Mark Nauseef - All in All in All (Relative Pitch, 2018) ****

By Paul Acquaro

All in All in All, on Relative Pitch is a rich and somewhat beguiling recording by the expansively thinking percussionist Mark Nauseef. The album, recorded in 2001 in Cologne, Germany, is a tremendous soundscape that focuses on the micro: dings of the glockenspiel, muted thud of prepared piano, hiss of electronics, and scrapes of percussion, played in service to the macro musical arch.

The cast is an eye-catcher: Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, prepared piano, Tony Oxley providing percussion, Bill Laswell on bass, field recordings, electronics, Miroslav Tadic on guitars, Pat Thomas on cassette player, electronics, electric keyboard, Arthur Jarvinen on glockenspiel, chromatic harmonica, analogue electronics, Walter Quintus with real time processing and conducting, and finally Mark Nauseef on percussion and electronics. With such a range of musicians, you may be tempted to think that it could be a cacophonous outing, or at least a very busy one, but it’s quite the opposite. In fact, the album reveals itself slowly as a rolling soundscape with elusive glimpses of the mountains on the horizon.

The album begins with a low rumble of piano, percussion, glockenspiel. The slight menace created by the sustained piano and deliberate ringing sets a mood. The dark theme is soon obliterated by a mix of percussion and electronics. An unheard pulse keeps the track together as slightly menacing sounds appear from the quiet, while the glockenspiel plays an important role in providing speckles of hope. The tracks, only titled by their length, are reference markers. The ethereal third track begins with a rise of distorted guitar, providing a little forward motion, and track four is dominated by skittering electronics and samples of voices stuttering percussively. The obfuscated words themsevles don't seem very important, rather they serve as textures and sign posts in the humid hazy fog of sound.

The original theme returns again midway through in track five. Here the the guitar, glock, percussion, and electronics bubble together a bit like Robert Rauschenberg's Mud Muse sculpture. However, here is also where the mountains can be seen - the music becomes denser, the pulse picks up, the clangs, fizzles, and sinewy sine waves part and the bass breaks through. The piano plays a forlorn melody on the start of track six, with some lusher chordal work, and while this passage is the most melodic of the album so far, it also seems to serve as a dividing point in the music. The later half of the album too gives precedence to its percussive side, with and ending that culminates in a restatement of the original theme, adorned with electric guitar, electronics, prepared piano, and plenty of percussive sounds. The actual instruments however are hardly the point, this is suggestive music, and the focus is on the percussion with the other instruments lending their voice in support. The music is a carefully constructed suite that relies on the close listening of the participants to achieve its impact.

All in All in All is something to lie beneath, listen to without preconceived notions of song structure, and certainly not thinking that you may know what happens next. It's an orchestral piece of sound and works almost on a subliminal level, something to discover and enjoy. 

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Prune Becheau, Day, Desailly, Maurel, Vysocky - Pancrace (Penultimate Press, 2017) ****

By Stef

For those of you who are interested in new listening experiences, I can recommend to check out this double LP by the French-British-Austrian ensemble Pancrace. The musicians are Prune Bécheau on baroque violin and organ, Arden Day on landscape piano, organ, boîte à bourdons, hurgy toys, Julien Desailly on uillean pipes, hulusi and flutes, Léo Maurel on organ, boîtes à bourdons, hurgy toys, and Jan Vysocky on pi synth, AM radio and microphones. You will also hear church bells, motorised bow and bird calls.

The music is recorded in a church in Dangolsheim, in the Alsace region in France, where instrument builder Léo Maurel lives. I add the video below (from another performance) just to show what the instruments look like.

The five musicians create a wonderful sonic event, with various layers of instrument creating one single sound, often with repetitive themes in the style of Philip Glass, alternating with the minimalism of "Dans Les Arbres", or the gentle complex rhythms of the Penguin Café Orchestra. But then again, comparisons like these ones fail to convey the unique sound of the band. One major difference is that that they dare to completely disrupt their own carefully built-up sound with harsh dissonances once in a while. The result is amazing: it is intense, frightening at times, sometimes soothing, friendly, strange or dark and foreboding, and interestingly enough, they switch quite easily from one to the other sentiment, without warning or progressive evolution, making the listening experience even more interesting and captivating.

In a way, it is pretty unique. And their concept and singular vision works well.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Watch a performance at the Sonic Protest Festival in March 2018:

 

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Gebhard Ullmann / Oliver Potratz / Eric Schaefer - Das Kondenstat (WhyPlayJazz, 2017) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

I know I start too many reviews like this "[album x] has been in heavy play on my [various devices] for quite a long time now..." And so it goes, Das Kondenstat has been in my car stereo and on my iPod for months now, and every time I listen to it, I begin thinking of my review and then my attention is sucked into the music. It is, to my ears, a new template for electronic/acoustic modern jazz.

Released on the increasingly important WhyPlayJazz label from northern Germany, Das Kondestat is the prolific reedist Gebhard Ullman (who seems to travel between Germany and the U.S), bassist Oliver Potratz who plays with Ullman in the bottom heavy BassX3, and drummer Eric Schaefer who works with Joachim Kuhn and Michael Wollny among other projects. In this trio they all take on electronics to supplement, and sometimes supplant, their traditional instruments: samplers, loopers, and modular synth all play an important role here.

Starting with the opening track, 'Variations on a Master Plan #3', a theme that seems to permeate Ullman's work, the synthetic sounds are front and center. The analog synth generates a burbling pattern that Schaefer and Portratz enliven with a thick drum and bass groove. Ullman jumps in with a effect heavy tenor sax and the trio fills in much more sonic space than expected. A breakdown in the song, which leaves the bassist playing a plodding downbeat line and the drummer playing an ambient solo, allows the trio a chance to rebuild into a steady groove with whirls of synth and playful looping saxophone. The follow up 'Lady in the Sky' begins with a solid rock backbone and Ullman's overblown sax. The group resolves to a tight beat, and after Ullman quickly finds his footing, he delivers an energizing passage full of melodic invention and edgy intention. Later in the sequence, "Grizzly Bear" begins with arpeggiated chords from the bass and a sample speaking in a British accent "surviving a Grizzly attack and still loving the great bear ..." touches on the absurd and symbolic. The sample about the bear attack continues through the track, while extremely active bass lines take on the prominent role. "Desert ... Bleue ... East" begins like an American folk tune, echoes of Westerns and wide open space fill the expanse of space in Ullman's ambient melody, while a chorus of R2-D2s whistle in the distance.

There is more as well, in the space of 40 minutes, the trio packs in 11 tracks, keeping a tight reign on the music by eschewing extended solos and showmanship. The construction of each track is detailed and most likely planned out, the result of seasoned improvisors willing to lose themselves in their craft.

While this fusion of jazz and dub/electronics is not new, having roots in the mid-to-late 90s, Das Kondestat does it right. The trio brings a refreshed vim and vigor to the sound, and in turn, opens up new musical possibilities. This is a trio to keep an ear/eye on!

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Resonance Ensemble - Double Arc (Not Two, 2015) *****

By Stefan Wood

“Double Arc” is the culmination of projects conceived by Ken Vandermark written for the large working group the Resonance Ensemble. An assemblage of influences as wide ranging as film scores, 50’s NYC composers, 60’s free jazz, 70’s African funk, etc., “Double Arc” is an epic work that is creatively stimulating, foot stomping, and at times maddening music. Comprised of Nikolaj Tzraska (alto sax and bass clarinet), Dave Rempis (alto & tenor sax), Mark Tokar (bass), Waclaw Zimpel (clarinet), Michael Zerang & Tim Daisy (drums), Steve Swell (trombone), Magnus Broo (trumpet), Per-Ake Holmander (tuba), the Resonance Ensemble is joined by Christof Kurzmiann (electronics/Lloopp), whose eclectic and diverse range of computer sounds enhance and perforate the ensemble’s already massive sound stage.

There are essentially two tracks, subdivided into sections, Arc One and Arc Two, and each Arc is a journey, employing different styles, modes and moods. Vandermark in his liner notes writes that the composition was influenced by Witold Lutoslawski’s Cello Concerto, where it was shaped by using gestures, and not written notes. One does get a sense that “Double Arc” is formed by these gestures, as each section is noticeably different than the one before. For example, big band funk moves into stoic minimalism, then to free jazz, improvisation, free bop, and so forth.

Given the diversity, it is to Vandermark’s credit that the music is as engaging as it is. At times I feel that his influences are a little too apparent (Don Ellis’ soundtrack music; the big band funk that to me is less Nigerian than George Russell large group funk), but I am nit picking, as I can hear and appreciate the nods to those sources. Everyone is in top form; the music is nothing less than spectacular. Arc Two is the stronger of the two tracks, not for just the Gil Evans like arrangements that begin the track, but the free form sonic blasts of Section C which lead right in to the searing hot funk mixed of Sections D, and the blistering free improv of Section F. “Double Arc” is the last album by this formative group, but they go out spectacularly.

Highly recommended.

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Made to Break - Before the Code (Trost, 2015) ****½

By Antonio Poscic

Out of Ken Vandermark’s many bands and projects, Made to Break proves to be, time and again, the vessel for his most creative outbursts and boldest ideas. Before the Code, the quartet’s fourth LP, is no different, rising from the intersection of free jazz, free improvisation, experimental electronic music, contemporary classical music, and enriched with distorted funk grooves. An amalgamation of styles that miraculously works out into an abstract, but coherent and at times hard-hitting whole.

Aside from Dutch musician Jasper Stadhouders replacing Devin Hoff on electric bass and bringing some additional fluidity into the mix, the group’s palette remains largely unchained. The bass still holds a very important piece of the puzzle, its thick and organically pulsing cues often the centerpieces of many segments. Meanwhile, Christof Kurzmann continues exploring the touching points of the analog and digital realms using electronic effects and the lloopp live-improvisation computer program. Much like in noise and minimal music, he goes for texturally simple but rhythmically and dynamically interesting sounds that either create structures using repetitions, glitches, variations in pitch, static, and haunting ambient noises that mimic digital machinery, or take the spot of the soloing instrument, dancing wildly above the rhythmic foundation. And while Ken Vandermark alternates between his trademark melodic playing, rock-like chords, and abrasive, sharp phrases that are reminiscent of licks found in his solo works, Tim Daisy slips in and out of hard, steady rhythms and unhinged, sparse brushes as if exploring an unknown dimension with his drumsticks.

All of these elements are arranged around Vandermark’s compositional framework that creates, in advance, basic outlines for the songs, but allows for surprising freedom of improvisation and flexibility both within specific segments and on a larger structural scale. It’s this framework that makes Before the Code as successful as it is, enabling the group to traverse the divide from free funk towards experimental electronic music with ease, only to plunge back into purely improvised, alien-sounding sections. What separates this release from predecessors such as Provoke is a distinct change in mood, as the record feels simultaneously more mischievous, implying an ironic perspective on the clash of the digital and the analog, the old and the new, but also more introspective based on the themes of the songs. Foregoing strictly philosophical motifs, the three tunes on Before the Code are instead dedicated to renowned directors, Agnès Varda, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

“Dial the Number (For Agnes Varda)” starts with a barrage of electronic effects, the saxophone and drums displaced and wandering, before a bass line steps out in the spotlight and takes the music into a great groove that will soon dissolve in the mazes of an electroacoustic labyrinth. This cycle will be repeated, as if retouching a photograph, several times during the song, all the while evoking words from Varda’s cinécriture. The second tune, “Off-Picture No. 119 (For Joshua Oppenheimer),” starts with Vandermark indulging in melodic saxophone flickers and Stadhouders fleshing out gorgeous bass lines. All of this will, again, break down into a mayhem of sounds. Nonetheless, the track never loses cohesiveness or its inner rhythm and rather ends with an amazingly fierce groove and an explosion of melody. Anyone who watched one of Oppenheimer’s movies, especially “The Act of Killing” or “The Look of Silence,” should recognize something familiar in this mixture of emotional layers, complexity, and tenacity. Finally, “Window Breaking Hammer (For Rainer Werner Fassbinder)” closes the album with some of the most left-field and spastic parts combining into a neo noir atmosphere that barely manages to hold closed the floodgates of another attack full of groove and spunk. A song as fractured as Fassbinder’s filmography phases.

All in all, this might just be Made to Break’s best release to date and also one of those albums with the potential to be placed in my top 10 had I not have missed them in 2015. Highly recommended!

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Jean-Luc Guionnet & Thomas Bonvalet - Loges De Souffle (Becoq, 2015) ****½

By Stef

In October 2010, in Bergerac, France, the MONC cultural arts centre created a major event of avant-garde and experimental theatre, dance, visual arts, flash mobs and music with the entire city as the venue, in a very participatory way with the audience and unprepared passers-by. Look here for more information.

As part of this event, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Thomas Bonvalet gave an electroacoustic performance in the protestant temple of the city. Guionnet does not play his usual reeds, but he uses the church organ as the key instrument for the fabulous sonic landscape they create, with Bonvalet playing banjo, mikes, amplifiers, harmonica and tuning fork (why not?). If you ever thought you knew what a banjo sounded like, I suggest that you watch the video below.

The album contains one 40-minute long soundscape, with the organ offering a kind of endless color-shifting drone as a foundation for an infinity of things to happen, shifts in intensity, harsh counter-sounds, reinforcing feedback and a multitude of little sparkles, as if you're listening to a sonic kaleidoscope which keeps revolving and surprisingly changing and offering new vistas and mind-boggling new sounds.

The music is as attractive as it is frightening, petrifying the listener into immobility while these fascinating sounds keep being absorbed and when the fourty minutes are over, and the listener returns to his more rubbery state, he/she is a little, and maybe a lot, disappointed that the experience is over.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

 

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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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John Russell/Steve Beresford/John Edwards/Ståle Liavik Solberg - Will It Float? (Va Fongool, 2015) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

This British-Norwegian quartet was put together by Norwegian drummer Ståle Liavik Solberg who had collaborated in recent years with guitarist John Russell (the duo recorded No Step, on Solberg label Hispid, 2014) and with electronics master Steve Beresford (in a trio with Swedish reed player Martin Küchen that recorded Three Babies, Peira, 2013). The addition of double bass player John Edwards, another prominent member of London’s free improvisation scene, was only natural. The recording of the quartet took place at the St. Mary’s Old Church in Stoke Newington, London, in November 2013, later mixed and mastered by another close associate of Solberg, Chicagoan cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.

Beresford, who plays on a wide variety of acoustic objects and resourcefully uses electronics devices, stresses surprising elements of danger, surprise and even dark humor in what may have sound as a cerebral, classic British free improvisation set. His presence alters the dynamics and the balance of this set to a course of a experimental, playful exploration of nuanced sounds. The spare interplay never attempts to anchor its intense dynamics on a clear pulse, melodic narrative, or structure. Still, this quartet succeeds to form  its own collective identity. Its delicate textures mirror loose puzzles, woven together in a patient flow of colorful sounds that only close to its later phases reveal its own evasive logics and blends surprisingly into an arresting soundscape. Suddenly, on the last piece, "The Third Time" the quartet burst with an innocent excitement, solidifying its raisons d'être - nothing is obvious, expect to be challenged, but this sonic ride guarantees many joyful moments.

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Artur Mackowiak & Grzegorz Pleszynski - A Sound Of The Wooden Fish (Wet Music, 2014) ***

 By Stef

It's always nice to get to know unknown musicians, as with this duo of Artur Mackowiak on guitar, synth and electronics, and Grzegorz Pleszynski on plastic tube trumpet and voice. They are joined on the first track by Jerzy Mazzoll on clarinet, who is a musician we do know in the meantime.

It's a short CD, fourty-four minutes in total, offering us rock-influenced arpeggio guitar with distant plastic tube trumpet sounds (and mixed in clarinet sounds on the first track). It's atmospheric music, floating effortlessly forward, repetitive and easy, once in a while some drama is added with heavy beats.

Mackowiak's approach is somewhat in the style of Loren Mazzacane Connors, dark sound sculptures on electric guitar with slight changes in the overall texture, with the single tone plastic tube trumpet howling over it, sometimes beautifully, but nothing that will wake you up from the contemplative listening this music requires, and that is maybe the downside of their approach, namely that few risks are taken, and what is true for sports is also true for music : you cannot win if you are afraid to take the risk to loose.

Yet it will be interesting to hear how their concept matures.

Listen and download on Bandcamp.

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Evan Parker ElectroAcoustic Septet – Seven (Victo, 2015) ****½

By Martin Schray

It was Cecil Taylor who once said that the compositional process begins with the selection of the players. In an allusion to Taylor Evan Parker stated that his art of composition consisted in choosing the right people and asking them to improvise. He also meant that the resulting music arose from this sequence of decisions and that his art of composition consisted in choosing the right people. And with Ned Rothenberg (clarinets, shakuhachi), Peter Evans (trumpets), George Lewis (trombone, electronics), Okkyung Lee (cello), Ikue Mori (electronics) and Sam Pluta (electronics) he chose the perfect musicians for his ElectroAcoustic Septet, which was invited to the 2014 Victoriaville Festival.

In the field of electro-acoustic contributions to improvised music Evan Parker is a pioneer. At a very early stage he has included electronics and processing in his music, e.g. with his long time companion Paul Lytton on Collective Calls (Urban) (Two Microphones) (Incus, 1972). His interest in sound processing led to the foundation of the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble in 1992, from their first album Towards the Margins (ECM, 1997) up to Hasselt (Psi, 2012), when the ensemble was expanded to 14 musicians (at their latest concerts there were even 18).

For Seven Parker has reduced the band members for his project drastically, and he has chosen musicians mainly working in the US (often based in New York) with whom he has had a history. With Evans and Pluta he played in Rocket Science, he released a great trio CD with Lee and Evans, worked in a duo with Ned Rothenberg, and his cooperation with George Lewis is history (From Saxophone and Trombone, Incus, 1980). He has even joined Ikue Mori on Near Nadir.

However, even fans of Parker sometimes have difficulties with his electronic excursions because they think that the part of “real” instruments, its warmth, the organic flow, and the authentic sound is underrepresented. But then again there is a perfect balance between the acoustic instruments and sound processing (Parker doesn’t like the term “electronics”) in his electro-acoustic ensembles because the processors manipulate and treat pre-recorded and live material – it’s rather a transformation of sound.

The music on Seven sounds as if you were in the middle of a huge and crowded insectarium, with bees, dragonflies, ants, bumblebees, spiders, butterflies and mosquitoes, all grotesquely amplified. The result is a whirlwind of fizzling, gabbling and buzzing – it’s a strange drone. There are ostinato parts, small solos are interspersed, even far eastern elements are integrated (Rothenberg’s shakuhachi), and Parker is able to use his trademark, circular breathing, in a very effective and natural way, so that it becomes a perfect part of the interaction, the density of sound, and the overall consistency.

Seven is beautiful noise par excellence, a marvelous piece of art, a successful communication, something you can get lost in endlessly. Just splendid.

Watch Mr Parker talk about and play with the ElectroAcoustic Septet here: Roulette TV: EVAN PARKER from Roulette Intermedium.

You can buy it from Instantjazz.  

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Jacaszek & Kwartludium - Catalogue Des Arbres (Touch, 2014) ****½

By Stef 

Minimal jazz and minimal free improv and electro-acoustic music and modern classical at times merge into some beautiful results. This one is a true gem. It is beyond genres, and of a subtlety and fragility that is beyond words, that can, actually, only be reflected by the sounds themselves.

The 'composer' is Michał Jacaszek, who tries to sonically evoke the sound of trees : "their forms, atmosphere and mystery", and in order to do so he first recorded the actual sound of the trees, turned them into a background drone, for Kwartludium, a Polish ensemble, to improvise on. The quartet are Dagna Sadkowska on violin, Michał Górczyński on clarinet, Paweł Nowicki on percussion, and Piotr Nowicki on the piano. After the improvisation, Jacaszek rearranged the sounds into its current collage.

The end result is absolutely stunning: surprising, moving, vulnerable, solid, vibrating and incredibly dynamic, and all this with an incredibly musical vision and sense of coherence.

No more words: listen to the music

 

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How many musicians does it take to create silence?

By Stef

Related to the whole free jazz and free improv movement, the family's quiet younger electroacoustic sibling is growing and expanding, quietly, without much fuss, yet gradually, and growing more beautiful by the day. His character is subdued, introspective, and calm ... yet incredibly intense and precise. Accuracy and the appreciation of the value of a single tone, with the full color of variant timbres coming to life and evolving in slow sonic kaleidoscopes, the instruments don't seem to matter, or rather, they present us with something new, with something we never knew resided somewhere deep in the brass or the wood or the strings.

AMM - Place Sub. V. (Matchless, 2014) ****

The masters and founders of the genre are AMM, now limited to John Tilbury on piano and Eddie Prévost on percussion. On "Place Sub  V", they push their musical concept even further, stroking, caressing cymbals and strings and wood, making sounds resonate and little muted plucks on strings and rattles with chains pierce through the ominous silence. There seems to be no need to express anything, no need to demonstrate anything, apart from the beauty of the isolated sonorities reverberating in the open space, creating space for other little sounds to emerge, to echo, to exist. Tilbury and Prévost know each other so well, and they listen so well to each other's sounds, giving each other space and interacting at the same time, that this instant joint composition is another example of the discipline it requires to generate this artistic purity. A lot goes on here, and the restraint and inventiveness create a marvelous tension that is kept throughout the one hour, one minute and one second long piece.

Beautiful!


Jürg Frey & Radu Malfatti - ii  (Erstwhile, 2014) ***½

Clarinettist Jürg Frey and trombonist Radu Malfatti offer us an incredible treat in two discs of more than one hour each. The first disc consists solely of acoustic clarinet and trombone, yet anyone listening to the album without knowing this, will have a hard time telling which instruments offer us this long, almost monotonous piece of long, endlessly stretched tones, which shift in color, in interaction and layering. The result is quite exceptional, mesmerising, soothing and intense at the same time. And once in a while you hear the physical aspect of the playing, like a tong-slap on the clarinet, to emphasise the acoustic side of the sound. The second CD goes on in the same spirit of endless tones, built around silence, but now one that is intensified by ambient sounds of birds singing, or voices in the background, and the overall tonality is even less physical, more a shimmering of sound, deeper and even more fragile.


Andrew Lafkas - 1+1 = Year Zero (Watermoon, 2014) ****

Bassist Andrew Lafkas offers us a one hour composition called "1+1 = Year Zero", performed by a nonet consisting of Jason Brogan on electric guitar, Adam Diller on bass clarinet, Tucker Dulin on trombone, Sean Meehan on percussion, Ron Stabinsky on piano, Leif Sundstrom on percussion, Karen Waltuch on viola, Barry Weisblat on radio, and Andrew Lafkas himself on bass. 

The composition and the performance are amazing. A basic low and barely audible sound is almost kept throughout, once in a rare while interrupted by a piano key, a minute skronk from the electric guitar, or another instrument piercing through the nebulous foundation, that at times gathers more momentum, with horns and strings increasing the volume, adding drama, yet without too much alteration of the core tone, making the composition move like a slow tonal river, with slow waves of sound, or even better surface ripples, that are clearly distinct but yet an integral part of the movement that you hear. 

Towards the end, the imminent flow increases into a massive groundswell, only to disappear again as it arose. A powerful piece, one that I've listened to a lot over the past months, and even if it may appear monotonous at a first listen, a lot is actually taking place. 


Skogen - Despairs Had Governed Me Too Long (Another Timbre, 2014) ****½

The absolute masters of quiet intensity are Skogen, a band whose "Ist Gefallen In Den Schnee" figured on my best albums list of 2012. The leader of this tentet is pianist and clarinetist Magnus Granberg, who created the music on this album based on 'harmonic and rhythmic material from a song by the seventeenth century English composer John Dowland'. I am not familiar with the original, so it's hard to compare, and I can assume that anybody knowing the original music, will also find it hard to compare. 

The band is Granberg on piano and clarinet, Angharad Davies and Anna Lindal on violin, Leo Svensson Sander on cello, John Eriksson on marimba and vibraphone, Ko Ishikawa on sho, Toshimura Nakamura on no-input mixing board, Erik Carlsson on percussion, Peter Wästberg on contact microphones and objects, and Henrik Olsson on bowls and glasses. 

It is hard to believe that a tentet can play such sparse and quiet sounds, that vibrate around the vast expanse of silence, shifting slowly and gradually with instruments coming out of the background for a few notes, a few percussive touches, then recede back for a few other instruments to present their timbral acrobatics, and even if the whole composition is built around a long stretched tone, the piece oscillates and pulsates in an organic, almost life-like way. 

Eventless Plot - Structures (Creative Sources, 2014) ***½

Eventless Plot is a trio consisting of Vasilis Liolios on inside piano, e-bow piano, objects, psaltiri, bells, singing bowls and semi-modular analog synth, Yiannis Tsirikoglou on objects, guitar, electronics, Max/MSP, and Aris Giatas on piano, psaltiri, objects and bells. They have two guests on the album : Chris Cundy on bass clarinet on the first track, and Louis Portal on percussion on the third. 

In contrast to the trio's usual albums, the sound is more restraint, quiet even, less psychedelic, but fully in the electroacoustic mode, with sparse sounds, quietly balanced and paced. 

On the first, far too short track, Cundy's clarinet hovers over the other sounds, suspended above the quiet soundscape, with deeptoned, flexing tones offering a kind of moaning quality to the music, alternated with more agitated moments, yet still hovering. The second track is played just by the trio, and is built around a high-pitched electronic sound, against which bells and bowls and other objects resonate, offering a more meditative mindset in the first half, yet then intensity increases, as does the sonic density, with guitar and piano creating a haunting repetitive framework. The third track starts more intimately, because it lacks the spacious resonance of the other two pieces, and little objects and percussion interact nicely and gently, gradually shape-shifting into silence and then into an electronic drone which keeps gaining momentum, but ever so slowly. 

Microtub - Star System (Sofa, 2014) ****

Microtub is an unprecedented tuba trio, with Robin Hayward on microtonal F-tuba, Kristoffer Lo on microtonal C-tuba and Martin Taxt on microtonal C-Tuba. Even if fully acoustic, the music has an incredible resonance, and the three instruments weave long, almost endless tones over and through each other, creating a deep sonic feeling of substance while keeping the space very open. 

It is no surprise that the Pythagorean concept of the "music of the spheres" come to mind, the deep harmony of sound that might emanates from the movement of the planets and stars, and that is imperceptible to the human ear (until now!). After listening to their debut album some years ago, you could wonder whether the core concept could still be open for creative renewal, and the trio does it here in spades, with more gravitas, more solidity, more depth, more expansiveness, and beautiful contrasts among the three instruments. 

So how many musicians does it take to create silence? 

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