Der Krater (ROOM40 RM4193) sees a team-up between two respected Europeans, Werner Dafeldecker and Valerio Tricoli. Genius bass player Dafeldecker has done a tremendous amount for modern music, advancing the envelope of “free improvisation” in the group Polwechsel of course, and in various collaborative situations; it makes more sense just to see him as a very gifted and original composer / player / polymath with cerebellum as large as the Vienna Stadtpark. Italian Tricoli is likewise treading bravely down the rare and forbidding pathways of the unknown, even traversing beyond the signpost marked “minimal” to find his own way to something new. Indeed the nature of Der Krater seems to allude even him, as he attempts to grope towards a prose contribution to the “press note” here, a task which he evidently does not relish. “What digs a crater in my soul…is a nameless spirit”, is all he can tell us, as if likening the soul of man to the surface of the moon being hit by meteorites, asteroids, and unknown foreign bodies of the cosmos. I’ll go along with that. I will mention that Tricoli’s parts are realised with the Revox tape machine and electronics, while stern-lipped Austrian Dafeldecker continues to work the double bass in typically muscular fashion. Net results are two sides of a cassette each filled with 16 minutes of profound doubts, mental anguish going beyond ambiguity into some new agency that is so nebulous that it stands a chance of warping the brain, if steeped in its gaseous flow for too long. Only those possessing sufficient stability of the “Braino” can endure this experiment.
UK veteran Mike Cooper has been enjoying a purple patch of creativity, with many releases sprouting forth on this Australian label. The recent trend for many of these records indicate his concerns with global ecology and geopolitical matters, and it’s impressive how he’s managed to turn in complex ideas, verging on didactic lectures, in sound; he’s come a long way since his unique folk-rock albums for the Dawn label in his vaguely prog-rock past. Black Flamingo (RM4209) takes a different direction however – it’s a set of collaborations with friends, neighbours, and international improv/music stars, growing out of his activities during lockdown when he (like many others) collaborated online or at a distance. Here be duos with Geoff Hawkins (long-standing Cooper collaborator of 60 years), Scot Ray, Jon Raskin, Viv Corringham, Tim Hill, Elliott Sharp, Michael Thieke, and many others. Black Flamingo is underpinned by a Sun Ra theme or subtext, which is welcome – there are short interludes with variations on the title ‘Sun Ra Sulks’, which may be a reference to the great man when he famously delivered a lecture to eager listeners, and started to recount an odd dream where he went to Heaven, found it was like a big department store, and was intrigued to learn how much it would cost to buy a pair of socks in the celestial realm. Only Sun Ra could engage with the Deity on such a level. Cooper’s Sun Ra fixation has in this instance lent a balmy, insouciant air to the music, as well as much variety and eccentricity, plus there’s at least one Sun Ra cover version (‘The Satellites Are Spinning’). We can’t say that every cut is an unmitigated success, but it’s a completely unique listen, and for those who enjoy Cooper’s queasy blend of slide guitar and ambient synths, it’s a real feast.
Another player who has used the Revox tape machine is Jérôme Noetinger, the French creator who can do little wrong for this listener. On Outside Supercolor (RM4184) however, he seems to be leaving the reels of Ampex reel-to-reel in the fridge, while he experiments with video sound. More specifically, it’s about inserting video output into sound inputs, and vice versa, said experiments taking place in collaboration with his friend Lionel Palun, a film and video maker who he’s known for 20 years. They got along so well they even formed a group, called Supercolor Palunar. Although this particular experiment seems to have arisen from a moment of personal crisis for both of them, maybe part of their respective struggles with art and society – I for one would like to think that Noetinger, a personal hero, is an engaged intellectual on a par with Guy Debord, constantly thinking of ways to subvert and outwit the normal structures and snares of modern life.
Well, video feedback and sound feedback are nothing much new, either in video art or sound art – Noetinger instantly admits as much in his notes – but he stresses that “what counts is how to appropriate it, how to live it.” Technically speaking, it was Palun who was inspired to go on and build his own software for manipulating video feedback, but that might not be what we hear on this record, which is two 18-minutes suites of strange and compelling humming sounds, the first one a very mesmerising buzz and the second one more disrupted with grains of video information flying around the room like locusts. At least, that’s my take on it. Very tellingly, Noetinger has titled his first piece ‘TV Eve on Me’, wittily referencing the famed Iggy Pop song that many listeners would regard as the ultimate benchmark in a sub-genre of punk and new wave songs that reference the problems caused by TV, or by watching TV, or use a TV metaphor to explore the aspects of any boy-girl relationship. Please send me your personal list…naturally, I wish Noetinger had titled his second track ‘TVC15’, but he didn’t; maybe he prefers to leave the Bowie-Pop connection unstated. I mention this since the creator himself points out the central problem with making music in the 21st century: “in the end, it’s always the same…it’s like rock music.” Here then is one way he’s found a shortcut out of that particular dilemma. By the way I think there are two videos by Palun which have some connection to the music, and they’re also on the CD.
All the above from 3rd May 2023.