Fine album from Bad Groupy which is the duo of American player Jeff Surak of Zeromoon with the Estonian bass player Kristin Kuldkepp. She also does electro-acoustic and electronic music and improvisation and has moved away from her classical music upbringing which also involved early music and playing the viol de gamba besides the double bass. In many ways her story is the complete opposite of Surak’s, which might explain the intensity of this pairing.
The Last Piece of Graphite (ZEROMOON zero210) showcases four pieces of controlled noises, where the pain and emotional turmoil of human existence is intelligently handled and recast into disturbing sound. The sound this duo make might be the key to understanding them, as they don’t seem especially concerned about exhibiting prowess or craft in playing instruments, as some “extended technique” improvisers choose to do. Likewise this one is somehow less airless than some Surak cassettes I have ingested – left alone, he might tend to want to fill every corner with suffocating shades of black, but evidently Kuldkepp is having a good influence on his behaviour. This isn’t to say Graphite is any less powerful than any given prior darkster or jolt-o-gram from the Zeromoon catalogue, simply that it uses different means to get to a similar pessimistic destination. Much subtlety, remarkable dynamics, unexpected shifts in timbre, all the things that can take our normal listening pleasure and turn it into a breakfast of champions. Interestingly, some of the material was recorded out in the woods and on the banks of a river, suggesting a healthy en-plain-air approach to making art which was obviously borrowed from painters like Pissarro and Cezanne.
I think if pushed to characterise the forms this music takes, I’d have to turn into an evasive physicist who was suddenly put on the spot at the Senate sub-committee hearings, but what Bad Groupy do exceptionally well is to avoid rhythm and repetition, preferring to enter and stay in dark uncertain zones where they can blindly grope about attempting to fathom the shape and dimensions of their environment. This semi-blindfolded march into the abyss takes them to many unexpected places, most notably on the long track ‘Black Magic of Auditive Seduction’, a small masterpiece of ambiguity and subdued aggression. If by now you’re still quaint enough to still yearn for some old-fashioned rhythm and repetition in your diet, the first track ‘Elevator Talk’ should settle your hash. From 18 January 2023.