BERNHARD GÁL – Relive

Austrian composer and musicologist Bernhard Gál owns a definite place in this writer’s memory, as he was among the very first artists reviewed in Touching Extremes back at the beginnings, in 2001. Having lost contact with his production for several years, it was a pleasure receiving the latest news from him and discovering that not only the qualities found at that time haven’t vanished, but gleam of a light of improved responsiveness to the surrounding elements of reality.

Relive is both innovation and a look at the long-ago in that sense: as a matter of fact Gál – who usually performs equipped with no more than a laptop in his live activity – gathered eight excerpts from sets dating from 2007 and 2008, recorded in various locations of the world, using fragments and samples from past installations and CDs and combining them in all-new compositions, the large part remarkable when not outright riveting.

What distances this man from the average manipulator is a highly skilled, refined logic of placement of the event, whatever the initial plan; he’s essentially able to devise pieces where the juxtaposition of electronically treated birds, a motorized movement such as a subway train’s shutting door and a “voice sculpture” (“Velvet Green”) weigh exactly the same in the psychology of the listeners, who remain at once surprised and graciously embraced by the reasonably hospitable atmosphere that the (supposedly) improbable concoction generates.

In “Schulterblatt” we find ourselves perking up the ears towards the subtle whisper of a series of hissing tea kettles until vocal splinters, feedback resonance and sparse touches of piano slightly alter the dynamics of the piece. “Uhudler” - perhaps the best chapter in terms of pure aural gratification, a modified ship horn and an electric shower drain pump contrasting an enticing mesmerism - is the track which will mostly satisfy the craving of those who wonder if drones have a role in this music. They do, indeed. Yet it’s just one of the many hues utilized by a half-architect, half-chiaroscuro painter whose musical conception still privileges the probing of silence as a crucial starting point for investigation.

Gromoga

HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS & TIM STORY – Inlandish

Inlandish is the third concerted plan between these two artists, following The Persistence Of Memory and Lunz. Not only it’s incontrovertibly their best but deserves - no ifs and buts - a spot in my own top ten of 2008 favourites.

The dog-eared concept of “deceptively simple” is just right for the depiction of this program: suggestive melodies, halfway through kind-hearted fragility and familiar ripples of remembrance, are carried on by Roedelius’ typically remorseful piano playing and Story’s penchant for psychological suspension; yet the same elements become somewhat misshapen by a splendidly communicative use of processing, sampling and electronic treatments, attributing a different, ever-anomalous palette to each piece.

Echoes of past glories are definitely perceptible in certain cyclical arpeggios – check “Beforst”, distantly reminiscent of “Ho Renomo” on Cluster & Eno - without any semblance of “conscious theft” of those impressions, a sort of childish peaceableness taking possession of the heart in several occasions, which is all the more valuable in moments of particular regret. When the time comes, a touch of orchestral brilliance is assured: give a try to “House of Glances”, a shatteringly moving theme highlighted by asymmetrical synthetic timbres and the unexpected appearance of a woeful choir in the secreted corners of the mix.

This is guileless music, the type of candidly insightful expression which even a callous misanthropist needs a prescription of, at least every once in a while. To be listened ad infinitum throughout uneasy nights ending with the consciousness of the existence of new options of perseverance.

Grönland