Tagged: classical

November 8, 2013

Rosenboom’s Beginning

David Rosenboom
In The Beginning
USA NEW WORLD RECORDS 80735-2 2 x CD (2012)

One abiding concern of renowned American multi-disciplinary musician/composer David Rosenboom‘s work has been the idea that minimalistic starting points can, if rigorously explored, create works of elegant depth and complexity. The conceit is simple enough, in one sense: take simple elements, build and weave layers of same, and by accretion a certain kind of intensity ensues. Artistic success lies equally in the careful handling of material and dedication to the logic of the method itself.

This nicely-presented two disc set showcases key works of this kind, chronologically covering the four-year period 1978 to 1981, and including extensive sleevenotes by fellow composer Chris Brown. Over the course of eight (mostly lengthy) pieces, Rosenboom exposes his system to a wide range of settings and instrumentation as well as varied numbers of personnel – from solos, on synthesiser or piano, through duos and trios, featuring anything from trombone to computer, to larger ensembles comprising orchestral instruments. The roll-call includes long-standing collaborators, Rosenboom’s son, Daniel on trumpet and William Winant on percussion.

Notable is the pointillistic precision of the opening track, ‘In The Beginning I (Electronic)’, which sees Rosenboom on solo Buchla. Fluid hi-fidelity folds of sound, unexpressively, in the best sense of the word, mount and merge into an orchestra-sized arrangement. Despite the mathematical process involved, this is never without beauty, never merely mechanical or metronomic, and seldom purely textural. There is a warmth when one could so easily end up with a form of austere academism. Here, and with the album generally, in fact, the listener can opt to pursue one tiny acorn or swallow the proceedings whole.

The ensemble interplay of pieces such as ‘In the Beginning III (Quintet)’ and ‘In the Beginning V (The Story)’ elaborate further upon this sensibility, by exploiting the multiplicity of possible tones and timbres of brass, woodwind, percussion etc. Rosenboom’s output covers a multitude of outlooks and interests – including somewhat freer music, as exemplified, for instance, in his collaborations with Winant. In the Beginning has a definitive air about it, and is as good an introduction to this particular and important aspect of Rosenboom’s work as any.

October 13, 2013

Multi-layered Riddles

Kalle Kalima and K-18
Out To Lynch
FINLAND TUM RECORDS TUMCD 030 (2012)

Inspired by the films of cult US film director, David Lynch, Kalle Kalima and K-18’s second release follows on from their Stanley Kubrick-themed debut.

This is not a score or soundtrack album; rather, Lynch’s films and, more accurately, the characters portrayed simply offer inspiration. The result is a vivid selection of compositions that combine jazz improvisation and soundscapes with hints of modern classical music and avant-garde rock to cover a wide spectrum of sounds and alternating moods. Certainly there’s no mistaking the improvisational element here, but it has been cleverly shaped and combined with composed music to produce twelve tracks; each of which is attributed to a specific character or location from one of Lynch’s films.

Anyone familiar with these films and characters will know that Lynch has created some of the most striking, disturbing and memory-searing images committed to celluloid. You don’t forget seeing Eraserhead or Wild at Heart, or indeed meeting Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth, in a hurry. Even the more linear and ‘conventional’ films, such as The Elephant Man and The Straight Story, have a unique, poetic feel that are unmistakably Lynchian. So how do you go about drawing inspiration from that? The answer is that you produce an album as baffling and incomprehensible as the movies you’re attempting to evoke. Lynch’s films are multi-layered riddles that constantly blur the line between fantasy, reality and nightmare; and to its credit, so is this album.

True Lynch fans will certainly hear how the characters have inspired this album, and each repeat listen highlights how Finnish, Berlin-based composer and guitarist, Kalima, and his musicians have found aural ways to bring them to life. ‘The Elephant Man’ is a collective, soulful improvisation that effectively draws on the character’s solitude and emotional longing; whereas ‘Eraserhead’ uses the quarter-tone accordion and African flute to great effect to portray the surreal horror of America’s industrial wastelands. ‘Frank Booth’ is a dualistic piece that suggests both sides of this pathologically violent yet gentle character; while the 35-second ‘Man From Another Place’ is just, frankly, screaming mad.

Standout track is probably ‘Mulholland Drive’, which is the only one based on a location rather than a character. It is melodic, dreamy and sufficiently psychedelic to have actually featured on the soundtrack to one of Lynch’s most brilliantly incomprehensible films.

While Out to Lynch may not linger in the memory in the same way as the films and characters that inspired it, any piece of work that attempts to interpret and reimagine the unique and often indecipherable world of David Lynch has got to be given credit. For anyone not familiar with the director’s work, this album will also provide an introduction to the seemingly random world of Mr Lynch.

Overall, it has to be said that just as Lynch’s films are not always an easy watch, this album is not always an easy listen. However, just as you suspect there’s a method to the great filmmaker’s madness, so too does this album have a certain way of drawing you into its world and making you want to stick around for a while; if only to see (or hear) what happens next.

October 10, 2013

Set Controls for the Heart of the Sonne

Zeitkratzer
Karlheinz Stockhausen
GERMANY ZEITKRATZER RECORDS zkr 0012 CD (2011)

Zeitkratzer, the ensemble led by Reinhold Freidl, he who resideth inside a piano, if I’m not mistaken, present this sensitive, sedulous and rather special set of interpretations of Stockhausen’s Aus den Sieben Tagen.

Aus den Sieben Tagen is a set of text-based compositions, mostly short sets of instructions which on first glance might seem to leave a lot up to personal interpretation on the part of whichever group of musicians might happen to be playing it. In fact, as Friedl makes abundantly clear in detailed and fascinating sleeve notes animated by a clear passion for the potential inherent in the compositions there are a lot of ideas and plenty of specifics packed into a few words. The notes really are very illuminating and do a service in casting other recordings of the same works in a new light. One thing that comes across, for example, is that however vague or gnomic the texts might seem at a casual glance, understanding Stockhausen’s own compositional roots in serialism, for example, allows you to grasp their inherent concerns. Friedl shows, quoting Stockhausen scholar Robert Worby, how interpreting ‘Nachtmusik’ serially defines how the material the musicians play is defined very clearly and exemplifies the concerns of these pieces with repetition, sequence, cycles and interaction of non-synchronised cycles of sound against each other. That such cycles and their rhythms are tied compositionally to the internal rhythms and processes of the musicians provides concrete instruction and interaction with time and place and leads, if clearly worked through as here, to a focussed musical experience.

Sound-wise the dark, rich sounds of timpani, double-bass, French horn in cumulative conglomerations on velvet black canvas recall Heliocentric Worlds era Sun Ra, a similar wide-screen chamber sound. In pieces such as Verbindung (also known as ‘Liaison’ in other recordings, i.e. ‘Connection’) the basis of the component rhythms in the physical presence of the performers is clear, the shambling, ambulatory pace and growling low-end roars recalling Tibetan Buddhist ritual music. The form and content of the textual instructions works to induce somatic and cosmic responses in the musicians so positions them, or allows them to place themselves in a position, where they can play in a flowing manner, conduits for energy. Stockhausen’s instructions are explicit in this regard with talk of playing universal vibrations and playing with such intensity you become aware of the heat generated by your body. Intentionally or not these are very yogic approaches and techniques. The mystical aspect of Stockhausen I have heard talked about dismissively, not to mention talk of demagogic impulses, but I do not know enough about this to comment. At any rate Zeitkratzer play these pieces with an admirably open spirit and also generate musically an open spirit, thereby making the most convincing sort of case for all involved: rewarding music.

The final piece out of the five selections presented is the longest at just over 17 minutes. Entitled Set Sail for the Sun it is another heliocentric echo. I have read an anecdote that Stockhausen saw the Arkestra – perhaps around 1970 – and alternately recognised a kindred exploratory spirit and was baffled by the Ra man’s dimensional collisions of avant-garde and what Stockhausen heard as cocktail jazz. The piece asks for the merging of single tones into ensemble sound until ‘the whole sound turns to gold / to pure, gently shimmering fire.’ Which sounds pretty good, I would say. The notes for this piece continue, pertinently, to quote Stockhausen: ‘Musical meditation is not sentimentality, but ultra alertness and – in the lightest moments – creative ecstasy.’ This lightness is understood and induced by Zeitkratzer, levitational in the best ecstatic tradition. The piece builds by its own internal logic and intuition to an almost overwhelming crescendo, but the solar focus and insistence on lightness keep the energy lifting up, cancelling gravity with a Sun Ra ‘Next Stop Mars’ / Pharaoh Sanders ‘Sun in Aquarius’ intensity, Friedl echoing Ra or Lonnie Liston Smith’s piano carnage. Solar fire, indeed – an excellent ecstatic tool for musical meditation.

After listening to this release, absorbing the notes and thinking about the music I went and dug out all the Stockhausen records and CDs I have lying about, including other interpretations of the same pieces. Listening to the 1969 Ensemble Vivante recording of Fais Voile Vers Le Soleil / Setz die Segel zur Sonne for which Stockhausen himself was at the mixing desk and effects controls you’re struck how the merging takes an almost entirely obverse form, the pungent plucks and plunks of tone gradually easing out into transparent laminal sheets – shimmering, yes, but arrived at and articulated in a superficially very different way. The contrast is invigorating and stimulating; this release and Friedl and Zeitkratzer’s work and engagement with it provided different perspectives and contributions to ongoing appreciation and understanding of these pieces, and that’s an admirable and enjoyable achievement.

As Friedl quotes Stockhausen as saying: “I do not want a spiritualist session. I want music.” Luckily for us, the music, through inspired composition and passionate interpretation is rewarding and invigorating, rather than an aural cryptic crossword. It is engaged, specific, nuanced, allusive and multi-layered. That’s my shopping-list satisfied, then.

September 8, 2013

Minority Report

Slawomir Kupczak‘s Report (BOLT RECORDS BR 1015 / NIKLAS RECORDS n/009) is a superb piece of modernist avant composition from a contemporary Polish composer, who comes to us with an academic background and is also a member of the improvising ensemble Phonos Ek Mechanes. Report is a fascinating and bewildering assemblage blending spoken word with computer music; as soon as you hear the first spoken sentence, your attention is firmly grabbed by the chilling authority of the voice (and its sound). The texts may appear to be documentary clips from a TV show or radio broadcast, but it seems they are all scripted by the writer Pawel Krzaczkowski (the full libretto is printed as an insert, in Polish and English), and recited by two readers, Irmina Babinska and Jacek Paruszynski. These texts alone are worth your entry money; spoken in Polish, but judging by the English translations they are a series of impassioned observations about life, work, and ideas – a tapestry of quasi-diary entries or fractured anecdotes, amounting to a pessimistic and exasperated search for the meaning of life. As the title indicates, all of these stories are “reported” – which is to say they are mostly written in the third person. “What did he say about values?” is the first piece, mounting a series of interrogations which ends with “What did he say about life?”. It’s as though we’re hearing excerpts from an official report written by the great cosmic civil servant in the sky, filing his observations on the life and peregrinations of a Polish Everyman. “All of my life I’ve lived in a game of lies”, is but one example of the world-weary utterances found in the mouth of this contemporary put-upon and somewhat downtrodden character.

Kupczak’s treatment of Krzaczkowski’s texts are where he adds his compositional value on this single 38-minute composition. To put it briefly, distortion is his plan. The readers can barely get a word out before it’s subjected to studio interference – tape loops, overdubs, filters to mangle the syllables, backwards masking, and other layers of precisely-calibrated mayhem intended to place perceptual barriers between us and the content, blocking our understanding, scrambling the data. Yet the meaning continues to burst through the walls at every opportunity; the emotion, in particular that of the male reciter, is enhanced and magnified through these interpolations, his urgent statements increasing in paranoia the further he is pushed into the echo chamber. The female reciter is sometimes transformed into a cold authority figure (a doctor or judge) passing sentence on the listener. Elsewhere, the voice becomes the distant voice of officialdom, some faceless administrator speaking through a telephone, its clipped tones announcing a certain doom. Other voices become a sinister overdubbed murmur of whispers, as of an army of dispirited bureaucrats working steadily in the typing pool. All of these strategies completely reflect and support the tone and spirit of the texts; Report is a modern-day Kafka episode, with strong undercurrents of paranoia, surveillance, and nightmarish images about frustration, the “dead hand” of authority, the impossibility of escape.

The work also includes computer-based music, of course. Taken as a whole, it’s a compelling suite of sinister abstract droning which binds together the texts into a coherent whole, before climaxing with a refreshing melody of a synth-pop tuneage which somehow succeeds in striking a note of total triumph while simultaneously undercutting it with the certain knowledge of imminent defeat. Along the way we hear a fascinating array of intelligent ambient textures – a lonely attenuated drone, a chaotic chatter of renegade machines, the abysmal soothing background hum of a shopping mall, and abstract squiggles that come close to delineating the condition of madness in sound. Kupczak’s compositions for electronic music are refreshingly free from cliché, especially in the sound, and he has found new and subtle ways to give voice to computer music without once leaning on over-familiar pre-sets. Every episode is given its own musical identity in this thought-through work, and there’s not a moment of wasted space.

Report amounts to a moving and impassioned portrait of modern society, with enough layers of conundrum and enigma to repay further returns. It’s a triumphant blend of libretto and music, where the elements are fully integrated into a carefully planned compositional schema. A modern opera for the alienated and disaffected. (28/11/2012)

Slawomir Kupczak
Bolt Records
Niklas Records
Distributed by Monotype Records
Hear excerpt on this TSP podcast

This CD is part of a generous bundle of items on the Polish Bolt Records label received here in November 2012, including a massive 3-CD survey of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio. We have a lot of time for this label so I hope (eventually) to give many of these CDs the attention they deserve.

July 6, 2013

Other Voices

With a name that still to me, smacks more of canteens and food processing than the monochrome autopsy/Manson kulcha of their then contemporaries, electro-industrial stalwarts Portion Control return with the Pure Form (OTHER SOUNDS OTHER S3) CD: their umpteenth release of dark-edged pulsation and galvanised throb. Now in their thirty-third year (give or take), the duo’s tenure with imprints such as In Phaze, Illuminated and Dead Man’s Curve yielded a fair to middling cultist response back in the day, which included, if memory serves, a fairly regular mention in Sounds’ “Wild Planet” feature. However, it took a considerable time for outfits like Skinny Puppy, Front 242 et al to give P.C. a tip of the cap as a major influence on their own nefarious doings. Surrounded by a bank of sequencers, drum boxes and sundry other devices, the vocalese comes forth, staccato like, in teeth-bared/snarling tones. Cuts like “Dead Star” are as much as I’d expect after scanning the track titles. I now remember why I always preferred D.A.F. or the Cabs (“Yashar” era)…less four square…less armour plating. Still, the instros do offer up several crumbs of comfort. As a fer instance, “Chosen Seed” with its exotic faux kalimba lines and the weirdly stuttering “Something Fierce” can certainly bear repeated laserings. Over time though, P.C.’s once jarring schematic has been gradually assimilated into the mass media soup and now they stand before us more as a soft and quilted juggernaut. Those fans of left-field techno appear to have shaped this duo’s destiny and not, unfortunately, the other way round.

Also on the Other Sounds label, you might be interested in the Klangstudie And Komposition (OTHER SOUNDS OTHER S2) comp that snuck out to precious little ink spillage back in 2011. Alongside the more familiar figures in sixties avant garde composition, such as Boulez and Moderna, there’s also some fascinating, yet more slightly trad rooted entries by Herbert Eimert (1897-1972), and Karel Goeyvaerts, a chum of Stockhausen. His “Komposition Nr 5″ and “Komposition Nr 7″ are a weird mix of touchtone phone-like abstractions and threatening, eldritch dronescapes. So where Pierre and Bruno zip to their respective soundlabs in open-top sportsters (top shirt button undone, no ties…), Herbert and Karel come on more pipesmoked ruminations and corduroy. Nevertheless, it only takes a tweak of a dial and a couple of flicks of those bakelite switches from these unfamiliars and I’m sold. By the way, Finders Keepers have also put Karel’s work under the microscope recently with a LP reissue of Pour Que Les Fruits Mûrissent Cet Été / Op acht Paarden Wedden.

Other Sounds is an imprint of Cherry Red Records.

June 28, 2013

Triumphs in Sound Placement

I recall seeing the name of electroacoustician Anna Lockwood mentioned for the first time in a now yellowing page of an ancient Record Collector. Her Glass World… on Tangent Records became a grail object for years. Until (and this WILL never happen again), I stumbled upon a boxload of Lockwoods and Henri Chopins (also on Tangent) at a local record fair for 99p a disc!! Since that time, I’ve been following Anna (now Annea’s) career in fits and starts. Still searching for a copy of Harvey Matusow’s Jew’s Harp Band LP in which Anna was a member (after studying at the Royal College of Music), and still playing, on a regular basis, the amazingly sensual and magnificently creepy ‘Tiger Balm’, which can be found on the Early Works 67/82 CD on EM Records of Japan). I urge you to hear this. So it seemed that Christmas had been rescheduled when I received a review copy of Annea’s In Our Name (NEW WORLD RECORDS 80729-2) CD on the American New World Records label. The utterly disarming ‘Jitterbug’ opens this three-parter. It’s a six channel tape composition that pits the micro burble of aquatic insects and fish against a guitar/strings/percussion trio. The main idea being that the touch of hom. sap. shouldn’t overpower the more fragile sounds of Ma Nature. You would have thought that ramming a couple of hydrophones into their watery kingdom might have made its inhabitants just a little self-concious. But no…the curious clicks, pops and flutterings rise to the surface like there’s no tomorrow. And for some of these lifeforms, with their accelerated lives…there probably won’t be. ‘Thirst’ is another multi-channel work. On this occasion, the hubbub and drone of the human worker bees milling through grand central station is captured and set against an artist’s recollections of an idyllic childhood in Damascus. I know which sounds the better option. The title track though, is the piece that should have really caused the biggest reverberations within the avant classical/sound collage circles. Commissioned by baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner (collaborations w/ Robert Ashley, Phill Niblock, Wadada Leo Smith…). it was designed to cut through all the media spin/b.s. regarding the plight of those incarcerated (and forgotten about) at Guantanamo Bay. Instead of the expected rage at this continual injustice, these sung/spoken poems by Buckner, (accompanied by a mournful cello), are delivered in a dignified and measured way, thereby, possibly, giving the work a little more longevity and more leverage on its journey through the airwaves and concert halls of the U.S. More triumphs in sound placement, with a fully beating heart. Extra points are certainly due for copious sleeve notery and thoughtful/considered sleeve art.

Speaking of sleeve art…turtles’ eggs or ping pong balls?? It’s a question that’s been on my mind since first glancing at the photos adorning the Weird Tales & Elegant Motion (MONOTYPE RECORDS mono052) CD by The Mia Zabelka Trio. Even the out of focus group photo seems to continue the misdirection. And that’s not discounting Mia’s violin skreek which wraps itself in all manner of sound processing, its methods to deceive. She’s been recording since ’87 and has teamed up with John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Curran amongst others. Mia’s joined here by the muscular and supple bassings of Pavel Fajt (ex Dunaj) and Johannes Frisch (also of the Kammerflimmer Kollektief) on drums/percussion. The set can be (loosely) divided into two states of being: powerful, sometimes fragmented avant funk (‘Backyard Funk’, ‘Back to Start’, ‘Nasty Rumours’) and insinuating, mid-paced tone poems (‘Djinn’, ‘Push’) that come with the gift of the unknown tongue and creepy, whispered asides (a la Gong’s Gilly Smyth, but with talons…). A solid body of work with a real sense of band unity. They remind me a bit of Massacre or Crimso extracurricular activity like Project X or Space Groove. And as a p.s., can their ‘Slims and Slams’ really refer to Slim Gaillard/Slam Stewart’s novelty jazz act? I do hope so. It’d be nice to see those purveyors of the ‘Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy’ given a nod. If that’s made you curious – check ‘em out on Hellzapoppin – a nutzoid flick from the war years with Martha Raye, Olsson & Johnson etc etc…

January 5, 2013

Barbs of the Unexpected

Fiat Lux

Very impressed with the beautiful melancholy of Leyfðu Ljósinu (TOUCH TO:90) from Hildur Guðnadóttir, a continuous 35-minute piece recorded live in one take, preceded by a four-minute ‘Prelude’. Using her own voice, cello, and electronic effects she transforms herself into an entire orchestra and choir, filling the available space with sumptuous melancholy music. I have found some of her other past records a bit ponderous, but this piece has a lightness of touch that is very refreshing. Although the music does build up into a cloud of competing sonorities, it never turns into a bland ambient porridge, and the sound remains clear and concise. This Icelandic composer and cellist is so confident of her craft that this music, at times, hardly appears to have been created by human hands at all, but emerges from a strange unknown crevasse like a mystical revelation. The title translates as ‘Allow The Light’, and it would not be far from the mark to read this as an allusion to the book of Genesis, and the words God spoke to bring the universe into creation. The music was recorded at the University of York and the notes assure us that there was absolutely no post-processing of the recordings. From April 2012.

Breathe life into the dead dinosaurs

We enjoyed Kyle Bruckmann‘s Cracked Refraction in 2012, a release on the jazz-ish label Porter Records which seemed an appropriate home for music that crackled with such rocking vigour and vital swing. On Procedural Grounds (NEW WORLD RECORDS 80725-2) is released on the modern classical-ish New World Records label, and shows another dimension to this impressive American all-rounder, improviser, composer, and musical omnivore. I suppose the main event is the 29-minute title track, but I enjoy the two pieces which showcase Kyle’s oboe work. On ‘Cell Structure’ he’s joined by the clarinet of Matt Ingalls with live electronic manipulation. Hearing this piece of scored crazy-paving garden design is like being led around a scale model of a maze with added spring-loaded traps awaiting us at every turn; try to follow the logic-defying musical woodwind phrases, only to meet with a sudden explosion of abstract digital noise, or be lulled by mysterious passages where only a strange rumbling serves as an intellectual anchor for the brain. Then there’s ‘Orgone Accelerator’, a solo spot for Bruckmann with his oboe and French horn, once again treated with electronics. This one isn’t so much of an intricate Chinese puzzle as the former, but it does stop and start in highly baffling ways, while remaining true to its avowed aim of pulsating ominously like a loathsome, inflated pumpkin with a sinister orange glow.

What accounts for this tendency to keep the music permanently surprising, at times almost shocking, to listen to? Bruckmann openly declares his “bent and affinity for discomfort zones”, and Tom Djll’s notes likewise refer to “a barb of The Unexpected” as one of the hallmarks of this fascinating music. Bruckmann also intends to bring improvisation into his compositions in a big way, stresses the social interaction between the players, and creating situations where “the act of listening” is the primary policy. He composes with “the mindset of an improviser”. Even the written score is regarded as a bit of a nuisance, just a formalised way of communicating with his talented collaborators. This approach is shown most strongly and successfully on the title track, which features some fine playing from the woodwind and string section, the great Gino Robair on live electronics, and the entire Rova Saxophone Quartet, four gifted players with their own impressive history of “directed improvisations” which makes them an ideal candidate for performing in this context. This rich work parses into multiple sections, blending generous chunks of quirky modernistic jazz propelled by an irresistible beat with the more free-form, burbly and parpy-type passages of improv gobble-dee-goo. The mixture of half-swallowed clarinet ejaculations with the honeyed syrup of electronic jelly is one ingredient in this tabled feast, likewise the brilliant clashing of the meditative string section playing slow, scored measures directly alongside skittery passages of unrestrained reed-vibrating skronk. At all times, what impresses me here is the relaxed control and assurance with which Bruckmann assembles these competing forces, and convinces us it’s all as natural as can be. Unforced, non-contrived complexity. Unlike John Zorn, he doesn’t aim to jolt us with far-out juxtapositions, and the logic of his method is laid out for all to hear in very precise, repeatable arrangements, cemented together with 18 bags of pure swing feeling. His intelligence and skill enables him, and the players, to sustain this endeavour for nearly half an hour with ease.

The same strain appears in more muted and subtle form on the minimal chamber dissonances and imperceptible events of ‘Tarpit’, which features a small ensemble with woodwinds, strings, percussion. electronics, and a prepared piano. Again, the listener’s logical thought is brilliantly defeated by the ingenuity of this piece, which is both utterly simple and intricately complex at once; it feels like at least two or three separate pieces of music overlaid, working together and against each other, like criss-crossing solid phantoms that can walk through walls as well as the bodies of their spectral compadres. Mr Djll reads this work as a cautionary tale about the slow death of culture through fossilisation, i.e. those who refuse to evolve are stuck like dinosaurs or mammoths in the tarpit of history. He thus finds an affinity with Captain Beefheart’s ‘Petrified Forest’. Any sleevenote that references the Captain is a good sign as far as I’m concerned, so you know you’re making a solid purchase with this item. Arrived 17 April 2012.

July 27, 2012

Archer Heights

Split for the Coast

The eleventh release on the Spectrum Spools label is Soft Coast by No UFO’s, which is the work of Konrad Jandavs from Vancouver. Once again John Elliott rescues an obscure piece of music from a small-run cassette label origins, and reissues it on luxury vinyl. I like a good deal of what Mr Jandavs is doing here with his synths, beatboxes, sequencers and filters, especially those cuts which maintain a good solid beat to support the layers of droniness. In some ways it’d be nice to hear him try out the long-form La Dusseldorf thing and see what part of the melodic backwoods his Winnebago takes him, but there’s also a lot to be said for his generally economical approach here, curbing any tendencies towards wallowing in self-indulgent filtered ecstasy. No UFO’s also has an uncluttered and fresh approach to the construction of each piece, such that we’re not wading through layers of overdubbed fug; there’s a simplicity and directness which appeals, even if the melodic figures are not especially strong or original. From December 2011, and likely to grow on us with time.

Dead By Dawn

Now here’s a lively and spicy mixed-up morgeroon from Anders Hana, who’s a Norwegian loopoid from Stavanger associated with such fine acts as MoHa!, Noxagt and Ultralyd. Also Blodsprut, Circulasione Totale Orchestra, Clifford Torus, Crimetime Orchestra, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten Quintet, Jaga Jazzist, Morthana, and Pokemachine. Matter of fact if there’s any far-out underground music going on in Stavanger it’s fairly likely that Hana will be involved in some way, either organising the venue where it happens or tearing the tickets on the door with a surly grunt directed at all incoming punters. On the single-sided vinyl object Dead Clubbing (DRID MACHINE RECORDS DMR2), he plays all the instruments including guitar, bass and drums, adding demented saxophone noise and groany synth passages, thus performing as his own one-man stoner-rock heavy-metal beat-jazz free-noise experimental-electronics combo. When you’re in the mood for something rich, thick and zesty, Hana is the man who’ll spread hot sauce over your French fries using a trowel for the purpose. Aye, nothing less than high volume and full-intensity performances will satisfy his creative urges on this salvo of grapeshot, and primary colours are the only oil paints he’ll deign to scrape with his nine-inch palette knife. What’s not to like? Well, only the slightly clod-hoppering and clumpy dynamic of the whole LP gives it a slightly awkward feel in places, like a Sherman tank stuck in first gear or a 30-foot giant with impaired motor functions, but that’s all part of the unkempt charm of Mr “no hairbrush for me thanks” Hana. The six dense pieces are generally short, obsessively repetitive and extremely – erm – direct. The label also operates as a fine-art screenprinting joint in Stavanger, and the actual artefact (I only have a promo CD) has visuals printed directly onto the vinyl and onto the PVC sleeve. 300 copies only of this drool-worthy red pancake.

Free Fall

Deeply impressed by Airfields (MAZAGRAN mz005), a new composition by Cypriot genius Yannis Kyriakides which we’ve had in the pouch since December. We noted his double-CD set Antichamber in TSP19 and I think it was around then we started to find a way into this dense work with its blending of acoustic chamber music with electronic sounds and strange effects, whereas previously it had seemed a bit daunting and unapproachable. This Airfields piece, a 12-part composition played by musikFabrik, an ensemble of classical players, with live electronics by the composer, really hits home – a very interesting take on spectral music, all players producing uncanny tones and unfamiliar sounds from their carefully-woven shrouds of woodwinds, strings, piano and percussion. In his notes, Kyriakides tells the story of how the piece came to be, and it’s a tale that involves a composition for the Siren Orchestra (who derive ideas from the futurist Luigi Russolo and the scientific theorist Heimholtz), and another composition for the Seattle Chamber Players. Since 2008, Kyriakides has been developing his own form of unusual graphic scores, working with photographs taken by satellites which he manages to recast into sonic information. As that technique improved, he found ways to render parts of these graphic scores by hand, translating the contours of these aerial views into scores which musicians could read. I like the idea that the musicians playing this unconventional sheet music are “put into a metaphorical orbit”, and it’s no doubt this methodology which accounts for the unusual, dizzying sensations of Airfields – sometimes we feel we are indeed falling through the sky in a semi-controlled way, taking a reverse parachute dive into another dimension. It’s entirely subjective, but I think this compelling and strangely melancholic music would make a perfect accompaniment while viewing Le Drapeau Noir, a 1937 painting by René Magritte. Further ghostly timbres arise in this, the third version of the evolving concept, through his placement of the brass section on the balcony of the performing space, to assist with the natural echo of the other musicians on the stage (a radical rearrangement of orchestral convention of which I’m sure Stockhausen would’ve approved). A live recording made in Amsterdam, the disc is issued with a booklet of full colour photographs.

May 12, 2012

Symposia

A Blanket In My Muesli

Here’s some unusual acoustic experimental music made by the German foursome of Quadrat:sch, deliberately emulating the traditional instrumentation of 18th century Alpine chamber folk with their set-up on Stubenmusic (COL LEGNO WWE 2CD 20305). Using hammered dulcimer, zither, guitar and double bass, the quartet turn in 12 short-to-medium pieces on the first CD of this double-disc set, all of them composed by the zither player Christof Dienz, and they are lively, taut renditions of pieces which follow song-like structures with their winning and bright melodies, complex time signatures, and brilliant inventive interplay of instruments. These tunes probably aren’t directly inspired by folk tunes as such, but some of them refer to dances, and the title of the opening track ‘This Way or That Way or the Other’ feels like a simple homespun philosophy that could easily apply to the gentler life of 200 years ago as much as it does to the strategies of a post-modernist musician. Apart from a couple of slow “pastoral” pieces, the mood of this disc is upbeat and cheerful, and you’ll soon be ordering a pair of britches and leather buskins so that you can join in this merry dance on the slopes of the Finsteraarhorn. On the second disc, the set-up is “extended” by the arrival of the great Zeena Parkins with her harp under one arm and a bushel of alpine fruits under the other. The percussionist Herbert Pirker also joins the team, and the six players use plucks, drones, groans, swoops, zangles and many other pleasing effects in very abstracted ways. These open-ended semi-atonal and non-rhythmic instrumentals (which are also composed rather than improvised) are intended to explore sonic structures, and while the set may not be a direct “answer record” to its more danceable brother, it is very indicative of the way that short, compressed compositions can be “opened out” into these labyrinthine buildings, full of twisting corridors and pathways. Oswald Egger supplies an interpretative text to this fine package of interesting music.

The Man with X-Ray Ears

The lovely Felix Kubin has released TXRF (IT’S ITS008) as a double LP, albeit not an excessively long one – some sides are just 11 minutes in length. It’s a fine set of irresistible and enjoyable electronic music made with such tools as the Sherman 2 filterbank and the Electrix Repeater, which is a loop sampler device – in short, a combination of analogue and digital devices to create patterns and processed sounds. As ever, Kubin manages to draw convincing lines of convergence between Kraftwerk, techno club music, and the more extreme modes of academic experimental electronic music of the 1960s, compacting his ingenious thniking in short and portable statements that remain somewhat enigmatic yet also very accessible. He also retains his very droll sense of humour, and I sense an undercurrent of hilarity which informs even the most austere of these cuts, which Kubin performs completely deadpan. According to the press release, of which I don’t have a physical copy, there’s also a scientific dimension to the set, involving the action of firing X-Rays at solid matter in order to determine something about their surface properties. This feels like a throwback to a certain time in the 1990s when Disinformation, John Duncan and others were exploring ways to make electronic music using scientific devices like particle colliders and shortwave signals. We’re not told exactly how Kubin managed to process X-rays into sound, and the plausibility factor is pretty low to say the least, but through the power of suggestion (a strategy also picked up by the cover image) it does pre-determine how we as listeners will approach the music to some degree. As a double LP, it’s structured in four connected sections titled ‘Total’, ‘Reflection’, ‘X-Ray’ and ‘Fluorescence’, suggestive of a process that might lead the listener through an experiment to its successful conclusion. In case any of this makes Kubin’s work sound pretentious, let me reassure you it’s quite the opposite; when you listen you’ll be won over instantly by the clarity of his thinking and the straightforward way he presents his ideas.

We Imply, He Infers

Another German composer is the excellent Marcus Schmickler, usually known for his extreme electronic music pieces. Rule Of Inference (A-MUSIK A-37) however showcases his compositional skills, with three substantial suites scored for percussion, orchestra, and chamber ensemble. The title piece is in four movements and allows the Cologne Schlagquartett to exercise their upper body muscles producing the strident, explosive portions of the first section, and the more approachable gamelan-like passages of the second part; we also hear bone-like rattling effects, brooding rumbles like thunder, and even some quasi-African polyrhythmic passages. Apparently all this percussion music was derived from complex ideas about logic, mathematics, and astronomy, and we’re advised to look for parallels in the music of Xenakis, Grisey and Stockhausen. It’s enough to restore your faith in systems-based music when it achieves such powerful results.

Quite different to the above is the 10-minute ‘Symposion’, an orchestral work which presents an eerie series of very mixed chords to create an effect like a slow-moving Ligeti or Penderecki piece. Though no stranger to micro-tonal compositional ideas, Schmickler here is in fact exploring something about the history of equal temperament, about which I know less than zero other than it’s a tuning system. ‘Symposion’ contains enough dissonances to curdle your internal organs, yet unlike Ligeti or Penderecki’s music it refuses any sort of narrative, religious, or philosophical associations and remains largely an exploratory, “process” experiment.

The album finishes with four short chamber-instrumentals which are intended as direct tributes to Carlo Gesualdo, the madrigal composer whose colourful life was about as bizarre as the music he composed; it seems Gesualdo broke all the rules in this very rarefied medium, but being the murderous nobleman he was, he could afford to do so and the audience for madrigal music was in any case incredibly limited (I like to think the Renaissance was a simpler more innocent time before globalisation, lucrative TV deals and instant internet coverage was the order of the day). One of the rules he broke was using far too many chromatic effects per square inch. Chromatics is another musicological term which I don’t really understand, but I’ve heard not a few records by Gesualdo and his scores make singers jump through hoops to produce musical clashes and dissonances that can jar the fillings loose from your teeth. Schmickler’s approach has been to eliminate the vocal elements completely and attempt, through his arrangements, to compress all those delicious chromatics into handy bite-size pieces. I’m no expert as I hope I’ve made clear, but I feel Schmickler has somehow missed the exquisite jarring factor that is to me the essence of Gesualdo. Even so, these four succeed nicely as modernist takes on Renaissance music. If this CD appeals, may I recommend you rewind to 2006 and hear a copy of Demos by this composer, also released by A-Musik, for a fascinating mix of orchestra, choir and electronic music.

March 28, 2012

Ouvrez Le Chien

Space to think in Filament Form

Vitor Joaquim wages a one-man war against information overload on Filament (KVITNU 19), his CD of “complex, extended and nonlinear” digital music which arrived here in November 2011. This is a serious contemporary matter which many have noted and bemoaned probably since the earliest days of advertising, and it’s only getting worse with the unstoppable increase of web-delivered information, much of it trivial and absurd. Some, like Otomo Yoshihide, decided to adopt an ambivalent relationship for a time, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s some of his Ground-Zero releases were packed with sonic overload in the form of sampled musical data, yet he continued to produce great art out of this situation, sublimating the information bonanza and nimbly expressing his own love-hate relationship with it. Joaquim is unequivocal, by contrast, and fears that in 2012 we are gradually losing the ability to concentrate, to think properly about complex issues, even deadening ourselves emotionally to the point where we’re unable to feel anything real. The music on Filament not only serves as a riposte to this grotesque state of affairs, but it’s also an instruction manual for humans; in its multi-layered and richly ambiguous droning music, you may start to find keys and clues, directly translatable into methodologies which will help to sharpen your intellectual facilities, and restore your fading emotive powers. Death to the buzzword, the sound-bite, the facile solution and the instant reply. I think it’s especially telling that his titles incorporate the words ‘Voids’, ‘Walls’, ‘Conformity’ and ‘Devotion’. Conformity is part of the problem; the internet, capitalism, global travel and advertising are making all of us think, feel, talk and act the same. Devotion, which may be religious or may simply be the application of one’s faculties to engage with real thinking, is one solution. Fine greeting-card styled cover by Zavoloka for this sharp release, with embossed silver elements.

The Umbrella Man through Brecon Eyes

Some parts of the above rant may have appealed to the composer Erik Satie, whose piano pieces are often associated with a slow performance or a promenade around the park where we can simply take time to stop and stare. What would this cafe-society aesthete have made of the over-crowded blogosphere? His minimalist philosophy has been used as a springboard by later modernists, including Cage, Reich, Adams and others; I suspect he’s even been credited with inventing “ambient” music before Brian Eno. For a less formalist and far more imaginative take on Satie, may I recommend A Kiss For The Umbrella Man (QUIET WORLD 21) by Susan Matthews, the South Wales musician. She takes extracts from well-known Satie tunes and serves them up with her own unusual piano arrangements, sometimes allowing for the addition of recorded voices and other tape layers; even the sound of the piano is treated in suitably subtle electro-acoustic fashion. Classical purists would probably throw a fit after hearing eight bars of this, but Matthews has genuine affection for the music and reveals hidden truths in Satie’s music through her very creative exploratory methods. Unfinished, uncertain in places, and not a revolutionary art statement, but Satie’s gorgeous scales and chord combinations really sing under her fingers, although I doubt this album is intended to showcase a virtuoso piano performance as convention would normally demand. By which I mean the ideas of Susan Matthews are prioritised over technique, and that is a good thing. It’s as though an art student were allowed free rein to interpret the classics as they see fit, and I’d like to see more of that…in my ideal world this important stuff would not be left solely in the hands of the trained and established “experts”. Egads, only 50 copies were pressed of this lovely CDR, and I’ve had it here since November. Better order your copy sharpish. If it’s sold out, send an email directly to Ian Holloway demanding a repress. Tell him I sent ya!

I’m going to the promised land

Now for some up-to-the-minute classical composition from the New York composer Dan Joseph. He freely admits he’s steeped in minimalism and while pointing out that the genre (if that’s what it is) is over 40 years old now and sometimes causes him to wrestle with dilemmas about “what’s new” and “what’s next”, he’s pretty much given up trying to break the mould or innovate wildly. However, what boots it when faced with the charm and stark beauty of Tonalization (For The Afterlife) (MUTABLE MUSIC MUTABLE 17545-2)? This outstanding 2009 composition occupies 33 minutes of the release, and it’s a glorious arrangement in pure simplicity. It explores the short and clear tones of the percussion instruments – harpsichord, marimba, and hammered dulcimer – then drifts into a high-pitched sea of long tones from the cello, violin and flute, finally proceedinto into a sprightly finale where all instruments are combined in passages of varying length and tempi (the composition is in fact an assembled mosaic of short pieces). This is music of such declared honesty and transparency that it’s the exact opposite of the way the world currently conducts itself (think of corporate finance dealings, or the utterances of any politician, in whose mouth the word “transparency” has a slippery meaning at best). It’s as though the composition is laying itself bare in schematic form as you listen to it, like a radio set inviting you to put it together. Somehow, Dan Joseph also finds room to accommodate memorable mini-melodies, and even some stripped-down baroque ornamentation. Imagine a grand Victorian ornate wardrobe being squeezed into a modern New York apartment. And what a great idea to incorporate the beauty of the hammered dulcimer, especially without a hint of parody or condescension (as Henry Flynt might have done). Joseph frankly owns that he has an interest in these purely formal explorations of tonalisation, even to the extent of thinking hard what that word really means and its other applications, but there is also a spiritual dimension to this music, concerning speculations on what happens after death and involving a personal memory of a friend that gives added poignancy and honesty to the work. Total recommendation for this music to the legions of Morton Feldman and Steve Reich fans, although this’ll also bang your gong if you’re into the music of those who have been intrigued by the possibility of minimalism-meets-gamelan, such as Philip Corner or Evan Ziporyn. Also here, the 2002 ‘Wind Patterns’, a lovely duo between Joseph’s heavenly hammered dulcimer and the flute of Leah Paul; and ‘Music Primer’, where baritone singer Thomas Buckner joins Joseph to recite the texts of Lou Harrison in his unique song-speech manner. In all, a fine collection of precision, clarity, and beauty.