Jubilee (ROOM 40 RM4169) is by Robert Takashi Crouch, A Los Angeles artist whose work I never heard before, but it’s to do with sound art, performance, and technology. Matter of fact the long piece ‘A Ritual’ here comes from a 2014 recording of a private performance. Like Giannone below, it’s drone music with a feeling of tremendous “import”, but Crouch I think is addressing some very deep and very personal themes in his work, which might account at some level for the very serious tone of these 19:44 minutes. The drone rises and falls as many drones do, but I like the way that a part of the shapeless mass – perhaps the head of a giant – seem to holds itself in place against the slow-moving buzzsaw of doom without flinching. A statement on mankind’s inexorable fate, for sure.
There’s also a shorter piece ‘I’ve Been A Part of Evil-Doing’, where I gather our man Crouch expresses intense remorse for all the sin in the world, including his own, regretting those times where he has wronged others, while stopping quite some way short of making a full Catholic confession. Much melancholy here too, and while not quite as intense as the above ‘Ritual’, plenty penitence for the guilty listener. The last cut ‘Reconciliation’ seems to complete this soul-purging trilogy, in title at least, and the accompanying music that goes with this epiphany achieves a certain grandiosity that passes on a strange sensation of slow-motion uplift for the listener.
Crouch himself is evidently very well-informed about modernism and many forms of post-post everythingism, to the extent that his convoluted press release here – taking the form of a letter to the label owner Lawrence English – is full of provisional remarks and what-ifs. He sees obstacles and failures everywhere, and one wonders if he despairs of real communication, as he strives to locate his work in “the intersection of post-phenomenological listening practices”, a phrase which I don’t understand. However, one part is clear enough: “In my life I’ve felt the sting of emotional abuse, racism, classism, and homophobia,” he declares, and with this very human plea for tolerance, it might make sense to accept Jubilee as having its place within a personal healing process for the artist. If so, then full marks. (30/09/2021)
Christina Giannone (New York artist) arrives with Zone 7 (ROOM 40 RM4166), which she explains is to do with zones and portals and some form of escapism…making transcendent journeys into the subconscious world. This nebulous process may derive from her grasp, or even the practice, of a technique she calls “focused psychological exploration”; the main outcome of it seems to be a willingness to surrender or turn off the conscious mind, and find a way into the “other state”. May appeal to readers of Aldous Huxley, or followers of the Surrealists, but Giannone’s goal is not simply about self-realisation, rather a means of equipping yourself with tools for survival and finding an “oasis of peace” within. She conveys all this with her intense, ambient, drone music. Despite her worthy intentions, the music seems anonymous and ordinary, never delivering on the promise portended by its sonorous airs. (19/01/2022)