MATT MILTON / DAVID THOMAS / RYAN JEWELL / PATRICK FARMER – Bear Ground

Creative Sources

The instrumentation comprises violin, viola, two drums, bamboo, breath, voice and objects. The quartet tries to affirm concepts in the “purely organic” ambit: small noises, minor rustling, whispered crepitations are a constant presence, the quietness of the environment attempting to attribute significance to something that, from the beginning, does not appear that precious. The latter is the major issue with this record for this reviewer: although there are circumstances in which the combination of scraped strings, rubbed skin, barely touched wood and underlying breathing achieves ear-pleasing types of resonance – not overly frequently, should we say – this seems to happen by mere chance, not as a logical consequence of the approach to the improvisation. In essence, despite repeated spins in different settings, I can’t help but perceive this CD as a sheer container of contingent manual activities that almost never manage to reach the status of satisfying music. This would have been acceptable five years ago, maybe; right now, it’s too little to consider Bear Ground worthy of being remembered.