering sense of doubt that lets one wonder, at times, whether the composition’s influence is somehow limited by its simple traits. The music’s timbral combination and beautifully resonant qualities push the needle of choice towards positive reception at last.

Except for “Jitterbug”, a polite but not overly absorbing variation on a classic boogie, the 34-minute cycle “Water From The Moon” - entirely played by Christina Fong on an amplified violin – comprises the best sonic matter on offer: obstinately graceful, poignantly evocative, traces of inquietude vaguely disrupting otherwise unperturbed inner visions. Drawn-out single notes, faintly dissonant geometries and gradually arching figurations succeed amidst moments of protective hush and suspended progression. Fong applies her exemplary talent and impressive precision to scores that, listened at the right moment, are capable of influencing the listeners’ ephemeral disposition, rendering them conscious – if only for a few minutes – of that inexplicable prescience clutching a sensitive being’s mind, often more concretely linked to impending life events than we realize. This is particularly valid for the really splendid “Siren Songs”, alone worth of owning the record.

“Variations On The Huang Chung Of The Eleventh Moon” – interpreted by the ensemble Ethnoeccentric - is a variegated piece that doesn’t lack anything as far as technically appealing incidents and sheer virtuosity are concerned; yet, sporadically, it comes across as less stirring when compared to the rest of the album, its polymorphic density occasionally hiding the profoundness that seems to intensely characterize the other pieces. Nevertheless, the three-way conversation of percussion, piano and strings remains totally efficient, the near-perfect instrumental balance dissipating any latent reservation about the commitment of the involved parties.

LUCKY 7S - Pluto Junkyard

2010-01-16T02:55:00.000-08:00

Clean Feed

Please welcome a truly brilliant septet which features – somewhat bizarrely – two lead trombonists (Jeb Bishop and Jeff Albert) and performs conspicuously intricate, ear-rewarding compositions, intelligibly articulated in invigorating swiftness, the cleverness of the arrangements at a persistently remarkable level. The rest of the lineup consists of Josh Berman (cornet), Keefe Jackson (tenor sax), Jason Adasiewicz (vibes), Matthew Golombisky (bass) and Quin Kirchner (drums).

This is easily one of the finest albums to come out of Pedro Costa’s imprint in the last year or so; persuasive compositions, nearly palpable structural mass, the instrumental delineation neat as a new pin. A refined complexity is deployed with judiciousness, never intended as a means to leave people impressed with pathetic flurries of bells and whistles. Illegitimacy and fury get channelled in energizing flows brimming with authority and, in a way, pressure. There’s something in these kids – look at those great faces inside the sleeve – which makes me think to each one’s different upbringing, to the juvenile (and probably ongoing) enthusiasm that was felt while practicing at home, dreaming of living a musician’s life in search of the purest mental freedom. You know what? Judging from Pluto Junkyard they succeeded, reinforcing the assumption according to which a mixture of precise directives and good-natured anarchy is the best weapon against cerebral stagnancy. Oh, and the rocking blowout “The Dan Hang” must be heard to believe: heavy riffage, muscular drumming and fuming squealing by an armada of clairvoyant pilgrims.

Had this writer been a po-faced Downbeat contributor, he’d have given this 70-minute CD four stars and a half. Being myself instead just a non-corporative nihilist bear amused by ordinary people’s illusions, who also happens to instantly recognize if an artist – and, in general, a person - is worth of a shufti, trust my words: Lucky 7s kick ass. Even if when they swing.

PAUL DUNMALL SUN QUARTET – Ancient And Future Airs

2010-01-12T22:01:00.000-08:00

Clean Feed

It’s funny reading, on the press release, of the “triumphant presentation” of the Paul Dunmall/Henry Grimes/Andrew Cyrille trio that occurred in New York the day before this CD was recorded (June 15, 2008), since I’ve just listened to the album documenting that particular concert finding the music rather confused, lacking artistic consequence and, in general, overhyped. Ancient And Future Airs is another matter altogether, a set where mental lucidity is constantly tangible, the interplay definitely benefiting from this clear collective vision.

In the lengthy “Ancient Airs” the Paul Dunmall/Tony Malaby forward couple - two tenor and a soprano sax, plus the ever-cherished bagpipes - is at times utterly spectacular, swapping accurately hurtful power shots reminiscent of the first Diego Corrales – Jose Luis Castillo fight (if you haven’t seen that one, get a copy then thank your reviewer later) but, in the calmer sections, conversing like old friends at late night, all arguments finally settled in favour of an evocative deliberateness not intoxicated by the fumes of dishonest technical deception. Not to mention the almost savage spirit of their extensive solos, “exhaustion” an unidentified word in this occasion.

Whereas Mark Helias represents a paradigm of functional acoustic link, his purpose apparently consisting in reminding everybody about the possible contaminations deriving from a schizophrenic autonomy (though he cannot certainly be defined as an unadventurous player: check the splendid solo around the 34th minute), Kevin Norton’s vibes – more than his corroborating drumming – squeeze small droplets of metallic colour on the timbral canvas, different hues added to an already complex, if entirely logical picture of passion and intelligence.

The encore (“Future Airs”) is a short yet momentous demonstration of how restraint and control can work wonders in jazz, the artists maintaining an utopian farsightedness as they manage to keep seditious tendencies at bay, a captivating de-escalation of energy into the original state of quietness. A classily sensitive conclusion for an inspiring recording.

CHRISTOPHER TIGNOR – Core Memory Unwound

2010-01-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

Western Vinyl

There are times in which all one looks for in a succession of juxtaposed sounds is delicacy. And there are certain composers that, under a veil of fragility, reveal instead an imagination so luminous that it becomes difficult to connect the apparent flimsiness of their work to the sentiments that it generates in the listener. Christopher Tignor – a computer scientist who happens to possess a gift for composing intriguing music – is a surprising artist, in that he raises artistic questions through means that have already been exploited by others, at least in part. Yet his creations cause emotional responses that we’re used to notice only when confronted with a deeper complexity.

Core Memory Unwound features compositions (or, as indicated by the press release, “tone poems”) for piano and violin enhanced by a self-designed software called “memory machines”. Apart from a couple of direct interventions by Tignor, the pieces are performed by Margaret Kampmeier and Colin Jacobsen with the same profound commitment applied by the composer in devising these concepts. This isn’t an innovative-at-every-cost statement, and we are not crying miracle, either. But there’s some magic in these strangely reverberating chords, stretched violin lines and poignant harmonic auras underlying the melodic developments. In a track such as the superb “Cathedral”, Tignor succeeds in leaving us suspended in expectation despite the use of compositional tools that, hypothetically, should not produce excessive awe, or even surprise for that matter. The man’s talent is revealed by the perceptively clever utilization of those materials, the outcome a record full of grace that accompanies our activities like an indispensable component of early-morning life. It sounds natural, and it’s just gorgeous. Sometimes, that’s everything you’re going to need to keep trusting the suggestion of an improvement.

CHRISTOPHER ROBERTS – Trios For Deep Voices

2010-01-06T06:38:00.000-08:00

Cold Blue

In 1981 Christopher Roberts travelled to Papua New Guinea “to study the natural prosody of music”. The strong reciprocal empathy led to a multitude of exchanges, the natives introduced to an hitherto unknown instrument, the visitor ensnared by their songs, rituals and atmospheres. During a subsequent dream, he was moving the bow “across the strings of the bass in an entirely new way that recreated the drums, and the hornbills’ wings, and the voices of the people whose every song tells a story”.

The gestures that Roberts had envisioned – later translated into a score for three double basses (himself plus Mark Morton and James Bergman) – are now audible in this beautiful CD, enriched by copious doses of substance in a relatively short extent (less than 35 minutes). There are many aspects that transform the listening practice in a rewardingly self-collecting session. For example, the stunning tone of the main voice - already a favourite of mine - which in this particular case is refracted and projected by the very deployment of the parts that the composer designed. A distinct serenity, deriving by the power of the memories rooted in the mind of the man who actually lived the initial experience, permeates the spirit of this music. Yet we also detect mournfulness, like a nostalgic remembrance of something that has struck hard and deep and can’t possibly be brought back.

Although the character of the pieces is prevalently tonal, there’s nary a moment of dullness in the whole album. This is one of those records who seem to symbolize the thankfulness to a superior entity, permeated as it is of engrossing appreciation for a unique opportunity to share the purest values of human brotherhood, an over-and-done concept nowadays. Luckily, the notes remain - and they’re outright magnificent.

APRICOT MY LADY – Newly Refurbished And Tussock Moth

2010-01-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

Esc Rec

What’s often missing in contemporary improvisation is a logic of entertaining. Does a midway point exist between excessive seriousness and buffoonery? Apricot My Lady – a quartet composed by Adam and Jonathan Bohman, Lukas Simonis and Anne La Berge – try and provide an answer with this amusing CD, which features eighteen petite pieces that, in the words of their creators, were put together because they tend to appear as a “song cycle”. I wish the world had more songwriters like these. One only has to take a look at the instrumentation utilized to understand, as it comprises “giant comb”, “eternal springs” and “short guitar” (all played by the Bohmans) amidst “regular” machines such as Simonis’ “guitar with at least 10 pedals” and La Berge’s flutes, filters and samples.

The inventive originality and the sense of humour which this music is gifted with instantly connected yours truly to the original intentions of the artists, of course still unknown after the second and third listen. But, in truth, who cares? Unserviceable squealing, incompatible paternities of slanted rhythms, nonsensical vocal counterpoints, rasping and scrubbing bravado, a temperament of gutturally visceral explicitness manifest throughout. And one of the Bohmans narrates the circumstances surrounding his tonsil and adenoid operation as a kid in a particular “tune”. Weird as you want, always intelligently delivered, this is excellent stuff.

RAN BLAKE & ANTHONY BRAXTON – A Memory Of Vienna

2009-12-31T07:48:00.000-08:00

HatOLOGY

Born from a single session occurred November 19, 1988 at Haus der Begegnung Mariahilf in Vienna, this music is finally released after 21 years. The tapes were left unattended for almost a decade, retrieved in 1997 and apparently forgotten again until this deserved publication. In the liners, producer Art Lange vividly recalls the enthusiastic fervour with which favourite standards and “agreed-upon songs” were being hastily written on a piece of cardboard before heading to the studio, a multi-purpose room located in an obscure district of the Austrian capital. Both virtuosos were there to participate in Cool Noir, a festival organized by the Wiener Musik Galerie. The sudden decision to have Blake and Braxton recording a series of evergreens represents one of those turns of events that frequently engender works that are destined to be remembered. If there’s a jazz album that doesn’t reflect the short time at disposal of the artists and the urgency connected with such an immediate project this must be it, the musicians performing with inspiring authority, care of detail and brilliant management of the emotions, the impression that of a two-week recording stint.

It is tremendously difficult today, for this writer, to listen to tunes like “Round Midnight”, “Alone Together” or “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” without manifest symptoms of aural exhaustion, mostly derived by the swallowing of an incalculable number of pedestrian versions by dozens of nobodies (and a few “names”, too). This can’t possibly be told of these particular actors, who literally disinfect the wounds of those faded bodies, bringing them back to life thanks to the untarnished transparency of their intentions. Blake plays articulated trickles, hammers clusters and re-harmonizes selected passages, obeying to a sense of adventurousness that is only limited by the perfect geometry of his figurations. Braxton tends to respect the basic fundament of the thematic materials yet, once the right moment comes, designs extraordinarily coherent phrases that, fused with not-exactly-docile atonal flurries, miraculously fit the structure of the original better than ever. The result is a lesson in style, masterfully delivered a couple of decades ago but sounding as if it was taped last month.

RHODRI DAVIES / MICHEL DONEDA / LOUISA MARTIN / PHIL MINTON / LEE PATTERSON - Midhopestones

2009-12-27T02:12:00.000-08:00

Another Timbre

Recorded at the church of St. James The Lesser in the namesake village near Sheffield, Midhopestones is characterized by a type of gestural gravity which thrives in the realm of whispered uneasiness, an apparently inviolable stillness perturbed by flimsy timbral substances. The record’s enormous value was immediately established after the reaction to the opening “Strines”. Contrarily to what usually happens with any improvisation I happen to analyze, it didn’t take long for this writer to be reduced to a state of partial catalepsy, still responsive to the ongoing sonic activities while subjected to a series of infinitesimal, if clearly perceived nervous shocks. This looked like a recurring incitement to remain awake in order to avoid a tumble into some kind of black hole. A spine-chilling vibe - but also a necessary component of an intensely intimate experience - arising when we really decide to listen, letting the sounds break through our wholeness and relinquishing linguistic demarcations.

The participants – working with harps, soprano sax, laptop, voice and amplified objects – sound utterly deprived of personal ambition, entirely taken by the construction of a comfortless enthrallment rendered even more compelling by a somewhat disembodied restraint. No metaphors, symbols or incoherent representations, just a constant quest for this invisible communion, human instincts tending to the achievement of a condition that is both incontrovertibly corporeal and unpremeditatedly spiritual. To do this, they privilege the starkest aspects of a tremulous instrumental organism – Minton pertinently counterpointing Doneda’s frail undertones and undernourished pitches with his own choice of multiphonic guttural emissions, Patterson and Martin settling on a speckled diversity sheltered by pulsing murmur and gentle percussiveness, Davies’ involvement barely audible at times, tremendously effective when the harp’s strings produce extraordinary subsonic hums that put the woofers at risk, setting the room’s loose parts in rattle mode.

This results in incomparably splendid music, a pre-orgasmic, unexploded intensity informed by the erosive traits of hardly manageable anxiety. Visceral sensations that are pretty strange to find in such a context, all the more startling given the evident logic at work: the artists in full control of the procedures, never trespassing the borders of aural congruity, yet eliciting a matchless transcendence. Every additional spin introduces new factors: what at first seems impenetrable becomes perfectly clear the second time around, whereas the firm memories of certain combinations get instead sabotaged by subsequent listens. The naked truth, according to what the rational mind suggests, is that I’m trying to come to terms with this album’s weight, unsure about the implications hiding under the manifest impression. The gut feeling says that we’re in presence of a landmark recording.

WILLIAM BASINSKI – Vivian & Ondine

2009-12-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

2062

William Basinski’s newest creature consists of a main loop, restated for approximately 45 minutes and subjected (this time just slightly) to the consumption process that defines his well-known glories. The fragment is, as expected, heartbreaking: an orchestral sample repeated ad infinitum, perhaps taken from a slowed-down segment of muzak. The composer owns a conspicuous collection of recordings of that genre, whose shreds are utilized to give birth to these immaterial spells, helping us to look at an altered kind of perpetuity.

What for this writer remains fundamental is to stress how this artist has managed to achieve an accurate symbolization of infinity through something that instead is corroded, tarnished, progressively losing bits and pieces in a complete disfiguration of the original meaning. The beauty deriving from the tussle between the idea of a reiterative sequence and the decay of material things is absolutely inexplicable, alone worth of hours of reflection. The fact that the Los Angeles-based Texan manages, each and every time, to strike gold by choosing the perfect cycle, the ideal tonality, the ultimate intensity for his nebulous arias, is just one of the many mysteries surrounding another timeless question: what separates those who break new grounds (and everyone’s heart) via the turning round of a single figure from the Lexicon-endowed wannabes producing massive outputs of pitiful waste?

A correct answer might be “the heart itself”. This gentleman is a luminous character who never gave a damn about placing himself distant from what he actually comes from and is always open to any discussion, willing to explore different ambits. However, Basinski refuses to change for the sake of it, remaining anchored to basic principles which, in art and especially in life, define a human being’s overall value. Vivian & Ondine - dedicated to two infant nieces of his, who came to this earth almost simultaneously while the music was being conceived – is in that sense another splendid contradiction, a homage to youth and potential development – and the hope for a brighter future - pictured by an amassment of grey clouds symbolizing a past that doesn’t want to know of going away, still burdening the deepest consciousness, intensely affecting our memories until the very end.

JOHN CAGE – Sculptures Musicales / Twenty-Six With Twenty-Nine / Twenty-Six With Twenty-Eight And Twenty-Nine / Eighty

2009-12-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

OgreOgress

The label from Grand Rapids, Michigan presents the latest superb collection of previously unrecorded John Cage compositions, their rendition graced by the customary commitment and technical mastery of violinist Christina Fong and percussionist Glenn Freeman (here doubling on bowed piano). Other instrumental entities involved in these recordings are Prague Winds and The Chance Operations Collective Of Kalamazoo, cellist Karen Krummel and bassist Michael Crawford.

“Sculptures Musicales”, originally destined to Merce Cunningham’s choreography “Inventions” and inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s suggestion, is a disquieting piece where silence and relatively authoritative, factory-smelling drones interspersed with essential percussive fragments are intertwined, a little bit in the David Jackman/Organum mode but with less godly rage. Lots of metallic resonances and a few violent amassments, static clangour from two/three different points, then extensive periods of complete hush. Remarkable, however not as imposing as the subsequent “Twenty-Six With Twenty-Nine” and “Twenty-Six With Twenty-Eight And Twenty Nine”, perhaps the closest that Cage has ever sounded to Phill Niblock in his creative life. If possible, these tracks are even more distressing than the sonic automations, the accumulations of clusters and timbres pushing the overall sonority on the edge of disintegration, never letting the tension go. Music that moves endlessly without actually changing its timbral complexion; shifts that, although clearly perceived, let us helpless in our tentative quest for a categorization overcoming the rudimentary concept of “dissonant mass” (it remains to be seen for whom this is “dissonant”, as your reporter finds such a kind of inert inharmoniousness quite blissful).

In a way, “Eighty” fuses the preceding conceptions, presenting again a reciprocation of absolute quietness and (this time) rather undernourished accretions of adjacent pitches characterized by a larger use of somewhat stressed unisons. It’s another striking example of the most interesting material written by this composer, which OgreOgress has the unquestionable merit of releasing and making snoopier people aware of. In fact, this stuff goes well beyond the commonplaces often related to Cage and, especially, to the human mushrooms – who have the nerve of defining themselves “artists” - popped up from the damp ground under his shadow. An abundant half of these scores sound almost intimidating: a usually invisible trait of this man which is much refreshing to these ears.

EVAN PARKER – Saxophone Solos

2009-12-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

Psi

A definition that could never be used for Evan Parker’s playing is “mealy-mouthed”. Whatever the means of expression utilized, the impressions gathered while listening to his unyielding spontaneous discourses mingle in a righteous harmony where distinguishing infinitesimal variations and minute details becomes both useless, a mere exercise of individuation amidst deeper meanings and intuitions, and fundamental as the best ear-training available. For there’s no doubt that every concept expressed by this unrepentant virtuoso must be listened attentively: only by doing so the preternatural qualities of that improvisational combustion are finally disclosed.

Recorded June 1975 at London’s Unity Theatre and, a couple of months later, at Jost Gebers’ FMP Studio in Berlin, the thirteen tracks constitute – unbelievably, given their undamaged modernity – the first attempts by Parker to extirpate the commonplaces of traditional jazz idioms from the instrument (although he’s ready to recognize influences which include, as per his own admission, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and John Tchicai as far as certain technical instances are concerned). The control applied to the soprano’s tones is fearsome, the ability of interlocking nastily squealing pitches in the over-acute register with ingeniously impolitic, mercilessly discrepant flurries an incessant source of wonderment. Clearly the man had a vision, and – to quote from him – “you either have a personal voice or you don’t”. This stuff is miraculous in its capacity of letting the listener accept the grace and the ugliness of a timbre, and one knows that a genius is present when the initial unattractiveness turns into something that is essential, necessary in understanding a revelation.

As hard as bearing almost 80 minutes of procedural difficulties is, Parker’s mastery transforms the intricacy in a meditation of sorts. To answer Francesco Martinelli’s question in the liners, Saxophone Solos does contain music that can still speak to today’s listeners, at least those who aren’t yearning for iPods. Actually, the idea here is that the nickname “Bird” has been attributed to the wrong Parker. Save some valuable time to sit on the couch and spend your rational energies to wander across the acerbic spirals drawn by this path-opening creative thinker three decades and a half ago.

FRANK ROTHKAMM – Ghost Of New York

2009-12-09T01:04:00.000-08:00

Flux

“The music of ghosts is located here, in the movement from one pitch to the next, in the ambivalence of notes when one note has been left and the next one is not quite yet reached”. Frank Rothkamm - a Los Angeles resident who still remembers the nocturnal shadows of his Manhattan apartment - is a man of clear ideas, even when the images he tries to conjure up through his studio productions are not exactly explicable. There lies the fascination evoked by Ghost Of New York, first instalment of the 3-CD + DVD “Tetralogy”. If this is the inauguration, we’re in for a delightfully misplacing trip.

A limited edition of 333 copies, the duration set at 33’33” (numbers that recall the theoretically universal numerical perfection with which low-cost spiritual leaders usually lecture the aurally impeded, dressing all that wittering with recurrent grammar errors in escalating mnemonic earthquakes) the album consists of five tracks of erratically nonrepresentational music containing the most evident exemplifications of a street man’s failure to realize that Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si is not the centre of the cosmos. Contrarily to the artist’s habit the sources are not made known to the mortal consumer, though I’m surmising that analogue synthesis and a computerized system might be held responsible for this hymn to the insufficient definition of a liquefied polymorphism.

The waves reach for our attention, constantly enticing, teasing us through intangible shapes, irreparable damages already done to that mechanism of reduction to basic constituents which the mind is prone to utilize when unable to recognize what’s happening. Complex draperies replete with bubbling fluids and swirling radiations are alternated with moments of uneasy stagnancy or dawdling levitation (I swear that this term was chosen before realizing that a track is called “Self Levitation Science”). Adjacent ephemeral circumstances fuse in a huge blotch as we drowsily connect the dots of a depressingly plumbeous day and the rerun of a vintage Azumah Nelson fight (whose picture’s colours are also extremely blurred). Does this lethargy mean we’re being hit in the head by these momentous synthetic protuberances? Have African boxers ever pondered about the inadequacy of a common illusionary stereophonic projection? Is the beginning of “The Bethroted Of Wyoming” a mutilated robotic quote of the incipit to Igor Stravinski’s Sacre Du Printemps? Why does this writer always ask questions in Rothkamm-related reviews? Unsolved mysteries, at least for now.

Although never antagonistic to the ears, this is not a choice soundtrack for dinner at home with your potential new fiancée, unless she’s a Conehead. This chef exclusively cooks food for thought (well, this is not really true – check this blog), accomplishing the goal via singular accentuations of the aspects of life (translated: “of sound”) that are vaguely readable between the lines, which – as he himself seems to admit in the inner leaflet’s observations – remains a major artistic interest. This is the only type of truth-seeker accepted in my house.

JASON KAHN / ASHER - Planes

2009-12-07T03:13:00.000-08:00

Mikroton

The overall depth and the level of interior summoning-up typical of Kahn and Asher's work – recently savoured thanks to their Vista on And/OAR - is confirmed by this CD. The fruit of a September 2008 performance at Boston’s Axiom Gallery, Planes rewards abundantly, highlighting the respective personalities throughout a soundscape where nothing sounds blissful, the sun is persistently obscured but nevertheless life continues one way or another, as demonstrated by the recurring voices of children at play appearing like miniature ghosts amidst menacingly clattering drones and insidious diffusions of breath-hindering substances, generated by Kahn’s analogue synthesizer and (mostly) bowed and scraped percussion. Asher, credited with “recording and playback devices”, is in all probability responsible for the patina of hiss and just perceivable underground noise, fusing his own research – which as always moves around the coordinates of metropolitan unrest – with Kahn’s eliciting of encrusted upper partials in measured crescendos smoothed by soft cymbal touches and elusive percussive strokes.

Certain artists try to constantly surprise - at the risk of repeated slip-ups - to offer something “new” to the listener. This diligent pair belongs to the opposite category: explorers so confident in what they’re doing, eager to exploit the whole extent of the field of action down to the tiniest component, that individuating alien elements in the music becomes an impossible task. And, as every human knows, we feel better when the likelihood of a satisfying outcome is there, a sure thing when these gentlemen are involved.

SAMUEL BLASER QUARTET – Pieces Of Old Sky

2009-11-28T05:13:00.000-08:00

Clean Feed

A combination of rare events in this circumstance. A trombone-led ensemble, not exactly a common happening, and my complete, possibly indefensible lack of knowledge in regard to the four musicians who form the quartet: leader Samuel Blaser, guitarist Todd Neufeld, double bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. One never ends learning, indeed.

The music in Pieces Of Old Sky is sombre, brooding, rarely moving out of a shadowy zone where the attempts of eliciting a faint smile get frustrated by heavy pensiveness and crawling dejection. Blaser’s acoustic personality results quite preponderant; perhaps not really him as a soloist but the trombone itself, especially given a not overly extensive palette. The focal melodies are at times near-memorisable (“Mandala” peculiarly recalling “It Ain’t Necessarily So”), somewhere else they zigzag a little, unfolding in reasonably complicated fashion according to an acceptable degree of atonality.

There is room for further excursion, though: Morgan’s bass, directly related to the main instrument in terms of frequency adjacency, is a reassuring presence whose affirmations are defined by the paucity of notes played rather than their geometric disposition. Both Neufeld and Sorey prefer instead to remain at the edges of interventionism, spreading a barely visible powder over the instrumental tissue through emaciated figurations and merely hinted patterns that fade away almost instantly, typically encouraging Blaser’s return to a thematic home of sorts.

Although it’s difficult to talk about “enthusiasm” after having listened to this album, the mood it creates is, if you pardon the oxymoron, uniquely familiar. Essentially, what emerges is the strength of a well-behaved group, a collective aptitude tinted by the authoritative, immediately identifiable timbre of its mild-mannered boss. A finely regulated democracy where everybody knows who is in command, and is all the more happy for that.

OLAF RUPP / MARINO PLIAKAS / MICHAEL WERTMÜLLER – Too Much Is Not Enough

2009-11-26T13:08:00.000-08:00

FMP

This album is the result of two days of recording that occurred at Köln’s Loft in May of 2009. A power trio is always expected to produce some variety of dynamic music whatever the context it performs in, yet Rupp, Pliakas and Wertmüller exceeded all anticipations, realizing their vision through the use of nearly superhuman energies, leaving us wanting for more even at the end of a quite long program (circa 65 minutes).

An association that came to mind during one of the repeated spins was Last Exit. Too Much Is Not Enough vibrates in fact of the same devastating fervour, that kind of take-no-prisoners attitude imbued both with technical expertise and utter abandonment of pondering that characterizes the milestones of free improvisation, a category to which this release definitely belongs. Rupp – a guitarist who never managed to enter the realm of personal favourites – shows that his playing on the electric is abundantly superior to what he does with acoustic, scathing lines and sparkling harmonics defining an imperative: that of meaning plenty and thinking less, a quality that not many artists are able to develop. In this case the success is total, enhanced by Pliakas’ overwrought massiveness on the bass, treated as a generator of snarls, rumbles and growls rather than a bottom-delineating machine, and Wertmüller’s frantic drumming, characterized by a splendidly snappy snare amidst perennially rolling avalanches, under which my instinct kept detecting a fundamental vital pulse. Together, the musicians reach a point of continuous boiling that nevertheless doesn’t generate an explosion that would, in a way, waste that accumulation of forces. What is to be loved is the hardnosed threat symbolized by the trio’s implacability, in comparison to which certain hypothetically “rebellious” entities cannot but pale - or plain disappear.

One of those recordings that, listened by a walkman while strolling across the city, put at risk of being hurt by the upcoming vehicles if inadvertently crossing the road, given the impressively discourteous, utterly involving manner in which it transmits the message and the unconditional value of its uproar. Great stuff – and look at the traffic lights before someone runs you over.

PETER BRÖTZMANN – Lost & Found

2009-11-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

FMP

The three-note call that opens and, as a recurring theme, informs “Internal Rotation” - first of the five tracks that constitute the program of Peter Brötzmann’s newest solo offering - sound like a signal to the doubters. “I’m not only a spitfire machine, not a furious babbler exclusively. I can sing”.

And sing the man does throughout Lost & Found indeed, albeit not in the way a regular listener would anticipate. There are no cost-cutting procedures for the soul in this superb album, which sees the German saxophonist fighting silence – but also listening to it - armed with alto and tenor, b-flat clarinet (masterfully utilized in the title track, among the most melodically refined, dolorously intense pieces I’ve heard from him) and the spectacularly garrulous tarogato, perhaps the instrument that better defines Brötzmann’s unique style, made of drunken loquaciousness, raucous permanence, exalting invocations to some mysterious god of undernourished, ever-raging incomparability.

Still, a significant dose of poetry lies behind what we hear. It might be traced in certain minute details – the artist’s emissions resonating from his chest into the tubes while he blows, for example; it could be individuated in the sense of articulation one identifies even in supposedly discomposed segments, right there where the lone wolf looks for a hypothetical moon to howl at without success, instead deciding to dedicate the fruits of his inner denudation to the scarce quantity of by-passers that chose to stop and listen to those wonderful rants, so absurdly lyrical, so outrageously touching.

Those who disparage the carnality of this expressive method, who find its odour of sweat and blood repulsive, those - in essence - who define this level of improvisation as “noise” need a serious reassessment of their capacity of detecting feelings. This music is achingly stunning, never really hostile despite an often confrontational appearance, a sensitively portrayed rebellion against the concealment of pain, which – thanks to Brötzmann’s magnanimous lungs – becomes as beautiful as love itself.

STEVE LANTNER QUARTET – Given – Live In Münster

2009-11-19T21:33:00.000-08:00

HatOLOGY

Heading a line-up comprising Allan Chase on alto, baritone and soprano sax, Joe Morris on double bass and Luther Gray on drums, Steve Lantner determinedly tries to maintain a courteous detachment from the extremes of excessively discordant liberty and overly cosy consonance. That the pianist insists in defining this music “jazz” in an era in which many – including yours truly – are frowning as soon as that word’s heard is nothing but commendable, especially because Lantner knows where he is and what he wants in any circumstance.

The set, recorded in 2007 at the 21st International Jazzfestival Münster, is a fine demonstration of inter-reliant playing, the musicians obeying to a logic of clarity even in the rare moments in which the musical threads become more knotted. In particular, there seems to be a tendency to the superimposition of instantaneous rapid themes and sudden sketches that, for the large part of the program, sound – at least to some extent - planned in advance, such is the controlled discipline emerging from the sum of the parts. Each member of the group gains additional visibility in infrequent solo spots, none of them exaggerating in self-admiration during those occasions. The interplay is responsibly compact, occasionally quicksilver-ish and, generally speaking, highly gratifying.

Lantner is endowed with a soberly momentous technique, articulated figurations ranging from enthusiastic sparkle to crepuscular contemplation. This charisma never turns out to be overwhelming or dictatorial, the leader often comfortable in acting as a sheer harmonic colourist, letting the flow go on without excessive interference. Chase is a refined saxophonist whose firm timbre is informed by an imperturbable independence which nevertheless allows repeated nods to the time-honoured heroes of the instrument, complex melodic flavours and ever-skilful outbursts favouring a constantly agreeable circulation of high-quality tone. Morris is the owner of a inimitable style on the bass, plucked with equal doses of bad intentions and guitar-derived designs, a sensitive smartness not once deflated by cheap tricks. Gray is flawlessly efficient, always discerning in scansions that appear relatively untarnished despite their traditional origin, propulsive tasks performed with brisk dynamism and evident competence throughout.

This reporter is still interested in hearing good jazz after all, perennial suspicions and doubts notwithstanding, and it took a mixture of instrumental masters and deep spirit to revive that curiosity. This quartet has managed to make me appreciate old things again, principally due to the fact that they actually shine under the light of fresh individuality.

DENMAN MARONEY QUINTET – Udentity

2009-11-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

Clean Feed

Pianist (or “hyperpianist”? Hold on, please) Denman Maroney is clearly trustful in the abilities of an average mind. Trying to explain the polyrhythmic concepts that underscore the large part of this music, he says that “there are at least two and more often three tempos going; the listener is free to choose which one(s) to relate to”. Perhaps this musician is not aware of the fact that the majority of a typical audience is not even able to stay anchored to a rudimentary 4/4 with a couple of shifted accents, let alone a superimposition of composed metres. Many pathetic characters come out with various kinds of bullshit about complex mathematic “mysteries” underlying the perfection of the universe, yet they could not name an interval or an elementary beat if threatened at gunpoint. Such sorts of involuntary victims of artistic diversity are not likely to be grateful for the labyrinthine qualities of this excellent album. Hell, this group doesn’t swing, if not for an allowed minimum.

Right, the hyperpiano. Besides numerous interlocking figurations executed with concentrated investigational attitude, Maroney – who appears positively gifted with a scintillating musicality coming from the insides of his brain - frequently plays the “regular” keyboard with a hand while enjoying the pleasures of extended techniques with another, the whole enhanced by the exploitation of several objects on the strings which generate “complementary overtones that move in contrary motion, one down toward the fundamental and the other up toward infinity”. Already fantasizing in regard to enhancement of awareness and realization? Wrong: the record’s title is the contraption of “undertone identity”, a concept introduced by Harry Partch which is too complicated to tackle in a sheer review. You can still learn the definition and use it in your intellectual conversations: nobody - except a few brighter individuals – go actually checking for the truthful core of these things, otherwise a lot of sapient icons would be swallowed by the very blob of their appalling ignorance.

Let’s not digress, though: the quintet performs fabulously throughout Udentity. Ned Rothenberg (alto sax, clarinets) employs a toothsome transitoriness in the methods applied, alternating altruistic repetition bathed in cutting dissonance and interchangeable anti-patterns which dignify the entire timbral tissue. He’s perfectly corresponding to the trumpet of Dave Ballou, who on a different side of the blowing spectrum avoids any kind of hypertrophic irresponsibleness, privileging lines that – although extremely respectful of the composer’s original plan – shine for intelligent restraint. If Michael Sarin’s drumming is entirely perfect for the overall design of these creations, his sober delivery a true injunction against the smell of moth-eaten "flexibility" characterizing the bulk of jazz drummers, bassist Reuben Radding is to be admired both as a solid donor of corpulent foundations for the general structure and an extemporaneous originator of bedazzling melodic sketches in places where an arcoed elegy is probably going to lead a sensitive receiver to deeper perceptions than an innocuous “pulse”.

Just to give a vague idea of how this stuff sounds, let me tell you that those whose ear-training includes Stravinsky and Zappa should greet this CD pretty warmly. Maroney has managed to tickle our interest with complications that sound good, lively, natural, without a hint of agony. Discomposure and angst are to be found somewhere else; here, we only appreciate an outstanding collective control over a series of well-developed strategies.

STEFAN KEUNE / HANS SCHNEIDER / ACHIM KRÄMER – No Comment

2009-11-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

FMP

Rather unabashedly, without thinking too much about the contingency of a stylistic connotation of their efforts, saxophonist Keune, bassist Schneider and drummer Krämer present a set of tracks that run the whole creative gamut of a format which may find its roots in a distant past, but in the right hands is still capable of delivering sharply dazzling instances of germ-free inventiveness. Following the fundamental principles of open-eared interplay, the musicians manage to concurrently generate a coherent logic of extemporaneous independence and respect the few rules of a jazz-tinged rendezvous that discards conventional savoir faire, piercing acumen and vivid perceptiveness informing the entire record.

Keune, who plays sopranino, alto and baritone, spits out short notes and brief outbursts whose character tends to the hysterical, at times hilarious side of things. He never irritates, though, his musicality deriving from a succession of microscopic messages and unobservant declarations that render the instrument a means for a lethally effective devastation of comfort. A style that nevertheless remains somewhat rational, a firm mind giving birth to utter instability, which is an important plus in music. The ruptures and subsequent reconstructions generated by Schneider and Krämer appear as the logical consequence of an unpronounced agreement, impartiality and vigorous fervour underlining a lucid madness that either warrants wild executions of instantaneous concepts or uncloaks a kind of tidy neatness which makes even the most rebellious discharge emerge as a smart reproach to the doubter.

The way in which these people keep fracturing rhythmic bones, altering melodic designs and throwing conventions away is both commendable for bravery and enjoyable for the quality of the playing. There’s not a moment in which the material sounds tired: every single event counts and all together they form a unique example of unselfish instrumental (de)synchronization. A wonderful aid for solitary fights against boredom, No Comment is highly recommended to regain a measure of trust in liberated expression, its title an ideal response to the stale dogmatic behaviour shown in recent years by silent gurus and pensive nullities.

THE BUREAU OF NONSTANDARDS – The Bureau Of Nonstandards

2009-11-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

Onezero

Kevin C. Smith utilizes circuit-bent machinery, including Texas Instruments’ Speak & Spell and Speak & Read, Power Gear Voice Changer and a fabulous Tiger Electronics Furby (a toy that had a great success in this reviewer’s land of retards a while ago). The sounds he generates are processed in real time via laptop by Maurice Rickard, the whole without additional overdubs or subsequent interventions. This results in a captivating record, halfway through serious electronica and a total joke, wealthy in good humour (those modified voices are a gas indeed) but, surprisingly, also connecting to deeper points of view.

Drones are not omitted yet belong to the evil-tempered, malformed kind, suddenly turning into ill-disposed creatures willing to pickpocket a saint’s patience, or bloodthirsty regenerations of preposterously unpropitious frequencies emitted by tiny fiends endowed with musicality to spare. If you give the CD to your children, they might grow to be a type of mini-nerd who at least should be a little more quick-minded than their “brain-melted-in-front-of-a-Playstation” schoolmates. Seriously, this stuff is worthy of attention, especially after knowing that all the pieces were improvised in live contexts (always in Smith’s hometown: Pittsburgh, PA). Despite the low-budget sort of cleverness, we receive absolute originality in exchange. Go for it - and play loud.

SORRY FOR BEING SO LATE, VINCENT

2009-10-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

I usually don't waste my time with this kind of rubbish, but this might be comical for someone. There's a Canadian guy named Vincent Bergeron who, in 2008, sent me his CD Philosophie Fantasmagorique – a funny, partially interesting record whose review can be found in the “Archives 2001-2008” section of this site.

Only by chance today I discovered an interview with Mr. Bergeron on Tokafi, published at the end of last year, in which he was so exquisite to tell these things:

“I keep the promotion simple and highly selective. Even in these conditions, by lack of options, you send something to a site like Touching Extremes which I strongly dislike for the kind of writing we can read there. They prefer listener excuses and expected free jazz. For so many people in the small experimental music world, if it is not drone music or free jazz, it is not good. Apparently, albums also need a steady instrumentation, the same for all songs if you are more unusual than the norm. And do not indulge on ideas, this is the worst plan. One idea per album is what you need... Don't you know? Experimental music should be listened while reading a book or it is not good. Mostly though, I am getting good reviews and I would say the best comments come from both songwriters and electroacoustic students. I am glad it is well understood by persons from a large variety of backgrounds. I don't want to make music for the elite only.”

Unwilling to analyze the reasons behind this man's behavior, I just wanted everybody to know that Mr. Vincent Bergeron had previously asked yours truly, via email, of BUYING this CD for review purpose. After my non-reply to that absurd request, he willingly sent the record.

Despite my non-negative and rather amused review, Mr. Bergeron felt somehow offended and proceeded to send me another email with rather unpleasant comments.

There is something more that I should say about what happened later on, which I won't do because it would make Mr. Bergeron's frail psyche crumble and, especially, because this would involve third persons who are obviously not responsible for this guy's rants.

I only chose to let everybody know the kind of low level a true genius (I'm being ironic, Vincent) can sink to. I also would like to emphasize Tokafi's choice of running such kind of less than intelligent statements without second thoughts.

PEOPLE BAND - 69/70

2009-10-24T02:36:00.000-07:00

Emanem

This 2-CD set comprises a series of surprisingly (given the age) good-sounding tapes that constitute a veritable authentication of the spirit, even more than being simple “archival material”, of the People Band. This union without a leader (though Terry Day and Mel Davis were unanimously considered orientation points to which everybody else looked at) began to exist in 1966 as Continuous Music Ensemble, finishing its course in 1972 after having developed into a real force of life, a variable assortment of instrumentalists – dilettantes to professionals, it didn’t matter – and personal experiences gathered under that sort of idealism which today is seen as laughable by many heartless cynics but in the 60s and the 70s brought probably the century’s best results as far as unembroidered creativity was concerned. As any elderly would concur, they don’t produce this kind of stuff anymore.

The endlessly changing line-ups, the fact that the musicians had to engage themselves with a multitude of instruments through a constant switching of the respective duties and the extremely diverse settings in which the events occurred (the players were either amassed in apartments and small studios or improvising in open spaces) all attribute a sense of immediacy to the playing, whose colours, impulses and indomitability remains thoroughly vivid across the entire program. The cooperative’s general philosophy is perfectly synthesized with what’s printed in the booklet: “Everything is music. Sound dominates our existence. Every sound/noise is music or can be used to make music”. Not a truer word indeed. Accordingly, the spectators were habitually invited to join the performers during the sets, although it is reported that members of the group - deemed “too musically anarchic” - were almost lynched by the rebellious attendants of a particular edition of the Anarchists Annual Ball. As ever, stubborn rigidness and hopeless stupidity lie behind those who proclaim independence from anything and anyone. The same happens nowadays, “radical” artists selling a presumed intellectual virginity for the quickest dollar.

69/70 includes handfuls of interesting incidents, running the whole gamut of aural reactions while encompassing doers and receivers in a single, virtually unconscious act. The improvisations collected in “Soho Studio”, which take the bulk of the first disc, are the most amusingly vociferous ones, intermittently recalling the Mothers Of Invention circa “The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet” yet informed by a lesser level of drama, the instrumental designs always incredibly intelligible and rather lucid despite the massive cluttering of timbres and dynamics, percussion and screaming voices emerging from the mix to define what the liners call “a beautiful orgasmic collective – quite tribal”. The self-explanatory “In The Woods” is obviously a prevalently peaceful chapter in terms of space distribution, the participants drifting in and out the microphones’ range to explore different areas of fortuitous artistry and subsidiary presences (such as passing airplanes). The slight diversion here is represented by “Paradiso”, named after the notorious Amsterdam venue which often hosted PB’s concerts. The quintet of Albert Kovitz, Davey Payne, Paul Jolly, Charlie Hart and Terry Day tends to a type of half-introspective free jazz tinged with altruism - especially towards the audience, treated to intensely expressive moments where the interplay is logical, unpredictable, nimble-footed, totally in tune with the addressee’s needs.

What’s to stress is how current these materials appear, 40 years gone. The importance of 69/70 – besides the excellence of the sheer musical content – must be individuated in its historical meaning at large. Significant expressions indicating a way of thinking and behaving that’s unfortunately destined to be watched as a relic, as these beings owned something that a sizeable portion of humanity has been throwing in the trash bin for decades - unselfishness and coherence. Qualities that everyone in the People Band was unquestionably willing to share.

WHO TRIO – Less Is More

2009-10-22T22:08:00.000-07:00

Clean Feed

WHO stands for Wintsch (Michel, piano), Hemingway (Gerry, drums and percussion) and Oester (Bänz, bass). Active for over ten years under this embodiment, these artists are as distant from an ordinarily stale jazz trio as an exhausted reviewer could wish for. For starters, we find no surplus of swing in Less Is More, which makes me extremely intrigued. There’s much else to explore, though, and the musicians are not shy in attempting different routes, all leading to a single result: the expression of simple rhythmic and melodic concepts through a superior level of restrained interplay.

Either walking across intense abstraction (the impressive opening track “Inside The Glade” is, purely and simply, a masterpiece of concerned waiting and unsettled thoughts) or examining the details of metrical interlocking almost to the point of ritualism (“The Pump”, “The Eastern Corner”), WHO always manage to look unique even by maintaining the instrumental gradations virtually untouched. “Wedding Suite” may appear as a straightforward song yet it is full of dissonance – of the digestible kind - especially remarked by the ever-interesting, outside-the-canon figurations played by Wintsch, whose style is reserved and intelligently comprehensible at once, altered melodies and harmonic cleverness bathed in inspired suggestion. Banz sounds prosperous or emaciated depending on the context, the focus remaining on the sensible aspects of structural stability. Hemingway offers a great proof of sensitive drumming throughout, the subtlety of his percussive interventions during the most rarefied sections a lesson of self-discipline that many bangers should learn.

Don’t be fooled into thinking about ECM or similar comparisons: despite a graceful confidence and the total mastery of the tools at their disposal, these men’s music is a refined blend of sensitiveness and, at times, visionary drive that does not need the support of a church’s reverberation to affirm its durability in the listener’s memory.

MEM1 – Stationary Drift

2009-10-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

Resting Bell

Mark and Laura Cetilia, from Los Angeles, are Mem1. They have been working in the field of sound installation and electronica in recent years, but this 27-minute chapter of their career – which is downloadable for free at the label’s website – has enough merits to stand alone as an outstanding release, full as it is of delicate poetry, dejected desolation and frail tones that repeatedly touch our heart. Starting from a single source - a cello - the duo builds an amassment of layered uncertainties through the use of electronics, which complement and enhance the acoustic qualities of the instruments while generating a string of rather uncommon soundscapes, whose peculiar beauty is especially exalted by its pallid colours.

The sounds tremble, attempt to learn to fly without success, then lay tired on a stratum of digital oxidation and slight distortion, only to be finally captured in a processing network which steals their essence and retransmits it across the room, altered yet still poignant. The hypnotic allure of certain segments is what attributes humanity to this music, the sudden turns towards unfriendly zones is what renders it less predictable. The magnificent blending of these intense feelings and the not excessive duration of the sequence seal Stationary Drift with a stamp of near perfection, placing it among the best episodes heard in 2009 relatively to this artistic area. One looks forward to hear more from such extra sensitive, deeply insightful musicians.

DIAPHRAGM – Sublimation

2009-10-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

SNSE

Business as usual: a sizeable pile of releases from last year lying on the desk and looking at me, hungry kittens impatient to be taken care of. I choose one randomly, put it in the player and – lo and behold – here’s a fine disc of noise-based compositions by Nicholas Pace from New York, working under the Diaphragm alias. The press release quotes sonic realities such as Speculum Fight, Iovae and Tom Grimley as hypothetical related listening. Sorry – the author is not familiar with any of those; but this record is damn good.

Apparently, the man lives in some sort of forlorn urban environment somewhere in the NY area, as he declares that the music is influenced by the “greyed-out hulks of broken concrete and razorwire” that surround his place. For sure the first feeling experienced is one of bleakness, thrumming rumble and static ingloriousness “welcoming” the listener together with a huge accumulation of sampled metropolitan echoes (and possibly a few measures of unidentified machinery and blaring traffic). Once the initial impact has been absorbed, though, we realize that the hostile mass does possess an alternative life, and that most sounds are unusually “canorous”, at times gifted with an aberrant harmony, always deployed with a noticeable logic which is what distinguishes this musician from the gangs of noisemaking cretins who leave our ears agonizing after a minute, whose records are only useful to stabilize peg-legged tables. In that sense “Party Foul II” is a bloody great track, dirty microsounds and ill-omened glissandos worthy of a seriously talented composer. Want a bleeding brain? Go to “Black Watermelon” and savour its bionic birds pecking at your hopeless auricular membranes.

The buried musicality characterizing the bulk of the program mainly derives from the utilization of what Pace calls a “rusted mountain of ancient oscillators”. I don’t know the exact reason, but Sublimation instantly clicked as soon as the spinning began. Maybe it will be a summer love-like excitement at the end, yet following a couple of listens – a murderous crossing of distortion and exacerbated reverb is accompanying my writing right now – this reviewer is still willing to believe that it might even appeal to so-called sophisticated audiences. Give it a try, hopefully you won’t be deluded.

GREG HEADLEY – Fragments Of The Dream Machine

2009-10-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

28 Angles

Having found himself in a creative mire during the compositional phase of this work, Greg Headley felt that the time had come for a total erasure of what was recorded until then, which was not the least satisfying in regard to the original intentions. This is never an unproblematic decision: there’s always the risk of losing the worthy bits and pieces and not being able to find a new path to tread with greater satisfaction.

This sort of inner irritation is expressed quite well by the five tracks of Fragments Of The Dream Machine (title courtesy of J.G. Ballard, a declared influence), whose 37 minutes contain, in the artist’s words, “the most chaotic and noise-filled music I have ever composed”. While it is true that this is a mainly dissonant record, full of blasphemous distortions and zigzagging anti-melodies, the general impression is far from one of mayhem. Behind the turmoil, we notice the presence of somewhat soothing elements – a few seconds of droning tones, a slightly calmer moment of suspension. It almost looks like the creator of these soundscapes is finding pleasure in his very confusion at last, finally managing to bring the inventive flux back to a certain degree of discipline despite a detachment from a typical construction process.

That said, for sure this is not a recording that will be easily memorized. But that’s not the point. What matters is the idea of a man trapped amidst untied knots who ultimately threw away the exasperation of obligatory choices by letting the sounds do the talking. Headley, for what I can surmise, works with computers. Yet it is the uncooked quality of the emissions he produces that is best likable, which is what renders him a peculiarly autonomous, unpredictable figure in contemporary electronica.