Bagatellen

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Taku Sugimoto
Music For Cymbal
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I’m familiar with the work of both parties involved, however noting the album’s credits, I went in not knowing whatever to expect: composed by Taku Sugimoto and performed by Jason Kahn on amplified cymbal, it leaves one eager to learn more about the nature of such a score for such an instrumentation. Long, interspersed pauses (one of which commences the recording) featuring the quietest of accents confuse me among the curious episodes of 'tapped' and manipulated cymbal. The overtone byproducts of said tapping are the most fascinating aspect throughout. Akin to depressing a struck drumhead, the malleability of Kahn’s cymbal is as unpredictable as it is inviting, cast bronze heated mid-resonance. That’s where the substantial length of this disc makes sense. The repetition is near canonical in that the cymbal seems to invariably imitate itself ad infinitum.

Toward the conclusion of the music, what’s transpiring sounds like a hammered dulcimer paired with feedback at similar frequency. The repetitive pulse has morphed into a chant. The ears give way, forced to grant wide berth to the extrinsic gestalt of Kahn’s ringing metal, allowing what’s beneath to breathe freely. That of the performer trumps the patience required of the listener. This is the best jogging disc I’ve heard since the Charles/Ibarra duo.

Norbert Möslang
Capture
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For some reason “soothing” comes off as tired as “it flows” when reacting to music in print. Capture gives me the shivers. Unique in these three offerings is that here no axe is listed, though ostensible is that the electronics are indeed cracked and perhaps even everyday. Light-Sound Installation by Norbert Möslang recorded on the fourth of July, 2004 in Feldkirch, Austria; it’s no church in the fields but a hair over an hour of Aunt Bernice’s old Zenith hum.

Unlike a lot of installation-based music, this one doesn’t bring the luggage. Think of a Mathieu performance beginning shortly after he's received some terrible news (how beautiful Stephan’s recordings are on sunny days, though). Capture: huge slab of multiple layers, some hardly audible, others excruciating and/or out of place. After the fortieth minute Möslang brings pitches closer, crosses the streams, quivering minor seconds, the broadening crests and troughs of two converging notes when you're tuning a guitar. Repeated listening extracts layers further yet, but still there remains some hesitancy to divert course. As the recording ends, forced air abruptly shuts off and you’re left with that uncomfortable nakedness. I’ll not reach for this much. . .one to seduce goosebumps nonetheless.

Jason Kahn
Timelines
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This is it. A big, bubbling cauldron of sound, we’re dealt over seventy minutes all told. Note size of ensemble, it should come as no surprise that singular instrumentation is indiscernible and more importantly immaterial (save some effective contrabass accent, esp. that terrifying arco figure after twenty-seven minutes). The "graphical score" comes from Kahn as performed by the composer, Korber, Möslang, Müller, Steinbrüchel and Weber.

Colors are constantly changing. Restraint prevails throughout even in light of the restive whole. Each thematic shift in turn invents an entirely new vocabulary alien to the last. Obviously, many such shifts take shape due to blokes laying out and such, but that’s a reductive answer to a stupid question. This is a massive group effort, a timeline of an insidious virus capable of being parceled out into several albums. There is so much information to process that it’s impossible to give an accurate appraisal after a week of listening. I look forward to growing with this time and again. Do yourself a favor.

~Michael Schaumann

Noir Guignol

Attended an advance screening of Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City last night & still digesting the two-hour barrage of ultra-violence, hardboiled hokum and vanguard visuals. This flick is so over-the-top in spots that uncalculated humor seems the only natural response. Several of the scenes are categorically guaranteed to elicit the squint-eyed wince or the teeth-gritted cringe in the viewer. The co-directors toss in turgid boilerplate from an impressive array of sources Tarantino-style, fermenting it down to frothy porridge in a cauldron of hi-tech thaumaturgy that is completely unapologetic in its embrace of misogyny, sadism and meretriciousness. A bullet-stopping badge; a conscientious cop’s fateful last day on the force; femme fatales by the flock-ful; archfiend adversaries blessed with above-the-law power and protection; an anti-hero gleefully-engineered to trump all anti-heroes- all are ensconced in a rain soaked cityscape still drowning in moral filth and swill despite the perpetual cleansing downpour from above.

It’s as if the prime directive is to shave both characters and narrative down to the most substratal and single-minded marrow then amplify these core elements in the most caricatural fashions. The women are voluptuous and ineluctable, the men stoic and leather-faced. The stilted metaphor-pregnant dialogue, at times seemingly lifted wholesale form a vintage Paul Cain novel, further pads the surfeit. Then there’s Rodriguez’s signature kinetic directorial style that ramps the action and impact to an even more overblown pitch. The audience barely has a chance to catch their breath before they’re socked in the collective chops by yet another scene of garish brutality. But somehow the majority of it goes down rousingly and the entertainment quotient remains high. Don’t want to divulge too much of the plot (which, if you’ve read the comics sticks to the content of the acid-free pages nearly to the letter and panel), but I am very curious to learn what others think of this most scrupulous transfer of print art to celluloid. The flick opens wide tomorrow, April 1st.

Antboy Music

Will Guthrie - Spear

Will Guthrie
Spear
Antboy 05

Don’t let the brevity of either the disc or the write-up put you off. This CDR by Will Guthrie, clocking it at less than 8 ½ minutes, is far more worthwhile than the bulk of other releases you’re likely to come across this year.

“Spear” is more or less a concrete piece, cobbled together from Guthrie’s own percussion as well as field recordings and who knows what else, assembled into a solid, rough-hewn slab of sound, a varied and at times vicious assault of bangs and wallops, especially in its first half, though it subsides somewhat toward the end of the work. Think extreme Xenakis leavened, perhaps, by a bit of Julien Ottavi’s influence (“Spear” was assembled in January of this year in Nantes). But my guess is that both those of a more “traditional” electro-acoustic bent as well as the young ‘uns enamored of the No Fun set will have a blast with this one.

More info at www.antboymusic.com

~ Brian Olewnick

No Fun Fest - 2005

(photo courtesy of Ed Howard)

Joe drew attention to this festival a while ago here, so it would only be fitting for me to follow up with a little report on that it was like to be so awash in these musics for the last week. Even better than reading this missive would be to check out Bill T Miller's amazing pictures of the festival.

This was the 2nd year of Carlos Giffoni's No Fun Fest. Last year, the first one was remarkable both in its scope and its depth: Pita, Wolf Eyes, nmperign & Due Process, Arthur Doyle's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Sightings, and many more. It seemed to be tapping into a number of overlapping scenes, the noise-rock of Sightings and Hair Police, the more discordant end of free-jazz, electroacoustic improv, and whatever it is you call what Wolf Eyes do. It was like a cross-section of a teeming reef of practices, barely held together by an interest in the extremes of volume, density, pitch. The common threads were the musicians themselves: members of Sonic Youth, Giffoni's own projects (Monotract, the duo with Dylan Nyoukis), rather than shared approaches.

This year's festival felt more like it was an exploration of just one thing, like the heads of a hydra, or the faces of a mountain. Maybe the feeling was a function of the social atmosphere: I must have met at least a dozen people whom I'd either only interacted with via electronic communication, or knew as friends of friends. Everyone seemed like someone you knew from a message board, had bought records from, or seen live at some point or another. Downstairs was a zoo of networking, 1/3 conference, 1/3 bazaar and 1/3 drunken middle school dance. The Hook was a great venue for the festival, and Carlos really knew how to make use of the space: the main space was devoted to the bar and the mainstage acts, downstairs was the merchandise and more music curated by Chondritic Sound on Friday, Chocolate Monk on Saturday and Heresee on Sunday

Before I go into the details of the shows, I'll lay down the background against which the lineup took shape: About a month or so ago, the headlines of the final night of the Fest backed out, SUNNO)) + the Total Acid Ensemble (John Weise, Pita and Lasse Marhaug.) To replace them, Giffoni booked Fe-mail, a Norwegian laptop noise duo. Then, about a week before the fest, both William Bennett and Phillip Best cancelled, forcing a replacement of Whitehouse, Consumer Electronics and the Bennett dj set by Borbetomagus, Macronympha and an Emil Beaulieau DJ set/performance. Around the same time Rudolf Eb.er of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock had to cancel his in-person appearance, due to passport and visa issues. Matthew Bower of The Hototogisu missed his flight over and Ron Lessard of the Nihilist Assault Group got sick the day of his show, being replaced by Richard of FFH (I don't know his last name).

The effects of these changes on the lineup changed the character of the festival in interesting ways: besides Chris Corsano, who was playing drums in two ensembles, Borbetomagus became the most solid connection between the free-jazz and the younger, more primarily electronic based music making. This brought it a touch closer in spirit to the earlier festival. In light of my other experiences with Borbetomagus, I imagine they blew the roof off the place, but, as with all of the other musicians who played last each night (I hesitate to call them "headliners"), I missed their performance. The addition of Fe-mail was a solid addition to the already impressive and prominent number of women musicians (Metalux, Tovah Olson of Dead Machines, Carly Ptak - who co-curated the Heresee night along with Twig Harper- Leslie Keffer, and Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards and many others).

--

One thing that's common to many of the musicians/performers at No Fun was this hyperconsciousness of tradition. Say what you will about the music, one thing you can't really say is that any of it is especially new, or perhaps, that novelty isn't its main appeal. So much of what happened was about the continuity and bastardization of old forms into new ones. Psychedelia's ghost was the most obvious one, alongside the spirits of industrial, sound-poetry, minimalism, Aktionism, power electronics, harsh noise, no-wave, and countless others. Different threads of musicians, chains of influence, geographically situated communities (Michigan, Ohio, Zūrich, Boston, Vienna), commonmindedness in strange ways.

Psych has some kind of special resonance for a lot of the musicians that played; anyone who's spent time reading the Hanson_American list is well aware of the voracity for obscure psychedelic music therein (the Blops, anyone?) I'm not really sure why: some kind of retrospective longing for unselfconscious weirdness? A love of color? Fuzz pedals? I personally think that some of it is excessive, but for a group of musicians who played at the festival, psychedelia is channeled without the mysticism, without the obscurity, and without the message. They abstract from the motivations behind a lot of it's "weirdness" (musical approximations of drug experiences, desire to "expand consciousness", appropriations of "exotic" religious practices, etc.) and take from it cloudy, damaged strangeness. Hive Mind's set made me feel like I was back in 10th grade, listening to Tangerine Dream's Pheadra after drinking too much cheap vodka with my degenerate friends, while Heathen Shame were total guitar/vocal/trumpet freakout, with an otherworldly vocal attack by Kate Village and a stage-dive (!) by Greg Kelley. John Olson of Wolf Eyes embodied the spirit in apparel: printed-over denim vest, no shirt, and headband. There was also the more explicit free-rock revival tone of Pengo, and the anarchic performance/ritual/rock of Magik Markers.

No Fun gave me the chance to reevaluate my opinions on two bands: Hair Police and Double Leopards. During Hair Police's set at last year's No Fun, I found myself in the midst of a swirling mass of bodies, which grew progressively more and more rowdy. Not 10 minutes into their set, I had my glasses knocked off and stomped on (unintentionally, I believe), which cost me $200 and a fair quantity of grief. I imagine that that had colored my feelings about them, but for a while, I've been skeptical about the considerable following they've amassed. I've also seen Double Leopards play before (maybe a year or so ago?) and found it pleasant but aimless drone-soup. Both bands totally impressed me this year; it's difficult to say whether it was a change in their approach or in mine. Maybe it was the PA? Whatever it was, Hair Police were vicious, loud but focused as well, and Double Leopards were less sludge and more shimmer, dense and overwhelming. The Double Leopards set is one that I'd love to hear again, there was one passage that I remember being especially beautiful, one strong high-end synth buzz that stood apart from the rest of the sound mass.

Contraposed to all of this hippy longhair'dness were the more theatrical performances: Dave Phillips, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Sudden Infant, Justice Yeldham & the Dynamic Ribbon Device, Glamorous Pat & Mokinox and HAZMAT featuring Anthony Miller & Large Parts. While everyone at the fest was putting on a "show", for better or for worse there were some acts where keeping your eyes closed would have been of significant detriment to the experience (Macronympha as well, but for different reasons.) You had a few approaches happening: the more flamboyant, dressup styles of Glamorous Pat & Mokinox next to the crazed destructive antics of HAZMAT. The former pair took turns trying to outdo each other in cawing, electronically processed screamswhile removing their clothes. Oddly enough, the two switched roles during the undressing, Mokinox with his fish costume got less interesting with his clothes off (revealing only some sort of fishy attachment to his phallus), where Glamorous Pat became more interesting, with his body paint (if those were tattoos, color me impressed) and sparkles. HAZMAT was one of two performances during the fest where I felt like I was in some real danger, dudes had a fucking chainsaw going on stage, where they were tearing through various objects that I could barely see.

The most anticipated, and in my opinion, two of the most fulfilling performances were those of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe: Dave Phillips and Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock. I'd seen Sudden Infant -the third Schimpfluch member- play on the Thursday prior to the festival, and wasn't so into it: covers of songs like Roxy Music's "In Every Dream home a Heartache" and Cabaret Voltaire's "Nag Nag Nag", via turntable loops, babydoll microphone with accompanying vocalist/cymbal smasher, Anne Stubbs.

Dave Phillips' was in every way, the best performance I saw during the festival. John Hegre of Jazzkammer did the sound, which accounts for the clarity and massive dynamic range (it went from quiet to LOUD). Phillips played alongside an unabashedly polemical video: footage of animals being slaughtered, tested upon, and abused, interspersed with short slogans attacking those who treat animals as a means, and bourgeois values. The sound came from a variety of sources, his amplified heartbeat, sounds from the throat/vocal chords, samples of insects, and electronics. Halfway into the performance Phillips walked into the audience and blew up balloons until they popped right in audience members' faces. There was an intensity of discipline and focus, a rigor which never again came up in the fest, as Giffoni wrote in an email to the Hanson_American board; "Dave doesn't fuck around." The seriousness, the intensity tempered with menace was a bracing contrast to the looseness and openness of the much of the other music in the festival, an antidote to the hippy vibe that was present in mercifully few of the acts. Fucking heartstopping stuff.

Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock (Rudolf Eb.er) was unfortunately unable to attend due to visa issues; his set was a video performance instead. Ed Howard has detailed the contents of the video nicely on IHM, so I'll just quote him:

"and oddly enough, possibly the most talked-about set of the whole fest was not really a set at all, but runzelstirn & gurgelstock's videotaped performance from japan, provided because rudolph eb.er had passport issues and couldn't actually make the fest. the video showed eb.er on stage with 3 young japanese women. the first 15 minutes or so consisted of an elaborately staged and slowly paced ritual in which eb.er gave each woman 3 different-colored drinks, washing the glasses out carefully between each round. what followed was another 20 minutes of the women vomiting copiously into tubs provided by the musician. the sound in the first half was some sampled screeching and chopped-up laughs, providing a deeply unsettling air of foreboding to the performance, and for the second half of the performance there was only the amplified sound of retching and of vomit hitting the plastic pans."

Ed goes on to mention how much he disliked the performance, I can only say that my opinion was the simple opposite: I loved it! I'd seen the Kurt Kren films of the Viennese Aktionists only a month before, and the film - titled Vomitplay (for 3 girls) - had interesting resonances with those, as well as to the entire Runzelstirn corpus. The only complaint was that the color contrast on the video could have been a little higher; I'd have liked to see more of the color detail in the pools of vomit. But that's just me.

--

"Influence" wasn't just some far off cloud, discernable only through its effects. One of more amazing parts of No Fun was seeing the inspired playing amongst their inspirations. Whitehouse would have been the most obvious example of this; their take-no-prisoners, black-humored nihilism were the blueprint for any power electronics, but also because of the simplicity of their set-up: cheap synthesizer, voice and effects. This building of shitty music out of shitty materials, this use of barely anything to make some of the most blistering din was a clarion call towards anti-professionalism, towards a juvenilia unhindered by any musical form at all. Super-crude sexual rage, carnal violence turned first within, then without, nihilism from an inner source.

On the entirely opposed end of the noise-spectrum (at least ideologically), were The New Blockaders, of whose Richard Rupens appeared with Emil Beaulieau (RRRon Lessard) and Dominick Fernow. Where Whitehouse seemed to be more about the individual, the New Blockaders wrapped themselves in arching claims about politics, history, art, and institutions:

The obscene progression of regression shall be halted by us, The New Blockaders! Let us sever this Parasite called History, it has nothing to do with us! This is the future! This is now! Move over you museum relics! Get out of our world, you poisonous scum! Avaunt! Avaunt! Avaunt! The Church of The Absurd marches on! Anti-newspapers, anti-magazines, anti-books, anti-music, anti-art, anti-poetry, anti-films, anti-clubs, anti-communications! We will make anti-statements about anything and everything. We will make a point of being pointless. ( The New Blockaders Manifesto, 1982)

The sound on those TNB records is some of the most ferocious noise I've ever heard, it's not often that I put them on.

Right between the two sits Fernow who performed under his solo project (Prurient), Macronympha, and the Nihilist Assault Group. His Prurient set was like the others I'd seen, 2 mics pointed at a stack of amplifiers, minimal processing, spasming, short vocal outbursts, feedback. The set couldn't have lasted more the 5 minutes, but it was plenty intense.

Macronympha was one of the last minute replacements for Whitehouse on the 2nd night Macronympha has been mainly Joe Roemer's noise project for the last few decades. He holds a special place in my heart for an "essential noise" primer he wrote for the Relapse Records magazine sometime in the mid 90's. A record store clerk in North Carolina gave me a copy when I was about 15, and it served as a buying guide for years. Aside from the palpable tension while Fernow was setting up (the lineup was he, Roemer, and Fernow's girlfriend, decked in fetish-gear, standing at the front of the stage), the pleasure of the show was in it's garishness, total working-class idful caricature, Fernow banging and scraping on contact mic'd paint rollers, with a denim vest on and no shirt, Joe Roemer slamming his body against an amp feeding back, and then going to the front of the stage to lasciviously grind up against and lick Fernow's girlfriend, while rubbing some sort of amplifying, sound generating thing against her torso. It was a bizarre spectacle, at once, some sort of ritual of a son giving up his lover to his (musical) father, while raging at inanimate objects, and on the other hand, this fury of sexually charged violence, which played itself out in the audience (a huge pit erupted next to me, so while watching the show, I was watching to avoid the careening bodies.)

However, what I was most looking forward to was the Nihilist Assault Group. This would be the NAG's only performance, and it was amazing, three figures in suits and black masks with masking tape Xs over the faces, 2 of whom were behind a table, thrashing away at a table full of electronics, one sitting in front of them, legs crossed, calmly drinking a glass of red wine. There was something decidedly alien about the set; a friend commented that he thought it was even more intimidating than the explicitly violent acts of the festival.

--

As far as personal preferences go, my partisanship towards experimental electronic music is likely well noted by readers herein. Solid, abstract electronics, with some measure of control, and a minimum of dogma/posturing: music that moves you like snow caught in eddies around windows. Something with a drop less personality, not the self-in-the-face-of-the-cosmos psych of Double Leopards, but more formalist. This was, in my view one of the hidden pleasures of No Fun, or at least the part that's been least commented on.

The two standouts in this field were Damion Romero and Buzzardstain & Dogjaw (Nate Young of Wolf Eyes and Twig Harper of Nautical Almanac). The latter was a great surprise to me, having seen Nautical Almanac a few times, I'm always ready for a little bit of shtick: some wackiness, some comedy, something extra-musical. But this wasn't the case at all; the set was just really solid electronics, Twig playing what seemed to be hand-lathe cut records, and other devices, while Nate Young was playing the hand-made, minimal electronics that brings the Wolf Eyes sound together. Really solid and focused, you could tell that the two were listening to each other, and really building something together.

Damion Romero is best known as Speculum Fight, his long running electronics project. His work under his own name is more minimal than the work he did as Speculum Fight, in ways, it's more conceptual sound-art, much more an exploration of the limits of a few electronic constructions. His actual performing during his set was limited mostly to slight adjustments on a few knobs of some devices he'd built (internal feedback controllers?), but the resultant sound was massive. Huge waves of low-end sound, cascading across each other throughout the space. It was simple, but incredibly effective, akin in many ways to a Phill Niblock piece.

Also impressive were Kites, Green Mist/Ykeo/Withdrawl Method (all tapes and feedback) and Jazzkammer. This sort of thing is never easy to describe (or in some cases, to remember), but I recall good feelings consistently through all of these acts. Especially notable was Dan Mithra's fine manipulation of busted-up walkmans (with a can of PBR!) and Jazzkammer's Lasse Marhaug rattling around a mic'd contraption of wires & stuff, rocking out the false endings with a big death metal sample.

The Quartet of Mike Shiflet, Peter Kolovos, Spencer Yeh and Chris Corsano was an interesting case. One had the feeling that if Corsano wasn't there, the trio of musicians would have produced a thick exploration of textures and drones. However, as Corsano is decidedly a free-jazz drummer, that's what the set turned into, loud, raucous improv. The energy level was like something you'd see during a set at the Vision Festival, it really was Fire Music played by a bunch of guys on electronics and drums. Not the feeling you'd expect amongst so much.....noise, but it great fun no less.

I did not see Hecker's set during No Fun, but I did see him play a solo set, along with a duo in collaboration with Yasuano Tone at Experimental Intermedia, the Thursday after the festival. Dave Phillips described Hecker's set at No Fun as "very mean spirited", so perhaps the two were very different, but gauging from his set as XI, he must be one of the more creative sound-designers in the laptop field. I can't say I've heard anyone do laptop squiggles (sorry, can't think of a better word) like he does; and what he lacks in moderation, he compensates for in terms of sheer novelty of sounds. It was very much in the vein of his Sun Pandemonium disc. Unfortunately, I didn't recognize anyone from No Fun at the XI set, and as Hecker is not the easiest man to talk to, we'll have to leave the concordance of the two sets a mystery.

I also did not stay through the Lasse Marhaug/Pita set, but I've been told that it was ridiculously loud. Jon Abbey telling me that he almost put earplugs in during that set is a sign of something just short of being inside a jet engine. I wish I'd stayed, but I did need to be coherent for work on Monday.

Soooooooo. Yeah, what's more to say? I'm still full of good feelings after the festival, it was an amazing time. Here's to more in the future!

~ Nirav Soni

Jim Pepper & Flying Eagle – ‘Live’ at New Morning, Paris (Tutu)

At its historical core jazz is an African American art form. Today the link is widely regarded as axiomatic, despite fallacious claims to the contrary by such superannuated ensembles as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Still, these proprietary rights are far from inalienable. Nor have they precluded other ethnicities from shaping and adopting idiom to their own designs, enriching the music’s history while simultaneously ensuring its future. Saxophonist Jim Pepper was a lonely figure in the somewhat rarified region of Native American jazz. Don Cherry explicated on his own Choctaw origins through musical means on various occasions, but other jazz figures embracing American Indian culture part and parcel with creative endeavors are seemingly few and far between. This paucity makes Pepper’s extant recordings all the more enjoyable and enlightening.

One of the finest and most representative is this compilation gathering concert recordings from three European dates in 1989. Pepper fronts a rhythm section comprised of Mal Waldron, Ed Schuller and John Betsch, Mal’s working trio of the day. The program offers a pithy survey of Pepper tunes: four stand alone originals, plus a closing medley that includes the title track and three Native chant-inspired pieces, among them the saxophonist’s seminal “Witchi Tia To.” The band also ventures through an elegant reading of Waldron’s signature “Soul Mates,” a performance that shows off not only the composer’s impeccable touch, but Pepper’s premium prowess with a ballad. And so as not to completely don the dapper duds of genteel dinner combo, the latter isn’t averse to punctuating a lush phrase with a hard-bitten squeal. Schuller and the normally cocky Betsch supply support with supple delicacy and a whisper smooth attention to detail.

Pepper also indulges his romantic proclivities on a lengthy rendering of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that opens with a gorgeous unaccompanied extemporization by the leader. It’s edifying to ponder his conception in contrast to that of another dues-paying Pepper who took this Ozian ode as his saxophonic calling card late in career. Here the optimism at the root of the song’s lyrics unfolds untempered and is positively palpable. There’s even room in the set for a cheeky salute to more gutbucket sources in Pepper’s own “Ski Jumping Blues,” a riff-based barrelhouse jam replete with quirky existentialist lyrics and a liberal dose of deep cerulean blowing. Pepper legacy is one often mentioned in the context of his cultural background. Dates like this one and others on the Enja-affiliate Tutu imprint demonstrate how seamless his blend of cultures could become.

A Little Phrase

For those who know me well (and even those who don’t), it may comes as no surprise that my favorite writer of all time is Marcel Proust, and that I consider his long novel, In Search of Lost Time, to be the greatest work of art in human history (or at least that I have come across in my humble 28 years on this planet.) The Search encompasses six volumes and more than 3,000 pages, which means that most people who have read Proust haven’t really read him, since you can only appreciate what he was after by making it all the way to the end and coming full circle.

I discovered Proust two winters ago during a unique time in my life, when I had just learned that I was going to be a father, and following a hectic fall semester in which I suffered complete burnout. As life seemed to be closing in on me, I withdrew completely from my obligations, dropping all my courses for the spring semester and canceling my involvement in several projects I had been working on. To fill in my suddenly abundant time, I lost myself entirely in Proust’s strange world of coincidences, characters and obsessions, reading all of The Search in less than two months time. Through the Internet I discovered a whole world of Proust maniacs: a café in San Francisco named after him, a group that celebrated the 75th anniversary of his death by placing a life-sized Proust, made out of papier-mache, into a casket, and holding a “ceremony” for him. (Unfortunately, by the time the casket was opened during the ceremony, Proust’s face had collapsed into an unseemly mess, the organizer of this affair reported.) After reading William Carter’s biography of Proust, a masterpiece in its own right, I also learned about Proust’s strange obsessions: his unhealthy attachment to his mother, how he liked to frequent homosexual brothels to watch others in the act through a peephole.

Proust had obsessions about music as well. He was so in love with a piece by Franck, for instance, that he hired a string quartet to come into his bedroom and play it for him, since he was unwilling to leave his bed (yet another obsession) to attend a concert himself. All of these obsessions make their way into The Search, with perhaps the most memorable one being Swann’s fixation on a piece of music, known as the “little phrase” by a fictional composer named Vinteuil. In the book’s first volume, Swann falls in love with Odette, a beautiful but promiscuous woman with whom he has a relationship that causes him great pain. Vinteuil’s “little phrase,” first heard when his love for Odette was at its most radiant, inevitably places Swann in a state of pure ecstasy. As their relationship begins to crumble, Swann desperately seeks out the “little phrase” at every opportunity in order to relive the love he feels slipping from his grasp, often having Odette herself play the piece for him on piano. Proust writes,

... He would rap on the pane, and she would hear the signal, and answer, before going to meet him at the front door. He would find, lying open on the piano, some of her favourite music, the Valses des Roses, the Pauvre Fou of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied in her will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead, to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil's sonata. It was true that Odette played vilely, but often the most memorable impression of a piece of music is one that has arisen out of a jumble of wrong notes struck by unskilled fingers upon a tuneless piano. The little phrase continued to be associated in Swann's mind with his love for Odette. ...

Proust scholars have speculated endlessly on what is the “real life” equivalent of the little phrase, and have generally agreed that it is one of three pieces. Either it is the opening ninth chord of Franck’s Sonata for Piano and Violin in A major, the rising phrases which begin the adagio of Saint-Saen’s Sonata for Piano and Violin no. 1 in D minor, op. 75, or Faure’s ballad in F sharp major op. 19.

One Proust-lover has argued that the little phrase simply can’t be the Saint-Saen piece, as it is too trite and superficial to have possibly inspired Proust to develop a major theme in his book around its notes. I disagree strongly with this view, and suspect that the author has missed Proust’s point, which is that circumstances in our own lives can strongly influence how we receive a work of art, and what might be regarded as ugly or worthless in one context can become profoundly meaningful in another, depending on our emotional state at the time we first encounter the work. Even our "taste" can be overruled by fickle emotions. I often wonder how many cds in my ever-expanding collection I have dismissed out of hand simply because at the time I first heard them I was feeling anxious or cranky or bored or depressed. On the other hand, what might be my “little phrase,” the music that can place me in a trance simply by virtue of its ties to my memory of a specific time, place, or person that I would like to recapture? Can repeated listenings erase a first impression if the associated memory is too strong?

For that matter, might this principle be extended to my ardent love for Proust’s work itself? Two years after reading The Search during a time when I was reeling from stress and at a major crossroads in my life, I wonder if rereading it today it would strike me differently? Or perhaps, by virtue of the moment I happened to come across it, Proust’s work will forever have its grip on me, irrespective of my critical faculties or changing tastes?

For Christmas this past year I gave my best friend, a person whose aesthetic judgments I usually trust, a set of Proust volumes. Tired of searching for an outlet for my enthusiasm for Proust through the Internet, I was sure that she would understand what it was about this novel that made it so extraordinary, and that I would finally have someone to talk with about this book, its quirky world and expansive cast of characters.

She gave up after reading the first 50 pages.

Jack Wright - Places to Go

Spring Garden Music 003

To my mind, Jack Wright is one of the handful of musicians that most perfectly embody the practice of free improvisation, along with Derek Bailey, Paul Lovens, James Coleman, Hans Tammen, Michel Doneda, and a few others. While improvisation is a basic feature of almost all musical activity in every human era and culture, it is rarely practiced outside the context of some musical style, characterized by the regular appearance of a limited set of structural patterns, typically involving timbral continuity, recurring melody, metrical regularity, and other structural phenomena that lend themselves to robust usage by the human music faculty. It is such robust usage that allows for shared expectations across a community of performers and listeners, the cognitive basis of music's profound social significance. The very tangibility of these patterns has occasionally given rise to various forms of representation in non-musical media, chiefly language and textual media like diagrams and written language. None of this would have readily occurred if weren't possible to perceive a given set of structural patterns by the presence of certain properties, as opposed to the less computationally tractable possibility of perceiving them by the absence of certain properties. It is the latter negative characterization of regular patterns that generally seems the best we can hope for in the case of the freely improvised music made by the above-mentioned musicians. This is the precise sense in which the term "non-idiomatic" is used, and it is the consistent embodiment of such non-idiomaticity that leads me to single out these individuals from among the hundreds of wonderful improvisors whose creations have given me great pleasure.

Another way to view the matter is in terms of the way a performer filters their previous experience through improvisation. Such filters most often have some holes large enough to let through syntactically complex chunks of past experience, whereas a musician like Jack Wright seems to maintain a microscopically fine mesh of immersion in the act of sound-production that forces their past experience to be ruthlessly decomposed into decontextualized fragments of musical possibility that enter the realm of the audible in grippingly fresh configurations. This is nothing other than the classic notion of a master improvisor as a musician who internalizes a broad vocabulary of finely differentiated techniques on an instrument to the point where any element of this vocabulary can appear at any time and in any relationship to other elements. Wright epitomizes this notion.

Of course, we want to know which sounds and which relationships Wright realized on this recording. What is perhaps the most useful answer both pleases and frustrates in its concision: ones which have not yet been named. I'm willing to maintain the claim even under a reading in which "names" extends to unrestrictedly baroque epithets used in the sound-mind itself, and not merely atomistic tools of reference used there and elsewhere. Regardless of the depth of novelty one concedes to this music, this very sort of consideration plants us inches in front of a question that won't readily be pushed to the side of our path: is the joy of discovery enough? Enough to account for the ecstasy that can be empirically attributed to these saxophone solos, that is. (To be completely clear, by "empirical" it is simply meant that there exist human beings who have experienced it this way.) Put another way, is it the thing discovered, or is it unsimply the thing of the discovery? Even just stating the matter so bluntly may be conceptual masochism without profit, and something as bold as a good guess is out of the question. With unabashed uncertainty, and perhaps a hidden desire--masquerading as the faintest of suspicions--that they matter, I'll poke around among things discovered.

A pack of dogs becomes a single ant. Tiny pieces of wire protrude from enormous cubes. A long, straight piece of yarn is pulled from a hopeless tangle. Instead of placing E notes in relief against C notes, Wright's sequential thinking compares apples to airplanes. You take a bite and then you are in the bowels of a huge machine a few miles above ground, not still sitting in your kitchen about to peel an orange. Wright's solos are a cornucopia of improbable events.

"The Figure of a Speech" is a jolting whirlwind trip through the land of ineffable breath-tube interactions ala John Zorn's A Classic Guide to Strategy, yet conducted with an extreme sense of introspection and restraint, as though Wright is meditating on all the spastic, violent, capricious, lurching, asymmetrical, manic, and hyperactive experiences that the act of meditation should presumably stand in strongest opposition to. At other times, though, Wright gives himself over to a violent flow of ideas, spitting out sounds like Zorn at his finest.

Besides Zorn, the saxophonist with the most vivid relationship to Wright would be Bhob Rainey, which most certainly is due to their extremely intimate collaborative relationship (witnessed in its purest form on the final track from Signs of Life.) While the two share a knack for ultra-concise bursts of saxophonic extremes, Wright plays silence less than Rainey, generally dealing with the fragile momentum created by continuously juxtaposed sound events, whereas Rainey generally thrives on the drama of anti-momentum and the opportunity to sculpt each sound cautiously. Places to Go might be thought of as about 50 Rainey solo discs overdubbed on top of each other. While Rainey decorates the void, Wright always keeps it filled, even if it's with tiny sounds whose impact is always massive because of the ever-present possibility that they won't be tiny.

"All Place Shall be Nameless" recalls John Butcher or Anthony Braxton in its focus on a spartan set of macro-structural options, with extended repetition and long tones that allow tiny fluctuations in tone to rise to the foreground. With a somewhat uncharacteristic absence of sudden or jarring elements, there is a gentleness and rhythmic consistency that might locate the piece on the remotest fringes of the "ambient" aesthetic, yet there is tension and unpredictability in the cautious transitions between timbres, all of which deviate from a full-bodied and conventional saxophone sound. Unlike one of Evan Parker or John Butcher's breathtaking circular constructions that seem to unfold like glistening machines churning away in some Platonic space light-years away from the frailty of human affairs, Wright's patiently waxing and waning phrases in this piece are always wavering on the brink of disintegration, as though Wright is contentedly nursing the human fragility in each moment of sound-production.

Often, the sudden changes in timbre and dynamics give the impression of phrases constantly beginning but never ending, just disappearing as sounds seem to enter into intra-phrasal relationships with successive events but then seem hopelessly severed from such relationships a moment later. It feels like something incredibly significant is happening at any given moment, but as soon as this is perceived something else destroys its significance. This constitutes an irrevocable discontinuity with any jazz idiom, where phrases inevitably have a beginning and ending, with negative space in between. Negative space is a rarity in a music where sounds struggle to stake even a modest claim in positive space.

Wright's own words give the most insight:

What amazes me when I listen back to a solo I like is the quick shifts within an overarching flow of ideas. I don't know where they come from, but often musical thoughts will overlap, as if competing for attention from me. Some sound will begin to emerge, even accidentally; I'll prick up my ears as if I am a bystander, and it gradually pushes the dominant theme out of the way, rudely at times. I sense continuity, without a piece having any concept or theme to unify it; it is melody, yet does not repeat or produce self-conscious variations to validate itself. (from a 2001 interview with John Berndt)

The disc is such a dense and engaging onslaught of arcane musical information that I've never been able to handle more than about half of it at most in one sitting; it's sort of an intimidating sacred book of solo saxophone music that calls for years of dedicated study. Having only had the disc for about three years, I feel as though my above remarks are only preliminary.

Wright includes an incredibly insightful creation of his own pen as the liner notes for this disc, and the brief final paragraph offers a helpful guide as we step away from this textual microscope and return to the broader musical context that we live in:

In 1952, listening to Johnny Hodges and beginning to play, I was already on the road of the jazz musician. That is still what I know myself to be, at least my broad tradition, my roots as a player. My original passion became fused with the notion that jazz was its own outer edge, a path without visible limit. The rest was convention, which largely bored me, as it still does. It is amazing to me, that such an apparently conventional young boy would eventually find himself fed mostly by strangeness. And exploring it here for himself, and with you.

It's worth adding that the stunning painting on the cover is a work by Wright himself, representing a visibly fruitful secondary artistic outlet for him. It's about two short steps up the ladder of non-representationalism past Duchamp, with similar density and neutralization of figure-ground distinctions.

Visit Spring Garden Music for more info about Jack Wright's music, philosophy, and label curation.

~Michael Anton Parker

Tania Chen/Steve Beresford - Ointment

Tania Chen/Steve Beresford
Ointment
Rossbin
RS018

One thing about the Rossbin label: you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. “Ointment” finds Beresford operating in toy mode in a series of improvised duos, live and studio, with Tania Chen, perhaps better known as a pianist (she has appeared as such with the ensemble Apartment House on the Matchless recording of Cardew’s chamber music among other places). One’s enjoyment of this disc might hinge on one’s appreciation of this aspect of Beresford’s persona as opposed to his avant Cole Porter stylings or evocatively noirish soundtrack work.

When I was a kid, we had a little toy piano. About fifteen inches on a side, the top painted light blue, the underside white. It quickly became clear that far more satisfying than dabbling with the slow-responding, slightly lugubrious keys, twiddling the steel rods from behind was where the action was at. They emerged at angles slightly askew, enough so that, when thwacking some of them, amply large vibrations would occur that would allow them to clang against their neighbors producing delightful metallic quivers and enamel-cracking buzzes. You could while away many hours just investigating this one tiny slice of music toy aesthesia. It might be from childhood sources such as this that I derive my distaste for the grab bag approach sometimes employed by free improvisers with an arsenal of equipment at their disposal, the “first I’ll play with this one, then this one, then the next” attitude that conjures up the mental image of someone tediously working their way through a checklist of must do’s. So a part of me wishes that Chen and Beresford would pause, at least on occasion, to more carefully consider their toys and objects, to give them more respect. On the other hand, if that’s not your game, I suppose you might as well jump in at the deep end of the pool and that’s what occurs here on the best tracks: a robust abandon that raises a satisfying welter. While the more overtly silly aspects lose luster after a listen or two, there’s enough spirited interplay (and perhaps a surprisingly level of sheer volume) to at least intermittently grab the listener. On “Liniment” (I should mention that each piece is rather humorously named in honor of a salve of one kind or another, including such mellifluous gems as “Demulcent” and “Chrism”) Chen’s violin strains against samples, rattles, metal and other detritus like an anxious parent dealing with an obnoxiously creative six-year old—very effective!—before zoning out attractively in layers of hiss, clicks and warped guitar. The aforementioned “Demulcent” has charms akin to the pings of a distant pachinko parlor while “Cerate”’s early morning dockside rumblings swell into an enticingly fervid smog of activity. Beresford’s use of electronics also goes some way toward leavening out longer pieces like “Lotion”, perhaps removing the immediacy of the acoustic sound producers but also “clearing the room” of some of the stifling quality they can create. The closing, self-mockingly funky number…well, I could have done without it.

Not a bad disc, doubtless a fun time to be had for Beresford’s fans. If you want more introspection, seek ye elsewhere.

Brian Olewnick

Jim Baker - More Questions Than Answers

Delmark 560

Trepidation isn’t a desirable emotion when it comes to appraising a debut disc by a musician. Yet that’s precisely the feeling I wrestled with when sitting down with this album for the first time. Baker’s own self-deprecating and dryly scripted liners recount a recording process fraught with delays and detours. Their downcast demeanor and circumlocutory gist suggest that the project was more of a chore than good fortune. The cover shot inspires little confidence either, featuring a close-up of Baker perched at piano, head hung down, fingers pressed to forehead like he’s nursing a migraine. Not exactly the portrait of man ready to boldly capitalize on the opportunity and faith afforded him.

In truth More Questions Than Answers isn’t exactly Baker’s debut, though the disc is the first to carry his name in the skipper slot. His contributions grace a number of discs, mostly under the leadership of various Chicago colleagues. It’s some of these past projects that initially gave me pause. For instance, by my reckoning Baker’s piano serves as fly in the proverbial bisque on the quartet parts of Fred Anderson’s Birdhouse, his stiff block chords stifling the leader’s normally loose-limbed tenor.

The one time I caught Baker in performance, at a concert at Bob Marsh’s loft space with Bhob Rainey and the cellist, his analog synthesizer, looking like a jumbled box of light bulbs and switchboard plugs, seemed more for show than music-making. Then came the ‘insight’ gleaned from an audience member, one who, with hindsight, probably had an axe to grind, of his day gig as an accountant and the accompanying financial security that suggested improv was more hobby than passion. The ludicrous notion that if you’re not scuffling and busking that somehow you’re not legit. These assumptions and experiences conspired into an umbrella prejudice toward Baker as more dilettante than dedicated artist; one soundly in place long before disc cued in tray and the music spilled from speakers.

I wish I could concede that the disc’s thirteen tracks splintered my ill-founded preconceptions completely to pieces. At the very least they pocked several deep grooves of doubt into the stanchions holding my animus aloft. Baker takes pains to note that all the pieces were extemporaneously improvised, but their later selection from a far larger pool of possibles along with their programming was premeditated. “Watching the Interstate” uncrumples in a string of tightly-fisted clusters that incorporate the length of the keyboard. Notes are closely packed and patterned in repetitive parcels, but remain melodically-conscious for much of the duration.

The sprawling “Post-Industrial Societies and Their Precursors” is even more prolix at twenty-plus minutes and can’t help but meander. Pedal-dampened left hand anchors tether right hand rolling motifs in an improvisation that unfurls gradually with deliberate intention and a strong undercarriage of dramatic structure. Despite a predilection for traveling the same improvisatory troughs on certain pieces, much of this music is downright lyrical and well-versed in clever constructions. Baker unveils his analogue synth only sparingly. Its aged diodes and switches crop up on just three tunes and occupying a total of only eight or so minutes with an array of rhythmic whirs, piercing squeaks, flittering whistles and static-laced hums. “Mourning Doves” tempers its sterile sound surfaces in the service of a surprisingly warm and affecting tone poem that would make Sun Ra beam with pleasure.

I may not be ready to lick the envelope enclosing my double sawbuck for the yearly membership dues to the Jim Baker Fan Club just yet. But I am happy to have my earlier jaundiced eye called out in an erroneous lie. Listeners who appreciate solo piano rendered by nimble fingers and a sagacious mind will likely find much of worth to explore here. The big question remains, what does Baker have planned next?

~ Derek Taylor

A Face in the Crowd

Evidentiary of a probable new lease on life, the Bags bullpen has several new authors of note. Introductions are forthcoming, predicated mostly on the Bags custodial staff spic & spanning their newly refurbished quarters & outfitting them with the requisite skeleton keys. There’s also the matter of printing cubicle placards and ordering monogrammed ascots, but that’s neither here nor there.

In the meanwhile it seems worth mentioning a personage who is at once of their number & curiously apart from it. I’m speaking, of course, of the heretofore inscrutable Emory Davis. Mr. Davis’ matriculation into the Bags fold is mostly a function of fortuitous circumstance-- call it kismet if you wish-- an instance of being at precisely the right place at precisely the right time. Perusing our electronic pages under the gas lamp illumination of what has been described to me as a “subterranean sanctum situated well beyond the prying eyes of rumormongers and flibbertigibbets,” Mr. Davis recognized the plight of our poor foundering ship and generously volunteered his services through the conduit of our liege and benefactor, an individual who also prefers to remain anonymous and effect her influence from behind the scenes.

Those services are still being ascertained and collated at the bullpen level as attempts at background checks have been stymied by multiple respondents. There’s the Emory Davis of Broadway musical repute, whose performances in productions like Tovarich, Greenwillow and The First Gentleman in the late 50s & early 60s evinced both a keen arranger’s ear & capacious clarinet chops to boot. Next, the Emory Davis whose stature as forerunner in the design of an elegant line of multi-faceted women’s swimwear puts him head and shoulders above his peers in the garment industry. Then there’s the clairvoyant Emory Davis whose amazing story was told in fictionalized form via a thrilling episode of the television show Mannix.

As can be plainly gauged, it’s a bit difficult gleaning the straight dope; especially when the subject is as prevaricating and evasive as Emory Davis is wont to be. My efforts are redoubled however having recently taken the heat for one of Mr. Davis’ typically maverick moves. Stay tuned.

Carpenter's Apprentices

In the annals of movie soundtrack lore John Carpenter holds a place as something of an unsung DIY exemplar, especially these days in an age of over-arranged Danny Elfman cookie-cutter bombast and pop-tune product placement. Adjunct to his directorial, screenwriting & producing duties he has also long scored the music to his films. His 70s and early 80s composing on films like Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape From New York still gas my jets to this day. There’s something about the minimalist proclivities coupled with synth bass and percussion to menacing grooves that perfectly complemented the on-screen action and urban anomie. That five-note fuzz bass motif that anchors the Precinct 13 theme still gives me chills and thrills when I hear it. Carpenter is subtle musical influence on many, but I’ve come across few bands that cop to such a direct debt as Zombi.

Zombi is just two guys: A.E. Pattera on drums, cymbals, Moog source & SCI Six Trax; Steve Moore on Fender, Korg Poly Six, SCI Prophet 600, SCI Pro One, Roland Juno 106 (all vintage synth consoles from what I gather). Their sphere of obeisance widens to encompass the musical preferences of other seminal directors like Italian shlock horror mavens Dario Argento (who also scored the music to George Romero's zombie epic Dawn of the Dead) and Lucio Fulci as well as metal and prog trappings. True in fealty of their sources they seem to be securing a host of gigs composing music for slasher and horror films. Other stated influences include Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michael Jarre. I also hear echoes of early Vangelis (think Blade Runner) in their compositions. Their website features a wealth of sound clips dating back to earliest self-produced EP efforts (2002) as well as radio studio-taped live material from this year. I'm particularly grooving on “Sequence 8 (alt)” and “Orion,” which reminded me of Argento’s Goblins fused with Faith No More. Very curious to hear how Phil, Professor Blivins & others sound off on these samples.

Paging through the local weekly I discovered that Zombi’s set to play the Twin Cities on Sunday, April 10th as one of two opening acts for Pelican. It’s a tour promoting their August ‘04 release Cosmos on the Release imprint, the noise/experimental offshoot of Relapse. To sum this whole thing up in two words: I’M THERE.

William Parker - Luc's Lantern

Thirsty Ear 57158

Since its inception in 2000, Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series has mostly failed to live up to the bold, quasi-revolutionary rhetoric of producer Peter Gordon, who, frustrated by a “growing complacency to challenge convention,” pledged to “create a series of records marrying jazz’s many languages” that would “challenge, probe, excite, and perhaps even anger listeners as we try to strip away conventions with a new convention.” Five years and some 40 albums later, the Blue Series has generated more heat than light, and listeners, if indeed they are shocked or angered by what they are hearing, seem to be registering their indignation with deafening silence.

All that said, the Blue Series has had its high points over the last half-decade, thanks in large part to the efforts of bassist William Parker, who has served admirably as sideman on numerous sessions for the label, and more importantly, has led two of Thirsty Ear’s most striking records to date, Painter’s Spring (2000) and Scrapbook (2003), each of which showcased Parker’s versatile playing and evocative writing in the trio format. Unfortunately, the latest trio date headed by Parker for the Thirsty Ear label, Luc’s Lantern, fails to live up to the standard established by its predecessors.

In the liner notes accompanying the disc, Parker explains the significance of the title. In a recurring dream, Parker writes, “I see a forest where only black trees with yellow and/purple teeth grow/Trees that play violins and write poems.” Each night “a small lantern is left on the porch so I can make my way/back home.” Such reflections are fitting for Parker, whose music has always favored the mythological over the logical, the lyrical over the prosaic. Parker’s romantic spirit has always formed the wellspring of his musical genius, and his most remarkable albums have owed their success not only to his own facility as a double bass player and bandleader, but also to his stellar bandmates. To borrow Parker’s own analogy, it has been the daring, declarative work of musicians such as reedman Daniel Carter, violinist Billy Bang, and drummer Hamid Drake that have translated the mystical significance of the forest with black trees and shone the light necessary to carry those meanings back home to the listener.

Parker’s chosen mates for this current session, pianist Eri Yamamoto and drummer Michael Thompson, are not up to the same task, though the fault is not necessarily their own. Parker’s music is best served by players who can match the bass player’s aggressive playing and round, full tone with pyrotechnics of their own, but here the music seems restrained. Yamamoto’s command over her instrument is sensitive and deft, but incapable of reaching the same emotive heights achieved by Carter on Painter’s Spring or Bang on Scrapbook. It may be that Parker’s music demands the presence of at least one reed, but in either event the results seem oddly restrained and confined. I have greatly enjoyed Michael Thompson’s work both live and on record. His percussive pallet is expansive, reflecting his diverse experience in a wide array of contexts—from reggae to classical—but here he seems somehow constrained, too far in the background.

The two opening numbers, “Adena” and “Song for Tyler” are quiet and contemplative, almost drowsy, save for the typically forceful, out-in-front Parker. Imagine a run-of-the-mill ECM album, except with a bass player on steroids, and you’d have a rough approximation of the tempo and flavor of these opening numbers. Things pick up a bit from there with “Mourning Sunset,” “Evening Star Song,” and the title track. “Evening Star Song” is the best performance on the album, as the contemplative, rueful melody captures the essence of a fading Sunday afternoon, when the setting sun casts a graying light over the dying day. The title track, the most up-tempo number on the album, gives all three players an opportunity to display their chops, but I found little in the individual performances or the interaction between the players to hold onto as a listener.

Over the final five numbers the album wobbles between occasional moments of beauty and an overarching lack of focus. A minor delight for this listener was Parker’s brief work with the bow on “Charcoal Flower,” which he returns to for the final piece, “Candlesticks on the Lake,” a short number which comes to an abrupt, yet predictable, halt.

Taken together, the ten pieces on Luc’s Lantern check in at an easily-digestible 47 minutes. Kudos to Robert Beam for designing one of the best covers of the year so far. Unfortunately for the listener, the music fails to match the mythological promise of the title or the descriptive powers of the brush. For Parker completists only.

~ David Jones

Dunmall / Lytton / Wishart - in your shell like

Paul Dunmall with Paul Lytton & Stevie Wishart
in your shell like
Emanem 4111

Dunmall: border bagpipes (1, 4), soprano saxophone (1, 3, 4, 5), tenor saxophone (2)
Lytton: percussion (2, 3, 4, 5)
Wishart: hurdy-gurdy (1, 4, 5)

Like any American not from New York or Cupertino, I have that vestigial synapse which fires whenever bagpipes keen; resuscitated bellows on a dewy heath, funerals in unfortunate weather, unkempt beard iced, Simply Red videos, etc. With the first piece, both drone anchors of border pipes and hurdy-gurdy inevitably cancel each other out, however once the straight horn is fetched an unmistakable concord asserts itself. Sans Lytton, Dunmall on soprano sees it fit to employ the hurdy-gurdy as subterfuge, hiding behind blankets of drone, deliberate in characterizing the nimbler saxophone as something it’s conventionally not, merely active in order to shake things up gently and in turn bump Wishart’s inner tube in different directions. It’s a listener’s game trying to figure out who is where and when. . .couple drops almond extract, Paul’s present just to file the stuff flush and the results are a joy to behold.

Don’t let the alliterative name of what is formally called the vielle a roué throw you. This isn’t Morris Dancing or brunch n’ bluegrass at the brewpub. Frau Wishart is thankfully refined throughout and I am already anxious to investigate her contributions elsewhere.

From 'Shells And Other Things' to the appropriately titled 'Nothing To Do With Shells,' the contrast couldn’t be starker. The second track, a tenor/trap duet of late 60s vintage features Dunmall as Trane-like as I’ve ever heard him, more notably in tone than drive. It's an intensely scalar attack that rarely convinces. The transition from first to next mimics that of the opening two pieces of Dunmall’s recent collaboration with Paul Rogers, Awareness Response, whence an anticlimactic plod through hoary forms follows a stunningly beautiful opening of border pipes and bass. It’s not uncommon that Dunmall’s recordings force me to think about them track to track. Something startling often tumbles into something worn, an uncomfortable fade to white.

Apparent even this early on is that our percussionist is in incredible form, alert as ever, recalling his middle 70s adaptivity and control sparring with Evan. While the tenor is discursive still, worlds from the soprano of the first track, Lytton’s clarity might save the day. He works here as brash ringleader, maybe the converse of a Nigel Morris’ very cautious sea foam washes. After ten minutes the lock’s been picked and tempers cool, a collective gesture that turns things around for the better. Is that a 'Rhapsody In Blue' quote at 11:08? "You mock me." Probably not. In light of this loquacious, if disorganized piece, Dunmall has never masked his intimacy with the jazz tradition, but that’s immaterial when it comes to whether things pan out or get panned.

‘The Ears Have It’ finds the potentially incongruous bagpipes/hurdy-gurdy combination somehow circumvented. Both instruments maintain drones beneath and although it takes a bit of time to mature, a quiet concrescence takes shape after a bit, the hurdy-gurdy sparse yet still lending that fantasy novel esoterica to the whole. Dunmall stretches the multiphonic capabilities of his pipes here to warm effect, but the following piece is where it happens. This number reminds me of the Saturday evening West Armenian Folk Show on a trusty but withering-into-whiteness local public radio station (doubtless the least popular hour of radio within, say, fifty miles of my 7-Eleven). These are sylvan, Old World improvisations, replete with that similar dark folk awakened on the recent Russell/Völker/Werchowski Three Planets.

I’ve never cared much for Emanem’s cover art but with this, as is evident in a few recent examples, the color scheme and visage so accurately address the music on the disc. Stinky, meretricious pink At The Vortex, earthy British Racing Green Four In The Afternoon, sleazy late-night gospel hour Angel Gate, In Your Shell Like brown and orange solstice rite.

Dunmall releases very rarely seem to come across as cohesive albums of music, save the two spanking recordings of his trio with Adams and Sanders I’ve heard, a conception which stands out still to me as his most unfettered and confident. Perhaps the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much preconceived or serial here is the child of pure improvisation, that quality the label in question relies upon so outwardly when purveyors File under: Free Improvisation.

I dislike the new Eminem video where his black friend gets shot. Other works, in their shell like need to be debearded first. This is very soundtrackish, though not damningly so--Dark Crystal maybe. This won’t change opinions per chance you’re not too keen on Dunmall. Just keep in mind the refreshment of this instrumentation has nothing whatsoever to do with novelty. Build a big bonfire with this one in your walkman.

~Michael Schaumann

Various - Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook (Rounder)

The Lomaxes logged more miles in jalopies both wheeled and winged than most of their academic brethren combined. They plucked the operative “armchair” out of the prevailing musicological attitude of their day and hit to the roads both domestic and foreign, searching out and preserving human culture through recorded sound. This set holds the dubious ‘cachet’ of a release date contemporaneous with Martin Scorsese mixed-success Blues Project for PBS. The director pens the preface to the liners, but the real annotative gold comes in a lengthy essay by John Cowley, track-by-track distillations and period photos that follow. Yet these absorbing trappings are a distant second to the trove that embodies the music: 41 performances parceled over two generously programmed discs and occupying just under 140-minutes.

Reach here encompasses a breadth of blues styles from Delta dirges to Old Timey string band to barrelhouse stomps, by both black and white purveyors. Rather than adhering to strict chronological or catholic parameters in their selections the compilers go for playability. The ad hoc-sounding order allows for some surprising confluences. Just A/B the antediluvian croak and spidery banjo twang of Dock Boggs’ “Country Blues,” taped in concert at his Newport Festival appearance in ’66 with Skip James’ ethereal falsetto menace on a rendering of “Cherry Ball Blues” from the same stage location (oh, to have been in attendance at that event). Elsewhere, Jack Owens & Buddy Spires, contemporaries of Skip and interpreters of his Bentonia style, try their hands at the tune and come up with a deliciously ramshackle improv jam. Another track that took me unawares, the original 1937 field recording of “Trouble So Hard” by Dock Reed and Vera Ward Hall that was copped by Moby and transmogrified into an international dance club hit (!) Also in the mix: vintage Jelly Roll Morton, Leadbelly, Blind Willie McTell, Hobart Smith, Pete Johnson, R.L. Burnside, Canray Fotenot & Bois sec Ardoin, Mississippi Fred McDowell and a slew of others. Ten titles are previously unreleased.

Spinning these discs in the car makes the miles melt away in a manner the Lomaxes would no doubt have appreciated on their own enervating travels. It’s akin to winning an admission ticket to a wang dang doodle at the Great Juke Joint in the Sky (or its afterlife analogue officiated by Old Scratch down below, as the case may be).

Bedhead

Rasbliutto Recordings

(Slight Return)

Thanks to the efforts of regular Bagatellen readers "mcgr" and Emory Davis, the comments (except those of the author himself) to Chris Kelsey's articles New-Ness And Jazz-Ness (February 21, 2005) and A Coda (Whereupon A Jazz Guy Learns A New Acronym And Makes Some New Enemies) (March 4, 2005) have been restored to the site.

New-Ness And Jazz-Ness: Comments

A Coda (Whereupon A Jazz Guy Learns A New Acronym And Makes Some New Enemies): Comments

cut

America the Beautiful

Living in central Minnesota can be a supreme drag. Winter often clings tenaciously to the landscape for the better part of six months. The respite of spring usually flies by in just a handful of weeks before the heat, humidity and insects of summer descend in an oppressive cloak. Case in point to the inclement climate: blizzard conditions and 16 to 20 inches of snow were forecast for last night and today. Lady Luck seems to be smiling though, as the brunt of the airborne glacial snow sheet hit our immediate neighbors to the south. The flakes are still falling though and accumulations are expected to pile up in the four to six inches range by Saturday.

Mirroring the meteorological good fortune, I arrived home today to find a bulging promo package from the Universal Music Group tucked under my doormat & shielded from the damp. Inside: all fifteen albums in the recent Free America reissue project. Just the solace for hunkering down and hibernating for a snow-entombed weekend. So far I’ve only made it through Archie Shepp’s Black Gipsy, an enjoyable if uneven affair, but I still feel safe in proclaiming the series a minor miracle, not to mention a resounding success. All titles were first were first circulated several months ago by Universal-France and the ones that made it to the U.S. carried exorbitant sticker prices (Downtown Music Gallery was hawking them back in December in extremely limited quantities for $24 apiece). The U.S. editions carry a more reasonable $18.98 list.

Packaging is exquisite, recalling the Verve Elite reissues that were en vogue several years ago with fold-out cardboard digipacks and colorful crepe-paper-style artwork for covers. The booklets contain original liner notes and commentary in both French and English with photos, where applicable, along with Xeroxed reproductions of the antecedent album sleeves. And the music? It’s dazzingly rendered in what I’m guessing is at least 20-bit sound. The fidelity is remarkably sharp with all of the instruments robust and preserved lucidly up-front. Shepp’s preaching from the pulpit and the swirling polyphony of Noah Howard, Clifford Thornton, Leroy Jenkins and Chicago Beau (on blues harp) is riding out the stomping see-sawing beat cadenced by Sunny Murray, Dave Burrell and Earl Freeman on the title cut. Beaming with an indelible grin likely to last at least for the next few hours, I can’t help coming to the conclusion: Minnesota ain’t so bad.

Joe Maini

Sound Art Now [ArtForum]

Locust Music

e.m.i.t. - experimental music in texas

U B U W E B

eyecontrol [Philippe Gras]

Sublime Frequencies

kohina - old school game and demo music

Rebirth of Brö

The Ink is Gone [Brö 3]	Still Quite Popular After All These Years [Brö 4]

Brötzmann has an uncanny facility for establishing and sustaining resilient rapport with drummers. First came Sven-Åke Johansson as the engine room on his earliest recordings. Then Han Bennink signed on as the combustible rhythmic tinder for his trios of the late 60s and early 70s. Louis Moholo arrived at the close of the latter decade, joining bassist Harry Miller in what many consider Brötzmann's most satisfying small group. The dawn of the 90s heralded a solidifying of Chicago ties and the blossoming of his relationship with Hamid Drake. Since then he's teamed with Peter Uuskyla, Michael Wertmüller, Nasheet Waits, Frank Samba and several of others in an ongoing series of highly galvanic encounters.

The relaunch of Brötzmann’s Brö imprint and the subsequent release these two recent entries place precise emphasis on his acumen at selecting felicitous percussive partners. In line with the label’s earlier incarnation releases (For Adolphe Sax and Machine Gun) both albums are LP only. The format offers both frugality (neither album cracks the 40-minute marker) and plenty of sleeve-space for Brötzmann’s signature graphics. Each is pressed on weighty 180-gram vinyl and housed in sturdy silk-screened cardboard sleeves custom-crafted to enlarge vinyl mavens’ eyes to the circumference of saucers.

Both records feature Brötzmann working from the same basic satchel of instruments including: clarinet, tarogato, alto and tenor saxophones. The Ink is Gone combines music from two separate performances, the first from Boston, the other from Philly, each sequestered to a single side. Walter Perkins presence as Brötzmann’s partner behind the drum kit offers an unexpected surprise. Perkins’ accomplishments as a jazz percussionist of strong merit are manifold. From his early-60s tenure fronting the Modern Jazz Two (w/ bassist Bob Cranshaw), through sideman stints with Rashaan Roland Kirk, Charles Earland and an impressive number of others, to later eclectic work with avant bluesman Cedell Davis and even a recent gig with William Parker (preserved in digital perpetuity on Bob’s Pink Cadillac), Perkins’ sticks have stamped a zigzag path through postbop jazz history.

Yet even with such a varied vitae Perkins’ fit with stoic German seems incongruous on paper. It’s a concern mostly coffined by the opening onslaught of “Boot the Bastards Out” as Brötzmann’s alto fires a stormy salvo of renal bursts bracketed by the Gatling gun tattoo of Perkins’ snare. The drummer whoops and hollers between punishing rat-ta-tat-tats, further crumpling any sense of polite decorum into a tight-fisted ball and tossing it matter-of-factly at the nearest trash receptacle. On the title track earlier recalcitrance dissolves into a gradually evolving line. Perkins’ sketches a swaying, skeletal meter and Brötzmann scribbles emotively across it, employing dusky-hued clarinet as ink-pregnant pen.

“The Beast Filled Dark & the Beautiful Forest,” a piece redolent with Brötzmann’s gothic preoccupations, builds from a prefatory Perkins’ and the entrance of the German’s doleful tenor tracing another emotion-wrung melody. The drummer hangs back, offering only sparse and muted cymbal patter. Roused by the relative calm, Brötzmann’s resumes with renewed vigor, disgorging a spate of passionate gut-forged gusts as Perkins’ slips in a precipitous sliding backbeat.

The album’s flip parses into two lengthy pieces. The first, a medley, unfolds to the mournful strains of Brötzmann’s tarogato and a slowly coalescing tribal pulse from Perkins’ cymbals and tom. Brötzmann gives himself over to one of his custom ululating trances while the drums boil boisterously around him shot through with Perkins’ shouts and cries. Another brittle series of martial rolls signals the return of impetuous tenor as the two trade staccato volleys that froth and collide on the cocky closer “The Wind.”

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek in title, Still Quite Popular After All These Years is still spot on in its appraisal; that is if readers consider the niche region of improv as a proper place for popularity contests. Bennink’s clout and qualifications suggest a stature similar to Brötzmann’s. And though this is their first duo record in over a quarter century, they manage to hit the ground running as if that prior date was just yesterday. The tracks dispense with clever titles and distill signifiers down to only the instruments played. “Clarinet/drums” precedes “tarogato/drums” and so forth.

Perhaps most surprising is the measured restraint shown throughout much of the interplay. This is a relatively quiet record, especially by Brötzmann and Bennink standards, with some passages approaching the edges of inaudibility. Bennink erects insinuating percussive patter, mostly on brushes, as interstitial rhythmic cartilage between. The close of the first side finds the German outlining with aerated clarinet the melody to “Master of a Small House,” a tune scripted in honor of bassist Fred Hopkins and first released on his hatOLOGY album with Joe McPhee Tales Out of Time (it’s a tune I’ve also heard him interpolate on another recent disc Danquah Circle). The haunting and elegantly elemental motif is one worthy of a consideration as his calling card canticle.

The album’s second side indexes space for Bennink’s humor with inflated press rolls and vocalizations counterweighing Brötzmann’s more serious locutions on clarinet, alto and tenor. An incessant high-hat and clickety-clack cadence builds tension broken by the regal spout of anthemic alto, plowing an obdurate path and wasting no time in looking back. Bennink’s tumbling solo is a model of tautly measured muscle. Its athletic pleasures leave Brötzmann primed for the majestic tenor-forwarded finale flanked by energized gravity-defying bombs and syncopations.

Bennink has history and shared vernacular in his corner. He’s consequently a more consistent and copasetic partner, his myriad rhythms embellishing and goading in equal measure. Conversely, Perkins sometimes sounds fidgety with the freedom at his disposal and there are occasions when he relies to heavily on stock beats and patterns. But both drummers succeed in coaxing out impassioned playing from their venerable partner. Each encounter is well worth procuring, even at the steep asking price tag. The pair of platters also rewards a pristine stylus. Be warned; an aged or worn needle will likely obfuscate some of the quieter interplay with its invasive pops and crackles.

~ Derek Taylor

KNON 89.3 FM

Found Magazine

This American Life

Soul Sides

Eigenradio

djalma primordial science

Retro Prog

Prog-rock is back. Wow, is prog-rock ever back. For some reason, kids whose dads (never mind their older brothers) got stoned while listening to Tales From Topographic Oceans are now adapting the lessons of Yes, Santana, King Crimson, and Rush to post-punk music, and the results are becoming quite exciting. After all, the mythology would have it that in the Seventies, the war was between punkers and proggers...now, kids are combining both musics into one roiling, bubbling ocean of blare. And I love what I'm hearing so far.

Coheed and Cambria are the new Rush; it’s that simple. These Jersey boys have their Canadian forefathers’ blend of singalong hooks and complex riffage down; their most recent studio album, In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3, has thus far spawned two excellent singles, “A Favor House Atlantic” and “Blood Red Summer,” both of which are featured on Live At The Starland Ballroom. This double-disc package contains both a DVD and a CD of the band’s performance, and the music is exciting in both formats. They’re tight, but they pulse with youthful energy – this is no mere nerdy run-through. The key to good prog-rock, after all, is making it rock, and Coheed and Cambria definitely do that. This show is much more about moshing (and singing earnestly along – their fans arise out of the “emo” subculture, in which diary-entry lyrics are delivered in the most mawkish of tones by downcast singer-songwriters, so there’s lots of we’re-all-in-this-together feeling in the crowd) than staring at fleet fingers or counting time signatures. The two singles were all I knew of Coheed and Cambria when I got this in the mail, and I’m now inclined to check out all three of their albums (which, by the way, all form chunks of a science-fiction saga in which Coheed and Cambria are the male and female protagonists – how’s that for nerdy?).

The Mars Volta are not nearly as concerned with choruses as the Coheed boys. Formed by two ex-members of the Texas post-hardcore screamalong outfit At The Drive-In, they are a peacock-like explosion of polyrhythm, ultra-spank guitar soloing, and utterly inscrutable lyrics. (I have no idea what Coheed and Cambria are going on about, either, but their choruses at least seem to be saying something – the Mars Volta’s CD booklets read like Burroughsian cut-ups.) Frances The Mute follows their debut EP, Tremulant, and the full-length De-Loused In The Comatorium, and it’s their Close To The Edge, or maybe even their Relayer. The album only has five songs, and only one of those, “The Widow,” is less than ten minutes long (it still had to have two minutes of concluding keyboard squelch circumcised away to become the single). The album’s closer, “Cassandra Geminni,” is a 32-minute suite, divided randomly into eight tracks on the CD but trust me, it goes continuously on, and on, and on, and on.

The Mars Volta’s sound is impressive as hell. Like Coheed and Cambria, they’ve got a nuts-in-the-vice lead vocalist, and a guitarist capable of fascinatingly staticky noise sculptures (still very much within the hard-rock paradigm, of course), but they’re as devoted to their Willie Bobo albums as their Led Zeppelin ones. Much of De-Loused In The Comatorium was reminiscent of Santana’s weirdest period (from roughly 1972 to 1975, when he was collaborating with John McLaughlin and Alice Coltrane and releasing the astonishing, almost-entirely-instrumental triple live album Lotus), pumped through a thrash-metal sensibility. Frances The Mute is equally jacked-up, but more flailing, sacrificing some of the groove they had early on. (The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea played bass on De-Loused, and his contribution didn’t seem as important then as it does after hearing the new one.) The best song on Frances isn’t the closing epic; it’s “L’Via L’Viaquez,” sung in Spanish and reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s “Achilles Last Stand,” mixed with salsa and plenty of post-Andy Gill guitar skronk.

Both these albums (and, indeed, the Mars Volta's whole catalog thus far) do what the best prog-rock always has: kick your ass in totally unexpected ways, and make 10 minutes of guitar solo and high-pitched screeching sound like what you’ve been waiting your whole life to hear. It’s a valid question whether something that consciously apes music labeled “progressive” 30 years ago represents, itself, any kind of progress, but in the face of these kids’ overwhelming and seductive energy, who gives a shit? This ain't some Sha Na Na action - these youngsters mean what they play and play what they mean, and anyway, they are aware of musical developments since 1975. There's electronic noise-sculpture here, and punk energy, and...and...and anyway, in an era of schlubbo acts like U2 and Nickelback (the only thing more boring than U2's lugubrious lighter-raising ballads was "Vertigo," their recent attempt to "rock"), I'd take rehashed Rush even if there wasn't much, much more to this.

In Search of Rarified Air

The calendar says March, but my mind is mulling on June, a mere three or so months away. Countdown to the 2005 Regional Air Guitar Championships has commenced. Last year’s transcendental heats made me a believer, but I chickened out on competing at the 11th hour, summarily cowed by some of the daunting talent on hand. Shortly after the spectacle a pal & I vowed to toss our imaginary axes into the ring and compete this year. It’s never to early to embrace the rigors of training and I figure if I’m going to be representing Bags in the contest of blinding fictional fretwork & acrobatic rock & roll lunacy I’m entitled to solicit some aid in the venture.

What I need is a 90-second snippet from a song. One that fuses helacious guitar pyrotechnics, superior riffage and exemplary theatrics into an alloy ideally suited for awe-inspiring translation to the naked stage. Something that will blow the audience’s collective mullets back and give me the stentorian edge I need. The competition by its very nature leans toward the conservative and calculable: Billy Squier’s “Stroke This,” Hendrix’s “Come on Baby,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me” and Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” were among staple tunes tapped last year. Scoring criteria is similarly predictable: style, appearance, energy & technique are all fairly easy to prep for. It’s the rarified category of “Airness” that has me a bit spooked. But I’m certain with the right song in my pocket I can nail this point tally too. So please, sound off at will. The prize for regionals is a paid flight to nationals in LA and, hope against hope, a victory there means airfare to Finland for the final showdown. For an eye on the competition check out the footage over at Air Guitar USA (high-speed connection a major plus). Foolhardy & feckless it may be, but I think I have a shot at that coveted tin crown!

modisti

The Ultimate Indian Music Resource

erstwhile records

Creative Sources Recordings

Sine Waves and Sound

Archives of Appalachian Music

Dusted Magazine

Stylus Magazine

l'innomable

The Jewelled Antler Collective

ndorward.com

The Fracture Of Good Order

Paul Dunmall - In Your Shell Like

Emanem 4111

If you know his discography at all beyond the Mujician cooperative, it's really no surprise that saxophonist Paul Dunmall's latest venture for Emanem is an improv gig involving hurdy-gurdy experimentalist and medieval scholar Stevie Wishart. It is, however, astonishing how well it worked. While this Brussels concert is their first collaboration, Dunmall has made frequent use of drones and "exotic" instruments within his ever-increasing corpus. (And it is worth remembering that he spent much of the 70's in a "music ashram" and that one of his first gigs was with Alice Coltrane's Divine Light Mission.) The first track here, "Shells And Other Things," opens with a few preparatory gestures -- Wishart sliding and swooping up and down the hurdy-gurdy and Dunmall seeking pitch synchronicity on his border pipes -- pave the way for some gorgeous "multiphonics." There's nothing more satisfying than to hear Dunmall and Wishart lock in to an interval, rich with overtones, and drift away from it again only to find a new and more complex tonal center. While I've enjoyed Dunmall's earlier border pipe discs for Duns and FMR, his playing here surpasses them in subtlety and variety. At 8:25 into this opening performance, Dunmall switches to a light and delicate soprano, the interplay becoming sparser and more pointillistic. Dunmall's breathy interrogations and occasional sharp jabs are matched step for step by Wishart's chromatic rasps, glides and clicks. A passing siren lends a humorous but appropriately aleatoric vibe to the proceedings.

Elsewhere, the aptly named "Nothing to Do With Shells" is the only track on which Dunmall is his typically frenetic self; he is in post-Coltrane mode throughout. He lets loose on tenor, quartal and scalar gestures alternating easily with braps and squawks. Paul Lytton, onboard for the rest of the gig, is the perfect foil for Dunmall's continually shifting rhetoric, his own playing consisting more of timbral motives in flux rather than serially morphing rhythmic ideas. Jean-Michel Van Shouwberg is correct to praise Lytton's duo work in his liner notes; here, as much as on the Evan Parker / Lytton reissues on PSI, listeners are afforded a new appreciation for the percussionist's grasp of color and gifts as an orchestrator.

The rest of the disc returns to the beautifully Webernian gestalt of the first track's conclusion. The second Dunmall / Lytton duo, much more subdued than the first and with Dunmall back on soprano, sets the stage for two trio pieces. These are studies in controlled silence, their spectral qualities enhanced by "oriental" pluckings, glisses and ornaments. Replete with equal measures of classical reserve and dry whimsy, they conclude an immensely satisfying release that fans of any of the three participants should waste no time in acquiring.

~ Marc Medwin

As Serious As Your Life

Valerie Wilmer’s catchphrase has been lodged in my craw lately for a couple of reasons. She coined it as a rallying response to the jazz cognoscenti’s initial (and some ways still extant) attitudes towards free jazz and it stuck. The mantra imbued fire musicians and their efforts with a gravitas and authority for better or worse. In the wake of the recent & recurring brickbats at a certain factious post below I’ve come to approach the motto from a slightly different angle. There’s a tendency for music fans (and musicians too) to take themselves and the sounds they love way too seriously. Exhibit A exists in the bloated comments section of Chris’ piece (since deleted at the author’s behest).

What is somewhat serious is the current state of Bagatellen. Joe has decided to cease his contributions of content to the site (see below). We currently have 16 authors on the rolls but, as any regular reader will attest, only a small fraction of that number post new material with any clockwork frequency. We can’t very well have a site without new content. And I’m sure readers would rather not have my lugubrious prose as the only item on the short-order menu. I know I wouldn’t. To use an adage of my ol’ pal Namor’s: a sub ain’t nothin’ without its seamen. So I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do. I can’t --or more accurately, won’t-- continue the site by my lonesome. This place started as a collective and by my lights it should either continue that way or close up shop and lock its doors.

I posted a poll over at Jazz Corner’s Speakeasy earlier this week when I got the news from Joe. The purpose was to suss out (however partially) prevailing opinions about our work here. Do people appreciate it? Do they value having this joint as a stop-over on their daily cyber journeys? The consensus, before the polls plug was prematurely pulled, seemed to be an affirmative to these questions. Jon Abbey made the prescient point that such a discussion was better suited here. Now that the reality of the site’s situation has sufficiently sunk in, I think he’s right. So I’m asking for advice from anyone who wants to give it. What should be the next course of action and how should it be accomplished? The time to make a decision is finite. Widening the aperture of the hourglass even further, Bags’ Server and Moveable Type subscriptions come due in April, so in a way these pressing questions are opportune. However the chips fall, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the Bags readership and authorship. It’s hard to believe we’ve been at it for 2+ years.

Wire - On Returning (1977-1979) (EMI/Harvest)

Not much to say relating to a new ROW entry at the moment. But in the interest of keeping the slot current this very enjoyable & dare I say influential Wire comp will serve as good a placeholder as any- the first ten cuts (outta a total thirty), especially. 1.2.X.U.!

i hate music

Rossbin Records

The Ross Russell Papers (HRC : Austin, TX)

Lions in Winter

We’ve all been there. Rackside at the record shop, weighing the comparative merits of ‘rare’ out-of-print discs in our mitts. Mulling whether they’re really worth the exorbitant price-tags the clerks have pasted on their cases. That was me this past weekend at Melody Records in Dupont Circle in DC, clutching two Arnett Cobb cds on French Black & Blue imprint that are, to the best of my knowledge nearly-impossible to locate stateside for reasonable sums (if you’ve seen them in your local brick & mortar, please don’t ruin this illusion; my wallet is sure to coldcock me if you do).

Familiar with Cobb’s 40s work as successor to Illinois Jacquet in Lionel Hampton’s band, his solo R&B sides for labels like Apollo and Okeh, and his handful of 50s LPs for Prestige they immediately caught my eye. Cobb’s string of bad luck ailments & injuries are also common jazzbo currency. It’s a list that rivals Roland Kirk’s: debilitating spinal illness at the age of 30 and devastating car accident eight years later that shattered both his legs & mandated the use of crutches for the remainder of his life. Like his contemporaries Buddy Tate and Jacquet, Cobb spent significant time in France during his twilight years living the life of the minor celebrity, guzzling fine Bordeaux and cognac, noshing on tasty continental cuisine and loving every minute of it. These two dates and a third teaming him with fellow aged tenor Guy Lafitte are praised highly in certain periodicals. Needless to say I bought the hype right along with the platters.

Listening to them now I’m pleased as punch with the purchase. Cobb sounds great. Slowed by age and infirmity, he swaps the raucous ribaldry and cross-cut saw phrasing of his youth for a rich, sonorous tone and a more measured, but no less blues-imbued vocabulary. His colleagues rise to the occasions too with Tiny Grimes soloing tartly on one and the oddball team of Milt Buckner and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown assisting on the other. The studio fidelity is crystal clean and long-story-short Cobb’s playing ways outshines his earlier work for Prestige in subtle and highly bewitching ways. As an analogue it’s the perfect aural accompaniment for sipping that ol’ devil juice Maker’s Mark.

Digging the discs at a leisurely pace I got to thinking about other players who seem to put their best feet forward at points in life when their careers could just have as easily run their course or even aground on the shoals of creative and/or financial insolvency. Strong arguments could similarly be made for musicians like Zoot Sims, Sam Rivers, Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, Mississippi John Hurt, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and a host of others as members of that noteworthy fraternity who find sustained/renewed life late in the game. To a lesser & more problematic degree there are slightly soiled statesmen like Lester Young and John Lee Hooker. And though I have very little experience with their music, I wonder if folks like Keith Rowe and John Tilbury would fit this particular bill? Food for thought (if only a meager repast) on this dull, dreary Minneapolitan Friday.

JazzCorner's Speakeasy

Chris Kelsey On Jazz, Etc.

Sonny Stitt - It's Magic

Delmark 563

Agenda-driven reviews have a knack for clenching reader jaws and leaving behind a bitter taste. I’m not an apologist for the critic who cuts a slab from the chip on his shoulder and uses it as the bedrock for his appraisal of a disc. That said, this new Sonny Stitt reissue on Delmark touches on several of the issues that have swirled around lately in the tide pools at Bags. Listening to Stitt effortlessly slalom the changes on ten compact standards that were carrying the signs of calcification even back in 1969 when this studio session was set to tape, the light bulbs behind the contentious “jazz is dead” marquee necessarily switch-on in the mind’s window. Stitt cut a preponderance of albums like this one. The Mosaic set covering his residence at the Roost label gathers nine full discs of similar standards-grounded material, mostly with a piano-guided rhythm section at his flank. Do these readings really vary all that much from current interpretations by the likes of Kenny Garrett or Jim Snidero? Even the disc’s anonymous liners trample well-trodden terrain.

Then there’s the issue of reissues as the self-renewing monkey wrench to the sales of recently recorded jazz. How will this Stitt set, now 36 years in the can, affect the peddling of new albums? Is the discerning bop consumer likely to overlook the latest efforts of say, George Coleman or David “Fathead” Newman for this LP-sized slice from a peer nearly a quarter century in the ground? My gut says no, but Coleman, Newman and other aged jazz royalty still trying to survive in the game might argue otherwise.

Despite a prolificacy that was sometimes more detriment than benefit, Stitt was never a mossback. Any artifice or vapidity in his playing was a function of boredom or the desire for the quick buck back-to-back studio sessions and tour gigs with pick-up bands could bring. His association with organist Don Patterson, documented extensively on a spate of 60s dates for Prestige, was a rewarding one. Patterson could play convincing bop, but also had his mitts in even more contemporary bags that gently pushed Stitt to the edges of his comfort zone. Drummer Billy Pierce suffers from some unforgiving miking and a magnetic attraction to his ride cymbal, but also conjures the occasionally intriguing accent or roll.

Stitt jockeys confidently between tenor and alto, sounding warm and graceful on the former, velocious and uncluttered on the latter. The notes posit the presence of Varitone, but its subtle patina rounds off Stitt’s edges only slightly. Leadership has its privileges and he grabs the bulk of solo space. A keen melodic sense unwaveringly dictates the action on tunes like the opening “Four,” a dusky rendering of “Body and Soul” and the ebullient alto errand “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” Patterson gets in some quick and clever B3 licks too. Questions of classicism and the buttoned down safety of repertory in jazz are salient ones, but they ultimately don’t detract a sliver from this disc’s stature as a placeholder for damn enjoyable music.

Axel Dorner / Robin Hayward - Axel Dorner & Robin Hayward

Axel Dorner & Robin Hayward
Absinth
005

Initially, I was a bit disappointed to see that this was recorded in the spring of 2001, right around the time of the Phosphor disc on Potlatch. I’d have liked (and still would like) to hear a more recent example of their work and felt that I had a reasonably good idea of what to expect on this one. Well, yes and no.

Wayne Spencer did a fine job recapping Berlin reductionist history in his review at Stylus Magazine, so I’ll happily stick purely to the music. Four pieces: two longer improvisations, two shorter compositions, the latter not altogether surprising given Dorner’s participation in the Zeitkratzer project. I think my expectations played a few tricks on my listening ability the first couple of times through. While there are certainly the sort of breath tones and soft valve-clacking that you might anticipate, you (or, at least, I) have to shift aural gear a notch or two to hear both the contrasts between the generated textures and the placement of tones alongside each other that make much of this music stand out as something special. There’s also, on closer listening, more granularity and roughness (not to mention volume) than I might have expected and that’s all to the good; the play of sandy whispers, silence and liquid gurgles about six minutes into the opening track, for instance, captures all of these attacks wonderfully. The second improv opens with more activity, a series of ping-ponging ricochets in a tightly enclosed space, Hayward sculpting startlingly violent and metallic bursts from his horn. A brief shift to hushed wheezes billows into a sandstorm, pitting the brass and scorching the ears before wearily expiring. Both are strong pieces that hold interest and then some.

The two composed pieces occupy tangential territory. Hayward’s brief (under two minutes) “skylines” offers linear spurts, generally in the lower registers, and silences. For me, it’s too much of a miniature, too small a snapshot to register as very much. Dorner’s “werchlich”, on the other hand, is a gorgeous piece. The opening trumpet tones recall, of all things, Leo Smith and the piece unfolds in a manner very slightly reminiscent of some early 70s Braxton works. Though no score is included, one can almost picture a graphic notation of a sequence of paired cursive lines generally (but not always) equal in length, wafting upwards or downwards, sometimes diverging, once erupting into a spray of icy splinters. There’s a calm, processional feel to it, a lovely pacing and placement of tones. It’s a special kind of piece and closes out an all around excellent recording.

More info at: http://www.absinthrecords.com.

~ Brian Olewnick

Meanwhile...

As the opposing armies of Stultification and Innovation mass and equip themselves with all manners of sword, pike, cannon, battering ram, boiling oil, and armor (leather, mail, plate, you name it), I thought I might break the siege for a few moments of respite.

First, just because it provides some meta-context re: the very notion of the, ahem, "online colloquy":

"What Does a Very Large-Scale Conversation Look Like?", by Warren Sack (from the Electronic Book Review).

Choice quote? "What this map tells us is that no one is following up on what other people are saying."

Secondly, the details for the 3rd Annual No Idea Festival, to be held in Austin, TX, March 31st through April 3rd, 2005, have been announced. As with the 2004 festival, organizers / participants Chris Cogburn, Nick Hennies (and others, IIRC) have brought together an interesting group of young(ish) regional talents -- Dave Dove, Maria Chavez, Jason Jackson, and Rick Reed, to name but a few -- and free improvisers with more of a national reputation -- this year, Kyle Bruckmann, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jack Wright, and others -- for several days of experimental music-making deepintheheartof. This writer plans to attend, and to file some sort of report here @ Bagatellen.

Do I see a bit of blue sky through the smoke? [Cough.] Crap, once more into the breach...

~ PFC Joe Milazzo (AWOL)

Ron Carter - Piccolo (Milestone)

One of the more frequently posited questions on jazz chat boards deals with fecundity, specifically which musician holds the largest body of work. Ron Carter’s name often crops up amongst the answers. His prolific pace is both boon and bane depending upon the listener polled. When the color line stymied his early attempts at earning a cello seat on larger symphony orchertras Carter turned the squashed grapes of his initial ambitions into an expansive cellar of wines. From the bold cabernets of his vanguard work with Dolphy and Davis to the cloying desert aperitifs that constituted some of his 70s albums at Milestone, Carter’s rarely taken time off from behind the mics. His more recent efforts are similarly checkered with ill-advised Bach concertos and session stints of nearly every stripe and shade. Then there’s the tendency, particularly in the 60s, for his instrument to be improperly recorded from a myriad of angles: too muddy, too leaden, barely perceptible, overly effervescent. Carter hasn’t always had it easy and a significant portion of his foibles are his own doing. That’s a big part of the charm and curiosity behind this two-fer from ’77.

Due to what was possibly vestigial chagrin from his earlier symphony experiences and the lingering stigma attached to the double bass concerning its viability as a frontline implement, Carter commissioned the construction of a new hybrid axe of his own design: the piccolo bass. Pitched between the bass and cello range with an easier action and lighter strings the contraption was intended to allow Carter the flexibility to regularly assume the melodic lead. Unfortunately the murky amplification that was so en vogue during the era often ends up tarnishing his tone and impairing his pitch. The rhythm section on hand consisting of Kenny Barron at the acoustic keys, Buster Williams on bass and Ben Riley on drums (a trio that would coalesce five years later into the nucleus of the Monk repertory outfit Sphere) counterweights these contretemps. I can think of few if any albums of the 70s that accord this level of adulation to the bull, or in this case calf, fiddle.

Originally a double album, the reissue version shaves off a reading of “Blue Monk” and pares the program down to six cuts. Even with the edit, four are well over 12-minutes apiece and the sum nearly maxes out the disc’s running time. The opening “Saguaro” sets the standard, sprawling out to almost a third of an hour with several protracted forays by Carter on his prominently positioned strings. There are points here where I wish he would splint his fingers together or pack his signature Sherlock Holmes pipe and step off stage for an extended smoke break. “Sunshower” shows off his arco abilities on the new axe and the pitch problems are wincingly evident despite some very nimble bowing. Williams, also tethered to an amp, is the anchor underneath, but better calibrated to the electricity with his heavier gauge strings and less effusive attack. Barron is the real star, parceling out sparkling solos and comping elegantly against all the prolix string bending. Riley mostly keeps time, but also finds space for a few subtle surprises. The set closes with an obligatory Latin tune “Tambien Conocido Como” and more tree-felling sawing, flamenco style. A year and nine months later the same band would convene at the Van Gelder studio with, yep, you guessed it, an even larger contingent of strings in tow.

Carter’s doyen-sized rep is well deserved, but it’s indulgent and entertainingly verbose outings like this one from his younger years that show his human side and keep him honest.

Simon Fell - Summer 2003 & Fall 2004

Simon Fell Interviewed, Summer 2003 & Fall 2004

Questions contributed by Nat Catchpole, Walter Horn, and Joe Milazzo.

Why the double-bass? Any specific inspirations / influences on that instrument you'd like to mention or discuss?

Rather prosaic answer to this one I’m afraid… I was asked to play double bass at school because my school needed a bass player and had a double bass which no one was playing. I was at that time studying music, but not actively playing an instrument, and it was thought that it might be a good thing if I was. It’s a situation which – as a bass teacher in later life – I’ve seen replicated many times over…

But the thing is, I’ve never really thought of myself as a bass player in a specialised "city & guilds" way – i.e. excessively interested (if not obsessed) with the mechanics of basses and their construction, technical questions, the theory and history of bass lines etc. Essentially, I’m simply interested in all musical questions, all instruments and their potential – I just happen to (mainly) play the double bass. For me technique (on any instrument) is simply a means to an end, i.e. the realisation of something musically worthwhile. The kind of musicians I feel little connection with are those (and there are many) who seem to see music as a potential way of demonstrating technique. Such musicians are often incredibly impressed by other people demonstrating their technique (rather than making interesting music); in fact some musicians sometimes give the impression that they play music mainly for the specific purpose of impressing other musicians. This whole side of music-making is something which I’ve always found incomprehensible.

Anyway, back to the question. I don’t feel technically influenced by any particular bass players, apart from those who have authored technical literature which I’ve found useful (Sigi Busch & Franz Simandl, take a bow!); I’ve acquired such technique and ideas as I have through a sort of stumbling, inefficient auto didacticism, and have never felt particularly moved to emulate other bassists. Having said which, there is of course one almighty exception: I have been hugely inspired by Charles Mingus. I doubt my music could have existed without Mingus (he’s not the only such figure, but he’s the only one who’s a bass player); as "jazz" composer, leader / director and all-round "rhythm section invigorator" his work showed me so much that might be possible.

Since Mingus, a few players have shed some further light on what I thought about playing the bass – in roughly chronological order, those players who influenced me at certain points might be Harry Miller, Barry Guy, William Parker and John Edwards. But Mingus remains the key, along with what goes on in my head…

You studied English literature for a time in the late 70's and early 80's. What relationship, if any, exists between your literary studies and the work you pursue now as a composer and improvising musician?

I'm not sure if there's any... if there is it's fairly subtle. My studying of Eng Lit was a bit of an accident. I just happened to be very good at it, and it was easier for me to get into University to read English than to read music. I suppose my experience of literature – particularly Joyce & the modernists, particularly poetry – was that this material often had a complexity and ambiguity that I often found missing from much of the music I was hearing. And the ambiguity and plurality of meaning that makes poetry work for me is also the same thing that I find exciting in music. I don't mind the purity of simple music, but I find a lot of music crosses over into being simplistic and patronising the listener.

So it's this frame of reference which I find most resonant for my work in music; of course I've been inspired by particular literary works – I've always been a keen reader – but probably no more so than the average musician.

As someone based outside London but close to it, how do you perceive the regional distribution of improvising musicians in the UK? Are the scenes outside London self-sustaining?

Mmm... not sure quite what the question is here. I guess I perceive that the regional distribution of improvising musicians in the UK is pretty similar to the distribution of all kinds of people, in other words that there are lots in London, but many who are outside London. But as in so many walks of life, the London-centricity of both the (London-based) media and the people who are already in London acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, persuading other people that London is the place to be if you're serious about your music (or whatever it might be). Which is absolutely not true. London is simply the place where there are perhaps more musicians (and door money gigs) than anywhere else, so people get to play more frequently and it's easier to check out musicians, try out projects, etc. [Although there's no particularly substantial audience in London - most of these door money gigs are rather feebly attended, probably more feebly than in Leeds, Manchester or Newcastle say.]

But this approach does have its disadvantages – you could argue that the easy availability of "turn up and play" free music gigs in London facilitates a tendency for the music to develop a certain homogeneity, and perhaps makes musicians and audience less sensitive to the specialness of the performance situation. You could argue that; personally, I suspect that there’s no ideal paradigm for the development of musical "scenes", and each situation has its pros and cons. The advantage of the London scene is that it does seem fairly self-sustaining, although this may just be through sheer weight of numbers. And if – for any reason – the room at the Red Rose Club was no longer available for example, then I think that would be an awkward setback for the London scene.

The scenes outside London seem to be less stable, if only because almost all of them depend on the dedicated work of one or two committed individuals; these people are often eventually ground down by circumstance, lack of support from the arts infrastructure, lack of support from an audience, lack of support from venues owners, etc. (But there are exceptions. Some clubs negotiate a generational change with success, like the Termite Club in Leeds for example, although of course things always change when someone new takes up the reins. But promoting improvised and similar musics is such a thankless task that you can’t really blame someone for using their own taste as a yardstick!)

Drawing back to look at the national picture as a whole, I personally am concerned by what seems to be an increasingly prevalent trend towards Arts Organisations and other "establishment" bodies withdrawing any kind of support (or other formal recognition) for improvised music; a philosophically and musically vital and crucial genre, towards the development of which British players have both contributed seminally and continue to be among the world’s foremost practitioners.

How do you perceive the relationship (musical, economic, other) between the London / UK scene and those in Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy and elsewhere?

Ad hoc, fragmentary… really based on personal relationships between musicians and interested promoters, rather than any cooperation between cultural bodies. Of course the grass is always greener on the other side, but it seems that there are cycles in most countries (generally to do with much larger economic and political shifts) where improvised music, experimental music and free jazz periodically have a relatively high profile and receive substantial financial input for a while, and then drop of the agenda again. I think most musicians who have been around a while could point to the ups and downs of the music in various countries, and those who are particularly canny may be able to tell you where is particularly "hot" at the moment. But I guess most people are like me, and just go and do gigs when we’re invited; and of course when you’re a guest you are usually well treated, so naturally things seems rosier than at home.

Although we seem not to experience the same large-scale cultural policy cycling in the UK (the music just being consistently ignored by the mainstream media), there are actually UK festivals where it’s possible to play improvised music and get an international-style fee (although not many!), and the picture’s not quite as black as some musicians would have you believe. But naturally most of those gigs actually go to visiting artists, with their promotability and scarcity value; it’s only natural.

As a footnote to these two questions, it might be worth mentioning that Jo & I are in the process of relocating our activities, and to outside the UK for the first time. By the time this interview is published we will be living in central France, so perhaps my status as someone qualified to answer the above might be thrown into doubt anyway!

What connections, if any, do you see between your freely improvised work, your through-composed work, and your "xenochronous" pieces (where disparate parts are put together afterwards)?

I would say they're all points on a spectrum – the spectrum of what I find interesting, and the language I use to express it. My attitude to improvisation is that it is indeed "spontaneous composition", although I know that approach is not popular with all players; some prefer a stream of consciousness approach, for example. The only difference I feel between this and traditional "fixed" composition is really the timescale. "Fixed" composition takes a lot longer to realise of course, although each improvisation has a lifetime's technique and ideas in it (hopefully)... although so does each composition! I would perhaps say that each of my compositions is what I would have liked to have improvised at that point, if I were physically able to play all the instruments simultaneously, and had the mental capacity to think on so many simultaneous levels. (Although the extra input from the musicians during performance is always important too, and provides an additional source of inspiration, especially when writing for players from the jazz / improv tradition.)

Another basic practical difference is that improvisation (apart from solo playing) is a collaborative affair - which can be uniquely rewarding in a way that's very difficult to simulate in any composed situation, although it can sometimes be frustrating. But that's the nature of music-making. But I have experimented with some (semi-) composed collaborative projects, often with Charles Wharf (e.g. Frankenstein), or the Pure Water Construction project with Martin Archer. These can be stimulating, but are definitely a different sort of beast to the traditional "solo" composition.

I would regard "xenochrony" as just one of many compositional stratagems which I used in my composed music. It's pretty hard to imagine xenochrony in the sense I understand it happening during an improvisation, almost by definition. Of course you can get things that sound like it, but as soon as you label it then that becomes a compositional decision (I can see this might be worthy of expansion sometime!). For me, the use of xenochrony in composed pieces is simply a way of allowing musicians from the improvised music (and jazz and rock) tradition(s) to do what they do best, without let or hindrance, and still incorporate them into complex, confusing or disconcerting compositional structures. Almost a case of having one's cake and eating it, as we say in England...

Could you provide us with a detailed definition of "xenochrony"? Could you also talk a little about how you arrived at this method and what you feel your experience with that method taught you as both composer and improviser?

Well, my understanding of "xenochrony" (which is not necessarily any more valid than anyone else’s, as I’m not consulting a dictionary here!) is events which have independent external temporal frames of reference happening simultaneously – coexisting in current "real" time, and by implication creating a new temporal frame of reference which is much more complex, unpredictable, stimulating and interesting – but nevertheless which can still be relatively easily read in relationship to conventional linear "time". In simple terms, you could describe it as "listening to two things at once, and finding out what new relationships that generates", and of course this is a technique ideally suited to the recording studio. But in fact my early inspirations in this field came mainly from composers trying to work with "real-time xenochrony", including Ives (of course), Nancarrow, Cowell, Stockhausen, Braxton, Mike Westbrook and several others. Eventually, I was made aware of Zappa’s studio experiments in this genre, and works by Ornette and James Blood Ulmer which also fed into my ideas about what was possible. In some ways my work in xenochrony has been about trying to find the link that would bridge the gap between the two working methods. I’ve always wanted my studio-realised xenochrony to sound more live, and my real-time xenochrony to sound more heterogeneous; a musical space where perceived relationships shift uncertainly between the real, the meta-real and the unreal.

Part of the importance of this particular strand of my work has been the extent to which it’s enabled me to understand the role of the "active listener" in appreciating improvised and some other experimental musics, and reinforcing my realisation that the relationships between elements of music (and by extension what people normally consider as the "understanding" of music) is primarily dictated by a mixture of being immersed in a cultural vocabulary, and the basic laws of physics (not the same thing as Western tempered tonality!), rather than some absolute musical truth. Listeners to improvised music (and xenochrony) are well versed in the art of appreciating obscure, complex and unpredictable relationships between musical elements, and in that sense provide a paradigm for how those truly interested in music should listen; advanced, subtle and complex musics of this kind are analogous to textural richness and ambiguity of post-Joycean literary modernity. In this context many "music-lovers" unfortunately seem determined to restrict the richness of the musical texture to that of accessible children’s literature.

As both composer and performer this work has helped me focus on how any element really only has meaning in a context, and that whether one is composing or improvising one is essentially realising a context in which each element of information can carry its full weight of significance, or at least emphasise the group of potential meanings which you feel are most relevant. Not all improvisers would agree with this, and there are some who would wish to posit a "stream-of-consciousness" approach; personally I feel the differentiation is not actually valid, and that it’s only a question of the speed, facility and inward / outward balance involved that allows one to classify a performance as part of a spectrum between "free-flowing" and "considered". And it is rare for any two individuals to share the same perception of this element of the mechanics of the music.

Simultaneously however, if improvisation is about anything, it’s about taking musical responsibility for the sounds that you make; I suppose the perverse side of my personality enjoys the fact that xenochrony for improvisers often involves them relinquishing that most important and precious of responsibilities and passing it on to me, although it is then an inherited responsibility that I actually take most seriously.

Could you expand on this comment: "I've always found serialism attractive... It seems to me that serialism is the only real compositional technique which has taken the history of how things should be thought of and thrown them out of the window while at the same time retaining the basic form." [quote from AVANT no. 8, 1998]

Well, what I was alluding to by this was the difference between my perception of what happened with Schoenberg's discovery / invention of dodecaphony, and how it is generally portrayed by the wider world of music. Most musicians (even some who should know better) describe Schoenberg's period of free atonality and subsequent 12-tone work as a "revolutionary" upsetting of the musical-applecart, which challenged everyone's perception (and many people's continuing perception) of what music should do. Well, yes and no. Yes, if you imagine yourself as part of a conservatoire-orientated Western European tradition, obsessed with pitches, their hierarchies and their relationships, a sensitivity developed over 300 years of precious specialisation. But all Schoenberg did was invent a new order to put the notes in, one not dictated by or reflective of the tradition to which he himself was so wedded; so in one sense perhaps this does seems truly revolutionary, as revolutionary as the aleatoricism of Cage or the ready-madeism of Duchamp. But if you listen to Schoenberg's music from this period in particular (and most of his life in general), especially with ears which have grown accustomed to atonality, you realise just how traditional his approach to form still is: his use of dance rhythms, variation structures, sonata form, etc. Indeed, in the earliest period of 12-tone composition, these traditional forms were stressed by Schoenberg, as a way of allowing his listeners to hear that his music was simply a continuation of the Austro-Germanic tradition, rather than a replacing of it. So what I meant by "retaining the basic form" is that essentially this is just 19th-century classical music with note order swapped about, subject to (from a traditionalists' point of view) non-musically derived note choices. I'm sure I don't have to explain why I find that so exciting; it's a simple but devastating idea, simultaneously revolutionary and nostalgic, and ties in with some of the conceptual experiments I and some of my favourite composers have indulged in.

Could you talk more about the importance of serial techniques to your own music? You've indicated that serialism has a kind of emotional bouquet for you -- you find it "simultaneously revolutionary and nostalgic" -- which seems a rather unique response to this sort of music. Could you also give us a little more detail on the kind of "conceptual experiments" of yours that have been inspired – if I understand you correctly – by serial composition?

We all live lives overstuffed with information, and of course I suppose for any of us perhaps 90% of what we know or believe is based on hearsay, supposition, vague impression, received opinion, etc. That seems to be part of the human condition. But I think it’s important that those of us who care about music don’t swallow historical caricature wholesale, or base our thinking on the propaganda created by vested interests to indoctrinate the uninitiated. This is why I make the point about serialism – and to judge by the documentaries recently made by a certain spiteful and evangelistic post-modernist composer for British TV – it’s a point that still needs making; even your comment about a "rather unique response" seems to be part of this unbalancing effect. My argument is simply that, unless you’re closely bound up in the conservatoire-based Western-European tradition, "classic" serialism really doesn’t make that much difference to what happens in the music; we’re only talking about the order of the notes, that’s all. It’s typical of Western European classical music that it is built primarily upon the construction and analysis of pitches and their relationships, and therefore the revolutionary tearing-up of 300 years of ideas about how these notes should be chosen would seem dramatic in this context; but from where we sit, being aware of musics where (for example) rhythm, timbre or architecture may take complete precedence over pitch, and the fact that Western European classical music represents only a tiny part of the spectrum of human music-making over the millennia, we might be inclined to classify this as a storm in a teacup. The serial compositions of Schoenberg and Berg are not dramatically different to their pre-serial compositions, or for that matter to the (almost) contemporaneous works of Mahler and Strauss, especially if we take them out of the specialist classical hothouse and play the to the "man in the street". Of course, Schoenberg was keen to emphasise the line of continuity between his serial music and the Austro-Germanic tradition, and thus deliberately utilised well-established, familiar (and nostalgic!) forms, voicings and orchestrations in his pieces. To me much of this music seems incredibly nostalgic for the imperialist certainties of the 19th century, with this kind of "human" serialism a continuing part of the Romantic ideal of individual expression / expressiveness.

The difference comes with Webern really, but this is not really about serialism / non-serialism. It’s about composers who think differently, regardless of the tools they’re using. What Webern wanted to achieve with his music is different, and in part contains the seed of many of the elements of modernism demonised by the conservatoire jobsworths; but his music would have been different and would have addressed these issues whatever the justification for his note choices. You could say that the most nolstalgic thing about serialism is that it reminds you of a time when it really seemed to matter how you justified the order that you put your notes in, and when the "note police" really had a power to control, censure or prohibit certain orderings.

As far as my "conceptual experiments" with serialism, I think its main effect on me was to open up the possibility of writing music without having to join that exclusive club of people with really well-trained ears who knew all the technical terms for every kind of historical usage of every kind of relationship, and who in some ways seemed to be limited by their awareness of the achievements of the past – I realise now that this was very much a young man’s view, but I was indeed young at the time. So serialism gave me a method which I could use to expand the rudimentary construction methods of my own music, whilst alienating those whom I saw as reactionary; but in fact this was also music which I genuinely liked the sound of, certainly much more than the "proper" stuff which all the people with taste seemed so keen on.

From that point on I’ve tried all the well-explored methods of total serialism, and have applied this to text and other information given to improvisers, to instrument / musician selection, to the application of electronic effects etc. I’ve also recently (as part of my work on Compilation IV) been exploring a quasi-serial ordering of selected parameters of musical material based on other numerical systems derived from the overtone series, from Stockhausen’s experiments in temporal chromaticism, from Le Corbusier’s Modulor system of division of space, from George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Vertical Tonal Gravity etc. But I suppose they key thing to point out is that these are always only starting points for me, rather than fixing systems. I suppose my experience as an improviser makes me unwilling (or unable) to resist the flexibility to pursue, develop and explore the unexpected event, regardless of whatever system one is meant to be working under.

Are the boundaries between academic music (e.g., Ferneyhough) and non-academic music (e.g., Fell) beginning to break down at all in Britain. Are teaching gigs at Oxford ever offered to people like Evan Parker?

I’m not sure the boundaries that affect the work of people like me in this country are between academic and non-academic, although I understand what you imply by the use of those terms. For instance, I don’t think any composer would set out to write "academic" music, it’s just that for many composers (as for many musicians in all traditions) teaching and teaching-related activities are a valuable way of sustaining a bearable standard of living in a society which places no real value on creative music, especially that developed from within the improvised music or jazz traditions. Each musician finds their own answer to how they want to balance these issues, but teaching can be part of that. I suspect several of my colleagues may consider my music "academic" these days, since for the last few years most of the funding I’ve received to realise projects has been research funding from academic institutions, and many of those projects have been realised by student performers within university and college environments. But I think that simply tells you something about the type of music that I’m interested in making, and something about the continuing inability of the UK to provide any kind of effective and efficient public funding for the arts, especially creative music. And within that overall picture, music from the improvised tradition remains a no-go area for "official" funders, despite the UK’s exhilarating track record in this area. (As in so many other things, Britain seems to be moving towards an American model for arts funding – i.e. none whatsoever except that generated by private sponsors & collectors, and those crumbs which can be scraped from beneath the university dining tables.)

To return to the question, for me the differences (boundaries) seem to be social rather than anything else. As a self-taught composer whose professional performing experience has all been in jazz and improvised music, I now realise that the reason for going to music college is not necessarily to learn how to compose music "properly" (which I was very wary of), but to forge the contacts and associations which will allow you to become part of an established scene when you leave college. And certainly in the UK, the contemporary classical performance scene (which is where much of the academic music you spoke of gets performed) is very self-referential and inward looking, with its own way of doing things and no real desire to look outside that continuum (in other words, exactly like every other music scene I suppose!). Of course these days everyone tries hard to give the impression that they read The Wire and interact with what’s hip. Suffice to say I wish people (of all kinds) would spend less time reading about what they should think about this or that music, and more time listening to it and deciding for themselves what they think.

As for Evan being offered a teaching gig at Oxford, you’d better ask him about that. But if you mean Oxford University (the famous one) then I would doubt it... although if you included Oxford Brookes University (the not-famous one) then quite possibly. The university scene in the UK is pretty effectively split between the Old and the New (former Polytechnics etc), with the old taking the part of the Establishment, and the new filling the role taken by the Art Schools in the 60s and 70s – i.e. a haven for the creative and the avant-garde. If it sheds any light on the situation, I’ve been living in Cambridge (or near thereto) for over 20 years, during which time I’ve undertaken creative music projects with several educational institutions, and have taught double bass or improvisation at many, but Cambridge University Faculty of Music have never invited / asked me to do anything whatsoever; simple as that. At the same time, Anglia Polytechnic University (the "new" university whose Music Dept. is based in Cambridge) have commissioned several pieces, performed some, assisted me with research and travel funding, undertaken some publication, asked me to run improvisation classes and generally proved very supportive. I suspect it will still be some time before creative musicians outside the Western European classical tradition are really taken to heart by the old establishment, and when they are it will doubtless be jazz musicians, media composers, prog rockers, anybody except improvisers who’ll see the benefits!

Could you discuss your experiences with students and student ensembles a bit more? I'd be especially interested in hearing you describe some of the instruction you provide for young improvisers. What sort of models, if any, have you used? What sort of teacher--student relationship do you feel is most valuable when that relationship involves the discipline of improvisation?

Well, I have to be honest and say that most of my work with student and inexperienced players has been through necessity rather than choice – at least in the first instance. The fact of the matter is that the economics of the kind of music-making I’m involved in, plus the curious "outsider" standing of British improvised music and its offshoots, have meant that I’ve never (yet) had access to an ensemble of professional "classical" musicians (contemporary or otherwise!). Although some such players have been kind and brave enough to take a chance with my music, the vast majority of the ensembles have had to be made up of the kind of players that I can gain access to (and afford); add to this the inevitable tendency that any funding made available to this kind of music in the UK has to have some kind of "educational" or "community" benefit – art for art’s sake (or art as R&D) being politically unacceptable these days – then you have a situation where I often find myself hunting among the student community for musicians with an interest in the unusual.

Having said which, although I didn’t set out to become a composer for student ensembles, working with students has several advantages over working with "professionals". Firstly, they’re likely to have much more time available to rehearse a piece, and work on more esoteric matters such as different approaches to (and outcomes) of the process of improvising; this often means that what the players may lack in technical ability, they compensate for with extra time and preparation. Secondly, student players tend to be less combative, judgmental and provocative (although of course a minority are), a problem which is pronounced among certain types of professional players (perhaps less so as the years pass). Thirdly, although the majority of students (like the majority of everyone else) are not interested in anything new, broadening their horizons or being personally creative, there is a significant minority who are, and these players can produce some superb work. And making contact with these players at the beginning of their musical experiences does give one the vague hope that something good may come of it.

As far as instruction for young improvisers is concerned, I’m not sure to what extent I ever get involved in "instruction". I would say my aim is to provide an environment where people understand that it’s OK to try something even if it doesn’t work out, and that it’s better to experiment – even if the results are of variable quality – than to merely do what "works". The fact that the Compilation series are recording based projects is helpful in this, in that everyone knows that if we try something and I / we are not happy with it, it will stay on the cutting-room floor; this enables me to encourage people to try things that they would never risk in front of a live audience. Live performance is therefore more difficult, but is simply the next stage in this process – requiring editing before the event rather than after.

If I do have any "golden rules" they might be something like (in no particular order): (a) don’t play just because you happen to be holding an instrument, play because you have something to contribute; (b) if you can’t remember what your point is – stop playing! (c) when you’re not playing, you’re listening – an equally (if not more) intense activity; (d) never play just because no one else seems to be [see point a]; (e) don’t dominate the musical discussion simply because you can, but you can dominate if your point merits it; (f) etc etc. I tend not to use "models" too much, because I would always start this process from the principle that everyone can improvise, and that improvisation is the most natural and automatic response to any potential sound-making environment – my job is to debrief people who’ve been brainwashed by the Western European / Free Market model of there being a "right way" and a "wrong way" to do music. Unlearn all that; although remember your technique (whatever it might be). Models can set up a hierarchical pantheon of aspiration which I feel is the bane of mainstream music-making, and which can be counterproductive at this stage.

As for the teacher / student relationship – I think it has to be a musician / musician relationship, with everyone involved understanding that one of the musicians (the "teacher") has considerably more experience in working in the field, and has spent much time considering the aesthetic questions arising; but also everyone understanding that this doesn’t mean the "teacher" is a "better" musician or improviser than the others – and indeed that such a way of thinking is completely unhelpful.

What was the origin of Composition No. 30? What was the experience of making that piece of music "happen" like?

What was the origin of Composition No. 30? Why my own twisted brain, of course! In fact the original version of the piece (which is somewhat different to the realisation released on CD) was written as a "live" piece (in the traditional concert-hall sense of the word), a concerto grosso for improvising trio (Hession / Wilkinson / Fell), concert pianist (Joanna MacGregor), rock guitarist (Tim Beckham) and orchestra. This line-up came about as a result of a scheme dreamt up by Ben Watson to combine what he (at that time) felt were three of the most interesting things around, and although there was never enough impetus to realise a performance of this piece in the original version (although I remain open to offers), the brain-storming process did generate enough energy for me to secure some research funding from the Arts Council of England, which I used to compose the original score.

That was in 1994, and for some time the piece remained a theoretical construct – i.e. an unperformed score. For 3 years I went around metaphorical cap in hand trying to secure funding to realise a version of (at least some of) the score, and in 1997 was successful in receiving a grant from the UK National Lottery which started the ball rolling. I then revised the score & instrumentation so that it reflected more of my own interests (and perhaps less of Ben’s!) and began the long process of realisation.

As for the nature of the experience of making that and similar pieces of music, I can think of two analogies. I think of film-making, and Orson Welles rueing that fact that he’d spent the vast majority of his life running around talking to money-men, middle-men & idiots, doing any ridiculous job that came to hand, just to try to scrape together enough money to do his own work… well I often feel like that. Of course film-making is on a larger financial scale, but the problems are similar. These kind of projects are by their very nature relatively expensive – they use a lot of studio time (and increasingly it needs expensive studios to record acoustic instruments well), and a lot of musicians (and I always like to pay reasonable fees to the experienced performers who participate), plus an awful lot of my time (and I’ve got to eat, keep warm, etc). So a hell of a lot of my time is spent just trying to solve very basic practical financial questions – time which could be much more creatively spent, I assure you. But hey – it’s going to be the same for any independent artist working on ambitious projects without institutional support.

My second analogy is that realising a Compilation project (and I’m just coming near to the end of Compilation IV at the time of writing) is a little like drinking a lot of beer. It starts off as being exhilarating, refreshing and satisfying, but before long becomes something you’re continuing to do because you started it and a process is now in motion. And pretty soon you realise you’re not enjoying it any more, in fact it’s making you feel ill and you’d like to stop. But you keep going because it can’t last much longer and you’re stubborn; you might as well finish it now you’ve started. And then you feel really bad and you wish you’d never started this thing, and you’re promising to anyone who’ll listen that you’ll never ever do it again. I guess a Compilation project is very similar to this process, even to the fact that eventually you forget how unpleasant the experience was and are seduced into doing it again; the main difference is that once the pain has passed, you can look back on the recording and (hopefully) feel proud of what you’ve achieved – I’m not sure whether any element of a drunken stupor would generate that feeling.

Do see any real possibility of subsequent performances of big pieces like Composition No. 30? Would someone like Rattle ever perform a piece like this with, say LSO?

Unfortunately, I doubt it, for all the reasons given above. I just don’t have those connections, and those type of performing institutions are so trapped in a cycle of funding fashionability that they’re never going to find their way to my door. I simply don’t fit any of the criteria which currently drive the programming and funding of those kind of concerts, as far as I can see. And I don’t have a publisher who can make those connections for me, and push my music into those situations. Of course, I could do a lot of this myself (although it would have been easier if I’d started 20 years ago), but I just don’t feel drawn to the task. Basically, I want to make music, and if it’s a choice between schmoozing, hustling and networking on the one hand, and staying at home and writing, editing, mastering or otherwise creating some more music, then I’m always going to go for the latter; it’s the only thing I really want to do (even though nobody’s really caught up with most of the music I’ve done already yet!). The only time this situation might change is (perhaps) when I’m old enough to get into the "last chance to see / hear" category, and somebody decides to programme some music to celebrate (my survival to) my 70th, 80th birthday or whatever.

Before then, I suspect that any future performances of pieces like Composition No. 30 are going to either come through the route of student / college-based performances, or maybe something put together by a (relatively) well-funded jazz / improv festival (presumably outside the UK) as a special event – but I’ve no idea where that would come from! As far as I know, I don’t seem to have any big fans running international festivals… (get in touch people if you’re out there…) Suffice to say I’m not holding my breath.

Do you see any sort of linear progression in your pieces -- is there any "advance" of any sort between, say, Frankenstein and, say, 13 Rectangles?

I note (with approval) the inverted commas around the word "advance"; of course that’s far too loaded a term in its implications to be comfortably used here! But yes, there have been significant changes in my work over the years, and certainly Thirteen Rectangles (in 1999) marked the beginning of what was (for me) a new compositional era. Whether any of these changes constitute an "advance" would probably have to be left to the individual listener. I’m sure there will always be people who would rather hear the free jazz of Hession / Wilkinson / Fell, or the free improvisation of numerous groups I’ve been involved with, than any of my "composed" work. Fine; I respect that, sometimes I even feel that way too. But I am interested in moving on, and trying to create music which doesn’t already exist, rather than simply replicating what’s already there (however good it might be) and which other people might be able to do better. I do feel an advance in the sense that I now know more clearly what I want to achieve, and have much more of the technique, experience and insight necessary to achieve it; but doubtless what I’ll be trying to achieve in 5 year’s time will not be the same as I’m trying to achieve now, and I’ll probably feel just as far away from it. But one has to keep trying – as Beckett has it, "try again - fail better".

More specifically, my current feeling is that Thirteen Rectangles marks the beginning of what might be called my "mature style". With that piece I began my exploration of new ideas about a system of composition based almost exclusively on a series of very personal melodic constructs, subsequently utilising counterpoint, simultaneity, canon, retrograde and harmolodic transposition to build larger forms, rather than a conventional harmonic forward momentum (in this I’ve been influenced by many things, including an idea of harmonic gravity – rather than end-goal-orientation – derived from George Russell). The original melodies have thus far been composed in a wide range of different disciplines, ranging from absurdly complex mathematical principles to free-flowing intuitive improvisation. The use of these melodies as the raw material for a complex collaging of different timbres, styles, textures and idioms gives me the freedom I need to develop large structures in a wide range of methods and voices, whilst still retaining a unique individual voice (inevitably, since all the raw material has my ideas and musical identity stamped right through it). Whilst there were many problems brought to light during SFQ’s work on Thirteen Rectangles – which were addressed in the Version 2 revision which was recorded and released on BF – the possibilities this work opened up were for me very exciting and have provided the direction for most of my compositional researches of the past 5 years. Above all, these techniques have informed (and are informing) the development of the Composition No. 62 series, which will eventually include Compilation IV.

By comparison, my feeling about Frankenstein (which I’m still very fond of) is that it’s a collaborative work, produced under constrained technical and financial circumstances and in a fairly freewheeling and reckless way, which as a result has much more of an "of the moment" feel to it than some of my composed work – in that sense it lies closer to improvisation than Rectangles, even though both pieces have the probably the same proportion of improvised material (but in Rectangles I began to get more and more interested in "site-specific" improvisation, i.e. improvisation which is clearly related to and part of the adjacent compositional structure – not unlike good jazz improvisation – but which is also "free" in every possible sense apart from where it finds itself occurring; I’ve found that some musicians can help me with exploring this idea better than others). Plus, don’t forget most of the composition(s) in Frankenstein were not mine (or Charlie’s), so in some ways I think of it as our "jazz" album! There’s even a version of "Here’s That Rainy Day" on there…

Indubitably some people will actually prefer the playfulness and spontaneity of the earlier record to the distilled concentration of my post-Rectangles universe; I don’t have a problem with that, but I hope there are at least some people who are interested in following the researches I’m currently undertaking (rather than where I was 10 years ago). I believe I’m just beginning to make the music I’ve really always wanted to make, a music which will be not quite like any other. I just hope Compilation IV lives up to these aspirations!

Are there any musicians you'd particularly like to work with? Are any of your compositions (as opposed to your performances) collaborative?

Like everyone else, I have musical heroes, and of course I would love to work with some of them – those who are still with us. One day of course I’d love to play with Braxton. Anyone who knows me knows my deep and everlasting respect for this man’s achievements. But in some senses I’m not sure what we would do together… of course I could just ring him up and ask him if he would like to do a gig (and a lot of people would do just that), but to me that feels incredibly presumptuous. This man’s music has been motivating me for 25 years, I can’t just think of him as one of the musicianly crowd. Of course, there are other musical heroes, but I’ve been lucky enough to work with many of them – people like Derek, Evan, Han, Brötz etc. I’ve never worked with Tony Oxley, which is one aspiration still to be realised.

The other great influence on my musical thinking who’s still around is Stockhausen, although it’s even harder to see how we might ever work together. Unless he picks up his intuitive music thread again. But in some ways I’d rather leave my heroes as heroes; working with someone can sometimes disabuse you of your presumptions of their genius!

More prosaically, I really would like to get the chance to work with some of the incredibly skilled, passionately committed contemporary classical performers who are out there. There are some players – Andrew Sparling comes to mind for example – who really can inject the fire, passion and fury into notated material in the way that my music needs. Much as I’m grateful to the student community which has mainly performed my music over the last 10 years, there really is a tendency in these groups (as there is in many many professional orchestras) to just sit back and play "normally", no matter what the notation says. How many times have I heard Varèse, Ligeti, Messiaen (and my own music) "normalised" in this way? For heaven’s sake, when Varèse writes ffffff it’s because he wants it to be incredibly loud, not just loud!! Wake up people – get a sweat on! I’d love to work with people in a classical context who are prepared to put themselves out for me the way improvisers do every time. The BBC Symphony Orchestra comes to mind, although the problem of working with large groups of professionals is another whole thing altogether.

As for collaborative compositions, as previously touched on I would put forward Pure Water Construction (with Martin Archer), along with Frankenstein, M.M. and Five On Genius (with Charles Wharf). Although it’s nice to be asked, collaborative composition is almost a contradiction in terms for me, however… and who knows when (and with whom) the next one will be?

How has Stockhausen been influential to your own work? Have you ever had that experience you've described, of "working with someone... [and it] disabus[ing] you of your presumptions of their genius"?

I’m not sure how much I’ve been particularly influenced by Stockhausen, and in what sort of ways. I know I’ve found his relentlessly creative individuality inspiring, and the fact that it sometimes tips over into eccentricity (or further), thus making him a figure of fun amongst "sensible" musicians further adds to his appeal for me. This stubborn expression of an irrepressible unique musical personality – despite the mockery, alienation or neglect this might entail – makes everything he does of interest to me. But I would also say exactly the same thing of Braxton (who is almost certainly the most important single influence on my work), perhaps more so. And maybe of Ives too.

I’ve been sporadically inspired by Stockhausen’s theoretical writings, although my musical influences mainly reflect an interest in how the person’s music sounds, rather than the theories behind it. Theoretical inspiration can come from musicians’ writings, but as often as not may come from other sources.

As for the working with geniuses part of the question, I think I’ve come to the opinion that the idea of the musical "genius" is an unhelpful myth. Some musicians are without doubt more technically gifted than others, with that manifesting itself in various possible ways. But that doesn’t seem to necessarily lead to interesting music. Far from it. Individual performances (or compositions) may "work" well or less well, but this can often be independent of the track record of the musicians involved. Eventually one might say that such a specific musician generally produces interesting work, or even almost always, but I’m not sure I’d accord anyone the implied infallibility of genius. We’re all human beings trying to actualise interesting things we haven’t heard yet, that’s all. Sometimes we think we’ve succeeded, sometimes not. (You’ll notice I use the term "interesting" a lot here; I think in some ways that’s the ultimate goal a piece of music can aim for…)

Anyway, if I had worked with any geniuses who’d disabused me, you don’t think I’d tell you, do you? After all, I’d probably want to work with them again sometime, and geniuses can be as thin-skinned as anyone else!

How have you been able to keep your Bruce's Fingers label a going concern for 20 years? What has the experience of being the primary documentarian of your own musical activities been like, both personally and in terms of career management?

I suppose it depends what you mean by "a going concern"; by many of the criteria you might use, BF isn’t an active record label in the traditional sense. Essentially it’s just a channel for me to publish recordings that I can’t find anyone else to publish, as and when I can find the time and money to do so. As a result, records tend to come out in batches, with increasingly longer gaps in between these days. Distribution is patchy, sales sporadic.

Anyway, how do I keep it going? Firstly, by investing a certain amount of whatever money I do make from commercial music in keeping the label afloat. The thing runs at a loss – although less dramatically so now than in the earlier years – because the one and only rule I set for myself was that I would never let a commercial consideration dictate anything about the music that was released on BF. I figure I could easily cover my costs (maybe even make a tiny bit) by putting out records that people wanted to buy – but I don’t, I put out the records that I want to put out. If some people want to buy them, that’s a bonus… If you can’t base this kind of thing on aesthetic rather than commercial criteria, then what’s the point? Obviously, my tastes have changed over the years, but ultimately that’s still the criterion I use.

Secondly, by being together about the whole thing. Keeping good accounting, being business-like with distributors and customers, trying to be professional about it rather than the flaky "creative artiste". Sometimes people are surprised that it’s just me doing all this, but it is. However, I haven’t really got time to pursue all the possibilities properly, so it will always be a rather awkward half-way house. But if I say I’m going to do something, I do it; I also expect the same from the people who work with me… I don’t always get it!

The experience of being the primary documentarian (great phrase!) has been very positive for me. Although initially I was forced into it by not being able to interest anyone else in what I was doing, looking back I wouldn’t have swapped the artistic control it’s given me for anything. (Except perhaps a lot of money, but thankfully I’ve never had to face that temptation!) On several occasions that I have had involvement with other labels, it’s involved confusions, delays, disappointments. Things can be badly mastered, badly edited, sleeve notes misspelled or misprinted, releases badly delayed, etc. Having said which, my thanks go out to the handful of labels over the years who’ve actually done what they said they’d do (and sometimes very well). But a lot don’t. I think the most frustrating thing in the world must be to produce a piece of work which you feel is important, and then stand by while somebody else screws it up (or leaves it on a shelf for a couple of years) – or worse.

"Career management" is a funny phrase. I know what you mean (I think), but it sits funnily with my experiences in creative music. I would say the "direction of my activities" (rather than "career") has lurched about in a seemingly eccentric pattern, driven only by a mix of what I wanted to do and what people asked me to do at any given time. Certainly in the projects I initiate I feel there is some artistic progress shown; with some of the others I’m not so sure. But very few of the things I do make sense in terms of "career management". If I wanted to make a "successful career" out of creative music I would need to do things differently (and I have seen people do it…). Personally, I just work on whatever I want to work on at any given time, to the best of my ability – without any concern about whether it enhances my "career" – and hope that someone else out there will be interested.

Having said all of which, of course running your own label means that you have some control over how your records are packaged and marketed, and I’ve certainly no objection to corralling a few good critical quotes if it will mean someone may listen to my music who might otherwise not bother. But I’m desperately trying to build an audience, rather than a career.

What are you working on now?

Well, Compilation IV has been occupying most of my time for the past year or so – maybe longer. It includes notated passages of a sustained density and complexity which I’ve not achieved before, and it has taken a long time to get these written down and prepared for the players. We had a batch of recording sessions a couple of weeks ago involving 58 players, working through improv, conduction, graphics, free and not-free jazz, orchestral music, big band stuff and electronics. I anticipate spending most of the next few months editing, mixing and overdubbing this material, and with a little bit of luck perhaps the album will be ready by the end of the year [2003]. But don’t hold your breath

Other projects which have tied me up over the past couple of years – most of which are recently finished and in the pipeline for release – include: IST’s Lodi album; SFQ1’s Three Quintets; the Mancini Project album (with Pat Thomas, Steve Noble & Han Bennink); SFQ2’s Liverpool Quartet; the ZFP Quartet’s Music For Strings, Percussion and Electronics; a new Badland album; plus a lot of new compositions (with plenty of notes!), at least some of which have been documented and should appear in the near future. I’ll make sure you’re kept informed!

How might you describe the "real" (i.e., existent) audience for your work? The "ideal" audience?

Very small, apparently (the "real" one that is; obviously the "ideal" audience would be huge…) But numbers aside, my ideal audience is one which values creativity, originality, unpredictability, experimentation rather than "reliability" or "consistency". It would be an audience without genre prejudices, and without stylistic no-go areas, but with an insistence on depth and richness of material. It would be an audience that is prepared to sit down and listen to an album as a work to be listened to closely, perhaps repeatedly, before it can be critically assessed – and be prepared to grow into an appreciation of something which initially seems unsatisfying (or perhaps just unfamiliar). An audience who are interested in asking “what would happen if…?” rather than “can I have some more of that stuff I already like?”. Of course, my perfect audience would be thousands of people who share my tastes and ideas. But that really is too frightening to think about…

For more information about Simon Fell and his available recordings, see: http://www.brucesfingers.co.uk/.

All photos courtesy Jo Fell.