Grace (FUTURA RESISTENZA RESCD001) by Lucy Liyou and Eric Frye is winning me over with its fractured attempts at communication. These two American artists are making a statement about healing, recovery from trauma, but they’re approaching it in a rather oblique way – content and ideas were exchanged between the two in a process of emailing and editing and re-editing. Frye has made a number of records over time, sometimes appearing as Constant-Pattern Solutions, but he’s often informed by conceptual ideas and ideas from the worlds of science, technology, and philosophy; he seems to have contributed an “algorithmic composition” method to Grace, which may mean computer programming. Both he and Liyou make use of those text-to-speech programs that dog our lives so much, and Liyou appears to be bringing in found texts, diaries, messages and texts…the smatterings of intelligible text which do surface are quite mechanical, yet also somehow rather poignant, their cryptic utterances hanging in the middle of a field of unfamiliar and heavily-edited sounds. It’s as though the last traces of humanity were gamely trying to make themselves heard through the impossible weight of technology in which the world is now wrapped. This may make Grace sound cold and conceptual, but it’s strangely moving, poetical, and full of mysterious intrigue. From the odd label in Brussels and Rotterdam which brought us the marginal Fernand Schirren LP in 2021. (14/09/2022)
On Shadow Phase (ROOM 40 RM 4153), Australian composer Peter Knight plays his trumpet through a considerable number of effects, pedals, delays, and very long tape loops. He explicitly intends to degrade his own sound until it’s no longer recognisable. There’s also something to do with exploring the process of exhalation; one suspects he’d be content to simply leave behind a print of his own breath on the tapes, as if subtracting all musical content from it, but what’s ended up here is long tones and rather sentimental-sounding drone music. There’s a lot more to it; his notes describe living through the “shadow of Covid”, the loss of an old friend and teacher, the value of the subconscious and automatic processes, and long bike rides. With the help of Fia Fiell (synths) on one track, and Jacques Emery (bass) on another. Wistful, melancholic. (14/09/2022)
Long and drawn-out sounds also feature on Omokentro (BOHEMIAN DRIPS BD016), the new record by duo Nabelóse; this results from the circumstances of its performance inside a huge water reservoir, which is now used as an auditorium in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg. Matter of fact our two performers semi-composed the work with this space in mind, intending to exploit its acoustics. The French horn of Elena Kakaliagou (from Zeitkratzer) is accompanied by the prepared piano of Ingrid Schmoliner, and both of them use their voices too. Amazingly alien and haunted sounds result; the duo create the effect of a sad, melancholic giant cooped up in a metal canister, moaning to be released. The players go to considerable lengths to create new and innovative sounds from their respective instruments. ‘Wolf’s Path’ is my personal favourite; packed with ominous mood, the thunks of the piano sound like the repeated shutting of a coffin lid, attempting to keep down the corpses of long-dead ideas from politicians and other enemies of mankind, which continue to stifle the world. Last heard them as a duo on their 2017 LP for Corvo Records, though they also form two-thirds of the PARA trio. (14/09/2022)
On Seven Poems On Water (ONZE HEURES ONZE ONZ043), Julien Pontvianne and Abhra join forces to set poems to music – or rather recast them into song form, intending to invoke the spirit of water. Pontvianne (saxophone) did the compositions, and the music is played by Francesco Diodati, Alexandre Herer, Adele Virat and Matteo Bortone, producing a sort of sketchy-minimal chamber jazz with very strong melodic elements. On top of this skeletal frame, the delicate wispy vocals of Swedish singer Isabel Sorling do float. The creators have done well to find a good sampling of water-related texts and poems, drawing on the printed works of W.G. Sebald, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, and more; more to the point, it’s a very international selection, including a Turkish poem by Nazim Hikmet at the end. This cosmopolitan approach extends to the band Abhra themselves, a mix of French, Italian, and Swedish musicians. Fave cut: ‘This Is Where The Sea Ends, excerpted from the text Oceano Mare written by Alessandro Baricco; music of quite remarkable weightlessness, and as impressionistic as an entire exhibition of Monet’s lilies. Alejandra Garcia did the cover art. (14/09/2022)