French-Canadian sound artist and composer Léa Boudreau brings us five recent (2017-2022) pieces on her Limaçon (EMPREINTES DIGITales IMED 23184), covering such diverse topics as mental illness, reunions with old friends, and the imagined lives of animal and plant species. The most ambitious of the five proposes the invention of four machines that could save the world, if only they existed; it came out of a free-association exercise with students at a school in Montreal. Despite strong conceptual themes, Boudreau misses every opportunity to express them with music that’s unique or vital; the ‘Mini-bestiary for the end of the world’, with its observations about insects and plant forms, ought to be teeming with life-forms, yet ends up as a tepid cup of microbes. ‘Recovery’ does hint at the pain of physical anguish, but is as effective as a well-meaning Hallmark card sent to hospital patient lying in a plaster cast. A tad more sonic variety can be grabbed on the ‘Quatre Machines’ piece, but it still doesn’t quite function as a blueprint for these radical earth-changing ideas, rather tending to expose how preposterous the ideas were in the first place. A flying machine that can transform polluted air into clean air sounds great, but it’s just wishful thinking. (01/06/2023)
Very strong improvised noise, drone, acoustic interaction and flashing blades a-plenty on Black Current (AL MASLAKH RECORDS MSLKH026), the newie from Sawt Out – a trio based in Berlin who’ve been stripping out lightboards since 2015. Mazen Kebaj (trumpet), Michael Vorfeld (percussion) and Burkhard Beins (percussion) seem to have rethought everything they possibly can about group improvisation starting with the sound (radical, cryptic, and shorn of its pelt) before progressing to group dynamics (now remade so as to avoid self-indulgent detours and instead following the philosophical paths of certain imaginary writers and thinkers). It’s much to their credit that I always mistakenly hear electronic elements in the music of Sawt Out, when in fact it’s all produced by acoustic instruments, played by men possessed of demonic monsters who insist on changing the flowers into oak trees and every blade of grass is covered with red dust after their unforgettable visits. If you hear nothing else, take time to listen to ‘After The Rain’, a magnificent 18-minute event of controlled intensity, and then go and cover yourself in mud, earthworms, and fallen leaves. (01/06/2023)
Gladly shall I wander down the Detour Tunnels of Light (THANATOSIS PRODUKTION THT24) as advised by Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel. If only they’d give us a bit more light in the first place. All the music (performed in a church in Sweden, a fact which the record label seems to deem of a certain importance) appears to be happening by candlelight, which may reflect something about the strict, scripture-based, and rather literal nature of the Lutheran faith, but it’s fair to say our plucky duo summon a very “crepuscular” atmosphere with their sopranino sax and grand piano, the latter instrument apparently “cracked”, which might refer to certain preparations and insertion of objects. I welcome the plan of abstracted “exploration” of long passages which may exist in space, and what’s even more beguiling is we’re never sure at what point we have entered the tunnel, and even less sure about anything when we come out. Few pieces of modern music can induce this healthy mental confusion with such minimal means. (01/06/2023)