I'm going to see a performance of several Gavin Bryars pieces on Thursday at Roulette as part of the annual Interpretations series. It will only be the second time I've seen his music performed live.

I can clearly remember the first time I ever heard a piece of his, around 1980. I was sitting in our car (a yellow, 1979 Corolla) on 5th Ave and 98th St., waiting to pick up Linda from work. It was late afternoon and I was listening to WKCR's afternoon music program, hosted at the time by Gregory Sandow who was then also the contemporary classical critic for the Village Voice. He said, "All the time, my skeptical friends ask me, 'What modern piece compares with Beethoven?' and I usually play them this." Whereupon he proceeded to spin Bryars' "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet." I was entranced. Here was something that was essentially a process piece yet conveyed a huge emotional impact (and on the most anti-religious of listeners, no less). I picked it up at the Soho Music Gallery and recall having a little discussion there about Bryars and others with Zorn, who was an employee at the time. I think that's the only time I've ever spoken to him.

I was pretty well smitten with the LP, the Obscure release that paired "Jesus' Blood" with "The Sinking of the Titanic". There wasn't much other Bryars around in those days, though I snagged the other Obscure album, the one with his lovely "1,2, 1-2-3-4", which record was also my initial exposure to Christopher Hobbs. Fairly soon thereafter, I found what's still a small favorite, his "Hommages" issued by Les Disques du Crepuscule, four gorgeous works for piano, vibraphone (celesta?) and percussion--not sure if it's currently available on disc.

Around 1982, I went up to City College to attend an open rehearsal of his opera, "Medea", staged by Robert Wilson. The score was only performed on piano (with singers), but it was quite beautiful. Ah--just checked and here's Bryars on that very show:

Acts 1 and 2, plus Act 4 scene C (written in New York) and Act 5 scene C (the ending) were performed, with two piano accompaniment at the end of February 1982 following rehearsals at City College, New York with a mixture of students, semi-professional singers and singers, notably Wilhelmina Fernandez, who was originally cast as Medea.

I get the idea that a recording has never been issued?

Well, as we all know, soon thereafter Bryars signed with ECM and a slow downward spiral commenced. Things began well enough with "Three Viennese Dancers" and, at the time, I enjoyed a few of the subsequent works though I think I'd have trouble with them today. I doggedly stuck with him for a while (the lousy Point remakes of the two Obscure classics severely testing me, that utterly needless Tom Waits appearance.) There was one highlight: a brilliant version of "Titanic" on Les Disques du Crepuscule from 1990, a rendition I think is even better than the original. [Wow! just checking again, I discover that the "Hommages" album is due out on disc next week! Also, the LP had no personnel info and here I find out that John White and Dave Smith were among the players! Here's the promo:

Newly remastered CD edition of the lost yet influential album by acclaimed modern British composer Gavin Bryars. Originally released in November 1981 on Les Disques du Crepuscule, Hommages was recorded in Leicester in February 1981 and produced by noted Belgian composer Wim Mertens. The album was conceived as a series of diverse homages to other composers, which include Bill Evans (My First Homage), Ferruccio Busoni and Gustav Holst (The English Mail-Coach and The Vespertine Park) and Percy Grainger (Hi-Tremolo).

Featured musicians included Andrew Bilham, Ronald Reah, Andrew Renshaw, Nigel Shipway, Dave Smith, John White and Marie Wilson, as well as Gavin Bryars himself on piano and vibraphone. The album is the only one which documents the important period between Bryars' early experimental music and later works from Medea onwards, as well as his enthusiasm for small composer/performer ensembles.

This new 63 minute digital remaster of Hommages includes two bonus tracks composed and recorded by Bryars during the same period: Danse Dieppoise, and the lengthy piano piece Out Of Zaleski's Gazebo. The booklet features extensive notes by Gavin Bryars on the origin and performance of all six pieces, and preserves the original album cover artwork by Marc Borgers.
DUE OUT: NOVEMBER 12 2007.]


Anyway, I think I finally gave up after "A Man in a Room Gambling". Not that it was so bad--it wasn't--but his work had begun to pall. (I did like the Joseph Holbrooke disc from around '98, though).

What's being performed on Thursday, however, are four early works including the aforementioned "1,2 1-2-3-4" as well as "Pre-Medieval Metrics" (1970), "Made in Hong Kong" (1970) and "The Squirrel and the Rickety Rackety Bridge" (1971), all of which are being issued by Mode Records on a disc called "The Marvelous Aphorisms of Gavin Bryars". Actually, I'm not sure if all of those are scheduled...

We shall see, but I'm looking forward to it.

Also on the bill is a solo piano work by Maria de Alvear, a Spanish composer with whom I'm unfamiliar. I'm kind of guessing the sound will be something like a minimalist-influenced Rzewski, but I could be totally wrong.

If I've done things correctly, you'll be seeing a word verification requirement for posting comments here as of now. Hate to do it but I've been getting a rash of spam "comments" lately and it's a royal pain to go in and delete each one.

Hope this doesn't impede insightful (and otherwise) contributions from you all.

I have a small "complaint" about museums: there's too much art.

When Keith and I were up at DIA:Beacon last week, I was ambling though the three rooms (about 20 paintings) devoted to Agnes Martin's last works, thinking, "I'd love to spend several hours with just one of these paintings." Being confronted with 20 or so is too overwhelming, making it difficult to really concentrate deeply on one piece. Similarly the next day in Philadelphia, in rooms like the one housing the two Newman's, the Rothko, the Klein and the Motherwell--too much information in too small a space! I realize there's no way around it, but I think appreciation of the work suffers.

And it's not just large abstractions by any means. Walking through gallery after gallery of pre-20th century European painting, I'm entirely conscious of missing most of what's there. The Van Eyck above, which is maybe 5" x 6", is an astonishing work but easily passed by if you're not looking. And even if you find it, how long can you stay and give it the viewing it deserves? On occasion, I've gone the the Metropolitan, marched directly to one painting (the Velazquez "Juan de Pereja" or the Vermeer "Girl with a Pitcher", usually), looked at it for over an hour, then left. It's the only way you can come close to doing the pieces justice, imho.

I was spoiled early on when I attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1974-75. One of the courses I took involved the purely technical aspects of classic painting--the preparation of the canvas, making rabbit skin glue, making your own gesso, glazing, etc. As the main project of the course, we were allowed to select a painting from the stacks, take it to a studio atop the museum and do a copy. I chose a Tintoretto study for his well-known Last Supper. It's a work that, were it hung in a room with other Late Renaissance or Mannerist paintings, would probably not attract much attention. But having the opportunity to sit with the thing for a couple of months, for ten or so hours a week, you inevitably come to realize how incredible this "minor" work really is, how gorgeously painted (and I'm not even a huge fan of Tintoretto!), how masterfully the paint is worked, etc. The experience had a huge effect on me and my appreciation for how truly amazing many "minor" artworks actually are.

I'm sure the same would occur with virtually any randomly selected piece. Some obscure Dutch landscape by a follower of Ruysdael, a Sebastiano del Piombo, a tiny portrait by Corneille de Lyon, a sketch of a French soldier by Edouard Detaille--all things that would likely be passed over on your way to the "masterpieces", all deserving of far greater attention. There was a small Rubens portrait tucked away in a corner in Philadelphia, a sketch that probably took an hour or two--incisive and perfectly rendered; I'm lucky to have noticed it.

Like I said, on occasion I exercise the single-view option at the Met because I can go there fairly often; I used to do it at the Boston Museum as well when I had unlimited free access. But it's, practically speaking, impossible to do on a regular basis and that's too bad, because the paintings deserve better.

*sigh* Sometimes I think I'm never going to get back to playing my old vinyl...

new stuff:

Haptic - Correction (Entr'acte)
hamaYoko - 4/29 (Entr'acte)
Marc Behrens - Architectural Commentaries (Entr'acte)
Christopher McFall - Four Feels for Fire (Entr'acte)
Moljebka Pvlse - Seventeen Migs of Spring (Topheth Prophet)
Tatsuya Nakatani - Primal Communication (H&H)

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

I rave a bit about the good things I see in places like DIA:Beacon, but here are some I can't quite get my eyes around there:

Blinky Palermo - Just don't see it. Flat, semiphore-like panels of no depth or spatial interest. Like this:




Walter De Maria - Two enormous rooms (maybe 50 x 250') each with six pairs of silver shapes (square and circle, oriented one way in room A, one in room B). I'd rather view them outside in a field or lawn.




The Warhol room. 72, I think, reproductions in varied tones. Just not interesting in any manner I could conceive.





The Nauman neons, eh. Never a Louise Bourgeois fan, still not. The Smithsons and Judd boxes would also be better served in an other-than-museum environment. That Chamberlain "curtain"....nope (though several others of his are great).

Minor carps because there's so much fantastic work there, but don't always want to be so rosy....

Wonderful and exhausting week thus far. Picked up Keith around midnight Sunday, spent a fair bit of the next two days going over various bits for the book.

Tuesday evening, we ventured out to the interim space for Issue Project Room, on the third floor of an ex-industrial building not far away from the previous site along the Gowanus Canal. It's a very nice space, a longish rectangular room with high ceilings from which hang their 16-speaker system. They're planning to move to a permanent site this spring; sounds potentially great, we'll see. Picked up Julien Ottavi after a comedy of errors involving Brooklyn street numbers and all was set.

Julien led off with a solo performance, much more tonally centered than anything I'd heard from him before, almost in dark-ambient territory. It's not my favorite area, but he handled it forcefully and you were pulled into the vortex without much trouble. Keith followed, creating one of those sets where things begin in a very hesitant, fragmented manner but before you know it, there's a coalesced, solid form, kind of a musical sleight-of-hand. The duo was a bit strange, Julien remaining in the same area, maybe even more "dominant", leaving Keith very little room in which to move. Again, Julien's music itself was pretty impressive, all roaring wave patterns, but the collaborative nature of the experience suffered somewhat. You could look at it as setting Keith with some challenges that were simply difficult to overcome with just resorting to competitive volume which he's not likely to do. Interesting nonetheless.

Wednesday, Jon treated us to an amazing lunch at the legendary Di Fama's pizza. It's a hole in the wall but has become quite the attraction featuring a de rigeur hour-long pie wait, which we experienced. Still, Keith and I were fascinated watching the owner at work (he and he alone makes the pies), treating each one as an individual creation, carefully pouring on a bit of olive oil, holding a handful of fresh basil and scissoring pieces onto the surface, giving the pie a last second once-over to determine whether or not it's good enough to go then, almost reluctantly, turning it over to the customer.

At IPS, Keith and Julien turned in a unique event of their own, performing Treatise while embedding within it several other graphic score renditions including Wolff's "Stones", Earle Brown's "Four Systems", Cage's "Variations II", a portion of Cardew's "The Great Learning" and a couple of Rowe's own. It was an extraordinary event, very different from a "standard" Rowe show (whatever that might be), episodic in a sense but never drifting, always changing approaches in a manner that was both natural and intriguing. You couldn't always, by any means, determine which piece was being performed when (unless you noticed stones being utilized, for instance), though prior to the onset, Rowe announced that people were entirely free to move about during the show, including to come up, examine the score and even ask questions. No one took him up on the latter, I don't think, but the general casualness helped the lengthy set a good deal as did the interplay between the musicians, talking over what to do next, how to handle it etc. in a refreshingly transparent way. A beautiful sequence, something I hope they do more often.

Keith and I went up to Dia:Beacon on Thursday, my second such visit, his first. Still a great, overwhelming place. If I have a general quibble, it's just that if given a choice, there are many works I'd rather experience by themselves, not in a grouped context. For example, there was a wonderful selection of 20 or so late Agnes Martin's, almost any one of which I'd happily sit with for several hours (at least!). Seen together, it's almost to much to grasp and process. But short of me coming to own or borrow one, not the most likely possibility, that's the way it is. Highlights included the Serra's (there should be music events scheduled for inside those things!), a large Bruce Nauman video installation in the basement and those daunting Fred Sandback yarn sculptures, among others.

Not having quite gotten my fill of long drives and museums, Keith, Jon and I headed down to Philly yesterday, through the rain, for a lengthy trek through the Museum of Art, again my (and all of our) first time. Impressive! Especially the modern section. Awesome Twombley room, a huge room with Kiefer, Richter and Polke, another incredibly strong room with a Rothko, two Newman's, a Kline and a Motherwell, all those Duchamp's. Well worth it. Also some great Eakins', an Ingres I didn't realize was there and numerous other, older beauties. Then over to the performance site, a historic house once occupied by Philip Syng Physick, a pioneering 18th century surgeon and, purportedly, the inventor of the carbonation process that led to soda. Nice old, creaky place.

Rowe was preceded by a duo of percussion and electronics. I forget the names but the less remembered, the better. Oy. He then proceeded to deliver a mighty, no-holds-barred performance, the likes of which I haven't heard from him for several years, at least since the Fennesz show at Tonic. Surging constantly, just billowing forth, very elemental and only just remaining under control, though ending in very, very delicate fashion with an attenuated soft drone. A great evening.

Out for drinks and food with the excellent Philly crew. Thanks for everything, Tim, Jesse, Dustin, Matt & MAP!

Home at 3:30 AM, again driving through a steady rain. Slept 'til 10:30....Too many new discs to listen to, including four from Ottavi and five involving Matt Mitchel and/or friends...

A fun week!

That mini-dust up at Bags following my review of the Propagations disc (Potlatch) is still simmering. I seem to rub Damon the wrong way, what with the "agenda" I'm pushing. I think at least some of his antagonism stems from my disinterest in what I've heard out of the Bay Area scene, actually for quite some time. Of course, I've only heard a smattering of releases over the years, but nothing's really grabbed me.

I was thinking how far back this extends and it's been some time. I was pretty much into Henry Kaiser in the mid-80s for several years; I still enjoy his cover band, actually, as well as a few projects like the duos with Frith, the Wireforks disc with Bailey (opinions seem wildly divided on that one), a couple of others. Never really cared for his pure improv, but I'd lost interest generally by the mid 90s. When I saw him at Roulette some time ago, didn't care for his work at all (though I thought Greg Goodman was fine).

I remember being excited about Peter Apfelbaum's initial large band disc; bad anticipation, there.

Every so often, I'd come across something else from that scene, things involving ROVA (some of whose albums I'd liked), Gino Robair, Vinny Golia or others and nothing ever really clicked. I think I reviewed a disc of Damon's for Bags a few years back and was middling. Gino has sent me a few items over the last couple of years and again, I couldn't hear much. While it's impossible, of course, to generalize based on a small sampling, with limited time and resources, one necessarily chooses where to invest one's attention. Unfair? Could be, but what are you going to do? Hell, there aren't many NYC based musicians I'd go out of my way to hear (Sean Meehan, maybe one or two others); it's not like the scene is incredibly vital around here either.

So Damon has at me every so often, which is fine. Then Walt chimes in, dragging in all manner of nonsense from left field, as has all too often been the case recently, getting snide and personal. I'm still trying to figure out who the Euro-nihilist with the accent I'm apparently trying to impress is. Alex? He's an American, fer krissake.

These reactions are just strange to me, so much not my way of coming at things. If I read a review of something I care about with which I disagree, I'd comment accordingly, stating my areas of disagreement and that's about it. By the same token, I have a tough time taking seriously people who get personal, so it pretty much slides off my back. (Aside from posting about it here, of course).

I did get a chuckle out of Damon going on about my "important writing". Yikes. I hope it's informative and gives potential listeners something to grasp onto but please....

Reading:

Japanese Death Poems (thanks for the pointer, Jesse!)
Mark Rothko - Writings on Art

About to Watch:

The Battle of Algiers

Moderation in all things.

Gets tricky when you do it on a website, though.

A little history, first. Bagatellen was begun several years back (2002?) by Al Jones, Derek Taylor, Nat Catchpole, Jason Bivins and myself. There was a perceived need for a site to review and otherwise talk about music (generally speaking, eai) that didn't have a decent devoted site. Talking about it at places like Jazz Corner engendered a certain amount of opposition so, in lieu of fighting about that, we set up Bags.

It seems to have worked reasonably well over the years. Nat disappeared (anyone know his story these days? Last I remember seeing anything was a photo of his baby), Al is patrolling undersea climes around the world (Hi, Al!), Jason pops in now and again but, I think, pretty much confines his music writing to Dusted. Derek and I make up the bulk of the reviews these days, with additional excellent contributions by Marc Medwin, Phil Freeman, Clifford (what is his last name, anyway?), maybe others I'm forgetting.

It's an open forum and anyone who wants to can pretty much write there. Aside from (usually) Clifford, we all leave open the Comments option on the reviews and there's occasionally much interesting back and forth, though much inevitable bickering as well. It's stalled somewhat in recent months, probably at least in part due to the infighting which, understandably, turns many off. Derek, who really manages the site, has pulled in the reins a time or two, stopping some needless nastiness. I'd never done so (actually, didn't know if I could!) until yesterday.

Briefly, I'd written a review of Lucio Capece's "bb". There ensued some decent commentary, including a post by our own Richard in which he made a typo (it's all your fault, Richard!). I followed with a (purportedly) humorous aside, referencing his typo as a possible alternative term for eai, referring to a recent, since closed, thread at IHM that had degenerated into personal attacks. Walt and someone else (using a nom de web, still a pet peeve of mine; wish people would grow up about giving their real names) began listing a series of their own concoctions in this regard.

Had I felt this was done in a good-natured way, while I still might have preferred the comments referred back to the Capece, it wouldn't have been a problem. But there was a snideness about them that aggravated me. Kind of, "The hell with the music under discussion, let's piss on this thread." I found it embarrassing, basically, and felt bad, in this case for Capece and his label but it would apply to anyone who sends out their work hoping for a serious listen and evaluation, only to encounter this level of childishness.

So I wrote Derek and said I wouldn't mind seeing those comments deleted. That's when I found out I could do so myself and...I did.

Well, there's been a little dust-up since then. Though it's a judgment call and I can see the other side's point, I'm comfortable with my move and think it'll work toward strengthening Bags in the long run, even if only slightly. There's a fine line between humorous asides and asinine jabs and people will obviously differ on where that line is, but if nothing else, I think the artists and labels involved are due a measure of common courtesy. Not deference, just basic courtesy. If there's a thread devoted to (would be) humorous names for eai, great, go for it. But to needlessly shit on a discussion of someone's seriously intended work, nuh-uh, take it elsewhere. At least with regard to my write-ups; others can make their own rules.

Of course, I'm probably just inviting further instances of the same, but so it goes; some people have nothing better to do.

btw, no moderation here, aside from the excision of penis spam and such (when seen, which is probably more seldom than its occurrence).

I received five pretty interesting things from Hibari and Skiti the other day.

Noid - "you're not here"
Toshiya Tsunoda - Low Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay
Taku Unami - Sound Track
Taku Unami - Malignitat
Taku Sugimoto - Doremilogy

With the exception of the Unami soundtrack, they all pretty much fall into what might be called the conceptual end of eai. Noid's is largely room atmospherics, Tsunoda alternates four field recordings with highly filtered (virtually silent) versions of the same pieces, Unami (on the wonderfully titled "Malignitat") crudely juxtaposes three (I think) sound sources, over and over and Sugimoto, after a lengthy piece which I think is a single amp hum (or its equivalent) offers to pieces for three guitars where, as the title would indicate, simple C-major scales are played.

Only one listen, but I had favorable impressions of all by "Malignitat". The subject of this sort of enterprise has been broached at IHM a bit (looked upon unfavorably by many) and I know Jon has some issues with the general direction. Ultimately, dunno, but at least a large part of me is pleased that these kind of directions are being explored. More later on after further hearing.

Party like it's 1966.

A thematic Record Club last evening. At the previous get together, we decided to do a club where all music selected had to be from a certain year. We chose 1960-1990 as the period from which to draw and Dan went and randomly chose a number from that range on Excel. Well, we think it was random given his love of music from right around 1966....

For myself, something from one particular album was an obvious choice: AMMMusic. On the CD version, there's a 5 1/2 minute cut, so it seemed eminently reasonable. My only qualm was, as good as that particular section is, replete with some raucous Keith and a great radio capture of a Pakistani (?) singer, it does read as an excerpt, which of course it is. The following track, "In the Realm of Nothing Whatsoever", is some 13 minutes in length but has far greater breadth and stands alone very nicely. As it turned out, there were only five attendees (Chris Cochrane recovering from an illness--get well, Chris!) so I went with the longer cut to lead off the evening.

It's difficult stuff, to be sure, but I think it went over well. In any case, Nayland, spinning next, successfully defined the nether pole of 1966, the AMM antipode, by playing Mike Douglas' "The Men in My Little Girl's Life", one of the most horrifically, creepily, treacly things I've ever heard. Dan followed with an odd, giddily enjoyable track derived from a BBC production company (I forget the details, but they did electronic music for use in soundtracks) featuring Anthony Newley warbling over magnetic tape bleeps, something like a Morton Subotnik pop song; very strange [Edit] This was a piece written by Delia Derbyshire, out of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Richard or Al, are you familiar with this stuff?].
















Julia played a charming, very early Cat Stevens song, "I Love My Dog" (really! very nice!) while Nina closed out Round One with a fascinating brief track from a Sound Effects compilation. When it started, it sounded like a variation on Xenakis' "Bohor" but ended up being an "Alien Landscape" sequence used for Star Trek.

I'm blanking on Dan's selection for Round Two (fill me in, Dan!)[Edit: but of course, how could I have forgotten Sinatra singing "Summer Wind"?!?]. Nina fudged the rules a bit (punishment to be determined) and played a track from the "Love" compilation which, I guess (it's Greek to me) is a project with Cirque du Soleil that reconfigures and combines Beatles songs, in this case "Within You, Without You" (one of my fave Beatles pieces, btw) and "Tomorrow Never Knows". The sitars from that segued nicely into Julia's pick, a Ravi Shankar soundtrack piece, the end credits, from "Alice in Wonderland". Nayland obliterated the burgeoning spiritual mood by spinning a track from the legendary "Mrs. Miller". Those of you who don't recall this creature are arguably better off. She was a dowdy, aging housewife who performed cover versions of contemporary pop hits and did so in ghastly, execrable fashion. A novelty act, as it were. One can only shake one's head. I restored a modicum of sanity to the proceedings by ending the evening with the last track from Cecil Taylor's "Unit Structures", a beautiful, episodic trio piece with Cyrille and Grimes.

Should make for a really interesting disc. I bet you could play it for someone unaware and the last thing they'd think was that all the music was recorded in the same year.

Reading:

Kobo Abe - Kangaroo Notebook
John Berger - The Sense of Sight

Listening:


Rhodri Davies - over shadow (Confront)
Martin Kuchen - Homo Sacer (Sillon)
Asher - Untitled Composition (for b) - Leerraum
Justin Hardison (My Fun) - Sonorine (The Land Of)
Thanos Chrysakis - Klage (Aural Terrains)
Stockhausen - Bass Clarinet & Piano (MDG)
Duane Pitre - Organized Pitches Occurring in Time (Important)

My review of Dörner's "sind" at Bags brought up the hoary question of whether solo improv recordings are on inherently shaky ground. The arguments generally fall into two categories: 1) that the lack of one or more collaborators tends to channel the music down a path toward hermeticism, self-involvement or, less charitably and quaintly Victorian-inspired, some kind of masturbatory exercise and 2) "music" gets sacrificed on the altar of technique, the recording turning into a "look what I can do" kind of affair.

I don't think either is necessarily the case (though of course both may indeed occur) and that the escape route is simply having something of deep musical value to express and staying as true as possible to its expression, regardless of the number of musicians its execution entails. To say that there's no such thing as an improvisation that could best be expressed in solo form seems silly. On the other hand, it may be true that as music edges into more abstract forms, pulling off a solo improv performance successfully may become a more and more tenuous undertaking. That's where having a solid idea in the first place comes in. I have no doubt that, all too often, someone thinks they should do a solo recording whether or not they happen to have an idea that lends itself to the format. That's when you tend to get the "catalog of techniques" approach, a very boring thing to hear no matter how imaginatively extended those techniques are. Although it's not so neat as that, I guess; I can imagine a given newly discovered technique opening the door to a hitherto unknown range of ideas.

But the general idea, something I hear often, that playing by yourself amounts to playing with yourself (again, as though that's an evil thing anyway, like it's 1860 in Puritan New England) seems misguided. I got to thinking about this again last evening, playing for the first time Rhodri Davies' new release on Confront (the title of which I'm blanking on at the moment). It's solo harp with e-bow and exists just fine on its own. There's no in-your-face technical prowess to be heard, no excessive arcaneness, just a delicate, ethereal series of overlapping hums.

To vastly different effect, the great Ferran Fages disc on Etude is all about emotional devastation, concerning private enough events that creating it in tandem with others would seem to be at least very uncomfortable if not unthinkable. I also have on hand solo saxophone discs from Lucio Capece (bb, a question of re_entry)and Martin Kuchen (Homo Sacer, Sillon) that, on first blush, strike me as successful gambits (maybe half and half with the Capece).

Anyway, rambling on a bit, just slightly rankled that solo improv efforts sometimes get dismissed out of hand, often unfairly, without giving the actual music an unbiased enough listen.

(photo: Yuko Zama)

As I've mentioned before, I do try to write up the great majority of releases that are sent my way and feel more than a little guilty when I don't. In recent months, I've pulled back a bit with regard to things that are sent to me out of the blue from labels/individuals with whom I've had no prior connection (if the recording is otherwise uninteresting, that is). More a time thing, than anything else plus a certain amount of exasperation in trying to figure out what to possibly say when, more or less, it's more of the same old.

So I felt especially bad a few months ago about shelving Dorner's "sind". I've enjoyed at least portions of just about everything released on Absinth since its inception. As I said in the review at Bags, it wasn't just that I didn't like the release (I didn't) but more that it was opaque enough that I didn't feel I could say anything coherent about it aside from expressing a certain amount of boredom. I respect Dorner enough as a musician to suspect that he had something up his sleeve conceptually, but I was damned if I could figure it out.

So when Marcus mailed me the other day, checking to make sure I'd received the disc, I felt obliged to pull it out and give it a rehearing. I'm actually very glad I did since, although I'm still not fond of it in and of itself, it got me thinking about other things I don't care for from artists I admire that, somehow, seemed related in my head. Trying to figure out why this is so, both the antipathy and the relatedness, is interesting and worth pondering, not that I've figured it out yet. Of course, I could easily just relegate it to, "It's simply not a very good record". But more often than not, I think that likely shortchanges the artist involved. At the least, it's another indication of the general health of the genre, that it can still cause issues like this to arise, at least for myself (!)

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

It looks like I'll be attending the four Interpretations concerts being held at Roulette this fall. I've gone to a number of them in the past with middling results, sometimes very nice, sometimes overly academic for my taste. The first is tomorrow with the Ensemble l'Art pour l'Art (not the best group name I've ever heard) performing works by Eckart Beinke, Matthias Kaul, Michael Maierhof, Ernstalbrecht Stiebler and Annea Lockwood. We shall see.

Upcoming shows in the series include Roswell Rudd/Mark Dresser (10/25), Maria de Alvear/Gavin Bryars (performing early works by the latter, which might be pretty good) (11/8) and an 11/15 set celebrating 40 years of Mills COllege with pieces by Ashley, Maggi Payne, John Bischoff, James Fei, David Behrman, Chris Brown amd Pauline Oliveros.

I should take more vacations like this.

Ten days, post-season, in Montauk is both very restful and can be very productive. Having nothing vacation-y to do, just me, Linda and Nanook, with 8 1/2 gorgeous fall days out of ten, crisp and clear, I could spend plenty of time writing and reading outside, watching the odd movie or ballgame. If someone would kindly fund me for a while, I could churn out this bio in no time!

Montauk is an OK place, past the awful snottiness of the Hamptons, replacing the bluebloods and fashionistas with Long Islanders in jogging suits; I guess, push come to shove, I'll take the latter over the former. Having been essentially a fishing town, it never quite acquired the panache of its western neighbors, a good thing. otoh, this tends to make it, in season, something of a frat boy drinking town, hence our venturing there in late September. Don't understand why everyone doesn't do that. Oh, wait.

Nice beach (virtually no one on it), great lush vegetation, pretty good food places. We stayed in a cottage in an area about a mile west of town. There are no streetlights in the entire neighborhood and, as since virtually everyone had abandoned their homes for the summer, walking Nanook in the evening gets about as close as this city boy ever comes to experiencing total darkness, depending on the clouds and the phase of the moon. Very nice.

Took the ferry out to Block Island this past Monday, easily still my favorite place in the Northeast. Rented a bike and tootled around the island. It's always intensely nostalgic for me when I visit; I've been there so often since about 1962 (maybe 20 times?) that I still expect to see people I know walking down the street which, of course, no longer happens. Amazingly beautiful place.

Reading:

Finished Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" which I eagerly await being turned into a rollicking film, something it begs to be. (Just checking imdb, I see no such reference yet but did notice that Kavalier & Clay is scheduled for 2009...)

Read Simon Schama's "Landscape and Memory". I hadn't looked through the contents before beginning and assumed the entire book concerned woods, forests, etc. and their relationship to art in general and people's psyches. Only the first third or so is wood-oriented though and, I think, it's the part that succeeds brilliantly in achieving his goal, to show how notions of "woods" are deeply etched onto the subconscious of people (or at least Western people. One of my criticisms is that, with the odd exception, Schama concentrates entirely on Europe and America; I often found myself wondering if his generalizations would apply to Amazonian Indians, Bushmen, Inuit, Malaysians, etc.) I'm not crazy about the term "myth" as I think it carries too much unnecessary baggage, but he does a wonderful job of demonstrating how ideas about "forest" pervade Western thought, art and politics.

However, he then goes on to two subsequent sections on water (rivers, mostly) and Stone (mountains) and his argument weakens considerably, even though he continues to provide story after fascinating story. He simply overreaches. He grabs at too much: Certainly wood, water, and stone are going to be rather important components of pre-industrial man's life and associated lore is going to arise about them. But whereas he convinces the reader of the pervasiveness and huge influence with the wood, the other two are just strings of anecdotes, not able to bear all the weight he wants to assign them. Still, a very fine read.

Began Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thoughts" which, so far, is as thoughtful and intriguing as most of his other work.

One thing we forgot to bring was the portable CD player, so my only listening option was via the DVD/TV combo. I did give one listen to the first disc of the Atlas Eclipticalis set--still had misgivings, though I wouldn't base anything on that sonic set-up.

Releases awaiting me upon arrival home:

Marc Baron/Bertrand Denzler/Jean-Luc Guionnet/Stephane Rives - Propagations (Potlatch)

(Various) Airport Symphony (Room40)

Leaving tomorrow for ten days in Montauk, Long Island, probably without computer access unless I happen on an internet cafe.

Montauk's a relatively nice place, right on the eastern tip of Long Island. After Labor Day it's even nicer, sans kidlets and drunken frat boys. Ideally, they'd dredge a five mile stretch between it and the Hamptons, making it much more difficult to reach but as is, it's still OK. There's a ferry to Block Island, still my favorite place on the East Coast, so I'll be heading over there at least once for some biking.

See everyone back here around the 29th, take care.

Somewhere around 1972, in Poughkeepsie, I discovered that the local library (Adriance Public Library) had LPs for loan. In the spring of that year, I'd discovered jazz via Ornette Coleman and, as my budget was reasonably limited around then, I tore through the jazz offerings there. I don't think they had many in stock, maybe 50 or so, but they included a number of relatively modern releases. I recall getting "The Amazing Bud Powell", "Out to Lunch" (I think "Iron Man" as well), "Mwandishi" and many others. I'd take them home for a week, go back and renew them, take 'em back home. Some good exposure to be had there.

They also had a classical section which included a decent amount of 20th century work. Between the cheap Nonesuch releases of the time and these offerings, much of my first experiences of contemporary "classical" music occurred in this period. I remember getting Varese, Stravinsky, Honegger (Pacific 231!), Prokofiev, Bartok.

I also recall borrowing a double LP recording of Cage's "Atlas Eclipticalis". My memory is of a dark blue sleeve, presumably a "night sky" kind of thing with little white dots. There might also have been a performance of "Cartridge Music" on the same album. (If anyone knows what release I'm talking about, please let me know). I didn't care for it at all. Somewhere shortly after this time, I heard Cage's "Three Dances" on the LP (Angel?) shared with Reich's "Four Organs" and loved those pieces but obviously they're much more approachable. But the "Atlas" was way too diffuse and arcane for me at 18. For a long while, I had this mental image of Cage as fluctuating between these two poles of rhythmic vitality and tedious obscurantism. Whether it was on that recording or not, I did hear "Cartridge Music" around then and liked it more but....

So I recently bought this new release of "Atlas" on Mode (the recording is from 1983) and still find it, or at least this performance, dry, academic and, in a word, boring. Whether that was also the case with my earlier encounter or I simply wasn't ready to hear the work, I don't know. Listening to the Mode release, I was trying to figure out why it wasn't working for me and I think it can be summed up as due to the phraseology of the musicians. Every tiny note or sequence just reeks of what we here around NY refer to as "uptown". The tweedy, blue-haired, old money avant garde, a "culture" that bores me to tears. Every sound bore that post-serial tincture, the total avoidance of anything to do with the world outside of academe. It strikes me as very un-Cagean. Truth be told, this tinge infects many Mode discs, though by no means all. It's frustrating, because I can easily imagine this being performed by creative improvisers and working exceedingly well.

I know Robert wrote about performances of the piece out Seattle or Vancouver way in recent months. Curious to know if he or anyone else could steer me toward renditions that contain more life than this dusty offering.

First Record Club in quite some time last night, first I've attended since May having missed June's. Special guest Chris Cochrane, a guitarist who some may know from bands like No Safety, Curlew and various Zorn projects was in the house and proved a pleasure both personally and musically. For a first timer, he leaped off the deep end by playing Side Two of Lennon/Ono's "Two Virgins", the 12-minute track that consists of the brutally rhythmic switching on/off of a radio over muted everyday background conversation. In the best tradition of Fluxus, it goes on and on, carrying you past intense aggravation into odd appreciation, though the (I think) humanly manipulated rhythms I could have done without. Chris' second selection, in a lovely about-face, was one of Satie's "Cold Pieces" played with extreme languor by Yves-Jean Thibaudet, a beautiful performance. I found out later on that Nayland had done the cover for the Zorn release, "Weird Little Boy", one I never picked up, which Chris is on. I've also, unfortunately, never heard his own release on Avant, "Bath" (I think Nayland did the cover for that one as well).













David Mitchum, the evening's other guest, played a track by Battles, a band I'd been wanting to hear (the one with Braxton's son Tyondai). Not quite the cold math-rock I'd been expecting, more an overtly goofy version of King Crimson, complete with munchkin vocals; sorta interesting. When his second piece began, I'm sitting there thinking, "I know this one. I heard it a long, long time ago...Weekend!" When my brother Drew stayed with us for a year or so in 1982, he had this album (Alison Statton's post-Young Marble Giants band) and I really enjoyed it. The cut was "Drumbeat for Baby", a memorable enough title, and I was pleased that at least my musical memory seemed to be fairly intact 25 years later.

Nayland played a rather hilarious piece by LA glam-rockers/would-be aliens Zolar X and a really nice one by Stew, a name new to me, from "The Naked Dutch Painter". A fine Brigette Fontaine song from Julia off "Kekeland", her disc with Sonic Youth, an excellent piece via Dan from his favorite unknown Swedish band, Komeda. Nina brought a humorous deconstruction of a Bach composition from the Goldberg Variations by the German bassist Sebastian Gramms but her final selection was a knockout, a recording from somewhere in the South Pacific of an acapella chorus some 125 strong that did the strangest pitch shifts; everyone thought there was some post-production but not so. It actually made you feel queasy, like you were out on choppy seas. Very odd but also very moving in a way.

A fine evening. Oh, I went fairly straight ahead last night, bringing the David Garland track, "Noise in You" and that amazing Shiina Ringo piece I raved about a while back.

On the way over, stopped by DMG and picked up Pita's LP, "A Bas la Culture Marchande" on the No Fun label; didn't have a chance to listen yet.

I don't normally do concert plugs here but there's this band Floriculture, who are playing in Brooklyn at the Center for Improvisational Music, 295 Douglass St. between 3rd and 4th Ave. on September 21 (site here), that's well worth checking out. The odd thing, for me, is that the inhabit a general area that I'm not really drawn to these days...but they do it so well, I become fascinated despite myself. That area (at least the two or three times I've seen them live and as represented on disc) could be said to lie somewhere in the Braxton-Lacy-Tristano neck of the woods but with a unique feel that springs from pianist Carl Maguire's complex, often jerkily propulsive compositions.

So even if you're as jaded as I am, take a chance at having your premises shaken.

[Received Lucio Capece's "bb", a DVD of two live, solo performances (a question of re_entry)]

Watched, and enjoyed, Lynch's "Inland Empire" today. Having recalled several analyses of it when it was first released last year, I adopted the well-advised strategy of viewing it as a dream-time sequence from the get-go. Good thing, I'm guessing, as although there are snatches of narrative cohesion here and there (and certainly abundant recurrence of subject matter, totems, themes) it's structured with dream-logic and as such far more beautifully achieved than anything else I've seen in a movie.

Almost all cinematic dream sequences leave me cold if not outright annoyed. I'll go out on a limb and guess that mine are pretty similar to most people's (aside, possibly, from more frequent appearances by Joan Chen). The Surrealist manqué nonsense that passes for dreams in your average flick have nothing to do with the ones I know, much less the overly cohesive, everything working the way it does in life examples. Here, the abrupt shifts feel right, the indistinctness and malleability of many of the environments is well thought out, the quasi-"logical" connections don't make sense but seem like they ought to.

Great soundtrack as well, including a lot of Penderecki which, given that about a quarter of the dialog is in Polish, makes its own sense.

(I was mildly pissed off when, watching the credits, I realized I entirely missed the (I think brief) appearance of Nastassia Kinksi!)

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

I've been alternating discs from the Shostakovich and Cage sets, a nice contrast. Atlas Eclipticalis seems like it might be an adoptive father of Sugifatti....

I know everyone's breathless awaiting more Braxtonia. I'm workin' on it! Just too much other stuff to do, listen to, watch. And, admittedly, my interest palls a bit in the early 80s period, but more on that later.

Incoming:

Miguel Prado - Mascara de Sangre (Ozonokids)
Tim Feeney/Vic Rawlings - In Six Parts (Sedimental)
Brendan Murray/Seth Nihil - Sillage (Sedimental)


bought:

John Cage - Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music (Mode)
Shostakovich - The String Quartets (Emerson) (Deutsche Grammophone)

I mentioned this album by David Garland a couple weeks back. Finally got around to giving it some more listening time and, while I still wouldn't recommend it overall, there are aspects that have ingratiated themselves into my brain. Given that he's doing "songs", the structures are eely and amorphous, not fixed enough on the one hand given their generally melodic nature, not free enough on the other. His lyrics are intensely personal and idiosyncratic which can work on occasion, on others seem coy or sentimental. But....when he nails it, he does so well. The title cut is a wonderful piece, concerned with the emotional importance of sound. Here's the lyrics:

Noise In You

I’ve heard that there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.

Composer John Cage, the sonic sage,
told of the time when silence rang.
Inside an anechoic chamber at Harvard,
as sound-proof a room as had ever been made,
a long, low drone, and another up high,
seemed to disprove the soundproof design.
But, he was told, the sound he heard was
himself.

Low note: blood flow; high note: nervous system.

I’ve heard there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.

Out in the woods, by the lake,
far from New York and the noise it makes,
things still aren’t quiet yet, sounds still abound.
They bang in my head and they ring in my ears.
A long, harsh note, and some shrill ones up high,
fill in the silence with noise from inside.
Blood and nerves — and something more.

Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.
Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.
Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.
Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.

I’ve heard that there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.
I’ve heard that there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.

(Incidentally, this is sung in a quasi-neo folk fashion, not "noisy" at all. Synchronistically, I was reading "Silence" this morning when the song came on)

In general, I'm frustrated because I get the sense he's capable of creating some very interesting music but for the time being and, I guess, the foreseeable future, it'll be oddball, once in a while brilliant, pop songs.

New listening:

Graham Stephenson/Dave Barnes - s/t (no label)
Jin Sangtae/Park Seungjun - 5 Modules IV (Manual)
Ferran Fages - Cançons per a un Lent Retard (Etude)

All three sound quite well on first blush.

Read McEwan's "On Chesil Beach". Interesting, short novel. Sort of taking a serious story about a relationship as it may have been generally described in a contemporary work (1961) but adding levels of honesty that have only become "possible" in years since. Makes for an intriguing disjunctive feel throughout.

Rereading Cage's "Silence". Also Shusaku Endo's collection, "Stained Glass Elegies" where he, as seems to be his wont, writes stories delicately balancing attitude and beliefs of Japanese Christians against "non-believers". Also finishing up "The Island at the Center of the World", by Russell Shorto, a history of Manhattan that seeks to restore the profound Dutch influence on the area (and subsequent republic) at the expense of the dastardly English.