Two Duos of Vocal Artist Phil Minton

By Eyal Hareuveni

British pioneer vocal artist Phil Minton turned eighty this year. Minton’s close collaborators in the last decade are the Berlin-based, fellow-vocal artist Audrey Chen and Viennese turntables wizard dieb13.

Audrey Chen & Phil Minton - Frothing Morse (Tour de Bras, 2020) ****

Minton said recently in an interview to The Wire that “singing with Audrey is like working with all the possible noises of the universe and beyond, earthquakes, colliding galaxies and slugs sliding down a wet window, very quiet. It’s endured because we love working together and some people in the world ask us to perform for them and give us a meager wage”. Frothing Morse is the second album of this duo, following By the Stream (Sub Rosa, 2013).

The title-piece was recorded live at the Santa Chiara Nuova church in Lodi, Italy, during the ImprovvisaMente festival in November 2015. The intense and fearless, dadaist conversational duet aims to go deeper than the textual level as Minton and Chen explore the most inherent bodily instruments and search for enigmatic, unintelligible and incomprehensible means of communication that leave behind all common elements of language, syntax, or vocabulary. Chen and Minton sound like one, two-headed vocal organism, interacting in a total telepathic manner. They explore together an expressive and highly nuanced spectrum of feelings and moods, from the meditative and ritualist, through the sensual and passionate, and, obviously, to the eccentric and grotesque, but with an arresting sense of timing, storytelling and emotional drama.

Phil Minton & dieb3 - With, Without (Klanggalerie, 2020) ****

Minton and dieb13 (aka Dieter Kovačič, a generation younger from Minton) work were scarcely documented so far - the DVDr’s (Unlimited 23, PanRec, 2011, and im Pavillon, PanRec, 2013), both captured short performances at the Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria. With, Without is a collage of Minton and dieb13 performances from the Unlimited festival in 2009, through three performances in Vienna, one at the Instants Chavires Festival in Montreuil, France in 2016 and the last one from the Disobedience Festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2017).

Minton refrains on these performances from referencing literary texts as he did in many previous free-improvised meetings before (he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook's group, Ho Chi Minh with Veryan Weston and more recently Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and sang extracts from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake with his own ensemble). With dieb13 he employs his dramatic baritone only with extended vocal techniques, deconstructing every possible facet of the human voice into free-form train of abstract and eccentric retching, burping, screaming, gasping, childlike muttering, whining, crying, whistling and humming sounds, or as Minton himself calls it: "belching obscene incoherent rubbish", often with what seems like as a tortured body language that enhances the abstract narrative.

These series of free-associative and imaginative gibberish of human voices were framed and orchestrated brilliantly in real-time by dieb13, always attuned to every nuance of Minton’s vocalizations, and injecting loose but coherent threads to Minton’s wild vocal journeys. On With, Without, dieb13 mixed and edited again these performances into an hour plus piece. The subtle and clever orchestration of dieb13 often extends and twists Minton’s manic vocalizations into alien and sometimes perfectly fitting cartoonish sonic universes. But at other times dieb13 charges these eccentric yet very emotional vocalizations with ironic comments, adds surprising depth and colors the crazed vocal eruptions with dense and unsettling urban noises. There are even brief segments where dieb13 matches sax pieces that trick Minton into brief, playful jazz-y duets. Typically, it ends with Minton articulating his clear desire to go to sleep. Obviously, no words were needed.

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Meet The Experimental Vocal Artists #5

By Eyal Hareuveni

The Norwegian, all-female Trondheim Voices performed compositions by Mats Gustafsson, Marilyn Mazur, Jon Balke and Christian Wallumrød, among others. Maja K.S. Ratkje and Ståle Storløkken and Helge Sten composed two distinct compositions for this ensemble.

Danish vocal artist Randi Pontoppidan is known for her collaborations with Joëlle Léandre, Trondheim Voices’ Sissel Vera Pettersen and with Danish poet Morten Søndergaard, and as well as an in-demand vocalist in the contemporary classical world. Her meeting with American veteran vocal artist Thomas Buckner is reviewed here. The Viennese sound artist has woven sound samples of Liquid Loft dance company into an impressive work. Israeli Jean Claude Jones edited sound files of 4 Local vocal artists into 18 duets.

Trondheim Voices - Echo Chamber 3.0 / Ekkokammer 3.0 (MNJ, 2020) ****½

 

Echo Chamber is a work-in-progress, written for Trondheim Voices by composer and vocal-artist Maja S. K. Ratkje as a concert performance for the ear. The 2.0 version of this composition was premiered in 2015 and its 3.0 version was recorded in December 2019 and March 2020.

This composition investigates how we relate, conceptualize and remember the human voice, as an expressive mean of communication and a unique instrument - a physical and metaphoric one, a verbal and emotional one, deeply connected to our body and soul. The nine vocalists of Trondheim Voices - Mia Marlen Berg, Siri Gjære, Kari Eskild Havenstrøm, Anita Kaasbøll, Ingrid Lode, Sissel Vera Pettersen, Heidi Skjerve, Torunn Sævik and Tone Åse - tell their own personal experiences with their voices, and what did they wish to express with their voices, in two versions of the composition, English and Norwegian. Their spoken texts were arranged and edited by Ratkje into a coherent script, in a way that all the thoughts and answers crisscrossing, extending, and complimenting each other. Actress-playwright Marianne Meløy added an introduction to the vocalists’ texts.

Ratkje managed to illustrate - sonically and verbally - the crucial liberating and therapeutic experience of finding your own voice, realizing that “this is my voice… I want to linger and linger and linger in it”. The Trondheim Voices ensemble is employed as an imaginative, provocative instrument. The personal thoughts and stories of its vocalists accumulate more nuances and insights about how they began to use their voice as an artistic expression, beginning with lessons from seminal vocalists (Sidsel Endresen and Joni Mitchell are mentioned), through the tasking musical training, and later, the freedom and the physical sensation found through experimenting and improvising with the voice, alone and in a shared experience of Trondheim Voices. The ensemble injects into this composition engaging and irreverent quotes from Mike Oldfield’s pop hit ”Moonlight Shadow”, Marlen Berg’s song ”Searching”, traditional Norwegian wedding march ”Bruremarsj fra Gudbrandsdalen” and the traditional folk song ”Working on a building”.

The Norwegian version worked better for me. The natural melodic phrasing of this intelligible language - for me - intensified the magical abstraction of the human voice as a musical instrument.

Trondheim Voices – Folklore (traditional customs, tales, sayings, dances, or art forms preserved among a people) (Hubro, 2020) ****

 

Folklore was composed for Trondheim Voices by ⅔ of the trio Supersilent - keyboards wizard Ståle Storløkken and guitarist-sound artist Helge Sten (aka Deathprod). Both are married to vocalists - Storløkken to Trondheim Voices’ Tone Åse and Sten to Susanna Wallumrød. Their composition is inspired by medieval rituals and the art of folklore and employs the Trondheim Voices as a living instrument. The wordless voices of the nine vocalists - Sissel Vera Pettersen, Anita Kaasbøll, Tone Åse, Ingrid Lode, Torunn Sævik, Kari Eskild Havenstrøm, Heidi Skjerve, Siri Gjære and Natali Abrahamsen Garner, with minimalist sounds of bells - become one massive microtonal instrument, where acoustic breaths, tones and polyphonic drones and their electronic manipulation are imagined as timeless, chant-like rituals.

Folklore was premiered at the 2018 edition Molde Jazz Festival, with a light design by Ingrid Skanke Høsøien and priestly costumes by Vera Pettersen. It takes the common and informal, generations-old folklorist art and knowledge and transforms it into a moving, cathartic and immersive experience. The untimely mysterious chants, songs, and tales, with their simple, almost raw delivery, sound now like a spiritual, secular liturgy, still seeking the purifying of the soul and healing power, but do not subscribe to any specific faith. Storløkken and Sten embrace the ethereal voices with clever and subtle sound processing that layer these voices into abstract but elaborate, celestial sonic entities, sometimes even using Trondheim Voices as a human church organ.

Randi Pontoppidan & Thomas Buckner - Voicescapes (Chant, 2021) ****

Danish drummer Kresten Osgood invited in 2017 veteran American vocal artist Thomas Buckner, known from his ongoing work with Roscoe Mitchell as well as his work with contemporary composers like Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley and Christian Wolff, to perform at his Copenhagen’s Monday club. Osgood recommended Buckner to meet Pontoppidan. Buckner went to visit Pontoppidan’s home the day before his performance and both began to sing right away. They sang all morning, ate lunch, and continued to sing all afternoon. Buckner invited Pontoppidan to join his performance with Osgood and the music continued to pour naturally and spontaneously. Buckner returned a year later to perform in the same club and then Pontoppidan arranged a recording weekend at Karmacrew Studio on the beautiful island of Møn.

On the opening piece of Voicescapes, “Greeting”. Pontoppidan sounds as inviting Buckner to explore whimsical Dadaist inventions, in a way that brings to mind the fantastic duo of voice artists Ratkje with Dutch Jaap Blonk (MAJAAP, Kontrans, 2004). But immediately, Pontoppidan and Buckner find their own, balanced, very poetic common ground that rarely seeks acrobatic pathos (“Hide”) and allow each piece to lead organically to the other. Both sound like true kindred spirits, who really don’t need to tell each other what to do or say - literally - and both communicate deeply (listen to “One Mind”) and spiritually (the meditative “Evening” and “Blessing”), on their very own wavelength. And indeed the power of this intimate vocal meeting is in its natural, leisured and restrained flow.

Andreas Berger - Works for Liquid Loft (Ventil, 2020) ****

Liquid Loft is a Viennese dance group that was founded in 2005 by choreographer Chris Haring together with sound artist Andreas Berger, known from his electroacoustic ambient project Glim (music for field recordings, Karate Joe, 2003), dancer Stephanie Cumming and dramaturge Thomas Jelinek. Liquid Lof is inspired by science-fiction literature and cyborg theory. Berger and Haring developed the idiosyncratic sound language of Liquid Loft, which is situated between body, language, movement and sound.

Berger detaches now this musical language furthermore from the bodies of the performers and lets it work on its own. Works for Liquid Loft are based on voice recordings and speech samples of Liquid Loft dancers - only scraps of these samples can be understood or guessed and found footage sounds (from the experimental films Chelsea Girls and Flesh by Andy Warhol, 1966 and 1968), all collected for Liquid Loft four dance works. Now robbed of their syntax and semantics, they become musical building blocks from which Berger arranges nuanced and highly suggestive and somehow disturbing, minimalist- ambient pieces, combined with electronic sounds and field recordings. The 12 short pieces never cease to surprise and impress with their captivating, rich and detailed sounds.

Jean Claude Jones with Meira Asher, Josef Sprinzak, Anat Pick, and Esti Kenan Ofri - Nucleus (Kadima Collective, 2020) ***

 

Nucleus was conceived during the 1st Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in Israel. Improviser Jean Claude Jones asked four vocal artists colleagues - Meira Asher, Josef Sprinzak, Anat Pick and Esti Kenan Ofri, with whom he has worked in the past, to send him vocal improvisations. Out of the sound files, sent back and forth between Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Galilee, Jones edited 5 pieces with 18 duets, some with himself strumming the lap-Spanish guitar, some between the vocal artists themselves most would never happen without Jones, and some for a good reason. Jones’ insistence to link these distinct vocal artists only emphasizes his own eccentric and restless sonic vision, and the eccentricity of the original improvisations. It works on the second piece when Kenan’s voice is edited with the voices of Sprinzak, Asher and Pick and on the fourth pieces when Pick’s urgent, gibberish chants are edited with the voices of Sprinzak and Kenan Ofri and the guitar of Jones, but on the respect of the pieces the lack of live, real-time interaction is evident. 

 

Revisit the past editions of the "Meet the Experimental Vocalists" here.

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Meet The Experimental Vocal Artists #4

By Eyal Hareuveni

Danish Randi Pontoppidan, British Phil Minton, German Ute Wassermann, Dutch Jaap Blonk and Slovenian Irena Z. Tomažin keep expanding the frontiers of the human vocals. 

Randi Pontoppidan - Rooms (Chant Records, 2019) ****½

Danish experimental vocalist-sound poet-composer-improviser-educator Randi Pontoppidan has worked with some of the greatest bass players of our times - Greg Cohen (their duo, Event Horizon, released its debut album, Space Geode on Chant, 2018), Joëlle Leánder and Jamaaladeen Tacuma as well as with Danish poet Morten Søndergaard, sax hero Lotte Anker and pianist Jakob Davidsen. She is also in-demand vocalist in the contemporary classical world, working with Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices and performing works by Steve Reich, David Lang, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage.

Pontoppidan’s first solo album Rooms finds her exploring many rooms of her own, tp paraphrase Virrginia Woolf, using only her voice, filtered through various loops and electronic effects and machines. Pontoppidan reaches the outer limits and the deepest secrets of her own voice - processed, multiplied and layered, and sketches an arresting series of imaginative and highly nuanced soundscapes, ranging from the angelic and spiritual (“Hush of Expectation”, “Mari Si”), to playful sound poetry (“Dunh”), abstract industrial sounds (“Industrious - Moving Castle”), icy, sparse minimalism (“Arctic”, “Tidal”), Reich-ian tribal pulse (“Dis Appearence”) and hymnal and meditative (“Dreamy”). When the listening experience of Rooms takes over - and it happens quite fast, you may forget that all these colorful, suggestive sounds are made only by a human voice. You may feel abducted by friendly aliens, gifted with a thousand, singing tongues, tempting and charming in many magical, wordless languages, and happy to share their untimely, infinite wisdom with the attentive listeners.

More: Youtube | Soundcloud

Randi Pontoppidan & Christian Rønn - Head Space (Chant, 2020) ***

Pontoppidan returns with Head Space, a meeting with fellow Danish electro-acoustic composer-improviser Christian Rønn, known from the free jazz trio Blind Mans Band, who plays here on the Wurlitzer piano and electronics. Pontoppidan and Rønn claim that the combination of her heady, vocal-improvisations and electronics and his fierce amplified Wurlitzer “took off to the hemisphere.” 

Pontoppidan and Rønn have choose to travel in loose and barren atmospheric landscapes, letting Pontoppidan operatic vocal flights disperse slowly and gently into thin space, echoed by the sparse, resonating Wurlitzer sounds of Rønn. The most interesting pieces are the ones that subvert this monotonous, deserted attitude, where the dynamics gravitate towards more tense, noisy collisions as on “Waterproof”, “Udspring” and “Gamma”. 

Speak Easy - @ Konfrontationen (Confront Records, 2019) ****

Speak Easy is the quartet of British vocal artist Phil Minton with German vocal artist-sound poet Ute Wassermann, who adds bird whistles to her vocals, percussionist Martin Blume, and Vienna-based Thomas Lehn on analogue EMS synthesizer. This free-improvising quartet has been active since 2008 and released its debut album, Backchats (Creative Sources, 2009), a live recording from Bochum, Germany from March 2008, followed by a DVD, The Loft Concert (PanRec, 2009), documenting a performance from a day later. The sophomore album is another live recording, captured at the Austrian Konfrontationen festival in Nickelsdorf on July 2016.

The audience of the Konfrontationen festival is the perfect one for this kind of eccentric quartet, familiar with all its musicians and eager to be startled and amazed by more and more eccentricities. And Speak Easy (a nickname for secret, intimate bars who sold drinks during the prohibition ban on alcohol in the United States, 1920-1933) provides exactly this recipe - 52 minutes of “Speechless”, a wild, funny, intense piece, one that never ceases to offer weird sonic inventions and strange yet emphatic dynamics. No doubt, Minton, Wassermann, Blume and Lehn found their very own way of speaking - urgent, easy, touching, intoxicating, sometimes with subtle, explosive noises, but always ready to share their most intimate secrets and teach their new languages to the curious, adventurous listeners. 

Ute Wassermann, Jaap Blonk & Michael Vorfeld (Kontrans, 2019) ***½*

Dutch experimental vocal artist-sound poet-electronics player Jaap Blonk’s own label, Kontrans, has a line of releases - improvisors - that documents his free-improvised meeting with like-minded musicians. Kontrans has released Blonk’s meetings with Mats Gustafsson and Michael Zerang, Maja Ratkje, Jeb Bishop and Frank Rosaly.

This release documents Blonk’s meeting with Berlin-based, fellow experimental vocal artist Ute Wassermann, who also plays on assorted whistles, “kutu wapa, frog buzzer and mirliton” and percussionist and visual artist Michael Vorfeld, who adds to his arsenal string instrument and light bulbs. It was recorded at AudioCue Tonlabor, Berlin, on March 2018. Like Rooms, this trio also offers 13 distinct pieces, but contrary to the introspective, reserved atmosphere of Rooms, this trio experiments with the wild, weird and noisy. These three hyperactive and reckless adults - alien bards, as one of the pieces is titled - play an endless, dadaist tag while soaring higher and higher into their sonic universes, Luckily, Wasserman, Blonk and Vorfeld share the same kind of humor and like risk-taking, hectic games. These three improvisers even succeed to create a surprising intimacy, but sometimes you may want to ask them to slow down a bit. 

JeJaWeDa - Pioneer Works, Vol. 1 + Pioneer Works, vol. 2 (Balance Point Acoustics, 2019) ***½*

This new quartet JaJeWeDa features trombonist JEb Bishop, JAap Blonk, both adds electronics, plus the powerful rhythm section of percussionist WEsel Walter and double bass player DAmon Smith. The quartet  debuted in the spring of 2019 with a series of concerts in the Northeast of the USA, but Blonk had collaborated before with Smith (North of Blanco and Hugo Ball: Sechs Laut-und Klanggedichte 1916 (Six Sound Poems, 1916), both released by Balance Point Acoustics, 2014). The new quartet debut releases - Pioneer works Vol. 1, a disc with a booklet of artworks by Blonk, and Pioneer works Vol. 2, a cassette with an unpublished sound poetry score by Blonk from 2001 (and a lime green tape), were released before a short autumn tour of the quartet.

The first volume, recorded at Pioneer Works, New York on March 2019, offers a wild, noisy, funny and urgent, free-improvising quartet where Blonk employs his vocals as another instrument, competing with the strong personalities and impressive sense of invention of Walter, Bishop and Smith, as all sound as getting closer and closer to a sonic meltdown. After a short “Warm Up”, all dive into the 30-minutes of “Work Out” where anything can happen and does happen, a total freak out of possessed dynamics. JaJeWeDa is supposed to “Cool Down” on the last piece, but this option does not exist in this quartet manual, and we get another playful, dadaist piece that by no means succeeds to exhaust the quartet’s energy. The second volume, recorded at the same place, same date, suggests a loose, structured texture. It often sounds like an eccentric, chamber texture. Blonk is the natural leader and main protagonist, staging a mix of fairy-horror tale with his hyperactive, playful comrades. 

More: Youtube

Irena Z. Tomažin - Cmok v grlu / Lump In The Throat (Sploh, 2019) ***1/*

Slovenian Irena Z. Tomažin experiments with fragmented vocals and bodily sounds produced between-with-after-at the realization of the voice. Her voice is deliberately morphed into extended noises with repetitive movements of the tongue, soft palate, throat muscles, teeth and air in micro resonating spaces of the oral cavity. The first, brief 11 pieces reflect Tomažin’s latest experiments with her voice, while the last, extended five improvisations are taken from her audiovisual installation piece, “Faces Of Voices # Noise’”, a production of MoTA – Museum For Transitory Art. This material was transformed and re-composed for Cmok v grlu / Lump In The Throat, her fourth album.

There are no words, melody or rhythm, at least not in any conventional sense of these concepts, but pure, highly adventurous, expressive and often unworldly and enigmatic sound art that keeps pushing for more edgy frontiers. Tomažin sounds on the first 11 pieces as willing to communicate only in her own terms. The other five pieces offer more complex and elaborate soundscapes, stressing how far and profound is her vocal artistry. These pieces move from the mysterious and silent “Zataknjeno za zobmi” to the spoiled and playful “Drobovje ust", the extraterrestrial chat of “Klic meduze”, the emotional lament of “Črna ovca” and the cryptic choir of “Neko drugo krdelo” 

More: Youtube

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Meet the Experimental Vocalists #3

By Eyal Hareuveni

Three vocal artists, three distinct extended vocal techniques and improvisation strategies, and three different atmospheres. The voices of these vocal artists - Audrey Chen, Danishta Rivero and Esti Kenan Ofri - are often used as an intelligible instrument, even an alien one, but still one of the most potent instrument in their challenging releases.

MOPCUT - Accelerated Frames of Reference (Trost, 2019) ****

The trio MOPCUT claims to be a medium-length noise-style that covers the head and ears with a vertical bang and a horizontal wave. MOPCUT also argues that its sonic output is a popular style for all ages, genders and generations, but adds that ts soundscapes should be trimmed evenly all around the circumference so that the noise at the front reaches the inner eye while the waves on the sides cover (or almost fully cover) the ears. 

You can trust this insightful advice. This trio - American vocal artist and analog electronics player Audrey Chen, known also as a cellist, a close collaborator of British vocal artist Phil Minton and half of the duo Beam Splitter with Norwegian trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø; French electric guitar player Julien Desprez, leader of his own ensembles and member of Mats Gustafsson’s Fire Orchestra and Eve Risser’s White Dessert Orchestra, and Austrian drummer-synthesizer player-vocalist Lukas König, member of Viennese groups Kompost 3 and 5K HD- are going to spin your heads and ears so thoroughly until your inner eyes will not only absorb their wild soundscapes, but most likely may beg for more from this rare stuff. Obviously, by then you may lose all connection with real human languages and earth’s gravity.

Accelerated Frames of Reference, the debut album of this trio, lasts only 32 minutes but you have to be in top shape - mental and physical one - in order to fully comprehend the series of ultra-accelerated sonic events that MOPCUT keeps creating. Chen rushes with her ultrasonic stream of consciousness, fragmented vocalizations as a shaman possessed by mysterious spells, and is always busy mutating and distorting her mad songs with vintage electronics. Desprez intensifies this troublesome and urgent atmosphere with imaginative, explosive noises and effects and König deepens these blistering attacks with disruptive, alien beats and noises of his own. MOPCUT chose to conclude with wild journey with the quiet and meditative “Soundspa”. A peaceful farewell or a promise for more insightful messages from the MOPCUT spaceship?

Listen and download from Bandcamp

Voicehandler - Light from another light (Humbler Records, 2018) ***½

Voicehandler is the American, Oakland-based duo of vocal artist and modular electronics player Danishta Rivero and percussionist Jacob Felix Heule. Voicehandler describes itself as playing “incantatory music grounded in the most primitive and somatic instruments -- the voice and percussion -- juxtaposed with contemporary, disembodied electronics”.  Light from another light is the second release of the duo, following Song Cycle (Humbler, 2015), and recorded during three live performances in May and June 2017 in n Berkeley, California. 

Each of three improvisations offers a distinct atmosphere and left-off-center song forms. “June 8” explores an immediate, psychedelic atmosphere where Rivero employs a stream of wild, hallucinogenic vocalizations, some are extended and processed by electronics. Heule envelops her associative vocalizations with intense percussive chaos of his own, but as a precise and highly nuanced acoustic mirror for her electronic-enhanced noises. “June 1” suggests an almost transparent and fragile drone where Rivero mysterious, processed vocals and fractured noises fly on a thin skies of sparse percussive sounds. “May 25” is the longest and most varied improvisation despite its relative, minimalist atmosphere. Rivero and Heule succeed to form a playful and very informative and sometimes even a seductive conversation between two proud ambassadors from totally different yet friendly sonic planets, eager to share their rare wisdom and hidden desires. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Esti Kenan Ofri / Oren Fried/ JC Jones - La Sprezzatura Ensemble (Kadima Collective, 2018) ***

Sprezzatura is an Italian word originating from count and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione's 16th century “The Book of the Courtier”, defined by the author as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it".  La Sprezzatura Ensemble is also the Israeli trio of vocalist Esti-Kenan Ofri, percussionist Oren Fried and lap-style Spanish guitar player Jean Claude Jones. The Italian-born Kenan Ofri plays regularly with Fried in the Kol Oud Tof trio (in Hebrew: voice, oud, drum) with oud player Armand Sabah, exploring songs from the Jewish Sephardic-Moroccan tradition. She is also a close collaborator of Jones, since the days he was in-demand double bass player.

The five untitled pieces of the trio debut album were recorded in Jerusalem during 2017 and 2018 and are described as “abstract, formative discourse”. Only the first and fifth improvisations succeed as both Kenan Ofri and Fried flirt with twisted abstractions of a sensual Sephardic song form while Jones explores the sonorities of the lap-style Spanish guitar but pushes the interplay to more risk-taking extremes. But other pieces fail to keep that interplay and the whole of this trio sounds far less meaningful than its separate parts, and Kenan Ofri, Fried and Jones do their own things with no memorable sonic events.

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Read more:

• Meet the Experimental Vocalists #1
• Meet the Experimental Vocalists #2

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Paul Jolly and Paula Rae Gibson - Vestige (33Xtreme, 2018) ****

By Sammy Stein

33 jazz records have been putting out beautiful and interesting music for decades now and the 33Xtreme inset allows dissipation of some of the best free jazz in the UK and Europe. Piloted by musician and producer Paul Jolly, it is good to see him featuring on this CD with UK poet Paula Rae Gibson on vocals. Paul Jolly, as well as being a label producer, has been a member of Sweet Slag and is currently a stalwart member of the free jazz combo the People Band. On the CD he plays bass clarinet and soprano saxophone, completely improvised and completely beautiful. Paul told me recently, "There will be a new album from me - a duo with Paula Rae Gibson, which I think you’ll really like (lots of bass clarinet)." Here it is- and he was right: lots of bass clarinet, some soprano sax, and total improvisation. Paula Rae Gibson is an award winning photographer and author with many books published, exhibitions held and magazine features to her name. She has collaborated with many musicians including Tim Pilling, Sophie Alloway and Sam Leak.

The CD's opener, 'Celebrity', is a poem about anger, the search for power and loss. it features beautiful, deep, seductive bass clarinet explorations, which somehow answer the poetry as if in empathy. Paula Rae Gibson's breathy lyrics are clear and profound. 'Speak As You Find' has the lyricist talking poetically over scale ascensions, descensions and then short, gentle motifs uttered by the bass clarinet, eloquently reflecting the lyrics and their sense of just reined-in anger. In parts, the clarinet emerges from being support to filling the gaps in the lyrics with gorgeous, rich solos which wrap the heart and make the gaps warm, comforting and lovely. In the final section the clarinet rises into altissimo and back to the depths, speaking its antagonism to the lyrics with sensuality and power.

'Echo of You' opens with lyrics depicting an unpleasant vision of life before the clarinet enters , staccato then gentler, as if urging a gentler view of things. A breathy staccato section again whilst the lyrics do their work in painting the landscape in tones of slightly depressive mood. 'I might die tonight, leave in the wind, sacred thing, ' is spoken over repeated, deep motifs, then rapid finger rivulets of sound given by the clarinet as if to counter the darkness of the lyrics. The clarity of both lyrics and the changes in the bass clarinet line makes this track listenable and incredibly interesting.

'Past So Tightly' is just under 10 minutes of dialogue and conversation between the clarinet and poet, the lyrics taking the mood down, the clarinet offering uplifting trills, loose-reeded playful interludes and breathy, deep passages which end up adding their own melancholy. Then stut notes under the dark words offer a lighter take on things, followed by a breathy, just heard line which allows the lyrics to be clear. Gradually the clarinet breathes ever increasing interest into the supporting lines and develops its own dialogue, still allowing space for the lyrics but increasing the dynamic content over which the lyrics continue their emotive, slightly dark tones. The final section sees the clarinet line come up, add life and finally lift the track out of the doldrums and there is a wonderful point where voice and clarinet are on the same held note. Oneness.

'Not Going To Save You' sees the lyrics follow their dark path but this time with soprano sax to lift and reflect. The change is welcome and a far lighter mood is created with the soprano echoing the lyrical lines but with added notes and phrasing which gives them even more meaning somehow. A real dialogue is created between the voice and sax, especially when the lyricist says ' I'm not going to save you'. The sax reacts as if stung and pleading. In the final section the sac soars away on its own line whilst the lyrics continue their downward mood. Mesmeric.

'Heart On Ice Breath' begins with repeated ' I' , under which the clarinet echoes the breaths and develops the ' I am not going to save you' message but with added rhythmic pulsations from the breath of the vocals and the pips from the saxophone. Both voice and sax create a rhythmic track with the sax adding lyrical sections of its own in the final section which are lovely and completely transform the track .

'Strings Made of Mean' is higher, lighter , still with the dark side of life reflected admirably in the lyrics but the sax offers a shinier, melodic interludes which make this track different and uplifting, despite the warnings contained in the lyrics about not getting carried away , not trusting and guarding the emotions. The sax line seems to contrast each dark phrase in the lyrics with a little cheery offering. Lovely.

'Eyes with Which You See' begins with soprano sax solo , airy and light, setting the mood a little higher than it has been, traversing the registers with dexterity and continuing regardless of the unsettling lyrics. 'Celebrity- Reprise' closes the album and a return to the bass clarinet for Paul Jolly, under the poetry above which speaks of the search for acknowledgement and power.
Throughout this album the sense of understanding is clear and present. The lyrics follow many dark paths but the bass clarinet and particularly the soprano saxophone offer contrasts at times, empathy at others and hardly ever break into the spaces so the poetical lyrics cannot be heard. This CD is not for the fainthearted if you are looking for sweetness and light but the poetical rhythms set by the words, the alternate sweet and deep voice of Paul Rae Gibson and the beautiful empathetic music delivered by bass clarinet and soprano sax work perfectly to make it listenable and interesting.

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Latest Releases from Vocalist Sofia Jernberg

By Eyal Hareuveni

Swedish, Ethiopian-born, Oslo-based vocal artist Sofia Jernberg needs no introduction. She calls herself a “maker of things” and she keeps doing a lot of beautiful things with Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra, and countless free-improvisations meetings. She also did many interesting things with the Swedish-American Seval, with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and the Swedish-Norwegian-French quartet The New Songs. Jernberg continues to make exciting things with Gustafsson’s new group The End, and with the Norwegian experimental Lana Trio.

The End - Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen (Rare Noise, 2018) *****

Take two of the wildest baritone sax heavyweights on our planet - Swedish Mats Gustafsson and Norwegian Kjetil Møster (whose resume spans from modern jazz groups as The Core and Trinity, through punk-jazz Ultralyd and Møster! to glam-rockers King Midas and Datarock); add the adventurous, avant-rocker, Deerhoof’s powerhouse drummer Greg Saunier (who enjoys improvising with guitarist Mary Halvorson and trumpeter Stephanie Richards) and throw into the mix Norwegian avant-noise-metal guitarist Anders Hana (from local groups MoHa!, Ultralyd and, Noxagt), who returned to musical activity after a seven-year sabbatical, and you already have enough ingredients for a super-exciting group, one that can reach apocalyptic climaxes in an instant. Still, the secret ingredient of this new group is Jernberg. Her strong presence seals the masculine maelstroms of fiery jazz, art rock, noise and poetic texts with a much needed feminine quality and emotional authority.

This potent dream team recorded its debut album, Svårmod Och Vemod Är Värdesinnen (in Swedish: dark melancholy and sadness are senses to be valued. This gory, suggestive titled is emphasized with the cover art by Edward Jarvis) in January 2018 in Bergen, Norway, after only three performances. Needless to say, the joint forces of Gustafsson and Møster with the baritone guitar of Hana and the propulsive drumming of Saunier promise raw, low-end onslaughts and boundless energy. Jernberg’s delivery - at times capricious, freewheeling wailing and on other times her one-of-a-kind singing-whispering-reciting charge the explosive mix with an urgent, even rebellious message of The End.

The album opens with two short pieces by Gustafsson and Hana. “Svårmod” offers everything you can expect from such group. Hana’s distorted-dirty, chainsaw guitar is in the center, embraced by the intense, baritone attacks of Gustafsson and Møster and the manic drumming of Saunier, while Jernberg screaming over this primordial lava. “Vemod” revolves around Hana’s hypnotic riff, that sound like a twisting West-African rhythmic rhythmic pattern with something catchy from the Captain Beefheart songbook, but already brings Jernberg wordless wailing to the center.

The End’s epic 14-minute “Translated Slaughter” is a completely different story. Jernberg acts, sighs, whispers and chants Gustafsson’s tortured-claustrophobic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics while Gustafsson and Møster are busy adding noisy, disturbing electronics. Hana deepens the dark atmosphere with assorted effects and Saunier keeps shaking this swampy ground with sudden attacks. Eventually, this pieces closes with a cathartic crescendo. Gustafsson’s “Don’t Wait” has a clearer - obvious - message (“...curiosity is the key, sharing is the key, don’t believe fuckin’ nothin’...”), and a familiar rhythmic structure, bringing to mind The Thing collaboration with vocalist Neneh Cherry (The Cherry Thing, Smalltown Supersound, 2012). The Jernberg thing offers her reciting-chanting the intuitive lyrics as half beat poet-half charismatic shaman, flirting majestically with the addictive, polyrhythmic pulse.

Møster’s brief interlude “Rich and Poor” serves as an introduction to his song “Both Sides Out”, a kind of requiem to post-Trump America that can be experienced psychoanalytic attempt to release the many demons from this tyrant’s deranged psyche. Jernberg continues to perform her shamanic duties, this time as an equal partner of The End’s brutal and terrifying cleansing ritual.

Only 44 minutes long but, no doubt, the best ones that you will spend in 2018.

More on Soundcloud.

Lana Trio with Sofia Jernberg (Clean Feed, 2018) ****

The experimental Norwegian Lana Trio - trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, pianist Kjetil Jerve, and drummer Andreas Wildhagen, was formed in 2007. The trio managed to solidify in its first two albums a delicate balance between its intense, powerful interplay, an uncompromising search for new sounds and dynamics and a strong affinity for open-ended, non-idiomatic improvisations. Jernberg joined the trio for its third album, recorded on March 2016 in Halden, Norway, and performs now again with the trio after the release of the album.

Jernberg sounds as if she has been free-improvising with Lana Trio for ages. She fits organically in the wild yet loose chaos that Lana Trio keeps producing. But her operatic-eccentric delivery charges the focused interplay of the trio with an engaging, emotional depth/ Jernberg vocalizes wordless, seductive suggestions and uses her voice as an intriguing, subversive instrument.

Jernberg connection with Munkeby Nørstebø - who works with another experimental vocal artist, Audrey Chen, in the Beam Splitter - is almost telepathic. Both sound as have perfected their own imaginative, cryptic language. Wildhagen embraces these secretive talks with sudden, rhythmic eruptions while Jerve frames all with minimalist, percussive piano playing.

Each of the four free-improvised pieces focuses on a distinct strategy. The first one, “Ears Anciens”, is restless and urgent; the second, “Omnivore's Aperitif”, is enigmatic, sparse and surprisingly quiet; the third, “Ghost Training”, explodes with fiery flow of volcanic energy ; the fourth, “Solitude Chant”, concludes this wild ride with a mysterious, tempting ritual.

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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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Kramer feat. Bill Frisell - The Brill Building, Book Two - (Tzadik, 2017) ****

By Martin Schray

Located at 1619 Broadway in the heart of Manhattan, the Brill Building was the center of professionally written pop music in the 1950s and early ’60s. It represented a specially designed division of work in which songwriters, producers and artists-and-repertoire staff cooperated to match artists with appropriate songs - it was a classic hit factory, a brand. The flagship company of Brill Building pop music (actually located across the street at 1650 Broadway) was Aldon Music, founded by Al Nevins and Don Kirshner. The most famous Brill Building songwriting teams were Gerry Goffin/Carole King, Jerry Leiber/Mark Stoller, Barry Man/Cynthia Weil, and Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman, other contributors were Gene Pitney, Bobby Darin, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond and Neil Sedaka. Brill Building focused on teen pop hits, which is why they were especially successful with girl/boy groups: The Shirelles, The Ronettes, the Monkees or the Everly Brothers were regular customers. Up to today the era stands for some of the most famous songs of the American songbook.

In 2012 Kramer, a legendary alternative rock/pop musician (of Bongwater and Shockabilly fame), composer, producer and founder of the Shimmy Disc label, recorded some of the smash hits of that time for The Brill Building (Tzadik). Among others there are beautifully weird versions of “Do Wah Diddy Diddy“, sounding like Captain Beefheart teaming up with Devo, or “Spanish Harlem“, which he transformed into a country song reminding me of Johnny Cash’s Tennessee Two with Nick Cave as a frontman. Kramer delivers these songs in his typical loopy, angular off-the-wall style and he wasn’t the old sound wizard if he hadn’t integrated found-sound dialogue snippets between the songs dealing with pivotal incidents of 1960s US history like President Kennedy's assassination, race riots, and the Vietnam War symbolizing the end of the cultural era the Brill Building represented.

For The Brill Building, Book Two Kramer is joined by guitarist and American songbook specialist Bill Frisell and the result is a completely different one. Again the album offers ten selected cuts from the golden age of assembly line pop, but this time the songs are much more accessible - mainly due to Frisell’s brilliant and distinctive guitar work. Kramer, who is responsible for all the other instruments except Frisell’s guitar, coats the songs with his artificial, amateurish, hazy, blurred, slow motion sound, which matches excellently with Frisell’s quivering, oscillating style. The results are surprising and sometimes really wonderful. There are spectral versions of Paul Simon’s “America“ and Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man“, the first one so timid and tender that the notes seem to vanish into thin air, the latter swinging between deep melancholy and gloomy film noir soundtracks. Other favorites are Jack Nitzsche’s and Sonny Bono’s “Needles and Pins“, here an enchanted wonderland of distorted vocals, Fender Rhodes, drum computer and guitar, and “Kicks“ (by Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil). The Kramer version is the best song Tom Waits has never recorded. But not all songs are such persuasive. The Monkees’ “The Porpoise Song“ (written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King) lacks the Beatles-psychedelia of the original, and Bert Bern’s “Here Comes the Night“ is better off with Van Morrison’s sharp, soulful voice.

Many of the songs are about love-sickness, loneliness, loss and how to deal with it. However, while the originals were often from a young people’s perspective, Kramer’s view is the one of an aged man, he sings the songs with a broken voice. Separation is more bitter, loneliness feels colder, disappointment hits you harder.

Of course, this is rather a pop album that hardly fits to the music we usually review. The connecting point is Kramer’s relation to John Zorn’s Tzadik label and of course Bill Frisell. If you like his All We Are Saying collection of Beatles songs, John Zorn’s The Dreamers albums or bands like Animal Collective, you might be right here.

The Brill Building, Book Two is available as a CD, available at Downtowmmusicgallery.com

Listen to “America“ here:

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Norma Winstone - Descansado - Songs For Films (ECM, 2018) ***½

By Paige Johnson-Brown

Norma Winstone is a vocalist in a serious relationship with instrumental music. She learned to read and started playing piano as a kid. After becoming a staple in the London pub scene, known for her remarkable control and her pure, horn-like tone, she got called to sit in with pianist and composer Michael Garrick’s group on a gig. After they played through the songs she’d learned, he asked her to stay up with the band for a few more tunes and take over the recently departed saxophonist’s role. She agreed and looked at his parts - no lyrics, some written melodies but often endless droning on a single chord. She mustered up her reading chops and improvised, using the wordless, vowel-based style of vocalisation for which she’d become known.

Over the next four decades, she went on to release over a dozen solo records and collaborate, composing vocal lines, writing lyrics to instrumental melodies, and improvising, with Garrick’s sextet, Kenny Wheeler, Ian Carr’s group Nucleus, saxophonist Joe Harriott, and many other prominent players in the British free jazz scene.

Descansado, Winstone’s latest record, is a collection of mostly instrumental music from films, featuring songs from the works of Godard, Scorcese, Wenders, Fellini, and more. Winstone’s voice is ageless, still the same unwavering and remarkably controlled, instrument-esque voice from 1970. The band features Winstone’s regular trio-mates, pianist Glauco Venier and multi-reedist Klaus Gesing, plus guest percussionist Helge Andreas Narbakken and guest violoncellist Mario Brunello, and they sound lovely. Moments of sparseness, almost contemporary-classical-esque, are the group’s best. Her instrument still sounds its most fresh and exciting in a more open, free arrangement. “Amarcord,” from Fellini’s film of the same title, is a beautiful, misty manifestation of this. Dreamlike, spiraling piano plays the wistful, nostalgic merry-go-round melody before dying to give way to the voice’s sorrowful dance with the heavy counterpoint of the bass clarinet and the haunting sound of hollow percussion across the cymbals. The piano returns only at the very end with the original melody.

The highlight of Descansado is Winstone’s lyrics, which she wrote for all but two songs on the record. Vocalese, putting lyrics to instrumental melodies, is a delicate art. It can go wildly well or wildly wrong. Examples range from poetry (Joni does Mingus’ “Pork Pie Hat:” “I'm waiting/ For the keeper to release me/ Debating this sentence/ Biding my time/ In memories/ Of old friends of mine”) to drivel (Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross do Miles’ “Four:” “Of the wonderful things that you get outta life, there are four/ And they may not be many, but nobody needs any more.”) Winstone’s lyrics are poetry, thankfully, and they really elevate the entire record.

“Touch Her Soft Lips and Part,” from Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, stands out.

There is a mournful yet restrained and plaintive quality to her writing that beautifully reflects her instrument:

On the brow of the hill

As she sees him depart

No more sun in her sky

No more joy in her heart

All of his magic

Still lives in her mind

All the sounds and the images

Slowly rewind

And he’s out there somewhere

Skies grow dark, suns eclipse

She remembers his voice

And the touch of his lips

“Maybe in time,” as he touched her soft lips

This piece is especially moving when considering the record is dedicated “To John and Kenny,” presumably Winstone’s late husband, John Taylor, and longtime friend and collaborator, Kenny Wheeler, who passed away within one year of each other, 2014 and 2015, respectively. Descansado is a fitting tribute. The word means “rested” or “refreshed,” and that’s exactly how Winstone sounds.

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Meet The Experimental Vocalists #2

By Eyal Hareuveni

Six vocal artists, each explore this unique artistry in his own, highly creative and personal way, and all remind us how much the voice itself - naked, manipulated and processed - is still one of the most powerful means of musical expression.  

Beam Splitter - Rough Tongue (Corvo Records, 2017) ****½

Beam Splitter is the duo of Chinese-American vocalist Audrey Chen, who also plays the cello and electronics in other projects, and Norwegian trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø. The duo began working in 2015 and has toured extensively since then on both sides of the Atlantic, often collaborating with other improvisers as vocal artist Phil Minton, electronics pioneer Bob Ostertag and trumpeter Lionel Kaplan. Tough Tongue, Beam Splitter’s debut album, was recorded live at the Viennese Rhiz club, at Caffeine Asperto in Ljubljana and in Berlin’s Weincafé, all during 2016. It is released in a limited-edition of 300 red vinyls plus download option.

Chen and Munkeby Nørstebø explores the spectrum between expressive, abstract vocals and the trombone as an instrument that channels pure bubbles of air and streams of breathes, intertwined in dense dialogues. Despite the abstract nature of Beam Splitter's aesthetics, Chen offers highly emotional and suggestive territories with her urgent, wordless lingo while Munkeby Nørstebø embraces gently her vocal forays with raw, tactile breathes, and serene drones. Both move organically, keeping a highly intimate, conversational mode, with their own senses of pulse and narrative development. The last, longest piece, “Sweet Nothings”, captured in Berlin’s Weincafé, introduces  rough elements of conflict and confrontation to Chen and Munkeby Nørstebø dialogues. These elements add a deeper, vulnerable dimension to Beam Splitter's intimate mode of sonic relationship. This 22-minutes piece concludes with newer, sweeter and compassionate understanding between these unique individuals.  

Redox - Orbitals (Creative Sources, 2017) ***½

Redox is the trio of Austrian, Graz-based vocal artist and electronics player Annette Giesriegl, pianist Katharina Klement and Croatian, and Brussels-based marimba player Kaja Farszky. All are performers of contemporary music as well as bold improvisers. Redox was formed in 2014 and Orbitals is its debut album,  recorded live in the Austrian town of Kumberg and in Croatia’s capital Zagreb in 2015 and 2016.

The term Redox - reduction-oxidation - refers to the process of transfer of electrons between two bodies, and redox reactions are used to power smartphones, laptops etc. Orbitals is the mathematical description of the wave-like behavior of electrons in atom. These elaborate, scientific terms do capture the essence of this trio. Redox operates in a busy, very vivid process of sharing, sculpting and charging voices and sounds with shifting elements of expressiveness, energy and momentum. The trio employs a wide arsenal of sounds - acoustic ones, extended ones with different vocal and breathing techniques as well as assorted piano and marimba preparations, and subtle electronics. Giesriegl, Klement and Farszky exchange roles constantly, each one intensifying the tension, the fragile pulse and narrative in her own distinct, eccentric manner. The nuanced and mysterious textures are developed in a methodical manner, insisting on an uncompromising investigation and experimentation with timbres and dynamics, with almost no attempt to suggest emotional release.    

And on Soundcloud.

Not On The Guest List - Free! Spirit! Chant! (Gaffer, 2017) ***1/2

Not On The Guest List consists of the Norwegian, Copenhagen-based drummer-percussionist Ole Mofjell and vocalist Natalie Sandtorv, a couple also in real life. Sandtorv is also an accomplished singer-songwriter who released recently the acclaimed album Freedom Nation (Øra Fonogram, 2017) and Mofjell is in-demand drummer who has collaborated with pianist Jacob Anderskov and sax players Tobias Delius, Anna Högberg and Aram Shelton.

Sandtorv uses her voice as an ecstatic, even hysterical instrument, sometimes dueling, often dancing passionately with the propulsive, schizophrenic drumming of Mofjell. Their deep, immediate understanding and almost telepathic connection allows Not On The Guest List to move instantly, back and forth, between highly intense and powerful free-improvised outbursts to delicate and soft stream of improvised lyrics, while holding their tight and focused interplay. Obviously, and quite often, Sandtorv and Mofjell improvisations sound as restless emotional conversations of two opinionated soul-mates, but both manage to keep the tension and surprise with their urgent and colorful spectrum of sonic references.

And on Soundcloud.

Tomomi Adachi & Jaap Blonk - Asemic Dialogues + Jaap Blonk - Irrelevant Comments (Kontrans, 2017) ****½ / ***½

Dutch vocal artist-sound poet-electronics player Jaap Blonk needs no introduction. Here he performs with lost twin, Japanese vocal artist Tomomi Adachi, who like Blonk, has performed contemporary works, collaborated with numerous improvisers, among them Akira Sakata, Otomo Yoshihide and Jon Rose, and adds electronics to his unique palette of vocal sounds. Blonk and Adachi performed together few times in the past but Asemic Dialogues is the first document of their work, capturing their live performances at Berlin’s Lettrétage on July 2017.

The title of this album says it all. No words or semantics are needed, but tons of verbal-emotional information is exchanged. These eccentric, restless twins dive immediately, head-on into noisy conversations that sound as secret, fragmented transmissions of two out-of-tune-aliens with extremely short spans of attention. These terrestrial creatures are clearly deeply in love, demonstrating great affinity for Dadaist vocal games and primitive techno beats. The second dialogue is even wilder than the first one and it seems that the beloved and adventurous vocal explorers were lost somewhere in deep, noisy space. These irresponsible anarchists show no sign of interest in return to mother Earth.  

The ones who are still novice in the art of Blonk may want to check his Irrelevant Comments, a sort of overview of all the things that Blonk can do: Musique concrète, beats, sound poetry, minimalist techno, horrific soundscapes and even weirder stuff. 16 pieces, dating from 1996 to 2016, recorded at Blonk’s home at Arnhem, Netherlands.

Native Instrument - Camo (Shelter Press, 2017) ***½

If Blonk toyed with "minimalist techno", Native Instrument explorers "insect techno." This Berlin-based duo of Norwegian abstract, minimalist vocalist Stine Janvin Motland, known from her past collaborations with drummer Ståle Liavik Solberg, and Australian field-recorder and sound-artist Felicity Mangan uses vocal and electronic adaptations of wildlife audio recordings originating mainly from the Australian and North European fauna. Native Instrument mixes the rhythms of the animal calls, add digital effects, radio recordings, and vocal imitations until the distinction between rural nature, electronics, and the human voice becomes ambiguous.

Camo is the debut EP release of Native Instrument. The four fascinating pieces entwine organically the natural voices with precise and subtle vocals and electronics layers. It doesn't take long before you begin to visualize the dances of frogs on acid, sweating in some steamy tropical ambience, jumping recklessly along some bug beats or experiencing the amphibian trance. Highly intoxicating stuff.

And on Soundcloud. 

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The Unique Vocal Artistry of Isabelle Duthoit and Viv Corringham

By Eyal Hareuveni

Two recent releases, presenting two unique vocal artists - French, Vienna-based Isabelle Duthoit and British, New York-based Viv Corringham. Both demonstrate how even the most weird and experimental music can sound sensual and tempting...

Isabelle Duthoit / Franz Hautzinger - Lily (Relative Pitch, 2017) *****

The duo of Isabelle Duthoit (who also plays the clarinet but not on this recording) and Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, a couple also in their private life, has been playing together a great deal in recent years, including in a quartet with Czech trumpeter Petr Vrba and Austrian synthesizer player Matija Schellander (that recorded Esox Lucius, Corvo Records, 2015) and recently at Nickelsdorf’s Konfrontationen festival in the Uruk quartet with American drummers-percussionists Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang. Lily is their first recording of Duthoit and Hautzinger as a duo and it compiles eight studio improvisations, recorded at Park West Studios, Brooklyn in March 2015 and a live improvisation, captured at Philly track Crossroads Music, later that month.

Lily is an intimate meeting, not only because of the personal connection between Duthoit and Hautzinger but more due to the emotional tone of this album. Duthoit and Hautzinger sound like opposites who attract and complement each other. She employs her expressive, wordless voice to suggest physically intense, deep emotional states of mind while he prefers a more reserved and introspective playing. She sound completely intuitive, totally possessed by her uninhibited, extrovert feelings while he adopts g a more cerebral sense of control. But such distinctions are eventually superficial. Duthoit and Hautzinger are strong-minded improvisers who like to take risks and experiment. Both know how sketch profound, fascinating sonic universes with minimalist, simple means.   

Hautzinger keeps developing on Lily his idiosyncratic vocabulary that translates reductive, electronic sounds to microtonal trumpet sounds, often using a quarter-tone trumpet to produce pure, abstract sounds and silent breaths. Duthoit spirals Hautzinger's abstract expressions into turbulent, ecstatic moods, with her immediate, natural stream of cries, groans, shrieks, gasps and whispers. Their interplay is simply telepathic - quiet, close and naked. Sometimes it is difficult to know who is doing what, Often both leap instantly between quiet, meditative expressions to cathartic peaks. On other times, as on the urgent “Un Serpent Dans la Nuit” or on the last, live playful piece, the only improvisation where Hutzinger references sounds of a conventional trumpet, Duthoit and Hautzinger sound like sonic lovers, literally, enjoying every second and every aspect of their unique relationship.

Viv Corringham / Stephen Flinn / Miguel Frasconi ‎– Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (Creative Sources, 2017) ***½

The trio of Corringham with American percussionist Stephen Flinn and glass objects player Miguel Frasconi was formed in 2015 and is titled aptly after the old public gardens in Kennington, on the south bank of the Thames river, now part of London. Listening to the debut album of this spontaneous-improvising trio, recorded at The Pencil Factory, Brooklyn in November 2016, may bring memories of an amusing trip to an enigmatic garden, full of weird, colorful sounds and visions.

Corringham is a certified Deep Listening teacher, after studying with Pauline Oliveros, and has worked before with innovative percussionist as Gino Robair and Eddie Prévost and vocal artist Maggie Nicols; Flinn is a composer who searches for unusual sound sources, uses rhythms to teach positive communications and social skills and has performed before with innovative vocal artists as Phil Minton, Jaap Blonk and Nichols; Frasconi is a composer specializing in the relationship between acoustic objects and musical forms, playing also on electronics and constructions of his own design and has composed chamber music, operas, film and dance scores.  

The six untitled pieces explore different, unchartered terrains of strange and even strangers sounds and dynamics, with elegance and impressive senses of adventure and invention. On the first one Corringham vocalizations mirror and extend the subtle, free-associative stream of  sounds of Flinn and Frasconi. The following improvisations are looser and more abstract, sketching detailed atmospheres with clear strokes of resonating sounds and a suggestive voice. The trio moves freely on these improvisations, offering on the third one an introspective and quiet texture and  sparse sonic searches on the fourth one. On the fifth one the trio explores game-like ideas. Flinn focuses on fragmented berimbau-like sounds, Frasconi dives into deep-space sounds while Corringham offers her uninhibited stream-of consciousness delivery. The last, short one is the most playful and passionate one, like three mad sonic scientists make mad sonic love.

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