Devin Gray - Most Definitely (Rataplan, 2023)

 

 

By Paul Acquaro

Something that is striking, though subtle, about Devin Gray's latest recording, a solo drum with electronics outing, is the attention to visual detail. With few exceptions, from the digital music perspective, artwork has gotten the short end of the stick, but here, each track has a different piece of imagery associated with it. Some are abstract, some figurative, while others remix elements and shapes in different permutations, each seems as purposefully chosen and precise as each track's sonic detail.*

That's kind of the thing right? A solo drum record really benefits from absorbing itself in details. Feel, of course is one part,  but more maybe so is how the patterns arranged and played. Now, add the pre-programmed digital elements and the patterns grow more complex, the details in how they interlock with the acoustic elements even more important. Gray has obviously thought hard about how the two elements interact and in the end has created an intriguing and visceral blend.

The album begins with a few short tracks. 'Hunker Down' kicks off with a quiet but urgent clatter of cymbals and a low frequency rumble. Here, one can hear the layers but by the second track, "Pull to Refresh," they have merged, Gray's acoustic hits and rolls enveloped in the electronics. "Bad WiFi" continues the trend, this time with intentional interruptions that suggest a bad connection indeed. The title track is built around a polyrhythm with the electronics adding a depth and sometimes a blur to the sound. Now, listen closely to hear how extended percussive techniques blend with slight effects (track 12, the delightfully named 'Doom Scrolling'), or none at all, like the follow up 'Only the Poets (for Daniel Levine) in which an austere drum roll grows more complex, underscored with a simple bass drums (Levine was a musician and collaborator of Gray's who tragically passed away last year).

Most of the tracks are short, one to two minutes, but two towards the later half of the recording clock in at around the 20 minutes mark. The first, "Solider On, Milford," starts with a bit of clatter but builds quickly in structure and momentum. Gray covers the drum kit, bringing the energy to a peak at about the halfway minute mark and then continues to builds the tension through a brief scrape with exploratory sounds to an ever higher level. The other epic, "Tough Love," takes a more textured approach, and over the span of the track, Gray frames his extended, effected cymbal work with fine textured cushion of space.

In the liner notes, Gray writes, "listening is the most important form of communication we have, its effects are greater than speaking. You will learn more by allowing yourself to be truly open, focused, and by challenging your everyday listening beyond what your ears and mind are capable of comprehending"

This is absolutely spot on. A solo percussion album can be a hard sell, but Gray hits all the right notes here, giving us something to listen to that goes beyond expectations of a solo percussion. Weaving his precise drumming deftly with an assortment of effects and live electronics to craft a modern, well, balanced, personal and engaging album.

* Though the focus here is on the digital version, Most Definitely is also available on CD and LP - which also feature the same attention to details, booklets, color vinyl - and are in quite limited editions of 50 each.

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Guitar - Duos (Part 2): Spontaneous decisions and sinuous backdrops

By Paul Acquaro

Part two in the series of recent guitar duos, before we move onto trios. We begin today with a couple of actual guitar duos and continue from there ...

Rubén Reinaldo & Kely García Guitarra Jazz Dúo - Acuarel (Free Code Jazz Records, 2020) ****

Guitar and Guitar. I've confessed before about my reverence for the guitar duo - and by this I mean simply two guitars playing together. To my simple ears, the musical ground that a pair of guitarists, attuned to their instruments and in tune with each other, is boundless. A sensitive pair can switch from quiet introspection to explosive outpouring effortlessly, leading the listener almost anywhere. The duo of Rubén Reinaldo & Kely García, two accomplished guitarists and educators from the Galician region of Spain, are exemplars of this configuration. Hailing from different generations, the younger Reinaldo and the established Garcia find much common ground in navigating the tunes of Acuarel. With nods to tradition, both musically and culturally, the two weave fluid melodic lines through rich harmonic passages, filling the musical space generously but still leaving plenty of room to not drown the listener. A wonderful example is the track 'Coscovals' - a modern jazz melody pings off a lilting comp, bright, light, but with a depth that invites the listener to dive deep. The title track is rhythmically alluring piece featuring an intricate interlocking melody. The final track, 'Berimar Blues' takes the album out in a blues-tinted flourish.

The duo reminds me, in some ways, of some of the exemplary guitar collaborations festooning my collection - like Bill Frisell and Dale Bruning, or Joe Pass and Herb Ellis, or - one of my evergreens - Vic Juris and Bireli Lagrene (not actually a duo, but good enough), or even Julian Lage and Nels Cline - no, none of these are truly comparable, but they all demonstrate compatibility, tunefulness, and selflessness. Added bonus: for the guitar players out there, the recording (even the download) comes with a book of transcriptions.

Ivar Grydeland & Henry Kaiser - In The Arctic Dreamtime (Rune Grammofon, 2020) ****½

Guitar and Guitar. Apparently the product of a spontaneous decision to record, American guitarist (and arctic explorer) Henry Kaiser met up with Norwegian guitarist Ivar Grydeland in Oslo and made a soundtrack to the documentary Ellsworths flyveekspedition 1925, an early silent film about arctic explorer Roald Amundsen’s second attempt to reach the North Pole. Less than two hours after starting, they were done, notably more successful than Amundsen in fulfilling their mission. 

 

The opening track already signals that it will be an atmospheric journey, 'Roald Amundsen 1925' opens with an evocative drone and blips of electric guitar. Over a sinuous backdrop, melodic intentions build, reaching a searing altitude around half way trough the 17+ minute track. Projected against bleakness, the guitar's distorted buzz is electrifying and lonely, it feels very much like we're soaring over a endless cracked icy white landscape, listening to the fears in our heads. It is, in a sense, frighteningly gorgeous. The track 'Spitsbergen' is different, arpeggios with a touch of blues, a little Morricone, and a little bit of the musical language from Grydeland's group Huntsville. It feels open ended, somewhat jagged, and tempting. Each track seems to capture a similar mood just a little differently, 'To the North Pole' seems a bit hopeful, 'N-25' a bit forlorn, and Into the Arctic Dreamtime, somewhat terrifying. Quite an evocative recording!

Csaba Palotai, Steve Argüelles - Cabane Perchée (BMC, 2021) ***½

Guitar and Percussion. This recording, from a Hungarian guitarist Csaba Palotai and British drummer Steve Argüelles was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. The two musicians, collaborators living in France, have certainly built their Cabane Perchée - tree house, or as DeepL will have it, 'perched cabin' on some strong branches of rhythm and repetition. Through the crisp, lively recording comes clear, developed ideas that build-up thir energy through circular motifs and strong grooves. 'Bulgarian Rhythm 1' opens the album with a swiftly moving cluster of chords and bare bones percussion accompaniment. The full sound is somewhat surprising given the instrumentation, but it is no exception, as the second track 'Phosphore' shows. Again a repetitive figure from the guitar and a laser focused set of percussive devices keeps the music lively and when Palotai breaks up the figure with short melodic runs the contrast is alluring. However, just as soon as one thinks there is a pattern forming, 'In Tents', the third track, shakes things up. Argüelles plays a prepared acoustic guitar, giving Palotai's acoustic guitar a much different rhythmic base to build on, which he does with slowly expanding chordal voicings, ending with an emotive solo passage. A very nice, composed, acoustic recording.

Álvaro Domene & Killick Hinds - Hocket Pulsar (Iluso, 2021) ***½

Guitar and String Instruments (and some electronics). According to the liner notes, it was Henry Kaiser who introduced the Georgia (USA) based Killick Hinds and New York based Álvaro Domene based on a feeling that they were musically compatible. His hunch proved correct as the duo quickly set forth to create Hocket Pulsar. On first listen, one could be forgiven thinking there is a glitch in their Bluetooth speaker connection. The opening title track is a long, patient expansion of sound. There are glitchy pops and fizzes of electronics over a drone for half of the track, while a more traditional electric guitar appears now and then in the mix. As the track evolves, the guitar takes over with rhythmic plucking of the lower strings and other elongated tones. It takes patience, but the effect is a rewarding experience. The next track 'Voces Magicae' offers a contrast, less electronic sounds and more percussive used of stringed instruments provide the setting. The other guitar strikes a minimalist melody, for a bit, until it becomes goopier both acoustically and electronically. 'Kinesis in Unlimited Dimensions' explores other sounds, growls from the guitar mesh with digital spouts, while 'Meditation on Mediation' takes a quieter but still very active approach, seemingly processing the sounds of the guitar other instruments into an effective blend. Overall a successfully experimental mélange of acoustic/electronic/digital sounds.

Lars Larsson and Gunnar Backman - A Love Supreme (Simlas, 2021) ***½

Guitar and Saxophone. Before we veer out of the electronics, let's talk about (virtual) guitarist Gunnar Brakeman and saxophonist Lars Larsson's A Love Supreme. I suspect naming a recording as such could quickly set up opposing sides: there will be those who hear the music through the lens of John Coltrane and only hear it in comparison to the original, and others who hear the music filtered through the influence of the original. It is best to do the latter here, and in fact, one could be tempted to do the same with Backman's instrument. He pays the virtual fretted guitar, which I would be hard pressed to describe except that the duo used Abelton Live to create an actual musical environment that sounds more like a full band than a duo. The opening track, 'Acknowledgement' evolves into a thick groove with a shredding virtual guitar, which is where the second track 'Resolution' also goes. It seems like Larsson's role is often to provide a connection to the original, whereas Backman takes us deep into a sonic epiphany. There is a lot of incidental sound as well, misty shrouds wafting through underground tech-dystopias, like on the intro 'Pursuance.' In the middle of the track, after a long attractively abrasive guitar heavy sound collage, the saxophonist takes a lengthy, melodic solo, his tone refined. The wisdom of calling your album 'A Love Supreme' is debatable, but the concept employed here, seeing each movement of the original as a stand alone piece to then reshape acknowledges the sincere indebtedness the world has to Coltrane's masterwork, as well its enduring malleability as a source of inspiration.

Chris Alford & Justin Peake - Turning On Our Own Time (2021) ****

Guitar and Bass. The duo of New Orleans based guitarist Chris Alford and bassist Justin Peake have created an excellent free-jazz/folk recording that pulls the listener deep into a place where the surreal feels visceral. Cleanly plucked notes and lingering reverberation of strings stand on equal footing as the two instruments converse. Bursts of ideas follow long expositions, and as busy as it may get, the two never get in each others way. The opener 'Mullerian Mimicry' features a pointy, abstract melody led by the guitar and supported by an insistent bassline that adds percussive elements and counter melodies. The title track takes a more atmospheric turn, the reverb is turned up and the echoing instruments cast a chanting-like pallor over the track. "Ancestral Murmurs' goes even deeper into reverie, this time with less echo, but with similar determination. 'A Course in Water' is a flowing solo finger-picked chord melody and 'Issaquena' features a somewhat indistinct bass thrumming overlaid by a lightly picked single note melody that dips generously into American folk. 'Turning On Own Own Time' is a spare, but generous album that over the course of 14 tracks stays fresh and engaging.

Ross Hammond and ... (s/r, 2020 - 2021) ****

Guitar and Drums, Vocals, Table. At the start of the pandemic California based, Kentucky born, guitarist Ross Hammond released a couple of EPs on his Bandcamp page. They were a diverse lot, an engagement with drummers' Mike Pride and Calvin Weston, one with vocalist Jay Nair, and another with tabla player Sameer Gupta. A strong connecting theme across these diverse duos is Hammond's deep plunge into Appalachian, blues, folk and the hard to describe but you-know-it-when-you-hear-it twang of Americana.  

 

Earth Music, his duo with Mike Pride, begins with a gentle finger picked melody claw-hammer style on the banjo over a solid pulsating drum beat. 'Waiting' drinks deep the country blues, and 'Walking Through' features Hammond's slide playing over a folksy, earthy drone. On Root, with Calvin Weston, Hammond strikes out with a more forceful blues on his slide guitar, employing a lowered tuning to get some gut grabbing tones. 'Snakeline' is swampy and mysterious, while 'Blue Eye' is bright and nearly pop music in comparison! Weston's drumming is groove based, giving Hammond propulsion. 

 

With table player Sameer Gupta on Live at Gold Lion Arts, Hammond's playing is lighter and a touch more open ended. On the beautiful opener 'Misdirection,' Hammond plays open chords, with gentle, bright leading tones weaving around the sound of Gupta's gulping percussion. 'Gone National' must refer to the National Steel guitar, as the sound is different, more muffled and metallic, than the previous track. Here Gupta's rhythmic prowess is a main feature. The tabla and acoustic guitar combination feels timeless and this is expressed nowhere better than on the hopeful sounds of the last track 'Happily Outnumbered.' The final collaboration with vocalist Jay Nair, Hope (a full length album), adds a entirely new dimension to Hammond's work. Dark and expectant, the opening track 'Mother of Compassion' finds a deep and ready connection between Indian musical stylings (the labels Carnatic and Hindustani come from the Bandcamp page) and American blues/folk. The track 'Ocean of Bliss' feels like it pulls to closer to American folk side with open and hopeful sounding chord-melody. Nair's complex melody graces the outlines of Hammond's guitar work elegantly.

Kevin Kastning & Mark Wingfield - Rubicon I (Greydisc, 2021) **** 

Guitar and Guitar (and a little Piano). The album came with the following genre labels: Jazz, New Age, Ambient, Avant-garde, Progressive rock. Rubicon I, the 9th album of the duo of guitarists Kevin Kastning and Mark Wingfield fits - but never entirely - under all of these labels. Throughout the tracks, there is a gradual accumulation of intent and tension as layers of foundational ambiance build, while injections of clean, incisive lines of electric guitar cut and the buzz of acoustic guitar strings add texture. There are also the unusual timbres and tones to consider, as Kastning uses his self-invented 36-string Double Contraguitar and a 17-string Hybrid Extended classical guitar to contrast against Wingfield's electric guitar and live-electronics. Together the two cover a wide swath of sonic territory that is sometimes familiar, sometimes treacherous (listen to the intro of 'Comoving Distance,' imagine yourself lost and floating between perceptual dimensions, it could get potentially pretty bewildering, no?) and generally fascinating. The tracks are very textural and fraught with possibilities - it seems at any moment something may develop. On 'Dynamic Horizon' an electronic ring can be heard throughout the track, while Kastning switches to the piano and provides a sparse melodic framework that Wingfield soars around with a frazzled guitar tone. 'The Lensing' continues with Kastning's piano and works off a somewhat more traditional musical interaction - Kastning provides deliberative melodic statements and punctuating chords to Wingfield's swooshing lines. The album ends with the 20 minute 'Particle Horizon', which finds Kastning back on guitar, likely the 36 string one. The track begins with atmospheric fill and a clean toned, staggered melody and expands patiently, layering in new sounds, but still keeping a threads of ideas stretching to a climatic moment three-quarters of the way through.

Kevin Kastning & Soheil Peyghambari -- The First Realm (Greydisc, 2021) ***½

Guitar and Bb & Bass Clarinet. My two favorite instruments: guitar and bass clarinet. Maine based guitarist Kevin Kastning's is paired up here with Iran/France based Soheil Peyghambari on their first recorded collaboration The First Realm. Like the previous album, it features Kastning on an assortment of unusual guitars that he has invented, which extend the standard range of the instrument in multiple directions. Peyghambari's clarinet meanwhile adds its own expressive range to the mix. Opening track 'Sleep Memory Walking' starts off in the lower registers of one of Kastning's extended guitars, shortly thereafter joined by soft, low tones from Peyghambari. The two engage deliberately and offer gently unfolding counter melodies, extending each other's melodic ideas. The next track 'As stranded declination tendrils' plays out differently. Kastning creates an ephemeral atmosphere for Peyghambari, who adds tentative, short flowing passages. Each of the tracks evolve with their own unique approaches, for example the closing track 'Perduring toward obsidian transferal' offers moments where the guitar provides a moving base-line low-end (I'd write bassline, but it would not be quite correct) under wisps of Bb clarinet, while the track 'Beside shadows calling forward' is grounded by harp-like arpeggios for the clarinetist to react to. The general mood is subdued and dreamlike, the dynamics are hushed and little changes make for big differences.

Aron Namenwirth & Eric Plaks - Shape Storm (Culture of Waste, 2020) ***½

Guitar and Piano. Aron Namenwirth is a Brooklyn based guitarist who seems to be getting more active lately - he's a part of the group Playfield with Daniel Carter, which has released two recordings on the label Orbit577 and he has released a few albums under his own aegis via Bandcamp. This duo recording from 2020 is a grower. Namenwirth uses a slightly effected sound, I am assuming a wah-wah peddle, to add a bit of texture to his otherwise clean tone. The approach adds extra propulsion to the interactions with the piano - it is slightly goopy sounding, and when applied to repetitive motifs, offers a contrast to the more precise melodic lines. The tightness between Namenwirth and pianist Eric Plaks reveal a long developed musical relationship, they are able to compliment, anticipate, and react to each other seemingly effortlessly. This is a nice duo setting, the two are on equal standing, and as Plaks at times takes the reigns and moves the improvisation into more frenetic territory, Namenwirth kicks in bit of crunch. The track 'Feedback Square' is a great example of this, while a track like 'Seven Sides' indeed shows a more textural and exploratory side of Namenwirth's playing. 

 

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Mike Majkowski – Mirage (Bandcamp self released, 2020) ****

By Paolo Casertano

What makes you decide to listen to a record for a second (maybe a third) time? Since home and perennial digital real-time recording have become so accessible and almost effortless (and this is true for at least the last two decades) this is one of the questions that haunt me the most. What is really worth recording? Gradually also “jazz” and impro related sub-scenes seem to have adopted the same approach, ideally replacing the uniqueness and non-repeatability of the live performances. My answer to the first point, a simple answer I admit it, it’s the tangible spontaneity of some of these outcomes. Not everything, instead, could be the second, visceral answer to the latter dilemma. Maybe it’s not always useful to read letters or drafts of great writers. However, sometimes, this helps to better understand some paths and developments that have moved an artist to a result. Dissection is a resource only if you know when to stop it.

“Mirage” probably falls into the category of “how to better understand the work of an artist” and it offers at the same time a very pleasurable listening experience.

Mike Majkowski has earned him a reputation in recent years with a consistent numbers of solo contrabass releases (for Avantwhatever, Bocian Records and Monofonus Press to name a few). Together with his distinctive and tireless slow bowing acoustic approach to the instrument, also the electronic presence has constantly grown in his musical research (the electronic compositions of his 2019 Between Seasons deserve close attention). Anyway, in my opinion, even when he prefers only the electronic output to embody his creative vision, the approach, the inner compositional structure of his music, the overall sound landscape he manages to build, underline once more how much he is deeply rooted and bounded to the sound territorial palette of the cavernous wood instrument.

“Mirage” appears as a 36-minute suite equally shared in two moments: “Morning” and “Afternoon”. In the first temporal frame, the inexhaustible bowing is far from being a monolithic slab of sound, it is not rigid and cold but alive, hiccup interrupted in an unpredictable way by percussive bowing, like whispered implosions, and scattered by weakening, soft vibrations. It’s like a river tumbling upon rocks or touching leafy branches swinging from its banks. In the second “moment of the day” the bowing is still ceaseless, but it seems to retreat from the forefront, slowly hiding itself behind the sustained tunnel of tone that occupy the sonic scene. There are some sudden, shorter surges of deep and middle undertones. Rapids in the river. The mood gets darker. The night is nigh.

You can listen to it on Bandcamp. No mask needed. Just breath.

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Latest Collaborations of Electronics Player Ikue Mori

By Eyal Hareuveni

Japanese, New York-based electronics player Ikue Mori  (she uses only her laptop) is an exceptional collaborator. She enriches any musical meeting, thoroughly composed or totally improvised, with her remarkable sensitivity and highly personal aesthetics. No other electronics player sounds like her and no one has collaborated with so many distinct musicians like her. Her recent collaborations with Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and Danish sound artist Christian Rønn emphasize her idiosyncratic sonic language.

Mahobin - Live at Big Apple in Kobe (Libra Records, 2018) ****½

Mahobin is a new group from the prolific pianist Sakoto Fujii and its debut album documents the first ever performance (actually, the second set of this performance) at the Big Apple club in Fujii’s new hometown, Kobe. The quartet features Fujii on the piano, her partner, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, Mori on electronics, and Danish sax player Lotte Anker. These four musicians shared the same stage for the first time on February 2018, but all have collaborated with each other before. Fujii hosted Mori during her residency at New York’s The Stone in 2013, and Fujii and Anker joined Mori during her residency at The Stone in 2016. In 2017 Anker toured with Fujii and Tamura in Japan.

Mori recorded last year with Fujii, Tamura and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith the album Aspiration (Libra, 2017) and recorded with Anker and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier the album Alien Huddle (Intakt, 2008) and participated in Anker’s What River Is This (Ilk Music, 2014). So it was only a matter of time before Fujii would ask all to participate in another of her Kanreki (還暦), her 60th birthday celebrations projects. Moti suggested the group’s name, Mahōbin (魔法瓶), a thermos in everyday Japanese, but the literal meaning of the ideographic characters mean magic bottle.

And Mahobin does offer many kinds of hot magic, sustainable adventures and wicked games and spices, all spontaneously improvised. The title of the first, 42-minutes “Rainbow Elephant” is another pun, this time on a famous Japanese brand of thermos bottles, Zōjirushi (象印, literally: elephant brand). This intense improvisation is the most free-formed piece Fujii has ever played, at times even abstract one filled with enigmatic silences. But “Rainbow Elephant” flows with a natural ease, with no attempt to gravitate towards any pulse or a clear narrative, but with a truly democratic interplay. Mori’s sparkling electronics extend the extended breathing techniques of Anker and Tamura and resonate Fujii’s prepared piano timbres. There is no redundant note or sound in Anker’s playing and she sound as navigating calmly the busy commotion, saving all from diving into unnecessary pits. Mid-piece Fujii intensifies its dramatic progression and towards its end she weaves a beautiful melodic undercurrent to the abstract interplay and concludes it with a touching coda. Throughout the many, sudden sonic detours, the four musicians never lose sight of the big picture and always introduce more delicate nuances and subtle colors to its overall, fluid texture. The second, shorter “Yellow Sky” sketches a darker texture, full of restless, claustrophobic tension. Anker again sounds as leading the conflictual interplay and with few gestures marks the contours and the spirit of this wild sonic journey.

Magic did happen on that night and now it is bottled in this great album, the eight in Fujii's Kanreki celebration.

Listen on Soundcloud.

Ikue Mori & Christian Rønn - Chordis et Machina (Nische Records/Resipiscent Records/Tonometer, 2018) ***½

Danish, Copenhagen-based composer-sound artist Christian Rønn is known from his electronic and organ improvisations as well as from his solo project Ganga. He has collaborated before with Anker, minimalist American composer Rhys Chatham, and singer-songwriter-poet Ingrid Chavez. His duo with Mori was recorded in Stockholm, but later they kept refining the basic tracks at their respective homes in New York and Copenhagen. Chordis et Machina is released as a limited-edition of 300 vinyls by Rønn’s label Nische Records, together with San Francisco’s Resipiscent Records and Copenhagen’s Tonometer.

This heady collaboration relies on Mori’s delicate electronics, blended immediately and with great precision with Rønn’s resourceful electro-acoustic sounds. His sonic palette embraces psychedelic-spacy trips, almost transparent and silent sine-waves, grit distortions and prepared piano. Mori and Rønn let their free-form, free-improvised interaction to settle naturally, attune and resonate to each other’s personal manipulations of machine-made sounds and their senses of time and space.

Both allow “Beyond the Forest” to dance around a twisted, fragmented pulse until its otherworldly groove is lost in a thick forest of out-of-tune, sudden sounds. “Loch Ness” follows the elusive character of the imaginary creature and suggests a fragile and cryptic cinematic soundscape. “Primordial Chaos” floats between dissonant-resonant piano hammering and its subtle, electronic reflections, sketching a nuanced, labyrinthine texture where sparse sounds are mirrored, shaped and morphed into newer, weirder ones. “The Path” surprises with its innocent, joyful spirit before its loose groove of white noises spirals and leaps into deep space.

Listen on Soundcloud.

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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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Cannibal – s/t (ultra eczema 2017) ****

By Daniel Böker

At the Sonic City festival in Kortrijk in Belgium I bought an album from the band Cannibal. The band consists of Dennis Tyfus, Cameron Jamie and Cary Loren. The first two did a set of 20 minutes at the festival and I was rather impressed by the intensity with which they performed.

On stage it was their voices and some electronic devices to loop and change the things they sang, said and shouted. On the album they are a trio and are more instruments: at the start there is a slide guitar, and in the middle of side A, I believe I hear percussion and flute, though they might be sampled or realized with some kind of electronics. At the center of the two tracks, simply called A and B, the voice is predominant, and electronics and sampling are used to exploit all of the possible sounds.

Track A begins with some guitar tones, no chords just single distorted notes supported by some sampled trumpet sounds after a minute or so. Then, in comes the voice: at first it is just voice, which means there are no words or lyrics to listen to. The voice accompanies the guitar as a very fine match. Single tones screamed into a microphone are changed and distorted after a few moments. As the guitar changes into an undistorted manner, the voice also gets clearer and they (all three of them are vocal artists.) start to tell a little story in a spoken word manner.

During the third part of track A, the musical possibilities of Cannibal come together: the instruments and the electronic sounds are back (as I said in the beginning, there might be some percussion or some sampled percussion and flutes.), the voices sing, shout, speak words and get changed and looped by all the electronic devices Cannibal has at hand.

Track B opens with electronic sounds. Listening to it, it might be based on vocal sounds. They almost create some kind of beat or at least rhythm with these sounds. The voices are the main instruments,  without telling a story in words. This track is the more uneasy track, there is a tension and a restlessness in the music that Track A didn't have. After five minutes the mood changes completely: A kind of piano sound comes in and the voice (again I don't know whose) starts to sing with only a little alienation.

Sounds like from a computer game of the nineties come in and the different voices sing and shout with more changes to them. Again some kind of percussion complements the sound. Change after change. It is not easy to listen to it as a "song". It is rather a kind of live compilation of a lot of different ideas. The listener is often taken by surprise. These changes create the tension I mentioned before. But while listening to it I realized that this tension finds its relief in a kind of humor the music of Track B carries with it.

So especially the second track brings something into the improvised music (and this is what it is - improvised music, recorded live in Brussels) which is, in my opinion rare to find: a solid kind of humor. It is not subtle, it is not just some kind of fine irony (you can find that more often I suppose.) That does by no means say that the music is easy or unintentional. But I found a humor in that music I really enjoyed.

Listening to the music of Cannibal on track B, I almost can see the three of them smile and laugh. Which does not mean that they don't take their art seriously. Because they do. That's what I saw on stage. But there is fun in the different ideas and the surprising turns they take.

Maybe you won't listen to it every day or in every mood. But it is a great album to listen to in a light mood. It is a great album if you are ready for some humor.

Here you can see them at work:




The Rubik's Cube is not just a forgotten toy from the 80's. The fact is that it's even more popular than ever before. You can play with this great puzzle on this link.

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Marcus Schmickler and Thomas Lehn – Neue Bilder (Mikroton, 2017) ****

By Daniel Böker

I find it a challenge to write about the music of Marcus Schmickler and Thomas Lehn. A challenge because it is a rather abstract soundscape where one can move through or get lost in, and a challange because it is a new universe of sound and music production for me.

Marcus Schmickler is a Cologne-based composer and musican, producing his sounds via his computer. I saw him live on stage one or two years ago: a tall man standing behind his computer, concentrated and calm, though the sounds he produces are wild and often confusing and his music is rather abstract. Through a little internet research, I realized that his compositions are based on a rather complex theoretical background, which makes me question if I am the right person to write about his music. I mean, I don't know the programme he uses. I do not produce electronic music myself, and I lack the theoretical background Schmickler has built around his compositions. 

But continuing on ... where Schmickler uses the computer and digital sounds, Thomas Lehn works with an analog synthesizer (at least on his collaborations here). He also lives in Cologne and will celebrate his 60^th birthday this year (Congratulations!!) Besides his duos with Schmickler he is a worldwide active musician with the piano (lesser in recent years) and the synthesizer. He performs composed works for electronic music and improvises live.

On their album  Neue Bilder (New Pictures), the duo presents two tracks of live performances, each title names the date of the event.

Track 1 '12022016' starts with some long whimping sounds, two, three, four of them. Clicking noises say hello, and as you might already know it is difficult to describe abstract improvised electronic music with words used for music in a more "classical" sense. After three minutes a plane lands somewhere and some kind of radiowave gets disrupted. Six minutes in, an electronic wind moves through some kind of desert, building an echo (I don't know how!) before someone tries to play an old vinyl that cracks and hisses. That cracking sound gets reproduced and amplified and a lot more is going on. In fact, it takes around 14 of the 17 minutes of track one till I hear sounds that evoke some associations with instrumental sounds.

Track 2 '9112013' (recorded more than two years earlier) continues the journey through a soundscape that is not mapped out - at least not with the usual instruments. (I have to say that Schmickler and Lehn are by far not the only ones moving in that area. There are a lot of musicans creating abstract electronic music: Merzbow, Microstoria, Mouse on Mars, Ikue Mori and others. But Schmickler and Lehn are rather radical in their approach. And the difficulty in putting words to this kind of music remains the same with almost all of them.) This one starts with more distortion, more clicks and cracks and the longer sounds follow only after the first minute.

Both tracks carry a tension with them as they move between intense and loud parts and almost absolute silence, and in both tracks there is that plane landing somewhere. For my ears it is difficult to recognize the different parts each artists plays. I actually don't know what sound is produced by Schmickler's computer and which comes from Lehn's synthesizer. And with this in mind, this is the closest to a classic 'duo' that you can get: the sounds heard on the album are the work of a good working partnership. It is a duo in which I do not hear not two separate 'nerds' with their 'toys'.

  

So, after all the challenge and doubt, just how does it feel to hear this album? Is it worth the effort?

I say yes, absolutely!

First this blog and the people writing for it (and probably reading it) are always in search for new and unheard experiences. This was one for me or rather is still one, even though I've heard Schmickler live already. Second in all the abstract noise and sound I can hear or feel the cooperation of two likeminded musicians going to places they think are worth going to. It is a duo in the best sense. Third if you listen to it more than once you'll find structures and sounds that reoccur and they make you feel at home in that soundscape. Finally, last (but not least!!) I was captured by the sounds, by the unfamiliarity of this album. I enjoyed the journey with these two guys. I felt curiosity, unease but also relaxation in certain moments and started to look for more music from Schmickler and / or Lehn.

PS: Both tracks did undergo some editing and producing in June 2017. On youtube (link below) you can find the second track as it was presented live. I think I can hear the difference...

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