Two from For 4 Ears

eRikm/Gunter Muller/Toshimaru Nakamura
Why Not Béchamel
For 4 Ears
CD 1553

Jason Kahn/Gunter Muller
Blinks
For 4 Ears
CD 1552

Perennial favorite Gunter Muller returns with two more releases on his fine label, his collaborative prowess featured on each.

The trio on “Why Not Béchamel” (no question mark in the title) is certainly an intriguing one on paper. Despite the near total electronicity of each, their approaches are distinct enough to ensure a wide range of sound. “Keburu” is all dark, ominous undertones split through by blasts of high-pitched static bleats and pops. Not too surprisingly, given the presence of Muller and eRikm (I’m using what is apparently the latest preferred spelling of his nom de musique), rhythmic patterns emerge with some frequency, generally as throbbing pulses or iterated swashes of white noise. It’s an effective mélange; as ply after ply is layered in, spun and twisted you get a rich, physical sound field full of spatiality and color until the plug, or cable, is harshly pulled. “Kabel”, easily the longest track at almost 25 minutes, occupies fairly similar territory but is less intensely claustrophobic and more expansive. There are multitudes of overlapping rhythmic elements sunk into near tonal beds of hum. At one point several minutes in, I swear that for a moment I thought I was hearing a West Indian gospel choir, softly intoning over local percussion. Very strange. This actually develops into a section rather reminiscent of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World music. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Muller is his ability to just set things on simmer and percolate along, something very much in effect on this piece. A good Muller recording is sometimes like watching a bubbling stew and this one goes excitingly aboil at its conclusion. They close out with a brief nightscape of croaks and cheeps, interrupted by the odd train whistle or shooting star. It’s a good, strong recording, guaranteed to tickle one’s pleasure buds.

Muller’s duo with Jason Kahn (here wielding a Powerbook, no percussion) is different in structure, consisting of nine shortish tracks, but the music touches on the same areas albeit with an increased lucidity perhaps due to having only two sets of hands involved. Again, rhythmic elements abound but instead of the abstract static patches that Nakamura is wont to generate, you hear more bell-like tones and a generally brighter palette. My problems with the disc are twofold: 1) there’s a bit of sameness in approach on the tracks and 2), perhaps contradictorily, I wanted to hear the pieces at greater length instead of the 5-7 minutes allotted. There are plenty of attractive samplings to be found. “Fourth Blink” (all the tracks are titled First through Ninth Blink) opens beguilingly, for instance, with a mysterious aspect that I would have loved to have heard delved into further. Several of the pieces, in fact, end rather abruptly, picking up and leaving just as they’re beginning to cook. Even though I think the duo would be better served by stretching out, it’s an enjoyable disc, one of the finer things I’ve heard from Kahn in a while. Still, the delights offered by “Blinks” have something of a momentary quality to them, for me, while those of “Why Not Béchamel” linger on for a good while longer.