Akio Suzuki - a i sha (Edition Omega Point, 2015) ***½

By Nicola Negri

Designing sound for installations and performance art is particularly difficult, needing to be effective in the moment and continually engaging for the audience, taking in consideration physical space while retaining musical coherence. Documenting such projects on disc is even more difficult, with the risk of having a musical performance that inevitably lacks the crucial aspect of the environment for which it was created.

With a career spanning more than 50 years, Akio Suzuki has constantly succeeded in both these endeavors, producing acclaimed sound installations and site-specific performances that always retain a strong musical identity when translated on record. His latest release a i sha is no exception. Created for the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa in 2009, the performances were constructed around self-built sound producing devices.

Installation of Howling Objects

Howling Objects used cylindrical paper boxes containing radios and microphones, that responding to the physical spaces in which they were located produced variable undulating drones, sometimes reminding of more familiar sounds, like guitar feedback and traditional electroacoustic treatments. The second performance employed a small dolly where the same radios where put and carried through halls and corridors, responding to the space of the gallery and creating an ever-changing musical landscape that merged with the environment itself and the audience inhabiting such space, adding another layer of complexity.

From a strictly musical perspective the album is an interesting mix of environmental sounds, electronic drones, and accidental rhythms, and Suzuki’s role is particularly intriguing: more than performing a musical piece, he prepares the conditions for it to occur, letting it to be shaped by randomness through spontaneous interactions with the surrounding ambience. The mind of the composer is always present though, emerging through carefully built sections that provide structural coherence – listening and reacting to the accidental interactions between sound and space in always meaningful ways. In the end, the musical experience unfolds in a natural, relaxed way, as inevitable as the sonic landscape we all live in.

Read More

François Tusques - La Reine Des Vampires 1967 (Finders Keepers, 2013) *****

By Stef

I just watched "World War Z" and "Warm Bodies", recent zombie movies of questionable quality, as well as "Under The Skin", an utterly bizarre movie with a phenomenal soundtrack by Mica Levi, hence this video below too. Especially in horror movies, the soundtrack is essential. Watch a suspense scene without the sound, and the effect is gone, making the scene slow or even completely silly. Keep the sound, and take away the picture, and the effect is in all likelihood still present. Nothing like sound to create emotional experiences.

But now for the topic itself: in 1967, French avant-garde composer and pianist François Tusques was asked by director Jean Rollin to make the soundtrack for a vampire melodrama, called "Les Femmes Vampires" (the vampire women), then erroneously announced as the first French vampire movie ever. Tusques assembled a band with Barney Wilen on tenor sax, Eddie Gaumont on violin, Jean-François Jenny-Clark and Beb Guérin on bass. As you can expect, the music is eery, haunting, full of dread, anticipation, angst, anxiety and fear. It is ominous, dark, unpredictable, gloomy and sinister. It is equally well-paced, slow, refined, sophisticated, precise and accurate. In contrast to what was the norm at that time, the soundtrack has no clear theme, just sounds full of dramatic tension and effect. The violin, the sax and the bass create long phrases hanging in mid-air, coming from nowhere, not seeming to go anywhere, yet with astonishing presence when they are in the here and now, immensely powerfully.

The album gives the complete recording of the session, even if only parts were used for the soundtrack (think of Mike Oldfield's score for The Exorcist). The A-side presents the full pieces from which some snippets were used in the movie, the B-side brings material that was not used in the movie, even if it is equally strong. When Rollin made his second vampire movie, "La Vampire Nue" (the nude - female -vampire), he re-used the material on the A-side, rearranged it and all this without Tusques' prior consent.

To have this music back, now, after almost fifty years, is amazing. When you watch the movie excerpts on Youtube, the movie looks incredibly dated, real sixties' stuff. And probably the most amazing thing is that when you listen to the soundtrack, it still sounds incredibly modern. It is today's music. Think of the vision and the audacity it must have required then.

Mica Levi - Under The Skin (Insound Vinyl, 2014) ****

The movie by Jonathan Glazer can be highly recommended - taking into account of course that I'm not a film critic - because of its weird tension, great imagery, audacious editing and overall atmosphere of doom, loneliness, horror and alienation (you actually never get a clue about what's happening), and in which Scarlett Johansson drives around Scotland in a white mini-van, doing away with local male individuals. I had never heard of Mica Levi, but I read that she's a songwriter and singer of a pop-band, as well as DJ. Maybe I should rethink my opinion of these three categories of musician, or I should be happy that she does nothing on this album of what you expect those kinds of musicians to do. The soundtrack has scores for violin, ambient and electronic sounds, with possible references to John Cage and György Ligeti, and Bernard Hermann's piercing violin score for the shower scene in Psycho.

Like the movie, Levi has ventured far beyond the norm, maybe redefining the concept of soundtrack. You could almost turn it round, and say that the movie is the videoclip for the music. Almost, because if Tusques' album really can be listened to as a stand-alone piece of music, the soundtrack for the "Under The Skin" has the main theme repeated into the various tracks, which works better in a movie setting than when you listen to the album.

Nevertheless, a fantastic listening experience. Not jazz at all. But a fantastic listening experience. 

Read More

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble: Outstairs (ECM, 2012) ****

Reviewed by Joe

I haven't been a fan of Christian Wallumrød's music for so long, it's a recent fad that seems to have grown on me whilst listening to some live recordings I have of this band. His approach is completely original, if you listen to his other records - trios, the ensemble, solo etc - you'll notice how he's developed his style bit by bit over the years. Moreover, that is what makes it so interesting, one could say it's all the same even! It's a music that works on small details, simple ideas that develop slowly, not unlike a melodically organised version of Skogen's "Ist Gefallen in den Schnee". Interestingly Stef also saw a connection with Wallumrød's collaboration on "Dans Les Arbres", so maybe I'm not dreaming after all!

The texture of the ensemble is of utmost importance to the colour of this music. The original band had Arve Henriksen on trumpet, which may give you a clue to the music stylistically, but since a while Eivind Lønning has been in the trumpet chair. The rest of the group is Gjermund Larsen - violin, hardanger fiddle, viola. Espen Reinertsen - tenor saxophone. Tove Törngren - cello and of course the unstoppable Per Oddvar Johansen on drums and vibraphone, and for all who don't know him, Christian Wallumrød plays piano, harmonium and toy piano. You'll notice there's NO bass and this really makes the music sound somewhere between classical and a sense of world music, which is created via the harmonium and the clever use of drums, often played with the hands. The great use of bass 'movement' via the cello, or sax even gives the music a very special sound. 

"Stille Rock" starts the album like a mournful prelude to the music that follows, Wallumrød's music has that sound, but is in fact uplifting. "Bunadsbangla" is 'the hit' of the album, and believe me he can write some catchy tunes! The album, like most of his work, is best listened to as a whole. There is little space between improvisation and composition, it sounds very organised, but it works well that way. You can make out small sections of improvisation, but don't buy this if you're looking for mind stretching new approaches, it's all about control and the beauty of restraint. There are too many pieces on the album to talk about everything. "Tridili #2" is a baroque piece with saxophone playing overtones and clusters in response to the melody. "Very Slow" is a quite piece (and slow!) using tone clusters. "Folkskiss" is a beautiful ballad that reminds you of a tune you heard long ago, but where - almost Gaelic in feeling! The scrapings and scratchings of "Third Try" could be from a gore movie.

This is a fine album that hangs musically between many worlds of sound. If you love film sound tracks that create space, and if you like organised beauty, then this is certainly one for you. 

    

Read More

Vandermark ...

By Stanley Zappa

Ken Vandermark - Mark in the Water (Not Two, 2011)  **½ 

Speaking of the parent culture, you gotta love Wikipedia. There, I found this: After several years of Vandermark 5 performances of his arrangements of works by Sonny Rollins, Joe McPhee, Cecil Taylor and others, Vandermark in 2005 announced, "Though I have learned a great deal by rearranging some of my favorite composers' work for the Vandermark 5, it's time to leave that process behind and focus more completely on my own ideas.”

A half truth, like most things on Wikipedia, as 2011 will be remembered for (among other things) Ken Vandermark rearranging some of his favorite composers' work for Ken Vandermark in the solo setting for release on the recording Mark In The Water—a CD length mish-mosh of post modern ancestor worship.

Simply by reading the roster of “dedications” and “portraits”, before note one was heard, there was memory of a record by none other than Kenneth “Thumbs” Carllile, in particular a tune called "Springfield Guitar Social." In this short song, Carllile imitates the guitarists of the day—Chet Atkins, Les Paul and the like. Each musician is imitated for a few measures, with the whole piece book-ended by (and contrasted with) Thumbs Carllile's own unique, developed, signature style. One comes away from that listening experience with a deep appreciation for Carllile's musicality. While his influences and antecedents are obvious and his ability to ape their styles uncanny—at no point does the listener forget they are listening to Carllile.

Similarly, at no point does the listener forget they are listening to Vandermark, despite the musical mime. Not that Vandermark is an incapable musician—even if the only time he touched the instrument was when recording and playing live, that's still more billable hours than most of us 9 to 5 schlubs combined. Through continued application, Vandermark's technique is polished to a high sheen, single reed excellence in abundance. That this is a live performance makes the high wire aspect of the recording all the more thrilling and Vandermark's stature as a reliable commodity producer that much more certain.

If you do get this recording, a fun game might be to put the CD into the player without looking at the track list and see if you can guess whose “portrait” is being musically painted, or for whom the piece is dedicated. I got the Evan Parker track right--that's one out of ten right...I guess that just goes to show how little I know. Ignore me.

Ken Vandermark Sextet - Strade d'Aqua/Roads Of Water (Multikulti, 2011) **½

Speaking of commodities, here again we find Vandermark's music fulfilling a mandate—this time music for film.

Wikipedia also told me that Vandermark's studies at McGill were in “Film and Communication.” As such, it's safe to say that Vandermark has at least given some thought to the roll and function of music in film (which is more than I can say, so ignore me twice.)

Unfortunately, I only got a download of the music, and not the images—which is a pity. It becomes apparent quite quickly that the images (regardless of what they are) were an equal member in the ensemble. Without the imagery, the music has a hollow, plodding quality which for all I know is exactly what Vandermark wanted and was perfect for the film.

There are certainly “film music” elements throughout—bring in the honestly and truly fabulous Jeb Bishop and his majestic tone to give the feeling of unity and triumph. Feeling spooky? Try Fred Lonberg-Holm bowing a harmonic or Nate McBride bowing a low E...that will spook 'em! And so on, somewhat crudely, for the duration of the recording. In and amongst, I can't remember where, Vandermark has a spirited tenor solo, and again, can there really be too much Jeb Bishop? Getting to those peaks, however, is a hard, austere slog.


© stef

Read More

Piano ....

Being far from home, alone in a hotel room, no better context than to listen to the more melancholy kind of music, full of despair and lonely sadness.

There are also times when a person wants some rest, some quieter moments, with some romanticism maybe, but then of the more intellectual kind, the one that is stimulating and interesting without being too demanding. The piano, solo or in a small ensemble, is your best bet.

Here are three albums that will please you.


Stéphane Oliva- Lives Of Bernard Hermann (Sans Bruit, 2010) ****

French pianist Stéphane Oliva is possibly the best known pianist in this series, a lyricist with quite a solid background and experience. On this album he brings a live version of his previous "Ghosts Of Bernard Hermann", the famous composer of soundtracks. Hermann's name is possibly not very familiar, but he composed for such movie masterpieces as "Citizen Kane", "Vertigo", "Cape Fear", "Psycho", "Obession", "Sisters", "Taxi Driver", and many more. Not only an integral part of movie history, from Orson Welles to Martin Scorcese and Brian De Palma, but also the top films in the thriller genre. When listening to Oliva's playing, you can understand why. Hermann's music is all about tension and contrast, like black and white movies : romanticism shifts into menace, and suspense evolves into deliverance.

The suspense becomes even more accute because the music is so light, like the footsteps of a person, alone in the dark. It's what it is not there, what is suggested by the silence and the lack of expansion that is the real threat (and treat), the creation of the unreal, conjuring up images in the mind, making it darker and more ominous. Every note is one of anticipation, made even more impressive by Oliva's rubato style of playing.

A great album.

Katya Sourikova - Angels & Satellites (Weave Records, 2010) ***½

This album could well fit within the ECM catalogue, because of it's genre-defying nature. Yes, it's jazz because of the instruments. Musically though, it is as close to romantic classicism or soundtrack music. For the latter, the music is certainly visual and imaginative. The notes are sparse, clustered around silence, and the music develops slowly, like morning mist slowly dissolving with the upcoming heat of the day. The texture is light, transparent and open-ended, like poetry without rhyme. There are even moments, as on the last track which are directly reminiscent of Jarrett. Yet the album has its moments of instensity too, adding character and variation.

The band is Katya Sourikova on piano, Curtis Macdonald on alto sax, Ivan Bamford on drums, Remi-Jean leBlanc and Rick Rosato on double bass.

The quality of the production, including the cover art and the booklet are also quite close to the ECM standard. Sourikova is a young pianist who deserves wider attention and who is clearly worth following. A great promise.

Listen and buy from CDBaby.


Jim Hegarty - Cut It/Out (Self-published, 2010) ***½

After trying out guitar and sax, Chicagoan Jim Hegarty stuck to piano, his original instrument, for which he further polished his skills in high school, to be followed by studies in composition. His sol album brings  free interpretations of several standards including Billie Holiday's God Bless the Child, John Coltrane's Impressions, and Leonard Bernstein's Maria, interspersed with some of Hegarty's own compositions.

His playing is bluesy, with a very light touch, nice pulse but with an approach that goes a little against the grain, sometimes angular, sometimes hesitant or cautious on purpose, as if the notes themselves are living beings wondering what to do next.

Nice album!


So, no free jazz today. Coming soon.

© stef

Read More

Marcin Oleś & Bartłomiej Brat Oleś - Other Voices Other Scenes (Fennomedia, 2010) ***

The ungrateful thing about a soundtrack without the pictures is that you cannot possibly imagine what is taking place and why the music is as it is. The same holds true for this album by one of my favorite rhythm sections: Marcin Oleś on bass and Bartłomiej Brat Oleś on drums. This double CD brings you thirty-six snippets of soundtrack for eight different movies, animations or theater performances. For two of those movies, the band is expanded with Łukasz Czekała on violin and Kuba Puch on trumpet, and with Jakub Urbańczyk on tuba and Jarosław Spałek on trumpet respectively. The Oleś brothers add other instruments as well, with Marcin playing double bass, piano, keyboards, acordeon and acoustic guitar, and Brat playing drums, percussion, gongs, tabla, marimba piano, keyboards, compositions

The end result is quite atmospheric but most of the time nothing more than just that : nice yet non-committal sound to accompany images. And that is of course partly the objective of the original compositions.

That being said, some of the tunes are really nice, almost in the same league as Evan Lurie, or even John Zorn's music for films : quite accessible, yet fresh minimalist pieces on which a few well-chosen sounds create a sad, or eery, or introspective, or menacing environment. That these environments are created by a few brush strokes by a few instruments is a stellar achievement. The downside is that like with all soundtracks, there is no expansion or exploration: the music is simple by definition : a theme needs to be set, easy in the ear because a first listen is all you get with your main attention going to the visual movements, and repeated several times to get entrance in your less attentive part of the brain.

A nice stylistic exercise, yet for the real thing, check out their real Duo album.

© stef

Read More

Mikołaj Trzaska - Dom Zły/The Dark House (Kilogram Records, 2010) ***½

It is hard to assess the soundtrack for a movie without knowing the movie, and it rarely happens that the music is sufficiently entertaining to stand on its own. Despite its inherent qualities, the same holds true for this album by Polish saxophonist and composer Mikołaj Trzaska, whose achievements have been appreciated before on this blog.

The musicians are Mikołaj Trzaska on alto saxophone, bass clarinet, taragot, farfisa and other keyboards, Clementine Gasser on 5 string cello, Tomasz Szwelnik on piano, Clayton Thomas on double bass, and Michael Zerang on drums.

Trzaska has written scores for theater before, and he manages to find a good balance between strong genre-bending compositions, and a very expressive performance. The ten tracks are in the same vein : from the sad over the menacing and the agonizing.

Some pieces are stellar, like the weird and horrifying opening track, the sensitive dialogue between clarinet and cello on "After Explosion", the gloomy, fear-drenched and hair-raising title track. But obviously the music has to support the action in the movie too, also at the emotionally more neutral moments. Most pieces are mini-suites, with themes and moods evolving in often very short time spans, and clearly determined by another logic than can be understood without seeing the pictures.

Yet, in soundtrack terms, this is without a doubt one of the most avant-garde I've heard.

© stef

Read More

Robert Burger - City Of Strangers (Tzadik, 2009) ****½

I've always liked the Tin Hat Trio (Rob Burger, Carla Kihlstedt and Mark Orton), for their refreshing chamber-jazz synthesis of many styles, showing creative and intelligent musicianship without pretence. This album on Tzadik brings film music by Robert Burger, the accordionist, pianist, guitarist, organist, percussionist, banjoist, ukuleleist, harmonica-player, marimbaist, etc, accompanied by Eyvind Kang on viola, Max Moston on violin, Marc Ribot and Mark Orton on guitar on one track each, and Carla Kihlstedt on violin on one track too.

The album has 31 pieces of soundtrack for a movie that I haven't seen. The pieces are short (obviously), just snippets of music, evocating a mood essentially, but because of their short and concise form, they have to capture that mood in its bare essence, through some clearly delineated melodic lines and varying rhythms. The result is a kind of haiku in music : deep, with a feeling that still resonates long after the piece has stopped. In that sense Burger is a true magician : what you hear sounds familiar, you've heard it before, somehow, somewhere, it draws from folk, jazz, country, rock, world music, street music, ballroom dance music, film music, and many more styles whose definitions have disappeared into the blur of our collective musical memories, and well, to end, even some avant-garde, yet the combination makes it fresh, surprising, captivating. But blending styles is by itself a boring practice, but here's it's elevated to a high level because of the great skills in melody, rhythm and overall sound. The music makes a nice bridge between the music by the Tin Hat Trio and Evan Lurie, whose soundtracks I heartily recommend, especially Selling Water By The Side Of The River.

If you like snippets of music, that capture a mood in a few lines, whether sad, melancholy, joyful, distressing, resignated, and many more, carefully crafted, and flawlessly performed, you will like this. You will like this very much.


© stef

Read More

Franz Hautzinger - two reviews

Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger is a true experimentalist, changing the approach to his instrument (blowing techniques and the use of electronics), but also to music, starting with jazz, then to pure improv and musical experimentation, he now seems to bring a synthesis of sorts on two radically different albums, while still remaining adventurous. The first is more rock-oriented, the second is a multi-layered solo soundtrack album.

Franz Hautzinger's Regenorchester XII - Town Down (Red Note, 2008) ****½

The Regenorchester (Rain Orchestra, named after the weather in London when the band gave one of its earliest performances) is a band with shifting membership, now in its twelfth incarnation, with Hautzinger on trumpet, Christian Fennesz and Ottomo Yoshihide on guitar and electronics, Luc Ex (of The Ex) on bass, and Tony Buck (of The Necks) on drums. Since Miles Davis, the combination of rock and trumpet has been a quite successful one, if you think of musicians such as Cuong Vu, Nils Petter Molvaer, Natsuki Tamura. On the fiercest pieces of this album, especially Tamura's unequalled "Hada, Hada" comes to mind, mixing unrelenting industrial sounds, a heavy beat, a wall of screeching guitar and mad trumpet playing. The track "RainDay" is an absolute monolith of musical power and drive, one of the best combinations of jazz and rock that I've heard. There is no sweetness to be found in the world of the Regenorchester, but lots of subtlety, both in the quiet as in the more violent moments. Some of the soft pieces are eery, dark, with lots of tension and experimental electronics, through which Hautzinger's voiceless processed blowing streams, and with great effect. And that seems to be the right word to describe this kind of music: it is more about the creation of "effect", than about expressivity, and in that sense closer to Pink Floyd (but not musically) than to Miles Davis, but that should not spoil the fun. Superb.

Listen to
Delis

Franz Hautzinger - Neublacher Blech (Extraplatte, 2008) ****

Hautzinger released his first solo trumpet album "Gomberg" in 2000. He released "Gomberg II" in 2007, which moves aways from the reductionist sounds, and is again back in the territory of harmony and rhythm, with lots of overdubs and careful construction, sometimes almost sounding symphonic. On the soundrack for the documentary by Marcus Carney, "Neubacher Blech", he continues in the same vein, but with added ambient sounds. Even melody resurfaces after so many years of exploration. As Hautzinger explains in a recent Wire Magazine interview: "I crossed this point and continued on, totally excluding the old parameters of harmony, rhythm and melody. But after a while I thought 'no', I can understand why pitch and melody are not over. You can see it in the development of painting, after Mondrian, a lot happened. Different possibilities". The album consists of 14 short tracks, all around 1 minute long, and one long track of over half an hour. The music is somber and fluid, and concessions were made to the requirements of movie making, resulting in more atmospheric moments. This does not mean that this music is mainstream or that it really left its experimentalist's streak. It still requires attentive listening, yet it's less hermetic and hence a little more accessible. Good for us.

© stef

Read More

John Zorn - Filmworks XIX - The Rain Horse (Tzadik, 2008) ***½

Film music has some other characterstics than normal record music : it requires easy to remember themes that are often repeated, and an immediate creation of mood that can accompany and reinforce the images on the screen. It is no different for John Zorn's Filmworks series. His latest, the 19th already, features three of his stalwart musicians : Erik Friedlander on cello, Rob Burger on piano and Greg Cohen on bass. And the result is good, one of the more accessible and aesthetically beautiful Filmworks he's made in recent years, which will possibly appeal to a broader audience. Some of his Filmworks are a little flat or bland, mainly due to the functional limitations of the genre, maybe also due to the speed at which he works : on the liner notes of one of his preview records in this series (I can't remember which), Zorn writes that he composed the score in less than three hours. Three hours of compositional work for one hour of music, not a bad result. This is probably not the case here. Although the usual klezmer inflections are in the music as might be expected, he introduces other styles too, with "The Stallion" starting like the best Michael Nyman theme, and the title song, "The Rain Horse", brings in tango elements and mediterranean influences, and of course the versatility of the three musicians add flavors of classical music with chamber jazz. As usual with the series, the musicianship is excellent. Fans of chamber jazz will love this.

Subscribe

Read More