Bruckmann/Dafeldecker/Hauf - Wane

Formed
102

Anticipation was high when I noticed that the four tracks on this recording were titled, “going”, “going”, “going” and “gone”. The results, however, are more like an indifferently played make-up game with some lackluster fielding. The instrumentation is intriguing: Kyle Bruckmann on oboe and English horn, Werner Dafeldecker on guitar and percussion and Boris Hauf wielding baritone sax and synths, but it’s the last that causes the problem to these ears. Clearly, the trio was attempting something different from the usual low-level improve here. The electronics are very much up front, generally arrayed in blocky, rhythmic patterns that rather deaden the proceedings. The relative lack of variation in amplitude, pace and timbre allows them to get as annoying as gnats--big, bulky gnats that obscure the interesting sounding scratching and plucking occurring somewhere below. Sometimes, as on the penultimate “going”, its sounds more than a little like one of those lumbering Braxton contrabass sax lines he used to hurl about. The first and final cuts, the crack of the bat and the deposit in the bleachers as it were, deal with this interference the most successfully, something of a balance being struck, but it’s real difficult for this listener to get past the mechanical to the fleshly on this one. Perhaps that was one of the intents of the session, to force the listener to resolve this tension. If so, I found myself unable to.

formed