“A” TRIO – Music To Our Ears

Al Maslakh

The record’s title seems to give an unsolicited answer to a hypothetical question by some kind of illiterate listener: “how do you call this stuff?”. Your reviewer gave up speaking music in depth since decades ago, utterly depressed by the mixture of ignorance and presumptuousness that a typical schmoozer offers to the counterpart. As I like to say, this is the topic about which no one knows shit yet everybody gives public speeches. The ability of enjoying sounds as they are – “good”, “bad”, “sweet”, “harsh” or whatever adjective you might wish to use – is THE foundation, not only of the mere act of listening but of living itself. It is something that teaches to respect the persons who talk without interrupting, trying to overwhelm them with our own argumentations. It is a means to get stronger in front of the adversities. Learn to really detect the various components of a piece, and the organization of life facts appear clearer in the mind (provided that the latter is not altered by certain substances). In this recording, Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Sharif Sehnaoui (guitar) and Raed Yassin (double bass) produce a great number of hard-to-describe sonorities that basically verge on the nasty side of things and, for the most part, are uneasily abrasive and downright stinging. They use drones, scraped surfaces, percussive gestures and motorized appliances to elicit meaningfully unseductive resonances. Sometimes they alter the timbre of the respective instruments in such a radical fashion that one just does not believe that there’s not a saxophone, or a distortion pedal in this set. But everything I heard is rational, enlivening, aggressive in a constructive way – and it IS (excellent) music to these ears, not likely to resemble anything emitted by other practitioners of the art of acoustic excoriation.

FRANK ROTHKAMM – Reno

Flux

Expect no less than good-natured surprises and the occasional question mark when you read the name Frank Rothkamm. Reno is an album of flaccidly pushy electronic music composed during the 90s, entirely orchestrated on an Atari ST computer running on Cubase and connected to an array of vintage synthesizers and ancient-sounding drum machines. In essence, this is the sonic rendering of a concept – that of the “supermodern ballet” – according to which audience and performers become one thanks to the universal clock which regulates the (presumed) proportion between the rhythms of our own cosmos and the neuroses deriving from the numerous difficulties contained therein (including the impossibility of getting a work acknowledged, namely what happened to Rothkamm when he went to New York in search of record deals and/or other types of artistic glory and was instead forced to live in stressful conditions throughout the stay). The original background for this stuff has to be found in San Francisco’s Rave movement, of which the main character was a booster both as organizer and performer in the years of reference. The sounds get consistently thrown to our ugly mug in all their scientifically démodé appearance: mathematical programming, wishy-washy timbral stableness resulting in some mythical splashes of blubbery synthesis, and a smattering of retro jewels (“Graphic Equalizer”, “Dancefloor Killers” and “Jazz Hands”) that will make someone put on the red shoes and dance a peculiar kind of blues. And it’s also perfect, enjoyed via ear-clogging headphones, for terminating the verbal bullshit surrounding a pitiable train traveller.

CELER – Levitation And Breaking Points

And/OAR

It takes just a few words to explicit our impressions in front of Levitation And Breaking Points, re-released by Dale Lloyd’s And/OAR two years after the original triple 3-inch edition. Describing the mere exteroception – as always in corresponding circumstances – is an intention that ultimately results in the typical fatuousness attached to any similar attempt when one listens to uncrystallized masses of sound rich in shifts of imaginary harmonies and ethereal chromaticity. Perhaps we could do better referring to “presence” and “absence”, for these two opposites lie – here more than anywhere else in Celer’s recorded output – at the basis of the pervading sense of noetic improvement and corporeal liquefaction perceived during the protraction of the experience (needless to say, this disc is a natural nominee for the “infinite repeat” mode). The richness of psychological phenomenologies remains the most valid point of discussion for this type of outing; both Will and Dani Long worked in the ambit of music therapy, so they were probably able to predict certain effects on a listener’s involuntary cognition since the beginning. What the miserable reviewer must do in such a circumstance is, once again, stressing the need of separating who operates in this area with a background of genuine education and sentience from those who join the bandwagon without having a clue about the grandness of these issues. Celer were in search of truths while in exploration, and this record shows their absolute commitment to orbiting towards spheres that – hypothetically – any individual gifted with serious inner means and a modicum of volition can reach. Especially by remaining silent.

HUIB EMMER – Green Desert

Z6

According to Huib Emmer – a Dutch composer I was not acquainted with until yesterday, henchman among others of Lukas Simonis who now publishes this CD on his own label – Green Desert should evoke visions of urban bleakness and sense of forsakenness. Using a miscellany of sources, a laptop and electronics, Emmer does manage to raise some degree of hell, though not ferociously as certain noise-mongers do. The representational processes mostly describe a fuzzy disarray, washes of unrecognisable fluids combining with more incisive frequencies to lead the unsuspecting headphone-wearing victim astray. Everything looks OK to that point, the music offering several levels of stimulating information to the brain and, in general, sounding rather personal. Regrettably, there are a few instances in which the whole steers very clearly to a sort of hefty industrial techno replete with cold – and ultimately insipid – square beats; even the quality of the sounds seems to diminish its order of magnitude quite decisively in those moments. It probably works better live, but these “variations” ruin an otherwise interesting record.

ELODIE – La Lumiere Parfumee

Faraway Press

Timo Van Luijk represents the trait d’union between the disjointed constituents of what once was the Mirror karyon, having ongoing duos both with Christoph Heemann (In Camera) and Andrew Chalk (Elodie). Don’t envisage a Mirror reunion in a three-soul incarnation, for this is asking too much. However, the goods coming from the newer tandems are not bad as a consolation, and La Lumiere Profumee – the second transcribed phase in Elodie’s chronicles – is yet another pastel-shaded intermixture of moods that incorporate Arcadian echoes, psychotropic frequencies and undersized exhibits of the most regular – and, alas, gradually disregarded – kind of human impression. The sheer nonverbal motility of playing, whatever comes out of an instrument – or a generic tool, for that matter – lies at the basis of nine delicate trips through various stages of slightly perturbed ataraxis. Leaving us to speculate about the acoustic origins – though the dust-smelling piano characterizing several episodes cannot be missed – Chalk and Van Luijk seem interested in depicting an affirmation of the continuance of life with elements of such a subtlety that one is afraid of watching them vanish in the air while the music goes. Ingenuous melodies and atonal lines depicted by a number of reed instruments mesh and lull us softly, different perspectives and planes superimposed in lethargic earnestness. The music highlights the pair’s commonsensical sensibility, picking the elusive nuances of our misconceptions to defeat the hoity-toityness disseminated by innumerable lecturers of the vacuum.

ARVO ZYLO – 333

No Part Of It

In an handwritten note, Arvo Zylo (note the relation between his first name and the website’s) advises me that it took six years to complete 333. The many hours that he put in are discernible throughout the three tracks of the CD, radical sharpness subjacent to music mostly born from of jolts and compulsions, classifiable without reluctance in the orbit of semi-dignified noise. The project’s unfolding leads the listener across stages of “refuse-any-melody”, industrial-scented cadenced autism, characterized by the same pros and cons of other releases in this battleground. This means that the physiological reaction connected to the initial impact is somewhat dampened by the absence of a functional evolution, the various constituents succeeding in separated scenes rather than agreeing to a proper arrangement. Things improve over subsequent temporal transitions, a distinct opening towards more “orchestral” sonorities making the difference; we even start hearing (perhaps illusively) echoes of samples in the overall crushing. I won’t name names to forcibly compare Zylo to the usual suspects, because he does not deserve it: like it or not – and I do acknowledge several of its intriguing aspects – this record shows a strong backbone and a good degree of individuality, regardless of the cosmetic qualities.

JOЁLLE LÉANDRE & INDIA COOKE – Journey

No Business

Forgive this spurt of anti-democracy, but… wouldn’t it be possible to pass an international law that prohibits the attending of concerts to people with cold or affected by chronic coughing, either pneumonic or just nervous? Starting from the very first seconds, there are several instances in Journey – an otherwise glorious album by the violin/double bass duo of Cooke and Léandre – in which someone in the audience chooses, with surgical precision, the most tense and/or rarefied spots to sonorously showcase the content of their bronchial tubes, systematically collapsing the supernatural pressure of the moment.

This aside – and heaven knows how I hate putting great music second after behavioural deficits in a list – this performance from 2008 confirms what the ladies had already shown four years prior with Firedance on Red Toucan. In essence, the ability of keeping the flame of instant creativity burning brightly for a long time. They do it through freakish deviations and fulminating twists and turns enhanced by balanced dosages of perspicuous lunacy and liberal sensitivity. The interaction ranges from near-silence – crackles and taps in evidence, together with sighs, susurrations and “yeahs” of encouragement emitted by the players – to literally inflammatory attacks to the instruments. This album has much to teach to the disadvantaged scrapers who pretend to define themselves “musicians”: ardour, intelligence, scorching reflexes and sheer beauty of timbre are inbuilt gifts that cannot be acquired by looking intensely at a point while remaining still. If “playing with passion” does indeed mean something, there are many chances here to understand what that is. Unless you swallowed a couple of Aspirins before entering the concert site, of course.

Random Cuneiform Picks From The “Recent-Or-So” Past, Part 3: Beat Circus

BEAT CIRCUS – Boy From Black Mountain

An outstanding record to begin with, quite dissimilar from the previous disquieting release Dreamland on this same label (another must if you ask me). Here we observe Beat Circus’ penchant for the expansion of moods directly related to earlier eras of the American history, those in which leader Brian Carpenter’s parents and grandparents fought to survive. However, implications and hidden meanings were clearer once I became aware that the original concept behind Boy From Black Mountain is Carpenter’s attempt to depict stories through the eyes and brain of an autistic child – his son, diagnosed with the disease a few years ago, now luckily healthier following years of treatment. Let’s just say that this is a collection of compactly designed and finely orchestrated songs, in which a relatively deadpan and occasionally gravelly voice pilots a superb ensemble that looks able to execute whatever score one puts in front of them. You can find traces of bluegrass, Cajun, Irish reels and rural folk in there, Ron Caswell’s tuba and Andrew Stern’s banjo in evidence at various junctures. “The Sound And The Fury” throws in – for good measure - a Chinese reed instrument, tremolo guitar and marvelous samples of choral singing by what sounds like a group of Buddhist nuns. Shades of Steve Reich-esque strings (hats off, Jordan Voelker, Paran Amirinazari and, in other tracks, Julia Kent) inform “Nantahala”; a tender accordion characterizes the conclusive “Lullaby For Alexander”, a piece that made this writer brood over the late Lars Hollmer. A touching goodbye to the kind of juvenile incorruptibility that can’t seem to be found anymore.

Cuneiform

Random Cuneiform Picks From The “Recent-Or-So” Past, Part 2: Led Bib

LED BIB – Sensible Shoes

Drummer Mark Holub is the compositional deus ex-machina behind Led Bib, whose lineup is also shaped by bassist Liran Donin, keyboardist Toby McLaren and the sax tandem of Pete Grogan and Chris Williams. Sensible Shoes is an album that requires a measure of persistence in order to obtain maximum pleasure from it. On a first listen one thinks about a classic Cuneiform offer, RIO tints in jazzy sauce with sudden harsher digressions; but there’s definitely more. The ability of seducing the ears via composite counterpoints flowing into sheer lyricism (“Water Shortage”, “Zone 4*”). The powerful dissonant riffage of “Sweet Chilli” and “Call Centre Labyrinth”, nearly grotesque stridency revealing instrumental compactness and utter disbelief in traditional values, facilitated by the lack of guitar-related commonplaces. The initial “Yes, Again” grows and immediately stops; you breathe for a second, only to be thrown in a pot bubbling with vehement pulsations and erratic changes, spiraling saxophones constituting both the melodic source and the ornamentations. A mercurial unit for sure, the quintet positively belongs among the bands to follow with interest in the label’s plentiful troops. Honest and vigorous, executing their scores with the “right” kind of zeal, still leaving room to authenticity.

Cuneiform

Random Cuneiform Picks From The “Recent-Or-So” Past, Part 1: Gutbucket

Reviewer’s note: Cuneiform was the first foreign imprint to send promos to a 27-year old enthusiast who had just started writing –  in Italian – on a limited-edition quarterly run by his best friend in the early 90s. Since 1987, Wayside Music – their selling branch – had already stood among the most reliable mail order services that I used to find records outside the circle of regularity (a next-to-impossible opportunity in Italy, given the absurd prices of the few imported items one could locate). I may remain silent for months in regard to this label, but the people from Silver Spring, Maryland will forever keep the special place they have carved in my heart throughout twenty-five years… and counting.   

GUTBUCKET – A Modest Proposal

Gutbucket – the quartet of (mostly) multi-instrumentalists Ty Citerman, Adam D Gold, Eric Rockwin and Ken Thomson – counts on a palette that ranges from harshly distorting electric guitars and sharp-as-a-blade reeds to the use of old keyboards such as Hammond organs and Roland Juno synthesizers. They even grieve over the lack of a mellotron in the inner sleeve. But if I must tell the truth, what impresses me the most is the tightness of the rhythm section: Gold and Rockwin cross-question the inevitability of keeping a beat with a foot, relentlessly displacing our poise via tempos and subdivisions thereof that would reanimate Lazarus in absence of the original redeemer. However, in “Doppelganger’s Requiem” the band brings out a softer ¾ with quasi-moderate arpeggios and something that might resemble a melody to sing; naturally, the whole ends with another overdriven blast. The 4-way dynamics are often quite complex for an instant identification, yet what’s bizarre is the clear idea of unaffectedness left by these ten tracks in the mind despite the numerous intricacies. Everything appears completely delineated, ready to be committed to memory with a bit of an effort; influences are not excessively visible; hints to seemingly not pertinent genres are also on display. The copious doses of transmitted energy repay the listener’s attentiveness, indicating paths to the enjoyment of materials that – though not really pioneering in the strictest sense – require functioning brains, pumping hearts and rock-solid nuts to be performed. These guys own all these things, and then some.

Cuneiform

OLAF RUPP / MATTHIAS MÜLLER / RUDI FISCHERLEHNER – Tingtingk

Gligg

There’s a sense of barbed menace in the six tracks of this superb CD. Rupp – whose temperament on electric guitar is twice as mordacious than his acoustic counterpart – throws up astringent jangles and straightforward messages bathed in vitriolic liquids, blistering resonances emerging from umbrageous spurts. Müller removes the expected stumbling blocks that may be hypothesized when an instrument like the trombone – not a model of malleability to start with – becomes the pliable means for a quixotic battle against the rot-smelling supercharged intellectualism that even respectable improvisers expose in some of their trades. The lone member never met before by yours truly – drummer Fischerlehner – is a welcome surprise, a new participant in the festival of accent-displacing propellers who treat toms, cymbals and snares as pretexts for spirited discussions, if not out-and-out scraps. Jointly speaking, the music resulting from these ignitable exchanges sounds consistent, often galvanic, ultimately unpredictable. The way in which the instrumental colourations combine, in union with the noticeable affinity between the musicians, makes for a clutch of bubbling improvisations that manage to preserve sharpness during the most boisterous fragments.

ERIC GLICK RIEMAN – In My Mind, Her Image Was Reversed

Accretions

An odd record, released in 2010. Not exactly attractive, very homogeneous in terms of acoustic shades and overall dynamics. Still, the idea of a modified 73 Rhodes piano – played in all possible ways with dozens of extensions and objects – is fascinating and, at the end of the day, a way to welcome at least a part of the contents was found. In truth, Eric Glick Rieman – who, among others, has studied (and worked) with tutors named Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue and Alvin Curran – doesn’t seem to consume himself by excessively thinking to aesthetics. The immediate sensation seems to favor a conscientious breakdown of the improvisational processes rather than tasting the efficacy of the results. Preparations include everything from rubber and metal to maple seeds and quartz; as different as the manipulations of the instrument may be, the general sonority is kept under the blanket of a meager minimalism, with diminutive noises and microscopic intrusions thrown in the plate. Never we raised our head and thought “a-ha” during the playback, if you get my point. It works in spurts, then one gets used to the company of a music that walks along a wall, looking down: a buxom girl with a weird but interesting face, uncertain about a sex appeal that she nevertheless owns. What I mean is that if there are intriguing ploys inside this CD, the composer made sure to disguise them carefully. Yet this reviewer is convinced that In My Mind, Her Image Was Reversed deserves numerous listens to really formulate a definitive judgment.

Update February 18, 2012. From Mr. Rieman’s Facebook page, commenting on the review: “It’s an odd bird – but is it homogeneous? Like milk? I think not. Anyway, he should know that a 73 Rhodes Stage electric piano is not a reference to the year it was made, but to how many keys it has, or in my case, HAD before it was dismantled and reassembled as a different instrumental animal. Perhaps, a snail ( just adding to my mixed metaphor).“

I had originally written that the instrument used was a “modified 1973 Rhodes piano”. Sorry for my unawareness of this fundamental truth in the history of musical instruments. I also can’t name the components in a harp or a clarinet, don’t give a fuck about how an amplifier works despite playing the guitar since 1979, and never listened to The Doors’ records except their first…

HAPTIC – Scilens

Entr’acte

The ascendancy of a record like Scilens on a sympathetic individual’s understanding can’t possibly remain unsung. There are artists that tend to melt away valuable energies across a wide gamut of intuitions, sonic investigations fluctuating in the midst of various levels of efficiency. On the contrary, Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills and Adam Sonderberg are specialized in compacting the results of their studio labour into messages that arrive straight to the point, cutting the line that links concreteness and transcendence exactly in between.

At least three veritable masterpieces are comprised by this extraordinary album, enigmatic impenetrability appearing as a precious gift. “Setae” and “Winter Wasp” are exemplary drone pieces, vital swells hiding hundreds of procedures, the kind of introspective response to life’s small incidents that defines only a fractional number of creatures. If someone’s able to catch just a few of the truly significant sounds occasionally disclosed by silence, that person can be considered blessed. But being able to take dozens of similarly circumstantial events to include them in awesome textural amassments – together with secretions deriving from an expert handling of the inner parts of standard instruments, electric circuits and everyday objects – that does require special ears.

Long minutes of utter stillness introduce the third ill-defined jewel: a 20-minute nameless track, not even hinted to on the sleeve, placing an already overwhelmed listener in uncomfortable mantric arms. The end is spelled via a reiterated murmur – perhaps a processed gong, or bass drum, enhanced by vanishing pitches at different heights – that makes one consider the unavoidable termination of stupid existential matters with the same fortitude of a soldier who knows that he’s sacrificing life for a reason that is bigger than his will, and is nevertheless ready to do it without flinching.

FRANK GRATKOWSKI / JACOB ANDERSKOV – Ardent Grass

Red Toucan

Frank Gratkowski’s reed-based ductility is an identified attendance at this domicile, whereas Danish pianist Jacob Anderskov is a charming new entry in a personal album – by now thick as a phone book – of excellent musicians who, one way or another, had escaped my consideration to date. Ardent Grass results as a fusion of technical neatness and shared esteem, qualities that brighten up eight moderately probationary improvisations. There’s no chance of listening to embittered exchanges or out-of-context pitches in this disc: the articulation of each contributor’s language is just about perfect, sometimes almost to a fault. Counterpoints are seamed impeccably; lines are depicted with physical certitude and open ears, every time respecting a distribution of weights that improves the interplay’s economy. Doubling on alto sax and clarinets, the German shows how the illustration of well-dressed designs can constitute an acceptable alternative to the troublesomeness of sufferance; he seems to walk lightly across any situation, always managing to stay connected with the duet’s essential spirit. Anderskov is a tasteful counterpart devoid of affected solemnity, the owner of a crystalline pianism permeated by precise flexibility who knows exactly when less is more, and vice versa. Never for a second we felt victims of the bravado of futile virtuosity: in this case, frequent listens are not wearisome.

PALAGRACHIO – Looking For A Looking For

Uceroz

Ivan Palacký operates an amplified knitting machine (for the record, a Dopleta 160), thus providing fragments of beat, types of frequencies that occasionally tend to a mild saturation of the membranes, and a slight grubbiness that is necessary to blemish silence when the right time comes. Teammate Peter Graham plays piano in the first track, harmonium in the second. The singular combinations of activity explored in Looking For A Looking For took a while to work in this listener’s discerning systems, however after three listens or so the music’s logic was acknowledged, even if not completely agreed upon. The improvisational arc in the larger chunk of the disc begins with Graham producing quasi-luscious chords and soft resonances over Palacký’s subdued tampering. Subsequently the piece’s structural definition gets thinner and thinner, almost to the level of the most vacuous kind of EAI in terms of significance yet somewhat pleasurable as far as the mere succession of events is concerned as one’s kept good company from tapping-knocking-and-clattering presences that do not disturb. When, in the succeeding segment, a tentative meeting of single harmonium pitches and further whirr-and-click condensations merges into a short yet unrelenting drone, the straws at which we were clutching to address our sympathy towards this album get a little stronger, alas momentarily. On the whole a decent release with a reasonable cohesiveness between its parts, though still distant from the uppermost stages of acoustic nirvana.

ROSEN FÜR ALLE – Live In Zurich

Unit

A trio that improvises with gusto in almost total dearth of typecasts, Rosen Für Alle are Christoph Gallio on alto and soprano sax, Jan Roder on double bass and Oliver Steidle on drums. The six tracks propose music that is noncompliant in a somewhat humorous way, not predisposed to resentment, apparently unlinked. The musicians favor razor-sharp reports as opposed to gratuitous panegyrics, leaving a modicum of space around multitudes of quirky pitches and lithe digressions, so that the audience can at least believe of having committed to memory, if not entirely digested, a part of the helpings. Jumpy drafts typified by the innate elegance of technically advanced (and yet open-minded) instrumentalists, lots of hypothetical associations in hundreds of fizzing bubbles with a vague scent of modern-day free jazz. Gallio’s eloquence remains evident along flights through various phraseologies, a gently caustic timbre defining healthily misleading melodic snippets. Roder’s dodging of prescriptions – the bass as the propellant of a vehicle in which three drivers often wish to take the wheel at the same moment – and Steidle’s unreal mastery of convulsive pulse’s secreted aspects boost the general get-up-and-go temper. Things are told in your face, sometimes slightly antagonistically. Then, a smile appears.

CHARLOTTE HUG – Slipway To Galaxies

Emanem

Charlotte Hug’s “son-icons” are presently at the basis of countless spurts of inspiration, eight of them commendably rendered in Slipway To Galaxies. Basically, the Swiss violist/vocalist acts in a way that allows the sketches that she draws on translucent paper to influence music created on the spot and vice versa, sometimes to a point of complete unpredictability (check this wonderful video for a better understanding of the process). The class that transpires from this recording is equivalent to the uplifting qualities that identify the combinations of resourceful whimsicality, tense stasis and brooding transcendence found aplenty in these 65 minutes. Every nuance is unique in this woman’s palette. Her singing technique mixes birdcall, astonishment and sufferance (or, if so preferred, makes one’s imagination run riot with fantasies about an Ute Wassermann/Meredith Monk hybrid). On the other hand, the unusual methods and absolutely individual jargons informing each droplet of Hug’s creative liquids generate, almost preposterously, an uncharacteristic state of respite. It’s as if the incessant movement of those undersized sonic molecules produced a substantial texture carrying magnetic powers, this entirely conquered listener rendered inert by a blend of respectful awe and downright enthrallment. In a nutshell, we’re approaching Masterpieceland.

CHRISTOPHER MCFALL – The Body As I Left It

Sourdine

A pretty powerful statement by McFall, released on Asher’s imprint in 2010. Seven tracks whose foremost traits are defined by an essential cyclicality, mainly based on looping patterns imbued with an underlying gloominess. This renders any piece perfect as the photograph of a state of mind, particularly when one’s not exactly in a bright-light mood. The Kansas composer possesses an unambiguous talent in extracting the same quantities of psychologically affecting content from each of his sources: one distinguishes – barely – vinyl noise, customized urban resonance, under-the-roof movements and mechanical clatter as primary presences in a recipe that only rarely is also spiced with glimpses of real instruments. Thus, The Body As I Left It sounds like a stifled trip through a series of upsetting remembrances and the various stages of a troubled REM phase, the music on the whole characterized by an almost total lack of acute frequencies and by the classic sense of ineluctability – associated to extremely effective processing – that informs the best albums in the zone where drones, concrete matters and obscure forebodings meet. As a soundtrack for the afternoons of many “do-nothing-because-the-end-is-near” kind of individuals, this will work spectacularly.

STEFANO PASTOR / ARI POUTIAINEN – North South Dial

Slam

Involuntarily bastardizing the breed of purported virtuosos who display tendon-straining exercises to peacock in front of an audience, violinists Pastor and Poutiainen recorded a one-off session lasting approximately four hours on October 8, 2008 in Genoa – their first summit – from which this 40-minute CD was distilled. The musicians had prepared advance drafts to channel the bowed energies through, so don’t be surprised in finding out that the results of this gathering of akin minds sound very much like structured improvisation. Both tending to a high degree of tone hoarseness (the Italian notoriously utilizes electric guitar strings for his instrument) they found several meeting points, including those where close intervals and extensively dragged pitches exalt the textural grain, giving birth to long arcs of serious dissonance informed by a minimalistic hillbilly-ness in some of the components. Pastor expands the palette via a synthesizer operated with a pedal, thus adding a smidgen of intangibility to certain sections (“Floating Under The Icecap” and especially “Mineraloids From Nowhere” being excellent examples). It’s not just about stretched notes and puzzling resonances, though: the pair knows how to draw lines more consistently linked with intoxicatingly convoluted materials (check “Breathing Vault” and the conclusive “Chasing The Atmophile Elements”). Still, they manage to avoid any unnecessary swelling by leaving the rough qualities of the sounds emerge and dominate the environment with confidence and musicality to spare.

TEENAGE BOATPEOPLE – Add Havoc

Agua Prieta

There’s something of a mild Mothers Of Invention aura in several of the tracks comprised by Add Havoc, the latest spurt of insanely rational inspiration by Teenage Boatpeople (Jeff Johnson, Milo Fine and Tim Mauseth). The violation of any rule of plausibility in the realm of vocal expression is pursued by Johnson, who seems to intone (ha!) his lines from inside an electric razor and plays the guitar with constant cross-pollinations of numskull jangle, dissonant sapience and poor-man’s Glenn Branca-like attitude (hey – all of these are positives). This lays the bricks for a sonic edifice where Fine’s polymorphic dynamics and off-centre multi-instrumentalism constitute the touch of refined schizophrenia that was necessary for the whole recipe to taste as good as it does. Mauseth’s pumping on bass and his contributions on various kinds of low and high tuned string instruments (plus harmonica and “rhythm programming”) reach for the aberrant divisions of regular rock (and dub, and ethno) impulses, appearing as most logic choices for a music that refuses common sense but sounds entirely connected to a scheme that is probably much larger than this jug of erudite rumpus.

Throughout the album the lingering impression is rather clear-cut, despite the semi-abnormality of the components. Rooted in deformed riffage, with large amounts of indiscipline providing the push needed for discarding any humdrum expediency from the beginning (not that we had any doubt), the features that any superficial listener would find despicable are all there to prove the opposite. Namely, that one could even try and fantasize sing-along boldness without remotely understanding a single pitch of what is being emitted, or that the abolishment of lackluster invariability in post-post-post whatchamacallit is authentically implemented when the musicians can play and are aggravated enough to convey the accurate dose of sardonic toxins. Mix the green-onion pace of the title track with the quasi-onomatopoeic tinkle-tap-and-squeal of the splendidly titled “Batta Bing, Batta Bam”; shake it fast and often for maximum fun.

INVERZ – My Machines

Granny

The fourth release by Greek Savvas Metaxas aka Inverz is also my first stumble upon his work. The sphere is that of oneiric soundscaping, in this case implying the exercising of aged vinyl in addition to instrumental fonts and real-life noises. A risky territory to move in – too many practitioners of the same act around, some of them excessively puffed up in relation to the music’s actual value – yet the assignment was definitely well handled: Inverz managed in fact to protract this reviewer’s interest during a number of successive listens, the classic “unavoidable comparisons” frame of mind all but absent. The psychological milieu where the sounds are competently placed appears to be of paramount importance for Metaxas, whose gently misshapen shards of erstwhile orchestral echoes and slowly oscillating concoctions of blurred recurrences often produce true art. Everything is filtered by several layers of translucent abstraction, rare morsels of tangible aural matter enhancing the whole; one vainly attempts to discern vague figures, or the provenience of a group of frequencies. This hopelessness in identifying what exactly is going on should be seen more as a reward than a deficiency on the listener’s side. This is music that must be left spreading without caring about who, what or when; it works, it is beautiful in its own unique way, and asks nothing except billowing all over the place.

ANDREW CHALK – Violin By Night

Faraway Press

New exemplars of Andrew Chalk’s ephemeral audio visuals, expressively transmitted throughout a vinyl album whose packaging’s stunning quality is directly proportional to its near-secrecy (no title or explanation in English language, only Japanese characters and the wonderful depiction of an animal dinner-dance both on the cover and the disc’s label). For this occasion the composer’s predilection for acoustic fog – characteristically developing from a profound processing of ever-unspecified instruments – is harmonized by the propensity to state few things in limited temporal extents. The tracks are in fact relatively short (actually this is not a new thing for Chalk, if you remember well) and their content more lyrically reachable than the awesome inscrutabilities of albums like, say, Vega. If any, vague associations with the best – and still respectable – Brian Eno might apply; also, there are sections in which the reiteration of certain orchestral tints will undoubtedly cause someone to mentally evoke the spirit of William Basinski. However the broken up ambiances and the suggestive soundscapes that constitute the trademark of this shy lone wolf are entirely unique, looped decay and poignantly transient metaphors at the basis of an instantly identifiable method. What needs to be stressed is that the man is one of the purest artists I know of, totally unwilling to subject his materials to the squalid promotional processes needed to please a wider audience. We can distinctly perceive time, labour and commitment getting put into such a release; in times of slapdash mediocrity, it’s enough to make us breathe a little better.

IVO PERELMAN / GERRY HEMINGWAY – The Apple In The Dark

Leo

A somewhat surprising message by two famed improvisers, The Apple In The Dark is especially worthy of attention for the unexpected attending of a piano, played by Ivo Perelman besides sax. One might almost feel entitled to stating that the stray unresolved chords and quicksilver flurries coming from the Brazilian’s interior turbulence represent the most visible dimension of this brisk-sounding meeting. Still, an excessive focus on a single aspect would give no justice to Gerry Hemingway’s recasting of conventional jazz vernacular as far as drumming is concerned. All over the album, the constant presence of the tightened skin of his snare snapping out the coordinates of an erratic pulse right into the membranes is also a propellant for our limbs, forced to follow dramatic dissections of rhythmic propositions that seem to fight against the nature of a regular listening specimen. Either joining forces via the elegant antagonism of a reed, or opposing to the analgesic effects of ordinary progressions at the keyboard, Perelman confirms his artistic persona as a container of hundreds of impulses that – more often than not – are turned into an admirable marque of fanciful instantaneousness. The union with an equally skilled, rational-minded technical subversiveness as Hemingway’s begot a first-class release: the interplay couldn’t appear flaccid even on purpose, a manifest insusceptibility to static formulas transpiring throughout.

WHISTLE PIG SALOON – Whistle Pig Saloon

Creative Sources

Whistle Pig Saloon are Robert van Heumen on laptop and controllers and John Ferguson on guitar and effects. Their music deals with drastically misshapen textures, instigated at first by Ferguson’s axe; at times they sound processed in advance and already unrecognisable per se, or else the cure applied by Van Heumen alters – make that “devastates” – whatever original trait is left of the six-stringed apparatus. It goes without saying that the large part of this record is frantically running from an inner space to the other, its whimsicality dictated by systematic changes in timbre and dynamics. There were occasions, during a headphone sitting, in which your correspondent was continually decreasing the volume to evade membrane stabbing. Essentially, a sense of explosive fluency underlines the skilled building of a 43-minute textural citadel, presenting the project as an interactive 2-head unit that knows what to do at any given moment. Scrambling across a multitude of dangers, the couple manages to remain unscathed by the redundant garbles that frequently classify several brands of feather-brained computer-fuelled gobbledygook. Starting from semi-agnosticism in terms of related genres, these gentlemen ended up creating a form of their own.

TOMAS PHILLIPS / DEAN KING – Les Mailles

Monochrome Vision

The English rendering of the record’s title (“meshes”) is an implicit allusion to film director Maya Deren’s Meshes Of The Afternoon (1943), considered her finest achievement. An analogous usage of techniques that combine apparently disunited representational processes and uncommon associations characterizes this bewitching album, a release from 2008 that seems to have slipped under many people’s radars (including mine). It would be painless, for a superficial beholder, to line Les Mailles in the “ambient” section given its unassertive attributes and the curricula of its composers. Indeed these quasi-oneiric textures work especially well as one’s allowed to let them stream at low volume in absolute muteness; Phillips and King have managed to paint an atemporal organization of fleeting audio images whose frequency quantifications get magnified and interiorly enhanced by the sensitive motility that maybe someone still owns. Vice versa, trying to insert them amidst the noises of a regular domestic environment becomes a meaning-annihilating gesture, a breaking of the fundamental rules which should always underlie the act of listening to music – not only when made of electronic shadows and manipulated location recordings, but in general. These sounds survive reality for a few seconds, then smile at the listener and vanish without returning, causing a respectable number of “stop-and-contemplate” episodes in the meantime.

MORTON FELDMAN – For Samuel Beckett

Hat[Now]ART

This version of For Samuel Beckett was first published in 1992, then reissued in 2006. Conducted by Arturo Tamayo and performed by much-loved (by this listener, who warms to Frank Zappa’s The Yellow Shark) Ensemble Modern, it has kept flowing through my rational and physical cracks for days, each time generating the same blend of anguishing wait and conscious neglecting of an assessment of its technical minutiae. The nearly chronic ebb and flow of clustered strings and winds – accentuated by a series of insistently enigmatic piano figures – moves across numerous stages of self-searching without asking for permissions. Something that comes into view as unpromisingly cyclical discloses instead lots of understated discrepancies lying beneath the façade. If one’s mood is upbeat, this music could make them stop and regain the realism linked to the consideration of someone who suffers. If the troubled individual’s identikit matches with the listener’s, it’s very plausible that the ill-defined contours rendered by the score will cause the clouds in that person’s head to condense in dark grey hues. The work – not considering the dedication and the hackneyed comparisons with Beckett’s style – was written a few months before Feldman’s passing. In virtue of this, the out-of-character increase of rate in its pulse seems to signify the composer’s slight rush in an imprecise awareness of his imminent demise, gloomy tones and unhappy acoustic layers replacing the rhetorical accents of a precooked memorial.

Two By Kali Z. Fasteau

Having been raised in an artistically developed household where events featuring the Gershwin brothers were hosted, and living in dozens of different countries at various times, it is no wonder that multi-instrumentalist Zusaan Kali Fasteau’s output comprises such a measure of acoustic information that placing it in a definite context is a rather ambitious task. Her calling, at least from what one gathers reading the press releases, lies in jazz and world music. The records she graciously sent – released on her own Flying Note imprint – are certainly heterogeneous. Two characteristics stand out since the first listen: unpolluted sincerity (to the point of quasi-naiveté) and a strong will of transmitting the maximum amount of inventive impulses within a limited period of play. Well, sort of: both CDs abundantly exceed an hour’s duration.

Prophecy: The Whale And The Elephant Trade Notes On The State Of The World is the most varicoloured of the deuce, the reissue of an album originally published in 1993. The bulk of the sound is grooved in Fasteau’s regalia of stratified foreign instruments besides the regular ones. The former include ney, shakuhachi, sanza and mizmar in addition to reeds, piano, synthesizer, cello and a very lissom voice. Other participants: William Parker, Newman T. Baker, Ron McBee, Badal Roy, Somell Richards, Ronnie Burrage and Oscar Brown III. The large part of the activity is dense with fickle occurrences and implausibly agitated engagements, though there are spaces reserved to Asian and/or African influences, ritual feverishness and somewhat intense moments of celebration of happiness interspersed with emotional invocations. The quantity of interwoven patterns, indocile designs and superimposed gamuts is astonishing; even so, the whole flows through time and space relatively comfortably.

An Alternate Universe is another recent release containing material taped in 1991 and 1992, where Fasteau is flanked – in duo and trio settings – by the aforementioned Parker and drummer Cindy Blackman, best known as Carlos Santana’s wife. The 25-minute cello/double bass duet “Ardor”, a growingly knotty improvisation mainly played around the coordinates of hectic exuberance – zigzagging squeals and growls succeeding at dangerous speed – lingers in the listener’s memory. The rest of the program is also interesting, again supported by wide-eyed cognitive states and desires of connection that leave no room to excesses of lucid reasoning. Just like Prophecy, this work is better received as an overpoweringly joyous physical manifestation; there’s no suspicion of artificiality to be found in the extremely composite, but still totally open macrocosm of this gifted woman.

Flying Note

ALBERT AYLER – Stockholm, Berlin 1966

HatOLOGY

Any honorable journalist inserts a mention of Albert Ayler’s obscure death in between whatever type of analysis is made of his work. On the contrary, the lingering sensation while listening to this awe-inspiring CD is one of ecstatic delight, a stark contrast with the customary “body-pulled-from-the-East-River” and “progressive-rational-volatility” depictions we’re constantly fed with. In this particular edition – tapes from the 1966 European tour, authorized for publication by the very Ayler estate – the lineup comprises The Brothers (obviously on tenor sax and trumpet) plus violinist Michel Samson, double bassist William Folwell and drummer Beaver Harris. The sentiment of thankfulness that seems to infuse the tunes contained herein is the same that we should direct to every person who allowed us to hear this material. Musicians, relatives and label.

Some of the pieces are offered in diverse renditions, each characterized by a remarkable stance. Still, an essential scheme repeats: theme (usually of a festive mood, halfway through children song and a choral kind of early jazz) then sparse doorways leading to the realm of an ever-consistent ferocious blowout. The lack of complacency belongs to the main features of Ayler’s idiom; the way in which the quintet’s members give their souls to lift up the sonic wholeness is moving. The dual adaptation of “Our Prayer – Truth Is Marching In” is a perfect illustration of an only apparent dichotomy. This line of attack – bursting out the flames of inside turmoil, hiding damage behind exuberance – includes entire lives and thousands of occurrences, events that establish if an existence is worth something; regrettably, the saxophonist had an incorrect idea about his own continuation. Or maybe he was tired – like any individual gifted with extra gears – of wasting precious time with mortals.

No use in pointing at the single instrumentalists, though Donald’s brief solo in the opening segment is just incredible. Believers don’t cross the door of a church thinking to separation, and indeed Stockholm, Berlin 1966 is comparable to a ritual of communion.

CHARLOTTE HUG & FRED LONBERG-HOLM – Fine Extensions

Emanem

Enwrapped by the consequences of an ingenious restlessness, violist Charlotte Hug (adding voiced twirps on occasion) and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm convey a somewhat dumbfounding esprit de corps, supported by interlaced jargons and fast development of embryonic cells that could even appear non-meaningful if observed alone. But mixed as they are in multitudes of galvanizing refractions and penetrating questions – often lacking a real answer – they generate the kind of irrepressible force that sets a listener in the enviable condition of accepting an irruptive phenomenon without the need of analytic thinking. The unreasonable quantity of micro-movements and indescribable noises they make, the anorexic poetry deriving from the couple’s germination of infinitesimal patterns and frenzied scraping, the anxious inclination to explaining loads of concepts at once while remaining able to rustle and breath calmly when the moment comes; all of the above defines a record that lacerates many conventions of today’s duo interplay. Critical stimulation with a tiny degree of lyricism, an unquiet intimacy broken by the inconstancy of events that might not change the universe, but sure enough alter a receptive person’s sense of proportion for a given time. Hovering seagulls – not in search of fish, just watching the ugliness of humans sprawled on the sand. Excellent music, lots of listens required.

MUSIIKKIVYÖRY – Tulemme Sokeiksi

Ektro

2009 CD release collecting the cream (“sludge” is probably the exact term) of two cracker-barrel cassettes released in 1981 by Musiikkivyöry / Mika Taanila, who was 15 at that time then grew to be a hailed film-maker (huh? Grant me pardon, for my ante-penultimate escapade with the medium dates back to watching a rebroadcast of Lady And The Tramp with my wife during a summer vacation). A specially introverted kid growing in a hidebound kind of environment, Taanila was nevertheless able to gibber masses of crust-like rhythms and atrocious-yet-sublime distortions that literally puncture the membranes, the whole flavoured with acromegalic utterances, radio snippets filtered by cascades of fuzz, and cut-up shards of psychic insanity. Some of this stuff sounds more exciting (and entrancing) than the work of a few “illustrious” entities in the same area of manifestation of repressed human impulse; other spurts – especially the three “Nimetön” (“Untitled”) – might have been performed with equal success by a convulsive autistic recluse, hideous discharges of drivel possessing neither cosmetic nor artistic value. Postlude: a moderately challenging anthology of noisy reductivism whose outcome is occasionally superior to the spur-of-the-moment existential discontent that was animating its creator when he pressed the “record” button thirty years ago.

NOISE OF TROUBLE – Bloody Route / From The Country Where Women Are Older Than God

Self-Release

The name is a clear accolade to Last Exit, Peter Brötzmann an acknowledged influence. Yet Noise Of Trouble – from Rome – do not imitate or even recall the above mentioned names, instead pushing closer to a series of realities that came to mind randomly while listening to the 90 minutes of this work, organized as a double album yet extant only in the guise of a free download (with the chance of a contribution: do it). Throw them out now, explain later: Blast, Zu, Curlew, Doctor Nerve, Motor Totemist Guild and what in general is referred to the post-RIO area of reconfigured improvisation. These are definitely entities that should draw a few prying listeners within the interplay of reedists Marco Colonna and Claudio Martini, bassist Luca Corrado and drummer Cristian Lombardo.

The subjacent conception is a “reverse journey” through the itineraries that brought African immigrants to Europe. Issues too long and complex to compound in a review, but still demanding to be deepened (hopefully NOT will translate their interesting thesis into English one day). The music, then: vibrantly effective in terms of askew riffage and broken tempos, performed with accuracy and righteousness, reasonably impressive when the conjugation of akin timbres – say, bassoon and bass clarinet – produces the sort of intrinsic acoustic quaking that leads a flux of diverse upper partials to fuse inside a single concordant cry. The moods are often grave (without grouchiness), the level of force warranted by Corrado and Lombardo able to feed a small electric cabinet. Headphones are needed to catch the subtleties, otherwise play loud as necessary. Seldom Italian musicians – including self-professed “experimenters” – escape the trap of plagiarism, however this writer is not excessively straying from truth when stating that the morsel he just finished chewing tastes as fresh-cut meat for the ears, and basically sincere.

NEST – Body Pilot

Serein

The duad of Welsh Huw Roberts and Norwegian Otto A. Totland, Nest present 20 minutes of pellucid textures and crystal-clear geometries that do not risk being confused with some dopey New Age byproduct. Four tracks outlined by somewhat protective rarefied ambiances, natural-sounding sketches in which piano, brass and woodwinds throw drops of melody that survive for fractions of seconds before disappearing. “The Dying Roar” begins with glorious droning inaction, subsequently flowing into more conspicuous suggestions; but it is the whole 10-inch that deserves a thumb-up, if only for the decency transpiring from every move. The fact that this inhuman evaluator spun this one several consecutive times might imply that he’s getting old. Indeed he is, yet this remains a satisfactory release in its genre.

DANIEL MENCHE – Guts

Editions Mego

Guts comes in two versions: double LP and single CD (the object of this review). It is said on the label’s website that the track sequence differs because of “time constraints”. The digital variant, if I did my maths accurately, lasts about nine minutes less; even so, the total duration of the pair of vinyls does not exceed 80 minutes. Better saying it clearly: if you want to get everything, buy both editions. Divagations aside, let’s rave about another salient album by Daniel Menche, who employed a piano’s magnified innards to bring forth yet more organic masses of brain-cleansing roaring racket. Depending on the movement, the music’s attributes and dimensions diverge: it can materialize as a downright dissolution of physicalness that does not allow any type of investigation of the harmonic factors, or a mounting foam of maleficent rumbles informed by sinister resonances and underground bumps until the everybody-out-of-the-house final catharsis is achieved. In “Guts One” there’s also something like a processed atomisation of the audible water-and-detritus-fall, causing further moments of displacement to our neural structure (though Menche devotees will definitely handle such preternatural issues quite comfortably). The Oregonian is one of the artists whose maturation’s speed has increased in direct proportion with the impossibility of finding letter-perfect words each time to represent the sizeableness of phenomena evoked through precise studio elaborations of otherwise raw recordings. A place among the greats secured since years ago, seemingly the man doesn’t want to stop researching the hyperbolized properties of dismantled acoustic sources. The psychological healthiness given by many of these works is there to confirm the constitutional earnestness of the being who fathered them.

GENE GUTCHË – Piano Music Of Gene Gutchë

Centaur

This record came escorted by one of the most exhaustive press releases ever. It details everything that concerns the composer (a fascinating figure: a German of Polish descent, born in 1907, who migrated to the US and built a somewhat hidden career there until his death in 2000) and the performer, Minneapolis-based pianist Matthew McCright. The latter is both fond of disparate genres (including contemporary pop) and a former collaborator of top-rank members of the avant circles such as Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Lucier.

In an ideal world, this item should be reviewed by a credentialed specialist: despite a liking of Radiohead and B-52’s, the liners are signed by “Dr. Matthew McCright”. Still, what transpires from the five scores proposed here is a music that – although reasonably rooted in atonality – sounds rather two-dimensional, deprived as it is of authentically startling disruptions or touches of bona fide ingeniousness. Picture a half-breed made of attenuated versions of Bach and Hanns Eisler, just to get hold of a vague mental object. This is not to say that listening to it is unpleasant; on the contrary, once you realize that the level of dissonant non-compliance is relatively low (after all Mr. Gutchë had to earn a living, the anti-academic stance notwithstanding; apparently, he never had other jobs except composing) and that there are indeed welcome rhythmic twists and atypical chordal excursions to be found at various moments in the disc – especially in the 2-part “Sonata, Op.32” – a measure of solace can be found while letting these ancient scents spread across the room.

And yet, the whole never ventures beyond the borders of a quite typical “dust-from-the-past-with-minor-incidents” experience, certainly well played but in the end scarcely important in terms of mere artistic and emotional consequence. All in all, this is a legitimate display of a minor name’s work, and – historically speaking – that must count for something. However it’s highly improbable that I’ll be hyping Gene Gutchë among the unjustly overlooked must-hears among my close acquaintances.

THE STONE QUARTET – Live At Vision Festival

Ayler

When performers of the artistic gauge of Joëlle Léandre, Roy Campbell, Marilyn Crispell and Mat Maneri unite to devise an instantaneous narrative, chances are that something special is going to happen. Live At Vision Festival was recorded in 2010; it consists of two tracks, a lengthy improvisation and a shorter but still legitimate encore. There’s no way of explaining the ongoings if not by telling that the slang spoken by The Stone Quartet erupts and flares more than flowing, particularly during combinations of single instrumentalists exposing the respective views (and, why not, their latent romanticism) as a preparatory ceremony before joining a wholeness that manifests in impressive spurts; the resulting dynamics are unforeseeable, to say the least. Another striking facet is the positivity of the messages, literally felt on our skin. No hint to clueless dejection or disheartening perspectives, four souls fused in a declaration against improvisational patency informed by a somewhat agitated good nature. They also listen with attention, choosing phrases and times of insertion of a statement in the acoustic tapestry with great care. The strings work in total symbiosis, Léandre the usual volcano of lyrical purpose, Maneri a receptacle of vibrant sweetness. Campbell delivers his lines with forthright vigour and property of language, Crispell acts as a harmonizing sage who perceives the exact instant in which one should speak or just remain silent. It’s nice to hear the musicians laughing liberated right after the end of each set, releasing the very energies that were used to keep everything in check over the most labyrinthine sections. Virtuoso interplay without surplus of fat, brilliant record.

LAWRENCE ENGLISH + STEPHEN VITIELLO – Acute Inbetweens

Cronica 

Long-distance partnerships are a dime a dozen these days, not infrequently the fruits of internet intimacies (…) born around the coordinates of “unknown nonentity kisses the ass of a prominent entity until he/she agrees to publish something together and the unknown nonentity becomes a recognized one”. Lawrence English and Stephen Vitiello met for real – in 2006 – and usually function at a level of significance that excludes them from the above kind of tactics entirely. Acute Inbetweens mixes treated field recordings and synthetic investigations quite consistently, standing among the area’s nicest records heard in recent times. As always in this type of work, the capacity of suggesting and confounding is at the basis of a success. Blurring definitions to the point of not allowing the listeners to distinguish familiar attributes and impressions, all the couple leaves is the effect of glowing murkiness that accompanies the listening experience almost completely. The sounds appear both unequal and embracing, occasionally very polite yet never syrupy; spherical patterns as heard in the final “Exposure In Relief” are rendered less normal by other sorts of contingent sonic events wholly immersed in an equalizing mist. The vibe surrounding us throughout is made of reminiscence, cuddling frequencies, smoothed contours and a general sense of melancholic well being. It takes a while before realizing it, but the album is rewarding under nearly every angle of inspection.

COLLA PARTE – Fields/Figures

SubGeranium 

The only familiar name in Colla Parte was that of double bassist and former Andrea Centazzo teammate Daniel Barbiero, who was also nice enough to send me this charming disc. Reed player and flutist Perry Conticchio and vibraphonist/percussionist Rich O’Meara are both first encounters for yours truly, and I really can’t understand how players so technically equipped and gifted with polished musicianship and sensible expertise can be practically unheard of. Lack of right connections, perhaps? Anyhow, Fields/Figures consists of eight improvisations titled after combinations of colours (“Orange On Red”, “Indigo On Grey”, you get the picture). Although the pieces are noticeably embedded in an amalgamation of chamber jazz traits and somewhat unsmiling moods, it is quite hard to stick a recognized genre’s tag to the album. Conticchio enunciates his ideas through unambiguous melodic designs, an articulated intricacy frequently appearing from nowhere to remind us about a talent endowed with abundant doses of warmth. Barbiero shifts between broken swinging pulses and arcoed awareness, congruence of expression at the basis of an unpretentious style hiding several riches. O’Meara caresses the vibes with unflappable elegance, generating halos of gleaming tones; when he decides to use the most evident aspects of percussion in “Yellow/Ochre”, the music becomes mildly bumpier, still maintaining a palpable dignity.

Droning And Yawning

SUJO – Eilat 

The mind driving the mysterious project Sujo is that of Ryan Huber. Quiet World’s honcho Ian Holloway admits that this 50-copy release is a sort of deviant homage to the music that defined his youth; in fact, Eilat is far from whispered. However, I’m not sharing the enthusiasm (also transpiring from other reviews on the web). To these ears this stuff coincides too much with a pretty standard mix of doom – heavy droning distortion and humongous drum thuds at the forefront – and unremarkable “trance” whose level of instrumental menace is quite one-dimensional. It lasts 33 minutes, yet in spite of such a short duration the sameness of the formula is enough to place this disc in the “unmemorable” folder. Once again, the mountain of semi-anonymity and harsh noise gave birth to the proverbial mouse. (Quiet World)

NICHOLAS SZCZEPANIK – Please Stop Loving Me

Nicholas Szczepanik did his best here to let me comply with the title’s request. It took three listens of this rather monotonous CD to understand that its only use is as mere ambient decoration, at very low level. In that way, one doesn’t realize what is instantly manifest by listening to it after turning up the volume; explicitly, that the music is characterized by unnecessary doses of cute consonance, affirming their “power” in an endless final stasis. Previously to that, there were sections in which the stratifications of what sounds like combined synthesizers had generated some movement worthy of perking the ears up for a while. But when the nearest release on the same imprint is O’Rourke & Heemann’s Plastic Palace People Vol. 2 (see below) you know in advance that the fight is lost. And not just for the comparison. (Streamline)

JIM O’ROURKE & CHRISTOPH HEEMANN – Plastic Palace People Vol. 2

Streamline

The new instalment of the long-awaited archival material recorded by Heemann and O’Rourke in the early nineties consists of an untitled intermix of circa 50 minutes. It slowly swims under the kind of abyssal sentience elicited by records, books and films so gripping that one literally doesn’t realize about temporal transitions while enjoying them. Originating from almost oppressive muteness, an initial subdivision culminating with synthetic perturbations akin to a mass of consuming exhalations gives the idea of some sort of internal push, as if the mind was waiting to be sterilized and sandblasted at the same time. The splendidly reminiscent attributes emblematic of both artists’ aesthetic sense are immediately highlighted; their versatility in enkindling different emotions in the listener and modifying their incontestable influences is implicit yet manifest. Repetitive keyboard patterns underlie a blurred conglomerate of looped ethnic percussion, then room is given to a portion in which a group of hammering men at work brings forth a joint pounding hymn to urban clangour amidst far-off engines and other resident ghosts. The second half – including the endmost part – presents dim traces of Mirror, due to the use of Brobdingnagian reverberations amplifying the core essence of sounds derived by bowed metals and strings in colligation with additional droning sources, typically left inexplicable by the instigators. Without wasting further words and trespass the limits of ballyhoo, let me tell you that Plastic Palace People Vol. 2 is the worthy next to an awesome first chapter, and just as indispensable. Obviously we’re ready to heartily greet more goodies from these gentlemen’s taped archives.

JOHN M. BENNETT / BEN BENNETT / BOB MARSH / JACK WRIGHT – Ohio Grimes And Misted Meanies

Edgetone

This recording occurred during the meeting of Jack Wright (saxes) and Bob Marsh (guitar) with a singular father-and-son duo: the former on “words, voice, objects”, the latter on “invented objects” described on the press release as things twisted and bent into instruments that speak, in a way or another. The sounds were captured on tape at the Urban Arts Space Gallery at University of Ohio in Columbus. Depicting what happens in a plain review is pretty arduous but, at the same time, Ohio Grimes is easy to comprehend despite the large amount of shrieking twists, popping blasts and frenetic scintillations that go with the Bennetts’ reshaping of regular speech (John M. often talks in Spanish, at least when he’s not acting like someone getting strangled while masked as a slimmed-down Oliver Hardy reciting snippets of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate. In between nervy quacks, raw zings, cutting skronks and ugly pings accompanying the declamations, one attempts to extrapolate a measure of sanctity from a patois directly deriving from the basic principles of human expression. Truth be told, this record is not likely to charm many listeners for a simple reason: it can’t be filed anywhere. However, practised ears will witness a lower-class verve trying to reach out for the belittled groups of desperados who still take pleasure from discovering something previously unheard. Make no mistake: you have to count me among those stray cats.

SCOTT FIELDS & MULTIPLE JOYCE ORCHESTRA – Moersbow / Ozzo

Clean Feed 

The history behind the names of these two pieces for improvising chamber group is too difficult to synthesize here; check the liners or google around, also to learn about the various evolutions of the very orchestra’s appellative. What’s transparent is that the opening period is dedicated to Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), though Fields and his companions decided to approach the task with the sagacious expertise of a qualified ensemble paying homage to a time-honored composer rather than a Japanese noise merchant. The outcome is a superb paradigm of how to carry out a joint improvisation, the timbres so consistently interconnected in different permutations and dynamics that giving privileges to “lead” designs and distinct ideas becomes a pointless exercise. Our friendly advice is to relinquish a bit of focus and abandoning yourselves to a compelling stream of beautifully emitted music, nurturing one’s yearning for density in a collective statement without losing grip on the poetic aspects of the diverse instrumental idioms.

The first, and a sizeable chunk of the fourth movement of “Ozzo” are plain wonders, replete with fine games of call and response, tactful probing of quietness and recurring parallelisms between assorted groups (sax, accordion and strings in particular evidence, with Thomas Lehn’s synthesizer adding pinches of analogue salt and the flutists inserting small enigmas throughout). The rest is more directly reminiscent of the conductor’s style both in terms of composition and as a guitarist: minuscule cells and dissonant quirks succeed and involve, the interest maintained by the extreme unsettledness generated by the palette’s variety. With musicians of the caliber of Frank Gratkowski, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Melvyn Poore, Angelika Sheridan and Georg Wissel among the many – everybody deserving a “well done” – this live recording (Cologne’s Loft, January 2009) is as impeccable as a pre-planned studio session.

On Diophantine Discs, A Good While Back

THE ORATORY OF DIVINE LOVE – Meditatio

Label manager John Gore acts at the rear of the moniker. Meditatio is a hovering apparition of muddled milieus, pretty heavy on the reverb side yet utterly endurable given the affluence of manipulated sources that one can detect under the surface. What differentiates some (not all) of these massive undertones from a myriad of CDs produced by less serious entities is the somewhat stylish shifting of thick stratifications generated by mysterious materials (voices included). This gifts us with a number of openings towards gripping landscapes amidst other sections that appear more ordinary than what Gore’s earnestness would habitually consent to. A nice game for the ears? Yes. A work of art? No.

MOTH ELECTRET – Tocasen

Stig Berg (aka Moth Electret) encircles his visions with profuse quantities of loops, most probably alimented by concrete matters subjected to a strict processing regime. If, at the outset, an all-too-easy association with someone like Asmus Tietchens might start buzzing in the head due to the use of liquid sources rendered barely identifiable, the growth of the project reveals a completely autonomous mental picture. There’s a core irregularity in Tocasen which contributes to add a few touches of genuine magic, at the same time dissolving the noxious vapours of routine that make us struggle for breath when tackling similar recordings. Even the coldest choices expose peculiarly resonant substrata that become increasingly desirable. An hour well spent.

SIL MUIR – Sil Muir

Italian duo (Andrea Ferraris and Andrea Marutti) working with the conversion of guitar sounds into cosmic oceans of unlimited cerebrum kneading. Perhaps moderately bordering on Aidanbakerville, of which Sil Muir are eligible as proficient inhabitants; nonetheless, the results are often engrossingly cinematic, throbbing in the “right” way, cuddling the listener with authority and warmness at once. When the reverberations of the instrumental font manage to reach the mix’s vanguard, an unsolicited skeletal melodicism tries to rear its ugly head, providentially for short fractions. On the whole a good, solid album of drones, lacking a bit in originality but ultimately without real weak spots. It grows with the elapsing of time.

THE INFANT CYCLE – The Sand Rays

Good old Jim DeJong. Extracting stimulating rhythms and magnetic impressions from worn-out vinyl, half-dead batteries, malfunctioning circuits and cables, The Infant Cycle demonstrates that great music really needs no pedigree to arrive directly to someone’s receptive system. There’s not much to say about The Sand Rays which does not coincide with the usual advice to play loud and often. Heartbeat-like patterns become off-center marches to indistinct directions in the outer space, crusty outgrowths repeating their prototype over and over make us feel eaten by termites from the inside yet still willing to smile to the world. This joint venture between physical deterioration and dynamic hypnosis wins this CD the “best-of-the-lot” prize.

Diophantine Discs

ALVIN LUCIER – Almost New York

Pogus

The four compositions on this double CD can nearly be divided in conflicting groupings as far as this listener’s response and psychosomatic participation are concerned. The first and the last seem to tend to the “ice-cold examination” area, while the middle chapters are the ones in which a certain degree of empathy is detectable. After a career spent dealing with “such phenomena as echolocation, brain waves, room acoustics and the visual representation of sound”, Lucier has been penning scores at the request of selected instrumentalists for a good number of years now. In this circumstance, the virtuosos tackling the material were cellist Charles Curtis, pianist Joseph Kubera, flutist Robert Dick, vibraphonist Danny Tunick and tubist Robin Hayward.

“Twonings”, for piano and cello, is based on the discrepancy between types of tuning (equal temperament the former, just intonation the latter). Throughout the piece, notes from the keyboard and string harmonics are played in unison; slight contrasts introduced by the clashing partials are what makes an otherwise rather average minimalist composition whisper sweeter suggestions to our ears. The title track features a single participant walking across a stage and using five species of flutes to emit protracted tones against two pure wave oscillators; this is probably the moment in which the classic sense of aural unbalance typical of vintage Lucier is felt. “Broken Line” for flute, vibraphone and piano is profoundly characterized by Dick’s sliding embouchure, which allows him to obtain stirring glissandos all over the whole set’s most expressive episode; we’re tempted to call it mathematical mournfulness. On the other hand, I couldn’t manage to extort emotions from the second disc, entirely occupied by Hayward’s tuba performing “Coda Variations” (whose foundation is a succession of tones taken from Morton Feldman’s “Duration 3”). The absolute charm of the instrument’s chubby accent is regrettably rendered less significant by a general lack of pressure, the score being a little too flat to really engage.

Class is class, and the magnitude of Alvin Lucier’s work will never be diminished here. However, parts of Almost New York – especially the above mentioned “Coda Variations” – made us envision a specialist in the physics of uncontaminated vibration willing to join Wandelweiser to see what happens. Luckily, there’s also something that is more in tune (pun intended) with his celebrated aesthetic of throb. Both substantial and animistic.

ALFRED 23 HARTH / SOO-JUNG KAE / CHANG U CHOI – Red Canopy

Kendra Steiner

The late Frank Zappa was among the first composers that I know to apply the process of “xenochrony” to music: that is to say, juxtaposing recordings from antithetic settings and diverse eras in a single, studio-generated opus. Red Canopy is founded on a kindred philosophy: the sounds were pre-recorded by each performer in 2005, and four years later Alfred Harth pasted them at Laubhuette in Seoul to produce just over 17 minutes of glorious work, definitely belonging to the schismatic German’s finest.

The tracks are evidently constructed on fleeting intuitions, but every instant counts. It all begins with a duet involving Choi’s double bass and Kae’s piano, the musicians left alone for the necessary time to thrust the listener right into a mood incorporating both thoughtfulness and sense of anticipation. When Harth enters the scene, the initial quietude is cracked by the impulse of telling many things promptly and eloquently. Yet it is in the following sections that we really need to come to terms with the idea that the artists never played unitedly. A track like “Samsa” features the same spirit of a well-adjusted room meeting, the magnificent flotsam and jetsam of a latent interaction consummately collected in what might resemble a chamber arrangement.

The skilful exercising of loops and electronics expands and compounds the primary timbres, setting the instrumental attributes on a boundary line between baffling lyricality and overt experimentation. The 3-inch CD (which comes in a narrow 123-copy printing) ends with the umpteenth question mark, leaving us at a loss – once more – in front of a form of creativity that doesn’t demand continuance or, worse, a format in order to explicit its whole potential.

BLOOM PROJECT – Sudden Aurora

Edgetone

Following a quartet release under the name of Bloom (not yet heard on these shores), two notable members of that unit – Thollem Mcdonas and Rent Romus – ride a tandem directed to the more concealed, yet still totally reachable neighbourhoods of piano-and-reed extemporaneous performance. Knowing the level of technical adeptness and the confidence in what they’re able to attain by just sensing each other (and themselves), there’s no necessity to be worried: this is a high-quality recording from every point of view. Only the first and the final track seem to display hints to the sort of regimented topsy-turvydom typically delivered by artists at the ardent apex of their instantaneous production. The remainder, including slices in which Mcdonas utilizes the piano’s internal organs as percussive/jangling sources of conflict, is largely played along the lines of a judicious rendering of introspective tempers interspersed with speculative circumlocutions. What transpires is the duo’s purpose of maintaining an eye on the inscrutable side of honest-to-goodness creative thinking, a formulation fundamentally headed towards the highlighting of insidious chromaticism (Romus’ atypically cushioned methods bringing out the innermost pitch components) and restrained melting of the respective voices. Whenever the ringing of a convoluted arpeggio on the lower region of the keyboard rejoins certain inspiriting sax tones, a sensation of warm-heartedness materializes. No anxiety, no hostility whatsoever: solely, a plain correspondence of intents.

CONURE – Strings, Locations

Edgetone

Mark Wilson’s array of guitars, pedals, urban field recordings, microphones placed on various objects and “a keyboard” causes the imprisonment of the brain in the molasses of an inexorably escalating, horrendously captivating noise. Strings, Locations is one of those records for which the relinquishment of a critical sense is indispensable. It’s mostly transmitting an energizing type of raucous hypnosis, with harmonic halos all around; degenerate yet sublime recurrences that slowly but surely transcend the limit of structure, disseminating cathartic miasmas in the meantime. Normality progressively turning into a sickening un-cheerfulness, the eyes becoming glassy as the ruins of life come and go like signs on a highway’s tarmac. Conure’s violent affirmation of being against all possibilities is also refreshingly unpretentious: get exactly what you hear, without getting lost in the meanders of contorted “explanations” and absolutist theories. A dilapidated entity that still possesses enough beauty to shine under a weak sun, a rock-solid antidote in opposition to the deleterious patina of fakeness often perceived in analogous works.

PAULINE OLIVEROS / FRANCISCO LÓPEZ / DOUG VAN NORT / JONAS BRAASCH – Quartet For The End Of Space

Pogus

This wide-ranging release presents two compositions multiplied for each of the four participants, Oliveros and López being the ones I was already acquainted with; both Van Nort’s electroacoustic researching and Braasch’s experiments with soprano saxophone and ventures in Telematic Music and Intelligent Music Systems were foreign language to date. Straight away, this is difficult-to-swallow food if one gets stuck in the “understand-at-any-cost” mind frame. Deriving from a thorough processing of improvisations over a pair of sessions in 2010, the eight episodes include such an amassment of perturbed ambiences that establishing a clear line of thought while listening to their often nebulous expansion is nearly unfeasible. A vague “spirit” is intermittently discernible by looking at the signatures, though Oliveros’ pieces – for example – are not droning as you could expect but tend instead, to a degree, to a sort of cultured anarchy. The record’s feel at large is that of huge forces at work in a galactic pot: flashes of genuine chaos, echoes of accordion or reeds emerging from magmatic fluids. By the use of headphones the audience can better value the musicians’ craft and the might of frequencies that via speakers appear to merely overwhelm, putting us in front of an intractable mass of hardly graspable events. Ultimately, the CD works in spurts – certain static soundscapes in Van Nort’s tracks are truly imposing – yet, due to a feeling of “distance” from the whole, love at first sight this was not.

TOHPATI ETHNOMISSION – Save The Planet

Moonjune

Indonesian fusion is not my specialty, however after listening to this CD you could easily declare that things have arrived at a more than decent level in that area of the world. Tohpati Ario Hutomo is an excellent guitarist (already met in another Moonjune-produced project, Simak Dialog). Here he leads a quintet with two percussionists, bass and suling (a Sundanese flute) through rather testing scores – tricky rhythm signatures abound – impeccably executed and endowed with the right balance of Western and Eastern components. Do not think to come across mind-opening shocks in Save The Planet, but – sure as hell – these guys can play. They merge multifarious structures and suggestive melodies like drinking a glass of water, never missing a beat, often evoking clear influences without really depending on them. Over the course of eleven tracks, one does detect reverberations from the past: Robert Fripp’s nervous arpeggios, Mahavishnu, Kazumi Watanabe, Dixie Dregs, Bill Bruford circa One Of A Kind. Yet, not a single “oh, no!” was uttered from this writer, who repeated the act of spinning the disc twice in a row despite the 67-minute length. Fresh-sounding and brilliantly performed music: give this album a serious try.

BRENT FARISS – Four Environments… Collapsing

Kendra Steiner

An outstanding album yet no more than 89 copies, for Kendra Steiner always publishes awfully limited runs. This one must be grabbed as soon as it’s spotted. Texan Fariss employed contrabass, sinewaves, field recordings, snippets of conversation and various metropolitan presences to devise four striking pieces that fit in diverse categories. I’ll leave you to ascertain which ones, thus preventing my words from resembling blatant propaganda.

The title track starts with bass sounds related – at least in this writer’s perception – to the acoustic construal of an inescapable decay. It then flows into a tense mantra where electronics, clusters of strings in the low-frequency area, looped splinters of speech and a general logic of distress lead the blissful prey through some of the best dynamic dronescaping heard in a while. “Three Spirit Recordings” also exploits percussion and what’s defined as “hidden voices” (recorded in allegedly ghostly locations). Unidentifiable noises initiate a gradual decline of rationality for a listener willing to dispose of aesthetical issues to merely enjoy unadulterated – and yet so encrusted – textural expositions. A section built on the seaming of (apparently) aircraft engines amidst local talk and assorted types of industrial clangours stands perhaps as the record’s highest moment, culminating in an exfoliation of harmonic connotation that left me flummoxed every time. “Witchcraft, Minutiae, And Other Rhythmic Consistencies” (for contrabass and “accompaniment”, whatever that means) ruptures an initial cautiousness with crunchy secretions, cold lumpiness causing additional doubts and misinterpretations. A comprehensive view of human psyche’s misery, facilitated by emissions whose spectral features contrast with the compactness of the sources that generated them, the whole wrapped by impressive subsonic throbs. “Palestine” ends the program with a massive contiguousness of crumbling, boiling and hissing materials with entrancing electronic patterns, barely changing acute pitches and extra doses of mechanical racket. The ears are ringing at the end.

Overall, the compositional frames are lucidly chosen and accurately filled. The fieldwork does not sound hackneyed for a second, no phoney reverbs in sight. Morsels of undeclared reality that – thanks to Fariss’ skill in organizing adjacent organisms – appear quite intimidating under an ostensible normality. A record reluctant in disclosing secrets, needing reiterated listens just to scratch its surface. At any rate, excellent.

“BLUE” GENE TYRANNY – Detours

Unseen Worlds

On a particularly problematic Christmas Eve, it’s almost six in the morning when the understated variations and touching chordal openings of “George Fox Searches” are spreading through an entirely quiet atmosphere, immediately evoking memories of something lived as a child. The starting point for these improvisations is an ancient religious tune called “How Can I Keep From Singing?”, whose title sounds like a necessity in an era where music has mostly become an article of trade rather than a communion act. The composition is dedicated to a figure that travelled the world, first alone then with a few loyal followers, to spread the germs of what he believed was a true spirituality. This concept may appear pathetic nowadays – but “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s playing is not. Detours might very well be one of his best oeuvres, in fact.

From the Satie-tinged echoes of “13 Detours” – a superb beginning, class and peaceful dejection distributed in the exactly right doses – to the ternary rhythm of “She Wore Red Shoes” – conceived for a choreography by Stefa Zawerucha – we’re given a rewarding blend of austere profundity and compelling harmonic hues. The one-of-a-kind Texan is a specialist in discarding the exasperating traits of virtuosity, sensible insights running across suggestive imageries that can’t avoid striking certain inside spots, instantly reopening the channels of compassion that we thought closed once and for all during years of progressive cynical disconnection. The final “Intuition” – a rarefied monologue “disturbed” by tape-generated emanations – adds a further touch of inimitability; the label’s assurance that Tyranny’s piano is “not encumbered by any new-age shabbiness” could not be more superfluous. This is stuff for connoisseurs. Occasionally kind-hearted, but connoisseurs just the same.