David Lee Myers / Sonologyst / Lars Bröndrum
Unus et Trinus
ITALY UNEXPLAINED SOUNDS GROUP US092 / DISSIPATIO DISS020 CD (2024)
Raffaele Pezzella is Sonologyst whose releases for Cold Spring have often brought us much enjoyment with their treatment of various popular “unknown” phenomena, including extra-terrestrials, Cold War paranoia, historic death cults, and ghosts. Here he invites the musicians Myers (Arcane Device feedback king) and Bröndrum (Swedish composer associated with EMS and Fylkingen, who has made some records with the free improviser Per Gärdin) to participate in this many-headed construction.
As it turns out, the three of them only worked together on ‘Unus’ on this CD, but what an impressive 20:48 mins they turned in as they exchanged samples, experiments and segments. Remainder of album is filled out with two tracks from each working solo, allowing us to savour the very different approaches taken by these international players. ‘Mèmoire du passè’ by Sonologyst can indeed be read as a poetic statement evoking the passage of time and the recovery of lost memories, almost surreal in its determined explorations of an imaginary space. ‘Kronos’ by Myers invokes a figure from Greek mythology, whose name came to be associated with allegories of time, and personifications of same, a trend that was enthusiastically taken up by artists and writers during the Renaissance. The powerful manipulation of synthesized tones and feedback (I assume) by David Lee Myers is highly fitting to this classical theme.
The first piece by Lars Bröndrum – I never heard his music before – may have the rather flat, academic title ‘Heterodyne Frequencies’, which sounds like it would be more at home in the textbook of an electrical engineer or physics scientist, but it’s a glorious exploration of large-scaled, far-distant unnatural noises, achieving the very difficult feat of suggesting “depth” and dimensionality in sound. At times, he comes close to invoking the greatness of Parmegiani with his imaginative textures and rich dynamics. As noted, the three composers join forces on ‘Unus’, quite the epic statement in terms of its length and diversity, almost like a book or treatise with its spoken-word introduction and seamless division into chapters, theorems, and layered cross-dialogues between these three inventors, all operating under related disciplines but engaging in much spirited debate and argument when they meet at their conference.
Cover artworks invite the viewer to admire the aesthetic beauties of concrete Brutalist architecture. (18/04/2024)