By Nick Ostrum
Weird Morning Meeting is a strange album. On the one hand, the configuration of instrumentalists is unique. The trio includes drummer Tom Malmendier and turntablists and electronicists Otomo Yoshihide and Emilie Škrijelj. I can think of a few drum-turntable and many more drum-electronics releases that have caught my ear in the past – many with drummers Paal Nilssen-Love and Christian Lillinger, who seem drawn to those combos – but I cannot recall a trio outing with this constitution. On the other hand, the product is fantastic, in both the superlative (superb) and unconventional (the stuff of fantasy) senses of the word.
I am not sure I am ever prepared for what any given Yoshihide release will sound like. He has already cast such a wide net, from full-on freak out music to minimalissimus near-silence to pop tunes. On Weird Morning Meeting, he abandons his guitar for a vinyl set-up. Tom Malmendier has been quite active, as of late, in the Creative Sources circle and various combinations with Dutch artists such as Dirk Serries and Colin Webster, as well as with Emilie Škrijelj. For his part, Škrijelj has chalked up collaborations with everyone from Mike Ladd to Lê Quan Ninh to Michael Thieke.
From the first rat-a-tat of the drum and the ricocheting shrieks of electric sound, Weird Morning Meeting had me. The first few minutes comprise various combinations of fire, brimstone, and pounding. Malmendier and Yoshihide hurl out squeaky shards and rumbling tremors, while Škrijelj shows an unconventional level of endurance in his stilted and stuttered beats. Malmendier and Yoshihide engage in a dialog, with one responding to, mimicking, and anticipating the other, as Škrijelj lays a jittery foundation. About 12 minutes in, what sounds like a skipping and distorted Ayler tune enter the fray for a half-minute.
The shock of the initial blast does wear off, but before the listener’s mind can wander too much, the trio slows about 17 minutes in. The density lightens and various scrapes, ringing tones, and what sounds like a motor on a cymbal take over. Texture replaces energy as the driving force. The nuances foreground. This is where the meeting becomes weird rather than explosive. It sounds very much in the electroacoustic vein, with the turntables serving as a unique bridge between the two poles. Malmendier and Yoshihide turn their turntables into some semblance of a closed-circuit board, though some of the textures sound just too raw and vibrative to be solely electronic.
The relative calm lasts about ten minutes before the potential energy the musicians have been building converts to kinetic (and electric). After an extended build-up, the trio expels another eruptive and exhausting release that persists with surprising fervor until the whole tangle unravels to an enthusiastic and merited applause.
Weird Morning Meeting is available as a download and CD on Bandcamp:
PS: In case you are not convinced, you can watch a live performance from March 25 of last year here:
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