Tagged: piano

March 29, 2013

Cendre: beautiful music trapped in land of Melancholia

Fennesz + Sakamoto, Cendre, Touch, CD TONE-32 (2007)

Sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on much by various artists who I used to listen to but then drifted away from. It’s been quite some time since I heard anything by Christian Fennesz. So I thought I should check out this collaborative instrumental work from 2007 with Japanese composer / musician Ryuichi Sakamoto with whose music I was also once familiar way back in the early 1980s when he was a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

“Cendre” is a series of ambient soundscape pieces done mainly on piano, guitar and laptop (used to process guitar and piano sounds and melodies). All track titles are short one-word names that suggest states of incomplete stasis or the remains of something that once existed but is no more. Much of the music is desultory piano melody meandering, often sad and meditative in mood as it favours certain keys, with guitar and laptop electronics active in the backdrop. The atmospheres can be quite dark but they are never menacing or threatening. No other instrumentation is used and there are vast spaces revealed in the music by the plaintive keyboard tunes. There is the sense that listeners have to fill in the empty spaces with their own imaginations and memories that those darkened spaces might evoke.

Although the album is divided into 11 tracks, the music is better heard as a continuous soundtrack of changing melodies and sounds that passes through a melancholy blues style, something approaching lounge lizard muzak and occasionally falling into abstract experimental territory. The best tracks are those where the piano and guitar electronics are blended so well that everything sounds like one instrument with an amazing array of tones and effects that all sound like pure piano and Fenneszian guitar effects (“Kuni”, for instance).

The music is certainly very beautiful and its sculpting can be gorgeous and heavenly but at the same time it stays within a very restricted zone of Melancholia: in this world, joy, lightness and happy defiance, in the face of a world that insists on solemn observance of the transience of life, are qualities alien to its denizens. I know we all have to die one day and for many that’s a terrible prospect to be shunned; for others such knowledge kills off all motivation to live fully in the moment; and for still others the awareness suggests we must observe detachment and resist a hunger to satisfy all our appetites but at the risk of denying our emotions, feelings and animal passion; but “Cendre” takes its remit of regarding the world and change with a detached eye rather too seriously to the extent of draining any life out of the music. The result is an album that increasingly becomes stupefying and soporific as it hammers its message over and over with each subsequent track.

Hmm … I probably wasn’t missing all that much after all after floating away from Fennesz and Sakamoto all those years ago.

Contact: Touch Music, Christian Fennesz, Ryuichi Sakamoto

January 27, 2013

Universal is Born

The lovely EM Records label in Japan has been busy with more of its characteristically wonderful reissues of scarce, choice and exotic items. All the below were received here 02 May 2012. I happened to visit Honest Jon’s Records in West London yesterday and found they were still stocking a few copies of the label’s older releases, some of which are out of print. I’m personally very excited to receive and hear I Saw The Outer Limits (EM1098CD) by Matsuo Ohno. The work of this exceptional Japanese electronic music composer is not exactly easy to come by. There were three CDs issued on King Records in 2005, but these volumes of The World of Electro-Acoustic Sound and Music are in the process of becoming collector’s items. If known at all, Ohno is probably best known to a Western audience through his soundtracks to the TV anime series Astro Boy, but that’s become something of an astral albatross for him. In fact he has a complex history behind him, working in documentary and nature films since the late 1950s, developing a very personal philosophy, and some details of his fascinating life have been recorded in the very simpatico sleeve notes to this release, written by the label owner Koki Emura. There are other and more obscure anime works, for example the work of Hiroshi Maname, which had an influence on this creator, and he also made his own innovative documentary films in the 1960s, including some highly personal film projects about the treatment of disabled and mentally ill children in Japan. He produced and directed a 1972 documentary following the Taj Mahal Travellers on tour.

In 1977 he scored the soundtrack for The War In Space for Toho, the large Japanese studio that produced the Godzilla movies, and he was commissioned by director Shinji Hinoki to produce an album of purely electronic music. I Saw The Outer Limits is the result, Ohno’s first release of non-soundtrack music, and an art statement in its own right. To emphasise the unique nature of Ohno’s music, Emura gently opines how much electronic music of the 1970s (and a lot of it was quite commercial and even sold well) was not only rather bland and boring to listen to, but also tended to simply recreate the sound of conventional instruments; many times we heard quite ordinary melodies being played on a keyboard, except that the keyboard happened to be a synthesizer. It’s worth bearing this in mind as you delve into the extremely subtle tonal shadings of Ohno’s work, which are the result of pure process – the sounds here can only be created by electronic means, and the only method to arrange them involved tape editing. While this is not wildly different from the techniques used by many classical electro-acoustic composers, the results here are blessedly free from theories of structure and compositional techniques. The music just floats…it makes a lot of electronic music seem clumsy and stilted with its delicacy and weightless grace. One senses that Ohno worked in a very intuitive way, and Emura for one is convinced that Ohno has “broken free from musical genre…also from the very framework of the standard composition process”. The other thing that listeners will notice is how strange and almost impersonal the work is, a quality which is another product of Ohno’s unique personality, his reluctance to preach or express direct messages in his music. Outer space music has rarely sounded so outer-spacey, in short – cold, distant, alien, and forlorn. The release comes with a bonus mini-CD of Animal Noise Music called Choju Gigaku, and the composer himself explains how this oddity came about for the World Expo in Japan in 1970. He himself is charmingly baffled as to why anyone would want to reissue this obscure item which was intended for a very limited audience and sold virtually zero copies at the time. For the rest of us music fanatics, prepare to be delighted for 12 minutes of electronic animals singing their beautiful little tunes. I think the label has also pressed this as a nifty seven-inch vinyl item. Essential purchase!

Portrait of a Prodigy (EM RECORDS EM1099CD / MEDITATIONS MEDI 02CD) collects a number of recordings by the enigmatic Indian flautist T.R. Mahalingham, remastered from 78 rpm discs of the 1940s and 1950s. Indian music is not quite in my line, but it seems this fellow did much to reinvigorate the Carnatic tradition with his attempts to put more voicing and emotion into his playing. In doing this he caused some controversy among the purists, and made matters worse by his slightly disreputable lifestyle; an occasional gambler who was not very reliable or punctual, often arriving late for concerts or storming off the stage in the middle of a performance. These however could be taken as indicators of his perfectionism in music, and signs of a temperamental genius. I’m not at all versed in the traditions here, so have nothing to compare it to, but my ears tell me his playing is clearly detailed, taut, and very meticulous. He may not exactly be the John Coltrane of the Carnatic flute, but his music is beautiful to listen to.

Another record guaranteed to expose my musical chauvinism and ignorance of world music is Diew Sor Isan: The North East Thai Violin of Thonghuad Faited (EM1101CD). This album compiles a number of mid to late 1970s recordings of this exceptional player of the Sor Isan. The Sor Isan is a fairly grating instrument and its keening sound may be an acquired taste to Western ears at first spin, but some will also love its rawness and direct qualities. It’s a very distinctive voicing you don’t hear too often. Thonghuad Faited is notable as one of the few players who managed to bring the instrument to the fore, and achieved notoriety as a soloist – again, going against the grain of tradition. The music is completely beyond my ken, and I’d be lost without the contextual notes provided by Chris Menist and Maft Sai (who also compiled the release) – they achieve an interesting blend of musicology and regional history in their concise essay, and bring the story to life. All of these tunes have something to recommend them, whether it be a syrupy ethnic drone, an intriguing vocal part, or even a lightweight easy-listening “rock” backdrop with drums and guitars. The other thing I like is that while the Thai violin is the “lead” instrument, it’s clearly nothing like the sort of musical excess we would associate with jazz, improv, or rock solos, and rather than relentlessly propelling forwards, the music keeps circling in on itself in a compelling manner.

On Istikhbars & Improvisations (EM1096CD) we hear the piano music of Mustapaha Skandrani. This is another example of a relatively obscure musician whom Koki Emura clearly regards as a hidden gem and one most worthy of wider exposure. This Algerian musician recorded this music of his piano improvisations in 1965 under the auspices of a French patron, and once again it is something I have never heard the like of. Skandrani was trained in the traditions of Arabic or Andalucian music, but in the late 1930s he came under the influence of a musician named Hadj M’rizek, who was on a mission to modernise and update the traditional forms of hawzi and shaabi music. It seems that the piano, that most European of instruments (the development of the well-tempered clavier, and indeed the entire Western scale, is a fascinating tale in itself, full of competing factions), was considered totally unsuitable for the rendition of the half-tones and microtonal structure found in Andalucian music. On these 18 short and exquisite piano improvisations, Skandrani provides plenty of evidence to the contrary. Admittedly the grand piano in question was tuned especially to accommodate him, but even so it’s hard not to be flabbergasted by the precision and assurance with which he executes complex runs of notes and tricky Middle-Eastern intervals. The dryness of the recording only adds to the husky, spicy flavour of the music. The album upset quite a few musical purists on its release, so perhaps Skandrani is a visionary “outlaw” who appeals to this label for the same reasons as Mahalingham above. Even so, Mustapaha Skandrani was highly respected and successful in his field, and did many great things for Algerian music in his lifetime. It’s surprising that this was his one and only recording.

December 9, 2012

Two Vinyl Voltaggios

Colour Field

Texas musician Rick Reed is here with a sumptuous double LP called The Way Things Go (ELEVATOR BATH eeaoa035). I am ashamed to say we have had this in the vinyl waiting list since May 2011, if the release date is anything to go by. Reed is a composer who layers his tones using tone generators, synths, and radio waves, and believes in long-form duration to achieve his aims. There are only six tracks across this 83-minute double package, which gives you some idea of his sense of scale. Each work is an enormous abstract expressionist painting, with dramatic timbral shifts taking place across unexpected and subtle turns. Reed is not one of those near-silent mysterious droners, either; he gives you a lot to listen to, a lot to digest, and as well as thinking big, he also believes in making it loud. For full appreciation of these solid and very very continuous electronic drones, turn up amplifier loud and prepare to float in a colourful and intense atmosphere that has no end in sight. At least three titles give us a clue to the Rick Reed aesthetic: ‘Mesmerism’ is the effect he intends to have on your psyche, lulling you into a trance with his throbbing tones; ‘In a hazy field of gray and green’ is the precise visual analogue we need to understand the contours of this near-shapeless music, and through naming colours he suggests its rich tonal effects (unlike some droners, Reed does not neglect the root note); and ‘Celestial Mudpie’ indicates the more spiritual claims to his music, promising a heavenly experience to the listener, while at the same time admitting it’s not so grandiose, and he might not be much more than a kid in a sandbox making mudpies. I should stress that “muddiness” is not one of his characteristics though, and this heavy sound has been so well realised, recorded and pressed that when spun it passes on the complete desired punch, groove for groove, in highly vivid manner. Reed did the cover paintings too. The label is still puzzled why Rick Reed is not better known as a composer, and it’s true he does have enough droney capacity here to outlast any of his English counterparts – e.g. Colin Potter, Nurse With Wound, Mirror – who continue to receive many plaudits.

Expecting To Fly

A truly uncategorisable item is Come Ho Imparato A Volare (CORVO RECORDS CORE 002) by the Italian artiste Ezramo. This is evocative, lyrical art, created by a very gifted miniaturist. In just six short tracks we hear a bewildering variety of musical and sound-art techniques, all in the service of Ezramo’s peculiar minimal-poetry lyrics; she sings, plays piano, zither, harp and bells, and also collages field recordings. She also produced the drawings and texts for the whole sleeve. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that this gifted woman is primarily a gallery artist, who assisted at the 2011 Venice Biennale, and that this LP has its origins in an exhibition of the same name which was shown in 2009. In the two years following her Stuttgart success, she developed this music which I suppose (not having seen the exhibition) might be an aural rendition or re-casting of the same themes. She is interested in insects and larvae, as is Irene Moon but in a quite different way, and she intends to explore the idea of “transformation”. All the album’s titles refer to this concept, either obliquely or directly, and if you think the image of being wrapped in a cocoon is going to depict a comforting interpretation of human existence, quite the opposite. It’s fairly clear that the entire experience of “How I Learned To Fly” is sad, painful, uncertain, and even racked with torment. Despite moments of respite implied by the romantic piano fugues, the core of the work is quite insistent on these raw emotions, many of which are clearly very hard to express. I welcome this degree of honesty and truth in art, which is very rare. The printed text inside just sings to us about the painful primacy of existence, and our responsibility as human beings: “Wake up!! It’s not a dream…this is your resurrection, your gothic metallic electronical freakin pathetical southern bloody blooming resurrection”. It’s also evident that the gifted Ezramo, whose real name is Alessandra Eramo, knows exactly what effect / meaning / substance she is aiming for with each note she creates; not a single wasted moment across the entire LP, which is compact and accurate as a jet of ice cold water between the eyes. I also welcome this sort of discipline and economy in art. As to what it sounds like, besides the piano music episodes, there are two or three abstract tracks of intense hissing sounds which deliver all the tension and fear implied above; there are overdubbed vocals chanting absurdist la-la tunes in a stark manner; and an opening track that is an expressive metallic rattling episode, highly reminiscent of Ashley Paul’s music. The LP ends with a collage of sound effects and field recordings that seems to depict a dramatic and near-nightmarish Cinderella story – footsteps running, voices muttering, something going badly wrong at a concert with choral music and brass music. 300 hand-numbered copies of the “trade” edition, and 50 art edition copies which were inlaid with original drawings by the artist. Released in March 2012, this is one of the most beautiful records (aurally and visually) I have received this year.

November 11, 2012

Pause and think again

Big Numbers

It’s been a while since we heard from the excellent John Wall, a UK composer who has been continually honing his very extreme approach to the art of digital composition. I was rivetted by his earlier work like Alterstill ¹ which displayed his meticulous approach to layering and assembling samples, producing astonishing juxtapositions and creating “virtual bands” from highly unlikely pairings of selected records. He made most plunderphonics artistes, especially the over-rated John Oswald, look excessive and careless by comparison. Since then Wall embarked on a trajectory, a path of attenuation that was determined to pare down his already minimal approach, and the music became increasingly austere: shorter in duration, far fewer notes, much more abstracted, and even tougher for the human ear to endure. As he evolved this very fundamental take on the less-is-more philosophy, I sensed by the time of 2005′s Cphon that Wall was sacrificing some of his own human spontaneity on the altar of digital perfection, much as I enjoyed the music. That particular trend appears to be reversing itself on this new record 139 (ENTR’ACTE 139) for Entr’Acte. This may be partially because another human is involved; it is a collaboration with Mark Durgan, the English noisemeister whose 2005 Hypertension Classics Vol. 2 (4 CDs of blistering, churning hell released under his Putrefier alias) still causes murmurs of painful remembrance among the few whose ears it has scarred. On these six untitled pieces, Durgan has been issued with a modular synth, but any predilection he may have had for creating a blistering screech assault has been quashed by the iron control of Wall. Or has it? Minimal as this music may be, the compacted strength of a thousand noise firebrands still ticks away at its mechanical heart. Wall may be doing everything in his power to bleed away the rich colours from each inhuman tone, but as many seated behind the mixing desk have learned, you can’t keep a maverick down for long. Which brings us to the additional credit Wall has taken on the record, that of “severe editing”. One can imagine what this methodology involves, not only a ruthless and focussed effort of selection in order to reduce hours of music to a single powerful blip of concentrated juiceiness, but also carrying out the activity with a stern countenance and furrowed brow, thereby presenting the very image of severity. I’m all for it. If I had my way John Wall would be appointed as a sort of musical censor in this country, cutting down overlong contemporary electronica albums to a fraction of their current length. In fact, why stop there? If he could encode his method into a computer script in some way, it could come bundled with each new installation of Audacity or Max-MSP, and automatically curtail the music at source. That would teach a few people a thing or two! At slightly over 33 minutes in length, this is a record which offers you ten times as much vitamin-enriched protein as any given slice of venison…realised at Wall’s UtterPsalm studios, and it’s also nice to see he’s able to incorporate his letterpress skills (title embossed in blind) into the design of the package, which meets the generic Entr’acte packaging conventions halfway. From 29 March 2012.

It had a dying fall

From the Californian Accretions label we have the solo piano record by Nazo Zakkak, A Pause By Any Other Name (ACCRETIONS ALP055CD). This gifted composer who currently teaches music at St Katherine College in San Diego has been improvising at the keyboard since an early age, but his Pause record is a structured composition of slow and very beautiful piano music. Zakkak considers himself a modernist and experimental musician, but tends to embrace harmonic structure and melody rather than the indeterminism and alienating techniques of much contemporary classical music of the 1960s. In short nary a trace of John Cage’s dicta can be found embodied in this music, outside of a passing reference to Morton Feldman, whose piano music this superficially resembles in its use of space and very deliberate timing. According to Cecilia Sun’s liner notes, it is to English composers of the 20th century we must look if we want to find real spiritual forebears to Pause, among them Michael Nyman ², Howard Skempton, and Brian Eno. All those concerned in bringing this release into the light are reluctant to dub this music “ambient” without the application of various caveats, and while many listeners will be instantly reminded of Music For Airports when they hear this, it would be foolish to overlook the compositional methodology at work here. Although recorded entirely by the composer on this release, Pause is scored for four pianists, who are required to pay careful attention to the decay of each chord they play in the series, making use of the sustain pedal and listening closely to the dying chords of their fellow musicians. The act of decay itself plays a part as a trigger in the compositional process, in other words. The album arrives in a rather vague and grey piece of cover art, but it’s a not-unpleasant piece of music. From 14 March 2012.

Layer Cake

After all that composed music, how about something more performed and spontaneous to round out our day? We’ve been receiving quite a number of items from the Norwegian Hubro label this year, many of them real niftaroos. Hubro seem to specialise in bringing our attention to numerous talented instrumental bands, all capable of producing fascinating music which is impossible to classify, freely mixing within jazz, rock or improvised idioms. What also comes across is great fluency and skill in playing. No exception is the trio Cakewalk, whose debut album Wired (HUBRO CD2514) was released in May 2012. Øystein Skar, Stephan Meidell and Ivar Loe Bjørnstad play synth, guitar and drums and while they are more firmly situated in the improvised rock camp than some bands on the label, the classification pigeonhole drops away very quickly on hearing just a few bars of music. It’s just great instrumental playing with a lot of energy, fire, and innovation, without self-consciously trying to imitate styles or genres such as krautrock, jazz fusion, or psychedelic jamming music; all three players make inventive use of their instruments and generate strong, unusual sounds. I suppose it is fair to remark that the band really have only two modes – either taut fast rock riffing or swirly introspective offbeat droning – but the elements fuse together in very satisfying and surprising ways, and each piece evolves and grows naturally. What comes across strongly is the assurance and confidence in the playing, which is impressive for a debut album, but then all three players are quite experienced and have come to Cakewalk from earlier bands – among them Sacred Harp, Highasakite, The Sweetest Thrill, Kramacher, Vanilla Riot, Glow and the Hedvig Mollestad Trio. Quite a list of names there – what current explosions of talent might we be neglecting in that Nordic Realm? At one time the lazy journalists used to summarise Norway as the home of “Norwegian noise” – and nothing else! Excellent bands like Cakewalk are proving what nonsense that is.

UtterPsalm CD2, released in 1995. ↩
In particular his Decay Music (UK OBSCURE NO 6, 1976), which shares some common ground with this record. ↩

October 28, 2012

Blood Geometry: a complex and transcendental musical beast

Elysian Blaze, Blood Geometry, Osmose Productions, 2CD OPCD272 (2012)

“Blood Geometry” looks like the best album the one-man black metal act Elysian Blaze has made so far: if it were better known, it might well set a benchmark for funereal and depressive atmospheric black metal / doom. There’s not much really to fault here in production values, technical execution and intense emotional expression.A beautifully elegant piano instrumental “A Choir for Venus” starts the double set, accompanied by soft synthesiser wash that simulates distant sea waves, a yearning ghost choir and the occasional vocal by EB main man Mutatis. This introduces “The Temple is Falling”, a tremendous and epic track detailing an apocalyptic event occurring both externally and within the eyewitness who gives voice to the drama. The style of music is typical Elysian Blaze: a funereal pace, basic percussion which at times could be better, raw guitars with a jewel-like lead guitar solos, melodic grand piano trills, a cold and cavernous atmosphere of dark, sinister mood, and expressive vocals shrouded in reverb set far back in the mix. Ghost angel choirs add to the elegiac mood of this long piece. The music ebbs back and forth in energy, emotion and according to the narrative as set by the lyrics so there are periods of near-deathly quiet juxtaposed against bursts of anger, aggression and existential torment. Yet while the work is highly operatic in its musical extremes and can be very intense, especially in moments where there is just piano and solid blackness all around, it never seems self-indulgent or overwrought.If this weren’t enough, EB unveils “Sigils that Beckon Death”, a mini-trilogy of a journey of self-sacrifice to resurrection: not the familiar resurrection known to Christianity but a resurrection to a darker, grander and defiant godhead. The music is rebellious, malevolent and magnificent in its fury: fast percussion, multi-vocal roars and sighs, a ragged voice, deranged space-piano melodies and pouring showers of acid guitar noise paint the picture of a fallen deity rising perhaps to a new and different life. A sublime moment appears halfway where raw guitars are allowed to drone constantly while Mutatis growls and other voices sigh in the background amid echoing effects and fragmentary lead guitar and piano solo tunes. As with the previous track, there are passages of intense, concentrated quiet set against sudden outbursts of pounding music and emotion. The track is a major highlight of the album though the ending is very drawn out. Title piece “Blood Geometry” is a sorrowful piece dominated by piano and organ that rounds out Disc 1.After a short introductory track, “Pyramid of the Cold Son” picks up where Disc 1 leaves off: it’s a ponderous track with eerie space-ambient synth tones and washes, and less emphasis on black metal guitar shower. Past the halfway mark the track becomes more black metal and faster in parts.

Now the major track of the album “Blood of Ancients, Blood of Hatred” is upon us. The 37-minute opus is deserving of full album status itself. The major challenge for EB is to make it internally consistent. It starts off as a sludgey ponderous piece with slow, almost lazy drumming and burning guitars while the vocal rages. There is a surprising section in the track where piano takes over and makes merry with a sprightly tune. This track has everything: buzzing guitar drones that veer into derangement through a change of key, a rollercoaster ride through nooks and crannies of dark and intensely concentrated quiet, blasts of aggression, cascades through anguish and despair, atmospheric washes expressing solitude, martial episodes. Just when we think “Blood of Ancients …” couldn’t be any more intense, along come the last six minutes of the track with a repeating riff of heraldic guitar, organ, sighing choirs, plaintive spacey effects and Mutatis’s own tortured vocal: sheer intense emotion piles on over and over in the ridiculously simple minimalism of this section. This is a really transcendental work of music and the album could have ended at this point.

This double-setter is very much what I expected of EB plus more; in addition to guitars, percussion, grand piano and organ, Mutatis has added what appears to be orchestral and symphonic elements where the narrative arc of the album calls for something majestic and truly epic. The result is a complex musical beast that, however long and operatic it is, never feels bloated or overdone. The one thing that would be considered a drawback is the percussion: it doesn’t quite match the music for power. There are many, many moments on the album that call for thunder and the music would be greatly enhanced if Mutatis had a live drummer with the intelligence, skill, flexibility and strength to create and maintain complex percussion beats and rhythms that could take some of the load off the guitars and vocals. I respect that Mutatis may want full control over the EB project but there comes a point in the project’s evolution where the music and the ideas and themes it’s supposed to express become bigger than the person in charge of it and if it’s to progress any further, Mutatis will need extra musicians and input from others.

It would be worthwhile for Mutatis to make this concession to the music and he would still be master of the project’s direction and vision which is very strong and focussed to the point of obsession.

Contact: Osmose Productions

October 14, 2012

A Round Cube

Plaistow Patricia

Lacrimosa (INSUBORDINATIONS NETLABEL INSUB.DLT01) has some fine instrumental music from the Swiss trio Plaistow, comprising Johann Bourquenez on the piano supported by the bass guitar of Raphaël Ortis and the drumming of Cyril Bondi. In their own understated way, these three talented Europeans are doing a lot to overturn a listener’s expectations of jazz trio conventions, and on this album frankly own their interest in the minimal piano arpeggios of Glass and Reich, allied with a solid approach to mechanical drum and bass playing. On the title track this results in some 23 minutes of compelling, repetitive music which won’t let your ears go nor surrender its friendly embrace as it weaves you, the unwilling dancer, around a virtual grand ballroom. Bourquenez in particular fills out the cold precision of standard minimalist techniques through striking rich and warm chordal shapes that evolve and shift in line with very human, intuitive rules…he paints chord changes in diffuse watercolour mode, rather than delineating them sharply in the style of a Mondrian or Ellsworth Kelly. Then we have the equally warm and human rhythm section, who far from acting as a two-man version of the sequencers on a Massive Attack album (as they would seem to wish, according to the press pack), provide a suitably solid structure for the colourful piano drapery to unfold. The results in this case are like a tent of the Bedouin in the desert of contemporary music. On ‘Cube’, the bassist and drummer are showcased with far more complex and tricky time signatures and flourishes that owe as much to European progressive rock as they do to trip-hop. Bourquenez meanwhile restricts himself to single-note plucks that have been treated and filtered to resembled the obsessive plectrummings of a very disciplined lead guitarist. On dirait a more laid-back version of 1970s Miles Davis without any egotistic posturings…it’s supremely accurate music, the tautness of every note and the simplicity of the clean, direct approach is just a delight. They’ve released five albums to date and Plaistow have made all their music available free for download as a matter of principle, and find this attitude doesn’t damage sales of physical product at their concerts; hence they found a home on the Insubordinations net label. The “feathery” cover art may not be much to look at, but the music is like a muscular “wee gem” lettuce standing on two sturdy legs.

In Dreams I Walk With You

American oneirist Joe Frawley has self-released a lot of his oeuvre, but 13 Houses And The Mermaid (TRS013) was put out by Time Released Sound, a small hand-made USA label which specialises in tiny editions with individually crafted covers. I wish I’d told you sooner about this fine item which arrived here 09 March 2012, as it’s already sold out at the website. Musically, Frawley works with his familiar techniques of layering his romantic piano fugues with exquisite sound-collages, using spoken word and sound effects. Previous works (no less beautiful) have resembled elaborate literary puzzles which, given enough time and a library of Borgesian proportions, we might be able to decode. 13 Houses And The Mermaid by contrast is more fragmented in its underlying meanings, much more dreamlike in its connections, and sparing in its distributed verbal and visual clues. There are however suggestive themes which recur from previous records; train travel, and the image of a lost or homeless young woman. Imagine a very fractured, evanescent form of cinema, much like the impossibly wonderful miniatures which Joseph Cornell used to craft through his patient editing and distillation of existing footage. Frawley is also content to align himself with David Lynch’s films, most likely the confusing and labyrinthine structure of Lost Highway. Frawley doesn’t quite probe into the same dark corners of noir psychology, nor are his charming “dreamstories” especially threatening; but in his measured and crafted manner, he does succeed in stirring nostalgic emotions in a completely unique fashion. Aided by Greg Conte and Melanie Skriabine, whose musical and vocal improvisations were incorporated into the composition.

The Mystery of the Red Dragon

Enigma of the month was sent to us on 08 March 2012 and may have arrived from Manchester. Only a small red printed symbol on the hand-made card cover gives any indication of the creator’s name, and said symbol is also stamped on the four postcards inserted in glassine wallets inside the cover. The murky grey images may correspond in some way to the four pieces of sound-art on the CDR, which is likewise a thoroughly baffling spin. The second track is 17 minutes of uncertain vaguely musical plucks on what might be an underwater guitar or a harp strung with lengths of chewing gum, surrounded by some equally hesitant percussive noises. So far this resembles music made by two shy ghosts in white sheets who won’t even come out of hiding as they perform their wispy and ethereal music only for the ears of those who dwell in the phantom zone. The recording itself has a slight hiss too, adding to the distancing effect. After this, the third track is just about identifiable as saxophone music, a lone horn played with such a melancholy quaver and sob of futility that you want to go and throw a warm blanket around the shivering husk of a man who’s making this music. Shortly, he’s joined by the rhythm section – some guy rattling the steel bannisters of a deserted factory stairway. Or is it the underwater guitar again? This music plays hob with a man’s senses until you start to feel somewhat unreal, floating in a dreamlike world where logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead. At length, a piano joins the ensemble and somehow the music gradually begins to coalesce into a washed-out, wafer-thin parody of improvised jazz. You were expecting melodies, maybe? Forget about that…the “Red Monad” group, as I shall temporarily refer to them, take atonality in music into a new dimension, and this forlorn track stumbles along like a wounded insect walking across a plate of Copydex glue. There are two other tracks, including the gritty short opener of chuntering noise which might almost be mistaken for field-recording type music (of the industrial machinery genre), and the last four-minute piece which contains more full-bodied playing, continuous rather than broken sounds, and evidence where the musicians are communing with emotions that resemble warmth and compassion. You’ll find the pace of this one infuriatingly slow, but if you can find your way to the core of this very extreme music, I’m fairly certain it will be something you have never heard before. Assuming you can ever find a copy, that is. The “Red Monad” group have chosen the path of complete anonymity and I have absolutely zero information to pass on about contacts, names, or websites, nor even a recognisable project name. If the creators wish to make themselves known, qu’ils le disent!

July 30, 2012

Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence

Sumptuous vinyl item here called Beasts For While (OWNNESS 11) from Collection of the Late Howell Bend. I was lucky enough to be sent a copy last summer (it was released October 2010), but if I’d bought a copy purely on the strength of that powerful cover painted by Matt Minter (not that there are many record shops in the world now where that scenario is possible) and brought this red vinyl pulsater talisman back home in one piece, I’d be praising the Gods of vinyl for my good fortune. Just four tracks, four eerie songs, from the trio of Irene Moon, Krysten Davis and Chantelle Dorsey. They perform with synths, violin, piano, a keyboard that makes a outer-space organ sound to rank with Sun Ra’s Solar Sound Instrument, and those singing voices – brittle, dour, spooky, cold….setting forth terrifying poetry in song with deathly precision and the cold certainty of predestination, as if retrieving lost Celtic folk songs from ancient days, or weaving spells….occult songs of night skies, stars, witches, old oak trees…strange processional marches to an unknown doom…

The mysterious worlds of Irene Moon have been something of a personal obsession here for a number of years, ever since we received a copy of the 2006 split LP they made with Warmer Milks. Intrigued by these primitive electronics (it sounded like electronic music made on wooden instruments) I wrote to the Begonia Society and received much treasured bounty in return. Among other things, it made me aware of the uncanny Auk Theater productions, videos of which can be witnessed on YouTube and UbuWeb. Irene Moon has been combining her entomological studies with music since 1997, and it would be wonderful if some day a kindly soul could gather together all the released effluvia from these endeavours, rescuing them from obscure cassettes and seven-inchers, and putting together a 3-CD+DVD box set that, if released and heard, would subtly begin a series of seismic events across the globe. However, that would be counter-productive; culture of this quality needs relative secrecy to thrive.

Back to the LP glowing in its red vinyl pressing like a meteor from Mars and its geometric sigils for labels. Even the size of it is a bit odd, not quite a full size twelve inch album. It’s a freakish 11″ to be precise – how could that even get manufactured? The recording quality is intimate, putting us in the room (hopefully a dark and damp cellar) with the instruments and their players, a muffled piano, a murmuring bass synth tone, and the uncanny creeped-out space organ sound (like a demented harpsichord). The one-take, spontaneous and creaky nature to these performances gives the impression the music is both instantly spontaneous, yet also composed and rehearsed. The ‘HaHa’ song sounds like the trio are almost making up the lyrics on the spot, yet they chime together telepathically on the repeated sections with nearly spot-on timing, uttering mirthless laughter in song like the three furies spinning a terrible fate. ‘Ruby In The Dust’ is as close to a love song as you’ll hear from the band here, but even the idea of couples meeting and communicating, ‘walking down the street…chance for eyes to meet’, is sung in such resigned, hollowed-out tones that love is rendered as remote a possibility as mankind ever landing on the planet Pluto. ‘Dominated By Splendor’ is the occultist highlight of side A, a spine-chilling nocturne of tangled words that’s underpinned by music bordering on the obsessive, I mean the single-minded way its spare notes are repeated…this is the one that transforms the trio into the three witches from Macbeth, the “weird sisters” creating a curse in song form. It’s fortunate that the record ends with a comparatively melodic and heartfelt instrumental, or we’d all be sleeping less easily in our beds tonight. This record is both intensely beautiful and quite terrifying, everything we should expect from real art. Mental note to self: any LP with skulls on the cover and red-orange colour scheme should be purchased instantly.

May 13, 2012

You’ve got some Nervatura

We received a generous bundle of recent releases from Gill Arnò in Brooklyn which arrived 20 December 2011, representing output from his Unframed Recordings label. Among the audio items is Nervatura / U (UNFRAMED UF/U006) released by Arnò himself, and it comprises three pieces he realised at Campo in Chicago, wrapped in a sizeable artwork which unfolds concertina-like into a frieze of thermal-sensitive images. This CDR is a second edition of an item previously released (just ten copies) as Unframed 10.e006 in 2008. The first short 6 minute piece contains identifiable field recordings rescued from the street, including what may be trolley cars or trains passing by, but somehow Arnò has managed to capture a snapshot of urban life that pushes the inhabitants right to the background, even pushing them out of the picture altogether where possible. This is followed by 11 minutes of very abstract wind-like droning sound, but if we can hear past the semi-opaque layers then the street sounds begin to reaffirm themselves, perhaps the warm chatter and clink of a crowded restaurant. It’s like riding on a subway train and being able to simultaneously see all levels of a transparent shopping mall rising above us. The droning rumble drops away and the picture of the muted crowd gradually comes into focus, soon to be overlaid with a slightly higher sound which may have been drawn from another level of the imaginary city palace, on another day completely. The long list of map grid references which follow the titles of the work start to make sense, and Arno’s compositional method is to overlay and contrast the varying timbres picked up by his sensitive microphones from these different locales. Part three stretches out for a good 19 minutes, and feels like it’s emphasising the sound of machinery and metal, perhaps the whirring of an active elevator shaft, or the collection of trashcans taking place some 500 feet away from the recording site, or a very dormant and sluggish railway yard slowly coming to life. Gill Arnò’s achievement here has been to assemble his sources into subtle yet meaningful arrangements, which communicate strong impressions of space and shape without too much heavy editorialising. There have been many attempts by field recordists to reveal the hidden face of the city, but this one succeeds without any pretensions towards mysticism or psycho-geography, and is an honest and convincing piece of work. As to the artist’s own statement of intent and methodology used, see the image from Gill’s letter.

Francisco López is one who has famously used processed field recordings of urban areas and arrived at results that are totally different to Gill Arno’s impressionistic pictures. On Untitled #275 (UNSOUNDS 26U), which we received in November 2011, López turns his craft in a more musical direction, applying a live multi-channel recording system to the prepared piano of Reinier van Houdt. On the first movement, Houdt’s piano is to the fore, and that instrument pounds out a series of quite alarming percussive minimal strokes that sonically sit halfway between machine-gun fire and the keys of an old-fashioned typewriter, said device being operated by a loopy Dadaist poet composing a vitriolic message against the petit bourgeoisie. About mid-point the piece enters a mood of dangerous seething calm, before gradually building up the tension again with carefully-orchestrated keystrokes, each one a bundle of constrained emotion – isolated notes, dissonant chord combinations, and a relentless metronome-like patter characterise this section. It’s almost a relief when this neurotic torture ends, and the remaining half of this 22-minute opus drifts away on a sea of near-silence and suffused slow chords that resemble the ghost of Satie paying a fleeting visit to the salon. If there is indeed a mechanism involved somewhere in this prepared piano set-up, it’s as though the clockwork device had run out of steam halfway through, leaving us to confront a void.

This torment is positively benign compared to the horrors of ‘Movement 2′, where López takes the above recording away in a tumbrel cart and subjects it to what he describes as “evolutionary studio treatments”. There’s a euphemism if ever there was. It’s more like a radical reconstruction of sound, occupying a nether world between composition, field recording and electro-acoustic music, and in this rather nightmarish zone each percussive bleat of the prepared piano is transformed into the clankings and groanings of an infernal machine. Even the smallest of Van Houdt’s keyboard-playing gestures has been fiendishly detoured, such that he is now pressing the buttons that operate a factory of doom, a winch of death, or a murderous metal robot. Thankfully, the violent and dramatic opening does subside eventually, and the piece mutates into a bleak, desolate world of abstract cloudery where the horizon starts to fade away and we lose our footing. Occasional forlorn piano notes, by now heavily disguised and muffled, attempt to peek through the canopy of gloom and provide some warmth, but it’s a desperate, futile action. There’s a strange beauty to be found in contemplating this washed-out environment, an activity with which we can occupy ourselves before the mechanical watch-grinding effect start to reassert itself after 20 minutes. Thereafter, it’s merely like being mashed in the gears of a gigantic clock for ten minutes, praying that we can somehow avoid being clubbed into a pulp by the chiming hammers when midnight finally strikes. López has indeed created a very “immersive” record here, it just depends if you can face being immersed in its bittersweet combinations of machine-like violence and baleful gloom.

May 5, 2012

Unseen Chariots

An intriguing mix of methods was used by Szilárd to realise his Spokes (PALAVER MUSIC PM001) album, which happens to be his solo debut and the first release on Palaver Press, and it arrived here from Brooklyn in December 2011. Ambient drones, plangent and suffused guitar playing, romantic piano music, field recordings of nature’s bounty (perhaps forests and bonfires) and spoken word using text from the French romantic poet Baudelaire, can all be heard on this gently beautiful album. All these elements are layered together so that the whole piece “rotates and shifts”, and gradually the suggestion of a narrative emerges from the textures, tones, and diverse droplets of information. It reminds me in places of a more subdued and discursive version of Joe Frawley, joined in places by a slow-motion Greg Malcolm. Szilárd is Jeremy Young who used to play the guitar in a post-rock band and is now making his first forays into experimental music, following a solo performance in Beijing at the behest of Yan Jun, the renowned Chinese sound artist and music critic. Young is clearly maintaining his Asian contact base, scoring films for Tomonari Nishikawa and inviting Aki Onda ¹ to contribute to the present release, and there is a certain “zen-like” vibe emanating from his soothing electro-acoustical work. Spokes may be slow-moving and almost static in places, but does not wear out its welcome nor descend into trite sentimentalities.

No less generous when it comes to the delivery of atmospheric clouds of mixed sound is Nord/Ouest (NEXSOUND NS67), a three-part piece of performed electro-acoustic music made by four Ukrainians. Alla Zagaykevych composed this enigmatic and dense statement on the “geo-poetical” condition of the world today, and he performs live electronics, Theremin and computer programming on the record; Sergiy Okhrumchuk adds a skittery violin to induce further tensions and stormy headaches into the mix, while Vadim Jovich supplies restless and nervy percussion blows that resemble the rattling of dry twigs on parched bones. Lastly there’s the vocalist Iryna Klymenko, hollering her strident folk-music inflected ululations with a sinewy assurance, thus completing what is a tasty and nourishing blend of chamber instruments, electronics, and human voice. This judicious small-ensemble approach is undoubtedly what keeps the music sounding so intimate and vivid, even when the gaseous billows of atonal music are so wildly unfamiliar to the ears. There are musicians who attempt this sort of thing and can’t seem to escape the trap of “blended frequencies”, by which I mean a steady decline into a flat, soupy morass of similar-sounding droniness. The Electroacoustic’s Ensemble ², by contrast, maintain crisp separation throughout, such that all performers are clearly identifiable as surely as if they were specimens of insects pinned to a board. Which brings us neatly to the underlying theme of this unusual and enlightening record, which draws its inspiration directly from the folklore of North-West region of the Ukraine, a culture which is apparently characterised by its untethered and free-spirited thinking, yet also remains sunk in a very closed-off, isolated enclave. These central conflicts, mixed with a healthy interest in “primitive mystery and elusiveness”, have produced the sumptuous blends we now enjoy. Zagaykevych is a graduate of the National Music Academy in Kyiv and has studied at IRCAM, but the academic programme has not transformed him into a dry, patronising composer who wishes to fossilise folk culture through the medium of serious music. On the contrary, when you spend 15 or 20 minutes in the company of this mystical warbler, you will find yourself instantly attuned to the natural energies of the birds, fish, snails, trees and flowers which adorn the cover drawn by Alex Vorodeyev. What dark secrets might that sentient bird hold in its skull?

By chance, the composer Lubomyr Melnyk also happens to have been born in the Ukraine, although is based in Canada where he released much of his work on the Bandura Records label in the 1980s. The Voice Of Trees (HINT 12) was originally written in 1983 and now surfaces on the Swiss Hinterzimmer label, with an evocative photo and engraving collage of a stag in a forest, and may indeed constitute a thoughtful reissue of the Bandura original. A dance piece scored for two pianos and three tubas, it’s a prime example of the composer’s “continuous music”, a musical form which is largely based around Melnyk’s own personal technique of playing the piano using large numbers of notes packed densely into a compacted space, quite often performed at some speed. The important thing is that he’s able to sustain this approach for a generous length of time, as these two suites – both over 30 minutes apiece – will attest. Contrasting with the very tonal and melodic arpeggios of the three high-speed multi-note pianos, we hear the tuba section holding down a slower and slightly more sober counter-melody. The combined effect of all this is little short of majestic. It would be a pleasure to recommend this beautiful record to all listeners who enjoy the arpeggiated sonorities of Glass, Palestine and Riley, but Melnyk is free from any sort of conceptual-minimalist expectations and is free to soar high on his romantic wings. The wings of a Golden Eagle.

Also arrived late December and also with trees featuring prominently on the cover is Frieda Harris (HEART & CROSSBONE HCB036) by Katchmare, which happens to be another alias for the American musician Nick Hoffman. Katchmare’s intention here is not to expound on the joys of nature, but rather to dwell on the occult rituals embedded in the Winter solstice, to arrive at a meditation on the cycles of life and death. The opening track ‘Winterreise’ is, in title at least, a nod in the direction of classical composer Franz Schubert, but the underlying theme of the record is rooted in occult matters and makes explicit its homage to Frieda Harris. She was the wife of a baronet in England, mostly known for her association with Aleister Crowley. She became a sorceress in her own right, developed the concept of Projective Synthetic Geometry, and applied its rules to the design of the Thoth tarot cards which she painted for Crowley. Katchmare evokes all of the above evil complexity by using musical designs of almost pristine simplicity and purity; the opening 25-minute track, described as a “saturnine and freezing drone”, is a superbly bleak piece of gently-pulsating music with a thin, lugubrious and eerie tone, and the piece turns into a brilliantly enigmatic conclusion of gentle thumping as of unwanted poltergeists in the attic space above. ‘Wind Canticle’ is, I suppose, more conventionally threatening and unlike its washed-out twin it has as much presence as the instant thunderstorm whipped out of nowhere by Karswell, the magician in ‘Casting The Runes’ by M.R. James. I also appreciate the creeped-out effects on ‘Shifting Snow’ and ‘Ulrikke’; both are quite short yet evoke infinite landscapes with an economy of means, and I like the way the uncertain electronic sounds morph into even more uncertain shapes. This is a fine release which improves significantly on the basic model of Depressive / Cold / Ambient Black Metal, by dint of its restraint, discipline, and intellectual subtext. Originally recorded in 2008; here it is as a limited CDR.

Both Nishikawa and Onda live in NYC. ↩
Oh! I hate that apostrophe, but it seems to be part of their name. ↩

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.