A quite gorgeous episode of contemporary free-jazz is Yuria’s Dream (VETO RECORDS / EXCHANGE 009), where the musicians paint a favourable portrait of sleepwalking, restless nights and scads of rapid eye movement with their free-flowing, ever-shifting sounds. The blend of instruments is delirious enough: Christoph Erb‘s wobbly and queasy saxophone, Jason Roebke‘s bass sighing deeply like a chronic insomniac, and the exquisite vibraphone work of Jason Adasiewicz adding the requisite sprinklings of magic stardust from the surreal dream-fairy as ordained by Paul Delvaux (who I would like to think has set up a permanent functioning Dream Agency from his home in Heaven). But there’s also the fluid structure of the work itself – an unbroken 43 minutes of assured playing, which threads the listener through various dream-states such as restlessness, agitation, discomfort, as well as more enchanting and delightful sleepy sensations characterised by sweet major sevenths and other mixed chords, plus certain more occluded passages which are just plain unfathomable in their mysterious candour. The three players perform in such sympathy that they are completely at one with the lovely Yuria, whoever she may be, and the result is a communally shared dream. It’s another Chicago-Switzerland handshake, decorated with a handsome silkscreen printed sleeve, as are all releases on Veto Records. Recorded November 2013, arrived here in February 2014.
Seeded Plain is a performance duo formed of Bryan Day (the owner of Public Eyesore and Eh? labels) and Jay Kreimer. On Provincial Stammer (BUG INCISION RECORDS bim-63), we’ve got seven recordings made in 2012 where they are playing amplified metal objects to produce an intriguing semi-musical effect. In amongst the nondescript groans, rattles, clanks, and other rather inert sounds, occasional percussive patterns bubble to the surface, along with fragments of broken melodies. Kreimer is also a sculptor and the duo are probably playing some of his home-built instruments. This music isn’t directly comparable to free improvisation, and it’s more about showcasing various unusual and mysterious sounds in a sort of open-ended performance space, allowing the listener to wander around the vaguely-mapped terrain to some degree and draw their own conclusions. This is their fifth album since 2008’s Land Tracts. From 19 February 2014.
The idea behind Chris Whitehead‘s Habitats for Metal Plants (LINEAR OBSESSIONAL RECORDINGS LOR048) is that the very soil of Britain has been undergoing a process of ecological change over the last several hundred years. He’s not directly concerned with global warming here, so much as the fact that the earth itself now contains a vast amount of metal content, a direct result of industrialisation, factories, metal works and other such plants. The double-meaning of the word “plant” itself is also likely to be part of the conceit. His observations in biology convince him that plants have adapted to this metal-laden condition, and are able to incorporate any alien elements they find in the soil into their makeup, and continue to thrive. I thought at first reading this might be another familiar “grass growing through the concrete” motif, but it’s actually quite different and far more specific, a unique product of Whitehead’s imaginative approach to science. There are three recordings on this short release, all of them carefully constructed according to the precepts of Whitehead’s theory, and the idea is that if you play them to your own houseplants you will be subjecting them to the type of “metallic vibrations” which they apparently crave. To achieve this effect, it appears that he has combined some suitably industrial field recordings – one of them from a magnesium works, another from a ball-bearing factory – with minimal musical effects, which resemble violin stabs and strange droning murmurs. I’m frankly unsure as to how “serious” this is all meant to be, and the inserted drawing by Whitehead depicting a flower which has metamorphosed its own roots into a metal cage (to imprison a villainous spider) is so whimsical that Edward Lear might have sketched it in one of his sprightly moments and included it in the pages of his Nonsense Botany of 1872. As sound art, it’s quite good, albeit rather slow and cold. From 4th February 2014.