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Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Meson - Obscurer Subjectivity (Discus Music 2022)

“Everyone improvised here. My ad-libbing was in the form of condensing lines of nuance suggested by the patterns produced by my collaborators and adding fragments, as I recall, from Ahlberg, Beckett, Thompson (Hunter S.) and, probably, from almost everyone else that I have ever read, listened to and/or met - you are all to blame and so I hope you enjoy this, responsively “- Bo Meson 

Words surrounded by music or words led by a music that surrounds them, words and music like the rhythm of life. Bo Meson’s words are immersed in the music made by guitarist Andy McAuley, synthesist Jez Creek, saxophonist Martin Archer, bassist Peter Rophone, and cellist Sarah Palmer and their output is conceived as a non-interrupted flow (the digital version of this record presents also the option to listen with no tracks breaks), a stream of a consciousness both in words and in music.

Hypothesis: was William Borroughs right and language is a virus from outer space?

Every track deconstructs language structures trough repetition and fragmentation reminiscent of Steve Reich works, but they also deconstruct musical references with melodies and rhythms that dissolve into noises or into silence or into one-another.

Fragmentation is the key both for music and discourse. Apart “We Are Not” (in which a pervasive bass marks a pervasive 1984 vision depicted in what is like to be the most structured text) the other episodes are characterized by splinters of sentences supported by a music which moves along the same lines.

“Alternative Pope” may be the manifesto of the whole album, words laying on a catchy layered riff and developing meandering sentences - but I will never be too old to be too young - … - time reels out -… - a camera with obscurer subjectivity represents a transcendental hyperspace, an infinitely regressive point of view - … - I am intentionally blank so that only you can read me – Words like music and - time reels out –

So when in “Chronological Quantum Leap” we hear 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' we are quite familiar with words but music is something else, we are somewhere else and we must be careful because the next section reminds us “We Are Not Here” and the final episode mixes physics (Gravitons) and pseudo-physics or better pataphysics (phlogistons). A sax riff leads the dance of the words until everything slows down and what remains in the end are some familiar noises maybe a teaspoon picking up the last grains of sugar from a tin-can. Silence.

Planet Gong seems in sight, I can see Daevid Allen smiling by the light of a Camembert Electrique and I must say that I’m very pleased too.

Available on Bandcamp.

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