A rare opportunity to dip back into some vinyl.

As luck and the alphabet would have it, directly preceding my rather un-looked-forward to reinvestigation of my Glass on wax, there sits Jon Gibson's "Two Solo Pieces", issued in 1977 by Chatham Square (my only vinyl from that label--kicking myself for not ordering the early Glass things from NMDS when I could have). Two side-long works: "Cycles" (1973) for pipe organ and "Untitled" (1974) for solo flute, both performed by Gibson. It's interesting how fresh something like "Cycles" sounds today; essentially a dense organ chord with a huge number of interior fluctuations, all of them somewhat clouded due to their sheer mass, it's the kind of thing that, if attempted today, I think would inevitably sound half-hearted and mannered. But in 1973, the ideas were new enough that their energy and sense of discovery were readily audible. Really excellent piece, holding up far better than many of Glass' things from the same period. The (alto) flute composition is also very beautiful, only "minimalist" in the sense that its long melodic line is repeated and elaborated on but it bears virtually no relationship to Glass (or Riley or Reich) with whom Gibson was playing. It sounds, if anything, more like something Rzewski might have written around that time--in an especially inspired moment. A little bit of his piece, "Song and Dance" comes to mind.

I'm not sure as to its current availability. It's been issued on disc by both New Tone and Dunya records. Great recording, though, try to hear it. [just checked--I did, in fact, write this up for All Music and mentioned that, at the time Robi Droli had issued it with three additional pieces]


I'd heard Riley's "A Rainbow in Curved Air" in the summer of '72, on WBRU (Brown University) while working for the summer on Block Island, buying it soon upon my return along with "In C". But I think that was my only exposure to minimalism for a couple of years, immersed as I was in jazz. I heard a piece of Reich's performed at the New England Conservatory in '74 and quickly picked up the DG 3LP set, "Drumming". I'd heard Glass' music on KCR and, as mentioned above, drooled a bit over Chatham Square items in the NMDS catalog (shortage of funds!--though I bought them on disc later on) but didn't actually have a recording in-house until my brother drew (at my urging, iirc) bought "North Star" which appeared around 1975 on, what, Virgin?

"Einstein" premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in November, 1976, just after I'd moved to NYC. I knew of the event and wanted to go but lack of finances made that an impossibility (I eventually saw its second NYC staging at BAM in 1984). The first recording came out in '79 on Tomato (a very interesting label at the time) which is what I have here.

It's a commonplace to observe that "Einstein" is a tipping point in Glass' career and I subscribe to that view. There are certainly moments of beauty subsequently but (to my knowledge) nothing with the thrilling rigor of the pre-Einstein work or the unbridled energy, still strongly informed by work like "Music in Changing Parts" of the maximalist explosion that was "Einstein". It might not be a precise balance, the down slope already impinged upon, but this work, especially when seen in the theater, is still enthralling, hugely imaginative and extremely moving. One wonderful feature, naturally unavailable on any recording, is that when the house opens, the piece has already begun, Lucinda Childs (on whom I had a huge crush) and Sheryl L. Sutton seated on opposite sides of the stage, reciting the extraordinarily touching libretto of Christopher Knowles.

A word on that. Knowles was born in 1959 and was (is still, I assume) autistic. Robert Wilson on Knowles:

In early 1973 a man named George Klauber, who had been one of my professors at Pratt Institute, gave me an audio tape he thought might interest me. At the time I was beginning work on a theatre piece called The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin. . . . I was fascinated. The tape was entitled 'Emily Likes the TV.' On it a young man's voice spoke continuously creating repetitions and variations on phrases about Emily watching the TV. I began to realize that the words flowed to a patterned rhythm whose logic was self-supporting. It was a piece coded much like music. Like a cantata or fugue it worked with conjugations of thoughts repeated in variations; these governed by classical constructions and a pervasive sense of humor. The effect was at once inspiring and charming. I was impressed and called George to ask who had made the tape. . . . It was arranged that Chris could come and live with me. We became collaborators and friends. He co-authored a show called A Letter for Queen Victoria and performed it throughout Europe and New York. In subsequent years we continued to work together. Chris would co-author pieces and his texts would appear in works such as the opera Einstein on the Beach… I am forever fascinated by the decisions Chris is able to make while maintaining control over a continuous and elegant line. He has a unique ability to create a language that's immediately discernible. Yet once he has invented his verbal or visual language, he destroys the code to begin anew. His art holds the excitement of molecular reaction. His product is constantly genuine and always a reflection of his own imagination, humor and good will.

The words by Knowles in "Einstein" appear to have been "downloaded" from AM radio, almost without editing but also, often, structured in a way that's childlike and naive, heartrendingly so. A line like, "Will it get some wind for the sailboat", the first line of text here, I find simply wrenching. "And it could get for it is". Later, he regurgitates programming schedules from WABC, information coming into his brain and leaving his pen, unfiltered, ineffably sad. I think it's crucial to the success of "Einstein" that, on this scale, the rigorous, often (intentionally) overbearing minimalism is offset by this profoundly human character. More, it's triangulated with text from Samuel M. Johnson who writes in an arch, 18th century manner without cracking the tiniest smile. (If anyone knows more about Johnson, please fill me in--not much info out there I could find). Childs' own section, "I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket...", is also oddly fascinating. These unlikely elements swirl together fantastically, caroming off one another, never giving the listener steady footing.

Live, of course, there are myriad astounding, incredibly drawn out visual episodes from the locomotive to the rising bed; it was almost hilarious how long Wilson and Glass would take to complete a "small" action. On record, you get a bit of a sense of that, but the ensemble is so percolating that no one with more than a passing interest in minimalism would be bored. Well sequenced, with scantly populated valleys followed by bubbling stews of activity, punctuated by singular dramatic moments, my personal favorite being Childs' sudden declaration, "Bern, 1905". "Knee Play 4", with some lovely melodies and spirited playing by violinist Paul Zukofsky, is another favorite sequence. Live, the concluding Spaceship scene was utterly spectacular and it's pretty damn exciting on disc (that bass synth line remains mighty cool).

Although the asceticism of his early work is extremely attractive to me, all things considered (beyond Glass, to be sure), "Einstein" remains my favorite work in his canon. Not that I've followed him much since, oh, the late 80s. I enjoyed "Satyagraha" well enough (the concluding "octave" aria is extraordinary), "Ahknaten", less so. Of the things I have on vinyl, his "Dance Nos. 1 and 3", also on Tomato (1980), is very good. The soundtracks for "The Photographer" and "Koyaanisqatsi" are ok (the film dates horribly, imho, save for that astonishing final image of the exploded spacecraft tumbling through the azure) and the set of "Songs from Liquid Days" odd enough to still generate a wee bit of interest. Otherwise, I'm more or less ignorant of his output for over 20 years now, catching in a film or TV show (or commercial!) once in a while; hard to think that I'm missing much. Happy to have "Einstein".

Two lovers sat on a park bench, with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight.

There was silence between them. So profound was their love for each other, they needed no words to express it. And so they sat in silence, on a park bench, with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.

Finally she spoke. "Do you love me, John?" she asked. "You know I love you, darling," he replied. "I love you more than tongue can tell. You are the light of my life, my sun, moon and stars. You are my everything. Without you I have no reason for being."

Again there was silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench, their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight. Once more she spoke. "How much do you love me, John?" she asked. He answered: "How much do I love you? Count the stars in the sky. Measure the waters of the oceans with a teaspoon. Number the grains of sand on the sea shore. Impossible, you say."

Jason Kahn/Asher - Planes (Mikroton)

Ok, ok, I admit it--I'm a total sucker for these kind of things. Give me some dense, drone-y electronics (here, despite not saying so on the sleeve, I think with added percussion--there's some of those finger-tapped Tibetan bells in play midway through) and layer in rich, well-chosen field recordings, augmented or not, and you've pretty much got me. The result may not be as transcendent an experience as achieved in more "dangerous" collaborations (see: Rowe & Sachiko) but such efforts, when well-conceived, seem to center in on some juicy area that I find as irresistible as a good piece of fudge. Healthier, probably. Kahn's generally dark hues play off Asher's often innocent and sunny recordings (children playing); it's not the most surprising juxtaposition but it works very well. Shimmering and begrimed at the same time, a fine combination.


Dafeldecker/Kurzmann/Tilbury/Wishart - s/t (Mikroton)

Orange, then green, now violet. Seven tracks recorded live in Vienna and Wels (sounds as though the first four are from one, the latter three from another), this is an enjoyable set though a somehow dissatisfying one. Rich in colors and textures, (Wishart credited on hurdy gurdy but, I assume, also playing violin, the clarinet and bowed bass of Kurzmann and Dafeldecker twining beautifully, Tilbury being Tilbury) the more or less drone-based improvisations are ultimately a little featureless, a bit too much like attractive slabs without much inner structure. Not sure what it is that gnaws at me here, maybe just a sense of too much noodling, albeit with variegated, often tasty pasta. There are a couple of points, oddly enough, especially in the first and last tracks, where I was reminded of early Anthony Davis pieces, specifically his "A Walk Through the Shadow" theme. Not bad, but a bit disappointing given the participants.

Mikroton

Available this side of the pond from erstdist


Anthony Guerra - s/t (a binary datum)

I have several questions. First, let me say this is an excellent recording. Do I know what I'm hearing? Not so much.

OK, it's a 10" lathe cut. I didn't know from lathe cut and still might require some explanation. Apparently, these discs are individually cut from PVC, not vinyl and, so it's been suggested, will erode at a far faster rate, enough that what one hears might vary significantly over time. Is this the case? Cool, if so. A guy in New Zealand by the name of Peter King seems to be the doyen of this area, perhaps responsible for this one. As to the sounds--most recently seen around these here parts as half of Green Blossoms, dispensing pretty, even sugary morsels of whimsical melody, Guerra here is all about icily remote noise. One side--the label doesn't distinguish--is relatively quiet, beginning with grainy, fluctuating tones and much static, as though recorded through wires that a dog's been at. It explodes and finds itself located in a different register, differently textured tones with an insistent, soft click. These eruptions become more frequent, though not too loud, before being abruptly sliced off just before the end of the piece, which concludes in a minute or so of near silence.

While I have no idea of which side is which, the other one sounds as though it just might be a continuation of the "first", picking up immediately in a rambunctious area, quasi-rhythmic static bursts sputtering over a low, turntable-like rumble. It pretty much stays there, a mini-firestorm over that bass threat--really tasty, wonderful stuff, great lack of self-consciousness.

It appears that the only way in which one might obtain one of these jewels (unless you're lucky enough to have one sent your way) is via barter at a binary datum

Go for it.

Daniel Jones/Barry Chabala - Undercurrents (Roeba)

I take it this was a long-distance collaboration (Barry can correct me) but whatever, it's a real good one, my favorite thing thus far from Mr. Chabala as an improviser (his take on Pisaro's "an unrhymed chord" is outstanding as well). He has a bent toward pure, ringing tones, often high-range--I know he's a fan of "Evening Star" and I think it comes through--so having someone like Jones in tandem is just the right tonic with his rougher scrapes and rumbles. Four cuts, each strong in a different way, leaning in the agitated calm direction. There's an especially beautiful sequence near the end of the second cut, "Empty", where those clear guitar tones play against a distorted field recording with voices and maybe radio captures. Each piece has a natural ebb and flow, an intriguing enough outcome if their genesis is as intuited above. Solid throughout, "Undercurrents" kept me attuned and riveted; strong release.


Lee Noyes/Barry Chabala - The Shade & the Squint (Roeba)

The last recording by this pair was a bit too tilted toward the efi side of things for my taste; this one's far more up my alley, much more expansive, much wider spaces carved out, particularly on the first of the two tracks. Once again Noyes, on percussion, (in New Zealand) and Chabala on guitar (in somewhat more exotic New Jersey) created their parts independently, "blind and layered", by which I take it without either's awareness of the other's output? However achieved, "Yin (The Shade)" is pretty much seamless, a rich, imaginative piece, varied in dronage both percussive and guitar-based and also evincing a wide range of clatter. The second cut, "Yang (The Squint)", incorporates far more silence--I take it this was a guiding parameter in the trans-world exchange?--and, with the plucked and struck approach largely taken on the respective instruments, falls more readily in the efi mode, quite effectively so, though I'll be damned if I don't pick up traces of "Moonchild"...

Both recordings are worth a hear.

Available wherever records are sold. Or, failing that, via squidco

Jason Kahn/Ryu Hankil - Circle (Celadon)

It's a pleasure to welcome the first release from long-time discussion group participant (and all-around curmudgeon) Bill Ashline's Celadon label, and even more of one to report that it's damn good. An interesting pairing in that both musicians often employ overt rhythmic elements in their work, not the most common feature at this end of the playing field, but those rhythms are quite different. Kahn I think of as more "steady state', with vibrating surfaces that maintain a fairly regular texture (over any small span of time, though shifting on larger scales), kind of a color field approach to sound. Hankil, who makes wide use of clockworks, strikes me as somehow more ragged, more erose with his ticks and alarms. So, on the face of it, it portends a possibly delicious melding of attacks and, yes, we get a good dose of that over the course of the 93 or so minutes of this 2-disc set. But, more, there's a lot of delicacy, of barely occupied space and high, soft textures. Too, the rhythmic element is never consistent--it manifests then sputters out, catches on barely then sublimates into sparks or subsonics. When, as occurs about 15 minutes into the second disc, Kahn re-emerges with fingers on tempered metal and Hankil clatters about on grittier, more commercial material (at least, it sounds this way to me), the effect is surprising and wonderful. It's a long enough set that it's tough to get a fix on the whole structure and, perhaps, it overstays its welcome a tad but by and large it's a rigorous, intricate and absorbing performance.

Celadon


Moniek Darge - Soundies (Kye)

When I received this disc, the name violinist/composer/vocalist Moniek Darge didn't ring a bell. But a little research revealed that I had indeed heard of her in conjunction with her partner Godfried-Willem Raes, founder of Belgium's Logos Foundation, whom I'd run across during AMM investigations. He and Darge apparently engaged in many a public performance, often in the nude, occasionally spurring arrest, etc. Still, I had no idea what to expect musically. Well, it's a varied lot, some of it quite good. Seven pieces, arranged chronologically from 1980 - 2001. "Sand", the earliest work is a fine extended steady-state work with marvelously irregular percussion delicately tumbling over a slightly wavering, organ-like tape. Really excellent study in agitated calm, my favorite piece on the recording. Intervening tracks are hit and miss, with some use of vocalizations and animal sounds a bit whimsical for my taste and the free improv aspects somewhat formless, though the chime-like tones and ambient noise in "Caete" are very lovely. Happily, the disc closes with another very strong piece, 2001's "Turning Wheel", a rich live soundscape (in situ, I think, not tape, though I'm not certain) with male and female voices (English and Japanese) and violin, somber and churning. Well worth a listen.

Available through erstdist (as is the Celadon disc) or from Graham Lambkin @ hawkmoths@yahoo.com

I saw Peter Greenaway's "Rembrandt's j'accuse" at the Film Forum on Sunday, with Carol. A very interesting (if, perhaps, slightly over-fussy) film, one that does get you thinking about "visual illiteracy" and how much you don't see in paintings.

For those unaware, Greenaway contends that Rembrandt's so-called "Night Watch" contains clues to a contemporary murder conspiracy as well as "naming" those involved. I admit, my first instinct was to fear a Dan Brownian type of overwrought plot but, if he stretches things here and there, he also presents compelling evidence even if I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn of art historians who think he's gotten it entirely wrong.

But by placing the painting in a historical context, that of Dutch group portraits of civilian guards, and pointing out all the "rules" that were broken here, not all simply aesthetic innovations on the part of Rembrandt, Greenaway at least forces the viewer to ask, "Why this?" and to look more closely. Though more (melo)dramatic in its implications, I was reminded of TJ Clark's masterful "The Sight of Death" where he sat with two Poussin paintings for a month, studying them very, very deeply, unearthing relationships that, I daresay, would have bypassed us all had he not spent the time, the brainpower. Here, there are so many oddities, elements that seem inexplicable without reference to events outside the ostensible subject matter of the painting that you almost have to rethink it in some manner, whether or not you buy the murder conspiracy theory. Why the facially hidden figure holding the rifle? Why the hand of a certain individual steadying it for aim? Why are the two females there at all? Other points may or may not be valid, as the humorous contentions of homosexual blandishment via the placement of the spear and the adjacent shadow of the hand (though, in terms of sheer contentious ribaldry, that strikes me as eminently plausible):



Yes, the visuals get a bit annoying, the overlapping scrims, Greenaway himself appearing throughout in a little square mid-picture, etc. Though often, too, via digital manipulation, he's able to isolate elements to make the (his) interpretation all the more clear.

But, more importantly, it makes you want to examine other paintings more closely, imparting the suspicion that you may have been missing a lot all these years. He shows Velazquez' "Surrender at Breda" and, of course, "Las Meninas", both of which have been studied to death but maybe deserve even more insight. I'll be very interested if Greenaway turns his sights there or elsewhere in the future.

Well worth seeing for the art historically inclined...

Haptic - Trebuchet (Entr'acte)

I like the text that accompanies this disc on the Entr'acte site:

A trebuchet is a medieval siege engine. Trebuchet is a humanist
sans-serif typeface. A trebuchet is an instrument of punishment
consisting of a chair in which offenders were ducked in water.
Trebuchet is the title given by Marcel Duchmap to the readymade
sculpture that he created by nailing a coat rack to the floor of his
apartment. Trebuchet is an endgame position in chess in which
whoever is the first to move will necessarily lose the game.

I also enjoy the music, as usual with Haptic and its eternal churning. Three cuts, two from July of this year, one from 2007 where Salvatore Dellaria joins Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills and Adam Sonderberg. "Counterpoise" is a miniature of soft, organ-like tones with subtle thuds and minimal percussive patter, very enticing and sadistically ended at 3:16. For shame. "Three" varies most widely from previous Haptic material I've heard though it's not so far away--the texture is thinner than the normal porridge, the sounds more gaseous. The earlier track rather resembles previous Haptic work; more of the same, in a way, but their "same" is very good: deep rumbles, dense eddies, the implied throb, the punctured steam vents, the escaping magma. Oh, and the helicopters [or not--see below]. Although it's my favorite piece here, I might have rather heard something at this level of more recent vintage. Minor carp, though; another fine release from these fellows.

Entr'acte


Yôko Higashi/Lionel Marchetti - Okura 73˚N - 42˚E (Musica Genera)

Three pieces, one each by Higashi and Marchetti, one combined effort. "Pétrole 73", by Marchetti, based on experiences he underwent onboard a trawler, lies atop a drone that pierces and wavers like a set of bagpipes (though I don't think that's the source), encircled by creaking hull wood, radio voices and softer, more overtly electronic tones. It's something of a tour de force and very impressive as such, boring its way into one's skull. Higashi's "Okura" is gentler though not overly so, incorporating the kind of elements more commonly found in concrete works, including music recorded in Mozambique (with a balafon-like instrument prominent), electronically distorted voices, chants, etc., eventually some funk. It has more of a travelogue feel and, as such, is quite engaging, not asking for much more than for the listener to sit back for the ride. The pair join forces for "Pétrole 42",the radio voices and creaks reappearing, this time over multi-tracked, held notes (Higashi?) that grow gauzier as the work progresses, sort of enticing but maybe a tad too woozy. Attractive recording overall, though.

musica genera

xxxxx - Is-land (Free Software Series)

Apparently Martin Howse, if it matters. The lengthy second cut is essentially a broad wash of white noise, shifting in volume and density every so often, some dimly perceived pops buried in the static bed. The third track (there are tracks, though the sound is continuous) ups the volume significantly and, as well, one hears more human interaction in an improv kind of sense, someone back there manipulating pedals or knobs; it begins to sound like a noise performance. Subsequent cuts (nine in all) vary a good bit, quiet down, incorporate recorded voices from bad connections in one fine piece, eddy back to the static. By the end, I found myself enjoying it well enough; it's uncompromising nature comes to the fore, nothing prettified, all sounds kind of "as is", if remote. Worth a listen.


Taku Unami - Malignitat 2 (Free Software Series)

...wherein Unami picks up more or less where xxxxx left off, a strong field of white noise in one's face. It lasts only a bit over a minute though, eventually (after some silence) followed by what sounds like a recording of rushing water, meted out in a kind of staggered rhythmic pattern, long/short bursts. More silence, then wind. The cliched nature of the sound sources is presumably intentional; you start ignoring their programmatic content and just consider their placement, the odd irregular clockwork way Unami has of distributing his stuff. Tap--silence--tap--wind--silence....sudden flutter. White noise patches, audience (?). It sounds uniquely Unami and that's enough for me; I like it.


Loïc Blairon - x/0 (w.m.o/r)

And then we have Loïc Blairon's "x/0". A half hour during which, every so often, one hears a sharp plink, something like a guitar string plucked below the bridge with no sustain though, in that Blairon's a bassist, perhaps it's from that instrument. (Richard has written in greater detail on all three of these releases in recent weeks, btw. I find, looking back, we make many of the same points) Several minutes of silence often pass between audible sound, making "x/0" eminently forgettable even as it's playing. Not a bad thing, necessarily, though I felt little tension in the waiting, unlike quasi-similar efforts from, say, Taku Sugimoto, who most will think of while listening to this. Plinks and silence, far more of the latter.

The Free Software releases can be downloaded from its site. Normally, the same should be true of the Blairon, though the w.m.o/r site doesn't appear to have been recently updated.

Remember the Rowe/Wright performance that was released on three discs, recorded from three vantages? I got a good deal out of that by playing them simultaneously. Thought I might do the same here.....let's see....

Not bad at all! Did a 1/2 hour stint, that being the length of the shortest of the three, "x/0", balanced the sound...the xxxxx and Unami went together particularly well (the former got through three tracks and the loud third one coincided with one of the more high-volume portions of the latter), with the plinks from Blairon adding their pithy commentary every now and then. Cool.

Sachiko M - I'm here...departures (2-:+)

I'm at something of a loss to say much of anything about this. I like it but after some 15 listens, I don't think I grasp it. Possibly because, unlike most of her work from the last few years, she doesn't concentrate on one sliver of a sound--sine wave or contact mic--but mixes in several here while still remaining spare to the extent of negating any idea of obvious structure. I found myself analogizing it to some of Duchamps' "Stoppages" where he dropped lengths of string from a given height, the patterns they formed on the floor becoming the work. There's a steady sine tone for the last bunch of minutes (with tiny bits of detritus sprinkled atop) but instead of being the kind of focus it was in, say, "Bar Sachiko", it feels more like a lopped off end of something, similar to the way Rowe enjoys catching just the edge of an object in his paintings. This piece was designed to be played in looped fashion as an installation, and I think it might work quite well in such a context, where one mightn't concentrate so much in a vain attempt to discern form. I still like it a lot on the home stereo, though I find its nature eely enough to defeat anything much of an attempt to say why. She's a step or two ahead of me, I think.


Filament - 4 Speakers (2-:+)

Somehow, a relative walk in the park after Sachiko on her own. Here, with Otomo (and "musikelectronic geithain" which are apparently the speakers in question), we're served a similarly diverse and spartan stew, also one intended for hearing as an installation, but the flow, interrupted as it often is with silence, hits me as more natural, less difficult to comprehend as a whole. Admittedly, there's more in the way of rustling going on, the kind of sound that ameliorates the sines and harsher contact mic scrapes more than a bit. There's also a beep of a malfunctioning fire alarm outside my window at the moment that adds its two cents every five or so seconds, not entirely missing the mark. Lovely overall though, with several episodes of low-level scuffling that are quite wonderful; a fine continuation of the Filament discography. (Love the physical filament attached to the disc card!)

Website for both of the above (in Japanese) here


Kato Hideki/Tetuzi Akiyama/Toshimaru Nakamura - Omni (Presquile)

Two tracks, @40 and five minutes, consisting of a kind of rough-edged, ruffled drone casting off shavings and shards. Somehow--and it's interesting to try to figure out how this is conveyed--I pick up a rockish undercurrent, I imagine due to Hideki's presence, which deadens the proceedings significantly for me. The phrasing, the effects, the timbres--I don't know, but it's distracting and unpleasant (not in a good way) to these ears, making the whole thing tiresome and obscuring whatever of value may have been contributed by Akiyama and Nakamura. It gets sludgier as it progresses, making it something of a chore to listen through, though if one perseveres, there's a patch or two of relative clarity. Not nearly enough.

presquile


nmperign - Ommatidia (Intransitive)

OK, gotta love the cover. Naked nmperign; it's been a while since I've heard them in such a format but their sound is unmistakable. The sounds themselves will be recognizable to anyone who knows their work, but the pieces, relatively short, are assembled for maximum impact and, to these ears, carry a higher concentration of mass and solidity than before. "Glass" begins in familiar nmperign territory, all windy, sandblasted breath sounds, slowly moving over its seven minutes to purer tones. Its elements might be familiar but the structure is just perfect: concise and sculpted, all curved angles. Several other pieces are more active, guttural...louder than one might expect, but the distribution of weight in each is almost compositional in character, really impressive how balanced they are. Great dynamic and, dare I say it, emotional range is covered over the course of "Ommatidia"'s 38 minutes. Excellent recording.

Intransitive

All of these also available through erstdist

Went to Roulette on Thursday for a set of solo piano works performed by the Belgian pianist, Daan Vandewalle. The program was in large part given over to pieces by Gordon Mumma but also included works by three lesser known (to US audiences, anyway) Belgian composers and closed with a composition by Alvin Curran. The music was part of Thomas Buckner's Interpretations series that Roulette has hosted for a few years now.

The performance began with Mumma's "Jardin" (1958-1997). Listeners familiar only with his radical electronic pieces from the 60s and 70s might be quite surprised at the delicate, romantic nature of works like this one. I pick up a good deal of Satie in "Jardin" and, to a lesser extent, in the other works of his presented on this occasion. The opening section here, for instance, has a similar rocking motion, soft low chords offset by high single notes, that you hear in the Gymnopedies but also an air of contemplation one hears in the Ogives. Mumma's harmonies are different, of course, but not so many steps away. A sense of gentleness is pervasive, sometimes lilting, often pensive. There's a casual use of repetition, but it's always fleeting; taking a cue from the title, you can easily visualize a rough-hewn garden, Mumma flitting from flower to flower, weed to weed. As throughout the evening, Vandewalle was superb, evincing an imaginative sense of dynamics, always modulating the touch and volume.

Of the three Belgian composers heard here, Karel Goeyvaerts seems to be the best known and his Litany series are widely performed there. "Litany no. 1" (1979) began with a heavy, brutal staccato figure that reminded me strongly of Louis Andriessen's blocky minimalism from around the same period. That basic framework remained in place throughout even as it was added to and subtracted from. I had the mental image of a kind of latticework; as you scanned from left to right it might become almost entirely obscured by lush vegetation at one point but erode away to only a handful of vertices at another. It was quite complex and energetic, Vandewalle's hands often suspended and quivering before resuming the attack. Its somewhat brutal character grew a bit wearing over the last few minutes and when it abruptly shut down, there was a palpable sense of relief. Impressive, though.

Announcing the three short pieces by Boudewijn Buckinx, the pianist said, "They sound tonal, but they're not." Well, they did. Composed as part of a project wherein one was asked to somehow relate the music to Ives' "Three Pages Sonata" and Schoenberg's "Opus 23", they presumably did so though at a level well beyond this listener's capacity to ascertain. What registered once again--and not for the last time on this night--was Satie, here more in the nature of the Sarabandes, though, in the first piece ("Three Penny Sonata") with Middle Eastern references thrown in to boot. "Forensic Waltz" indeed had a dance hall character while "Middle Way" possessed a certain bluesiness, languid, soft and nocturnal. All three works were stunningly beautiful. Vandewalle referred to him as the most prolific composer alive. Not sure about that but his homepage shows quite a few. I'm hoping to investigate further.

The first half of the concert closed with Mumma's "Graftings" (1990-1996), a more severe set of pieces whose nature derives from "the complex timbres of resonating partials". While more rigorous in a post-serial sense and more like what one might have expected from a composer of Mumma's generation and affiliations, the music was not very arid at all, largely due once again to the marvelously subtle use of dynamics and touch; whether credit goes to Mumma or Vandewalle I'm not sure. Again, the sheer delicacy and consideration in the array of sounds made for fascinating listening.

Mumma's "Songs Without Words" began the second set, a series of nine brief compositions, portraits, of various people including Christian Wolff, David Tudor and Jon Barlow. Aside from the odd, loud trill here and there, they were pretty much of a piece: calm, very delicate, fairly tonal ruminations, seemingly set down in an intuitive fashion with no preconceived formula. There was an interesting sameness about them, as though Mumma was saying, "The differences between us are subtle, really not so large." At several points there was a gorgeous tentativeness in play, the single notes placed with such caution and care, as though the composer was attempting to limn his subject with an impossible degree of exactitude. These were the most transcendent moments of the evening.

Thomas Smetryns was a piano student of Vandewalle and, apparently, an awful one. In desperation, Vandewalle asked the 18-year old to write down some pieces so he could understand his ideas without going through the agony of hearing him trying to play them. The results astonished the teacher, Smetryns having clearly absorbed the concepts of composers from Wolff to Skempton at such a young age. (His site, in Belgian [which is to say, erm, Dutch], can be found here.) Indeed, Skempton was the composer that registered most strongly in the two works, "Brassens" and "Biermann", played this evening, along with a dash of Rzewski. The first was disarmingly "simple", with a steady, calm rhythm that was nonetheless surprising, the finely etched melody never going quite where you thought it would. Like Skempton's wayward son, maybe, very lovely. "Biermann" was darker, with a seesawing pattern of low chords and high, ringing notes but, as with almost all the music heard at this event, with a wonderful delicacy. More and more, I was assigning at least half the credit for this to the pianist.

The final piece on the program was Alvin Curran's "Inner Cities 5" and, well, I wish in some ways it hadn't been included. Part of a massive 4 1/2 hour cycle (which Vandewalle has recorded on a 6-disc set), it began impressively enough with Vandewalle very rapidly attacking the keyboard with the palms of his hands but not actually depressing the keys except, inevitably, accidentally. A wonderful effect, like a restrained Cecil Taylor. Little by little, more keys were sounded until, maybe two or three minutes in, the music abruptly shifted to a wild, maximalist stretch á la Charlemagne Palestine, bubbling and rumbling at a furious pace. I believe the pianist is asked to to negotiate the score in as fast a tempo as possible but the result becomes more of a pyrotechnic display than anything else. The transcendence that Palestine sometimes achieved via similar means was absent. One admired the craft (and endurance!) but left with little of substance.

Apart from that, it was quite a special evening, rehearing the Mumma works in a live context (I'd heard and greatly enjoyed the 2-disc set a few months ago) and being introduced to a couple of composers, Buckinx and Smertrynsm, who I'll look into further. Anything with Vandewalle will also be the subject of increased interest in the future. I noticed he had some early Feldman pieces in his repertoire; hopefully he comes to include the later ones as well.

Been skimping here lately, but reviews to come soonish...

Meanwhile, some nostalgia. On Sunday, I drove to Poughkeepsie to return my brother Glen's wallet, which he had left at our place the evening before. Was considering overnighting it to him, but that was an iffy proposition, it was a beautiful day and I felt a bit like a drive, so I tooled up on Sunday morning and made the hand-off. I asked him for a decent place to get a sandwich and he mentioned this wrap place on Raymond Ave, so I went, ordered a roast beef wrap, a blondie and some iced tea and sat out on a bench that was situated right about where the above photo was snapped.

What's now the Juliet Cafe had been the Juliet Theatre in my youth, right across the street from the northwest corner of the Vassar College campus. A little up the road was the Raymond Avenue School, where I spent first, second and third grade*. A block away was the small record store wherein I first heard Fred Frith, Dudu Pukwana, Xenakis, Crumb, many more in the early 70s. I saw my first in-house movie at the Juliet in 1960, 'Spartacus'. Not a bad choice at all for a 6-year old! Although the other early one I recall viewing there was of a slightly lesser grade, Jack the Giant Killer. Saw many a movie at the Juliet over the years, including Ken Russell's 'The Devils' in '71.

Aside from different businesses inhabiting the storefronts, the street hasn't changed much at all architecturally. Traffic circles have recently replaced lights from this point south along the Vassar street front; sitting on the bench, I noticed there were apparently still locals who have little idea how to negotiate these obstacles. Called Carol, with whom I'm sure I attended a movie or two here while in high school, had a fine conversation. I'd just seen Betsy and Emily, two dear Vassar friends, the night before so the nostalgic convergence at this particular bench was wonderfully intense.

Happy Glen left his wallet.

* My 3rd grade teacher was Mrs. Fratz, one of the two best instructors of my youth (the other, in 5th grade, was the beautifully named, hard smoking Sonia Brousalian). Mrs. Fratz (I remember "Mrs.", though I'm not sure) was overtly unattractive, looking very much like Max Patkin, the erstwhile Clown Prince of Baseball, with the added indignity of having severe elephantiasis in both lower legs. But what a teacher! Wonderful temperament combined with pushing this bunch of eight-year olds well beyond our supposed limits. I specifically recall learning 8th grade math, algebra, in her 3rd grade class. She retired during my senior year in High School, 1972, and apparently I wasn't the only one with fond appreciation for her toil, as our class gave her a nice retirement party. Thanks, Mrs. Fratz. Speaking of that gaggle of imps, if Martin Winn or Ronald May ever reads this, give a mail; always curious how you fared.

Lucio Capece/Radu Malfatti - berlinerstrasse 20 (b-boim)

I remain way, way behind in my grasp of everything Malfatti's been up to in recent years, but I think it's safe to say that, broadly speaking, this duo doesn't sound un-Malfatti-ish. The silences, though present, are of shorter duration than is found in much of what I've heard and the ancillary sounds--here, all manner of clicks and rustles--are also more in evidence. At heart, though, are the paired, quiet, lengthy breathlike tones from trombone and bass clarinet (a luscious enough sound marriage in any case). That dissolving of the borders between structure and pure sound seems to me, in part, to be what Malfatti's about anyway and this is a fantastic example of same. One's mind flits back and forth between these concepts; as soon as I find myself wallowing in the lush depths of Capece's bass clarinet, frosted by the trombone, I flash back to the layered structure that would be there regardless of the specific sound source and find that fascinating enough for me to forget the exact sounds involved. There's an utterly lovely sequence near the end where Malfatti taps a cadence with his fingertips on the trombone over a low, burred tone from Capece that's worth the price of admission. For all the glacial pace, one's brain is constantly active, slipping from one mode to another, maybe once in a while attaining some kind of illusory balance. Beautiful recording.

Should soon (?) be available stateside via erstdist?


Green Blossoms - Whiskey Leaves (digitalis)

Much of Anthony Guerra's work in recent years has trended toward the lush and melodic, often very attractively so. Here, as Green Blossoms, in collaboration with his partner Aiko Noga, he pushes even further in that direction, the pair compiling a set of dreamy songs over a mix of electronics and guitar-generated tones that range from delightful whimsy to gauzy evocations that all but evaporate. There are a couple of tracks that tilt too far toward the folky/poppy/woozy for my taste but there are also a couple, "Hana-Akari" and the title piece, that are just gorgeous tunes, catchy little memes that linger in the brain. Really nice closing track as well, a moody meditation on harmonium (I think) and guitar. Refreshing like lime sorbet. Nice work.

green blossoms


SLW - Fifteen Point Nine Grams (organized music from Thessaloniki)

The second offering from this high-potential quartet (Burkhard Beins, Lucio Capece, Rhodri Davies, Toshi Nakamura), recorded in 2007. One piece, though it falls into two sections. This first, lasting some 25 minutes, is wonderful, beginning in scrabbling fashion, mid-volume, then collecting itself, reducing things to strong, low hum, then gradually piling on sounds until a fine dull roar is achieved, Beins working up a fine lather. Not an unusual approach, but very subtly done here, with tones that often exist in a narrow range but are laid out with a sensitivity that allows each its space. I would have preferred it had ended at that point as the ensuing 19 or so minutes, while not bad, edges a bit into noodling territory and, to my ears, never quite gels until the very end, a keening sequence (I think Capece's buzzing soprano is the main element). Good recording overall, though, entirely worth hearing.

organized music from thessaloniki

Very saddened to hear of the death of Suzanne Fiol today. Apart from creating and managing the finest new music venue in NYC (Issue Project Room), the site of many a beautiful performance, I always greatly enjoyed talking with her, a very vibrant person.

Thanks for everything, Suzanne.

OK, so in the course of sifting through ancient drawings and scanning some of same, I came across a bunch done while working at Environ (and a handful at other loft venues from around the same time). Figured they were worth posting here (and on fb). These would have been done between Oct. '76 and early 1980. I think there are more around I haven't unearthed yet. Lots of these are done on the back of concert fliers, in fact.

A couple quick sketches of Abdul Wadud to start:




On one or two occasions we had blues musicians up to the loft. I'm pretty sure Son House was there--would love to confirm that. But I clearly remember the Sunday afternoon we hosted Bob Gaddy and Sweet Papa Stovepipe.





Charles Tyler was often at hand, great guy and, as I posted yesterday, he wanted to use one of my drawings of him--one of those I can't yet find--as a cover for a solo album which, afaik, was never recorded. Here's another:



Some of the AACM school. Brings back strong memories of Muhal, often around, always up for a good conversation. Great man. Hopkins, Jenkins, Hemphill, all gone now.



(Fred Hopkins' bass)

(Leroy Jenkins' violin and set-up)

(Julius Hemphill)



Naturally, I also sketched the environs of Environ; here are a handful:















More when/if I run across them.

[Not sure why these images come out huge when clicked on...maybe someone with more knowledge on scanning intricacies can clue me in.)

Testing my new scanner.....

Delicate Sen - s/t (Copy for your records)

This is just a really good, varied and strong live set by the trio of Billy Gomberg (synthesizer), Anne Guthrie (french horn) and Richard Kamerman (motors, objects), recorded in March of this year. I think they have a leg up with the delicious instrumental blend here: Kamerman tends toward the harsh and metallic while Gomberg has a refreshing tendency, when I've heard him, to linger in tonal byways. Add to this the all too rare, in this music, timbre of the french horn, beautifully deployed here by Guthrie, and you have a delicious prospect from the get-go. And then they construct this utterly captivating performance that wends its way through numerous neighborhoods, each of interest, almost never flagging over its 40 minutes. There's a point about halfway through where Gomberg adopts an almost church-organ kind of sound opposite Kamerman's jangling metal that's fantastic and when Guthrie plants long, burred tones in the midst, transcendent. Fine work. [from chatting with Gomberg a few nights back, I learned that there was in fact a loose kind of system employed to structure the performance, not one, I daresay, that any at-home listener is likely to discern]


Richard Kamerman - And She Sat Up In The Street In The Sun (copy for your records)

Kamerman's latest solo release is, not surprisingly, quite difficult to grasp in its entirety. It's very unwieldy in the sense of being almost impossible to have any idea what direction it's going to take though, those directions turn out to be generally both enticing and knotty. It begins fairly quietly, with hums, tumbled light metal, ratchety sounds for the first 15 or more minutes. Very attractive. Suddenly, there's a sequence of brutal, loud and "ugly" feedback-like tones that usher in a much more random and barren section, more open circuitry sounding with a fetchingly awkward sound placement. Kamerman, when I've seen him perform, often displays this attribute, which I enjoy very much. Similar to Annette Krebs, he manages to balance grace and imbalance, a tricky thing. Even so, he gets moving onto some wonderfully corroded terrain toward the back end of the set; it almost rocks. As said above, it's tough to put one's aural arms around the whole performance, but if you get over that (and why shouldn't you?) , it's a challenging, rewarding disc.

copy for your records


Marc Spruit - On/Off (CDR)

A 3" chock full with fairly harsh, loopy electronica that, overall, has the effect of being inside an old video game console, being buffeted around by every ping, explosion or chime. There's a prominent sound that reminds me of old, electronic scoreboards on pinball machines, a kind of brief, percussive throb, that's very alluring. I said "fairly harsh" but most of the music here has a feathery finish to it, enough that the aftertaste, if you will, is not unpleasant at all. Fun work, all 18 minutes; I imagine it would be quite giddily immersive live.

spruit

Once in a while, it pays off to be married to an Assistant Director of the OR at an Eye & Ear Hospital.

So, I'm at work, a little before 9AM. Yesterday, I'd had a slightly annoying floater put in an appearance in my right eye, a little larger than those that I'm sure we all get from time to time but nothing too bothersome, I was still there today but, again, I didn't pay it much mind.

Rather suddenly, it was as if someone had injected streams of black dye into the upper left side of my right eye. It flowed across making that half of the world resemble a monochrome Morris Louis painting. I kinda figured this wasn't good. So I did what anyone else would do, googled "floaters". Learned that what I was experiencing was not uncommon (the dark strands) and not necessarily a real problem but could be indicative or precedent to retinal damage. It dissipated over 15-20 minutes, leaving behind some stragglers and a fine mist of tiny particles that, I take it, were the remnants of the initial surge. So I called Linda who quickly scheduled me to see their best guy in this area.

Trundled down to 14th St, waited a couple of hours (the doc was doing clinic patients and couldn't, of course, bump them for an add-on), and eventually was examined. Lo and behold, I had a small retinal tear. "As retinal tears go," he said, "this is the kind you want to have." and suggested a laser surgery patch up. That afternoon.

So I did. Interesting procedure. I thought it might only involve a dozen or so zaps to seal the errant flap but it was more like 1,000. Very bright zaps. Very bright. Made for a rather psychedelic light show within my phosphenes. Some pressure/pain, but not worse than an average cavity filling. He explained that for people with extreme myopia, like yours truly, the tissue involved was stretched thinner than normal, making this kind of event more likely than in others. Something to look forward to, I guess.

Unhappily, I wasn't given a pirate eye patch to wear home and things seem to be operating as usual, though those floater remnants are still there and will, I imagine, take a few days to either disintegrate or settle.

Not quite the day I expected when I arose this morning....

There was a whiff of the Scratch Orchestra at Listen Space last night, something of a similar spirit (though in an interior space, not "in public") that several times evoked the same kind of smile I imagine I would've shown back in London, 1969.

The evening presented four pieces conceived and performed by James Saunders, John Lely and Travis Just. Upon entering the white-painted room, a former funeral parlor, I saw that the central area had been opened up, chairs lined up against one wall. On the floor, toward the middle of the room were a couple dozen common household objects, more or less aligned athwart the space. There were several stones roughly three or four inches around, a couple of kitchen utensils, a toy or two, a ruler, two plastic bags, a small cardboard fruit container, etc. Each had a string tied around it leading off to one end of the room or the other, the strings bearing colorful little flags, three or four each, of the type used for notebook dividers. The piece, by Just, consisted simply of the three musicians dragging the objects--usually slowly--toward themselves, sound resulting from the friction between them and the painted, slightly rough wooden floor. I'm not sure if any set sequence was involved or if the flags carried meaning beyond the decorative, but it was a lovely work, calm but with subtle agitations, the varying textures of the objects combining really beautifully. Very quiet (some of the objects were quite light), very satisfying.

Next up, a piece by Lely had the three sitting around a small table, iphones (or the like) in place, grasping a mallet, five various objects in front of each. They played some kind of metronome app (unheard by the audience, which numbered all of a dozen) and struck their objects in the same regular rhythm, though off from one another. When they switched objects (not at the same time) they also restarted the app, enabling a different combination of the tempi. It had a kind of playful Reichian aspect and one could easily appreciate the irregular triplets that emerged, but one also quickly grasped the essential nature of the piece, leaving relatively little room for surprise. One of those works that would have been fine at five minutes and became overly drawn out at 15-20.

Remaining at the table, newly armed with pencil and scissors, they proceeded to a piece by Saunders. The score consisted of about 20 sheets of paper per performer, each containing a drawing of some kind and, as I would later on discover while talking with the composer, specific instructions on what to do with it. These included various kinds of drawing with the pencil, cutting with the scissors or touching with their fingers, the resultant sounds ranging from the almost inaudible (rubbing fingers on the paper) to, well, as loud as scissors get. It seemed that there were only loose guidelines as to how long to spend each sheet; though they finished within a page or two of each other, there was never any group shift at the same time. It did have in common with the previous piece a bit of excessive length (if it lasted 20 minutes, I would've pared it down to 12 or so), the inherent sounds were much more fascinating and complex, rustles to snips to crosshatchings to flutters, the table acting as a good resonator for some of the long drawn lines especially. Really very nice, inevitably reminding me of Costa Monteiro's paper explorations. As with every piece this night, it was rewarding to watch as well as listen.

The last work was again by Lely and quite the capper. Saunders sat at the left end of the table, equipped with a floor tile and a chopstick. Just was at the right, with an old, thick book and a chopstick of his own. Between them sat Lely, his hands on a glass brick similar to that shown above. He slowly slid it toward Saunders. When it touched the tile, Saunders began, apparently as rapidly as possible, to thwack the brick and tile in a single motion, producing a quick double tap. Lely then moved the brick away, slowly, toward Just. Saunders' strikes began, necessarily, incorporating the tabletop as well so his sound now had three elements and those elements became more and more drawn out as the brick receded from him. When it touched Just's book, he started in on the same action (Saunders' arm now extended the length of the table--fatigue was becoming a factor!). Lely then slid the brick between the two poles, the resultant set of double rhythms expanding and contracting elastically. It was a rare display of (semi) athleticism in this music! Eventually (after messing with the two players a bit, I think) Lely's brick once again abutted Saunders' tile and he was "allowed" to cease, sweating and shaking his arm. It moved, ever so slowly, back toward Just, none to soon caressing his book, bringing the work to a close. Really fun, only about 5 minutes total, perfect length. Wonderful piece.

Satisfying evening, thanks gents.

Six pieces I did in August. I somewhat humorously find myself in the position of certain musicians who release, almost, their every thought, a stance I really don't have so many problems with on the one hand. On the other, as I start painting (and drawing--those perhaps to come) more often there's necessarily a rise in the number of pieces that fail for one reason or another. If they're bad enough, they go straight to the trash but I keep others around because, to my eye, there are one or two good aspects to them. But for now, especially since I am happy with a small bunch from August, I'll just present those.

The above is a good example of a piece that was seriously drifting toward the trash--I was trying for a very fine, precise rendition and failing utterly, so I just tore into it. And, I think, it worked.

I'd previously done a set of four 4x4 inch paintings of a red t-shirt or details thereof. I always had it in my head to do three sets, red, indigo and gray, four each, all the same size. Here are the indigos:








Cutting square sheets out of a larger block inevitably leaves one with oddly proportioned rectangles of paper and I've been using them as is. When oriented vertically, you're almost automatically drawn to a kind of Japanese compositional area. I did a few, this is the one I thought worked decently:



As always, enormous thanks to Betsy for her help, inspiration and judgment.

Sebastian Lexer - Dazwischen (Matchless)

I'm not as interested in the software integration used by Lexer on this solo recording, more in the music as such, but the electronics are indeed used well enough that it's tough to imagine the music without them and, in any case, the music is quite good indeed. Richard went more into depth than I'm able to here and if I'm not quite as blown away as he was, this is still one excellent disc. As he points out, most of the pieces feel more like compositions, breathing compositions, than improvisations, all the more impressive when manipulating and assessing the live interaction with the programming, but Lexer carves out his own sound as well. Gentler than Tudor, harsher than Feldman (though alluding to both), more liquid in feel than most post-serialists but still retaining no small amount of astringency, even piquancy. Maybe a tinge of Tilbury but not nearly enough to be a distraction. The cuts work well as a suite though if I had to choose a favorite, it would be "defining edges" with its multiple gentle arcs like flowering branches. Wonderful palette in that one and there's not a sub-par track on the disc. I can easily imagine this one revealing more and more on each listen and look forward to doing so. Get this.

Matchless


Tim Olive - The Specialist (Emrecords)

The "area" in which Olive is operating here is, even if I can't quite define it succinctly, one that I'm not so partial to these days: clunky/noisy/scratchy. Not the clunky/noisy/scratchy of, say, Tandem Electrics (who I should thank for a fine set the other evening at Listen Space along with an excellent one on the part of Bonnie Jones and Tim Albro), but something a bit more assertive, more through-plowing, with less concern for space. Given that, I've been trying to listen to this from a different angle, the same way I wouldn't look at the Gilbert and George-ish disc cover and evaluate it like a Twombly. This yields some dividends. The claustrophobic press of the sounds begins to be appreciated on its own merits, the grinding gears, the wacky clangs and whoops, the oily feel, the strangely moist static. Listened this way, there's much to enjoy but I get a little disgruntled by the thirteen rather brief tracks, wanting to here the kernels elaborated upon (like track 12, a rich, Roweian drone). In sum, I'm a bit half and half on "The Specialist"; it's too gesturally active, if you will, for me to totally embrace, but intriguing on its own terms.

You can get it, among other places, from Squidco where there's another review.



Seijiro Murayama - Space and Place (ftarri)

It's funny, there's something here, on the third track, that I'm sure most if not all of us have done, that is, striking a hard surface with a smooth stick and varying the pressure along its length so that the tone changes. I remember first discovering this with paint brushes on a concrete windowsill. So when it emerges here, I have this odd combination of pleasant nostalgia and a little disappointment of the "hey, I've done that" variety. Curious about the quasi-Sun Ra allusions in the titles of the album and last track as well. Overall, it dwells more in the snare and cymbal-induced drone area and I generally enjoyed the pieces though I had a nagging sense of grasping their essence a good length of time before they concluded.

available stateside via erstdist

Without a doubt, my most enjoyable, if belated, "discovery" of this year has been the music of Michael Pisaro. I'd heard snatches off and on for a while, if I'm not mistaken, including while listening to the Wandelweiser radio stream, but hadn't really listened until a few months back when Barry kindly sent me his Confront release of "an unrhymed chord" and soon thereafter I heard Pisaro's "hearing metal (I)" among four recent Wandelweiser discs. Michael saw the write-ups here and was kind enough to send me his entire Wandelweiser output, an additional six sets of material which I've been happily wallowing in for several weeks.

I find a real affinity between the way I approach "things" and how I hear that Pisaro does, which likely goes a long way in explaining why I enjoy the music so greatly. If I'm allowed to generalize, he comes at things with an extremely high level of concentration and seriousness, but that seriousness has something of an innocent, even childlike sense of wonder at the phenomena he's experiencing/creating that I find both appealing and inherently fascinating. That concentratedness necessitates lengthy works, by and large, but not once have I found a piece over-extended, even (especially) the 288 minutes of the combined Transparent City project. That's a remarkable accomplishment right there. Too, he has the wonderful habit of creating "rules" that can be thought of as "simple" in the sense that they're easily described and understood, yet they faithfully produce complex, endlessly rewarding results.

I bet the earliest piece, "mind is moving I" (1995), for acoustic guitar (with whistling), employs some system with regard to chord choice, length, decay, dynamics, etc. though I get the impression that the whistles are more intuitively placed (I could well be wrong!). The guitar sounds are emitted sparsely: isolated, quiet chords with odd harmonics, mostly left to hover on their own, sometimes in a short series, often allowed to evaporate, occasionally cut short, sometimes accompanied by a soft whistle. That's all. Yet for 72 minutes (a popular duration for Pisaro) I was held rapt; it felt more like a half hour had elapsed. Listening at home or, better, up here in Cape Cod, it was a perfect complement for the area birds, squirrels, bees, flies--it integrated with the surroundings beautifully. Not "peaceful" in any sappy, ambient sense but, oddly, in a very active manner despite the surface stasis of the music. Here, as on subsequent releases, I can't help but think that it's Pisaro's poetic sensibility--what to introduce when, with what qualities--that makes this music stand apart from quasi-similar efforts by others. Again, it's not a complicated "score" (maybe it is?) but its particulars, including the care and concentration with which it's performed here, cause it to levitate.

His "here (2)" for accordion (Edwin Alexander Buchholz) and flute (Normisa Pereira da Silva) appears on the excellent 2-disc set of accordion music that includes a wonderful rendition of Cage's "Cheap Imitation" as well as engaging pieces by Frey and Beuger. In a sense, it anticpates later works where a sine tone is buried amidst sounds of similar timbre in that the flute, especially in the piece's first half when the accordion is breathing out thick, dense chords, is virtually hidden from overt perception. As the music trends higher and sparser, attaining a kind of thin air aspect, the twinned tones, long sustained, are clearer, interlacing quite beautifully. At 20 minutes, it's relatively short for Pisaro, but perfectly timed here.

It's difficult to write, qualitively, about the "Transparent City" sequence, comprising two 2-disc sets, 24 pieces of 10 minutes each with two minute pauses between tracks, except to say that I love them, have been listening quite often and don't think I've come close to exhausting the material there. As mentioned above, the basic idea seems rather simple: take a 10-minute swatch of field recording (all samples here recorded in and around Los Angeles, in various types of locale) and threasd it through with sine tones that roughly approximate the general timbre of the recorded sounds. And that's what we hear. Why they work so fantastically (though, interestingly, I'll be damned if I can pick out any "favorites" from the bunch) is tough to say, except for two things. First, the recordings themselves are great, precise, depth-filled, almost as fascinating as sitting in those places with open ears oneself, no mean accomplishment. Second, as in "mind is moving I", the aesthetic judgment evinced by Pisaro in his deployment of the sine tones is unerring. I used the term "thread" above and, in fact, the strongest mental image I have while listening to "Transparent City" is the glimmer of a thin silver filament wending its way through rough, jumbled material, just barely glinting here and there, disappearing into the folds, re-emerging. The sine tones never dominate, never lie atop the recorded material; often they're either absent or unhearable. When relatively prominent, they take on something of a Lynchian aspect, imparting an otherwordly quality to the water, marketplace, roadway, etc. The field recordings were unedited; curious if some judgment was applied choosing which 10-minute segment to utilize. Why 24 pieces, using recordings from a four-year period? Dunno, except to say, miraculously, it doesn't seem like overkill! The pieces are different but of the same cast; there's a strong consistency here. I'd even welcome a third set.

Belying somewhat what I said above, the structure behind Pisaro's "harmony series" (here, #s 11-16 out of 34) is, if not complex, at least a bit arcane. As I (probably faultily) understand it, he begins with a poem and somehow manages to render it graphically ("as if one were making a stencil"). He then reduces the essential meaning of the poem or fragment thereof to a single characteristic which informs the rendition of the piece ("proliferation" is cited as an example, so that piece "might be read as a shift from a barely to a clearly audible, multi-faceted sound".) And I think there's more to it but I'll stop there. The result is nine pieces that are often spellbinding (some of the numbers have variations--the nine are presented almost symmetrically, both by title and approximate length: 16a, 11a, 12a, 13, 14, 15, 12d, 11c, 16b). Far too much to go into here, but highlights include 12a, a duo for oboe/English horn (Kathryn Pisaro) and sine tones (the composer), a 20-minute series of paired tones of long duration (with long silences) that is almost stately, the tones sliding with mild irregularity up to and away from one another, creating slightly irregular "beats". I might call it "meditative" but its mutations require too much attention. Two solo works are gorgeously played by Greg Stuart (percussion--a musician I very much want to hear in other environs), one recalling Jeph Jerman a bit. 14 might be my personal favorite, for violin, harmonium, piano and (I think) bowed guitar, the single piano notes in a slow tempo, like water droplets on a sheer, silk scrim, shifting gently in a breeze. Evoking the spirit of Feldman without ever imitating him. Great piece.

Neatly, this series concludes with the Wandelweiser release (2-disc) of "an unrhymed chord", the same piece through which I was really introduced to Pisaro's work via the fine version by Barry Chabala. Here it's rendered twice, the first a tremendous exploration by Stuart using 70 sounds, all "made by friction--either by bow, stick or hand". As much as I enjoy Barry's, this one is my current standard; maybe there's something about the chosen sounds, that frictive aspect, that really imparts a wonderful grain to the piece here. That plus the choices Stuart makes, of course. Whatever, it succeeds in manifesting as a palpable presence in the room, filling the space, endlessly absorbing. The second version might be the one work out of this entire bunch that didn't work for me on most levels. Aggressive and chancy idea, though: Joseph Kudirka, who realized the work, solicited contributions from several dozen musician acquaintances, asking that the "sounds were to be electronically generated in a non-performative fashion". Kudirka then assembled the sounds in the manner suggested by the score (the louder the sound, the shorter its duration/iteration), their entry more or less determined by the notations of the contributors. There's something of Rowe's "sight" about this but it lacks that work's "found" power and grace. For my ears, perhaps the already semi-randomized nature of the score requires more "touch" on the part of the person doing the realization. Here, everything is listenable enough, not bad by any means, but the specialness that adheres to so much of Pisaro's work isn't there for me.

Hey, pretty decent batting average nonetheless.

Many thanks to Michael for sending these discs my way, it's been a total pleasure coming to (begin to) know the music.

I believe most if not all of these are currentlyh available through erstdist

Curious listeners might also be advised to tune into Wandelweiser Radio which seems to be currently down but which I imagine will be back soon.

Every so often, browsing through my LPs, I come across a sequence that makes me wonder, "Is there any other collection that contains (say) these four LPs?" This is one such string.



David Garland's first album, if I'm not mistaken [I am, maybe, by two--see site below--not sure of the sequence of LP releases], from 1986, with Mark Abbott (who used to have an electronic music show on KCR that I wish I'd paid more attention to in the late 70s), Klucevsek, Marclay, Zorn and others though it's more often than not solo. The opener, "I Am With You" give a clue as to Garland's fine songwriting and singing capabilities, with some goofy electronified vocals that work surprisingly well, still. It's downtown NYC in '86, after all, so one can expect awful synthesized percussion and, yes, it's here; not really as awful as you might expect, actually. Overall, still sounds good in that unique, hyper-awkward way Garland has with a tune. Singing about i-beam girders, clocks, furniture, Planet X, keeping in touch:

I think I'll probably be
here for you when you need me.
Just give me the word. I'll come right away--
unless, I guess, I'm busy or something.

There's something about Garland I find inherently likable, I admit. I can imagine having grown up with him as a good friend, with similar obsessions. Wish he recorded more. Ah, lookee here, he has a site and apparently an upcoming album.

nota bene: when I saw Fredric Rzewski play at the new Carnegie recital hall a couple of years ago, Garland sat in front of me. He's very tall. It was mildly annoying.


I think I have Gaslini on one other record, a duo with Braxton (and a piece for the IIO, I guess), but I otherwise know next to nothing about him. This is a 1976 release on Pausa with no accompanying info; I imagine I picked it up (apparently in a cutoff bin) intrigued by Ponty being on the same disc as Lacy, Oxley, Rutherford etc. I wrote it up for AMG here and can't add much to that. Not really my cuppa, a little too much on the "classical" side of free jazz, maybe, Cecil without the soul.


I suppose it's possible, given this LP's seeming obscurity and its creator's involvement with a certain dinosaurean rock group, that this might well be the most monetarily valuable thing in my collection. Maybe not, just checked e-bay and they're showing two, one for $50, one for $130. Whatever, it's a pretty nice set, not at all what you'd expect from someone associated with the Floyd (he co-composed Atom Heart Mother). Interesting bio at AMG.

Fun music, though, piano miniatures mixing Satie with minimalism, sometimes with a childlike simplicity, other times descending in a chaotic storm (though Geesin's always in control--maybe not such a good thing). He attains something like a hyperactive player piano status--incredibly dense but somehow mechanical even as one is, embarrassingly, experiencing a bit of a thrill. In a funny way, imagine the best possible Keith Emerson solo piano album (I know, this is difficult) and you're most of the way there.



This one has been reissued as "Ghana: Ancient Ceremonies, Songs and Dance Music". My 1979 LP has the dubious generalization, "Africa" followed by "Ancient Ceremonies Dance Music & Songs of Ghana". Whatever, it's a spectacular bunch of disparate tracks, very much in keeping with other great, more widely proclaimed Nonesuch ventures. Instruments like the dzil , a xylophone-like thing with, I imagine, gourd resonators (likely filled with spider webs, imparting that fantastic buzz) are spellbinding to hear. Lot of percussion typical of West Africa, but also treasures like the gonje, which resembles a douss'ngouni but is bowed, here played by Adolphus Micah. Wonderful village choral work as well. The young girl singing "Marilli" is nothing short of incredible. Raw and beautiful.

***********

Too late to listen to the next in the shelves, though Jon Gibson's "Two Solo Pieces" wouldn't likely make those five LPs any more likely to exist in a set elsewhere. Besides, as luck would have it, he immediately precedes my Glass section, a job I have mixed feelings about attempting (listening through, that is).

In any case, we'll be on Cape Cod from tomorrow to the 19th; might post from there, might not. See everyone soon.

I like cold weather.

I've always been partial to it. I mean, give me 50◦ on a clear, crisp day or evening and I'm very happy. But given the choice between 90◦ and muggy or 10◦ and raw, I'll take the latter every time. It's gotten "worse" as I've aged, on both ends. Tolerating high heat and humidity becomes more and more of an ordeal while my apparent immunity to the effects of cold has also increased. My winter coat is a short, light jacket, like a windbreaker with a thin lining. I've never zipped it up. I can imagine doing so in an extreme situation but that hasn't happened yet (strong winds, below zero). I don't own a hat, or gloves (that's what pockets are for!) or earmuffs or a scarf. I don't really think twice about it, just go about my business wearing, or not wearing, however much clothing I feel comfortable with.

So, last evening, we're eating at a local bar/restaurant, one that has outdoor seating so that we can bring the puppy along. At the next table, there's a family of three, father, mother, daughter. I recognize the guy from the neighborhood, though I'd never met or spoken to him. As they're leaving he comes over and says, "Excuse me, but I gotta say hello. I was telling my wife that this is the guy who goes around walking his dog in freezing weather in a t-shirt or with his jacket wide open like it's spring." Nice guy, we exchange mildly humorous remarks about imperviousness to cold.

I tell him that, when taking Nanook out for her nighttime pee, which generally involved walking no more than 100 feet up the street, I'd routinely go out with my feet clad as they are around the house, that is, barefoot. I'd only put on footwear if there was snow on the ground. Very bracing when it's around 20◦! Sometimes, though, it will have begun to snow without me realizing it. I'll get to the front door with the dog and think, "Hell with it", and go out sans shoes anyway.

Yes, it's cold, but it's entirely worth it imagining what goes through the mind of the next person to walk down my street, encountering barefoot footprints in the new snow.

Been thinking about this movie for several days, Ayneh (The Mirror), directed by Jafar Panahi (1999). [Spoilers to follow, be forewarned]

It has an interesting structure, something about which caused me to relate it to ares of music I generally concern myself with here.

The movie begins with a simple enough premise: a seven-year old girl, one arm in a cast, leaves her school in Tehran one afternoon and her mother doesn't come by to pick her up. All her friends have gone home and the remaining school personnel are somewhat indifferent to her plight, eventually foisting her on a man with a scooter, who also seems relatively unconcerned with the young girl's actual safety. One of the clear subtexts in the film is the miserable way women are treated in Iran, their issues often dismissed out of hand if not derided. The girl wanders through the streets of Tehran, trying to get strangers to bring her home, a location of which she has only a vague idea. One of the fascinating aspects of the movie thus far is that it was shot on the streets of Tehran as is, cinema verité style so the viewer gets an excellent idea of the everyday activity taking place there, the massive amount of traffic through which she and others dangerously thread their way included.

Fine, all well and good. One is rather touched at her ordeal and the film is well-shot enough to maintain interest.

About 40 minutes in, the girl has secured a ride on a bus she has been told will head in the direction of her home. She's lodged herself near the driver but the front of the bus is reserved for men--women must huddle in the rear. There's something of an argument going on between the driver and the person who put her there when, all of a sudden, the young actress, Mina Mohammed Khani, breaks character and has something of a tantrum, declaring, "I don't want to act anymore!", removes her hijab and the fake cast on her arm and angrily leaves the bus, seating herself on the steps of a nearby store. A camera pans toward the back of the bus where we see the film crew in a dither, the director ordering a female adviser to talk with Mina, to try to convince her to continue. Several people try to no avail, mina continuing to change into her own clothes, in a total snit.

Panicked discussion ensues among the crew. One of them realizes, however, that Mina hasn't removed her mic an that they're still able to pick up transmission. Realizing she's in the middle of Tehran, far from her home, in essentially the exact same situation as her character (hence, "The Mirror"), they make the rather amazing (casual? callous? negligent?) decision to continue to film her from the bus. So they do, following her going from person to person, place to place, trying to get home.

It's a pretty amazing shift as the viewer goes from more or less caring about her character to seriously caring about the welfare of this little girl, wandering through traffic, engaging not always kind strangers, getting into cars, etc. (though she does so with determination and pluck).

But it was the act of being willing to change gears mid-film that made me think of some (possibly weak) connection to certain areas of music. Going from a scripted form, though loosely so and incorporating much improvisation, to an entirely freely improvised one where the structure is outside the control of the director and forms on its own. I guess more than anything, it was that willingness, even if it was more or less forced by circumstance, to go with something outside oneself, to surrender to happenstance with the knowledge that, maybe it'll lead to something even better than you'd planned (which it certainly does, in this case). Something akin, say, to Rowe's use of radio in AMM, to be willing to "disrupt" a perfectly fine performance with an intrusion of the unknown that may or may not be appropriate, that may cause the concert to crash and burn or not.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it but, whatever, it was a unique kind of viewing experience for me. (I'm almost counting on being told the dozens of times this trope has been used before....) Perhaps it has to do more with decisions made in real-time, a rare enough occurrence in a film that (unlike, say, Godard) didn't begin the day with that in mind as a possibility.

Worth seeing for any number of reasons, anyway.

First heard Garbarek on the late George Russell's "Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature", on which I believe he contributed some of the thematic material. Just prior to that, I guess, ECM had begun to release his work, that fine string of records culminating in "Witchi-Tai-To" (maybe "Dansere"? We'll see when we get there). But the earliest recording is from 1969, I think (released in 1971 by Flying Dutchman), the self-titled debut of his band, Esoteric Circle, with Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen. Annoying, I can't locate a cover image of the LP which feature the sculptures of Gustav Vigeland (here are photos of same):




Great record, one of the best proto-fusion albums I know, holding its own with Tony Williams Lifetime or the early McLaughlin's. Rypdal is pretty incendiary, Garbarek is in Ayler/Coltrane mode, on tenor throughout, composing wonderful melodies, moving here, fierce there. It might be argued though, that it's Andersen who really holds things together--what a great tone he had (might still have?), really one of the most under-rated bassists from the time period.

I know there was a recent upsurge of interest few years back when ECM finally released the early Garbareks. Listeners who enjoyed those should certainly get their paws around this one.


Definitely a seminal record for me. Happy I could find a shot of the original vinyl, much pinker than the disc release, I think, and a great example of an archetypal early ECM cover (recorded in 1970). Wonderful record, strong combination of gorgeous, northern-tinged melodies with tough, imaginative free soloing, each member of the quartet on pretty equal footing. Beautiful miniatures by Andersen especially; what a fantastic bassist he was. Christensen, when all's said and done might be a trifle light for my taste, kind of a Scandinavian Barry Altschul, but he fits in well enough here. Garbarek could write killer riffs too, as in the wildly propulsive "Beast of Kommodo" [sic] which still rocks mightily and the surging title piece (which was used for many years as the opening theme for WKCR's evening jazz program). Then of course, there's "Blupp". Fine recording, well worth hearing if you haven't.


I think there was a period when many of the ECM covers were all text, right? Nice design, anyway. "Sart" is kind of Garbarek's reaction to electric Miles, bringing in Bobo Stenson on piano and e-piano. The title cut especially, with its viscous semi-funky bass and spacey soloing. It's interesting how different his first five ECM albums are from one another, each taking a fairly divergent path from its predecessors. Of this bunch, it might be my least favorite but has its virtues nonetheless. When the piece "Sart" wells up, like a big bubble bursting from the depths of a thick stew, it's powerful enough. The first part of "Fountain of Tears" (titles like that portending ill to come) does point a bit toward Tryptikon and Andersen's (again, brief) "Close Enough for Jazz" is moodily lovely. But there's an air of diffusion that subtracts from the overall effect of the record, imho.


Another fine cover. I go back and forth between this one and the following as my favorite. Pared down to a trio with Edward Vesala and excellent substitution for Christensen (especially in this sort of music), Garbarek pulls a Norwegian Ayler, investigating Scandinavian folk forms from a free jazz angle, and as raw as he ever got. The structures are "loose" again here in terms of a lack of defined heads, but there's a great tautness in general feel, everything seem stretched to the verge of snapping. It's not that it's loud and strident all them time (though there's a good deal of that), just that it all feels tense. In a very good way. Even the closing folk song, "Bruremarsj", which sounds essentially like a drinking song, carries a dark edge. Very fine record.


Pound for pound, I might have to consider this the strongest Garbarek release. He had the inspired idea to do covers drawn from the JCOA catalog, Carla Bley's great tune, "A.I.R." from Escalator and Don Cherry's equally beautiful "Desireless" from Relativity Suite, adding in Carlos Puebla's "Hasta Siempre" which Charlie Haden had used in his Liberation Music Orchestra and Jim Pepper's "Witchi-Tai-To". "A.I.R." is given an incredible run-through here, Garbarek on soprano, new bassist Palle Daniellson really driving the quartet (no more Rypdal, this is all acoustic), Stenson in fine Tyner mode. The sole original, Danielsson's "Kukka" is pleasant enough, though unexceptional, but serves as a nice lead-in to "Hasta Siempre" where Garbarek unleashes his inner Gato. The title track begins with the piano trio, working its way to a furious improv on the theme and final statement of same; still gives me a bit of chills, I must admit. "Desireless", on the JCOA recording, was always a real tease, a super-gorgeous melody that only lasts a little over a minute, iirc. Well, here it's stretched out a full 20+, sating this listener quite well. Fine, fine performance. With Holland's "Conference of the Birds", probably my favorite ECM jazz album.

nota bene: this is the first in this particular series that came out on Polydor, thus no longer imbued with that intoxicating German-pressing smell of the earlier ECMs. *sigh*



"Dansere", with the same quartet, recorded about two years later, is a nice enough record, but much of the fire is gone, replaced by the (if I may stereotype) Nordic iciness that, as far as I can tell, permeated his work from here on in. This is a big step toward "the ECM sound" (the slight preciousness of the album title and cover photo inch that way as well); the burr has been sanded off some, the melodies are folksier (as opposed to folk-song based) and there's a certain self-conscious ponderousness to much of it. Not nearly as weak as much of what the label would issue in coming years, but it's a sidestep in that direction. Stenson is more Jarrett, less Tyner. Listening now...it's perfectly passable but somehow depressing, like these guys have in the interim become "professional jazz musicians" rather than just musicians. There's more than a whiff of Eberhard Weber over much of it...the pastels are coming...

**************

I'm sure I liked "Dansere" pretty well at the time (1976) but this was the last Garbarek release I bought. Some of that doubtless had to do with my lack of a stereo for a couple of years ('77-'79--stolen from my apartment, couldn't afford a new one) but I'd already given up by and large on the label.

Too bad about Jan. Coulda been a contender.

Jeph Jerman round-up. Releases listed in reverse packaging size order. Cover images when available.

Jeph Jerman/Doug Theriault - all be right with you (tandjrec)

A 3" disc. As it lists recording dates from 1996 to 2009 and three locations, one can safely assume these 20 minutes have been assembled from various situations; once in a while it even sounds that way. Actually, the occasional shift in spatial resonance is one of the more attractive features here, close mic'ed to booming. Sounds like Theriault pretty much on guitar (probably processing?), Jerman on percussion. Very energetic throughout, inching more toward free improv than eai, the air aflutter with squeaks, clicks, taps, twangs 'n' bangs. Well constructed, not essential.

There's a site, tandjrec but it doesn't seem to be functioning at the moment.


Jeph Jerman - Vinyl (easy discs)

Described on the insert as simply, "collaged recordings of old vinyl records being played with cactus needles and dried agave leaves". It sounds like it and sounds fantastic. "Sere" was the term that first came to mind. The dryness, not as in sterility but as in lack of moisture and enhanced clarity, is all over this music. There's a true tactile aspect as the needles and leaves race across the tracks. You even seem to pick up faint ghosts of recorded music; I'm not sure if this is even possible or if I'm suffering audio hallucinations. Actually, the third of four tracks manages to evoke a more aqueous feeling, the sounds more rounded and reverberant. Beautiful recording, highly recommended.

Jeph Jerman/Tim Barnes/David Daniell/Sean Meehan - Live 07/22/04 (CDR)

The two tracks contain the names of the performers in differing sequences and combinations: "jeph/david/sean & tim" and "tim/sean/jeph & david". This is in the small sound end of the spectrum and far be it from me to have any interest in parsing out who's doing what. More than most, it's the kind of live recording that begs to have been heard in situ, all the location acoustics in play. Upping the volume on disc would seem to miss the point. It's lovely, though, in its quietude and care. Especially fine ending to the second of the two tracks, a gentle, rocking back and forth sequence. Wish I'd been there.


Jeph Jerman/Tom Cox - If/When (CDR)

Four tracks of relatively active, highly concentrated shuffling around of stuff. Small stuff mostly, I think, on surfaces with some amount of resonance. You get a sense of stirring often, as though Jerman and Cox have placed objects with varying degrees of solidity, including things that might melt during the process and items with slight bell-like properties, and have taken to mixing them with utensils of differing materials, sizes, densities. Very enjoyable; oddly, very relaxing.


Jeph Jerman - @stuk (CDR)

[Cover from Patrick Farmer's review at Bags. Mine is different, as I imagine all are]

Three cuts, the first dealing with Jeph's radiator, its own and all the surrounding sounds, the second with his electric meter. They're quite wonderful, forming very large, densely detailed spaces in which to wallow. Not sure what else there is to say, just that they're fine ear openers. At the beginning of the live piece, it's difficult to say what, if anything, Jeph is doing (aside from counseling about cellphones) and what noise the audience is making, but soon he sets to sliding metal objects across one another, dropping them atop each other and generally creating controlled metallic havoc, later on switching to stones or marbles, rolling them in hand (maybe in his mouth?), letting them drop.

One pauses at this point to wonder about qualitatively differentiating Jerman offerings. They all tend to strike these ears as pretty "good", sometimes more than that but they're so clearly an expression of Jeph's gestalt that, in a way, they're of equivalent "value". Anyway...


Jeph Jerman - Prayer.Tactus (semperflorens)
Then again, something like this does stand out a bit. "Prayer" has Jerman on a Tinguely machine (not sure which one as there are a few. Here's an example), Tibetan prayer wheels, burden busket ([sic] I assume, "burden basket"?) and drum. It's fantastic. You're plunged into an entirely other world: mechanical, rumbling, moaning, percolating, electronic, stone-age. "Tactus" (for stones, volcanoes, shortwave, wire and vlf [Very Low Frequency?])--did someone say "rumbling"? This is one huge set of low-level, speaker-threatening growls, as though Jerman had lowered a mic a mile or two into the maw of Mount St. Helens. Very impressive, also in a way very approachable. Eventually, it splays out into a combination of shortwave bleeps and gamelan-like sounds. Of the Jerman I've heard, this might be the one I'd offer to someone looking for a taste. Marvelous release.

Jeph Jerman/Daniel Mithas/Nick Phillips - Ones/Hands (Palsy)

As reconstructed with the help of Nick Phillips, this LP consists of recordings Jeph sent the pair, Ones (Mitha & Phillips), in 2004 which may or may not include some of their work with him in the 90s. They then added in bits of their own, mixed things together. This was issued by White Tapes in 2005 on disc but the LP version was remastered by Scott Colburn. Got it? Who cares, it's an amazing recording, just gorgeous all the way through, the Ones duos presumably responsible for the bulk of the non-Jerman sounding (that is, more tonal) portions, though I wouldn't bet much on it. Very nice mesh, the displaced guitar sounds alongside the rustling noise, lovely episodic, cinematic feel to each side. When the acoustic guitar emerges full-on, almost Robbie Basho style, toward the end of one piece, it's pretty magical. The other swells into an enormous drone of cymbals and ringing bowed metal. Both are pretty great. Have turntable, get this vinyl.

To the best of my knowledge, all of these are available from erstdist

(Various) The Black Box (Flingco)

Just in time for your Halloween gift grab bag. A tombstone-shaped device with speaker, volume control and track selector, The Black Box corrals nine brief tracks from Annie Feldmeier Adams, Haptic, Cristal and Wrnlrd for your edification and/or dread. Did I say brief? Well, it depends. Each piece is a mere snippet, lasting several seconds, but placed on a loop so that you may play it for as long as you like or can tolerate. The two by Adams are spoken lines: the cheery, "Today I will not kill myself" and the positively exuberant, "I don't feel anything". The three by Haptic are enticing enough smears, the two each from Cristal and Wrnlrd (the latter apparently an obscure black metal outfit) are flashes of attractive noise. The tinny speaker imparts a rather nice extreme lo-fi aspect to the project and, I have to say, leaving the final cut, Haptic's "3", on for an extended period sounds pretty cool. A novelty item? Yep, but kinda fun....actually, what's really fun is leaving it on that track (batteries not included, btw), putting it back in its smartly designed box, muffling the sound somewhat, and leaving said box on the shelf of some unsuspecting person, like a spouse.

flingco sound


On (Sylvain Chauveau/Steven Hess) - Your Naked Ghost Comes Back at Night (Type)

I'm clearly not the best person to assess this as my knowledge of or interest in current "dark ambient" is minimal; not sure if the so-called "Isolationism" of the mid 90s applies, though that's my chief referent. Here, Chauveau (guitars) and Hess (drums, percussion, piano) created several hours of music which was shipped to Helge Sten for processing. Sten, I take it, is also known as Deathprod, a figure of some standing in the dark ambient world [also, as I was reminded by Steven, a member of Supersilent]. The result is seven bubbling, turgid, molten tracks that, yes, remind me of things I'd heard some 15 years back, though there's a depth of detail and range of sounds that was generally lacking then (in my experience). Pulses rather than beats and dollops of tonality render the music much less oppressive and blank than it might have otherwise been. Not exactly my cuppa by any means, but the last three tracks, where things are reduced to a nice, bleak simmer, work pretty well, sound good and hollow.

type


Fredy Studer - Voices (Unit Records)

Recorded between 2000 and 2005, released in 2008, "Voices" documents percussionist Studer's interactions with three vocalists, Lauren Newton, Saadet Türköz and Ami Yoshida. I don't think I'd heard much of Newton since her Vienna Art Orchestra days. Türköz is entirely new to me, of Chinese ancestry via Istanbul, her voice carrying a fine coarseness and drawing on Khazakh traditions. Yoshida, of course, is a known quantity. Newton in avant scat mode, as she is here on "Axis", sounds rather trite, like second hand Jeanne Lee, and tread perilously close to Galas on "Madcap" but when she sits back and relaxes, as on "Die Dinge", she's fine if not inspiring. Türköz is more rewarding, though I'd be interested in hearing her in more traditional settings; her voice seems so redolent of Central Asia and that can be a bit oil and water with Western art tropes. I sometimes found Studer's percussion, while always capable, somewhat rote in an efi sense, but with Türköz, on cuts like "Can", he fits well. Yoshida, on her own, is as striking as ever (her tracks were recorded in 2004) but Studer doesn't follow her lead, playing a kind of gross Prevost cymbol-bowing session on "Nakae". Overall, too grab bag and unfocused to recommend.

unit records

Four new recordings from Wandelweiser.


Tom Johnson - Counting Keys (Edition Wandelweiser)

My reaction to Tom Johnson's music in the past has visited the extremes of hot and cold. I love "An Hour for Piano", really like most of "Rational Melodies" and am unreasonably fond of "Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for String Bass". On the other hand, on my short list of suggestions for interrogation soundtracks to reduce the most hardened mass murderer to a pile of mush, I'd place "The Chord Catalog". Perhaps this is impressive in and of itself. John McAlpine performs four works here that skirt the boundaries between math experiment and oddly lovely music. "Counting Keys" (1982), in five segments, utilizes fairly clear additive and modulative rules, iterating one kind of approach per segment, watching as the results expand, contract, cascade. The rote aspect never quite transcends its directives, though, and the end product, while attractive, remains somewhat dry. Desirous of writing a piece "consisting more of silence than sound", Johnson created "Organ and Silence for Piano" (2002), which does just that, though some of the sounded parts in the first couple of sections are a bit...pompous, as though defensive of their turf. It quiets down some and the methodology for generating note sequences is less overt throughout, though one still senses it's buried down there somewhere. But the ambiguity imparts a more poetic feel and, indeed, the silences are well used and come to have a real solidity.

As its title suggests, "Tilework for Piano" (2003) makes use of tiling properties, as imagined for musical notation. Now, admittedly, I'm a big fan of tiling and if I would have preferred something with a more Penrose feel, I do think that in this piece, Johnson does manage to transcend the topography of his construction, which involves laying triplets "alongside" each other, five of them in various groupings, repeated as many times as there are combinations. There's a playfulness, almost of a animal nature, to be heard, the notes skipping and prancing in clearly defined groups whose relationship to each other is constantly in flux. Sort of like Penrose tiles...."Block Design for Piano" (2005), my favorite on this recording, has an exceedingly complicated plan involving 330 6-note arpeggios but as McAlpine points out in his liner notes, these blueprints are all but inaudible, the listener instead somewhat enraptured by the haze of those rising figures, the harmonies quite gorgeous for all their rigorous base, a fine blossoming sense reached by irregularly (?) varying the lengths of the arpeggios from four to five to six notes. Quite beautiful.


Michael Pisaro - Hearing Metal 1 (Edition Wandelweiser)

The first Stockhausen I ever heard, back in college, was Microphonie and I've always remained partial to the general family of sounds elicited therein. So it's not surprising, all else aside, that I'm drawn to the music here, derived from the excitation, via bows and strokes of a 60" tam-tam much like that used by Stockhausen, sensitively played by Greg Stuart. The added flavor, as is Pisaro's wont, is the integration of sine tones pitched very close to the range of the tam-tam itself, becoming almost indistinguishable from it insofar as the sine throbs might well be mimicked by bowing action on the metal. One soon ceases to care as the music, infinitely complex when played at volume, envelops the listener. Pisaro describes "Sleeping Muse" as "something like a four-part chorale of bowed sounds" and merely reading about the approach might summon up drone-y, rather flaccid work but this is nothing of the kind. As rich, (relatively) tonal and flowing as the music is, the range of detail, the the endless swirls are entirely absorbing; one guesses that the sine tones are the spinal fluid here, imparting a kind of meaning to the arcing tones.

"The Endless Column" (the three pieces, by the way, are all titled after Brancusi sculptures) slows things done lusciously, a series of strokes (recorded individually, ordered randomly, one after another) swaddling a slowly rising sine tone which, again, is more felt than heard. The deliberateness of this piece is wonderful; one gets something of a prayer bell feeling but with the peals entirely dissembled. The final work, "Sculpture for the Blind", superimposes eight layers of bowing, again interwoven with sine tones, the durations of the bowing increasing over the ten minutes of the piece. The structure thus falls midway between the preceding two, combining the drone of "Sleeping Muse" with the slow pulse of "The Endless Column" as well as containing a fine, subtle grainy character that gives it a different coloration. Again, the focus one hears, on the part of both the composer and performer, keeps the music from drifting into gauze, not even close.

Wonderful recording, one of the best I've heard in recent months.


Antoine Beuger - two.too (for erwin-josef speckmann) (Edition Wandelweiser)

Two discs, the first an almost hour-long duet, "two", with Irene Kurka (soprano) and Jürg Frey (clarinet). The voice and clarinet alternate long, pure tones, Kurka very gradually singing the text: "as the full moon rises/the swan sings/in sleep/on the lake of the mind" (Kenneth Rexroth). The pair kind of seesaw back and forth, very calm and deliberate, reciting the words one at a time but repeating each many, many times, changing pitch with each advance in the poem. Beuger's concern for space is evident; it spools out slowly, like a thread in water. I find myself first rather entranced, then gradually bored, then fascinated again, going back and forth on an even slower pendulum than the performers. Ultimately, I found my attention wandering around the 40 minute mark.

But then there's "too". I had first listened to it without having read Richard's analysis of the piece (with the help of info from the composer). I would have realized after another listen or two, I think, that the underlying body of "too" was precisely the same recording just heard, but I never guessed that the "accompanying" duo of Rhodri Davies (Irish harp) and Ko Ishikawa (sho) had been lifted from a Hibari recording done in 2006 (one I don't own) and transplanted, the 20 minute track laid three times in succession over "two", just overlapping it on each end, tucking it in. Perhaps a closer examination of the recording dates may have hinted as much, but the two performances are so well integrated that the notion may never have crossed my mind. Technical details aside, the addition of Davies and Ishikawa absolutely open up the work. What was once intriguing if a bit arid now just blossoms. The Hibari recording also contained large amounts of space so there's never the slightest sense of overcrowding (indeed there remain, still, many moments when none of the four are creating sound). It may be due in substantial part to the affinity between the four voices, the harp providing a soft percussiveness that lovingly accents the smoother tones from voice, clarinet and mouth organ. There are times when the voice and sho are in almost perfect unison, others when the harp seems to be supplying just the right counterpoint. It's an inspired, not to say unusual choice, and Beuger aced it, an impressive decision. "too" becomes a rapturous experience, well more than the sum of its parts.


Stefan Thut/Manfred Werder - Im Sefinental (Editions Wandelweiser)

What to say about this release? How to possibly offer a qualitative opinion? To all aural appearances, we have two field recordings done in a glacial area of Germany, near rushing water, on the same day, each a bit over a half-hour long. You can hear some small sounds apart from the water: a plane far overhead, birds, perhaps wind rustling long grass, but the water is the backbone. Variations between the two works are minor (the second, by Werder, contains some very high-pitched squeaks that might be avian--there are crow caws at one point--and, I think, more buffeting of the mic by wind); maybe they were recorded at the same time from different vantages, opposite sides of the stream. Have they been enhanced or otherwise worked on? Hard to say; nothing that strikes me as obvious. So, one simply sits back and listens.

What sets them apart from any number of "mood enhancing" environmental recordings done since the 60s? There is a difference, I daresay, perhaps having to do with focus, depth of audio field, sustained concentration. That last probably makes the greatest impression, the willingness not to seek overt change. They each end with alarming abruptness. I enjoyed them. Hard to say exactly why except that, if nothing else, they strike me as honest.

Strong set of releases.

wandelweiser

Available stateside from erstdist

Andrea Neumann/Ivan Palacký - Pappeltalks (Uceroz)

A fine, strong set of duos from 2006-07 with Neumann at the inside piano and Palacký on his amplified knitting machine, I take it a Dopleta 160 model. I've been curious about this the handful of times I'd previously come across his work--I guess this is it:


It does generate a wonderful range of sounds, buzzing to clattering and much between. Of course, that's of less import than the coordination between the two musicians and these talks are marvelously cohesive, sounding as one. You can, on occasion, pick out the resonance of the strummed piano wire but it weaves perfectly amongst the aural skeins of the Dopleta. Calm in pace but aboil with activity, these talks reveal new thematic connections on each listen. Both players give the sense of being very intent, very concentrated, paying great attention to where the music wants to go--harsh when it needs to be, sedate as well--maintaining a spacious but firm kind of control. The disc is also arranged quite well, the final Pappeltalk a kind of summation, a very rich 15 minutes worth of delicious granules, deep thrums and delicate plucked tones; very Roweian. Excellent work, get it.

Oh and I won't mention anything about the cover on the small chance that someone will be as surprised as I was.

palacky


Michiel de Haan/Marc Spruit - Schoonhoven, Hollands Licht (CDR)

Two new releases from the duo who brought us "Radical Improvisations" a couple years back. Schoonhoven, so named in honor of ZERO-movement artist Jan Schoonhoven (see below) comprises six tracks (seven listed on the sleeve, six showing in my player) from 2007-08. Not solely due to the guitar/turntable instrumentation, but the first things that leaps to mind are the Otomo/Tetreault duos from years past, for both the ferocity and the in-your-faceness of the music. It's very "hands-on", more toward the gestural noise end of things than "eai" as such. In many ways, it's a kind of music I've found myself veering away from, but this pair, here, really digs in with all four hands (possibly a couple of feet as well) and the resultant swarm of crashes, blips, whooshes, snatches of LPs, bangs 'n' beeps serves to create a convincingly plastic wall of bric-a-brac. Nicely done and, at about 1/2 hour, perfect length for work of this density.



Its companion release, Hollands Licht, as one might gather, attempts to make sonic reference to the uniquely limpid light of that area that has infused canvasses from Vermeer to Mondrian. A tall order, to be sure, and if there's any way to tell whether or not they succeeded, I'm unaware of it. The music, in many ways, is even harsher than on "Schoonhoven", the cuts more abrupt, the variations in microsecond attacks more severe. To the extent I hear it as pricklier, I'm not as fond of it as the prior disc, but those sharp, painful points, taken on their own, work just fine, though there are loopy moments as well and its 28 tracks in about 40 minutes pushes things a tad inasmuch as one tries to get a handle on the elaborate display. Still ok, though, noiseheads should get quite the kick playing this at volume.

Ordering info at their myspace page



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Addendum: Miraculous apparition of rainbow image on the wall behind my computer, source unknown.

A few minutes ago, Richard mentions in an fb status update that he's whistling, "I Saw Her Again Last Night". Immediately, I'm transported back to my childhood bedroom, listening to WABC on the radio and reading Marvel comics. This has happened countless times.

I'm sure it's been researched (though a quick google on "music induced visual flashbacks" yielded nothing), but it's always striking to me how consistently this occurs, that linkage between a song and, in my case, reading comic books. Just let me hear, or even hear a reference to, a pop song from, say 1966 to '71 ("the Letter", "Hello, Goodbye", "Groovin'"), and what transpires in my head, in addition to a scarily note for note, word for word reproduction of said song, is an image from Hulk, Nick Fury or Doctor Strange. Not necessarily an actual image, but a range of inks, certain colors, even the smell of the comic. (I know olfactory sensations often carry the most powerful nostalgic associations). But the merest suggestion of one of these songs and there I am, lying on my bed, devouring the latest batch of Marvels, hastened back from Sandy's Breyer Patch where me and another fanatic would bedevil him into prematurely opening the stack of new arrivals, beseeching him to let us use his wirecutters to unveil that month's cache.

Guessing, I imagine it has to do with going through puberty, discovering things in the wider world, beginning to differentiate between "stuff" and "art", how important that would have been for someone that age. Jeez, you'd think a pop song might mentally connect me with some girlfriend, but nope, just comics. Geek in training.

Lately, it's been the colors as such, the inks. That period, in Marvel, was one of experimentation in many aspects but one that doesn't get mentioned often (not like I follow discussion on this, but I bet) is the coloring, the ink techniques. I didn't realize at the time that the artists, the Sterankos, Buscemas, Adams, etc. pretty much just did pencil drawings, leaving the inking and coloring to someone else. Little by little, I realized that I enjoyed those comics inked by Joe Sinnott more than others; his thick, sensuous line held far more appeal than the relative scratchiness of his cohorts. But the coloring began to get interesting too. The introduction of black matrices for shading was way cool; I remember it in some Adams-drawn things and the inker/colorist's name I recall is Tom Palmer--not sure if that's right. [Just checked--yep, that was he. Has a whole book on the subject: Tom Palmer: The Art of Inking Neal Adams] In addition to the black or gray-scale shading, there was an increased use of super-saturated colors, rich purples and dark greens that threatened to stain one's fingers. Those were what have been leaping to mind lately when "Hurdy-Gurdy Man", "Love Is Blue" or "Last Train to Clarksville" flits across my consciousness.

Curious how common this is. Gotta be.

'nuff said.

[Heh, just realized I posted on more or less this same subject in August of last year. Just shows to go. Obviously found no further corroboration of this connection in the interim!]

A quintet from entr'acte, the first three on vinyl, the latter two on disc.


Jacques Beloeil - Bidules 1-9 (entr'acte)

Nine pieces for cheap Casio SK1 (LP). Almost despite myself, I found the first half of this album wackily enjoyable. It's like some modern-day, nerdy Keith Emerson trapped in his basement, obsessing over what can be wrung out of this tawdry keyboard, over the top baroque but fun. That's on the side labeled "Agreement". The other side, "Reaction", is a different bowl of tapioca, overtly Glassian in approach, albeit the relatively palatable Glass of "Einstein" and the Dances. With a rhythm track. And really overt. Elsewhere, it resembles early 80s Frith, Skeleton Crew, etc.; indeed, the sounds are almost identical on occasion (I know Frith used a Casio then, perhaps the same model). It's actually put together pretty well and, on one level, pleasurable enough. Necessary though? Hard to give it that.


Ian Middleton - Time Building (entr'acte)

(Not precisely sure that's the cover; think so)

In some ways, not in so different a territory than the Beloeil, though here the device of choice is a Korg analog synth. Also, to its disadvantage, there's not the slightest tinge of humor. Drone-y tracks, almost sitar-like in tone, quavering rapidly, with agitated burblings alongside. Way too woozy for my taste and there's not so much difference between the six tracks, all oozing along perilously close to astral realms. Think Daniel Lentz without the rigor.


Nokalypse - Repeated in an Indefinitely Alternating Series of Thoughts (entr'acte/Absurd)

Themistoklis Pantelopoulos adopting a somewhat annoying nom. Hopefully its not only his Hellenic derivation, but the comparison in a surface sense to Xenakis is hard to pass up. The Xenakis of Kraanerg and Persepolis, at least as evidenced here. The piece is a huge mass of swirling sounds, kind of organ-like in essential nature but I get the feeling they're often synthesized mutations from a large variety of sources, some of which might be natural. They're layered one atop the other, several dozen ply thick it seems, into a huge, messy lasagna of sound. It's not bad at all, actually, if (not surprisingly) lacking Xenakis' structural rigor and having, somewhere beneath it all, a rockish tinge (no rhythms, just a kind of guitar-chordy sound). Not bad, easily the best of the three LP releases here.


Marc Behrens - A Narrow Angle (entr'acte)

(a note: reviewers copies from this label arrive in generic sleeves; I'm never quite sure what, if anything, the actual sleeve design on the commercial release is. Only comes up as an issue here, where I like to have such an image. The one above accompanied an announcement of this disc at blog.cronica; no idea if it has anything to do with the Behrens disc, but I liked it)

Three pieces sourced from three different places: a games parlor, a Tokyo Metro station and a Taoist temple, the sounds altered radically and infused into quite solid constructions. The first is marvelously violent and careening--pachinko-like!--and, when played at volume, feels like being smacked around the room. In a good way. The Metro piece begins with a huge whoosh but soon settles in to an eerie reflection on the two standard tones emitted by the turnstiles, one granting access and a harsher one denying it. These are delicately played with, adapted, layered into a shimmering matrix that's both icy and enchanting. The temple track I found the most compelling, tending toward the quiet, with low booms and high whistles, but erupting once in a while, an unexpected bell peal in the relative silence. Really impressive and a fine release overall.


Simon Whetham - Fractures (entr'acte)

Based on field recordings made in Iceland, this has a very cinematic feel, though Whetham gives equal time to (what sound like) natural phenomena, often having a roaring aspect, and human activity, including snatches of conversation, footfalls and various engines. Much of it is quiet, barely there rustling and, as such, is very pleasant to listen to. However, it makes one appreciate the best work of people like Tsunoda who, somehow, manage to invest more into their mappings of the everyday. Still, 'Fractures' works very nicely and is well worth hearing by fans of the territory.

entr'acte

So, I went over to Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center last evening. A free, outdoor show scheduled to begin at 7PM, the main draw (for me) being a performance of Rhys Chatham's "A Crimson Grail" for 200 electric guitars, 16 basses and sock cymbal. I wasn't expecting anything fantastic; as much as I loved the Guitar Trio box last year--still do--my general take is that when guys like Chatham or Branca expand their palette to a gargantuan degree, muddiness sets in, in concept as much as sound.

The organizers of the event were clueless in several regards. I arrived quite early, around 5PM, armed with a book (Junot Diaz, Oscar Wao, which I had been resisting for a while but succumbed), food and water, scheduled to meet Carol around 6:30 at a designated spot (me, cell-less, having to revert to prehistoric methods of encounter). Of course, they weren't allowing people into the seats, which would have been simple and non-disruptive, so a couple hundred of us clustered around the entrance. At about 6, we were told, "Oh, the line is going to be around the other side of the park." Like they'd never done one of these events before. Not that it ended up mattering, but it's a little annoying being ushered from right at the entrance to about 600th on line. Still, fine, it was amusing though to listen to the bitching and moaning around me, much of it from a prominent local film critic who shall remain nameless....

But we got in and actually secured a couple of seats pretty much in the center of the audience area. The guitar seating was on three sides of the venue, ground level, front, left and right. There were four canopied podia, from which the conductors (David Daniell, Ned Sublette--fun to see him--, Jon King and one other I forget)would control their sections, they themselves taking cues from Chatham who, with the sock cymbal player (essentially a metronome) was on stage.

First up, though, was the Asphalt Orchestra. I was wondering what the deal was as no mics were on-stage, but the 15 or so piece band marched in along one of the side aisles, playing a rousing little number a la Dirty Dozen Brass Band and formed a line in the front. Ground level, with no mics, in front of 1000+ people. So maybe the first two rows could hear them clearly. Again, great planning. They did two pieces, departed and I bet half they crowd barely knew they were there.

OK, the Chatham. As a composition, it was severely clunky, lurching from one section to the next with little sense of any organic whole. It began very nicely with a controlled hum that expanded into a rich drone, the sounds gently flowing back and forth over the space, lovely effect. The next section also began intriguingly, a 16-note pattern that was also meted out to the four sections, I think four notes each but slightly irregularly, so the sequence softly ricocheted from one quarter to another, the initial bare bones "melody" being added to little by little with flourishes and fanfares. That was fine, but it went on way too long, the sock cymbal's relentless beat becoming very wearying and the essential elements of the section not all that fascinating to hold up for that long (20 minutes?)

The cymbal and the parts for the basses were two of the aspects that tended to drag down much of the music that night, lending a concrete-bound quality to music that should have soared. I understand there's a practical reason to have a timekeeping function for an ensemble that large but I don't think that was the answer (maybe, reduce the ensemble? Obviously....but no, can't do that...)

It was in two parts (Chatham said three but I couldn't distinguish the latter) and each ended with a kind of rave-up, the volume and pace increasing. They were the highlights of the set, but: 1) It wasn't anywhere near as loud as it needed to be. I don't know if they were under neighborhood restrictions (though I was told that only amps below a certain power level could be used--the guitarists brought their own) but these portions just begged for increased volume. and 2) This was odd--the first such section bore a striking resemblance to parts of the title track from Branca's "The Ascension". I mean, if I walked in at that point, otherwise unaware, that's what I would've thought was being played. And the finale, otherwise the work's highpoint, sounded as though explicitly derived from the same album's, "The Spectacular Commodity". How strange to have such overt (if subconscious?) references to music done in more or less the same vein almost 30 years ago. I gave Chatham perverse credit, though, for writing a central "melody" that was simply a C-Major scale. [edit: Maybe he's been listening to Taku :-)]

So, all in all, it was an underwhelming experience. As with Branca, in my experience Chatham's music works better the more pared down it is (including his two gong piece). Given overly abundant resources, things tend to billow out into conceptual murkiness and flaccitude (!).

Great conversation and Haitian food with Carol and Rick afterward, though! Made the evening more than worthwhile.

Burkhard Beins - Structural Drift (Edition Künstlerhäuser Worpswede)

Three works conceived during a residency at Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, solo but constructed from more than just percussive sources, including electronics. One of the qualities in Beins' music that I love is a kind of earthiness, a fine grit that has often been a key factor in keeping certain group performances from sliding into blandness as well as having the capability of forming a magnificent edifice on its own (Rowe/Beins). That's not entirely absent here, but I found myself having to accommodate a slightly different Beins, which turns out to be a good thing. The first track is more or less drone-centered (ebow in prominent usage, I assume), with a repeating pulse. I feel a kind of distance here, the sort of thing you pick up sometimes in recordings of installation pieces. A soft rumble underneath keeps matters on a rough enough keel and, after its 15 minutes, I do feel a sense of satisfaction, but I think I'd get vastly more out of it live, able to be more thoroughly enveloped.

The second drift, however, is something of a marvel. At the very beginning, we seem to have simply moved a step or two sideways, the ebow hum replaced by a more pointed organ-synth tone, the rumble by a harsher rattle. That synth sound is the first of two referents that struck me (intended by Beins or otherwise): the analog type of tones generated by Terry Riley in his Poppy Nogood days. I absolutely love that "flickering" effect where the tone shifts sound as though they're produced by some manual operation like flipping open and shut a gate; I could listen to that for hours. Very soon, darker rumblings and loose metal crashes intrude and we find ourselves in an entirely different landscape from the first piece and an extremely unusual and fascinating one. Sirens come and go, fire and rain arrive. Beins reverts briefly to the opening set of sounds before introducing the other element that strikes me as allusive (about 15 minutes into the 20-minute work), a three note, high chimes sequence recalling phrases in music like Feldman's "Why Patterns?". The effect is beautiful and eerie, that original synth tone subtly increasing in stridency, the clicks beneath seeming a bit more desperate. He carries that through to the conclusion, lingering in this lovely, alien field. Wonderful piece.

The final, brief drift is finely concentrated, a propeller sound blending disparate chunks into a lumpy whole before dropping out entirely in favor of high electronic flittings, a succinct bookend.

Well worth hearing. Should be available stateside soon via erstdist More info here


Christian Wolfarth - acoustic solo percussion - vol. 1 (hiddenbell)

As it happens, another solo percussion release graced my quarters around the same time as the Beins, though this is a very different affair. Among other things, it's a 45rpm, 7" (bright red) vinyl offering. The brevity of the two pieces presented (6 1/2 and 4 1/2 minutes) might work against it, I think; I would have preferred to hear each piece at much greater length. But these seem to have been prepared as focused investigations of carefully limned sound worlds, sticking to one area, seeing what can be gleaned. "Skyscraping" appears to be all metal-driven, a shimmering cloud of malleted, rubbed or bowed cymbals and gongs. It's not, generally speaking, an area that hasn't been visited many a time, but Wolfarth approaches it with care and an appreciation for the overall structure of the work that makes things cohere very well. Thinking it over, maybe 6 1/2 minutes is an appropriate time span, not allowing things to billow out of hand, letting the listener grasp the entire shape of the work. This is the kind of piece where it's all too easy to listen once and think, "OK, I've heard this sort of thing before" and miss out on the subtleties, the lovely ebb and flow, the sensuality of the tones. It grew on my each time I played it (especially at volume); good work. "Zirr" is a different animal entirely, rambunctious snares in an off-kilter, quasi-martial state of excitement with ringing cymbals underneath, a frantic, nervous piece. An interesting slice, though one with less inherent appeal to this listener than the previous work. As this release is "vol. 1", we'll presumably be hearing other episodes from Wolfarth's investigations in upcoming months. I'm curious.

Available via metamkine or maybe through Christian himself

June and July paintings

Not working at the same pace as in May (two weeks in Spain and the new pup tend to put a damper on things like this--though I did take a sketchbook on the vacation and did about 20 ink drawings), but messing around a bit more, beginning to feel more comfortable with the medium again. Much like those musicians and labels accused of putting out too many things, I'll post all of 'em, ones I like and ones I don't. Admittedly, the real disasters end up in the trash, but there have been surprisingly few of those, at least in my eyes.

These are close to actual size (when clicked on) and in more or less chronological order. [Edit--some seem to reproduce larger; the t-shirts are 4 x 4 ", for instance; not sure why they appear that way)

Four red t-shirt studies.









Small rock thing--didn't much like it but did take a shine to the blue on burnt sienna at the bottom, so did a quick relatively rare (for me) abstraction.







Self-portrait in the tv screen.



Back to rocks....

Music for the Balinese Shadow Play - Gendèr Wayang from Teges Kanyinan, Pliatan, Bali (Nonesuch)

I'm not sure if this was the first record of Balinese music I heard, but it's one of them. Actually, my first encounter with a piece of gamelan music was via the amazing Nonesuch sampler double LP, my initial exposure to all sorts of music from outside the US/Britain ambit.

This stuff is simply spectacular. Timeless, endlessly beautiful, heartbreaking even. One of my all-time favorite recordings though I'm entirely ill-equipped to say much of anything about it. I'm sure I'd have a gamelan expert saying that this ensemble, a quartet incidentally, was nothing special, a commercial gloss on the real thing. Whatever, do check it out. It's available as part of the ongoing CD-issue of Nonesuch material, with a new cover:



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For some reason, I have that filed under "Gamelan". The names are given for the four members but there's no group name, no implied "leader". I put on the next one just now, The Ganelin Trio's "Ttaango....in Nickelsdorf" (Leo, 1986) and, while it's ok of its kind (an extension of the Taylor/Lyons/Murray trio, I might say) it's the sort of thing I have a tough time revisiting; I'd rather hear Cecil.

Plus, I have those early Garbarek's waiting; been thinking of those for a few days, wondering how they'd sound.....

I can't remember what it was that induced me to buy this album back in '82. I'm sure I hadn't heard it on KCR and don't know, at the time, where I would have read about Ms. Galas--maybe Cadence or Coda? I wasn't then (and still am not) a fan of histrionic vocalization, male or female but Galas, at her best (and this is an example, imho) transcends that. Heh, this is one that really drove Linda nuts when I played it loud. A 12" 45rpm, two side long tracks. The title piece makes superlative use of multi-tracking, Galas sounding like a swarm of Baudelaire-reciting demons; fine tape and electronics work as well.

And then there's "Wild Women with Steak-Knives" ("for solo scream"). Of its kind, I can't think of anything more powerful. Pieces like this have always made it difficult for me to listen to the Shelley Hirsch's of the world. When Galas pins you to the wall and shouts, inches from your nose, "And I'm not talkin' about meatballs, I am talkin' about STEAK!", you hie yourself to the meat market. Holds up extremely well, happy to say.

Galas' brother Dmitri, a playwright, was an early victim of AIDS and she would go on to concentrate on AIDS-related themes, more effectively than anyone I've heard (see below). At the time of this recording, 1981, AIDS wasn't quite recognized as a single phenomenon, but some of the brutally sarcastic lyrics point that way:

I commend myself to a death beyond all hope of redemption
beyond the desire for forgetfulness
beyond the desire to feel things at every moment
But to never forget
to kill for the sake of killing,
and with a pure and most happy heart,
extol and redeem Disease.


Her second record (1984), self-titled, appeared on Metalanguage, the SF-based label that was also early home to Henry Kaiser & ROVA. It's more controlled in many ways and features more electronic processing, splitting of her voice via multiple mics and overlays. Two side-long works, "Panoptikon" and "Tragouthia Apo to Aima Exoun Fonos", the latter her first foray into Greek, I believe. Excellent record, maybe the least known of her good work? The outrage seethes but remains just below eruption level, very tense, the odd spatter of molten lead burning one's cheek.


I somehow missed her third album (Divine Punishment). This one I didn't have a strong memory of--never liked the cover, maybe that's it. She begins with the co-option of that spooky organ music you hear in every other crappy Gothic film (Berlioz, right?). But again, it hold up pretty well. Five pieces, a step towards song-form from the previous efforts, some of her effectively dark pianistics and spat vocals on cuts like 'Artemis'. And "Cris d'Aveugle" ain't bad either--bitter, bitter, bitter, with those lamma lamma sabacthani's, as corny as they sound on one level, still capable of producing a chill. Great mix of crone cries, innocent babe plaints, deep-throated sibyls and, for all I know, norns (look it up). I have to say, this play-through is turning out to be far more rewarding than I expected....


This one, the last vinyl I have of Galas (another 12" 45rpm), has always been a small favorite of mine, if only because of the presence of the single most powerful, most ruthless AIDS-related song I've ever heard, "Let's Not Chat About Despair". Worth quoting the lyrics in full, I think:

You who speak of crowd control, of karma, or the punishment of god.
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you fear the cages they are building in
Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas
While they’re giving ten to forty years to find a cure?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you pray each evening out of horror or of fear
To the savage God whose bloody hand
Commands you now to die alone?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you taste the presence of the living death
While the skeleton beneath your open window
Waits with arms outstretched?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you spend each night in waiting
For the devil’s little angels’ cries
To burn you in your sleep?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you wait for miracles in small hotels
With Seconal and Compazine
Or for a ticket to the house of death in Amsterdam?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you wait in prison for the dreadful day
The office of the butcher comes to carry you away?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you wait for saviors or the paradise to come
In laundry rooms, in toilets or in cadillacs?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Are you crucified beneath the life machines
With a shank inside your neck
And a head which blossoms like a basketball?
Let’s not chat about despair.
Do you tremble at the timid steps
Of crying, smiling faces who, in mourning,
Now have come to pay their last respects?
Let’s not chat about despair.
In Kentucky Harry buys a round of beer
To celebrate the death of Billy Smith, the queer,
Who’s mother still must hide her face in fear.
Let’s not chat about despair.
You who mix the words of torture, suicide, and death
With scotch and soda at the bar,
We’re all real decent people, aren’t we.
But there’s no time left for talk.
Let’s not chat about despair.


She has a band here and her direction is clearly rock-ward. Chilly rendition of "Let My People Go":

O Lord Jesus, do you think I've served my time?
The eight legs of the devil are crawling up my spine.

******************

I kept up with Galas for a good while, though the recordings became somewhat less focused. She moved towards blues, which I largely enjoyed but didn't need to hear so often.

I saw her Plague Mass at St John the Divine in 1991, I guess. Quite the event. A full (very large) church, Galas took the stage in a topless evening gown, drenched in stage blood, put microphones to mouth and intoned, "Give me sodomy or give me death!".

Quite the evening.

A year or two ago, I received a rare live review assignment to cover her on the West Side at the Highline Ballroom, a swankish little night club. I wrote it up for Bagatellen (here) "Gloomy Monday" has stayed with me, I must say.