Malcolm Goldstein & Masashi Harada - Soil

Emanem 4124

For a musician who’s actively been plying his craft since the late 1960s, Malcolm Goldstein’s discography remains pitiably small. The paucity of documentation is certainly not due to an absence of talent or influence. His work with violin can easily be considered amongst the most adventurous and indefatigable on the instrument. It’s more a reflection of an indifferent attitude toward the recorded form and an emphasis instead on live performance as a primary outlet of expression. Recognizing a kindred musical spirit, pianist Masashi Harada orchestrated a minor coup in coaxing Goldstein into a Boston studio on a spring day back in 2002.

Goldstein is more commonly associated with modern classical circles, but the freely improvised settings favored by Harada prove no problem. Fourteen tracks occupying just over an hour follow the pair through an investigation of a textbook’s worth of extended techniques. The pieces range from mere fragments like the closing “Secret Sharer” to more labyrinthine forays like “Romanticism in Relation to Life.” Goldstein is a master at conjuring and controlling protracted pitch-fluctuating drones, so much so you can almost hear the sizzle of rosin on horsehair like a hot steak knife shearing through room temperature butter. Listening to his high pressure legato strokes, I’m left wondering what aural portions of his constructions remain beyond the access of human hearing as he alternates between dolorously dry scrapes and scuttling pizzicato chatter. Harada’s academic training with Joe Maneri comes through in his attention to microscopic detail and his ability to abandon strict Western tonality on an instrument known for its allegiance to it. His background as drummer also comes into play via a highly percussive, often staccato, approach, but only rarely does he venture under the hood.

Goldstein’s bow approximates the spasms of an epileptic teeter-totter, serrated glissandi regularly sliding off his strings as he places his instrument in harm’s way through a punishing set of paces. Harada is just as active and unpredictable at his stool, his fingers scampering in complex terpsichorean sorties across his keys, sometimes shaping consonant chords, at other junctures activating torrential avalanches of notes. Both men make canny use of dynamics. Goldstein hugs his violin close, gripping the strings like a vice and plucking out brittle muffled patterns that sound like the disconcerting patter of tarantula legs. Harada responds with similarly muted clusters that mimic slivers of glass striking and shattering on concrete.

Elsewhere on “Come Ride and Ride to the Garden” Harada sets up delicate and silvery counterpoint to Goldstein’s abrasive arco oscillations, which in turn brilliantly exploit the natural acoustics of the violin’s hollow body. On “Micro Lyricism” Harada’s haunted ululating voice floats in proximity to a keening string drone. With “Wind and Mirror” dark pedal-tempered chamber chords coexist with distant filament-thin string harmonics. There’s a daunting density and astringency to much of the interplay, the pair responding with telegraphic reflexes to each other’s split-second transitions, but also a fair share of ear-opening lyricism in the exchanges. Listening to how well it all works, the urge to witness a reunion between the two becomes involuntary and irresistible.

~ Derek Taylor