bagatellen | Haptic - The Medium (Flingco Sound System) [LP + DVD]

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Haptic - The Medium (Flingco Sound System) [LP + DVD]

By Al ⋅ March 17, 2009 ⋅

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Of the rationales for the growth of output and energy in recent years among experimental improvisers, the music’s inherent communality should be cited as the most significant factor. U.S. musicians have perhaps subconsciously taken cues from their European counterparts in a new, pragmatic, open source approach to continuity that could scarcely be found here a decade ago.

While inter-relational growth and technical development are not new concerns to musicians, it’s notable that the US now, in such a short span, should have hardy, amoebic “scenes” taking on lives of their own. Philadelphia, Seattle, Austin and Baltimore are only a few of these regions where such music isn’t so much identified by its “sound”, but by the musicians who comprise the community, and specifically who’s breaking new ground within.

While the developments point to no real equation, there are variables, and though the “performing ensemble” isn’t too common, it can undeniably serve as glue among creative musicians on the local level.

Haptic could be described as the Broken Social Scene of its demographic, only with more immediacy to its sound, with no backbeat, and far less predictability. While experimental music is its own dog, a working band is a working band, and it’s none too surprising that a trio practicing in indefinable music should be one of the more intriguing in recent years to originate between these shores. Chicago’s Adam Sonderberg, Steven Hess and Joseph Clayton Mills — identifiable by their association with Dropp Ensemble — formed Haptic in 2005 not as a working band per se, but as an amorphic unit with a collaborative requirement. The group occasionally performs as its own trio, but Haptic is ultimately a microcosm of the larger intra-city community in their embrace of the tremendous potentials of the outsider within — the inclusion of a fourth (or fifth) rotating member.

On The Medium (Flingco Sound System, 2009), Haptic brings Tony Buck, Boris Hauf and Olivia Block into the fold as extra personnel. I’m an unabashed fan of the 3″ medium for this type of music — something between 10 and 20 minutes seems the ideal duration for music often impenetrable and almost always requiring the legroom for its own evolution. While The Medium spans both 20-minute sides of an LP (it’s also available digitally), there’s a concision to the record owing to the music’s accessibility and the tangibility of its moods.

Buck and Hauf join Haptic on the first sidelong track with coarse, spurious details amid a brooding and liquid background. The trio and its guests find a dependency early on that allows relief and accentuation for minimal treatments, a collage incorporating layered, heavy-stock cutouts of common source colorations. Atop the slowly paced setting established by Haptic, Hauf and Buck insert subtleties akin to specks in the early night sky. Most interesting is an ascertainable minor key achieved by three source tones sounded at a snails pace with the broader, darker tones that span the duration of the piece. The side deserves to be played loud for the exposure of wonderful, hushed nuances.

As aficionados of such music know, the delight is in the details, and the spacing and timing of the minutiae are as integral to the overall experience as the perceived overlaying theme. The group achieves something close to perfection in that light on the second side, which belongs to Haptic and Olivia Block. Block used certain prepared sounds, most of which came from her distinctive field recordings and related mixes chosen specifically for Haptic’s dynamics. Block has a talent for bringing heavy sound out of objects that would otherwise project near-nothingness, afforded by a scientific grasp of the signal-to-noise ratio and the equipment and measurements at her disposal to exploit it. Her contribution to the piece makes for a seamless, dramatic experience — an extended, slow interlude of the transitional type one might hear in experimental metal, very expressive and devoid of typical instrumentation.

For those requiring extra sensory depth, the album includes a complementing visual medium — a DVD with the 180-gram LP, featuring video from Chicago artist Lisa Slodkl, with whom Haptic has collaborated on other occasions. A 40-minute mix of looped short material from several instances of found footage provides the visual backdrop to The Medium’s harmonic richness. The material has a grainy bleakness to it, yet any thematic overtones of the pictures are usurped by the music itself. Would that the 5.1 treatment were more common/affordable.

The music stands preferably on its own, and best as a case for experimental collaboration and causality. Those who call Chicago home have more convenient occasion to experience Haptic live, and with the certainty that each performance will be measurably different from those prior. For all of us the satisfaction might be in anticipating who’ll bring the next dimension.

~Alan Jones