David Sylvian: “there’s a light that enters houses with no other house in sight” (SamadhiSound, 2014) *****

Reviewed by Joe

The rise and development of noise, electro acoustic sound research, acousmatic composition and minimal music all seem to be coming together in the past few years. The number of serious artists that are investigating the genre has begun to not only expand but also have some popular success. Of course artists like Eno (and his ambient friends), Cluster, Popol Vuh or even Pan(a)sonic have been investigating the various possibilities of noise and minimalism for years. However, more recently we've seen Supersilent (& Co), Christian Fennesz, the Punkt crowd (Jan Bang and Erik Honoré) and more recently Ben Frost, to name just a few, have all made noise more fashionable.

David Sylvian is certainly no newcomer to this scene. His interests date well back to his work within the group 'Japan' and their interesting, and at the time 'individual', take on pop music. With his liberation as a solo artist it became clear that he was interested by a wide range of sonic possibilities, his early albums (Brilliant Trees, Gone to Earth and Secrets of the Beehive) mixed jazz, prog-rock and minimalism. With the arrival of Blemish in 2003, it was clear that Sylvian was making yet another change in direction, working with more experimental musicians such as Toshimaru Nakamura and Derek Bailey. In more recent years he has used his singing-voice almost like a poetic 'bard', incorporating a sort of spoken word quality.

His latest release there’s a light that enters houses with no other house in sight David Sylvian has continued with the idea of the spoken word. Using the American poet Franz Wright, who recites passages from his works (*), combined with sonic backgrounds provided by David Sylvian, guitarist (and sound manipulator) Christian Fennesz and pianist John Tilbury. The effect is quite literally stunning. The combination of ideas and musical resources used spans a large gamut of styles. The basic musical thread running through the 60 minute composition is built from minimalistic soundscapes, these include interludes of piano and guitar in various combinations, and from time to time a string ensemble, brass and percussion (**). The range of musical ideas (or effects) covers a lot of ground from horror movie ambiances to a wonderful string quartet in the closing moments of the piece.

It's impossible to discuss individual sections in this one hour composition as the poetry and music just flow from one idea to the next. The effect of the voice reciting poems, used as a thread, give this album a hypnotic feel, almost as if you are in a dreamlike state. Adding to that Franz Wright's gruff voice - a true master-stroke - you find yourself completely immersed in the piece, unaware of the time passing. The final words (which I'll leave you to discover) of the piece make for a profound ending to this excellent album.  

An album that would definitely have been in my top ten of 2014, if I'd heard it earlier! Very highly recommended.

* If I understand correctly much of the poetry comes from Franz Wright's Kindertotenwald, published in 2011.
** Unfortunately we didn't receive any information other than the sound file, so the instrumentation is a little unclear, especially since much of it is electronically manipulated.

Postscript: It's interesting to remember that David Sylvian has also recorded and produced releases by players Derek Bailey, Toshimaru Nakamura and more recently Stephan Mathieu. I should add the SamadhiSound website is very badly organised and it is often difficult to find past releases on the pages.

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Zeena Parkins - Double Dupe Down (Tzadik 2012) **½

 Reviewed by Joe

Well this is one hell of a surprise, for me anyhow. I couldn't decide whether to give this album two or twenty-two stars, it's certainly a difficult one to review for me. I did a quick scan round the net to get a little information and discovered that it's a compilation (so they say) of film music from five films. Unfortunately I didn't know anything about this, so I was wandering about in the dark when trying to get a hold on the music, I guess that's maybe the best place to write a review from.

When listening to the album from a completely neutral position the first thing that comes across is how bitty it is. There are 19 tracks which range from 0:37 seconds to the longest at 5:05. My first impression was like listening to out-takes from an early John Zorn album. The tracks seem to move quickly from beautiful string trios to scratched noise duos which fly out of the speakers, disappearing as quickly as they arrive. Although each piece does have something interesting it's often without any connection to the last track. As an example the album finishes off with the track 'Anthem', which is the Star Spangled Banner played a la Jimi Hendrix. There's no guitar mentioned so I imagine it's Zeena Parkins' sampling - maybe made up from Hendrix samples? In spite of that I couldn't quite see what the purpose was, and the American national anthem isn't really a favourite in this house either. But in general the bones of the album are made up from semi classical pieces - 'Opening Credits' 'Zoo', 'No Sweet Love', 'Fireworks', 'Allegra' and 'The Air is Perfectly Clear'. These are all miniature compositions, and very attractive pieces I should add, generally performed using harp, cello and violin.   

Other confusions, probably due to the film music aspect of the record is the wonderful atmospheres which don't go anywhere. The first track is an excellent example 'Harpstrings and Lava', an eerie piece which hangs in the air expectantly. Sounds of pedal steel or bottleneck harp (?), clicks and hiss floating through a sustained chord finally leads us to a short harp cadenza. You wonder what will happen next? There are noise tracks, there are sudo classical tracks, there are electro-acoustic tracks, there are even bagpipe tracks - 'Pipes Oompie'. The mix is enormous and for anyone having seen the films these are taken from, or dedicated to, there's probably lots of very interesting references. You can't complain about the music, each track has something to offer, and often something interesting but it's a bit like eating a plate of Egg fried noodles with ice-cream, boiled fish, chocolate mousse, oysters, lemonade and a glass of red wine.    

Finally, if you see the people involved (see below) in the pieces you'll understand the range of music to be found on the CD. I only really know Zeena Parkins from her amazing work with other musicians, so maybe if you know her work already, or even the films this music comes from then you'll probably enjoy this. If not I suggest you start elsewhere. 

Shelley Hirsch: Voice
Okkyung Lee: Cello
Christian Marclay: Turntables
Ikue Mori: Electronics
Zeena Parkins: Harps, Keyboard, Objects, Electronics, Yamaha Cs-80, Gleeman Pentaphonic Synth.

Sara Parkins: Violin
David Watson: Bagpipes
Matthew Welch: Bagpipes
William Winant: Percussion
Maggie Parkins: Cello
James Pugliese: Drums
James Staley: Trombone

© stef

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Bruno Duplant, Julien Héraud, Nate Wooley – Movement and Immobility (Peira, 2012) ***½

By Dan Sorrells

Movement and Immobility is a forced confrontation with sound. Though I’m not sure I can get fully behind the “total” acousmatic immersion that folks like Pierre Schaeffer and Francisco Lopez advocate, there are definitely times when yielding to sound in-and-of itself is a freeing, rewarding exercise. And sometimes, you don’t have much of a choice.

Much about Movement and Immobility is obscure: just what exactly Bruno Duplant’s “electroacoustic device” is, how much of the music is improvised, what has been processed in the studio after the fact, hell, even whether all of the musicians were ever in the same room to create it. I struggled with this when it came time to sit down and write. I debated sending emails, hunting down musicians, asking questions. Instead I listened to Movement and Immobility one more time. I listened, and I realized: it doesn’t matter. This is an album that’s less about human gestures and motivations and struggles than it is about pure sound. Sound as a complete environment, a complete experience.

In three long pieces, ideas are slowly repeated, revised, subtly reconstructed, bringing to mind the stoic focus of the minimalist composers and the aural depth sought in many works of ambient music. Héraud’s saxophone is the most easily identified element, though the long notes exist more as timbral coloring than anything else. “Continental Drift” hums and rumbles like the automated systems clicking on and off in the engine room of some spacecraft. Events start and stop on esoteric time tables, layers of ringing feedback multiplying and dropping away. Electronics and trumpet amplification seem to be a part of the process, but never in an obvious or straight-forward way. Occasionally, scrapes of percussion can be picked up, or the crackle of radio static seeping through the din of “Climate Disruption.”

In all, this is an interesting, immersive offering from musicians who frequently conjure up novel sounds. Somehow, Movement and Immobility sounds altogether different from all that they’ve shown us before. So strap on some headphones. Maybe even a blindfold, like a hardcore Schaefferian disciple.  I suspect they’ll surprise you again.

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Fabula (Creative Sources, 2012) ****

Reviewed by Joe

I thought I'd wade into some of the 'noise' CDs waiting to be reviewed in our files. In fact I notice more and more bands around that are working in a completely different area from what we would probably call 'music', a more 'noise' oriented area, built up of work with electronics, live and prepared instruments. With these records one has to find another level to listen on, a little like acousmatic and electro-acoustic music. Pierre Schaeffer a man who is more or less responsible for 'musique concrete' and 'acousmatic music' talked about sounds in a new vocabulary, which I believe is called 'solfege du l'objet sonore'. Here he developed a whole new language to describe the construction of sound(s) to make new sounds unheard before. Anyhow I digress, let's move on to Fabula.

And so we have it, Fabula, made up of four musicians : Axel Dörner - trumpet, Ernesto Rodrigues - viola, Abdul Moimême - prepared electric guitar, Ricardo Guerreiro - computer. But how to describe the music (or maybe the sound) they make? Their music is built of fine layers of sound that come together to form a sort of pleasant 'interference' or wall of sounds that organically change throughout the piece. In fact I was immediately taken by the first few minutes as made me think of the noise an alien may make to communicate with, maybe fans of sci-fi will bare that out? In a way that's the beauty of this piece which spans 46 minutes. We hear many colours and combinations, most of which combine well, keeping the listener fixed to the speakers. The trumpet of 'Dörner' rarely uses traditional notes, sound is of utmost importance, texture seems to be the goal. 'Rodrigues' uses his viola in a more traditional way, franticly bowing his instrument or caressing it in a tentative manner hoping to find new vibrations which produce harmonics. Rodrigues and Dörner also develop moments of extremes of pitch which blend into the whistle and hiss of the group's sound. 'Moimême's' guitar is hit, scraped, fed back and changed in various ways, and even though his natural sound can be heard it is only maybe the tightening of a string, or a hammer-on, all very atmospheric. 'Guerreiro' is probably the only one who sounds like himself (a computer), and of course able to finitely change sound and re-process all that happens around him into a new vocabulary.

The music, which is a concert performance, swells around you creating a sort of semi-industrial sound-scape, sometimes mysterious and at times dark and cold. Yet the great thing is it does progress (develop), if not via a tonal system then by an inner logic that the performers felt at that moment. I guess performances of groups such as 'Beast', or the 'Evan Parker Electro Acoustic Ensemble' also work in this very exciting area which to my mind could be thought of as visual sound.

If you enjoy music that has the ability to make you hear mirages (!?), then you'll enjoy listening to this very image oriented sound piece. If you've been working in heavy industry you'll probably recognise some of these sounds. Just remember, 'Please do not adjust your hi-fi, there is no problem with your system!'

    

© stef

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