Fred Lonberg-Holm - Dialogs

Emanem 4109

Dialogs may seem a counter-intuitive title for a collection of solo improvs, but in the case of cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm the quixotic mantle fits. Cradling his dinged and battered instrument (pictured both on cover and traycard insert) between his crossed legs he sets about hatching a program of music heavy with odor of idiosyncrasy and irascibility. Aiding him in the enterprise are a handful of added accoutrements- listed in the notes as small speakers, test amps, piezos and motors- taped, glued and wired to various surfaces giving the contraption a cyborg-like appearance. Organic wood wedded with synthetic circuitry and metal- a duality that plays out in the ongoing duel/dance between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ tones.

Lonberg-Holm is notorious for devising nefarious ways to torture and persecute his cellos. He’s one of the few arbiters on the instrument who can easily equal the cacophony of an amp-cranked guitar by playing purely acoustic. Plugged in watch out because any speakers in the vicinity are likely to fulminate and even detonate under the compressed din. That might resemble fawning hyperbole, but it’s not far from the truth. His own canny, quirky personality feels at odds with the violence meted out his defenseless implement.

The disc’s eight pieces are assigned simple sequential numbers to differentiate them. Lonberg-Holm keeps all but two to modest running times. At fifty-four minutes it’s terse for an Emanem outing. Through all manner of rubbing, scraping, sawing and plucking a full range of ferrous and alien sounds spool out from the tautly wound strings.

On the opener he carves a tuneless jig pocked with air horn harmonics. Moments of outright lyricism are few and striking when they do occur. Track two opens with an ear-piercing sustained tone that bruises while it stupefies veering off into a jumble of knife-edged drones and puttering stops. The piece finds focus in a coarse colloquy between slicing arco streaks and a sustained mechanized drone. Suddenly Lonberg-Holm sharpens bow pressure mimicking the machine in a scribbling swathe of nose-bleed register modulations. The action ends with a skein of finespun chamber-style sonorities that fritter away into silence.

Track five finds him aping the plink-plonk pitches of guzheng or komungo. Track six involves noises that sound alternately like a swarm of mosquitoes and a muted outboard motor. Number seven, the most overtly mellifluous of the clutch, traces ribbons of whirring harmonics that almost take on the sonic cast of Scottish bagpipes. The remainder of the set follows a minefield course fraught with sonances that would take reams of paper and subjective prose to qualify. Some of the more abstruse maneuvering struck me as overly enigmatic and mileage may vary, but this is an introspective expedition almost certain to transfix intrepid ears.

~ Derek Taylor