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

Yann Leguay - Quasi Static Crack Propagation (Consumer Waster)

OK, pretty excellent title...lovely cover and interior illustrations as well. My first exposure, I think, to Leguay who, per the label press release, seems to operate on the conceptual edge of noise, perpetrating art along the lines of destroying a microphone, etc. Here, the sound sources are electronic playback machines of various kinds (the track titles equalling their model numbers), specifically the interior noises they produce while in operation, a not-unknown tack investigated (among others) by Keith Rowe when he finally added a mac to his table but, instead of using programs, close mic'd the machine's body finding the sounds produced within more interesting than those produced by software.

And...it's pretty damn good! A Sony Walkman (D-NE1) provides the material for three pieces, much less harsh than I might have expected, a resonant hum of two deep pitches interfered with by short static bursts which occasionally cascade into a bit of a flurry. It's blunt, very matter of fact, but handled by Leguay in a manner that straddles that awkward.graceful line, something I quite enjoy. It's second appearance, far more brief, finds a different range of sound, lighter and wispy alongside several strands of rumbling static and some loopiness. More active, lending a cartoon-like quality to the affair, doubtless unintentional. Its last entry is more varied and expansive, with flutter that softly undergirds rising and falling gentle whines and the requisite squelches and knocks; quite attractive! The Tascam CD-601 is plundered once, yielding a steady percolation of metallic and plastic clicks over a faint but fascinating background hum while the same company's DAP1 DAT recorder offers a grainier substrate, more dangerous sounding, the voltage seeming all but uncontrollable; both are very fine. Back to Sony for exploitation of its TCM-5000EV tape recorder, wherein we hear the most repetitive sounds, a layering of them, somehow subtly gaining momentum, some stationary, dropping out, reappearing in altered guise. Of the product-named tracks, all of them good, this is my favorite, a fantastic, alien mini-landscape.

The disc closes with a 14-minute live work, again an excellent chunk of music, ranging from initial quasi-syncopation (just the slightest hint of funkiness), ultimately finding drone territory, but a singularly rich one, with a low, scaly throb slowly cycling beneath a pebbly, iterating coating. He then just turns of the off switch and matters quickly and rudely dwindle to nil.

Fine stuff, another wonderful release from Consumer Waste. Hear it.

Consumer Waste

VipCancro - Gamma (Lisca Records)

A vinyl release by the Italian quartet of Filippo Ciavoli Cortelli (percussion, tapes), Alberto Picchi (electronics), Andrea Borghi (bass) and Nicola Quiriconi (voice) containing seven shortish tracks that might be classified as spooky, industrial drones. "Drones" for the obvious reason that the tones are largely extended throughout the length of the given piece, "industrial" in that there's an attractive layer of grime over everything, a dark, oily, gritty sheen and "spooky" because, well, the combination of elements tends toward the harrowing, easily allowing the listener to picture him/herself in a large, shadowy, possibly vacant and threatening space. Sometimes, as toward the middle of "Molize", super-slow, rocklike death chords come a-crashing but mostly the sounds slowly ooze by in an airborne miasma, probably not safe to breathe. Though a vocalist is credited, his contributions are, to me, indistinguishable from the other instruments, probably a good thing in this context. It not my favorite sort of approach and it's a bit too much the same over its course, but if the dimmer realms of isolationism are your thing, you'll find a nice, gloomy swamp here in which to bathe.

Lisca Records

Robert Piotrowicz - Lincoln Sea (Musica Genera)

When last heard from, Piotrowicz had taken a (to me) surprising and divergent pathway with his "When Snakeboy Is Dying", its lovely arrangement of piano, guitar and vibes very different from the heavier electronic work I'd previously known. On "Lincoln Sea" (like the previous release, issued on LP), he again switches course. The sound source is entirely (I think) electronic, though subtle allusions are made to orchestral forces. My immediate impression, though, was of an affinity to Partch's chromelodeon, a similar reed organ feel in something approximating just intonation. It's very, very thick; one senses strand upon strand, ply upon ply. There's likely much going on that's beyond the ability of my speakers to comprehend, though things clarify a bit at higher volumes.

The structure of the first track (Lincoln Sea is one piece, split between two LP sides; I reviewed from a CD rip) is amorphous, sinuous, the largely mid-level lines writhing through the space, the growling bass notes pummeling from beneath. Mark Harwood, in his accompanying notes writes of an architectural construct and you can easily imagine this piece in a large, interior environment. Sounds split off, creating several momentarily separate lines, wind back and form new interactions. There are stoppages, pauses, shifts of direction. Sometimes I found myself thinking of Branca with a more subtle sense of composition. That connection is reinforced toward the end of the first piece as heavy, end-of-the-world rockish chords are dropped, though with welcome irregularity. The second side begins less assuredly (in a good way)--similar sound but arrayed intermittently instead of steadily streamed--it's not just the buzzing, but you get a feeling of swarm, of mass clouds of insects. Big ones. It's more diffuse and less chromelodic-sounding at the start. For all the surface appeal of the electronic sounds (which appeal is high), it's rather difficult music to grasp, resisting easy compartmentalization.Once more, in the final few minutes, Piotrowicz introduces chordal punctuation but they're wheezing a bit now, tired, deflating, more Partchian. The hints of triumphalism that gilded the first piece have dissolved.

As said, hearing this in situ would be ideal as I imagine a large part of its effect resides in the physicality of the sound. Listened to more linearly, one can quibble with its structure, feeling things go on a little lengthily here, maybe too short there. But it's engaging throughout, a refreshing change from many drone-based recordings, which genre is certainly nodded to. Piotrowicz (who, amusingly, is referred to by Harwood as "despot composer"), has opened an interesting doorway, folding several disparate elements into a sometimes confounding but always plastic whole. Good work and, better, implying more exploration to come.

Musica Genera

Alvin Fielder/David Dove/Jason Jackson/Damon Smith - From to From (Balance Point Acoustics)

Readers know my problematic relationship with jazz post-1980 or so, especially that branch which styles itself as "free" but to my ears is often anything but, rarely recapturing the excitement, visceral and intellectual, of the AACM in its prime, Taylor, what-have-you. I understand exceptions will always exist and while I operate under the assumption that, all things considered, it's not worth wading through that particular morass on the off-chance of locating a jewel, things wend their way to me and I'm usually more than willing to give a fair listen. Sometimes you get lucky.

Though I've only encountered his post-60s work sporadically, I've always enjoyed Alvin Fielder. Fielder strikes me as the spine of this quartet (with David Dove on trombone, Jason Jackson on alto, tenor and baritone and Damon Smith on double bass). 77 years old at the time of the recoding, his work throughout is consistently alove and inventive,, "free" in non-obvious ways, nothing routine. His sensibility often recalls Blackwell, always a great thing for this listener. The music itself ahres much of this conception as well; themes arise, though they tend to do so subtly, but usually dissipate into group playing. There are solos, more or less, but you never get the sense of the kind of stagnant theme/solos/theme structure that I've heard all too often in much purportedly free music of the last couple of decades. Jackson will begin playing only to find, less than a minute later, that Dove enters in. As well, Fielder and Smith don't engage in "support"--that age old idea of Ornette's that rarely receives more than lip service, where the rhythm section is on equal footing with the horns, is always the case here. Again though, for me, it's Fielder who keeps things moving, who stirs the kettle so that nothing stick to the bottom. Jackson, apparently a fairly young player, wears his influences openly on the one hand (I hear Shepp and McPhee among others) but also has his own sound, a wide, roaring one, like a more soulful Gustafsson. I don't recall if I've ever heard Dove's trombone work before (I know of him more as a music organizer); Rudd is clearly in his sound but he also creates his own world and has a good knack for note distribution. This is busy music, no doubt, but manages to remain very fluid (Fielder again), never really treading water. There are moment, like midway through the title track, where I'm reminded of an old favorite band, the mid-70s Shepp group with Charles Majid Greenlee, Cameron Brown and Beaver Harris (where's Burrell?). I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment--I think generating that level of music in 2013 is no mean feat.

A solid, all around vigorous and enjoyable recording.

Fred Van Hove/Damon Smith/Peter Jacquemyn - Burns Longer (Balance Point Acoustics)

Van Hove is another old master (about 71 at the tome of this live 2008 recording) with whom I have only partial familiarity. The early FMP sides, sure, and I had a relatively hard to find (in the US) Musica Libera Belgicae LP that dated from the mid 70s, iirc. There may have been more hearings, not sure. In any case, here, on both piano and accordion, he's joined by bassists Smith and Jacquemyn, the latter also new to me.

The music on this date is more along the lines of that which no longer interests me. Van Hove, on piano, is certainly able but I both don't hear very much to separate him out from any number of free pianists (particularly Europeans, that gargantuan debt to Cecil still weighing heavily) and, moreover, it sounds fairly indistinguishable in essence from much quasi-similar work over the past four or more decades. It's very well played, don't get me wrong, but imparts a bit of "going through the motions", something that the prior recording somehow lacked. On the first of three tracks, the trio create a non-stop torrent for 28 minutes, the bassists bowing aggressively, filling the space and producing (in me) the claustrophobic feeling I get from much similar music; what many find "ecstatic", I find cloying and self-involved. The ten minute second track is only slightly less dense but again, I get that old sense, a la Malfatti, that one isn't any longer permitted to "not play". When Van Hove whips out the trusty squeezebox for the first few minutes of the lengthy final piece, things are mitigated somewhat, the relatively long wheezes coming as a relief, perhaps inducing the bassists toward less freneticism as well. It's my favorite cut here but still, the de rigueur relentlessness that eventuates becomes tiring. I always pick up a closing of doors rather than an opening. Of course, your mileage may vary but I find it instructive, if difficult to quantify, that I really don't pick up more than a trace of the same in the Fielder session, one that strikes me as far more "free" in a fundamental sense. I should mention that these are digital-only releases and I've been listening over my Macbook which, while not too bad, surely negates some of the richer sonics (especially, I'm guessing, that from the basses)[correction: "From to From is also available on CD]. Still, it's the structure that seems important to me and while I hear most of the first as flexible and, for lack of a better phrase, aware of the outside world, the Belgian recording hits me as overly hermetic. FMP nostalgists will doubtless disagree. See for yourself.

Balance Point Acoustics

d'incise - (aral) (Mystery Sea)

It's always tough (for me) to write about this area, what maybe you'd call the dark ambient side of field recording, apart from merely being descriptive of the sounds. d'incise does what he does very well, molding and weaving lines of sonics into a good, palpable mass, always heeding textural play, with various soft, low thrums wandering among patches of crystalline static, for example. Given a strong enough ear on the part of the creator, that is to say an ear more or less on my wavelength (!), it might be tough to go wrong. If I have reservations about it, it's along the same line as I have about graphics or photo enhancement programs: the results are appealing butI'm wary at the ease by which they're achieved. Dunno, maybe Protestant work ethic kicking in. Given all that, this works very well, the throb providing a subtle forward thrust for the first 15 minutes before giving way to a clear organ-like tone that levels matters, splays things out a bit under the windy swooshes--nice combination of vacancy and clarity. That works into my favorite portion of the disc, that staticky sounds acquiring welcoming irregularity of occurrence, sounding more "natural" (i.e., as though recorded from broken circuitry), the organ thinning out and ultimately disappearing into a haze. A bit further in, there's the slight surprise of a lovely piano chord that tolls away beneath the scrim, then some attractive clatter in the mid-distance and what sound like small tapping machines, which come into wonderful focus at the very end of the piece, when all the bass hums suddenly disappear.

Admittedly, this kind of music tends, after a while, to blend together in my memory--it's hard to isolate--but for listeners into the genre (whatever it might be called) will find much to enjoy here.


Mystery Sea

Tom Johnson/Samuel Vriezen - The Chord Catalog-Within Fourths/Within Fifths (Edition Wandelweiser)

When I first began reading the Village Voice, around 1972, Tom Johnson was its new music critic. By and large, the music he wrote about was entirely unfamiliar to me; I learned a good bit and, I'm pretty sure, missed a huge amount more, not having any kind of point of reference at the time. I think I came across his writing here and there in the ensuing years but I'm pretty sure I never heard any of his own music until picking up "An Hour for Piano" on Lovely Music Ltd., in all likelihood because the pianist was Frederic Rzewski. I loved it. I'm not sure if it's because there was nothing else around from him (though, checking, I see that India Navigation released his "Nine Bells", which I don't think I've ever heard) but my next encounter was either with his entirely wonderful work, "Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for Solo String Bass" (Robert Black, on a Bang on the Can recording) or the "Rational Melodies" album on hatART (Eberhard Blum on flute), which I also loved. At this point, I began keeping an eye out for his work and, as I recall, the next thing I saw was his "The Chord Catalog" on XI, which I eagerly procured.

Well. Let me back up a bit. Johnson, to his credit, will say that he's less a composer than a list-maker, creating expositions, not compositions. He locates patterns that he finds fascinating for one reason or another, often for mathematical reasons or representative of tiling functions, etc., and seeks to create an aural image of them. Personally, I'm very partial to this kind of approach though, of course, there's the danger of a work becoming more science experiment than aesthesia, e.g. some of Alvin Lucier's compositions. "The Chord Catalog" is simply that: all the chords possible to play in a single octave, all 8,178 off them, played in order, from the 78 two-note chords to the one 13-note chord. Even so stated, I'm intrigued. But the reality, played by Johnson was...well, "opaque" would be an understatement. I tried. I really, really tried. But I simply couldn't find way in. Played without affect (appropriately), there was nothing for me to grasp onto. It was both dry and pugnacious and even though I figured it was me who was somehow missing something, I gave up. Humorously enough, a couple of years later my friend Walter Horn visited NYC from Boston. He handed me a copy of the same disc, saying that he couldn't stand it but thought I might like it!

So it went. Come the Net, I'd trawl around YouTube, occasionally checking to see what there might be from Johnson, finding the odd lovely work. Earlier this year, I found an extract of a performance of this beast, by Samuel Vriezen, a pianist and composer who I knew slightly from his work with Wandelweiser-related musicians. It was captivating. By simply (not so simple, I'm sure) taking the piece at a much faster clip (faster than Johnson's pianistic skills allowed him to do), it undergoes a substantial transformation wherein all sorts of patterns emerge. It's still something of a monolith, no doubt, but it's now an approachable one. Vriezen's note-rate seems to fluctuate between about 1 and 4 per second (very roughly), faster on the less voluminous chords, slower on the crowded ones. [edit. received a note from Vriezen correcting my perception of note rate: the tempo I used in the recording moves from quarter=138 down to 36 with a chord per sixteenth. So it goes from 9 or so chords per second to just over 2, rather than from 4 to 1.] I can only imagine how difficult this is to play, to be so precise, to maintain an exceptionally steady pace and dynamic level, but Vriezen copes magnificently. You hear all the threads, the rising scales within dense clusters, the shifts; there's actually drama imparted, though I think Johnson might scoff at such a notion. The just slightly off-center pyramidal structure--the first and 10th parts each contain 78 chords, first of two notes, latterly of eleven--is also somehow poignant and moving, the penultimate section with 13 twelve-note chords wistfully and ineluctably leading to the final, single example, all thirteen notes.

As if this unexpected pleasure weren't enough, we're also treated to Vriezen's own beautiful composition, "Within Fourths/Within Fifths", inspired by Johnson's body of work. A description of the piece as well as its score can be found here. While it shares a very similar mode of construction as "The Chord Catalog", both in its compilation of possible note configurations within a narrow field and the resultant quasi-logarithmic increase in products (here without the "decrease" on the other side, so no pyramidal form on the whole, though that form exists within each of the ten sections), by choosing such consonant chords and sustaining the notes on each, Vriezen immediately places the listener in a far more overtly gorgeous realm, one where it's easy to overlook any "catalog" aspect. The pace is slower (though consistent), about a chord per second, allowing these jewels to suspend for a tantalizing moment before disappearing. The effect is not dissimilar to Satie's music from the Rosicrucian period, works like the Ogives, with the same feeling of a processional in a Gothic church. It's hard to hear the progressions as non-intuitive, which is a wonderful illusion. Simply gorgeous sounds.

A great accomplishment on the art of both Johnson and Vriezen.

wandelweiser