Bagatellen

"Jazz Is"

I received the following via anonymous email last week, and it looks awfully familiar, though I cannot really tell you why. Maybe the anaphora the author uses has drilled the idea that I must have read this before, somewhere else, into my head.

If no one else recognizes this, and by way of explanation, is willing to illustrate (no experience necessary), extend, celebrate or parody these sentiments, I would be most grateful.

Because jazz for me is life in all its confounding, painful, joyful efflorescence. Jazz is not a polite music. Jazz is Jelly Roll Morton sitting in a brothel in the French Quarter, hitting the ivories and claiming he invented the music. Jazz is Armstrong hitting high notes and mopping his face with a huge white handkerchief as concert-trained trumpet players in the audience rip out their hair in frustration. Jazz is Bechet's unbelievably ripe vibrato. Jazz is Ellington's jive -- and his genius, his sense of color and movement and drama. Jazz is Dizzy Gillespie pulling a knife on Cab Calloway after that crazy argument about spitballs (it wasn't Dizzy). Jazz is Bird's junk-sick version of "Lover Man". Jazz is Illinois Jacquet blowing his brains out on yet another JATP version of "Flyin' Home". Jazz is Lionel Hampton dancing on the tympani. Jazz is Coltrane playing a 40-minute solo. Jazz is Mingus punching Jimmy Knepper in the mouth. Jazz is the steel plate in Art Blakey's head. Jazz is Shelly Manne describing playing drums with Stan Kenton as being like "chopping wood". Jazz is Ornette Coleman writing a symphonic work -- union restrictions, you know -- just so he can enter the UK and play his with his trio. Jazz is Cecil Taylor beating the crap out of the piano at the Five Spot. Jazz is finding Jimmy Smith on an old jukebox. Jazz is Philly Joe Jones doing his Bela Lugosi impersonation. Jazz is Jimmy Giuffre's accompanying himself only with the sound of his foot tapping. Jazz is Lester Bowie titling a composition "Jazz Death?" Jazz is Johnny Otis voluntarily declaring himself an African-American. Jazz is Sonny Clark throwing in that damn "Carmen" quote is just about every solo he takes after 1959. Jazz is Roland Kirk playing three reeds at once. Jazz is Warne Marsh collapsing as he's playing "Out of Nowhere", his favorite tune, and never getting back up. Jazz is Dean Benedetti. Jazz is Chet Baker having his teeth stolen while working as a gas station attendant. Jazz is M'Boom, an orchestra of percussion instruments. Jazz is some kid in rural Georgia, or inner city Philadelphia, or some burned out, formerly-great industrial center in Europe, hearing the sound of a saxophone -- or trumpet, or piano, or drums -- and wanting then to dedicate their lives to the mastery of a musical instrument. Jazz is Miles turning his back on an audience. Jazz is, like all great American innovations, vulgar and loud and occasionally garish. It is unpredictable and it often mocks you with the sheer volume of truth it presents you. And I wouldn't want discussions of this music to give me anything less.

Lee Morgan - Unforgettable Lee! (Fresh Sound)

The 1960 edition of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers -- featuring Wayne Shorter, lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons and Jymie Merritt -- was an explosive unit, and one whose star soloists were also masters of their own brand of "sick" humor -- as such yuks were known in the late 1950's from which these men were departing. Yet the 1960 Messengers were much more than a collection a well-drilled rogue elements. I always thought it appropriate that one of Shorter's compositions for this group was entitled "Giantis" (see Like Someone In Love on Blue Note). It is a name that conjures up for me images of Stan Lee's original X-Men, inked so as to look like slimmed-down bumblebees and battling some green- and purple-visaged, adamantine-shelled, blunt-clawed (in the best Jack Kirby tradition) creature breaking free of its cosmic bonds and bursting through the concrete of a pseudo-Manhattan thoroughfare: fire hydrants take off on rockets of municipal supply spray, faceless citizens scream or cower, and brownstones cant like windowed dominos in a Cold War chain of wavering nation-states.

Come to think of it, Stan Lee's genius was not unlike Blakey's. Both men created genres in which their leading characters were at war with themselves as much as they were opposed to a world that refused to understand them or recognize their humanity. Giantis: one's own grandiosity? Giantis is, ultimately, easily dispatched, but one's insecurities, envies, and hormones coalesce into an energy that is both one's best friend and one's most vile nemesis. Both the Silver Age Marvel comics and hard bop are narrative styles that mutated into genres. Both are meta-narratives, and both lend the simple and occasional downright petty emotions of prolonged adolescence a gravitas. A gravitas, moreover, that has proved nearly inexhaustible and addictive for more than three successive generations of audiences.

(FWIW, I don't buy the connection between Greek tragedy and the Marvel superhero yarn, and I won't be convinced until someone sorts out all the theological and psychological dilemmas inherent in these forms.)

Although Wayne Shorter is the first soloist on many of these Birdland broadcasts, and although his work here only further underscores how his first mature style, a synthesis of Rollins'-like ribald humor and Coltrane-derived "sheets of sound" (cf., "It's Only A Paper Moon"), was among the most unique and important of its time, it is Lee Morgan whose name appears above the title here, and for good reason. A good chunk of attention has been focused, and rightfully so, on the work of trumpeters such as Don Cherry and Booker Little as being on the most leading edge of jazz trumpet playing in the early 1960's. But Lee Morgan's odyssey is both one of the most personal and most informative in all of jazz's history. It may be that Morgan recorded too prolifically for his own posterity -- a pretty counter-intuitive notion, that -- but most analyses of Morgan's work do him a disservice, sputtering out into claims that he made a number of largely indistinguishable, boogaloo-bloated albums after returning from his a sabbatical in his native Philadelphia in 1963.

It helps to remember, however, that Morgan is all of 22 years old here. This is the sound of a very seasoned prodigy. Each solo by the trumpeter finds him stripping away the lingering influence of Navarro and Brown. The core that is left is a voice that is nearly strangulated by its own fervor, and one whose penchant for braggadocio is balanced by a propensity for cold-blooded introspection. My own taste takes over when I say this, but I do feel that one of the most convincing indications of Morgan's mastery is that he so obviously began to listen to and emulate the highly vocalized approach of Kenny Dorham at this stage of his career. In any event, Morgan's wild maturation can be witnessed at every index point on this 2-disc set. It is all there in a pealing, yearning "Along Came Betty"; an argumentative "So Tired"; a "Dat Dere" that starts off subdued, then shifts immediately from soft, bent cries to a crescendo of long, high, vibrato-less tones, and ends with a blat that sounds, in this context, like self-deprecation; and three versions of "This Here" that each serve as wonderful examples of his sardonic eloquence. (Did anyone ever use the trill as brilliantly as Morgan? And just listen to how he responds to Blakey.)

Ah, to be young, incredibly talented, and a complete misfit with an ill-defined, inexpressible grudge to grind... To be the James Dean of hard bop stars: dreamy but gawky; capable of both crocodile tears and true lamentation; so fashionable and frail as to gamble with effeminacy; and driven by appetite for fast living, that for all the vicarious pleasure it gives us, is only going to be the death of him.

Burkhard Beins/Tony Buck/Steve Heather/Eric Schaefer - Berlin Drums

Third in the series following the reed and string selections from the same city, “Berlin Drums” likewise offers four 3” discs from individual musicians, this time of the percussive persuasion. As before, producer Marcus Liebig casts a fairly wide stylistic net, though not always to the set’s benefit.

Two of the four recordings, however, are excellent. Burkhard Beins begins “Nadir” with several minutes of pure brushed cymbals and gongs, a standard enough gambit but one which, when played with as much sensitively as is heard here, can generate wave upon wave of luscious overtones and deep resonances in which you feel you can wallow forever. Beins, though, quickly pulls the carpet out from under you about a third of the way through, thrusting you into a large, relatively empty space occupied only by a thin high tone and a handful of random clatters. As abrupt as it is, there’s an invigorating feel to the transition, as if you’ve been shoved from a warm, humid room into a spare, chilly one. After several minutes, you are evicted from the abode entirely, tossed into a back alley where rainwater falls from overhead gutters and the hum of an unseen highway vaguely fills the background, punctuated by the odd bell tone. “Nadir” is a lovely, unsettling performance.

Tony Buck’s powerful “Honey/Tongues” also begins with pulsating gong work, but swiftly moves into a rich welter of stroked and pummeled percussion that mutates in an almost liquid fashion throughout the piece. A section toward the middle contains more overt stick playing than one might expect but Buck, by manipulating the timbre of the struck items and generating a woody, semi-tonal quality, maintains a level of interest above and apart from the rhythms employed. Still, the general surging character of “Honey/Tongues” is never far away, a strong ebb and flow, push and pull, that carries the piece forward with irresistible conviction. It eventually billows outward, scraped gongs emitting near-elephantine roars, pounded metal erupting and dissipating into the air.

And then to something completely different, “Electric Bongo Bongo” by Melbourne-based Steve Heather. It begins enticingly enough with subtle scratchings and crumplings, only to suddenly veer into a protracted rhythm, fairly regular and mechanical, that, while presumably derived from any number of homemade, “junkyard” percussion instruments, doesn’t have enough inherent depth to sustain much interest. Heather elaborates on it a bit and sends the rhythm through some series of variations but, for this listener, few of the beats were sufficiently intriguing to want to hear for more than a few moments. Though Heather provides all manner of varied, even baroque, ornamentation, the basic unconvincing framework of the piece shows through. When the stolid, rock-like burps reappear, there’s a sense of falling back on easy answers instead of taking conceptual risks.

Of the four musicians presented here, only Eric Schaefer offers more than one track, though his three pieces (two of them further subdivided into sections) blend together pretty seamlessly. There’s something oddly retro about his work. Using a fairly straightforward, though very delicate approach, he’s somewhat reminiscent of the British free percussion school of the late 60s and early 70s, though perhaps with a bit more rhythmic emphasis. One can almost imagine some of these tracks having been performed by, say, Jamie Muir around 1972. Maybe even Jon Christenson on a good day. He introduces what I take to be an electrified zither on “No brain, no pain”, accompanied by some rote drumming, but the result is a bit too much like a Han Bennink outtake for my taste. The three sections of “Don’t tell Morton” revert to the soft use of bells, chimes and other “small” metal objects, all rather attractive in a way, but all also verging on the insubstantial (thought he very last section generates some mystery). Not bad, but not memorable either.

“Berlin Drums” remains very much worth purchasing for the Beins and Buck sets (not to mention the continuing gorgeous and unique packaging!). While survey compilations will almost necessarily vary in quality, I’d love to hear just a bit more consistency in this series, the next of which will be “London Strings”.

~ Brian Olewnick

Bob Mack vs. The Nuge

Getting ready for a serious Sammy Hagar Weekend, but before that there’s still time for a Ted Nugent Thursday. Ever since first perusing it in the pages of the now defunct Grand Royal Magazine (second ish’), I’ve held a special place in my journalistic memory bank for Bob Mack’s mano y mano with The Nuge. In the years after I’ve made several half-assed attempts to locate a reprint or transcription online, each to no avail. This afternoon though, after a spate of the usual paper-pushing & client haranguing, I got the itch again and miracle among miracles hit paydirt. The good folks over at Glorious Noise saw fit to plaster the whole interview up as a series of four jpg page scans. They make the bold claim that it’s “quite possibly the the best rock and roll interview in the history of rock and roll” and damn if I don’t agree with the assertion. At the very least it’ll likely have you rolling on the floor & trying to keep from spewing freshly quaffed coffee through your nostrils.

And for even more Nuge just drop by his website & take a gander. The Motor City Madman is in full effect & there’s lots to marvel at. My favorite section is probably Ask the Nuge where he regales fans with the answers to pressing questions on the finer points of bows, hunting, firearms & of course ROCK & ROLL (all conveniently & conscientiously indexed for easy access & readability). Now there’s a Real American Hero! JACKASS!

Please Make A Selection

"Sorry -- looks like I'm half a pint late."

"No problem. I was just washing the dust of everyday life off my shoes. Hence the preliminary nature of my stupor."

"Very good." [Slightly awkward pause.] "I suppose a cup of coffee is out of the question?"

I could build on this beginning and tell you the conversation went downhill from here, but it didn't. I really had been waiting for Andrew, and, in that meantime, I had been ignored by -- and thus freed to eavesdrop on -- talk passing between a black-clad fellow who looked remarkably like our own Alan Jones and another guy who looked unnervingly like me if and when I start showing the symptoms of male pattern baldness. The kicker, their subject? The problems of "making it" in the arts. There was some exhortation, as well as a goofy moment when a young lady poked her head around the Cock And Bull's creaking red front door. Without looking up, the regulars at the other end of the bar let out a warm, barely slurred "Come on in". The bartender signaled welcome with a knock back of his head and a wave of his silver bottle opener. "Oh no", she demurred, "I'm just looking to see if someone is in here." A specific someone, I guess. To which pseudo-Al made a strange, screwed-up Rat Pack face (squint one eye, raise the other eyebrow, curl the upper lip) and said, "I'm right here, baby." I did not note my unfortunate doppelganger's reaction.

The only conclusion I could reach is that all of us were trying to put a rough day in the rear-view mirror. Or at least squash it flat between one's arse (I prefer the King's English in this instance) and the naugahyde comforts of one's bar stool seat. (Male bonding malgre lui.) Wait; do not reach the conclusion that the conversation proceeded uphill from there, words unburdened of tension and recrimination. The establishment's jukebox saw to that.

Let me give you some examples. When I walked in, the coda to Shuggie Otis' "Island Letter" from 1974's Inspiration Information. While Andrew and I talked about the near-impossibility of ever truly re-reading Pynchon's V., John Lee Hooker was singing "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" -- and the first refrain hit right as I downed some more ale and shook my head in sad appreciation of The Whole Sick Crew. I spoke later about praying or, less ambitiously, hoping to be struck down with an incurable illness and the clarity that must come with knowing that one has only so much fleeting time left to one's self. It is not a sin, Andrew reminded me (though I did not apprehend his response as a reminder right away), but, suicide, that's a different story. I still cannot decide if The Cure's "In Between Days", a song so redolent of high school summer's so black and so hot with friendless depression, undercut our exchange, or whether it worked some white magic upon it. I do know that I feel that Van Morrison's "Into The Mystic" would have distracted me at that moment, and maybe distracted me into happiness, and that, in the great tradition of fiction, the song's occurrence then rather than later would have been more appropriate that Robert Smith's ghoulish hovering. And I know this to be true, but mysteriously -- that is, regardless of my taste or propensities to seek out a soundtrack for my life.

Are bar conversations inevitably sentimental, in that word's original, favorable sense? I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question; I am far too impertinent with questions in my writing. I mean this as sincere self-interrogation. Alcohol has something to do with it, but this explanation is so obvious it cannot be complete. Consider too the posture one adopts at the bar. You and your confidants face forward, staring into a mirror, or green, brown and clear glass bottles of various volumes. To actually talk to (as opposed to with) someone, you have to pivot into their space at the bar, and lean into their voice -- or their listening -- to make yourself understood by the multiplied murmuring around you. The bar crafts intimacy the way a Catholic confessional graces the confessor with remorse. One's posture causes one to become what those gestures only signal. The distances between does and is blurs, it is shortened that quickly.

I think it is the music that saves us from the maudlin. The jukebox plays, and those songs, both alien and familiar, assume the sound of one's own inner voice. Calling us back to ourselves. Siren-like? Perhaps; perhaps we always mistake the real significance of the siren's song, and we compute providence as myth, which, whatever myth's glories, is still an error. Hold on and back up. I'm waxing too rhapsodic, as another friend of mine says. I meant this to be about jukeboxes I have known, and the bars in which they reside, glowing like hearths, less insidious than televisions but just as ubiquitous. Like the machine at The Elbow Room, where Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks, and Sinatra albums all sat on the menu. Or the nickelodeon that sat on the ground floor of The Ginger Man. I once punched the keys for Stereolab's "Metronomic Underground" and Sonic Youth's "Titanium Expose" on that baby. Or the booth selectors I found at Brownie's Restaurant before it finally closed its doors in 1994. (You've seen Brownie's, which sat at the end of East Grand Avenue just beofre you hit I-30 to Texarkana if you've seen David Byrne's film True Stories.) A decade ago, but I still remember the experience. Over a piece of runny, saccharine lemon meringue pie and a cracked cup of Nescafé the consistency of Valvoline, I flipped through the grease-patinaed laminated pages of these technological marvels that had last been operation circa 1969, marveling at the scope of blue-collar pop musics represented therein. Lou Donaldson's Alligator Boogaloo. Otis Redding's Sings Soul. Merle Haggard's Mama Tried. Roger Miller's Golden Hits. The original Cameo release of ? And The Mysterians 96 Tears. 007-themed exploitation albums. Richard Harris' A Tramp Shining. Stan Getz's Getz Au Go Go. Records I had seen priced with broad Magic Marker strokes in countless flea markets and at innumerable garage sales. You have to understand, this is Dallas, Texas, the South (geographically, culturally), and I was browsing through evidence of an eating establishment clearly adjusting to a post-segregation era in which white, black and brown are equal as consumers. Discovering that booth selector was like finding my birth certificate, and finding, moroever, surprising information recorded on it. What I would not have given to be able to slip a dime into one of those boxes that night and to hear those worn-out grooves, engineered to play back shrill and fast (replay value, you know), to have confirmed for me that the place was not as deserted as it seemed. But there was no stack of wax on the end of the jukebox line, no automated thing to respond to my programming... unless you take the end in question to be history.

That was a long time ago. I'm less of both a Romantic and a Bohemian these early days of the brave new century. When I drink, and when I listen to music, I do so with a purpose either in mind or at least not far underneath the surface of my consciousness. As I continued to talk with Andrew (about and around houses, safe neighborhoods, mutual acquaintances), I found more and more than I could not let a tune pass through the air with offering commentary on it. "Is this Souxsie And The Banshees?" (It was.) "I hear Grant Lee Phillips." "What was that thing that played before this?" I could not tell you precisely when it was I allowed the music to emulate, and then to supplant the conversation. Was it an occurence at which I for my friend should have taken offense? No. I remain confident that, finally and for all time, it was my conversation with my friend. Last night, I mean.

Up, down, over, under, sideways, down... You see, I'm not sure our conversation plateaued, either. Looking back, I can see that it stood by the side of the road with its thumb out, a drifter counting cars and bounded on every side by a hill obscuring every neon sign of civilization. Like VACANCY.

The Bevis Frond - Inner Marshland (Reckless)

The British have always had an edge when in comes to top-flight psychedelia and acid rock. Bands like Pink Floyd and Soft Machine pioneered the precedence for others to follow. Opening the Doors of Perception once more for late millennial American acts like The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and Bardo Pond, Londoner Nick Saloman, under the nom de cachet The Bevis Frond, reconciled the vintage trappings of the argot with a post-punk viscerality. He did it largely as a one-man enterprise, recording much of his earlier material at a DIY studio in his rented flat. This album, his second, is one of his best. The invocational “Cries of the Inner Marshland” gives a mescaline-tinged fix on Saloman’s attic coordinates with sonar blips piercing through a percolating froth of bong water and back-masking guitar arpeggios dovetailing into shimmering flange effects. “Termination Station Grey” expands from a low-fi passion pop center with more fuzz tone guitar, stereo-channeled vocals and the rhythmic push of murky drums. Keening Farfisa organ fuels “Window Eye” as Saloman once again layers thickly striated slabs of riffage over stoned-out hallucinogenic lyrics that recall the work of his countryman Lewis Carroll. Inserted between are a motley assortment of humorous skits and samples in which he adopts a small cadre of alter-egos. My favorite of these: a scratchy LP-lifted quote from The Riddler that presages “Defoliation Part Two.” “I’ve Got Eyes in the Back of My Head” finds Saloman making like Bob Mould circa Metal Circus, a tsunami-sized wave of feedback trailing his ten-story tall stereo-bifurcated licks. “Medieval Sienese Acid Blues” takes the laconic rock-star conceit even further as coarse-grained blues chords spool out from both sides of the stereo spectrum and Saloman filters his nasalized voice through some sort of reverb mic attachment for added attitude. But some of the most impressive and excessive fretwork flames on during the long-form melodic masterpiece “Once More.” The 1988 cd version of the album appends three cuts from Bevis Through the Looking Glass including the nearly 20-minute lysergic jam “The Shrine” to the original album.

Great Zeppelins

Alessandro Bosetti/Antje Vowinckel - Charlemagne...

Bosetti, Alessandro/Vowinckel, Antje
Charlemagne, la vue attachee sur son lac de
Constance, amoureux de l’abime cache
Bowindo
03

Some of our French readers may offer a better translation of the title. The best I can manage is, “Charlemagne, his eyes fixed on Lake Constance, in love with the ruined mask”. Not that it matters. The disc in question is oddly structured, featuring two lengthy pieces by Bosetti and a shorter one by Vowinckel. Both of Bosetti’s are entirely electronic in nature having little to do with his perhaps better known quiet work on the soprano saxophone, both solo and in groups like Phosphor. The first, “Sardinia and Japan are Islands”, strings together in seemingly random fashion a large range of unrelated sounds including taped voices, processed field recordings and digitally generated tones. It’s something of a mishmash, a stream of consciousness kind of journey where, if the listener isn’t entirely in sync with the music’s creator (and I fear I’m not in this case), a sense of arbitrariness creeps in and one is left with the disquieting notion that episodes have been stitched together without any compelling reason. There’s a shallowness of field that fails to convince one of a viable alternate reality. This is decidedly not the case in the subsequent track, “Kitchen Piece” which works altogether more successfully. The original sound source is an improvisation performed by Oreledigneur (the duo of Giuseppe Ielasi and Renato Rinaldi) in “Rita’s Kitchen”, presumably then processed extensively by Bosetti. One of the basic aspects of the work is that, happily, it does indeed largely sound as though one is in a kitchen! The noises are kept abstract and sections are sliced and diced with abandon, but there’s a “kitchenness” to the proceedings that’s quite appealing. It’s also far less claustrophobic than the preceding number, expansive in breadth and taking special delight in inserting palpable space between sounds, opening everything up. One can almost visualize the little side trip up a faucet, over a dish rack, a peek out the window, kicking crumbs out of the toaster, etc. It’s a very nice work.

Antje Vowinckel, a new name to me, is apparently better known for her radio plays, but she plunges into the musique concrete field with abandon in her piece, “NIPPS”. It’s an interesting contrast to the first Bosetti piece since, in some ways, there’s a similarity of approach, a kind of free-for-all attack where each subsequent element may bear little obvious relationship to what came before or follows after. Which is to say that perhaps the reason I find Vowinckel’s work fairly convincing may simply be that I feel an affinity for the way she arranges sound, that the series of events reads as somehow logical to me, even if it’s impossible to explain why. In any event, she uses many “big” sounds: explosive vocalizations, sci-fi ray gun blasts, large blobs of tone, all of which cushion and envelop the mid-range clatter and upper level sizzles and whistles. When, late in the composition, a collage of Japanese voices bursts in, it’s somehow right, a door opening into an adjacent video parlor. “NIPPS” is vibrant, even a tad gaudy, but it brims with life and that's all one can ask.

~ Brian Olewnick

Domenico Sciajno/Gert-Jan Prins - The D&B Album

Domenico Sciajno/Gert-Jan Prins
The D&B Album
Bowindo
04

Yes, I cringed when I saw the title, too. The subtitle, fwiw, is “featuring: do shine’o & prinsjan”. Granted, it’s not a scene I've kept up on really at all but, is it still in existence in any meaningful sense? Is it already time for a retro look at d’n’b? When Derek Bailey released his version in 1997, I already thought there was more than a tinge of bandwagon jumping (though not necessarily on Bailey’s part as I felt he simply used the tracks as background noise in front of which to improvise). So the “whys” of doing a disc such as this are something of a puzzle to me.

Given knowledge of the prior work by these two (much of it very fine indeed), I wasn’t too surprised at what is to be heard here. While not regimentally so, the tracks are rather rhythmically oriented, hinting at regularity without quite getting there. The sonic elements are of the rough electronic/glitch variety for the most part. In a sense, I could understand the appeal of this sort of approach: take the general structure of a given form, loosen the constraints a bit and widen the aural palette, allowing the form greater freedom to blossom. Except, perhaps, d’n’b may not be a form that benefits from this much laxity. One gets the notion that had Sciajno and Prins sublimated themselves to the rigors, artificial though they may be, of d’n’b, had they really plunged into it, more vital music may have emerged.

All of which is not to say that “The D&B Album” is without its own charms. While the opener, “Cascocity” plods along in dribs and drabs, “Stonone” manages to churn up significant energy, the duo keeping the sounds mid-range and higher (I tend to ascribe the lower, dirtier sonics to Prins, the whistling, more ethereal ones to Sciajno but I could be wrong), the whole swirling mass transcending, for the moment, any but the vaguest d’n’b connections. The remaining three tracks vacillate both in attack and effectiveness. “Diamonds Will Do” is a quiet number, its languid rhythms sounding more like early computer music (of the Moog ilk or, if anyone remembers, Roger Powell) than d’n’b, augmented by the mandatory overlay of “non-related” fuzz and static. “Tablerock” begins promisingly, with a fuzzy, flickering beat that whips pleasantly enough around one’s noodle. It actually generates a series of juicy episodes but, in the end, you’re left with just that: a sequence of events enjoyable in isolation but which fail to cohere into any larger idea. The final piece, “Vinexology” begins in a more fragmentary area, making rough use of radio alongside several prickly beats, sounding reminiscent of some John Oswald work circa “Plexure”. In sum, not bad but lacking staying power, giving the listener a bit too much in surface texture and too little in conceptual depth.

~ Brian Olewnick

V5 Live

The Vandermark 5 and Atomic, two of the hardest touring band in 'free jazz', hit the Twin Cities Monday for a one night stand at the 7th Street Entry. As the stunted step-child of First Avenue (the old stomping grounds of Minneapolis mainstays Prince, Hüsker Dü and The Replacements), the venue offers surroundings that are basically antithetical to acoustic jazz, shaped as it is like a dank oblong fallout shelter with cramped stage and the lingering odors of countless smoked cigarettes soaked in a mire of spilled cheap beer and booze. Adding insult to possible injury, Juliana Hatfield was playing the Ave next door and her cranked amps funneled a near constant barrage of muddied noise through the walls that combined with various ceiling fans to undermine the bands’ quieter moments. Vandermark took the minuses of the environs in stride, setting up an impressive merch table at the bar and taking time out to amiably scarf down a sandwich before Atomic took the stage.

Appearance-wise Atomic reminds me amusingly of the cast to the BBC’s The Office pallid and proportioned as if they’ve spent too much time under cubicle fluorescents. Their fashion sense is also decidedly Northern European (pianist Håvard Wiik was wearing the same 70s-style blue and white zip-up tube sweater I saw him sporting at ACME in Athens). Bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and trumpeter Magnus Broo may be vertically challenged, but both men compensate for their small statures with obvious élan for their art. Powerhouse drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and lanky reed man Fredrik Ljungkvist completed the bill. Wiik played Fender Rhodes in place of his usual acoustic ivories and the switch added a very cool retro element to the ensemble. Their six-tune set got a late start, but was largely worth the delay. The V5 followed and a third set combining the talent pools of both bands constituted the slated finale.

Wiik’s lounge-laced electric keys set up the unnamed opener as Ljungkvist and Broo negotiated the twisty head over a robustly grooving bass vamp. Both horns sounded a bit stiff and reticent in their solos, but Broo eventually broke out in a spate of high piercing trills that loosened the mood up. Flaten kicked off “Everyone’s Dancing Samba to Silent Music,” the second number, with an ill-advised solo intro that combined Jimmy Garrison-like flamenco strums and stops in an exposition whose clarity was diminished by extraneous sonic flak. Lungvist’s entrance on licorice stick faced similar steep incline, but gained ground and speed with time concluding in a focused flurry of overblown whistles. Wiik closed shop with a ping pong match enacted on his keys, bouncing chords back and forth before returning reluctantly to the tune’s melody.

“The Evasive Magnet” came next with tenor and trumpet engaging unaccompanied in a loquacious chamber duet. The braiding lines hardened into a circus-sounding rondo broken by free form interludes that gathered volume and force. Ljungkvist engaged in some crowd-pleasing overblowing and the sheer numbers of calories expended through his horn made the return to the theme seem inevitably anticlimactic. “Really” worked from a jaunty up-tempo beat and walking bass line. Wiik, Ljungkvist on clarinet and Broo traded quick nimble choruses for the majority of the number before turning on full throttle for the finish in an effort to beat back the Hatfield beast snapping at their heels. “Longing For Martin” a lush and languorous ballad feature for Ljungkvist’s Turrentine-toned tenor and Nilssen-Love’s surprisingly sedate brushes set a deceptive stage for a burning romp through the band’s signature tune “Boom Boom.” Wringing every modicum of groove out of the vamp-driven piece Ljungkvist turned pugilistic, trading punching notes with swinging legato roundhouses, sounding all the while like a bar-stomping amalgam of Big Jay McNeely and Illinois Jacquet. It was an astutely chosen finish and one that left the audience properly primed for more.

Vandermark and company assumed the stage to the applause of a well-oiled crowd thanks to their colleagues. His dry off-the-cuff wit threaded through the between-tune banter augmenting the band’s working class hipster credibility. The set was a curious departure from of the schematic of band’s new album Elements of Style... Exercises in Surprise, with the leader quietly wresting first solo honors form second saxophonist Dave Rempis on the majority of pieces. “Confluence,” with Vandermark on weighty baritone and Rempis on alto, served as inaugural salvo. As with Atomic this first entry felt a bit forced. A raucous freak-out preface sidled into a showcase for Vandermark with Rempis stepping back after the statement of the head. Bassist Kent Kessler found himself saddled with an unusually diminished positioning in the mix and the piece concluded as a duet between the leader and Daisy, the latter seeming a bit rickety behind his kit.

“Suitcase” signaled another switch in instruments, Vandermark opting for bass clarinet, but Rempis holding fast on alto. Dolphy’s spirit hung particularly heavy on each with lots of register leaping and oddly voiced intervals. Daisy’s lock-step rhythms felt incongruous and it took an adroitly muted solo from Bishop to right the tune’s trajectory in a barrage of tailgating tonal growls and smears. “Knock Yourself Out,” a funky vamp-fueled tune and the only representative from the new record, received a rough hewn reading with Rempis ripping things up on tenor. Vandermark’s baritone played the requisite riffing role, but broke ranks for an unexpected solo of his own following another brilliant turn by Bishop that traded in blustery elongated slurs. “Camera” came across as an archetypal jam-packed Vandermark piece. Repeating Flaten’s mistake Kessler attempted a bass preamble, but the various crowd conversations and undiminished clatter from the gig next door conspired aggressively against him. Vandermark’s clarinet sought a similar coup against the din and came up with mixed results. But the biggest casualty was Daisy who found himself relegated to a metronomic cymbal crash on mallets and stop gap beats that quickly began to grate the ears. Even a closing segment that turned up the heat with Rempis alto riding out a strong rhythmic push by bass and drums couldn’t completely rescue the piece.

The band recouped their compromised center on “Vehicle” returning to a winsome reed combination of tenor and baritone. Daisy again supplied a supple backbeat and Kessler thrummed out one of his signature ostinatos dancing a lively jig as his fingers pummeled his strings. Vandermark’s solo was marred a shade by ill-fitting harmonies from Bishop and Rempis, but both of the latter horns book-ended the leader’s efforts with rousing improvisations. Rempis in particular was on fire, raging through a rapacious clutch of choruses in what was probably his most incendiary statement of the evening. The set closed with “Cruise Campo” another up-tempo cooker this time pairing alto with clarinet and muted trombone atop the snapping bass strings of Kessler and the counted beats of Daisy.

I had to cut out before the third set and can’t comment on the action therein. But in witnessing both bands seperately I left The Entry with a heightened appreciation for each, something I wasn’t sure was possible prior. Both sets had their share of blemishes and foibles and the differences between the two bands are pronounced. Atomic has a strong sense of joviality to their approach music coupled with laidback informality. It’s obvious that they’re having a great time on stage and infectious as a result. The V5 feels more self-consciously like a serious work-ethic-driven band. Tight and well-toned from innumerable distances traveled on dozens of tours. Confident, capable and highly talented, but also occasionally a bit too humorless and sternly-countenanced for their own good. Vandermark’s compositions often carry this patina too with great attention paid toward bucking conventions, but a guiding emphasis still placed on honoring existing traditions in the bargain. It can be a difficult tightrope to tread at times, but the results carry a strong jolt of surprising invention that makes jazz so fascinating to begin with. Hearing these two bands juxtaposed on the same ticket is a thoroughly entertaining experience and one I can easily recommend to anyone with the least bit of affinity for creative improvised music.

Munge Rock

http://monolith.sourceforge.net/

"Monolith is a simple tool that takes two arbitrary binary files (called a Basis file and an Element file) and "munges" them together to produce a Mono binary file (with a .mono extension). Monolith can also reconstruct an Element file from a Basis file and a Mono file."

When a colleague at work first notified me of this, the subject line of his email read: "Get your head around this…" After reading what I initially expected to be technical documentation, I wrote back, "what is this?" Unfortunately, other factors at work prevented us from carrying the discussion any further, but I am now prepared to answer my own question.

A tract in theoretical mathematics. A generally fascinating case study in the atomization of cultural artifacts, complete with downloadable executables. An inquiry into the problems of representation, interpretation, and embodiment. A meditation on loss -- I think… consider the implications of this statement:

"Digitization, therefore, is the process of deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Of course, an infinite amount of information must be discarded in this process, and there are clearly an infinite number of ways to do this."

A story about a possible world in which encryption does not protect digital content, but sets it free. Quite possibly, the apparatus of another file-sharing revolution.

I most fascinated by the implications of three of the author's (Jason Rohrer's) claims.

1) "Copyrightable entities are inherently analog. Music, painting, sculpture, writing---all of these must be presented in the physical realm to be consumed by a human audience. Even mediums that are always created and represented digitally, such as digital photography, must be translated into the physical realm (for example, into a lighted display on an LCD monitor) to be consumed. The bits (the 'ones and zeros') used in the representation mean nothing to us by themselves---we cannot experience or otherwise consume them."

Is this true? Or is the author simply ignoring the work of human coders and the role of human invention in the creation of systems of coding in order to further his claims about the universality of binary code? Or is he correct? Would a claim that one intellectually owns a given binary sequence be as absurd as the claim that one owns English grammar? And are there or are there not are some artists, active in some field, who create works of art whose content is expressed in unique combinations of ones and zeros?

2) "Mono files, given that they contain no information from the original Element files, are not explicit representations. The binary data in a Mono file cannot be directly interpreted to produce a presentation of the copyrighted content, so they cannot be seen as representational at all. [emphasis mine] Mono files take the data a step beyond any explicit representations, and I claim that this step goes far enough to leave copyright behind."

This is a matter of taste, isn't it? I know the author does not mean to position himself at the center of the figuration vs. abstraction debate, but "representation", even when used legalistically, is a word as loaded as any Roman candle, so we will have to live with the fire hazard that goes with the fun. I can imagine someone inspecting the results of the Book of Genesis / The Crying Of Lot 49 "munge" produced near the end of this essay and locating something aesthetically pleasing within its patterns, shapes, suggested vocal sounds, etc. As such, I'm not thoroughly convinced this is a point that can be adjudicated per se. Surely these files represent something, even if it is what the author elsewhere calls "garbled content". Like energy in Newtonian physics, content in the Monolith universe is neither created nor destroyed, only transmutable.

3) "However, this feature of Mono files is hard to understand fully for sound recordings, since the resulting Mono file is not even a playable sound file at all (the munging completely obliterates the MP3 header information that would be necessary to even interpret the bits as audio)." [emphasis mine]

Now this strikes me as proposing an area of worthy aesthetic exploration. What if we start cracking other digital files down to their most basic encoding, wrapping them in audio file formats, and running them through a digital audio player? How would Donkey Kong sound if subjected to this treatment? A TIFF of Guston's Zoning? A PDF of the complete Great Gatsby? An SPSS-produced analysis of poverty data? A MARC cataloging record for the publication Iran-Contra Investigation: Joint Hearings Before The House Select Committee To Investigate Covert Arms Transactions With Iran And The Senate Select Committee On Secret Military Assistance To Iran And The Nicaraguan Opposition, 100th Congress, 1st Session (1987)? Are there sound artists currently working with the "corruption" of digital materials in this manner?

The possibilities may not stretch into infinity. Then again, maybe infinity is over-rated.

Mephista - Entomological Reflections

Tzadik 7711

Here is a trio whose name is aptly chosen. Dark, mysterious, seductive and even a bit demonic in their shared search for musical space outside their usual stomping grounds. Each of the three points of this particular triangle has an assumed forte. For Courvoisier it’s expertly rendered chamber improv with strong credentials in free and classical camps. Mori is the maverick delegate from the field of laptop electronics, one who creates ambient textures from an unpredictable palette of samples and sources. Ibarra favors a percussive scope steeped in detail and dynamics rather than volume and density. Her facility on a breadth of non-Western drumming implements also separates her from the majority of her immediate peers. Each of these women also has a reputation for regularly subverting her customary role, especially in the context of the ensemble at hand.

On Entomological Reflections, the trio’s sophomore Tzadik outing, Mori still shoulders the primary duty of colorist, doling out snippets of static and shaping washes of crackle-circuited detritus that caulk the crevices between her colleagues less alien drum and piano patterns. The nebulous nature of her instrument’s parameters makes it difficult for her take any sort of conventional lead, but there are numerous points, such as during the amorphous orbit that is “Void,” where she does just that, guiding Ibarra and Courvoisier down tributaries seldom traveled in their own work. The disc’s fifteen tracks are nearly all of uniformly economical lengths, the longest clocking at just under six minutes and several registering far less, Mori‘s “Apartment” is but a passing fragment. Their brevity supplies another challenge. How exactly to communicate meaningfully together under short temporal spans and still come up with cogent, reflexive interplay. Surface level listening carries the nagging feeling that these three are trafficking in the same clutch of tricks. It’s the deeper delving and attention that reveals the true reach of their explorations.

Compositions are credited to each of the three women collectively and individually, but most seem to take shape out of a high degree of communal improvisation. For “Drôle de Mots” the three become percussionists with Mori and Courvoisier carving out splintered rhythms right alongside Ibarra. Mori ends the colloquy with a protracted drone. Ibarra continues the drum-centered tack with “Cardiogram” her sticks stamping out an arrhythmic tattoo in broken time with the piano’s stuttering keystrokes and Mori’s ping pong flits and flutters. The cross-court volley continues in a call and response between Courvoisier’s stammering digits and the answering clatter of her colleagues. “Fractions” maps an auditory seascape of sonar beam blips, cymbal and tom whitecaps, eddying piano string plucks and dampened key flourishes.

Ibarra assembles her kulintang for “Le Châtgeau de Cène” engaging in another oblique communion with restlessly chosen piano chords and swirling spectral electronics. On “Beloukia” Ibarra’s chimes and cymbals are nearly indistinguishable from the trickling sonic rivulets set in motion by Mori’s whirring high-speed chipsets. “Shifting Roll” takes the action out on an appropriately ambiguous note as Ibarra hammers out an ominous backbeat interrupted by snatches of piano-driven melody and Mori’s preferred plethora of whirlybird accents and effects. Those with electronics allergies will almost certainly have their ailment inflamed by the music here, but others with stronger immunities are strongly advised to investigate the itinerary of Mephista’s new expedition up close and personal. The miles logged reveal a plentitude of aural oddities and wonders for the sets of ears willing to behear them.

Susie Ibarra - Folkloriko

Tzadik 7098

Drummer Susie Ibarra has long embraced elements of her ancestry in her music. Adopting Philippine kulintang and Balinese gamelan percussion instruments into her already variegated arsenal she’s crafted one of the most creative and recognizable approaches in improvised music. The last few years have seen her shy away somewhat from the more blatantly energized style she favored in ensembles like the David S. Ware Quartet and William Parker’s In Order to Survive. These days composition and an even greater attention to nuance and texture inform her playing. Recent projects have included an opera (Shangri-La) and a small handful of film scores. Folkloriko, her latest release on Tzadik, is a timely litmus for the altered trajectory.

A Sepia-toned photo of two women who might be Susie’s relatives adorns the cover and illustrates precisely the manner in which this music tilts lens both toward the past and the present. “Anitos,” a ten-minute polyrhythmic piece designed for duo percussion, opens the disc and features Ibarra in tandem with her husband Roberto Rodriguez. The pair make for a deeply communicative team, ranging over a small trove of instruments that includes: bass cajon, cajongas, bells, wooden kulintang, Tibetan cymbals and jun juns. Lyrical patterns of beats mesh and diverge over a dialogue of underlying rhythms as mallets, fingers and palms coax sounds from a gamut of wooden, metal and skin surfaces. Neither person touches anything resembling a traditional drum kit for the track’s entire duration and the results end up spaciously organic, devoid of animus.

The remaining four-fifths of the program is filled out by “Lakbay,” a multi-sectional suite subtitled “A day in the life of a Filipino immigrant worker.” Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith joins Ibarra’s core trio of pianist Craig Taborn and violinist Jennifer Choi for its realization. “Gawain Ng Pamilya I” builds from Ibarra’s kulintang and brushed snare into a loping march that ebbs and accelerates at odd intervals. The piece’s second part, set near the disc’s end, adds a muted Smith and becomes a bit cluttered as a result. Choi and Taborn arrive on “Umaga” inserting themselves between the leader’s fluttering whisk accents with indigo-hued chords. Choi’s lines are especially stringent, her bow levering against strings to create keening whines and severe scrapes. Smith’s stern staccato brass holds the center on “Merienda,” as Choi and Taborn flitter and dance around him with insouciant interjections. The sounds of conversing voices can be heard muttering from the stereo wings.

On the dark driving rondo “Awit Sa Trabaho” Ibarra makes the first full use of a kit and she attacks it with audible relish setting up an revolving rhythm with the agile input of Taborn and Choi. “Ang Sayaw” sways like an elegant jazz waltz, offering yet another aperture into Choi’s pathos-dipped arco work. Her duet with Smith on “Palengke” offers the album’s arguable highpoint, a thoughtful and detailed meeting of extended techniques on two instruments that a first blush would appear ill-suited to such close collusion. Taborn’s turn comes with the rhapsodic solo acrobatics of “Paniniwala.“ And so the suite progresses until its haunting melodic conclusion“Lullaby”, a Crayola box worth of colors and hues touched upon along the way. How well the music illustrates the imagery of its subject is obviously open to opinion, but on purely music terms Ibarra’s abilities at fusing far-ranging elements into a sumptuous and often affectingly-lyrical whole seem beyond the reach of slight or doubt.

AMPLIFY 2004: ADDITION IN BERLIN

Observations by Wayne Spencer

The AMPLIFY festival is an annual event organised by Erstwhile Records, a New Jersey based record company largely dedicated to electro-acoustic improvisation. AMPLIFY 2004: addition was the fourth festival in the series (the previous ones were held in New York, Tokyo, and then New York again), and, for the first time, proceedings were split between two cities: Cologne and Berlin, Germany. The Cologne half took place over 6-8 May 2004. Sadly, I could not attend this; instead, this review covers all of the main shows and most of the side shows (as they were referred to) in the Berlin wing of the festival.

The intended theme of the festival was expressed in its subtitle: “addition”. As Erstwhile owner Jon Abbey succinctly put it in an interview with Stylus last year, “it’s about quartets and the construction/deconstruction of them”. To this end, the Berlin wing of the festival presented three successive days constructed around quartets selected by Abbey and guitarist Keith Rowe. In addition to these, a series of supplementary side shows before and after and the main festival was arranged, mostly featuring duos chosen by Abbey. As might be expected from Erstwhile’s involvement, the music largely (but not exclusively) fell within the category of electro-acoustic improvisation. This category has yet to attain a consensual meaning but can perhaps be tentatively defined as wholly or partly improvised music that utilises electronic equipment – whether alone or in conjunction with non-electronic instruments – to produce amplified sounds and assemblages of sounds – whether laminal, pointillist or continuous – that are not in principle confined to the timbres, pitches, forms, and melodic and harmonic structures regarded as legitimate by western popular or art music or other a priori systems of musical thought. In his History of Electronic and Experimental Music, Thom Holmes traces improvised electronic music back to elements of the late 1950s live work of John Cage and David Tudor with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Rather more pertinent to contemporary electro-acoustic improvisation would seem to be the work of the improvising groups AMM and MEV from the mid-1960s onwards. However, it was only in the second half of the 1990s – with the coming together of (amongst other things) mounting dissatisfaction with existing models of acoustic improvisation, an interest in new approaches to timbre and other music elements foreshadowed by figures such as Helmut Lachenmann, the existing explorations of the aesthetics of equipment failure by figures from within and without the world of electronica such as Oval, Nicholas Collins, Ryoji Ikeda, Yasunao Tone and Pan Sonic, a growing interest in improvisation within electronica, and the availability of relatively cheap, easy-to-use electronic equipment – that pioneering figures such as AMM’s tabletop guitarist Keith Rowe began to attract more than a modicum of interest and study, and new local and global networks of electroacoustic improvisers began to coalesce. The musicians picked to appear at AMPLIFY 2004: addition mainly came from the ranks of the improvisers who have made their names in this new musical movement.

Monday 10 May 2004

The Berlin half of AMPLIFY 2004: addition began with a side show at the Club der Polnischen Versager, a club in the Mitte area of Berlin that was established in 2001 by a group recently described by Exberliner magazine as “a handful of arty Polish drop-outs” (hence the irony of the club’s name, which translates as "Club of Polish Losers") and now serves as an important venue for improvised musical concerts and many other kinds of cultural events. It is not a large venue, with the seating consisting of nothing more than a short flight of concrete steps (with a few scattered mats) and a small area of bare floor, and it was full to the brim on the night (about 30 or so people in all).

The opening music was by Annette Krebs (on tabletop guitar and radio) and Sachiko M (on mixing desk and amplified textures). The two performers had discussed their approaches before the set began, and perhaps as a result of this the ensuing improvisation took place on a shared musical terrain somewhere between their more typical individual styles. This was not the Sachiko M of extended, high-pitched and fairly invariant sine waves; instead, she produced quite active patterns of pulses, bleeps, long tones and reverberations from her electronics, as well as scratching and other sounds from amplified textures. For her part, Krebs’ playing was quieter and more spartan than is sometimes her wont and ranged across the sounds of compressed, bowed, plucked, struck (with cotton wool buds) and scraped (with wire wool) guitar strings, snatches of radio voices, and bursts of electronic noise. There was relatively little call-and-response interaction in the playing, yet the two contributions proved consistent with each other and mutually supporting, and this higher-order collective playing produced an interesting and beautifully textured sequence of quietly active passages of different densities alternating with fecund silences.

The second set, by Burkhard Beins and Keith Rowe, provided a singular and startling contrast to the first (Keith Rowe later told me there was deliberate intention to broaden the sonic terrain under exploration). With the room barely illuminated by a single red light, it began with the broadcast from Rowe’s radio of a live Canadian programme about current events in Iraq, evidently intended to serve as an irruption of wider socio-political realities into the performance place. Almost immediately the air was thick with dense swathes of radio chatter, harsh noises from Rowe’s tabletop array, and insistent, ritualistic playing on rubbed drums and bowed cymbals from Beins, creating an atmosphere that could certainly be taken as conveying something of the dark obscurantism and ugly violence of contemporary global conditions. At length, the inspissated gloom was overlain with a somewhat surprising new element: a clear and lengthy extract from a broadcast of Dusty Springfield’s "Son of a Preacher Man". For Rowe and his listeners, radio intrusions can serve a multiplicity of purposes (see Rowe’s article "Above and Beyond" in Volume 5 Number 2 of the London Musicians’ Collective’s magazine Resonance), but if nothing else this particular extract from the airwaves supplied a reminder of how ugly social circumstances lie half-concealed beneath the ubiquitous delusions of inane and narcotic popular music. In any event, the song was at length submerged beneath a series of crashing metallic sounds from Beins, and a later relay of Peter Sarstedt’s "Where Do You Go To My Lovely" was permitted to bubble to the surface only briefly. Towards the end of the set, the density of the duo’s soundscape grew thinner, yet it remained a fierce, intense performance and was warmly received by the audience of its conclusion.

The final set of the evening was by Toshimaru Nakamura (on no-input mixing board) and Andrea Neumann (on inside-piano and mixing board). The duo began with a blanket of harsh and quite loud sounds, but soon moved into quieter territory. Unfortunately, at this point Neumann encountered technical problems, requiring her to enter into a doubtless unwelcome and distracting exchange of signals with the operators of the PA system. Once the problem was resolved, she shifted nicely between the components of her equipment, plucking or rubbing strings or generating crackles and other electronic sounds (including what sounded like a music box), generally in short bursts of activity. What Nakamura was contributing to proceedings was not always entirely clear; however, he seemed neither to underpin nor interact with Neumann, and their respective playing stayed largely separate throughout. Viewed as a collaboration, the set did not strike me as a successful one.

Thursday 13 May 2004

The second of the sideshows took place at Ausland, a formerly squatted club located in the basement of a residential block in Prenzlauer Berg. Abbey estimated the audience as being around 70 or so, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was as high as 100; it was certainly crowded.

The evening began with Annette Krebs and Keith Rowe, both on tabletop guitar and radio. By means of close listening and adroit collective interplay, the musicians created an underlying ground of eddying drones and pulses dexterously crosscut, augmented, attenuated, silenced and warped by an array of short and extended sounds from variously manipulated strings, radios and electronics that exemplified how free improvisation using the most abstract materials can produce an assemblage and dialogue – a spontaneously evolving journey through an almost palpable field of possibility – riveting to observe.

Next on stage were Burkhard Beins and Andrea Neumann (whose Lidingö was released on Erstwhile in 2002). Their at times quite delicate improvisation was tactile and episodic, using a fairly narrow range of sounds (especially bowed drums and cymbals from Beins and plucked, scraped and mechanically oscillated strings, and bursts of electronic noise, from Neumann) in a sequence of pointillist exchanges and more extended interactions separated by silences. The playing was alert and responsive throughout and it was a pleasure to follow.

Günter Müller (electronics) and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing desk) closed the session with a low-key and undemonstrative set of electronic pulses slowly shifting in frequency, volume, timbre and metre. The music was never very enterprising, but as the piece continued it became increasingly confined within a straightforward, regular rhythm that made it ever harder to distinguish it from the established banalities of mainstream electronica.

Friday 14 May 2004

Proceedings now shifted to the main festival at Backfabrik, a large complex that once served as an East German baking factory and is now a centre for the supposedly creative economic activities that some see as increasingly the motor of capitalist economic development in the post-industrial west. As Myron Levine explained in a recent paper in the Journal of Urban Affairs:

“On Prenzlauer Berg’s southern edge, just minutes from Alexanderplatz, the night life of Mitte, and Kollwitzplatz’s cafés (Töns, 2001), the developers of BACKFABRIK.de converted a massive factory-bakery collective into a striking complex containing 24,000 square meters of office lofts designed to attract smaller, innovative firms in the media, advertising, computer, and telecommunications industries (‘‘Die BACKFABRIK.de,’’ 2002). Designed by the internationally renowned architect Marc Kocher, a former partner of the late Aldo Rossi, the project offers an Italian-style central piazza, bistro, restaurant, courtyard obelisk, gallery and exhibition space, and even a rooftop fluorescent light sculpture. Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse laid a tile to mark the commencement of construction and returned to illuminate the light sculpture at the project’s 2002 opening, signifying the importance of the project to the government’s efforts to have Berlin become a high-tech, corporate service center in the New Europe."

The festival occupied a single very large and high-ceilinged room within the complex with adjacent bar.

It had originally been planned that the main festival would open with performances by AMM and Toshimaru Nakamura as a quartet and then a sequence of short duos featuring the members of AMM paired with Japanese musicians. However, quite late in the day AMM’s pianist John Tilbury that decided his existing boycott of American cultural life obliged him to withdraw from the festival, thereby terminating any possible involvement by AMM as a group. Under the revised schedule drawn up in the wake of Tilbury’s withdrawal, the whole of the four-hour session was given over to the quartet of Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Keith Rowe and Otomo Yoshihide that was initially programmed to close it. Abbey estimates that approximately 70 paying customers ventured out for this challenging prospect. Most stayed until the end, sitting on the seats arranged around the group, lying on the floor, or occasionally walking around the room in order to revive the limbs or gain new points of vantage.

The set began with a silence into which music from another part of the complex percolated. Soon, however, the quartet emerged from its repose to develop the sound that would fill the next three hours and 55 minutes. Summarising a performance of this length in a few words requires egregious simplification and excision; nonetheless, I think it is not too inaccurate to suggest that a defining characteristic of the music that unfolded over the course of an evening that started in weak sunshine and ended in a deep gloom illuminated by just three lights and the table-top lamps in front of each performer was the strong sense of a field uniting the individual players into a collective presence, a common musical space bound together not just by devices such as the shimmering ground provided by Sachiko M and Nakamura alone or with other members of the group, but also by the evident locus of attention and expectation uniting the quartet and the ways in which new strands of sound were woven together with existing contributions so as to emphasise the emergent shared fabric as well as the novel components. At the heart of the group’s matrix was the shifting ground arising at any given time from some combination of sine waves, mixing-board pulsations, buzzes, the sound of a fan playing on guitar strings, or other extended, drone-like components. Introduced into this space was a diversity of elements, ranging from the sounds of distressed wire and metal to electronic white noise or gentle clicks and crackles, with events initially fading in and out of the background swells in relatively brief episodes. Over time, the density of the music increased, as Yoshihide and Rowe began to engage in a more active and sustained dialogue on electric guitar/turntables and tabletop guitar respectively, utilizing a multiplicity of small sounds and more occasional violent interjections. This in turn was succeeded by a pronounced emphasis of the horizontal, consisting first of dense, massive drones flecked by high-pitched waves and later by quieter drones accompanied by intermittent percussive touches. The session concluded with a long period of shimmering reverberations and sine waves commingled with streaks of white noise, crackles and restrained percussion that was superficially subdued yet strongly present in the midnight air. It was a powerful conclusion to a superb collaborative performance.

Was there a benefit to playing for four hours? Of course, there were inevitably a few longueurs (as there are in many shorter performances), but these were insignificant when placed against the scope the extended duration gave the quartet to develop a rich group sound and explore a broad range of interactive musical textures and combinations. More important still, perhaps, the time allowed the quartet to establish itself as more than a transient element in the soundscape. Sometimes it was merely a delimited frame within a wider soundworld manifest through the sounds of passing trams and other extraneous elements; for longer periods, though, it served as the totality of the sonic environment within which audience and musicians subsisted, allowing one’s habitual acoustic expectations to be powerfully displaced by a new, extemporised logic and set of relationships to be explored. In short, one important thing the availability of four hours permitted the group to do was to go further than is usually the case in re-educating the senses.

Saturday 15 May 2004

The second day of the main festival in Backfabrik was better attended than the first and was curated by Jon Abbey alone. About 110 (his figure) attended. The first to play were Beins, Nakamura, Neumann and Rowe. Keith Rowe later said that he conceived of the group’s performance to be akin to a fairly short overture or introduction to the music to follow. He also pointed out a fact that I suspect eluded almost all of the audience, namely that he (and perhaps others in the group) had used a blank sheet of paper as a mock score, in commemoration of an occasional practice of Beethoven’s. In the event, the group’s playing was spacious and labile, an interplay of generally restrained sounds and gestures that was short but rich. It seemed to whet many people’s appetite for more.

The first group to be given opportunity to take advantage of the opening quartet’s setting of the scene was that consisting of dieb13 (turntable and electronics), Axel Dörner (trumpet and electronics), Billy Roisz (visual projections) and Burkhard Stangl (guitar). There was a degree of interaction between Dörner’s grainy exhalations, dieb13’s churning sounds and Stangl’s quite conventional guitar figures, but the improvisations succumbed to rather stereotyped patterns and lacked both subtlety and an integrated group sound. Roisz’s backdrops of lines, moving circles and other patterns and geometrical figures worked best for me during the more agitated and homogenous passages of playing, but in general I found it difficult to concentrate on both the audio and the visual dimensions of the group. As the effective intensification of Beins and Rowe’s performance by the conjunction of ambient darkness and a single red light showed, there is scope for synergy between constructed visual effects and improvised music, and Roisz’s exploration of these possibilities is surely to be applauded; however, I would suggest that little progress has yet been made in discovering visual elements that can effectively be integrated with music that demands close listening.

Next on stage was saxophonist John Butcher, playing the first solo set of the festival. He started on tenor with a piece constructed from a powerful and disciplined series of twisting microtonal lines, an intervening section of circular breathing, and a concluding shift to sharp tones with abrupt attacks. It was a riveting and virtuoso performance, although perhaps closer to the aesthetic of 1970s free improvisation than many in the festival. His second piece used amplified feedback from an unblown saxophone and percussive use of the instrument’s keys. In comparison with Graham Halliwell, another saxophonist who has explored amplified feedback, Butcher exercises rather less control over the feedback process; at the same time, he also seems deliberately to aim for ruder effects, and on this occasion succeeded in producing an interesting extension of his instrument’s usual range. For his third piece, he turned to the soprano, beginning with an extended section of circular breathing. For me, this invited comparison with Evan Parker, which is perhaps unfortunate as Butcher’s playing lacked the depth and multiplicity of sound that Parker now achieves (notably on Lines Burnt in Light), resembling instead Parker’s earlier Six of One. The set ended with a long, high and microtonal passage that was quite hard on the ears but intriguing to follow. The thunderous applause and marked enthusiasm that ensued left no doubt as to the audience’s sentiments about the set.

Butcher returned to the stage for a quartet with the Austrian group Radian, who started with a relatively quiet and exploratory period but soon coagulated into a crude and often repetitive amalgam of drums, electronics and electric bass, to which the saxophonist could add little of interest. If this set was intended to illuminate the construction of a quartet, it seemed mainly to suggest that the ad hoc addition of an additional figure to a trio given to replicating hermetic compositions produces few benefits. Butcher then left the stage and Radian continued with a loud set of regressive and highly formulaic compositions featuring a propulsive march of simple and repetitive rock rhythms on drums and bass and routine electronic washes. Jon Abbey defended Radian’s inclusion in the festival on two grounds. The first was that the group’s compositions “remove everything extraneous”. This proposition, which would seem equally to justify the inclusions in AMPLIFY of both the White Stripes and practitioners of the most mind-numbingly one-dimensional techno music, would seem to be unconvincing. The second reason given was that he personally likes the group. As sole financer and co-organiser of the festival, no doubt Abbey is in a position to indulge his own tastes, but an appeal to the privileges of proprietorship does not answer the suspicion that Radian’s set was incongruous in a festival otherwise dedicated to electro-acoustic improvisation and consumed time that could have been better utilized by the many musicians not in the festival who are less beholden to the anachronistic conventions of a bankrupt popular musical form.

Sunday 16 May 2004

The final day of the festival was curated by Keith Rowe and attracted, on Jon Abbey’s estimate, around 130 people. It was also perhaps the only day of the festival that touched on the original theme of “quartets and the construction/deconstruction of them” in more than a perfunctory fashion, featuring a series of four solo performances, followed by a quartet performance by all four. Judging by my conversations with Rowe, however, if there was a theme of the day, it had more to do with ideas of extending the guitar, with each of the musicians being selected […] as leading exemplars of extended guitar (or in the case of Nakamura, quasi-guitar) techniques.

The first solo spot was occupied by Oren Ambarchi, who played a modest set featuring a short guitar phrase twisted and augmented over time, with the help of delays and samples of his own playing. It had no great aspirations in relation to rhythm, harmony, timbre or any other musical variable, but proved charming and interesting.

Next was Toshimaru Nakamura, playing not, as one might have expected, the guitar on which he recently recorded Side Guitar (Improvised Music from Japan) but a no-input mixing board, with which he mixed layers of extended tones of various frequencies and grain, white noise, rustles, pulses, crackles and beeps into an amalgam that continually mutated through subtle changes and more abrupt transitions. It was often very effective, although he was inclined to abandon suppleness of metre and tempo for long periods in favour of inflexible rhythmic regularity.

The third set was by Rowe. Its beginning was sufficiently unostentatious that it escaped the notice of some audience members, but Rowe quickly secured their attention. The first half of the set was dedicated to the construction of an ensemble of superimposed layers of diverse pulses, reverberations, radio noises, and more intermittent flashes of sound, the characteristics of which changed constantly as existing layers were varied or removed and new ones added. In the second half the improvisation became less dense, as the wide resources of Rowe’s tabletop array were deployed in a somewhat more successive fashion, before decaying away to an obscure ending that became evident only when he switched off his table lamp. It was a superb demonstration of how far Keith Rowe has taken the guitar from its traditional sounds and styles, and how the expanded sonic terrains thereby opened out can be harnessed to create compelling musical creation and experience.

The final solo excursion was provided by Christian Fennesz. He proceeded to batter the audience with unsubtle juxtapositions of uninteresting and loud electronic pulses, tones, washes and percussive sounds, supplemented for a short period by some recognisable and dull guitar chords. After the performance, several members of the audience I spoke to said that they had nearly been driven out of the performance room by his tiresome assault on their hearing. It seemed a crude and pointless exercise.

The solo performances having concluded, Ambarchi, Fennesz, Nakamura and Rowe gathered to play as a quartet, apparently under the collective name The Four Gentlemen of the Guitar. Powerful pulses and drones tended to predominate, and for long stretches the collective sound became an amorphous electronic fog. This was a pity, for when a more pellucid texture was allowed to emerge, opportunities arose for active and close listening, and there were periods of interesting improvised interaction and collaboration to hear. The performance seemed to be brought to a premature end when a quiet passage prompted the eruption of applause. In any event, an improvisation I thought was decidedly mixed in quality was enthusiastically received by the audience.

The day had certainly demonstrated how the traditional guitar had been extended, even if it did not always show those extensions being used to good effect. As for the construction of quartets, it perhaps more than anything else drew attention to the fact that the behaviour of musical groups cannot necessarily be predicted from the behaviour of their constituent members as musical individuals. Social life is not just individual life acted out in company.

Monday 17 May 2004

With the main festival over, the side shows resumed. The first gig took place at the Galerie Neurotitan, a gallery with adjacent book, comic and CD shop located at the end of a decayed alleyway in the fashionable Hackesche Market area and has been holding non-mainstream exhibitions since 1996. The performance was part of an event relating to the Charhizma label’s recent release Platte, a handsome and painstakingly-produced collection consisting of a vinyl album of turntablism from various artists and a collection of 10 silk-screened mock LP records designed by separate artists, all housed in an elaborately illustrated box. One room of the gallery was dedicated to an exhibition of the illustrated LPs spinning on separate decks, plus art by each of the artists concerned. An adjacent room was the location of a performance by dieb13 and Otomo Yoshihide, both on turntables and electronics. An adjacent room was the location of a performance by dieb13 and Otomo Yoshihide, both on electronics and turntables. What transpired was exhilarating: a very physical, yet often spacious and delicate, interaction in which a musical intercourse of mangled sounds was improvised from uncertain procedures and recalcitrant materials at times only tenuously under control. The proceedings projected a strong sense of exploration - of tentative trial-and-error and the pursuit of sounds appropriate in the context - as well as of disrespect for traditional equipment and techniques of music (including the dismal clichés of hip-hop turntablism. In contemporary social and musical conditions, such a demonstration of how arbitrary boundaries and conventions may be destroyed and horizons fruitfully broadened, all in the course of dialogue, was surely welcome. It was certainly very heartily received by the audience.

Proceedings now moved a 100 yards or so to KuLe, a club squatted by theatre students in 1990, renovated during the 1990s, and now home to artistic ventures including Labor Sonor, a regular series of improvised and experimental music performances and one of the cornerstones of the radical Berlin scene (see Charhizma's Labor CD). It is another quite small venue, and the room was jammed tight with around 40-50 bodies. The first duo featured Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet) and Burkhard Stangl (guitars). It was a relief after the more intrusive of the sessions in the main festival to be obliged once again to listen with care to something that did not ostentatiously force itself upon you. The music began close to the ground explored by Fagaschinski with Michael Renkel on their CD Rebecca (also on Charhizma), with Fagaschinski playing sustained microtonal tendrils and grainy passages of modulated breath, and Stangl introducing scattered acoustic guitar chords. However, over the course of several short pieces, as Stangl added electronics and an electric guitar held vertically or laid horizontally on a table, the playing moved further afield. These were uncluttered, delicate and obliquely poetic improvisations, marked throughout by a careful and haunting interlacing of wavering clarinet tones, hisses, exhalations and watery percolations from Fagaschinski, and a range of physical and electronics bowings, percussive taps, plucked notes, chords, and intermittent explosions from Stangl. There were even two brief snatches of tonal melodies from Fagaschinski, like half-forgotten and wistful memories from simpler times.

The following set by Tim Barnes (percussion) and Mark Wastell (electronics, amplified textures and metallic percussion) was equally refreshing in its subtlety and variety. For anyone familiar with his sometimes quite ‘reduced’ work, Wastell was surprisingly active, shifting quickly and adeptly between hisses, crackles, rumbles, oscillations, pure tones and other sounds from his electronics, as well as amplified textures and the ringing clarity of his various metallic percussion instruments. Barnes concentrated on a narrower range of sonic materials, often relying solely on gnarled woody cracks on a drum - yet he too also turned to rubbed and scraped cymbals, grainy bowings, vocal exhalations and what seemed to be bells during the course of the improvisation. The resulting interaction between the two was a subtle one, embracing both direct trading of gestures and less obvious congruencies of sound, and bringing together space, silence, shifting textures and intriguing timbres in ways that facilitated and rewarded the listener’s focussed engagement.

The final session of the day was by Martin Tétreault and Xavier Charles (both on electronics) who explored a dense soundscape of churning electronics and physically oscillated objects. The performance had some points in common with that of the Four Gentleman of the Guitar, only with a more intimate sound and clearer structure. Unfortunately, it also proved relatively unvariegated, and long before it concluded its initial impact had been diluted by a propensity to repetition.

The music continued over the next few days, but sadly I had to return home at this point. What I saw of the festival was well organised and surrounded by a good social atmosphere. The side shows were perhaps more successful than the main events overall, but the standard of the music was generally high, with some collaborations being as fine as one could reasonably hope for. Clearly, Jon Abbey deserves our gratitude for the enormous amounts of his personal time and money he sank into the festival - and so too do his various collaborators in Berlin and elsewhere for their hard work. And yet, I have my reservations. Coinciding with the first main event was a very enticing performance in the Wedding area of town by another electro-acoustic quartet (Boris Baltschun, Serge Baghdassarians, Boris Hauf and Michael Renkel). This was a reminder of the many excellent musicians and groups left out of AMPLIFY 2004: addition, and more especially of the relatively limited number of Berlin-based players who had been included. In conversation, Abbey made the entirely reasonable point that a festival can only accommodate a fairly small number of musicians, and hence someone will always have to be left out. He explained that the festival was built around Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Keith Rowe and Otomo Yoshihide, the four musicians he regards as consistently excellent and the best in the field. He added that although there were many good musicians in Berlin, he had, in his view, included all the important and distinguished local players in the festival. This judgement about Berlin musicians might perhaps be coloured by Abbey’s apparently limited sympathy for the distinctive aesthetics of electro-acoustic improvisation from the city (very little of which has been released on Erstwhile). More importantly, however, it would seem that Abbey takes the view that it is possible and desirable to conduct individual-level appraisals of musicians, and to order the results into a fine-grained and stable hierarchy that contains at its top a handful of exemplary, superlative and ultimately privileged figures. This is not entirely different from the star system that mainstream cultural industries operate, under which individuals are invested with a mythical aura and strong media identity that serves to create both an infatuated consumption amongst the public and an enduring brand name that reduces the considerable risk and uncertainty otherwise surrounding production of cultural commodities. I doubt Abbey has entirely the same motives, yet his delimitation of a tiny class of purportedly pre-eminent improvisers (isolated from the collective contexts in which they often appear) seems to turn on a fetishist and implausible amplification of the work of the individuals concerned, and to be conducive to a reverential and passive relationship between audiences and his quasi-aristocratic elite. On what rational grounds, for example, can Keith Rowe’s work be taken as such that he merits no less than nine appearances over the course of the two legs of the festival, while many other interesting and exciting players are not given even one? It must also be wondered what effects such attempts to identify and differentially benefit small elites have on the tightly-knit and mutually supportive networks of musicians that subsist in places like Berlin, as existing working relationships are ignored and musicians who work together and support each other as equals are assigned on no very obvious or justified grounds to different categories of merit. Even where there is not such a strong sense of musical collectivism, Erstwhile’s hierarchical stratifications would seem destructive of any notion of collective free improvisation as a socially critical enterprise that exemplifies or prefigures more egalitarian social relations, especially in ensembles that include both elite and less favoured musicians. It equally threatens to create even greater economic disparities than exist already: a glance at the world of film or popular music reveals all too clearly how star systems concentrate opportunities and rewards in the hands of those assigned star status. In general, neither the creation of a star system nor a strongly individualistic and instrumental approach that often aims at unique combinations of atomised individuals in recordings or performances marketed as world exclusives (another aspect of Erstwhile’s operations) may be best calculated to serve the long-term interests of the music. This is not to say that Erstwhile's approach may not from time to time produce hothouse flowers of a certain beauty: it is the potential effects of such an approach on local and global ecosystems of electro-acoustic improvisation that are cause, I would suggest, for concern.

~ Wayne Spencer

Ray Charles - True To Life (Atlantic)

Ray Charles, post-SNL recognition but pre-GOP -- 1977 to be exact -- partnered with M.O.R. arrangers Larry Muhoberac (Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell, Tanya Tucker, and Silverchair) and Sid Feller (Paul Anka, The Osmonds, Eddie Fisher) and interpreting lounge and fern-bar staples such as "Let It Be" and "I Can See Clearly Now"... you'd be excused for thinking I've chosen a strange (to be polite) way to pay tribute to one of the most important figures in American popular music.

But drop the needle on Charles' reading here of "Oh, What A Beautiful Morning" and let Side A roll on from there through "How Long Has This Been Going On?" These two performances, amounting to a rather momentous 10 minutes of music, may be some of most powerful Charles vocals ever committed to record. And if that statement isn't enough to convince you that you need to hear this record, I don't know what else I can say. As the musician himself said just months ago:

"I guess I'm kind of a strange animal. What works for me is songs that I can put myself into. It has nothing to do with the song. Maybe it's a great song. But there's got to be something in that song for me."

It is a an odd compulsion, but, as someone who almost cannot function without the daily presence of music, I do understand it. Only too well.

R.I.P., Brother Ray. The peace is well-deserved.

Tomas Korber - Mass Production

Tomas Korber
Mass Production
w.m.o/r
10

As I’ve mentioned before, I prefer dealing with a recording “blind”, not particularly aware of how this or that sound was achieved or even, for the moment, is there is an overarching, extra-musical purpose behind the project. As I discover (or don’t) these things, it’s interesting to see how, if at all, my impressions shift. Korber calls his fine, new disc “Mass Production” and includes images and schematics of some old factory equipment so there’s already some possible attached meaning, a meaning that would appear to be enhanced by what you first hear, a gradual fade-in of some irregularly rhythmic, mechanical seeming sounds, giving one a sonic image of a large rotor or fan, old and dirty enough to have acquired detritus that clips its enclosure as it rotates. It’s slowly superceded by a more generalized hum, a rich though non-tonal drone that contains more strands than immediately apparent. Both of these elements are the sort of thing one might, if lucky, discover for oneself while wondering through an industrial area. Whether you’d be aurally aware enough to stop and listen is another matter, hence the great value of a disc such as this. These episodes ebb and flow, again giving the impression of walking through a large space, turning a corner that blocks out the previous drone only to open upon some machines emitting a banshee wail.

In any event, this is the impression I get over the first 20 or so minutes. Perhaps I’m being overly imagistic and Tomas may have different ideas! Suddenly, however, “Mass Production” makes a sharp right turn, leaves the factory entirely and enters, well, maybe an adjacent laboratory where specialized experiments involving high frequency modulations are being undertaken. Something goes awry and the technicians get the opposite of what they sought as the apparatus does an abrupt flip-flop into chasmic throbs that threaten the integrity of the surrounding walls. More to the point, this disjuncture is an attractive strategy, a way of not getting too caught up in the relative luxury of the drones and rhythms, forcing one to step in a different direction at the risk of losing some overall coherence. I suppose the critical thing is that you feel that the step was a natural (if entirely unanticipated) one, not taken because of a dearth of ideas but more so as not to allow one to get into any kind of rut, however enticing. This second section evolves and mutates until we arrive at a luscious pairing of high, rustling swizzles and a simple, basso hum that begins to ooze out into the space, losing solid shape and sublimating into the “room” in a lengthy, relaxed coda (I’m trying not to make my usual referent but at this point in the disc, it’s tough!). The pacing is wonderful; Korber knows when to linger and when to move on. He actually ends on a rather dramatic note, a swift upswing in volume and sudden silence.

“Mass Production”—it’s a good thing.

~ Brian Olewnick

Four with Mattin

Margarida Garcia/Mattin
For Permitted Consumption
L’Innomable
04

Radu Malfatti/Mattin
Whitenoise
w.m.o/r
07

Taku Sugimoto/Yasuo Totsuka/Mattin
Training Thoughts
w.m.o/r
09

Belaska
Vault
w.m.o/r
06

Mattin’s been releasing recordings at a rate of about two per hour recently and four of them recently alit on my player. Oddly enough, they’re all pretty good. Even excellent.

Half of them feature our intrepid computer feedbackicist in severely quiet mode. One that doesn’t may be my slight favorite, a rollicking duo with bassist Margarida Garcia who herself released several very fine discs last year. “For Permitted Consumption” is a single, relatively brief (33 minutes) piece that’s broken into several fragments, indeed sometimes sounding as though the recording tape was altered with garden shears. Garcia’s electric bass is attacked with abandon, flayed with bow and hammered with fist, creating a wide range of mysterious rumbles, hisses, groans and more. Mattin, as seems to be his habit, is rather more elusive; it’s often difficult to precisely pin down his contributions. But the piece has a rich cinematic quality, a black and white graininess that evokes a slow pan of a dark, industrial interior. While I’m not exactly certain what’s involved with “computer feedback”, there are definitely moments where feedback reigns, underpinned by some marvelously dirty bass scrapings. A nice, tough little album.

Unsurprisingly, Mattin’s duo with Radu Malfatti, “Whitenoise”, inhabits very different territory. Our own Dan Warburton appears to come at this disc, in his fine WIRE review, from a different angle than myself. Whereas he concentrates on the spaces and intricacies of the piece itself, I find that I tend to enjoy letting the first piece mingle with surrounding sounds (obviously, I don’t think either approach is “right”). The held tones here, for example, breaths from Malfatti and washes which more or less match in timbre and texture from Mattin, are an almost exact sonic map for the soft purr, in both duration and general sound quality, of cars passing outside in the street. Admittedly, this manner of listening is confounded later on in the first piece when a thin, piercing line of feedback dominates. Having failed to encounter a corresponding ambulance siren, I’m jerked back into the recording itself, which back and forth is, actually, rather invigorating. This “interruption” is brief, however and we’re soon back into the realm of car engine-accommodating hisses. The second track has more overt continuity, lacking the longish silent stretches of the first. As Dan pointed out, there’s something of a more “natural” quality in the sounds produced—wind and grass rustles as opposed to automotive susurrus. Malfatti can be heard gulping for air between attacks, lending a nervous urgency to the affair that demands attention. No street-listening here! Mattin supplies a subtle, undulating backdrop containing, upon closer listen, a large number of varying elements including some juicy dollops of low feedback that are squeezed out at irregular intervals. Not really minimal at all, this portion of the disc is one of the richer, denser works I’ve heard in a while.

“Training Thoughts” refer to those of the chugging kind. This was recorded “live at Emban” and while I’ve been unable to determine exactly what Emban is, I assume it’s within close proximity of a railway. The very first sound one hears (and, essentially, the only sound for a few minutes) is that of a passing train, not very near, maybe separated by a wall, a soft, liquid rumble of muffled clacks that glide smoothly along—really a quite attractive sound. It reappears often at irregular intervals and, indeed, I’m not entirely positive if it’s an artifact of the ambience or a summoned sample but I’m betting on the former. It’s only at about the 7-minute mark (out of 65) that one hears something other than a train as tiny tinkles and thin hums gradually emerge at no greater level of prominence than what preceded. At about 22 minutes, Sugimoto plucks a single note. Mattin and Totsuka (on mixing board, one guesses) emit quiet but atmospheric whispers and whooshes, occasionally buttressed by Sugimoto, more often heard alongside the ghostly train. About halfway through, the trio briefly becomes predominant and, for the remainder of the disc, remains of roughly equal footing with its engine-drive accompanist. Personally, I like the result a lot. There’s a spatial depth that’s very sensual and the trio manages the utmost reticence without appearing either tense or coy. Most recordings with this much silence carry something of an anxious feel, but “Training Thoughts” is relaxed and accepting.

Belaska is Mattin teaming with Mark Wastell, heard here as on the fine +Minus disc, performing on “amplified textures” instead of cello. A fairly unique soundscape is achieved almost immediately as thick, echoing heavy-door-closing sounds play off against embedded slivers of severe electronica, the dark, subterranean atmosphere befitting the disc’s title, “Vault”. Indeed, per Mattin’s notes, the inspiration appears to have been the juxtaposition of an electrical alarm box with its hyper-solid, cool surrounding walls. Not nearly as quiet as the preceding two recordings, “Vault”'s throbbing pulsations occasionally reach medium volume levels though the subsonics can penetrate into one’s spinal region. The four sections occupy this low seismic area, laced with sizzling veins, throughout the disc, not varying too much yet remaining both convincing and intriguing, ringing true enough to sustain interest and then some. As with the Garcia release (and with several of Mattin’s works) there’s a decidedly movie-like feel induced here, something that could easily be a soundtrack for a dark film that blends concrete imagery with an abstract narrative. Again, very good stuff.

He may be issuing recordings at a prodigious rate, but if Mattin can keep churning them out at this high level of quality, bring ‘em on.

~ Brian Olewnick

To Air Is Human

Still recovering from the U.S. Air Guitar Championships. The midwest regionals were held last night at the Triple Rock Social Club, a grungy Twin Cities watering hole. Sponsored by Air Guitar USA the event drew ten competitors and a respectable crowd. Its name may engender a grin, but the masterminds behind the contest consider it serious business. Grand prize is a trip to the national finals in Los Angeles, June 17th. The winner there advances on to the 9th World Championships in Oulu, Finland. Other locales represented include Chicago (6/3), Denver (6/10) and New York (6/12) [that’s tomorrow, Phil!] Second and third place finishers win Toshiba TVs.

Rules are very specific & thorough. Two heats. The first allows for the freedom of song choice. The second narrows the pool in half and puts the contestants at the mercy of song selected by the ‘celebrity’ judges, of which there are three. Score criteria includes: style, appearance, energy, technique and an appropriately indefinable wildcard attribute “Airness”. 25 bucks and a 60-second edit of a song for the first round gets you in. Free wrist sweatbands provided at the door (I chose day-glo yellow). I was on the fence about entering (“Crazy Train” was my song pic) and ultimately bowed out- glad I did as my humble licks couldn’t have competed with the guy who eventually earned the crown.

The contest kicked off with Bob the Fucking Murderer, a poor man’s Johnny Rotten with orange spiked hair & leather spiked collars to match, who had been getting good & liquored up for hours prior & took the surliness of his obvious source of inspiration to another level. His version of The Dictators’ “Who Will Save Rock & Roll?” featured minimal ‘guitar’ but lots of flailing about, spitting beer, smashing bottles, mics, mic stands & basically anything within reach to the uproarious approval from the crowd & visible chagrin of the organizers. Next up the utterly amateur Jenny Pentrix, decked in suede fringe jacket, cig hanging lazily from lower lip, doing a lame-ass version of her namesake’s “Come On, Baby”. Polite, but tepid applause followed.

The enigmatic Jackicaster stepped up after & gave the crowd it’s first taste of brilliance to the tune of Billy Squier’s “Stroke This.” Zippered orange jumpsuit, white boy ‘fro, patriotic headband, milkfed gut & a killer Lemmy moustache combined with a mime’s flair for the nuances of his imaginary axe, he oozed cheap sex & taunted the crowd with flamboyant kicks, struts & a devil may care attitude, looking suspiciously like he’d just been properly serviced by a groupie before taking the stage. Forgettable contestants followed his formidable lead with predictable Led Zeppelin (“Heartbreaker”, “Rock & Roll”) and AC/DC (“You Shook Me”) covers.

Swami, another Hendrix disciple this time at least looking the part, played a strong minimalist card on “All Along the Watchtower,” his healthy afro & laidback affect working as his only winsome attributes. Lasch Man Standing represented for the speed metal crowd, sporting a mullet wig, nylon backed baseball cap, and an exemplary application of the power chord straddle stance. Half the contestants appeared to be playing ukeleles, hands mere inches apart on their invisible frets and showing a sometimes wince-inducing disregard for the virtual parameters of their ‘instruments’.

But the best of the bunch was hands-down Mother Rucker, a guy who looked a near spitting image of Ian Astbury of The Cult. He chose Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy” as his opening number & worked the crowd into a frenzy, leaping from the monitors, spinning windmills, playing with his teeth, flicking his tongue and licking the neck of his fictional lightning stick.

The final round weeded the crop down to five with each taking a stab at Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever.” Jackocaster and Rucker finished out in a well-deserved two-way tie, only to face each other down in a jam-off over AC/DC “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock & Roll). And it’s here that the contest turned transcendental, with the two battling and teaming to goad the crowd to ever-increasing heights of adulation. My personal favorite move: a dual beer bottle and wine bottle slide guitar riff by Rucker who felt so inspired he shucked down to his skivvies, climbed the balcony bar and dove head first into the crowd below. That ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ willingness garnered him first prize. All of the contestants and judges to hit the stage one more time for a grand finale roof-raiser with several opting for other ‘air’ instruments including drums, bass and keyboards.

Outside, after the show a documentary film crew was filming the proceedings for an upcoming movie. As I was leaving I overheard them interviewing a contestant and came away with possibly the best quote of the evening. After asked whether he had signed his release, the contestant replied “oh, you mean that piece of paper that says I won’t be getting paid for whatever I say?”

Steve Lacy (1935 - 2004)

Changes
In retrospect, even those accomplishments
which seemed perfect when accomplished,
may seem imperfect and ill formed,
but this does not mean that such accomplishments
have outlived their usefulness.
That which once seemed full,
may later empty seem,
yet still be unexhausted.
That which once seemed straight
may seem twisted when seen once more;
intelligence can seem stupid,
and eloquence seem awkward;
movement may overcome the cold,
and stillness, heat,
but stillness in movement
is the way of the Tao.

Tao Te Ching (translated by Stan Rosenthal)

Jubilee

I spent this weekend working through the Criterion Collection edition of Derek Jarman's 1978 film Jubilee. Premise = Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) asks court magus Dr. John Dee to summon a spirit ethereal, Ariel, who reveals to the Queen "the shadow of these times", i.e., the future, i.e., Albion as the sun rises on it in the closing years of the 20th Century. What do the Queen and her retinue discover? As Jarman himself writes:

"Law and order has finally been abolished and do-your-own-thing is the order of the day. [As one character says, desires are now realities.] The church is a strip club and Buckingham Palace a recording studio... Open war between all factions of society. A gang of bike girls centered at H.Q. in Southwark, rape and kill all adversaries, led by the Queen of Punk, Bod [played by Jenny Runacre, who also appears as Queen Elizabeth I]... The music of groups like The Slits, Sex Pistols plays incessantly to rapturous reception."

The funny thing is, the punks mostly despised this film. Vivienne Westwood went so far as to silkscreen her criticism of the film on t-shirts (I suppose they were made available for sale through Seditionaries). There's probably something to the fact that the punk movement in the UK, given its sneering, colonialist appropriation of yobbo working class mores, was not very tolerant of alternative lifestyles. Whatever the case, Jubilee has had to collect dust in anticipation of a revival. I cannot and will not be just another observer commenting on how prescient the film is its portrayal of particular varieties of social and personal anomie, the old if not ancient evils of the "State", and the utterly destructive consequences of our opting for consumerism and spectator-hood. I'm sure you'd much rather read Naked Lunch anyway. And I won’t talk here about Jarman's highly politicized homosexuality, because I don’t feel qualified to do so. But, as someone whose on occasion inhaled the lingering chemical fumes of punk culture all throughout his mid-1980's adolescence, I can tell you that this film is fascinating as a pop cultural artifact.

Jubilee tries very hard to escape mass culture; Jubilee crawls and swims through stagnant pools of pop culture like a fleeing prisoner might have to make his or her way through raw sewage. I don’t think I can read the film's denouement, in which Elizabeth and Dee walk along the English shore and fade into the sunset (it is not clear whether they have returned from their journey in time or not) any other way. Although Jarman was always a keen observer who began his film-making career by mixing secret histories – documentary Super8 films of his own sub-culture – with extremes of fantasy, Jubilee seems completely smitten with punk music and fashion. So much so that Jarman places pre-MTV music videos within the film (most notably, earlier performances by Siouxsie and the Banshees and Adam and the Ants), and makes over trained actors like Toyah Wilcox so that they look more punk – lumpier, more sallow, and more mentally unbalanced – than the real punks themselves.

Ultimately, like me, Jubilee can think about punk but cannot be truly grounded in it or of it. After all, Derek Jarman was of a slightly older generation than that of his heroine Amyl Nitrate (original punk Jordan), and, as much as he had no use for the House of Windsor, he was still English in the way David Hockney is English. Like Hockney, Jarman was also a painter first, someone interested in beauty's conventions – beauty's history, if you will. Jarman could never be as bored, I think, as the highest avatars of punk cool could be. Nor did punk excel at self-consciousness; it made a virtue out of not knowing anything about itself. Several contemporaneous cultural developments, several 70's collide in Jubilee. Punk, disco, camp nostalgia, camp self-actualization (both in the form of the Rocky Horror Show participants on-board), Warholian art cinema, fascination with the occult, the filtering of post-modern thought into the English-speaking world. Such engagement with the world was antithetical to punk. If Jubilee is a punk expression, it is one only inasmuch as it reveals the inherent limits of punk as an aesthetic. I think this has little to do with punk's supposed nihilism. This nihilism is debatable, anyway… maybe UK punk was nihilistic, but mostly because it was an abstraction that got fat on art-school sweets; punk soon split and mutated into strains of surrealism, populism, extreme formalism, and even fascism. "No future" indeed. Rather, it has much more to do with the fact that punk was fashion, and punk was music. Punk was style and not much else, and so existed at that nexus where music is indistinguishable from style. Maybe this is why young people today still listen to Throbbing Gristle but could care less who Sham 69 were. As an idea, punk was a fluorescent wraith. Jubilee is perhaps best read as a very literary, highly imaginative diary chronicling the souring of one individual's infatuation with the potential of punk as aesthetic, as energy, and as opposition.

As Borgia Ginz, played as a queen-ed out Batman TV villain by a screaming, cackling skull billed as "The Great Orlando" says, "If we play our music loud enough, we can't hear the world falling apart." But Ginz is no punk; he's just an impresario, the hedonist who owns both the BBC and the C of E. And the problem is that the punks did think like him. That is, the world doesn't fall apart. Everything in the world falls in on itself, we are touched by everything impersonal; although it feels as if we are ourselves "blank", it is only because that touch is so neutral, so transparent, so without texture, like the red plastic bedsheets with which one character -- Crabs (Little Nell) -- asphyxiates one of her lovers. There is no collapse, no cataclysm. No whimper, either. What there is is terrible constriction. In such circumstances, nothing isn’t doom. Nothing would be a relief.

~ Joe Milazzo

Buck Hill - This is Buck Hill (Steeplechase)

Loyalty to hearth and home can be a liability to the jazzman as touring has long been a staple tactic in the hunt for notoriety and success. Most musicians accept the reality of the road as a necessary tribulation of their trade. But there are also those that buck the trend and choose to eke out a localized existence regardless of the professional consequence. Like his older Chicago peer Von Freeman, D.C.-centric saxophonist Buck Hill knows the costs of the trade-off first hand. Hill has been a Capitol-area treasure for going on four decades. He first started gigging in the 40s and the 50s led to high profile stints with the likes of Stitt, Ammons, Getz and Roach- heavy company and proof of chops that still serve him well today. There are also shades of the first four horn men in Hill’s robust tenor vernacular. Like Von Freeman and Fred Anderson his recording debut came comparatively late in the game. Prior to the date and well after Hill made his primary income through day jobs as a cabbie and post office employee (fodder for another screed entirely). He caught the ear of Steeplechase producer Nils Winther on the recommendation of Billy Hart who also supplies traps for the date. The rhythm section also includes Kenny Barron on keys and Buster Williams on bass, blue chip all the way. Jerome Kern’s ballad “Yesterdays” and Sonny Rollins “Oleo,” the two standards of the session, join Williams’ tricky “Tokudo”- a track that allows Hill a chance to show his harmonic acumen and allegiance to Trane- in comprising the record’s first half. The middle tune even makes room for an unaccompanied center section where Hill waves his band mates to the sidelines and rips through three explosive choruses alone. The platter’s second half holds three Hill originals, including the shimmering “I Am Aquarius,” the triple-time sprint “S.M.Y” and the modal “Two Chord Molly.” “…Aquarius” proves to be the standout and one of the most satisfying horn plus rhythm performances I’ve ever heard. A bold statement I realize, but one I’ll gladly stand behind. A second take of “S.M.Y.” beefs up running time to a healthy fifty-six minutes. Hill cut three more records worth of material for Steeplechase before dropping out for a stretch and returning in the late 80s with clutch of dates for Muse. His debut remains one of his best efforts and a dazzling gold doubloon in the treasure chest of 70s jazz.

"I was 15 before I realized I was dead"

I spent this weekend working through the Criterion Collection edition of Derek Jarman's 1978 film Jubilee. Premise = Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) asks court magus Dr. John Dee to summon a spirit ethereal, Ariel, who reveals to the Queen "the shadow of these times", i.e., the future, i.e., Albion as the sun rises on it in the closing years of the 20th Century. What do the Queen and her retinue discover? As Jarman himself writes:

"Law and order has finally been abolished and do-your-own-thing is the order of the day. [As one character says, desires are now realities.] The church is a strip club and Buckingham Palace a recording studio... Open war between all factions of society. A gang of bike girls centered at H.Q. in Southwark, rape and kill all adversaries, led by the Queen of Punk, Bod [played by Jenny Runacre, who also appears as Queen Elizabeth I]... The music of groups like The Slits, Sex Pistols plays incessantly to rapturous reception."

The funny thing is, the punks mostly despised this film. Vivienne Westwood went so far as to silkscreen her criticism of the film on t-shirts (I suppose they were made available for sale through Seditionaries). There's probably something to the fact that the punk movement in the UK, given its sneering, colonialist appropriation of yobbo working class mores, was not very tolerant of alternative lifestyles. Whatever the case, Jubilee has had to collect dust in anticipation of a revival. I cannot and will not be just another observer commenting on how prescient the film is its portrayal of particular varieties of social and personal anomie, the old if not ancient evils of the "State", and the utterly destructive consequences of our opting for consumerism and spectator-hood. I'm sure you'd much rather read Naked Lunch anyway. And I won’t talk here about Jarman's highly politicized homosexuality, because I don’t feel qualified to do so. But, as someone whose on occasion inhaled the lingering chemical fumes of punk culture all throughout his mid-1980's adolescence, I can tell you that this film is fascinating as a pop cultural artifact.

Jubilee tries very hard to escape mass culture; Jubilee crawls and swims through stagnant pools of pop culture like a fleeing prisoner might have to make his or her way through raw sewage. I don’t think I can read the film's denouement, in which Elizabeth and Dee walk along the English shore and fade into the sunset (it is not clear whether they have returned from their journey in time or not) any other way. Although Jarman was always a keen observer who began his film-making career by mixing secret histories – documentary Super8 films of his own sub-culture – with extremes of fantasy, Jubilee seems completely smitten with punk music and fashion. So much so that Jarman places pre-MTV music videos within the film (most notably, earlier performances by Siouxsie and the Banshees and Adam and the Ants), and makes over trained actors like Toyah Wilcox so that they look more punk – lumpier, more sallow, and more mentally unbalanced – than the real punks themselves.

Ultimately, like me, Jubilee can think about punk but cannot be truly grounded in it or of it. After all, Derek Jarman was of a slightly older generation than that of his heroine Amyl Nitrate (original punk Jordan), and, as much as he had no use for the House of Windsor, he was still English in the way David Hockney is English. Like Hockney, Jarman was also a painter first, someone interested in beauty's conventions – beauty's history, if you will. Jarman could never be as bored, I think, as the highest avatars of punk cool could be. Nor did punk excel at self-consciousness; it made a virtue out of not knowing anything about itself. Several contemporaneous cultural developments, several 70's collide in Jubilee. Punk, disco, camp nostalgia, camp self-actualization (both in the form of the Rocky Horror Show participants on-board), Warholian art cinema, fascination with the occult, the filtering of post-modern thought into the English-speaking world. Such engagement with the world was antithetical to punk. If Jubilee is a punk expression, it is one only inasmuch as it reveals the inherent limits of punk as an aesthetic. I think this has little to do with punk's supposed nihilism. This nihilism is debatable, anyway… maybe UK punk was nihilistic, but mostly because it was an abstraction that got fat on art-school sweets; punk soon split and mutated into strains of surrealism, populism, extreme formalism, and even fascism. "No future" indeed. Rather, it has much more to do with the fact that punk was fashion, and punk was music. Punk was style and not much else, and so existed at that nexus where music is indistinguishable from style. Maybe this is why young people today still listen to Throbbing Gristle but could care less who Sham 69 were. As an idea, punk was a fluorescent wraith. Jubilee is perhaps best read as a very literary, highly imaginative diary chronicling the souring of one individual's infatuation with the potential of punk as aesthetic, as energy, and as opposition.

As Borgia Ginz, played as a queen-ed out Batman TV villain by a screaming, cackling skull billed as "The Great Orlando" says, "If we play our music loud enough, we can't hear the world falling apart." But Ginz is no punk; he's just an impresario, the hedonist who owns both the BBC and the C of E. And the problem is that the punks did think like him. That is, the world doesn't fall apart. Everything in the world falls in on itself, we are touched by everything impersonal; although it feels as if we are ourselves "blank", it is only because that touch is so neutral, so transparent, so without texture, like the red plastic bedsheets with which one character -- Crabs (Little Nell) -- asphyxiates one of her lovers. There is no collapse, no cataclysm. No whimper, either. What there is is terrible constriction. In such circumstances, nothing isn’t doom. Nothing would be a relief.

Shelly Manne - Steps to the Desert

Contemporary 7609

Jazz elements have long permeated Jewish music. The cross-pollination dates back to work of clarinet doyens Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein in the 1930s and earlier. Thirty years before John Zorn hit the music world by storm with Masada Shelly Manne was conducting his own experiments in the melding of Hassidic melodies and jazz-based improvisation. This recent Contemporary reissue packages music originally released under the album title of My Son the Jazz Drummer and adds 45-rpm-sized edits of four tunes to the running time. Five of the drummer’s regular LA-area associates fill out the sextet commissioned to perform the tunes. Shorty Rogers and Teddy Edwards comprise the frontline on trumpet and tenor saxophone respectively, with Rogers uncorking his flugelhorn on four of the ten core album numbers. Pianist Victor Feldman, guitarist Al Viola and bassist Monty Budwig complete the rhythm section.

“Hava Nagila,” the “Round Midnight” of the Jewish songbook, receives first honors in the set list. Rogers handles the arranging duties and filters a hardbop attitude through the familiar melody. Budwig’s moody out of tempo bass vamp starts things off and the horns pick up the familiar theme in a clever staggered fashion, each trilling expressively in a cyclic chase before sliding into a string of solos led by Edwards’ calefactory tenor. Rogers’ flugelhorn is cooler in tone, but equally velocious in phrasing, charging through a quick chorus before Budwig and Feldman, on vibes, engage in a dual solo break. Manne sets up a crackling snare beat beside them that bubbles over in a quick spate of press rolls. A terse return to the melody signals the close capped by a single ringing piano note from Feldman. Along with the majority of the other selections on the disc it makes for accessibly adventurous West Coast 60s jazz.

Lennie Niehaus, Feldman and Edwards arrange other tunes in the set. The Niehaus numbers often carry the most intrigue in terms of playing to and testing the band members’ strengths. First among these is the German crooner vehicle “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” which sticks out a bit like a bruised thumb amongst the other Jewish songs in the set and comes off like an outtake from an I Spy episode with its Noir-heavy blues head and sliding crime jazz harmonies. Niehaus’s intricate rendition of “Bokrei Lachish” is the album’s longest excursion and a spotlight for aggressive solos from Rogers, again on flugelhorn, Feldman, Edwards, sounding even more heated here than on the opener, and finally Viola, who again set’s his frets to nearly fulminating with friction applied by racing digits.

“Yossel, Yossel” finds Rogers muted and Manne on brushes and features strong solos from the trumpeter, Edwards and Budwig, who’s pizzicato exposition carries intriguing flamenco fingerings. Viola’s filigree single notes close the piece out with a delicate cadenza. “Zamar Nodad” is the first of several pieces that make use of Brazilian rhythms and colors. The band takes a stab at the then hugely popular theme to the film version of Leon Uris’s “Exodus” also embelishing it with bossa nova accents and an unaccompanied preface from Viola on acoustic strings. Other tunes on the session docket include “Tzena,” which sounds like something out of the Jazz Messengers songbook circa 1960, “Die Greene Koseene,” “My Yiddishe Momme,” a melancholy-tinged feature for Edwards, and the title track “Orchah Bamidbar.”

Concept-driven projects were a regular repast for Manne during his long sojourn with Contemporary. This date of Jewish tunes sits solidly with other albums like Checkmate and Peter Gunn in its ability to put a fresh spin on popular material. The truly amusing and surprising thing is that despite the dated facets of some of the arrangements, the whole album sounds uncannily as if it could easily be a current release on Tzadik.

Big Weekend

Ronald Reagan: dead. Steve Lacy: dead. Jennifer Lopez: married again.

Open Water

It's not too often that buzz about a movie gets me charged, but this is one I truly can't wait to see. The film screened at Sundance outside of the contest and scared the hell out of everyone who watched it. Two divers are stranded by their charter boat, and are left to shrivel up in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Better, it's a creepy "things under the sea" movie. The director/writer's budget was so low that he couldn't afford a mechanical shark, nor could he afford digital versions. He and his crew instead used the real thing throughout the film, chumming the water and letting the sharks swarm around the actors. If that's not crazy enough, the actors and film crew had no insurance (no firm would ever have taken on such a note), so everybody agreed in contracts not to bring suit should the worst come around. You couldn't have paid me enough to take on such a job, but it turns out nobody was hurt and the improvised results are supposed to make a very terrifying film.

I'm a sucker for scary flicks, and even moreso if it involves sharks, so it's my hope this doesn't turn out to be another Phone Booth.

Elliott Carter – What Next?

ECM

Valdine Anderson, Sarah Leonard, Hilary Summers, William Joyner & Dean Elzinga / Peter Eotvos, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra

There’s a lot that is mysterious about Elliott Carter’s 1997 one-act opera What Next?, even if we exclude questions about how a nonagenarian could have created it. To begin with, have the five characters in the work (along with boy alto Emanuel Hoogeveen as "Kid") actually had an accident on the way to a wedding (possibly between "Rose" and "Harry or Larry")? Did they lose their memories/identities, or are they Pirandello-style ghosts never had either and are waiting for author or audience bestowal of such goods? Whether or not these specters exist in the manner their words imply, are there actually corporeal, if silent, "Road Workers" that "Mama, " "Rose," et al. at some point try to convince of their (apparent) predicament, or is someone just imagining that others later appear on this bizarre scene? The ECM packaging, which includes Paul Griffiths’s complete libretto, as well as an essay by David Hamilton and a "Gee-Whiz!—I’m-Actually-Working-Knee-to-Knee-With-My-Long-Time-Hero! " journal by the librettist isn’t terribly helpful on these matters. The printed "Situation" that precedes Griffiths’s libretto says, "There has been an accident. Of the six ‘victims,’ all quite unhurt as far as we can see, the five adults have different views of how they are related and how they have come to be in the same place at the same time." The Hamilton piece adds that " [t]he arrival of Road Workers (played by percussion players) reactivates the sonorities of the opening until they leave. " However, the libretto proper, at least as it appears here, has nothing whatever about the entrance of any characters at all after the curtain rises. (Further confusing this matter for me is a review of a live performance I’ve seen that suggests that the ensemble comes to be confronted not by paver/percussionists but by a policeman!) For its part, the Griffiths journal focuses almost exclusively on what seems like an intent to convince the reader that very significant work was contributed by the librettist (sometimes even during meals with the great maestro himself!!). For example, Griffiths informs us that he picked up some reference materials relating to the names of celestial bodies, that he wrote several drafts, that he thought or worried about the work while in bed on occasion, that he received 25% of some commission fee or other from Boosey and Hawkes for his efforts (half in advance), etc. But as to whether we may at least take the "Situation" literally, and so rule out any Malone/Unnameable "brain-in-a-vat" theories—whatever may be the case about the veracity (or sanity) of any or all of the characters—there is nothing. A Robert Craft journal this is not.

I hope the reader won’t take the foregoing as the foundation or prelude to an attack against the opera, the libretto, or even the packaging. The Beckettesque aspects of the work must preclude puzzled opera-goers from expecting answers to such mundane questions as “What the hell is actually happening here?” On the contrary, the fundamental haziness of the ECM booklet allows us the fun of focusing on other sorts of internal clues, both musical and literary, in order to develop our theories regarding the “story.” Here’s my current take…subject to later amendment, of course:

The piece opens with some raucous percussive banging. Naturally, this could represent a physical accident, like a car crash. But the first words uttered are:

MAMA: Sh – Ss – Sh – Sh
STELLA: SS – SH – Shh - tar
HARRY OR LARRY: Sh – Sh – St
ROSE: Ss – Sh – arr
KID: A
STELLA: Star
HARRY OR LARRY: Star
ZEN: Star
ROSE: Star
MAMA: Star
KID: Star
ZEN: Starts
HARRY OR LARRY: Startle
ROSE: Starlings
MAMA: Starch
STELLA: Starkest
KID: Starve I’m Starving

The entire crew then goes on to talk about stars, starts and startles, and there are numerous references to various celestial bodies (Alpha Canis Major, Sirius, etc.) as the piece goes on. "Stella" even claims to be an astronomer on her way to the observatory at the time of the "accident. " I take from this—and from the fact that the percussion blasts opening the work go on too long to be representative of a discrete, crash-type event—that these people (I’m not quite willing to make the leap to each singer representing one or more aspects of a single person or some other entity, like humanity as a whole) are "seeing stars. " I concur, that is, that they are awakening confusedly from something (anesthesia, or coma or nothing at all), or perhaps, like the characters in one of Sartre’s plays, they have just died. The point is that the proximate cause of these "stars" is as likely stroke or congestive heart failure as a pile-up on Route 9. This interpretation makes the subsequent non-responsiveness of the "Road Workers" more sensible—to me, anyway. Whether they’re physically present or not, they simply can’t see or hear our heroes. Of course, they could be deaf and blind—or just uncaring representatives of an overly bureaucratic world. Was there going to be a wedding? Was someone on her way to work? Quien sabe? Finally, before I turn from the narrative (such as it is) to Carter’s music and its performance, it is worth noting that the above excerpt from Griffiths’s libretto should not be taken as representative of the work as a whole, which actually contains any number of complete sentences and even a few jokes. For example, in response to Rose’s questions: "Do you believe in God? Do you believe there is a creator? Do you believe we are in the hands of another being? " "Zen" answers, "It depends on what you mean by 'believe'. " Keeping in mind that this response is from a character whom the "Situation" strongly suggests is a megalomaniacal fraud, it’s hard not to find this cutely anti-Clintonian.

Speaking of Canis Major, after about ten times through this knotty 40-minute work, I began to wonder why there isn’t more in the text about Ursa Minor. The rising minor third (along with a rising tritone) seems the most prevalent musical motif in the work—making its appearances apparently unrestricted to any particular instrument, ensemble or character. At any rate, those two pitch shifts are what now cling to me most doggedly after the last note of the work is heard. As is his wont, Carter has linked particular instruments/groups with specific characters or ideas. Here, the easiest coupling to discover is the pairing of flowery soprano, "Rose," (who may or may not be a singer still buzzing from audience cheers after a recent concert) with piano. If these sorts of associations sometimes seem only half-hearted in Carter’s mature scores, it is largely because there are always at least forty other intervallic, rhythmic, timbral and dynamic associations simultaneously being developed, any number of which can obscure the connections we’ve noticed. What I’m referring to can be described (with only a dollop of exaggeration) along these lines: "When the second flute repeatedly plays dotted-eighth G-sharps in its lower register, one can expect a reference to early Blake—except, of course, when this pattern is accompanied by a lightly trilling oboe and celli sul ponte an octave down, when these instruments together imply either the tragedy of the commons, or, if flutter-tonguing is used, Leonardo’s prefiguring of such tragedy. " That level of nearly insane complexity has always been Carter’s stock-in-trade, so one shouldn’t expect Wagnerian leitmotifs or Peter and the Wolf instrumentation schemes. What’s most amazing about Carter, however, is that this extreme multi-level approach has never been pure gamesmanship or allowed to spiral into unintelligible muck: it has simply provided rich rewards to repeat listeners. While there is almost no end to the depths of understanding one may reach regarding many of his works (Ph.D. theses no doubt proliferate), they are also often very beautiful to those who have no use at all for that sort of analysis—so long as these listeners are willing to let a fair measure of dissonance flow into their lives. Carter’s works are thus like forests, or oceans, or life itself. In What Next? Carter’s ability to create gorgeous and intensely moving surfaces is perhaps best heard in the orchestral interlude entitled "The Singing Stage. " This brief, wordless scene is filled with longing and nobility and is lovely, whatever connections we mortals are likely to be missing. (His facility is also made quite clear throughout the dizzily spinning Asko Concerto, a 12-minute piece for chamber orchestra from 2000 included on this ECM disc. I won’t discuss that work here except to say that it is lovely, a good deal lighter and more quicksilver than Carter’s 1970 Concerto for Orchestra, and that it is brilliantly performed here by Eotvos and his Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra.)

In discussing the performance of a work as obviously difficult as What Next? I want to stress that I have not seen the score, and, even if I had one handy, would need to take a tremendous amount of time and trouble before I could comfortably make any assertions regarding accuracy. Anyone can hear, however, the beauty of tone of both singers and instrumentalists as well as the apparent effortlessness of the production. I’m old enough to remember a time when only one pianist in the world could perform Carter’s Piano Concerto—and then once a year. Times have obviously changed: Eotvos and his Dutch masters toy with Carter’s metrical modulations, cross rhythms and other former near-impossibilities as if they were Flemish folk tunes for children. Everyone in the orchestra is perfectly wonderful, but I’d feel remiss not singling out the English hornist, the four percussionists, and the pianist for special praise. The cast is just as good. It includes the nervous, here-and-now "Mama" (soprano Sarah Leonard); cynical wiseguy "Harry or Larry" (baritone Dean Elzinga); Con man guru "Zen" (tenor William Joyner); narcissistic coloratura "Rose" (Valdine Anderson) and the tough, star-gazing "Stella" (contralto Hilary Summers). All seem entirely undaunted by the rigors and difficulties of the Carter/Griffiths approaches to melody, rhythm, prosody, and expression. Further, words are always clearly enunciated, despite the score’s demand for consummate athleticism, and they deliver their lines with just the right balance of emotional involvement and dreamy detachment.

It is amazing to me, as it must be to so many others, that, even at 90, Carter was able to create a first rate work in a genre new to him. Perhaps even more striking, however, is that What Next? is radical in ways that many supposedly avant-garde operas by younger composers are not. To give a couple of examples, Ligeti’s Grand Macabre and Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexico are delightful and original pieces, utilizing such devices as car horn choruses and “coloraturas of the sea,” but both also contain, if not traditional arias, at least “set pieces” in which particular instruments or easily identifiable themes, rhythms or sonorities are relied upon for significant periods during discrete scenes. There are "hooks, " or at least footholds. As indicated above, that’s not Carter’s way. Nor is Carter the type to include dancing Maoettes or references to languid Brando movies in his works. (Still, What Next? demonstrates that he’s not completely arid: he didn’t keep Griffiths from throwing in a reference to Big Macs.) There’s no question that the composer is more at home with Ashberry than with South Park, and his opera is no exception. What Next? fits comfortably into Carter’s heady vocal catalogue alongside Mirror On Which To Dwell and Syringa. By now, I suppose it’s pretty clear that Carter, like Cecil Taylor, Pierre Boulez and Derek Bailey—to name three other 20th Century icons of stubbornly difficult music—is not a crowd-pleaser. By his own admission, he was never quite at ease during his brief 1940s foray into the world of consonance and relatively easy tonality. He preferred to follow Ives. But it wasn’t Foster or Sousa or "Nearer My God To Thee" that he wanted to bring to the contemporary concert hall, it was Dunne, Milton, Bowen and Einstein. Carter has always been an intellectual’s intellectual, ever refining his page-long algorithms, consistently offering layer upon layer of meaning for those interested in diving deep. Even so, he has never sacrificed the beautiful to the lesser divinities of the intricate or the cerebral. His priorities have invariably been flawless. As a result, Elliott Carter of the most prolific creators of profoundly beautiful art—not only of our time, but of any time.

~Walter Horn

Hailing, Preamble, Syllabus, Projection

On the first and third Tuesdays of each month, I meet with a local arts group. We share our own work and discuss it. We also discuss the age-old difficulties of the life creative, but, to my relief, not too much so. Occasionally, if a participant does not have anything of their own to present, he or she may talk about an artist, a specific piece, or even a discipline that has had a significant impact of his or her own work. In the past -- and we have only been meeting regularly since March of this year -- the group has had the opportunity to see / hear / study Ellsworth Kelly, Li-Young Lee, Hiroshi Sugimoto (I keep promising myself I will write a Bagatellen. entry on his work and its relationship, as I see it, to the music of the other Sugimoto), Andrei Tarkovsky, Thelonious Monk, The Rg Veda, Joseph McElroy's Hind's Kidnap, and the lithographic process.

Tonight, rather than reading from one of several "things" I have in progress, I am going to talk a bit about contemporary improvised music and "eai". The reasons are several: there has been little discussion in our group so far of music; we have discussed improvisation in the abstract once or twice; in making casual mention of "avant-garde" music (Cage, Feldman, Lachenmann, Cardew, etc.) to some of my colleagues, I have noted a certain resistance to the very idea of it; most significantly, whenever talks in our group turns to the notion of the transcendent, the religious, and the sacred in art, I find my mind and my own comments sending me back to this music.

I'll be making some off-the-cuff remarks, dropping some names, and referring folks to places on the web such as Paris Transatlantic and the Erstwhile site (they already know about this place). I'll also be reading a few of the notes I have scribbled here at Bagatellen, as the questions Dan, Alan, Brian and others have posed here have helped me considerably in firming up my own sense of what this music is, how it operates, and what it does. (I, for one, think it does do something.) Finally, I plan to run the Keith Rowe / Toshimaru Nakamura footage from balance beams.

Ours is a diverse group. I am only one of two writers who regularly attend. Several photographers, musicians (a classically-trained vocalist), painters, filmmakers, digital animators, and those involved in the theater arts (acting, design, etc.) are also usually on hand. I am curious to see what happens once I engage them on the subject of these sounds. I hope to be able to report the results shortly.