Jason Kahn - Things Fall Apart (Herbal International)

Kahn certainly has enough releases under his belt but, to his credit, lately he's often been coming up with significant variations of themes he may have overused in the past. Earlier this year, he found himself in a large room in Zurich where he had hoped to make a recording only to find a cavalcade of external sound sources, from horse-drawn wagons with their bells to a burgeoning Tamil wedding party--things falling apart enough to quash any routine recording notion. But he liked the room, the acoustics therein, the atmosphere, so he determined to make various unplanned recordings, kind of sketchbook style, remaining in the space well into the night when things quieted back down.

So we have fourteen untreated "drawings", averaging about four minutes long, Kahn using parts of his percussive.electronic arsenal but also voice, chair, plastic bags, etc. While one gains a kind of looseness not usually present in his work, one necessarily loses a bit of cohesion, not a problem if considered as snapshots over the course of the day. Sometimes he's a good free jazz drummers ("Dreaming Of", "Wait", the latter with voice), sometimes a radio tuner ("Message For"). He sings--tunes ("We Fall"). Does it teeter on the edge of too casual? Yes, I could see that reaction. On the other hand, I can imagine being secreted in the rafters of the building, discreetly listening to the welter of activity below, remaining fascinated throughout, perhaps scared when he full-throatedly yells and groans into the eaves ("Calling"). By the time "Night" occurs and Kahn lets loose with a loud, almost cantorial wail, I imagine the listener is either very aggravated or a little bewitched. I might fall somewhere between, but I'm glad he took this opportunity and happy to have heard it.

Goh Lee Kwang - 逆耳 New Ear (Herbal International)

An obscure, hermetic release, this. Two discs, some 130 minutes with two version of something called "Vurnmmkied" (google returns only hits related to his recording) and a thirty-minute track called "3753", with the following commentary on the label site: "Then I got nothing to say about "Vice Versa", because whatever it is, it can be vice versa; And "New Ear" is for ears." Does "Vice Versa" = Vurnmmkied? No idea. There is an ear on the back cover.

The first disc is largely given over to a very rough static sound, more broken electronics than static as such, I think, though on occasion you can just make out what seems to be snatches of field recordings and light metallic jangling. Once in a while the sound completely drops from one or another speaker. Upping the volume increases the level of interest; my visual analogy became peering through a Brillo pad with a high-powered microscope. About 25 minutes in, it enters a looped phase, a dull, thin clang marking each iteration, fuzz gradually becoming more predominant. At times, you almost get an effect similar to early Riley or Reich tape experiments. It does on a long time though, a really long time. I'm not sure if there's actual change or if one's brain begins picking out different sounds and patterns--I think the change is there, you simply have to make the investment in concentration. Moving one's head (ears) also matters. I admit almost dying when, in the last 15 or so seconds, one speaker leaps to sudden, extremely loud, life. After all is said and done, I was glad to have heard the work--it's a tough go but worth it.

Despite the similarity of title, "Vurnmmkied II" is a different beast altogether, beginning with wavering, midrange sines and progressing to subtle, quiet vibrating patterns, almost sounding like slowed down insect life, but just as likely to be motors of some sort. The sines take off into the ether, leaving behind the faintest of taps, only to plummet back in more complex weaves, deeper and smoother, with a Radigue-ish aspect. This, in turn, fractures into ever more brief buzzes soon offset by bell-like tones, the buzzes looping into a static, simple pattern. As before, this is more or less maintained for a good while, in this case about ten minutes out of thirty. Perhaps more difficult to even possibly get into than Disc One but still strangely attractive, decidedly at variance with much you're likely to encounter elsewhere. Another drastic shift occurs in "3753", all woolly, amorphous electronics, like billows of soft e-bow feedback, finding a low branch and just languishing there. Easily the most approachable of the tracks, it may also be the least satisfying as, while pleasant, it doesn't quite provide the gristle of the first two, feeling more like a sweet proffered as a reward.

Still, a challenging effort; considered as a whole, possibly my favorite work et from Goh Lee Kwang.

Christoph Gallio/Olaf Rupp - Fasane Hula Punk (Rapid Moment)

I don't think any reasonable person could fault me for momentarily thinking that I might be in possession of a disguised Diego Chamy release....

But no, we have instead thirteen short improvisations from soprano saxophonist Gallio and guitarist Rupp. I don't think I'd ever heard Gallio before and have only encountered Rupp, to the best of my memory, on the Berlin Strings album on Absinth, which I pretty much enjoyed. Here, having vainly attempted to rid my mind of the cover image, I nonetheless didn't find the music here very much to my liking, dwelling in that efi zone that, no matter how competently played (and both seem quite capable, Gallio with a good, breathy tone and ample dexterity, Rupp proficient as well, somewhere between Kaiser and Sharrock), just fails to excite me. I've seen several reviews around that praise it to the skies and, obviously, this could be right up the alley of a listener yearning for the good old Parker/Bailey days (though nowhere near as rough and rewarding as that pair at their best), but I'm not one of them.

"Fasane" means "pheasant" in German, incidentally.

Herbal International

Rapid Moment

Éric La Casa/Cédric Peyronnet - Zones Portuaires (Herbal International)

Field recordings with a difference, a two-disc set, one given over to each musician. La Casa alternates two short tracks (less than two minutes) assembled from radio transmissions in the first case, with lengthier ones sculpted from urban/industrial parts of Le Havre and Liege. And "sculpted" is the word that comes to mind. Sometimes with a (welcome) axe. I talked with La Casa recently (he literally lives around the corner from me in Paris) and, among many other things, we spoke of the well-documented difficulties I have with trying to make qualitative judgments on field recordings (not to mention other stuff!), a matter he agrees with. In a recording like this one, part of the "solution" is the sheer plasticity of the sound, the very moldedness of it. But also, of course, the choices made and the resultant disjointed narrative aspect that obtains. It's determinedly man-made but with the kind of eerie resonances that are unexpected consequences of human activity, including a booming interior hollowness in otherwise varying spaces. The listener is very much carried along here, hurtling often, the drastic changes in dynamics causing one's "aural stomach" (!) to drop. The ferocity and quasi-mancing presence in the first long track is mitigated somewhat in the second, a greater concern shown for various textures sliding across one another, accompanied at moments by wonderful, ultra-low booms, muffled but powerful. I was absolutely absorbed by it. I may not be able to quantify it, but when it comes to field recording, this is what I'm talkin' about.

The Peyronnet disc is something rather different. While it may have been constructed from the same source material (it was recorded in the same two cities, in the same year), Peyronnet seems to process the sounds more overtly than La Casa. The first two tracks, each about ten minutes long, are ok though they sound more or less like slightly less effective versions of those found on Disc One. But on the last track, Peyronnet lurches at right angles to his material, creating a vast, sighing drone that reams our space for six or seven minutes before expiring, leaving behind a empty, nighttime landscape in which you can discern soft footsteps and gently lapping water. Quite lovely. Matters settle down into an interesting kind of nondescript area, general sounds in a large space, maybe outside, machine engines and associated clatter leading to what sounds for all the world like a drumroll (I take it that it's not) shattering into soft rubble. A strange, otherwordly and very enjoyable piece.

A fine set, then, definitely worth checking out.

Herbal International

(Various) - Hear & Now (Purepresence)

On a semi-related note comes this book with CD bearing, yes, an unfortunate title.

If I'm understanding the structure correctly, each of 26 artists (a French/Australian project) was asked what one question they would like to be asked. Those questions were then collected and all presented to each individual who answered as many or few as they chose, sometimes one, sometimes many (presented in both French and English). Of names likely familiar to readers here, you have Marc Baron, Loïc Blairon, Anthea Caddy, Éric La Casa, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Pali Merseault, Cédric Peyronnet, Philips Samartzis, Thembi Soddell and Tarab. Some provide fairly pat answers, some dig a bit deeper; some talk mostly about themselves, some about more general issues, the latter always more interesting. It's well worth the read if you're interested in the area involved (sound-art, for lack of a much better term), especially the contributions of Guionnet, Samartzis, Baron, Soddell, etc.

The disc is, naturally enough, similarly varied, fifteen tracks of about five minutes each. Many are quite enjoyable, even in truncated form: Thomas Tilly's 'Inverted Field'--just empty space but entirely immersive; the colliding spaces of insect/amphibious and human/mechanical activity of La Casa'a and Samartzis' 'Captured Space'; 'Locus', a fantastically rich meld of drones, crackle and natural sounds from Lizzie Pogson; a track by Peyronnet, 'Kdi dctb 257 [e]', also very processed as above and also eerie and excellent; a fine, diffusionist track, whistling and thrumming from Kristian Mark Roberts; and an oddly delightful baaing (lambs? goats?) with area noise and speech via Pali Merseault. But each work has at least something to offer, a solid compendium.

Purepresence

Tristan Louth-Robins - The Path Described (3LEAVES)

I remain at a loss how to quantify many a field recording, especially those (like this one) which form what are often called "sound maps" of a particular area. Though they're constructed in a similar manner, they strike me as fundamentally different from, for example, early Luc Ferrari, wherein various elements from around a given location were sewn together to, somehow, miraculously, form something akin to a musical composition. Louth-Robins' pieces here represent what I hear as something other. He puts together a kind of sonic walking tour of regions that resonate with him,, areas he experienced earlier in life. He records sounds along a "path described" (described down to six decimal-place latitude and longitude measurements, all in southern Australia) and melds them into an aural environment that one would experience, possibly, whilst traversing it. In the first, "Fleurieu W. (Across Two Bays)", water sounds are prominent, in very high relief, rushing and burbling in the foreground, roaring distantly. There's a narrative element, described in Louth-Robins' notes, all designed to place the listener in the spot, which of course he/she isn't, making for a sense of displacement that a little bit uncomfortable, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. You *know* the construct is artificial but it resolutely attempts to achieve a trompe l'oreille effect. I vacillate between being sucked in and being put off. Water also plays a large role in "Fleurieu E. (Across Two Islands)", though the space in which it resonates feels larger, more empty; perhaps I'm unduly influenced by the accompanying photograph. It migrates to avian and amphibious fauna, not so surprising, but something about this track moves me more than the prior one. I'm guessing it's the implied space, the air that's felt around the sounds. Finally, "Alexandrina Flux" is once again replete with water (Lake Alexandrina) though it serves more as a bed for a multitude of insect sounds and rhythms. The latter are fairly impressive and, while I've had some amount of problems with the isolating of insect sounds before, these by and large manage to transcend their origins and exist as unanchored sounds--I'm actually not sure whether that's a "good" or "bad" thing. Sometimes, as I said, I fall into it entirely, other times I feel there's been too much aestheticization (if that's a word) of the sound, preferring to appreciate it in a more naturally embedded way.

So, as is often the case, a recording like this presents me with certain problems, not a bad thing. It's recorded beautifully and I can only assume that listeners engaged in the art of field recordings will enjoy it quite a bit. I did as well, even if aspects of it (not of Louth-Robins' devising, necessarily, but of the genre as a whole) continue to nag at me.

3LEAVES

SEC_ - Moscaio (Bocian/Toxo)

SEC_ is Mimmo Napolitano, a member of several Italian electronic and improvising ensembles, here heard solo using recorders, no-input feedback, radio, etc. The music is rough and ornery, partially out of noise but more reminiscent to me of things like Rowe/Lehn/Schmickler, bearing a similarly brutal and awkward aspect. The sounds chosen give no quarter to the soothing or calm--all is agitated, acid, black & white. While "Swarms of Flies", the first track, sounds like nothing of the sort, "Becoming an Insect" sounds like just that, an intense, aggravating swarm of gnats with bangs that may be hand swats. The title track seems more out of classic tape music, filled with conflicting elements--echoey bangs and static, metallic whines and low rumbles. It shows more implicit structure than some of the other pieces and though it's not my favorite area, works pretty well by its own lights. Listeners poised between cracked electronics and pure noise will feel at home.

SEC_ - Outflow (dEN/Toxo/hcb)

In one respect, this recording isn't so very different from the above: solo SEC_ manipulating various electronic instruments. But the music is far denser and has, without anything approaching beats, more of a propulsive feel, a great sense of the surge. At its best, the sounds approach the power of composers like Dick Raaijmakers, SEC_ using a similarly rich palette. There are even moments, as in "Evacuation" where you hear the slightest hints of heavy metal. When it settles down to a simmer, as on the title track, it remains finely agitated, never really relaxing. It's interesting to me why this connects so much more strongly with me than the music in "Moscaio". It certainly has something to do with the intensity which seems far more focussed here, more channeled. Each track has depth and presence--the disc is strong all the way through. Highly recommended.

Olivier Di Placido/SEC_ - Rainbow Grotesque (Bocian)

A turntable-like sound seems more prominent in this collaboration (an LP release) though none is listed on the credits, welding some of the same kind of material dealt with in "Outflow" to a Tetreaultian soundscape. I get the impression of many rotating devices here, a circular feeling to a large percentage of the sounds. There's also a rapid-fire, sputtering noise assault that, again, has some of the disjointed aspect of "Moscaio", abetted here by some Roweian guitar noises from Di Placido. And, as in that release I find that the music has slid back into an area more concerned with effect than with a deep body of sound. There's a rapidity of action that outpaces consideration for texture, placement, etc., something I think SEC_ managed to handle very well in "Outflow", though the final track, "_que", hints at the wider spaces of Asian stringed instruments, a welcome respite. As before, listeners into this area, say those who enjoy the stylings of Erik M, will likely not have the same problems as me.

Jérôme Noetinger/SEC_ - Testacoda (Bocian)

I was all ready for "testacoda" to mean something vaguely horrific, like "last head" but no, according to Google Translate, it's simply "spin". Noetinger, of course, is a long-time master of this field and I have to guess that it's largely his presence that swings the music, once again, back into the realm of the thick and juicy. Perhaps not so much thick as ropey, all these strands connecting small nuggets of sonic material, stretched through space, sticky enough to cause small floating objects and dust to adhere. Side A (this is also an LP) works a bit better than the verso for me, the latter having a share of loopiness that I could do without. But here, the fractured, stuttering elements manage to somehow fuse into a Twombly-like surface, isolated items that on their own might not hold much interest acquire a kind of meaning when set down in sequence or overlapped. Tough to explain, but well worth a listen.

A kind of rocky path, then, traced by these four releases but "Outflow" and "Testacoda" are well worth anyone's listen.

Bocian

Toxo

dEN

David Dove/Lucas Gorham - Screwed Anthologies (El Cangrejito)

David Dove/Jawwaad Taylor - These Are Eyes, See? (El Cangrejito)

A caveat right off the bat: My knowledge about the Houston chopped and screwed culture and the music therefrom (DJ Screw and others) is minimal at best. I first heard of it via Jon Abbey at IHM and his enthusiasm had me going and checking out various tracks here and there which I by and large enjoyed, though not so much as to investigate the genre in any depth. So be forewarned...

Until I heard the recent Balance Point Acoustic recording with Damon Smith, I'd also been more or less unaware of Dove's work as a trombonist, knowing him more as a curator of events down Texas way and I'm happy to have at least partially remedied that gap. As the subtitle of the first disc states, this recording consists of "improvised music under the influence of DJ Screw", the first (two discs) recorded in 2009 and 2010 with guitarist Lucas Gorham, each musician also using electronics.

One thing that's immediately apparent is how well suited the trombone, especially in its nether reaches, sub-woofer-enhanced, is to the purple drank fueled realm of chopped and screwed (were low horns ever used by the style's original practitioners?). The first disc of "Screwed Anthologies"is a fairly spacey affair, trombone alongside echoing guitar, only obliquely referring to its inspiration, but beginning with the second cut, extracts of DJ Screw performances are heard emerging through the live music, thickly bubbling up into the sluggish, miasmic soundscape. Both instrumentalists refer to blues modes in passages that are isolated from the flowing mix, suspend there for a few moments before the beats move on. The final cut on Disc One centers on a four-note bass figure that strongly recalls that of "Bitches Brew", Dove circling it with fine imagination and Graham, in fact, presenting some chords that also seem to refer to late 60s Sharrock or McLaughlin. Without making overt references to the genre in question, the duo seems to be searching for (one of) its roots and doing a fascinating job of it. Little by little, turntable static and a recording of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" which, as I discover, had been Screwed, filters through--wonderfully so--and the piece eddies onward, merging live improv with various recorded material. The overall effect is pretty mesmerizing. I keep coming back to Miles, but that might be my age showing. The opening cut on the second disc might be my favorite, beginning with multiple, fantastic, layered growls from Dove and merging guitar lines, clicks, Screw and, I get the impression, a good deal more, creating a great flow. It's not so different in structure than some of the earlier music but the elements just feel even more right, finely balanced, again with something of the feel of Milesian expansion and scale. The following track spreads sounds out even farther, thinning the textures, positioning elements more sparsely. By this time, we have the basic modus, but the individual difference in execution and choice still allow the music to sound freshly conceived. By the end of the set, though, I did find myself wondering if this particular gambit, as enjoyable as I found it to be had been played out.

Well, I'm not sure but "These Are Eyes, See?" retains certain trace elements from the above but veers off into a different, perhaps equally rewarding direction. Some skeletal vestige of chopped and screwed can be heard--in the slowness, the long drip, in the attenuated echoes of bass lines, but we've entered the backwaters here. Jawwaad Taylor contributes spoken word in an urban vernacular that acknowledges hip hop but stands apart, varying his dynamics and imparting tinges of musical lilt to his speech. He also offers a bit of fine, low trumpet playing on the first cut, muted work on the second. Dove sends his trombone into the darkest depths, well below sea level. As before, these long pieces (two are over a half hour, with a brief third to wrap things up) create their structure as they unfurl, never feeling forced (not hardly! they certainly move at their own leisurely pace). There may be a tad too much echo now and then for my taste and a vocal enhancement or two that I found unnecessary, but for the most part, I was quite happy to sink in and let myself float down to the muddy bottom. The short track that concludes the disc utilizes stronger rhythms, a more declarative trombone and (I'm guessing) extracts of DJ Screws voice, forming a tight coda to the disc. I should also mention the fine paintings by Ayanna Jolivet McCloud that grace the sleeve which compliment the music in an unusual and for me, thought-inducing manner.

I greatly enjoyed both releases. Both a nice change of pace for me personally and works that satisfy and provoke in equal measure.

El Cangrejito

Coppice - Big Wad Excisions (Quakebasket)

First confront rises from the ashes and now Tim Barnes' Quakebasket--so great to see!

I'd had mixed feelings about the two previous offerings from Coppice, on Consumer Waste and Pilgrim Talk, having the sense that things were still in progress, ideas not fully fleshed out. My first impression here, then, is the opposite, that the pair (Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer) have certainly found their groove, perhaps in more ways than one. Each of the four cuts on Big Wad Excisions (I keep telling myself: think of a thick roll of cash, think of a thick roll of cash...) features one or more prepared pump organs manufactured by Kinder or Estey, presumably of late 19th or early 20th century origins. There are also karaoke machines, boomboxes, tapes, etc. These organs, with their woody tones, seem to be the source of much of the material, including providing the pulses that were present in the earlier release but are much more prominent here.

"Smack Keel" has a grinding, fluttering set of drones weaving around each other, various other repeated sounds surfacing and descending along the way. Though electronics are in play, there's an acoustic feel to the track, as though the buzzes might be from vibrating paper or bellows or exceedingly loose lips on a brass mouthpiece, a welcome airiness suffusing the atmosphere. A delightful, short wheeze ends things. Harsher, cracked electronic sounds begin "Impulses for Elaborated Turbulence (Excised)" before a dead slow, lurching quasi-rhythm manifests, stumbling to a halt and evaporating after just a few moments; pretty funny. "Sop" is the longest track, many of its tones bringing to mind the dreamier portions of late 60s Terry Riley; it's by no means that bubbly but some of the sonorities are quite similar and much of the music has that downstream flow to it. It's a wonderful piece, with great breadth and exquisite patience, giving the listener ample time to appreciate the play of textures, sandy against fluid, wood scraping metal and has a natural episodic quality, related images melting from one to the other, remaining muted throughout but still conveying a fine sense of dynamics. They make great use of the organs as organs too, summoning almost ghost-like lines from them, as from an ancient wax cylinder recording. If those aren't exhalations from organ pipes late in the piece, they may as well be. A great piece, I could ply this all day. The disc ends with "Hoist Spell", the organs taking on something of a chromelodeon aspect, the static fairly furious (though never overbearing), the deep, dual drone supporting a host of scrapes and small explosions. It's the one track the carries a kind of acceleration, building up steam only to (excellently) falling over the ledge with a thud at the end. :-)

A fine, fine release, easily my favorite slice of Coppice experienced thus far.

Welcome back, Quakebasket.

Quakebasket

IST - Berlin (Confront)

No small pleasure simply to see these silver metal containers once again, heralding Confront's welcome return to operation!

I'm not sure you can call the IST concert from January, 2001 at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin historic specifically, but it does, as Fell writes in his notes on the release, serve as a kind of general marker in the annals of so-called lower case improv. Obviously, there had been precedents for some time, from Malfatti (and prior) on; Fell's own participation in the first Erstwhile recording, "Extracts", released in 1999 would be one example. But playing at an event like the FMP-sponsored festival, to an audience far more accustomed to a Brötzmann tenor eruption than a Davies harp caress was, in a sense, confrontational and Fell's observation on the presence of many younger Berlin musicians in the crowd, some of whom would explore their own quiet paths in upcoming years (I'd be curious to have this assertion documented) allows this half-hour to represent a moment in time that seems noteworthy.

Ironically, compared to much that ensued, the music itself is fairly active! Fell mentions that IST's music evolved over the years, beginning with sounds that were more overtly derived from the more vigorous "efi" form which its members had sprung and here, it seems to be at an interesting balance-point between sparsely occupied and loosely filled space, resulting in a kind of forward lilt that's very captivating. The volume ranges from quiet to a medium range and the musicians, particularly Fell (bass) and Wastell (cello), do a fair amount of pizzicato and otherwise percussive playing that harkens back to the jazzish (if several times removed) work of players like Guy, Kowald et. al., though certainly pared back a good deal. To the extent one can distinguish, not always the easiest of tasks, Davies (harp) appears to be pressing onward, or downward, with the most persistence, into the reductionist sphere. The flow is knobby, those wonderful, wooden knars connected by the most diaphanous of tissues--often quite spellbinding and I'm impressed by the apparent quietude of the audience here, given the nature of the event--and the performance feels complete, the duration expertly judged.

Fine music, happy to have had it documented.

The Sealed Knot - Live at Cafe Oto (Confront)

Speaking of history, I'd no idea about the derivation of the Sealed Knot.

It's always a pleasure to hear the work of this fine trio, 2/3 of IST (Fell replaced by Burkhard Beins) but with Wastell having long since switched over to tam tam and all three employing electronics and the resultant sound is entirely apart. We're now into long sounds (though I'm somehow hesitant to refer to it as drones), individual strings sustaining for many seconds but extremely varied in pitch and timbre and, for lack of a better term, particulate nature, while always remaining soft. The use of finely chosen long tones combined throughout with an array of quiet, rapid, gently percussive sounds makes this set, again perfectly circumscribed at about 1/2 hour, work so well. Despite the delicacy, the effect on the whole becomes very rich and reverberant, reminding me a bit of Rowe's solo music circa 2004 but with distance between the elements; there's a strong feeling of three-ness here, fantastic levels of detail. after a (luscious) lull mid-piece, there's a sudden and surprising three-note electronic-fuzz figure as the churning music edges darker by a few degrees before fading into some hollow percolation and wheeze.

An excellent recording, one of my favorites of the year. Welcome back, Confront.

Until the upcoming Confront site appears, available from the usual culprits, including Erst Dist, Metamkine and Squidco

Paul Khimasia Morgan - Blue Poles (The Slightly Off Kilter Label)

Nine solo tracks by Morgan, relaxedly running the gamut from field recordings to guitars, zithers, bicycle lights and papers of varying dampness. The pieces are brief, from one to seven minutes spread over 33 minutes and seemingly very, very casual, although I certainly can't be sure of this. But they raise the point: how to distinguish the happenstance from the intentional and, of course, whether it's always worth doing at all. The field recording from Nairobi that occupies the disc's first 58 seconds sounds randomly chosen, though pleasant while the ensuing cut features a guitar whose sounds seem pitched halfway between arbitrary plucking and Ellington's "The Single Petal of a Rose". The title cut has soft taps, like someone idly thrumming their fingers on a tabletop with nimb-ic hums and the odd squall while "objectssbrasion"'s flints, papers, tuning forks and foam rubber scurry about noisily and with good humor, causing a general ruckus. So it goes...It's the kind of music that, for me, works better when less concentrated upon, in which case, depending on the volume level (I've done from very low to room-disturbing), it integrates with the surroundings quite well or disrupts things with equal efficiency. I think, given my druthers, I'd have preferred longer tracks but, as is, "Blue Poles" is oddly ingratiating and gradually worms its way under one's skin, irritating and tickling in like ratios.

(Various) - GoldDust (The Slightly Off Kilter Label)

Six pieces culled from The HOUSE Festival, in Twickenham, England, 2011. Each track is introduced by a voice as though preparing a radio audience for the sounds to follow, an odd thing to include on a CD release unless, I guess, it's being used for publicity/educational purposes. It's requested that one uses headphones but I lack those devices. In any case...

Paul Khimasia Morgan's "For Uma Devi" is quiet and subtle, very beautiful, kind of like a condensed, concentrated version of the softer pieces from the above recording, tumbling into what sounds like distant calliope music; lovely. Michalis Mavronas doesn't fare as well with an overly spacey synth work, "Bedroom #1"--too many echoes, bubbly bits and other cliches and too long by half. "Maestro", by Neil Luck, is kind of hilarious, beginning with a swatch of the most banal, infomercial pop you're likely to ever hear, before segueing into overlapped male and female voices enunciating words in English and Japanese, the same words at the same time, occasionally swapping languages (I think the woman is Japanese, the male, English). Once in a while the sappy music bubbles forth, sometimes a voice is heard in isolation. After a few minutes, the male begins mumbling rapidly, the music returns (sounding like extra-sugarladen Chick Corea), the male breathes audibly and coughs and a new voice cycle begins, the words more staggered. Variations go on for a while, that awful awful music insisting on popping its merry, saccharine head to the surface an unhealthy number of times--weird, funny and disturbing; I want to hear more from Luck.

Jon Aveyard's "Captive and Comfortable" appears to be about rustling paper (with perhaps styrofoam or plastic cups) and, I'm guessing from the photos in the enclosed booklet, has to do as much with visual performance as sound. Still, it works well enough as an aural experience, a consistently captivating breadth of textures. Recordings from earlier that day in the vicinity are the material from which Marcus Leadley creates his collage, "House", mixing "natural" ones (insects, water, air) with conversational snatches. It flows well enough, but ends up being a bit innocuous, at best like standing on the sill between a populated gallery and a rural backyard, a potentially enjoyable position but you can do that yourself. Joseph Young self-introduces his homage to Cage, "In a Kitchen", a blend of modest, household sounds with spoken text. It's ordinariness is off-set by a certain amiability and wackiness of text (sentences from various literary works, I believe, as well as a Viagra ad and describing various foods found on the shelves), causing this listener to simply accept and enjoy.

An interesting compilation, shedding some small light on five composers whose work I hadn't known.

The Slightly Off Kilter Label

Julien Ottavi (the Noiser) - The Black Symphony (monochrome vision)

A smile inevitably crosses one's face, before hearing the music, when confronted with a work from Ottavi bearing a title like this. More so when scanning the thirteen sections, each bearing a classically inspired appellation like, "mouvement secundo presto" or "suite variation menuet". This is The Noiser, after all, so when the initial, full-force static assault of "prelude" booms forth, one thinks, "Yes, of course." But then, after the "silcenzio" (not sure, wondering if these terms are Corsican), matters mitigate. Each of the movements is self-contained, concentrating on a given sonic territory for several minutes, often augmenting it during its course but not venturing too far. There's a slightly surprising lack of aural violence here, relatively speaking, Ottavi seemingly more concerned with the overall form of the work and the way the subtle grains rub against each other. It's not a dramatic arc by any means, more a matter of positioning, almost a list, the connective tendrils having to be sought. That said, I find myself enjoying the tracks more as individual nuggets, especially the sparer ones like the sparse clicks, whistles and occasional explosions of a cut like the aforementioned "suite variation menuet". They possess a great amount of depth, multiple plies, and one can only imagine the kind of buffeting one's ears would absorb in a live situation. I wouldn't mind hearing a more organic cohesiveness maintained over a long stretch such as this; perhaps that's to come. On the meantime, another strong effort from the Noiser of Nantes.

Roel Mellkop-Mecha/Orga - Rotterdam (monochrome vision)

A collaborative disc between Meelkop and Mecha/Orga (otherwise known as Yiorgis Sakellariou utlizing field recordings made in Rotterdam (Meelkop's home town) as well as other electronics, presented in three tracks, a duet and two solos. The duo quickly morphs from recognizable area recordings into flat electronic pulses, intentionally deadening, winding down to flat blips before resurfacing at another location altogether, wispy and wind-driven, with a strong feeling of abandonment. There's a lovely, extended period of quiet, distant sounds, the pair allowing "almost nothing" to take center stage for a good while. Harshly grating metal announces a return to immediate activity; all is stark and cold. A tough, largely unpleasant and strong track. Meerkop's solo is all hushed, muted noise,a natural steady-state sequence, essentially urban background hum 'n' throb, but entirely absorbing. Mecha/Orga's piece begins more volubly, but soon settles into quietude as well, though more rural in nature, with soft water and wooden tapping, before the machines return, pounding and stamping relentlessly to an abrupt end. A good job, gray and intense.

Yannick Franck - Hierophany Иерофания (monochrome vision)

"A physical manifestation of the holy or sacred, serving as a spiritual eidolon for emulation or worship." The sleeve design and track titles ("Mausoleum", "The Dive" and "Dying Down") could have been used in a mid-90s, Laswell, death/dub effort and, truth to tell, it's not so far afield from that. Thick drones with a tonal base (or several tonal bases), a certain amount of sharpness within, weaving shards of church bells, voices, choirs, etc. Often very reverberant and pulse-filled but, for me a little too palatable, posing no problems while being not quirte ecstas-producing enough to not worry about having problems posed. It may fulfill the title's definition, but...not my area of interest.

THU20 - Vroeg Werk (monochrome vision)

A Holland-based ensemble formed in 1985, THU20 has included Jac van Bussel, Roel Meelkop, Guido Doesberg, Peter Duimelinks, Jos Smolders and Frans de Waard at various times, all of whom appear on various tracks of this 2-disc set (one studio, one live), culled from recordings done mostly in the late 80s and early 90s, with a handful from the oughts. As a generalization, the music (assuming this to be a representative sampling) occupies a territory in the vicinity of Voice Crack and similar groups who often used noise-electronics over a pulse-based foundation. That rhythmic element, which is pretty consistent and always of a mechanical nature, grates on me a good deal. I understand it was something of its time, antecedent to or synchronous with various dystopic forms, ambient to industrial, that were prevalent then, only transferred to a more improvisatory framework, but it serves to drag matters down here. The sheathing, the splatters, bangs, sizzles and other effects are fine, tickling ones ears and agitating in a good way. You only wish they'd be allowed to course through the space unfettered by pulse. There's some death metal-type declamatory yelling a la Boredoms, etc. A little goes a long ways and at 150 minutes plus, I'd long since grown weary.

monochrome vision

Klaus Filip/Dafne Vicente-Sandoval - remoto (Potlatch)

Not nearly enough bassoons in these here parts...though anyone pining for those deep, reedy tones will have to search elsewhere.

Two pieces, one ("Obscur") recorded in Christoph Amann's studio, the other ("Clair") in a Nickelsdorf church. Filip is on sine tones here, not his customary lloopp, using them for relatively long notes, though never really settling into drone territory. Instead, I have the image of thin layers of cloth, multiply-hued within a narrow range, wafting and falling, layer after layer. Vicente-Sandoval skitters between, piercing a swatch of fabric here, caressing it, subtly staining it there. Her attack is entirely outside of standard bassooning, sometimes high-pitched, often tapping the body or the bocal (a newly learned word!--the metal tube between the double reed and the bassoon proper). Part of me really wanted to hear at least a few traditional notes from the woodwind, thinking they may well have blent deliciously with the sines but it was not to be and, in a sense, I credit Vicente-Sandoval with sticking to her guns, so to speak, and doing a great deal with less. I find it difficult to otherwise describe the work. In general form, it's akin to previous music I've heard from Filip (I believe I've only encountered Vicente-Sandoval as part of Bruno Duplant's "Presque Rien" prior to this) in that there's a supple, taut but elastic flow, quiet but firm, a feeling of tonality that accepts perturbations. Even when he descends to speaker-threatening depth, there's a serenity in place, a surety of purpose. Given the nature of the sounds they tend to produce, it's difficult to avoid hearing the sines as being foregrounded though I found that, making a conscious effort not to do so (perhaps more my issue than other listeners') resulted in a fuller, very rewarding experience.

On the second track, the duo is joined quite clearly by the environs in and around the church in which they're recording. The music Flip and Vicente-Sandoval produce is more urgent and pinched at the beginning, sharp slices that become embedded in the ambiance, shrill enough that they (in my imagination) cause the abrupt falling-to-the-floor of some heavy object about seven minutes in. The sounds from both musicians are more aggressive, the sines a bit more sour, with subtle harmonics, the bassoon being assaulted with vigor, rapped at noisily and overblown harshly. But still, there's no crowding and things never get steady-state; always there's an allowance made for ebb and flow. It disintegrates beautifully.

Strong work, very challenging to deal with the fluidity and slipperiness of the structure. I like it a lot and, as ever, would love to hear the pair live--I can easily imagine the sonic repercussions.

Potlatch

Biliana Voutchkova/Michael Thieke - already there (Flexion)

A very subdued, enchanting duo with Voutchkova (violin) and Thieke (clarinet). Listeners aware of Thieke's work with Kai Fagaschinski in The International Nothing will have an inkling as to the nature of the music here. Soft but with insistent grain, long lines frayed into harmonics, layering, refracting and searching forward. I'd only previously heard Voutchkova once, in a fine rendition of Wolff's "Duo for Violins" with Daniella Strasvogel; I'm certainly looking forward to hearing more. There are moments when here when the music almost acquires airs of Northern European string musics, something like Norwegian fiddling, but just an echo. Elsewhere, you hear a plaintive keening that summons forth bagpipe traditions, but more wonderfully sour. There's a healthy amount of nervous anxiety here as well, some skittering and fluttering along those sinuous lines, as in the second track,, wherein Voutchkova, as she does on several occasions, speaks as she's playing, in a low tone that's indecipherable to me and all the more mysterious and beautiful for that. It's a very simple idea, I suppose, but one that I find very strong and oddly moving. Thieke manages to almost bury himself throughout, often sounding quite string-like, on point throughout, providing spine and color. Even when the sounds become fragmented, as on the third piece, there's a bubble-like flow, a kind of percolation that always has things cascading, tumbling, advancing. Great combination of the warm and the itchy--really strong, don't miss it.

Flexion

(The following are items for which I was sent links, not discs. Thus, all have been listened to on my semi-adequate but by no means ideal Macbook Pro speakers. Caveat emptor.)

Frédéric Nogray - Vaccabons et Malfactours (Kaon)

I think the words in the title are intentional misspellings of the French for vagabonds and malefactors, but I'm not sure...This is a 20-minute composition using as its source field recordings made by Cédric Peyronnet of the area around the Taurion River in central France, near Limoges. The recordings themselves seem to be very straightforward, including insects, birds, rain, passing airplanes and, of course, the multiple sounds of the river water itself. As far as that goes, it's reminiscent, necessarily, of Annea Lockwood's various riverine studies. Nogray has assembled sequences into a piece, not an unusual thing in and of itself, but I get the feeling that he's generated a more interesting field than a straight reading of the recordings would have offered; Lockwood's work, for instance, often strikes me as somewhat attractive but ultimately bland as well as being something I could do for myself. Nogray begins with the fauna, moves through thunder and rushing water, moving naturally and seamlessly between sonic spaces. It's quite subtle; it took several listens for me to hear the gradations, to not just accept things at face value. The arc becomes more apparent and the sonic layers become clearer, the individual sound-types etched with precision. I still have something of a qualm with regard to the standard kind of elements in use here but, given these restrictions (this project was undertaken by 18 musicians, each using Peyronnet's recordings), Nogry has created an interesting and often captivating document.

Kaon

Francisco Meirino/Kiko C. Esseiva - Focus On Nothing On Focus (Aussenraum)

A split LP. Meirino's piece, "Focus on Nothing" is a solid, dystopic, industrial soundscape, referencing noise but widely varied in dynamics and pacing. The sounds employed tend toward the harsh, replete with hollow, metallic scrapes, shudders and bangs, sometimes pulsed, casting a rich though gray pall, always sharply etched; no haze here. Near the beginning, there's much flutter of activity, like an old, creaking factory starting to churn its gears after a long period of inactivity. That burst seems to carry the remainder, taking the energy then dissipating it, the sputters growing gradually less frequent until the whole affair simply ceases. A fine work, bleak and fascinating.

I'm less fond of Esseiva's "Nothing on Focus", where the sounds, essentially not that different from those used by Meirino, are assembled in a more random, less cohesive manner, seeming to owe more to early tape collage music, that of the kitchen sink approach. Sounds often seem to have been chosen for stereo effect or spaciness. Not bad, just less convincing to these ears, less immersive, more technical. I would have liked to have heard a narrower sound range, investigated more deeply.

aussenraum

Stephen Cornford/Samuel Rodgers - Boring Embroidery (Cathnor)

One wonders at the title as the music is anything but boring and, as well, "embroidery" connotes the superficial and unessential, also not qualities I'd assign to this release, which is almost overtly beautiful. The superficiality of beauty? Well, not to these ears. The label notes refer to Feldman and Tudor, reasonable points of reference, but I hear more explicitly John Tilbury. I could easily have been fooled, I think, were I told this was a construction of his for piano and electronics. By saying this, I don't mean to detract from the efforts of Cornford and Rodgers in the slightest--it's wonderful work. Slowly paced, with extreme care given to timbre, sounds that are soft but knife-edged, not ripping the space but slicing cleanly through, in complex arcs. The title continues to gnaw and forces you to think that perhaps the pair was trying to walk that thin line between the too pretty and a deeper beauty, choosing the luminous piano tones, for instance, almost on a dare, determining whether their (ahem) pulchritude could stand up to intense scrutiny on its own or slightly leavened by the (not overly) grittier electronics. Or perhaps I'm over-thinking it and it's simply very full, very warm music. It's also one of those that, as much as I love it, it seems pointless to go to deep into descriptives. Suffice it to say that if you enjoy the more contemplative portions of the Rowe/Tilbury/Prevost edition of AMM (and, really, who doesn't?), you'll have a splendid time with "Boring Embroidery". Get it.

Stephen Cornford - Music For Earbuds (3LEAVES)

As if to upset the blissful feelings engendered by the above release, one of the pair offers a roughly synchronous selection of sounds that is miles away, though no less fascinating. Five tracks, constructed from "unprocessed acoustic recordings of the feedback between a single earbud headphone and a cassette walkman tape head." Whoda thunk? Maybe consider this to be a distant cousin of Toshi's nimb with a similarly incredible audio range and here, crucially, wielded in pared-down fashion by Cornford, allowing the surprising depths of each sound field to become apparent. Each of the cuts inhabits a different world: a grating, slippery whirpool, endlessly tracing a veering ellipse; a high, transparent keen, also circling but next to impossible to discern clearly (very beautiful); a looser, wetter version of the first, dizzily careening; a splintery array of razor-like needles, rotating but also spewing acid. These four surround the central, and longest track (15 minutes), a rather astounding faunal trompe d'oreille wherein one hears all manner of birds, lizards, amphibians and insects. I can only imagine the glee Cornford must have experienced cobbling this world into existence. Does it last a tad long? Perhaps, but still you're forced to marvel at the slightly alien expanse that unfolds. Very enjoyable, often amazing stuff.

3LEAVES

Devin Disanto - Tracing a Boundary (Task)

The initial recording from Disanto, a Chicago-based composer and an engagingly audacious one at that. Looking at the credits, one sees a sextet of three horns (Jess Turner, trumpet; Jeff Smith, trombone; Disanto, bass clarinet) and three strings (Dan Lis, and Dan Letourneau, guitars; Max Wanderman, ukelele), summoning to mind a fairly rich small ensemble, but you'll be hard pressed to pick them out during most of the composition, something that tickles this listener. To be sure, amidst the field recording (or field recordings--I get the impression there may be several sources, layered), the instruments leak through, somewhat reminiscent of the sine tones in Pisaro's "Transparent City" series, something that seems to be a touch point. The ambient sound is urban, including traffic, the predominant noise a difficult to decipher, ongoing clatter, as of wooden boxes of hard materials being shifted about, crumpled thick paper, infiltrated by steam-like bursts which may well be the horns. No human voices though, aside from the very intrusive one (Disanto?) that periodically, prefaced by an electronic beep, announces, "Two minutes, thirty seconds", "Eight minutes", etc. at several points during the composition. As jarring as these interruptions are, I find them apposite and oddly welcome, breaking up the flow in a welcome manner that adds an unexpected, if sporadic, layer. Elsewhere, the instruments glimmer through every few minutes, sometimes gentle, faint guitar chords (reminding me, in parts, of Burkhard Stangl). Zippers are zipped, keys dropped, all in heightened, high-focus detail, the soft instrumental passages phasing through like slow, distant searchlights. Wandelweiserian in form, Disanto's composition pushes out from there into bumpier territory, maintaing the reticence on the one hand but allowing for a certain amount of rudeness on the other. It's a great balance and "Tracing a Boundary" is a bracing work. I'm greatly looking forward to hearing more.

I don't believe Task has a website of its own yet; in the meantime, check here

Miguel A. Garcia/Tomas Gris/Lee Noyes - Asto Illuno (Idealstate)

A Celtic goddess of the dawn? That was one of the rare hits I received when running Asto Illuno through Google. In any case, we have a brief (30+ minutes) trio excursion into AMMish territory from Garcia (electronics), Gris (objects) and Noyes (piano). It's much more subdued than I would have guessed going in, beginning with pointillist probing, expanding to twitters and short pulses. resisting long tones but assuredly retaining the flow. The dynamics gradually increase as does the density of the sound, the pulses growing harsher though the piano correspondingly works low and calm, gruffly anchoring things. The essential structure follows the traditional AMM arc, something that has long since become almost routine yet, when performed with a combination of sensitivity and imagination, as is the case here, still has the ability to satisfy. The (seemingly) cracked electronics offers a broken mirror to the piano, the trio negotiating that rise and fall quite well before amusingly falling to pieces in the past couple of minutes in a tangle of boops, bleeps and bangs. A solid, thoroughly enjoyable recording.

Idealstate

Billy Gomberg - False Heat (False)

Gomberg's music, to the extent I've encountered it, has always been overtly engaging, almost too much so, like an irresistible candy that you initially chide yourself for enjoying its excess sweetness but, dammit, it's good and you eventually come to realize the faint bitter strains that give it its power. In that sense, he often reminds me of Fennesz in his prime. "False Heat" is no exception. Released on LP (I heard a digitized version), we have two sides of Gomberg's electronics. Side A, which I think is a real-time improvisation, opens with a hyper-low tone, splaying into several layers of varying pitches, textures and wobbliness, all in an interwoven, multi-thread drone. At heart, the elements are not uncommon at all but the placement is very fine, the choices made just right. I've been (for the umpteenth time) looking at Eggleston a great deal recently and the "normalcy" of his photos--not normal at all--seem to have some resonance with this music. Talk about sweet, Side B's opening drone is chocolate salt water taffy. It unspools slowly, the piece taking on a hazier character than the first, with some welcome sour tones slicing through the molasses. Much of the second half of the work is infused with sounds very reminiscent of throat singing--visions of David Hyke's Harmonic Choir thrust themselves to the foreground but, sweet as this music is, it has none of the saccharine quality of that ilk. A sensuous bath, well worth the subsequent trip to the dentist.

if still available (limited edition of 108), you might try Experimedia

Lucio Capece - Less Is Less-Music for Flying and Pendulating Speakers (Intonema)

A few weeks ago, having just experienced a couple of electro-acoustic performances and felt a bit oppressed by the phalanx of speakers surrounding the audience, I remarked (on Facebook) about the desirability of small, mobile speakers. Obviously, this wasn't a novel idea but, in my experience, it was all too rarely put into practice. Serendipitous, then, to receive the most recent offering from Lucio Capece consisting of two works, one for balloon-suspended speakers and one for "pendulating" ones, that is, speakers in a motion similar to that of pendulums (pendula?).

To my ears, Capece has produced some of the strongest, most consistently vital work of the last several years and "Less Is Less" is no exception. Two pieces here. The first, "Das Temperierte Berner Münster" benefits from the composer's notes which, since the label site doesn't reproduce them, I think I will (partially) do so here:

I recorded the sound of the Bern Cathedral during the previous day of [sic] the performance by placing a microphone inside cardboard tubes of differing dimensions. The resonance inside the tube produced certain pitches to the recordings. Afterwards, I built a sort of long tone melody with these pitches.

I deduced the harmonic spectra of these pitches, and selected specific frequencies from within the spectra. I also selected frequencies deduced from the room mode, and by making a spectral analysis of the recordings.

I selected freely the frequencies following my intuition and taste. The resultant ones were played by sine waves coming from three wireless speakers hanging from three helium balloons (90 cm. diameter).

While it pretty much goes without saying that one is missing a large portion of the work's substance by virtue of hearing it on disc, I get the impression that this recording does a really excellent job at capturing a great deal of the experience. There's a wonderful sense of volume and physical variation within the space, possibly enhanced by the photos included in the accompanying booklet, the three balloons--red, yellow and blue--aloft in the beautiful, Late Gothic structure, Capece seated solitary and small in one end. There's an amazing, essential buzz in the air, kind of a blurred beehive effect, through which pure, wavering tones pierce and amidst which are muffled thuds, obscure deep tones, the odd harsh bang. It's all darkly majestic somehow and for all its monolithic aspect, things are always shifting, pushing and pulling through the space. The balloons were nudged by assistants every three minutes and Capece takes a stroll with his soprano, though I'm unable to pick it out from the sine tones I'm guessing he's emulating. But the combination of spatial volume and (relative) lightness is truly impressive; you get a real sense of the air in the cathedral being transformed. A fantastic piece, would loved to have been there.

Steve Reich did an early piece for swinging speakers ("Pendulum Music") as did Gordon Mumma ("Speaker Swinging") and, I imagine, others. Capece's "Music for Pendulums and Sine Waves in Different Tuning Systems" is a subtle, lovely variation that, if anything, recalls Lucier. Capece again:

Two of the pendulums played sine waves in three different tuning systems: Twelve Tone Equal Temperament, Just Intonation, and Pythagorean Heptatonic.

The third speaker caused feedback produced by a cassette recorder. The movement of the feedback caused a sort of delicate delay that changed according to the movement of the speakers.

Capece added some synth and other sounds. What you hear is a medium-pitcehd, complex drone, very clear, glasslike. There's both a sustained basic tone (which undulates) and several other threads introduced over the piece's 28 minutes. My sense is that there's more choice on Capece's part, more use of intuition, than Lucier would normally allow himself, thereby nudging the work away from purely an example of acoustic phenomena toward, if you will, an aesthetic judgment. I suppose your tolerance for this end of the spectrum will match up reasonably well with the enjoyment you derive from works like Lucier's "Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families Hyperbolas" (surely one of the great titles!) though, as stated, this has more give to it. Then again, I can see Fripp/Eno heads (guilty as charged) getting deeply into it as well. I enjoy this as much as either though, more than the cathedral composition, it absolutely begs to be experienced in situ.

A superb recording; Capece on a roll...

Wozzeck - Act 5 (Intonema)

OK. This seems to be the fifth effort by Wozzeck which, at least here, consists of Ilia Belorukov (laptop with synths, ipod touch), Mikhail Ershov (bass guitar, effect pedals) and Alexey Zabelin (kick, snare, hi-hat). It's the first to reach my ears. All 200 minutes of it, five "acts" of 40 minutes each, on an audio DVD. Belorukov writes:

I had the idea to compose a slow evolving (or even unmoving at all) 40 minute piece with very similar parts, difficult to grasp, and with a structure packed with unexpectedness carefully disguised as monotony.

"Difficult" not in the Malfattisian or Capeceian sense (both of whom are cited)--at least for this listener--but because Belorukov often chooses to use thin, beat-driven sounds as his stasis field, the kind of sonics that test my patience from the get go. "Act 5.1" contains a pretty basic, techno-like rhythm augmented with a gooey rising and falling synth figure atop which is, gradually, layered various plies of detritus--fuzzed blats and conversational extracts among them. It takes (me) some effort of will to relegate the beats to any kind of beige background, though it's an interesting exercise to attempt to do so. By the time screams appear, they almost blend in with the odd grayness that has formed, the gray of pillow padding where all these speck of color exist but become all but invisible. Pixilated gray, maybe. There are elaborate notes and diagrams included with the disc. For this piece, Belorukov references King Crimson, Webern and Zorn. I can't say I detect them but the next work, "Act 5.2" begins in a manner not too different from some Naked City, particularly the ultra-short pieces featuring Yamatsuka Eye, but looped, sliced and iterated in time signatures based on the first 40 digits of pi. Yep. There's a thrash metal meets the ultimate math rock geek feel to the thing. While the essential grist of the piece is more interesting (to me), the same grayness inevitably sets in. By now, it seems clear that Belorukov is positioning this kind of monotony against that (ostensibly) created by the likes of Malfatti. My problem, of course, is that I don't generally find Malfatti (even as representative of a type) to be monotonous; quite the opposite. The music at hand...almost is. But not quite and not, somehow, in the same sense as Malfatti. It's a different kind of subdued interest, not as deep as some others, to these ears, but akin.

The third act's meat is in adjacent territory--reminded me of things like Blind Idiot God at first (though that likely betrays my lack of knowledge of the genre; the piece had the working title, "Black Metal", doubtless referencing bands other than BIG)--but in alternating snatches of sound/digital silence, 30 seconds each. The least interesting section for me, thus far. Still not sure if that's the point...(caveat: I'm writing this while listening for the first time, apart from a 10-minute dip I took upon receiving it. Maybe not ideal but, 200 minutes is 200 minutes.) "Act 5.4" is the ballad of the set, all spacey ambiance and dead slow beats/throbs, much quieter than the previous tracks. The guts of these pieces are much more complicated than I'm describing and are gone into in great detail by Belarukov though I must confess, often I can't pick out the subtle variations. The final track is probably the most varied here but, oddly, I found myself hankering for the more "monotonous" pieces!

I don't know--a tough release to tackle, but tough in unusual ways, almost aggressively daring you (if your interest is in contemporary experimental music, anyway) to lose patience but in a manner different from, say, Mattin. By citing Malfatti, Belorukov seems to be arguing for a kind of equivalency, at least insofar as elements used, tat extended silence broken by low volume trombone tones isn't essentially different from beat arrangements that blend into an unvariegated whole. It's not a bad question and, if anything, isolates a strong and lingering aestheticism on the part of many listeners, myself included. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, though, moldy fig that I am.

Intonema

Graham Lambkin/Jason Lescalleet - Photographs (Erstwhile)

The three albums recorded by Lambkin/Lescalleet were always intended as a kind of trilogy--"The Breadwinner", "Air Supply" and now, "Photographs". Were they to do another, Erstwhile could always capitalize on the classic New York TImes faux pas when a new work of Asimov was advertised as "The fourth volume in the Foundation Trilogy". Barring that, we have these works that insist on being connected though the tendrils and sinews doing so are obscure. I'm given to understand that many such interweavings exist but, puzzle geek though I am, I can only discern a few superficial ones. Each disc contains eight tracks and there's some titular correspondence between the cut names on discs 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 (3 and 4 being the new ones; you'll notice that they're so referred to on the CDs themselves). The third tracks on "The Breadwinner" and the first of the "Photographs" discs each begin with a letter/number combination, E5150 and CT20 1PS. Some routine googling reveals that E5150 is a Black Sabbath composition (who knew?) while the other are the postal coordinates of Lambkin's home town of Folkestone, England. Significance? I've no idea. The seventh track is called "There and Back Again" firstly, "Back Again", most recently. If there are other enigmatic nuggets, I can't find 'em. Similarly, "Air Supply" has three adjacent tracks, "69°F", "68°F" and "67°F" and the second "Photographs" disc contains three cuts sharing self-similar titles in the same slots, each with "Kingdom" preceding the remainder of the title. The earlier disc concludes with "Air Pressure" and "Air Supply", the latter with "Street Hassle" and "Street Cleaner". The first album's cover design overtly referred to Robert Ashley's "Private Parts", the second to a Fripp/Eno bootleg, "Air Structures". This one? No notion on my part, though there's a Jody Whatley recording by the same name... I'm doubtless missing much else, particularly if the "clues" are embedded in the music, but so it goes. I'm not sure if any of this adds appreciably to one's enjoyment of the works, but there it is. More interesting to me is the way the recordings capture a personal relationship between the pair, overtly referred to in the superimposition of their faces on the interior of "The Breadwinner", but quite explicit throughout, including the photos in the release at hand, which, for all their physical disparity (apart from their basic size: large) infer a twin aspect.

Disc Three appears to have been largely recorded in or near Lambkin's home town. It begins with the local fellow's ruminations on loss, including the death of grandparents and ends with comments about a 50₤ cast iron skillet: "yeah, they last a lifetime". Unlike the previous two releases, where I think the only vocalization was a brief snatch having to do with VHS tapes, this one is replete with scenes from daily life, a recorder apparently left running routinely, many of the discussions occurring in the vicinity of food. The sounds not from field recordings (processed or otherwise) tend towards the ambient/electronic, though I suppose it's possible the whole shebang is constructed from "natural" sounds. That there's a huge amount of construction is clear from the start, Lambkin's voice (either slightly slowed down or the result of an old cassette recorder, one gathers) is led into by a short, ringing, electronic crescendo, almost like a camera zoom; there's an almost songlike structure in play. There are Ferrari-esque, distant engine flutters, liquified animal calls (?), microphone buffeting, background hiss implying an open mic in very quiet circumstance, dozens of other elements, all imparting an implicit sense of narrative, disjointed though it is. A priest thanking a congregation for the transport of a statue of Our Lady of Padua segues into trite church organ and echoing choir--Lambkin's childhood house or worship?--dissolving into a molasses of altered pitch, quite moving and dreamy/nightmarish. That resonant hum, a little like the ending minutes of "I Am Sitting in a Room", is picked up at the beginning of the following track, allowed to throb, eventually morphing into a mildly poppy, bubbling swath of electronica, redolent of post-Riley rock bands (for all I know, taken directly from some like source), before a double-tracked female voice recites a list of seemingly unrelated words. A series of sounds like solarized waves, only certain frequencies audible, the rest masked, plays against ultrahigh sineage, reverberant scrapes, suddenly intruded upon by conversation about tea, then confusion about what day it is, a clock ticking. So it goes, much more conversation, casual and humorous...I have to say, not only does everything sound great, no matter how banal the source, but the overall flow is fantastic, richly cinematic even in Super 8. It's also very much in the mode of Lambkin's self-released work of the last few years; the choices made are similarly, though inexplicably excellent. Why and how material like this works so well is a great mystery...

The final disc was recorded in Boylston and Worcester, Massachusetts, I take it either where Lescalleet was raised and/or where his mother (guessing) now lives. I'm not at all sure if each musician was given a bit more weight with regard to the material recorded on his home turf or if it's just a listening bias on my part, but this disc seems to carry a little more Lescalleetian feel, the other more Lambkinesque. Probably in my head. Beginning with soup, concluding with a stated dislike of plum pudding... The first track, following the table chatter, contains some exquisite, near-quiet work, faint hollow bangs and thumps, like distant Partchian cloud-chamber bowls, really wonderful. It gradually blossoms into kitchen sounds, which it likely was all the time, and back into conversation. As in the companion disc, there are references to a church (its bells, its visage) and the track melts into a quasi-similar, blurred kind of pulsing dronage, quite striking. Some of the more intense moments (volume-wise) ensue, howling and screeching, before giving way momentarily to the pair nattering about, soon eclipsed by odd, pitched hums, as though distilled and then dirtied from an organ. Again, a fantastic sequence. This source continues across three tracks, the ones with "Kingdom" in their title, so presumably there's a connection. Those bell-like pots and pans (or whatever they were) recur in the closing track, melting into a thick, rising hum, very slowly winding down before surprisingly (as if anything should be surprising here) transmuting into a kind of processional, chorus and percussion, something I get the feeling I should know (Orff?), looped, iterated for several minutes, dissolving and then lurching back into the kitchen, Lambkin asking, "Jason, were you a fan of the plum pudding?", Lescalleet responding, "No." Cut to silence.

I'm not sure there's anything out there that moves like this; the combination of casualness and discreet organization is wonderful to experience. And, as said, it simply flows beautifully. Something about that nexus of sound and meaning hits the mark time and time again though I can't figure out why. Great work, even if I'm missing most of the puzzle pieces.

Erstwhile

Sebastien Lexer/Grundik Kasyansky - The Fog (Dromos)

One is forced to begin with the packaging, which is unusual and very beautiful. Ana Martins has created a CD case consisting of two plates of glass, each about 6 inches square and 1/16 of an inch thick, between which she's affixed a kind of pouch made from virgin wool. The gluing method is invisible and the sack is slit on top, allowing the plates to pull apart almost an inch so as to remove the disc. Additionally, the front-facing wool is drawn upon, in my case with what seems to be both black and white chalk; each of the 150 copies is, of course different. The image above is of mine. Title and other information are printed on the glass in raised white. It's all very striking--nice job!

Happily, the music is also very fine. Lexer's piano (plus enhancements) has always had the welcome knack of combining a clear classical sensibility with something quite raw and even grating; that comes very much to the fore in this 2011 set (running a bit less than a half hour), with Kasyansky supplying electronics that include a healthy dollop of old recordings. Those snatches of "traditional" musics (which are enticingly vague, sounding almost like Mussorgsky here and possibly alluding to "Moon River" there, though often residing in old-timey jazz) function as a kind of glue keeping the harsher shards in the same space. The set has a very attractive dynamism on several counts; the volume varies in a kind of rolling fashion, the generally medium-low level punctuated by abrupt violence as well as uneasy quietude, the textures ranging within a defined space, Lexer almost always managing to sound pianistic even if the keyboard is only used sporadically in the usual manner. Kasyansky's contributions are more amorphous, even viscous, the sampled music outweighed by a bagful of electronics; as with the piano, these are used both subtly and, when appropriate, brutally. As can be discerned from this mangled attempt, it's tough music to describe except in sensual terms. Thick and chewy? Something like that. It has an unusual fullness given the relative sparseness of the constituent elements, something a little bit magical. I've listened six or seven times now and I'm hearing more each go-through, always a good sign. I'm somehow reminded of the phrase, "giving good weight".

A strong effort--get 'em while you can.

Dromos

Massimo Magee - Giant Worms (Array)

A complex experience, this. Magee has created a series of eight "snapshots" in three formats: audio, visual and text. The digital information for each piece, across all formats, is exactly the same. Exactly. So the audio file, if reduced to bitmap form (I think I have this right, but probably not) is exactly equivalent to the analogous visual file and each are exactly equivalent to the text file. I'm a little hampered insofar as experiencing this as seamless as I might like given that the CD drive in my Macbook is non-functional, so I looked at the images and texts on Betsy's old Imac but had trouble concurrently running the audio there, hence taking the disc back to my CD player for that. Given all of that...

I'm guessing the audio files involve some amount of feedback from the visual and text ones; to some extent, they're based on Magee's soprano sax work, but this has been overlaid and, I think, transfigured by feeding it through various electronic programs so that the final result references both while lying in the middle. So much of the "language" and inflections are reed-centered though there tends to be a pulsing, staticky element that's just as prominent (much of the electronics here involves rhythmic patterns of one kind or another) and it's often difficult to tell from whence a given sequence has been sourced. It's not easy music, possessing a kind of alien quality, though with the odd spark of surprising beauty (a rapidly repeating, high, bell-like tone in the sixth track, for instance, has a plaintive aspect amongst all the furious, machinelike ratcheting). There are even little "themes" that reappear from time to time between tracks, lending a smidgen of familiarity to the otherwise harsh and unyielding soundscape. I like it pretty well, grim as I find it to be.

I can't get so much into any kind of "following along" with the visuals and texts, more just finding it as a somewhat interesting instance of fact: that this image or this series of typographical symbols are indeed what the sound files look like when translated into this medium. One can see something of a relationship to the music in the visual files (all very interesting and attractive on their own) in that amid all the raster effects, one can see embedded "naturalistic" forms, distorted and otherwise masked though they be, which I think of as cousins to the saxophonics audible in the music. The text files are more abstract, impossible for me to "decipher" at all, though perhaps others are more adept at this.

Credit Magee with pursuing an unusual and interesting tack here. Perhaps systems more powerful than my own can present this in a true multimedia fashion; if not, I'd look forward to the time when it's more feasible to have all the elements overlapping, intersecting, etc., wherein one can get a truer sense of the underlying equivalency. Until then, give this a try.

Array Music