Well, with a turntable back in the house, I can return to occasionally carrying on with the little project I began some months back, Browsing Through My Record Collection. When last we met, I'd gotten to Muhal's "Mama and Daddy" but wasn't sure my recollections were up to snuff. So I played it today and, I'm afraid they were. "Afraid" in the sense that, with this album (Black Saint 0041, recorded June, 1980) Abrams settled into a kind of rut that would persist at least until I grew weary of checking out his every release. This rut consisted of, generally with one exception, constructing an album made up of exceedingly dry, quasi-academic works, albeit with a definitely jazz-based ensemble. That one exception, inevitably the saving grace of the session, was a heavy, often beautful, blues-based piece. The frustration factor was large. I mean., look at this line-up: Abrams, George Lewis, Wallace McMillan, Vincent Chauncey, Bob Stewart, Leroy Jenkins, Brian Smith, Andrew Cyrille, Thurmna Barker. All-Stars at every position. Yet he forces them through three pieces that are just tired excercises in melding avant playing with the sort of "classical" approach that was popular in Third Stream circles in the late 50s and early 60s and arrives as arid and brittle as week-old Wonder Bread here. When we finally reach the title cut, it's with a mix of joy and anger, the latter to the effect of, "Why aren't you filling the album with stuff this beautiful?!" *sigh* Gorgeously languid, strolling juicily along and capped by a superb Abrams solo. Almost worth it for this piece alone. Back in the late 80s, I made a cassette of the single pieces from this and subsequent Muhal albums that were worthwhile. Damn good. It's always struck me as bizarre that Abrams seems to have felt it necessary to prove himself in such a tedious area, as though the world needed more sterile, academic pseudo-avant classical music.

Oh yeah, the cover. I can't say I was ever all that big on the dressing in African costumes, the face-painting and all, but some people can pull it off better than others. And it helps when it's in some kind of context, even if it's just a performing stage. A photo that looks like it was taken in some mall-based picture studio just looks silly, reading as though someone had just rifled through the props basket. The one on the back cover, fortunately unavailable, is even worse.

Finally, after over a year without any turntable at all and after several where the chances of it functioning on a given day had dwindled below the 50% mark, I picked one up. I've never been an audiophile and I'm still not. I tend to look for mid-range items from companies with a good track record, sometimes scanning a few reviews. I picked out this Audio-Technica AT-PL120. It wasn't difficult to set up and it works, so I'm happy.

The immediate spur for this purchase was the arrival, a couple weeks back, of Jason Lescalleet's amazing release, "The Pilgrim", about which I'm sure I'll have much to say later. The bulk of it is on disc, but also included is a vinyl recording that I was very anxious to hear. It's an extremely moving piece of work and a very brave one as well.

The second thing I put on was the Philip Samartzis/Rasmus Lunding album, "Touch Parking". I managed to eke out one listen to that on the old turntable. This was a Nikko with a tone arm that ran perpendicular to the center of the record, gliding along in its slot. The problem was that it was increasingly refusing to drop once it reached the record's rim. The only way I could listen to "Touch Parking" at all was by stacking it atop six or seven other records so the needle could catch. Not very efficient. Philip was kind enough to send me a disc burn of the recording shortly thereafter but it was still nice to hear it as originally intended.

Both releases, by the way, feature elaborate photo-engraving on the vinyl. I think I posted one side of the Samartzis disc before. Here's the other. I have no idea how common this is among contemporary vinyl releases. I assume it is so, but I'm out of the loop on these things. I still remember how awesome we thought it was when that live Jethro Tull album from about 1971 appeared on translucent purple vinyl!

Over the last few years, I've been reading an awful lot of Japanese fiction, generally of the "serious" variety (Abe, Endo, Kawabata, Oe, etc.). Murakami, whom I often love, was probably the most popular of these authors though, of course, he's quite serious in his own way. Last week, on a whim, I picked up Yusuke Kishi's "The Crimson Labyrinth". As is often the case, I was initially intrigued by the cover with its high magnification of what appears to be some kitschy illustration, a nice abstraction of a banal image. Scanning the exterior blurbs, I saw that Kishi was being championed as a "rising new star of horror" and that the plot of this one had to do with some characters plopped down into a "real" computer strategy D&D adventure. It seemed silly enough but it had nonetheless pricked my curiosity, so I picked it up.

I'm only about halfway through so I'll suspend ultimate judgment but I've been happily surprised to find that it's at least somewhat more than its superficial aspects. Indeed, I'm picking up a great deal of Murakami here from the main protagonist (40-ish, drifting, confused about women) to the very matter-of-fact style of writing that hides all sorts of agitation beneath its surface. The plot is indeed on the fantastic side, though I'm not sure it's something Murakami wouldn't have considered, at least around the time of Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. A group of strangers awaken in a remote, desert-like environment where it quickly becomes apparent that they are "players" in a real-life strategy games, receiving information via handheld gaming devices similar to PSP2's . It's silly in one respect (if not several), or course, but serves to lay out a pretty fascinating (again in an understated Murakami-like fashion) array of human interactions. We'll see how it ends.

Kishi has apparently written a couple of things previously, "The Black House" and "Isola"; curious if anyone's read them. More, I'm interested in learning about other popular Japanese authors who may, in one way or another, be thought of as heirs to Murakami. Lemme know!

Bagatellen's been hit by a blizzard of spam. I imagine it's something to do with the move to the new server but, damn. Hopefully Al and/or Derek can straighten thing sout soon. Please bear with us/them.

Last night, I posted a review at Bags of Henry Kuntz' solo album, "Wayang Saxophony Shadow Saxophone" which elicited a response from my buddy Dan Warburton that raised two issues of some interest.

One, more generally, has to do with audio CDs that stem from multimedia origins. In my experience, this is more commonly encountered in discs containing the sound portion of site installations (for instance, several of the Melbourne-based artists like Philip Samartzis or Michael Graeves). Sitting at home, dropping the disc into an audio player, the listener is necessarily cut out from much of the situation for which the sounds were designed. Listened to one way, you're often conscious of this lack, thinking, "If only I was able to hear this in its proper context, it would undoubtably have been more successful." I tend to say, "Well, use your imagination!" It ain't all that hard, especially if you've been given a degree of description of the intended environment in the liner notes or other explanatory text, to hear the music/sounds with at least some approximation of their proper context. Kuntz' music was meant to be heard accompanying some form of Balinese puppetry. You might say, "Well, he should have released a DVD". Yes, that would have been ideal but I'll assume for the moment that, given his likely financial situation, that wasn't an option. So, as listener, you have to do a bit more work. Heard "only" as music, the saxophonics (largely breath tones) didn't particularly captivate me. But I found that when I ran a mental movie of shadow puppetry (I've seen enough of it to be able to recreate the imagery without much problem), while listening, it worked 100% better. For me, it still wouldn't fall into what I'd consider "great" music, but it serves its purpose admirably and that's enough for me (arguably, as is usually the case with film soundtracks, it shouldn't be attention-gettingly good). I can understand someone not wanting to deal with only a piece of the package. Fair enough, but if that's in fact what you're presented with, I don't think it's too much to ask for a bit of compensatory work on the part of the listener.

Dan also voiced the commonly held (and not entirely unreasonable) opinion that there's nothing left to do vis a vis solo saxophone recordings. This has been bruited about for a number of years now and, de facto, there are an awful lot of boring solo sax discs floating around. Why the aversion to sax as opposed to other instruments? Well, imho, it has to do with the audible baggage that's part and parcel of saxophonics but which can be masked in other instruments. Brass, for example, seems to be more easily abstracted. You can listen to Greg Kelley playing by himself without necessarily picking up allusions to Miles or Bowie whilst saxophonists have a very hard time avoiding jazz connotations. It can be done, certainly, and is (Stephane Rives, for instance) but it's apparently far more difficult. There's also the "human cry" quality inherent in reeds, something generally eschewed within eai (good or bad? Neither, imho, but more to do with what's necessary in a given period; it was good to dispense with for a while--maybe it'll come back refreshed, viz. Kai Fagaschinski's gorgeous clarinet) that's difficult to cast off. In any case, there's the general idea that a given instrument is exhausted and that's something I have a problem with. That view narrows things down too far toward the instrument and away from the musician. It's tantamount to saying, "Everything's been done with the color red. You can't use it anymore in painting." There may, in reality, be a dearth of interesting solo saxophone recordings but I'd only view that for what it is, a lack at this time, and be wary of making a generalized prediction. Musicians have this habit of coming along and destroying one's preconceptions, happily. The next ten solo saxophone records that cross my CD player may indeed be dross but I'll still give the 11th a listen.

Listening:

Christian Weber - 3 Suits and a Violin (nice sounding new release on hatology with Moser, Siewert, Koch & Wolfarth)

Christian Weber - Osaka (solo)

Inger Zach - In (also fine-sounding on first blush, a solo outing on kning)

Writing about people you know

I'm talking about musicians here or people you know otherwise involved in the music. And I'm talking about eai. My personal guess as to how many serious fans this music has, worldwide, hovers around 5,000. Totally a guess, of course, but I doubt it's very far off however one would define the term. Erstwhile, pretty clearly the pre-eminent label in the area, rarely sells more than 1,000 copies of a given disc. Partly this is due to distribution issues, partly--and increasingly--due to the simple fact that the music is downloaded rather than purchased. But live events, in NYC, ones that feature relatively prominent names, might draw 100-150 if you're lucky. Even if the artist has something of a cachet in the pop world--Fennesz, for instance--maybe 200 people show up for a performance in one of the biggest, most "art" conscious cities in the world. So I feel fairly safe in saying that there are about 5,000 around who have a rough idea of what, say, Keith Rowe's been up to in the last five years and care a little bit.

These days, if one so desires, one quickly gets to know a large proportion of both musicians, label owners and fans in the area. It's hard not to. Unless you're a social hermit, you interact with others on discussion groups, attend concerts and say hello to people there. Give yourself a year or two and, without trying hard at all, chances are you've come to know a large number of folk in the biz, some of whom you likely consider "friends". Many of them create or foster the production of music! How about that? And since the percentage of people who write about music among the non-musician fans of this genre is pretty high (sometimes it seems that this is the case more often than not), you're often called upon to write about stuff created or distributed by people you know or consider friends. Horrors!

The appearance of impropriety rears its misshapen head and you occasionally find yourself called out for venturing a positive opinion of someone you're otherwise acquainted with, accused of log-rolling (if you yourself have something to gain from a similarly appreciative response) or shilling, or what-have-you. Of course, this is a very real possibility, at least if you've no shred of integrity. But what's a poor eai writer to do? Restrict himself to comment on only those releases with which he has absolutely no personal connection? If you're writing about some spawn of a vast conglomerate, that could be quite easy. In this tiny neck o' the woods though, well, some releases would simply never be written about at all! We're an incestuous bunch, that condition forced upon us by our meager population. When you're members of a tiny, isolated village, sometimes ya gotta marry your cousin.

Now, as suggested by some (I'll namecheck Adam Hill here as one who has argued these matters very well and passionately in the past--if he sees this, I hope he'll comment), you could preface each review with a caveat stating one's relationship with certain individuals involved in the given project. One: that's pretty clunky. I've done it on occasion when the relationships went beyond the normal bounds. My write-up of "Duos for Doris", for instance, contained one such. But Two, at least on my part, I never make any secret about who I know, who I like personally etc. Again, I daresay most who read my stuff at all know me reasonably well from discussions going back to the rec.music.bluenote boards and freejazz.org almost 10 years ago as well as more recent lengthy participation at JazzCorner, Bagatellen, I Hate Music, etc. If you know Rowe's music at all, chances are you know I'm writing a bio of him (and may even finish it one day). So, if I review a disc Keith's involved in, I trust the reader has this information already in mind and can judge my opinions accordingly.

Then there's the simple practical test: If I consistently love the work of someone who 90% of other fans consider to be abjectly mediocre, there might be good reason for suspecting I'm listening through rose-tinted ears. That's not been my experience, however.

That said....I can't deny that my perceptions of someone's music is often biased to one degree or another by either what I think of them personally or, if I don't actually know them, by what impression their (perceived) personality has made on me. It can work both ways. If I know and enjoy a person and, especially, if I have prior experience with his/her work, I find that I'll try "extra-hard" to glean some deeper understanding--in a positive sense--of a given performance. I'm not sure this is "wrong"; I have a working opinion of the person and I'm trying to "fit in" this performance in front of me. I think we all do something of the sort. But does this mean cutting extra, possibly undeserved slack for some? Yeah, could be. Does it preclude a negative review? Of course not. Hell, part and parcel of this area of music is that failure happens. On the other hand, if an individual takes the stage and exhibits persona aspects that entirely rub me the wrong way, let's say wearing leather pants and cowboy boots and a cross around his neck, are those attributes going to be something I'll have to work hard to get past? Well, yes, I suppose so. If a disc arrives bearing portentous track titles by a single (faux) named "artist", sure, my hackles have been raised. Still, I do everything I can to give a fair listen and a fair response. I think I achieve this more often than not; others may disagree.

This subject crossed my mind several times today after spending a lovely few hours yesterday afternoon talking with Annette Krebs at dba (btw, a great bar on 1st Ave between 2nd & 3rd Sts--check it out). I've enjoyed Annette's music for several years now and had previously met her at Musique Action in Nancy in May, 2002. I'll go so far as to make the presumption that we're now "friends". I'm looking forward to hearing more music from her over the next several decades. Should I not write about it? Should I preface future reviews with "Annette and I had several hot ciders on a rainy Sunday in NYC a while ago."? It seems silly. She was actually very appreciative that when I wrote up her most recent disc for Bags earlier this year, I was indeed critical of several of the tracks (I think I used the term "hermetic"; not a plus for me) and that, too often, people say that everything was great, everything wonderful, that it's refreshing to get honest opinions. Well, of course. Giving your honest opinion is what you do with friends anyway, isn't it?

As always, I welcome dissenting thoughts.

Whatever happened to Caspar Brotzmann? I'm playing some of his discs at home today (I think I have most of his legit output) and finding, as I have before, that his music holds up far better than I would've thought. Better than much of his dad's stuff, in fact. Raw, brutal, utterly unpolished. Really some of the most exciting power trio stuff I've heard in the last couple of decades, Germany's answer to Fusitsusha.

Not much found on-line, not even many photos. AMG shows nothing since 2000's "Mute Massaker" which I recall (and said as much in my review there) was overly noodlesome and relatively lacking in ferocity. Anyone know the story?

Bagatellen's back up. Woo-hoo! I've transferred all the reviews from the last week or so over there so I can get back to important stuff like ganglion cysts.

Richard Harland Smith made an eloquent plea to the producers of Law & Order over at movie morlocks that they exercise some self-restraint and NOT use the Adrienne Shelly case as the basis for an upcoming show. My cynical side advises me not to bet the house on that one but we'll see.

More than a little disconcerting this morning to see Adrienne Shelly's face splashed across the front page of every NYC tabloid now that her case has been deemed a murder. I mean, prior to this she was known by, what, maybe 5% of the population? But when a pretty, strawberry blonde actress gets killed, it's a paper-seller. Yechh. I guess, when forced to choose, a senseless, stupid murder is preferable to an unfathomable suicide, especially for the family who might otherwise have been wracking their brains for years, wondering why. Still, so sad...

Annette Krebs played a strong, lovely set last night. The space was the back room at Monkeytown, a restaurant abut a half block in from Kent Ave. on N3rd St in Williamsburg. Had dinner beforehand with my brother Drew; pretty decent stuff, kinda high-end Italo-Mexican if there is such a thing. Didn't realize at the time that we could've eaten in the performance space proper, though I don't cotton to that idea very much with, in general, eai. Too much concentration required if it's any good. The performing space was a cube about 20ft square with low slung couches along all four walls and enormous video screens on each. Comfy and cool.

Bryan Eubanks was first up and played a 27-minute (timed, apparently) drone, arising from circuitry. Though fairly dense, with 5-6 discernable strands coming into and out of focus, one got pretty much the entire picture after five or so minutes; it needn't have lasted longer. I was thinking though that, had I encountered the "same" sound in an, er, more natural setting (say leaning against the engine housing of a large ship) I may have happily sat for much longer, enjoying the "music". Something about the intentionality of an art performance, this time, soured things.

Annette's set was beautifully structured and lasted exactly as long as it needed to (less than 20 minutes, I'm pretty sure). Varying the sources from radios (serendipitously catching snatches of the Colt/Patriot game!) to delicately plucked, koto-like guitar strings, to amplified rubbed objects, it was the kind of performance that just makes sense, simply coheres, without one being able to express exactly why. Poetic choice-making, for one thing, I suspect. Projected around her was the 1927 Duchamp film, "Anemic Cinema" (and, d'oh! I just now realized, whilst typing, that this is an anagram!) which consists of optical illusions of spiraling created by overlapping, twirling concentric circles. Lovely stuff.

I'll say up front that anyone referring to themselves, in public, as "corridors" is on shaky ground as far as garnering any respect from me. They guy doing so last night (I forget his given name) spun out cotton candy wafts of ersatz-Eno for an ungodly length of time. I swear, every time a new sonic element was introduced, I inwardly (hopefully not audibly) groaned in the realization that this ensured at least 5-10 more minutes of intense boredom. I did discover something interesting, however: there are occasions when the sound I can pick up, travelling between jawbone and eardrum, of myself chewing gum can actually be far more fascinating than the music occurring in the room in which I happen to be sitting.

Sawako, a young Japanese lady, closed out the evening with a perfectly enjoyablemixture of field recordings and electronics--light but tasty. Accompanying her was an amazing film by Ralph Steiner, "Surf and Seaweed" (1930) which, when not serving as a backdrop for a Williamsburg art performance, contains music by Marc Blitzstein (how about that?). It consisted entirely of shots of water near shore, waves lapping and receding; very "basic" stuff in a sense, but gorgeously shot and lingered over. I see that it's available as a small part of a 7-disc DVD set called "Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941" that came out last year. Santa? You listening?

Speaking of DVDs, I received a new release on the intriguing and rewarding, if bafflingly named, OgreOgress label this afternoon. They've been putting out first performances of numerous late Cage pieces and this one, "Two3/Inlets/Two4" is in that same tradition. 158 minutes long! 121 of which are taken up by "Two3", 10 pieces for, in this case, solo sho. The sho is a Japanese mouth organ often used in gagaku performance. 121 minutes of solo sho, relatively sparsely arranged at that, is a lot for most Westerners, I imagine, to absorb--including me. "Inlets" is a delightful intermission of sorts, performed on conch shells, both blown and tipped back and forth while filled with water. "Two4" is quite similar, unsurprisingly, to "Two3" except presented here for sho and violin (the always excellent Christina Fong). The simple addition of a second voice does wonders for this gaijin's ears.

Two from Azul Discografica

The first two recordings on the fine-looking new lable, azul discografica, have surfaced. Can't locate better reproductions at this time than the ones below, but it'll at least give you an idea. Both discs are available through erstdist.

Loy Fankbonner - el pabellon

azul discografica
azd01

It’s an approach as obvious as it is underutilized: record and process sounds in one’s immediate environment, weaving a fabric from known, everyday sources into something no one’s ever heard. Loy Fankbonner, co-founder of the new label azul discografica (the cover aesthetic of which reminds me a lot of the original BYG Actuel series), does just that on its first release, “el pabellon”.

Recorded over a period of three months from March to May, 2006, using only the sounds that crept through his Washington Heights (upper Manhattan) window as raw material, Fankbonner (credited with microphony, samples, processing and mix) crafts eight solid slabs of sound that are both varied and, by and large, successful. In the first track, “atardecer”, a recognizable general urban rumble gradually gets admixed with sharper, more piercing tones before evanescing into a delicate blend of hiss and watery drops, small bells and mutated car horns alongside, before a threatening crescendo at the very end. It’s a gorgeously evocative work, one of the strongest here, summoning mental images halfway between gritty reality and dreams. Other pieces, like the ensuing “jornada”, are more chunky and discontinuous. Taking Fankbonner at his word about the sole sound source, some of the harmonica-like tones are mysterious as to their origin. I hear a little bit of Braxton in those notes; I can almost imagine him playing clarinet with, in this case, clanking metal behind him. There are several shorter vignettes scattered through the discs, snapshots of moments enhanced or not so much by Fankbonner, each quietly effective.

On “vecindario”, he injects a series of off-kilter beats, sampled from who-knows-where, that throw a wrench into the flow, obstructing the “natural” sounds of the city until one learns to accommodate them, something more easily done when various loud throbs and sirens emerge, placing the beats into a wider context, though I still found the track disquieting. The longish “noche de primavera” extends this sense of unease through a range of eerie, high-pitched whines and remote “choral” moans while the title track closes out the disc by returning to that dark, lovely rumble heard on “atardecer”, not noticeably messed with, fading out as though the window is being slowly closed.

“el pabellon” is a solid first effort, well worth checking out.

Mattin

Songbook vol.4

azul discografica
azd02

Ah, OK, what can we make of this? I'm apparently one of the few earthly denizens who enjoyed Mattin's first volume in the "Songbook" series on Hibari, a raucous, snarled set of improvised rock songs sounding (if this is possible) like a less studied version of DNA. I've missed the interim entries, vols. 2 & 3, though I somehow doubt there's any discernable "career arc" happening. This is a live set, a very recent one (July 5,2006), recorded in Tokyo by a rather all-star quintet: Mattin (vocals, guitar), Taku Unami (bass, piano), the excellent Anthony Guerra (guitar) and, from down the hall in the toilet, Jean-Luc Guionnet (sax) and Tomoya Izumi (shouting).

It's a brief disc, the six "songs" presented in a single 22-minute track. Supremely lo-fi and unbalanced, Mattin maybe singing into his computer mic (I say, "singing" but of course other words would serve better: growling, shrieking, sobbing, howling, gurgling, etc.), Guerra alternating between harsh clusters and relatively delicate plucking. Unami's bass playing, given his prediliction for computer-animated toys, is surprisingly funky. Cracks me up when, after a given eructative song, Mattin demurely says to the audience, "Thank you very much, thank you." In addition to DNA, the clear precedent for this approach seems to be Zorn's "Locus Solus" project from the early 80s. For my money, this works better, here largely due to Guerra's playing which, as usual, I find very compelling. That said, "Songbook vol 4" is at best going to be an acquired taste for most listeners. Dealing with Mattin's personality, as out front as it is here, ain't no easy thing. The final track, "Apologies", finds him bawling his head off. If he's faking it, it's a disturbingly convincing fraud. I don't know. That's also the section in which one can discern Guionnet and Izumi contributing from, apparently, a toilet far off mic.

It'd be tough to out and out recommend this one, but I'm kinda glad to have it.

Three more reviews initially headed for Bags (I see this morning that server-affiliated site I Hate Music also seems to be down). These all arrived via the kind consideration of Nicolas Malevitis of absurd records. Thanks, Nicolas!

Didac P. Lagarriga
The Reversed Supermarket Trolley Flies Towards the Rainbow
Lalia
LA 01

And then something comes along like “The Reversed Supermarket Trolley Flies Towards the Rainbow”. Swathed in a delightful pop-up kind of sleeve complete with a shopping cart-traversed rainbow—which I unfortunately am unable to reproduce above but which can be viewed here--this disc is nothing less (or nothing more) than a live recording from a 2 year-old’s birthday party. The affair for little Amaryllis was held in a century-and-a-half old house in the small northern Greek village of Iasmos in November of 2005 with music provided by Didac P. Lagarriga, a Barcelonan native. His array of instruments—laptop, balaphon, mbira, berimbau, piano, cello, guitar, bass, melodica and more—weave amongst the sounds of the party. There’s no screaming of tiny children (happily) though their voices filter through from time to time. More often, the hubbub is at a slight remove, perhaps from the next bower, occasionally drifting over to investigate what the strange Spanish musician is up to and contributing the odd growl, chortle or recitation of ABCs. Tunes come and go, generally with the sort of rhythmic character you get when playing kalimbas and balaphons. In between, the music floats off almost without purpose, accommodating the distant crying of a child here, providing obbligato for a spirited, perhaps tipsy mommy there.

It’s an entirely whimsical undertaking which, while it doesn’t present itself as anything more than it is, manages to create a fanciful, Fellini-esque aura. Part field recording, part performance, this trolley contains something quite wonderful and comes as a breath of innocent, brisk air into a scene that can get a wee bit hermetic.

Lalia has no website but ErstDist should also have copies. Otherwise, anyone interested may
inquire directly at laliarecords@yahoo.com

Leif Elggren
45 Minutes from underneath the beds

Utan titel
#6

I guess the first thing I noticed when I slid this disc into the player was that it was 70 minutes long. A mumbling voice appears, speaking in English but sounding rather like a recovering stroke victim, going on about inflow and outflow from kitchens and bathrooms, sounding as though read from an instruction manual. I was previously unfamiliar with Elggren and, charitably, thought that perhaps this is the manner in which he speaks. Later tracks on this disc show this not to be the case, casting this initial sequence in a rather creepy light. It’s clearly a very personal statement, gone into in some depth in the accompanying liner notes involving the worlds he constructed lying beneath various beds, drawing scenes on the supporting frames there, etc. In that sense the main work here, which does indeed last 45 minutes, is likely successful as an evocation of this history. Whether or not the unconnected listener will find it of interest is another matter. I went back and forth, feeling uncomfortable and put off at some points, drawn in at others. The music proceeds in segued episodes, many of them having an electro-percussive aspect. There’s an extended loud, feedback-y drone near the start that does little for me but the chaotic section following, made up of what sounds like overlaid percussion recordings, is quite winning. Overall, I enjoyed more than I was bored by.

Of the remaining six tracks, two are in the 10 minute range, the others very brief. The first of the former is my favorite cut on the disc, a rich welter of low throbs and clatter, the least hermetic work here, one that at least hints at an outside world; the second will delight No Fun folk (I liked it too). A couple of the shorter ones are talk pieces, delivered without the stroke effect but still not terribly illuminating.

Howlin' Ghost Proletarians
The Singer
Absurd/Phase!
#56/PHR-22

Conceived as an homage to Johnny Cash, the interior sleeve of “The Singer” contains a passage (in French) from Cormac McCarthy’s “Outer Dark” and the general tone of the disc is, indeed, somewhere on the nether side of Cash at his most anguished even if it never quite achieves McCarthy-ian depths of bleakness. The music of Loren Connors might be the most appropriate point of comparison.

Fabrice Eglin (guitars, slide guitar, amp) and Michel Henritzi (guitars, slide guitar, amp, harmonica) fashion nine blues-drenched songs, chain-draggingly slow and rough, seemingly designed as evocations of the blood soaked, unrelentingly harsh Western vistas encountered in McCarthy’s novels. Guitar lines regularly morph into feedback howls while laboriously pushing their way through clouds of dust and mounds of carrion. While the pieces are generally effective, they’re also similarly so with not so much to differentiate over the course of the disc, though the quieter works (such as the two “Outer Dark” songs) do camp out in an even sparser, dustier terrain. This kind of “monotony” may well be intentional, serving as a metaphor for a day after day trek over brutal land and, if approached with that idea in mind, the album works quite successfully. If listened to in hope of more elaborate variations, one might be disappointed, but as a whole, ‘The Singer” functions well as a grim, forlorn, not unsentimental slab of hurt.

absurd

phase!

Adrienne Shelly (1966-2006)

I was shocked this morning to read in a story in the New York Times that Shelly had been found dead in her office. No cause of death announced.

I met her a couple of times in the early 90s when she worked with my friend Richard Harland Smith in several of his plays and sketches. She seemed to be a wonderful person. And I always greatly enjoyed her filmwork, especially in Hal Hartley's "Trust" and "The Unbelievable Truth".

Too sad.

Bagatellen has been suffering from server-related problems for almost two weeks now, the upshot being an impossibility to load anything, including reviews. It's being worked on by Bags stalwarts Al Jones and Derek Taylor but in the meantime, I thought I might as well post my growing backlog of write-ups here, at least for the time being. I'll likely re-post them at Bags once the site is back up and running, hopefully soon.

So, two releases on the fine Australian label, Room40, are first up:

Richard Chartier - Current

Room40

EDRM409

“Current” is of a piece, a 20-minute steady emergence from chirping quietude into a slightly louder and progressively richer sound world. It’s not very different from any number of recordings that listeners in these parts will have heard before, but…well, it is. Structurally, its additive nature will be familiar as the initial crickety nightscape is layered with a discreet organ-like tone, a persistent (though not insistent) three beats of wood and, later, what seem to be embellishments of clarinet origin. The music splays out gently toward its conclusion in a kind of soft, silty delta. Then it’s over before you realize it.

I’m not sure there’s much more to say except that, if you appreciate the choices Chartier makes here, as I do, you’ll find “Current” to be a thoughtful, even ingratiating bubble of ideas.

Janek Schaefer - In the Last Hour

Room40

RM419

Even before I researched the background of this disc, my first impression was of a clear literary quality in both the music and its packaging. The sleeve interior depicts a landscape painting, its creator unidentified but the representation is Bierstadt-ian in Romantic grandeur, an ancient single-master facing a cliff-lined watery canyon. The four track titles, “In the Last Hour”, “Between the Two”, “Half Submerged by Each” and “The Ruined City”, also exuded a novelistic air. So I wasn’t very surprised to discover that their source was indeed a literary one, stemming from Iain Banks’ novel, “The Bridge”. The Schaefer piece was initially presented at the November 2005 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, in the Town Hall there, wherein the audience lied down in the center of the large space, in near darkness, surrounded by speakers, the handsome, gilded ceiling of the hall occasionally illuminated by flashes of light. (more detail can be found here)

Stripped of its proper environment and consolidated onto a CD, the work still retains a good bit of power. A couple of the pieces make substantial use of the hall’s organ, including languid, respirations on the first track, eventually accompanied by far-off bird cries, possible gunshots and, at the very end, the sort of jostling sounds you might here below deck in an old trawler. After the brief, misty “Between the Two”, things come to something of a boil, a bass clarinet line (sounding a bit out of early Reich), darts among the birds before the water sounds hinted at earlier flood the area. A range of dull bell tones and hissing washes appear, a mournful clarinet motif alongside, all evoking a passage through mysterious, dangerous climes. The sensation of uncertainly drifting upriver is quite haunting and effective here. The final track summons up an old (?), romantic orchestral track, vinyl pops galore, flickering out into a succession of noise slabs, before the organ returns, its lengthy tonal chords evoking a fog-enshrouded sea. The organ becomes positively majestic toward the end of the piece—cliffs looming up from the clouds lit by a single ray of light?--(You sink into this kind of thought process with this music….) though the avian life and lapping water have the final say.

It’s an interesting, often stunning and unusual set of music, another one I’m betting will allow various readings on subsequent listens. Worth a shot.

room40

By most lights, I have many odd items in my recording collection. But among the people I hang out with on-line and in the contemporary music scene, of course, most of these things aren't odd at all. Indeed, they're largely things we'd expect to find in each others holdings. Still, there are a few pieces of music that I hold dear which, were they heard at all by my confreres, would likely be looked at askance. Extremely askance.

One of them is Marc Blitzstein's "Airborne Symphony". I picked this up probably back around 1975 on a Columbia LP reissue of the original recording done, I believe, in 1946 with Bernstein conducting the New York City Symphony and with Orson Welles as narrator. The release I bought had an amazing cover, a photo that you'd likely call "socialist realist" in style except that it's resolutely American in tone; "capitalist realist", maybe--a heroic head shot of a bronzed young pilot framed against an imposing propellor. I'm mightily pissed that I can't locate an image of said cover on the Net. If anyone succeeds in doing so, please let me know. [ooh! ooh! Found one! Dark, but better than nothing:

The piece was a wartime Air Force commission to celebrate the history of flight, something that, in more hacky hands, could have become a pretty risable object. Blitzstein, however, was an interesting character. Though having had a long and involved history with the American Left, he was of a generation that still retained a great fascination with all that capitalism had produced and, I imagine, saw no contradiction in melding the two forces. Of course, given that the commission came from a military body, the leftist aspects had to be camouflaged discreetly so Blitzstein fashioned a kind of cautionary tale, reveling in the history and glories of flight but casting a baleful eye toward its potential (unavoidable?) use as a force for evil and destruction.

The music is a wonderful melange of styles, heavily spiced with the American vernacular of the 40s both in musical style and text. There are, unsurprisingly, martial references but also jazzlike sections, US folksong aspects, sentimental balladry, etc. Welles teeters right on the edge of excessive bombast, snarling out some lines so viciously he overwhelms the mid-40s microphones but, as in the extraordinarily poignant and sorrowful "Ballad of the Wounded Cities", is also bone-chillingly somber. The piece tracks flight from Icarus to Leonardian balloon fantasies to the Wright Brothers. Through WWI and, in its last half, to its use in contemporary warfare against fascism. Some of the sections are pretty hilarious, like the "Ballad of Hurry Up", detailing the frustrations of ground crews when their missions are readied and aborted, multiple times. How often does one hear "Snafu", "Fubar" and "Tarfu"(had to look up the latter) in a "serious" classical work? One of the most purely gorgeous songs is "Night Music: Ballad of the Bombardier", in which a "19-year old bombardier" writes a letter to his sweetheart on the evening before he leaves on a bombing mission. Sung in a pure tenor, it's the sort of thing that many would find overwhelmingly schmaltzy and utterly unlistenable but, to my ears, it's rendered so humanly and convincingly that it's devastating in emotional impact.

The Symphony ends in an appropriately chaotic welter of massed aircraft, on the tipping point between use as an instrument of peace or of war now that Hitler's been taken care of. Welles, in the midst of a triumphant celebration, bellows out cries of, "Warning! Warning!!".

An absolutely amazing piece of music, imho. I'd gotten a later rendition (also with Bernstein) on disc a couple of years ago which, while OK, lacks the passion of the Welles version. I just found that on another disc and have it on order. Looking forward to hearing it once again in all its conflicted glory.

A note for NYC area music listeners. Berlin-based guitarist and electronicist Annette Krebs will be making what I believe to be her first ever NYC appearance on Sunday at a place called Monkeytown in Williamsburg. She'll be one of four solo instrumentalists, details:

Sunday November 5th, 8pm $6
@ Monkeytown
58 N 3rd St
(btw. Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211


Sawako - field recordings/electronics
Bryan Eubanks - electronics
Annette Krebs (Berlin) - guitar
Corridors - guitars


Annette's done some wonderful work over the last few years. There's an especially fine recording on fringes, pictured above, which sports one of my all-time favorite cover paintings (by Krebs).

Adventures in self-googling


I was going to say, "We all do it" but I dunno. Doesn't everyone do it? I bet it's the case though a lot of people seem ashamed to admit it. Helps, of course, to have an eminently googleable last name, one that's unwieldy enough so that, when googled, the vast majority of hits circle around the proper person. Like Olewnick.

Early on in my access to the net, I located a passel of other Olewnicks about whom neither I nor anyone in my family had ever heard. They tended to be scattered in the Catskill region, extending west toward Batavia and north-central Pennsylvania. I'd assume they're related from somewhere prior to the Greenpoint Brooklyn days of my dad's childhood, back in the old country when the name carried along its "kin of Olav" connotations (I'm guessing, actually; that's the best I've come up with). This was moderately interesting in and of itself. What was disturbing and unsettling, however, was the discovery that there existed another "Brian Olewnick" up around Schoharie, NY. What the fuck? I mean, if you're from some good Polish family, what are the odds of slapping an Irish tag like "Brian" on one of your kids? I think (I'm hazy on this in fact--have to verify it with the folks--that mine came from an uncle somewhere so, conceivably, that could be the familial connection). Very annoying to realize there's someone else walking around, blatantly using my name. I mean, really. I've been contacted three times by people looking for him. One was a former exchange student from Brazil who'd apparently resided with the Schoharie Olewnicks some time ago. In his e-mail he asked, in order for me to "prove" I was the right Olewnick (*sputter*) the name of the family dog. Sorry, buddy. Oh, and this joker seems to pronounce it Oh-LEW-nick. How gauche.

Hey, Schoharie Brian, if you've self-googled your way here, how ya doin'?

So, anyway, I periodically search on myself, seeing out of curiosity which sites have picked up reviews of mine (the largest portion of hits), occasionally finding some comment on them. Google blog search revealed a few surprises as well. Kinda cool.

But this post was prompted by a recent (and, as of today, still current) result whilst performing a google image search on "olewnick". Go ahead, try it; I'll wait.

OK, there are a bunch of album covers. To be expected. There are a few snaps of me at the crossword tourney, in the company of a pair of dashing gentlemen displaying the requisite xword fashion sense and demeanor; fine. There are a couple of photos of one Allison (or Alison) Olewnick, out of Burroughs' hometown, Lawrence, Kansas. Don't know who she is. Bet she knows me, though. Hey, Allison! Say hi to a missing cousin.

So far, so good. But then we come to a large photo of someone about to eat a grub. "Survivors eat grubs" says the caption. Now, I'm known in some parts for my willingness to eat most anything. At Jazz Corner, I'm the recipient of more than a few jibes from people to that effect. But what the hell does "olewnick" have to do with that photo? Maybe that mouth belongs to the other Brian. It's suspicious, though. If you try to go to the associated site, it's "Not Found". Further down the google page, there's a particularly creepy photo of Dame Edna, replete with purple wig. Again, what gives? Where's the olewnicity of that photo? Not even just me, but any Olewnick? I can't quite figure this out. On page 2, there's a very cool still capture from the DVD of "Harakiri". Now, I purchased "Harakiri" a few months ago--wrote about it here, I think. How does my name get affiliated with this particular pic, though? Just chance? Seems unlikely. I've not commented on any Japanese film site. I think I did so at Bagatellen, briefly, but I can't see how that could possibly connect to this one. Damned eerie.

Ah well...

The Richard Powers book, "The Echo Maker", is fabulous 1/3 through.

[edit: I note that if I refine the image search to "brian olewnick", the Dame Edna pic is thankfully lost, but the others remain.]

It's long been something of a paradox: I listen to a teeny tiny fraction of the music available out there in the world, some miniscule sliver of the market, but that slice grows and grows becoming all but unmanageable. There might be only about 5000 people worldwide really into contemporary "eai", but most of them seem to put out discs (the rest of us write about it).

A necessary outcome of all this product is that much of it is, relatively speaking, mediocre. That is to say, I'd still rather listen to your average, humdrum eai track than My Chemical Romance (don't get me started), but things do have a tendency to blend into one another. Even musicians who I have a seriously high amount of esteem for, say Gunter Muller, get into the habit of releasing things that become real difficult to differentiate from prior recordings or, essentially, from any number of current offerings from others.

So, I end up placing more and more value on the music of those musicians whose individuality remains striking, whose creations sound like something that could only have originated with them. (I'm not sure, by the way, if this is an entirely justifiable outlook, but I'm old-fashioned that way). Rowe would be one, of course. Samartzis, who I wrote a little bit about is another; happily there are plenty more. One, most definitely, is Olivia Block. I first heard her several years ago, getting her initial two releases, "Pure Gaze" and "Mobius Fuse" (see my AMG reviews, the urls of which aren't being accepted here--maybe too long) at the same time. Many people use field recordings but only a handful, like Block and Toshiya Tsunoda, consistently apply such a poetic ear for sound. Even more than the usual query, "How do you tell what's 'good' and 'bad' in this music?", discerning "good" and "bad" field recordings might be a fool's errand but, presumably for subjective reasons, there are some that simply leap out at you in their incisiveness, concentration of detail, poetic character, juxtaposition within a mix, sheer gorgeousity of sound, etc. Block is not only unerring in her choices of raw material, she has the added...fearlessness to inject and overlay music that is unabashedly nostalgic in nature, harkening back to neighborhood brass bands playing in the gazebo. There's a beautiful, rural feel to the music--one can easily imagine lying in a field, listening to the wind rustle through the weeds, faraway fireworks, echoes of the music from a half-mile away. Dunno, maybe it helps if one grew up in a quasi-similar environment (I believe Block is originally from Texas, now residing in Chicago), open enough to allow the isolation of elements to be perceived, peaceful but active. In any case, both recordings are unique, wonderful discs, well worth checking out (presumably both still available from sedimental).

Last year's "Change Ringing" on Cut, made it three for three, another wonderful recording with a larger contingent of live instrumentalists (see a multitude of reviews at the Cut site, here). This month, Ms, Block is back on Sedimental with the bracing and superb (and superbly titled) "Heave To". I've only listened a handful of times, including blasting it in the car downtown NYC last Saturday night, but I feel safe in saying it's a helluva piece of music. The first several minutes of the opening track are as exciting as anything I've heard in the last few years and, if the remainder doesn't quite stay at that ridiculously high level, it's not all that far behind. The over-riding impression I have is of being in the belly of an old wooden ship, the vessel itself traversing a heavily flotsam'd sea, the detritus banging off its hull, echoing through its innards. The park band elements aren't entirely absent, chords emerging like the foghorns of passing tankers, then receding. There's also a lot of insane Pendereckian string playing. I'll have more to say about the disc when I write it up for Bags but, do yourselves a favor and pick this baby up.

So, I'm sitting at my desk Friday afternoon around 3PM, glance down at my right hand and see, on the underside of my wrist just below the ball of my thumb, a chickpea-sized lump under the skin. "What the...?" I exclaim. Immediately I race through a bunch of rather humorous conjectures. Was this always there? No, I think I would've noticed it before. Is there an equivalent lump on my left wrist? Nope. Hmmm....It's pretty hard and initially seems like it might be a growth on the tip of my ulna. Or radius. Whichever bone ends there. But further prodding reveals that its hardness is more of a cartilage type than bone--there's a little give. It's seems capable of being moved a wee bit. It doesn't hurt at all though the more I poke it, it seems likely I could make it sore, so I try not to.

Well, when in doubt, google. So I type in, "bump on wrist" into the staunch search engine and, fairly quickly come to realize that it's a ganglion cyst. Kewl. Such growths are non-cancerous and not otherwise malignant. In some people, they are painful and can be easily excised. For others, they disappear after a while or just hang out there in perpetuity. The most common site is on the back of the wrist but, as the illustration shows, my area and the base of the ring finger are also frequent. There's no danger of a small, Alien type creature erupting. This thing appeared so suddenly that I have the strong feeling that, had I been looking in that direction at the right moment, I could likely have seen it flower.

For me, the main thing I've gotten out of this is a reminder, as though I needed it, that the body is just a sack o' stuff that has its own schedule of gradual decomposition and weirdness. If this extrusion is the worst thing that happens to my shell in the next 20 years, I'll be pretty lucky. It's just strange to suddenly acquire a new physical characteristic after 52 years. Plus, until a matching one appears on my left wrist, my sense of symmetry is thrown off.

Listening:

Olivia Block - Heave To (a wonderful new release on Sedimental. I should write something on her, one of my favorite current musicians)

Two new releases on the fledgling Azul Discografica label:

Loy Fankbonner - La Pebellon (I think I'm remembering the title correctly--"The Pavilion" in Espanol. An intriguing disc made of of processed sounds recorded through the artist's window)

Mattin - Songbook Vol. 4. Raw, short (22 minutes) live recording of improvised "songs" with Taku Unami, Anthony Guerra, Jean-Luc Guionnet, and Tomoya Izumi.)

Look here. This delightful package fell into my lap a little while ago courtesy of Nicolas Malevitis at absurd records. There will be a review up at Bags in short order, but I wanted to mention it here as well since it's such a wonderful, unique item. Essentially, it's an hour's extract from the birthday party of one Amaryllis, who turned 2 in November or 2005. The party was held in a tiny village in northern Greece called Iasmos, and the Barcelonan musician Didac Lagarriga was on hand to entertain the crowd with a small truckload of instruments. He plays mbira, balaphon, cello, guitar, chimes, laptop etc. but the music, as recorded, is on an equal level with the sounds of the party. So you're just as apt to hear little kids chortling and crying, tipsy moms singing and scolding, dishes clattering, etc. as you are to hear the odd patch of rhythmic melody. It's a lovely, unhurried, unpretentious disc that almost no one will ever get to hear. It's out on Lalia records which, apprently, was formed for the sole purpose of issuing this one recording. They have no distribution but will, I think, wing one your way if you contact them at: laliarecords@yahoo.com . It's worth it.

[edit] I'm informed me that ErstDist should be in possession of copies soon.

A couple weeks ago, I picked up the 5-disc set of Nusrat FatehAli Khan's Paris Concerts from 1985 & 1988 on Ocora. Amazing, amazing music. I wrote a little bit the other day for Bagatellen here. One thing I touched on is something that's always...bothered me when listening to songs sung in a language I don't understand, that is, how easy it is to ignore content, to isolate one aspect of a work from others.

In painting, you can look at, say, Raphael's 'Transfiguration' or Velazquez' 'Crucifixion' and pretty much ignore the explicitly Christian content, instead concentrating on the underlying human essence. One needn't believe in the myth of Jesus' resurrection to read the Raphael as an evocation of transcendence over earthly travails, a triumph of human spirit. Christianity, unfortunately, is imbued in most of our daily existence, so it's something that needs to be dealt with. We (I think) have less difficulty ignoring the ostensible reality of Athena or Mercury when admiring Greek sculpture, whereas there's a certain amount of conscious effort required to extricate one's judgment from scenes purporting the reality of the religion one happens to have been in the midst of during one's life. There's that necessary caveat to be expressed: "Of course, I don't think any of these things depicted actually occurred, but..." It's a tough hurdle for many people, I've found. They can't separate out the overt text from the subtext, always seeing the looming face of Christianity (or Islam, or Hinduism or Judaism, etc.) tingeing, if not outright discoloring everything else.

This carries over to music as well. I have this problem, to some extent, with religious classical music; if I never hear "The Messiah" again, it'll be too soon. But even there, I can disentangle the mythological trappings in given examples, say, the "enfant Jesus" section of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. It's an inconsistent thing.

In standard pop music, much the same thing applies albeit (usually) without the religious content. Pop lyrics, obviously I should think, are by and large vapid, boring, banal, stupid, etc. It's real difficult, for me, to ignore them and concentrate on either the underlying music or, less often, the "spirit" behind the moronic lyrics. However....I can happily listen to some pop music where the song is in a language I don't understand. I've no particular reason to think that the lyrics in a Toure Kunda song are any less stupid than those in one by Snoop Dog or Dave Matthews. But since I can't translate them, I don't care!

But how valid is this stance? If I understood Senegalese, my appreciation of Toure Kunda's music would, I assume, drop a bit. By wilfully ignoring this shortcoming, by not going out and finding translations for the lyrics (I imagine thy're available), I'm not knowing the music as fully as I could in the fairly certain knowledge that, were I to do so, my enjoyment would be lessened. I admit to feeling somewhat dishonest when pursuing this tack.

So, the late Mr Khan. Aside (I think) from the Rowe/Nakamura disc, "between" (Erstwhile), this set is the most beautiful music I've heard this year. The majority of it (perhaps all of it) is Islamic religious song sung in...Urdu? (I'm not sure) I don't countenance Islam any more than I do Christianity and were Khan singing in English about the glories of Jesus instead of in Urdu about those of Allah, I can't help but think that, incredible music aside, I'd've been at least somewhat put off. Who knows, maybe not. I can listen to some Gospel without retching...But this stuff is so gorgeous, so rapturous, so full of life that I blithely cast off those other concerns. He might be singing about subservience to Allah, but I don't care. The essence that comes through, the core beneath all the fol de rol, is humanist and beautiful, just like it is in Raphael, Velazquez and Messiaen.

Seem to be getting linked to here a little bit in the last couple of weeks. Thanks Steve Smith, Mwanji and anyone else who thought it worthwhile. I've been meaning to continue with the Browsing Through My Record Collection thingy, but encountered a stumbling block in the form of a non-working turntable. This, combined with my less than perfect memory of what albums like Muhal's "Mama and Daddy" actually sound like, has inhibited my from further reminiscing lest my descriptions fall even farther off-mark than usual. Might be remedied later this week, we'll see.

On Saturday, I enhanced my status as best all-around brother-in-law by taking Linda's never-leaving sister and hubby on a drive to the Catskills to view the fall foliage. Took about an hour and a half to get from Jersey City to the Palisades Parkway due to several closures of Tonnelle Ave. with no remotely reasonable detour available. The roads clustering around this artery are a maze of back to back to back one way streets that lead nowhere, unmarked dead ends through scary industrial areas and thousands of drivers even more clueless than me trying to ascertain which way is north.

The delay had its silver lining--we no longer had time for a tour of West Point, desired by the retired military brother-in-law, not looked forward to by me. I mean, it's just buildings. A bunch of years ago whilst motoring around in the area, I ended up on a road that forced me into the academy. I wasn't at all sure I was even allowed in and feared being ordered, at gunpoint, to reverse course. Instead, even more uncomfortably, I was saluted by the young cadet at the guardbooth. "Um, yeah, OK" and waved/saluted back.

So we got on the Thruway at Nyack and headed north. Always some great scenery along there, especially as you get to the Harriman Interchange with those wonderful fields that go right up to the base of imposing hills. Got off at 299 to crawl through New Paltz, marvel at Manny's Art Supplies (that it's still there--I used to bike over from PoTown to get my art stuff in the early 70s) and head on out into the flood plain to the West.

It was getting on 1pm, so we decided to stop for lunch at Mountain Brauhaus at the intersection of 299 and 44/55. Fantastic location, right at the base of some of the more impressive cliffs in the Shawungunk Ridge. You can look up and see the rock climbers speckled along its face. We'd been there several times in the past, often after going swimming at Minnewaska or hiking at Mohonk, but it had been at least 12-15 years. What was once a solid if unspectacular German Restaurant had, while keeping its general looks, transformed itself into a pretty upscale eatery with, in addition to the wursts and schnitzels, an unusually wide menu. Whereas hasenpfeffer might have been the most exotic option in times past, on Saturday I was debating between Sliced Goat Sandwich, Deer Goulash and....Kangaroo Loin. Well, it's not every day that you're presented with the possibility of munching on some Kangaroo (I never had, in fact) so the choice was made for me.

It arrived, bathed in mustard-wine sauce, in two tapered cylinders, each about seven inches long. I had a brief pang of concern, wondering if I properly understood the limits of the term "loin". Nonetheless, I plunged in and it was quite delicious. Kind of beefy with a liver-y edge to it, virtually no fat and very tender. Good stuff. Still, I was a bit relieved when I located the above illustration.

The others had unadventurous but good fare and, eschewing dessert ('cuz we were eventually heading to my folks' where Mom's own German pastries would be in effect), we headed on out 55, past Minnewaska, out along the Rondout Reservoir, up the fantastically beautiful Peekamoose Road (waterfalls by the roadside, chalet-like houses out in the middle of nowhere), along the Ashokan Reservoir and back down to Poughkeepsie where the aforementioned parents and goodies awaited.

Mmmmm...kangarooo......

Listening:

Two on Esquilo: Minamo's "A Herdsman's Life" and Fages/Barberan/Costa Monteiro - "Semisferi"
Two on Room40 - Richard Chartier's "Current" and Janek Schaeffer's "In the Last Hour"

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.