Instead of just providing us with the excellent sonic concoctions that we have grown accustomed to over the years, Jason Kahn went a step further, as he has already done several times on his own Editions imprint. The bulk of All Along the Way is in fact a book that contains a veritable journal of the North American tour completed by Kahn in 2022 – the first run of gigs for him since the global pandemics – with the inclusion of a CD comprising the sets from Portland and Chicago.
Kahn reports on his adventures without frills, exhibiting a stark honesty when needed. His prose captures for the reader the “lonely-in-this-universe” feeling that an experimental artist gets when traveling long miles on routes that offer little chance for community interaction. Furthermore, things don’t always go as planned when socializing does occur – usually on the day of the concert – due to logistical difficulties, insufficient sleep, poor cuisine, mediocre musicians appearing on the same program, and chatty colleagues eager to talk about subjects they don’t have a genuine knowledge of. Not to mention the stress of having to leave an equipment-laden car parked far from sight, or the annoyance of a failing technical component affecting the performance.
In spite of any problem, Kahn shows his gratitude for the persons who hosted him during the tour, and his appreciation for those who continue to work hard, often for free, to keep evenings of “uncomfortable” music happening in an environment that was and still is, in many respects, unsustainable, particularly for small-scale events. Equally notable are the segments in which he compares places that were dear to him in his youth with their current version. Similarly to most of us in this awful now, Kahn (an American who has been residing in Europe for decades) hardly recognizes his own geographic and social roots, drawing conclusions that may sound harsh, but get straight to the point.
After reading the book cover to cover, one is left with a mixture of feelings: admiration for the protagonist, bitterness when realizing that a routine like this is, in any case, preferable to the filth of a daily grind that involves repeated compromises, and total sympathy when Kahn reiterates how necessary good coffee is to him in order to fully lubricate his inner engine.
As far as the audio material is concerned, Kahn explores the interactions between the molecular elements of other people’s everyday auditory experiences, fusing them with familiar yet disconcerting radio and electronic signals. Real-time control of a mixer’s knobs is just as important in such dynamic irregularity as snap decisions. Within an improvisational context, these combinations generate a jaggedness of both vital rhythms and meaning of the whole.
Speech intelligibility of Kahn’s previously recorded characters is sometimes marred by a significant degree of distortion and/or interference, as if to emphasize the banality of human communication. In addition, feedback, ground loops, and brief bursts of FM waves are mixed into an electroacoustic mosaic whose boosting qualities for the neural system are undeniable, if probably beyond someone’s tolerance. The skill with which Kahn extracts interesting sonorities from every source is also demonstrated by the appearances of the modular synthesizer, though the latter’s voice in the timbral palette is never unduly dominant.
All Along The Way is one of 2023’s most intriguing releases. Food for thought and for the ears in a single package, which we strongly recommend.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 