Los Glissandinos – Stand Clear (CS029)
Since Kai Fagaschinski and Klaus Filip issued a download-only set of recordings at Klingt.org last year, I have waited impatiently for the release of this excellent album.
For me the most interesting recent development in music has been the (often reluctant) acceptance of the laptop as a tool for making music in an improvised environment. As the laptop flies through its infancy at breakneck speed, its use alongside acoustic instrumentation has raised a lot of interesting questions.
Stand Clear is the best example I have heard yet of digital and acoustic technologies coming together to form one organic whole. This is music that simultaneously renders the tension between man and CPU both immediately apparent and completely irrelevant in the same moment.
Filip uses laptop generated sine tones, restricting himself to a very basic refined palette, very rarely contributing more than one sound at a time. He is mainly focused here on clean, smooth lines of sound (nothing granular on this disc!), but he is also totally involved in a conversation with Fagaschinski’s clarinet rather than taking the distant stance often taken by Sachiko M, perhaps the most obvious musical comparison.
Fagaschinski is one of a clutch of interesting reeds players to emerge in recent years and to my ears he brings something fresh to the scene. Unlike many of his contemporaries he is not afraid to actually play a note on his instrument. Much of his early work with Filip seemed to revolve around intertwined tones from both musicians merging together to the point it became difficult to sort them apart. These elements are still very much in evidence on Stand Clear, but he also pours breathy hisses and deep rushes of gurgling air into Filip’s subtle sonorities to create a minimal (but never silent) structure of stunning beauty.
There are three pieces here. Two shorter works book-end the remarkable ‘History of the animals’, a twenty-five minute tightly interwoven journey that stands as one of the best passages of improvised duet I have heard in ages. The track winds its way very slowly through several movements, beginning with gentle, fluttering passages from Fagaschinski folded into Filip’s envelopes of low bass tones before dropping into near silence and understated tension. Eventually a high pitched sine from Filip grows out of the quiet, pulling Fagaschinski with it until a fierce scribbling mass of high-register sound emerges, easily the harshest moments of the recording before things fall again into finely detailed and restrained interplay. Right at the end of the piece, just when you think the full dynamic gamut has been run Fagaschinski suddenly slips into a few moments of beautiful mournful melody before it is all suddenly cut short by the end of the track.
This release captures the work of two excellent musicians that have developed their sound closely together over a period of time to reach the refined state of intimacy present here on Stand Clear.
For anyone that still has doubts about the laptop’s validity within improvised music I recommend you listen to this release. This is man and machine very much in harmony yet still pushing and pulling at each other enough to create music that is very hard to describe and is unlike anything else you are likely to hear this year.
So yet another release from the absurdly prolific Creative Sources label. But to my ears this is their finest moment yet. Wonderful stuff.
~Richard Pinnell
Posted by RPinnell on July 17, 2005 3:41 PMGreat review. When that last batch of Creative Sources discs was announced on their website, this was the one I was most excited about. I don't know why because I don't know either of these musicians very well. Strange. Must have been the name Los Glissandinos. Glad to hear that it's good, though.
The laptop-as-instrument question is very problematic. The number of different sounds a laptop can produce is limitless. Any sound that can be recorded can, of course, be played back and, with some simple Max/MSP programming, manipulated on the fly. The infinite possibilities are a little bit overwhelming. No one will ever have the experience (like Mr. Parker's while watching Tatsuya Nakatani blow into his cymbal) where he finds himself exclaiming: "Holy crap! I can't believe that sound came out of that laptop." There's no such thing as extended technique for a laptop-- only more VST plugins.
In a live context, I think many people are suspicious of laptop improvisers (--just read Eddie Prevost's last book). They could be up there checking their email or playing Snood for all we know.
Personally, I don't have a problem with this. I quite enjoy the music of many laptop improvisers and call several of them friends. The above comments are just some thoughts.
Posted by: William Hutson at July 17, 2005 5:15 PMThe only instance of extended technique for laptop I am aware of is Mattin playing the outer casing with a violin bow onstage in London a few years back. Also about the most visually interesting laptop moment I have witnessed yet!
Posted by: Richard Pinnell at July 17, 2005 5:24 PMYou know, the coast is clear for the first unprogrammed laptop player....
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at July 17, 2005 5:31 PMAre all laptop players programmed in some way then Brian? I wondered why they all looked a bit odd....:)
Posted by: Richard Pinnell at July 17, 2005 5:34 PMclarinet not sax is what fagashinski plays.
-j
Whhooops!! No wonder he brings something fresh to it!
Well I make at least one fundemental error in everything I write, thanks for finding this one John, who ever you may be!!
Its still a great record though.
Anyway, mistakes with improvised music are OK aren't they? :)
Please note, at the request of one of the musicians involved, the offending sax comments have been changed. This isn't a sly attempt to try and save face on my part, I totally accept this stupid error and put my hands up to it. Its just nice that it now reads correctly. Apologies
Posted by: Richard Pinnell at July 18, 2005 3:28 PMAs for subverting technology like laptop Taku Unami is lately using it not as a sound source with ''limitless posibilities'' but only as a trigger device for little vibrant objects producing different sounds. He used that concept on his record with Mattin ...
As for Los Glissandinos KF & KF are even better live since the space and acoustics of the room add a lot to their sounds. This year i had pleasure of organizing their gig in Slovenia and even thou there was a lousy PA the concert was great (a year before in Nickelsdorf it was an amazing experiance) ...
Posted by: lukaz at July 18, 2005 5:27 PMYes I caught Taku playing live that way a while back Luka. It seemed like he had ball bearings sat inside the concave woofers of a set of speakers and created percussive sounds by passing vibrations at different levels through the cones.
At one point the throb was so sudden and so violent a ball bearing shot out and bounced across the floor, creating a rathe rnice percussive effect :)
Posted by: Richard Pinnell at July 18, 2005 5:34 PMi didnt mean to make a whole thing about sax/clarinet. Didnt lesson my enjoyment of review, just thought i would drop a quick clarifying note
j
Does indeed sound like nice stuff, but is my feeling that the "something new" being brought here is awfully close to the "something new" that john butcher has been bringing for some time? or is it because i only had 45 seconds worth of serious attention to devote to it this morning?
Posted by: Mark at July 28, 2005 2:40 AMHi Mark, thanks for your comments.
Something new was actually something fresh, not a great difference, but important.
Others have done similar things to where Kai takes the clarinet on this recording in the past, its just been a while since I heard anyone doing it.
I was directly referring to his use of extended tones, using the instrument closer to its originally intended purpose rather than purely making as abstract sounds as possible with his clarinet. As much as I love extended techniques, there was something fresh about hearing an "eai" musician using his instrument in exactly the way it was originally intended!
I have not heard everything from Butcher but in the discs I do own I am not aware of him playing these long continual notes in the same way Fagaschinski does on Stand Clear and the earlier Los Glissandinos recordings.
Maybe I am wrong, but as I said 'to my ears' Kai brings something fresh.
All a bit unimportant though, its the great music that counts.
Posted by: Richard Pinnell at July 28, 2005 4:43 AMHold da bus! WHAT earlier Los Glissandinos recordings? I musta missed out on something here!
Posted by: Dan Warburton at July 28, 2005 6:49 AMDuuuh, just reread your first paragraph. Scuse me!
Posted by: Dan Warburton at July 28, 2005 6:50 AMIndeed, it's the great music that counts, thanks for the reasonable and enlightening discussion about all of it.
Posted by: Mark at July 28, 2005 5:37 PMAgreed, great music is the point...thanks for highlighting these boyz.
mem
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