On CD August-September (SPECTRAL HOUSE sh008), the American minimal player Bill Thompson combines his electronics set-up with the prepared contrabass of Brent Fariss.
We’ve been kept up to date with Thompson’s recent solo releases since his sojourn in London, but in 2006 (when these recordings were made) he was still in Austin and associated with the label Spectral House. This operation is also based in Austin Texas and through its small catalogue is predicated on contemporary music from that area alone; as such, Alex Keller (the minimal sound artist who brought us the amazing Blackout, among other gems) unsurprisingly has appeared on it, but also The Gates Ensemble which includes the lovely Josh Ronsen. Said label founded by Fariss and Thompson. Today’s record recorded at the Loft, presumably a venue in Austin; though it doesn’t say as much on the wrapper, the recordings were made in 2006 and originally came out on a CDR.
Compared to Thompson’s recent confident, single-minded explorations, this release has an interesting degree of hesitancy, a sense of entering into a bargain where the terms and conditions are vague and the outcome isn’t entirely clear. One might say he’s making a tentative foray into the soupy worlds of “electro-acoustic” improvisation, except that Thompson is known for his works using his moog guitar, plus he’s playing amplified percussion on these recordings…what’s interesting is to hear his spellbinding, low-key hum as Fariss cuts into it with his scrapey bass notes, except to describe it that way makes it sounds violent and pro-active, characteristics not to be found on today’s release. Yet ‘august’ – by rights one should express the word all lower-case here – still seethes with some sort of tension, not a quality I’ve usually found on Thompson’s more recent meditational and peaceful solo works. Are those chirping insects coming to visit us halfway through? I don’t like the looks of those locusts or the twitching antennae on these hissing cockroaches, but I suppose worse and more alien scenarios have been played out before. Maybe through this delicate tension – a suspension of multiple elements, including electronic, acoustic, pre-recorded, and semi-random – our two players can give an illustrated lecture about the importance of rapprochement in a diplomatic situation, except they didn’t perform it at a foreign embassy.
The ‘september’ performance floats in a similar lite-buzz broth, but it’s also capable of turning into a blackening cloud billowing over the horizon, while the unknown (by me) moments can include uncertain percussive rattles and bumps, but also an evidently processed contrabass “solo” which emerges as something turbo-charged through its treatment, and putting us in a space beyond the twee antics of “extended technique” and into a much darker place. To put it another way, the bass of Brent Fariss is in fact a black bear. I’d also like to mention something about the periods of silence and inactivity in ‘september’, except the pollsters may have beaten me to it…it’s not about a time and motion study, more about expressing a huge weight of uncertainty and doubt. Yet by the end of the piece the duo have worked out how to express a rhythmic rise-and-fall figure that restores hope to the bleakened soul. From 27th October 2022.
Available from Burning Harpsichord Records.