Went in early on Sunday afternoon to meet the estimable Pan Schaumann at the bar, dba. A pleasant surprise to see old Record Club member Sasha tending bar (Actually, I knew she worked a bar in the area, just hadn't realized it was dba). Schaumann, in from St. Louis, insisted on buying me a large bottle of a rather strong Belgian beer, De Proef Flemish Primitive Wild Ale which I emptied in about an hour. I'm not a drinker. I haven't been drunk since I was 17. This may have been the dizziest I've gotten since then. Thanks, Mike!

So, we stumbled on over to Tonic for the final night of the fest. First up was the trio of Tim Barnes/Jeph Jerman/Sean Meehan. They positioned themselves in front of the stage and, as my wallside seat was one table further removed than previously, I had absolutely no view as to what, specifically, they were doing. Which is fine as I tend to close my eyes anyway. Apparently Jerman had some tiny motorized devices wandering across his frame drum, Sean was rubbing the old dowel and Tim, I'm not sure what he was doing. But, unsurprisingly, it sounded fine; subdued and subtle with all sorts of textural variation, the type of thing I could happily listen to for hours.

Ami Yoshida/Christof Kurzmann were next, hot on the heels of their new release on Erstwhile, "Aso" which, after a couple of listens, I think I can safely recommend highly. I know Jon thought it was the set of the festival and while I think I can see where he's coming from, I was a bit less enthusiastic. There were moments that were extremely beautiful, especially the last 6-7 minutes including a very long spell at the end where Ami froze in one position, possibly emitting the slightest of sounds. But much of the rest I found a bit bumpy, swerving toward rapturous moments, just touching them, then pulling away. It's a set I'd like very much to hear again, though, as I may simply have been missing some connections (I was more tired for this evening than any of the others).

English is Joe Foster and Bonnie Jones, here joined by the redoubtable Sachiko M. Foster's been a grating, not to say enjoyable, presence on several websites I frequent, taking me to task at various times; I was eager to see him live. He was manipulating a snare drum (I think--again, they were in front of the stage and my view was generally obstructed) and wielding a trumpet. Ms Jones, who I'd never previously heard, was making use of open circuit electronics while Ms. Matsubara deployed her usual sublime sines. I thought it was the set of the evening. Hard to describe except that there was an added layer of excitement, some extra sizzle in Tonic's ozone while they were playing. Everything just fit together wonderfully. Some of the trumpet, played into the drum, got a little clunky but enough good will had been built up in this listener by that time that I wasn't really bothered. Sorrier still, now, that I missed English's Friday show, about which I heard great things.

I'm not extremely familiar with much of Phill Niblock's work though I've heard a good amount over the years and have always very much liked what I've heard. Jason Lescalleet has been a big favorite over the past five or so years, both live and on recording. Something about the pairing of them struck me as potentially fantastic. Well, maybe not. It was an odd set. Niblock sat at a table below the stage on the extreme left of the room while Jason's large set-up occupied most of the stage proper: a couple of laptops, three or four old tape recorders, a couple of cheap Casio-style keyboards and much more detritus. As the music began to flow from the speakers, he futzed around with some connections then sat behind his computers, hands in various positions around his face, sometimes rocking back and forth dolefully but doing naught else. It became clear that the music was entirely Niblock (again, I was rather blocked, so it was difficult to tell if Jason had set something in motion previously), creating a fairly lush, moderate roar mixed with water sounds. This went on for about 15-20 minutes, creating some amount of psychological tension as one wondered what, if anything, Mr. Lescalleet planned to contribute. Attractive enough at first, I found Niblock's music to pall after a while (again, tiredness may well have been a factor). Finally, Jason rose, having apparently sampled a goodly bit of Niblockian product and intent on regurgitating it in his own fashion, which he proceeded to do. Amazingly, ferociously. Little by little, he allowed layers of sound to accrete via, it seemed, different machines, ultimately constructing an absolutley massive, infinitely dense wall of noise, woolly rather than prickly, tweaking it here and there but essentially letting it just sit and breathe. Now, that is noise. Eventually (it seemed like a very long set, maybe an hour?), he went about turning off various devices 'til there were no more. As a collaborative set, it may not have worked so well but Lescalleet's portion more than made up for it (anyway, as it appears to have been entirely based on what Niblock created; maybe the set did work well).

Lasse Marhaug/John Hegre? Well, I felt duty-bound to stay for the whole thing and did so without resorting to digitally plugging my ears but it was a chore. It was loud, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't very interesting either. Two minutes in, you were pretty sure what the next x-minutes would bring. There was one sort of cool moment when both dropped out almost entirely, kinda like a bass break in a funk tune. But otherwise, eh.

As always, a fascinating bunch of music to hear. I'm rather amused and pleased at the drastically disparate reactions I'm reading about on places like I Hate Music. I'm not sure there was a single set that someone hasn't judged spectacular while another deemed it shit. That strikes me as a healthy state of affairs. Congrats to Mssrs. Abbey, Barnes & Wolf for managing to piece all this together, to get people, maybe, to think a little bit.

The first three sets on Saturday were my favorite combined "moment" of the festival. Each was pretty quiet but each approached quietude from entirely different angles.

The Mattin/Radu Malfatti disc released earlier this year on formed is a big recent favorite of mine (see review here) and I was anticipating something along similar lines which, indeed, transpired. The piece was more "composed" than I had thought, the duration of the elements plotted out to the second, Malfatti positioning a digital clock next to the small score. It began with a few minutes of silence before Malfatti picked up his horn. As on the recording, the trombonist's contribution consisted of soft, long tones, recognizably brass-derived but burred. Mattin, on laptop, played sounds that sometimes coincided, sometimes overlapped, sometimes were out on their own. These sounds, it soon became clear, were derived from recordings of the ambient sound in the room played back a few minutes later. You began to listen for the odd cough or chair squeak to recur. But that was all secondary to the gentle pace that began to assert itself, a breathing kind of tempo, very slow like some large sleeping creature. At least twice, silences of upwards of three minutes were maintained. I was held rapt throughout, a beautiful set. David Jones made some interesting points later on--the audience had kept as quiet as possible during the set. But once you, as an audience member, realized that whatever sounds you happend to make were being utilized by Mattin as part of the performance, didn't that free you to be as "noisy" (or at least, normally active) as you wished? I'm guessing Mattin wouldn't have minded that at all; not sure about Malfatti.

Burkhard Stangl & Kai Fagaschinski actually began in less tonal territory than I'd anticipated, the former taking a violin bow to a small object held on his knee underneath his hand (a piece of wood?) while Kai demonstrated a ridiculous command of his instrument, taking it through breath tones, key clicks, gorgeous pure notes and more. It stayed fairly abstract for a goodly while, Kai holding his forearm under the mic, blowing transversely across his arm hairs, rubbing the clarinet reed over his beard stubble, etc. At one point, rather humorously considering Cosmos was to follow, he made mouth noises of the pinched and squeezed variety, sucking air through teeth pressed to lips. It was a rather comic sound, made more so by Stangl's choice of delicate, prettily strummed acoustic chords behind it. Gradually, the improv began to coalesce into more and more concrete form, naturally not forced, until it ended with an absolutely lovely melodic section, a simple and effective "song" to cap the performance. Very beautiful, very gutsy in this context. Fagaschinski, I get the feeling, has a fine stubbornness that won't allow him to simply bend to fashion. I'll be following his future work as closely as possible.

I somehow think of Cosmos as a fragile affair, something that in a given performance, has a greater chance of failure than success. This is baseless, actually, as their Erstwhile album ("Tears") and their track on the AMPLIFY box, the only times I've previously heard them I think, are both outstanding. Once again my fears were rendered groundless as they turned in a thrilling, gossamer and steel set. Admittedly, Sachiko can virtually do no wrong in my ears but Ami's work outside of Cosmos has been far spottier. Here, however, she was right on point, modulating her high-pitched squawks beautifully as well as doing some relatively "normal", lower-pitched work. There's a certain beguilingly theatric aspect as well, Yoshida, her mic set at a level several inches above her mouth, adopting a kind of pleading position later offset when she turned her face to her left, burying her mouth in her upper arm. Wonderful set. My only minor issue is that, when singing for longer stretches, she tends to fall into a pattern that you often hear with, say, free jazz saxophonists where there phrases last for a set duration that has to do with the breathing capacity. This "super-rhythm", once perceived, can be grating. Ami sometimes fell into that, her screeches lasting for about 7 seconds, one after another. Small carp, though.

GOD. Sorry, but it's difficult to get past the name. Aside from their having been a not entirely capitalized God band in the mid 90s (Mick Harris? Justin Broadrick? not sure of the members right now) and even if it's an acronym, it's just kind of silly. I'd've preferred DOG. They're pretty big favorites of much of the crowd, this electronics duo (Bryan Eubanks & Leif Sundstrom), but I've yet to be convinced. For a while, it was an OK noise exchange then, somewhat astonishingly, Eubanks resuscitated those pure rising tones that were so irritable from two nights prior. Sometimes, it's true, they seemed to arise in tangential pairs and their intermingling fields provided a bit of interest, but it just went on and on, long after everyone had grasped what structure there was. I jokingly said to a few friends afterward that it may have been a tribute to the recently deceased James Tenney, whose "For Ann Rising" used quasi-similar, ever-ascending tones. Varying reports surfaced that this might actually have been the case though the last ones I read denied it.

I don't know Wolf Eyes, despite Braxton's endorsement. I may be missing something but I've yet to feel impelled to sample them having, maybe, a reasonable idea of what I'd get, that being something not so different of the No Fun approach I've already written about. Aaron Dilloway is an ex-Eye and he capped off this evening with the festival's only solo performance. He looked pretty cool, admittedly, what with dual mics inserted in mouth, their wires trailing out each side, causing him to appear like nothing so much as a plaid-shirted catfish. He generated a fairly strong wall of noise, augmented by processed vocalizations, swaying in place captivated by his own creationbut also using way too much goofy sounding echo-effects. I thought, "eh." If I can over-generalize, one of my problems with this area of music is that, on the one hand, there seems to be very little thought involved but on the other, there's not the out and out abandon you might otherwise wish to see. It's often stuck in the middle, wanting to be outrageous but not really pushing it (I think Mattin gets there, Joe Colley too) but not having a lot of seriously interesting ideas. Given some sound-generating equipment, too often it's a boy's night out affair, seeing how loud and abrasive one can get which doesn't strike me as all that far from seeing how many beers one can down and just about as worthwhile. The audience demanded an encore (there was more than a whiff of a rock performance ambience) and I liked it much more than the main set but, damn, give me Cosmos' depth any day.

The following evening was spent in the cozy confines of Yankee Stadium watching our town's fairly amazing offense turn out the lights on Toronto. Consumed a healthy meal of three ballpark franks, Crackerjack and cotton candy. First time I've had cotton candy in a dog's age. Interesting stuff.

We were in the upper deck out in left field, about ten rows deep. Nice, cool evening. About 7 or 8 kids in their late teens filed in several rows in front of us, pretty clearly white trash from the burbs. One of them wielded a sheet of posterboard, on the front of which was messily scrawled in magic marker, "JETER MVP", which she held up periodically as though anyone cared. On the back of the poster, however, presumably left over from some prior use, was the charming inscription, "Beep if you understand English. Fuck Mexicans." Lovely. I scoured the papers the next couple of days, hoping to see a report of a "tragic" car accident later that evening, somewhere in the depths of Jersey or Long Island. Alas, not.

I glanced up at the stadium clock at 8:30, thinking, "Hmmm....I bet Sachiko and Sean Meehan are beginning to play about now...." Ah well. She apparently projected her sine tones that night through her headphones into the room. Wonderful idea. Next time...

So, ErstQuake 3, 2006. Four nights, five performances each evening. I had to miss Night 2 due to a small matrimonial commitment (27th wedding anniversary), but the other three days presented much to chew on.

Wandered down to Tonic Thursday evening, meeting a gaggle of known personages hovering around outside--always good to see these fellows (unfortunately, yes, all fellows) at least once a year. Secured my preferred Tonic seat, the foremost stool on the right hand wall with the round table for elbow resting.

The opening set is always somewhat invocational in aspect and this year's, with Jeph Jerman and Greg Davis, was no exception. The two stood behind tables littered with natural-ish detritus including stones, sticks (bundled and individual), feathers, shells, bells, a bull-roarer, seeds, etc.They tended toward the very quiet, for instance holding a handful of pebbles under a mic, gently rolling them inside their palm. Pretty effective overall, though I couldn't help but register a couple of reservations. One, no fault of Mssrs. Jerman and Davis, is that the "mystery" aspect of this sort of music tends to be lost in live performance, at least if you're choosing to keep your eyes open. That is, heard on CD (please check out their excellent recent disc, "Ku", my review of which here) even if you have a rough idea what's occurring, there are plenty of sounds whose origin is impenetrable, lending an extra layer of enjoyment. Actually seeing it produced strips away this veil. On the other hand, maybe that "veil" isn't really a desirable function, that the reality of what's being done is more important and meaningful and that not knowing allows a certain fantasy element into the proceedings that you' d be better served not "enjoying". Hmmmm....The second issue harks back to my early free jazz days when, not atypically, the percussionist in a given ensemble would have dozens of "little instruments" arrayed on rugs around his basic set-up and, when it was time for his "feature", he'd go through a rote series of gestures, making sure each instrument was heard. ie, ten seconds of guiro, 15 of the handful of shells, 10 of the dried carob, 10 of the triangle, etc., etc. Really, really boring. With Jerman and Davis, things didn't reach anywhere close to this level of routineness, but I would've much rather they stayed with some sounds for longer periods rather than often switching around; it became a bit too episodic for me. The bundle of dry sticks that each manipulated, for instance, I could gladly have listened to for at least several minutes rather than a few seconds. Jerman's "Lithiary" disc on fargone, where he "simply" places multiple rocks on a couple of shaker tables and records the quavering results, is a fine example of what I'm talking about. Still, quibbles aside, an enjoyable opening set.

Los Glissandinos were up next, a duo (most of the festival coonsisted of duets) with Kai Fagaschinski on clarinet and Klaus Filip on computer, playing his lloopp program. I'd been fortunate enough to meet Kai the day before, an extremely wonderful guy, so I may have been a bit predisposed to like this performance, but like it I did. As with his duo a couple days later with Burkhard Stangl, Kai has no fears about injecting a strong dose of melodic content into his work. They created two improvs this evening, both brooding and melancholy, Kai devoting equal time to extended technique and "traditional" playing. The first 2/3 of the second piece got tonal enough to be verging on Gavin Bryars territory, maybe a little bit too much for the musicians as they abruptly broke off that pathway, wandering around a bit disjointedly for the concluding five or so minutes.

I've seen Barry Weisblatt perform many times and my reaction has varied widely. He's charting very difficult waters, using an electronics set-up dependent in part on light-activated devices (piezo-electronic? Is that the propoer term?) and often eschewing through-going drones which tends to shift the burden to sound-placement, a touchy area where the listener's internal sense of poetics often determines how one reacts. Here he was teamed with Bryan Eubanks, whose work, what little I'd previously heard, I wasn't so taken with. In addition to small fluorescent tubes (?), Weisblat used a steady flame, whose slightest fluctuations in the internal Tonic breezes, such as they were, caused massively turbulent eruptions from the sound systems. That was very cool, as was the smoke effect when he later blew it out) but the general interaction between the two struck me as awkward and blocky---and not in an interesting way. Eubanks at one point initiated a series of rising pure tones, the timbre of which was a little off-putting as was the general obviousness of their structure; he kept at it for far too long. I can easily imagine, however, listeners with a slightly different take on it reveling in the music. Didn't work for me, though.

I was greatly looking forward to Scenic Railroads, having enjoyed Joe Panzner's writing in the past as well as liking him personally. And the first five or so minutes of their performance (Mike Shiflet being the other half of the RR) won me over completely. But then....I dunno, on the one hand it seemed to lose focus for me, the occasional dollop of fasciantion burbling to the surface only to be swiftly subsumed into the general drone. Later in the set, I got to thinking that it had more to do with the actual quality of sound they were generating from their laptops, something that struck me as fundametally thin or at least less substantial than I wanted to hear. Like styrofoam instead of glass. It's notoriously difficult to create consistently rich work from computers, especially when you're shooting for richness and depth; Fennesz does it, not so many others. It was too easily graspable, like you could see to the bottom of the bowl instead of getting lost in the liquid. If that makes any sense. A frustrating set, for me, one that I really wanted to enjoy more than I did.

Ah, but then came Mattin and Tim Barnes. Probably the most polarizing set of the festival in terms of audience reaction and not just from one diametric. I'd heard a goodly amount from Mattin over the past couple of years and, more and more I'd found myself really enthusiastic about his his work, including even the goofiest projects like his "Songbook". Much as one finds certain jazz musicians to be inherently musical (re: the old comment on Monk, "He even walks musical."), that most anything they come up with just sounds good no matter how absurd the premise (Don Cherry might be an example), I found I'd been getting that sense from Mattin. Had someone verbally described what was to take place this evening, I very likely would've demurred. Happily, no one so informed me. Tim was on stage, sitting at an oversize sock cymbal set-up which was hooked up to some electronics (he was in awesome form throughout, if visually and psychologically overshadowed). Mattin began the set by pacing in a wide circle at the rear of the room, his computer held open to his right ear like a large clamshell as it emitted an intense whine. This went on for several minutes. He then began marching up and down the center aisle. Near the stage was positioned a guitar amp on a wobbly circular table; as the computer drew close, feedback ensued. And Mattin began shouting. What he was shouting was a matter of some debate over the next few days (not sure if it was resolved). It seemed to be in English--"fucking" was certainly one word--but it was so grotesquely strangulated that the rest became guesswork despite its being iterated umpteen dozen times over the course of the set. "Computers are fucking with you!" was my stab. "Consumers are fucking consuming." was someone else's. This was often yelled directly into the computer's mic hole, causing even greater levels of distortion. All this while plunging the device toward the amp, itself teetering on the frail table endangering the welfare of the first row denizens. I had a vision of Mattin smashing the laptop somewhere, preferably the amp and not Richard Pinnell's head. The sound was immense, brutal and almost unbearable. I thought it was great. Partially just as a change from what had preceded (including opening up the performance space, thus making you realize how slightly hermetic things had been earlier), partly the commitment to the drama by Mattin, partly the sheer, fascinating noise. Whatever, it worked for me, though others had vastly different opinions. Some had problems not with the chaotic noise as such (after all, we're a hardy crew) but with its presumed derivativeness from bands like Whitehouse or its similarity to previous Mattin/Barnes shows (which I've not seen, perhaps luckily!). Some resented the political nature of the slogans, a position I have great sympathy for, normally. Except that in this case, it simply worked for me.

This is getting rather long. Think I'll do the other two days in their own installments.

The intrusion of a popular song into an eai performance always has a dual character. Ever since Rowe began using tapes of Lou Christie's "Lightning Strikes" or the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" in early AMM shows, I bet the reaction of thelistener hovers between the immediate enjoyment of a juicy, sweet piece of candy and the troubling feeling that one is succumbing to an all-too-easy temptation.

On the plus side, it's often the case that the frame provided by an improvised work casts the song in a surprisingly good light. When "Son of a Preacher Man" erupted in the midst of a Rowe/Burkhard Beins set, one of the first things to cross my mind was, "Damn. That's a really nice song." Typically, Rowe would engage in the excellent practice of abruptly cutting off whatever song he happened upon just about when the listener was in "danger" of settling in and enjoying it, though in the case of Dusty Springfield, he let it go on for a length of time that's both beguiling and uncomfortable. When does a song become a crutch, a convenient hat-hanger in a welter of noise? It's a tough judgment call to make.

Christof Kurzmann has been messing around in a similar area in recent years. His duo with Burkhard Stangl, "schnee_live" (Erstwhile) used Prince's song, "Sometimes It Snows in April" as a basis for a 1/2 hour "improvisation", seguing into and out of the thematic material, ending with an updating of an Austrian drinking song. It's lovely and, essentially, I like it a great deal even if there's something nagging at me. Something that says: using popular song in eai is like steroids in baseball (at least in the general public's opinion--I have my own thoughts about that whole business, but never mind). It's....cheating, maybe. Maybe not. My opinion fluctuates.

So, along comes this recording by Kurzmann and Kai Fagaschinski (here referring to themselves as Kommando Raumschiff Zitrone (don't ask me)) bearing the title and containing two versions of Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". The album's cover, btw, is a photo of one Marisol Sanchez whose lovely visage was reason enough, I suppose, to so use her as there's no other overt connection to the disc. The first track is a 12 minute rendition of the Flack song, beginning with softly strummed acoustic guitar (from the original? I don't think so, but neither musician is credited with guitar, so perhaps it's sourced from elsewhere) and some languidly bitter clarinet (both musicians are clarinetists), establishing a edgily romantic mood and then...well then, Ms. Flack herself comes in singing. They essentially accompany her for several minutes with microtonal reedwork and subtle electronics. Again, the first impression is, "What a lovely song!" You appreciate it on its own terms, in this context, much more than you (or, at least, I) ever did before. It also provides a very nice "spine" for the improvised accompaniment. To their credit, this duo dispenses with the theme after three or four minutes, using its "ghost traces" to improvise off of for the bulk of the piece. A briefer "reprise" closes out the disc, four non-thematic though relatively tonal pieces are sandwiched between.

As always, I go back and forth on my feelings. Initially, the undeniable frisson of pleasure at the integration of abstraction and song-form carries the day. On second listen, a sense of...disappointment sets in. Third and fourth tend to hover between those poles. I like it, but...is it ultimately so substantial? Is it even trying to be? The mere fact that it raises these questions, of course, is a good thing on the one hand. On the other, though, is the existence of music that is "past" asking these questions already. Well worth hearing, in any case.

I admit it, I'm a Survivor-holic. Have been since the very first show. There was something that immediately grabbed me from a gaming aspect. Even with all the garbage that's shoehorned into every season (the product placement, the enormous hokiness of the "tribal council", the inevitable condescension toward whatever the local population happens to be) as well as the working knowledge that each episode is the condensation of three days worth of activity and, hence, has been edited into shape for the desired dramatic arc. Even so....the damn thing works. At bottom, despite all the nonsense, you have a group of people living together in extreme conditions for an extended period of time and having to deal with each other. That just cannot help but be fascinating.

The way the game's set up, you can't even really strategize to any great extent except to avoid doing overtly stupid things like lazing out at the beginning or generally acting in an assholish manner. Otherwise, it's almost a random event and has been since the second series. In the first, when most of the contestants had no clue what they were doing, only the inimitable Richard Hatch understood that it was a game and that strategies should be employed. Whatever the gaming aspect, it's inevitable that interesting relational dynamics develop and those can be great watchin'.

The new season, with its racially segregated initial groups, begins tomorrow. As someone who despises that part of the whole Olympics gestalt, that nationalist or ethnic rooting, I have my misgivings, but we'll see.....

The irrepressible, not to say irresponsible, Mattin sent over three discs the other day, one of them his new duo with trumpeter Axel Dorner (or Doerner if you're umlaut-challenged), "Berlin". The words "extreme" and "Mattin" often go hand-in-hand and this disc's no exception although, as it progresses, you realize the extremities have more to do with structure than in harsh noise. There's plenty of the former, especially toward the beginning, but more jolting are the abrupt and unexpected stops and starts along the way. They're pretty brutal. Dorner (who, as near as I can tell, doesn't use laptop on this date) sticks largely to his patented "trumpet as tubes of metal" approach, generating metallic breath tones throughout that mesh cleanly enough with Mattin's electronics to often be indistinguishable. But somehow, a real sense of give and take and collaboration oozes through. What begins as sonic aggravation has you upset that it's ending an hour later. Good record.

Gave up on the last Roth; better than its predecessors but not good enough to finish. Half-skimming the Rush as well, which is disappointing. The sexual interplay, here between a husband and wife, just doesn't hold interest or, for that matter, come across as very believable. There's a glimmer of a plotline surfacing here and there, hopefully it'll be enough to warrant plowing through 700+ pages; I've got about 400 to go.

Attempting to slake my neverending thirst for Japanese novels, I picked up:

Shusako Endo - The Samurai
Yasunari Kawabata - The Old Capital
Kenzaburo Oe - Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids

Also ordered the new Cardew Reader, despite having previously shelled out substantial dollars on Treatise Handbook and the Scratch book, both of which are included in this one. Also despite the unaccountable and unacceptable omission of Rowe from the invited commentators. Presumably a leftover from the scrap with Prevost, but there was no one, as near as I can discern, who was closer to Cardew than Keith and, arguably, there's no musician around who understands his work as thoroughly and deeply. But, so it goes....

We bought a piano this past weekend.

We'd had an upright back around when we were first married and living in Queens, 1979-84. Linda played a bit growing up; I'd never really played. My family did have a little organ my sister Lisa doodled around on and I'd sit there making noise pretty often, teaching myself a handful of single-note themes. The one I remmeber was a Bach riff that Jethro Tull purloined--I forget the original's name or the TUll construct now, but I can still play it.

Having one in-house, though, I figured I'd try to teach myself the rudiments but, of course, I was unwilling to really learn the basics, instead buying sheet music of things I knew and loved and figured wouldn't be absolutely impossible to bull my way through. So I got some Satie scores ("Sports et Divertissments" and a volume of vairous pieces, none of them the better known stuff, the Gymnopedies, etc.) and did get to the point where I could play some of the "simpler" ones (none of them are simple, of course, to play well) at about one quarter speed. Also got Barber's "Excursions", which proved well beyond my meager capabilities. Needless to say, I spent a great amount of time simply noodling around, figuring out Roscoe Mitchell lines, etc.

We kept the piano when we moved to E. 96th St. (a large apartment), but when we bought our co-op on W. 105th, a one-bedroom job, it had to go. Linda's pined for one since then and as we have both the space and, recently, the finances for one and, since a certain elderly relative with a passion for playing is due to arrive for a visit soon, plans were set into motion to procure one. We checked around and found a listing for an Altenburg Pianos in Elizabeth and drove down on Saturday. It's a lovely old establishment, begun in 1847 iirc, where a very pleasant 6th generation member of the Altenburg family showed us around. Turns out the manufacture their own line of pianos and we bought a new upright for $2,500. It was delivered a couple days ago. So, we once again have a piano.

I wasn't sure if I'd kept the Satie and Barber scores but indeed I had. Broke them out of storage for Linda, noodled a little myself. On the way to work this morning, I remembered I have some Cardew non-graphic sheet music as well that came along with one of his books. Hmmm....might have to check that out. Of course, int he intervening years between 1988, when we got rid of the last piano, and now, I've heard tons more piano music. I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to get the score, for instance, of Feldman's "For Bunita Marcus". That could be fun....Or maybe some Skempton.

It's nice to have a piano around again, I must say.

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

Received three items from Mattin yesterday, including his duo with Axel Doerner, jointly issued by Absurd and two other labels. Pretty brutal stuff. The others are a duo with Mattin and Lucio Capece and a solo Capece disc, each also very, very noisy.

Picked up the Ruscico DVD release of Tarkovsky's "Stalker"; looking forward to re-watching it (only seen it once before) this weekend.

Lunching with Pete Cherches and Steve Smith yesterday, the latter recommended the Destination-Out! site: http://destination-out.com/, a fine place that specializes in mp3s of out-of-print avant jazz, especially from the 70s. The current feature is Marion Brown's lovely "Geechee Recollections". I should mention Pete's and Steve's blogs as long as I'm at it: Pete's is a wonderful, often very funny food-oriented one: http://petercherches.blogspot.com/ while Steve's is pretty much about music, at least as much as he can squeeze in between his TimeOutNY and NYT gigs: http://nightafternight.blogs.com/. Check 'em out.

Brown, in addition to possessing one of the greatest faces in the music, released a couple of super fine albums on Impulse! in the 70s, the aforementioned "Geechee Recollections" and its follow-up, "Sweet Earth Flying" with both Paul Bley and Muhal Richard Abrams on piano and electric piano. Muhal's feature on the latter might be my single favorite example of his playing. There was a third in this Jean Toomer-inspired trilogy, "November Cotton Flower", issued on the Japanese Baystate label, also real nice. Additionally, Amina Claudine Myers released a gorgeous collection of his works for solo piano, "Poems for Piano", on Brown's own short-lived label, Sweet Earth, in 1979. This is not to even mention his great work with Shepp in the 60s and the ECM recording (which I don't own for some reason?!), "Afternoon of a Georgia Fawn".

Last I heard, Brown was in western Massachusetts, not in very good health. A very under-recognized musician and a very beautiful one.

There's a tendency, among musicians in taomud (have I used that term here? The Area Of Music Under Discussion), one I think is generally healthy, in fact, to release music with little if any indication as to instrumentation or other descriptors of how the sounds were created. The disc package will usually have some sign of who's responsible (not always!) but perhaps only that. This may be partially in reaction to the jazz habit of listing every last device utilized in the recording which suplies its own kind of anal fun on things like old Art Ensemble records. To the extent this pushes the primacy of the music itself to the foreground, I'm totally in favor of this stratagem. If, as is my wont, I may make an analogy to painting, it's rather like being concerned with what materials were used to construct a work--is that watercolor or gouache? Was linseed or sunflower oil mixed with the paint? Who really cares? I mean, it's of some interest on a certain level but what you're seeing--or hearing--is usually a level or two above that.

Now, when you receive discs for review purposes, sometimes there's accompanying notes that go further in explicating the music that the info provided on the disc sleeve itself. Fine, if it's put out there one way or another, it should be used. But if it's not, if the disc arrives without notes anywhere, I assume that's the desire of the artist and try to respect it accordingly. Sometimes, I may have conceptual questions--is this what you were shooting for?-- and may inquire of the musician. Often, even when I do, the musician would rather I sort that out for myself; all well and good. Sometimes, for one reason or another, I actually do get bothered by my inability to understand how a given sound is being generated and will ask; again, I occasionally get a response of, "I'd rather not go into that." Again, fine.

But more often than not, I'll simply go with my best guess and use the descriptions of what I think is the instrumentation as ancillary color for the real meat of the music, which is the music itself. Whether a sound has been generated by a computer or a bass saxophone is, while perhaps interesting, entirely secondary.

So, Rafael Toral's disc, "Space", came with something of a statement of intent--not quite a manifesto but a fairly clear exposition of what his current aesthetic goals are. However, there was no instrument listing. Now, I know from past experience, limited though it's been, with Toral's music that, while known primarily as a guitarist and electronicist, he'd also dabbled in a bit of trumpetry. At least, I think I know this. Hmmm....you know, googling around, I can't find any specific reference. See that? In my head, I'd pegged Toral as a trumpet dabbler. So when, on the disc in question, trumpet-like sounds emerged, I automatically assumed the instrument was present, even if it had been electronically enhanced so as to significantly alter its sound. That's another thing--you can usually pick out something about a given instrument's phrasing, attack, etc. so as to recognize it even when blanketed by tons of altering processes. So I went and wrote a little about how much trumpet was played, how it referenced electric Miles as well as Bill Dixon. The Milesian connection was further enhanced by some obvious electric piano usage--except that it wasn't electric piano, it was manipulation of a sine wave generator by a glove with sensors. All this Rafael explained to me via e-mail after I'd sent him a copy of the review.

I appended the correction in the comments section at Bags. I imagine there are a number of readers who chuckled at the errors. Of course, given my druthers I'd rather have gotten it right the first time, but in the context of how the disc was presented, I don't think it amounts to much. The music succeeds or doesn't on its own merits, not on the listener's knowledge of the instrumentation, though if taken to a far enough extreme, that could enter into it, I guess. ie, were the whole thing derived from a software program and the push of a button.

Anyway, this possibility is part and parcel of much of the music sent my way, wrapped in mystery and intentionally so.

I see Naguib Mahfouz died at 94. A long life, at least. What a wonderful writer.

That Sei Miguel disc holds up real well on subsequent listens. Sounds a lot like what you'd exepct the next step after Bill Dixon's "Vade Mecum" albums to be, a similar sense of unfurling space, retaining a lot of jazz gestures but integrating them with abstract and electronic sounds and doing so without any (or, at least, much) sense of anachronism. For myself, this is a pretty impressive feat, as I generally find the introduction of jazz tropes into "eai" as grating or overly restrictive. But there's almost always a pendulum swing effect in any art form and perhaps we're beginning to see signs of a certain kind of revitalization of music which contains a jazz impulse, at least as one impulse out of many. I'm still a bit dubious, admittedly. This is the only music I've heard of Miguel's so I've no idea where or how this fits in with his historic arc but for the moment, it's some refreshing work.

Roth report: Majorly disappointing thus far. I made it through more than half of "My Life As a Man" before I gave up, tired of page after page of misanthropic whining. It's difficult not to read autobiographical qualities into Zuckerman (I assume, not having followed Rothiana, that this is a given) and you sit there saying, "Why are you telling me this? I don't care!" Tedious in the extreme.

I made it only about 20 pages into "Our Gang" before tossing in the towel. I suppose it's possible that, in the early 70s, this sort of paraody could've been considered provocative. Maybe. But it's just so juvenile--renaming political figures with childish noms de satire (Trick E. Dixon - har! Almost as funny as Ronald Ray-Gun or Al Bore! Why construct an intelligent argument when youe can just call someone a name?!) and, on top of that, setting up enormous softball tosses that he can send sailing out of the park, conveniently turning the Nixon character into a laughable buffoon, rather than a complex, intelligent and evil creature. Thanks but no thanks.

I began "The Great American Novel", therefore, with some amount of misgivings. Still in the Prologue and it's bearable (it's about baseball, after all, giving it a leg up) but we'll see.

In the meantime, I'm delving into Rush's "Mortals", a novel with far more promise....

I received two discs from Rafael Toral recently, his own solo album "Space" and "The Tone Gardens" by Portuguese trumpeter Sei Miguel (pictured here) on which he performs. Both appear to be consciously concerned with extending the current state of free improvisation past ruts they perceive and both, interestingly enough, look specifically toward jazz forms to do so, a quixotic notion perhaps. Toral states such goals explicitly in notes that accompany his disc; I'm making an assumption on Miguel's part, not being familiar with his prior work. Both recordings "succeed" on occasion--the Miguel more so than the Toral, to my ears--although as one would expect, it's a rough road, strewn with old baggage that's extremely difficult to steer around.

As its title implies, Toral's disc is a bit spacy. Though he's known more as a guitarist and electronicist, he plays a lot of trumpet (processed) here and if you're looking for a general point of reference, Miles' 70s work might be as close as you'd come, though sans the funk. He's basically playing jazz formulations even if they're atomized along the way. It's often uncomfortable, especially to listeners used to more "standard" eai, but on those several occasions when things gel, you can begin to get an idea of what Toral might be shooting for. It's more gestural than most post-AMM improv (which is an issue in an of itself--one path could lead in a Le Quan Ninh-type direction where flamboyance trumps musicality) but who know? maybe that's at least one thing the music needs.

More on the Sei Miguel disc later after more listens, but the impression I get is that his amblings down a parallel pathway are more natural to his own musicality, more unforced. When he arrives at the post-Milesian stew, it feels more "right".

I'm usually very good about providing write-ups for virtually every disc that makes its way to my desk. Lately, I've been deluged by them, however, and a number of items manage to combine being not very good with supplying me with almost nothing to write about. So I've decided to just give them a pass, something I feel a little guilty about.

Generally, if the recording is from a "name" individual, that is someone fairly well known within this tiny corner of the world, it's almost automatically of some interest to a reviewer, even if it sucks eggs. You can place it within some context, try to analyze why it fails, etc. But when something arrives out of the blue, as it were, from someone who, though they may be well known in their own neck o' the woods, is an unknow quality to you and when the music is....bland, there may not be too much to say short of a simple, episodic description of sounds. I received to discs from the Australian Room40 recently, a fine one from the duo of Greg Davis and Jeph Jerman, "Ku" (review posted at Bags today) and one from Lloyd Barrett, "Mise en Scene". I admit, the title put me off a bit, bearing something of an effete air, maybe. But the music, electronically oriented washes of generally tonal stuff, less beautifully melodic than Fennesz but in the same ballpark, albeit without a shred of grit, left me unmoved. Also left me with nothing but gauze to talk about, so I didn't.

A little more troubling were the three new releases from Gunter Muller's For 4 Ears label out of Switzerland. Now I like Gunter a lot, both musically and personally, but his label has a nagging tendency (not always, by any means) of releasing things that are OK, but ephemeral. Recordings that are pleasant enough but which you forget about almost as soon as they're over. These three (Masahiko Okura/Ami Yoshida/Muller - Tanker; Norbert Moslang/Muller - wild_suzuki; Moslang - burst_log) all more or less fall into that category. The first is fine in a way, just unremarkable. There's a point been reached for a while now in eai where a lot of people are readily capable of releasing "good" recordings, the way Campbell's makes "good" soup. Fine but not memorable. There's really nothing to say about it; it's not really much different than any dozen other releases over the last year. "wild_suzuki" (and yes, I'm getting a little tired of the inevitable underscore in titles from these folk!) is even blander, really baffling why it was chosen for release. I have to give the solo Moslang another listen, but my initial impression was the worst of the three.

Now, all these musicians have a bit of a name so on the one hand, I feel somewhat compelled to alert their vast (read: meager) fanbase as to the nonessentiality of these discs. On the other, what's to say other than they're not very good? Parsing them out would be extremely tedious but a three or four line review might be worthless. It's not like they're offering any real (rotten) meat to chew on. Arggh.....

Received an interesting e-mail today from someone I know in the music biz. He has this idea. Essentially, he's proposing a project that would involve real-time music criticism (or, at least, descriptive writing). As I understand it, the writer would be "performing" at a computer, his/her words displayed on a large screen for the audience, typing away as the musician(s) performs.

Although something about the idea intrigues me, I'm not sure what of value is likely to eventuate from such a situation. Obviously two very different activities are taking place, creating music on the one hand and digesting, understanding (one hopes) and regurgitating one's comprehension in coherent form. The practical difficulties on the part of the writer seem insurmountable if what's desired is more than a blow-by-blow account of the music. I mean, in a typical (good) improvised performance, the "meaning" of the piece only becomes apparent (perhaps in the merest of glimmers) once it's over and the listener can see/hear how all the prior elements have cohered or not. And, obviously, it not only generally takes numerous listens to begin to form an understanding of a piece but it takes concentrated listens, something unlikely to occur if you're typing at the same time, much less under the unaccustomed pressure of doing so publically.

At least as a one-time event. I could almost see, were someone to choose to do so, a writer getting comfortable with the routine over the course of time. Touring, right. Can't for the life of me imagine doing that, though.

Curious to see the responses, if any, of the other writers invited. There were ten, including a few relatively "prominent" (in this neck of the woods) people.

[edit] Rereading the mail, I noticed that the suggestion is made that not only would one be critiquing the performance, but that the musician(s) involved would get some portion of your feedback in real time and decide whether to adjust or not their performance according to your wants. So it would be interactive with the musician. I can't imagine actually doing this. I was thinking who I'd choose to work with (this is an option) and, among NYC area musicians, my favorite might be Sean Meehan. How the hell would or could I comment on a Meehan performance as it's occurring? His music, generally, is of a piece. I'd have no idea what, if anything, to say, until after it's over. "Hey Sean, could you change the pitch of that dowel rubbing? How about dropping a few more grains of rice on your snare? Why not insert a Buddy Rich drumroll here?" I mean, really.

Bored. At work. The software I use here that comprises 90% + of my job was recently upgraded. In doing so, the company involved screwed up some of the database. The guy at the company who did this and who's the only one knowledgeable enough to repair his blunder, is on vacation until tomorrow. So I don't have a helluva lot to do. Happily, the environment here allows (more or less) me to fiddle around somewhat. I can't quite play Weboggle but I can do things like this. It's tough to work on my growing backlog of reviews since it actually helps to listen to the music when doing so (!), something I can't pull off here either. And not wanting to trundle in bio documents makes working on that a no-go as well, though sometimes I'll test some ideas in Word here. Thank goodness for the Net, though--I have no idea how I survived days like this pre-Web. Took walks, chatted, surreptitiously read a book; dunno.

There's only so much discussion group browsing you can do though. Jazz Corner is fairly active, Bags less so, IHM, a bit. The JC List is OK, though way too much nonsense there. So I resort to this little outlet.

Gave a second listen to a really nice recording by Seth Nehil and John Grzinich last night, "Gyre" on the Cut label. I think (I have to investigate further) it largely consists of field recordings cobbled together in the studio, though the result often sound half-electronic. Good, rich stew of sounds. I've heard enough fine things in this general area, that part of me's beginning to wonder if it's fairly easy to assemble such a concoction given a decent ear and some well-chosen sources. Not that it matters in the end. But similar to how a certain mode and quality of eai (let's call it ersatz-Muller) seems to be attainable without very much difficulty if you layer enough elements atop one another, I sometimes get a sneaking suspicion of the same in the field recording (adapted or otherwise) sub-genre. Still, the best of it, like Tsunoda or Jerman, has that ineffable poetic quality that separates it from the routine even if it's virtually impossible to quantify to unconvinced ears.

I received a new naturestrip disc yesterday by two hitherto unknown to me musicians, Eugene Carchesio & Leighton Craig. Recorded in one of their backyards, it's a combination music/field recording session--really no more than what it presents: two guys playing music outside with all the ambient noise impinging. Kinda nice, relaxed stuff though, as listener, I found myself waffling back and forth between intent listening (not so rewarding) and hearing it as though it was coming from the yard next door, as part of the ambience (better). Curious to see how it holds up.

Also an odd-looking thing from Rastascan, a kind of Music Minus One for improvisers, called Music + One. 22 short solo improvs by 22 musicians, designed to be one component of a subsequent improvisation with more musicians. If that's clear. So I think (I didn't get around to playing it yesterday), the recording consists of 22 tracks with 2, 3 or 4 musicians where one of the "musicians" is a pre-recorded tape by someone else. Hmmm.....

Been meaning for a long time to read some Philip Roth (never really have except for "Portnoy's Complaint" as a snickering 14-year old, and even then just concentrating on the "good parts") so when Mom asked what I wanted for my birthday a couple weeks back, I said, "How about some Roth novels?" Received same yesterday: "My Life As a Man", "Our Gang", and "The Great American Novel". Began the former last night.

We had to go to a wedding reception Saturday night. I hate wedding receptions. In this case, the bride was the daughter of someone Linda works with closely so she was obligated and I dutifully tagged along. Even if some portion of the attendees are people you don't mind hanging around with (in this case, there were two or three co-workers of hers I knew who are fine but with whom any mutually interesting subjects for conversation evaporate in three or four minutes), the atmosphere in general and the music in particular are almost always loathsome if the whole shebang is done along "traditional" lines. I'm fairly confident that there's a law on the books, for example, requiring the band to play "Twist and Shout", "La Bamba" (the same song, really), "Hot, Hot, Hot", etc.

In this case, the families were Ukrainian with, apparently, rather strong ethnic ties to the culture and the band reflected this: a quintet of saxophone (the guy brought out a curved soprano for one piece and made frequent use of an electronic "reed"--I forget what it's called--that could sound like a trumpet, etc. when called for), accordion, guitar, bass guitar and drums. So the repertoire wasn't as awful as is usually the case, interspersed with a bunch of traditional Ukrainian tunes that wouldn't sound out of place on a Guy Klucevsek album.

But....eventually the crapola emerged. The initial onslaught was led by "Brown-Eyed Girl". Now, sitting here at the moment, though of course I recognize the song, I couldn't tell you who originally performed it. I'm rather proud of that fact. But I'll ask the guy behind me in the office. Hold on. Wow, Van Morrison. Huh, used to like him in HS. Anyway, regardless of what one thinks of the song (me, not much), it's just so weird to see the crowd, virtually en masse, rise up to the dance floor, "la-la-la-ing" for all they were worth, in throes of ectasy. I never fail to feel as though I've landed from some distant planet. There were a bunch of doctors present, people you know have a certain amount of education. Didn't matter. What is it that gets people into these states of group frenzy? What is it about "Brown-Eyed Girl" that triggers such uniform reactions? I suspect some correlation between "Brown-Eyed Girl" and brown-shirted boys...

Of course, the same response occurred later on with the inevitable (I turned to Linda and gave a rueful smirk) "Twist and Shout". The joy and release experienced by these people when given an opportunity to go, "ah, Ahh, AHHH, AAHAHAGAHGAHAGH!!!" and fling their arms in the air is so depressing to behold. The combination of comfortable nostalgia with the phony notion that they, in their youth, were part of some wonderful thing, doubly phony in that they likely weren't part of it and it wasn't wonderful anyway. Seriously creepy. But the uniformity, the group-think, is what really irks me. You're confident that they all (well, let's be generous--95% of them) go home and watch the same crappy TV, read (if they read) Grisham or King, buy Leroy Nieman prints, vote Republican or Democrat, etc.

Yes, it's effete and such. But it just creeps me out. The food was pretty good though, so that's something.

Have I mentioned how much excellent new music is emanating from Australia these days? I think so. One relatively young guy there is Joel Stern. I think I first got wind of his work through some collaborations with Anthony Guerra and the neatly named label, twothousandand. Stern works with electronics and field recordings for the most part, but also puts in some time on more traditional instruments. Recently, I received a couple of discs from the less neatly named musicyourmindwillloveyou label, an imprint I'd never heard of. In fact, why I was getting them, I had no idea as the return address on the package, iirc, read "mymwly". The discs, this one included, provided no info other than (I presumed) the band name/album title. It was beautifully designed, though, that Rorschach (sp?) - like image having been printed on a delicate, tissuey paper wrapped around thicker black stock. Better, the music was both fascinating and unique, a dreamy blend of the recognizably musical and the abstract, keeping the floor well-oiled enough that you are never quite sure of your footing. (there'll be a full review posted at Bags in the next few days). As it turns out, Sunhine Has Blown is a Stern-organized duo with Adam Park (plus guests) and represents yet another facet of his musical persona.

There's an overtly dopey tendency to think of Australia as one place so to say "Australian new music" severely over-simplifies the issue but, that borne in mind, there's still an amazing amount of quality work coming out of that nether continent. Distance, I assume, inhibits too much touring in Europe and the States, which is a shame. The handful of Aussies I've met from the scene (Guerra, Michael Graeves, Will Guthrie) have been outstandingly fine people as well as wonderful musicians. It's too bad if they get relatively short shrift due solely to geographic isolation. Give Oz some.

There's a Downtown Jersey City list I frequent (jclist.com, I think) more for keeping up with local activities than for discussion, though there are at least a few interesting folk thereabouts. Someone today started the inevitable "Top X-number Greatest Albums" thread. This person chose 5. Of course, it's a silly proposition to think about, still--thinking about it, actually taking the notion seriously, causes some amount of discomfort. What if, for some ungodly reason, you really had to make this choice, picking five albums to take to your desert island (or Ellis Island, in Jersey City's case)? I think if I were given 500, I might feel OK with my selections. Maybe. I'm sure that "Duos for Doris" (Rowe/Tilbury) would be one, though. After that, bets are off. Needless to say, the titles crowding the list are the usual rock suspects. *yawn*. Just to get people confused/aggravated, I posted Doris, along with Mingus Presents Mingus, Partch's Delusion of the Fury, AMM's The Crypt and Feldman's For Bunita Marcus as played by Tilbury. Could do worse, I guess.

So I spent a good portion of this past weekend, interspersed with shepherding niece's children around, listening to all those Fargones and there were several that stood out. Aside from the previously mentioned "Momeht Ybaxehnr" disc, the one illustrated here from a the quartet of Mattin (computer), Jean-Luc Guionnet and Bertrand Denzler (saxophones) and Taku Unami (computer-controlled toys), a live date engagingly titled, "-/:.", works very well. And Jeph Jerman's "Lithiary", sourced from shaker-tables filled with rocks, is superb. A real surprise, with some wonderful tracks, is Eric Alexandrakis' "Electro-Organic", a kind of rethinking of 80s techno-pop that comes across as a fine cross between Fennesz and the original Love of Life Orchestra. Even the pure noise stuff, related to the things I wrote about in my previous post, had far more nuance (and far less obnoxiousness) than I'd expected. Glad to have heard it all.

A couple of years ago, I received a package of discs from the Ground Fault and Auscultare labels out of California. They represented aspects of a scene I'd been vaguely aware of for a while, one which manifests around NYC each year at the No Fun Festival, held in the warehouse district of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

This particular musical seam can probably be traced back quite a ways, stemming from the more orgasmically noisy ends of both free jazz and out-rock, but I tend to give the credit or blame to Borbetomagus. The Borbs surfaced in the late 70s, if I'm not mistaken, two saxophonists (Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich) and a guitarist, Donald Miller. The latter was a regular hanger-out in the loft jazz scene and, in all honesty, a seriously annoying one. Something insufferably effete about his manners, as far as I was concerned although I should say when I've seen him in recent years, that tendency appears to have been weathered. In any case, your typical Borbs performance (I think I saw them once back then and heard them on KCR a number of times) was balls to the wall screaming and metallic distortion. It's as if they took Brotzmann's "Machine Gun" and "Metal Machine Music" as starting points and upped the ante from there. I wasn't fond of it then and I'm still not. Not because of the loudness, chaos, etc. but (at least I think in retrospect) for the absence of thought, something not the case with Brotzmann, Reed and others. At its core, there was an adolescent rock sensibility, a "look at me" kind of petulance and egotism that I found off-putting.

Well, the Borbs soldiered on over the decades, others misread the lessons of groups like AMM (anything goes! well, not really.....) and a bit of a movement developed that approached noise from this rock performance-like angle. The discs I received varied widely in quality to my ears, from the puerilely unlistenable to the intriguingly excellent (Joe Colley, for instance). But for every rich, interesting sound-world, there were several guys (these are largely males in their 20s as near as I could tell) making vomiting noises, flushing toilets, screaming imprecations, arbitrarily creating electronic niose that seemed designed to aggravate their parents more than anything else. I thought, "This is what I'd expect from a rebellious and precocious 13-year old". I wrote as much when I reviewed them at Bagatellen but this didn't deter the label from sending more stuff, again varying enormously in listenability.

A few months later, the No Fun Fest was occurring and I thought, to be fair, I should witness the music in its proper context so I trundled over to Red Hook for an evening. I saw Greg Kelley inside (I hadn't realized he was playing with one of the 7-8 bands on display that night) and he opined that I might have been a bit harsh in my judgment of some of these guys. "Could be", I said, "we'll see". The main room was pretty good-sized, maybe 75-feet square and there was a bank of bleachers at the rear so I plopped my relatively elderly butt there as masses of unwashed male youth began to flow in. It was pretty stinky. And crowded. The first act was a duo (I forget the name now--Para-something), playing homemade electronics and vocalizing. I quickly picked up on a de riguer aspect of this scene--all vocals must be done with microphone shoved inside of mouth as deeply as possible. Ok then. They pranced, played and sang, creating a rough, noisy racket which, as abstract as they might have liked to think they were being, never escaped rock-style posturing. At a certain point it appeared from my vantage that one of the gentleman was, in fact, vomiting on his mic, an assumption proven correct as an unmistakable odor wafted back my way. "Well", I thought, "I guess I have to give them credit for not merely evoking the sounds of egestion, but actually doing it." The next guy, solo, didn't vomit as nearly as I could tell, but similarly gesticulated and orgasmed through an utterly boring run of noise. Seriously, these fellows need to be locked in a room with AMM records for a long while.

The third performance was someone I'd reviewed unfavorably (I swear I'm forgetting his name at the moment) and who Greg had made special note of as to his musical worth. I respect Greg and enjoy his own music greatly, so I hoped for the best. I'd gotten out of my seat and wandered around between sets, venturing downstairs only to encounter a hairy, bare-chested (and, shockingly, really smelly) gent growling through the crowd, lending an even more pungent olfactory air to the environs. When I returned, there was standing room only, the crowd having mushroomed to several hundred, and I was backed against the rear wall. The show started, the solo performer at a keyboard of some sort. It turns out he's, I believe, a PETA activist and chose to accompany his set with video of many, many animals being killed, scientifically tortured, etc. I think the point, such as it was, was impressed in the mind of the stupidest person present in about four seconds, but the videos went on for 30-40 minutes, whatever the length of the set. The music itself was actually better than its predecessors, but....Midway through, Greg sidled up to me and shouted into my left ear, "You may have been right."

I chose to leave after that set, forgoing several others that, I came to understand, included the swinging of chairs among the crowd and other niceties. *sigh*, kids....

However, however....no scene is so monolithic, even one that seems to have monolithicism (?) as one of its core values. A few weeks back, Ed Howard was kind enough to send me a box of about 15 discs on his Fargone label and the related Quodlibet imprint. Some of the same musicians are involved but, listening to it at home and from a safe distance odiferously speaking, you can begin to discern more variation in approach. There's also less apparent posturing and schoolboy obnoxiousness present. That isn't to say I'm loving a lot of it, but it's rather interesting to try and adopt a listening posture that's less confrontational to the music's surface aspect and somewhat more accepting of its mannerisms, allowing oneself as much as possible to sink into it on its own terms. You begin to identify items of value among the seeming thoughtlessness, at least in some of the work. I'm still wading through it and I doubt any of it will end up among music I return to again and again, but for the first time I'm seeing seeds of something that could, maybe, develop into a fairly strong branch of improv.

It's not really in the same ballpark as the music described above, but I'd make special mention of the Russian duo going by the novel moniker, Momeht Ybaxenhr, whose extremely limited edition disc (like, 30) "Five Moments of Silence for the Many Dead of Chechnya", consisting entirely of very restrained field recording deployment, is outstanding.

Back on 6/30, I waxed enthuasistic on reconnecting with High School friends, spurred on by my recent contact with one Debby P. (I imagine I shouldn't list by full name people who might not want to be so identified...dunno. Maybe I'll go back and edit). As near as I could tell, she seemed very happy at being thought of and contacted and I, after sending back a little recap of the intervening 30 or so years, looked forward very much to hearing from her in more detail.

But, so far, nada. It's just hard to figure, one of the vagaries in e-communication. It could be something similar that happened with Rich K. where, as near as I can figure, he may have felt as though, given our subsequent "career paths", there wouldn't be much to discuss. I disagree, of course, but if that's the case, I respect his judgment. Of course, there could be any number of reasons, including ill-health, family issues, who knows what? But it's just a little bizarre, sitting around waiting, not knowing if it's appropriate to send another mail, not nudging but just inquiring if everything's OK, if she'd prefer not to engage. Carol says, "Oh just wait, she'll respond." so that's what I'm doing....

I did meet with Matt (and his lovely wife Lisa) last month, spending a fine few hours walking around and reminiscing. Good guy; hope to see him again.

Been thinking about memory gaps a lot this weekend, areas (people) who dropped out of one's consciousness for one reason or another. Precipitated by talking with Carol Friday evening, trying to figure out why, though I was quite enamored of her in 5th grade, I couldn't for the life of me place her in 6th and through most of HS until about junior year. We shared the same homeroom, for instance, and though I recall a number of other classmates (who I can't imagine I liked nearly as much), I just can't visualize Carol there. Very frustrating in and of itself and, of course, calls into question what one remembers generally, how much one's lost.

I posted a review of sorts of 'between', the latest release by Keith Rowe and Toshi Nakamura, at bags yesterday. Very difficult work to write about as there's always more than the music to talk about whenever Rowe is involved but explicating it without sounding exceedingly vague or impossibly abstract is tough. How is their work crucially different from your garden-variety eai pair? Well, it is, but parsing it out ain't easy.

I assume he wasn't the first to do so, but Dali used to write about tiny but hugely important steps taken by painters, little adjustments that made all the difference in the world. Raphael taking the model of Perugino's Virgin Mary's and given the heads just the slightest tilt, for instance, but that tilt opening up the floodgates to vastly deeper human-ness in painting. Vermeer expanding on Pieter de Hooch's interiors--the subtle placement of objects, the more luminous treatment of lighting--in one sense the two's work is very similar but the small-ish steps taken by Vermeer catapult his work into an entirely different realm in other, more important, senses.

So if you have two fellas working with ticks and drones (to overly narrow it down)--how is what they're producing different than two other guys producing "similarly" abstract noise? Why is a smear by de Kooning more beautiful than one by Joe Art Student? Well, context, of course and as part of that, awareness of one's suroundings, placement of this instead of that, here instead of there. It's a poetic construct, basically, one that the observer either perceives and appreciates or not. I wish it didn't come down to this degree of subjectivity and part of me still thinks that, conceivably, it doesn't have to (though I've been unable to delve deeply enough to explicate it in words, if it's possible at all) but that's the best I can do. There's some satisfaction derived from the appreciation of other listeners whose taste and judgment I respect seeming to come around, more or less, to similar thoughts as I have. But who knows?

It's interesting how resistant certain listeners remain to this mode of criticism, though. There's still a mind/body dualism out there that doesn't want to deal in abstractions, even when abstractions are explicitly one of the creators' concerns. I think many listeners simply don't want to have to think about too much, just to listen. Which is too bad.

So, I take the three aforementioned books on my France trip. I'm about halfway through the Updike. Unlike "Rabbit, Run", it's impressing me more as what I'd expected from a (talented) writer in his late 20s. The observational parts are as brilliant as I've come to expect but the Greek fantasy episodes are weak and come off as an entirely unnecessary flouting of the author's erudition. In any case, I'm dipping into while waiting at CDG for Linda (long story re: connecting flights not worth going into), depositing it into the little basket atop my (free!) luggage cart when I go walking around. Linda arrives, has her own cart, we consolidate baggage onto hers and walk blithely away, leaving poor Updike in the basket, nevermore to be seen. Damn. Worse, ambling over to the nearest bookstore to my office (a surprisingly well-stocked Border's), they didn't have it. So no determination on "The Centaur" yet.

The Russell, as expected, was fine. Pretty amazing how current many of his concerns remain. Its spine now on prominent display in my bookcase, awaiting the shocked discovery by one of my in-laws....

But the real discovery was Norman Rush's "Mating". What a wonderful novel! Not that I keep so up to date on all things literary, but I'm a little baffled as to how this work, published in 1991, flew so entirely below my radar. It's certainly good enough--and seems to have been deemed so from most quarters--that I'd've expected it to be routinely mentioned in the years since. Dunno! In any case, it's a very fine story with a couple (and more) of seriously fascinating characters. Perhaps there was some discomfort re: a male writer painting such an honest, self-searching portrait of a female character, but that character is one of the finest and most beautifully drawn I've come across in ages. Great book.

So, I picked up his third, and most recent, book, "Mortals" yesterday.

Also acquired a collection of linguistic essays, "Language Myths", edited by Laurie Bauer & Peter Trudgill as well as Paul Feyerabend's "Conquest of Abundance".

Oh, and reading "To Kill a Mockingbird: at home, which I'd never gotten around to....

Back from a pleasant week in France. Linda and I first trained to Nantes to stay chez Rowe in Vallet for a couple of evenings. Met by keith and, a nice surprise, Will Guthrie at the station. Will (an Australian living in Nantes the last few years) has been producing some of the best music I've encountered recently (check out his "Spear" and his wonderful duo with Ferran Fages, "cinabri" on Absurd. I'm highly anticipating his upcoming release on Richard Pinnell's new imprint, "Cathnor" as well); great to finally meet him. Rowe's converted cellier (? I think I have the term correct) in the midst of a Muscadet vineyard, is a beautiful place, he and his wife Stephanie the most gracious of hosts.

Then back to Paris for five days, doing the standard museum hops, multi-kilometres of trudging (legs still a bit sore), ingesting of local foodstuffs, withering away in the heat. Very appreciative of the beach chairs along the Seine esplanade; great place to snooze, read, ogle the locals, etc. Such accommodations would probably last less than an hour around NYC....

Back to face about nine discs received during my absence:

3 CDRs from Asher Thal-Nir (very nice on first listen)
2 from the Australian label Room40 (Greg Davis/Jeph Jerman & Lloyd Bennett)
3 from For4Ears (Muller/Yoshida/Okura, Muller/Moslang and Moslang solo)
1 from OgreOgress, "For Feldman", a DVD audio disc.

*sigh*...it never ends!

happily.

I mentioned crosswords in the "About me" thingy on the right. I daresay there's a good degree of overlap between addictions to crosswords and Boggle. I began boggling maybe in the late 70s, I'm pretty sure at the inducement of my close friend Marc who is, among a few zillion other things, a crossword and Scrabble fanatic. We played almost every time we got together, jiggling that cube, racing to find the words.

The activity dwindled in the past bunch of years (though we still Scrabble with some regularity) but a month or so ago, I found a link to WeBoggle on the fine geekpress.com site.

The addiction has been total. It's very well designed with an excellent dictionary serving as referee. Best, there's a new game every 3 1/2 minutes or so (the game itself has a 3-minute limit) and you're playing in real time against whomever else is on-line. Crowds seem to range between 75-200 people in my experience. Quick typing fingers help. I've managed to eke out wins 4-5 times, finished in the top 10 pretty often, though I'd guess my average finish is about 15th. I'm almost always astonished by the number of words I simply don't see. There was a study I read about recently, I think on the Edge site, where the subject was asked to watch some people dancing or exercising on a video during which a person in a gorilla suit walked by in the background. Almost 50% of the participants failed to see it. Amazing; gets you wondering how much you're missing every day...Boggling does something similar. Great fun, anyway.

Off to France tomorrow evening, staying at Keith's place in Nantes for two days then Paris for five, accommodating Linda as she eases back into normality after a week with her sister....

I spent much of my adult life thinking that I wouldn't enjoy writers like Updike. There was something about that generation, not quite of my parents but a good 15-20 years before mine, that left a bad taste in my cultural maw. That just-pre-hippie (though not Beat) bunch of effete white guys who wrote about the angst of wealthy Westchester-ites. I just couldn't imagine having any interest in them. I do remember reading, maybe 30 years ago, a large collection of Cheever short stories, probably in my folks' collection, some of which I thought very strong but I shoved it aside in my head, arcing out into more exotic terrain.

Updike, Roth, Mailer, Heller; all these guys were back-burnered and then some. About ten years ago for some reason, I read Updike's "S." and loved it. I then got ahold of "In the Beauty of the Lilies" and loved it more. I read "Toward the End of Time" and thought it was one of the finest SF novels I'd even encountered. "Seek My Face", however, muted my enthusiasm a few years back and I let my nascent Updike passion lay dormant for a bit until, a couple weeks ago, figuring I should start at, or near, the beginning, I went out and bought "Rabbit, Run".

What an amazing novel. A few years ago, I'd read "Revolutionary Road" and was totally knocked out, thinking that this was about all that could be said re: 50s middle class America. While that one holds an edge in pure ferocity, "Rabbit, Run" might even do it one better in thoughtfulness and deep understanding. His empathy for the generally repugnant central character is wonderful/terrifying as we (I think I can generally assume, at least among those of us raised in similar environments/cultures) recognize more of ourselves than we're usually comfortable admitting. All the more shocking and impressive that this was written by a 28-year old. I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have had near the appreciation I do had I read this much before I was 40. Updike beautifully lays out the antecedants for much that would follow in the ensuing decade. You can feel the 60s counterculture bubbling beneath the psychological surface here even if it's given no direct allusion.

I brought him up on a Jazz Corner thread and opinion seemed split pro and con on Updike in general. The cons appeared to have similar reservations to those I held before finally taking the plunge. I think at least some of the dislike has to do with the reluctance to deal with some unsavory self-recognition.

Leaving for a week in France on Thursday night. Picked up some reading material yesterday:

Updike - The Centaur
Norman Rush - Mating
Bertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a Christian

On Saturday evening, Carol and I journeyed into the bowels of Brooklyn (Bushwick), looking for a junk shop called Goodbye Blue Monday, a site that has been hosting musical events for a little while now. A friend of hers, Rick Brown, was performing that evening in duo with Mark Howell, a situation they call Inconvenient Music. We found the shop, nestled in among various closed and miserable loooking places, under the rumble of the elevated J Train. The front room, reasonably jammed with detritus (a lot of vinyl I would've loved to pore through...) included a small bar and stage. Wending our way through some back areas, we came to the "garden", half open to the sky, half sheathed by corrugated tin, where Rick and Mark were playing. It's a cool little space, packed dirt floor and all. I had little idea what to expect, musically speaking though eyeing the instrumentation initially led me to think I was in for something out of the burgeoning psychedelic Americana quasi-movement with which I'm not at all familiar. Howell played electric guitar, cornet and percussion while Brown wielded a G3, an ancient, tiny electric keyboard, a wooden drawer (complete with shoulderstrap) affixed with sundry jangly stuff and a couple of homemade "trumpets", consisting of plastic cones with sax mouthpieces. And he sings, too.

Actually, given the set-up, I'd've expected more of an improv set but the pair did pretty much nothing but short, composed songs. The first set featured odd, blocky rhythms that never quite let you get comfortable (a good thing) and even odder song structure; it almost sounded folky but would always slither away. One really nice piece for cornet and cheapo organ leaked into Tony Conrad territory. The second set featured a surprising and lovely cover of Don Cherry's "Trans-Love Airways" from his sublime (and little known--not yet released to disc) "Relativity Suite" followed by a work that was pretty darn close to the Art Ensemble's "Odwalla". Good, rough-edged, funky stuff.

In the front room, there was another enjoyable duo, Emma Zunz, hailing from Seattle (via Borges). Two young ladies, Annie Lewandowski (guitar, accordion, voice) and Christin Miller (guitar, noise, voice) again doing songs, this time of a resolutely quiet and plaintive sort. Very effective--some beautiful harmonies and a nice dash of noise via Miller's guitar-bowing (what hath Rowe wrought!) and manipulation of pick-ups and other small items.

A lovely, unusual evening, all told. At home, I did the necessary googling and discovered that Lewandowski had studied with, among others, Eddie Prevost! How about that? Further, sieving out Rick Brown from his several million like-named companions (tossing "inconvenient" into the mix helped), I came across an FMU site that mentioned his past participation in a band called Fish & Roses. Hold on a second, I thought, that rings a bell. Troop over to the vinyl, fetch out the mid 80's compiliation "Island of Sanity" and, sure enough, there's a track from Fish & Roses with Rick and wife Sue Garner (also at the junk shop). Damn, coulda brought it for an autograph.

Today I realized I probably have Howell in my collection somewhere also, possibly on a Phil Kline disc. Turns out he was a member of Frith's Guitar Quartet as well though the one time I caught them, in Victoriaville, I don't think he was there.

Small musical world, anyway. Very cool.

I realized that none of the Muhal Richard Abrams albums mentioned so far and, in all likelihood as near as I can recall, none of the upcoming ones, includes a good, relatively recent photo of the man, so I thought I'd locate and post one.

My turntable's been broken for a while now, probably the better part of a year. It's a Nikko, one of those with the tone arm that slides itself at a perpendicular angle to the, whaddya call it, the little nubbin that holds an LP in place. It had been cantankerous for a while, not always agreeing to lower itself to vinyl; it's not like a regular stylus that you can manually place on the disc--if it doesn't wanna go, there's not much you can do about it. Makeshift solutions like stacking five or six LPs to bring the desired one up to the level of the needle met with paltry success.

I have about 1,000 LPs and I do still enjoy playing them. Additionally, some people inisist on releasing new stuff on vinyl, once in a while, occasionally posting them my way for review. Philip Samartzis, for instance, put out a very fine disc called Touch Parking last year. I had to ask him to send over a CD burn so I could actually hear it. Incidentally, re: that record and presumably others, it seems like huge advances have been made in the art of etching designs onto vinyl. I remember being thrilled at, iirc, opening a live Jethro Tull album from around '71 and discovering a translucent purple disc inside. Yum! Well, "Touch Parking" looks like this: ....Well, like the image above. I haven't worked out how to insert images anywhere but at the top of the current post yet. Hmm.....

So, as I amble through my collection, I come across the odd album, like Muhal's "Spiral", that I don't have particularly strong recollections about and I can't play it to refresh those memories. I know it's a live performance, I think at Montreaux (?), it's three pieces (even this--I'm writing from work and can't directly check, but that's my memory). There's one, probably called "String Piece" where the action takes place inside the piano. There's another where he indulges in what would become an increasingly unfortunate tendency toward academic atonality, by no means his strong suit. But there is one beauty, I believe called "C Song", that fits in nicely with much of the work on the 'Afrisong' LP. He's a frustrating musician from that standpoint, exhibiting a real wide range (for my taste) from gorgeous to all-but-unlistenable.

Reading:

Yukio Mishima - The Sound of Waves

Last evening was a rare thematic Record Club: Guilty Pleasures. This is a toughie for me. There's honestly very little, if anything, that I derive pleasure from musically which I feel the slightest bit guilty about. It's just kind of a foreign concept to me. On the other hand, I can readily apply it to other forms, say, movies. There's a slew of well-constructed but essentially awful Hollywood product which I can happily watch, acknowledging its core vapidity but willingly allowing myself to be sucked in and manipulated. Even if I feel guilty about it afterward. The guilt will even rebound while watching something profoundly beautiful, like Ozu's "A Story of Floating Reeds". In the middle of viewing it, the thought might well cross my mind, "Why do you ever watch that other garbage?" Good question. But I do.

But with music, it doesn't work that way; I just don't listen to the equivalent of "Die Hard" or something. Books too, I guess. I mean, until I'm trapped in a cell for life and it's the only material available, I'll simply never read a Grisham novel. When this theme was determined, the very first thing I thought of was a recording I actually didn't own though I had it back when it topped the US Hit Parade, in February 1968: Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra - Love is Blue. That's the debonair Mssr. Mauriat up top. As a 13-year old, I absolutely loved this song. I imagine, were I able to search back even further into my memory with any accuracy, that I already had affinities for both instrumental music (I have vague notions of greatly enjoying "Wipe Out") and excessively romantic, that is to say, syrupy, melodies, both embodied in this piece. Rock bands had been incorporating faux-classical motifs and instrumentation into their songs for a year or two, fitting in well with a budding effete-ness in my own formative aesthetic. In the next few years, for instance, I'd become enamored of groups like The Nice and, a bit later, (*gulp*) ELP. The latter's third LP was my first exposure to "Pictures at an Exhibition", I shudder to say. King Crimson would, without bothering to credit the source, use the Mars theme from Holst's "The Planets" in a puportedly epic song. Little by little, I began to realize there was this thing called "Classical music" out there and, I suppose not unnaturally, I was drawn to the Romantic warhorses, Beethoven (the symphonies not, certainly, the late string quartets!), Tchaikovsky (The Piano and Violin Concertos!), Rachmaninoff (the 2nd....). This effect lingered on in various guises for a long time, much to my detriment. For example, I grew to know and love much of Prokofiev (still do) but didn't get around to the inarguably more profound Shostakovich until much later and still have only made a dent.

In any case, I trace much of this back to "Love Is Blue". I had it on 45rpm, played it incessantly. This at a point in time where I was beginning to wake up to Hendrix et al. Weird juxtaposition. I thought it fit into the guilty pleasures category simply because I'd long since understood how treacly and in many ways awful a piece of music it was yet, when I encountered it here or there in the intervening years (likely more often than not over loudspeakers in a mall), I still felt fondly about it; it still evoked warm 'n' fuzzy feelings. So I went down to Tower on Thursday, not at all sure where to look for it (embarrassed to ask!) and, indeed, not certain whether the store had an Easy Listening section. Well, they do, up in the Classical Dept. and, lo and behold, there's a Paul Mauriat section. There were two discs containing the song; I chose the one with the gooier cover.

The Record Club group is pretty much a half-generation younger than myself so they didn't have any direct connection with the work, though I think most recognized it in some vague fashion. Its charming awfulness was impossible to miss, though. Their selections were, in large part if not entirely, from similar points in their own development though, for a geezer like myself, this meant baffling choices from the late 70s-early 80s, things I could easily understand as far as their awfulness-appeal, but had a necessarily tough time directly connecting to. Joan Jett, the Bee-Gees, the Knack, Neil Diamond.....

My second track was King Crimson's "I Talk to the Wind" from their 1st album, my "all-time" (like I knew anything) favorite record shortly after it appeared in, iirc, late 1969. I'd long since traded in almost all my LPs from that era, but I re-purchased this on disc several years ago, curious how I'd react to it not having heard the music for some 25 years. Not surprisingly, things like "Schizoid Man" held up fairly well and, as I expected, the free improv portion of "Moonchild", baffling to me as a 15-year old, sounded fresh and well-placed inside the British SME/Iskra 1903 tradition of the time. Also not terribly surprising was how unlistenable I found the title track and "Epitaph", two pieces my teenage brain found awesome. Most surprising was how lovely I thought the melodic line from "I Talk to the Wind" sounded, how appropriate the flute playing, how delicately right I found Fripp's guitar pings. I really liked the song. The lyrics however, courtesy Peter Sinfield (I think KC was the only band ever to have, as a regular member, someone whose sole duty was to provide lyrics) are entirely cringeworthy:

Said the straight man to the late man
Where have you been
I've been here and Ive been there
And I've been in between.

I talk to the wind
My words are all carried away
I talk to the wind
The wind does not hear
The wind cannot hear.

I'm on the outside looking inside
What do I see
Much confusion, disillusion
All around me.

You don't possess me
Don't impress me
Just upset my mind
Can't instruct me or conduct me
Just use up my time

I talk to the wind
My words are all carried away
I talk to the wind
The wind does not hear
The wind cannot hear.

*shudder*

As always, an extremely enjoyable evening, even if suffused with righteously miserable music.

When I began this thing, I intentionally told no-one (with the exception of Mark Forman simply due to discovering his existence as mentioned below) about it. I thought it would be an interesting little experiment to see who managed to find it on their own, if indeed anyone would. I'm an inveterate googler with regard to acquaintances of mine (and myself!), often nosing around to see who's up to what. Since discovering the Google blog search, I check myself periodically and have found a few amusing references including things in Russian Cyrillic and other languages I've vaguely attempted to decipher.

Last week, Dan Carlson, he of Record Club, claimed first prize when he googled on himself and Julia and my space was the only result. So, it took about a month and a half. The other day, Gerardo Alejos, doing a similar thing, stumbled across it. Very cool the way these things happen, I think.

Figuring it might be a way in which to attract some of HS classmates I've been otherwise unable to locate, I hereby toss out a few names: Sue Hahn, Scott Crossley and Shirley Stuart. If any of you ever vainly self-googleize and find yourself here, please say "hi".

There's been quite a lot of fantastic music emanating from Down Under for the past several years, little more deep and beautiful than that created by Philip Samartzis. I first heard his work in duo with one of my very favorite musicians, Sachiko M, on their "artefact" [sic] from around 1999. I've kept up reasonably well since then and have consistently enjoyed what I've heard. If I can generalize about the sound organization that seems to occur "down" there, I'd say there's a strong emphasis on spatial separation. Many of the musicians are involved in installation work and that sense of roominess, of air between sounds, often permeates their recordings and to wonderful effect. Michael Graeves, Arek Gulbenkoglu, Will Guthrie (now in Nantes), Thembi Soddell and many more are all producing outstanding, vibrant work.

I recently received Samartzis' "Unheard Spaces" (a review will appear at Bagatellen in the next day or two, and I was especially bowled over by the second of the two "suites" on the disc which consists of collaged field recordings from Venice. Along with what I've heard from Toshiya Tsunoda, the best I've heard in this area since the classic Luc Ferrari "Presque Rien" series. The art of choosing which tapes to use, which ones to abut against others, how to overlay them for the most poetic/exciting effect, etc. is utterly beyond me yet you can fairly clearly hear what succeeds and what doesn't. I hope to get more into this idea later as it seems more than a little paradoxical to me. ie, why this bit of children playing works but this other one doesn't. I imagine it's about context and immediately prior memory.....