Boris Hegenbart - Instrumentarium (Monotype)

Wherein Hegenbart performs his variation on dub utilizing recordings provided by 19 musicians, to wit: Michael Vorfeld, Martin Siewert, Stephan Mathieu, David Grubbs, Jan Thoben, Bernhard Gunter, Sascha Demond, Fred Frith, Hannes Strobl/Hanno Leichtmann, Oren Ambarchi, Marc Weiser, Martin Brandlmayr, Christophe Charles, Ed Osborn, Felix Kubin, F.S. Blumm, Boris Hauf and Ulrich Krieger. Hard to make a general statement except that Hegenbart's contributions to the track tend toward the low range (as befitting dub), often echoey, and injecting elements either rhythmic or indirectly so. The characteristics of the sources impart a certain flavor to each track, but I hear more of Hegenbart than them (to the extent I can recognize their manner, which isn't always the case), which is fine. The underlying hum and throb that's often heard here brings to mind 90s recordings on Made To Measure, Benjamin Lew and others. There's also something of a Radian/Trapist vibe at times. If, for my taste, it's all a bit too much on the easy listening side of things, it's readily digestible and not untasty. A good entry drug, but likely not for those whose listening runs toward the more rigorous end of things.

Sultan Hagavik - 9 Symphonies (Monotype/Bôłt/Glissando/Niklas)

Googling Sultan Hagavik yields numerous citations of an IKEA-produced mattress. Further research turn up a tape-oriented Polish band, which I'm pretty sure is what we're dealing with here. And tape manipulation is the operative thing with Mikołaj Laskowski and Jacek Sotomski each wielding a pair of cassette machines. Not sure of the sources, aside from Schubert and Gorecki who get citations, but the sound is not so dissimilar from their Polish forebears, some of whom are represented in the "Blanc et Rouge" collection I wrote about prior. There are more vague allusions to rock and its rhythms here as well as the noise scene generally, though the relatively pastoral interludes are attractive in a Jon Hassell-y way. That said, there's little that holds my attention, the taped sounds having a thinness and an unsurprising aspect, the occasionally surfacing beats coming across as banal. Seems like more sought for effect than thought, overly infected by a pop sensibility. Nice cover though...

Monotype

(Various) - Blanc et Rouge (Bôłt)

A fairly massive (3-disc, 3 1/2 hour) sampler of Polish avant-garde music ranging from 1962 - 1989, all recorded at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio in Warsaw.

CD 1 - Eugeniusz Rudnik's "Lesson II" (1965) combines taped sounds with electronics and excerpts from broadcasts, often containing dire allusions to missile launches, countdowns, explosions and the like, offset with children's voices. Maybe a bit heavy-handed but, for the time, a forceful work. The doyen of Polish experimental music of the 60s, Krzystof Penderecki, is represented by "Death Brigade" (1964), a piece I'd never heard, inspired by the Holocaust, written several years after his Threnody. For speaker and tape, it's a very impressive, dark work. The spoken text is subtly worked, sometimes doubled, slightly reverberated, accompanied by whispers.The electronics (and, I think, taped orchestral sounds)sometimes pulse, elsewhere whine, everything very much of a piece and solid, propulsive though without rhythm. Fantastic piece; would that Penderecki had stayed on this path and visited the sites it opens to rather than fall into that religious morass...Keeping with the theme, the final piece on this disc is another of Rudnik's, "Elegy to the Victims of War" (1982), which uses tapes of Catholic masses interspersed with electronics and orchestral samples. There's often a good, somber tone, but the arrangement of elements comes off as more kitschy than deep.

CD 2 begins with several minutes of radio announcements (in Polish) before veering into a group (Josef Patkowski, Rudnik and Krzysztof Szlifirski) tribute to the 20th Anniversary of the Polish Workers' Party, an interestingly disparate work, flitting from drum rolls to isolated beeps and plucks to skittering vibes-like tones. We then hear the first of two works by Elzbieta Sikora, who so impressed on the KEW set released by Bôłt last tear. "Rhapsody for the Death of the Republic" (1979), takes recordings from atomic bomb trials, slivers of what sound like a military chorus and other ominous sources and weaves an Andriessen-ish hocketing structure, severe and frightening. It references patriotic motifs from various states but never wallows in them--very effective. Her "Janek Wisniewski - December - Poland" (1982-83) is also quite impressive, a bee-swarm of electronics, harsh, hurtling, intended to portray the descent of her country into chaos. Other pieces by Bohdan Mazurek, Rudnik and Maria Pokrzywinska are somewhat more routine, solid if unexceptional.

The final disc includes two works by another KEW member, Krzysztof Knittel as well as one more by Rudnik, "Guillotine DG" (1989), an odd march-based work with French song about the device, piccolo and ersatz "tribal" drumming. Knittel's "Dorikos" (1976-77), for string quartet (the Wilanow String Quartet) and tape is fascinating, the musicians operating in a relatively traditional mode (Dorian with, to my ears, echoes of Shostakovich) while the tape hurls all manner of "everyday" sounds, crunchy noise, animal and children soundscapes, crashing waves, a weary old man speaking, raucous laughter, shattering glass. Strong piece. His "Gluckspavillon for Cathy" (1978) begins with some ferocious tuba (Zdzislaw Piernik) in a generally ghostly ambience, sounding a bit like something George Crumb might have dreamed up. But over its 36 minutes, it ranges quite widely, using speech, traffic sounds, orchestral snatches and much more, concluding with an extended tape from, perhaps, a bar somewhere, with conversation and muted lounge music. Intriguing work, and an interesting, if uneven set of discs.

Corneliu Dan Georgescu - Horizontals/In Perpetuum (Bôłt)

Georgescu, born in 1938, has studied with a host of luminaries, including Kagel, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Wolff and Xenakis. Here, were presented with his second symphony, his tenth string quartet and

Tomasz Kaminski's liner notes compare his music to that of Feldman. I don't hear it particularly, in the symphony (titled, "Horizontals"). There's far too much attachment, in the symphony, to earlier, more Romantic forms. In fact, though this is hardly my area of expertise, I hear something of a mishmash, with nods to film scores, Prokofiev, minimalism and much more. It's very colorful but structurally meandering, seemingly wanting to be more abstract and stasis-oriented, but always veering back into eclat and shiny effects; too much bravura for my taste. The string quartet fares much better, calmer but with just as much color, though more subtly applied (I'm thinking that's Georgescu's forte). Not Feldman, no, more traditional still--perhaps comparable to some of Volans. Often mysterious, sometimes humorous, this work holds together wonderfully, with finely balanced pizzicato and eerie drones, living up to its moniker, "In Perpetuum"

"Et Vidi Caelum Novum" is for orchestra and chorus and, inevitably, with the spiritual haze implied by the title and the extended vocal techniques, recalls Penderecki. Percussion and brass are up front, leading us back into the general territory of the first piece. As with that piece, the sounds here are impressively arrayed and quite ear-friendly, but I still feel the lack of an underlying rigor. I've no idea how representative these compositions are of Georgescu's music, but with only this to go on, I prefer him in his more circumspect guise.

Sławomir Kupczak - Report (Bôłt)

"Report" is a sound text piece, the words provided by Pawel Krzaczkowki, spoken (in Polish) by Irmina Babinska and Jacek Paruszynski, amidst computer-generated sound by Kupczak.

All aspects of the sound-worldvary over the length of the work, the voices altered, warped, echoed, sped up a bit and otherwise processed, the surrounding electronic vortex incorporating taped public spaces but more directly referring to classic 60s tape music. Occasionally, things mellow out a bit, a soft drone offset by typewrite-like clicks, backgrounding an apparent complaint by the male speaker. The text is stylishly bleak, Tarkovskovian perhaps (an English translation is supplied), often enunciated with bitterness. Somewhat past the midway point, a surprising, lounge-ish bass line emerges, with piano accompaniment, a noirish effect that's at once a welcome change but a bit ill-fitting. More than anything else, I'm reminded of those old Heiner Goebbels/Alfred 23 Harth collaborations, though sans the odd excellent musician. The music becomes increasingly straightforward as the disc progresses,ending in a swirl of Roger Powell proportions (look it up).

Listenable, overall, but a bit scattershot for my tastes, not much to really chew on.

Phonos ek Mechanes - C+- (Bôłt)

Trio electronics with Cezary Duchnowski (piano, computer), Pawel Hendrich (guitar, computer) and Sławomir Kupczak (violin, computer). Not to generalize, but if there's a reasonably consistent characteristic about a good deal of the contemporary music feature on this label, it's that it perhaps owes to much of a debt to its predecessors, particularly the strain of electronic tape music prevalent elsewhere in the 60s and 70s that apparently took very strong hold here. There's something of the anachronistic in play that you don't here outside of academe in, say, the US, where the outside world manages to seep in, explicitly or otherwise. Not wanting to be too facile, but if you can imagine the driest Richard Teitelbaum work given some welcome Slavic spice, you'd be close to the music here. It's more interesting than the wan electronic academic work one can often hear but still retains an excess of reverence for a kind of classical tradition that no longer seems relevant. It sometimes sounds as though the musicians have heard nothing else but music in their "field", which obviously isn't the case, but the sense of insularity is strong.

The sounds are solid, well structured and not unenjoyable, just too listless for me, at least now. Maybe I'm missing something.

(photo: Yuko Zama)

One of the many amazing and, if not unique, damn rare things about Keith Rowe is his way of looking at an event or series of events in a wider context, usually several wider contexts. I recall when he played at Tonic with Christian Fennesz (2004?). The set order was to be Rowe solo, Christian solo then the pair. Spending the day with Fennesz, Rowe was aware of his intense excitement about the upcoming evening and surmised that his, Fennesz', set would be loud, surging, onrushing. So, with the view of all three sets and their "exterior" structure, he fashioned his own set very much as a prologue, keeping things subdued with a gradually rising ramp, if you will, to lead into Christian's set and to provide a platform of sorts from which he could launch. Which he did.

Knowing that he was to play four sets in two nights, three in duo and finally solo, he had several areas of concern. One, expressed to some of us, was to make sure he had four different approaches, four relatively discreet areas of sound. But on the whole I had the impression of two pairs, similar but offset from each other, like stairs:

____ -------

____ -------

wherein the first set of each evening was the subtler, softer and more graceful of the two and the second the more visceral, confrontational one. Moreover, almost as a linkage, day two's first set culd fit between day one's two performances and the finale, the solo, extended the second set from the first evening, giving a 1-3-2-4 retrospective nesting.

But perhaps that's just me...Rowe certainly looked at the sets as four portions of a larger work.

I'm not sure if this was Michael Pisaro's first live improvised set though I imagine it's been at least since his AACM-inspired days as a guitarist from Chicago. The day before, the pair had agreed on one parameter, at Pisaro's suggestion, that the set be 49 minutes long (Michael likes that number). Both of Tuesday's sets were difficult to anticipate for different reasons. Pisaro's playing on his own pieces and, from what I've heard, on those by others had always resided in a relatively small, if nuanced pool: quiet, full of ebow induced hums, sometimes gentle taps, very rounded. And, augmented by some soft sine tones and at least one noticeable patch of field recording (birds and car engines predominant) that's pretty much the area in which he chose to dwell, Rowe also remaining fairly quiet but much rougher, utilizing his stalwart scrub pad to good effect. It was quite subtle, bearing (I'm sure) more layers and connections than could be heard at first blush; I'd very much like to hear it multiple times. As is, I found it both relaxing and moderately absorbing. If anything, Rowe was leaning a bit toward Pisaro's territory and, given that, my favorite moments were toward the end when, instead of reciprocating in kind, Pisaro chose to lean a little bit the other way, playing a handful of two, three and four note melodic phrases, implying a song form--lovely and unexpected.

As was the case with the first set, Rowe/Lambkin was also a first meeting though you might not have known it from the way they came prepared. Both, independently, had chosen to bring drawing and other art materials to the show, amplifying them quite severely. Sitting side by side at separate tables, they fashioned something of a busily active workshop scene, scribbling, rubbing, tearing, scissoring and taping their way through the construction of a visual art form (which may find its way into the recording they're working on for Erstwhile on the day this is being typed). Rowe turned on a (very good) salsa station for much of the set while Lambkin, having realized it was the birthday of the late Don Van Vliet, at one point flipped on a cassette recording of "Well" from Trout Mask Replica, lovingly swathed in layers of static. It was all very brusque, sometimes close to violent, though the pair went about their business like two craftsmen on adjacent benches, churning out creative industrial product. It was massively entertaining, sight and sound, with a great sense of depth and play, entirely absorbing and perfectly placed. Elegance where you wouldn't expect it.

[Pausing to note that on the first night, about 180 people crammed the Temp Gallery to the brim, maybe 120 the second, each a far healthier turnout than normally achieved in these parts]

Hardly a first meeting, Christian Wolff and Rowe have performed together, in AMM and elsewhere, many a time since 1968, most recently in Philadelphia the preceding Sunday. Here, no piano in the room, Wolff brought his electric guitar, placed flat on the table, with a few objects in tow, notably a small cookie tin. He had also, I think, tied a piece of thick ribbon to one of the guitar strings which he occasionally bowed, indirecting stimulating those strings. The improvisation was quiet but rougher-edged than the previous evening's opener with Pisaro, Wolff, in Rowe's mind, playing more viscerally than he'd heard him before, certainly without much of the quasi-melodic delicacy he showed on Sunday. But he retained the wonderful habit of cutting off a phrase at a very unexpected point, at some precise fraction of the length the listener expected it to dwell. The performance reached a number of brief, one or two minute planes of sublime stasis, then would move calmly on. One of those involved Wolff doing a wonderful double-tap on the aforementioned tin with his bow, string/wood, string/wood, softly, in a regular rhythm, just seven or eight times. Elegant and beautiful.

Finally, Rowe played solo. It was an amazing set, Rowe as brutal as I've ever heard, beginning by grinding his trusty scrub pad into the strings of his Lap-Stick (a kind of lap-steel practice fretboard, analogous to the violin one he'd used previously) with huge pressure, bringing radio sound (mostly a soul station with some great tracks and a Barry White-voiced announcer) in and out in thick, plastic bursts, attacking the strings with the mini-fan, stones, knives, really creating a thick, almost miasmic atmosphere, very rough, bubbling and viscous. Through it all, though, was threaded a 1935 recording of Casals playing a Bach cello partita, so lovely, offering the listener multiple connections to discover between it and the music being created 78 years later. The piece possessed huge physical volume, real three-dimensionality, felt very much like you could stick your arms into it an knead the elements. He ended with a complicated, bitterly beautiful drone, bleak but resolute. Very intense and very much a climax of sorts for the two evenings. I do think that, ideally, one would hear the four sets in sequence, as movements of a single work. If we're lucky, perhaps we will one day...

Would that all festivals could be this solid and inspirational Great stuff.

(Various) - v-p v-f is v-n (winds measure)

Two discs, eighteen tracks from fifteen different artists, all in the field recording area. For this listener, an interesting little laboratory from which to approach the eternally vexing question, "Why does this one work [for me] and not that one "? Given the historic quality of the winds measure label, I figured on getting more of the former than the latter, true enough.

Disc I

Daniel Blinkhorn - "coral-cnidaria" (I'm admittedly a sucker for any words beginning with "cn"--this is an aquatic phylum that stings its prey). Water at first, with muffled voices out there somewhere, then the addition of a crackling sound, fire-like but not, one assumes. Good flow and variation, juicy distinction between sounds, kept me pretty rapt!

Martin Clarke - "gate" Strong wind, rusty swinging gate--a perfect match. Great whistling sound, vibrating the metal of the gate, something one could sit and listen to for hours. Wonderful.

Hideki Umezawa - "oil stove" Droll piece, in a way, beginning with a screech (the old door to the stove?) then the kind of clicks you get as heat courses through old metal. An abrupt band (the door closing? and hand swatting the stove?) and slower clicks, along with a more liquid, pulsing sound. Fascinating for it's 2 minutes plus, alternately scary and funny.

Renato Rinaldi - "aqve" Interior water sounds, as though sloshing through some large vat, deep in a cellar. One of those that would so clearly be more immersive in situ, it works well enough for a while here but palls after a few minutes.

Daniel Blinkhorn - crab-coenobita ("coe" when pronounced as "s" works too). Crab noice, I imagine and very subtle. Something nags at me, though, something to documentarian and not inherently fascinating, though possibly my fault. Maybe feel that unquantifiable need for greater sonic space between "objects".

Ben Owen - "thames gate" Brief (a little over a minute), obscure, swashes of sound, dark. I like it. Love the mystery.

Jason Kahn - "in place: panorama weg, Zurich (excerpt)" OK, here we have a decided departure from the field recording norm. Kahn, instead of presenting a recording, verbally describes what he has been experiencing in Zurich, the sounds her's hearing and thoughts about hearing and listening. It's not entirely dissimilar to something I did, in written fashion, while participating in a realization of Cage's "49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs" a few years ago, finding myself in the equally beautiful and exotic milieu of Staten Island...Very interesting, very glad to have thi s kind of thing available, at least once. Now, what if someone does it again...?

jez riley french - "bathroom then barn estonia" The former possesses a high, vaporous whine and an almost impossible to hear, deep flutter. The barn is more expansive, even huge-sounding, rattled by wind, creaking, tools hanging on walls, banging. Impressive recording.

Disc II

Eric La Casa - "night train in montlouis"Kind of steady-state sound, hard to pinpoint, perhaps blurred urban but just as possibly rural, or some mix between. Fuzzy and prickly at the same time, woolen even, I enjoyed it.

Sally Ann McIntyre - "waiorua rotations" Waiorua is a place in New Zealand...here, an irregularly clanging metal sound amidst birds and wind that would seem to be a gate of sorts. I actually love this, can immediately place myself there and know I'd be doing the same thing as McIntyre: balancing the buffeting of the wind in my ears, a very physical thing, and the dull bangs of the object. The odd passing vehicle added as seasoning. Fine, fine work.

Daniel Blinkhorn - "small glacier from shoreline". Funny, had this been titled "oil stove, I may not have batted an ear, mentally morphing the pops from the ice into those produced by hot oil. Beautiful range of sounds here, massive space between akin noise. One automatically recalls "concret ph". Lovely.

Simon Whetham - "estonian swamp" contains insects abuzz, birds a-chirp and a-hoot and surrounding sounds. Hard to imagine it wasn't assembled from numerous recordings; either that or transcribed in an extraordinarily rich environment. Still, this is an example of field recording that's a bit too pretty and, at the same time, too flat, like someone's instagram of the scene.

Patrick Farmer - "coed-y-dinas" It falls into a similar category, for me, as the Whetham above. I get the sense that my processing system demands more differentiation of sounds, that massed fauna and flora doesn't usually do it. My loss, no doubt.

Ben Owen - "8524 oto-date", a lovely, very brief piece, concise and mysterious, imparting a sense of largeness and enormous activity looming somewhere "out there". Excellent.

Michael J. Schumacher - "air conditioner duct" Fascinating work--I take the title at face value and can imagine the oddly amplified sounds working their way through the piping, sounding like mini industrial repair crews. Love it.

Alan Courtis - "amsterdam-brussels train" (one is always obliged to wonder when a track comes in at precisely 4'33"...). A soft, whooshing train, smooth and shimmering. Good sound, but the kind that really requires 3-d immersion. still, very enjoyable.

Ben Owen - "864-1 elbe" Water dripping or lapping, quietly, irregularly. As with the McIntyre, framed in a manner that I can easily place myself there, lying beside the source, calmly listening. Fine. A soft boat motor begins, as does birdsong; they fit beautifully.

Lasse-Marc Riek - "lake" Inevitably recalling Ferrari, but effectively so. Also, for some reason, getting an image of one of those blurred black and white Richter paintings of a banal seen made strange and beautiful. The sounds sometimes feel as though leaked through a different dimension, hazily recognized. Excellent work.

All in all, a very fine compendium with great range and a few real gems embedded. Plus the requisite gorgeous winds measure packaging to boot! Give a listen.

winds measure

Ok, so this business again.

In 2012 I was entirely lackadaisical about maintaining any listing of my favorite recordings but trawling through the years posts, these are the releases I enjoyed the most, entirely beautiful work for which I deeply thank the musicians and label owners (alpha order, received by me in 2012):

Antoine Beuger - s'approcher, s'eloigner, s'absenter (Erst Live)
John Cage (organized by Antoine Beuger) - Empty Words (Edition Wandelweiser)
Lucio Capece - Zero Plus Zero (Potlatch)
Morton Feldman - Crippled Symmetry (frozen reeds)
Reinhold Friedl - Mutanza (Bocian)
Will Guthrie - Sticks, Stones and Breaking Bones (Antboy)
Eva-Maria Houben - druids and questions (Edition Wandelweiser)
Catherine Lamb - three bodies moving (Another Timbre)
Radu Malfatti - darenootodesuka (b-boim)
Michael Pisaro/Taku Sugimoto - D Minor/Bb Major (Slub)
Michael Pisaro/Toshiya Tsunoda - crosshatches (Erstwhile)
Vanessa Rossetto - Exotic Exit (Kye)
Keith Rowe - September (Erst Live)
Keith Rowe/John Tilbury - Tension and Circumstance (Potlatch)
Jakob Ullman - Fremd Zeit Addendum (Editions RZ)
Christian Wolff/Keith Rowe - s/t (Erst Live)


If I were forced to choose one, it's likely "crosshatches"

And special mention for "wandelweiser und so weiter" (Another Timbre), necessarily somewhat inconsistent given its size, but the best pieces there, including those by Beuger, Pisaro, Sfirri and Malfatti every bit as glorious as those cited above.

Other releases I also loved:

Marc Baron - ∩ (Cathnor)
Alfredo Costa-Monteiro - Umbralia (Triple Bath)
Cremaster/Angharad Davies - pluie fine (Potlatch)
Angharad Davies/Tisha Mukarji/Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga - outwash (Another Timbre)
Jürg Frey (R. Andrew Lee) - Piano Music (Irritable Hedgehog)
Eva-Maria Houben - orgelbuch (Edition Wandelweiser)
I Treni Inerti - luz azul (Flexion)
Martin Küchen - Hellstorm (Mathka)
Andrew Lafkas - Making Words (Sacred Realism)
Catherine Lamb/Bryan Eubanks - Untitled #2 (Sacred Realism)
Jason Lescalleet - Songs About Nothing (Erstwhile)
Mites - Passing Resemblance (Copy for Your Records)
Seijiro Murayama/Kazushige Kinoshita - 59:01:68 (ftarri)
Andrea Neumann/Bonnie Jones - Green just as I could see (Erstwhile)
Jin Sangtae - Sacrifice 2 (Ghost & Son)
Tandem Electrics - big hearts, small rats (Copy for Your Records)
Manfred Werder/Bruno Duplant - deux trois choses ou presque (Engraved Glass)
Anna Zaradny/Burkhard Stangl - s/t (Bocian)


And special citation to Bôłt Records for their endlessly fascinating issuance of obscure (to me) Polish contemporary music.

Deep thanks and appreciation to all.

Chris Abrahams/Sabine Vogel - Kopfüberwelle (Absinth)

I imagine there's a more idiomatic translation of the disc's title than "headlong wave" but that'll do for now. Pipe organ and flutes--such a sound! "Roadless" wins one over right off the bat, long interlacing tones, the heady reediness of the organ adjacent to the (here) somewhat woody quality of the flute--just gorgeous. Eleven minutes of this long breath, no extra "structure" necessary, just the listener placing him/herself inside a space with these sounds whistling past. More than enough. They don't dwell there, though, moving to a piece filled with small pools of sound, "handwriting"--an additional 11 minutes but in very different space, not so serene as might be thought on first blush, but troubling. And that trouble blossoms into "luftleere raume" (evacuated space), all stridency for the first few minutes, tumbling into silence like an alarm that loses power. Yet another sideways turn ensues, "floating head over" getting a wee bit spacey, nodding to throat-singing techniques (I take it it's Vogel doing something similar on flute) but also, oddly, summoning up memories of Partch's Blo-Boy, with its stepped upon bellows and three organ pipes attached, a lonesome plains feel (not sure how many of those there are in Germany....). "aufauchend" (emerging) recall the second track somewhat but the organ is almost humorous in its puffs, like a softly tooting tugboat, the flute a swallowtail whipping about its stacks; very engaging. Finally, "companions for the river journey" takes things home superbly, with heaving sighs from the organ and flute, end of day breaths, slow exhalations, the odd tootle marking time. Almost an alap, haunting, echoes of Hariprasad. This and the first cut are exceptionally beautiful and everything in between solid as well. A rich, exciting recording, can't wait to hear more.

absinth

Eva-Maria Houben - orgelbuch (Edition Wandelweiser)

There's something about Houben's music. It's so pared down yet so moving, so endlessly fascinating that I feel I could spend days and weeks listening. I'm hesitant to bring up Agnes Martin once again, but the aspects of certain kinds of regularity, the endless wealth of stuff dwelling in apparently vacant areas, the tonal range; well, it's difficult not to.

In, "orgelbuch" Houben has limited herself to three sets of fourteen combination of manual and pedal stops (2/1, 3/2 and 4/3) and chosen a third of those for this release (6, 4, 4). the tones are only several seconds long for the most part, maybe one to four, but act like shifting, tinted planes, calmly passing across each others face, altering colors and positions slightly. The notes tend toward the breathy, but are also flute-like and, often enough, what we normally think of an organ sounding like. The pieces are fairly short as well, between about four and seven minutes. Within this sparse territory, there exists ample room for drama (Ozu comes to mind) as when, at the beginning of "trio VIII b" or during "quatuor I b", the deep bass note enters bearing all the portent of a Bach fantasia but, of course, leading to an entirely different, more contemplative area. The clearly perceived calm here is very striking.

There is something at hand of, simply, the inquisitive search, seeing just what will happen when this stop is laid alongside that one, or those two. In this sense, I feel a kinship with Lucier, though Houben never even approaches the slightly "science experiment" cast that can sometimes be the case with his work. Houben always maintains a strong emotive content, sublimated though it may be which elevates her music beyond the merely experimental. Combined with rigor and just a wonderful sensibility of tonal color, it makes this music endlessly absorbing and quite timeless.

Beautiful work.

C. Kenneth Lee - dialogues with environments (Edition Wandelweiser)

Three works for solo piano in a kind of homage to Cage's "4'33"", insofar as the room in which the recordings took place is accorded coequal prominence, at least as the stated intention of Lee. So one hears various rustles, coughs and whatnot while the beginning of the last track, "Piano Solo No. 5" (2011) sounds as though recorded in close proximity to a number of aging fluorescent bulbs. More to the point, the piano sound is noticeably different in the three spaces.

The music itself doesn't seem to owe all that much to Cage, at least directly. Had I listened not knowing the source, I might have guessed Tom Johnson. Some of the music has a similar ungainly minimalist aspect, clusters more or less repeating but slightly off and rarely very smooth. Then again, there's attractive tonal, semi-melodic work as well, though not of the Cagean Sonatas and Interludes variety. In these sections, I think a little more of Hobbs or the more acerbic music of Skempton. As has been my experience with some of Johnson's music, I often find the idea more interesting than the results. Here, the music doesn't quite stand out for these ears, though I get the feeling that, were I attending the live show and in tune with the room vibe, it might have been just fine.

Hildegard von Bingen/John Cage - hildegard von bingen:john cage (Edition Wandelweiser)

I admit to being woefully ignorant about all things von Bingen. I managed to miss the bandwagon (late 80s?) when her work was making a resurgence among new music types. Since then I've heard the odd piece on radio or elsewhere, but I couldn't reasonably make any assessment of Irene Kurka's performance here except to say that it sounds pure, committed and non-anachronistic to me. The salient matter here, of course, is that it's paired with Cage's "Sonnekus 2", for solo voice. Nine von Bingen compositions are presented first, then "Sonnekus 2", also in nine sections. I wasn't familiar with this work of Cage's either. The texts are derived from Mosaic sources (arranged so that the word, "Sonneries" appears acrostically). Kurka sings them in a style that clearly echoes von Bingen; I'm not sure how much, if any, freedom the performer has here. There's a video available on You Tube with Susanne Hille singing it in almost this manner; perhaps there was a direct reference on Cage's part?

After each is presented separately, they're heard again, intertwined, one von Bingen, one Cage, all nine songs from each (I assume the same performances). You get a nice can of flutter effect; the tones are quite similar but with differing tinges between each. Kurka's soprano is pure and very rich, balancing the ethereal and the earthly. Connecting Cage to medieval music--nice idea, very well handled here in an unusual and worthwhile recording.

Edition Wandelweiser

Available from Erst Dist

Marc Behrens - Unit (and/OAR)

A 42-minute recording of a sound installation wherein speakers hung over fiver pair of frame drums emitted pre-recorded sounds from several sources (including rocks, crickets and cymbals), causing them to resonate. Man, would I love to have experienced this in situ. The sounds themselves are wonderful, having a rounded, liquid aspect, the fullness of the drums' tone reverberating thickly in the room. The sequencing is large-scale irregular though with small nuggets of iteration, if not "rhythms" per se. There's abundant space between segments, imparting a Noh kind of feeling (though the inspiration derived from a trip through the Qinghai province of China). The listener feels (gently) propelled between the speakers; given their appearance, it's not hard to think in pinball terms, a slow, soft pinball machine. Again, the desire to more directly experience the installation is quite strong, but the disc performs quite ably and fills one's room with fascinating and intricate sounds.

Giovanni di Domenico/Arve Henriksen/Tatsuhisa Yamamoto - Distare Sonanti (either/OAR)

Di Domenico (piano, Fender Rhodes, synths, electronics, editing), Henrikesn (trumpets, electronics), Yamamoto (drums, percussion). Leaps into a post-60s Miles thing from the get go and attractively so, with Henriksen (from Supersilent) veering toward a much more Jon Hassell-like approach. It's almost unfair using a Fender Rhodes--those of us of a certain age are cast directly back to the glory days of Corea and Jarrett with Miles. The trio play so solidly and impart just enough of a new spin on things that they manage to pull off what could easily have been a pastiche. Listeners familiar with and enamored of that tract between Miles of that period and Fourth World-era Hassell will find much to enjoy here. And that includes me.

and/OAR

Rale - I sit by the window and watch walls and ceiling (monorail trespassing)

One of those interesting cases where it might be tough to essentially differentiate this music from much that has come out of the drone/noise scene except...this is really well done. Rale (William Hutson) offers seven tracks, culled from improvisations done between 2007 and 2011 and reassembled, that bleed together but vary, not unusually, from coursing dronage to full-fledged noise assaults, nothing very unfamiliar but very well constructed and paced, making the disc thoroughly enjoyable and somehow feeling fresh. Odd how that happens. The first section, wind-tones giving rise to hollow metallics, later adorned with radio captures and spatters is, on the one hand, something we've heard before but you just don't get any direct sense of a recurring event; it sounds new, the angle varied just enough to cast not only a different light but one with some importance, a slant previously missed. This is the case throughout, augmented by a subtle "narrative" structure with a couple of false endings and revivals. Not a dull moment to be heard, each section carrying something, several things of value. Good work.

monorail trespassing

Joseph Hammer/Jason Crumer - Show Em the Door (Accidie)

I've been duly chastised for not (as far as I can remember, which may not be very far) having been previously aware of Joseph Hammer's work. Situation rectified. I take it that, at least to some extent, he utilizes tape loops in various conditions with all sorts recorded material etched therein perhaps somewhat in a Lescalleetian manner, resulting in a slow pulse, iterated feel. That's certainly the case right from the beginning of this very fine recording, a collaboration with Crumer, who hails from the noise scene. My immediate point of reference upon hearing that first track, "Banner Drop" (one of four, all about 12-14 minutes in length) with it's repeated horn fanfare-like sound, was Ground-Zero's classic "Consume Red", not a bad starting point. I do get a feel of Otomo's 90s work in general here, that harsh noise/drone mix. "Guitar" is far crunchier, though the rapid-fire whizzes and bangs almost constitute a pebbly drone stream themselves, before settling into a very attractive and unexpectedly tranquil conclusion. The title cut begins as a noise-filled chugger, imploding impressively, before segueing into and odd, almost cello-like pattern, intricately rhythmic, reminding me, of all things, of Kevin Volans' work in the late 80s. "TB Blues" begins with a squeezebox melange with loose minimalist overtones, acquiring crumbs and dust as it rolls along before collapsing, with an audible cry of exhaustion.

Extremely enjoyable, well worth a listen.

Accidie

João Pedro Viegas/Paulo Chagas/Paulo Curado - Wind Trio (Creative Sources)

Eleven pieces, largely if not entirely improvise, by Viegas (soprano and bass clarinets), Chagas (flutes, oboe, sopranino clarinet) and Curado (flute, soprano and alto saxophones). the language is pitched somewhere between efi and the sort of post-Third Stream music initiated by the Davis/Newton/Wadud trio back when, iffy territory for these ears, though handled quite well here. That kind of loosely jazz-based, abstract lyricism is a rough go for me; I kind of feel the need to hear something on a Giuffre level, surely an unfair standard but one that nags. As ably as the instruments are played (and they are) and as lovely as the resultant textures have a tendency to become (and they often do), I can't help but think that a greater underlying melodic sensibility, however masked, would have helped. The trio dances around it but stays outside. For these ears, if you're not obliquely referencing the blues, as a similarly constituted Hemphill/Lake/Mitchell trio would have, it's not a bad idea to offer an acknowledgement of one's own tradition, or *a* tradition. Otherwise, as attractive as some of the pieces here are, there's an insubstantiality that's hard to brush aside. Not meaning to be overly critical--fans of this area of music will likely find much to enjoy here--I think it's a tough avenue to take nowadays. Creative Sources

Cremaster/Angharad Davies - Pluie fine (Potlatch)

A welcome drizzle indeed. Davies' violin is a fine choice to augment the gents of Cremaster (Ferran Fages, feedback mixing board, electro-acoustic devices and Alfredo Costa-Monteiro, similar devices, speakers, electric guitar). When listening to her music or that of Cremaster, words like "sandy" and "sere" often come to mind, but not so much dryness; there are always layers, some containing tinges of moisture, maybe a little clay...That clayey feel is front and center here in a recording suffused with fine timbres and just enough implicit structure to cohere over the long run.

How to describe? there's a kind of inexorable grind to it; retaining the desert imagery, I think of the giant sandworms of Arrakis, that they might have produced the sounds heard on "embrun", the first track here. The resonant whine, amplified down cavernous, miles-long, grit-filled tunnels. The moans could be death throes or orgasmic sighs...wonderful piece, would love to experience its like in a live situation.

"bruine" is shriller and maintains a wavering but fairly consistent tone throughout. It's strong, though, and "little" things like the short washes of brushed cymbal-like sounds (I assume electronically produced) carry great weight, swathe the piercing tone in just enough chamois until it expands outwards, accumulating mass and detritus as it does so. Again, a fine work. Things grow somewhat more jagged with "crachin", hard crystals jutting out from the side of those tunnels, gouging one's thighs, dust stinging one's eyes. As with much of this work, there's a vastness at hand, a massive volume of space created, odd given the seeming thinness of much of the sound material. I pick up a bit of the divine rawness of Xenakis' electronic work in this one.

"pluie fine"--excellent recording, perhaps my favorite from those involved, which is saying something.

Potlatch

available from erst dis

Sarah Hughes/Kostis Kilymis - The Good Life Consumer Waste)

Not enough mosquito alarm in the music nowadays...

Hughes remedies that (I think I know which sound it is, but could easily be wrong, having nil experience with regard the devices) and, along with her zither and Kilymis' electronics, creates a very satisfying, serene couple of pieces. The offsetting timbres of the soft zither and bubbly crackle of the electronics, right from the start of "Fossils and things", is ingratiating, intelligent, luscious, a kind of prelude. It seeps outward from there, the zither bowed or otherwise excited, the electronics becoming more troubled, but the pair always maintaining a steady flow, careful but forward-moving. maybe it's the mosquito alarm--at any rate, there's a fairly consistent, high whine--but one gets the image of slowly poling through a hot marsh, limited sight distance, but fairly calm, with just the slightest tinge of fear.

The tone on "Pussy Riot" is cooler but no less engaging, perhaps laden with a tinge of dread at the then current travails of the Russian trio. The zither plucks a spare lament over a slightly agitated stream of electronics. There's a bleakness about it, along with the implicit melancholy of the strings, that's very impressive, very immersive.

A really strong recording overall, perhaps my favorite that I've heard from either musician.

Matt Earle/Jason Kahn/Adam Sussman - Draught (Consumer Waste)

Trio electronics from a 2009 session. It's a somewhat disjointed set. The first of the two tracks contains small sheets of sound overlaying and skidding past one another (I think "mica") while the second is denser and shifts focus more often, kind of slippery and disjunctive. It's ok but there's a routine feeling to me about this set, hard to differentiate from many others over the last few years. It reaches an intriguing, complex little pool of sound toward the end of track two, but too little too late.

Consumer Waste [Please forgive the brevity--a ton of things here, not so much time]

Tomasz Krakowiak - Moulins (Bocian)r>

Jeepers. Listing only "percussion", I take it we're into a thicket of motorized beaters, thwackers, scrapers and, I guess, a human arm or two. Whatever the means, Krakowiak generates a pretty intense layering of clatter that's at once rhythmic and arhythmic depending where one concentrates. It almost begs for three-d immersion, of walking through several rooms populated, or infested, by these devices. On disc though, it's impressive enough. The tracks split apart from each other mercilessly and abruptly, as if, while walking, one is suddenly hurled through the wall into an adjacent, different but equally visceral sound-room. Even when the textures are relatively mild, as in "monterrey", the beats just don't let up. It's exhausting but energizing music, mono-dimensional on the one hand but dense enough, with multitudes of gray shadings, to hold one rapt. A clear highlight [SPOILER ALERT!] is a swirling, skittering maelstrom from which emerges, fragmented at first then delicately coalescing, the voice of Diana Ross singing, "Come See About Me". Worth hearing.

Blip - Dead Space (Bocian)

Blip being Jim Denley on alto sax, flutes and balloons and Mike Majkowski on double bass, pitch pipes and objects. Just realized that I've been hearing Denley off and on for quite some time now, maybe 15 years, though hardly with any consistency. That said, I don't thin I've ever encountered a session featuring his work that I've enjoyed as much as this one. Something very solid about the work here, with a strong, irregular flow to it. Not groundbreaking but managing to be fairly active while avoiding standard efi pitfalls, allowing the sax substantial leeway without dragging in all its baggage and Majkowski doing the same with the bass--much "bass-like" sound here without ever coming off as pallid or overly idiomatic. No mean feat, any of it. There's also a density in play that belies only two performers, a thickness of sound that's quite appealing. Apologies if this is overly vague but it's tough for me to give a decent description; in one sense, it's (largely) a bass/sax & flute duo, with a good bit of peripheral, generally percussive noise. There are quasi-rhythmic elements throughout, providing a strong sense of forward movement, the wind and strings rippling alongside, smooth and stinging. Check it out, you may be surprised.

Bocian

[

(Various) - Wandelweiser und so weiter (Another Timbre)

and so on; and so forth; etc. Just wanted to say that I love the title.

Well. The music presented here certainly merits being commented upon individually and I'll do so but the whole is worth lingering on as well. The group of composers and musicians operating under the Wandelweiser umbrella has been of just about manageable conceptual size for one to have a nice working mental category, even as one allowed that "enclosure" to bulge and subdivide. Still, it's satisfying to have, however necessarily incomplete, a graspable set like this, showing good range, encompassing better and lesser represented artists. As in any undertaking of this size (almost eight hours worth of material, some 18 composers, over 60 participants), there will be fluctuations in strength but there's more than enough here to achieve a true, deep level of satisfaction. And yeah, a few really, really great works.

So, in order of representation, by composer, taking all of his/her pieces as represented in the box set:

--Sam Sfirri has four pieces, all based on Beckett texts, with nine realizations scattered throughout the set. "natural at last" (2010) is performed three times, twice by a quintet comprised of Neil Davidson (guitar, objects), Rhodri Davies (harp), Jane Dickson (piano), Patrick Farmer (amplified objects, open CD player) and Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (zither). Here, initially, it's a serene though rustling quiet, a string-like feeling predominant, with gentle crackling colors and the almost humorous tinge from the repeating disc player. The second version edges slightly into a more drone-filled scale, also very satisfying. I wouldn't mind hearing works like Sfirri's interpreted by the same ensemble multiple times, especially when the variations aren't necessarily drastic; very intriguing. The other version of the piece is realized by a septet of Angharad Davies (violin), Phil Durrant (electronics), Jürg Frey (clarinet), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Radu Malfatti (trombone), Lee Patterson (amplified objects) and Philip Thomas (piano). It's smoother, emitting something of the character of a single, resonant object with variegated surfaces. Five minutes of subtle, shimmering beauty.

"the undulating land" (2010--with the NMC Chamber ensemble: Jason Brogan, electric guitar); Bill Carson, acoustic guitar; Jared Sinclair, flute; Kim Larson, clarinet; Ron Wiltrout, percussion; Sam Sfirri, melodica) has a Japanese feel, soft stops with flute and clarinet and starts punctuated by gentle, muted metal taps and quiet guitar. Lovely piece, not so "wandelweiser-ish", which is fine. The first of two accountings given "for the choice of directions" (2010) is by the composer (melodica) and Brogan (short wave), isn't too far from what you might expect from a similarly instrumentalized improvisation from Wolff and Rowe: quiet and edgy, content to investigate a limited sound pool, in the process generating mystery and demarcating time in a probing fashion; another really strong piece. When the same quintet as performed on the first natural at last" cut sets to work on it, they offset thin, tamboura-like drones against string plucks and skittering percussive sounds, creating quite a different sound world, again vaguely Asiatic but also eerie and sinuous; I get an image of walking through a narrow, high-walled garden maze, steamy hot, with creatures flitting about. Excellent!

Finally, his "little by little" (2010) is limned three times, first by an electronics sextet comprised of Stephen Cornford, Robert Curgenven, Ferran Fages, Farmer, Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Lee Patterson, then by a septet of Angharad Davis, Bruno Guastalla (cello), Sarah HUghes (zither), Daniel Jones (electronics), Dominic Lash (bass), Tim Parkinson (piano) and David Stent (guitar) and once by the septet listed above for "natural at last". They're all very hushed, spare and crystalline, in the sense of crystals expanding into space in unexpected, discreet sequences but consistent within themselves. Beautifully realized work all around and, right off the bet, this set is well worth it if only for giving me a decent appreciation of Sfirri's music, of which I'd only heard bits before.

But wait, there's more.

--Antoine Beuger. Returning to the first disc, we encounter one of two pieces by Beuger, "Lieux de Passage" (2008), a work featuring Frey's clarinet (with the other six members of the septet above) and, in my estimation, the high point of the collection. If there's been a tendency, among some Wandelweiser composers, toward a more expansive, lush sound (occasionally, to my ears, too far along those lines), Beuger here balances things perfectly. Not to compare at all, but I found myself thinking, "This is the music Gavin Bryars should be writing now", taking his one-time beautiful melodic sensibility and paring it down, whittling away the flab, to its essence. A kind of concerto, I suppose, Frey playing with exquisite refinement, the piece (which runs a bit over 26 minutes) having the subtlest kind of arc, nothing you can place your finger on but, to my ears, possessing an implied narrative, sustained by the occasional deep piano chord or drone, kind of a continuo that imparts just a tinge of drama, a tiny but perfect amount of spice. A double-step rising pattern toward the end is particularly moving, causing me to think of another work of unearthly beauty, Messiaen's Louange a l'eternite de Jesus". The Beuger is one of my favorite things heard over the last few years.

His "t'aus 'etwas (lied)" (1995) is performed by two vocalists (Parkinson and James Saunders) though "mouthists" might be a more appropriate term. They make small percussive sounds (the sound of the letter 't'), attempting to be in unison though not looking at one another so always ending up a bit off, reminding me of water drips. The slight variance in actual sounds and even slighter one in placement are enough to carry the work, to make it just as fascinating as listening to water drops, which is to say, very.

--Manfred Werder, represented thrice, two actualizations by Annett Németh ("2011(4)" and "2008(6)") one by the Parkinson/Sanders duo ("2 ausführende (seiden 357-360)" (1999-)), this time on organ pipes. I've had my share of qualms about Werder's work, not the ideas but the recorded documentations of them, questioning their necessity (as opposed to doing it oneself), but I have to say that Németh's are wonderful combining field recordings with other sounds (I take it realized in-studio) and fashioning solid evocations of place, layered in intrigue. The duo is an odd bird, not sure I'm totally sold on it. The single pipes, possible breath-activated (?), play two pitches, presumably one per person, with substantial and varying lengths of spaces between, during which one can just pick up some ambient sounds, including (I think) birds. The tones are sounded virtually identically--I take it that was the intention, allowing the silences to account for much of the variation. All well and good but, aside form achieving a peaceful stasis, it lacks the tensile aspect that I want to hear. Perhaps a shade too accepting of things for my taste.

--James Saunders. Two pieces, the first a very brief number, "various distinct spatial or temporal locations" (2011) which finds producer Simon Reynell investigating certain properties inherent in a coffee carton, entirely pleasant if more an entr'acte than anything else. "with the same material or still, to vary the material (2011) uses the Davdison/Davies/Dickosn/Farmer/Lazaridou-Chatziigoga quintet on bowed objects. No ringing tones here, mostly dry, scratchy ones, the objects seemingly chosen for their limited resonant capacity. A nice enough track, though not so distinguishable form any number of improvisatory ventures in similar areas over the last 10-15 years.

--Radu Malfatti "Heikou" (2011), performed by the same septet as heard earlier, the one with Angharad, augmented by bassist Joseph Kudirka. The piece calls for tutti sections followed by isolated sounds, all notes chosen by the instrumentalists, resulting in a respiring quality, like some large creature, sitting, contemplating, breathing. There's something, perhaps by coincidence, of Feldman's ensemble works in the air; very "of a piece", not susceptible to minute-by-minute analysis or appreciation. Lovely sound, fine feel, good work.

Two composiitions by John Cage, in large part the inspiration for Wandelweiser, are included, the 1991 work, "Three2" and "Piece for Meditation" from 1944. The former, here played by three percussionists (Simon Allen, Chris Burn and Lee Patterson) is relatively vociferous by Wandelweiser standards, a slurry of metallically sliding sounds of various depths and timbres, very rich and unpredictable. The latter is a prepared piano work, played by Philip Thomas, soft, gentle and, as almost anything by Cage from that period, ridiculously gorgeous, all 73 seconds of it.

"Etchings", a 20-minute track by Pierre Borel (alto saxophone), Johnny Chang (viola) and Derek Shirley (bass), though structured in a manner not uncommon to the Wandelweiser collective, sounds more like a fairly typical quite improvisation one might have heard any time in recent years. It's fairly steady state, the viola staying high, the bass low, the saxophone, often (nicely) difficult to pick out, occupying the mid-range. Solid enough work.

Phil Durrant's "Sowari" (1997) seeks to replicate computer and glitch sounds with, largely, acoustic instruments (here, Durrant on electronics, Patterson on amplified objects and processes and Thomas on piano). It's quite effective, darkly droning, with rough, skittering sounds and looming groans, imparting an underground feel, or perhaps a large craft interior with stressed, torqued metal. Strong piece.

Michael Pisaro makes the first of two appearances with "fields have ears (3b)" (2010), rendered by Angharad Davies, Farmer, Hughes, Jones and Lash. As with much of Pisaro's music, I have the sense that it's far more complicated than I'm able to hear and I'd love to see the score (this applies to most music from this cadre). It fits in with one trend of his recent work in that a relatively generous amount of sheer aural beauty is allowed to seep in though not so much as to overly sweeten matters. The thin crackle of Farmer's electronics create a huge and wondrous space between it and, say, Lash's deeply bowed bass. The clear, bright piano chords act as a kind of beacon for a while, steering the more erose sounds through the darkness. Eleven minutes in (out of 30), there's a pronounced shift, as though our band of travelers has encountered an even darker, more treacherous area; the piano still rings, but more warily. It's an incredibly fine several minutes here, frightening and resolute. Eventually, after a brief snatch of Josquin des Prez (!), the piano takes on a tolling aspect, the funereal character that had been lurking all along emerging clearly. Beautiful stuff.

His "Descending Series (1)" (2009), for piano (Thomas) and sine waves is simply unearthly. It's highly Romantic, in a way; as "simple" as the chords are, they're highly evocative and bittersweet, but supplied with crucial rigor by the sine tones, which aren't cold, really, but have a kind of "stepped back" impassiveness and understanding. The concerns, as it were, of the piano are acknowledged but placed in a larger context. Heh, I may be applying a far greater programmatic intentionality to this music than is justified, but it's hard to imagine these aching phrases not having such an effect on almost any listener. Again, a fine, fine work.

Stefan Thut's "Vier, 1-12" (2010), performed by Angharad Davies, Julia Eckhardt (viola), Lash and the composer on cello, is something of a tough nut and perhaps exemplifies a certain distinction between much Wandelweiser music and other contemporary work. The structure fits in snugly--the plentiful silences, the small knots of quiet sound. But the language of the strings refers more directly to post-serial tonalities, at least near the beginning. Later on, there's a kind of expansion into a vaguely chromatic area that hints at the subtle, sublimated emotional aspects often found in these here parts. After broaching this aspect, the music recedes, almost hides. Interesting work; sometimes frustrating, other times oddly rewarding.

His "Many, 1-4" (2009), played by the Set Ensemble (Davies, Guastella, Hughes, Jones, Lash, Parkinson, Stent and Paul Whitty on harmonium) begins rather differently, with solid drones underlying crinkly percussion and electronics but also, soon, evanesces into a soft spray of elements. I do get something of the sense of spores being released from a central fount. Good piece and at five minutes, perfectly timed.

"Ensemble" (2010), by Jason Brogan, with the Canadian crew of Crys Cole, Jamie Drouin, Lance Austin Olsen and Mathieu Ruhlmann all wielding electronics. Hard to ascertain the structure; to the ears, it could be an improvisation and, as such, would fit well into what I've heard in recent years from the quartet's members in various configurations. There's a forlorn, distant horn sound dwelling beneath the scrabbly, staticky foreground that inevitably brings to mind that snowy north country...It's the sort of piece one could easily pass over thinking, "OK, I've heard things like this before" but at the cost of missing some finely etched detail (a whispered phoneme at one point, I think) that lends a good amount of mystery to the proceedings.

One improvisation is included in the collection, performed by Davidson, Rhodri Davies, Dickson, Farmer and Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, and to my ears, it's the weakest track here. It's maybe overly ingratiating in this context, not bad but somehow actually sounding more conservative when placed among this music (or, at least, as represented here). One might question it's purpose as well. Apart from acknowledging the Wandelweiser group's effect on contemporary improv, though I can't hear even that with any specificity here.

I'm not very familiar with Taylan Susam's work. "for maaike schoorel" (2009), with the edges ensemble directed by Philip Thomas, is an odd little work, burbles of chamber group playing appearing now and again as though someone's opening and closing a door to a rehearsal studio. "for sesshū tōyō" (2010), rendered by Angharad Davies, Durrant, Kudirka, Lukoszevieze, Patterson and Thomas, isn't too dissimilar, containing discrete, brief episodes, but the language used is, to these ears, more interesting, owing less to the academic classical world than the previous piece. The flow is more supple, the tonal contrasts more delicious.

"for five" (2010), by Dominic Lash, the five being A. Davies, Guastalla, Lash, Parkinson and Stent, seems somewhat akin to the Susam pieces in structure (of course, I've no idea what the respective scores indicate) in that a series of sound blocks are heard, silences between. The texture is quite different, a tendency toward dry scraping long tones here, along with the occasional bandoneon bellow. Perhaps excessively dry to my taste.

Jürg Frey contributes three pieces of his own. "Time Intent Memory" (2012), played by A. Davies, Frey, Hughes, Kostis Kilymis (electronics) Lash and Malfatti, as it happens, also initially adheres to the general structure of the Susam and Lash works above. By virtue of allowing himself more substantial time (26 minutes), however, he enables scalar effects to come into play that don't quite arrive on the others. More likely, it's that combined with the actually sound choices, mostly long-held tones, including the always luscious Malfatti, that generates such an expansive feeling. I can't say it's an exceptional work--it fits in snugly with much I've heard before--but it's nonetheless quite satisfying. (I pause to consider whether "exceptionalism" isn't beside the point here...)

"Circular Music No. 2" (2012) (A. Davies, Durrant, Frey, Lukoszevieze, Malfatti, Patterson, Thomas) is slow and pastoral, having a song-like quality, the piano and clarinet gently ambling along, buffeted by "winds" from the strings and electronics, which sigh with a melancholy air. Very lovely.

"un champ de tendresse parsemé d'adieux (4)" (2011), with the edges ensemble, comes as a refreshing change of pace, dropped objects, generally small (coins? pebbles?) though sometimes more massive, tumbling amidst what seems to be breathily whistled, gently descending wind sounds. I translate the title as "a field with gentle farewells strewn". At 20 minutes, it perhaps lasts a smidgen too long but hard to complain.

Angharad Davies, who plays on many of the pieces contained here, offers a work of her own, "Cofnod Pen Bore/Morning Records" (2011), performed by Davidson, brother Rhodri, Dickson, Farmer and Lazaridou-Chatzigoga. It's another that, to me, is hard to distinguish from an improvisation, which doesn't matter much except, maybe, to stand a bit apart from the essential gist of the collection. It's a solid piece, though, gaining interest when some strong rising tones (Davies' e-bowed harp?) emerge near the ending.

John White's "Drinking and Hooting Machine" (1971) is included here for reasons I can't quite figure out. I've heard the work before (can't recall where) and thought it was kind of of its time even then, more so now. One of those pieces that's (I imagine) much more enjoyable to experience live, where the players take swigs from their bottles, thus changing the pitches, on recording...something's lacking. Maybe it's the inherent knowledge possessed by virtually any listener having blown across the top of many a bottle. Part of the pleasure is the nearness of the vibrations, the physicality of them, which is missing here (the edge ensemble, once again)

In addition to her actualizations of two Werder compositions, Annett Németh contributes one of her own, "eine unbedeutende aussage" (2012).Hardly "a minor descriptive", as rendered by the Set Ensemble, is a ravishingly lovely piece with hushed rustles augmented by gossamer sine-like tones and accented by a sole, deep piano note. Hard to describe why this one works so, so well (again, it sounds almost like it could have been improvised) and others are more...routine. Németh and/or the players manage to capture something very special and encapsulate it with rigor and tenderness. Excellent music,

Finally, and happily, we encounter Eva-Maria Houben, one of my favorite composers in this field. Her "von da nach da" (2005), for violin (Davies), electronics (Durrant) and amplified objects (Patterson) is a marvelously subtle and somber study. That idea of fluctuating detail within a sustained, not-quite-drone is so effective here, evoking more than one expects, the "bits" acquiring fullness and flow. And the sheer aural colors are endlessly, sensually exciting. A great way to end this massive document.

Moreover, the booklet includes an excellent conversation amongst Beuger, Lash, Pisaro, Thomas and Reynell, not that you should require any extra inducement to pick this up post haste. Reynell deserves massive kudos for assembling this set. The music provides a decent, if necessarily incomplete overview of the Wandelweiser folk, is both a superb intro to the newcomer and a very valuable addition to those of us who have been enjoying this area for some time now. There are several first class works here s well as many of generally fine quality, only a handful that I might have omitted.

What are you waiting for? Listen!

Another Timbre

[the image atop this page is from one of the interior sleeves, not the box, of which I couldn't locate a sizeable enough image on-line...]

Bruno Duplant/Pedro Chambel/Jamie Drouin - field by memory inhabited 1 & 2 (rhizome.s)

Two interpretations of a Duplant score by this trio, using various electronics, each 20 minutes long. The first evinces an enjoyable mixture of low-key and jittery, the sounds soft but active and prickly. That tension between calmness and nervousness is what carries the piece, the hums not quite serene, the rough, glitchy noises sometimes sounding very much like CD defects, in fact. Hard to describe overall, really, except that there's an uneasy eeriness to much of it that's very effective. The second realization is fuller and describes a very different character, perhaps a bit closer to a Luc Ferrari kind of feel, somehow more naturalistic. Not sure about the scores, not sure how much was recorded remote from one another (I suspect all of it) but if the score is in the nature of those done by, say, Michael Pisaro and others in the Wandelweiser enclave I think it might be a piece of evidence that such sets of instructions are very conducive to this kind of long-range collaboration. Kind of wondering about the thoughts of those involved, pro and con, on the differences between direct and indirect communication re: the realization of such scores.

In any case, yet another fine document courtesy M. Duplant.

rhizome.s

Hugo Carvalhais - Particula (Clean Feed_

A quintet date with Carvalhais (bass, electronics), Emile Parisien (soprano saxophone), Gabriel Pinto (piano, organ, synthesizer), Dominique Pifarély (violin) and Mário Costa (drums). I should say right off that the music is well outside of my range of the last couple of decades at least but, still, it's quite well done and, even to these jaded ears, worms its way in and sits with surprising comfort. There's something of a classic ECM feel, especially with the soprano tracing catchy unison lines with piano and bass, but also hints of Anthony Davis' Episteme ensemble (the opening to "Capsule" bears more than a passing resemblance to Davis' "A Walk in the Valley") and, in Pifarély's violin, a welcome tinge of Leroy Jenkins. As well, Carvalhais' playing strikes me as owing a good bit to Dave Holland--his intro on "Simulacrum" almost sounding like an outtake from a Circle session--and Pinto occasionally recalls Paul Bley.

This can be problematic for me, needless to say, but on the other hand, the influences are well-chosen and the group manages to, to some degree, transcend them, creating work that somehow stands on it own without teetering. It may not be my current cuppa, but I can easily imagine it being greatly enjoyed by both fans of the earlier music and nascent ears looking for an attractive and intelligently played alternative to more humdrum attempts at maintaining the genre.

Clean Feed

Andrew Lafkas - Making Words (Sacred Realism)

70 minutes of wonderful, rewarding music by Lafkas, arranged for a 12-piece ensemble (Ann Adachi, flute; Adam Diller, tenor saxophone; Tucker Dulin, trombone; Kenny Wang, viola; Lafkas, bass; Margarida Garcia, electric guitar; Gill Arno, electronics; Keiko Uenishi, electronics; Barry Weisblat, electronics, Bruan Eubanks, electronics; and Sean Meehan, snare drum and cymbals).

My first thought, my first point of reference was Feldman's "For Samuel Beckett". I heard a similar cloudy richness to the music, that sense of turbulence within a fairly steady stream. This isn't drone music but there are certain features that more or less remain constant throughout: a medium level dynamic range and a regular issuance of sound, a flow that's uninterrupted even as it fluctuates smoothly but widely in color. Overlapping lines, opening with deep tonal swatches leavened by Meehan scraped metal, begin the work, the leader's ultra-deep, bowed bass establishing a fine, loamy bottom.

There's often an opposition of the pungently globular and the scratchily raspy in play here, all of it carried along on some billowy cushion, allowing for the necessary bump and skewing but always pressing on. It bristles a lot, scouring out the church in which it was recorded, while maintaining this coiling, surging form; really impressive. Another vague point of reference: those great early Olivia Block discs; there's firework-sounding sequence over lush, organ-tones that brought her work to mind.

I'm guessing there was a score involved where the continuo was passed from one group of musicians to another, the baton never dropping, the methods of continuity always shifting but retaining an urgency that's really compelling. I'm not sure what else to say except that "Making Words" held my attention, rapt throughout. Wish I'd been there.

Catherine Lamb/Bryan Eubanks - Untitled #12 (after Agnes) (Sacred Realism)

One of the first questions that popped into mind was: Would I have reacted differently to this piece without the reference to Agnes Martin? Probably not a meaningful question as the reference is there and is part and parcel of the work. As she is, paintbrush to head, probably my favorite visual artist of the last century, Eubanks' and Lamb's release has a leg up, settling me into the (or, at least, a) proper frame of mind to experience this demanding, hyper-minimalist music.

Briefly, the hour-log piece is divided into four 15-minute sections. Each section consists of a single sound field (I say that guardedly as, to the extent it's a kind of white noise, there are fluctuations within each field, not unlike those found in a band of Martin's painting); the shifts between them are distinct but not huge.

That's it. The inside sleeve reproduces a 1984 work of Martin's (the title of the disc), a tan square centrally placed over a just slightly larger, somewhat lighter tan square (very beautiful). I tend to naturally think of some of Martin's gray wash paintings of the 90s,where the bands contain "just" a thin wash of gray paint but worlds of life and action therein. Doing so, I try to mentally excavate the same from this "thin wash" of sound. It's challenging but achievable. Donald Judd somehow comes to mind as well; there's a similar kind of subtle monumentality which, of course, dwells in Martin too. More than anything, there's a steadfast and resolute self-erasure-as-presence-enhancer that recalls work like "Bar Sachiko", a major favorite of mine.

I'm not at all sure how this was produced. A line on the sleeve states, "This is a realization of a generative work" and give a site for download on an application. Jacques Oger today mentioned seeing it performed in Paris with electronics and viola; if there's a viola in play here it's masked in plain sight and played with extraordinary consistency. If I had to categorize the general sound range, I'd say something on the order of a very breathy, burnished and burred flute, with an implied wealth of detail just out of the range of hearing.

Great stuff.

And an auspicious label debut; looking forward to more.

Sacred Realism Also available from erst dist

Anonymous - Improkup! (w.m.o/r)

a description of events

An action is one thing; a documentation of that action is another. Within the act of "documentation", one can create something which is purely that, a record of the events, for various reasons from historical to contemplative, or one can seek to present it in the guise of an art object, which raises questions. In a more overtly art-centered world, we have items like Manfred Werder's scores which may consist of lines of found or extracted text which the "performer" may take upon his or herself to actuate, often by experiencing surroundings of choice. All well and good, but when released to file or disc, one wonders, "Why?" What has been accomplished that couldn't have been done so as effectively by the listener, the recipient of the work? More complicatedly, sometimes the release does, indeed, seem to elicit something previously unheard (unseen?).

There's the experience and then there's the compunction to elucidate it not via abstracted, edited form, but with a second by second (aural) reproduction of it, as though the importance, the meat, is inextricably bound in the smallest details, though this implies a god's-eye view of things, especially when dealing with something of this length, over 24 hours (I forget the exact cumulative time), that thought is paradoxical in that none of the participants conceivable attended to matters that closely; they slept, ate, excreted, etc. An event occurs, you weren't there but now you can, if you chose to listen in that matter, gain a second-hand experience of the activities. Or, you could (much to the dismay, I imagine of the creators of this object) listen in an abstracted, aesthetic way, something that the very nature of the pure sonics involved does tend to pull one toward, at times. There's a portion early on when Mattin and a friend or two are driving toward the warehouse in which they intend to squat and conduct their workshop, where they apparently pull over, perhaps grabbing a bite, and the tape is left running in the vacated automobile, maybe 15-20 minutes, and one "merely" hears the ambient sound, the roadway, etc. It's very beautiful, I'm afraid to say.

[A little earlier, I thought I'd turned off the recording. Was sitting here typing something else when I heard faint snores, which I assumed where emanating from our dog, Katie. Looked around, didn't see her. Took me about 30 seconds to realize that the squat had entered their sleeping phase...nice]

and then...well, I think Richard mentioned some technical problems he had with this disc and similar ones have plague me. My Macbook would spurt out the disc at irregular intervals, in between making noises that caused me some concern. I thought you could stream at the Metamina site, but it didn't work for me. So I decided to call it a day.

All in all, I listened to 5-6 hours of the activity and it's hard to say what more value I would have received listening through; the relative paucity of English was one thing and listening "aesthetically" would seem to be missing the point (though, as mentioned above, it was an easy enough trap for me to fall into). The consistently lingering question was the issue of the documentation as such as opposed to the action it was documenting. Even that--it's hard for me to know what significance squatting has at that point in time, at that particular place in Basque country--what did that signify? Did anyone (outside of the participants) care? Did it matter to the discussion that they had done so or could the same talk have been had camping out somewhere or at a bar over a long enough span? Not sure but, as with Werder (admittedly, I enjoy bringing such apparently disparate activities and approaches into some kind of tandem), my gut feeling is that this sort of text inevitably, perhaps tragically, loses much impact.

With the caveat of having missed a substantial portion of the work, it still strikes me as reasonable to say that I'm afraid you had to be there.

Improkup!

Cockroach Boy - s/t (Pilgrim Talk)

40+ minutes of sounds provided by Satoshi Kanda and Nick Hoffman, live in Japan in 2010. More than that is bafflingly tough to say. Searching for referents, one might hazard to place this material in the neck of the woods recently occupied by Taku Unami. That is, for one, there's a strong impression of missing something vital by virtue of merely digesting the audio portion of the event. When glass shatters early on, I conjure up a thrown bottle, but who knows? (Kanda is known for milk bottle utilization...) And much of the other sourcing is similarly elusive and disjunctive. I'm tempted to fall back on the old "liming space" trope; listened to with that in mind, it does so quite well; there's some depth at hand, enveloping the sparse bleats, moans, taps etc.

It's often very quiet, enhancing the feeling that I'm missing important portions, but so it goes. Aurally, its get to the level of listening to a quiet individual putter around his kitchen, not such a bad thing. FOr whatever reason, I found myself enjoying more often than not though I'd be hard pressed to say explicitly why. It breathes and feels honest, best I can do.

Pilgrim Talk

Jürg Frey - Piano Music (R. Andrew Lee) (Irritable Hedgehog)

Lee, who I've previously encountered performing Tom Johnson's "An Hour for Piano", ventures more directly into the Wandelweiser fields with these two compositions for solo piano by Frey, "Klavierstück 2" and "Les tréfonds inexplorés des signes pour piano (24-35)". They manifest a certain kind of minimalism that floats somewhere beyond Gurdjieff, nestles in obscure, never-visited corners of Satie and hyper-distills the early work of Glass, perhaps via an extremely fine sieve woven by the aforementioned Johnson.

"Klavierstück 2" opens with somber, low chords, allowed to toll and hang for several seconds each, repeated for a couple of minutes before being replaced by brighter, even sprightly higher ones, brilliant but with a sour edge, iterated more quickly. The fine liners by William Robin make the claim (not contested by me) that this perfect fourth is sounded 468 times. Necessarily, even if not consciously attempted, there's a tiny amount of variation in touch and certainly int he manner in which the notes weave, smoke-like, in the air between the strings and the microphone. It's wonderfully mesmerizing, a really exquisite balance between the stringent and the subtly complex. It's bookended at first by four like chords a bit higher than the first, but just when you think you've ascertained the structure a virtual melody, brief and spare though it may be, appears, ethereal, Messiaenic. A lovely, surprisingly emotional coda to a rigorously ecstatic work.

"Les tréfonds inexplorés des signes pour piano (24-35)" comprises twelve sections ranging from about two to eight minutes in length, the entire piece running over 47. Robin describes them as vignettes, not precisely related but akin. I find myself thinking of pieces from Satie's Rosicrucian period, the Ogives and other "gothic" works, often somber and brooding. The pace, depth and orientation of the notes varies, from repeated chords at regular intervals, higher or lower, faster or slower to leisurely descending scales embedded within static frames to sets of notes that are almost melodies. I tend to have an imagistic reaction first (old church interiors, doubtless hastened in via Satie) then that's swiftly subsumed by the bath of sonics, of the rich, wet chords, these globules of sound.

Lee, to his great credit in music like this, virtually disappears. There's certainly wonderful thought, consideration and decision making at play here, but the music seems to exist apart form a performer, a fine thing.

And a fine and beautiful recording, a necessary addition for the collection of any self-repsecting Wandelweiserian.

Irritable hedgehog