Tagged: classical

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.

February 5, 2012

Cannibale / Agitato

Tutto Va Bene (NIENTE RECORDS VOLUME 9) is the third item we’ve received from the Italian avant-electronic duo st.ride, and it’s another strong set of tunes constructed using drum machine, voice, and the “mopho” which is probably their personal shorthand for the synths and other electronic devices which inhabit their homes in the same way that an unwanted debt-collector hovers around the doorstep of his defaulting creditor. I’m not here to make direct comparisons with previous releases, but this new one feels more stripped-down and uncluttered, probably due to the decision to leave the guitars at home on this particular trip to the Genova studio; without that amplified burr, and thanks to sequencers, monophonic keyboards and primitive settings, the music hits home like a surgical-precision bash in the nose-bone. Maurizio Gusmerini spits, barks and snarls his simplistic lyrics like slogans and chants, a nifty update on the way most UK punk rockers used to sing in 1977; along with Edo Grandi’s drum machine, it’s these rhythmic vocal eructations that are providing most of the structure for each song. This approach creates a bare-bones framework, leaving the synth elements free to squelch out their unnatural fizzes and burbles in extremely simple ways, filling in the spaces and gaps with one-note one-sound monotonal gulps. On occasion, the synths are allowed to go completely crazy, as on ‘Turbamento’ where they unleash eleven types of merry free noise heck from their split-circuit-tongues, making this particular ditty a perfect expression of pent-up anger and frustration in 4 and a half minutes, where the vocalist is simmering with rage and words are inadequate to capture the extent of his emotion. You can hear the stern frown of disapproval written on his face. On ‘Mi Piaci’ he may sound a bit more resigned to the cruel fates of the world, but it’s because he’s been turned into a robot, acquiescing to the incessant demands of the consumer-driven society with a helpless vocodered sigh. In fine, this album is a winning combination of semi-musical contrived chaos, direct and elemental electronic sounds, enervating coffee-fuelled beats, a seriously disaffected singer handing you unpalatable facts (in Italian), and no bullshit anywhere in sight. You may come for the Kraftwerk / Depeche Mode comparisons, but you’ll stay for the distinctive st.ride modernistic take on alienated urban electropop. From the overall pessimistic tone, we have to assume that the title which translates as ‘All’s Well’, is deeply ironic; and the fact it’s restated on the cover in multiple languages only emphasises how bad the situation is world-wide. Embrace this pessimism freely, that’s my advice; in a world full of corrupt media and slimy politicians, at this crucial time we need to get our information from clear-thinking truthsayers, as found on this record.

Profoundly radical and inventive approach to playing contemporary classical violin music from Aisha Orazbayeva on her superb Outside (NONCLASSICAL RECORDINGS NONCLSS013) CD. Technically proficient to a near superhuman degree, she can clearly play complex and challenging modern music with a breathtaking ease, but that’s just for starters – it’s a given. It’s the intense attack of her sound that will demand your attention – she plays like a freakin’ demon on the six Caprices of Salvatore Sciarrino, the startling “calling card” that opens this record and occupies you for seventeen minutes (I personally was riveted to the spot with my jaw hanging open). Her whole body is alive, contorted and possessed as she unleashes these uncanny sounds from her instrument’s guts, not skimping on the astringent scrapey effects and high-register complexities that create shrieking harmonics enough to scrape the fillings from out of your back molars. So far, so electrifying. But all that isn’t enough for her, since she adds a further sonic element by recording these pieces in numerous external locations ¹ – bus stop, car park, railway arch, warehouse – eschewing the comfort and predictability of the recording studio acoustics in favour of “wild” echoes and timbral shadings, with results that are later sewn together at the editing suite for maximal ear-slam. You can imagine the devastating effects of these combined strategies, but you don’t have to imagine anything, since Orazbayeva has made this all happen herself. I personally have often grumbled to myself about the generally rather conservative approach to the recording of mainstream classical music; I won’t say that Orazbayeva agrees with me 100%, but she has certainly forged her own personal solution to the situation. Sciarrino, himself something of a musical outsider who considers that he owes no allegiance to any particular school of modernism, seems a most apt composer for her to interpret. The remainder of the CD is also full of interest and surprise; there’s the Ravel Sonata recorded at the Royal Academy recital hall with a piano accompaniment, putting us on slightly more familiar sonic turf (and it’s a beautiful rendering). At the end of the disc are two very odd items – a two-minute Russian lullaby ‘Pchela I Babchka’ by Salvador / Tsepin, and a piece she composed with Helmut Lachenmann called ‘Toccatina / Russian song’, which ought to satisfy your cravings for hearing a truly “deconstructed” approach to plucking muted violin strings in the production of quiet and mysterious music. Before that, we have fourteen gorgeous minutes of ’5 Bagatelles from OUR violin and computer concerto’, which she wrote in 2010 with Peter Zinovieff. Astonishing far-out musical tones are created and generated with great assurance in a seamless mixture of acoustic playing and cyber-music. Quite different in tone to the “demonic possession” style of the Caprices, here Orazbayeva displays her skill for steady, continuous sound and glorious atonalities, combining it with Zinovieff’s dark cybernetic utterances and producing a music so strange that you can taste it like slowly-unfurling fungi in your brain. This suite has both intense intimate beauty but also unfamiliar and alarming darknesses, as on the closing segments ‘Peg’ and ‘Stre’, whose inventive noisy textures you could use to resurface half of the UK’s motorways. The package may look restrained and decorous, but don’t be fooled – it’s an album of pure classical dynamite from this astonishing Kazakh genius. Recommended, but be sure to approach with lead-lined tongs and protective goggles!

A similar strategy was used by the violin-cello improvising duo of Kuwayama-Kijima, who since the early 2000s often performed and recorded their music in abandoned urban spaces. ↩

January 7, 2012

The Populista Front

Schumann, Kagel and Ferrari refracted through the Warsaw kaleidoscope of imagination

From Poland in October we got these three items in the Populista series, curated by Michał Libera. All these are released on the Polish Bôłt label, with help and support from Monotype Records. The first one is Dichterliebe (BR POP01), a song cycle by Robert Schumann, the famed 19th century German romantic, here interpreted by singer Bernhard Schütz and Reinhold Friedl (of Zeitkratzer fame) on the piano. Classical music from this period is completely out of my line, but even a man with a tin ear like mine can perceive that this is an extremely – erm – imaginative rendition of the material. Schütz’s vocalising is clearly taking great liberties in his efforts to inject the florid material (sung in German) with as much emotional range as possible, and a conservatoire vocal trainer would probably turn pale and have a heart attack if he heard this. Plenty of attack and sustain in Friedl’s assured keyboard work, too, and the album is recorded in a decidedly non-quiet manner with plenty of room presence. So far, very impressive – classical music informed by an anarchic and playful spirit. Apparently the original lyric source for Dichterliebe is a long poem by Heinrich Heine, who was in fact very critical of the German romantic tradition and packed his lyrics with sarcasm and satire. This satirical tone seems to have been one of things that has informed Schütz’s singing here, as he bends the notes around the melody in a snide mocking way, occasionally punctuating the lyric with an angry growl.

Next we have Ludwig Van (BR POP02), an interpretation of a work by Mauricio Kagel created by the pianist Frédéric Blondy with DJ Lenar on the turntables. This is a much more complex piece than the above, more overtly experimental, and layered with twists and turns. Kagel was a German-Argentinian composer of the 20th century who also occasionally made films, one of which was 1970′s Ludwig Van, apparently a rather critical piece of avant-garde cinema which asked pointed questions about the ways in which later audiences had appropriated and interpreted Beethoven’s music. It is the soundtrack to this film which has, in turn, been reclaimed and reinterpreted in the current post-modern mashup we have before us, along with several other bits of source material including Werner Herzog soundtracks, a lecture by Alfred Cortot, samples of string playing and percussion music taken from contemporary improvisation records, and multiple other unknown sounds. It’s an indescribable puzzle piece, a crazy-quilt knitted together from mosaic-fragments of music, and virtually every second of sound appears to have a subversive intent or hidden meaning, one quote leading to another quote. It’s also glorious to listen to. What we’re hearing is a studio recording made at the Warsaw National Art Gallery, produced the same day as its premiere. Michał Libera produced it and had a hand in the mixing and assembly stage. A fabulous 32 minutes of delirious complexity which bends 19th century classical music into 20th century atonal composition, by way of very contemporary techniques (editing, turntabling, mixing, layering). Highly recommended!

Lastly there is another piece of modernism, Cycles Des Souvenirs (BR POP03), on which Rinus van Alebeek interprets the music of Luc Ferrari, the well-known French-Italian tape music composer. van Alebeek is a Dutch maverick conceptual artist whose opening conversational gambit is “I don’t make music”; he is in fact a writer who has long since abandoned traditional literature and its confines, and for some considerable time has been “writing” with the cassette recorder. It is an example of his unique sonic approach to documentary reportage, I suppose, that we hear on Cycles Des Souvenirs, a very compelling suite over an hour long which layers together several half-familiar domestic and everyday sounds along with half-whispered narrating voices, suspending everything in a very fluid and open-ended mix which quite clearly is not “composed” in any normal sense of the word. You do not sense an authorial hand directing the listener what to hear, and as such this record significantly revitalises the genres of field recording and tapework; it unfolds in a very natural way and you have no clear idea where it is going, or what to expect next. Who am I to say, but I feel intuitively that Luc Ferrari would certainly have approved, and this is very much in the spirit of his tape works.

The cover paintings by Aleksandra Waliszewska are also quite splendid, surreal faceless portraits not unlike the work of Magritte. Schumann has orange dribble running down his chin, the messiness of romantic slop staining his shirt collar. The Kagel cover shows a man whose face has apparently been sliced into floppy pieces of cured meat. The Ferrari cover is a white-faced mystic whose third eye is either an open wound or the female genitalia. By way of a press release, we were sent a copy of the Populista Dictionary, a witty and rather sardonic text which provides further oblique clues about the project ¹. For example, “the dying 20th century shall never form a museum of performances but rather a garden of reactions. Even if from time to time it may make it (the 20th century of course) look ridiculous”. All of these Populista releases are radical reinterpretations of historical music, making it more meaningful for modern audiences, and deserve your investigation. We look forward to hearing more in the series. Michał Libera, true to his name, has found a way to liberate great music from the mausoleums of high culture, setting it free through the power of imagination.

I have provided a large jpg of this document, but there is also a PDF version online. ↩