The Hills Shout (WIDE EAR RECORDS WER069), declares Jacques Demierre, a Swiss pianist who recorded this one in Munich – just him and the piano for 39:46 mins. Apparently it’s a recording of a live solo concert – or is it? After reading his convoluted artistic statement, it seems as though it might be an edited version of that concert, or it might be him trying to recreate the concert from memory while he sits at home. Or else it was something he was working on all the way during 2020 lockdown. He tells us it “sounds like the live memory of a past concert”, and I think the activity that’s important to him here is simply the act of remembering – for him, the art of memory is “always a way to produce a new acoustic reality”.
Well, so much for the Descartean vortices. Musically and aurally, this one’s quite a metal train ride of extremes, veering from minimal solitude distillations of single notes, to melodic half-jazz figures (incomplete, sketchy figures), to joyous classical glissandos which Poulenc would’ve scored with relish after meeting Thelonious Monk, by way of more avant techniques such as lower-register rumbles in the mode of Charlemagne Palestine having a bad day, or prepared mufflers on the strings or pedals which earn the John Cage birthday cake of the day. But Demierre doesn’t see fit to abandon structure, and whether or not this item is actually “composed” as such, it has ended up on the “form of a rondo”, meaning, I suppose, that we do get repeated sections and variations on same as we traverse our slow way across this fascinating stony outcropping of ambiguity and mathematical puzzles. It’s almost a relief when a repeated theme turns up, like a signpost in this rugged territory, these shouting hills of his.
I agree with liner note author Kurt Gottschalk who writes about “an album that seems to be built of blocks”. Critics are always applying that “block” metaphor to the music of Varèse too, but with Demierre it’s very hard to see the joins between these blocks, much like the perfectly formed stone walls of the Incas. A tremendous amount of conviction in this strong performance, which after you’ve gotten used to the dramatic switches and changes, you will no longer regard as “bitty” and start to appreciate the depths of intellectual and intuitive musical language at play. Very unusual, very worthwhile. Take the bracing walk in these hills and brave all weathers too. (15/05/2023)