The music on Primordial is marked by fractured sounds and noises that produce in the listener (at least in me) a kind of restless expectation that is never to be fulfilled. It is as if the focal point of each piece is shifting into a blurred horizon. What we can hear are fragments that recreate new shapes each time - deceiving, stimulating, provoking.
Kevin Miller (electric guitar) and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (electric bass, electric guitar, trumpet and electronics) developed their collaboration on the long distance exchanging files between NYC and Finland thus creating a music that thrives in-between, in the recording gap in time and space of playing-listening-overdubbing.
Just some fragmented impressions to try to give and idea of what their music sounds to me – anyway as it is often the case, this music requires a dedicated listening to let it develop its full potential and once you do so you are rewarded with a ear and brain enriching experience.
'Dark Mantle' opens the album with an energetic guitar duo that develops assembling layers of sound that seem to fray just to recreate themselves in a new shape
'Icy pool' sounds like trio made of two people with the bass and the almost-percussion-like electronics overdubbed by the electric guitar
The closing guitar duo of 'Broken Hands' focuses on the production of contiguous spikes of sound that merge and disassemble to create changing patterns that make me think of crystal formations in collision.
As usual, for better comprehension and to form your own judgement, here is the Bandcamp link to the album.
For more information about Kevin Miller: https://www.youtube.com/@kevinmiller124, https://kevinmillerguitar.com
For more information about Jukka Pekka Kervine: https://www.facebook.com/jkervinen
Now, and I really want to thank both Kevin Miller and Jukka Pekka Kervinen who were so kind to answer some questions about their work together, here is what they said:
Guido Montegrandi: How did the idea of Primordial develop?
Kevin Miller: The music heard on Primordial comes from a duo that Jukka and I have been working on for several years. Jukka and I have actually never met or played music together in-person, and have always created music through file-sharing. Almost every track on Primordial was completed through an extremely simple process which involved Jukka sending me an improvisation, followed by myself adding an improvisation to his improvisation via the process of overdubbing.
Jukka Pekka Kervinen: It was quite simple. We have collaborated with Kevin quite a lot, I think this is our 5th album. Kevin just sent a message if I would be interested of making a new album, and I started right away. There were no titles or theme, I recorded my parts of improvisations one by one, and sent them to Kevin after finishing.
GM: To me, the music on this record inspires a sense of urgency and the titles you choose evoke a kind of precariousness. Did you decide to focus on specific themes and atmospheres or did it just happen to develop that way?
K.M.: I think one of the things I like about the particular chemistry that Jukka and I have together is that sense of urgency. I can’t speak for Jukka, but I definitely feel that the urgency and precariousness you picked up on is something I always cherish in the process of “real” improvising, where you feel like the mechanics which are allowing you to make sound with your instrument are almost separate from the part of you which is a witness to what is happening.
Nothing related to the improvisations was pre-conceived, and the titles are honestly just completely random and from a source that has absolutely nothing to do with this recording or music in general. That being said, I completely get what you’re saying about them sort of informing that sense of precariousness in some way.
J.P.K: Your impression sounds quite exactly what is happening in this album. I work in the edge of the chaos, construct systems I am not able to control, sometimes completely chaotic, mostly non-deterministic, many times so complex that I know beforehand that I am not able to control the system. That applies to instruments as well, I play several, too many to learn them “properly”, so I am focusing to produce sounds rather unconventional manners. The last gig in here Finland I played alto trombone, which I got four days before the gig, not much time to learn the instrument (I have played other brass instruments). But experimenting as much as possible, I always find something interesting, and during to gig I am so focused that I invent even more.
GM: What is your attitude when improvising and was it modified by being, in this case, in different places and time in the process of creation?
K.M.: I think my attitude when improvising always comes down to an acknowledgment that the improvisational process will always work better for myself if I try to surrender to the moment as much as possible. So, in essence, I basically just tried to shut my brain off and listen to Jukka while allowing myself to make sound with guitar. I think, if you have chemistry with the person or people you’re playing with, that’s all you have to do.
For myself, this attitude when improvising wasn’t modified by the fact that we weren’t playing together in real time since my whole mode of being was just listening and reacting to Jukka.
J.P.K.: I have done that a long time, lots of collabs where we are different places. It is somewhat similar to playing together in real life, only different thing is extended time lag, it is not fractions of seconds, it is hours, days, weeks. If Kevin sends me something, I don’t prelisten to it, I decide the instrument or electronic/digital system, and play along and record all in first take, like in real life. When sending the base/first track, I try to imagine the other one there, leave the space, create the atmosphere, something where to continue.
GM: To J.P.K.: As you are also a visual artist and the author of the beautiful cover of this work, what is your opinion about the relation between music and visual expression, do you consider it relevant to your work?
J.P.K.: Sometimes there is a relation, many times they are separated completely. Nowadays, as I mostly work only digital images, I just focus the image not thinking it relations to anything. It depends quite a lot what kind of tools I am using. I write most of the software I use myself, to make music, texts, visual images. Sometimes I use same algorithms for creating sound and images, just adjusting parameters and (digital) materials to different dimensions (time to X-axis, amplitude/events/pitches/etc. to Y-axis, for instance), others might have more open connections, or no connections at all. I have also done quite a lot of “visual music”, graphic scores not meant to be played (there are no instructions), but somewhere between imaginary visual and sound world(s), the see the sound, to hear the visual element.
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