Amiira
Curious Objects
SWITZERLAND ARJUNAMUSIC RECORDS AMAC-CD725 C.D. (2023)
Time for another communication from arjuna Music records, a small but substantial imprint from Bern, Switzerland which boasts a back catalogue that has given homes to, amongst others; Sun Electric, Tom Thiel and Joao Paulo Esteves de Silva. usually their output is shuffled/sorted into one of three genres: electronics/electroacoustics, unplugged improv or non-formulaic/avant pop. However, with Amiira (though I can’t comment on their 2016 debut), those boundary markers appear to have been uprooted, discreetly of course, and no doubt, under cover of night. These post-moderns!… can’t live with ’em…can’t live without ’em ! After a six-year hiatus, the trio of Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet/soprano sax/f.x.), Björn Meyer (bass guitar/f.x.) and Samuel Rohrer (drums/electronics), w/ links to oudist Anouar Brahem, Ronin and Laurie Anderson) return to the studio with a ten-strong line-up of curious objects (which are also available on vinyl).
What’s immediately evident is that the lugubrious/forlorn voice of the old retainer the bass clarinet, continues to hold its own in certain scattered outposts of avantist composition, and here, occupies a good seventy per cent of the playing surface. The remaining three cuts seeing Klaus in soprano sax mode, caught amongst drifting ambience and keening, metallic atmospherics. Pacing is key, as sensitive lyrical ballads such as “On Second Thought” compliment the more abstract chug of the aptly named “Concentric”; its repetitive, ahem, groove is almost a slice of (lower case) funk. “Gravity Inn” easily bears repeated listenings too, probably because its schematics seem to hark back to nineties U.S. experimentalist Ui (w/ Sasha Frere-Jones) and the Before and After Science album; captured during a time when Eno was under heavy Weather Report influence.
Also, nice to see Frida Bingo’s (?) sleeve art adding to the band’s ambiguity quotient. Now, is that a picture of a Whale shark’s gaping maw or maybe one of a recently discovered, distant constellation? Dear reader, we just don’t know…