BRAIN DEAD ETERNITY

WE'VE MOVED

2010-09-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

This website has been discontinued as of September 15, 2010.
Please direct yourselves to www.touchingextremes.wordpress.com and bookmark it. All the reviews that were published here have been transferred on the new website, though they're still archived here to make things easier for everybody who linked them. See you there!

CHRISTOPHE CHARLES / I8U – Unter Den Linden / Und Transit

2010-08-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

Admittedly, your reviewer is still far from enlightenment in regard to the generation of Unter Den Linden. Christophe Charles refers to a concert by Mark Fell in 2009 as a “Grundton” for the composition, then specifies that sources recorded in the same year and in 1987 (!) were also used. Then again, there’s a mention of a prior piece called “HCDC”, made after the death of Daniel Charles in 2008, and a hint to Massenet for good measure. These scattered pills of knowledge should not detour the potential audience from the fact that these 30 minutes surely belong in the high ranks of acousmatic music. A masterful sequence of quiet environments and breath-holding atmospheres, ruptured by extraordinary moans of flying airplanes (as loyal readers know very well, I could listen to those sorrow-eliciting sliding drones for the whole extent of my residual life and die happy). Even the most insignificant constituents become essential, including the chugging of various vehicles or the weak signal of a radio. The composer’s insightfulness does the rest, highlighting the existential breathing that perennially underlies silence in the “right” way, creating a world of vacant presences that place the addressee inside their sheer enormity, ultimately reminding us about what “sensible listening” really means.

I8U presents the sonic result of her observation of “a particular passageway in Minoritenplatz” as she was attending an artistic residency in the Austrian city of Krems. For a second time I am left guessing by the liners, which didn’t manage to let me comprehend if that area was subsequently utilized for a quadraphonic installation, or just inspired it. Und Transit - mainly derived from field recordings - stands on its own legs without the environmental component, though. It is largely based on stationary gaseous matters and distinct tones, motionless chords and slightly anguishing impressions depicted by an otherworldly frozen ensemble (except the first movement, which – at the risk of derision - might vaguely recall the “legendary” intro to Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”). One remains enthralled by these stunning suspensions, enhanced by sharp ultrasonic frequencies that successfully divert our attention from the outside world’s remote manifestations while mixing seamlessly with the evening’s crickets. The struggle of this excellent work to prevail over the depression drawn out by the misshapen mazurka echoes coming from the neighbouring hill emphasizes the seriousness of the gap between actively researching human beings and pork-swallowing retards quite effectively. And yet, both sides share this cosmic macrocosm we were thrown in (which, to be honest, is rather degrading). Therefore, play this in utter quietness to appreciate its true worth: the fourth track - “Freitag” - is the decoding key for shaving the hairiest hearts.

Nonvisualobjects

SETH NEHIL - Furl

2010-08-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

A conceptual prolongation of his previous Flock And Tumble (also on Sonoris), Furl incarnates a somewhat more structured version of Seth Nehil’s accumulation of organic, environmental and instrumental substances. It is difficult to approach this work without thinking of it as a cycle of compositions, for the chains of events appear planned with extreme care. However, the sense of unfathomable ambiguity and doubt about the actual origins of the sounds heard are typical of this artist’s field of research. The feel of imminence and contiguity, the space left to each manifestation for being weighed up and evaluated by the listener’s imagination, and the circumscription of vagueness within the borders of a fractional solidity are all strong points of this album, which gives perspectives on the manipulation of sonic phenomena that are both innovative and familiar – especially for those already acquainted with Nehil’s output.

Five pieces are comprised in the disc, the duration not exceeding the limit of ten minutes. They make the time flow quite fast, given the numerous invitations to scrutiny during their unfolding. Nehil applies restraint and congruity as not many comparable composers are able to; he places a percussive incident right before or after the extended tones of something appearing as spectra of processed ringing metals, mixing the elements with customary attention amidst the tiny granules of a rustling vulnerability. Urban flavours were definitely used – unobtrusively, never overwhelmingly. The inexactitude of certain frail reverberations is perceived as an ideal dressing to happenings that stimulate and confound rather than affirming an explicit point of view.

According to that logic, the most absorbing chapter is “Swarm”, in which human voices (one of the record’s very few recognizable constituents) are utilized in puzzlingly anomalous fashion: short phonemes (say, “Hoo”, “Hey”, “Ha”, arranged in slightly out-of-phase mode) seem to depict a condition of precariousness, hesitation expressed by developed creatures arrived on the scene of existence with huge delay. Like the testing of an echo, in a way, or a hopeless call to check if someone responds even if the eyes aren’t seeing anything in proximity. It’s a strange, fascinating moment that beautifully complements the fleeting mirages of this acoustic microcosm. Those who loved the preceding release will not want to miss this, which keeps showing various unopened doors leading to inexplicable discoveries.

Sonoris

DOUGLAS QUIN - Fathom

2010-08-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

Being quite active in other lines of work (a naturalist providing recordings of environments for movies and documentaries) sound designer Douglas Quin does not publish the fruits of his research with excessive frequency (the last I recall from him was the wonderful Oropendola – we’re talking 1994 or so). But there’s no doubt about the value of the ones he decides to release, such as what’s comprised by this stunning LP.

Fathom was entirely realized by deploying and minimally treating sounds that Quin seized during Polar trips (both North and South) by immersing hydrophones below the water surface. The gathered materials include walruses, whales, seals, orcas, plus various types of moving or breaking ice, all from an underwater perspective. The superiority of the recording detail, in conjunction with a rare case of unblemished vinyl (no pops and clicks, and – curiously enough – the initial groove hiss seems attuned with a whispered pitch itself) make sure that the experience is spectacularly connecting. Not only a direct participation to the actual occurrences is convincingly approximated; we also become aware, little by little, of an impressive kind of cosmic musicality. The wailing walruses heard in the faraway distance while the forefront of the mix is taken by rhythmically percussive clacks amount to a genuine composition; the strange glissandos characterizing a sizeable part of the second side of the album may be animal in their origin, yet resemble a singular synthesizer processed by atypical marine effects.

The capacity to rivet an audience through the painstaking acoustic depiction of mere realities (even if the circumstances in which they were captured are far from easy to repeat) is what separates professionals – better if gifted with a unique sensibility – from those who just stick a mike around and throw any walk in the woods they collect on the market. No need to say where Quin belongs, and the limited edition of 300 copies should suggest what to do. Promptly.

Taiga

ANGUS CARLYLE – Some Memories Of Bamboo

2010-07-31T06:13:00.000-07:00

Since Carlyle’s name was new to yours truly, I went for a Google search and the most satisfactory description was the following: “… Angus’ work explores the intersections between culture, technology and creativity. More specifically, he is interested in how our constructed ‘landscape’ modulates a sense of the relationship between human beings and the environment”. Not a truer word indeed, as this collection of location recordings testifies. Limiting the action to the small suburban district of Kami-Katsura in Kyoto, this man succeeded in presenting an artifact that is not comparable with the current overabundance of field recording-based releases – a dime a dozen lately – as in this case the sounds really tell a story of their own, perfectly portraying the difficulties revealed by each setting and the fickle temporariness of the situations he researched through. Carlyle is very precise, explaining in the enclosed booklet circumstances and utilized materials, adding his reflections about those moments.

That said, it is pretty pointless to merely list the acoustic pictures contained by Some Memories Of Bamboo: there are several that we come across quite regularly, a few less widespread than others and, at times, rather extraordinary. Seaming together natural and urban voices is not a difficult task these days, yet Carlyle accomplished a nice balance of clarity – namely an easy identification of the source – and elusiveness, either derived from a malfunctioning piece of equipment or caused by the long distance from which certain scenes were captured. The repetition of a computerized announcement on a bus appears almost as lyrical as a nocturnal bird; a restaurant’s muzak fragment is so softly restrained that, once framed in this particular milieu, it becomes plain lovely - like a whisper of summer wind.

Pure poetry is found in the record’s finishing episode, an old woman singing an ancient Japanese tune, then chatting amiably in broken English with the fellow soul who happened to record that moment. They talk, among other things, of the beauty of a well-visible moon in an afternoon’s blue sky. Reading in the liners that this frail lady was recovering from a heart attack is touching, her will to keep living and appreciate the sheer magnificence of the universe’s phenomena a teaching for many people who grieve over trivial matters and minor frustrations, unable to see the essence of what’s necessary right in front of them.

Gruenrekorder

GIANCARLO TONIUTTI – qwalsamtimutkwɁitalucʻik

2010-07-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

A reclusive gentleman from a land of cold silences (Friuli, extreme North East of Italy), Giancarlo Toniutti has carved an individual niche amidst the obscurity of the really serious sonic experimentalists over many years of barely reported activity. The man is highly esteemed by those in the know, despite the relative scarcity of releases (besides other things, he's been a collaborator of Andrew Chalk and Jason Lescalleet). This CD, whose name is in Nuxálk language, is subtitled “and now he almost did make himself into hemlock needles, it is said”. Cryptic messages that find their acoustic expression in a kind of music that, in the originator’s words, “deals with the dynamics of perception itself as an element of a sharing experience”.

Originally intended as a sound-field for exhibitions by visual artist Luisa Tomasetig, this piece – which lasts a full hour – was created with an object that existed only for that purpose and today is no more: a “rattle-harp”. Basically, it’s a 145 x 85 drift metal plate, various meters of steel and metal wire with “tintinnabula” attached, plus “accidental” bone and wood. It was played with a “num”, namely the arco of a Mongolian instrument called “morin xuur”. Everything you just read testifies about the type of person Toniutti is: looking for the core essence of the matter and for the actual meaning of a gesture, certainly not content with the first plaything found around. Quite a difference with certain alleged experts of installations, not to mention those who buy expensive toys to pollute silence with records exclusively justified by the money used to release them.

The concrete upshot of the recordings (which were completed between 2001 and 2002) is a gorgeous work that has nothing to envy to the bona fide masters of the genre – say, a Jonathan Coleclough. The organic quality of the soundscape – essentially, a series of deeply resounding bowed drones with click-and-clatter protuberances in the background – requires total openness in its effectively overpowering low-frequency radiation. At the same time this music asks for repetitive reproduction, unafraid to reveal a raw magnetism to anyone able to identify a soul in the place where humongous rumble and ruthless growl rule.

Alluvial

JUAN PEDRO FABRA / JAN HÅFSTRÖM / CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFF – Graf Spee

2010-07-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Despite the obligatory credit to Fabra and Håfström – active participants in the installations of which this music constitutes the sonic component – the sounds in Graf Spee were entirely generated by Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, a bona fide master of the subliminal action of frequencies on the brain. The sources are unspecified – sine waves, presumably – but the authority that these permanent wavering pitches establish on the listener’s will is inescapable and, ultimately, desirable, as one literally becomes addicted to this type of nerve-kneading feeling. For the umpteenth time, though, I wonder why we can’t have a chance of listening to this sort of material via CD. If these propagations were conceived for a walking space, the necessity of flipping a vinyl (also existing in a 50-copy “art” edition with a pictorial insert signed by the artists) tears the mesmerizing enchantment to pieces.

The first part is the most “minimalist”, if you forgive the expression. An incessant throb that mutates according to the volume level and the position you’re in (needless to say: no headphones) is interspersed by an indeterminate “something” that I couldn’t manage to decipher, a fragment of a church choir maybe, or just an electronic invention (in that case, all the more flabbergasting for this reviewer) appearing in a mist and emitting a short enigmatic figuration, a question mark of sorts in a brainwashed gaze. The oscillations perceived when playing this segment loud are extraordinary, almost hurting the rear of the head in selected circumstances. At moderate levels, the effect is not too far from Eliane Radigue’s mind-numbing processes. Please consider the latter a mere reference: Von Hausswolff is Von Hausswolff.

Side two is even more mysterious, if possible. A concise hypnotic section is repeated for 12 times, giving a “rhythm” to our attention which is called out, sustained and abandoned in a minute and a half or so, only to be coaxed back by the exact replica of the previous track, until conclusion. The snippet per se is another fulfilling coalition of pulsating tremors, felt in the body and vibrating through the cranium rather than “heard”. Its plausibility is confirmed by the physical acceptance of it as a natural phenomenon acknowledged on a primary manifestation. After a while, we hope that it never stops, as if suddenly threatened of being deprived of an essential element for survival.

Presto!?

IAN HOLLOWAY / DARREN TATE – The Earth In Play

2010-07-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Two long-time collaborators reunite to satiate our appetite for unsophisticated depth once more, managing to draw out heart-warming consequences in the 35 minutes of The Earth In Play. In spite of the fact that marine recordings were utilized and that images of water adorn the sleeve, the CD is not drenched in liquid sonorities, actually perceptible only in the first of the two nameless tracks, a five-minute prologue of sorts with Tate complementing the aquatic echoes with the strained oscillation of the processed sounds of an accordion – or squeezebox, as he calls it. Perhaps a souvenir left by his erstwhile neighbour, the late Kathleen Vance, heard playing that instrument on a couple of earlier releases by Yorkshire’s purest artist.

Holloway’s classic bottomless sound is at the forefront in the longest track, obviously the album’s nucleus. It’s a simple yet profound piece, initially orbiting around subterranean whispers (presumably obtained by slowing down the pitches emitted by a wooden flute) that go away and reappear, either reciprocated or balanced by a meagre piano, additional – and slightly dissonant - droning constituents (Tate is also credited with guitar) and infrequent percussive touches: a single hit, a reverberating clang, small gestures that nevertheless weigh a lot in the music’s economy. The effect, as I listen in a torrid July afternoon characterized by the boundless mantra of cicadas and the occasional faraway tolling of the local bell tower, is just wonderful. The positive thoughts and the best intentions we used to have - forgotten for years now - return for a short while, giving the mere illusion of new existential openings as a present.

Quiet World / Fungal

CELER - Dwell In Possibility

2010-07-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

There are many titles but no actual subdivisions in the music comprised by the two sides of this LP, whose tracks were recorded by Will and Dani Long at home in 2008. As always, the sounds were obtained via a painstaking work of degeneration and reconfiguration of the timbres coming from normal instruments and machines. However, this time the final result is special as we abandon precincts characterized by worn-out terminologies and genres, approaching instead a condition which is nearer to a singular kind of extrasensory fog than “new ambient”, or whatever name you may want to stick on it.

A slight differentiation exists between the parts. In the first, human remnants seem to be still present: unrecognizably altered voices (perhaps a handful of singers, somewhere), or just traces of someone’s activity appear and perplex, attributing an additional degree of uncertainty to an indescribable combination of factors. Everything revolves around a constant instability of nebulously stifled clusters – occasionally following a synchronization of sorts, elsewhere amassing one over another in indefinite fashion – that get suddenly cut at one point, leaving us quite flummoxed.

The other face of the coin is represented by the relative steadiness informing part of the second side, also defined by the type of vibrational/irrational power (mainly originating from a creatively skilled equalization) which only certain adjacent frequencies can elicit. Sudden increases in the thickness of the sound’s inherent rumble are capable of annihilating the shimmering textures that some of these recordings are endowed with. Ultimately, this mix of situations brings the whole to the same state of sonic ambiguity perceived previously, the amplified influence of the lowest possible susurrus literally clutching the nape of the neck at elevated levels of playback.

In both cases the outcome is impressive, causing a temporary postponement of alternative actions, and the few pops due to the vinyl are not detrimental to a compelling involvement. Dwell In Possibility indisputably belongs among Celer’s paramount releases and its reissue in digital format would be very useful for this writer’s personal needs of infinite-repeat abstraction.

Blackest Rainbow

I8U / CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI / GIL SANSÓN / BRIAN MACKERN AND GABRIEL GALLI - Physical, Absent, Tangible

2010-06-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Excellent materials on Richard Garet’s recently founded label, enclosed in an abundant hour of sounds suitable for concentration and active listening. i8u's "Rarefaction" consists of a humming drone (enhanced by virtually inaudible acute frequencies) whose corporeality and intensity changes with the passage of time. Think an earth loop/ultrasonic activity kind of palette with deeply booming surrounding pulses, imprinting the membranes quite effectively without shock or surprise. Just a nice and increasingly mesmerizing piece made with intelligence and good taste, splendidly functional in this early summer Sunday afternoon replete with chirping sparrows and chattering wrens around the house. On an entirely different note, Christopher Delaurenti first subjects us to the strident ejections and electrically morphing ambiences typifying "Sigil", then contributes to the improvement of our aural awareness in the longer "Nictating" via whooshing loops of whispered post-industrialism that repudiate colour in favour of mechanical pulse and grey mist, until a series of slowly declining electronic arcs and a few subterranean murmurs appear, ending the track on a slightly anguishing hue.

The sonic world of Gil Sansón - expressed in the eight movements of "La Montana Se Ha Ido" - is informed by subtly deployed field recordings and concrete matters rendered scarcely recognizable by the studio treatment; while certain chapters may result a little predictable, a couple of suburban soundscapes and the motionless solidity resulting from opportunely processed layers of environmental manifestations make sure that a degree of respectable acoustic artistry is maintained. Brian Mackern and Gabriel Galli close the show with a composition - "34s56w/Temporal De Santa Rosa" - containing Morse code messages, complex resonances and various kinds of unfathomable intrusion. Alarming atmospheres take shape from a rather static ground, the ensuing music more or less on the level of the best heard on the CD, enriched by a puzzling finale characterized by a vaguely familiar alien melody, transposed to progressively lower registers amidst incessant crackles and discharges.

Contour Editions

HAPTIC - Trebuchet

2010-06-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

The operational area for Haptic – Steven Hess, Adam Sonderberg and Joseph Clayton Mills - is that of mesmeric elusiveness informed by a measure of physicality, causing a feel of anticipation for an event that might materially occur, but we'll never be able to realistically justify. There's no credible method to describe the acoustic phenomena that the trio engenders, if not by trusting adjectives that by now sound stereotyped, when not plain worn out: organic, tactile, laminal, throbbing. All hopeless attempts to seize what’s uncatchable.

Quite often, this sagaciously deployed mix of treated field recordings and unspecified instruments contains sounds that are more similar to the amplified version of certain indiscernible frequencies emitted by the insides of our ear than to the different external examples that one could muster. The layered clusters of harmonics - equally effective in an enticing segment like the introductive “Counterpoise” and in the development of the cryptic scenarios heard in “Three” - enrich sonic topographies mainly expressed through a low-definition mantric inertia, finding a reference point (admittedly vague) in artistic realities such as Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann's late Mirror. On the other hand, the third and longest chapter “Four” is constructed with mildly interfering matters, actual essences (am I hearing concealed firecrackers and bell towers in there, together with the helicopters?) and granular crunch submerged by subsonic tremors, at times calling to mind environments rendered well-known by Asher. Haptic do possess their own nature, though, which is beautiful to ascertain upon repeated spins.

Ultimately, the quality of Trebuchet is directly proportional to its capacity of "freezing" the listener and, along the process, making the brain work in a subliminal way. The awesome muted hums appear as a memento of the decaying aspects of intellect, finely contrasted by the purity of the screaming children appearing in the disc's very last seconds, as to represent the new beginning of a cycle that once was believed to be endless and instead is about to be broken by something ineluctable.

Entr'acte

MATHIEU RUHLMANN – Gravity Controls Our Myths

2010-06-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

A fascinating title introduces the latest outing by Canadian Mathieu Ruhlmann, who’s been active for many years in the sonic fields where fading memories, concrete elements and awareness of the impossibility of changing a life’s destiny meet, often with deeply affecting results. This is an ideal case in point, an impressive work where everything is more or less recognizable but we can’t really put a finger on what’s being listened to. Gravity Controls Our Myths diffused its fumes incessantly this afternoon: unobvious messages directed to the archive of consciousness that keeps discoloured postcards of mournful reminiscences inside, ready to be taken out as a certain scent or a particular reverberation emerge.

This music is like a sizeable rock held in the hands of a kid standing in front of a deep sea. You keep observing it under the sun and it’s a familiar enough object, then – once thrown down in the water – the contour gradually loses definition, rapidly becoming an unevenly blurred vision. The same happens with the sequences of images that Ruhlmann presents: they may be starting from the most normal activity – sounds that you’re sure of knowing, yet still don’t attempt to describe in fear of a poor figure. Human and animal components are definitely predominant - even the sighs emitted by an infant inserted amidst nocturnal faunas and all kinds of manual tampering, environmental and urban echoes and domestic banality functioning as magic powder for foggy evocations (“On The Fabric You Shine, Latern”, “Nest”).

Simple fragments of melody played on a slightly detuned piano are accompanied by a sort of indistinct chorale in “The Sea Of The Spirit”, among the album’s absolute tops, also shaped by additional natural materiality and distantly echoing drones that come and go from the mix. Such a kind of piece is what convinces me that this is one of the finest statements released by this composer, a reminder of individual vulnerability if we ever needed another. It surely deserves a responsive audience, comprising those who can appreciate the value of an open wound.

Semper Florens

RICHARD CHARTIER – A Field For Mixing

2010-05-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

The dedicatees of this pair of gorgeous soundscapes by Richard Chartier are, respectively, Steve Roden and William Basinski. Regarding the latter, the magnificently scary ebb and flow of the indeterminate cavernous resonance characterizing “A Desk For Mixing” is defined by its originator as “the starting point for the collaborative work Untitled 3” between the two. It is an awe-inspiring, utterly splendid track, simplicity and profoundness fused in thought-stopping suspension.

On the contrary, the 47-minute “Fields From Recording 1-8” – the title a gentle irony on the origin of the piece, whose source are processed location echoes born during travels across several continents – is one of those episodes causing us to put a question mark of sorts on Chartier’s deserved reputation as a man working at the margins of audible. In fact, it is not the first time in which this writer experiments with seriously increased volume while listening to his creations, thus enjoying an outcome that is probably at the opposite end of what the artist had initially envisioned.

By giving the proper attention to the original materials and the method with which the composer deploys them, the musicality of contemporary life is exalted, the listener inclined to forget the crudeness of people’s feelings and the heavy consequence of extreme metropolitan lifestyles. Chartier manages to filter the pessimism out, channelling the resounding features of certain environments into masses of frequencies that result both ethereal and concrete, finding a poetry of sorts in what started as a cold manifestation of hypothetical evolution.

Occasionally the focus is shifted on the animal side. A barking dog appears camouflaged amidst the urban din, whereas magnificent exotic birds make their presence fundamental in a section. Still, we’re not in front of a sheer collection of aural snapshots, which may be more or less successful but essentially means nothing. A Field For Mixing is a specialist stimulation of the emotional response that aware individuals feel when confronted with the altered order of familiar factors.

Room40

AIDAN BAKER - Blue Figures

2010-05-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to unearth functional words to portray the sensations that Aidan Baker’s music elicits for over a decade now, but conveying the right metaphors every time has gradually become unfeasible. Suffice to say that - even in the theoretically more “normal” records - there are always places in which everything connects, another step to transcendence the ultimate outcome. This afternoon it happened at the beginning of the third track of this CD – “Untitled Drone” – which is shaped by a permanent, apparently interminable elongation of neighbouring loops engendering a soft contrast of malleable hums that, in turn, determined a condition of utter numbness – a mental void, as they call it - in yours truly. The birds were singing marvellously and the wind was blowing gently, making the branches of the surrounding trees waver. That everlasting sound tied my soul to the most heartbreaking quintessence of a personal universe that might be about to end, at least on its earthly shape.

Thanks to certain types of vibration, though, a man can state of having had the good luck of comprehending that the worst moments of life are still worthy of being savoured. This record – which, for mere historical data, was recorded live in Berlin and Prague in 2009 – is just an additional chance that a musician gifted with a deeper level of perception gives to someone prepared to experience the kind of inside tremor that inevitably leads to the recognition of our absolute ignorance. Once that move is made, the meaning of the word “harmony” is definitely clearer, and a new day begins without the obligation of listening to people talking, because you know where you’re going and, above all, what you need. And that, for sure, is not coming from a human entity.

Basses Frequences

JIM HAYNES - Sever + Severed

2010-05-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Jim Haynes is not an overly prolific record releaser, so when he decides that his material is ready for publication it must mean something. Thanks to Sever we’re the fortunate receivers of a splendid drone-based album (a reductive definition, in fact), but also witnesses of the definitive authentication of a style that has by now become instantly identifiable. The four movements include all the acoustic gifts that we’ve come to expect from this artist. Crackling, rustling, various kinds of concrete tampering, interference, pulse, competent looping, stretched distortion in turn becoming a tantalizing undercurrent highlighting a multitude of indecipherable additional activities. The whole sounds entirely human, yet somewhat alien.

What makes everything work in these consistently engaging amalgamations is Haynes’ ability of blending ingredients into a unique harmonic richness, which is compatible with the receptive listener’s system in utterly unexplainable fashion. Even the most hypothetically disconcerting emissions have a reason to be exactly there where one finds them and not only exist, but influence the addressees. When a scene is suddenly interrupted there’s no time for remaining deluded because, almost immediately, a new factor of psychological gratification intervenes to raise the level of alertness – until you get numb again, surrounded by the customary mantle of sympathetic frequencies. It goes on and on, comfortingly familiar echoes and ominous signals succeeding without exhaustion. It’s magnificent stuff, enriched – in the limited edition reviewed here – by another CD (Severed) whose 17 minutes let us savour some of the original sources with which the composer prepared a new painstaking attempt to dissociate our very selves from the junctures of a cheap reality, once more rewardingly.

Intransitive

POLWECHSEL & JOHN TILBURY - Field

2010-05-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

For this session, materialized in 2007, Polwechsel comprised two percussionists (Burkhard Beins, Martin Brandlmayr), a saxophonist (John Butcher), strings (Werner Dafeldecker on double bass, Michael Moser on cello) and the hypothetically pivotal figure of John Tilbury, who results instead entirely incorporated in the collective’s sound taken as a whole; his personal incidence is, at times, far from conspicuous if ever valuable.

Immediately after the elapsing of the initial seconds of Michael Moser’s “Place / Replace / Represent”, the first in a brace of extensive pieces, we illusorily believe ourselves to be the ultimate addressees of an essential acoustic report. The music, brilliantly recorded by Martin Leitner and Wolfgang Musil, is in fact executed with undiluted severity bordering on the maniacal, the players focusing on distinct gestures like if they were their last acts on earth, the fastidious care with which every strained note reveals primary harmonics and composite overtones at the basis of a growing sense of inside involvement that places the listener’s seat amidst the performing musicians almost factually. It is not implausible, indeed, to perceive the tiniest human component while attempting to decode the messages; the soft whistle of the air exhaled from someone’s nose is clearly identified in a couple of stiller segments, which makes one imagine tight-lipped absorption and shut eyes in pursuit of a barefooted kind of rightness. In the midst of unmitigated tones, coarse scrapes and impulsive droning clusters, an amazing shade appears for only a few precious instants: it’s a “resonance piano”, namely – in Nina Polaschegg’s words – “a recording of single piano chords played via speakers into the strings of a second grand piano”. A hauntingly gripping presence, whose elusiveness seems to signify an insinuation of declining memory, its sonic worth a critical constituent of this stunning work.

Dafeldecker’s title track is both a direct response to the nearly religious atmosphere of the previous piece and a study on abrupt dynamic shifts, mostly typified by the alternance of straightforward motions in semi-silent environments (in turn characterized by a deeper attention towards the noisy features of the instruments, which get amplified and made resonate for long) and huge clouds of abrasive materials, impressively - and unwillingly - recalling David Jackman’s massively rasping snarls at one point, circa five minutes in. In between, various kinds of oscillations, gliding squeals on metal, a meticulous pondering on the placement of the residual events. Each signal is carefully considered, reciprocal nods useful for the artists’ preparation to the next flood of grittiness. Distinctive voices are in truth discernible – listen, for example, to how Butcher manages to let us hear the sax chirruping acutely, when differentiating cumulative notes and sheer clamour becomes more problematic.

And yet, whatever individual accent a pair of specialist ears might recognize, what lingers on following several days of deep scrutiny of this album is the impression of a communal levitation that, as it often happens, finds its origin in the inhospitable land where the importance of “surpassed” concepts such as timbre, pitch and harmony is secondary, and all that's heard is rendered authoritative by an edifying lack of pretension.

HatOLOGY

DIS.PLAYCE – Habitat

2010-05-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

This CD contains 38 minutes extracted from the soundtracks of two cityscape installations: “Ian W.Coel” (Frankfurt) and “Karl Ortmann” (Karlsruhe). I usually approach this kind of record with extreme suspicion, as we’re by now grown used to – and pretty much worn out by – people utilizing field recordings with the purpose of not having a purpose. Take the sounds, place them on record, release it and go on to the next “project”. But Dis.Playce (Maximilian Marcoll and Hannes Seidl) added something that feeds our motivation: composition. The selections comprised by Habitat – whose dedications and intents are explained in detail in the inside leaflet - are interesting in a way that is proportional to the intelligence shown by the assemblers in the logical disposition and crafty merging of the single elements. Although it is a fascinating listen when you raise the playback level, feeling completely encircled by the urban manifestations characterizing both pieces, only through a headset one is able to determine the true value of the compositional endeavor, becoming aware of the many subtleties that the seaming of the different segments reveal. In synthesis, the sonic report functions even when separated by its original raison d’être.

I couldn’t understand if the mesmeric qualities of some of the parts derive from additional processing of the sources, or it’s just a mastery in looping the constituents in such a fashion that the cyclical imageries start generating a slight harmonious aura of their own. But the secret allure of this work lies exactly there, in that – more than sheer environmental gradations – we have the impression of hearing actual music. Entrancingly affecting our psyche, the soundscapes influence the circumstantial reality without the need of recurring to violent impacts (except for a short anarchic section in “Karl Ortmann”) or excessive schizophrenia. All it takes is concentration and wide-open ears, and the reward will soon materialize. Natural or metropolitan, the spirit of these echoes doesn’t matter; what really counts is the gratification that arises from the act of listening. A rare accomplishment in the rapidly expanding universe of self-professing “sound artists”.

Creative Sources

BJ NILSEN – The Invisible City

2010-05-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

A distinguished accumulator of field recordings and correlated studio treatments, BJ Nilsen creates music that fluctuates between ephemeral and material, not failing to maintain a vision of the world’s real traits that, in his soundscapes, never cease to elicit interest. The Invisible City – announced by Jon Wozencroft’s routinely impressive photographic cover artwork – is definitely one of the best exemplars of Nilsen’s sound art, a record that could be filed in different departments of a hypothetical archive without erring. Naturally, drones form the basis of most everything. Halfway through crudeness and mortality - touches of more typical instrumental timbres like Hammond organ and guitars wrapped by a veil of strange frequencies, altered animal emanations and processed fumes – this work hardly reveals its fairly indecipherable facets in settings that might be deemed as “static” only by extremely superficial ears.

The majority of the tracks seem to signify an ascension of sorts, from a near-degradation level towards a high pinnacle that, inexorably, remains just conceivable but is not actually reached. We wait for something serious to happen – an explosion of violence, a shaking of our confidence, a breaking of fossilized convictions – yet are left with a mere potential, the intuition of a bigger (and somewhat ominous) impending occurrence. This excludes any tendency to ambient innocuousness: the way in which the sonic events unfold, revealing luminous interstices amidst a general sense of bleakness, furnishes the listener’s mind with the idea of a scrupulous procedure whose results are evidently magnificent and, at worst, perplexingly attractive.

If a slight disapproval, so to speak, exists then it must be directed to the composer’s will of listing, in each piece, every single source from which the action derives. Sometimes it is better to leave judgments and (mostly) errors to the mind's eye, capable of making apparently unrelated elements combine marvelously in a private merging of textural features and implied meanings. Ingested as such, this release offers lots of captivating perceptions to investigate, substantial gratification coming either from sheer contemplation or relatively uneasy involvement.

Touch

DANIEL MENCHE - Kataract

2010-04-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

Once again, the inexpressible sense of potency received as a gift from Daniel Menche’s experiments affirms its dominance, this time in a 39-minute piece based on recordings of waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest, processed and enhanced in the studio with some measure of electronics.

The compositional configuration in Kataract follows an arc of sorts, an itinerary defined by ominous, devastating and, at the end of the day, spellbinding tones. The initial pulse is accompanied by an intimidating kind of reverberation, akin to the animal perception of an earthquake that’s about to become manifest. It doesn’t take too much for the massive wall of noise to come out and destroy as the liquid sources are corrupted and re-sequenced, thus giving life to varying degrees of dynamic shift and shape modification. We hear feedback, synthetic waves, heavy percussion, powerful wind, aircrafts, even screaming – but, as always, it’s all a figment of our imagination.

What we get for real instead is the quintessence of a positive brutality generated by natural phenomena. The mastery in Menche’s craft transforms this simple yet critical element in a means for entering a state of transcendence typical of his finest creations; so remotely distant from the discounted amassments and alterations recorded on CDR by a gazillion of wannabes. He collects sonic essences by exploiting the intensification and the inside structures of an environmental occurrence, letting the beneficiaries understand the parameters and the regulations that, ultimately, are innate in every type of chaos.

When the incessant ferocity is finally placated and the music directs towards an adequate conclusion (strangely enough, with a sound that recalls an amplified flow gurgling down a drain underlined by impressive subsonics), one feels like having been invulnerable throughout. On the contrary, a superior force just overwhelmed us. This artist is an unsurpassed extractor of harmonic significance from wholesome violence, and we’ve been shouting this for almost 20 years now.

Editions Mego

FRANK ROTHKAMM – Alt

2010-04-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

Two synonyms associated to Rothkamm's name considered as an adjective – frank – are “open” and “transparent”; that’s exactly what the tracks shaping this record feel like. Thanks to a set of algorithms and computers put in motion without secondary human intervention, we benefit from a valuable therapy consisting of uncomplicated – minimal, you may say - electronic designs that, at the same time, are austerely efficient and, in a couple of examples, plainly stunning.

“Gui” utilizes a modified sliding guitar sample as a hooking “theme” in such a tantalizing fashion that Wim Wenders might wish to grab it for the second edition of Paris, Texas; “OOO” makes us wonder instead if a reiteration of overlaid choir scraps is indeed the sound that will be heard after our vanishing. Perhaps the main aspect to be chewed over is the music's overall tendency to reveal facets that are both positively “present-day” and hinting to the past. More than “ambient”, in fact, one tends to think about certain episodes as some sort of slowed-down development of constructions grown from selected branches of the German cosmic era. The impeccable linearity and the untainted geometry of these structures are definitely relatable to that area of exploration.

This notwithstanding, a clear reference to the typically uncompromising traits of Rothkamm's work is also detectable. Creativity that doesn't need excess to affirm its value, only the sureness and the deep conviction that an idea, or even a single fragment, is sufficient for the instigation of an important artistic signal if that lone element is given the proper light and angles. There lie the rewarding aspects of Alt, sounds that enhance the positive features perceived by the mind during a listening session, stimulating a dynamic response that goes well beyond the mere “I appreciate it/I don't” feedback.

Baskaru

PETER WRIGHT – An Angel Fell Where The Kestrels Hover

2010-04-10T11:42:00.000-07:00

For starters, can anybody find a better title? Difficult, I’d say. Peter Wright tickles once again the drowsy end of consciousness, for the occasion excluding barbed-wire distortion to cuddle the responsive audience with his trademark protracted reverberations, jangling overlays (courtesy of those celebrated 12 strings) and, in general, overstretched hallucinations. This music constantly hides – good or bad things, it doesn’t matter – thus forcing that moment’s mental position to shift. We decide that something must be done, because what’s currently happening is not leading us anywhere.

So, following a short gentle intro (“Fell Asleep Here”), you let the entrancement of “Sunstroke” take command and starts daydreaming about some sort of impalpable truth that might be expecting behind the corner, a place where everything works as planned and you’re not supposed to struggle for what should be due – "rights", they used to call them. In “Lavender Buzz” blackbirds sing, insects do what the track’s name says and there’s seemingly nothing else to care for, regardless of the urban souvenirs utilized by Wright, a memento of the inevitability of a confrontation with the actual world. “River Lea Time Lapse” introduces the serious droning, the kind of inward-looking humming of frequencies that resemble a low-key choir, gently embraced by additional parts imbued in tremolo and echo. Wonderful piece: a deadpan facade that nevertheless shines, its composed charm utterly splendid.

“London Is Drowning…” is slightly more anguishing, offering a mournful stasis as the soil in which the roots of an implicit pessimism are nourished by looping liquids and vague remembrances of a ringing timbre. The castle of resonance generated by this superimposition of sorrow and luminescence features a magnificent room of mirrors: feeling entirely misplaced becomes really easy, yet painlessness affirms itself after the initial melancholy. “…And I Live By The River” – an extension of the previous track (and a reference to Clash?) – sees the currents flow into a different, but still motionless tonality, the unmistakable gradations of recollection an inestimable aid in the battle against the inexplicability of certain internal commotions. “Kestrels” ends the movie in style, puncturing the heart with glowing beams and moaning lows, sealing the experience with a stamp of uncertainty characterized by a moderate conflict between the upper partials.

Despite the endless repeats and the unremitting analysis people may want to subject it to, An Angel Fell Where The Kestrels Hover is a rather unexplainable work, a statement open to thousands of diverse interpretations, mostly based on individual acuity. The generative methods and the inherent moods that brought to the creation of this umpteenth resplendent record are discussed by the composer on this interview with yours truly. Anyhow, words ring hollow when the sound is this profound, and this solitary man from New Zealand is definitely among the deepest artists around today.

Spekk

DRAPE – Dream Words

2010-04-08T22:21:00.000-07:00

Ryan Gracey and Spencer Williams are Drape. Their work – as easily deduced from titles like “Cosmic Juices” and “Thin Air” – deals with slowed-down breathing, ethereal matters, blurred colours. In a word, what was once called “space music”. And, of course, it is mostly based on synthetic waves, celestial samples, repetitive ebb and flow and – needless to say - drones, pushing the sonority to occasionally well-affirmed consonance (“Goldenmouth”) and, in the finest examples, wrapping it with a blanket of unplumbed secrecy (“The Pillar And The Post”). So you’d expect your purple prose peddler to launch his customary tirade against the overpopulation of this sector of electronica. Not this time, no.

There’s something – and I still have to understand what exactly is – that makes me appreciate this record quite a bit. It is indeed a very serene release, well structured designs succeeding without anxiety, each detail in its correct place; and, for good measure, a degree of legitimate authenticity is perceived. Hints to pages from the Eno book, and also from the golden era of people such as Robert Rich and Steve Roach are not missing, yet you can almost touch the concentration and the genuine dedication with which Gracey and Williams painted the hues and chose the combinations in the studio. One detects the hours of labour behind Dream Words and – either you like the final result or not, and this writer does value the effort for the large part – this is already a valid reason for respecting the men who created it. Which, given the unproblematic access to this zone for practically everybody, equals a praiseworthy achievement. Honesty and acceptation of one’s limits will always be more precious than bogus saintliness shrouded by supposedly inscrutable, entirely mono-dimensional stasis.

Gears Of Sand

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS – The Place We Began

2010-04-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

“…To return to the place we began and know it for the first time…” is both a quote from T.S. Eliot and the root of this enthralling offer by John Luther Adams. A couple of summers ago the composer found a number of boxes full of previously utilized reel-to-reel tapes, dating from the early 70s; he decided then of reassessing the material in order to create “new soundscapes from the fragment of my past”. You may assume a theory similar to that which brought William Basinski to the generation of the majestically regretful Disintegration Loops. Yet this record does not evoke anything analogous, in that these newly generated pieces – though containing echoes recalling something that’s achingly missing – present an alternance of nebulousness and more visible details (such as in “In The Rain”, characterized by partially intelligible field recordings) which, after opportune treatments and instrumental additions in the studio, delineate the music with a completely original morphology. The final results are dyed with the type of tonal paleness that - once connected with an emotional state - elicits dejection and faith at the same moment.

Neither Adams specifies the sources that were used, nor he lists the instruments chosen for their enhancement. All we’re left with is a sonically amorphous plan, its development largely articulated in successive aural sunsets and repeated chiaroscuro junctions achieved via a superior management of the frequency spectrum, making the most of the originator’s ability in fusing heart-piercingly subdued tones and spectacular subsonic activity. This generates an impressive display of different types of pseudo-stasis, in which fundamentally inert dynamics get nourishment from the inside, as it happens with the minor undercurrents that are distinctly felt between the toes even when bathing in the calmest waters. The gradations discerned in the title track and in the initial “In A Room” summon up ghosts of bowed vibraphones and rubbed glass, whereas in the masterpiece “At The Still Point” the speechlessness caused by a fantastic reiterative evanescence juxtaposed with other colours of this misleading palette (possibly including piano, but you’re never sure) compares this chapter’s inward-looking temperament to the finest pages of perceptive minimalism, the absence of recurring geometries notwithstanding.

A wonderfully understated album by an equally elusive artist, who leaves the essence of sound doing all the speaking. Like in the best dreams, which inevitably fail to materialize.

Cold Blue

DALE LLOYD – Akasha_For Record

2010-04-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

After releasing music by a number of intriguing artists on his own And/OAR imprint, Dale Lloyd comes back as a composer with this limited edition on picture disc, and he does it with a vengeance. Hard as one tries, classifying this work is awfully problematical. Maybe these sounds were born to stimulate the less comforting sensations residing in our head and pierce a deceptive idea of protection through an uninterrupted generation of disbelief. These uncertainties involve both the utilized sources and ourselves, observed in the cosmically irrelevant role of discreditable entities that should remain speechless for ages before even trying to utter a word about what the awareness of a pure phenomenon really means.

In essence, Akasha_For Record is a series of sonic pictures whose incidence on the close environment’s resonance is sinisterly effective, and the equivalent can be told of its psychological consequence. Lloyd focuses on a restricted quantity of constituents to develop soundscapes that amplify the need of personal seclusion. The responsive listeners are going to face perplexing echoes and concrete-yet-mysterious compounds that may sound recognizable for a moment. Still, when they’ll try to detect the exact cause of an illusory fulfillment (or, more properly, of the subsequent distress), regret will be awaiting behind the corner. The nearly indistinguishable features of several of these infected vistas – halfway through metropolitan undertones and Thomas Köner’s exploration of forlornness – materialize for a while; afterwards, they either vanish completely or morph into some sort of ill-fated, unhealthy luminescence. A mere figment of the imagination, symbolizing the unfeasibility of determining what is the specific factor that, at the same juncture, cuddles solitude and scares like an ominously silent threat.

The contriver writes that the vinyl constitutes a primary component in the procedure, accumulating “dust, pops, crackles etcetera over time”. My copy doesn’t seem to cooperate in that sense, except perhaps for the incomparable needle-in-groove low rustle at the beginning and end of each side. But what I’m convinced of is that we are indeed dust, an insignificant graffiti waiting to be sandblasted off the existence's wall by the pressure of unconcern. This splendid album is a perfect reminder of the man’s miserable condition of deluded omadhaun, and an anticipation of the kind of acoustic intuition that will probably be met when, at long last, the process of human failure on this planet has reached its ultimate stage.

Elevator Bath

PAUL BRADLEY / COLIN POTTER – The Simple Plan + Accretion

2010-03-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

Abrupt changes in life determine a lot. Subsequent occurrences go well enough, or the chosen course leads to disaster; we’ll never know in advance. But after a page is turned, there’s usually no way back and the truth must be accepted as it is. Both Paul Bradley and Colin Potter recorded this music under the influence of “significant new chapters” in their personal existence, deciding to leave the results of the studio procedures virtually untouched and with just a minimal intervention of the computer, utilized only to record and arrange the sounds.

Reality may indeed change, although when people like Bradley and Potter are involved you instantly identify the consequence in terms of sound. It’s spelled “magnetic drones”. In this field the pair belongs to the upper echelon, regardless of the instruments used (in this occasion, synthesizers and guitars processed by “a selection of new and classic pedals”). The Simple Plan constitutes the original root, five tracks whose mood – always confined within the borders of virtual stillness – ranges from extremely harmonious to reasonably contaminated, in either case filling the environment with a blend of resonant vibration and mild unease. The 135-copy special edition reviewed here, now sold out, comprises a bonus disc – Accretion – containing three beauties born from the reworking of the basic material yet sounding even more intense, to the point that this writer maintains a slight preference for the latter CD (though the sonic essence is exactly the same).

The electronic cloud that cuddles our nerves in everlasting stasis (repeat mode is obviously suggested) symbolizes the ideal practice for forgetting – at least momentarily – about any aching that might be trying to attack your determination in remaining balanced despite eventual negative circumstances. It is also a symbol of the fact that certain things remain unaltered, as one can still count on the earnestness of elected sculptors of hypnosis when all that’s needed is a couple of hours of mental peacefulness. Words aren’t contemplated when the explanations are given by morphing layers of waggling pulses, and this work offers plenty of that.

ICR

JIM O’ROURKE – The Visitor

2010-02-28T02:20:00.000-08:00

A notorious omnivorous listener, Jim O’Rourke makes us ponder at some logically riveting compositional ideas, his instantly identifiable individuality blooming from genuine (or just suspected) musical influences. Technical facility is also an essential issue in The Visitor, an album in which he handles all instruments, thus confirming the remarkable eclecticism that made him famous. The advice we’re given is “play on loudspeakers, loud”, and one immediately comprehends that this is the condition in which the principal’s most stirring harmonic wisdom can shine. The music, comprised by a single 38 minute track, is in fact improved by superior orchestral hues and unobtrusive finesse that only skilled ears will discern, such as the protracted hovering of unusually suggestive pregnant frequencies after a particular chord or superimposition. Details like these, beyond the sheer quality of the composition, are the features that alone render the CD worthy of repeated examination.

The protagonist’s acoustic guitar often appears as the nub around which lots of incidences revolve, yet it’s tremendously fascinating to hear how the Chicagoan develops atypical resonances through the adjacent layering of different instrumental complexions and pigmentations, managing to let them sound as a natural occurrence. O’Rourke’s itineraries denote a world of reflective observation, at times underscored by the secluded melancholy of a piano or by the all-American echoes of steel guitars and banjos. A magnificent interlude about 17 minutes in flows directly into a Reichian embroidery replete with interlocking patterns and arpeggios, an enticing illustration of the man’s command of a huge amount of idioms. The sense of solitude expressed by certain openings is plain touching: the mournful tranquillity of the passage starting at circa 28’ is striking, an underlying concoction of strummed strings and soft-spoken contrasts that, born in slight discordance, might lead a sensitive addressee to a state of lucid bliss.

A few Bacharach reminiscences here, a couple of Steve Tibbetts-meet-Pink Floyd bucolic gradations there; O’Rourke is always willing to show a way in, even to those who tend to associate rather than acknowledging uniqueness. These tokens are glimpses from an achingly irretrievable past, not second-hand postcards. They do not detract from, but instead enrich a record that improves its magnitude with each spin, quiet nature and total unpretentiousness winning upon a stonehearted pessimism.

Call it an unforthcoming classic.

Drag City

CHAS SMITH – Nakadai

2010-02-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Originally released as a vinyl LP on Arc Light in 1987, Nakadai's reissue came out in 2008 with the addition of two bonus tracks, but was received only recently in this house. As I’m writing, it’s spinning for the fourth time in 12 hours - and my heart and brain are spiraling, too. Chas Smith is among the mavericks who have managed to create a personal niche, his work with pedal steel, self-built instruments and sonic sculptures legendary. He does not saturate the market with recordings: each record symbolizes a wonderfully uncommon daydream through which one might put a finger on that part of the inner nature that suggests the correct behavior when the world proposes the exact opposite. A music of solitude, of utter awareness, a soundtrack for the struggle of the few sensitive humans remained - those we desperately look for, unsuccessfully - against daily mediocrity. Sounds that fuel the necessity of what Pauline Oliveros would define as “deep listening”.

Either via superimposed guitars or with the help of other musicians on tuned percussion (in this case Bob Fernandez, John Fitzgerald, M.B. Gordy and Theresa Knight) Smith treats the listener with majestic swells of indefinitely echoing harmonies, adjacent chords that flutter and waver in completely suspended, continuously morphing tonalities. Clouds of intangible pitches gradually extend their effect on the surrounding environment, then make a way into the most invulnerable resistances of our individual psychophysical equipment. They shift in the air and move us within, putting in touch with a hypothetically clearer reality that we still hope to reach sometimes. Once the music’s over, though, that certainty returns in the obscure realms of nonexistence, and we’re unable to recollect ourselves for a while.

Despite the total difference of the initial sources, these pieces frequently recall the discerning complexity of Roland Kayn’s breathtaking visions, bringing back that state of grief-stricken realization of something inaccessible that can just be intuited and wished for. A sort of prelude for the phase that’s going to come after life, when those who really understood – people who teach by remaining in silence, talk with a hint of the eyes and make their essence resound without the need of bombast - will be turned into another kind of energy, hopefully similar to the untainted vibrations elicited by Smith’s marvelous creations.

Cold Blue

TORSTEN PAPENHEIM – Some Of The Things We Could Be

2010-01-31T11:43:00.000-08:00

A typical Sunday afternoon of an inclement January. It’s cold, last night it snowed; now it has melted, the sunrays struggling to filter through the clouds. Ever since this reviewer was a young kid, these end-of-the-weekend afternoons – especially when associated to certain albums - never fail to introduce a feel of inescapable, indefinable sadness, a cross between missing something gone forever and the anguish deriving from the prospect of a school test – or similar adolescent “threats” – on Monday morning. What does this have to do with this CD? I couldn’t really say, but the acoustic echoes and the influential moods evoked by this multi-faceted gathering by Torsten Papenheim are permeated by the same kind of mild dejection. It’s music that doesn’t affirm; it rather whispers and suggests. Images, ideas, sensations, fragments from other people’s lives or from our past, the latter’s memories becoming painful to recall as we get older. All clearly visible, sometimes a little disconnected, elsewhere immediately recognizable by the mechanisms of recollection.

The work’s fragmentariness depends on its conceptual nature. Besides the composer, the involved performers are Dave Bennett, Christian Biegai, Christian Marien, Derek Shirley, Michael Thieke, Gerhard Uebele, Merle Bennett, Axel Haller, Matthias Müller, Roland Spieth, Clayton Thomas and Ute Völker. The orchestration features almost every type of instrumental voice - brass and reeds, keyboards, percussion, guitar, bass, plus an accordion and a banjo. The participants were asked to chip in separately, without actually knowing what was occurring on a compositional level. To this accrual of contributions by single musicians or small groups, Papenheim and Dave Bennett added their subsequent manipulations in the studio, defining the outcome with a mixture of semi-coherence and concrete interference (radio and field recordings, peculiarly deviating buzzes and hums) that perfectly frames the volatility of what’s unclassifiable.

Sloped reed melodies and gently discordant arpeggios are masked as a romantic soundtrack to a lovely promenade along the shores of sonic contamination. Still, the music does not take any definite side. There’s a bit of everything: skewed jazz, minimal repetition, improvisation, pianistic melancholy, RIO hues (in particular, I was recalled of Aqsak Maboul in various instants), even a whiff of Biota. The final “All The Songs You Sing” resembles a lo-fi transformation of a morsel of classic into a Charlemagne Palestine-like drone, barely rippled by a soft drumming activity. You may not exclaim “Papenheim” on a first listen, but right after the second one the record’s unique temperament is identifiable. Successive spins just add to this weird sense of gratification imbued with dolefulness.

The advice is leaving the door of consciousness ajar for a series of vague remembrances: among the misty vistas of this tiny world, components that fit your emotional response are probably going to be found somewhere. Hesitant smiles, deep sighs and intelligent restraint. That’s what this release is all about.

Schraum

COR FUHLER / JIM O’ROURKE – F-O’R

2010-01-30T12:21:00.000-08:00

Recorded in 2000 at Chicago’s Empty Bottle Festival, not only this CDR constitutes an oddity for O’Rourke zealots but it is also a very appealing chapter of remarkably fresh-sounding instantaneous interaction – ten years ago, remember. That said, it’s a shame that F-O’R can’t be brought to a wider attention, or at least beyond the extremely limited number of copies typical of each Conundrom release, as it surely contains some of the best improvised substance heard from both artists.

Fuhler is active on piano, EMS Putney, crackle box and keyolin. O’Rourke plays instead organ, EMS Synthi A, computer and effects. The first part of the set sees the couple in “nonfigurative exploration” mode, never cramped within a scheme or limited by a definite consecutiveness of events. Acoustic shades and noise, mixed with expertise and sense of humour; the insides of the piano and the dirtiest kind of processing seem to work wonders throughout. The central section is frequently informed by the keyolin’s personality, the music occasionally resembling a blend of East-Asian reminiscence and unconstitutional disruption of genres (got to dig those splintered drum’n’bass patterns appearing along dissonant whirlwinds of strings).

After more un-muzzled sputtering turpitude the whole calms down consistently, as a (computerized? eBowed?) long-string Prana start warming the ears amidst additional subdued tampering, the scene instantly becoming one of unclouded concentration underlined by the usual array of tiny interferences. The bizarre resonances elicited by the duo through looped arpeggios and suggestive synthetic oscillations – about 14 minutes into the second track - demarcate my favourite moment of the disc. Whimsicality is the keyword, though, and following a few spurts of plain-spoken chordal fragments surrounded by strange bleeping codes and unremorseful organ ejections, the record ends with poignant particles typified by the appearance of basic essences that would end characterizing O’Rourke’s I’m Happy, And I’m Singing, And A 1,2,3,4. Still, threatening roars keep lurking in the background until conclusion.

(Conundrom, via ErstDist)

CAROL ROBINSON – Billows

2010-01-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

After having listened to combinations of frequencies that instantly make sense, connecting with a different order of priorities without apparently altering what was already working, the urge of telling about the experience to someone who can understand becomes stronger. Such is the case of Billows, the debut CD as a composer of clarinettist Carol Robinson, until now principally present in this reviewer’s memory as a regular performer of Phill Niblock’s scores. Let’s be perfectly clear from the start: this album is an instant addition to the “get-a-copy-soon” list, in the hope that it is just the beginning of a path that looks pre-established, with a definite aim.

Robinson is deeply linked with the conceptions of Giacinto Scelsi, who offered a veritable authentication of her thinking of music (“an opening toward something beyond our reality”). However, among the influences declared by this Paris-based American artist, the winds of South Dakota - where she lived as a young girl - represent the most important. Indeed Billows resonates splendidly exactly for its correspondence to the “composite minimalism” of this natural phenomenon. Gently intertwining, caressing breezes on the skin while standing in contemplation under a warm sun, no urban or human presence, only the listener and the cosmos at large. This is what a sensitive subject will probably wish when inhaling this music, possibly alone, in full quietness. Entirely linear or slightly gliding, these overtone-fuelled whispers are thoroughly marvellous, an important message to the people who keep blathering around “vibration”, absolutely unaware of the word’s actual implications.

In technical terms – which almost equals swearing, given the purity of the resulting sounds – Robinson utilized exclusively clarinets (precisely, basset horn or birbyne) smoothly enhanced by a Max/MSP live electronic system. The outcome’s unpretentiousness teaches a lesson to those musicians who allow the computer to do everything, thus killing the potential spiritual traits of a work. Despite the absence of immediately recognizable clarinet pitches – except perhaps for the initial part of “The Lingering”, where the instrument’s real voice is clearly audible – the sonic occurrences are acknowledged as innate, akin to something we were raised to - and still necessary. One couldn’t really match this up to the aforementioned Niblock, or Alvin Lucier, in spite of the typical adjacent-tone quivering produced by some of these pieces. Robinson’s approach is not that manifest: it’s less physical, seemingly informed by meditation and reminiscence and, in that logic, maybe closer to the essence of Eliane Radigue’s concentrated transcendence. This, ultimately, renders the whole effective in an utterly new way. And this, too, is what we call an individual style, not the least because the tracks are very short in comparison to the lengthy distances privileged by the others. Also, that this woman has waited so long for deciding to release her own material is testimony to a rare wisdom.

Either via speakers (recommended - and in “repeat” mode, of course) or headphones, the influence of Billows on my psychophysical organization has been incredible in barely three days of listening. The importance of this kind of event in a receptive person’s life can’t be stressed enough. Near silence, and even further. It is all extraordinarily beautiful, an inherent gratitude perceived as the heartbeat frequency decreases.

Plush

HAPSBURG BRAGANZA - Hatchling

2009-12-29T12:30:00.000-08:00

Under the curious moniker hides Phil Begg from Newcastle (a positive sign for starters - does the name :zoviet*france: ring any bell?). Especially known as a creative improviser in the Belgian avant-garde circles, this artist works with an array of processors, microphones and instruments, concocting fascinating sequences of natural-sounding events and seaming the resulting imagery with a compositional maturity that betrays his young age.

We could say that Hatchling features three different stages. In the first part, all one hears is a series of intertwining elements, feeble discharges and toneless secretions superimposed in moderate dynamic alteration. Nothing extraordinarily striking per se, but it’s how these factors are combined that lights a bulb. In fact, these malnourished constituents are deployed very considerately, propagating effortlessly around the listener’s head, totally avoiding that feeling of stereotyped field recording that kills many good intentions in this musical area.

The real mesmeric effects start materializing circa fifteen minutes in. And it happens – you won’t believe it – with water, Hapsburg Braganza having managed to generate something gorgeous with the most worn out kind of environmental accent. It begins with an unadulterated wash, presumably captured at the Crummock Water shore, as Begg indicates in the sleeve notes. Subsequently, the flux grows in intensity until it becomes an actual waterfall, the consequence an extremely effective relaxing therapy, principally when listened via headphones.

From that point on, straight sailing to logical emptiness: a marvelous static drone, perhaps obtained by layering an Indian Harmonium with bowed piano and guitar strings (checking the instrumentation right now) rises from the streams to take full possession of our entire system. The body reaches a state of complete respite, the mind is – as always – ready to be transported in places exclusively accessible to those able to decode a peculiar jargon, where words are a waste of time and vibration is the only desire. The conclusive moments are characterized by the remote, yet still reassuring presence of blackbirds, pigeons and ducks, definitely useful for a gentle awakening from this beneficial analytical inertia.

Forty minutes have passed without us realizing, with just a modicum of ecological and instrumental voices. Delivered from unconstructive thoughts, we set ourselves for another day amidst human vulgarity. When that sort of heart-drying routine tries to molest your internal quietude, give a spin to this beautiful CD.

Idiosyncratics

LÉOS ATOR – 3 Requiems Rouges

2009-12-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

A recent email by French sound-poet Léos Ator (née Lionel Stora) courteously invited this scribe to give news about the reaction to this CDR, a 30-copy limited edition sent by the composer a few months prior that was lying amidst piles of other records, waiting for review. Uncharacteristically, this polite request ignited a desire to listen to the disc immediately: an act that brought valuable spiritual consequences and the acquaintance with a seriously talented artist.

Ator recorded the music by using the voice and what he calls “pure data programming”, his work, quoting from the press blurb, “freely inspired by medieval Requiem as its main purpose was to invite listeners to meditate on life while fading away”. Whereas the central episode appears as nothing more than an interesting concurrence of electronic pitches generating an uncanny foreign harmony, completely hiding the vocal qualities behind a constantly changing mass of acute sounds, the final piece is almost bloodcurdling, in some measure recalling early Lustmord: a single deep growl counterpointed by vacillating lines, periodic dissonant clusters effectively altering the droning temperament. A strong affirmation indeed.

But the real awe comes from the initial track, entirely constructed on a slowly mounting massive moan that threw me in a state of complete entrancement since the very beginning. This bottomless low-frequency lamentation evolves through semi-static shifts – think a cross of Mirror, Ligeti and a squad of bombers in flight as heard from long distance - complemented by additional waveforms which, peculiarly, resemble a somewhat discordant background of wooden flutes. The whole is augmented by indistinct appearances of soprano-like interferences after the first half. No words can explain the influence, the absolutely stunning effect of this sonic matter on the psyche.

3 Requiems Rouges needs a room to resound just as a human body necessitates oxygen to survive. Even if this will remain the one time in which I decided to spin a CD upon its creator’s pushing, it was the right thing to do. Please welcome Mr. Ator among the personalities to keep an attentive eye on, and try to secure an exemplar of this item, if only for the fantastic opening chapter. Alternatively, you can download the title at the label's website.

Bourbaki

AIDAN BAKER - Dry

2009-12-24T05:54:00.000-08:00

What can a sonic crafter who became famous for the use of looped guitars do, if dispossessed of effects and delays? The answer lies in the 47 minutes of Dry, which was entirely played on an unprocessed electric guitar, nine tracks linked together as in a single piece.

Difficult, for the non-owners of an instinctive musicality, to even think of appearing completely exposed and unaided, attempting to produce appealing music without resorting to tricks. It is there that the separation between contenders and pretenders takes place. Baker is well acquainted with the core essence of the instrument: the fact that this record sounds related, in a unique way, to one of the countless lucid dreams he gifted us with in the past is testimony to his immutable sense of personal synchronization, which transits across many lands – static recollection, tranquil arpeggio, unanticipated crackle. Rather stunning, especially considering the bareness of the utilized means.

The Canadian’s ability is also established by the customary richness of those layers, reiterative figurations and chiming chords that, once superimposed, cause sympathetic resonance in large quantity. Not that there’s only cuteness: on the contrary, noisy particles of unclear activity, thumping hits and semi-strums – and, just maybe, some manual preparation - characterize the most surprising parts of the disc. But when Baker brings the whole to a conclusion by utilizing a mechanism of heartrending pseudo-vocal glissandos – ending the trip with the highest percentage of evocation – we’re finally able to release our breath, the deep sigh that typically follows an intense listening experience. “Yes, it’s still him” is the thought that comes to mind during the silent instants following the closing stages.

A touch of class that resounds magically, a highly recommended work – again – by a true poet of reminiscent reverberation.

Install

MIKA VAINIO - Aíneen Musta Puhelin

2009-11-27T01:46:00.000-08:00

The English title is Black Telephone Of Matter, which is probably less fascinating – and perhaps even more incomprehensible - than its Finnish translation. But - language matters aside - this album by Vainio, the fourth at his name on Touch, gives us several reasons for feeling musically rewarded, and many others to remain wholly mystified and at a loss for words in the unproductive attempt to describe sounds that are impenetrable, often incredibly cold, yet attuned with the logic of solitary contemplation (bordering on inaccessible sufferance) that is becoming rather typical of the era in which the world seems to shut doors to whoever stands outside the borders of mass stupidity.

In spite of the countless silences that the record presents the most frequent response is a sense of oppressing adversity, the kind of thoughts that usually people try to swat away through an unrealistic vision of eventual future betterments that, in truth, are not likely to appear anytime soon. We’re left alone with sudden appearances of computerized excretions whose equalization is at times irritant, barely audible exudations introducing waste materials replete with electrostatic remnants and misshapen atmospheres from unknown places – could be a waterfall or an anechoic chamber, the result remains a total despoliation of the original tissue of a sound source.

When Vainio decides that low frequencies and entrancement must become one and the same, he delivers authoritatively: tracks such as “Hautaa Hevosen Pää” (dedicated to John Duncan) and the final “Hengityttajä”, both utilizing elements of physical reality amidst impressive landscapes of forlorn burdensomeness, place this disc in the “spin again before long” list.

Next time we’ll think about smiling.

Touch

GÜNTER MÜLLER – Cym Bowl

2009-11-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

Finding brain-teasing complications in Günter Müller’s sonic conceptions is a hard task, maybe impossible. Yet, having started as a “regular” percussionist, he’s made the most of an ever-noticeable sensitiveness in the treatment of both the percussive arsenal and the emissions coming from other sources (he was probably the first to utilize an iPod as a generator), thus giving birth to an innovative brand of intensely affecting electronic music, often spiced with EAI components. The Swiss composer is really one of a kind, and the fact that we almost instantly recognize those characters as soon as his records are spun is testimony to the status reached.

As the title implies, this album was entirely realized with cymbals and a singing bowl, the initial three tracks and the last respectively informed by those instruments. The original sounds are rendered nearly unrecognizable after being subjected to a skilful studio therapy, which makes sure that all which is caught by the listener consists of a series of hypnotizing impulses, an imposing throbbing whose diffusion is enhanced by admirably unusual overtones. The unclear definition of the structure and the hazy features of these meticulous juxtapositions define any attempt to trace a profile of the compositional design as meaningless: we just receive the mass of sound as perceived, fully satisfied with its intoxicating permanence and incontestable beauty. A natural phenomenon to behold more than a simple musical piece.

“Third Cym” is perhaps the most absorbing track on offer in terms of emotional content, containing the ideal doses of everything: pulse, luminescence, reiteration, capacity of progressive entrancement. But it’s the final “Bowl” that results as an extraordinarily congenial deviation from the “norm”, a vacillating harmony possessing a sort of vocal quality transforming it in a cryptic choral strain amidst bodiless echoes of lastingness, ending in absolute mystery following a shift towards the realms of incomprehensible droning, the whole underlined by various kinds of subterranean heterogeneity. A step in a different direction for Müller which we’d love to see deepened in the future, a disquietingly poignant episode pushing an already gratifying release into the ranks of excellence.

That the pronunciation of the record’s name equals “symbol” is only a thought crossing my mind; it remains to be seen what the main designer is referring to, if that’s not a mere coincidence.

Mikroton

STOP PRESS. Just in from Günter Müller: (...) cym_bowl = symbol was clear for me as soon as I knew that I would use the bowl for a cd. There you go!

JOHN DUNCAN – Live Brussels

2009-10-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

Recorded at Argos VZW Ways Of Hearing Festival on October 18, 2007, this performance comes in an extremely limited edition CD (50 copies autographed by the composer). As the label’s name implies, John Duncan’s ideas leave us asking questions rather than finding answers, this mysterious set being no exception.

The opening drone – a wonderfully wavering pulsation shifting in the stereo field with evident effects on the nerves – is suddenly cut short by a discharge of disposable sonic materials, abruptly interrupting the state of illusion created in the initial segment. From then on, the audibility level diminishes quite a bit and one is forced to turn the volume way up – provided that you’re not wearing headphones, of course – in order to presume (not really understanding) what’s going on.

At first, intangible appearances – the sound similar to a twister blowing through a hundred bottlenecks - maintain the atmosphere relatively static, although disturbed at last by a measure of electronic interference. This section works well also by mixing it with the sounds coming from the outside, but that’s not the point. What matters is the customary sense of somewhat anxious awareness of an implied deeper process, ever less than predictable in its cross-pollination of human expression and mechanical amorphousness. The muffled helicopter-like throb appearing after approximately 15 minutes introduces an even more impenetrable setting during which Duncan’s shortwave mastery shines of its very radiance, additional fragments of brain-stimulating frequencies mixed with urban echoes and a few whispered words to perplex the listener once again.

Remote explosions, contaminated air, biotic resemblances enhanced by processed vocal phonemes, humming mantras picturing a hardly bearable solitude, distant sirens, ill minds, suffering people, a desperate search for a solution amidst ominous reverberations highlighting the limitations of mankind. Duncan is neither a teacher nor a healer - or maybe he is both? - yet his performances always manage to elicit serious distress and important indications - which is what real art is all about.

Allquestions

MARINOS KOUTSOMICHALIS – Anasiseipsychos

2009-10-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

A full hour of sine waves, the result of “late-night improvisations” at home by this knob-twiddling Greek man who knows what he’s doing. Let’s make it clear right now: Anasiseipsychos is a great CD, one of those releases made to be played endlessly, day in day out. For this writer sinusoidal tones represent something nearing cosmic perfection, therefore how could anybody expect a “critical” analysis of what’s just a product of interweaving purities?

OK, here we go, get a cheap description: permanent lines, slowly arching frequencies, decaying ellipses, intertwining glissandos. Wait a minute, I hear voices shouting, everybody can do this. No, sir: a person must possess a special kind of ear to set this type of resonance into a structure definable as “music”, and it looks to me that Koutsomichalis is up to the task.

Nothing here is designable as “unprecedented”, but these creations are peacefully beautiful in their crystalline minimalism. Not to mention all those deceptive geometric allusions that inquisitive ears find tangentially, or in some corner, or at the vertex of a virtual triangle…more or less everywhere. And what about the customary natural equalizations deriving from the different inclination of the head, and the non-existent pulses that an efficient cerebrum generates? Pure illusion, like everything that’s being told to keep believers docile and ignorant, as Frank Zappa would have it, until “enlightenment”.

Sound does not claim to heal people; on the contrary, it kills those who are talking nonsense around it, little by little. So be careful: what is functional for complex intelligences is instead lethal for hollow-minded followers of alleged deities that, in turn, encourage psychological illness, the whole inevitably causing the rational (and possibly physical) collapse of both creators and adorers in a reciprocal sucking of vital juices.

When losers are left alone with the purity of real vibration – that which a creature is (or is not) able to resonate within from the birth, and nobody can teach - the inconclusive bitterness of loophole living becomes really hard to swallow. You are what your brain and body eat, you are what you say, you die for what you are. And you didn’t learn to listen.

Entr'acte

ISOBEL CLOUTER / ROB MULLENDER – Myths Of Origin: Sonic Ephemera From East Asia

2009-09-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

Environment-based editions are a dime a dozen these days, trying to discover a special item a pretty hard assignment. Fear not, though: just walk towards Dale Lloyd’s ever-impressive And/OAR to come across a catalogue as diverse as the various facets of human activity, not to mention the level of touching intensity shown by some of this label’s records over the years. This splendid work by Clouter and Mullender was originally conceived in 1999, year in which they decided to gather sounds that “would serve to illustrate how precious the sonic environment can be, and to act as founding materials for a soundscape collection at the British Library Sound Archive”. All the pieces of this CD borrow from original recordings made in 2001 in regions of Japan and China.

The sources of these impressions are traces of urban life and organic reverberations perceived in different settings including temples, private gardens, deserts and beaches. The team-mates appear to be principally interested – as confirmed by the extremely detailed notes of the accompanying booklet – in the phenomenon of booming sands, which they frantically tried to capture in several occasions, mainly during a stay in the Mongolian desert. Indeed the sounds recorded amidst the dunes characterize the vast majority of the second half of the program - the one where a distinctly droning nature, which renders the acoustic landscape ominous at times, seems to prevail as opposed to the more variegated expressions – sea waves, children at play amidst talking folks, metallic thuds, kitchen-related noises, squeaking objects, traffic and other assorted symptoms – that are mostly found in the Japanese files, but also in the conclusive episode taped at the Labrang monastery in Xiahe, largely characterized by the creaking spinning of Tibetan prayer wheels.

Leaving details aside, what actually strikes is the way in which Clouter and Mullender managed to seize and subsequently organize the inherent musicality of these flashes. It’s right here that contenders get separated from pretenders in this particular area. One thing is sticking a microphone outside a window and finding an excuse to release whatever happens in those sixty minutes; another is embarking in a project of such extent and significance, a trip that is not strictly geographic but touches the essential aspects of the reactions that humans have when confronted with aural occurrences that do not belong to a daily familiarity. Those responses are fundamental in determining who we really are, as the behaviour in front of sound is the perfect gauge for a soul’s depth and, at large, the real value of hypothetically “sentient” entities. The amazement of the two partners, clearly expressed at the end of “Dune 3” after having heard marvellous murmurs, is an indicator in that sense. It shows the degree of love for existence that is necessary to individuate a quintessence, something that was achieved completely in this case, unpronounced mysticism and earthly manifestations blending in physical radiance.

And/OAR

NIKOS VELIOTIS – Cello Powder

2009-09-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

I’m not annoying everybody by repeating the whole concept and the almost ritual procedures behind this work (just Google the artist’s name with the record’s title and get what you need). On a strictly musical sense, something must be said, though. Veliotis subdivided the cello’s tonal range in 100 quarter tones and – from August 26 through December 6, 2008 – painstakingly recorded a sixty-minute drone for each pitch. The daily diary of this operation appears in tiny print on the sleeve and it’s quite interesting - if a little hard on the eyes - to read, had someone believed that making droning music is easy (try without a keyboard, then come back weeping). Following this Via Crucis, the resulting 100-note telluric mantra was placed in a single audio file called “The Complete Works For Cello”.

The sonic outcome is extraordinary: a huge wall of sound that might be described as a cross-pollination of Phill Niblock, Glenn Branca and Iannis Xenakis occurring during the Chernobyl disaster. Familiar with the very long silences typical of this Greek cellist? They’re gone: this is a colossal, monolithic mass whose stillness reveals thousands of disguised micro-movements. Listen carefully and, especially when wearing headphones, superimposed orchestras, indecipherably singing choirs and lone vocalists are distinctly perceived. It is only a fruit of the imagination, grown from the accumulation of upper partials, notes and noises comprised by this amassment. Superlatives - and the will of totally liberating your head from everything else – are definitely required.

A fantastic CD that’s going to be enormously valuable in a much needed process of isolation from the rest of the world, at least for a hour, and – more than ever – from all kinds of endlessly pontificating schnooks. Nikos Veliotis rules.

Noise-Below

TARAB – Take All Of The Ships From The Harbour, And Sail Them Straight To Hell

2009-08-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

A claimant for the top spots in the artistic area where acoustically stimulating communiqués exploit the interaction linking a specific environment and the objects that furnish it, Australian Eamon Sprod (Tarab) recorded the basics for his new record in regions of the globe that are both pretty close and very distant from where he’s based. In the latter case the zone in question is Angel Island, in the bay of San Francisco, which initially used to lodge an immigration center, then became an American military base, and today is managed by the US National Park Service. The remnants of what once were buildings stuffed with anguishing truths are decaying in silence; that’s exactly the kind of setting this man needs to create.

The lack of human presence is a too-heavy burden for the average soul to resist to, and I’ve often wondered what people who usually talk ad infinitum might receive from an opus like this, in which the most recurrent incidence is a sort of hushed resonance, in between a ghoul-infested hall and an abandoned warehouse that only a desperate somebody enters, expecting to unearth something “useful” amidst dumped materials and rotting debris. Past glories gone, nonexistent future, worn-to-shreds existences, yet a still strong dignity imbued with a special type of holiness. Concepts that quickly find their way across the psyche as one listens to these forlorn echoes, a crushingly desolate aural ambiance just rarely pierced by ruthless clanging abrasions, or enhanced by other kinds of crackling and hissing matters; sounds that progressively discover an accommodation in the deepest meanders of the brain causing an unusual intoxication, not obeying to the desire of distancing ourselves from a contemptible reality.

Is it the wind, or a poisonous gas? Are those whispering insufflations the last calls to observe the world’s leftovers before they definitively disappear? As soon as a powerful rumble is heard from a long distance we hold our breath, trying to virtually grasp the nature of that place and blow that vision away, ashes of meaning in the sea of ignorance. The sensitive listener remains silently waiting for more of those moments, in the vain hope of being led through a path of comfort. It doesn’t work, the frequencies of tarnished rational mechanisms and the reverberations of individual negligence sticking painful needles in the flesh of illusory beliefs.

Probably this is the best documentation released by Tarab until now: marvellously unsolvable, deeply affecting, incomprehensible for the populace, evolutionally constructive. Set aside a good chunk of your time and concentrate when listening, prior to even attempting to speak. It takes a while for this 56-minute piece to sink in; when it happens, a small fraction of enlightenment has been achieved. It corresponds to the awareness that the end is near, right behind the gate many herds are confidently, pretentiously, anticipating to traverse, childish victims of an absolute joke. There’s no need to be afraid, though: when the mind is not working anymore having reached its expiry date, hollowness suddenly stops spreading, and the cosmos breathes a little better. Transformed energy does not rant about god, but contributes to the propagation of a massive vibration.

23Five

IRR. APP. (EXT.) – Kreiselwelle

2009-08-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

Wilhelm Reich used to hypothesize about the interrelation of energy, life forms and the universe at large. Kreiselwelle – final chapter of a trilogy, Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition being the preceding instalments – is Irr. App. (Ext.)’s imaginative portrayal of what Reich defined as “spiral wave” (that’s the album’s title in English), a recurring shape that the psychologist had observed in several systems, not necessarily restricting his analysis to biotic issues.

The improvement of consciousness via abnormal sonorities is an aim that many composers have tried to achieve, with mixed results. Matt Waldron excels in the creation of extremely affecting soundscapes based on the concurrence and the management of sonic objects – on occasion, even ordinary ones - in contexts where urban or natural environmental factors and a general vibe of amorphousness exemplify a critical incidence. For this album, Waldron utilized found sounds whose origin or character can be associated, more or less directly, to the same configuration that inspires the whole concept. Springs, whirling air, washing of fluids, soil noises, someone’s steps: everything seamed in an organic continuum, gradually losing its quintessence to establish a sort of spontaneous pattern, the crucial resonance of these elements merged in a synthesis of hypnotically cyclical, bottomless pulses featuring human echoes, bewildering electronic intermissions, gargantuan breathing, stifling vapours derived from liquefied compatibilities.

The corrosion of faith, the dissolution of confidence, the determination to identify with “what comes after” way before the moment is due: this excursion through the meanders of psychoactive mutability causes these and other reactions, working much better than thousands of inadequate words, involuntarily succeeding in depicting the frenetically unsystematic activity of the brain during the REM phase, the instant in which a huge quantity of data appears, memories from current and past experiences jumbled in a typically disjointed hotchpotch.

The collaboration between Irr. App. (Ext.) and Nurse With Wound didn’t crop up by chance: there are indeed a few sections that vaguely hint to Steve Stapleton’s tortuously nightmarish impenetrability. Still, behind Kreiselwelle lies a manifestly individual logic that only a rigorously open-minded inspection is going to disclose in full. It’s a record one could easily get lost in; subsequent to the decoding process, though, we find ourselves incredibly close to the essential core of what sound and its connection with non-standard mental procedures represent for our existence to keep flowing without excessive traumas. A difficult yet imperative conception, indispensable for detaching a fundamental reality from those self-constructed psychological shelters that inevitably lead to an early end or - at the very least – to unintelligent behaviour.

Finding a middle ground at all times is far from the best possible option for a complete development. And compromise, especially when your main beliefs are implicated, is a slow-but-sure assassin.

The Helen Scarsdale Agency

JGRZINICH – Phase Inversion

2009-08-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

Among the genuine masters of this game, acquired Estonian John Grzinich gives a showing of his strength with a gorgeous accumulation of drones and found objects, the latter mostly verging on the softly metallic/distantly clattering side of concreteness. The record presents exactly what was expected, this commentator well acquainted with a good number of the artist’s past releases (published on the best labels in this field, from Cut to Sirr, to Elevator Bath – you name it, he’s been there); yet there’s something distinguishing his work which is called class. I don’t know how to explain it, this has probably to do with a deeper perception of the vibrating particles of a particular source, or the shape of a chosen environment, or maybe just comes from a highly developed inner ear. A Jgrzinich drone sounds dissimilar from a regular buzzing hum: it appears more like the layering of a thousand desolate murmurs bathed in amniotic liquid.

The static façade hides hundreds of inherent movements, muted throbs, sub-harmonic changes that nevertheless make the whole sound as an immobile stifled choir, silently spreading resonances which, in conjunction with the dissipating energies represented by those faraway rattles and clangs, represent a memento of how to behave ourselves in front of the vague, a symbol of the unconcern we should always demonstrate when the worst is approaching, be it the fear of an uncertain future or the sheer notion of death. Perhaps a record like Phase Inversion could help someone to get in touch with that inside dimension which is inevitably left aside when one is intent in “living” by filling the brain with figments of imagination and innumerable illusions, only to be given a final bill at the end, still ill-equipped and even more frightened.

In actual fact, life itself is a phase inversion. On the contrary, many people are convinced of giving lessons to others, not realizing that what they believe to have “invented” is just the chewed-up remnant of a truth that everybody sees in a wholly individual way - all of them completely wrong - and that will finally rape everyone’s abstruse beliefs concerning human evolution and a presumed afterlife - not to mention reincarnation - except for the obvious transformation of the corporal matter into food for worms (or ash, if you’re sophisticated enough) and energy into some substance that might be useful or less, according to the quintessence of that erstwhile “being”.

Mystery Sea

CELER – Capri

2009-08-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

During a residency in the Italian island of Capri, Will and Danielle Long found the time – as they always did – to transform the experience into mesmerizing aural pictures which we now have the opportunity to get pleasure from, thanks to a new label from Berlin headed by Christian Roth. The sources utilized by Celer for this particular outing were piano, strings, horns, acoustic guitar, field recordings and “the warm breeze of the Mediterranean sea”. The latter constituent - which used to surround and energize yours truly over the course of ever-remembered adolescent summers spent in contemplation of that very marine environment, only from the shores of Tuscany – encircles the music in combination with a thicker-than-usual aura of recollection, embracing us all along 77 minutes flowing with nary a moment of tiredness. The calming effect of these short pieces equals the sense of silent yearning experienced in those tiny fragments of infinity in which levelheaded beings put the finger on a dolorous understanding of the invisible mechanisms regulating their internal temperament.

Capri’s tracks, taken as physical phenomena per se, confirm the amazingly rapid evolution of Celer’s artistic vision. What had started, years ago, as a not-completely-convincing assemblage of loops that could or could not work depending on the choice of the raw matters and the audience’s transitory inclinations, today has become the steady reiteration of a process of metamorphosis: personal experiences into sounds and, in turn, melancholically stirring emotions. It is not easy – except for a recurring piano-based “theme” – to individuate the original instruments under the haze of quiet resonance that the essential substances create, yet the value of this album lies right there: a series of blurred memories, vague images and formless reverberations contributing to deepen the regretful feel of another praiseworthy record which - after Dani’s precocious ascent to the sky - is even more aching to listen to and evaluate, although she remains clearly visible amidst this resounding fog.

Forced to designate a “darling release” for 2009 in the sphere of meaningful ambient/meditative electronica, this would definitely be one of the nominees, and the fact that this is a 400-copy limited edition should persuade the hesitant. You must learn the difference between those who were born to identify with vibrations and frequencies and the ones who invented a job for themselves without the necessary underpinning and, especially, profoundness.

Humming Conch

ANDREW CHALK & DAISUKE SUZUKI – The Shadows Go Their Own Way

2009-07-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

The time-honoured alliance between Chalk and Suzuki is enriched by a new episode - typically sheltered by a tenderly refined sleeve artwork - where aspects that sound a little more “present” or concrete, if you like, are explored preferentially as opposed to the wraithlike qualities of previous releases either by the duo or Chalk alone.

In general, the sounds and the overall mix are uncooked in a human way, showing an inclination for the material features of the surroundings: closely recorded motors, voices of people from the streets, cans, scraped metals giving shape to irregular drones. This is counterbalanced by quasi-oneiric sequences of organ/synthesizer and crickets in the sixth track, among the masterpieces of this fine disc, and rudimentarily poignant string melodies in the ninth and eleventh (all the tracks are untitled).

Sections characterized by the emblematic wonderful frailty expressed by these artists’ visions are not missing, though, and one welcomes the presence of gritty pictures of traditional instruments and a timidly humming woman like a comeback to the birthplace after many years, scents, lights and memories blurred in an indescribable sensation of belonging that is contrasted by the confirmation of the elapsing of existence, the distress deriving from the sureness that nothing will be back as we remembered it. These men are the rare possessors of a gift which allows them to reveal the purity that’s left inside sensitive beings, and that too frequently is forgotten in favour of opportunism and façade by the others.

It might take various spins of this apparently uneven record to understand, but the beauty that it irradiates is physical and often dolorous. You should remain overwhelmed in complete loneliness, as speaking with someone while this music spreads its wholesomeness in the air equals breaking an unrepeatable spell.

Siren

ASHER - Miniatures

2009-07-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

A double CD containing short looped fragments of past-time music for solo piano (with very rare exceptions), captured by Asher by having a recorder handy as the radio was on, in order to gather the segments that sounded more interesting for potential further manipulation. Two main characters emerging: the almost mournful, nostalgic unhappiness of the pieces, and an omnipresent sibilance that surrounds the whole, nearly claiming the attention on itself rather than the actual playing, a fundamental constituent of the record.

The risk of accustomedness is not present in Asher’s art, as it offers alternatives in an apparently immutable context, maintaining the bewitching qualities that have affirmed his style as distinctive. The listener is free to choose the direction in which interest should be focused. Are we going to be fossilized in deterioration together with the sound’s tendency to decay? Do we concentrate on the permanent hiss? Shall one try and determine what the original source is (in my case, unsuccessfully)? Is the cutting-and-looping technique our primary object of interest? There are lots of elements to consider for the guessing of crucial meanings. And - as usual - there’s underlying humanity throughout, in this circumstance explicated by the mere imagine of the artist’s readiness, perhaps at late night, to snatch these snippets when the moment is right. What were the thoughts he had in mind during that particular day? Were there grief and melancholy involved, or it was just an idea for experimentation? How did Asher manage to locate so many sweetly reflective spots in stylistically coherent pianistic performances?

What this man most importantly does is avoiding those clichés that, somehow preposterously, materialize when artists decide to utilize impracticality to push their work forward, typically ending in deplorable failures. This record gives a sense of firm ineluctability and tender frailty at once, eliciting doubts while confirming certainties. Its flimsy structure sounds evocatively irrepressible, a blurred sight that never disappears. It doesn’t help to disentangle from the inevitable, throwing the receiver in a mental state of confined childhood, admonishing about the excesses of enthusiasm. Invariability permeated with timid inhibitions and hopes ended in tatters that one’s still trying to recompose.

Sourdine

MECHANIQUE(S) – Logos

2009-06-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

The components of this group share a proclivity to confounding the listeners in regard to the origin of the sonic matter they bring into being. Dafna Naphtali’s voice is processed by a computer running custom Max/MSP programs, its fundamental nature and a gazillion of refractions – altered, intermingled or just obsessively repeated – weighing exactly the same in the overall context. Martin Speicher’s alto sax and bass clarinet appear as pretty normal on a first approach, then non-conform wickedness and idiosyncratic impatience gradually become essential traits in the improvisational setting. As far as the “endangerment” of Hans Tammen’s guitar is concerned, much has already been written; suffice to say that one gathers very different interpretations of concepts such as “virtuosity”, “harmony” and “open-mindedness” after hearing what an instrument originally born with parlour purposes can do in the munificent hands of a bright manipulator.

Interested in “the overlap of various elements of their technical and aesthetical practices”, Mechanique(s) recorded this great disc in 2001 at Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium. That’s right, eight years have gone away meanwhile. But make no mistake – this music proudly shows no wrinkles, sounding as if taped two weeks ago. The musicians wander around structures that glitter as pure diamond and sound absurdly periphrastic at once, pretty distant from certain liturgical behaviours currently found in the reductionist faction of EAI. The improvisations exploit the single members’ total attentiveness in relation to the procedural possibilities, accomplished contortions crowded with sparse culminations, stomach-churning sneering and breathtaking apogees. The only way to escape the logic of rambling transparency shown by the trio is abandoning ourselves to a fantasy of timbral spitefulness, decomposed protocols and, ultimately, extraordinary complexity defining the absolute gratification of organisms ready to accept and swallow hundreds of consecutive contrasting messages that, miraculously, make the whole work like a perfectly oiled machine.

Emotions are hidden everywhere if we only want to find out - even behind warped sounds. There’s an urgent need to launch a repulisti of all the convention-derived encrustations of the intellect to realize what’s actually possible. This is much better than letting someone dictate the rules of your knowledge - in the name of an aim that does not exist – tracing a depressing trail according to which one arrives at the end of life without having done nothing meaningful or at least intelligent. Wasted time is not returned to anyone.

Acheulian Handaxe

GIAMPAOLO VERGA - Fadensonnen

2009-06-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

Giampaolo Verga - an Italian composer who is also actively involved in the encouragement of artistic creativity during the recovery processes of psychically disadvantaged persons – seems to be genuinely aware of the value of silence. With violin, voice and electronics he reveals what his mind is made of, meditating with semi-closed eyes at the farthest fringes of audibility, utilizing indistinct radiations, feeble reverberations and also acute frequencies to concoct electroacoustic settings that seize our concentration, often veritably enthralling in their mixture of profundity and legitimacy.

The rarefaction of the materials, the whispered straining of the sources, the timorous comparison between voices that we imagine deriving from lamenting ghosts and elongated percolations of frail instrumental sketches are just blurred suggestions of the essential traits of something that’s both unmistakably perceptible and manifestly indefinable, glimpses of silent commitment looking for liquids in serious acousmatic drought. With my windows open in a peaceful afternoon, remote urban presences and ever-singing birds making themselves heard from long distance, Fadensonnen sounds just perfect, at least until the sudden breakup of the final “Limbisch, Limbisch”, a startling – but not less interesting - departure from the general subject.

As opposed to certain Mediterranean tormentors who would like us to walk through interminable corridors of vacuous blessedness hiding bestial deficiency, this man discloses the hand and shows a few coins in the palm. It’s all he has, yet those little riches command respect, and could constitute the opening deposit for a future of insightful observations and, hopefully, significant intuitions.

Creative Sources

THANOS CHRYSAKIS – A Scar In The Air

2009-05-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

A Scar In The Air is a part of the “Inscapes Series”, namely music “based on the structural and aesthetic capacity of sonic matter”. Six tracks, all connected in a continuous flow, for a total of half a hour which shows the most ear-satisfying traits of this Greek composer’s artistic vision, occupying a well definite place between the (often exaggerate) seriousness of cultivated acousmatics and the kind of vibrations that should be associated with the concept of “space”: not in a celestial acceptation, more as anything associable to the notion of “propagation of sound in an environment”. Under this meaning, Chrysakis offers numerous moments of profound integrity and gratification, leaving the sounds activate our psyche in a state of self-determination despite the evident care behind the compositional effort.

The sources are not indicated, but there are several of them that are clearly intelligible and, although regularly exploited in this ambit, used in such a discreetly clever manner that those colours look just perfect for the segment in which they’re appearing. Coming to terms with the perception of interiority is a perennial struggle which sees human ignorance constantly defeated – here’s the reason of the flourishing of “extreme anxiety groups” sticking definitions to something that exists only in their mind's eye. Yet it’s doubtless that music like this - offering different departure points for the observation of phenomena whose resonance, both outside and inside, is impressively effective – might constitute a good start for inquisitive thinking.

One can decide: appreciating the pure magnificence of an obscure reverberation, recognizing the typicality of chatting people, being displaced in amorphousness when a voice is fused with a marimba which reproduces its same elocution patterns, or just accepting the whole as a mixed-energy macrocosm. What remains is the impression of an unexplainable deeper implication that’s better left undefined, unless you want to join the extended queue of those who sing “progress” to themselves while standing at the centre of a depressing miniature universe, their imaginary advancement a mere shadow elongated by the sun of someone else’s ideas (which in turn had been pick-pocketed elsewhere).

Aural Terrains

GÜNTER MÜLLER / JASON KAHN / NORBERT MÖSLANG – mkm_msa

2009-05-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

Reconsider your endorsement of the mollifying aspects of electronic music, as Müller, Kahn and Möslang have returned to divulge another abundant hour of their aural calisthenics which also act as a stimulator without the need of a medical prescription. These six tracks were recorded in 2007 during a series of twelve concerts in South America, yet in their meticulousness they sound as if preconceived in a studio, such is the scientist-like charisma transpiring from the involving contraptions of this decentralizing trio.

This methodical analysis of a sweltering micro-world, where hypercritical expropriations of instrumental physiognomy and inviolable appliance-generated irritableness remunerate our distaste for the frivolous connotations of contemporary masquerades, causes the large part of today’s electronica to sound antediluvian. There’s substance here, that’s the difference. People who declare of having seen the light – while ignoring that “fractal” and “consonance” don’t belong in the same sphere, unless the ears are developed beyond doubt - could even find the nerve to proclaim that this is not really music, that these fabrications of polymorphous propagations, implacably austere investigations of an organic inanimateness, indicate the road to a place where nothing results as callous, excoriating and detrimental as a sonic process. Then, why does this stuff rejuvenates so much? What’s the rationale behind this implausible forthrightness? What idiotic dissertation should deny the only purpose for this biologically artificial combination to exist, namely symbolizing a fruit fallen from an unlikely type of tree?

The legitimisation of intolerance is nearer than you think, often rooted in what’s generally considered as an “open-minded” intellectual environment. It’s too easy to throw a record either in the cauldron of one-a-day-masterpieces that get forgotten after a week or in the closet of ignorable-because-they’re-not-my-friend brilliant releases. The probationary intelligence of these artists - not to mention Müller’s classic “whop-whop-whop-whop” always welcomed on these shores, a heart starting to beat again following a difficult surgery – won’t score many points for friendliness but surely pave the way for that sort of untidiness whose lineaments are nevertheless extremely alluring. Self-congratulatory artistic debauchery be damned.

For 4 Ears

CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE / CHRISTOPH HEEMANN - Saiten In Flammen

2009-05-05T01:30:00.000-07:00

The title translates as "strings on fire". While listening to this proudly droning, cataclysmic elegy to intimidating resonance we comprehend the reason beyond doubt.

Reshaping a sound that corresponds to a landmark of minimalist intensity – namely Charlemagne Palestine's fiercely obstinate piano strumming - is not something that many people even dream about, much less achieve. Yet Christoph Heemann shows how this mission can be accomplished, maintaining the American maverick’s original traits visible despite his subtraction of the most markedly percussive aspects of his relentless tolling.

What happens in less than half a hour is the birth of a new beast, a hybrid sonic warning where expert ears won't struggle in recognizing echoes of Mirror, Organum and Niblock disguised under the clothes of outrageous clusters and reverberations. It takes only a few moments - in both sides of this vinyl album - for the vibrating mass to take command, any restriction forgotten, hordes of aggressive upper partials putting the body through a storm of quivering roars and powerful oscillations. The whole is underscored by massive rumbles, Palestine's Bosendorfer (which for the occasion was taped in 2000 at the Ludwig Museum in Aachen) a dangerous machine capable of inviting the courageous ones to a thorough absorption by a weighty wall of sound - for this REALLY is, not Phil Spector's.

The dam by now broken, waterfalls of misshapen chords denote the conversion from almost elementary gestures to a multiple refraction of the light emitted by two akin souls. There's no looking back. After repeating the experience over and over, we reinforce our intolerance against inferior music.

Rare specimens of creators own the gift of turning every move they decide to make into untainted art. Palestine and Heemann have reached a clamorous balance between enlightened grandeur and utter closure towards cheap-mindedness. This record sounds dangerously close to an exclusion of huge percentages of mortals from certain types of authentic harmonic comprehension. It has to be that way, though, and one feels kind of sorry for those who are left out.

But the sympathy lasts thirty seconds, before the survivors enter the dome of vibration once again to receive the ultimate blessing.

Streamline (distributed by Drag City)

ASHER / UBEBOET – Cell Memory

2009-04-28T01:05:00.000-07:00

Certain collaborations are born from the core of inevitability: both Asher Thal-Nir and Miguel Tolosa belong to the rank of enormously insightful sound artists from which we always expect some degree of enchantment, thus wholly justifying a joint release. Cell Memory does not delude, although it is not exactly equivalent to what I was figuring out in anticipation before spinning the CD.

The first track starts with a wraithlike bewailing, repetitive laments wafted by strong currents, a desert sandstorm heard from within a tent. The tone is one of resignation to the acceptance of upcoming chances, regardless of the entailed consequences. The piece then evolves towards sonorities recalling a faulty turbine amidst low murmurs comparable to massive underwater bubbles, in which what sounds like slowed down feedback appears to place an additional element of reiteration in an already haunting soundscape.

The second episode shows a slightly different trait while remaining relevant to the general concept. Again we're greeted by a threatening rumble that establishes its authority on the psyche straight away, then turns into a somewhat comforting incidence. This foundation is soon enriched by a overwhelmingly choral superimposition of stretched emissions, halfway through alien baritones and a potent insufflation blowing transversely in a large fissure. The whole wraps us in a blanket of diffidence, yet we’re also thrilled to be encircled and finally engulfed, as an impenetrable throb dictates the pace of the composition and the ghosts return, worrying appearances that, on the contrary, are back to hunt the demons of unresponsive ignorance.

Well-known recipe, truth be told. But when the chefs are at this level of expertise, one gladly returns to the same restaurant. Translation: four full stars.

Winds Measure

SHINKEI / LUIGI TURRA – Yu

2009-04-27T01:05:00.000-07:00

The bigotry related to reductionism is by now a surpassed phenomenon, especially since the “movement” has welcomed hordes of nondescript pseudo-Zen pretenders who built a career out of sitting mute in front of the audience for a hour of complete stillness, playing a single note then cashing the check.

Where’s the connection with Yu, one might ask. “Everywhere” is the answer, for this record by the Italian duo of David Sani (Shinkei) and Luigi Turra is an exemplary lesson on how to wrinkle intense quietness with significant snippets of sound. “Significant”, in this case, does not necessarily mean “new”: several choices applied by the composers are based upon elements already found in hundreds of neighbouring recordings (with particular reference to subtle presences of dripping water, birds and variously aged persons captured in a transitory phase of everyday life, everything rigorously Japanese from what I’ve been able to detect). But it’s the architectural assessment of the whole piece that makes all the difference in the world: Shinkei and Turra seem to have caught the exact formula for developing the inherent musicality of the sources more or less instantaneously, adding ear-striking frequencies that act both as stimulating counterpoint and enrichment of the basic material.

The commitment to the achievement of an open-minded state is manifest, the narrative resulting linear yet corrugated enough to render the listeners aware of their own fragility. There are instances in which the sheer subsistence of these adjacencies transports in a dimension of brokenhearted fulfillment, an example being the old blues mashed by the shortwave noises in the splendid “Nagoya Koen”, a track that sounds like a John Duncan/Akira Rabelais hybrid disrupted by sudden subsonic appearances.

The ensuing “Kin-Hin” exploits colors from another palette, intersecting rumble, harmonic resonance, whispered hiss and concreteness while remaining linked to the incorporeal aspects of creation. The stupor derived from this kind of listening experience - which can’t possibly take place in a less than silent environment, unless you want to diminish excellent music to the level of circumstantial noise – is exactly the mental frame that large portions of humanity are desperately trying to achieve.

Only, these people are just finding a way to erase the word “failure” from memory, incapable as they are of facing hard realities unaided. Yu, at the end of the day, is precisely that: a magnificent representation of solitariness. The core of a truthful existence, far away from the nonsense of spiritual futility and the affected pretence of “being one” with someone we don’t like, a pecuniary reward the real aim.

Nonvisualobjects

PHROQ – Half-Asleep Music

2009-04-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

Francisco Meirino (Phroq) recorded this material at late night - he was barely managing to remain awake - not because of a lack of alternative timing, but to carry out a private experiment after having read an article about uni-hemispheric slow-wave sleep, a phenomenon that causes half of the brain to rest while the other maintains alertness. According to this approach, the resulting music should be guided by the subconscious and essentially identified by what the composer calls “raw intuition”. In reality, in one of those peculiar circumstances subverting the expected order of things, this project appears carefully planned and lucidly executed, which we unquestionably prefer to the inconclusive out-of-tune drowsiness of many drugged idiots worshipped by certain publications.

Mystifying snippets of pragmatism and bewitching sonic pictures of seductive stimulation form a somewhat disjointed narration, where both condensed fragmentariness and surrounding spheres of nerve-tickling frequencies have the same right of citizenship. The high quality derives from Meirino’s capability of shaping the fruits of his research into something that sounds like a consistent totality which, at times, becomes consuming to the level of near-debilitation. Yet the juxtaposition of opposite kinds of source, such as superimposed and manipulated electric hum and human mumbling, penetrates the ears without damage, any aesthetic judgement banished in favour of the pure enjoyment of a now alarming, now hospitable chain of events. Inconveniences in the compositional building are entirely absent and even the most radical episodes do possess a sturdy logic, which is what renders the overall process almost faultless. As far as the timbral relationships are concerned, let’s just say that Phroq is a noncompliant musician and leave it at that.

Definitely ineligible for the soundtrack to nocturnal quietness – indeed one wonders how Meirino managed to avoid trouble with neighbours whilst working on these pieces - Half-Asleep Music is a gutsy exploration of the semi-unknown aspects of transfixion bordering with illuminated edginess. A highly recommended, rewarding listen from every angle.

Entr’acte

JASON KAHN AND TAKEFUMI NAOSHIMA – In A Room

2009-04-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

Despite all the talks about “new silence” and its derivates, this is a surprising album - not the least because the title is as self-explanatory as one can get. In fact, the CD contains an exact hour of contemplation between activity and nonbeing, where the environment is not only host but often claims the role of principal character.

The piece is entirely centred around a fundamental parameter, a refrigerator-like hum which remains constant the whole time. Upon this fixed presence, external urban noises (typically, engines of vehicles in transit) and somewhat far-off human presences punctuate an otherwise silent background. The shoes of someone who walks across the room are heard, most probably from the protagonist(s). At times we distinctly detect the subtle breathing of one of the two, characterized by an equally typical micro-whistle of the nose.

Instruments do appear, if extremely sparely: Naoshima slices the air open with mixer board-generated frequencies usually moving in the over-acute regions of the aural range, Kahn alternates stillness and restricted emissions from a collection of unspecified percussions, the whole appearing more as a series of ritual gestures than a “performance”: the closeness, the intensity, the innate introspection of the act are mind-relieving. Describing how these timbres materialize is rather senseless. Some gently snapping wooden cluster, short ringing bursts, small portions of metallic scraping. This music deals with “existing”, not “playing”.

A work whose bareness will keep superficial listeners at a safe distance, In A Room doesn’t present inaccessible complexities yet necessitates of absolute concentration and awareness of where we stand in a particular moment. Learning to listen to the inherent qualities of apparently extraneous factors – and to be even more thankful for quietness - is the name of the game.

Winds Measure

MIGUEL A. GARCIA – Subsuelos

2009-03-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

Spanish sound artist Miguel Angel Garcia, also known as Xedh, recorded Subsuelos during a number of “intense nocturnal sessions taken inside a 200 meter squared abandoned pavilion, with the initial intention of making an exploration of this sound-space”. The results have been issued on MP3 and FLAC files by this very label in May 2008; this is the “physical” version of the album.

Garcia utilized sounds exclusively coming from within the large room, adding a series of typically suggestive, if unsettling electronic tones which he proceeded to recapture via the same microphones. At the beginning of the CD – a minute and a half of scarcely perceptible presences welcoming the listener - one would be justified in thinking about yet another specimen of environmental examination in a vain attempt to give a musical voice to the menacing quietness of the night. Instead we’re in for a chain of events that surprise us quite often, abruptly shifting the focus of the piece over various sonic settings – some of them extremely beautiful, others less uplifting but stimulating nonetheless – which contribute to place the music in close proximity to acousmatic sharpness rather than cause an obvious “installation association”.

The malleability of the materials processed by Garcia is evident and superbly exploited throughout, unfathomable halos, echoes of forlornness and devastating excrescences succeeding in consecutive scenes amidst traces of loaded stillness. Although there’s nothing exactly innovative in this kind of notion I didn’t manage to locate stereotypes, frequently discarding the rational approach to simply put my perceptiveness in abandon mode for a sheer enjoyment of the states of trance that several episodes generate, with a particular mention for the breathtaking throbbing that certain subsonic emissions produce and the reiterative reverberations at the opening of the final track “Ipurtargik”, a magnificently remote resonance that defies any tentative description.

A commendable work from a composer whose maturity will hopefully bring additional juicy fruits, Subsuelos comes in a 50-copy ultra-limited edition. It should be attentively considered when appraising the next future of nowadays’ ambience-based electroacoustic perspicuity.

Bremsstrahlung

ERIC LA CASA / CÉDRIC PEYRONNET – La Creuse

2009-03-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

Being magnanimous, we could say that the majority of field recording-based albums is pleasant to listen once, maybe twice. True, some are much better than others; this depends on the individual predispositions and inner ear(s) of those who collect the sounds and assemble them in (optimistically speaking) cogent compositions. But there’s also a major risk of disappearance of the record amidst thousands of irrelevant collections of singing blackbirds, solitary steps on a lake’s shore and sparkling waters. Did I mention insects and wind? Face it: not everybody is a Francisco López. To craft a meaningful artifact influenced by the outside (and inside) world requires an awful lot of energy, a good dose of luck, creative talent to spare and something - unachievable by many – that cannot be expressed by mere concepts and definitely not “taught”.

La Creuse is an outstanding album that reaches the fundamental objectives of this genre. La Casa and Peyronnet (the latter typically known as Toy.Bizarre) have already established their competence in dealing with this type of project in the past, the respective careers filled with fine demonstrations of perceptiveness and open-mindedness. For the occasion, they chose to “represent in sonic terms (…) a triangular area in the north of the Creuse department in central France”, in order to “give landscape a sonic corporeality”. Each artist applied a method of reciprocal manipulation of the materials gathered by the companion, thus producing a uniquely special mix of sources that surely sounded unrefined and essentially different at the origin.

All the foreseeable factors of such a kind of release are present, yet not a single minute of commonplace can be individuated. Better still, the pieces are perceived as hybrid formations of raw matters and electronics; a few choice-defining discoveries and procedures related to the artists’ “surveys” in the region are indicated in the CD booklet (in French language). A flawless meshing of natural subsistence and human involvement, utterly splendid in any form, shape and state – liquid, solid, electric, gaseous, you name it.

Nonetheless, this is an impenetrable work: even after listening to it five or six times over a weekend, it’s ceaselessly revealing minuscule clues and previously unseen facets yet it really doesn’t want to be even tenuously remembered, except for its quintessence. It sounds like an infinitesimal segment of life with its pros and cons, just as when we hurriedly bring out a camera trying to catch that wonderful sunset: the consequent picture, as perfect as it may be, inevitably can’t enclose the full extension of the sky. Then again, who – besides yourself, having lived the direct experience – will ever be able to share the emotion? That’s right: nobody. Certainly not with words, or by showing that photo to unresponsive lookers.

This is precisely the point: La Creuse is as an inexplicable episode as being the testimony to a rare event which unfolds exactly when one happens to be there by coincidence. Neither “music” nor “environment”, it has to do with creation. No - make that “Creation”, with the capital C. It won’t give anything to commit to memory; an unusual sort of understanding, yes – that’ll be granted, only after forgetting about selfish needs.

Don’t be surprised if you feel genuinely inadequate after this. Those echoing auras heard throughout the record are the voices of your living, flowing away through the fingers of a fruitless illusion.

Herbal

MARK FELL – Attack On Silence

2009-02-20T02:03:00.000-08:00

The world is beyond doubt flooded by people releasing industrial quantities of gobbledygook about incidents connected to speculative “illuminations” in relation to sounds that actually don’t mean a iota for the human brain, if not for lulling it to sleep by the association with comfortable suggestions of snugness and warmth typical of the blind-minded. In this case we’re dealing with physical resonances that many of those desperate entities regard as sheer noise while keeping the chit-chat a propos of supposed next lives and evolutional enhancements going on, yet finding pleasure in the easiest brands of classical music of three centuries ago (so much for “progress”) or believing to cure their anxiety via so-called “prayers”.

Mark Fell, a British artist working on the fringes of artistic genres, explores “the relationships between geometry, colour and waveform” on this, a DVD where the simplicity of the utilized means is – as usual, one would say – the key for a rigorous experience of outright transcendence, not attained by listening to someone who scares the shit out of unhinged audiences by hypothesizing intimidating scenarios of boundless ignorance, usually conjured up by the consequences of an overly abundant dinner on the sleeping process. Fell achieves the objective through the adaptation of the senses to events that link our perceptive channels and organs efficiently: waveforms (mainly derived from computer-processed Tibetan bowls), geometric shapes, hues derived from barely conceivable colours.

By looking at the video we’re instantly captured as the graphic representations of the sounds manifest themselves with unmistakable precision, stopping only when the sonic substance ceases its momentary existence. The design is extremely simple, and all the more significant: intelligent waveshaping is the basis of the whole thing, relating gradations and visual oscillations to the aural involvement coming as easy as breathing for those in the know. The psyche is dazzled by the associations, its functionality improved at the same time. The music is gorgeous per se, a cycle of electronic emissions which gradually evolve from scattered surges, strident wakes and rhythmic clicks to the often literally astonishing unhurried glissandos characterizing the third and longest segment.

To quote the composer: “Are these phenomena affirmations or reconfigurations of the subject (…) or are they essentially physiological? (…) Are we being enlightened? Examined? Entertained? Enmeshed?” This writer could not answer to these questions. What’s important is that we’re not subjected to counterfeit mysticism, a constant presence – nourished by people’s discouraging weakness - hiding money-spinning intentions in today’s practices.

Attack On Silence is a sample of serious borderline ability, definitely not suitable for just-woke-up laggards.

Line

ORGANUM / Z’EV – Temporal

2009-02-09T02:55:00.000-08:00

“Subdued” or “restrained” are not adjectives that can be stuck to this CD, chock full as it is of glorious roars and stomach-churning rumblings. Still, there’s also abundant proof of an impartial attentiveness to the flood of sonic events that indicates the stratum of acuity to which David Jackman and Z’EV elevated themselves during the production process. As the latter explains in a few lines on the sleeve, the basics were thrown by working side by side on a computer; the sacrosanct furore typical of Organum’s legendary pages was added in subsequent solitary circumstances. After all, lone wolves actually need no help; yet, given the merits of prior efforts by the duo, it looks like this particular partnership has been somehow carved in the stone of inevitability.

The three tracks – over 47 minutes – that define the structure of Temporal sound as a sort of initiation rite for someone who’s not used to be overwhelmed by the viciousness of metallic howl. Although an implicit harmonic delineation is present in a number of junctures – notably in the mind-boggling accumulation of cymbal resonances, snarling skins and holy chants that constitutes the core of “Eagle”, an ideal trait d’union between both artists’ current fields of research – listeners are left just about staggered, assaulted by acoustic incidents weakening the fortifications of their personal fortress from every front, without actually realizing what exactly is hitting the ears, if not for a vague sense of blurred responsiveness. More than discerning the effects of reverberating percussions, we feel like escorted by an imperishable angst: one foresees the end of existence while benefiting from extensive portions of unadulterated ecstasy. Distress and enchantment indeed, the admiration for this type of artistic solemnity absolutely inescapable.

This material wraps our ignorance in coils of choking hostility which, grisly perspectives notwithstanding, suggests a way out of discouragement through its very threat. A sensitive person’s wisdom is definitely enhanced as a result of continual sessions with such a record, one of the most bad-tempered displays of creative integrity in recent times. Die Stadt’s unfaltering heart does not skip a beat: we’re fortunate that a label on this level of trustworthiness still exists.

A five-star album for a starless future.

Die Stadt

LUIGI ARCHETTI – Fragments On Speed, Slowless And Tedium

2009-02-09T02:54:00.000-08:00

“Slowless”???

Was it spelled like that on purpose? Did “Slowness” constitute the initial intention? I’d be willing to know if there’s a secret rationalization behind this word, a silly curiosity of mine that shouldn’t detract from the crystalline grace of this release, entirely realized – one would say – with a guitar and a computer yet sounding as a million different things.

Luigi Archetti, an Italian-born Swiss resident, is a regular presence on the experimental scene of the last decades. Besides being a guitarist and composer, he also works in the visual field (painting, installations, drawing and video) and has collaborated with a veritable who’s who of fringe artists around the globe, including Iva Bittova, Guru Guru’s Mani Neumeier, Cluster’s Dieter Moebius, Bill Horist, Taku Sugimoto, Can’s Michael Karoli and Damo Suzuki, Bo Wiget, just to list a few. Lots of dissimilar visions, many of them probably influencing the man’s inventiveness in a way or another.

The nineteen “Fragments” develop hundreds of links and connections between silence, noise and understanding of vibratory phenomena through fundamental gestures, improvisations captured by their originator in critical (…cryptic?) intelligibility then subjected to a systematic treatment which not only renders the original source almost untraceable and, in some cases, completely extraneous, but literally alters our methods of approaching a recording by “looking forward to something”. Archetti gives a short illusion of familiarity then shifts the burden of pulsation elsewhere, often abruptly, otherwise gradually, always settling on the accurate spot where “that” ringing chord (or inharmonious symptom, for that matter) makes all the sense in the world. It’s a phantasmagoria of misshapen outlines and nearly irrational timbres, the axe as a sound generator over and done in favour of an overpowering logic of non-belonging: a cruel condition for an ordinary individual to be in, absolute nirvana for those who don’t care a iota about social relationships and choose to actually behave as a living organism, thriving in the hallowed name of resonance - both corporeal and intellectual.

By pulverizing anticipation via drastic transformations of six-stringed realities, this discreet gentleman stimulates reflexes and gratitude at once, rewriting the guidelines of how an investigational guitar album should be designed while heightening the considerable necessities of people who need to be set apart from insubstantial music and diminutive IQs.

Domizil

BERNHARD GÁL – Relive

2009-01-17T12:18:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

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

RY-OM - III

2008-12-29T08:51:00.000-08:00

The duo of Tom Shelton (laptop, acoustic guitar, feedback loops, vocals) and Ryo Ikeshiro (laptop, electric guitar, feedback loops), Ry-Om is the kind of project that inspires confidence ever since the very first listen, pushing our will to repeat the experience time and again. Theirs is one of the most exquisitely meaningful types of computer-based blends heard in the last ten years: evanescent implications and bell-and-whistle attitudes don’t belong here, structural steadiness and compositional rationality do - no questions about it.

Kaleidoscopic timbres and unstable frequencies aren’t used as an excuse for intellectual mystification, each element finding an ideal placement in the fastidious logic of a particular segment, linking its connotation with a far-from-foolhardy approach to the extremities of the audible range. Throbbing regularities - when existing - coincide with the shortage of directional lights, the music stabilized by an inherent consistency which makes us perceive it as rock-solid despite the volatility of some of its constituents. We’re offered apocalyptic droning ecstasies, bubbling marmalades, acid syrups, unfriendly integralism, entomic interferences. Sharp-witted interceptions remove the cancerous growths of sterile repetition in the right moments, at the same time introducing new factors of interest. When the infected physicality of the guitars is involved, its frail concreteness gets agonizingly mangled by the absolute nonexistence of canonical mercy, leading to repeated episodes of forthright hostility.

Thus here we are, numerous consecutive spins over a week’s span still insufficient to really determine what works so well for us to stamp the record with a seal of unconditional excellence, wholly justified and without reservations. Choice track: “3.4”, utter magnificence for ears willing to be horsewhipped by the redeeming values of tetchy dissonance and clogged up by the wax of reiterated enmity.

Creative Sources

NIKOS VELIOTIS & ANASTASIS GRIVAS – Vertical

2008-12-28T10:57:00.000-08:00

Through the use of a specifically designed bow, Nikos Veliotis extracts the quintessence of harmonic indeterminacy from an instrument habitually bracketed together with string quartets and classic repertoires. In his hands the cello becomes a means for infusing different areas of perception with a foretaste of what individuals suppose to be “coming after”, a sort of prescience about a merely hypothetical post-existential phase usually leaving sensitive (and, face it, often plain stupid) believers suspended in inexplicable anguish. In Vertical, Veliotis is flanked by Anastasis Grivas, who plays a custom-made guitar that results as complementary to the cellist’s grievous drones as the distress that comes by looking outside the window when the snow falls, the sky is grey and the challenges of daily occurrences destined to add further trouble to already difficult periods are inevitably going to hit the pit of the stomach.

In case you didn’t get the picture, this record contains the materialization of dolefully dissonant murmurs that are not likely to elicit smiles. Still, they do possess an inherent grace which, in actual fact, derives from the softly clashing emanations of the upper partials in the extreme regions of the frequency spectrum. Not just that: in the third movement we’re presented with an altered combination of impalpable metallic whispers, slightly tarnished sonic capsules dragged across the ice of a hopeless pessimism. When the cello reappears, it’s like a friend’s hand on the shoulder in a useless try to raise spirits, but the dejection lingers on. The whole, interspersed with the customary long silences (up to over five minutes) separating the tracks, constitutes one of the most unfathomable listening experiences of a winter that’s not prone to grant any favours.

Only a severely concentrated incursion across the dormant nuances of tone could really cure the inexcusable incompetents who roam about things fabricated for personal purposes. The problem is that many people – including several self-defined “musicians” – are manifestly unable to decode what life itself communicates. There’s no more time to waste with conceptual tawdriness, as interior resonance chooses the worthy ones to reveal its magnificence inside their indiscernible nucleus. An apparently cruel natural selection, necessary to preserve a handful of elected amidst the ruins of human collapse.

Low Impedance

CHRISTOPH HEEMANN – The Rings Of Saturn

2008-12-15T01:21:00.000-08:00

It’s been a long time without new solo albums by Christoph Heemann and I, for one, was missing them a lot. If there’s an artist whose individual music is perfectly symbolized by the worn out adjective “cinematic”, that’s the introvert gentleman from Aachen. Many illustrious projects have seen him as a fundamental contributor – HNAS, Seclusion, Mirror, In Camera to name a few, a collaborative effort with Charlemagne Palestine upcoming; still, there’s something in the personal releases that, by some means, distances this farsighted visionary from practically everybody. Maybe - just maybe - a comparable creative entity might correspond to Jim O’Rourke – not surprisingly an erstwhile Heemann collaborator – but the concoctions of altered reality and concreteness generated by this man are unambiguously unique, The Rings Of Saturn – a self-released limited edition - being no exception.

After an introductive collective conversation (Italians, of all humanity), the record starts to unveil its seducing grace, an untainted attractiveness that only recurring listens can really bring forth. Merging urban environments, chatting characters, kids at play, passing cars, birds in gardens and shoes on pavements – plus a myriad of other indecipherable, yet welcome to the ears sources – with absurdist takes on actuality, the composer explores the remote corners of the listener’s psyche, filling the surrounding air with materializations that get disfigured and processed that necessary bit to maintain their origin visible through delirious dreams. Case in point, the hilariously disquieting detuned-and-delayed marching band heard in the third movement before eloquently austere sounds of bells – first a railroad, then a church - take center stage, letting us in silent pondering. We’re used to listen to these manifestations, yet Heemann manages to make them appear as the most pleasant occurrence in the world.

A minute or so of cut-up including various scraps of muzak – typical of earlier masterpieces such as Invisible Barrier – introduces the fifth chapter, made of haunting aural snapshots characterized by the whistling voices of hundred of feathered creatures whose presence, aptly treated and mixed with the sound of automobiles, represents an ethereal apparition from which an ill-omened foreshadowing emerge under the guise of slowed-down, droning frequencies (possibly an elongated piano reverberation, but it could be anything). A fabulous moment of intense emotion, among the absolute best of the disc.

Much appreciated here are the glimpses of pregnant silence characteristic of rural areas at dawn, blackbirds and roosters mixing their existences while, somehow, a radio appears in the distant background to fade away almost instantly. A refreshing element of familiar awareness soon overwhelmed by a looming moan out of nowhere, as to remind that the end is never too far even when things get calmer. It’s doubtful that people untrained to this kind of introspection will be able to penetrate the essence of moments like this; luckily for them, a motorcycle and a dog promptly arrive to cement our feet in an unwelcome reality once and for all, despite the tolling from another bell tower ending the vision.

The sonic narrative is concluded by a track based on looped-and-destroyed orchestral fragments and mariachi-styled trumpets, an untitled piece of poignancy that, again, leaves the whole in a state of uncertainty and suspension, a “to be continued” of sorts which seals a stunning present for 2008’s Christmas. A superb release, destined to 100 lucky owners who – hopefully – don’t deserve to be called “latecomers”.

Available at DIE STADT and DRONE RECORDS

CELER - Nacreous Clouds

2008-12-14T07:41:00.000-08:00

“Nacreous clouds” is just another definition for “Polar stratospheric clouds” or PSCs, whose abnormal shining occurs before dawn or after dusk due to the sunlight received from beyond the horizon, a luminosity that is also reflected to the ground in those circumstances. To sonically represent this phenomenon, Will Thomas Long and Dani Baquet-Long recorded several segments of music and human activity, either by playing regular instruments (cello, violin, piano and bells) or aptly described “household sounds” (water, TV static, etc.) together with “classic” field recordings. Afterwards, they made tape loops of the whole, setting the playback at various speeds in different combinations, the results processed by laptops and “channelled back out into a Kaiser filter”.

If you think that it’s possible to detect even a slight particle of the above mentioned sources while listening to this CD you’re completely wrong, as the 37 pieces forming this malleable architecture – improvable by shuffling the tracks according to the composers – are short glimpses of a state of conscious stupor that renders this work, in all probability, the best Celer album I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy. The “raw iridescent ambience” depiction used in the press release is a good one: umbrageous entities, whispered amorphousness, sudden disappearances and somnolent reminiscences are all part of a same mental condition, the nerves receiving a much needed rubdown that transforms a latent tenseness into a resinous melancholy. Goodbye to vigilance, welcome to inside responsiveness. A fine paradigm of contemporary ambient at low volume, but also an exciting titillation of particular frequencies as the mixture is left free to reveal its stifled resonances more deliberately.

And/OAR

VIKKI JACKMAN - Whispering Pages

2008-11-30T10:04:00.000-08:00

The hybridization of dissimilar sound sources is a stimulating field of exploration, and no one more than Andrew Chalk is a master in transforming a simple idea into the sonic depiction of a feeling of overhanging dejection. After her admirable debut on this very label - Of Beauty Reminiscing - pianist Vikki Jackman continues to look at the different approaches to this kind of process. These nine tracks are a decisive step forward in terms of sheer daintiness of the music, although essentially based on the same components. The large part is in fact constructed upon rarefied touches of piano, at times played as in a state of sluggish sadness (“Empty Rooms”), elsewhere modified by studio treatments that cause the instrument to become unrecognizable.

Chalk is definitely present, perhaps with impalpably tailored guitars, bass and additional processing: in a track like “The Softest Blue” plucked strings are traceable amidst spellbinding layers of slow-moving shades. Despite the glitches and hissing frequencies of pieces such as “Never A Wave” trying to shift the music’s gravity centre towards a “current” brand of entrancing electronica the nostalgic factor remains as always preponderant, and there’s no doubt that the unclothed minimalism of these transformed melodic snippets is a critical element in the overall mood of the disc, which - despite being credited to Jackman alone - should positively be called a shared effort. Indeed there are several sections that distinctly recall Chalk’s own work and - especially in “Dreams” and “A Summer Interlude”, both enriched by beautiful field recordings of birds and urban environments - also Brian Eno’s, when the latter was still above suspicion of compromise.

Egoless manifestations of innocence that by no means we’ll cease to appreciate, more than ever when life events force us in a corner and start hitting hard to the body.

Faraway Press

CHRISTOPHER MCFALL - The City Of Almost

2008-11-24T03:04:00.000-08:00

Kansas City’s Christopher McFall began to pull together these tracks after moving in a studio situated in an erstwhile flourishing part of the town, an area where “avenues were rife with commerce and business”. As it happens, the cheerful times didn’t last and those environs - where the composer still works - have deteriorated to the point of wreck, thus prompting him to illustrate the place as “The City Of Almost”.

McFall has awakened our interest time and again throughout the latest months, thanks to superbly conceived pieces that give a voice to that unfathomable, lump-in-the-throat glumness brought forth by desperation and neglect, particularly when referred to a desolate kind of metropolitan wretchedness. Yet he’s able to extract the vital juice that renders those depressing snapshots nearly desirable, or at least akin to the sense of belonging that humans helplessly seek out for the whole extent of their inconsequential life. Feeling in synch with a bleak quarter is one of those inexplicable frames of mind producing a blend of sorrow and interior peace, and McFall captures exactly that balance in the recordings. His soundscapes contain crumbling gatherings, underground lamentations, postindustrial-like whirring secretions and, the most fascinating characteristic of this very disc, what appears as mourning chorales of mutely weeping souls, appearing every once in a while to remind about the complete unreliability of good intentions, rapidly swept away by a single event or the necessity of adapting even to a disgusting compromise, if only to keep living to tell the tale.

The ill-omened loops and intimidating spirals defining the overall aesthetic of this album in a track such as “All Parts Contained” distance the work of this man from the humdrum-drone activities of our day’s dumb multitudes, placing The City Of Almost in the restricted-access room containing the few authentic masterpieces of grief-eliciting music.

Sourdine

ARSENIJE JOVANOVIĆ - Galiola

2008-11-24T02:42:00.000-08:00

Criminally under-recorded, the music of composer and director Arsenije Jovanović possesses the kind of remarkable qualities that, love it or hate it, are going to finger the nerves of those who listen conscientiously. The nearest thing to a blurred concept of “notoriety” for this artist derives from the involvement in the soundtrack to Terrence Malick’s movie “The Thin Red Line”, which in fact features Jovanović’s “Prophecy of the Village Kremna”. That’s the longest and most suggestive vision in this four-episode compilation, based as it is on an ancient Serbian prediction, a numinous foretelling about “catastrophic events and apocalyptic occurrences which will fall upon the homeland and its people”. A sequence of haunting female voices, lingering nocturnal appearances, distant moans, sighs and mumbles, humming low frequencies chipping away at the tranquillity of a candid latecomer, likely to have impressionable audiences sleeping rather uncomfortably should this track be played at late evening.

Strikingly emotional as well is 1967’s “Tombstones Along the Roadside”, described as a “national Danse Macabre” by the originator; initially conceived as a theatrical stage act, the composition honours the innocent victims of the Balkan wars from the end of 19th century to WWII, portions of the texts taken from the gravestones of deceased soldiers and subsequently transformed in monologues and hypothetical dialogues between the sufferers and their tormentors. The remaining tracks are, to some extent, not as much of evil-boding - but extraordinary nonetheless. “Prayer for One Galiola” was born from an unpleasant incident as, many years back, Jovanović found himself lost at sea in the dead of night, his boat’s engine not working (he landed on a small island named Galiola after hours of wandering in the waters), and also from an assortment of hallucinations following a car accident that, somehow, were all associated with this name. “Les Vents du Camargue” is the most concrete-sounding affair, the main source being the Mistral that made impossible an external recording at first and took the leading role afterwards, either through its forceful blowing or via the psychological mechanisms that were set in motion by the wind’s influence, the whole taped at the Cathedral of St. Trophime in Arles. Still, this depiction doesn’t even acquaint with a tiny bit of what this great piece sounds like.

Jovanović’s particulars are uniquely vivid, having the large part of this music been written for radio broadcasts (and, in general, rarely performed). The dramatic aspects are definitely predominant, often disturbing; there’s a sort of bloodcurdling magnificence emerging in several fractions of these sonic constructions which is both illogical and inescapable, analogously to the attraction for the gruesome details of a scene of death that many people experience. Here’s to hoping that more of this body of work is unearthed, especially if the standards of inventiveness are confirmed at this level of impressive consistency.

FO A RM
And/OAR
Alluvial

RICHARD SKELTON - Marking Time

2008-11-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

Those who listen to it at the appropriate moment instantly recognize the signs. Richard Skelton’s music is hedged by a well-perceptible melancholy, its wooden scents suffusing the responsive listener’s psyche by projecting memories to places where one’s sure of having been a part of something - perhaps as trees, clouds, engraved stones, butterflies; certainly not as humans - and eventually to return to, sooner or later.

Marking Time represents the first occasion in which Skelton appears in real name on a label different than Sustain-Release, but the fundamental nature of his wonderful sonic craft hasn’t changed a iota. An inborn consistency, deriving from the ideal intertwining of two or three essential melodic/harmonic constituents, is what pushes the pieces towards the spots of the soul where a cyclic chord or the knitting of reiterated linear patterns can literally germinate, burgeoning into undersized plants whose roots hold on to the inside parts of the mental organism that want to escape from the well disguised but still visible psychoses of a desperate mass, causing an effect of regretful understanding - the very reason for remaining with feet firmly planted in that grief, the element that, ultimately, is going to fortify our individual being, the factor which constitutes yet another small step to the ever-imperfect integration with a surrounding world which isn’t even a simulacrum of the idea of wonderland that mothers lulled us with in the early stages of living.

Sparse piano chords are scarred by noises of slacked strings and gentle hits on the instrument’s bodies, as to recall a malfunctioning clock signalling that the time has come to finally turn that page of the dusty book of consciousness; perpetual silhouettes of plangent violins and winded harmoniums provide evidence that there’s actually no need to wait for a presumed “future life” to realize that the quintessence of total awareness is achievable, if only we manage to unlock the mind from the trap of words. Were this writer forced to choose a symbol to represent the concept of dolorous beauty expressed by the Lancashire musician, the pick should be “Lowe”: a heartrending synopsis of everything that’s feared right before disposing of adolescence, the uneasiness originating from the impossibility of transmitting this deeply emotional message to the right persons.

Those creatures do exist. Mr. Skelton is one of them, and letting the artist’s call for attention unanswered would be outright foolish. This music is the key to a different dimension of our existential form, as precious as the devotion to someone that you have the fortune to meet in time and will always keep in your heart, whatever happens.

Preservation

ERIKM & AKOSH S. - Zufall

2008-10-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

Turntable-cum-sampling virtuoso ErikM started his career as a rock guitarist, but over the years he’s increasingly become proficient in an outstandingly clamorous style. He mixes in fact billions of different sources - plus the classic noises derived from prepared vinyl - into a pernickety assortment of events symbolizing the sonic multiplicity of the last three centuries. Collaborations with Voice Crack, Christian Marclay and Luc Ferrari have propelled this man towards a deserved reputation, yet there was the need of a truly authoritative statement to consider him a genuine great. Well, this statement has almost certainly arrived as Zufall is one of the best pound-for-pound albums of 2008, 51 minutes that clutch the attention without letting it go for a split second, the music ensuing from two live performances recorded in Paris and Brussels.

Clearly not extraneous to the success of the album, Hungarian reed player Akosh Szelevényi - currently based in France - gives an amazing demonstration of his potential on an array of instruments that comprises saxes, clarinets, tarogato, kalimba, bells and Tibetan horn. Being this the first time in which I listened to Akosh’s playing, let it be known that he blew me away in several occasions: a lightweight hybrid of Peter Brötzmann and Alfred Harth, with hints to early John Zorn - at least in circumscribed snippets - this gentleman jiggers all the good intentions of an ordinary evening by incurving and entangling outside notes in textural chains of question marks, showing an impressive command of every known technique while discarding mere juggling and tricks in favour of meaningful locutions that systematically snap out of banality to demoralize the phonies who believe that reeds were meant for jazz exclusively.

Still, the show that ErikM puts up is nothing short of astounding, and remains the most sizzling trait of the disc: impossible not to be staggered in front of such a barrage of dissimilar stimuli - fragments of Beethoven, rap and old-fashioned muzak weighing exactly the same in this perspective - where everything becomes the infinitesimal component of a fractal complexity which, preposterously, is also comprehensible to the most minuscule detail.

If you long for fresh-sounding plunderphonics, sampladelia and cut’n’paste this is an absolute must, a really outstanding saxophonist added as an extra: the howling tarogato heard in Part 7 is alone worth of acclamation.

Ronda

STEPHAN MATHIEU - Radioland

2008-10-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

Two names immediately hit my mind as soon as the “shortwave radio” definition comes into sight. John Duncan, who has pushed the methods of management of that particular resource towards formerly unfamiliar territories and unprecedented consequences, his Phantom Broadcast an excellent starting point for the neophyte; and Tod Dockstader, the 3-CD set Aerial signifying a pinnacle as far as the sympathetic qualities of harmonious emanations from the ether are concerned (if your collection doesn’t incorporate this masterpiece, consider yourselves slapped on the knuckles). A niche amidst these beauties is needed today, for Stephan Mathieu’s Radioland adds new connotations to the original notion preserving an awesome aesthetic magnetism for its whole extent.

Mathieu, whose Hidden Name with Janek Schaefer (released by Cronica in 2006) ranks among the most stunning albums heard in many years by this writer, created another superior objet d’art by processing signals drawn together in different sites from June 2005 to November 2006. The source treatment occurred in real time - a feature, this, endowing the record with a much treasured insinuation of “mortal blemish”, still perceivable despite the subsequent post-production. Contrarily to the above mentioned artists’ approach, which tends to leave corporeal mechanisms aside - thus giving the idea of inaccessible locations and predominantly enthralling states - Mathieu extracts the gist of what the inhabitants of those radio zones bear with themselves. Although the music definitely belongs in the top-notch area of spectral stillness (“spectral” meant in the scientific acceptation, although “eerie” wouldn’t be a totally inappropriate description for this sonic substance), there’s something that lurks behind the sheer magnificence of these overlapping, wavering shades. Short shreds of an on-air debate appear, without prior notice, only to fade away in a handful of seconds, and the materialization of a soprano banshee surprises us in a vaporous mass of frequencies. The final track “Prolog im Himmet” makes brilliant use of chanting female voices, captured somewhere between a remote station and the unidentified secrets of our remembrance, somehow recalling Akira Rabelais’ Spellewauerynsherde.

But the uppermost peak of this work, a literal stimulation of the responsive components in the apparatus of unintentional recollection, is “Auf der Gasse”: five minutes of inert echo, apparently void of particularly crucial contents yet animated by a series of hardly perceptible movements under a feeble timbral tissue, elements that cause a harmonic dislocation - bordering on downright nonbeing - which can’t possibly be engraved in the futility of inadequate words. The ones who recognize what I’m talking about will instantly realize that the moment has arrived; others are almost certainly going to try and attach doomed-to-failure definitions, in the hallowed name of their “studies on human advancement” (typically characterized by a hopeless unawareness of the fundamentals, the most important being that the terms “improvement” and “collectivity” do not exert a reciprocal pull).

Radioland must be snatched from the jaws of inattentiveness, today like tomorrow. It’s a marvelous memento of how people’s rationalizations sound dimwitted, while the essential nature of existence - spelled “resonant vibration” - is there for all beings to be pervaded from. Someone’s blessed by an inborn awareness of such phenomena. Meanwhile, on the blunt side of wisdom, self-styled scientists are convinced of having taken hold of the “before and after”, blathering about unfathomable raison d'êtres that do not actually exist, utterly neglectful of the “here and now”, disrespecting the core of the fundamental matter. In a nutshell, incapable of growing up.

Die Schachtel

GREG HEADLEY - 24-Carat Abnormalities

2008-10-08T02:28:00.000-07:00

In its quiet progression, the practically invisible career of Greg Headley has established a recognizable, almost familiar pattern of thorough approval in my own taste. I detect plentiful doses of sincerity in what this man does, the music sounding like the fruit of a private improvement rather than a showing off of mundane things brought out only to be able to say “here’s the new record”. This latest CDR release was to some extent influenced by a series of trips to Eastern Europe that the composer embarked on in 2007 and, above all, by “several changes, big and small” which affected his life one way or another. The basic substance was produced without too much of a previous thought - according to a logic that Headley describes as “create first, analyze later” - and with the usual means: guitar and a computer running software instruments (there are also piano and organ sounds in the album, yet it seems that everything was axe-piloted).

The uncomplicated structure of the large part of this work is exactly its winning feature: a two-note, three-note sketch of melodic material is taken, examined, reutilized and decomposed, a timbral defacement happening meanwhile, sometimes down to near-collapse, elsewhere with just a modicum of interference. Pulse and repetition are not irrelevant to the context, yet we’re pretty distant from proper minimalism - and don’t think about Fennesz, either. Picture instead someone observing an object from every possible position, in order to decide what is the better light for it to disclose a supposedly indiscernible, concealed beauty. This, too, seems to be the secret behind Headley’s artistic principles, which we should mull over excluding superficiality.

28 Angles

ZAFKA - Yong He

2008-09-29T01:26:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, the first releases by Dajuin Yao’s Post Concrete imprint were remarkable proposals in the field of contemporary, and truly original, electronic/acousmatic music. After a long silence, Yao launched a sub-section of the label - Archival Vinyl - where the recent output can be downloaded for free. Pleasant surprises are in store for the snoopiest.

Yong He is an extremely mature and, in several moments, stunningly beautiful work by an artist whose name and music this writer had never met before. Treated reverberations of water and birds open the composition, entirely based on a subtle balance between environmental (preferably urban) emanations and transfixing electronic abnormalities. A smoggy figuration of cyclical electronics functions as the fire under a cauldron of both adult and young voices, the whole encircled by a background characterized by sounds and noises from a flea market, or whatever it may be. A seller’s chanting call becomes an essential element of the piece as the listener is subjugated by a veritable spell in mere minutes, crying toddlers and creaking loops surrounding us until puzzling echoes of what the ears identify, perhaps wrongly, as superimposed layers of shêng (the Japanese sho) lead to the next segment.

Obliquely unkind resonances enhance the coalescence, while another sexless voice seems to grieve over a failure and sing a lullaby at one and the same time, a moment of surreal enthralment rarely experienced in recent times by yours truly. Moaning inharmonious drones metamorphose the prospect into a landscape of rustling objects, engines and heaven-knows-what-else; this represents the preamble to an amazing section featuring a sweet little girl singing along a Chinese children song on the radio, apparently on a street given the blaring traffic’s interference. A cross of alienation and tenderness that acutely moved the grouchy reviewer, who’s still wondering why. Out of the blue, rarefied gongs and more birds welcome back on the pensive side of life: taped oddments of talking-and-chuckling elderly men remind of the great contrast - purity versus experience, early growth versus near death - which is the very axis of an existence that people keep investigating to no purpose, looking so foolish as so many points in their time are unavoidably flying away.

The ceaseless racket, a true metropolitan bellow, soon returns to save from the last illusion. We’re ultimately set free from the idea of an affected reconciliation with non-collaborative neighbouring beings. The winged creatures, the tolling of the bells, a coughing man, the heavy rain, a supposed civilization, nothingness, meaninglessness, futile words. Everything absurd yet existing, although destined to end sooner than later.

Yong He is an essential ingredient of 2008’s crème de la crème, an absolute work of art.

Post Concrete

DARREN TATE - Reflections On A Ceiling

2008-09-22T01:01:00.000-07:00

Coming in a DVD slim case adorned with Tate’s customary artwork made of black moons and virtually nonfigurative paintings, Reflections On A Ceiling is a three-part work that buttresses and substantiates all the characteristics of the Yorkshire artist we have felt affection for throughout the years, that fusion of frankness and volatility which causes an effect of unsystematic gratification in the mind of the listeners, subjected to sounds that are as intelligible as unforeseen.

The start is immediately surprising, as Tate is captured while answering a phone call amidst a layering of tangential field recordings, mainly belonging to the “noise from the town” variety: passing cars are pleasing to hear, provided that they remain at a good distance from our immediate surroundings. After that, the music increasingly shifts towards a preponderance of electric guitar and oscillators/electronics, the former played without any pretence of technical mastery, just abstract swipes and resounding dissonance, the latter generating a constant seesaw of frequencies that nevertheless stabilize the sonic development instead of altering its symmetries. The third subdivision dips the same phone call and initial ambiences in a viscous solution of effects, wobbly echoes of far-sighted candour once again reminding that the man is a one-and-only creative thinker, an unambiguous shape among many bad emulators of his style.

Fungal

ANNETTE KREBS / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA – Siyu

2008-09-18T01:29:00.000-07:00

There’s no necessity of losing ourselves in the wake of mind-bending analyses when dealing with certain records. They work since the initial moments, provided that the context is right (in this particular juncture, that entails unconditional quietness: you just can’t afford to be bothered by kitchen noises or children at play while trying to make sense of Siyu).

The most interesting facet of Krebs’ attitude to improvisation is an absolute openness in regard to sound-generating activities and pieces of equipment. In her playing, the concretely acoustic assets of a manipulated instrument live together with the precious elusiveness of hiss-and-grind flotsam and jetsam, a touch of warped human existence added for good measure, possibly via micro-recorders and shortwave radio. The manifest distinction from the impassible (dis)connection of Nakamura’s subliminal pulses and ear-splitting frequencies is probably the winning card of this album. Music that pullulates of abrupt appearances, events lasting the span of a sympathetic nod before vanishing in the hush from which they had materialized.

How long, one wonders, we’ll have to endure disputes apropos the alleged frigidity of this type of expression? What many critics refuse to take in is that the mainstream listeners are plainly and simply not ready, still attached to self-related aesthetic laws which, for the large part of consequential contemporary art, mean next to nothing. It’s not about “I like it, I don’t” anymore. This music – when properly realized – appraises the effects of other sorts of feedback (no pun intended): the intellectual response of those who receive it, the transmitting properties of contiguous spaces. Try to consistently raise the volume level when assessing the record - especially the first track - then tell me that nothing’s happening. Someone’s going to be irritated, others will remain at a standstill in absorption – yet I’m willing to wage that no one would be left unconcerned. If that happens, those people aren’t actually listening; their channels are closed. They’re doing something else, although physically in attendance.

If you believe in EAI’s faculty of attracting through the sheer curiosity produced by sounds that aren’t even so “new” but hold enough magnetism to modify a person’s perceptive conditions, then Siyu is a fitting release for your trust to nosh.

SoSEDITIONS

SAWAKO - Bitter sweet

2008-09-11T01:57:00.000-07:00

Looking at the impressive curriculum vitae of Sawako, which includes a Master’s degree in Interactive Communications and studies in “Networked Expression, Physical Computing, Post Linear Narrative and Audio/Visual”, one is almost taken aback by the tender greeting that Bitter Sweet, probably the most emotionally intense work she’s given birth to, reserves to the listener.

A polymorphism of warm textures whose ever-changing nuances - best appreciated in two heartrendingly stunning tracks such as “Deep Under” and “Looped Labyrinth, Decayed Voice” - put our thoughts in that zone where childhood’s pureness of reminiscence and the candour of a vital ecstasy meet. A multi-chambered wintriness only rarely illuminated by traces of shimmering light, immediately dissipated by a copious leafiness of meshed melodies, rather simple but, in their intersections, projecting huge shadows all around the place where you’re standing. It’s without a doubt a splendid album, also for the reason that the composer wisely chose to focus the effort on the instrumental weaving, leaving her frail vocal tone appear exclusively in the final “A Last Next”. The whole gains both in concentration and grief, the Japanese girl returning to the highs reached in Yours Gray on And/OAR, making us care for her music with renewed fervour. Among the guest artists, Ryan Francesconi and Jacob Kirkegaard.

A modern ambient miniature masterpiece, with more than a fair share of highlights: play Tsubomi, Saku in infinite repeat at sunset and deliver yourself from the burden of an ineffectual mortal subsistence.

12k

FERIAL CONFINE - First, Second And Third Drop

2008-08-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

Before his current blurred visions of grace, Andrew Chalk had already intuited that unrefined yet enthralling forms of beauty lie in the cross-pollination of noisy structures and latent tranquillities. First, Second And Third Drop was a firm gesture towards the non-believer, the invitation to a feast of bowed metal, wooden flutes, hissing steam and shifting drones that finds many points in common with that other legendary lone wolf named David Jackman, not coincidentally a subsequent collaborator. The five tracks of this strong album - originally recorded in 1986 and only now out of the archives - seem to symbolize the stages of an initiation.

A short introductive assault on the ears comes from the initial “Procession”, the prosecution of the harsh ritual of ringing clangour visible in “The Flying Fish” (here the Organum association is almost inevitable). After the acrid baptism, things start to change quite noticeably, “Advent” being the turning point of the disc: the noise is inescapable despite a discernible harmony at work beneath the shrieks, an unreal cavernous chorale of energies that would like to stretch while being pushed back by a petrifying stare from the gods of inexplicable racket. Still, they’re flirting with sensual numbness, the intangibility of what all this means at the basis of a state of disheartenment.

The cycle gets its completion with the two final segments: “It’s Past” is a mist of brittle harmonics generated by some sort of celestial body drifting around perplexity, while “The Sky Collapsed” seals the pact between useless questioning and acceptation of unawareness, a healing caress of droning resonance and singing birds on the head of the poor beings who were convinced of their personal advancement, but will always remain mere casualties of anachronism.

Siren Records

ANTHONY BRAXTON / JOE MORRIS - Four Improvisations (Duo) 2007

2008-08-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

The current picture of the world of improvisation shows multitudes of different perspectives, several stimulating currents, an abundant batch of cardsharpers in the foreground and those who inevitably get classified among the holy cows, although not always due to effective artistic merits. Yet Anthony Braxton - either a name that puts in awe due to his mercurial mind and forward-looking musical thought, or a “too difficult” musician to be “avoided at any cost” - manages to escape expectations, except one: everything he does unloads in fact a burden of consequence on the audience’s shoulders, like it (aesthetically) or not. This can’t possibly be denied, if not by utter ignorance.

When Braxton decided to publish the entire session that he and guitarist Joe Morris recorded on July 30 and 31st in the Crowell Auditorium of the Wesleyan University, both artists were positively conscious of the historic importance of this issue. The saxophonist has expressed a wish for utilizing this music “as a way of talking about composition in time and mutable space” to his students in the future. That says a lot of this duo’s character, its main feature evidently being a stunning stability, a blend of liberated opinion and structured development of concepts that the discerning listener can unmistakably compare to fresh water springing from under a mountain rock bottled in beautiful crystal profiles. This is purity of intents, also known as “creativity at the uppermost level”, allowing unpredictable events to be instantly digested, reshaped and exposed without the gloss of a formula, or the ennui born from typical “jazz progressions”.

Morris himself ranks among the guitarists – let’s just say “players”, mental and corporeal boundaries extending well over the sheer mechanics of the six strings – destined to puzzle many addressees, principally those used to standard reckoning (pun intended). In those hands the instrument becomes the proverbial means to an end, not necessarily a method to portray virtuosity (which, in this context, would be all the more futile despite the obviously superior technical expertise of the participants). There are parts of the improvisations in which we seem to hear Braxton’s now graceful, then raucous flurries accompanied by African mbira patterns rather than guitar arpeggios; elsewhere, clustered chords and scarcely malleable phrases are bound to the sense of frustration that a number of non-sympathetic listeners will surely experience (“What’s that? No diminished 7th? Where’s the augmented 5th?”). The man, supposedly, doesn’t care a iota. No need to refurbish chops and licks when all’s needed is chainless imagination and a correct brain architecture.

The reciprocal respect between the principals is palpable, regardless of a noticeable dissimilarity: Braxton utilizes seven saxophones (for the archivists: Eb sopranino, Bb soprano, alto, C melody, baritone, bass and contrabass) versus Morris’ solitary axe. The former’s insightful cleverness and, for want of a better word, culture is manifestly perceptible from the manner in which he wraps, cuddles and caresses the latter’s lexicon, the existent difference in terms of dynamics notwithstanding; a bass sax is enough to make a living room’s silverware jingle quite a bit, you know. But this is not a one-way transaction of course: both suggest and listen to the echoing modification of their very proposition, mutual skill and responsiveness intertwined in a prolonged conversation whose fecundity is treasured from the first note to the last. Four hours streaming without problems, many highlights to relish all over the four discs: as a hypothetical symbol, the quiet dialogue starting around minute 15 of the second could be perfect. “Lyrically inquisitive” is probably an appropriate description. Don’t think for a minute that it’s all flowers, though: when the going gets tough, roses morph into corrosive thistles. Still gorgeous, acutely stinging, ever treacherous for the uninformed, ballad-only “late-coming aficionado”.

Maybe the most pertinent observation – especially when thinking of personal communication being at an all-time low nowadays, in the face of myriads of instruments helpful to the contrary – came from my wife, who synthesized the whole with the following words: “these guys are definitely talking”. Indeed they are, yet detecting the substance of what’s being expressed falls exclusively on us.

Clean Feed

JIM O’ROURKE - Long Night

2008-08-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

One of the most unfathomable works by Jim O’Rourke, Long Night was conceived in 1990, the bright young man nearing a degree in composition at Chicago’s DePaul University. Like other opuses of his early career, it has remained desolately weeping in the archives until Streamline’s chief Christoph Heemann decided to render the life of considerate beings a little better, for two hours and a half at least.

The dilemma, now. I intimately know - ever since the very first listen - that this is a superb effort, deserving to be mentioned on a par with determinate chapters in the curriculum of Eliane Radigue, Charlemagne Palestine and, in a fractional way, David Behrman (to which the score is dedicated, yet the slightest hint to this composer’s oeuvre can only be sensed in the final section of disc one, where the electronic waves start travelling around quite a bit following over a hour of steadily shifting motionlessness). What worries is my utter failure in explaining why the music is that good, four consecutive listens already in the bag. After all, this ought to be a “traditional” drone piece - the inner resonance, the superimposition of harmonics, the illusion of events that aren’t actually happening, and so forth. I mean, we might try to use the stuff as environmental incidence - and get slapped in the face by our silliness. There’s something in here that comes right out of the speakers: “No, son. You must pay attention. You can’t read a magazine while this is going on”.

Consequently, the concentration does get put in but the sounds elude your ability of categorization. They budge, morph, change gradations, communicating movement yet remaining stationary. On top of everything, they work subliminally, and not in a New Age sense of “relax”: these substances crawl into the nerves and under the skin, benign worms causing valuable inspiration. Let’s not even deepen the breakdown of that extraordinary fragment where at one point - a good chunk of part two already elapsed – an overlapping accumulation of non-existent string and keyboard instruments seemingly materializes in Riley-esque ecstasy, genuinely inciting to watch the firmament and lose ourselves in bewilderment once and for all, pushing the whole towards the purest kind of minimalist energy. No chance of actually defining what the hell is happening, though. Oscillators could be used as a mechanism for interior development, I’m left thinking, although many derelict scientists of the psyche believe that the human machine has a preference for Mozart and the likes. Not anybody’s fault of course: we’re not going to stop, go back and deal with those who are impeded by their own limits. It’s just not possible anymore. Evolution claims its victims, and Jim O. was there aged 21, if you get my point.

If some reader feels that this “magna cum laude” judgment is vaguely unbalanced, they’ll have to bear in mind that this writer is a junkie for albums such as Remove The Need, Tamper and Disengage - episodes to which this CD should be paralleled, together with Mizu No Nai Umi. In essence, material fairly hated by its composer, at least according to what was declared in past interviews. Not a problem for me: a private inside niche has already been found for Long Night, which still refuses of dwelling in it. But I’m repeatedly taking pleasure in its unapologetic majestic sluggishness. Every minute of it enriches the blessed listener.

Streamline (distributed by Drag City)

RYOJI IKEDA - 1000 Fragments (reissue) + Test Pattern

2008-08-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

Formerly released in 1995 on Ikeda’s own label CCI, 1000 Fragments is by all means an influential album and, to this day, an attractive one independently from personal inclinations and evolving taste. Divided into three core compositions, this document encompasses something for just anybody concerned with the overlapping territories of computer music, ambient and plunderphonics, the Japanese researcher maintaining the dissertation’s level in the “interesting-to-brilliant” range. My preferred slice is the final one “Luxus”, built upon an awe-inspiring alternance of vaguely choir-ish chords from outer space, underscored by a pulsating drone that lingers on for minutes, new elements gradually introduced as the music flows in a masterful “neoclassic minimalist” structural design ending with purring low frequencies. Gorgeous stuff without a doubt. “Channel X” is a baffling initiation to the mental dislodgment generated by a swift string of different sonic events, which include test tones, communications between astronauts and ground control, media snippets, electronic sounds and much more. A very well conceived track that, despite its fragmentary character, leaves a bit of room for our reflexes to individuate the sources and situate them in the zone of immediate recollection that, as a whole, is the engine alimenting the positive reception of such an endeavour. “Zones” is a sophisticated illustration of pulse-based ambient, a stylish assertion overcoming the “by now acknowledged” status through impeccable timing and logic of sound assignment. One of those releases that win the fight against the passage of time, containing at least a potently riveting segment.

Interested in the “invisible multi-substance of data that permeates our world” and the “relationship between critical points of device performance and the threshold of human perception”, Ryoji Ikeda has been working on a multimedia venture called “Datamatics”, of which this is the second chapter after Dataplex, on this very label. By digitally converting all kinds of information (text, sounds, photos and movies) into barcode patterns and binary 0 & 1 sequences, the composer gives life to a whole host of micro-sonic streams whose fundamental temperament is based on a prominent rhythmic component, noticeably perceivable even in the apparently more restrained sections. We’re warned not to overextend the volume boundaries, as the alternatively stinging and rumbling discharges of these vibrational configurations might hurt both the speakers and the eardrums. 67 minutes of this concentrate can be a veritable test for your broad-mindedness, as there’s actually no real variant in the overall scheme of things; this CD works efficiently as a brain stimulator though, its impulses having a definite say amidst a state of alertness and unquiet responsiveness that are missed when the program is over, proof of a subliminal functionality in regard to the corporeal systems. A stimulating experiment for which the word “music” appears quite limited, either destined to the well versed in this sonic quarter or the ones allowing themselves a modicum of frostiness and impassiveness every once in a while. Unquestionably not appropriate for those inclined to idealism at all costs.

Raster-Noton

DANIEL MENCHE - Body Melt

2008-08-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

The superb artwork by Emily Hyde illustrates the sleeve of a white-vinyl LP, which the reviewer puts on the turntable, who knows why (what a liar, I do know why), with great expectations. The instrumentation promises a lot, too: Hammond organ and native American drums. Oooh, it makes me wonder: “Will DM mitigate his manners a tiny bit?” No way. Facilitated by the type of recording (in the “analog domain”) the impression is instantly one of typical Menche ferocity, albeit of a vaguely regulated kind.

The first side sounds like the representation of a turbulent day by a symphonic orchestra stuck on a single chord, as in a mental loop that made all the players forget everything they had learnt to that moment. Avalanches of roar and hiss rotate around the static harmony, only the bass line gradually shifting to situate the observation point elsewhere. The moments in which the definition of this murderous mantra is more evident are somewhat arousing, though ingurgitated again by the distorted mass until the end, the sound of pure electricity closing the section.

Face B throws us in the deep waters right away, the percussive factor highlighted in the mix, rapid fusillades reminding of a helicopter coming closer and closer amidst metallic clangors and dramatic background shifts. Because of those phenomena of aural misapprehension emblematic of the best entrancing music, we seem to pick out a human choir hidden somewhere in the surroundings. The second half embosses another classic Menche moment in our memory, indistinct organ notes exiting the stereo frame and beginning to bounce from a wall to the other, violently cuddling, caressingly devastating.

I tried to resist the hype, once more uselessly. You just have to love this man’s work. Body Melt is a must.

Important Records

"Is this a lateral escape from Touching Extremes?"

2008-08-06T11:39:00.000-07:00

Yes and no.

Certain recordings do deserve a special attention. Sometimes I might even retrieve old favourites from the archive of memory, but there's no actual rule here.

Essentially, this is just another outlet for writing about meaningful music. Mind you, though: Touching Extremes remains alive and kicking.

And so the old fart succumbed to the blog hydra. But I swear that I'll never, ever have a MySpace page.

Yours,
Massimo