From Denmark, the trio Mesmer with their Terrain Vague (ARBITRARY 19) album…mostly played with drums and synths with occasional trumpet, and with such a slow pace and near-anonymous surface sound, I was first tempted to regard this as some form of post-rock revivalist move, picking up on the lessons of American bands like Tortoise and Pan-Am. But the musicians Emil Jensen, Victor Dybbroe and Anders Filipsen have been working at their project for over 15 years now before releasing this debut, and Terrain Vague has been created from an archive of live recordings taken from three separate concerts. They also layered in field recordings of specific places around Copenhagen – seems they were looking for certain sites where “nature and culture meet and challenge each other”, whatever that may mean. Terrain Vague thus emerges as neither an “album” of music nor a document of live performances, but a conceptual construct – where the aim is to school the listener about “how sound and its absence influences us as people”. Potentially an interesting idea perhaps, even if Mesmer don’t really succeed in engaging our interest with this vapid, wallpapery music, its pointillist synth doodles dotted tastefully about the room, as if they’d rather have jobs as interior decorators than musicians. (24/10/2023)
The duo Zöj are attempting to express something about cultural identity, a very tricky and poignant subject in the 21st century – “what it means to be from more than one place” might not cover it completely, but it’s a start. Gelerah Pour is originally from Iran and Brian O’Dwyer was born in Australia. Open up the gatefold and you’ll see Gelerah Pour on the left proudly holding up one of her instruments – either the Kamancheh (Iranian bowed string instrument, and part of the lyra and rebab family) or the Gheychak (Iranian bowed lute) – with the motto “This Machine Kills Fascists” written in full capitals. Folk historians will of course recognise this as the exact same message that Woody Guthrie had inscribed on his guitar, at a crucial time and place in history, i.e. America in the 1940s. But back then, the enemy was easier to recognise. Aiming your musical weapon at “Fascists” in the global 21st century is a much tougher proposition, and what’s more I’d venture to say it’s a moving target too.
All of this led me to anticipate an angrier and more forceful music than what we hear on Fil O Fenjoon (BLEEMO MUSIC / PARENTHÈSES RECORDS PREC19), which turns out to be very moody and wistful melancholic songs and instrumentals, barely straying from a root note and most of them set in the same key. The plight of women in Iran, and themes concerning freedom and courage, inform most of the poetical lyrics and the content, and even the jewellery worn by Pour is part of this statement. I’d imagine the words of the Iranian poet Hooshang Ebtehaj – the basis on several tracks here – are also part of it, and though I’m not familiar with his work it’s an understatement to say he has lived through “political and cultural upheavals” in his part of the world. Voice and playing of Gelerah Pour is front and centre for my money, O’Dwyer providing a very respectful and non-intrusive percussive backdrop, but this is his personal mode of expression behind the kit – he sees sound as a way of making a “connection” and wants his playing to “ebb and flow” in sympathy with his collaborators, and the walls of the room itself. In this context, it’s clear why a stoner-rock drummer would be – ahem – massively misplaced in this group. Contemporary world culture blended with contemporary experimental sounds – that’s their aim, possibly reflected to some extent in the album title which means “Elephant and Teacup” in the Farsi tongue. The duo have been active since 2012, working under the Zöj name since 2016. (24/10/2023)
Another good record by Zea, the vocalist and guitarist Arnold de Boer from The Ex. We Are Still Each Other’s Only Hope (MAKKUM RECORDS MR39) is an entertaining and bewildering mix of deconstructed and imaginative non-rock songs played in his inimitable manner, studio and home recordings, with guest appearances from many of his usual collaborators – Xavier Charles, Mats Gustafsson, Harald Austbo, Hubert Kostkiewicz, and many others. This one doesn’t follow the agenda to reinstate the Frisian dialect into modern culture, and the strange tales are sung and recited in English. We’ve enjoyed Zea since we heard The Swimming City in 2015, and we don’t have any new observations to add at this time. (24/10/2023)
On Acustica (MACRO M74), Stefan Goldmann makes cut-ups of 20th century avant-garde music – or more precisely, recordings of same, i.e. the music of important avant-garde musicians interpreted by orchestras, pianists, percussionist, and other trained musicians. Over 70 years of history was raided by our eager experimenter; he makes no bones about describing it as a “DJ Mix”, and none of the composers are named, nor are the musicians who made the records, although the press informs us that Goldmann has previously executed a similar project using Stravinsky records.
I used to get on my high horse about DJ culture and how I felt it was disrespecting avant-garde music (and jazz, sometimes), but that was in the 1990s and a time when UK DJs were allegedly playing vinyl copies of Pierre Henry’s Les Jerks Électroniques De La Messe Pour Le Temps Présent to death on their wheels, and inadvertently inflating collector’s prices for this commonplace and frequently-reissued Philips album from 1968. Stefan Goldmann’s effort is growing on me however, with its 24 short tracks flowing together in a surprisingly listenable and coherent manner. He seems to have gone out of his way to remove anything remotely shocking or challenging, leaving us with quieter moments, smoothed-down edges, and very subtle contrasts; in places this strategy may be said to depart from the intentions of the original composers, but Goldmann is trying to illustrate overlaps, connections, and interactions from history that we might not have noticed before. And if they weren’t there before, he’s doing his best to force these connections. Admittedly, after the early diffuse and distributed music at the start of the album, things get somewhat more dramatic on the later and longer cuts, with samples of operatic singing and orchestral stabs barging in.
If, unlike me, you’re not too “precious” about the sources, you will find much to engage the ears and mind in Acustica, as you savour each dissonant tone row like a raspberry. Hard to believe this is the same fellow who, as Lucaslavia, produced a bland drone mulch out of avant-metal and dark ambient samples in 2023. He also contributed to that remarkable Sfera album in 2022, which did a lot to cast fresh perspectives on the music of Scelsi, everyone’s favourite modernist master of severity. (24/10/2023)