The legendary free improvising percussionist Paul Lytton released a couple
of excellent albums earlier this year that I’ve taken a while to get to,
one a studio recording with frequent collaborator Nate Wooley, and the
other a raucous live recording with a trio of German musicians. Both
records are exemplary instances of Lytton’s creativity beyond the standard
drum kit, finding him utilizing his collection of contraptions and
electronics in vast and probing improvisations.
With Known/Unknown we are bestowed with the first Lytton/Wooley
duo release in nigh a decade (their last being 2010’s Creak Above 33 on psi), and their third overall release as such,
the pair having toured and collaborated together on various projects since
the mid-00’s. This set was recorded in Dusseldorf Germany in January 2018
by composer/producer Bojan Vuletic, who also recorded and mixed the duo’s
previous two releases and collaborates frequently with Wooley. As Wooley
states in the liner notes, the duo wanted to record in a studio where the
pair could spread out and he could play amplifier and Lytton could utilize
his contraptions and electronics. The studio space and long standing
acquaintances yield fruit over the albums near eighty minute duration, as
the duo slices the time up into three wonderfully bizarre sonic landscapes.
Like their preceding collaborations there's a good mix of wet and dry
playing, the duo starting off with the former before ultimately digging
deeply into their respective bags of tricks and unleashing some seriously
tasty proposals. Lytton's treatments can be severe and it isn't long into
the first track "Known" that he begins layering understated textures for
Wooley to play against (are there crickets in there somewhere?). There is a
lot of subtle movement over the first half of the piece, with both
musicians making great use of both the acoustic and electric bits of their
arsenals. Over the last half, in conjunction with some electronic
processing, Lytton disperses whistles and all manner of piezo-mic'd goodies
as Wooley haunts the space with croaks and amplified wind gusts. The piece
tightens up towards the end in an intense dialogue of horn and junkyard
percussion. On "Unknown" the same junkyard percussion scampers crisply
along beneath Wooley's heavy diaphonic tones to open the piece. The first
third of the piece expands in an extended and highly textured interplay
where the duo roil like a hot pan of bacon and eggs, emitting all manner of
pops, squeaks, and sizzles. The piece is augmented momentarily by an
intense haze of electronics, which drifts through and inspires more
pointillist interactions between the duo. The final untitled piece is a
(relatively) breezy 10-minute closing statement that is much more condensed
than the previous two but is no less adventurous. It serves as a nice
summation of the sessions and caps off another terrific album from one of
my favorite duos in free improvisation.
Paul Lytton, Joker Nies, Richard Scott, George Wissel - Do they do those in red? (Sound Anatomy, 2020) ****
Recorded at The Loft in Cologne in 2017 and dedicated in the memory of Paul
Rutherford, Do they do those in red? finds Lytton (table top bit
and piecces) in collaboration with German musicians Joker Nies
(electronics), Richard Scott (electronics), and George Wissel (saxophone).
Nies is a sound designer and engineer who is active on the festival circuit
and who has collaborated with John Butcher, Alan Siva, Dave Tucker, among
many others. Richard Scott is an electronic composer and improviser who our
readers might remember from the excellent Grutronic releases on Evan
Parker’s psi imprint in the early 2010’s. And finally reedsman Georg
Wissel, who having recorded or performed in duos with the other
participants individually, is the least common denominator on this album.
On the first track “the nuts and bolts” Lytton employs his table top bits
to create a textural canvas over which the electronics and saxophone
amalgamate. Around the midpoint the density decreases and the electronics
swirl and churn. Lytton briskly re-enters in a flurry of wildly
unpredictable clatter, recapturing the textural emphasis of the piece.
Wissel mainly plays percussively throughout, only reaching a throaty roar
briefly towards the end. “It’s always a questionable activity” slows it all
down and puts the emphasis on the electronics. Again, Lytton and Wissel
play texture over the deep synth washes and colorful electronic fodder. The
next track is the fantastically titled “Taking orders from fucking idiots”,
on which some of the electronic bleep-bloop sounds called to my mind Morton
Subotonick’s Until Spring. On “no man’s land” the group stretches
out on a wild 20-minute improvisation, with touchstones ranging from Evan
Parker’s electroacoustic groups (not surprising considering the members on
this record) to the more aggressively electronic sounds of Kurt Liedwart’s
Mikroton label. The closing piece, and my favorite from this session, “a
constant state of flux or motion”, periodically weaves barely-there
snippets of field recordings and voices into the mix. The track finds
Wissel much more unrestrained during some of the rowdier portions and
Lytton comes to the fore more often here as well with some wild
electroacoustic sounds. Altogether it’s more varied with some lowercase
sections to break-up and balance the stormier ones. Those who like
free-improvised electronics will find much to enjoy in this sonic
phantasmagoria.
I’ve been listening to Mad Dogs for three days straight, and I’m still giddy and disorganized in my thinking about it. My mind gets pulled into ruts when I try to find some clear expression of the music it contains. Sometimes I feel as though clichés are the only way we can get everyone sufficiently close to a piece of music. At least, they’re what we struggle to stop returning to when we brush up against the limitations of language, especially when faced with music that really connects. I’ll only let one really easy one go for you: embarrassment of riches. Five discs and over four and half hours of music captured at the 5th Krakow Jazz Autumn Festival in 2010. Calling this the Barry Guy New Orchestra is sort of misleading, but forgivably so. “Small Formations” is offered as a qualifier, and the smallest formations on display are as small as they get: solo sets by Agustí Fernández and Mats Gustafsson. It may just be that the New Orchestra name is the easiest rubric to jam the musicians of Mad Dogs into, though they all certainly interface in a world much more expansive than that.
You see, there’s a great thing that happens when the New Orchestra is broken down into small subsets: you get all kinds of other high-profile, well-received groups like the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio, the Tarfala trio, the Gustafsson/ Fernández duo, Fernández /Guy duo, and on and on (see full list of line-ups below). What makes Mad Dogs such a resounding success is that any of the five discs could easily have stood as a solid album on its own: the restless clatter of Parker/Guy/Lytton, who claim the entirety of the second disc; the absolutely balls-to-the-wall fourth disc, which features a surprisingly emotional set by the Tarfala trio, followed by a reprise of Parker/Guy/Lytton, this time with Fernández added; or the wide-ranging third disc, which features Hans Koch and Per-Åke Holmlander with a subtle dual percussion backup, a beautiful duo with Maya Homburger and Lytton, and the truly critical mass of Fernández and Gustafsson, who build to an almost unbearable crescendo.
This is not the world of microsound or the quiet smears of instruments and electronics that mark more recent branches of improvisation. This is the physical, acoustic collision of virtuosity and musical ingenuity, the raw synergy of musicians recognized as masters of the form. There’s an urgency spanning across these discs, as though Mad Dogs is making a case for the very legitimacy of free improvisation itself. Intentionally or not, the set is presented in an expanding fashion, building in both size and intensity, launching with the dull, muted thuds of Fernández’s solo piano set and culminating in a cathartic orchestral blowout with an octet whose bombastic density would make Varèse blush. In between, all manner of duos, trios, and quartets make their showings. Especially interesting is the opportunity to contrast the three different sax trios present throughout (Parker/Guy/Lytton is a whole different beast than Gustafsson/Guy/Strid).
In László Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance, the defeated musicologist Mr. Eszter, distraught at the fraud of equal temperament (which fakes the elegance of pure tuning), decries that the “world […] was too full of the noises of banging, screeching and crowing, noises that were simply the discordant and refracted sounds of struggle, and that this was all there was to the world if we but realized it.” It may well be that the world can be heard in bangs and screeches and crows; however, not all are the product of struggle. Some arise from the joys of cooperation, exploration, innovation, even downright Dionysian celebration and excess. These are the bangs and screeches of Mad Dogs, and they are a rallying cry for a world (or at least music) we can be proud of. Line-ups featured:
Agustí Fernández (solo)
Agustí Fernández/Barry Guy
Mats Gustafsson (solo)
Johannes Bauer/ Per-Åke Holmlander /Hans Koch
Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton
Trevor Watts/Johannes Bauer
Hans Koch/ Per-Åke Holmlander /Raymond Strid/Paul Lytton
Trevor Watts/Barry Guy/Raymond Strid
Maya Homburger/Paul Lytton
Agustí Fernández/Mats Gustafsson
Mats Gustafsson/Barry Guy/Raymond Strid
Agustí Fernández/Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton
Evan Parker/Paul Lytton
Trevor Watts/Herb Robertson/Hans Koch
Agustí Fernández/Johannes Bauer/Raymond Strid/Trevor Watts/Herb Robertson/ Per-Åke Holmlander /Mats Gustafsson/Paul Lytton
This recording from Paul Lytton and Evan Parker marks their golden jubilee
as musical collaborators and good friends, the title serving as a
tip-of-the-hat to their first duo record Collective Calls (Urban) (Two
Microphones) which was originally released on Incus in 1972 after they'd
already played together for a couple of years. I've spent a good deal of
time the last few weeks enjoying both albums and noting similarities and
differences, and so it follows that this review is colored by the lense of
that exercise. Gone are the electronics and prickly intensity of the 72'
sessions, interchanged here with distinctively refined technique and a
confederation secured through the blood-and-guts of a half century of
collaboration.
The material that comprises the original set was recorded in a loft space
in London over the course of two days. And while the recording quality is
very good, the loft space and analogue equipment definitely color the
ambiance. The current album was recorded at a studio in Chicago over the
course of a single day, presumably using modern digital devices and
systems. This difference manifests in a similar fashion to viewing old
photographs of young men having fun in an informal situation, versus
crystal clear digital portraits of the two masters they've become (though I
doubt there was any lack of fun in the latter sessions). The song titles
are snippets of text from Elias Canetti's autobiography "Party in the
Blitz", which is set during the London Air raids of WW2. Many of Canetti's
references are to Hampstead, where Lytton spent his adolescence. Parker
said that Lytton found some of the passages rather moving, having lived
away from England longer than he lived in it.
On "...the dissent, that began with the Quakers?..." rustling percussion is
tinged with breathy calls and functions as a sort of rhythmic, staccato
parley between the duo as they establish their footing. The next piece
"...confused about England." finds Lytton quietly working over his trap
set, opening up once Parker reveals himself with pad clatter and his unique
constructions. On the third piece, "England feels very remote to me."
Parker hints at snatches of melody, seeping Coltrane reconstructed through
fractals. Lytton likewise bears tinges of Rashid Ali...perhaps I'm
projecting, perhaps not, you can judge for yourself. On "Alfreda was always
especially cordial to me" the salt and pepper percussion lays down a
supporting structure for the forward and backward melodies, stout and daft,
neither coming or going (both coming and going, both forward and backward).
"...becoming transfigured.." dredges descriptive saxophone passages in a
menagerie of breakables. On "The bonfires of Hampstead Heath." the bustle
of barely there skins and pads gradually accumulates energy, and then boils
over. For "What has it become entangled…" Parker strings together hefty
metallic globules, varying in tonal color, set against the thudding
counterpoint of Lytton's kick drum. "How tight knit was England then!"
starts with the slow decay of metallic soundings and reed pops bubbling
from a spring, beckoning the listener downstream with it's momentum, and
eventually roiling into whitewater. On "...beheading their own King…" the
saxophone floats on the sizzle of the percussion before abruptly submerging
and going quiet amid the lingering effervescence. The last track "Each
thing, the one, the other and both together would amount to the truth."
emerges slowly from silence, Parker envisaging in a single breath over
Lytton's humidity, after which the duo dovetails into epilogue.
Friends for the sake of friendship making sounds for the sake of sounds.
Enduring the passing of seasons and the chasm of distances and wheeling
back around now and again to strike sparks in shadow, to rekindle the
flame. When asked to share the story of the duo's lengthy history (which
Bill Shoemaker's excellent liner notes highlight), Parker eluded to a
(brilliant) piece by the poet and music journalist Paul Haines (whose book
of collected works "Secret Carnival Workers", I might add, was co-edited by
our own Stuart Broomer), also called "
Jubilee
", which includes the following passage, which struck me as an appropriate
conclusion to this piece:
"
All sounds are immigrants of course (The first thing we hear, the last
thing we recognize?). None is intent on creating a past; in fact, for a
sound to be curative (an attribute highly esteemed by them), it must be
capable of being forgotten differently, which may explain why some
sounds are sent out uncorrected: To check."
Momentum 4 is a box set of duo recordings by Ken Vandermark, recorded at the Elastic Sound Studios in Chicago in 2015 and 2019, and at NYC's Stone in January 2018. The idea was to capture rare duo performances - even if the musical relationships have been ago long established. In our review, we have deviated from the order of the discs and begin with Keith's assessment of discs 2 and 3 where Vandermark is in duet with electronics player Ikue Mori and pianist Kris Davis. Then, we'll come back to my thoughts on his duets with drummers Paul Lytton and Hamid Drake, and finally bassist William Parker.
--
What makes Vandermark so special is not just the distinctive character of
his musicianship but his character itself, and the feedback loop between
them. His writing articulates an openness to listen and to learn; his
playing demonstrates it by giving others generous space and apt
communication. The subversion of personal patterns is a constant motif.
This creative giant, who should by now be comfortable and confident in
every move, is in such a position exactly because he’s purposefully not.
For this reason I gravitated towards these discs, which feature musicians
that don’t have a decades-long rapport with Vandermark like Lytton, Parker,
and Drake. Freely-played duos with less-than-familiar musicians seems like
excellent laboratory conditions for witnessing the instant development of
Vandermark.
Disc 2: Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori first played with Vandermark during his first Stone residency in
2016, documented on Momentum 1: Stone, with Nate Wooley and Joe
Morris. It was a strong set among many strong sets, just like this one,
which was recorded at Vandermark’s second Stone residency in 2018 (along
with the Davis and Parker discs). For 46 minutes, split across two tracks,
Mori is on laptop and Vandermark is on saxophone. Mori’s software and
technique can generate a chimerical barrage of percussion, displaying many
faces of beat and rhythm simultaneously, like a digital drumming
hecatoncheires; pulses created by droning pitches’ oscillating frequencies,
electric purrs and percussive flutters, glitched clicks and cavernous water
drops, and more recognizable drum machine sounds can occur closely
together. But the timbres are often soft and the volume is often low, so it
feels non-aggressive. And though this seemingly living percussive
environment sometimes flirts with becoming ambient, Mori avoids this with
judicious strokes of sound surrounded by plenty of space. Perhaps because
of its tirelessness, or perhaps because of its innumerable lines in
contrast to the mostly monophonic sax, the software environment can feel
like a wall which Vandermark throws himself against, starting the set with
energetic bursts of varying technique as if to test it.. It’s difficult to
tell whether my ear adapts or Vandermark does or both but, as the set
continues, Vandermark’s own high pitch frequency oscillations, snaking
sinusoidal multiphonic lines, and glitchy click and tongue slap pulses sync
well with Mori, phasing in and out of counterpoint. It’s perhaps the most
rhythmic set I’ve heard from this rhythmic saxophonist. Some other
Vandermark characteristics, like his deep vibrato and moody, smoky, soulful
melodies, are here, and there’s a couple stunning moments where Mori’s
environment focuses into a booming four on the floor beat over which
Vandermark rips loose a freeform freakout. Vandermark’s instrument allows
greater agility in communication, but Mori’s software is surprisingly
mobile itself, allowing a conversation as lively as the other acoustic sets
here. My favorite thing Vandermark has released all year, and it’s been
quite a year for him.
Disc 3: Kris Davis
Kris Davis first played with Vandermark in 2016 during the sessions for Sing Me Some Cry, with Eric Revis and Chad Taylor. They reunite
here for their second recording, for 3 tracks across 53 minutes, with Davis
on piano and Vandermark on all sax again. The chemistry of this set belies
their time spent together. They are rapidly responsive to each other.
Davis’ muted rhythms and hammered keys, beautiful boppy chords and
melodies, free flights, thunderous reverberations, and clock strikes and
twinkling glissandos inside the piano are matched well with Vandermark’s
rhythmic clicks, sultry soul tunes, energetic free frenzies, and resonant
vibrato. They follow each other’s ebbs and flows through volume, space, and
time and also up and down their instruments registers like friends who
finish each others sentences. It’s not just a communicative match, but
Davis also seems to share Vandermark’s rhythmic essence and a similar
inside-outside aesthetic. The set seems so natural, you’ll wonder why they
didn’t start playing together sooner.
- Keith Prosk
--
Disc 1: Paul Lytton; Disc 5: Hamid Drake
In the thoughtful booklet accompanying the box set, Vandermark talks about the impact that the work of the first generation of British improvisers, who broke free from the parameters of jazz and developed their own musical language, has had on him. Lytton’s history itself goes back to the late 60’s in London and he has a long history of playing with the musicians of from this movement. Vandermark recalls a particularly revelatory conversation with Lytton where he wanted to draw on what he had learned from the music, to which the drummer explained that the Saxophonist's playing "implied a beat."
It seems that if we were to look at the work - at least on these two discs and the one with William Parker, which I’ll get to in a moment - we are indeed contending with rhythmic instincts that are an integral part of the musician's DNA. This is also why I think I have always enjoyed Vandermark’s work so much. No matter how 'out there' he may get on the sax or clarinet, there is a still deep rhythmic notion that holds everything together. Starting this collection with the Lytton duo recording seems just right.
What you hear are a pair who have worked together - on and off - for two decades. Lytton and Vandermark recorded English Suites back in 1999 (Wobbly Rail), he appears on 2013’s Nine ways to read a bridge (Not Two) in a trio with trumpeter Nate Wooley/Vandermark, as well as on a 2004 Okkadisk release, CINC. There are others, but more important is what they are doing now (or rather, in 2015 when they met at the Elastic Sound Studios in Chicago), which is nothing less than captivating. Lytton's playing is crisp and urgent. He provides ample support for Vandermark to let loose with a fury of ideas. From the moment the first track begins something is happening. It’s a little tepid, maybe for 10 seconds, then the percussive roles begin, no straight ahead time, but an insistent pulse pushing the saxophonist. The communication between the two is audible, there are slight pauses, almost like Vandermark is turning to Lytton and asking “you good?” Their track, ESS3, which is the longest, plays strongly with the dynamics. A long stretch finds Vandermark working the periphery of his instrument, while Lytton provides small, nearly inaudible, accents. A brilliant start to the collection.
Hamid Drake is a sympathetic drummer. His work with William Parker stands in my mind as a one of the most important rhythm sections in contemporary free jazz, and it is interesting to hear the two of them working separately here with Vandermark. Interestingly enough, I believe that Vandermark and Drake's musical relationship is around the same length as Drake and Parker's, as Vandermark notes in the booklet, they first played together in 1994, which resulted in the DKV trio with bassist Kent Kessler. Interestingly, Vandermark and Drake have not play as a duo much until this session date at Elastic Sound Studio.
The long term relationship bears fruit on the closing disc of the set where the duo explores the full spectrum of sounds and approaches. From the opening bars, Drake plays with a calmer energy than Lytton - not to say he avoids faster tempos and denser patterns, but the approach is different. I especially like the exploratory part of the track ESS 2B, here Vandermark's clarinet tone is warm and reedy, though at some moments shrill, and Drake is deep in the background, providing choice accents. A similar moment occurs on ESS 2E, but this time Vandermark emerges from the search, delivering lithe and urgent melodic lines over Drake's expert accompaniment. In between, ESS 2D features the baritone sax, with Vandermark displaying his signature deep pocket - insistent, direct, and friendly - along side Drake's similarly earthy solid drumming.
Disc 4: William Parker
Save the best for last? Hard to say, as this is overall such a strong set of music, but the duet with William Parker is certainly a strong contender. Again the booklet, Vandermark discusses his association with Parker, mentioning how it goes back twenty years to when they worked together in Peter Brotzmann's Chicago 10tet. Parker is a bassist who, again to my mind, can hardly do wrong. His playing, like Vandermark's, is a mix of searching and driving. The 15 minute mark in the first track, Stone 3A, is tender and warm, Vandermark's clarinet is light and the bassist's double stops and gentle pauses give the moment a perfect blend of motion and support. Likewise, in the Parker penned track 'Eventual (for Sunny Murray)', which was delivered the month after the legendary drummer's passing, the mutual sense of loss is palpable as the duo digs deep into the sound textures, even during the pulsating moments.
When this fourth installment of the Momentum series came out a few months ago, I quickly jumped at the chance to review it with my colleague Keith. I had thoroughly enjoyed the original set of recordings from Ken Vandermark's week at the Stone in January 2016 (and had had the chance to attend some of the concerts) and after the intensity of volumes 2 and 3, I was ready for more. Suffice to say, this is a heavy set of music, there is a lot to digest, and a lot to savor. I've had been listening to it for months now, repeatedly, and I hope you have been - or will soon be - as well.
End of the year. Time for judgments. Nate Wooley is my favourite 2012 trumpet player. An overview of all the astounding releases he has given us during this year could justify a monographic review of many pages. I realized my admiration even better after this impressive work done in collaboration with the veteran and pioneer drummer Paul Lytton, and featuring Ikue Mori and Ken Vandermark as well. The suppleness of registers and styles that Wooley deploys, with results always at ease, is really mind-boggling. He can easily switch from pure experimentalism delving into rumorism à la Toshinori Kondo and Axel Dörner (to be more frequently found in his solo productions or in superb collaborations with the other young trumpet phenomenon Peter Evans) to more traditional and sentimental phrasings à la Magnus Broo. I’ve never seen him live, so I really wonder which kind of amplifying settings he adopts to achieve this sound.
Obviously the 35 minutes long “Free Will, Free Won’t” is an exhaustive manifesto of such an attitude. We find blasting open notes sounding like scratches on vinyl, raucous and screeching passages with the marching Lytton’s drums running after. Some unbelievably long notes achieved with circular breathing transfigure in drone carpets. In the meanwhile Lytton amuse himself with thousands of Mikado sticks - I like to think he’s indeed using these - hitting every inch of skin, metal and wood he can reach. For many minutes in the second half of this composition Wooley doesn’t produce anymore a single recognizable note. He plays instead with the air silently blown in his instrument’s tubing.
Ikue Mori creates in “Abstractions and Repetitions” a minimal electronics scenario where Lytton inserts subtle and far interludes of clangors and beats while Wooley seems to explore the vocal potentialities of trumpet. As Meredith Monk could do. I personally consider not to be missed the last four minutes of intensive dialogue between Mori and Lytton in “Berlyne’s Law”.
“Men Caught Staring” opening disc two is another gem offering the duo’s total music vision, comfortably oscillating between innovation (watch out for Wooley's distorted synth and “Vocoder” starting around minute ten or the gibberish effect in the final part!) and solid, awe-inspiring free interplay as in the short and perfect “The Information Bomb”.
The presence of Vandermark’s sax starting from “Automatic” drives Wooley and Lytton to more traditional but not less remarkable soundscapes. Brasses face each other through long sentences joining in emotional crescendos. Lytton is now set free for long soloing and when the other two musicians come back are clearly influenced from the rhythmic environment he has built, choosing at first a short syncopated conversation, and then intensifying the groove up to the final outburst.
This is a live recording. Sound quality is outstanding.
Quantity is seldom a per se value, but we have here one hundred and nine minutes of pure, passionate, involving high quality music. I regret to not have included this in my personal 2012 Best Album List.
Sincere thanks as a listener to Clean Feed for its productive efforts in the field of free jazz. It is, in my opinion, the label that has contributed more than any other to the production of memorable music during 2012. Music that will certainly last for many years to come.
Take a look to an excerpt of the gig documented in disc two (and know why sometimes listening a well mixed and mastered record is better than attending to a concert!)
2023 was a year of great loss for the world of free jazz and free improvised
music. Not only have great musicians passed away, but also label operators
such as FMP's Jost Gebers. Martin Davidson also died at the beginning of the
month, a man without whom the British improv scene in particular would have
been unthinkable. Davidson was responsible for
EMANEM, one of the most
influential labels of the last five decades, which was also the parent label
of Evan Parker’s Psi label.
Many musicians appreciated Davidson not only for his technical expertise in
mastering, but above all for his passion for this music and for his sharp
humour. His releases were not only professional, they were a testament to his
dedication to the craft and the artists he worked with. The careers of Derek
Bailey, Anthony Braxton, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Evan Parker or John
Russell - especially their reception in Europe - would certainly have been
different without him.
Damon Smith and Henry Kaiser have published a musical obituary for him, which
you can see here:
We have decided to refer to some milestones of EMANEM label.
Anthony Braxton / Derek Bailey: Duo (1974)
Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey were not a duo that would have immediately
been described as a match made in heaven in 1974. Braxton, despite his very
brittle philosophy of improvisation, represented an undeniably American
approach, while Bailey was a singular phenomenon even among the abstract
Brits. Moreover, both were in a transitional phase. For a while, Bailey had
concentrated almost exclusively on extended techniques, pitches and chords
were of no concern to him. It almost seemed as if the guitar was just a means
to an end. And then they both came up with an album that placed great emphasis
on truly collective improvisation and listening to each other in order to
create something completely new and unique. That may sound trite today, but
the music still sounds so incredibly fresh and homogeneous that you can’t tell
how old it is. What is more, it has one of best album covers of all time.
Barry Guy / Howard Riley / Philipp Wachsmann – Improvisations Are Forever
Now (1977 - 79)
Martin Davidson has not only helped new talents to make their way, EMANEM has
also re-released outstanding albums on CD for which one would otherwise have
had to pay exorbitant prices on vinyl.
Improvisation Are Forever Now (1977 - 79
) is one such album. As I’m a big fan of all three musicians anyway
(especially Howard Riley, who I think is always underrated), the choice of
this album is no surprise. Riley is the rhythmic and harmonic center of
gravity, relying heavily on his trademark clusters. Wachsmann and Guy scrub,
saw and scrape around this center with their pizzicatos and glissandos. Like
many EMANEM releases, there is a smorgasbord of contrasts here too, with
meditative sections and fast-paced musical chases alternating at an incredible
speed. The music has often been referred to as “insect music“, but the
pejorative connotation contained therein could not be more wrong. Instead,
there is great expressivity and energy to marvel at, as well as an extremely
subtle shaping of the forms presented.
John Butcher/Phil Durrant/Paul Lovens/Radu Malfatti/John Russell: News
From the Shed (1989/2005)
Another great re-issue. News From The Shed was something like my
initiation into what is called improv - and it was radically different from
what I knew as (free) jazz or new classical music. With improv there was no
planned structure, no preconceived form, the pieces only have the form that
they develop spontaneously and the listener has to search for such structures,
textures or parameters themselves. It was listening as work, which is why I
was very disturbed at first, but then found more and more pleasure in
discovering something new with every listen. The music by John Butcher
(saxophones), Phil Durrant (violin and electronics), Paul Lovens (drums,
cymbals and saw), Radu Malfatti (trombone, zither and accessories) and John
Russell (acoustic guitar) is metallic and brittle, but then again organic and
real. Crashing and creaking sounds are contrasted with quiet, long tones, it
takes a while to discover the beauty of the music, but it is undeniably there.
The recording was originally released on the Acta label in 1989. This CD
reissue from EMANEM includes four additional tracks from the same sessions,
which are of the same high quality as the original album and complement it in
that they include some effects not heard elsewhere.
Paul Rutherford - The Gentle Harm of the Bourgeoisie
Well, in the album's liner notes Martin Davidson himself said that
this one “is probably the finest solo trombone album ever made.” I tend
to agree with him, along with Derek Bailey who said “…this is still the best record of solo free improvising you are likely to
find.” The liner notes of the CD reissue are full of this sort of praise. I’m still
not positively sure that Rutherford wasn’t from a different planet altogether.
This album is gloriously wild, subtle, innovative, and funny in all the ways it
needs to be - and it still sounds totally fresh. A record for the ages, and a
testament to Paul Rutherford’s unique genius.
Evan Parker & Paul Lytton - Three Other Stories (1971-1974) Evan Parker & Paul Lytton - Two Octobers (1972-1975)
Between 1972 to 1977 Evan Parker and Paul Lytton released 3 albums of wild,
experimental electro-acoustic free improvisation before their duo morphed into
a trio with Barry Guy and took on a life of its own. The early Parker/Lytton
duo albums are worlds apart from their work with Guy, including their work
with electronic sounds and noise (with the exception of the first trio album)
and can be seen as precursors for Parker and Lytton’s future work in their
Electro-Acoustic ensembles. After 1976’s “Ra” there was nothing to hear from
the duo until these two releases compiled several live and studio performances
from 71-75 into two volumes of never-before-heard manna. These were released
in 95 & 96, respectively, and at that time their previous duo releases
were long out of print, so these came as a revelation to many.
Evan Parker, Paul Lytton, Paul Rutherford, & Hans Schneider - Waterloo
1985
This one is just a great set altogether with a great quartet, one that sees Parker and Lytton with Rutherford and bassist Hans Schneider - who was working with Lytton at the time - filling in for Barry Guy. The recording is from Le Festival Jazz Et Musiques Improvisees in Waterloo on August 17, 1985. Parker and Rutherford sound amazing, the subtle interactions and playful suggestions keep you coming back. You can tell Lytton and Schneider had a great rapport at the time and it comes through in their careful playing. An excellent record that I highly recommend.
Spontaneous Music Ensemble –Bare Essentials 1972-3
There are some recordings that have a big impact on you, the listener. Quite
rightfully I should add. Whenever I think about the importance of Martin
Davidson’s Emanem, what comes first in mind is Face to Face by SME –a duo at
the time consisting, as always, John Stevens and Trevor Watts.
This cd came out in 2007 and is proof that there was a lot more radical
material for us to listen. And a label to publish it, a label dedicated to
free improvisation. Emanem supported this kind of musical practice without
referring to any kind of trends or hip sounds. Connecting Stevens’ liner notes
from Face to Face with this double cd, we discover the essentials in non
idiomatic music making. Non-hierarchical, produced on the spot, on a constant
dialogue between the players, who share a wealth of ideas.
It’s much more than just Essentials, it’s music of the highest order and we
have to thank Martin Davidson for letting it out to the world.
John Carter and Bobby Bradford - Tandem 1 (Enamem 4011) & Tandem 2 (Emanem
4012) (released in a remastered single edition as Emanem 5204)
John Carter and Bobby Bradford had a rare and beautiful partnership. Musical
soulmates, their deep connection led to the recording of some of the most
important records in the history of American free jazz, drawing from folk
music, blues, American history, and the developments in new music happening
from the 1950s all the way until Carter’s death in 1991. But no album quite
captures the spark between them as effectively as Tandem, which
presents two full concerts, a lengthy set from April 30, 1982, recorded at
Worcester’s Piedmont Center for the Arts and a shorter set from October 20,
1979, when the duo played before the Art Ensemble of Chicago at UCLA's
Schoenberg Hall. The sets feature Carter and Bradford playing and improvising
on highlights from their catalog, including “Echoes From Rudolph’s,” “Circle,”
“Angles,” “Woodman’s Hall Blues,” “And She Speaks,” and more. Each of them
takes a solo turn, on clarinet and cornet respectively, and these plus the
duets are utterly sublime. The two takes of Carter’s classic “Woodman’s Hall
Blues” are must-hear for anyone who has spent time with his unique voice. Well
worth also checking out Martin Davidson’s own writing for the liner notes,
available online at
http://www.emanemdisc.com/E5204.html
-----
Reviews by us of Emanem albums (in reverse chronological order). The label
released around 258 titles since its creation in 1974 (including re-issues and
compilations).
"The EMANEM label was founded in 1974 in order to publish music too
good and too adventurous to be considered by most other labels. In particular,
it seemed (and still seems) vitally important to document improvised music that
does not use the vagaries of notation as a (somewhat imperfect) means of
preservation. EMANEM features improvised music at its very best -
unadulterated new music for people who like new music unadulterated. Every CD is
a labour of love - every one an important masterpiece - too good to discontinue.
(Why waste time, effort and resources on anything less?) Most feature total
improvisation, but some use partly composed material. The presentation of each
CD and this website concentrates on clarity (as does the music) - there is no
desire to emulate the current fashion of obscuring and/or omitting vital
information. But then, Emanem is not about fashion, it is about substance."
Emanem is not RAP!
"I have been using the name Emanem since 1974, when the rapper who
subsequently chose a similar name was only one year old. Therefore, if
anything, it is he who is trying to cash in on my reputation, not vice
versa. If you find this situation confusing, then please ask the rapper to
change his nom de rap. Every so often I get requests from budding
rappers to judge their rap. I reply that I am not qualified to do so, but
that I can tell them that their spelling is poor.
I once received an
email from a lady in Greece saying that she loved me, but she lost interest when
I pointed her to my website!"
Evan Parker had a very prolific year in terms of material releases and
those we’ve covered thus far have impelled some praising write-ups from
members of the collective (Lee’s
Weekertoft reviews, Eyal’s
Topographie Parisienne review, and Stuart’s
Chiasm review, specifically), and still we are left with somewhere in the ballpark of
ten or more releases without comment. The spectrum of his recent releases
encompass the majority of his interests, with recordings both new and
archival, from albums in collaboration with old friends to his signature
solo soprano work to his spectacular electronic phantasmagorias; we got a
little bit of everything. I’ve reviewed them in no particular order, and
not all of the releases include Parker as the featured artist, however his
participation is the common denominator in these write-ups. My hope is that
these reviews can shed a bit of light for those who don’t know where to
start or spotlight them for folks who were unaware of some. Special thanks
to Colin for his help in leaving no stone unturned.
Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Paul Lytton - Concert in Vilnius (NoBusiness, 2019) *****
Whenever I listen to this trio, their group intuition and their shared
complex musical language (which they have refined and coagulated via
practice and the passage of time) never cease to bring a smile to my face.
Having played together since at least 1980, and with Parker and Lytton
collaborating long before that, they’ve built a vast catalogue of records
together over the years. I’ll spare you any otiose rumination on whether
they constitute proper free improv because of their familiarity and
long-built rapport, as I think Parker states it best himself in the program
notes for his 1992 show in Rotterdam “I think that in that debate at times
sight of the wood was obscured by the trees. Certainly by the time a
theoretical position is arrived at in which it is thought the term
‘non-idiomatic improvisation’ is the best description of something as
instantly recognizable as Derek Bailey's guitar playing we have reached
what E. P. Thompson called in another context ‘the terminus of the
absurd’.” What I will say is that I love the music and I go out of my way
to get ahold of any new or old material the trio issues.
“Part 1” starts with the familiar sound of Guy’s slinking, popping
pizzicato dancing with the polished fluidic language of Parker, his nuanced
and gradual attack smoothing the flickering edges of his playing, as Lytton
gently and perfectly stitches it all together with irregular rolls and the
rapid thump of his kick drum. With this trio it’s all about the interplay;
the implicit telepathy of a group that has collaborated long enough for
their roots to become entwined as a sentient bundle. Reaching for a
metaphorical precipice of the potential for reed and brass, for gut and
wood, for stick and stretched skin, a vast rippling sculpture garden of air
pressure variation versus time. The second offering finds Parker unfurling
golden spirals of circular breathing early in the track. Guy's playing
broods with a deep resonant menace, intermittently striking sparks with his
severe arco and violent plucking and slapping. Lytton is a maelstrom of
crackling energy, more combustion than creature, heavily working every
strikable surface of his kit. There is a brief remiss about halfway through
before Parker leads them up and out with some of the tightest, textured
improvisation you're likely to hear. Maybe my favorite piece ever by this
trio...maybe. It's as refined a distillation of their expression as you're
ever likely to find.
On Part 3 Guy pummels his prepared bass, his aggressive snap, strum, and
rattle is a force of nature served solo across the first quarter of the
piece. Eventually Lytton's skittering percussion begins to accent the
controlled chaos of Guy's playing before he really sinks his teeth in and
gets the sticks moving. Parker doesn't reveal himself until the midpoint,
entering the fray with clicking and popping and harmonic squawk, segueing
into an eruption of chrysopoeia over the latter half of the piece, swelling
in volume and intensity, his breathing and measure staccato a roiling
cipher issued to his band mates who meet the upsurge head-on in a colossal
wave of sound. Part 4 closes the album with a fragment, or brief conclusion
almost for show. A gorgeous little nugget of sound brimming with what's
been stated, as if to show that they open it up like a steam valve once the
boiler is hot. Their creativity flows like a river here, and this might be
their very best offering depending on your tastes.
Camera phone footage of Part 3 via Youtube:
Evan Parker, Agustí Fernández, Ivo Sans - Locations (Vector, 2019) ****½
On “Locations” Parker is joined with a longtime collaborator in Catalonian
pianist Agustí Fernández and the fantastic, assiduous percussionist and
artist Ivo Sans who plays with Fernández in the SAI trio with dancer Sònia
Sánchez, and has also performed in duos and other groups with Parker,
amongst his numerous projects. Parker and Fernández have been working their
chemistry over the last couple of decades in various undertakings. They’ve
released music as duo, in trio with Herb Robertson, as well as with the
Parker/Guy/Lytton trio. Both men are participants in Barry Guy's New
Orchestra project and Fernández has also played as a member of Parker's
Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Here we are presented with a set of terrific
studio-recorded improvisations captured in Barcelona in 2017.
On “Location 2” Fernández’s piano broods; a bed of low register tones
dredged in staggered runs of the upper. Parker's playing is in his classic
vein, fractals of timbre and rapidly tongued chatter varying in attack from
smooth and woody to a hectic squawk of bird call with trailing harmonics
and ghostly false notes. Sans' percussion strikes the right balance between
texture and timing with his rubato rolls and groaning cymbal grima. For
“Location 6” Fernández goes directly for the offal of his piano, maniacally
ripping and scraping at the innards. Parker and Sans are mindful of his
exertions and play at the periphery of his outburst, adding thoughtful
contrasts of varying timbre. “No” begins quietly with some light wooden
sounds from the drums and a scraping rumble from the keys over Parker's pad
clatter. The intensity increases linearly towards the conclusion, with
sails unfurled towards the end, the atmosphere full of activity. Parker and
Fernandez duel briefly at the beginning of “Location 3” until Evo enters
with a flurry of agitated percussion that re-establishes the direction of
the improvisation. Fernandez goes berserk, attacking his instrument and
wringing ferocious cascades of notes from the insides. Parker follows suit
and chuffs up his tone considerably, keeping tempo with the aggressive
rhythms of the piece. A brief dance between piano and drums followed by a
stanza of Parker's infinite breath and the trio closes with some very nice
fanfare.
“Location 4” is a short, subtle piece of abstract rolls and cymbal work,
barely there saxophone hiss and harmonics, and the half muted thumping of a
piano played as percussion instrument, extremely tasty stuff. “Location 5”
gives me the immediate impression that Fernández has been buried alive
inside his piano, as it issues a lot of near unidentifiable low end
activity originating far away from the ivories portion of the instrument.
Evo's playing is busy but remains low intensity, he keeps the sticks moving
swiftly about his kit whilst Parker provides a writhing contrast by
tactically uncoiling his smooth edged runs bringing to mind an immense
snake worming its way through jagged underbrush and frayed mulch.
“Resolution” is a short piece that swells up gorgeously to seal the album.
Rattling percussion, full broad piano, and Parker's golden horn it’s
absolutely the comeliest piece on the album, like the smell of the open air
on the morning after a violent storm.
Hideaki Shimada, Evan Parker, Roger Turner - Kanazawa Duos (Pico, 2019) ****½
On "Kanazawa Duos" the Japanese violinist Hideaki Shimada duals with Parker
on soprano saxophone on the first cut and free improvising titan Roger
Turner on the second. Hideaki has released albums of layered,
electronically manipulated solo violin since the mid-80's under the moniker
Agencement as well as working with other experimental Japanese musicians
such as Tetuzi Akiyama. Like Evan Parker the English percussionist Roger
Turner has been at it since the beginning, working closely with Lol
Coxhill, Phil Minton, John Russell, Carlos Zingaro, Annette Peacock, Fred
Frith, Cecil Taylor, Parker, Derek Bailey, Keith Rowe,
William Parker, Paul Rutherford, Joelle Leandre, Marilyn Crispell, Henry
Grimes, and many, many others. He's forged relationships with many Japanese
artists throughout the years such as Toshinori Kondo, Otomo Yoshihide,
Kazuhisa Uchihashi, and Chino Shuichi, playing with the latter in the 2009
Hana-Bi shows in London. So now that we have everyone's credentials in
order, let's move along to the music.
Like the eponymous painting style “Spring Tachism” bursts with energy and
expression, Hideaki providing his via electronically manipulated fiddle and
Parker on the soprano saxophone. Hideaki squelches and hums swell and
decay, and it's hard to identify his violin as such as it's mainly
masticated by his processing. His soundcraft provides a certain amount of
grit for Parker's hiccupping and piercing trills. Near the midpoint the
electronic manipulation is scaled down and the piece acquires a chamber
music character (almost), before the effects reemerge like jungle insects
fluttering above the ever flowing river of Parker's metallic gambol.
“Autumn Crags 2” with the ineffable Roger Turner is a little bit different.
Instead of the contrasting but complementary methods of the former track
these two play directly off of each other. Hideaki's processed violin is
met head-on with Turner's keen ear and broad sonic palette. Turner's
quivering percussive sculptures provide something of a counterpoint to the
chirping and strepitous motion of Hideaki. Not a lot of build up or
dynamics, but a lot of texture and interplay.
Evan Parker - Work in Progress (Vortex Jazz Club, 2019) ****
To be honest I've always been pretty intimidated by the thought of
reviewing an Evan Parker solo album. Some part of that is due to an
insecurity in my ability to relay what I'm hearing properly without
sounding like an ass, and some is due to the reverence in which I hold his
solo work. I don't own all of Parker's discography (a problem I work at
from time to time, when the means are there), but I do own most of his solo
albums. They fascinate me. No one else sounds like him, really. And while
his solo work has certainly evolved over the years, you can hear it's
underlying logic in as early a recording as "Saxophone Solos" which was
released in 1975. That was about 45 years ago, think about that. 45 years.
Think of all that you've taken up and put aside in 45 years (if indeed
you've even been around that long), And yet Evan Parker's solo saxophone
logic is still extant and still being refined. Surfaces polished, edges
rounded.
It's different now, but if you listen to his oldest solo material against
his more recent work a common thread remains. The flight of a flock of
starlings, the geometry of spider webs, the hexagonal shape of honeycomb,
the fractal growth patterns of flora, and Evan Parker's solo soprano
saxophone music. It's the physical manifestation of his internal
mathematics and it is vital and always worth listening to. Anyway, enough
of that. EP donated the tracks on "Work in Progress" for the fundraising
efforts of the Vortex Jazz Club, which he has called his 'spiritual home',
and where he has maintained a long-standing monthly residency. It's the
first official EP solo release in almost a decade (the last being 2010's
"Whitstable Solos") and judging from the title I assume these are meant to
be taken as sketches and ideas and not really a proper solo album, but
there is plenty of great material to digest here nonetheless.
The first track "Piece 1" provides the vortical, multi-layered tonic of
quickened notes associated with Parker's work. There is some gorgeous
playing here that remediates any thought of 'sketches' in the derogatory,
as Parker fills the last couple of minutes with some of the best playing
I've heard from him. Scrumptious. On "Piece 2" the listener is treated to
an ambulo of sparkling overtones swirling above the honking fundamentals in
another startlingly potent storm of sound. The third piece is really the
first I might call a sketch due to its short duration. Even so it serves as
a coda to the second piece, as it shares similarities and tactics. The last
track entitled "Short Pieces" is the longest of the four and is constituted
of several short passages broken up with brief silences, definitely
sketches, that provide an interesting glimpse into Parker's methodology.
What I think is most impressive here is the amount of control displayed,
not that it's particularly surprising but he makes the high speed shifts in
register and patterns sound as seamless as fake teeth.
Evan Parker & Joe Morris - The Village (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2019) ****½
Although they've worked together in various groupings and ensembles over
the years, this record documents the first duo concert given by Evan Parker
and guitarist Joe Morris. It's title is a nod to the West Village in
Manhattan, where this show took place in the Greenwich House. In his notes,
Morris states that he noticed that those who collaborate with Parker hardly
ever play in unison with him, preferring modes of juxtaposition, and that
he'd decided that if they ever played together he would focus on the unison
whenever it was appropriate. It's an interesting observation. Parker's
collaborative work is wholly different than his solo material, not that
some of the techniques don't bleed over from time to time. His playing in a
group context generally leaves space for the other musician(s) between
phrases, baiting them into filling the gaps. Like Parker, Morris has what I
would deem to be an instantly recognisable improvisation style that is in
many ways similar in his use of phrases and spacing, so I was intrigued
with how the two playing 'in unison' would come off.
"The Mound" makes up a little over 70% of the albums content with its near
40 minute run time. Parker is on tenor saxophone and Morris plays very
clean electric guitar. Their dialogue is busy and masticates the air in the
room. Both artists make heavy use of brisk, harmonically rich runs with the
timbres and techniques used being very complementary. It's a very textured
and full sounding recording for a duo that wouldn't work as well with
additional players, at least not with what they're doing here. As for
playing in unison it works out very well (and as a side note we're not
talking perfect unison, obviously) and I'm not sure there's another
guitarist who could pull it off aside from Morris. His playing seems tailor
made for this sort of meshing of the streams and his decision to forgo any
effects is the right one. Careful listening reveals that, in general, one
player leads and one follows closely behind. And who is leading switches
several times over the piece. It's an extremely satisfying listen, but you
can tell that it's made to be listened to intently, otherwise much of the
detail and dialogue is lost.
On "Groove" Parker switches to soprano sax and Morris' guitar is prepared
with (perhaps) a shard of balsa woven through the strings (I've seen video
of him using tongue depressors in this manner). Parker's tone is
alternately fluid and hiccuping and Morris' preparations give his playing a
buzzing percussive pop that's a welcome change-up. The piece builds up in
intensity and they really let loose during the final third of the track,
with their dynamics building up peaks and dipping into valleys. They never
linger on any one thought longer than necessary, a superb show of
improvised music.
In times of drastic reductions of state resources, especially pertaining to culture, creating performance possibilities like running a venue or a festival is often left to the personal commitment of enthusiastic individuals. Their work is of inestimable value for the artists. Some examples (among many others) are Alois Fischer, who has been organizing the Kaleidophon Ulrichsberg since 1978 (the festival itself has existed since 1973) and Hans Falb, who has started the seminal Konfrontationen in Nickelsdorf in 1980, as well as Norbert Bach, who has been running the W71 club in Weikersheim since the 1970s. And there is David Mossman, the man behind the Vortex, London’s number one platform for jazz, improvised and experimental music (together with Café Oto, which is actually just five minutes down the road). The club has existed without any core funding after its establishment over twenty-five years ago.
Saxophonist Evan Parker, who has had a monthly residency at the club for a number of years, says that the Vortex was "my haven from the demands of the road… (it) is for me a space to play 'free jazz'. I cannot imagine life without it". Parker is so grateful for the existence of the club that he’s organized a fundraiser (with Dave Holland) to give his support, since the club needs financial help to keep its operations going and to enable bands to start a career (prominent examples are Polar Bear and the Portico Quartet). What’s more, Parker and his long time collaborators Barry Guy (bass) and Paul Lytton (drums) have dedicated their new album to Mossman and the club. Music for David Mossman starts with Guy presenting his famous gliding-into-the-notes technique, while Lytton surprises with a high-pitched drum set reminiscent of Tony Oxley, his playing being more muscular though. Guy strums thick chords and only after three and a half minutes Parker joins the duo with a surprisingly tonal, traditional melody which pays tribute to great jazz saxophonists like Sonny Rollins and Ben Webster, even a distant echo of John Coltrane is audible. However, he soon changes to his typical style using the well-known Evan-Parker-elements. The band picks up speed but it’s not the classic boisterous approach, it’s a rather subtle one. Soon they’re zigzagging some of their signature spontaneous routes, the tension rises and ebbs, opening a transition for circular breathing and circular bowing while Lytton supports Parker and Guy with finely chiseled clatter. The music sounds like someone’s rummaging around in a box of sounding metal.
This seems to be a typical album by the trio, providing free jazz on a top level, but nothing new either. Yet, the music offers some artful surprises. Especially the solos by Parker and Guy present an outstanding degree of concentration and resolve, their instruments serve as vessels for their elaborate use of extended techniques. In fact, there’s only one - rather short - Parker solo (when he uses his characteristic circular breathing). Still, there are two other passages when he takes off for a solo but Guy refuses to leave him soaring alone, he chooses to duplicate his sound with razor-sharp tremolos, overtones and harmonics. The same goes for Lytton, who propels an already cyberspeed Parker solo with cymbal barrage (in “Music for David Mossman III“). The result is music of an incredible density, music that varies harmonies and tempos constantly, music that changes its shape. Hardly ever have these excellent musicians shown such a disposition to integrate their individual sounds and typical patterns to an all-encompassing unity.
Or, as Evan Parker says in the liner notes: "Collective free improvisation is the utopian state arrived at in that other 'little life' as the late John Stevens called the mental space of music making that happens when musicians of a like mind play freely together." In the last track, "Music for David Mossman IV", this improvisation rumbles, squeals and seethes like on Tracks, the trio’s first recording from 1983. May this band and the Vortex live long! Music for David Mossman is available as a CD and a download.
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools
shape us."
- Marshall McLuhan
It's been close to a decade since there's been an official release by
Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, the last being
Hasselt which was released on Parker's own psi imprint back in 2012, their
first album post-ECM. Now on the heels of releases from the
Parker/Lytton/Guy Trio in 2019 and the Parker/Lytton Duo in 2020, we
have two new releases from Parker's EAE, an expansion of the
Parker/Guy/Lytton trio for the exploration of live signal processing
within the context of free improvisation. Parker has made incorporating
electronics a part of his practice since his late 60's collaborations
with Hugh Davies and in fact on the first album of their trio with Guy,
1983's Tracks, both bassist and drummer "use amplification and live
electronics to extend the sound of their instruments." It's subtle, but
practically sec compared with the brut of their later releases. In 1985
the trio made the excellent, electro-acoustic set Hook, Drift, &
Shuffle with legend George Lewis, who also joined Parker on his
tremendously engaging 2015
Electro-Acoustic Septet release (also released by Victo, a different group of musicians
entirely with the exception of Parker).
The EAE formed in 1992, adding Phil Wachsmann (violins, electronics,
and sound processing), Walter Prati (electronics and sound processing),
and Marco Vecchi (electronics and sound processing) to complete the
sextet, but the group didn't release a record until their excellent
1997 release Toward the Margins on ECM. The group added Lawrence
Casserly on electronics and processing for 1999's Drawn Inward, which
along with their debut was recorded in the studio. All of the EAEs
subsequent releases have been recorded live, in concert.
The year 2002 saw the Ensemble expand to nine when they were joined by
Agustí Fernández (piano) and Joel Ryan (computer and live processing)
in Oslo, which was documented on 2003's Memory/Vision. On their 2005
release The Eleventh Hour, FURT (Paul Obermayer and Richard Barrett)
joined the project (sampling keyboards) in addition to Adam Linson
(double bass) for a 2004 date at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in
Glasgow. The group's cumulative expansion continued on 2009's The
Moments Energy with the addition of Ned Rothenberg (clarinets), Ko
Ishikawa (Sho), and Peter Evans (trumpets) for a show that was
commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Finally, the aforementioned Hasselt documents concerts over a two day
span, which to quote Parker were "...the culmination of a tour that
defied the laws of cultural funding." The group swelled to 14 members
with the addition of Peter van Bergen (clarinets), who filled in for
Phil Wachsmann and Marco Vecchi (sound processing and sound projection)
on their most ambitious release to date. So, that's a brief rundown of
the whos-and-whats through the last couple of decades or so to help
give some context for the significance of these two new releases. One
that captures a live performance of the group during May 1996, the same
month that they recorded Toward the Margins, and another at the 2019 Ad
Libitum festival in Warzawa with what's essentially a re-tooled EAE,
Lytton and Parker being the only original members (the original
members, going back to their work as a duo).
That sets up quite a contrast and the recordings discussed herein do
not disappoint. On the contrary, I would venture to say that these are
two of their strongest thus far. Our colleague Stuart Boomer wrote the
liner notes for both releases, and I must admit that I got the lion's
share of my information about these recordings from said (excellent)
notes as well as his insight filled essay on the EAE for his column in
Point of Departure,
Ezz-thetics
. Finally, I realize the McLuhan quote is out of context (though
context doesn't seem to stop anyone these days) but it also fits the
EAEs M.O. so well I couldn't help myself. I hope our philosophy buff
readers will forgive the slight transgression.
Fixing the Fluctuating Ideas (Victo, 2021) ****½
On Fixing the Fluctuating Ideas the original EAE is joined on the first
piece by the Tuvan vocalist Sainko Namtchylak in a concert that offers
a much appreciated window into their early live sound (they were a
group for 6 years prior, touring the UK and performing in Berlin).
Sainko and Parker performed earlier on May 15th at Toronto's Music
Gallery as documented on the 1997 Victo release
Mars Song
en route to the Festival International de Musique Actually de
Victoriaville (FIMAV) on May 19th of 1996 where this set was recorded.
You'll probably either love Sainko's contributions or hate them (I'm
solidly in the former category), as that seems to be the nature of
'free' vocals.
The first three minutes of 'Fixing' are hers alone, and she puts on a
hell of a performance. Even detractors can't argue that she doesn't
hold your complete attention with her coos, operatics, growls,
screeches, squeals, snarls, shrieks, and other vehicles for futile
descriptors. Then the sampling/live processing begins and Sainko
whispers a melody, very softly, beneath processed samples of her vocals
that have been twisted into monster forms. What follows is a haunted
dialogue between the vocalist and sound processors that she balances
out with a bit of sweetness, preceding the emergence of the acoustic
instruments. Sainko integrates easily with the group, filling in open
gaps with various techniques without it ever feeling forced or
overwhelming. The DSP seemingly takes a hammer to the glass sculptures
the band constructs, sending shards of the performance swirling about
the soundfield. 'Fixing' develops in segments, first the vocals, then the
acoustic instruments, then the DSP, then the acoustic instruments
without vocals, etc, which keeps the long track fresh. The duration is
also unique in that the early EAE albums are composed of shorter
tracks, sketches and ideas, whereas here they stretch out at length,
ideas bleeding into each other, the group probing and coalescing in
ways not heard on their first two albums.
'Fluctuating' starts with a dialogue between the fiddles, which Guy and
Wachsmann use to converse in a woody push-pull of shriek and grunt.
Lytton and Parker add sparse elements which, rolled through the signal
processing, manifest as flickers at the edges of the soundfield.
There's a gradual shift to stasis just before the strange spectres
return to harass Lytton's extended collection of traps. At times it
becomes difficult to discern whether a particular sound is acoustic or
electric. Object or reflection. An aural sleight-of-hand that's one of
my favorite aspects of the EAEs music. Parker's soprano emerges from
the din as a plume of swirling lyrical fractals that is pulled apart
like string cheese then granularly redispersed by the signal
processing. The quartet of acoustic instruments continue their dialogue
as the DSP crew rapidly snatch notes and textures, making them reappear
as mutated silhouettes and bizarre sonic artifacts. Guy winds the track
down with a show of brute force to affix punctuation to an impossibly
good performance. The album isn't available digitally but is sold by
all of the usual suspects, it's well worth the small amount of extra
effort.
Warzawa 2019 (Fundacja Słuchaj, 2021) ****½
This highly anticipated release from the EAE was recorded in March of
2019 at the Ad Libitum Festival and as mentioned previously, features
some new players as well as some old ones. FURT (Barrett and Obermayer)
return to contribute their sound processing expertise, while Peter van
Bergen is back on clarinets, and Adam Linson, who played on The
Eleventh Hour, returns on double bass. Long-time Parker collaborator
Matthew Wright joins the fold on laptop and turntables, as does Sten
Sandell on piano, Mark Nauseef on percussion, and Percy Pursglove on
trumpet. And as I've already mentioned (ad nauseam at this point), the
duo of Parker and Lytton round out this updated EAE.
'Part A' winds up in a slow rustling manner. A Goliath awakening.
Stretching out the mighty limbs. Shaking off cobwebs. The hypnagogic
din is pierced by Pursglove's first few assertive notes, which excites
a charge of tiny, flickering sounds that emerge from their electronic
ant hill. Pursglove repeats variations of the phrase, like an
invocation, stretching long notes across sparse piano soundings and
ringing whispers of metallic percussion. Some of the electronic noises
are like grotesques, leering and retching at the ensemble as they find
their sea legs. Lytton interacts heavily with the samples using small
percussion and traps to both imitate and contradict his reflection. The
sounds come more frequently, stacking, obscuring, muddying. As the DSP
builds in intensity, the acoustic instruments dim, issuing only light
accents under a shadow canopy of swirling electronics. Parker plays
fluidly over the rustling percussion and skittering electronics, with
Sandell thumping out a sturdy accompaniment. Linson's guttural bass
scrapings provide a steady drone for Pursglove's abrasive yelps as well
as textural detritus for the samplers. As the piece winds down with the
general clatter and spit valve sounds, Sandell abruptly closes out with
a brief flurry of heavy notes, leading right into the next half of the
album...
...which is labeled 'Part B.' Here the decay swells into a hissing,
hiccuping drone that's picked at and processed by the electronics
something like birds darting after worms. The acoustic instruments
offer just enough to keep the particle field of noises fresh, the
pantry well stocked. A stuttering effect becomes unexpectedly prominent
and marks the beginning of an intense, building rush of sound. The
instruments (electronic and not) build into a chimeric multitude that
doesn't just color outside the lines but seems oblivious to the desire
for any such restriction. There is a discernible peak somewhere before
the 12 minute mark and shortly after the piece breaks up into
incandescent pieces of shrapnel that creak and groan as they cool. Of
course all of this is captured and turned inside out by the processors
making everything woozy and surreal, like navigating a house of mirrors
on a dyslexic mule while looking through a pair of kaleidoscopes. The
piece drifts into stiff piano stabs and inside-the-box noises that
sound like they're being delivered at the edge of the void. The album
blooms a final time, led by Parker's torrents of exhaust rippling their
turbulence over a hazy shimmer of gong (I think) and mulched samples.
If you aren't sold by now then I'm afraid I can't help you. The album
is a very welcome return from one of Parker's most important groups
(IMO) and for me was a lot to absorb in a single listen. Just know that
it's even better the second and third time around (and on and on).
I think that despite all the history that's occurred between these two
albums the best way to approach them is with a fresh ear (easier said
than done now, sorry about that). I've enjoyed them the most when I was
able to prevent myself from listening through the lense of my music
collection. When I was able to wipe my mind of all the bits and pieces
of music writing I've read and information I've accumulated regarding
the EAE and simply allow myself to be entertained, amused, even
surprised. This is all said much more concisely (and elegantly) in a
sentence from Paul Haines in his liner notes for 2000's
Dark Rags
, Parker's duet with Keith Rowe, "There is no need to listen here as
though monitoring; provisions have been made for you to listen
creatively, free of clinging past listening, free of the onerous chores
of accumulation."
Listening to Warzawa during my commute earlier this summer I noticed
that some of the sounds I was hearing were coming from outside of my
car. This June marked the emergence of the
Brood X cicadas
here in the Midwest US. A curious bug, they spend 17 years underground
before emerging enmasse to climb the trunks of trees, shed their nymph
exoskeletons, and emerge as winged adults for a four-to-six week frenzy
of singing, mating, and egg laying. After that they die and their
larvae crawl back into the ground to restart the cycle. Their song can
reach up to 100 decibels, obviously loud enough for me to hear in my
closed, moving car with music playing.
And so it was that I had the unique opportunity to take in a
superposition of transformations (and of course I had a little fun with
the power windows, 'listening creatively' and whatnot). One
transformation represented by the song of these peculiar insects that
days/weeks earlier were happily nibbling on tree sap for their 17th
consecutive year but whose slow, awkward bodies were now splattering en
masse across my windshield and easily being picked off by birds in
mid-flight, all to fulfill their obligation and keep things moving
forward for the species. The second is represented by the music of the
EAE, a group transformed by time and circumstance into something that
looks quite different but that has the same DNA, the same nucleus. A
revamped vehicle filled with sympathetic ears and chops to match to
continue the work at hand and (fingers crossed) the work ahead. Parker
and Company continue to mine the rewards and possibilities of
Electro-Acoustic improvisation on their singular and ever-evolving
endeavors toward the margins.
