Fargone Round-Up

Older and newish, a selection from Ed Howard's Fargone label:

Mohmet Ybaxehnr
Five Moments of Silence for the Many Dead of Chechnya
Fargone
FAR-018r1

Mohmet Ybaxehnr is made up of two St. Petersburg residents, Alexsandr Kuneev and Gleb Ivanov, each responsible for deployment of field recordings that comprise this bleak, rather excellent release. The bleakness obviously fits with the disc’s title though no overt reference to warfare or other ill is made by the sounds used. In fact, the recordings generally consist of impossible to identify thuds, rustlings and distant industrial whirs. The restraint shown by the duo is quite impressive, limiting themselves to a handful of seemingly sparse elements and wringing out all manner of evocative noise. “Third”, for instance, begins with wooly, wind-buffeted sounds, very gradually increasing in intensity until the volume of the recordings surpasses (I’m guessing) the capacity of the recording device, where it dissolves into buzzing static, but this “distortion” acts as a kind of filigree, almost a gilt edge, on the underlying darkness. Really fascinating work.

Doug Theriault/Brian Moran/Ed Chang
Tic Tac Tek
Fargone
FAR-031

About an hour of sheer noise terror, heavy on the aggressive electronic bleats. Six pieces: two trios and four duos, Moran in all of them. Whether in pairs or triads, one thing you can say: these musicians fill every nook and cranny of space with sound. In fact, “overstuffed” is one of the adjectives that springs to mind. You kind of have to sit back and simply bathe in the sonic overkill, not be on the lookout for nuance or thoughtful placement of elements. Once done—and for this listener that’s no easy task—there’s a certain numb pleasure to be derived here. The fourth track, a duo between Theriault (guitar and electronics) and Moran (circuit bent electronics) does indeed encompass a wider range of colors than the rest. Even as it shreds one’s ears, it allows a bit of air to creep in between blasts and creates a vivid image. The army of deranged bleats pervades in the next piece; I was kinda hoping I’d heard the last of them. This track begins to get a tad overbearing but again, allowing oneself to submerge, it becomes tolerable. Itchy but tolerable.

Doug Theriault
Orange
Fargone
FAR-030

Theriault’s solo disc, “Orange” was recorded more than two years after the above (Summer, 2004) and evinces a far different set of concerns. While there’s a real nice gravelliness to the proceedings, there’s also a resolutely tonal aspect to them, a smooth shuffling from element to contrary element. The landscape may be bleak but what objects dwell within are rounded and lucent, at least for the first 15 or so minutes of the single 52-minute track. Things don’t revert to the welter of noise heard earlier. Instead, they gently disintegrate into isolated bleeps and burbles, at their sine-y extreme edging a few steps into I.S.O. territory. The final third shifts ground once again with an odd cascade of drum machine sounds (maybe distorted samples of drumming), echoey guitar, glitcholalia, etc. It’s initially a bit disturbing and thin sounding but that wan quality soon gets used to good effect, contrasted with a throbbing, darker spell that occupies the next section, riding on a bed of static. The disjunct final section sets off rumbles against roars, drops out entirely a split second here and there and concludes with a steady, rich attack recalling prime Voice Crack. “Orange” is a quality outing, one that provides a few things to think about in terms of intent and contrasts as well as some simply good sounds.

Bryan Eubanks/Doug Theriault
Arrest Attention in the Midst of Distraction
Fargone
FAR-032

You can hear vestiges of Theriault’s semi-tonal approach on this album, recorded about two months later but here his “sensor guitar” is stacked up against the steadfastly abrupt and harsh open circuit electronics of Eubanks. As in “Orange”, the single track, here some 36 minutes, falls into several episodes, the relatively solid and uniform initial third morphing into a more abstract, “spacier” middle area. I admit to occasionally possessing the urge to hear a single sound-area elaborated on more fully and perhaps maintained throughout a disc but, that being said, this duo manages to not veer entirely out of focus when they venture into looser environs. For a while it appears that, instead of any sort of recapitulation, things are dissolving even further, the previously liquid guitar phrasings eroding into the merest fragments. But the last five or so minutes turn out to resemble a fractal version of the whole, a rich thrum emerges that you expect to carry out the remainder of the piece, but it too disintegrates in a small shower of ashes. Perhaps less focused than I’d somehow like to hear, but a good recording.

Invader
1
Fargone
FAR-034

Invader is Ariel Velez wielding “tapes, software and pedals” and the twelve tracks on “1” mete out dripping servings of dense noise. The first three stick pretty much in onslaught mode, extreme bursts with a generally pushed forward lower level. “…After” injects some surprising ultra-fuzzed out rock guitar, possibly lifted from some sludge metal band of which I remain blissfully unaware. Then, back to the blast furnace. It’s not so much that the sounds themselves are undifferentiated but that their presentation tends emphatically toward the “open the floodgates” approach. All well and good on the one hand except that certain old fogies (present party included) like to hear at least the suggestion of some amount of thought having been involved. What Velez does, he does as forcefully as most anyone else in the field to whom I’ve been exposed--listen especially here to “From Those Stars”, a fine mini-rampage--but (and this would be difficult to explicate) I hear more *ideas* in, say, Joe Colley. Still, “1” would likely more than satisfy most aficionados of the genre and works very well on its own terms.

Jeph Jerman
Lithiary
Fargone
FAR-035

I’d been meaning for a long while now to hear more of Jerman’s work and Richard Pinnell’s immersion in same earlier this year over at IHM only whetted my appetite further but, things occurring as they do, “Lithiary” was my first opportunity since then to actually do so. And it’s a grand one. A simple enough construct: Take two recordings of stones jostled in shaker-tables, overlay them et voila! Infinitely shifting strata of lapidary lushness. The clicking of stones doesn’t seem to get paid the appropriate attention in these here parts. There’s one of Cardew’s “The Great Learning” pieces, right? and some by Christian Wolff but it’s got to be one of the most seductive sounds going. Toward the end of the single track, it seems as if most of the stones have tumbled off the table and, aside from a handful of petrous knocks, one hears more the rumble of the table than anything else. I could easily keep “Lithiary” in the deck for a long, long time. Beautiful recording.

Mattin/Jean-Luc Guionnet/Bertrand Denzler/Taku Unami
-/:.
Fargone
FAR-044

An intriguing and wide-ranging live date from a quartet made up of two computers and two saxophonists. Saying “two computers” is even a little bit misleading as Unami appears to be using his to send his collection of small toys scurrying across a tabletop, contributing more of a delicately percussive sound. The whole set, in fact, tends more toward the quiet end of things, albeit with the occasional eruption. Denzler and Guionnet do a fine job of not simply avoiding all traditional saxophone timbres at all costs but rather interspersing a variety of attacks as needed at the moment. It’s always interesting to hear when one ostensibly “definitive” technique (or rejection of same) over time comes to be seen as merely a step along a path. The integration with Mattin’s generally soft electronics is seamless and persuasive. As one of the relative few (I think) who really enjoyed Unami’s toys at last year’s ErstQuake, I regret not being able to watch them in action, but their seasoning, when apparent, adds a very nice touch here. Good, subtle stuff in large part.

Vic Rawlings/Mike Bullock
On that which is best and the best that can be done under the circumstances
Fargone
FAR-045

I’m less enthused about the string bass/cello, heavily augmented with electronics duo of Rawlings and Bullock. Hard to pin down why, exactly. Perhaps it has something to do with picking up traces of classical technique that, for this listener, don’t sit all that well in these contexts. More simply, it might just be that the choices made simply don’t click for me. The pieces tend toward the quiet, with much “small” scrabbling about often set against large, empty areas. But it’s one of those recordings that strikes me more as an episodic sound catalog than a purposive document which, after all, may be all that was intended. It’s an interesting dilemma: there are points on the fourth track, “?”, which remind me superficially of the sounds generated by Unami’s toys but whereas I often find the latter fascinating, I found these more mundane.

Eric Alexandrakis
Electro-Organic
Fargone
FAR-045

The real joker in the bunch, “Electro-Organic” waltzes in straight from the dance floor, all luscious melodies, hot beats, slashing guitars—basically everything you (well, not you or me, but, you know) would’ve wanted in a disco circa 1985 spiced with healthy dollops of noise. Utterly shameless and you have to give the guy credit for that. You’re shaking your head in disbelief at the sheer balls needed to attempt this music but, hell, I guess it’s never too early for techno-pop revisionism and, truth be told, Alexandrakis pulls it off rather well. Relistenings show that some pieces, like “Faith in Avarice” are actually not all that many steps away from poppier Fennesz. The disc falters a bit midway through but begins to pick up steam toward the end, finishing with the entirely endearing “Good Riddance”. I was even a little bit reminded of my old favorites, The Love of Life Orchestra. A fine, sugar plum tonic for the preceding batch.

fargone

Posted by Brian Olewnick on August 14, 2006 7:29 AM