Alessandro Bosetti/Michel Doneda/Bhob Rainey -- Placés Dans L'air

Potlatch P103

I'm not familiar with the work of Mr. Bosetti, but I know the prior recorded work of Messers Doneda and Rainey well enough to see that their approach has evolved considerably over the last couple of years. Rainey came out of the NEC school of "Boston microtonalists": I was impressed with his debut (mostly) solo recording "Ink" as well as with his contributions to the first incarnation of Nmperign. Doneda was, at one time, in the Evan Parker school of what might be called "soprano whippoorwills." In recent times, these two gentlemen have developed, let us say, a more abstract approach to their instruments and to music in general. Obviously (to all who are likely to be vising this site, anyway), at some point in the distant past, there was a "progression" from through-composed music to partially improvised jazz. Later, jazz itself became freer, with some schools finally eschewing all notation in favor of the spontaneous creativity of the performers. For some, however, the bop or blues or swing elements continued to feel like heavy corsets, and these, too were eventually dropped by the avant-garde. What was left? Recognizable or repeating rhythms, 12-tone temperament, melodic content of any kind. Anything else? Well, sure: distinct pitches, familiar sounds, traditional sorts of "interaction" between players, displays of virtuosity, "normal" uses of "normal" instruments.

For some, it's always been a kind of competition-- abstract, more abstract, complete abstraction. Cage's (now pretty ancient) "4:33" seemed like it might constitute a boundary to this race, but...maybe it hasn't. Maybe there's something more abstract than nothing whatever. (Maybe, for example, there's a way to blot out memories of past, now traditional sorts of music making altogether. In any case I think I have some understanding of this progression, and I have no wish to pooh-pooh it. It stems from the same urges that caused Schoenberg to dump traditional, then over-stretched tonality and substitute his new-life-giving serialism. It made for Partch's fabulous palette of instrumental wonders. This impetus should not be seen as any kind of perpetual desire for newness (which would be kind of pathetic). It stems rather, I think (at least partly anyway) from something deeper: an absolute sickness-unto-death of the older means of producing older art forms. Maybe it's because anything even a little bit "yesterday" can't compete with what's really yesterday. Or maybe it's that anything not completely "other" may remind us of the movement through time from that to this, from then to now--in short, of our mortality.

Not in any particular hurry to die myself, I welcome the radical "today." Naturally, I couldn't want the music I praise in 2003 to be at all like "Hickory Dickory Dock" or "The Moonlight Sonata" or "Body and Soul" or "Let it Be" or "A Love Supreme" or "Pierrot Lunaire" or "Three Phasis" or "Conic Sections" or "Come Out" or "La Voyelle Liquide," could I?

"Places dans l'air" has received some pretty nice notices in "Cadence" and "STN," and no wonder. This recording is in the hunt, baby. For much of it, it's hard to hear much beyond some faint breathing, pad clicks, dampish mouthpiece noises, and the occasional grunt or squeal. The three performers probably listen and interact a bit much for truly avant tastes, and there's likely too much in the way of breathy/chirpy atmospherics (hence the disk title) and the use cool Pendereckian sirens or harmonic hums here and there. They even all play determinable pitches at the sime time on a couple of occasions. But if the album's more "traditional" sections (some, in an almost flagrant derivativeness, including brief repetitions of sounds!) reduces it to the not quite tomorrow, it's certainly no earlier than last month, and that is more than many recordings can say these days.

-Walter Horn