Artur Nowak – Guitar Granulizer
emd.pl 003
Fifty one-minute guitar solos. I admit, presented with such an eventuality, it’s going to be a severe uphill climb to get this listener to sustain interest. Didn’t happen here. Nowak comes out of a Frith/Didkovsky kind of aesthetic mixing vaguely prog-ish lines (often including overtones bearing unpleasant reminders of the Synclavier) with various noise attacks. Obviously, the notion of sustaining any ideas of interest that happen to occur is self-defeated by the structure in place, but it’s not like Nowak attempts to construct mini-kernels of appropriately sized music either. In a superficial sense, there’s a wide array of sounds and approaches presented but more fundamentally, there’s a tired sameness at play, the sequencing apparently arbitrary. Every time a potentially interesting event occurs (and there are several) it’s whisked away and quickly fades into the gray. I don’t get it.
Daniel Menche – Animality
emd.pl 006
With “Animality”, Menche continues down his obsessional pathway of electro-tribalism, offering a 52-minute track dense with altered percussion layered into weaves of disjointed echoes and static pops. It’s pretty good: thick, juicy, bizarre and captivating. There’s one thing that gives me some pause—its overt West African aspect. If only because, to the best of my knowledge, Menche isn’t West African and I pick up whiffs of an exotica component at times. Just as often, however, it sounds like reworkings and dissolutions of Reich’s own Ghanaian appropriations from around the “Drumming” period as layer upon layer of percussion (or faux percussion via electronics—hard to tell sometimes) collapse in upon themselves. As might be expected the ferocity ebbs and flows but the more subdued portions retain as much rhythmic fascination as the avalanches, Menche working unusual beats against one another, often with cinematic effect as sounds from “other” environment impinge on what one has come to think of as the “current” sound world. Things flag here and there and I might have preferred the work at 2/3 its current length but overall, it’s a treat.
Xavier Charles/Robert Piotrowicz - ///
emd.pl 005
A brief but volcanic assault courtesy of Charles’ “vibrating surfaces” (not sure if objects bobbing on inverted speaker cones are still in the mix but they might be) and CD player and Piotrowicz’ synth and guitar, the music on “///” ricochets with abandon from the blistering to the merely caustic, dipping into sundry genres along the way. A dollop of C&W here, laced with super-skronk guitar, kneaded out into a sheet of gristly but semi-cooperative cacophony then baked far, far too long, well beyond the bounds of decency. While I may not be sure of its lasting health value, it offers good, crunchy nuggets o’ noise enough to get you through a rainy afternoon and that’s not so bad.
Package-ophobes avert your delicate eyes, but as can be glimpsed above, these latter two arrive in some fairly nifty togs. You open the sleeve and the disc dangles in space before your eyes. Not a little cool.
Posted by Brian Olewnick on March 28, 2007 3:21 PMthat menche thing is monstrously good.
i'm not typically a big fan of his, but it sits much better in my ears than brian's. (not surprising because i don't have the interest in/ patience for a lot of the minimal poink drone music he relishes in his reviews.)
This record is about PERCUSSION, and when i played it for some non-improv-obsessed folks they found it RIVETING
Posted by: falen turtle at March 28, 2007 4:04 PMWell I'm GLAD you found it RIVETING, I should GIVE it a LISTEN as I LIKE Menche's work quite a bit.
As for "minimal poink drone music" I need to hear this. Are there other forms of Poink drone music that are less minimal too? I need to hear me some poink :)
Posted by: Richard Pinnell at March 28, 2007 4:43 PMBrian - I tend to find "Animality" a tad too brief. I could listen to those tribal percussive rhythms for hours on end....I'm not sure where you pick up the West African aspect? I've not picked up on it.
Posted by: Tom Sekowski at March 28, 2007 6:08 PMTom, reminded me an awful lot of recordings I've heard from around Ghana, especially those that featured large village ensembles. One example might be the "Drums of Death" disc that appeared on Avant a few years back.
As I indicated, the most exciting moments for me on the Menche disc are when I get the sense of the percussive structure collapsing in on itself. I found myself linking that to the way Reich's interference patterns would collide and merge in, say, the bongo portions of "Drumming". Very beautiful.
Perhaps he simply happened across similar rhythms on his own and has no direct knowledge of or interest in Ghanaian or Reichian music, dunno (I doubt it, but you never know). I did, though, find myself thinking of earlier second- or third-hand usages of West African music, some of them big favorites of mine like Bengt Berger's Bitter Funeral Beer. I admit there's a little something nagging me about it, something along the lines of, "Well, if we're here, I'd really rather listen to actual Ghanaians." but I generally manage to put that aside.
I'd agree with Mr. Turtle that this is a primo disc to play for friends who otherwise sneer at the ol' poinky drones.
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at March 28, 2007 6:29 PMlest we forget:
http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/001375.html
Brian - now I get what you're digging at.
I knew there was a certain sort of similarity from another life...
I could fall asleep to Menche's drones...this is definitely something to play on auto-repeat.
Though I hate to admit I had difficulties closing the disc's cover...I had a guy from work help me out [he used to work in materials handling before]
"i'm not typically a big fan of his, but it sits much better in my ears than brian's. (not surprising because i don't have the interest in/ patience for a lot of the minimal poink drone music he relishes in his reviews.)"
Turtle, you may have a point. I too sometimes feel that I've heard enough "minimal poink drone music" (juicy if provocative description!) But I hope you're not criticising Brian for this. It's quite reasonable that he tends to review the particular kind of music he likes best. It takes a lot of time to write a decent review, and I wouldn't want to do it for a kind of music that wasn't pretty high on my list of likes.
Perhaps the problem is that Bagatellen needs reviews submitted by more people with different tastes in the general improv/new music field. This week I received four new releases from the Emanem label, and they're pretty good too. (How's that for a concise bit of reviewing?) But I'd love to read someone's considered opinion of them in detail to consider against my own first impressions.
I don't see that Brian should have to review them in addition to all the ones he does, as I'm sure they're not his thing. But there must be other people out there who could do a decent review of a wider range of improv releases.....
Thanks, Simon. I'd only add to it that I review those releases that labels happen to send me. Occasionally I'll write up something I got on my own as well, even if it's as far afield (and non-poinky) as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It sort of stands to reason that labels will choose to send their wares to writers who they have at least some reason to believe will find them more or less up their alley, which may also go some way toward explaining the (over)abundance of positive reviews here, assuming their discernment of writers' tastes tends to be on the mark.
But by all means, anyone who thinks "their" favorite sub-genre of music is getting short shrift, write it up!
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at March 29, 2007 11:07 AMi definitely wasn't criticising brian for liking what he likes and reviewing what he likes. i just thought it'd be helpful to contextualize this record/ review with what he 'normally' writes about because the menche is heavier, percussive stuff.
i'd like to see more reviewrs with different backgrounds/ tastes than brian's, and i'd like to see them jump the hurdle of his prolificity too!
and richard - yes there is non-minimal poink drone music. think news from the shed.
by the way, i listened to raphiphi (wachsmann, minton, malfatti, 1990) over the weekend and it reminded me that eai actually COULD be acoustic
Posted by: fallen turtle at April 2, 2007 10:44 AMfwiw, what I write about and what I listen to or have listened to are often two very different things. I have tons of "heavier, percussive stuff" that I've known and loved over some 35 years of listening to improvised music from things like Cyrille/Graves or Don Moye to dozens of non-Western albums to Harry Partch, etc. For that matter, I've reviewed Menche before as well, at least twice that I can remember in addition to seeing him perform.
But, as I said above, I too would like to see many more reviewers plying their trade here.
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at April 2, 2007 11:02 AMi wasn't trying to take a crack at you old man. your name around here is practically synonymous with enjoying lowercase eai because that's what you tend to write about.
i'm not interested in how much menche you've written about or heard either (and i never accused you of not hearing enough) - all i was trying to do is point out to people that, given your published penchants, his music (and the style of music on this disc) is probably way down on your list of things to CHOOSE to listen to.
now you can take a nap. some of us youngsters have crocdiles to rescue from the storm drain. Come to think of it, that would be a great activity for listening to "Animality"
Posted by: fallen turtle at April 2, 2007 4:23 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................