Michael Vorfeld/Chris Heenan - Half Cloud, Half Plain

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ES008/ESVAR004

Contrabass clarinet and percussion, including the bowed variety, is a combo that has something going for it from the get-go. There’s a juiciness about the idea of the deep, liquid-y reed pitted against thinner, harsher skins and metals. On “Half Cloud, Half Plain”, Michael Vorfeld and Chris Heenan present five improvisations that are at always least solid and sometimes more than that. In common with several other clarinet players in recent times (notably Kai Fagaschinski) Heenan doesn’t automatically seek to disguise his instrument as much as we’d heard in a good deal of post-AMM improv, allowing its idiosyncrasies to remain largely in evidence. It’s interesting to hear how this approach differs from music we might have heard a dozen or more years ago, the lessons learned in the meantime, including the ability to blend provocatively with the percussion, making the sound of the reed both recognizable yet strangely “new”. Oddly, the second cut, “Darker at the Bottom than the Top” is both successful and a bit more “old-fashioned”, Vorfeld wielding irregular brushes, stroking bells while Heenan uses his axe as an air funnel, but it’s a concise, well-thought out piece. The third and fourth cuts are serviceable if unexceptional but the final work, “Clouds higher than the plain part” is a beaut and really makes the set. Stop/start at the beginning, it coalesces in a series of small whirlpools, drifting to a surprising space of high, fairly tonal rubbings and sympathetic clarinet calls, ending there as though having floated into a sunlit, peaceful pool. Very nice.

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