Ad-hoc improvising group VÖ here on The Sounds of VÖ (THANATOSIS PRODUKTION THT19), a double-CD set and featuring some of our favourite Swedish players of recent years. Eva Lindal of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra made that impressive and unusual Bäver record with her sister Anna, and Johan Berthling recorded Björnhorn for this label, a lugubrious solo double bass album. And there’s Alex Zethson also, who composed the perplexing Some Of Them Were Never Unprepared for this label in 2021. I see I was feeling slightly frustrated by the restrictions of that compositional grid, but today’s item – on which Zethson plays piano and harmonium – is a group / improvisational effort, even though Zethson does deserve the credit for making the session happen in Stockholm and inviting the Greek guitarist Giannis Arapis who happened to be in Sweden for another date.
The Sounds of VÖ offers very pleasing acoustic sounds and combinations – violin, alto sax, double bass, cello, organ and acoustic guitar – with no single instrument taking centre-stage or stepping forward for an old-fashioned “solo” in conventional musical terms. The press notes are keen to stress repeatedly than the ensemble had no clear plan, guidepost, or map to guide them as they created their music, and the only common ground was an interest in experimenting as an “operational procedure”. On the first of these two CDs, we have mostly very long and contemplative musical sojourns, all of which are forlorn and introspective in nature, notwithstanding the beautiful wistful sounds. The clarity with which these fey emotions are expressed is quite remarkable, and give an extra force to this very gentle music. What we could add is that each brief sojourn is distinctly lacking in compositional shape, and everyone simply fades out when they’ve finished saying their piece, leaving behind fleeting impressions rather than the satisfaction of a resolved statement. This isn’t exactly a by-product of the way they choose to work, but it’s certainly baked into the VÖ approach.
This aspect is even more noticeable on the second disc, 13 much shorter pieces of around two-three minutes apiece, where the group playing coalesces for one glorious moment before vanishing away like a vivid dream. The second disc also feels more varied in terms of the combinations of players, and the oddness of the sounds they make, and the group are motivated by what is, for them, an inexplicable urgency to say something, as if conspiring in secret in a darkened underground chamber away from the eyes of the authorities. Both discs have their appeal; the murmuring and whispering mystery-chatter of disc two, and the collective sighs and longings of disc one. The nameless anxiety dark-mode vibe also fits in with what I perceive to be the aesthetic choices of this label, based on what we’ve heard from the catalogue so far. From 4th November 2022.
Jolly short instrumentals by Etceteral on their Rhizome (GLITTERBEAT RECORDS / TAK:TIL GBCD 133) album…they are a Slovenian trio, but most of the actual sound seems to come from Bostjan Simon who plays synth, electronics, and sax, along with the drummer Marek Fakuc. Third member Lina Rica does the visuals, but these projections aren’t just for the band videos and stage act – she does it during band rehearsals and recording, hoping to send the players into a trance with a “potential creative loop”. The band – or at least their press release – are aiming to touch a lot of bases and meld multiple genres with their “futurist jazz”, and while their sound is superficially quite attractive, the novelty soon wears off and it becomes apparent that they’re not very inventive composers, nor skilled players. Not enough drive in their heavy-handed rock beats, nor enough depth or subtlety in their jazz moves, and their electronic sounds are very tame. Also must deduct 20 points for using the word “Rhizome” as an LP title; this Gilles Deleuze trope is becoming seriously over-played. This is their second LP, after their debut Ama-Gi on the Slovenian label Kapa Records. (04/11/2022)
New CD from Mathias Preuß the German saxophonist who sent it from his home in Lemgo, the University city in the North Rhine-Westphalia region…and we heard him a few years ago teaming up with the Indonesian player Coffee Faith. This time he’s blowing with Michel Henritzi, our favourite lap-steel guitarist from Metz, and they recorded Memories (EXKLAGETO 26 / KLAGETO 4) in 2022 in Studio La Cave in that part of France. One’s tempted to say these noisy, gritty drone blasts have more in common with avant-garde heavy metal than with most free improvisation, but that’s perhaps because Henritzi is making much more use of amplifier and effects than usual on ‘Kreuzberg Nacht’, then reining himself in for a season of bleak despair on ‘Aus Den Wolken’ with those disconnected, alien emissions of iciness. Mathias Preuß packs each fluid phrase with a lot of juicy emotion, mostly rather disaffected and remorseful, and this duo complement each other best when they stay in the same dank zone of misery for 12-14 mins at a time. Attempts to lighten the mood, as on ‘Lost Dream’, are a mistake; aiming at a more uptempo rhythm with staccato guitar-jangling obliges Mathias Preuß to adopt more speedy fingering, and he wanders into street-busker turf. By the time we get to ‘Wuppertal’ I wonder if all along we’ve been hearing music inspired by side two of Heroes, in particular ‘Neukoln’; both the musicians are drawn towards that same astringent, profoundly melancholic bent. The CD title is particularly apt, as though each piece were evoking the memory of a lost place or lost time, rather than living in the moment. 200 copies pressed on this sub label of Psych.KG. (07/11/2022)