Todd McComb: Jazz archive, 10/2018-07/2019

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Although it's for the second time this calendar year — and this is the first I've done that in this space — I've decided to roll the previous set of thoughts over to another archive page: The previous nine months simply ended up producing, already, more verbiage (by word count) than any previous sets of entries. Why have I felt so verbose this year? Well, it's been something of a trend here generally, but moreover, it had much to do with the tone of confidence in the previous intro, and starting to feel less like I was exploring what was out there, and more like I had a sense of the field. Of course, such a sense remains particular to me & my priorities, what I enjoy, what I find theoretically stimulating, what I find useful in day to day life.... I guess we'll see where all that goes next.

Any time I start to feel like I know what I'm doing, especially within such an open & dynamic field as contemporary improvised music, it's a good time to remind myself that there is surely far more happening than I will ever know. And I do sometimes lament the static quality of some of my musical inputs, meaning that there are sources I tend to appreciate, and so I always worry about getting into a mental rut.... (And I'm also writing a new intro now in part because there was a considerable lull in having new items of interest to discuss. That happens sometimes, and I'm growing more accustomed to the rhythms in this space: A feeling of being overwhelmed with variety can be followed quickly by wondering why there's nothing new catching my ear.... That dynamic undoubtedly involves my shifting internal judgments too.) So I need to make a point, at least for myself, to continue to seek out something different. In the meantime, readers can always consult my prior (& updated) favorites, summarized by year for quick reference. (I hope that it's useful for people who want a relatively brief list of especially worthwhile — to me anyway — recent albums, without feeling a need to read a bunch of commentary. Words aren't necessary to appreciate music, after all, and might even interfere.)

I mentioned "contemporary improvised music" above, so why does this space say jazz? For one, I started there, and tend to keep web pages at their same addresses, instead of moving things around. But that's obviously a ridiculous answer: When I started this project, I had intended to prioritize USA (or perhaps American more broadly) production — and also youth. I've speculated in the past on why the former priority became untenable, in part because of the dismal support for the arts & education in this country, or perhaps the differing priorities of people who might become involved with musical resistance, but I've found over time that only a minority of what interests me originates in this hemisphere.... (And I simply do not believe that this project "works" if I ignore items I find more appealing — for whatever reason — in favor of items I find less appealing.) In the latter case, I've found that various older performers still have much to say (& that I might have much to say in response), but I do continue to be open to youth & new ideas (I hope!). That said, as I wrote in the prior intro, I take jazz as resistance, as a medium fighting oppression and for social justice & new forms of life. And African Americans played & play a huge role, which ought to be respected any time one uses the term. However, I also don't believe that restricting the sound of "jazz" to the classic sound of jazz suits its liberatory purpose: Time marches on. Moreover, of course, there have been many more improvisatory musical traditions around the world, even as (at least in this country) improvisation was so strongly linked to "jazz" per se in its glory days (the 1960s — the climax of the modern era), such that there are many "roots" today — & many struggles for freedom. And I continue to prioritize improvisation because I believe that it reflects the conditions of life itself, particularly in such volatile historical times. (That's not to say that I won't listen to or discuss composed music, but I consider composition to be something of a crutch — sometimes helpful in getting something done, such that perhaps it can lead to more....)

Notions of composition as somehow "more preliminary" than improvisation might already seem eccentric, but I also try to take an improvisatory approach myself in this space: I try not to wait "too long" before discussing an album, so that I can capture some of the spontaneity of my thoughts & their tangents. Excitement can easily be lost in the sobriety that so often accompanies time, but new insight can form as well, and so whereas I want to be spontaneous here, I also revisit old favorites with some regularity, such that reactions to something new might be played against or through (new?) reactions to something older (although usually still from within the time frame of this project, which began in 2010). So thoughts develop over time, and I've consequently kept entries in written order — thus requiring these restarts — and resisted impulses to provide typical web widgets for searches, etc. So please scroll to the end for the latest entries, and please also be aware that albums might be discussed across multiple entries, sometimes from different perspectives. As noted in the prior intro, I frequently take a "translation" perspective, of one thing into or from something else, not to imply that they then become interchangeable....

Whereas some entries are straightforward, others are more textually involved: This is generally complex music, and I like to let my writing reflect the lines & interactions of the music — albeit perhaps unrecognizably, or perhaps more accurately, idiosyncratically. I'm trying to offer a spontaneous artistic response, and I'm willing to take risks with that, so sometimes I end up saying something silly. (I feel that's better than the alternative.) Despite all this theory — including e.g. in (open) writing projects like Practical listening or Basic mechanics of modernity — or perhaps because of it — I also try to ask what the "use" of an album is, i.e. how can it help me or others in our daily lives? Relevance is very important to me, despite what some might think of this music: New ways of thinking & interacting are exactly what we need in the current historical moment. Or sometimes we just need new ways to survive, and music can facilitate that too.... (In all of this, I generally prioritize small ensembles, but not as small as solos or duos, which present fewer combinatorial possibilities, so expect to find a lot of trio & quartet albums being discussed....)

I think I'll leave these latest opening remarks at that. There's plenty of context for these & other remarks to be found from reading earlier intros or the previous several years of individual entries.... For now, my own concerns return to where they often are, i.e. what new items do I want to discuss? That's largely prompted by whether I feel I have something to contribute, and there is never an ideal place to start.... (And any beginning is a rupture.)

From what I've seen elsewhere, I seem to have more interest in vocal music than most people writing about otherwise similar music, and along with various other stimulating material, the prolific Creative Sources label continues to release more vocal music than anyone else: So opening this set of entries, after a long (& mysterious) mail delay, Factorial was recorded in Italy by a quartet featuring singer Patrizia Oliva, who also uses electronics & plays the Chinese bawu (transverse reed). Oliva, whose vocal technique spans a variety of styles, is joined in the quartet "4!" by Carlo Mascolo on prepared trombone, Domenico Saccente on accordion & prepared piano, and Felice Furioso on drums, bass & other percussion (including "cupa cupa" Neapolitan friction drum). Mascolo had already appeared on Creative Sources with the Lisbon String Trio on Intonarumori (discussed here in August 2017), and indeed the album design for Factorial appears to be similarly inspired, but the others were new to me. (In this case, the collage is by Oliva herself, and there is a different graphic designer, so I don't know if it's coincidence or homage....) Although Oliva was new to me as well, she has already appeared on 18 albums for the Italian CDR imprint Setola di Maiale (hard to obtain, unfortunately), including a couple by Gamra Quartet, a more conventional "free jazz" quartet including reed & guitar & drums in aggressive & somewhat repetitive settings around vocal loops, ostinati, etc. Factorial is generally less aggressive or focused on that sort of canonical "free" style, and even comes off as something of an anthology: No recording dates are given, for one thing, which is not my idea of how to document improvised meetings (although I suppose people can have their reasons), and so along with the variety of vocal styles being employed (not to mention the evocation of collage form), it's unknown how many sessions were involved. Although the vocal technique varies from track to track, or even within tracks — evoking e.g. Joëlle Léandre (on track three, by far the most assertive of the nine) or the throat creaking of Isabelle Duthoit (per e.g. Light air still gets dark), and including e.g. snippets of distant or dreamy pop, cabaret (with maybe a quick hint of Messiaen) overtures, lilting or "naïve" sing-song, Sprechstimme, inarticulate chatter, absent-minded silliness, etc. — there is nonetheless a sort of coherence to the album around the quartet, despite that the group (except Mascolo) varies their instrumentation. Prepared trombone can vary from rather high to rather low pitch though too, glissandi often prominently included, and even the characteristic interaction with accordion (accented by drum set) changes on tracks employing piano instead. The title & ensemble name suggest the various combinations & permutations of sonority & dynamic available across a quartet — as just intimated in my new opening — yet the combos & timbres (which often seem almost subconscious, or perhaps displaying an urge to hide) project a kind of spaciousness that deemphasizes momentum or continuity, such that moods almost seem to hang in the air, gathering like smoke. The result can seem occasionally aggressive, but usually comes with a haunting subtlety, such that depending on context, Factorial can be slow to make a firm aural statement — or alternately, one can become caught in rapt attention to its overall atmosphere & details. (Differing responses to attention from the listener, the basic "ambient" quality here, are a feature of many recent Creative Sources releases....) So despite some issues with the documentary or anthology aspects of Factorial, Oliva's voice comes off rather distinctively (in its variety), amid carefully cultivated & original sonic moods. And despite its attention to rich improvisatory detail, as well as novel technique, the album also has more of a "pop" feel (at least at times) than most mentioned here.

Five by the (mostly English) Runcible Quintet on FMR (discussed here in May 2017) is an album that I had particularly enjoyed not only for its masterful (chamber improvisation) technique, but its cultivated sense of five-way interaction. In some ways, it seemed to be "one of many" albums out of the strong London improvisation scene, employing a global palette of sounds & evocations, and indeed in retrospect, perhaps it developed more tentatively than some. That said, a followup has now appeared — recorded 18 & 23 months later — in Four, and what were perhaps more exploratory interactions have become that much more powerful: However, as the title might already suggest, Four actually opens with a quartet session (minus bassist John Edwards) from late last year, followed by another quintet session (with the same full ensemble) from this past March: Both are about a half hour in length, meaning that Four basically consists of two (relatively) short albums. Returning to a discussion of Five, of course I was familiar with Edwards, and I had already admired guitarist Daniel Thompson (in e.g. Hunt at the Brook & related projects), as well as some complementary material from flautist Neil Metcalfe, but was not yet familiar with drummer Marcello Magliocchi or saxophonist Adrian Northover. As also mentioned at the time, I first enjoyed Five as a sort of "flute trio" album (& I often enjoy flute in improvised music, including for its pan-native evocations...), and then came to appreciate the sorts of interventions & commentary that Northover & Thompson were making as well, as integrated in large part by Magliocchi — whose drumming style I've continued to enjoy, including for its sometimes almost minimalist accents & repetitions. (Subsequently, I was also quite taken with Ag, the trio album from Northover & Thompson with Steve Noble, and their contributions have come to seem that much more distinctive since....) However, the quartet session that opens Four — with a long track, and then a much shorter followup track — precludes focusing on a "flute trio," due to the absence of bass: Guitar fills a similar role at times (as it had, often shadowing Edwards, on Five), but the quartet tends to break more into two duos than interlocking trios (both around drums). Nonetheless, after a relatively austere opening around flute, there is a wide range of energetic interaction & exploration, making for a very compelling track (evoking & incorporating globalized styles into a sometimes mysterious mélange), with a new brightness to the sound in the absence of bass. (The flute & drums duo also seems to profit from a more "direct" interaction.) The short followup opens with a brief guitar solo, into a curiously intricate machinic assemblage.... Of course, Edwards is the player who most attracted my attention in the first place, and his absence makes for an interesting revision to the ensemble, but one needn't dwell on such absence for long, as the next two tracks (of relatively equal length) employ the full quintet again — while often retaining the group's new brightness. The bass makes its presence known instantly, however, and often appears (once again) at the center of activity — including some "flute trio" moments, particularly on the last track, which also features an unusual (for this group anyway) solo from Northover. (Indeed there are more solos here than on Five, and more reed, but there is basically more of everything, due to the increased length, pace, comfort....) Another aspect that I just promised to address is "use," and so what is the use of this album? (What's the use of a runcible spoon? To eat mince & quince, evidently....) First, I enjoy the wonderful collective interaction, which seems like a typical response, but I also hear it as stimulating other creativity in turn, and have generally found listening to Runcible Quintet to be a helpful (& often calming) experience when considering written forms, next steps, etc.: It evokes a timeless quality, but not through a lack of activity or drive... and the spaciousness of the result seems to leave plenty of room for my own ideas as well. (It's also a great, generally non-soloistic tour-de-force for flute, something that can't be said every day. Indeed, Four might already be my favorite "flute album.") And despite some potential awkwardness involved in combining two different sessions, including the quartet, and despite this followup being so recent, Four is simply a great album. Circumstances made me wary, but the result is very satisfying... "ideality" can obviously be an enemy to recordings of improvised music, but this one captures something special, including that Runcible is one of the most compelling improvising collectives working today.

Since Five & now Four, I've been paying more attention to Adrian Northover — who, among saxophonists, is capable of quite subtle ensemble contributions, and the latter might be said of Marcello Magliocchi on drums as well. (Indeed, continuing the remarks begun around Patrizia Oliva & Factorial, Magliocchi has appeared on twenty albums for Setola di Maiale, so he's actually been quite prolific....) On Sezu, another recent release on FMR (recorded in Bristol in March 2017), they're joined by Phil Gibbs on guitar (& banjo for one track), and Maresuke Okamoto on cello & voice (for one track). Gibbs appears on many FMR releases, especially with Paul Dunmall (such that I'm not sure that I've heard him before without Dunmall), but Okamoto (b.1960, Tokyo) was new to me: The most unusual track of the album is clearly the third, on which the vocals appear, mysterious Japanese in the foreground with various shimmering accompaniment. That track does bring an emotional impact after the intricate openings, but the format (straight solo & accompaniment) is simply not one I tend to enjoy. Fortunately, the other tracks are more intricate & contrapuntal: Gibbs brings a dazzling quality on guitar, and has a tendency to dominate the (front line) sound (as opposed to the more "earthy" Thompson, above, who weaves in & out...), but Northover can be more assertive & to the fore on alto sax here as well. Okamoto's cello is the more novel contribution, however, provoking some unusual & creative textures early in the program, and forging more characteristic timbral combinations by the end, especially around noisy bowing, and amid the relatively straightforward yet creative percussion sounds (tapping, rubbing, etc.) from Magliocchi. FMR produces a lot of "chamber jazz," much of it rather similar in style & orientation, but Sezu provides some ear catching innovations around its carefully modulated collective quartet texture, and so makes a powerful first impression. In that sense, the vocal track might not be a favorite, but it's provocative, especially on first hearing, changing the way the quartet interaction is perceived — even as the vocals never return. (The resulting stance is a mix of striving & poise....) I've yet to be especially interested by the more soloistic Japanese productions, or by those oriented on (often delicate) pianism, so Sezu ("Without" in Japanese) is a welcome opportunity to hear a Japanese instrumentalist in a more polyphonic (yet still intense) improvisatory setting. More is clearly possible from such a setting....

Dissection Room, also from Creative Sources (& recorded in Lisbon this past December), is another album delayed by the USPS that I want to note: Although it isn't particularly polyphonic, meaning that it tends to focus on a "central" sound or action more than I usually prefer, Dissection Room is quite evocative of its (medical) setting, with sonorities suggesting a palpable sense of horror: There is sawing, grinding, slashing, pounding, hard echoing surfaces, the metallic shimmer of colliding knives, etc. The album pairs Albert Cirera on prepared tenor & soprano saxes with Alvaro Rosso on double bass — & the two had already appeared together on the more mainstream "free" quintet album Ao vivo!, as mentioned around Rosso's participation in the Lisbon String Trio in July — to be mediated or deconstructed by electric guitarist Abdul Moimême. (The latter actually first appeared in this space back in April 2012....) The often short sonic bursts that make up Dissection Room don't generally engage a lot of long-term continuity, or elaborate much simultaneity, but they do create an austere, clinical mood. (In the notes, Stuart Broomer frames the trio as dissecting music per se, which is probably applicable, but the — admittedly stylized — sounds of a medical dissection room are rather evident to me, so the title seems to be more concrete than merely that.) The main line of inquiry is consequently quite dissonant at times, combining timbres, including some low grade static etc., although it does resolve into a kind of quasi-"anthem" by the end. In the meantime, there are some amazing sequences, particularly about two thirds of the way through the single fifty-four minute track, when some startling polyphonic activity occurs. Otherwise, the eerie & often slow moving (almost minimalist, yet again) collective trio quality embeds a calmness vaguely reminiscent of e.g. Drought, although the latter seems far more naturally-oriented than Dissection Room.... (Yet one wouldn't claim that a cadaver is somehow "unnatural.") A distinct musical character does manage to emerge, though, out of the mastery involved in this rather novel, macabre & clinical operation. (One might otherwise think that such a theme would be more likely to emerge from death metal influenced bands of e.g. New York City, but if it did, it would have proceeded rather differently....) The result entails a perverse delicacy, highly trained surgeons cutting calmly & precisely into tender flesh....

While I'm here, I also want to mention a couple of other recent trio albums that sometimes lean in more minimalistic directions, but also feature some novel combinations & interrogations.... Luminária, recently on FMR from the Frame Trio, was recorded in Coimbra in November 2017, and features the duo of Luís Vicente (trumpet) & Marcelo dos Reis (guitar) — who have worked together in numerous recent projects, such as In Layers (discussed in February 2017) & City of Light (discussed in May 2017) — as basically "mediated" by bassist Nils Vermeulen (with whom I was not previously familiar): Straightforward yet novel timbral combinations, usually arising from trumpet & guitar, as supported (harmonically) by bass, are elaborated (formally) into relatively straightforward extended pieces (of which there are six) according to ostinato, hocket, etc. Although I hear it as a more exploratory album — not that it's very "difficult," or hard on the ear — there's also a satisfying quality to the resulting quasi-melodic austerity (which can be heard in full on Bandcamp). Enclins, recorded live at Radio France in June 2017, and the second album from the Clinamen Trio of Louis-Michel Marion (contrabass), Jacques Di Donato (clarinet) & Philippe Berger (viola), after Décliné (discussed April 2015), is even more minimalistic: The "swerve" of "atoms" here is even tinier, yielding slow simmering that sometimes seems to suggest very long & slow melodies amid an overall sparse, buzzing surface.... (One might think of e.g. the intricate clarinet & strings combination of K'Ampokol Che K'Aay, or the variety of activity, including spectral, from e.g. Baloni — which employs basically the same ensemble — but things tend to be far more distended on Enclins, with little tangible activity at most moments.) One can perhaps admire the trio's commitment to their vision (of largely imperceptible action that can nonetheless add up to something meaningful), but if anything, the second album is more smooth & uneventful than the first... it doesn't make for foreground listening for me, although some curious things do sometimes occur. Perhaps the most intriguing development is the increasingly "granular" sense of ostinato, i.e. of timbre "kontakting" a large structural element.... All three of these albums then involve novel timbral combinations, elaborated formally into (tangible & sometimes energetic) results that the listener can then grasp — in other words, they involve some degree or version of timbre yielding large-scale form....

Astral Spirits has been a rather prolific label of late, but I guess I've yet to mention them: That's due in part to their decision to release albums on cassette tape, of course, but with their Bandcamp site I can avoid issues with physical media — & in fact, they've now released a few CDs & have moved into vinyl too. (I can understand people wanting to get creative or retro or what-have-you with physical media, as they come to be redundant for a lot of people, but using a cassette tape is not something I care to contemplate. Personally, as noted probably too often by now, I find CDs convenient: They can be popped quickly into a player without having to worry about software updates or other computer-based harassment. A cassette does not seem convenient, not to mention needing another kind of quality playback device. Anyway....) Their music also seems to come with more of a "rock" orientation than I usually adopt, but they've also been aggressive in supporting explorations of novel sonorities, etc. even if a lot of it is built around speed. In particular, although it's composed music, I wanted to note Convulsionaries (recorded last October, and released on CD) by the Brandon Seabrook Trio, including Daniel Levin (cello) & Henry Fraser on bass: I had discussed Stomiidae back in February, and that was a free trio (recorded 18 months prior) also featuring Seabrook & Levin, there with Chris Pitsiokos. The orientation on Seabrook's compositions on Convulsionaries leaves the bass in more of a supporting role, but there's still much to enjoy, particularly around Seabrook's fast guitar & sometimes cathartic (partially scripted) interactions. It's an enjoyable, maybe even "fun" album (with e.g. almost a James Bond-esque noir quality at one point). More raw is Hiljaisuus ("Silence" in Finnish?!), an LP recorded in Chicago in September 2017, on which the Tashi Dorji (guitar) & Tyler Damon (percussion) duo is joined by Dave Rempis on saxes, forming a trio called Kuzu. Dorji & Damon have been making a big impression around the web, but mostly as a duo, so I was interested to hear them as joined by Rempis: He's quite prolific, often with more of an "inside" orientation than I have, but is seemingly involved in ever more projects, such as Spectral (with recent favorite Empty Castles)... which is very different. On Hiljaisuus — & I have no idea where Finnish comes into it, but describing this very noisy music as "calm" or "spacious & light" seems to be part of its fundamental twist — Rempis gets to be as heavy & aggressive as he wants, in a real free blowing session, but framed by the unique duo style that Dorji & Damon have developed together. (Rempis's participation almost evokes Damon Smith on Ewen / Smith / Walter for me: Although Ewen & Walter hadn't played together before, the sheer speed & "insanity" of their interaction is of a similar vein — even as Smith acts more as mediator, whereas Rempis immediately instigates.) Rempis does begin quite aggressively, such that lightness doesn't seem to be an option for the duo, at least not without first injecting much energy of their own, which they proceed to do: Dorji is actually from Bhutan, and then moved to Asheville as an adult, whereas Damon (b.1987) is from Cincinnati, and now lives in Bloomington Indiana. I hadn't realized that this duo was so "middle American" so to speak, and of course Rempis (having gotten his start with Ken Vandermark) exemplifies a particular strand of contemporary Chicago jazz... such that Kuzu belongs somewhere on the tree (or rhizome) of Americana. The way that Rempis pushes the energy with these guys is amazing, as is their response, and as noted, the influences (& "sharding" etc.) recall Ewen / Smith / Walter (another piece of Americana, however amusing such an observation might seem). Moreover, some "calm" is certainly involved, in an "eye of the storm" sense... so such a suggestion is not as absurd as it might initially seem — even as the surface of the sound is often so frenetic. (One might even suggest a sort of lively inversion of the clinical calm of Dissection Room....) There is, moreover, a strong ritual mood emerging from the core duo in particular: One might further suggest a resemblance, in the domain of results anyway, to Tipple Live at Elastic Arts, a similar ensemble — albeit of players with vastly different styles, in each case — recorded in the same venue two years earlier. (Such a resemblance is, in many ways, quite superficial, and doesn't survive attention to details, particularly since energy moves through the trio differently, yet both invoke a similar ecstatic intensity for the listener. And it doesn't make sense to call Tipple an "American" trio either, although Kevin Norton is from New York....) So the Dorji-Damon duo is forging a distinctive personal style, and Rempis makes for a particularly aggressive (Midwest) collaborator bringing another kind of intensity on Hiljaisuus....

I'll probably continue to write in "bursts" here for the next few months, as I focus on articulating an extended (theoretical) discussion.... In the meantime, I want to note Interfaces (on Ravello Records, which does not seem to appear at the usual retailers) by the trio of Jeff Morris (live sampling), Karl Berger (b.1935; vibraphone & piano) & Joe Hertenstein (drum set & stone-table-percussion). Interfaces was recorded in Woodstock NY, home of Berger's Creative Music Studio, over three days in September 2017, and consists of ten tracks lasting over fifty minutes. It's also the (stated) first album by Morris — no relation to the various other musical Morrises in this arena, as far as I know — & adopts a very particular stance on electronics: Morris has constructed a setup that doesn't produce its own sound, but samples & manipulates the music produced by others. That does include specific software designed in advance for this particular project, and despite the novelty emphasized in the distribution notes, of course various other performers have used similar live sampling & playback: Wade Matthews, Alvin Curran, Carlos Santos, etc. The difference is those performers have also (usually) generated their own sounds, and so Morris is taking a more restrictive approach in that sense: Perhaps the best comparison is actually to Boulez Materialism (discussed here in July), both for its sampling (& mixing) emphasis from the electronics, and for its frequently jazzy or bluesy sound (there especially around bass). The subtitle "Jazz Meets Electronics" thus serves both to describe the result, and to overstate the basic novelty of the electronic interventions.... That said, Morris does produce a unique (if not unprecedented) personal result, and in this case, the electronics often have a percussive quality themselves — coming from sampling drums, piano, vibes... — although they occasionally render (sometimes eerie) legato. Hertenstein has been featured here since early in this project (as his move to New York more or less corresponded with my start), but I had yet to mention Berger: I knew that Hertenstein had been working with him, and of course Berger has quite a history, if less of a recent discography: He's most often on piano on Interfaces, and generally produces the most "conventional" musical input, across a variety of piano styles (almost a tour, from blues to Bach & beyond) at various points. His is a pleasing & easily flowing style, incorporating a range of (often traditional) ideas, and the piano does sometimes ring through clearly (& tonally) for extended passages, while at other times it's more masked (or disarticulated) by electronics. The vibes-based tracks tend to be more abstract, however (& so that much more akin to Boulez Materialism), although the "conventional input" does limit how "out there" Morris can be — albeit while attaching Interfaces much more firmly to tradition. Hertenstein largely moves between the two poles, coming closer to the sometimes raucous or dissonant electronics, or closer to the traditionally thematic piano at various points: The resulting palette can be fascinating (although I'm not quite sure what stone-table-percussion, credited with those hyphens, exactly is), particularly as it's remixed (sometimes aggressively) by the electronics into a general percussive sea. Despite some rather conventional material (always on the verge of being deconstructed) at times, Interfaces is thus an exciting & distinctive debut: So where does Morris go from here?

Tyshawn Sorey is another drummer whom I noticed early in this project, in particular for his many appearances on albums by other people: I see that I first mentioned him explicitly around Steve Lehman's On Meaning in May 2011, but had already noted him on e.g. Steve Coleman's albums, and then again with the cooperative trio Paradoxical Frog the following month. Although I was soon impressed by Sorey's drumming, his leader albums hadn't excited me: I discussed the piano trio album Alloy briefly in November 2014, but didn't end up mentioning the subsequent The Inner Spectrum of Variables (released in 2016) or Verisimilitude (another piano trio, released last year) at all (although I did listen to both). I guess I was starting to think that what Sorey wanted to produce simply wasn't what I wanted to hear, despite my initial impressions to the contrary. It happens: Of course, in this general space, Sorey is also one of the most acclaimed USA musicians of his generation, one of the handful of people that regularly receives prestigious grants & quasi-mainstream attention, etc. (The way that these things work in the US seems very wrong to me, but that's not Sorey's fault, and so I don't want to get too worked up here... but basically, among other issues, technical proficiency is a requirement far beyond having something to say, with the latter seeming to be quite optional. I mean, let's face it, many of the people in charge will be happier if someone has nothing to say: It's safer that way.) So I was doubly pleased that Sorey put the (often romantic) piano trio genre aside, at least for the moment, and created the massive & unusual octet album Pillars: Readers might have noticed that I sometimes chafe at narrative form, generally speaking, and so when Sorey talks of being non-directional & avoiding "linear narrative," he has my attention. The Feldman-esque proportions of the work — at nearly four hours, at least in its triple CD version — are obvious enough, but rather than place sound figures into varying layers via pervasive time signature changes, as Feldman does, Sorey assembles his "moments" into a larger work only later, after they're recorded: The "moment" concept & the nonsequential presentation also explicitly refer to Stockhausen, such that the resulting piece involves surreal shifts that somehow aren't jarring: Pillars instead unfolds according to its own logic, as assembled by Sorey — as editor, basically — subsequent to recording. (I would also recommend the double LP version, which I heard via digital download, in that it's "only" 95 minutes, is generally "brighter" in tone, and moves along a bit more. So it's edited rather differently from the CD version, which has some quite extended & even ponderous moments.) The result has something of an "ambient" effect — also mentioned explicitly by Sorey (who compares it to Zen) — in that it (intentionally) sustains different levels of listener attention (as discussed here around Sîn in February: There are also loud, "scary" moments in Pillars, but it's less about a "close up" quality as associated with lowercase, or a term I prefer around some of those Creative Sources releases, improvisational post-concrète.... It's plenty concrete, though, an edited "tape" assembled only at a remove from live performance.) It should thus reward both closer & more disinterested listening: Yet, because of the way it's constructed, i.e. "subsequently," there's little sense in which details intensify.... In fact, whereas I found Pillars to provide an excellent background for editing (something I do often), I didn't find it to be much of a spur for creative thought more generally. Oh well, it's still an interesting idea, and develops some distinctive textures: One might even suggest that it takes something of an "inverse" approach to that of Anthony Braxton, e.g. on Quartet Live at Sesc Pompeia, where previously prepared electronics prompt (in part) the improvising players. (For Sorey, the transformative "electronics" are largely involved later, i.e. in the editing process.) And indeed Braxton comes off as rather "narrative" in comparison. As does Bill Dixon on Tapestries, which might be said specifically to construct a sort of landscape-narrative form: The frequent austerity (including that of the cover, from the same label), and sometimes similar ensemble sound & even musical contours (especially around brass "calls" & variations in player participation) also mark Tapestries as a clear (& presumably self-conscious) influence on Pillars (which was itself recorded at Firehouse 12 over two days in July 2017)... although a cursory search did not turn up a document of Sorey & Dixon playing together. (Basic textural concerns on the two albums might also be said to be inversely aligned.) Connections to those African American legends extend to Sorey's ensemble on Pillars as well, a unique set of musicians who are (mostly anyway) chosen for their own distinctiveness, rather than according to traditional notions of score & instrumentation: Stephen Haynes (trumpet, flugelhorn, cornet, alto horn, small percussion) plays the only high horn, whereas he had been one of many on Tapestries (with its "inverse" texture); Ben Gerstein (trombone, melodica) & Todd Neufeld (electric & acoustic guitar) return from various early Sorey projects; the inimitable Joe Morris plays both electric guitar & double bass, whereas Carl Testa (mostly known from Anthony Braxton ensembles) adds electronics along with double bass, and is moreover joined by Mark Helias & Zach Rowden also on basses — with Sorey not only conducting & on drums, but on trombone & Tibetan dungchen as well. (Rowden is the one new name, but apparently he has experience playing both Feldman & Scelsi....) So an octet with four people playing double bass is already unusual, and that appears to be less for purposes of volume or reinforcement here than it is to have different styles available for different solos.... (The electronics are very noticeable at times, almost cliché around massive glissandi, but are not at all ubiquitous. The melodica, in turn, is the least obvious instrument credited, apparently fitting smoothly into the electronic sections and/or with the grainy basses.) And then the horns are oriented around trombone, with Haynes also playing brass so as to engage (a variety of) higher registers, and the dungchen appearing at times as a noisily rumbling bass version. (There's thus a specific, underlying profile to the group of horns, forging an "extended" trombone of sorts.) The guitars then add a brightness, sometimes a ringing sense of mellow calm that pairs well with meditation bells, even a lightness that sometimes fades into string harmonics more generally.... For me, the resulting sound happens to be highly evocative of Pieces of Old Sky by the Samuel Blaser Quartet (released in 2009, and still available on Blaser's Bandcamp), with Sorey & Neufeld (& also frequent Sorey collaborator Thomas Morgan on bass). And beyond the basic sound world of that earlier quartet, and beyond or in relation to its own sense of non-narrative form, Pillars also evokes Tibetan ritual music, particularly in its noisy, rattling, clanging, tinkling, perception-filling quality. (In this it reminds me a bit of recent, hybrid favorite AAMM....) Some of the moments tend to be quite static, droning, and work more by way of contrast with others, rather than offering much of independent musical interest: Nonetheless, a ritual quality does emerge, particularly as noise intersects the disorienting, "out of time" quality deriving from the piece's final construction, and as senses are consequently filled again.... (The four minute drum roll that opens the CD mix first suggests highly detailed manipulation of white noise, and I originally thought "Wow, this is certainly austere..." but before it ends, one comes to realize that it's a drum roll, and no other moment is again quite so austere....) There are also some very extended solos, perhaps minimally accompanied, as Pillars erects such a large space (so as to fill nearly four hours, or even more): It supports & surrounds a peculiar spaciousness, though, sometimes (suddenly, ritually) "filled" as noted, even as the timing between individual "moments" might be offset or striking: It comes to yield space for individual expression... somewhere in the past... where a clatter might both be & not be amid a peaceful din. And where vistas emerge... behind oneself... such that "composition" becomes a (previous) mood. Pillars thus does become a drummer's exploration of different spans of time, of the span of time, of spanning time per se. (Is it possible to perform live at all? Maybe not....) It's also ambitious & creative, both formally & for its ensemble sonorities, even if its impact on me has started to fade with exposure.

As I continue to be busy (with a more extended project to appear in this space), so does Ernesto Rodrigues, with several more new releases, both including himself & not. While I might have something to say later about some of the latter items, with the convenience of Bandcamp, I can make a few remarks about some of the former albums now: In particular, I want to continue a focus on albums oriented on violin family ensembles, perhaps with some added spice. Rodrigues continues to be one of the leading producers of improvised music for bowed string ensembles, and if anything, seems to be intensifying his explorations in this specific arena: Penedo (the name of a region in Portugal) was recorded last New Year's Eve, and is another very long album from Rodrigues, with three twenty+ minute tracks coming to well over an hour. The ensemble presents something of a continuation to the concerns of the trio We Still Have Bodies (discussed here in August), but Penedo employs a string trio with a second cello (frequent collaborator Miguel Mira, yielding a fuller sound) joining Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues, and Carlos Santos subbing for Richard Scott on electronics. Santos generally brings a "smoother" (or more austere) style than Scott, with less contrapuntal "melody" per se, and more looping or sustain of frequencies at the extremes. (One might thus compare Penedo to Jardin Carré, the latter being a generally grittier & more inward looking affair, using a different string trio, and yielding a sense of circular reflection....) The second cello, of course, reflects a common (string trio) configuration for Rodrigues, e.g. already on Incidental Projections & Xenon (both discussed here in May 2017), and yields a tenor emphasis: On Penedo (perhaps given its place name title), the "central" texture thus supports a broad landscape sweep, invoking & acknowledging flora & fauna amid a general windswept (including via electronics) expanse. When technology intervenes, or more simply humanity, a sense of hybrid mystery arises, such that one ultimately finds oneself transformed by the journey, yielding a calm awareness & new attentiveness to one's surroundings. (The farewell has something of the ongoing, exploratory feel of Nashaz....) A clear followup to Penedo is then Eris, a quintet album recorded less than a week later in January, also in Penedo, with Anna Piosik (trumpet) joining the three strings & electronics. (Piosik had not been mentioned here explicitly, but has appeared with Rodrigues e.g. in Octopus, as mentioned in September.) I really enjoy the opening to Eris, with a distinct "jungle" vibe immediately troubled by very high electronic pitches, and into wind & whistling tones against percussive whacks.... (The resulting sort of perceptual framing, particularly around enclosures & lines of flight, might be compared to e.g. Primary Envelopment, as first discussed here in March 2015.) From there, if anything, Eris becomes more "hybrid" via an extended "industrial" vibe that emerges to leave the jungle far behind for some kind of interior(ized) space, a factory perhaps... or maybe this is the chaos internal to the mind, to which one retreats... it's spacious though! (The trumpet is occasionally recognizable as such, but is usually deconstructed into a variety of extended pulses & raspberries.) Eris goes on to sculpt & articulate energy in a variety of ways from there, including via a broad range of string techniques & formal procedures, but doesn't seem to recapture its initial excitement. In particular, it seems to focus on various means of achieving continuity, such that string figures sometimes become repetitive (via ostinati, etc.). (Life itself seeks continuity amid so many discords & challenges? Or it's repetition that's a source of discord?) Nonetheless, continued exploration of these textures & timbres is welcome, and Eris likewise yields a sense of calm awareness, generally a welcome "use" for any album. (And these albums are both more distinctive & more satisfying than this quick report might suggest....)

Beyond (perhaps subtly) novel combinations of instruments featuring bowed strings, Rodrigues also continues to explore more specifically traditional (& acoustic) formats, with another "string quartet" album already appearing: Dis/con/sent is also over an hour in length, this time in a suite of seven tracks (alternating long & short) recorded in Berlin in May by Dietrich Petzold (violin, viola, bowed metal), again with Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues, now joined by Matthias Bauer (who was new to me, although he's previously appeared on Creative Sources) on bass. In Rodrigues's recent output, Dis/con/sent might thus be compared directly to Crane Cries (discussed here in April) by a "true" string quartet (i.e. with two violins, although Petzold once again changes instruments), or to Theia (discussed here in July) by what I've dubbed a "jazz string quartet" (i.e. bass instead of a second violin). Dis/con/sent is rather different in tone from either, an impressive & imposing release that's often quite aggressive, although slower or more mysterious around extended techniques at times too: Indeed, the "bowed metal" makes a jarring entry within moments, but is used judiciously from there. Dis/con/sent also employs a wide array of 20th century string quartet technique, including in its ensemble interactions, making it an improvised successor to some of the most dissonant — yet conventionally motivic — music in that format. (It might thus also be compared to the recent Ignis Fatuus, another string quartet discussed here in August, in that case doubling cello, and with more of a romantic or wry sensibility around Honsinger....) Indeed, listeners who enjoy e.g. Bartok or Shostakovich might well enjoy Dis/con/sent, although it's that much more adventurous: It's highly contrapuntal, even as the counterpoint can be repetitive at times, extending continuity (per Eris), and even (perhaps) yielding to nostalgia by the end. (However, the fern cover art doesn't appear to be supported by the kinds of naturalistic evocations sometimes found on these string albums from Rodrigues....) Parts of Dis/con/sent end up being calming, but (perhaps as implied by the title) that's more internal to the suite of movements, rather than an overall result, which suggests something of an intentional symphonic form (presumably as spurred by Petzold) & shifting attitudinal dynamic. It makes for a weighty & sometimes almost intimidating album, difficult to hear as fully improvised.... Also recorded by Petzold in Berlin this past May was Buratino, an album featuring Ernesto Rodrigues without either Guilherme or the former (at least not actively playing), but including previous collaborators Elo Masing (violin, from Crane Cries) & Hui-Chun Lin (cello, most recently mentioned here around Poiesis in May) to form a string trio that is further bolstered by Caroline Cecilia Tallone (hurdy-gurdy) & Ame Zek (12-string guitar). Neither of the latter had appeared in this space before (nor had the hurdy-gurdy at all, apparently), although Zek does have a solo album recently out on Creative Sources (First Bow, "dedicated to fight and fighters against corrupt capitalism"), and of course both also involve strings: Buratino thus employs an unusual string quintet, with the hurdy-gurdy providing "bowed" sustaining potential (acoustically, rather than electronically), and includes some new collaborators for Rodrigues. (And perhaps I should add a remark on recent digital-only release Efterår, pairing the two Rodrigueses & Masing in a quintet, this time with Tomo Jacobson on bass & Mia Dyberg on alto sax, neither of whom had appeared in this space previously: It's yet another appealing album, sometimes aggressive after starting on harmonics, and also apparently focusing on mental or emotional transition for the listener via a variety of evocations amid wave-like explorations of continuity — although it's rather short. I also feel compelled to note that it already appeared on Bandcamp the day after it was recorded, in Berlin, this month!) So Buratino consists of five tracks — totaling very close to an hour, and arranged as 3+2, as if two sides of an LP — and ranges from searing aggression to haunting (bizarre, sometimes naturalistic) mystery. Adding the hurdy-gurdy & (unusual) guitar yields more timbral variety, and the wealth of sonic interactions here include some of the most striking & unusual among those assembled on the set of four string albums featured in this entry. Not as traditionally contrapuntal as Dis/con/sent, the quintet instead emphasizes a "main line" that is variously accented: High pitches swirl against a drone in the opening, whereas pizzicati or glissandi might be thrown off repeatedly from a low rumble, particularly yielding to hocket & a driving (grinding) continuity on the second "side" (which seems to want to undo or unwind the calm eventually emerging from the first). The striking sounds end up being rather composite (i.e. involving multiple instruments simultaneously), in repeating stable figures, as opposed to e.g. the sense of "timbral spanning" (or disarticulation) of Coluro. That said, the prolificity & frequent conceptual overlap of these albums does inhibit one in selecting a single item to feature as "special," which of course is not a requirement in this space, but does leave me making these mixed entries: The truth is that if a single one of these albums appeared in a vacuum, I'd probably spend more time on it, but instead I've simply come to expect (yet) more. Such practical circumstances & resulting expectations sometimes make me feel uncomfortable (with my own response), but "comfort" really isn't the point: I actually enjoy & appreciate that Rodrigues releases so many albums with so many different musicians, and don't want to feel as though I'm "penalizing" anyone for doing so!

John Butcher & Eddie Prévost are already very well known, of course, and I haven't been emphasizing solos or duos anyway, but I do want to note their recent collaborative album Visionary Fantasies — recorded in London this past April, and out on Matchless (with discussion, etc.). The album as a whole lasts over an hour, opening with two solos by Butcher, followed by a 19' solo from Prévost, and then a suite of three duo tracks totaling a little over 35'. It's the solo from Prévost that really got my attention, though, with the various rubbed surfaces & shimmering metals suggesting horns & bass, such that at the height of its din, one almost feels as if one's listening to a quartet. The mood of "Obsessional Enquiries" hits me well also, such that I feel compelled to note its symphonic evocations ranging across industrial technology & into the natural (& perhaps even supernatural) world: It ends up being one of the most engaging & transformative tracks I've heard in a while, solo or no. (The noisiness also takes on some of the "peaceful din" quality of some of e.g. Sorey's recent Pillars or even Hiljaisuus by Kuzu, as discussed here last month. Both have Himalayan, Buddhist roots....) When Butcher returns to the interaction — and his preludes had already set a mood — the charged atmosphere remains, with (actual) horn lines (& effects) now intersecting (with precision) the broadly percussive canvas, itself starting anew from a slow clattering, then rubbed metallic calls set against an emergent gurgling... finally into a haunting, yet more identifiable (& ultimately sustained) duo format around the squeaking horn.

I'd noticed pianist Cory Smythe previously — including e.g. for his participation on Mode's Xenakis Edition, Vol. 13 — but hadn't mentioned him here: I guess I'd heard him most with Tyshawn Sorey, as the pianist on piano trio albums Alloy & Verisimilitude, as well as on The Inner Spectrum of Variables with its "jazz" string quartet, but as noted in my discussion of Sorey's Pillars last month, those albums didn't make strong impressions on me. In particular, I tend to see the piano as an absurd, antiquated contraption, and so to enjoy albums where it's deconstructed along those lines, more so than I do traditional pianism — although obviously the piano did have quite a historical run as the central instrument of European music. (I'm more than willing to see that era pass, both for its imperial associations & soloistic orientations, as well as for its relative colorlessness. The piano's practical significance, i.e. for rendering multiple musical lines, has just about ended anyway, what with new technology....) So one might think that Smythe's new trio album Circulate Susanna wouldn't have much appeal for me, and even seeing it praised on the Free Jazz Blog, I might not have listened, except that it was readily available on the Pyroclastic Records Bandcamp site, so why not? (And I didn't actually read Stuart Broomer's comments until after listening to the album, but merely noted his enthusiasm: That's my preferred way to hear a new album. I was then quite surprised by what I heard, since I hadn't even noted originally who was joining Smythe....) It turns out to be a very stimulating album, on a couple of basic levels, namely the unusual ensemble, with Sofia Jernberg (extended vocals) & Daniel Lippel (detuned guitar) joining Smythe on piano (& autoharp & electronics), as well as the interrogation of Americana: The latter in particular fits into recent thoughts here, especially since I'd just revisited some earlier remarks in & around the new opening: Circulate Susanna is also composed music (albeit incorporating improvisation, but offering another reason that I might have been less enthusiastic, even though I do continue to feature some composed albums here) in all but two tracks (i.e. one short improvisational section without the pianist, and one lyrical cover to conclude the album), and interrogates the American Songbook in general via deconstruction of the traditional song Oh! Susanna: Although the piano is sometimes given "extended" treatment, including via its own preparations (& detuning), it mostly comes off as rather straight, framing the album harmonically. Indeed, the leader's own (often repetitive & chordal) playing is of limited interest (although it's clearly his conception), as vocalist Jernberg tends to steal the show through an amazing range of extended technique, particularly exploring infra-chromatic spaces within & around the piano's capacities. (I had recently noted the impressive Jernberg here in June, specifically on With Sofia Jernberg by Lana Trio.) Jernberg ranges from flutey high harmonics (which are unusually powerful) to low growling throat singing, and almost every sort of vocalization in between, from fast (sinus) abstraction to sultry (chest) cabaret. Actual lyrics are found on only two tracks, though (or so I think, as the voice is often partially obscured). I had never heard of Lippel before, and he's much less active, with Circulate Susanna often featuring duos, especially voice & piano (although the others briefly as well), but the full trio interactions are high points overall: Sometimes it's unclear if the detuned strings are guitar, autoharp, or piano preparations, but they add welcome (& understated) spice to the interaction, again troubling the piano's basic chromatic scales, along with & against the voice: It would have been great to have more passages involving the full trio sound... or perhaps will be, another time.... Besides playing on Mode's Xenakis Edition, Smythe's work with Sorey incorporated Xenakis influences as well, but here — other than in relatively brief passages — the piano is generally rather tame & conventional, its repeating chordal assertions seeming almost starkly ubiquitous against other (more novel) sonorities. (So hovering American imperialism begins to sound explicitly unfamiliar...?) Indeed, for me the music is more suggestive of some of John Cage's work, in particular his own work in & around Americana, whether traditional songs in strange tunings or hymns with elements systematically removed.... (I have memories of hearing these, e.g. at Cage's 80th birthday concert, but don't know the names of specific compositions to which I might be referring. Sorry.) Beyond that sort of general interrogation of American history via traditional Americana in song, I might also note similarities to a couple of other unusual vocal albums made in this country in the past decade, North of Blanco for its similar (albeit non-pianistic) palette of Texas weirdness, and Steve Lehman & Sélébéyone for another musician well rewarded by dwindling US "art music" circuits moving into vocally (& perhaps globally) oriented critique.... Frankly, the American Songbook is a lot more palatable to me when presented in such an ambivalent way: I simply cannot accept it as "pure entertainment," as there's a visceral negative response that goes back to childhood (& of course, such problematic responses have been embedded into jazz performance for decades, sometimes subtly). Ultimately, then, despite some musical aspects that don't necessarily accord with my preferences, the result is so distinctive & unexpected that it deserves a strong note here. I'm genuinely impressed by the conception (& the singing): That Circulate Susanna ends up being so thought provoking despite an orientation on generally "boring" piano (indeed treated that way, i.e. as one might say, ironically) makes for a stunning debut in its own way. It's well worth hearing, and hopefully joins Sorey & Lehman on NPR, et al....

I had been anticipating the third album from HMZ, the Köln-based trio of Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Pierre-Yves Martel & Philip Zoubek, and now it's arrived, out on the Swiss label Insub Records: Otherwise was recorded last November, and consists of two relatively long tracks totaling nearly forty minutes. Compared with the instrumentation on their second album, Drought (which is longer overall, despite shorter tracks), in addition to their main instruments, Hübsch & Martel now employ pitch pipes, while Zoubek & Martel employ synths (with harmonica having been banished, apparently). Although having fewer tracks might mean anything, Otherwise does indeed seem to be more concerned with continuity than was Drought, and in fact the three albums increase in smoothness as the trio continues to develop their sound. (Their first album, June 16th, recorded in 2012, is actually relatively excited, even jagged & with more conventional instrumental figures, compared to what follows. All three can be auditioned on Martel's Bandcamp site, among other items....) Whereas the interaction on Drought has more of a (generalized, e.g. Deleuzian) machinic quality, and a distinctive balance & pace around smaller forms, Otherwise has more of a cinematic sweep, and might be compared to increasingly polished albums produced in series by e.g. Baloni or even the Tom Rainey Trio, in that some of the excitement & novelty seems to wane as the collective style is more thoroughly mined & refined. (And neither synths nor pitch pipes stand out here, but contribute to the smooth, droning background.) The resulting emphasis on continuity does involve more drones, and so takes on a more typically minimalist aura — fitting in well with various other sparse explorations: Of course one might mention the recent album Tse (discussed here in June, and also featuring Martel), another partly Swiss production with its other performers appearing on Insub as well.... In any case, many of the trio's characteristic sonorities continue to be developed, and the result yields a carefully sustained energy that does reward close attention, perhaps despite its more drawn out form. They did also tour again for the release of Otherwise, and so perhaps this trilogy will continue to grow....

I last discussed albums from Ivo Perelman in this space in October 2017 (then around Octagon, by a standard "free jazz quartet," so something of a departure for him), and had only recently discussed (the previous May) some of his work with Mat Maneri: The string based microtonality, absent piano (which appears on so many of Perelman's albums), was appealing, but the albums (especially Counterpoint, to which I had turned only after appreciating Maneri's combination with Tony Malaby on tenor sax on New Artifacts) also came off to me more as "studies" than as finished products. That said, I couldn't resist hearing the latest installment in the Perelman-Maneri pairing, in keeping with Perelman & Leo's prolific history, an entire Strings series: In particular, Strings 1 is basically formulated as a "string quartet" with Perelman's tenor saxophone occupying the role of cello. (Given my interest in improvising string quartets & related combinations, I was eager to hear something like this, particularly coming from a different stylistic orbit than that around Ernesto Rodrigues, who's of course especially prolific in this general arena....) Joining Perelman & Maneri (on viola) are then Mark Feldman & Jason Hwang on violins. (I had most recently mentioned Feldman here in July 2016, around the quartet album Miller's Tale. I see that I had yet to mention Hwang, but he actually has a new album, Blood — the second by his fusion octet Burning Bridge — available on his Bandcamp site. Coincidentally, I was listening to it shortly before learning of the latest releases from Leo: It's appealing, with some creative sonic combos, but is also composed music, and rather more "biographical," or at least cinematic, than I tend to feature.) The resulting album is a very active, and very long (nine tracks, 73 minutes): Perelman's horn often dominates the proceedings, particularly as he plays so often in higher registers, making for many crossing lines, etc. There are some passages with reduced forces, but Perelman is rarely silent, even as the music does very occasionally slow to adagio.... Strings 1 thus retains an exploratory feel, eagerly lush at times, excited, and featuring a litany of string figures & techniques (although not really the reduction that Rodrigues et al. so often engage.), but also projects something of a soloistic quality. It maintains a strong presence as well, and even some aggression across its exhausting duration, during which Perelman's horn does make for quite a cello (an instrument he apparently played in his youth). I enjoy many of the passages, and there's extensive variety, but as suggested, the result still doesn't really seem like a finished product. (It again seems like a series of improvised studies, some more compelling than others.) What comes next? (Literally speaking, Strings 2 was released simultaneously, but uses a rather different ensemble, with Hank Roberts & Ned Rothenberg joining the Perelman-Maneri duo on some tracks.) This basic combo does seem to have a lot of potential, and these players in particular have quite a varied (& global) background from which to draw: Perhaps a subsequent album by the same quartet could forge more of a lasting statement?

I remain in the middle of writing an extended piece, but still coming up for air a bit, and so want to note a few recent items that I wouldn't necessarily have featured here previously, particularly around intrepid power drummer Weasel Walter: Although it's a duo, and mostly created via editing & layering parts against each other in post-production, Poisonous with Peter Evans is a very striking album. Recorded in Brooklyn in January, and consisting of 7 tracks (totaling 40-some minutes), one of which is "straight" (i.e. a free improvisation without extensive post-production), Poisonous continues some of the explorations that Walter & Evans had undertaken in their trio with Mary Halvorson, the third (& final?) installment of which was Mechanical Malfunction (recorded & mentioned here in 2012). Evans' trumpet spans evocations of "Taps" to breathy static, with various chirping, vocalizations & glissandi in between. Meanwhile, Walter seems to play mostly a regular drum kit, but does also employ the occasional ringing metal, wood blocks & especially clickers. However, the real action occurs mostly after the fact, as the album opens with disembodied sounds seeming to hang in the air, and mostly continues to be weird in a very high energy way, including an almost deafening roar at times. (The last track eventually layers all of the material on top of itself, quodlibet style, for instance.) And although some can be quite loud, most of the tracks have a definite conceptual basis, so Poisonous isn't really a free-for-all.... I'd mentioned Walter's most recent duo with Sandy Ewen, Idiomatic, in February, and his latest album is yet another duo, this time with sax player Martín Escalante (who was previously unknown to me), Lacerate: Although it doesn't involve post-production tricks, the latter juxtaposes many of the same basic ideas as on Poisonous, including a softer touch from Walter at times. (All of these may be auditioned, at least in excerpts, at Walter's Bandcamp site.) Finally, as long as I'm mentioning an album outside of my usual, and employing extensive post-production, I also want to note Jeremiah Cymerman's new solo, Decay of the Angel: This is another extensive album, Cymerman's clarinet employing various contrapuntal techniques against itself, often with a melodic orientation, but more often with an aura of noisy dissonance, and usually both. (I had enjoyed Cymerman's playing & conception on e.g. World of Objects, an album for horn trio that also involved extensive post-production, although presumably not as much as on Decay of the Angel. He had appeared here most recently in February 2016, with Sheen by the rock-inspired Bloodmist, who have a recent live double album also available from Cymerman's Bandcamp site....) There's a bit of a tone poem quality overall, albeit across seven tracks & very controlled at times, with some textures maintaining over extended stretches. (And I should add that, while Decay of the Angel is dark, I don't find it to be pessimistic: The often folk-inspired melodic undertow assures that. It's more wistful, even calm by the end.) In any case, there are plenty of intriguing sonic combinations to be found on these albums, particularly as post-production techniques come to suggest interactions that can then be undertaken live.

I first mentioned The Procrustean Bed (a concert series & record label around Kriton Beyer) back in March 2017, in response to Beyer's album Nuc Box Hums with Ernesto Rodrigues, and again this September, particularly with the trio album Digressions (with Nicola Hein). The latter was the label's fifth release, and its sixth is the intriguing electronic trio, Id (recorded in Berlin, November 2017): There, Beyer (exclusively on daxophone, as he'd been on Nuc Box Hums) is joined by pianist Antonis Anissegos (b.1970, Greece) on Wurlitzer electric piano & electronics, and Dan Peter Sundland on electric bass. I was not familiar with either before, but both actually already have albums on Creative Sources.... Id can be a real tour-de-force for the relatively "straight" daxophone, mostly in its horn or vocalizing mode, but is especially conditioned by both the assets & limitations of the Wurlitzer: I don't know anything specific about the various (historical) electric keyboard brands & their strengths etc., only what they sound like on particular recordings (if that), but it appears that Anissegos is employing some custom modules for sound generation, at least at times, although there is also more of a "keyboard" sense at times too, including "traditional" synth modes with glissandi & other pitch bending. Sundland tends to be quite forceful on electric bass as well, often setting a regular thump-thump against which the other performers function almost like dueling horns, but sometimes he's also more involved in the general electronic haze.... There is thus a consistent electronic character, and a generally aggressive quality to the rhythms, even beyond what might be considered to arise from the inherent dissonance of daxophone or keyboard pitch bending. One might even say that Id is rather agitated — perhaps in keeping with its title. There's also often (consequently) a start & stop quality to the sound, usually emerging first from the bass plucking: In this, it's rather different from e.g. Trialectics, another Berlin trio album with bass & electronic sound generation, but trumpet rather than daxophone. Trialectics is thus "more acoustic," but also generally more calm (i.e. less insistent or repetitive) in its articulations, despite what might be regarded as similarly abstract approaches with tight phrases. Despite its distinctive sound, then, Id does suggest more of a "rock" approach, albeit with a pointillistic orientation to its various echoes & rumblings. There's something of a skittering quality too, and indeed, particularly if one listens to distinguish daxophone from keyboard (& I found that, at least initially, the daxophone almost hides behind the keyboard electronics), the former puts on a virtuosic show of mainly linear (i.e. melody-like) material: Its rich chirping timbres are then buoyed & interrogated by the (more musically traditional) timbres of electric keyboard & bass. In that sense, the strange sounds do sometimes serve to add novelty to what is otherwise fairly mechanical material, including hocket & ostinato, etc. (In other words, gestures do become established, and are subsequently recalled, sometimes mechanically & usually with an established pulse.) The result can be quite engaging, however, gritty & squawking or even e.g. percussive at times, if somewhat agitating.... It's not the most free (or most personalized) use of electronics, then, but it's certainly distinctive & assertive.

Ernesto Rodrigues continues to release albums at a dizzying pace, and as suspected, the advent of a Digital Creative Sources has meant even more albums: Many of the early Digital releases involved older material, but many are now quite recent. (I generally find them to be worth hearing, but it gets to be too much music to discuss in any detail. That Rodrigues works with so many other improvisers, both new & in new combinations, does keep things relatively fresh, though....) That said, one of the arenas in which I've found Rodrigues' work to be especially compelling is the improvising string ensemble — and I suppose that the most succinct way to describe the violins etc. is as "classical strings," since Rodrigues has other albums combining classical strings with guitars, etc. — and those explorations have continued to be quite frequent recently: In particular, on the heels of Dis/con/sent (a "jazz string quartet" album, discussed here in October), featuring Dietrich Petzold on violin & viola, there are yet more classical strings albums featuring Petzold: Ljubljana made it to the "main" Creative Source imprint, and it's an album that forges a powerfully calming mood. Recorded this past May, Ernesto Rodrigues & Petzold (here also on bowed metal, as on Dis/con/sent, as well as clavichord) are joined by Guilherme Rodrigues to form something of a classical string trio — pace the occasionally noisy metal or tinkling clavichord. In fact, this is the same personnel (& instrumentation) as on the double album Sacred Noise (recorded in October 2016), the second half of which was recorded in a church. Like many Rodrigues albums, Ljubljana starts rather sparsely, and seemingly with less planning or anticipation than on Dis/con/sent, but eventually evolves into powerful (& sometimes noisy) climaxes that are nonetheless assimilated into an overall air of calm. There's thus a consistently rewarding affective change that emerges from this album, not so unlike e.g. Penedo (by Rodrigues with a different ensemble, also discussed here in October), but in this case suggestive of breathing through stress. (And I can't help but think of Scelsi's Aion, especially pace Petzold's occasionally jagged bowing of metal.) And as already suggested, there is (much) more: Kühlspot Social Club, a short digital album, was recorded just this October, and features the exact same quartet as on Dis/con/sent: Like Ljubljana, it has more of an air of "mystery" than the latter, and involves shadowy (or watercolor) harmonics & what even seem like vocalization effects. Der Sturm is of a more normal duration, recorded back in October 2017, and features the same trio as on Ljubljana: It features more traditional creaking string figures, but likewise turns to flutey lines & landscape colors, amid various quick outbursts. Without Petzold is Repérage, also recorded in October 2017 (also in Berlin), this time with Gerhard Uebele on violin, but also with Matthias Bauer on bass joining Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues (on viola & cello): The recording is relatively distant, at least compared to the close mic'ing often used for these sorts of post-concrète albums, but the string interactions are among the most classical — melodic, even Romantic at times — in Rodrigues' recent output. (I hadn't mentioned Uebele previously in this space, but he has likewise already appeared on Creative Sources.) Finally (at least for now), perhaps the most sonically aggressive of the recent classical strings albums is Hexagon, featuring six bowed string players (as the title suggests, but in a curious configuration with a single cello): Recorded just this past October (in fact, the very same day as Kühlspot Social Club, if the info is to be believed), and barely more than half an hour in length, Petzold returns, but Hexagon was actually recorded by bassist Klaus Kürvers (another frequent Rodrigues collaborator), who is joined by Bauer again on bass, violinist Elo Masing (from e.g. Crane Cries) & the two Rodrigueses. The opening string bending interaction makes for an intriguing start, moving into a shearing feel that eventually yields to more of a classical mood, then into some "crunchy" contrapuntal sounds; the second half (of the single track) focuses more on continuity, including around a generalized hocket, such that motives pass in waves between the musicians... who nonetheless continue to produce richly independent detail via technical variety. (The resulting accumulation of power might even be said to evoke Bartok or late Beethoven....) As I've remarked about some other albums (e.g. recently regarding Ivo Perelman), many of these projects do seem more like explorations than finished products, but there is still much to hear — at least for those of us interested in these kinds of textures & (affective) outcomes.

Besides classical string albums, Rodrigues also continues to be very active with ensembles including electric guitar and/or electronics more generally: Indeed, for me the most ear-catching of his recent albums has been Kuori, a relatively short production from Lisbon in December 2017 featuring Lauri Hyvärinen & Abdul Moimême on electric guitars, with Carlos Santos on synthesizer joining Rodrigues to form a quartet. Moimême recently appeared (in October) in this space with Dissection Room (a non-Rodrigues Creative Sources album recorded four days after Kuori), and has been a regular participant on the label. I was not previously familiar with Finnish guitarist Hyvärinen (b.1986), however, although perhaps I should have been: He's recorded with Colectivo maDam (whose album with Rodrigues, Coluro, has been a favorite), as well as with e.g. guitarist Sandy Ewen (about whom more soon) & drummer Andrew Drury (yielding the duo album The Islands, recorded this past April, and appearing on Drury's Different Track Recordings). Kuori is another rather sparse album, as seems to be typical of Hyvärinen as well, but is occasionally loud or intrusive with its fascinating & detailed timbral combinations. It thus projects something of an ambient character (perhaps recalling e.g. Rodrigues' acoustic Sîn), but also involves a variety of extreme pitches, from very low to very high, usually subtly. There's occasionally something of a "spacey" quality as a result, and in fact I was reminded of an image like "Distant Radio Transmissions," which happens to be a Roscoe Mitchell title. (In this case, the title is in Finnish, meaning a shell or casing, as are the track names.) The sometimes prominent ringing & "echo chamber" effects yield that sometimes "distant" impression... sometimes over or across what seems to be a windswept landscape. Despite (or maybe because of) the usual quiet, an intense feeling of ritual gravity is also projected. (The resulting framing & sparseness is indeed more evocative of the timbral spanning of Coluro than it is of e.g. Skiagraphía, which is more "centered" & continuous in tonal sweep, despite the relatively less timbral variety — even rigor — of Kuori.) Needless to say, it's also difficult to grasp who is doing what, particularly amid the electronic manipulations, but the resulting sound is (consequently) quite coherent. It's also quite distinctive, despite involving a quartet of mostly known performers, so I'll have to keep an ear on Hyvärinen now.

And with Rodrigues, of course there is more: Seconda pratica is another short digital album, recorded in Lisbon in January 2018 (i.e. the next month), this time with Moimême joining Rodrigues & frequent collaborator Nuno Torres on alto sax to form a trio: Once again, a sense of calm emerges from an initial haunting quality, windy & rumbling, amid sudden abrasions, and finally into a surging drone. Chaotic Complex Systems (recorded this past June) reprises the trio of RRR (recorded October 2017, and discussed here in August), with Olaf Rupp joining the two Rodrigueses. It's kind of a rambling, open-ended sequel, but does (also, per Hexagon) feature e.g. some interesting string bending sequences. Much more imposing is Luminescence (once again from October 2017 in Berlin!), a very long digital album featuring Hui-Chun Lin (cello) & Shuichi Chino (zither) joining Rupp & Ernesto Rodrigues to form a novel sort of "string quartet." (Lin was most recently mentioned here, also in October, around Buratino, in that case a novel variant "string quintet.") Luminescence is also a very "busy" album, often with a nearly overwhelming level of activity & detail, but also tends to narrow or focus around the cello, which comes to produce quasi-melodic lines that are in turn richly ornamented by the other musicians (as a sort of groove). The ensemble itself is quite distinctive, but the result is sometimes incoherent, or perhaps searches for coherence around a main line....

Returning to the ensemble on Kuori, participation by Carlos Santos is often difficult to appraise, because it's unclear what he's doing: That's no more the case there than on so many other albums, and indeed that he's credited with synthesizer suggests that he's actually producing tones, rather than "only" sampling & looping & manipulating.... On the recent Le Havre (recorded in France in March 2018), however, he's credited with "electronics" & appears to focus on manipulations, but as usual, not in an obvious manner: One is sometimes confronted by sounds that "must" have come from electronics, but they arrive as a sort of fait accompli, such that one is often unaware of their origins. Joining Santos on Le Havre are the two Rodrigueses, such that one might readily compare to We Still Have Bodies (discussed here in August) with Richard Scott, but whereas it's often quite clear what the latter is doing, Santos usually remains subtle. Indeed, in pairing with the like-minded father-son duo, one might think that Santos's contributions would be that much more highlighted, as e.g. with Scott or Rupp, but that's not really the case. (Somehow they still tend to vanish, becoming spectral.) One might then characterize Le Havre as a "travel" album in that it tends to maintain continuity, even a single sweep, while passing through a variety of locales. (As a study in style, it would be helpful to know more about the actual circumstances of the sonic production, as it probably would for Kuori.) And as with so many of these albums, a latent searing intensity arises from & returns to a mellow sense of calm.... Anyway, that's my little tour of Rodrigues' recent output for the moment: And even as I write this, there are already new albums about which I'll have something to say (soon-ish), and by the time you read this, there will probably be even more....

I just mentioned Sandy Ewen when discussing Kuori, and indeed the central guitar duo of that quartet provides a nice transition into discussing some recent guitar duos, particularly from Ewen: I had mentioned Lake Monsters with Henry Kaiser here back in July 2015, and her relatively new duo album with Weasel Walter (Idiomatic — not a two-guitar duo) again just last month, but Ewen has at least three other recent guitar duo recordings available: The most ear catching for me is Transfusion with the (previously) unknown (to me) Chase Gardner, recorded in Denton Texas in December 2017, and released on Marginal Frequency. Like Kuori, there is a consistent sense of rigor to this interaction, producing a variety of unusual timbres & sonic combinations. In particular, the low growling vocalizations can be especially striking (including when both guitars engage in similar activity), especially when set against a sort of "twisted" gamelan, but also against squeaking crackles, etc. There's thus a wide range of touch on the strings, including via various objects — even sounding almost like a horn at times as well. The combinations tend to be articulated quite precisely, and are often maintained for a while, yielding a bit of a repetitive quality. (There's also a rather consistent background hum at times, which can detract from the crispness of the main interactions as it grows louder....) The striking quality of so many of the interactions on Transfusion might remind me more of Kuori than Ewen's duo with Hyvärinen, Finnish Dinner: That album actually begins rather actively, at least as compared to much of Hyvärinen's work, but slows considerably over time, developing a strange sort of energy (out of continuity) that emerges into more growling vocalizations against "alien" bent pings from Hyvärinen (there on acoustic).... Like Transfusion, See Creatures (from Astral Spirits) originated in Texas, there with (likewise previously unknown) Lisa Cameron on berimbau-ophone & lap steel. (I'm not really sure what the -ophone means for the berimbau, but she seems to have more going on....) That album also starts strong, and comes to revel in weird textures & combinations, there seeming less rigorous, but still striking at times. Ewen thus continues to develop her unique personal style in these duos....

Also not a two-guitar duo is recent double album Molecules by Kazuo Imai (nylon string guitar) & Roger Turner (percussion), recorded in Tokyo in October 2017 & released by Ftarri: I've not explored contemporary Japanese improvisation as much as might be warranted, and as noted here in the past, that's partly because of (what I perceive to be) its more soloistic orientation. (Of course, taking turns soloing has been typical of many popular styles, including US free jazz....) Various timbral explorations & approaches to melody have been intriguing, but my own orientation in this project is more around collective combinations via simultaneity. That said, the interaction on Molecules is very closely intertwined for a duo, one might even say tentacular.... The acoustic nature of the interaction — & Turner is credited with a rather restrictive percussion setup, which varies considerably in timbre throughout the performance, but generally remains restrained in whatever direction it takes... — also serves to differentiate it from the "electric" albums just mentioned here, and yields a rich sense of detail: That's also true of the variety of touch that Imai pursues on the nylon strings, incorporating a range of traditional Asian (plucked) string techniques, together with more contemporary orientations. (I was not previously aware of Imai, b.1955, which is probably suggestive of how little I've pursued contemporary Japanese improvisation to this point, but he's known e.g. as the longtime leader of Marginal Consort.... And Turner has been performing similar duos in Japan, with a variety of performers, for a while.) The liner notes talk both about the recording technique involved, particularly in balancing the dynamics between the two performers without amplification, and about the choice of two sets (from the same evening) on two separate CDs: In fact, the first set (i.e. the first CD) was the first that Imai & Turner had ever played together, and it does begin with more tentative explorations, whereas the second begins from the "hard won" results of the first. (And the first almost seems to start over, with faster responses, not faster playing per se, after about twenty-five minutes.) Their quickly shifting interactions, especially against a variety of rhythmic articulations, keep one focused on details, even as the performance is sometimes quiet, and even as (at least for me) the limits of the duo format do sometimes appear (i.e. when a third person might inject something completely different). Nonetheless, this is a compelling production, evoking something like e.g. the (nautical) farewell of Nashaz at times... particular with its sparseness, which is more understated (particularly in the percussion) than actually quiet. (One might also compare to distinctive, contemporary guitar-drum duos such as Ewen-Walter & Dorji-Damon, and indeed the acoustic Imai-Turner duo brings less of a rock feel, i.e. less rhythmic drive — even as "drive" does quickly become fractured for the other duos... but it does bring a similar spirit of fast exchange of ideas.) Indeed, the "molecular" title makes plenty of sense, since the interaction concerns the smallest musical elements.... It's basically the sheer variety of what Imai can do to a nylon guitar string paired against Turner's shifting, but highly focused percussion techniques that makes for such a stimulating interaction, one for which the two musicians (also) seem to have plenty in reserve. Might someone else be able to add some different sonorities & prompt some other dynamics in a future interaction? Even absent that possibility, the result is already rather appealing.

Since returning from a lengthy hiatus from public improvised music in 2016, guitarist Ian Brighton has been quite active: After releasing a solo album on Confront, and then Reunion: Live From Cafe Oto, featuring different ensembles on different tracks, from solo & duo to quartet & sextet, he soon got my attention with Kontakte Trio (discussed here in August 2017). Now he returns with another post-serial album of ensemble improvisations in Strings, this time featuring a quartet, to immediately catch my ear once again. In particular, regarding the history, Strings (more than an hour long, and recorded on a single day in London this past June) revisits Brighton's "String Thing" ensemble from the 1970s & 1980s, such that their previous album was the second to be released on FMR, Eleven years from Yesterday (1988). Moreover, String Thing already occupied the longest track on the Reunion album, and Brighton has another FMR album in the works, Imaginings, including many of the same musicians: (FMR releases a lot of great albums, and so, although it baffles me) I don't want to continue to question the bizarrely partial information on the FMR site, but while I haven't seen that album listed for sale (or details of its contents), it suggests an anthology of different musicians performing around Brighton, including those from Strings (again) — which actually itself remains absent from the FMR site to this point. So prudence would suggest that I hear that other album before embarking on this discussion, perhaps, but I also tend to be less interested in albums that feature different groupings on different tracks.... Not only that, but despite enjoying Kontakte Trio, and now Strings, I've been reluctant to hear much of Brighton's earlier work: That's probably a strange statement, but as I've remarked before in this space, I came into this project wanting to be "fully" contemporary, not wanting to get caught up in musical history so much... as has been my focus in too many other projects. So I've been circumspect, although revisiting older recordings, especially out of e.g. AACM, has come to inform this space over time. (And that many of these performers have continuous recording histories does provide more temptation to "creep" backward in this regard....) It's strange to me, then (& I've decided to continue to embrace the strangeness, at least for now), to be hearing Strings as contemporary & compelling, while knowing that this is an ensemble formed decades ago: In particular, Brighton (on electric guitar) is joined once again by label editor Trevor Taylor on percussion & electronics, as well as by Philipp Wachsmann & Marcio Mattos on violin & bass/cello respectively, as well as on electronics themselves. (The latter is significant to the blend here, because the strings often appear to be mixed together, and in turn with the quartet, electronically, rather than in the acoustic arena.) Similarities with Brighton & Taylor's partnership on Kontakte Trio are easy to hear, but instead of Steve Beresford's extended piano (& whereas I continue to enjoy that album overall, the humorous samples hold up least well for me over time), there's now a sort of mini string "choir," mediating their serial interactions — with Taylor once again featuring vibes (& now chimes), and so generally projecting a discrete & individual sense of musical note (as serial music so often did, historically, including e.g. per critiques by Schaeffer). Ringing tones often appear more generally, whether from guitar or string pizzicato, into various electronically mediated buzzes or "chirps" at times.... That's the kind of interaction that I've found so directly enjoyable, although I'm not really sure what it is about Brighton's playing that's so immediately appealing — other than its honest directness, I suppose. (Brighton sent me some information about his career & activities, but other than coming out of the general English improv scene around Derek Bailey, I still don't have much of a sense for where he gets his more specific musical inspirations. Something about his world travels for work perhaps? If so, the influences remain abstract.) I'd mentioned Wachsmann previously with another older quartet that made a new album relatively recently, Berlin Kinesis by WTTF (with Roger Turner, Pat Thomas & Frangenheim on Creative Sources, 2015), and he's developed his own style on violin over the decades: The physical playing sometimes seems less technically detailed than that of violinists who are newer to the improvising scene, hence the way it sometimes functions in a choir here, but there's also a novel (& global, via African roots, albeit more classically inspired than many, and so again abstract) musical perspective involved, including via ongoing work with electronics. (I continue to have less of a sense of Mattos, although he appears on many albums out of England.) The eight tracks on Strings are clearly separate, and with rather different characters: The first two are impressive sonically, but project almost a preliminary character, in that they seem to derive from ideas just waiting to be expressed. The longer third track, however, takes on more of an exploratory & transformative character, from low buzzings & whistling dodecaphony into eerie strumming & even a "falling" quality (out of sparseness) — at which point there is still over forty minutes remaining on the album, i.e. a typical full length. Then we get more of the string choir, into an extended tonal theme that evokes Rubbra's Violin Concerto for me (although there are differences, so it's probably coincidence, or perhaps common influence), with the classical "cadential" feel leading into an emphasis on more delicate timbres in the later tracks (including e.g. a vocalizing effect). There's also a sense of mastery that this discussion doesn't really convey, such that whatever the circumstances might be, a particularly detailed & reflective post-serial style finds some of its most compelling contemporary expression here. Indeed there seems to have been no shortage of passion to create this String Thing album after the Reunion concert.... Whatever Brighton did with his (musical) career, and the time away seems to have filled him with ideas, it's thus worked to create something both distinctive & surprisingly polished. Time away can do that — & public perceptions of dodecaphony have changed in the interim as well.

I've heard New York saxophonist Michael Foster (b.1988) in a number of projects at this point, most of them raucous & rock-oriented with driving rhythms: I last noted him here in February around Throes are the Only Trouble with Weasel Walter, and previously in a more extended discussion of While We Still Have Bodies (November 2017). I've actually heard more, though, e.g. duos with Ben Bennett, in various albums available to hear online — & have noted descriptions such as "noise punk" & "in your face" applied to his aggressive style of various alternate mouthpieces, tubes, etc. (He had a previous duo on Relative Pitch too, The Caustic Ballads with cellist Leila Bordreuil, 2016.) However, although I'd continued to listen, I was especially struck by the recent Bind the hand(s) That Feed, and took more of a look at Foster specifically (as opposed to simply as a member of a duo or collective): It turns out that he's "overtly queer," which is what tends to animate so much of his extended technique, and which I hadn't seen mentioned before actually exploring his own site. I was drawn to the music first, but found myself agreeing with much of what Foster had to say about queering music as well, not only in terms of transgression per se, but in terms of transversality — particularly relative to the basic pyramidal shape of Eurocentric modernity (to reinject my own terms), with its focus on filial (e.g. economic) descent & heteronormative relations. (In fact, I felt that Foster's remarks & music served to emphasize & illuminate some of the basic theoretical issues I'm currently exploring in Postmodern Aesthetics — a longer essay to be completed in the next few months. I felt a stronger affinity, in other words, and in this case, for clear reasons.) Besides Foster, though, Bind the hand(s) That Feed comes from a collaborative trio that includes both Katherine Young (b.1980) & Michael Zerang (b.1958): I was intrigued by Young since early in this project, but besides contributing to some of Anthony Braxton's projects, she hasn't released much since Pretty Monsters (mentioned here in January 2013), an album with a composed feel & a rock sensibility. In fact, Young's participation was a major spur to wanting to hear Bind the hand(s) That Feed, as I continue to be intrigued by bassoon: That's undoubtedly due in part to the fascination my children had with the instrument when they were young — and that I didn't feel as though I could afford to enter the pricey & dicey realm of bassoon ownership for them. (Even "cheap" copies cost several thousands of dollars. I did enter into the only somewhat less dicey realm of oboe ownership, though, and that instrument is still being played....) I've since contented myself with the wonderful Ramble from the Sandra Weiss Quintet, itself an acoustic group more about pacing than here.... Finally, I was also intrigued by Syrian-American drummer Zerang (the senior member here) since early in this project, and had last mentioned him (June 2015) with The Bridge Sessions: I hadn't really found anything to feature him in a while, with much of his work involving accompanying relatively straightforward free jazz, and he's often more in the background on Bind the hand(s)... too, although that's rarely while engaging in typical drumming in this case, such that Zerang adds another layer of varied weirdness to the proceedings. (Between the double reed, the electronics, and Zerang's participation, I was reminded of Psychotic Redaction, a recording dating to Chicago in 2006 that I actually featured early in this project — it would be too rhythmically traditional for this space today. And taking a further look, I found that Young & Bruckmann had actually recorded — also at Elastic Arts in Chicago, as here — an album with Sam Pluta on electronics, Live - Elastic - 10.20.16 for Minus Zero records: It's different enough, but less radical, or indeed queer.) All that said, electronics are much more prominent on Bind the hand(s) That Feed than I was really expecting (although Foster does his work with microphone placement, so technically differently from what Young is doing, which is "electronics" per se), and it ends up being a bizarre yet compelling album: I love the weird growling bassoon & electronics in the opening track, particularly for how subtly aggressive it becomes. There are some vocalizing effects as well, mostly from Foster (I think), in something of an exploration of growls (& sometimes whistles, or breath per se), into which Zerang blends in various ways, less so than he frames.... By the last track, there's almost a traditionally free sax trio forming, with bassoon filling the bass role & some identifiable percussion, but in between, there's a variety of tautly slow or quiet sections as well: One almost gets the sense of "distant radio transmissions" again (e.g. regarding Kuori, as discussed here last month, & where there's a separate "electronics player") or indeed gritty strings, such that a different ambient vibe emerges from raucous aggression, crackling skronks against searing rubbed surfaces & percussive raspberries.... (How aggressive can breathing really be, one might wonder?) Whereas Bind the hand(s)... is then an intriguing issue from the less prolific Young (who in turn plays an unusual instrument), it also seems to be a significant event for the prolific Foster, as the queering he emphasizes & explores engages another level of musical abstraction. The sheer intensity that the trio in turn focuses into a relatively calm (& technical) ambient setting (at times at least) is simply amazing as well — as is the fearlessness from which that setting emerges. This feels like a unique event.

Thanos Chrysakis returns with another quartet of deterritorialized (or deconstructed) sounds reterritorialized into classic forms: Iridescent Strand was recorded in London in November 2017, and features five tracks from Chrysakis himself (credited with laptop computer & synthesizers), Sue Lynch on reeds, James O'Sullivan on electric guitar, and Joe Wright on tenor saxophone with dynamic feedback system. (O'Sullivan has appeared with Chrysakis before, e.g. mentioned here in March 2015 around Asphodels Abide, while Lynch & Wright appear to be new collaborators: I found nothing by Wright, but Lynch has recorded with The Remote Viewers.) A horn is sometimes recognizable, although generally blended into the overall texture, but not always, and most sounds seem to be highly processed. For instance, the striking opening with its loud bass roar around various strange bounces & boings suggests an origin on guitar for the latter, but the latter might also be synthesized or related to whatever this "dynamic feedback system" is doing with the tenor sax. Harmonics fly, bass is generally big (despite no obvious bassist), ringing tones develop, and before the album's end there's a sort of metallic gonging — such that, once again, one might associate metallic sounds with the guitar? In between, there's all kinds of pitch bending, a bit (at least) of sampling, various loops (I guess?), some industrial buzz, and even a bit of horn skronk.... As "dynamic feedback" suggests, and as Chrysakis' previous keyboard work has already suggested (especially for organ, e.g. Music for Two Organs & Two Bass Clarinets, discussed here in May), there's a unifying overall texture, and indeed an evocation of some of the happenings of Pauline Oliveros' late Phase/transitions triple album. (The sorts of sounds that break up the larger textures are surprisingly similar in both.) One might also note the precedent of the dual electronics setup on Skiagraphía, which suggests more of a surging, ambient wave. (Despite the substantial electronic manipulation, sax & viola might actually be more identifiably themselves on the latter album.) I've noted before how Chrysakis excels at highlighting particular musical elements on the fly, thus drawing a structure into existence out of seemingly chaotic sounds, and Iridescent Strand indeed seems to consist of studies on molding or fusing deterritorialized sounds into e.g. grooves or recitatives, such that they come to take on an eerie familiarity despite their disembodiment. It's almost as though Chrysakis is taming & rearticulating (or sculpting) wild or orphaned sound fragments. (And as the synthesizers credit suggests, he adds some sounds of his own, including "spacey" sounds that quickly reassimilate to the texture.) Although sonically unfamiliar, and sometimes dissonant, the result comes to have real sensual appeal.... Iridescent Strand is thus a transformative album, generating (relative, musical) simplicity from (timbral) chaos — a real-time study in sonic form & perception — always finding a way forward. (Simplicity per se might be overrated, but we do need a way forward amid chaos today, and so such a result definitely seems relevant.)

I've appreciated Portuguese violist João Camões in previous albums such as Earnear (recorded in 2010 & 2011) & Chant (recorded in 2015) — each rather different in conception — and now he returns with the rather short (half an hour in total) Selon le vent (with its two tracks recorded in May & June 2016 in Lisbon) on JACC Records. (I had noted JACC Records in May 2017, around House Full of Colors by a Portuguese quartet including Zingaro, Miguel Mira, et al....) On Selon le vent, Camões (b.1983) joins the preexisting French duo of Gabriel Lemaire (on saxes & clarinet) & Yves Arques (on piano) — with Alvaro Rosso (on bass) joining for the second track. Of course, Rosso (from Uruguay) has appeared frequently in this space at this point, especially with Lisbon String Trio, and most recently (in October) with Dissection Room.... Lemaire (b.1989) was mentioned here in February 2016, around Walabix invite Maris (which also noted his work with Quatour Machaut). Arques is new to me, however, and it's the piano that I've found problematic in my appreciation of Selon le vent: The first track is basically what I've been calling a traveling album, passing through a variety of sonic landscapes, with the piano working percussively & subtly in the background as support for the horn-viola duo, who traverse a variety of spaces via harmonics & shifting textures, incorporating pizzicato & halting snippets of folk-like melody against eerie whistling & scraping, etc. In this, they recall not only various other, recent soundscape albums — as this remains a popular arena for exploration, including here — but e.g. Camões himself most recently with Autres Paysages (discussed here in December 2017), another travelogue and/or landscape album — and the first from Camões to involve a horn. By the end of the detailed first track, however, the piano emerges from its mysterious depths (e.g. low rumbling & thunks) to articulate repeated figures in a clearly pianistic, even coloristic manner, and the resulting sense of (re)entry of Western tradition (as it's invoked for me anyway) is something that I find a bit jarring & unresolved. And although the second track, now featuring Rosso to create a bigger overall sound, includes many intriguing ensemble passages, much of it involves the swirling piano in its usual harmonic-chordal mode (after more of an emphasis on preparations early): Indeed, the other three musicians each end up taking "solos" against jazzy piano accompaniment, albeit interspersed with less typical ensemble interactions.... The second track thus projects a "stronger" sound, perhaps forges a more emotional sound per se, but also projects more of a typical free jazz feel. (In both cases, continuity is relatively emphasized. However, one should also note the trio's name, Pareidolia, such that continuity can be illusory.) An album like this would seem to highlight my ambivalence regarding the piano & its associations, and I don't mean to pick on Arques — and indeed he's apparently an authority on the work of Henri Michaux, thus underlying the travelogue conception of the album — but when the piano comes off "straight" here, it detracts from the intensity of the album for me. Such an observation also needs to be placed against frequent pairings with keyboard, including piano, from Camões: Earnear features piano centrally, often straight (but with more of a contrapuntal emphasis, rather than coloristically), and even Chant might be said to involve an overall conception that "fits" the piano (albeit actually using the more exotic marimba). One might further note my interest in Feldman, including related articulations (e.g. from Tilbury) that indeed use the instrument coloristically... such that the contours of my perceptions & preferences around the instrument remain paradoxical. (The lingering tenderness that emerges from Selon le vent might also be suggestive of Feldman, et al....) I do find the Camões-Lemaire pairing to be intriguing, and there's still a strong & appealing sense of detail throughout the two rather different scenes of Selon le vent — making it well worth hearing. The timbral soundscape genre remains a difficult one within which to make a distinctive impression, though.

Speaking of paradoxical perceptions of piano, and indeed speaking of Michael Zerang on Bind the hand(s) That Feed a few days ago, it turns out that Zerang is now (as of this week) releasing more material on his Pink Palace Recordings, including The Shuddering Cherub "for solo piano with vibrating elements." The latter is ostensibly composed music, and for a solo performer, but not only do I want to note Zerang's recent projects (beyond accompanying others), but his specific rethinking of the piano: The Shuddering Cherub is a very active album, featuring some sort of automated controls, such that the entire interior of the piano is involved in various preparations that can be sounded throughout the instrument at once. (The result puts a new exclamation point on my description of the "piano as an absurd, antiquated contraption" in a discussion of Circulate Susanna in November.) One might thus describe the result as Nancarrow meets prepared piano, and indeed there's various fast individual striking of strings together with various strumming almost continuously. It occasionally sounds traditionally pianistic, but only as layered against the interior manipulation, and in one section takes on some of the "gamelan" character that I've noted in other prepared piano albums — but still against the fast individual strikes & strumming. (The piece thus tends to move in waves, and isn't especially percussive.) It gives a rather different impression of the piano, although the latter remains more audibly identifiable than e.g. on Ernesto Rodrigues's Piano album (recorded in 2015 with Carlos Santos), on which the piano is treated much more radically, and almost entirely according to friction, producing piercing highs & grinding lows without so much as a single string being hammered. Still, Zerang's conception sounds distinctive, and moreover the extent to which it's composed is unclear: As on Follow the Light — a companion release involving a quintet of quasi-hurdy-gurdy, two violas & two contrabasses — there's clearly planning involved, but much of what happens seems to be spontaneous. (And I probably have rather different notions of the merit of calling something "composed" than many writers.) On the latter album, the central instrument is "Queequeg's Coffin" (played by Zerang), a cello-based instrument played by turning a wooden wheel, as designed for a theatrical production of Moby Dick(!): The album begins in the mode of a thick drone, sounding almost like an organ, and eventually produces a variety of counterpoint in the strings, thus seeming to "open" the drone to various interactions, cracking its homogeneous sense of time.... (One might compare to Buratino, mentioned here in October, which likewise incorporates hurdy-gurdy into a string quintet, there including guitar as well. The broad impression is rather different, though, even as many of the string interactions do end up sounding similar....) Both albums would appear to respond to the jazz saw about "changing the instruments" in order to change the music, and to do so decisively.

It seems as though I'm always starting a discussion of new albums — and it's usually plural — from Ernesto Rodrigues with some sort of disclaimer. I guess that's both because he makes so many albums, and because I continue to especially enjoy many of them. Obviously there's nothing wrong with that, and so I guess the disclaimers come into play simply because I'm devoting so much time to his music, and also because on a "per album" basis, I'm being relatively neglectful. It's the latter that eats at me sometimes (& not only regarding Rodrigues), but there are only so many hours in the day, and the alternative is to say nothing, and so to feel as though good work is being ignored (which is also why I feel less of an urge to discuss albums that other people are discussing, although I do do that sometimes anyway). And then regarding the former, I haven't actually heard it, but I often imagine people thinking "Why is he always discussing the same musician?" Well, not always.... but Ernesto is creating a lot of music that I value, and in fact that often fits right into my priorities here in general. (And beyond that, he also releases a lot of great albums by other people too, often musicians who are unknown at the time, yet go on to more.... I can't even count the number of times I've "discovered" someone only to see that they already have a Creative Sources album. I don't know if Ernesto does all of his own talent scouting, but however that works, it's been very successful, and across a range of styles.) Moreover, although Ernesto plays with several of the same musicians over & over, he also engages much more widely, and that gives many of his albums very different characters. Even his personal discography has come to encompass hundreds of musicians, and involves a variety of styles & priorities. (One might even observe that simply assembling so many musicians into so many different groups, including of various sizes, is itself impressively musical within the basic mode of relation....) Today, though, I want to discuss some recent albums from Rodrigues that are very much his own, consisting of medium-sized groups of performers whom (in most cases) he has engaged on many recent projects: Before I get to Stratus, though (recorded in Lisbon in June 2018), which I hear as another high point to date in his output, I want to discuss some earlier albums in the same "arc" (at least as I hear it), especially Mimus: Mimus is the latest release from the 8-member (duh!) Octopus ensemble, whose first album Vulgaris I mentioned briefly as part of a long survey in August, and whose second (mini, digital) album Dofleini I mentioned in September. Mimus was recorded only twelve days after Dofleini, also in Lisbon in March, and uses a nearly identical ensemble (with one substitution, at saxophone), whereas Vulgaris had been a little different (including e.g. piano & cello). Mimus also seems to capture a new level of sophistication for these ensembles, specifically in its "underwater" sense of lighting & color: It opens seeming almost like an organ, but with much more timbral detail & sensitivity than available from an organ keyboard. As so often, it's unclear what Carlos Santos is doing with electronics, but the trumpet (Anna Piosik, mentioned here in October with Eris) & two reeds (Bruno Parrinha, mentioned with Lithos in June, and Paulo Galão, not mentioned previously, but appearing on various Creative Sources recordings) combine with the strings (Rodrigues himself, the relatively well-known Hernâni Faustino on bass, and André Holzer — who is new to me — on resonator guitar) & snare drum (João Valinho, also not mentioned, but appearing with Rodrigues in Diceros, as well as without Rodrigues in the Free Pantone Trio, which I also hadn't mentioned) to produce a variety of musical activity that not only yields an underwater feeling, but what seem to be variations in light & color: Like the octopus depicted on the cover, there is almost a translucent quality to the music, such that various elements continually shift to take on background colors, including via pulsing resonances. The result has a sort of (ambient) smoothness that does nonetheless become more busy at times, perhaps mixed in real time with some looping? (There are hints of an industrial vibe at times too, for instance, albeit submerged.) There's something of a slow evolution as a result — i.e. a sense of austerity — but one's energy level can be powerfully modulated by what are ultimately relatively subtle — yet immersive — articulations from these standard (classical) instruments. Whereas Mimus is striking for its sense of immersive shading, in April (i.e. the following month, also in Lisbon), Rodrigues recorded another new album (3 Phases (III) Black) with a previously existing medium-scale ensemble, Diceros, and it obliges with a more rumbling & earthy sound: I'd mentioned Diceros (also) in August around Urze, but that was an octet (and so a natural pairing with Octopus), while 3 Phases (III) Black is a 12tet. (And without an explanation, I don't know what the three 3 Phases albums have in common beyond being recorded on consecutive days at the same venue... three different improvisation styles in historical order, I guess? Besides Rodrigues himself, Santos is the only person to appear on more than one of them, and the orientations are rather different: 3 Phases (I) White is more traditionally jazzy around sax & piano, while 3 Phases (II) Grey intriguingly pairs Rodrigues with a saxophone trio — SAT — in what ends up being a mostly quiet, drone album.) 3 Phases (III) Black didn't make as much of an impression on me as Mimus did, but I do want to note it, since it explores its own sorts of sonorities in an ongoing project, and particularly since I'd originally mentioned Octopus & Diceros together.... Perhaps more significant to this line of inquiry, however, is Backlighting (which I'd also mentioned already in August), another April 2018 recording, and one that seems to take up the coloring innovations of Mimus in a smaller (& quieter) format, in particular placing viola against three winds from different families (flute, reed, brass). I've found Backlighting to be too subdued to be of much use in my life, but did want to note it again as apparently pivotal within these recent developments....

Ayler Records continues to release some distinctive items, and I see that I haven't had much to say about any of their releases since Joëlle Léandre's Can you hear me? (in September 2016), so although it's composed music, I want to make a few remarks about the recent album Barclay by the Scott Fields Ensemble (a quartet).... I'd actually noted Fields relatively early in this project for his unique personal style on guitar, but hadn't had much to say, largely for the same reason, namely that his releases tend to be relatively composed. In fact, I'd only mentioned him to this point around Conference of Analogies by the Eckard Vossas 4 (a Creative Sources release, also with Simon Nabatov, discussed in April 2017), saying that the "idiosyncratic sense of movement & transition does continue to remind me of Fields elsewhere." A similar comment applies to Barclay, which is actually the third in a Samuel Beckett Trilogy from Fields — with the first two (also eponymic) titles appearing in 2007 & 2009, i.e. a while ago now. Indeed, not only does Fields have a taste for Beckett, but literary inspiration in general, having e.g. composed for the Multiple Joyce Orchestra as well.... Moreover, Ayler has already supported a similar orientation in e.g. Marc Ducret's Tower Series (inspired by Vladimir Nabokov), along with the various other (mostly composed) new concepts that they've been releasing.... However, Barclay is an instrumental album, and doesn't attempt to "transcribe" the three plays on which its three tracks are based, but rather to render them into music diagrammatically, i.e. as inspired by the basic motion & feel of the texts, their characters & pacing etc.: There is thus usually a bunching (knotting), halting style, with bursts of activity often followed by repose, then more activity again, etc. (The final track is both more contrapuntal & more sustained in its activity, with a couple of basic figurations weaving together....) I certainly don't claim to be an expert on Beckett or literature per se in general (at least not from an "inside" perspective), but I do appreciate these sorts of trans-modal projects, i.e. making something out of something else, particularly across forms & genres. (After all, it's what I'm so often doing here!) There's thus a formal inspiration, both more broadly, and according to individual phrases: Fields (on electric guitar) is joined by Matthias Schubert (tenor sax), Scott Roller (cello) & Dominik Mahnig (percussion) to form colorful & appealing timbral combinations as well, such that the halting bursts are often distinctive & sparkling on their own — beyond formal considerations. (I'd also mentioned Mahnig in a piano trio with Nabatov back in February 2016, but hadn't actually mentioned Schubert previously, and Roller is new to me.) It's thus an enjoyable (& contemporary) sounding quartet, often with a "jazz" vibe (& with very clear & warm recorded sound), yet sometimes projecting more of a rock ambience around guitar.... (So let me also note that the music could hardly be more different from e.g. Feldman's organ-esque For Samuel Beckett....) It does seem to me to forge a "sound" & style, though, one that would be conducive to a more spontaneous approach. (And in my terms, that's what composition per se is for....)

Trio was recorded in Nova Scotia in July 2013, and released in late 2016 — both a long time ago for an album to be newly featured here. I foggily remember seeing it listed at Squidco in February 2017, and the easygoing yet vague description from John Heward did intrigue me, but it wasn't enough to prompt an allocation of time & money. I didn't really know who any of these three musicians were. Later, still in 2017 I believe, I came across Trio on Bandcamp — I'm not quite sure from where (as a few possibilities present themselves) — and had a listen. It was hard to categorize, but also understated. I hear so many hours of new music (for the first time) most weeks, most of it exactly once, and Trio didn't jump out at me. It's not a "jumping" kind of album. Then a couple of other releases appeared last month: The first I noticed was Le way qu'a do (recorded in Spring 2018), the second "free form folk" album by Les Surruralists (after Sortablue, released in 2014), a duo of Arthur Bull & Éric Normand (with some instrumental support from others on their second release). It was a "different" sort of album for me, but Bull singing "Jack o' Diamonds" did make an impression — including on some people around me. Not only is Le way qu'a do traditional folk songs, though, but the opening instrumental track (referencing Monsieur Coleman, I assume Ornette from the style) was intriguing atonal, yet mellow & flowing. (The songs are tonal, though.) And I had noted Normand already in Boule-spiele (discussed in January 2017) & e.g. Torche! (discussed in December 2017, when I wrote that it consisted of, to paraphrase, "simmering world mediations speaking from North America") — i.e. very different albums — but hadn't noticed guitarist Bull. (And he does indeed bring some of that distinctively bluesy "roots" style to Trio, albeit transformed.) The second relevant December release was another Heward album in the Mode Records "Avant" series, I guess titled John Heward Quintet, and recorded in 2014 prior to the Guelph Festival, for which the quintet was formed: The most distinctive interaction is between Heward & Barre Phillips, whose duo seems to inaugurate much of the early quintet interactions in general, but the quintet also involved legend Joe McPhee, along with Lori Freedman (who has a couple of recent albums out herself) & pianist Dana Reason (with whom I wasn't familiar at all). This is a very long recording, and frankly I found much of it kind of tedious by the end, various duo interactions... but was specifically intrigued by the way that Heward would frame (or bisect) various activity, setting one interaction in relief, then another: There was both a starkness to what he was doing, as well as some deep rhythmic & structural insight.... I also (finally) noticed a few other facts: Avant (which pairs with e.g. Mode's Scelsi, Xenakis & Cage Editions, i.e. recordings I've found to be quite significant in the past, but which has a rather strange catalog itself) had released multiple prior duo albums with Heward, Heward had just died in November, and he wasn't actually a new name to me (although I hadn't remembered my two prior encounters...). So now I found myself interested in both Bull & Heward (1934-2018), and found my way back to Trio: I hadn't heard of bassist Adam Linson (b.1975) either, although it turns out that he'd already been active with some very prominent improvising musicians, but shortly before this project started (& so that's kind of a coincidence). And he currently has a research appointment in computer science & philosophy, working in cognitive psychology... so hasn't been so active musically. Finally then, what one finds on Trio does seem understated, combining as it does the contours of a gritty, bluesy style with processes of abstraction: Bull's fast plucking style (in shifting ostinati) frequently has a percussive quality as well, such that it's not only a guitar trio, but something of a percussion trio — with both Linson (via bowing) & Bull (via feedback) sometimes providing continuous (legato) tones as well. (Trio also appeared in the US the same month as Jack Wright's Roughhousing album, and has some similar qualities in its dynamics & interactions, qualities I associate with American music per se.) The subtlety of the resulting musical interaction also suggests a timeless quality, such that Trio isn't (obviously) connected to any musical trends — such that a 2013 recording can still sound very fresh — and such that its passion (initially anyway) comes off as understated. The bowed bass can become quite intense, though, and the guitar can sound zither-like (in ways that remind me more of the Vietnamese dan tranh than the canonical Chinese zheng, but that might all be incidental). At one point on the first track, a rock vibe even emerges briefly, before shifting elsewhere, as simultaneity itself slips in time: Indeed the "sliding" temporalities remind me a bit of (my comments last September on) Sensoria, another abstract album incorporating American roots.... There's moreover a strong conversational quality to Trio, as already suggested in Heward's short introductory paragraph, something that I've sought since early in this project: So this is a good example of becoming trapped in my own conceptions, such that an inability to assimilate this music mentally to what I've been learning over the past few years led me not to notice that it involved a different & distinctive approach to what I'd been seeking in the first place.... So that's humbling, and indeed the music itself suggests a profound humility — despite percussive attacks & sometimes searing dissonance. At times, I thought there simply wasn't enough happening, particularly in the more exploratory second track, but the intense moments of simultaneous conversation don't really stop, rather they merely "slide" (via differential slowing) into collective positions of less vertical overlap, i.e. not based on rhythmic divisions or actual rests. Trio thus comes to involve various framings & perspectives, but with no one "above the fray" so to speak (or below) — & comes to project a strongly emotional quality as well. (I've found that this album has sometimes upset me, even made me angry.... And that's definitely American. At first I didn't even realize — and that's very American too.) The various shifting repetitions come to build a powerful rattling momentum at times, such that what seemed understated comes to seem very potent & collective. I was consequently forced to make this entry: Heward (who was better known as a visual artist) will clearly be missed.

My other prior encounter with an album from Heward, as noted parenthetically above, was 4x3 (recorded in 2017 — & so his most recent performance available at the moment, released in 2018 on Tour de bras): This is a strange album, pairing Scott Thomson on trombone with Heward on drums & Michel Bonneau on congas, balofon, etc. The contrast between the horn legato & the accompanying percussionists drives much of the action, but Thomson's variety of articulation is impressive indeed. (Sometimes he's percussive as well.) The sense of continuity versus discontinuity, smoothness against sharp attacks, thus reminds of Trio, although Thomson generally stays very much to the fore. (And although the album notes mention these performers joining Heward's weekly improvisation series, again I didn't take note. The soloistic orientation wasn't aligned with my interests anyway.) Leaving Heward behind, and turning to Bull again, then, even more impressive from Thomson is the recent Spine, debut album by the trio Monicker (recorded in June 2018), in which Thomson & Bull are joined by Roger Turner on drums. (Like Trio, Spine appears on Ambiances Magnétiques, a Montréal label that I'd sampled, but hadn't really "grasped" to any degree. Many of their releases are composed music, but many are improvised....) Actually, the existing duo of Bull (who took time away from music, returning in the early 2000s) & Turner was joined by Thomson: There is once again a focus on some amazing trombone articulations, once again becoming percussive at times (as does Bull via the sharpness of his string attack), but with more depth of interaction overall. (And both of these albums were recorded in Montréal, where Heward lived. It's Bull who moved to Nova Scotia.) Continuity & discontinuity thus remain themes, sometimes involving sharp resonances or tinkling metal... as various accents & rhythmic implications shift in their details. Monicker again comes off as more soloistic (& also often subtle) around the very resourceful Thomson, but also expands upon a flexible style of musical interaction that doesn't really correspond to anything anywhere else. So Spine is (also) well worth hearing & a distinctive debut. And despite aspects of minimalist abstraction in their conceptions, all of the albums in this entry are in fact quite active sonically — thus forging new (musical) possibilities.

When it comes to Québec & the Montréal, scene at least as articulated by recent improvisatory performances on Ambiances Magnétiques — & they release various composed albums as well, there showing more rhythmic structure & control — what I generally hear is an open & flowing, mystical or ritual style that favors a more overlapping "mensural" (although I have no idea if they explicitly adopt that sort of medieval notion) approach to time over clear collective rhythms or grooves. One might even associate such an approach with the "hippy" concerns of the 1960s: Such imagery comes to mind for me regarding the recent Fleur de chaos (recorded in October 2017), by a quartet called HMMH featuring Joane Hétu on vocals. I hadn't mentioned Hétu here before, but she appears on many albums in a variety of contexts, here in a very free guise, voice often growling low in the texture, only sometimes emerging to prominence — maybe via fast whispers etc., and with her sometimes switching to saxophone as well. (The continuity between vocalizing per se, including far back in the throat & with a turn to horn, does suggest Isabelle Duthoit on Light air still gets dark, which might be the closest analog, there embedded in a more explicitly post-serial or indeed quasi-spectral conception.) Hétu is also the executive producer on recent Ambiances Magnétiques releases, and is joined here by Émilie Mouchous (with whom I am not otherwise familiar) on synthesizer, as well as the pairing of Pierre-Yves Martel (here on viola da gamba & harmonica) & Carl Ludwig Hübsch (tuba). Of course, the latter two have already appeared here with their trio HMZ, both with the texturally distinctive Drought, and with the more recent & smooth Otherwise (discussed in November 2018, there adding synths to their previously acoustic toolkit). As is typical of recent projects from Martel — & Tse (discussed here in June 2018) may be canonical in this regard — various high held tones often dominate the texture, producing dissonance & abrasion via their collisions. Other times, the general texture consists more of a low roar, suggesting a windswept landscape even into strangely raucous noise.... Indeed sounds tend to run together, including the voice as noted, in order to produce a pensive & ritualistic atmosphere generally lacking strong rhythmic contours, and with vocal attacks varying (or absent): There are thus different musical (or timbral concerns) in different tracks, ultimately producing a heightened sense of awareness — in a sort of solo-less ritual reminiscent of e.g. the quintet Torche! (discussed here December 2017 & mentioned again in the prior entry), in both cases developing tension largely without rhythmic clarity or individuation. (One might even compare e.g. to Ernesto Rodrigues's recent Montréal, featuring a return by Karoline Leblanc on harpsichord, a generally atmospheric & slowly rumbling album that likewise produces a sense of ritualistic drama....) So, as akin to Drought, there is often a kind of basic starkness to Fleur de chaos, yet it can also be very active (usually briefly & around the voice). Otherwise, one might speak of slowly shifting weirdness, and a general sense of exploration, from which (what I might call) a truly North American musical vibe does emerge (in something other than a traditionally jazzy idiom, the latter actually being closer to European modernism). Fleur de chaos retains an overall sense of calm, however, such that despite the sometimes chaotic interactions, it can often seem almost minimalist (or, one might say, intensely focused). One might then relate (it) to various modes of communion....

I want to note a couple of other recent items from FMR, which does continue to confuse me by not having an "official" list of releases available.... These are also both albums that involve dodecaphonic & even post-serial improvisation, so it's not a totally arbitrary pairing. First I want to highlight Frost Burning, which is listed as a "Spring" 2018 release on Bulgarian violinist Biliana Voutchkova's web site, and seemingly considered as such by the FMR numbering, but didn't appear anywhere (that I could find anyway) until DMG last month (& still no appearance at Squidco — although the FMR releases appearing at these two outlets have often been somewhat different). Voutchkova is joined by Alexander Frangenheim — who has appeared frequently in this space since first being mentioned with Ernesto Rodrigues, but who'd also already recorded with e.g. English free improvisers — & Greek pianist Antonis Anissegos — whom I'd mentioned with Id (from Kriton Beyer) in December 2018 — to form the trio The Forestry Commission: Besides being slow to appear (but hey, better later than never), Frost Burning was also recorded (in Berlin) back in February 2016, i.e. before both The Afterlife of Trees (the first Voutchkova album discussed here, in December 2017) & Blurred Music (not discussed here, but an interesting concept album with Michael Thieke that received some good attention elsewhere) — which were themselves recorded later in 2016. (And Id was recorded only in November 2017.) That might be coincidence, but Frost Burning also presents a relatively easygoing & approachable performance of dodecaphonic improvisation between piano & the two strings. It extends into various post-serial realms as well, perhaps evoking some pensive (e.g. set theory) pieces by Xenakis: Particularly with piano (& on FMR), it might be compared with Still now (if you still), which nonetheless emphasizes more traditionally free virtuosity around speed & spiky rhythms, etc. Frost Burning is more mellow, although energetic in its own (incendiary) way, and with many details to enjoy. I feel as though it might make for a good entry not only into these musicians' individual styles, but into post-serial improvisation more generally, since it does stop well short of overwhelming the listener with figures & relations (as well as being acoustic). And it appears that The Forestry Commission could be an ongoing project, so it'll be interesting to hear what they do next....

Less easy to hear, or perhaps I should say more enigmatic, is On the Validity of Tractors, which was actually recorded back in July 2013, although published only late last year. The Valid Tractor trio consists of Pat Thomas on piano & electronics, Dominic Lash on double bass, and Lawrence Casserley on "signal processing instrument." I'd mentioned Thomas with the WTTF Quartet, recalled just last month around Strings & Philipp Wachsmann's participation — & a group that had also featured Frangenheim. Lash appeared here most recently with Extremophile (with its partial medieval inspiration), but Casserley is actually new (to this space, albeit previously active with Evan Parker, et al.): His development of a signal processing instrument (starting from IRCAM), i.e. electronics that sample other sounds but don't produce their own — should also be invoked as a precedent for e.g. Jeff Morris on Interfaces (discussed here last October), in that case a rather more aggressive & jazzy album.... On the Validity of Tractors actually begins with a relatively similar dodecaphonic vibe around piano as on Frost Burning, but becomes progressively diffuse as the album proceeds: Eventually it's about the tiniest of figures in a smooth & mysterious tapestry. (Coincidentally, I had an extended electrical outage earlier this week, and was able to listen to this album absent some of the usual background noise, especially the constant hum of electricity, and it opens up considerably under those circumstances....) The liner notes discuss tractors, specifically radiators. From there(?), relationships proliferate like mad in the music, almost evening out into a tinkling, simmering hum itself as a result. The basic feeling of diffusion (around electronics) comes to suggest a sort of ritual quality of its own, indeed making for an enigmatic album. Still, I have to say, I simply enjoy the dodecaphonic & post-serial style (in general) — and the unusual sorts of affective relations that it can produce & trace on both of these albums.

I saw the release announcement for Skullmarks last year (actually together with Molecules, discussed here in December), but it's yet to arrive at US retailers — so I (eventually) ordered it directly from John Butcher at his website. I immediately noted the release, since I'd been intrigued by the English ensemble Common Object in the past, particularly as expressed around Whitewashed with lines in June 2015 — in a discussion that opened a new series of entries here, and found me confronting some of my (fraught) impressions of the English scene. The group was formed by harpist Rhodri Davies, whose composition occupies the first disc of Whitewashed with lines, and Skullmarks presents a composition by John Butcher, with the group now expanded from a quartet (& that from a trio) to a sextet. (Butcher & Davies are joined once again by Lee Patterson & Angharad Davies, but now also by Pat Thomas & Lina Lapelyte, thus doubling the violin & electronics constituency of the group — & augmenting the overall smoothness of its sound. I hadn't mentioned Lapelyte previously, although she'd appeared on Goldsmiths, a 2016 album featuring both Davieses & others. But Thomas had just been mentioned with On the Validity of Tractors....) The performance & composition both derive from the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, with Butcher selecting four objects from the site's ethnographic collection, and arranging the performers within the museum space: So it's not a matter of written music, but rather a setting, including both geometry & more specific (object-based) inspiration. According to the notes, all six musicians contributed compositions toward this project, but no word on whether any of the others will be released on record.... (It's perhaps also notable that although the recording was made, once again, by Simon Reynell, the album doesn't appear on Another Timbre — as did Whitewashed with lines — but on Ftarri out of Japan. I guess this is a matter of spreading the wealth, so to speak? In any case, the Ftarri release is of excellent quality, including graphics, notes & packaging in general.) The addition of more performers, to form (if anything) a more eccentric overall combination, does work well: Textures are more full, and range across a variety of material & inspirations, including with some pauses, presumably around changing object focus: One might note e.g. birdsong, windy echoes, even moving into a sort of cacophonous electronic jungle.... (And note that the "Common Objects" of the group's name was originally a reference to their instruments, so this museum project is something of a doubling of object reference. Presumably arising from Thomas, there are also some passages that highlight pure electronic sound generation, as opposed to the process/sampling approach of Patterson, which is often geared more toward textural continuity.) The result is generally compelling, combining a sense of exoticism with a taut focus that functions well in an ambient setting — in terms of which, Skullmarks is a rather dynamic album (i.e. less minimalist than Whitewashed with lines, but still very concerned with precise expression). However, the museum setting also raises a number of other questions beyond my basic appreciation for the music, particularly around cultural appropriation: Although Common Objects have previously featured English archeology as inspiration — and indeed Lord Pitt Rivers got his start with English archeology — the museum objects in question here are from North America (three of them) & Nepal. Note, moreover, the sense of space that's interrogated & projected by the album (& composition) as well, namely the museum itself. (In other words, the album begins from an explicit post-appropriation, post-imperial situation.) One might thus take the museum itself as a "de facto" result, from which Common Objects continues an interrogation of global humanity, i.e. simply continues moving forward (as history must). That seems like too easy a framing, though, and indeed my previous wariness regarding the English scene revolves around this post-imperial situation more generally: If jazz is about overcoming imperialist oppression, then what is (or can be) music from the very center of world empire? (To me, the English have always been the worst of the invaders, and these largely North American object selections do nothing to ameliorate that impression.) Of course, such a question is also presumptive of unity & uniformity, and many people in the UK certainly never agreed with English policy abroad, down to this day. (One can say the same of residents of Israel, the US, etc....) I imagine that such questions & differences of perspective can seem more organic — at least in some sense — from within that interior setting, but for me as a North American, they remain problematic. (I don't know that it's reflected in the performance, but the Pitt Rivers Museum was also intended to illustrate an "evolutionary approach to culture" — something with which I very much doubt I'd agree. An emphasis specifically on everyday objects, though, is significant....) Back to appropriation, then, exactly what is being appropriated? When this topic arises in (usual) musical discussions today, it (most often) ultimately involves someone making a living (perhaps a very nice living) on ideas developed elsewhere (in some sense). And I do think it's important to ask who is benefiting economically (since, after all, economics comes to dominate all facets of society in our era) from such activity: Here, that's obvious enough in that the musicians are furthering their careers, the museum is justifying its ongoing existence, etc. Yet, we aren't talking about an economic windfall by any means — one might even be talking about "sacrifice" in order to follow an artistic passion & even to keep these objects in the collective imagination. In other words, did this project actually prevent anyone else from doing anything, including (hypothetically) selling music on the same themes? To answer affirmatively would require a broad loop through global social relations, although it's not an absurd answer... just a distant (& highly contingent) one. It's also interesting for me to ponder that I've generally enjoyed English improvising albums that take in wide territories for their musical inspiration, whether a global sense of musical activity, or indeed the non-idiomatic style that tries to avoid any such external reference. (Ag, for instance, is vaguely nativistic, at least in one sense of that term....) The difference here then isn't so much with the actual styles of sonic production — which are, after all, those the performers have developed over decades (& so basically unique) — but the specific object focus: Presumably that did inflect the performers' imaginations as well — perhaps according to many of the same terms as I'm considering here. (One might even figure these concerns into "process" more generally, which is an ongoing orientation that Common Objects has borrowed from minimalism per se.) Farther afield, the variety of shifting textures & emphasis on timbre almost suggest a Creative Sources album — from which a different perspective on global (musical) borrowing emerges: I might compare to e.g. very recent favorite Stratus, with its frequently sunny & "outdoor" feel, also with electronic "smoothing," or to the acoustic Sîn, jagged & dark, also with a variety of "episodes" (around unknown inspiration). Perhaps the most similar is Skiagraphía, though, similarly brief & with a dual electronics setup.... (Note that Skullmarks was actually recorded prior to all three of these Rodrigues albums, two of which also originated in 2016.) Comparatively, the English scene comes off more self-consciously, particularly given the written discussions associated with the music, but also likely due to the simple passage of time, allowing such questions to foment more explicitly.... So which musicians should be inspired by prior Native North American production? Isn't that a question of attitude? Who else would make music like this? What other music, if any, might be made in its absence? (Such questions can also take on a different feel when populations have been almost totally devastated... not that such devastation was innocent.) In any case, one might differentiate Skullmarks from some of these other (ambient) sonic tapestries, not only according to its specific object focus, but due to its particular sense of interiorized space (yielding another sort of precision) as well. In particular, this isn't a "travelogue album" (as I've observed so often, most recently last month about Selon le vent), but focuses on a specific (yet composite, one might say) space. Simply, it concerns different (& seemingly more specific) relations — a kind of refiguration of (local & so global) responsibility per se. In other words, there's almost a feeling of claustrophobia, yet yielding broad tautness & intensity — including around such questions. And so whereas I might need to question continued possession of these objects by this museum, I also have to follow my ear on the music: It's masterful according to notions of instrumental command & ongoing development of a distinctive ensemble sound, and it's thought provoking. In other words, it's very good.

I've written about making a conscious choice to stay away from much "music history" early in this project, simply on account of wanting to take a very contemporary perspective, and so not get (immediately) wrapped up in the sort of historical sense that's dominated so many of my other projects. And jumping into the middle (of most things) is also simply a lot more practical, particularly around notions of determining contemporary interests within a very broad field.... Come to it with as little baggage as possible, right? Well, this project has been going on for a while now, so it's come to have its own (internal) history, and so its own baggage. (Also over time, I end up consulting more & more historical sources, in a kind of creeping backwards — or, as figured a little differently, in an overflowing of the present itself.) Part of that (personal) history is my fascination with Pool School from the Tom Rainey Trio, beginning in 2011. As someone new to the scene, I was taken not only with their various contemporary techniques, but with their collective sense of simultaneity. There was also a freshness about the album that I probably couldn't perceive (too clearly anyway) at the time, arising from the newness of the trio itself — and it still seems to have fit its time very well. Subsequently, I didn't appreciate their albums Camino Cielo Echo (discussed February 2012, where I really did try) & Hotel Grief (discussed November 2015) so much: They felt stiff relative to Pool School, and indeed Camino Cielo Echo involved compositions, whereas Hotel Grief arose from an improvised concert at the end of a tour featuring compositions (& so seems to remain in regimented ensemble roles itself). And as they say, expectations are a cage (among other things), so it happens.... It's been a while now, though, and the trio's fourth album Combobulated (recorded at Firehouse 12 in September 2017) returns to a much freer sense of collective expression. There's also a more triumphant feel overall, as the members of the trio continue to rise in individual prominence as well, and indeed the crux of the expression on Combobulated is often found in solos. Again, that's not really my thing, and it does seem like part of the intention is to remain approachable, i.e. not to overwhelm the listener with too much three-way material (such that the opening is a highlight). (I also don't know what's typical of their live, usually improvised sets in this regard.) One does get more elaboration of a "surf" vibe (to which I probably should've been more attentive way back when), and some of the drum work seems to involve new techniques. So it's an enjoyable album that continues to develop a sound, but probably not one I'd be mentioning here without the personal history.

Continuing some thoughts on personal history here, Clean Feed — on which Pool School was released, as opposed to later Tom Rainey Trio albums on Intakt — was a relatively new label when I began this project, and has recently eclipsed 500 issues. (So, well over half have fallen clearly within the "domain" of this project. Of course, Clean Feed has also done very well, and I doubt that anyone reading this needs me to tell them more, but I do want to honor their prolificity & contextualize a few things....) I still make a point of checking Clean Feed releases, and usually listen to samples etc. from musicians appearing there whom I don't already know. For a while Clean Feed releases seemed relatively central to me, but over time, (apparently) my interests have shifted a bit from theirs, such that my comments have become more occasional again. As I've mentioned in the past, I never had an "alternative rock" phase or similar, and I often hear quite a bit of that background from Clean Feed albums, so in that sense the inspirations are a little askew from mine. In other words, there's more of a popular emphasis, and definitely more reliance on Western tonality than from some other sources. Clean Feed does continue to expand their coverage to different nations & scenes, though, albeit often within those parameters, and most often with composition-based music. (E.g. their US-based issues often seem relatively conservative on account of this orientation.) Still, there's a lot to like, and even if I've been leaving most of their releases undiscussed, I do listen regularly.... Today though, on account of both Clean Feed history & my own, I want to revisit an album already discussed in May 2016, Talking Trash by Pascal Niggenkemper's Seventh Continent (a sextet). I feel as though this album hasn't gotten the attention it's deserved, and in particular that it doesn't seem to have inspired any followups (at least as yet). Talking Trash also involves some differences from my usual interests here of late, in that it's based on a composition (a single suite, in fact), uses the piano (& two of them at that), and even dates from two different recording sessions with somewhat different ensembles. So that's not what would usually attract me, but the textures that emerge continue to amaze: I'd emphasized the more tuneful or even groovy parts in my previous discussion (from May 2016), and indeed there are some more popularly-derived textures, but most of the sound world is uniquely its own: The interiors of the pianos are well suited to creating a "wave" effect, as befitting its ocean theme, and the clarinets (with amplification, which is likely necessary to the mix) then work with the basses to create various watery colors — generally in shades of blue (as opposed to e.g. Mimus by Octopus, which involves more shades). (That blue goes so well with "the blues" also makes the whole project "click" as a Clean Feed album.) The double trio (or triple duo) configuration allows a variety of interactions & counterpoints, but most of these timbres would also seem to be available from a (simpler) trio.... The one divergence is the use of "pronomos" & sub-contrabass flute by Julián Elvira (as contrasted with Niggenkemper's string bass), which I do want to note again: I've yet to hear this instrument elsewhere, and continue to believe in its potential to bring different timbres to the bass (timbres which have most often arrived elsewhere, usually crudely, via synthesizer). Indeed, the album is packed with unique sonorities & combos, including from Niggenkemper himself via bass preparations. And whereas he's continued to develop his personal style individually as a collaborator or sideman on some recent albums, Talking Trash hasn't been followed by other leader albums. (And of course Niggenkemper also appeared here early in this project, first on Polylemma, which involves a much more traditional "free jazz" ensemble, albeit with explicit dodecaphony & quarter tones — and so sits alongside Pool School in my seminal c.2011 interests here — and then with Baloni & Fremdenzimmer, another classic Clean Feed album involving some compositions.) So what's next? Anyway, for those who haven't, or maybe for those who haven't in a while, simply listening to Talking Trash from the beginning should be striking enough.... It remains a little jewel on Clean Feed, now more than a hundred album releases in the past, but still not very similar to anything else they've been producing.

I've learned that I can't be too anxious for new releases to open the new year in this space, but a few 2019 items have begun to appear: Besides Combobulated (as discussed last week), Rogueart has a couple, including Voyage and Homecoming (recorded in Berlin — as so many interesting things seem to be these days — in February 2018) by AACM legends Roscoe Mitchell & George Lewis. Easing my self-imposed restrictions on duo albums somewhat (and imposing such restrictions was always about channeling attention, in this case through a very broad field that only comes slowly into focus over the years...), I want to note Voyage and Homecoming both for its different approaches and for its specific "trio" track featuring "Voyager," Lewis's interactive computer pianist. Voyager is featured on the second & longest track of the album (discounting two framing tracks of applause that likewise aren't listed on the CD packaging), and for me is something of a mixed bag: I've enjoyed some computer improvising within ensembles elsewhere (& "the line" for such activity can be hard to draw, as so many interactive electronics players have various algorithms that they might employ at any moment), but the difference here is the extent to which the AI is featured: It spends (substantial) time soloing, particularly early on — when it seems about to erupt into a Beethoven sonata at a couple of points — and is only eventually "corralled" by the input of the two people involved, who do succeed in bending its contribution into a worthwhile shape by the end of the track. However, even given those developments — & I'm going to defer further thoughts on whether such a device is actually useful for anything, since experimentation can be an end of its own — the (acoustic) duo interaction that follows (Homecoming) between Lewis (on trombone for both tracks) & Mitchell (switching from alto to soprano sax) is instantly more compelling (albeit brief). The opening track (Quanta), featuring sopranino & laptop alone, also presents some compelling interactions — with high pitches being manipulated by electronics recalling Growing carrots... for me — although it ends with a repeating computer voice in rather whimsical fashion. (That track could surely be elaborated further, and already presents a different approach to electronic participation.) Despite my ambivalence regarding the IRCAM-derived electronic performer, though, as the liner notes state, the "trio" performance also recalls e.g. Streaming by Mitchell & Lewis with Muhal Richard Abrams (in what was their last album together): Once again, that's a piano-oriented album, and very lengthy (even exhausting), as recorded in 2005. I did mention Streaming in a discussion of This Brings Us To (also in June 2011), but didn't spend much time on it, in part because it was already "old" (& so just outside of the original domain for this project), and also because I didn't imagine myself developing an orientation toward more open-ended improvisation of the sort.... And not only is Streaming relatively free (especially for the Pi label), but involves older performers: As noted again in the new intro here a few months ago, I'd intended to focus on younger performers — in part because I was mistaken about how vibrant older people can (still) be in this scene.... (I also didn't realize that Abrams wouldn't release much more. And I didn't end up enjoying Made in Chicago much, as discussed in March 2015, which ended up being a swan song....) Indeed, I noted its "ceaseless imagination" at the time, but didn't pursue Streaming much. If I were to redo my history here (which is, of course, impossible), I'd've studied it more in those early days....

Finally (for now anyway), further to music history, I recently made some remarks on Ars Nova - New Music over in the early music section, but wanted to add a few thoughts here as well: Not only does the album make for a technically precise orientation to Ars Nova music via Pythagorean tuning (i.e. 3-limit just intonation), and argues passionately for the importance of such matters (but certainly not for the first time, as also noted), but for the importance of tuning & interval variety in general. As a brief orientation, one might consider the sequence by which a variety of musical modes was first cataloged, i.e. analyzed theoretically a posteriori, and for which variety had to be accommodated in order to justify the typological scheme, only to then serve as a theoretical straightjacket for subsequent production: In other words, music came increasingly to fit its theoretical classification a priori, to the point that the modern period installed broadly standard tuning (e.g. "equal temperament") in order to limit allowable note gradations. Of course, some music continued to make fine distinctions in practice, but at the level of music notation — & so of what music came to "be" in the modern world — variety was quashed: This is modern (musical) typology in a nutshell — & indeed it's so pervasive that it underlies catalog schemes here & elsewhere, including to open this entry.... (Hence one might note that I've needed to do a lot of typological penance here, so to speak, although much more such discussion can be found elsewhere.) I also want to note the Wolfgang von Schweinitz (b.1953) composition on the "two diatonic divisions of the major third" (i.e. [10/9] & [9/8], where [9/8]x[9/8] is the Pythagorean major third & [9/8]x[10/9]=[5/4] is the diatonic major third — i.e. of 5-limit JI) more specifically: I wasn't familiar with this composer, who now lives & works in California, and I don't know if he was involved with the program conception (& I think not), but it's appealing & relatively easygoing music on this tuning difference. (I discussed e.g. Kyle Gann's Hyperchromatica "for three retuned, computer-driven pianos" last March, for instance. Differences in tuning are one practical place to orient compositions....) It ends up in harmonics by the end (as does e.g. perhaps Machaut's most famous virelai, as performed here), and so shows a sort of progression. Of course, modernity involved a lot of "progression," with its tonic-dominant motion being installed as standard, something that contemporary musical activity has often sought to expand upon — including via tuning differences, as such distinctions are actively probed by much improvisatory practice these days (e.g. by Ernesto Rodrigues, for whom tuning concerns lead "normally" into formal considerations of timbral variation...). One might thus observe not only the development of a contemporary politics of frequency (as noted e.g. by Steve Goodman), i.e. according to preferences for or against a deep bass, but a contemporary politics of interval: My own interest around different tunings, and indeed around non-discrete notes, reflects just such a (relational) politics. And Ars Nova - New Music thus presents a rather basic (i.e. historical) interrogation of both musical segmentation & its typology. To put such a query into its simplest terms, then: What makes an individual tone a distinct musical note? (At least for me, answers begin relationally....) Moreover, is there actually a reason that we even need "musical notes" in the abstract?

Sawt Out (recorded over two days in studio in September 2016) is the first album from (yet) another improvising trio out of Berlin, this one featuring Lebanese trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj with German percussionists Burkhard Beins & Michael Vorfeld. (The Echtzeitmusik scene continues to impress.) It's generally a very sonically active album, even intense on some of the later tracks, and so (as seems to be a general trend) belies the minimalist origins of some of these timbral ideas & interactions. I first mentioned Kerbaj (b.1975) around Ariha Brass Quartet (an album that remains well worth hearing) in February 2017, and more recently with the more calmly enjoyable AAMM last June. (His distinctive "cartoon"-style graphic design also covers Sawt Out, as it has several of these other albums....) I hadn't mentioned it here, but even more recent from Kerbaj is Walls Will Fall (The 49 Trumpets of Jericho), recorded in May 2018, and (metaphorically?) true to its subtitle: That's kind of a relentless, building wave of a performance — almost an inversion of the second track on Sawt Out. Beins first appeared in this space around Membrane (with John Butcher & Mark Wastell) in July 2015, and then soon after with the percussion quintet Glück in September 2015. Most recently was Third Issue from Trio Sowari (also on Mikroton) last July.... Although it's composed music, Glück made a distinct impression on me at the time, and moreover included Vorfeld, who also appears on Nashaz — featuring Kerbaj associate Sharif Sehnaoui from "A" Trio (& so AAMM). To add to the "international relations" vibe then, Sawt Out was also published by Malaysian label Herbal International, again "spreading the wealth" (per recent remarks on Skullmarks...), and appearing on the package a bit eerily next to a logo for the Goethe Institut: So there are already a variety of relations in play, reflective of our era, before even considering the music.... Sawt Out continues to tour (under that name, which is rather more corny than the music...), and there are e.g. some videos on Beins' site (where this album is actually listed as a 2019 release, although it's 2018 according to Herbal), allowing one to watch what they're doing: That's a good thing, because I really wasn't sure: The piercing highs that punctuate the third & fourth tracks (with the latter reminding of the opening to Growing carrots...), for instance, seem like they might have arisen from electronic manipulations, but judging by the videos, these come from Beins bowing hanging Tibetan singing bowls — although they're not nearly so intense in the video performances, so who knows. Moreover, the rapidity (& repetition) of articulations that Kerbaj achieves is at least partly explained not only by the various objects levitated by the breath from his inverted trumpet bell, but by a flexible balloon/tube that he uses as a mouthpiece & can pinch rhythmically. (The only possible "electronic" gadget I saw was a small propeller fan, which at least in principle could have used mechanical energy.) Whether that explains the sheer speed, density & relentlessness of the second track — which seems to be edited to begin mid-cacophony — I don't know, because again, the album is more intense. (The album is also tagged as "eai" which might simply indicate its general sound, although as noted in the past, the extensive microphone placement does result in basically an electroacoustic album, and necessarily so, considering the careful balance involved.) That second track generally makes me flinch when it begins, although its bracing intensity (emphasizing dissonant continuity, not unlike Boule-spiele, discussed here in January 2017 & so actually after this recording was made) opens up with time into a more discernible metallic clattering.... I also, specifically wanted to "check the video" (& I usually avoid the commercial video sites) because of the title, as I wondered if the intense high glissandi from Beins might have been produced by a musical saw, but apparently not.... (I also got a chance to see what Vorfeld does with a small hammered dulcimer, covered in cloth to produce fast & precisely repetitive "clicks" — as also featured on Nashaz.) So while it seems that an album such as Sawt Out could not be made without contemporary electronics (microphones & mixing in particular), it also appears that the musicians are not using any electronic devices directly: That also differs from e.g. Coluro, which might otherwise be the most similar reference for the less intense (& longest) opening track, which is a sonic essay that I enjoyed immediately — & that remains a highlight. (The "break" to start the second track required more exposure to appreciate.) The specific exploration of timbral space, on Coluro including around flugelhorn, also suggests a (further) trumpet inquiry: I'm not actually familiar with any traditional use of trumpet (or similar) in Middle Eastern music, unless (perhaps) one gets into ancient prayer calls, the shofar, etc. (And hence the flugelhorn mention, as it was explicitly derived from an animal horn as well.... And as an aside, the most interesting, recent feature of shofar in this general musical space is probably that on Shofar Rags by Alvin Curran.) So not only does Kerbaj transform his instrument via various preparations & additional objects, but the concept of "call" as well, such that Sawt Out takes on a transformative vibe more broadly. (It's also wonderfully coordinated, such that complex timbres can blend across the three performers into composite sounds, undoubtedly due to sound stage engineering as advanced in its own way as the performers' mechanical preparations & techniques — here with the recording itself attributed to Rainer Robben, the mixing to Beins, and the mastering to Werner Dafeldecker, also of Polwechsel....) It's consequently a highly potent album, perhaps more "ordinary" in its timbres on the extraordinarily poised & communicative first track, but eventually coming to various points of searing & wobbling concentration — sometimes beyond the edge of comfort (broadly speaking). What is humanity & what is machine? What is personal & what is impersonal? Where is the call & to whom or what is it addressed? Moreover, anything outside of the ensuing musical intensity tends to vanish from the mind, until the world returns again with the silence of its cessation.... One does then (eventually) step back, perhaps reluctantly, into an ordinary stream of time.

I first noticed Marco Scarassatti & his homemade instruments on the (ethnologically inflected) quartet album Amoa hi on Creative Sources (discussed October 2016): Not only are the sounds he manages to conjure of interest, but so is his environmental & situational approach to music, as exemplified again by the subsequent solo Casa Acústica (mentioned in both April & November 2017). The idea of various sounds both throughout one's home & throughout one's day, some more arbitrary & some more closely conceived, coming together to form a musical tapestry is appealing to me. There's a basic reality to it, and Scarassatti is obviously attuned not only to hearing his surroundings, but to interacting with them in various ways: There's almost a sense of sculpting even beyond sound. So I was intrigued to see Scarassatti appearing with a rather different quartet on Not Two (recorded in São Paolo, also in April 2017), with Japanese legend Otomo Yoshihide (on electric guitar, bass & turntables) joining fellow Brazilians Antonio Panda Gianfratti (on percussion) & Paulo Hartmann (on "prepared 3rd bridge guitar" & local instruments). I did mention Yoshihide in an aside here in July 2016, but hadn't really featured him (although I've heard him in several contexts at this point).... Gianfratti — who has appeared on Creative Sources himself, with Hans Koch, and elsewhere with e.g. Veryan Weston, Marcio Mattos & Yedo Gibson (all featured here already) — was new to me, though, as was Hartmann — who is noted online for his "open eco-design" principles. So, that all sounds worthwhile — with Scarassatti being listed on (another folk instrument, the) viola de cocho, as well as (some of) his homemade instruments. Moreover, the album is titled Psychogeography, an Improvisational Derive, and so explicitly evokes Situationist International: Just how might this recording from Brazil situate listeners within their own psychogeography? (Another obvious reference on the theme, at least for me, is the two Dérives by Boulez, the second being a personal favorite among his works.) I'm not sure that the album really does that, since after all, it took place a couple of years ago in a distant locale (& a "derive" is inherently local, isn't it?), but there's still much to ponder & enjoy: Perhaps the situation has as much to do with the various strange instruments & who is doing what as anything. (And the latitude & longitude track titles certainly seem to suggest locations that are not always the place of performance.) I'm not sure to what extent I should be trying to attribute sounds to particular musicians & instruments, in fact, rather than listening to the ensemble more generally... does it matter what is what? For a derive, maybe it does.... In any case, the album opens with a layered industrial vibe, especially around plucked strings. With the regional folk instruments, it's almost as if a carnival sometimes pokes through a haze of noise, and indeed the opening track is a high point of the album: As static mounts & rhythms break, some sort of electronic vocalizing emerges. (The "vocalizing," deeper this time, only reappears on the last track.) The strong contours are suggestive of much more. The second track, though, is much more minimalist — again mostly around string plucking, ringing this time, with variable resonance — extended & (mostly) quietly atmospheric. That ends up being the mood for most of the hour long album, although there are simmering or pounding passages, massive bass resonance at times, and especially various scrapings & bent strings. (Psychogeography "finally" becomes noisier only with the last track, with its eventual shifting resonances — another high point — leading into something of a farewell....) Although some tracks don't seem to be as dynamic as others, there is nonetheless a sense of calm that emerges — eventually (as required or expected?) directing attention toward the listening environment itself as the album ends. And whereas it does create a sense of space, that space is also intersected at various points by electronics & other (escaping) resonances, thus resisting a sense of separation & perhaps even projecting a degree of continuity between the "then" of the performance & the listener's now — indeed ultimately forging more provocation than statement.

Coincidentally on the heels of Sawt Out, Michael Vorfeld appears on another album (recorded last March) out of Berlin that I want to note: Improvisors (although the title is sometimes listed as merely the performers' names) was just released on Jaap Blonk's Kontrans label (& is available on his Bandcamp site, along with some other examples), and documents Blonk in dialog with fellow vocalist Ute Wassermann — with Vorfeld accompanying. Both vocalists have been featured on favorites from past years here, North of Blanco (2014) for Blonk & Natura venomous (2015) for Wasserman, and although they have different arsenals of techniques, they work rather well together in dialog: While Wasserman employs a variety of whistles & buzzers to extend pitch & timbre, Blonk sometimes moves far into the domain of electronic manipulation, such that while the voices occupy the center of the musical stage, they also fade into a variety of sounds at the margins. Improvisors is thus less "polyphonic" & layered than the previous albums, with Vorfeld (also credited enigmatically with "light bulbs") clearly in an accompaniment mode. (I should also note the louder & more aggressive duo that Blonk released a couple of years ago with Tomomi Adachi, also from Berlin, Asemic Dialogues: It features electronics from both performers even more pervasively, cartoon voices, etc. Indeed there's more "conflict" there. And I had mentioned Adachi here in December 2017 with Goldsbleed, an "all-star" Berlin quartet to which I thought he deferred too much....) The result is a generally spacious feel, within which the vocalists might sometimes collide in the center — almost a (bizarre) dueling recitative feel, sometimes yielding a sense of ritual. The emphasis on foreground interaction also yields an explicit sense of balance, often as framed by percussion, but also a self-consciousness through the overlapping vocal techniques, which come to be set in (relatively) sharp relief. Sometimes I feel tempted to note improvising vocal releases more generally, but am (currently?) wanting to (be patient &) restrict myself to discussing albums that really deserve discussion.... Particularly as it brings together ideas & sonorities from previous albums of note, though, Improvisors did need a mention: And there are still many possibilities remaining for vocal participation in these free improvising contexts, of course, as relatively few interactions & textures have been elaborated into full artistic statements.

Of course, when I say "deserve discussion," what I really mean is that an album (or conceivably something else) excites me personally, in the sense of prompting comment: There are albums that immediately catch my attention, and there are albums that I find appealing after more exposure, and there are albums that I tend to like & might even feel like discussing in some sense.... But the latter is where things get a little trickier, in that what I might want to discuss doesn't necessarily fit the album that well in general, i.e. is a tangential issue of some sort, etc. The other issue is that I can't help but think that a sentiment like "this album deserves more attention" is more vain than "I really like this!" I mean, there's an ego relation buried (not too deeply) in the latter too, but again, it makes for a clear prompt, and even better, direct excitement with what someone has done — rather than involving broad considerations including the space of music journalism (or criticism, which is not quite the same), etc. Some of those sorts of comments are probably best made outside of specific examples, although it's always tempting to "weigh in" on the prompts of the day — again suggesting vanity. (And many people will always want specific examples.) So that's an orientation I'm going to try to consider a little more carefully here, in particular to rethink the nexus between my more theoretical orientations & mentioning specific music. And that's also where my thoughts turn as I transition this space from a "specific project" (in the sense of a framing, but also perhaps of an ending) to a more general ongoing orientation....

I had no idea at the time, but after I reprised a discussion of Pascal Niggenkemper's Talking Trash last month — and in particular highlighted its double trio of clarinet, piano & bass — Joachim Badenhorst (who appears on that album) released a new (2019!) album by the trio Watussi, Stargazers: Also included is Niggenkemper himself, as well as Austrian pianist Ingrid Schmoliner (b.1978). It's a followup to their atmospheric (including some yodeling) album Watussi (2013), and is once again produced by Schmoliner, but released on Badenhorst's Klein label. (The latter packaging involves, in this case, a recycled cardboard sleeve wrapped in a large print of stargazer lilies....) Badenhorst's previous release was Typhoon Days, which basically consists of (mostly melodic) music he plays over field recordings. Although Typhoon Days is relatively straightforward in that sense, it seems to have inspired Badenhorst, and Stargazers involves field recordings extensively: The scant information credits "additional field recordings" to Badenhorst from several months after the noted January 2017 recording session, so I'm not sure how it works. A couple of tracks seem to be entirely field recordings, principally of crowd scenes, especially of children (e.g. filling the rather affective seventh track, with its strangely shifting rhythms). At other times, though, some chattering & e.g. crickets seem to descend under the musical performance — so I don't know if all the field recordings date to later. In any case, the resulting album involves a distinctive & affecting overall tapestry, such that instrumental passages fade into basic human commotion, whether minimally or with more activity. There's a sort of "view at a distance" impression that emerges as a result, perhaps not so unlike Tyshawn Sorey's recent Pillars (albeit there in monumental proportion) — which also evokes Tibet (from which at least some of Badenhorst's field recordings were apparently taken). One might say that the different tracks conjure — together — a sense of multiple temporalities, or a distinctive sense of time that almost seems to suggest disembodiment. (It reminds me a bit of when I first saw Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance back in the 1980s....) Some of the tracks do also involve the development of fully instrumental textures as well, usually in a composite approach fusing the instruments timbrally: The piano might sound like a gamelan, with a creaking horn or grinding bass filling another register. Stargazers actually opens with a sort of drone that soon takes on a quasi-Indian character — but such specific evocations fade as the album proceeds (& if anything, comes to evoke eerie, industrial dance house music by the end). One might then ponder, tangentially, how often "new age" music ends up mimicking (or appropriating) other world cultures... but here Watussi does develop their own sound, beyond the field recordings, in later tracks. (At one point, they almost sound like a jazzy horn trio, incorporating various bent tones.) Frankly, none of the sections seem like something I'd especially enjoy by themselves (although some textures could certainly be elaborated further), but somehow they add up to a very effective album — & an album that ends up projecting a strong social message, if less explicitly so than Talking Trash.

Another (also 2019!) album that doesn't seem to fit my usual priorities here, but likewise projects a strongly spiritual component, is Sedition by a horn trio fronted by Blaise Siwula (on clarinets & tenor sax). I've noted Siwula in the past, which is of course why I noticed him now, beginning with Jeff Shurdut, and then in another trio album on Setola di Maiale, Tesla Coils (discussed September 2014). Later, I especially came to appreciate his sophisticated world-tinged clarinet improvisation with the Lisbon String Trio on K'Ampokol Che K'Aay (first discussed here in July 2017, the same month that Sedition was recorded in Brooklyn), and to an extent (feeding into that appreciation) his Mexican trio, Mérida Encuentro (whose second album was discussed here in July 2016). On Sedition then, Siwula turns less to classical abstraction than to a bluesy feel & "roots music" inspiration in general. It's thus a rather straightforward album in terms of both texture & ensemble alignment, but I've found it to be consistently effective & enjoyable. At times there's a return to a bit of creak & grind style, but most of it involves rather straightforward — even "neolithic" (although the strings don't actually fit that, even given some license) — lyricism & rhythm — with Siwula supported by Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic on bass (whom I mentioned on Futura Spartan Suite with Todd Capp & Guillermo Gregorio last June) & Jon Panikkar on drums (who is new to me, but apparently has a "punk" background). A dance-like quality even comes to emerge, the lightness of living itself intertwining the blues per se.... (The result also reminds me a bit of the Buddhist-inspired Peter Kuhn Trio on Intention — also a track title on Sedition — as discussed here last March....) For whatever reason, there's such an engaging & affective quality to this album that I simply have to mention it. Most of the tracks can be related to traditional styles, but together, that sort of individual accounting doesn't seem like the point: Like Stargazers — albeit via rather different sounds & relations — basic simplicity (& in this case, directness) comes to yield potent overall expression.

Writing about a release from the first half of 2018 today, I almost feel like some sort of April Fool: Of course, there's no shame in belatedly learning of an enjoyable release, and certainly none in making a fine album, but I start to feel pressure to highlight more 2019 releases. Actually, this situation seems to be typical in this space, since although Sîn did appear quite early in 2018, I didn't start writing about other albums that would become "favorites" until June. It still seems odd, but that seems to be the main rhythm here, with the biggest bursts of releases of interest coming in the early summer & then straggling in around the New Year (i.e. about half a year later). Anyway, regardless of whether I feel a compulsion to list something under "2019," good music is good music, and I was quite taken with Live at Ftarri (recorded in Tokyo in April 2017) on Raw Tonk Records. (I'd mentioned Raw Tonk here in June 2015 around Alex Ward, but lost track of their releases until a more recent reminder....) There, an English trio of Sam Andreae on saxophone, David Birchall on guitar, and Otto Willberg on double bass meets Japanese legend Toshimaru Nakamura on no-input mixing board for a series of improvised musical instigations. The English trio actually has a prior album, also worthwhile, A Hair in the Chimney recorded in 2016 (as well as the more "environmental" Live in Beppu from the same Japan tour). (That follows two prior trio albums with Andreae & Birchall — all to be found on Birchall's Bandcamp site. And I had briefly mentioned Birchall with Richard Scott & Auslanders in July 2016, but not the others, although they've also recorded with Scott. Andreae in particular seems to be known for his "pinched" background articulations, i.e. muted sax colors.) Apparently I hadn't mentioned Nakamura here previously, but have heard him in several varied productions... for whatever reason, he really clicks with this preexisting trio. There's a strong tension between aggression & restraint, a sort of channeled intensity that evokes a different kind of balance: Resonances might hover or shift, even echo, but the "pinched" quality orbiting the sax could be applied to the quartet more broadly, as what I might otherwise describe as industrial grinding never seems especially heavy or overwhelming — i.e. never erupts full-throatedly (or fingeredly). Rather the interaction is animated, and oriented on rhythmic variety (even counterpoint), with a fresh energy in each track, often into clashing dissonances around wobbly yet assertive drones — but retains a "mediate" or "emerging" coherence. (The electronic quality might be compared to e.g. Skiagraphía for its hovering & bizarre sort of underlying clockwork, or to Coluro — released days earlier — for its timbral segmentation.) The combination of familiarity & experiment is immediately ear-catching, but also doesn't really lead into a catharsis (as e.g. Roughhousing & its otherwise similar trio) or involve the sort of naturalistic repose of the also analogous Hunt at the Brook (or indeed Runcible Four, which sometimes orbits Daniel Thompson on guitar in similar, bent ways). In contrast, Live at Ftarri seems to remain in some sort of nonexistent (yet fully present), liminal zone: It becomes itself without its components ever fully revealing (or perhaps being) themselves. So although also projecting balanced expression, Live at Ftarri thus continues to be a provocative & shifting spur toward ongoing thought & creativity.

As I understand, guitarist Henk Zwerver came to emphasize music relatively late in life, but he's now released four albums on Creative Sources in the past year-plus, most out of the Amsterdam improvising scene: I hadn't commented to this point, but did want to note the most recent trio, Midnight Tea Suite (recorded in May 2018), which presents a less traditionally jazzy & indeed spikier feel around frequent collaborator Ziv Taubenfeld on bass clarinet, and Maya Felixbrodt (who is new to me) on viola. Midnight Tea Suite follows the quintet album Zwerv Live (released in 2017) & septet album Music From Any Moment (2018), both of which traverse a range of stylistic associations, the latter especially about "strategies" for septet interaction. They are thus almost "collage" albums, albeit featuring some fine playing from Zwerver & e.g. Luis Vicente (trumpet). Somewhat more striking (at least to start) is For Oumuama (2018) by the Bertch Quartet with Edith Steyer (of Berlin), which ends up being more sparse & then traditionally jazzy (again).... In contrast, the Zyft trio on Midnight Tea Suite seems to be seeking a more "nuts & bolts" experimental approach to fitting assertive figures together collectively (at times rather raucously), and features some great simultaneous moments. It also features solos. (The guitar also enters sounding strikingly like a piano.) Yet there is also "an edge" developing, albeit with quasi-romantic interludes, such that a sometimes searing intensity emerges from tight exchanges that in turn spread out into solo articulations & more melodic explorations.... Midnight Tea Suite thus seems less reliant on traditional "jazz" expressions or collage ("ands" aside...), albeit retaining a similar individual spotlight at times. So it seems like part of a continuing stylistic progression for the intriguing Zwerver....

Further to 2018, other Creative Sources releases continue to appear: I also want to highlight Undergrowth (recorded in Bari in August 2017) by Francesco Massaro (alto sax, clarinets, etc.), Giovanni Cristino (piano) & Walter Forestiere (percussion). I hadn't mentioned Massaro but he also has a solo album on CS, and appears in a sextet on Leo.... The others are new for me. I like the concepts of Undergrowth, in some ways translating (& grounding) the "undercommons" concept (from e.g. Harney & Moten's book) in a "natural" setting, and some of the scuttling through thickets is indeed distinctive & appealing. There's also a rhythmic sophistication & some compelling pan-trio combos that further seem to articulate a musical over-under. The piano is quite appealing at times, with its preparations, but also becomes more assertive, almost into a new age quality (at which point Undergrowth might be compared to Stargazers & its similarly soulful quality, as discussed last week), I guess so as to bring undergrowth into the light.... There is indeed a (technical) progression through the album, with the sparser & more mysterious tracks speaking to me (perhaps ironically) more directly. Still, the album concept comes off coherently via technical relations (even including bebop) between perspectives on different tracks.... (And while I'm here, I also want to note that the "digital" release from Ernesto Rodrigues that I discussed here as Efterår in October has now been repackaged as Egin on the main CS label.... I should also note Ganglia by vocal quartet VocColours from last year, to be mentioned again soon amid a pending Braxton discussion, as well as the sparse Fourtyfour fiftythree trio around Georg Wissel....) Albums such as this illustrate the breadth of Creative Sources, which is becoming something of a post-everything musical space, i.e. post-serial, post-concrète, post-collage, post-drone.... (The most comparable label right now is probably FMR, with both having their own distinct focuses, along with a more general post-everything orientation....) And now perhaps I'm (mostly at least) finished talking about 2018 albums?

Anthony Braxton is likely the most imposing musical figure in the generalized post-jazz space: That is, his music draws on jazz, often profoundly, but also opens a variety of new horizons. That last sentence could describe several twentieth & twenty-first century musical figures (or hundreds or thousands, if one embraces broader circles of contribution), arising from a variety of nationalities etc., but Braxton is also both an African American living & working in USA, and someone who has largely focused on a variety of (intersecting, as posited by Braxton himself) compositional forms & structures. In the former sense, including via his AACM lineage, Braxton himself retains a quite tangible connection to jazz ("proper") of the 1960s, while also moving less into the realms of free improvisation — realms taken up increasingly widely in Europe & elsewhere, and indeed (mostly) prioritized in this space. That said, Braxton's music does involve considerable improvisation & performer choice more generally — as does classical composition at large in the wake of e.g. Stockhausen & Cage — and the maestro himself does continue to appear on improvised (i.e. non-composition-based) albums. However, it's through his body of compositional work that Braxton appears so imposing, particularly via the sheer volume of his output. (And beyond "jazz" associations, what might separate Braxton most clearly from his composer colleagues, of whatever stripe, is the fact that so much of his massive & adventurous output has been performed, including so many premieres for enthusiastic audiences, whether live or via technological retention. And the latter surely does rest on his jazz legacy....) In the sense I've been using here, then, Braxton's compositional activity serves to forge a multifaceted nexus that is then articulated relationally (& partially) in performance via musician spontaneity: Because of his extensive workshopping, Braxton's music rarely sounds stiff in performance, and indeed seems regularly to engage both performer & listener imaginations, providing an active portal or interface into the (musical) worlds that he's been creating. So the compositional activity can still be figured as "preliminary" to the performance (involving — in a sense, being validated by — improvisation), but in Braxton's case, any particular (at least recent) composition provides a specific perspective on his broader output, one from which its performance might well go on (explicitly) to draw. Braxton's (composed) music might thus require a decade or more of work before achieving a mature result in performance. His situation is certainly not unique in this respect, including among AACM members, as e.g. Henry Threadgill has likewise worked through a particular set of stylistic & compositional ideas with various colleagues over extended periods, such that e.g. This Brings Us To could arrive near the beginning of my project here. (One might then figure In for a Penny, in for a Pound as elaborating the same basic stylistic focus....) In Braxton's case, the first major summation of his Ghost Trance Music (GTM) arrived around the same time, with the release of 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006, but in terms of my specific project, it was (coincidentally) a couple of years earlier, and so largely off my radar. Before turning to the new GTM (Syntax) 2017, however, there is more to say about this situation: The imposing quality of Braxton's musical output is enacted (obviously enough) through his amazing musical imagination & cultivated technical approach, i.e. his compositional & performance activity per se, but also via sheer volume, in this case instantiated in the 9CD set 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 (& more recently by the 12CD GTM (Syntax) 2017 choral extravaganza), performed by a 12+1tet of instrumentalists. In hindsight, I should have spent a lot more time on that earlier GTM set, but I also want to take a moment to consider how it articulated, formally, to my project here: On the one hand, it's composed music (although I was more accepting of composed music early in the project) performed by a relatively large ensemble, and released (only) in a large set requiring substantial commitment. (Perhaps I should also note that, per its online history, the Tri-Centric Foundation started its second life in 2010, the year I started writing in this space.) On the other hand, it's not only landmark music that took over a decade to develop, but continues to be a significant building block (both conceptually & technically) for Braxton's subsequent work. So in that sense, my "objections" are trivial & formulaic — yet have a real impact on how I (& presumably others) allocate scarce resources, especially our attention. There have been various situations in which I'd've been inclined to listen to an hour of music, but ten hours...? It's a lot to ask, and I also can't help but think that some of these releases are constructed in such monumental terms, in part, as a way of gatekeeping: One shouldn't dabble in Braxton's music, but must make a real commitment? It's difficult for me to imagine that such an accomplished musician would be attempting to avoid criticism by making his music relatively inaccessible, but there does seem to be a concept of authority engaged in these releases that goes beyond presenting music per se. Perhaps it's simply a matter of having observed how the music industry ultimately treats so many musicians, as Braxton certainly has.... (Things have changed, of course, although not all for the better.... Still, Braxton's appearance on Bandcamp does now make it possible e.g. to audition one composition at a time, so perhaps this aspect of the situation is becoming moot.) Basically then, the intentional naïveté of my approach here — e.g. the determination to listen to the most recent music without too much investigation of precedents — clashed both with the timing of Braxton's output, as well as his approach to developing & releasing music: From my perspective, it's an approach that served its purposes well, but is now also in need of modification, greater attentiveness to Braxton's output being one obvious incentive. (The more basic reason is that it's already largely achieved the result of orienting me within this space, i.e. without being too overwhelming....) In particular, the more than a decade (& much more than a decade if one includes the development of the choral performances) spent developing GTM spanned Braxton's musical activity from the classic quartet performances (which I did spend some time on previously...), which notably incorporate a variety of dodecaphonic ideas into an otherwise fairly typical improvising quartet framework, to a rather thorough reimagining of jazz forms & relations in general. Moreover, I've come to realize (in more specific terms) that Braxton's GTM concept — inspired by Native American practice of musical & physical (i.e. dance) memory & futurity — meshes with my own ideas on musical & especially temporal layering, i.e. interrogation of temporality per se. (Much of the "stuff" of GTM remains jazzy here, however, such that Native evocations are not immediate. However, with exposure, I do find the temporal structure to be meaningful in those terms. I might even call it an interrogation of spectrality.... There is indeed a sense of everything happening at once, which Braxton has gone on to cultivate more explicitly & extensively....) GTM melodies are then about this 3-way coincidence of past/present/future, to the point that they seem to suggest that Braxton's music has always been this way.... (One might also note e.g. the rather different Afro-futurism & concepts of timelessness of Sun Ra....) As the liner notes to 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 already emphasize, then, this music consists in pathways (& those pathways are in part serialized....): There are also a variety of interactions possible between different groups of musicians, such that smaller groups form & unform, perhaps communicating with gestures, and establishing what Braxton calls a "multi-hierarchic" situation. Different sorts of simultaneity thus emerge from slight variations & temporal displacements, e.g. whether someone is leading or following — a sort of asynchronous quality that opens up to a variety of cross-directions. (The latter particularly attracts me as both world-making & world-tracing trans-practice....) And whereas the Iridium set does involve such variety of activity, it also involves some starkness of line at times, as well as a general "chorale" feel (homophonic versus polyphonic), as the musicians often come together around the central melodic elements. The latter is then an aspect of the workshop orientation, and basically involves the (further) education of the musicians within the Braxton universe, as his massive sets always seem to build (in coherence & elaboration) from one hour-long performance to the next. (In this case, and again in the SGTM set, the program progresses — chronologically within Braxton's oeuvre — coming to involve the later "accelerator whip" class of GTM in the Iridium set, i.e. still later than the compositions of the SGTM series.) In this, Braxton thus builds a sort of musical theory of relativity, step by step... where serial melodies traverse harmonic space as a sort of time travel (because the performers are ultimately stationary, train analogies aside). Temporal notions here are thus in rather sharp contrast to those of serialized rhythm, particularly in this "accelerator" mode (because, after all, let's remember that time travel is actually easy: One usually moves forward in time one second per second. And this is not a fact to dismiss!) Particularly with the formal linkages to other Braxtonian — & it seems that this term has (unfortunately) been appropriated in a variety of ways! — styles, there is thus a "nuts & bolts" approach to musical relationality that emerges, i.e. as an intensive interweaving via embedded (layered) sorts of collage-processes.

As compared with 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006, then, GTM (Syntax) 2017 is indeed somewhat more preliminary music (although perhaps it continues to assert & enact the meaninglessness of chronological time in Braxton's oeuvre), not yet the "accelerator whip," and indeed beginning with the so-called "first species" of GTM, generally articulated in steady quavers. The earlier compositions do come off relatively stiffly then, but lead into the "accelerator class" of the final trilogy of Syntactical Ghost Trance Music (SGTM). Whereas the final three discs of the 12CD set are thus more appealing to me, as noted, the set does build from start to finish: One learns (along with the singers it seems, as their interpretations grow in depth as well) the SGTM by progressing through it materially, and indeed much about the GTM (pre-Iridium comps) & Braxton's subsequent production more generally.... This was moreover a long term project, as Kyoko Kitamura (mentioned here already with Geometry of Caves, as well as her own Protean Labyrinth last September), who leads the twelve member mixed choir, remarks that she began working on this project in 2010, when Braxton handed her a stack of scores.... (As noted, GTM involves different groups & sections with emergent leadership, such that one might better say that Kitamura begins as leader or frames the performance, in the absence of Braxton himself as performer.) Whereas earlier GTM interpretations involve the "stuff" of jazz, SGTM is (here) all vocal, and not obviously related to jazz singing styles either. It's very much "choral music" in the sense of exploring what can be done with a 12-voice mixed choir as a technical medium. For that reason, I was frankly surprised to see the extensive discussion on the Free Jazz Blog, since nothing about that space had suggested an interest in choral music. I guess Braxton is sufficient draw anyway — & he did personally highlight the significance of this set — and the writers there do go on to provide a nice survey & recording history of these compositions. (Thus it appears that the same compositions can appear in instrumental settings. Here, though, the various letters & numbers being enunciated refer to spatial movements that can be invoked in a multimedia setting. Yes, there is a very "raw" thread of nuts & bolts running through the SGTM series....) I've been particularly interested in possibilities of vocal expression since the beginning of this project, however, and have spent a great deal of time on (e.g. late medieval) choral music. When it comes to contemporary choral ideas, I might then go on to note pieces by Scelsi from the previous generation, which interrogate some of the same issues of layering & displacement, as well as e.g. Stimmung (& its emphasis on "mystical" harmonics), or even more dated (yet relevant) concepts of Schoenberg regarding Sprechstimme.... (In the realm of more contemporary production, I already noted Ganglia by the four-voice VocColours, recorded in Köln in April 2016 but released in late 2018, and involving similar concerns around vocal interaction, there layered around a formal structure emerging simultaneously from pianist Andrei Razin. As far as more extended vocal technique, experimenting beyond solos, I had highlighted some such duos around Improvisors last month....) Beyond tracing central passageways through Braxton's broad output, then, SGTM can be seen also as tackling the contemporary choral form in general: It involves various phonemes as noted, building to longer texts or exclamations, involving vocalizing, some overtones, extended vocalizations (whistles, squeaks, whispers, etc.) — all with extensive variation in senses of foreground & background, particularly as the singers regroup themselves more spontaneously in the later interpretations. Density & pacing rarely vary, however, especially in the earlier works: Quick phrases & motion between front & back are the norm, taking on almost a "chirping" quality. Moreover, there are some held tones & even some prominent glissandi at times, but the music rarely moves into spectral modes per se, nor does it trouble a sense of "individual note." There is also limited variation in timbre, although (again, especially as the interpretations progress) singers do sometimes vary their articulation & diction into various "characters" that do add a timbral dimension to the choral interactions. (Some statements seem to be more specifically addressed toward the listener than others, for instance.) The whole production tends to maintain a basic "operatic" diction, however, or at least typical US stage projection & technique. In both cases, a sense of (what I call) segmentation is maintained, in that the vocal practice announces itself as a stage practice, and not part of everyday life, while the notes themselves remain distinctly within their historical Western conceptions: Whereas the latter underpins the "erector set" approach that Braxton uses to articulate (that is, both divide & connect) his various musical perspectives, it also marks some conservatism in 2019. (In other words, in that sense, Braxton's choral output is not as contemporary as it might be, technically: It doesn't problematize the musical note per se.) Factors of timbre & segmentation stand out for me, in fact, because (at least this) SGTM interpretation sets itself apart, as noted, i.e. as distinct from everyday sonic experiences of crowds, etc.: This crowd sounds much more artificial. And yet, while "artificial" might seem like criticism (& I do mean to interrogate segmentation quite broadly), this is apparently what Braxton wants: He wants to create separate worlds, apparently to be perceived as distinct from our own, to be visited for purposes of contemplation & experiment. (As also akin to Sun Ra, his music also continues to embrace space themes etc. as a means of "thinking otherwise....") One might then posit a particular construction of theatricality per se, and in turn modes of engaging with life: Braxton apparently intends us to return, after a perhaps quite extensive tour, to where we've been. However, as the interpretations proceed, and as the rhythmic complexity of the basic melodies increases, more asides appear, dominant textures become more troubled, energy varies, e.g. anger emerges.... The situation thus might not be as fluid as some, but becomes rather rich: Braxton wants to "unlock every door" to his "holistic and productive" "fantasy environment." (The performance is indeed ultimately more nuanced & involved than that on the Iridium set, which comes off as more preliminary in comparison.) The basic "stuff" thus becomes rhetorical here, if not rhetoric per se, such that its experimental "use" comes to entail an interrogation of speech & communication. (And so it would be difficult to be more broadly relevant than that....) In this, SGTM projects a (very) human relational spectrum as its basic affective stance. For me, the opening & subsequent elaboration of No. 340, feeling out of phase with itself, is the most striking, but numerous moments continue to emerge from repeated listening, especially to the final trilogy....

GTM (Syntax) 2017 was ultimately recorded over six days (two compositions per day) in January 2017, yielding more than eleven hours of music. Regarding reconfiguring my project here, I felt some obligation (beyond an interest in Braxton, and in part to overcome the shock of a 12CD set) to have a listen, in part because I didn't anticipate much interest in choral music from other corners. Perhaps that was wrong, but the release also coincided (fortuitously) with having completed Postmodern Aesthetics, and so with a bit of weight coming off of my (intellectual anyway) shoulders. That completion was also a spur to revisit my naïveté in this space, as noted, and so to ask, if my acquaintance with Braxton's latest music was blunted by my reluctance to engage more fully with his history, what had actually caught my ear & why? (And I should also note that I did a quick search for Braxton's earlier books discussing his own music, but didn't find them to be available. Perhaps another time....) At one point, I featured some of his Echo Echo Mirror House Music (EEMHM, discussed here in June 2013), which pushes the concept of simultaneously connecting all of his output to a limit, there via recorded playback even beyond dense layering: Including the syntactical commands, EEMHM also engages notions of multimedia, to the point that Braxton conceives a Disney style (per his own evocation, which did make me shudder a little) tour of a musical world (or attraction), one through which the listener would move: Such a concept of movement does fit with my prior remarks regarding large ensembles, and in particular their "fit" for ordinary (i.e. stereo) recording. When it comes to EEMHM as it stands, the whole thing makes for quite a din, and indeed a carnival atmosphere, relentless... so the opportunity to move about within it does sound welcome to me. I suppose that Braxton's music will indeed yield a sort of virtual world someday, then, one that can be physically visited, complete with robots & games & indeed various "fantasy environments from which to process real world conflicts...?" Within this vision, whereas I might ponder issues of hierarchy & control of such an affective technology (& Braxton apparently does likewise), a sense of spectator activity could certainly return, i.e. a more visceral sort of active listening, yielding (to) different senses of narration as well.... (Such a sense of "visitation" also contrasts with the "off-putting" monumentality of so many Braxton releases. Disney does project a welcome, after all....) Less chaotic has been the Diamond Curtain Wall Music (DCWM), and even prior to studying GTM more extensively, that's what had most caught my ear: I've yet to see a more detailed discussion of DCWM, as appears for GTM, SGTM & EEMHM in the definitive sets devoted to each, but it's known to combine GTM with another (more melodic?) type of composition, Falling River Music (FRM), as well as to employ an electronic improviser called Supercollider. When it comes to software in improvisation (itself a form of composition), then, I can note both the massive Phase/transitions from the great Pauline Oliveros et al. & more recently, "Voyager" by George Lewis (mentioned here around Voyage and Homecoming in February): Whereas the latter sounds like a piano, others mostly sound like organs (such that a greater variety of timbral exploration seems to remain very possible in this space — and Braxton does initiate such steps in later episodes of 12 Duets, even coming to strange vocal sampling by the end & so perhaps to an evocation of SGTM...). What one finds, first of all, in DCWM then, is further interrogation of presence beyond the temporal spectrality figured so extensively by GTM: There's a sense of both immersion & distance, which the "wall" of the electronics both establishes & punctures.... So in keeping with the naïveté of this project, DCWM & its surrealist strands of time had a rather direct & contemporary appeal to me, and so I listed Braxton Quartet Live at Sesc Pompeia here in "favorites" (as discussed in April 2016). In retrospect, how arbitrary was this choice? Actually, not so arbitrary! Unless I've missed something (which is certainly possible), Live at Sesc Pompeia not only involves some of Braxton's most widely renowned current collaborators, but is the most recent performance of DCWM released on record. Indeed, 2014 was obviously a pivotal year for Braxton's discography, with not only this recording being made, but also Trillium J, as well as the release of monument 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 in addition to (historical jazz interrogation) Quintet (Tristano) 2014 & enigmatic Trio (New Haven) 2013.... Since then, Braxton has recorded a set of improvisations with piano, as well as Solo Victoriaville 2017... (and now I see that some other items have just appeared on New Braxton House as I write this!). Further to DCWM recordings, then, the first seems to be Trio (Wesleyan) 2005 (i.e. prior to the Iridium set), whereas Quartet (Warsaw) 2012 (on For Tune) presents another touring example analogous to the set from Brazil. DCWM also confuses me in that the numbered compositions appearing on these records can also — apparently — be performed as something other than DCWM, such that the only thing that securely indicates its performance is that it's named as such! Or maybe it's the presence of Supercollider.... Tangentially then, not only is Duo (DCWM) 2013 (with Maya Masaoka on koto, thus continuing the "duets with women playing less typical instruments" theme from 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012) improvised (i.e. not oriented on particular compositions, and actually introducing more timbral exploration to Supercollider...), but Trio (New Haven) 2013 (on which Braxton is joined by drummers Tomas Fujiwara & Tom Rainey) appears to find Braxton himself in the liminal position held by Supercollider elsewhere, with the drummers on "either side." One thus perceives intensive cultivation & workshopping of DCWM leading into 2014 (& Braxton's 69th birthday celebration)... but none (released) since. In this, the São Paulo sets can then seem more spacious, and indeed more expressively individualistic, according to the styles of the colleagues participating, than the rather more chiseled & daunting 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012, itself featuring Kyoko Kitamura (again) on voice, Erica Dicker (not mentioned here previously) on violin & Katherine Young (recently of Bind the hand(s) That Feed) on bassoon: So there Braxton also registers an emphatic response to the ongoing jazz "boys' club" in one of his most imposing releases.... What to make of all this then, particularly that 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 seems to have barely been noticed (including by me prior to investing this extra time)? Again, I think not only of the imposing quality of Braxton's output, here in its boldest 12CD format, but of prolificity per se: In particular, how is prolificity articulated for the listener (or indeed consumer)? I eventually made my way through the massive recorded output of Ernesto Rodrigues, for instance, but that happened one (usually well under an hour) album at a time.... What presents itself there, I think, is the power of seduction, the small & in-between, constantly leading to more enfoldings without scaffolding... as opposed to the monument.... I mean, in hindsight, large & clearly delineated releases are easier to follow, aren't they, at least provided that one first takes a leap...? Another factor is that it's this very sense of monumentality that figures Braxton unequivocally as "a composer," a label that still seems to hold cultural meaning in so many milieus.... What one finds, however, is that a sense of monument comes to define the narrative of Braxton's work as such: So I await e.g. his official statement on what constitutes DCWM & indeed whatever else he has in store. (And in keeping with preserving some of that pesky & unrecoverable naïveté, I'm also still waiting for "the right time" to watch Trillium J & any other opera that comes to video....) I also can't help but start to perceive this process of narration & articulation as a kind of listener participation — a process that then converges to happen "all at once" in the person of Braxton himself.

I'd thought that releases dated 2018 had largely passed, but another substantial batch from FMR has since appeared: I want to mention I Nm I Nente — recorded in Santiago, Chile in November 2017 — in parallel with Psychogeography (as discussed last month): Both are recordings featuring Otomo Yoshihide (b.1959) improvising with South American musicians, the latter dating to April 2017 in São Paulo, Brazil. And whereas the latter (quartet) album features more in the way of indigenous instruments & ethnographically-inspired approaches, the former (a quintet) is arrayed around electric guitars. In particular, I Nm I Nente features Yoshihide with two other electric guitarists (Ramiro Molina & Lorenzo Román), as well as with double bass/synthesizer (Amanda Irarrázabal) & drums (Nicolás Ríos). In addition to Yoshihide playing turntables, as well as Molina credited with "processes," as well as other secondary instruments on Psychogeography, then, one might note that both albums orient around strings & percussion. (And beyond the analogy with Psychogeography, itself on Not Two, both Molina & Ríos had already appeared on FMR — with Frode Gjerstad on Atractor Extraño, as discussed here in February 2017....) Both albums are also over an hour long, and include not only noisy passages — around which one might invoke a variety of characteristic Japanese production, including e.g. that on Live at Ftarri (which is less tuneful) — but also more atmospheric or reflective or even tender (almost "new age") moments. I don't know how much of a history of "folk music" there is in Chile, and indeed one hears clear (if modified) "rock" references on I Nm I Nente around the guitar interactions... its sense of surreality & dreamy textures thus coming to seem more global, or at least more Western. (The pace of articulation also tends to be steady & similar on both albums, whether in noisier or more lyrical modes.) I Nm I Nente is also "tighter," in that there are more tracks, and in turn more of a specific gesture involved in each. A sense of shifting relationality also generally precludes foreground (or background) continuity, such that although there are processes, including significant ostinati at times, there's no overarching view or groovy feel that emerges. There's instead a basic shifting (i.e. of perspective), again with quasi-naturalistic vibes sometimes exposed beneath noisier surfaces, sometimes with a sense of partial calm (with e.g. gamelan evocations) emerging, sometimes remaining edgier. The "screaming missiles" (i.e. overlapping, piercing glissandi) of the last track end up being the most immediately striking timbres, then, even as some earlier sequences remain more haunting.

First, I want to congratulate Leo Records on their 40th anniversary: I've had only modest interactions with Leo over the past several years, but he's always seemed sincere & dedicated to service. Compared to other "musical spaces" in which I've worked, the generalized post-jazz space has some of the most humble & caring proprietors. They really stand out, Leo Feigin among them, and he's been doing it for 40 years! And among Leo's more than 800 releases, those devoted to Ivo Perelman have been both particularly numerous & prominent of late, so I also want to continue with a few remarks on his recent "Strings" series (after discussing Strings 1 in November): In particular, on Strings 3, Nate Wooley joins Perelman & Mat Maneri to form a trio (recorded in Brooklyn in February 2018) which in many ways comes off as a horn trio (i.e. not so unlike Wooley's participation on e.g. World of Objects with Jeremiah Cymerman & Evan Parker), in that Maneri's "horn-like" articulation (as mentioned by Perelman) is particularly prominent. The "Strings" series comes to mean more specifically the pairing of Perelman & Maneri, and there are supposed to be seven albums in total, so who knows who the other collaborators might be at this point, but I should also note that the albums are not appearing in recorded order: Strings 3 is actually the earliest of the four to be released so far.... I'd already mentioned (in October 2017) Wooley with Perelman on Octagon, and so Strings 3 continues that collaboration: As the "horn trio" remark suggests, Strings 3 is also rather far from the string quartet evocations of Strings 1 (recorded in March 2018), and tends to be both conversational & rather frenetic. In its assertiveness, then, it's rather different from Strings 2 (recorded in August 2018), which at least in its outer tracks, brings another pair of reed (Ned Rothenberg) & bowed string (Hank Roberts, cello) to form a quartet. (Although the middle of the album involves "only" a trio, the "2+2" combo is something I've enjoyed more generally, e.g. in a rather different — & in that case rather contrapuntally atonal — context on New Dynamics: Strings 2 does build to something like this for its final, longest track — albeit without trumpet.) The result is a more sophisticated sweep, gestural at times, but conjuring its own space, often around a general insistence: Strings 2 is the most discursive & broadly conversational tapestry in the series so far, then, although the cello does often serve to anchor the "horns" harmonically (such that the interaction retains a tonal orientation) — as opposed e.g. to Strings 1 where, in the "cello" role, Perelman tends to work in his highest register & produce clashes.... Returning to Strings 3, then, it's not only the earliest recording (so far) in the series, but the least strings-like in idiom — emphasizing, in some ways, the trumpet-tenor pair, with Maneri in a mediate role. Strings 4 (recorded in July 2018) then adds Matthew Shipp to this same "horn" trio as (once again) more of a harmonic base....

Although it appeared on Ftarri, as noted, Skullmarks was recorded by Simon Reynell of Another Timbre — who had recorded & released Common Objects previously. The group also emphasizes bowed strings (amid a very processual approach) more than it had in earlier configurations, and so might further be compared to a new trio release (this time recorded by Reynell for Another Timbre) also featuring Angharad Davies: Dethick is named for a small country church, where Davies was joined by Rie Nakajima (b.1976) & Alice Purton for two days in August 2018 to develop a series of improvised tracks. (Neither of these performers was previously known to me, but Nakajima is apparently known for her art installations.) No credits are given, other than listing the three performers, but Purton is generally a cellist, and violin & cello do appear prominently. Nakajima (perhaps along with the other two) then adds percussive factors using various objects, as well as perhaps some electronic hiss/clicks, etc. (As opposed to credits, the web site shows a photo of various objects, especially porcelain bowls, but also wires....) An atmosphere of restraint maintains, however, such that details of timbre & articulation yield both a probing quality & an exotic look at beauty. The string duo textures project a very Scelsian quality, especially on some tracks, a kind of pulsing presence that can be vigorous, but also gives way to feelings of repose. It's not at all a noisy album in that sense, although it does come to project strength (rather than delicacy) through its limited means. (In its timbrally oriented string duo plus "other exploratory sounds" idiom, not to mention its sound installation thinking, one might compare e.g. to Growing carrots..., which is generally the more aggressive & intense album... such that in some ways, more mellow shifting trios with Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues are more apt comparisons....) Dethick does also come off as a series of studies, such that different tracks initiate different concerns, although a couple of timbral "themes" do recur as "sequels" — & I don't know to what "wet metal" refers, but that's the prompt that I found most appealing. (And the sequence on "one" is the most Scelsian in its concentration on single tones.) So whereas the individual tracks tend to excise discursive or narrative dimensions, the album sequence brings that back.... In the meantime, the basic textures of a string duo almost seem to be employed as a solvent, dissolving & reconfiguring (sometimes rattling) creaturely activity into an earthly-universalist, throbbing pulse. The trio thus interrogate notions of expression & expressivity per se, albeit far from the usual norms of musical phrasing.... (The mysterious balance emerging from the interaction almost makes me feel as though I should be hearing barking dogs outside, as on so many ethnomusicology albums....) Dethick is thus a rather potent exploration: Even as its sequence of differing thematic tracks doesn't necessarily yield a sum greater than its intriguing parts, bodily attention & affectivity are often modulated & aligned according to (sometimes) ringing tones. Perhaps a followup is warranted? I see that Nakajima is only beginning to release music, and also has various upcoming concerts....

Adopting a similar ensemble, and indeed a similar mood, is Shade — like Skullmarks, coming from Ftarri. (And I've been more attentive to Japanese releases lately....) There, however, the minimalist string & percussive action is more tonal — albeit involving some Asian-derived pitch bending at times. There's thus often a smooth orientation, droning & mellow... yet attacks do come to sharpen, building a sense of tautness. There's also a bit of what I'd characterize as romantic melancholy developing, including around some classical (even homophonic) string figures. (Shade thus sounds more traditionally Western, at least at times, than Dethick.) Shade was recorded in Tokyo in September 2018 by Yasumune Morishige (cello), Yoko Ikeda (viola) & Takashi Masubuchi (guitar), and arrives without commentary. (The musicians were all unknown to me.) And although it certainly invokes introversion, it also explores affectivity per se, such that a sense of overall theatricality nonetheless emerges — reworked into a sort of balanced calm. One might even suggest that the trio converts excitability into calm, thus (as might be said of Dethick) evoking the basic activity of the Zen garden as its project....

When discussing Anthony Braxton's recent & monumental GTM (Syntax) 2017 choral set last month, I wanted both to center that release & to discuss Braxton's later output more generally. I also mentioned being taken with the Diamond Curtain Wall Music (DCWM), and another 12CD set in particular, 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 released in 2014. (The latter seems to have been a very significant year for Braxton's recorded discography, apparently conceived intentionally around his 69th birthday.) Considering that I missed this landmark set at the time — & indeed it seems to have received no reviews from the usual sources — it was tempting to make excuses for myself, and why I continued to prioritize more modest releases. That's easy enough to do, but now I need to correct the oversight & continue situating 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 as one of the central Braxton releases of the past decade, even likely the most technically significant in terms of its small-scale interactions. As noted previously, DCWM combines Ghost Trance Music (GTM) & its melodic system of temporal passages with Falling River Music (FRM) & its more gestural or affective approach. (In the prior large entry, I'd also attempted to summarize FRM as "melodic," but that's clearly not a good enough contrast with GTM, which is technically melodic in the sense of a clear linear structure incorporating rhythm. Whereas GTM is also melodically extended — so as to forge those temporal passageways — FRM is then more about smaller scale nuance, etc.: In the "pure" FRM albums particular gestures tend to be repeated endlessly, whether building simultaneously into a sort of heterophony, or extending into linked chains.... Such nuanced expressivity working through small figures is also where one might find timbral variation acting formally in Braxton's music, whereas GTM — & indeed most of his output — does not use timbre structurally. Perhaps I'm overstating the distinction, but I'd also describe Braxton's "language music" as more about articulation than timbre....) DCWM also involves an AI or software performer called Supercollider, and that seems to be what defines DCWM within Braxton's oeuvre. Within this format, then, there is a single GTM composition & a FRM composition for each musician, for each piece. (Also as noted, other albums, including Trio (New Haven) 2013, released at the same time in 2014, use an otherwise identical combination of GTM & FRM, but aren't characterized as DCWM without the electronics, whereas the improvised Duo (DCWM) 2013 is labeled that way absent compositional reference.) Involving an extended melodic-temporal structure, GTM compositions don't define the overall "sound" of a performance, in large part because they appear not to specify instrumentation: The final three "accelerator" compositions from GTM (Syntax) 2017 are found as the GTM components for three sets on 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012, for instance, none of them vocal.... Moreover, although each set involves Braxton & another human performer, the electronics tend to be pervasive, lending the "feel" of a trio. (And this is significant for the basic senses of past/present/future, albeit not in a straightforward way.) In this, 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 is much more intense & detailed than other DCWM sets, during which the electronics are frequently turned off, and performers sometimes indulge more soloistic impulses around an exuberant public display. These concentrated studio sets, recorded two per day, on two consecutive days to form a series of four for each musical partner, were recorded in sum over three weeks at Wesleyan, then. (In this, the women joining Braxton for the project had no need to interact. Whether they did or not, they don't say.) The first series of four hour-long sets involves vocalist Kyoko Kitamura, director on GTM (Syntax) 2017 & current director of the Tricentric Foundation — and more on her contribution soon: The series with Kitamura would be a landmark by itself, and it's unfortunate that I didn't notice it earlier, particularly with my focus on subsequent experimental vocal albums by others.... As also noted previously, the subsequent series of four involve violinist Erica Dicker (also using preparations, including scordatura) & bassoonist Katherine Young (also on electronics): These make for fantastic four-disc compilations as well, and shouldn't be underestimated, with the three different instruments involving a variety of interaction styles, not only from Braxton, but from the software (which Dicker notes in the very brief notes as a third member, a suggestion that doesn't seem like a stretch at all, given the performances): Indeed, whereas I noted that software attempts such as this "mostly sound like organs," more exposure leads to more appreciation for the timbral variety that Braxton employs on 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012. (I actually started taking more specific note of Supercollider's differing timbres due to Duo (DCWM) 2013, which sometimes presents a sort of mediation between the very different sounds of reed & koto.) Whereas opening with a series of sets featuring the human voice seems to have intimidated and/or put off some regular listeners in the post-jazz space, what I find more curious is that the first duet with Kitamura opens with Supercollider projecting a rather rough & static-y timbre in the right channel. It's a bold (albeit understated) start (to what is probably the least bold of the twelve sets, at least pace the initial vocal novelty): Perhaps it's about coming into clarity through effort. The second set starts out seeming like some sort of underwater sonar, the third very low in pitch & grainy, finally the fourth with what I think of as a more characteristic shimmer (i.e. more akin to that on Quartet Live at Sesc Pompeia, where Supercollider appears to engage in showmanship as well...) with ringing highs. In the sets with Dicker, notable are the electronic timbres in the third, with its persistent low rumble, and the fourth again with a "characteristic shimmer," but there also low in the texture. (One might note in parallel how Braxton varies his register as well via the different reeds that he plays, also spanning the gamut himself.) Perhaps because Young also employs electronics as a part of her normal performance practice, her sets include some of the most adventurous parameters from Supercollider, timbral uncertainty in the second, and then sampled voices in the fourth: I'm not sure that that final set really works, as it seems almost as though the musicians come to ignore the (very persistent!) vocal chatter (including silly voices, etc. melting into crowds — unlike the SGTM sets, as remarked!) as a sonic nuisance & engage in close dialog instead. Still, it's adventurous, and the other 11 sets are great. Great(!): Again, this is highly concentrated, chiseled music, betraying no compromises. The pairing of GTM & FRM endows a flexible musical scaffolding with gestural & affective relations, and then eerie timbral prompts arising from the electronics condition the articulation. (One might note the "eerie" specifically as an affect concerning absent agency, per the late Mark Fisher, and that's an impression here. To be more Braxtonian, one might go on to speak of articulation between or across worlds....) Such affect then extends relationally across Braxton's entire output, whether past, present or future... or so he aspires. (One might note that such relationality is not merely analogic, but rather intentionally erected.) Although both Supercollider & FRM involve timbral or gestural interrogations, however, GTM — & Braxton's style in general — enforces a sort of musical segmentation, i.e. kernels of difference that aren't transgressed by the music. (I might repeat my "one second per second" remark, and it's that sort of granularity that Braxton maintains: As some affects & relations articulate or blur across spaces or worlds, some remain discrete.) A sense of formal balance is thus maintained more strictly throughout 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 than on the live or improvised sets, which might "knot" around enthusiastic virtuosity in the moment.... (Balance is probably also formally easier in a more restrictive setting, since there are only two FRM compositions & these tend to collide in e.g. a quartet setting....) On the carefully conceived studio sets, then, an overall narrative quality tends to remain taut on each set, albeit as an often eerie (& partially atemporal) narrative.... When it comes to electronics, I already noted a parallel to the massive (but not quite as massive) Phase/transitions by Pauline Oliveros (which also happens to be a 2014 release), itself monumental, i.e. made of shorter pieces, but also considering a variety of definitive interactions & concerns. (For a more recent album farther afield, I might also note Live at Ftarri, which comes off as more multi-threaded via rather different means, but also projects some of the same kinds of engagement....) As noted, though, it's the vocal sets on 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 that I find most striking: I guess I should've realized that Braxton had an interest in the voice as instrument, since I knew he was writing operas, but it wasn't so clear to me until the SGTM set, and of course now. One might then compare this landmark trio with Kitamura & electronics to some (subsequent) vocal favorites in this space: Natura venomous presents some similar textures, including electronics itself, but is never as assertive & sometimes e.g. moves to whistles (by Wassermann). Kitamura retains a modern & strongly operatic technique almost throughout, employing some timbral/diction variations in some moments, as well as e.g. glissandi, but keeps to rather strong note-based segmentation & chest projection. In that, her performance is quite different from e.g. Duthoit on Light air still gets dark (likewise a 2015 recording), which can be described as an interrogation of segmentation per se, transgressing boundaries both between notes & between what is & isn't vocal. (As noted, transgressions of this type, i.e. going back to Stockhausen et al., seem not to appeal to Braxton....) Kitamura also enunciates some of the letters & numbers subsequently elaborated in the SGTM sets (& already in Syntactical GTM Choir (NYC) 2011), thus invoking other possible layers of activity & other worlds, including almost seeming to be in dialog with herself at times. The result is quite simply a landmark for voice & electronics (& jazz horn of course!) that deserves to be very widely known. At least from the perspective of smaller scale musical interactions, 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012 might thus be the most impressive & far reaching performance Braxton has ever released — and saying that now feels almost like an understatement, if I may be so bold. Physical boxes are still available, plus of course Bandcamp....

As already noted, released at the same time, and also still available in physical media (with no discussion at all), is Trio (New Haven) 2013: As also already noted (beginning last month, in this case), it moreover involves a similar compositional setup as 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012, with one GTM composition plus one FRM piece per musician, but this time without electronics. As such, I hear Trio (New Haven) 2013 as something of a pendant to 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012, i.e. as a reconfiguration of many of its affective relations via situating Braxton himself "between" the two drummers within its evocative three-way temporal structure. (And of the drummers, Tom Rainey has appealed to me since early in this project, i.e. as revisited here in February around Pool School & subsequent issues.... Fujiwara has been less of a fixture for me, but was mentioned here in May 2016 with The Out Louds — and I've heard his leader albums, but hadn't discussed them....) Here of course we have a "real" trio, and so no need for hand waving.... Again, though, the massive output by Braxton already & then in 2014 apparently intimidated me, such that I didn't jump in, and so didn't hear Trio (New Haven) 2013 either (although it was actually reviewed at the Free Jazz Blog). And as I've discussed in the past, there's also a tendency to "choose one" among a group of similar releases appearing at similar times, and that would have been inappropriate in this case: Adding both of these sets retroactively is thus actually easier in many ways. (In those terms, I would rate Trio (New Haven) 2013, itself a 4CD set, as of similar impact to either the second or third four set series of 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012.) In some sense, the ensemble on Trio (New Haven) 2013 is also unremarkable, a saxophonist backed by two drummers, and so there's a very basic jazziness here that isn't necessarily found in the more exotic timbres of the DCWM sets. It also took me longer to warm to these sets, which aren't as immediately striking, although there's more of a progression, with both fluidity & conviction increasing. The rhythmic concentration on both "sides" of Braxton, i.e. absent much in the way of melody, also provides a finer mesh (so to speak) through which to assess these GTM interactions, such that it's the reconfiguration (i.e. almost a "turning inside out") & transformation per se (vs. the preceding DCWM sets) that end up being so compelling. (I should note that one might figure the GTM as involving non-dialectic mediation. That any such motion is non-dialectic is critical to surveying the non-Hegelian topology of GTM passages. As on most of the above series, GTM compositions also become more complex as this series proceeds....) In that sense, Trio (New Haven) 2013 can be heard as quite jazzy, and indeed employs the very basic horn-drums combo. Its transformative power then extends to other music, which can consequently be heard differently. I assume it will be more straightforward to enjoy for many listeners, with its subtleties only revealing themselves later: At one level, these are simply broadly engaging melodic & rhythmic tapestries, masterfully performed.

Finally (at least for the present sequence on Anthony Braxton, or so I think at the moment), there are also some new "bootleg" issues on New Braxton House (also as noted here last month), and I want to mention the two albums from the 2016 Big Ears Festival, 10+1tet (Knoxville) 2016 & Trio (Knoxville) 2016. As opposed to the albums featured in the previous entries, these are not massive releases, but rather typical three quarters of an hour to an hour concert sets from consecutive nights that April. They also involve new Braxton compositions (over 400), and so it's not entirely clear how they relate. Of course this is Braxton, so they do relate, and indeed explicitly invoke earlier compositions: 10+1tet (Knoxville) 2016 includes three earlier GTM (I think) pieces, while Trio (Knoxville) 2016 includes two GTM comps & Trillium J(!). (My memory might be off, but I thought that the Tricentric Foundation web site had a list of all of Braxton's compositions, but that's no longer the case, and so matching composition numbers isn't as simple as it might be. Perhaps I'm mistaken about one or more of the GTM attributions. And perhaps I should simply listen & not worry about it....) I'm not sure how the involvement of multiple GTM compositions relates to the structures involved in the previously discussed sets released in 2014, but presumably that's what the new "umbrella" compositions are about... (and the GTM comps used do involve different degrees of acceleration). My impression is that these sets involve what I've been calling the "travelogue" format, in that musicians move through different stylistic areas, including via formal (technical, musical) connections. 10+1tet (Knoxville) 2016 then comes off as something of a successor to 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006, although with less homophony, with its collage-like transitions suggesting other contemporary activity (as e.g. Ken Vandermark & Larry Ochs have both been producing these sorts of structural collages — including releases this year). There's something of a similar feel here as on those earlier GTM sets, though, albeit now sometimes also fugal (as are parts of e.g. GTM (Iridium) 2007), including some different & interesting ensemble combos, in turn opening onto new vistas.... Movement & variety seem to be the emphasis, though — & this set does continue to grow on me relative to Braxton's other recent large ensemble pieces, so it's definitely worth hearing. Trio (Knoxville) 2016, which includes Taylor Ho Bynum & Kyoko Kitamura, is then more intimate, opening softly, and going on to include a variety of solos or otherwise spacious passages, again with a travelogue feel.... There's also some "electronic sparkle" as suggestions of DCWM sometimes (usually very quietly) appear as well. Moreover, this set seems like a clear precedent for Geometry of Caves, which was recorded eight months later in 2016. (That album is still amazing, but was obviously more striking before I'd heard these releases by Braxton with Kitamura. I thus related it to other vocal work elsewhere.... Still, its basic structures, involving a sort of "blindness" — as noted here back in June 2018 — are rather different from Braxton's.) As the collage or travelogue (which I might describe as a sort of temporal collage) images might suggest then, a variety of perspectives is also emphasized, particularly from the voice (including some straightforward English diction, various chatter & even a very brief three-way vocal exchange near the end). It's consequently not as austere or chiseled as 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012, offering up more of a floating & timeless vibe, as well as not being nearly so long or imposing.... (I actually conceive of some similar forms for myself as necklaces, in the spirit of "ragamala," which could be a worthwhile image here. Each section, subsequently strung together, makes for a little jewel.) These "bootlegs" are offered only digitally & for free, and so don't add to the series of eight physical (& so presumably highlighted, along with the recent 3 Compositions (EEMHM) 2011 on Firehouse 12) issues on New Braxton House, the latest of which is GTM (Syntax) 2017. Might something more in that sequence, i.e. ending with Trio (New Haven) 2013 in terms of Braxton's performance of his own non-operatic music, be forthcoming? Perhaps another major synthesis? It's clear from these releases that Braxton continues to work on new indexical structures & formal relations.

Udo Schindler (b.1952) is another prolific musician, and someone who's also prolific as a multi-instrumentalist across the spectrum of reeds & brass. Although I've admired various aspects of his technique, which is quite extensive, particularly considering the wide variety of horns that he plays, his albums haven't totally connected with me. As mentioned (first here in November 2017 & again similarly in February 2018), that's largely because the sorts of detailed articulations he employs seem more tailored to a solo performance, or at least to a format with less simultaneous sound than I usually enjoy. (In these discussions I've noted something like 16 albums on FMR & Creative Sources, plus more elsewhere, so there's plenty to hear....) That's been my impression, anyway, but some recent albums put more emphasis on blending: In particular, I'd intended to discuss Rhizome (recorded in Munich in March 2018, and released last year), but its notes (by Schindler) refer to another trio with Ernesto & Guilherme Rodrigues recorded at the same time, and I'd wanted to wait for that: The Rodrigueses tend to release music so quickly, that I'd expected that album to be imminent, but apparently not, and Schindler has continued to release other albums, so let me make a few remarks on those for now, rather than trying to continue remembering what I want to say.... Rhizome involves Schindler on clarinet, saxophone & euphonium with two string players, Georges-Emmanuel Schneider (violins & electronics) & Gunter Pretzel (viola). The album does make a strong first impression, even as it sometimes "devolves" into soloistic interactions (& the two shorter — of four — tracks are simply solos), and at least superficially recalls various similar trios as noted here. (Two with similar instrumentation on Clean Feed, and so presumably more accessible, are New Artifacts & Fremdenzimmer.... Farther afield, and without a horn, is Growing carrots in a concrete floor with its installation approach, to which Schindler's emphasis on architecture relates, as noted already in a prior Schindler discussion....) Here, though, violin can very much sound like horn while horn can sound like violin, such that the horn & string timbres are relatively intertwined. The result is often then about space & spaciousness (& the rhizome is basically a spatial or geometric form), but some sections are more generally compelling in their detailed & creative trio interactions. (Other sections, as typical with Schindler, have less dynamic simultaneity.) There's again a sense of miniature at work, as well, a sort of little machine... yet more a sense of exhibition than of use (i.e. practical weaponry) per se. Besides the unnamed recording with the Rodrigueses, the duo Kontergesang (released along with Rhizome) also dates from the same sessions & consists of Schindler with only Schneider (who has quite impressive technique himself, e.g. incorporating electronics to loop or boost flutey harmonics), this time instantiating those "little machines" specifically in the "countersongs" of blackbirds. The results don't really sound like birds (i.e. timbrally), but apparently mimic the structures of their interactions. It's also framed by slowness, almost like an organ with combination tones at times. Still, it's an interesting inspiration, and yields a thoroughgoing duo orientation, rather than soloistic exchanges.... Finally in terms of recent Creative Sources releases, there was Blue Sonic Vibrations (the duos for which were recorded in Munich in June 2017, with the solos dating to March 2018 elsewhere), on which Schindler (again spanning brass & reed timbres) is joined by vocalist Franziska Baumann (also on electronics). Again, these seem like studies, particularly in their formal alternation between different sets & combos. And again, they are quite detailed, especially in terms of articulation, if also a bit slow moving. (One might observe, on the positive side, that the listener is really intended to hear the various details of articulation.) And I mention that somewhat earlier release in part because Schindler already has another duo album with a vocalist, Hillside Talks with Jaap Blonk (voice, computer), also recorded in Munich, this time on two dates in June 2018, and released on Relative Pitch. Here one often finds close imitation between the two, and so another step toward combining Schindler's detailed style with that of another musician. One might say that the two then focus on weirdness... in a sort of "can you top this?" exchange: The result can be rather animated, with the electronics sometimes adding another dimension (as they had to some degree on Blue Sonic Vibrations), but also produces a sort of "hovering" feel as the interactions intertwine themselves. (Let me further note that Blonk himself, on the heels of his self-released album with Ute Wassermann & Michael Vorfeld, as just discussed here in March, has also appeared on a recent grand release from Leo Records, Readings - Gileya Revisited composed by Simon Nabatov. The latter is more oriented on the historical poetry per se, with the musical contributions of its all-star cast more to the background.... and there's a similar companion release with Phil Minton rather than Blonk, Readings - Red Cavalry.) So, what to make of all this? I guess it's that Schindler has a uniquely detailed style that interests me as potential for broader relations, in these cases especially involving bowed strings & voice....

Among recent releases, the whimsically titled Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc? on Relative Pitch, an alto sax & drums duo album recorded in Berlin in August 2017 by Christine Abdelnour (b.1978) & Chris Corsano (b.1975), suggests multiple topics for discussion: First, there are the relations between performers & scenes: I'd heard Corsano on a variety of albums, and certainly taken note of his reputation, but also have to say that his playing hadn't registered an individual impression with me. As has happened with others, though, that changed with Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc?, which involves various distinctive interactions & sonorities, including from percussion. (This is no longer the generally frenetic, free drumming to accompany high energy free blowing for which Corsano seems to be known. It's more controlled, but still quite intense. His entry into the Berlin scene thus seems like a departure, although a welcome one, from my point of view.) I'd heard less of Abdelnour, who's also been credited as Christine Sehnaoui & Christine Abdelnour Sehnaoui, and hadn't mentioned her here: This album involves quite an impressive exhibition of her extended horn technique, though, so I'll be watching for more.... (It seems pointless to speculate on people's relationships, although I guess there's still an allure somehow, in this case driven by a documentary desire to mention Abdelnour's other credits: She'd appeared, for instance, on Creative Sources album Undecided (a family affair), with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui & the two Rodrigueses.... She's also worked extensively with Andrea Neumann, connected on record to Sharif on Nashaz, as well as with e.g. Magda Mayas — from whom I haven't seen anything in a while — in the Berlin scene.) Such musical relations seem especially concrete when comparing Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc? to recent favorite Sawt Out (itself recorded earlier, in September 2016), combining Sharif Sehnaoui's compatriot in "A" Trio, Mazen Kerbaj, with percussionists of the Berlin scene. (Abdelnour is of Lebanese heritage, but born in Paris.) In particular, these acoustic combinations of horn(s) & drums are not only especially rich in timbres in general, and not only explore various connections & indeterminacies in how sound is produced, but involve some of the same techniques, i.e. breath through horns bouncing objects to create percussive sounds, etc. Such indeterminacy of source — related to what I've been calling segmentation, in this case of musical notes per se — is further underlined on Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc? in that Corsano also plays slide clarinet, such that the various rhythmic beatings of breath might go on to trigger combination tones between the horns or further percussive interactions.... (I also didn't seek out a video image of their performance, if such exists, leaving this rather perverse interaction to occur entirely in the acousmatic dimension for me. In particular, it's unclear how often Corsano is using the reed, since many percussionists create similar sounds with friction. At times, it actually seems like he's blowing the reed & doing some traditional drum work at once, although there could be other mechanical linkages at play.... If so, one might recall pre-modern pipe & tabor performance, albeit here involving all the timbral interrogations of the twenty-first century.) Their joint approach thus tends to be quite technical, even mechanical — including in intent — at times, and generally retains strong rhythmic contours throughout (including via persistent beating tones, etc.). So interrogations of segmentation come to form a major pole of interaction on Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc?, in which horns might vibrate percussion, or be percussive, or percussion might sound like a horn or otherwise, often in close imitation, and beginning from some sort of mutant drum roll.... (And on one track, e.g. the sax sounds like quick bow strokes across a bass. There are also grinding metallic interactions, squeaks, bends, slurs, pops, etc. within a general feast of vibratory relations.) Again these interactions suggest those of Sawt Out, including a processual orientation on some tracks, as well as the close placement of microphones. (As noted when discussing that album, that something should be labeled "acoustic" while surrounded by microphones & mixed into a stereo recording is always a bit dubious.... Perhaps sound engineering is the functional definition of "lowercase," rather than being about the original sounds & musical relations per se. Anyway, in this case, as on Sawt Out & as opposed to some other Berlin productions, the result involves no shortage of presence.) That earlier album also conjures a sense of space in its grand opening track — as does Nashaz, even more so, as a much more gracious, even calming, album — whereas the other pole of interaction on Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc? is that of the classically intimate sax & drums duo, the sonorities of which first make a concrete appearance midway through the third track, and become increasingly persistent toward the end of the (nearly hour long) album. Close interactions & matching or clashing articulations thus (sometimes) transition into maximal timbral contrast between the two.... In this, the musicians sometimes engage a more traditional sound (& the third topic for discussion) in the horn-drums duo, which can moreover be found in a variety of non-modern settings. In that, my prior orientation away from duos comes into play — & indeed my recent discussion of Trio (New Haven) 2013 as reconfiguring (in some ways) how to hear this combination (albeit there with two drummers) — such that a duo of this sort occupies a specific (historical) pole: Addition of strings, whether the classic jazz bass or e.g. piano, marks an instrumentation as not only post-paleolithic, but of the iron age — a phenomenon absent from large swaths of the world until recently (in the broadest historical sense). Of course on Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc?, various metallic sounds are still involved, not to mention the "lowercase" mic'ing, so one can't call it primitivist (or better, neo-paleolithic), but the combination does sometimes evoke those images. (Within such an image, the horn is basically an extension of the voice itself, and so it seems to me that its actual material affects its sound & function less.... I might also contrast e.g. the recent & enjoyable A Brighter Side of Darkness from Luis Vicente & Vasco Trilla, which adopts an explicitly transcendentalist stance, interiorized, particularly around very long breaths on the trumpet: It's thus a more rhetorical album than the very in-your-face & technically oriented Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc?.... And both albums do seem absolutely contemporary, even if my thoughts wander to prehistory....) I'll return more tangibly to these "primitivist" ideas at some point, but meanwhile there's the constraint of a duo interaction to consider: Here, though, not only do the musicians often interact so closely that a sense of individual instrument (i.e. segmentation) is lost, but Corsano (I think) sometimes seems like two performers himself, such that a dual sense of solo-accompaniment rarely (but sometimes) holds. (The "crudity" of the slide clarinet is still presumably a factor in the generally rough sound of the album.) Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc? is then often about boundaries (as is, to some degree, Braxton's inversion on Trio...) & in turn partial occupation of historical positions.... A strangely taut ritual vibration is thus generally maintained, right from the beginning, although cracking at points, until seemingly almost disavowed (after recalling the opening drum roll) by the rather melodic-rhetorical ending — which I found unsatisfying as a conclusion to an otherwise very provocative album.

Astral Spirits, from Austin Texas, was originally a cassette-only label, but has been releasing more CDs of late — not to mention availability on Bandcamp — & more releases in general (& in fact there's another new item today as I enter that link). Besides that cassettes were never really my scene — actually, my main intersection with cassette culture was via Carnatic music — I'd also associated Astral Spirits with aggressive post-rock or generally psychedelic music from the US. I'd still say they're oriented on aggressive sonorities & dissonant interactions, but they're definitely branching out from post-alt-rock per se, and also from a more US orientation. They've already had several intriguing releases this year, so it's time to pay more attention.... Although it's a cassette (or download), I first want to note Maps to Hands by Nicolas Caloia (double bass), Yves Charuest (alto sax) & Karl Fousek (analog synth): I'd noted both Charuest & Caloia on (Un)Fold by the quartet Stir (in an August 2017 entry oriented on Agustí Fernández) of which Charuest was the leader; Caloia was also mentioned with Tristan Honsiger's In The Sea trio in the same entry, and directs the Ratchet Orchestra in Montreal. I'm not familiar with Fousek, but the others are associated with the Montreal scene, and so that's probably where Maps to Hands was recorded in December 2016. (It doesn't say.) Per the opening remarks, it's an aggressive album around Caloia, combining bass & sax with various gurgling synth sounds to create some powerful combinations: The bass tends to boom or grind very low in the texture, matched against horn squawks & various rumbles, squeaking & wide glissandi, crackling & bent tones, at times gaining more momentum around strong ostinati. It sounds almost jazzy at times, but mostly forges new combos. (There's even something of a similar "screaming missile" feel, as noted last month for I Nm I Nente, to close.) I'm not sure what "maps" might be invoked by the title, but other track titles allude to significant physical performance gestures.... The tautness & novelty do wear off a bit as the program proceeds, but it remains a very creative trio interaction. Also from Montreal, but one of a couple of dozen releases last year (and one I didn't mention because I'd only noticed it after a Free Jazz Blog review), is Eave by a quartet (without instruments attributed) around saxophonist Anna Webber (b.1984), who has gained some recent fame in NPR (i.e. more mainstream) circles: Eave is a rather mysterious album — apparently involving (a rather conventional quartet of) two horns, guitar & drums — with a ringing, ominous start that nonetheless remains understated around subtle, shifting textures & offbeat motion. Sounds range from the typical squeaks to crystalline gonging, engaging moderate & creative concepts of dissonance throughout. (It's neither very minimalist nor very aggressive, then, forging its own unique balance.) Both albums are well worth hearing, mostly for their novel timbres & combos, and both add to impressions of the Montreal scene — as recently discussed here (February 2019) around HMMH & Fleur de chaos: I'd named almost a "hippy" vibe there, but these Astral Spirits releases do seem to have moved past the 1960s.... They're also, and perhaps consequently, albums from which I don't feel any real affective transformation. Well, the former (along with the following) can definitely be agitating: Hypothetical "resolutions" might be heard as only dissolving themselves into more conventional genres, not as musical catharsis per se. (So I hear these albums largely as small ensemble studies.)

More recently from Astral Spirits, this time available on CD, is Fictional Souvenirs by a trio of Pat Thomas (Moog Theremini & IPad based electronics), John Butcher (saxophones) & Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums & percussion). I had first (belatedly) mentioned Astral Spirits here back in October 2018 around Convulsionaries & Hiljaisuus, and those were two of the first CDs (& an LP) that they released, now followed by a batch of several more, so perhaps indicating a move away from cassettes...? In any case, Fictional Souvenirs was recorded in London in July 2017, and moves decisively into the English scene: I'd first mentioned Pat Thomas back in September 2015 around WTTF Quartet, and had admired his dodecaphonic technique on piano — yet have also been marginalizing "straight" piano playing in this space. Thomas didn't register much for me again until recently, then, both with On the Validity of Tractors (discussed in February), where he also plays electronics, and more subtly on Butcher's Skullmarks.... Both of those involve more sophisticated equipment, I believe, and I've given his credit here exactly as it appears on the album: The sound of a theremin is of course intriguing, and with a long history, and does appear at times in relatively straightforward form on Fictional Souvenirs, including near the beginning, but more often dissolves into a more general contribution: The crudity of the electronics involved thus add to the aggressiveness & raucousness one perceives (as above) from this set (including piercing whistles, rattles & static), although it does sometimes involve those silly "spacey" sounds too.... The result projects a sort of DIY vibe, which (or so I think) fits on Astral Spirits. Of course, Butcher needs no introduction, and he & Solberg had already been performing together: I'd mentioned their duo on Clean Feed, So beautiful, it starts to rain, in January 2017, and then their quartet Stray (with John Russell & Dominic Lash, also of On the Validity of Tractors) on Iluso Records in December 2017.... There are moments when Fictional Souvenirs comes off as more of a sax trio, but as noted above, it's also a generally rough & agitating experience: Pops & clanks, repetitive sawing & breathing, Butcher's soprano fluttering, shrill squeaks, hums & echoes... all serve to transgress & refigure various timbral boundaries. (I'd expected a more polished presentation from these performers, but something more raw can be welcome at times too.) Instruments are more generally identifiable here than on Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc? (as just discussed, and as recorded one month later), but the electronics basically inject some similar indeterminacy as that forged "acoustically" by Abdelnour & Corsano. Both albums can be harsh & raw. Particularly for these recent Astral Spirits releases incorporating electronics, then, one might ponder broader notions of cyborg music (or even collectivity per se) & its sometimes (potentially?) inhuman contours... as a sort of machinic primitivity? But then, the figure of the cyborg renders an open future, here interrogated without safeguards or resolution, i.e. as an uneasy future (still perhaps craving nostalgia, i.e. souvenirs). So this isn't "let's escape reality" kind of stuff.

After taking a few months off from releasing albums in the wake of an explosion of material around his 59th birthday last year (both a prime number & his birth year), new items from Ernesto Rodrigues are beginning to appear: For now, I want to highlight Spiegel, consisting of two sets across two non-consecutive nights during CreativeFest #12 in Lisbon this past November: It remains to be seen how many albums will arise from last year's festival, but it's been a time during which Rodrigues has often assembled his larger groups. (This year, that's already resulted in a new release from his IKB ensemble, this time with twenty members, in Paradoxurus hermaphroditus. If anything, it's even more quiet & probing than previous IKB releases.) The ensemble on Spiegel, the same both nights, is most similar to that on the recent Stratus, i.e. a septet with the participation of percussion & electronics. However, Spiegel substitutes Guilherme Rodrigues on cello for Bruno Parrinha on reeds & Andre Hencleeday on piano for Miguel Almeida on guitar. (It's interesting how reeds & bowed strings come to sound closer to each other within Rodrigues' work than do e.g. some other winds.... Also, the piano is not usually noticeable as such, but one does sometimes perceive the distinctive sense of space that arises from its relatively large resonant capacity, such that it does change the feel of the ensemble somewhat.) Spiegel likewise seems to exhibit a renewed focus on quiet & restraint — such that one might locate it in another interstice of the sequence articulated by 3 Phases, i.e. between the broad drones of II & the close-up assemblages of III — & perhaps even a sense of formal restraint per se in its orientation on mirroring or surfacing: Its slow-moving quality thus achieves a sort of tautness, particularly around a dialectic of discontinuity versus smoothness that might be compared to the concerns of sonata form. (That these sets begin with a gong marks the performances themselves as already opening a discontinuity within a larger flow of general experience....) In this, Spiegel is then rather less about "color" than is e.g. Stratus or some other recent albums from Rodrigues, and comes to feel like something of a continuing refinement or distillation. In particular, it cultivates a sort of hushed & secretive, i.e. hermeneutic, quality that contrasts with some other articulations inspired by or modeled upon the natural world.... (Such a hermeneutics moreover continues to interrogate audibility per se, with electronic participation in Rodrigues albums often geared toward such a "sorting" operation within what might be termed a lowercase engineering environment. In my terms, audibility thus comes to figure use per se.) Different expectations come to appear, especially around a ritual orientation that seems to return more strongly in some of Rodrigues' recent music (e.g. Montréal, as mentioned in February), here more specifically around structural articulation & response within a generalized sense of flow: I've been seeing similar styles described elsewhere as related to painting or the visual arts, and that might be true of particular inspirations, but more generally, what I hear is a different interrogation of temporality per se, i.e. the way in which the flow of experience unfolds perceptually. (One might thus consider the temporality of a painting, i.e. its sequence of creation, which does not necessarily proceed according to the naïve spatial parameters of the physical surface, e.g. down & to the right or from the center out....) In this, notions of momentum & restraint moreover come to interrogate continuity per se, and not only as a purely sonic unfolding. (There are expressions of consciousness still lurking.) Spiegel thus seems to involve moments of semiosis & a renewed concentration of style for Rodrigues.

[ And I am subsequently informed that the second set on Spiegel involved playing along with the recording of the first set. That would explain why it is more detailed, although I had thought that perhaps it was simply a matter of the musicians elaborating their work through ongoing interaction, and of course with the participation of electronics, looping can occur in real time.... I grow accustomed to methods being mysterious in this space, I guess. - 25 May 2019 ]

Espresso Galattico by the Gasser 3 is one of those albums I decided to hear almost at random, not really knowing what to expect. (I try to do some "random" listening so as not to get into a rut....) The blurb from Leo told me that the trio started in Zurich in 2009, and it turns out that Espresso Galattico was actually recorded back in August 2015, but released only now as their first album. Although it was presented as an ongoing, free improvising trio, I also didn't have a sense of e.g. the age of the participants, who are Jürg Gasser (b.1947) on tenor sax, Peter K. Frey (b.1941) on bass, and Dieter Ulrich (b.1958) on drums (& "buegel"). Ulrich appears on a variety of albums, especially for Intakt & mostly in an "inside" vein, but hadn't made an impression. The others were new: Frey (perhaps some relation to composer Jürg Frey, who participates on some of his albums?) does have other releases, especially with Daniel Studer (b.1961) in a bass duo: Their album Zeit, also released this year on Leo Records, derives from multiple sessions & accommodates other performers at times (as seems to be their norm), but shows off an impressive string interaction that "liquefies tonally bulky material" & has been characterized as "dynamic minimalism" per its liner notes. It's not jazzy at all, but rather stark, yet also active & fluid. (Studer has some new albums of potential interest about to appear, but I haven't heard them yet, so he might be appearing in this space again soon....) However, I found basically nothing about Gasser, except that he's the treasurer of WIM (an organization devoted to improvisation in Zurich), and only derived his birth year from an online PDF announcing a concert for his 70th birthday.... As this entry hopefully already suggests, though, I've enjoyed Espresso Galattico right from the start, and so am now left with the task of explaining that enjoyment, a task that I certainly don't want to turn into an apology.... So let me go on to consider a couple of secondary issues explicitly: First, rather trivially, given my previous comments here, it should be clear that the imagery of galactic espresso doesn't do much for me, but this also doesn't seem like "spacey" music in any sense. (The notes do talk of "particles" flying around between musicians, i.e. the movement of small sounds & gestures by which their musics becomes intertwined, not so much via melting, but according to decisive strokes & uptakes....) (And I don't know what this says about the increasingly ubiquitous coffee culture, but that's also rather overdone in general, if you ask me.) In any case, there are also more "palatable" track titles.... Second is my basic uncertainty regarding the Swiss scene & the Zurich scene in particular: Leo has actually released multiple albums originating in or around Zurich (including e.g. the rather diffuse Raw with John Butcher, as discussed in January 2017, as well as e.g. Ramble farther afield — with Sandra Weiss also being on the board of WIM), for unknown reasons, since the city is also home to Intakt Records: The latter continues to release a variety of albums, many of them quite international, and with high production values, graphic design, liner notes, etc. Although they've featured e.g. international legends such as Fred Frith lately, they've also released a lot of Swiss material. Most of it, per my comment above, seems rather inside or mainstream (melodic, etc.) to me, but there are many albums I haven't heard. What to make of this? It seems obvious that Switzerland invests in music education, thus producing a lot of good musicians (& I could name many others who've appeared in this space, even given my basic confusion), but how much of their work is basically about affirming the status quo? I mean, Switzerland is one of the world's richest countries, and home to some of the most corrupt & exploitative international organizations in existence — but the same can be said of USA, and this is the home of jazz.... (I do feel a need to note these thoughts. As it also happens, I assume coincidentally, my paternal grandmother's parents were both from Switzerland, and she was my one fully European biological grandparent, so....) A specifically positive political thing I can note about the Swiss scene is that they do have many talented women participating — although not on Espresso Galattico. An aspect of the latter, though, is its emphasis on precision & clean lines, to the point that one might (as in the previous entry) talk about inspiration from graphic arts: Although the ensemble is different, here often pivoting around the bass, its framing & directness somewhat recall John Heward's Trio for me (recorded in 2013 & discussed here belatedly last January). There is thus little of e.g. the transverse assault on segmentation & exotic timbres of Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc?, instead retaining standard timbral roles (with the exception of when Ulrich switches to "buegel" — which doesn't really sound like a bugle to me, whatever it is — to pair two horns briefly around the bass). However, the bold decisiveness of the interaction seems to etch musical lines in the air, beginning from the sharp tenor cuts reframed fluidly by bass & accented by drums that open the album, and continuing across a variety of stark-yet-dense interplay. A sense of space is thus conjured from lines cut up & redirected, into a sort of prism of minimally affective gesture.... (In this, Espresso Galattico attains some of the same sort of trio sophistication as e.g. the long-running Kaufmann-Gratkowski-De Joode do on Oblengths — also from Leo — in which there is nonetheless a more consistent rhythmic emphasis from the bass, not to mention more focus on extended techniques.) Is Espresso Galattico actually an "inside" album too then? It's a standard sax trio, without much extended technique, but also rethinks the basic space & articulation of a free jazz performance, almost effortlessly seeming to throw off new patterns & forms.... (And is such a sense of novelty only possible for me via geographic distance? Perhaps.) This occurs largely without extended continuity from the horn, which might thus be characterized as cubist. (So there is no slow simmer here, but no overwhelming density either.) And then might be volatilized (simultaneously) by the bass.

On the other hand, Vulcan was an album that I knew I wanted to hear, at least once I noticed it: Not only is the "improvising string quartet" an ongoing interest, but I'd only recently enjoyed Philipp Wachsmann & Marcio Mattos reprising their work with Ian Brighton on Strings (as discussed this past January). That album, including percussion such as vibes along with electric guitar, as well as electronic mixing for the strings, has a rather brighter & especially more exteriorized sound than Vulcan, however, which retains a chamber-style intimacy. It's also a more recent performance, dating to 2018, whereas Vulcan is from (unnamed dates in) 2016 across a couple of sites in London. The latter is actually the second album from Stellari String Quartet, the first being Gocci Stellari, recorded in 2006 & 2007, shortly after the quartet formed. (Both appear on Emanem, which has a broader if intermittent series devoted to string improvisations. I should also note how English labels such as Emanem & Psi — both linked under Martin Davidson, who seems to have become a bit cranky with the music business & not for nothing — greatly diminished their activity around the time that I started this project, in another coincidence that undoubtedly affected what I heard....) Stellari is what I've been calling a "jazz string quartet" with bass instead of a second violin & in this case that's John Edwards: Edwards needs little introduction, and is someone whose work I've been noticing here for a while, most recently on (half of) the Runcible Quintet's second album, Four (discussed last October). Compared to Vulcan, that album is also richly detailed in a basic chamber mode, but with more variety of timbre conjured from its multiple instrument families, and especially with a more choreographed sense of coordinated rhythmic activity, almost seeming aggressive (albeit amid more peaceful dancing) in comparison. Filling out the string quartet is then violist Charlotte Hug, whom I'd yet to mention here: I've heard her as a soloist, and her personal style seems rather flamboyant & so soloistic, but Hug's quirkiness works well within Stellari, in part serving to animate the quartet, but without really differentiating itself rhythmically or timbrally. (Hug also has a couple of recent albums, including a couple of large-scale compositions, on Fundacja Sluchaj, which continues to publicize a lot of fascinating music along these lines.) The many short tracks on Vulcan — all named for active(?) volcanoes, & so of rather more earthly provenance than the stellar phenomena named on their first album — do indeed retain such an intimate disposition that the musicians tend not to be differentiable according to tone, and thus blend across a variety of voicings on each instrument (according to some classical norms for the quartet medium), in a very busy exchange of ideas. Not being in the "lowercase" mode (& with no credit for mixing/mastering), the recording also doesn't have a lot of presence, and requires close listening at a distance: In this it's perhaps closest to Chant (among albums featured here), which does also add percussive color via marimba joining a similarly constituted string quartet. (Chant is also more focused, at least at times, on primary figures projected by the whole quartet, as well as cultivating something of what I've called the "travelogue" mode....) That's not to say that Vulcan isn't percussive, though, as the entire range of modern string technique is used, starting with pizzicato, but incorporating spiccato, harmonics, bowing below the bridge, tapping & slapping strings, as well as some body blows, etc. (Similar techniques tend to move around the quartet as a whole, which most often interacts within the same temporality, only sometimes differentiating speed between instruments and/or musical figures, which always retain a similarly "busy" quality. It thus almost defines "conversational.") The result is densely exploratory, with a variety of small motions & details intertwined within a growing tapestry.... That level of detail also contrasts, at least in degree, with that of e.g. Theia (discussed here last July) & some other improvised string quartet albums, in that they (often) also undertake clear stage projection of collective themes for the listener, thus incorporating something of a starker potency. (Although Theia is especially clear & focused in its epic confrontation, presumably due in part to the underlying Lisbon String Trio having already performed a series of live concerts with other musicians, other recent quartets involving Ernesto Rodrigues show a similar concentration, again relatively speaking: E.g. Crane Cries — using two violins, as discussed here in April 2018 — is evocative & almost lyrical, while Dis/con/sent — with its "second" violinist sometimes turning to grinding metal etc., as also discussed here last October — suggests a gritty materialism.) Vulcan is still sometimes explicitly affective, but its interiorization requires more work from the listener — although it's also more directly evocative of the twentieth century string quartet literature, and so its basic sound will be less exotic to someone familiar with that world.... In contrast to the name, then, while one might ponder explosiveness in Theia, Vulcan doesn't suggest musical eruption (although it does suggest musical newness, which is undoubtedly the quartet's prior stellar reference): Rather, its multinational quartet (from Uganda, Switzerland, Brazil & England) conjures an amazing variety of detail that moves quickly in shifting combos & articulations. (It's also more "variety in place" than travelogue per Chant....) Indeed it tends to be rather quiet & pensive, with much to explore for the active listener as well.

Urs Leimgruber (b.1952) is someone whose music I noticed relatively early in this project, first mentioning him with an untitled quartet release on Creative Sources in June 2012, and then with the MMM Quartet (& Live at Metz Arsenal) that September: Given his less featured position in the unusual tapestry of MMM Quartet, though, I also hadn't really heard him front & center in a more recent production, but that very much changes with the new double album from Fou Records, Face to Face with Jean-Marc Foussat on EMS Synthi AKS (& voice). Leimgruber plays both soprano & tenor saxes there, and works remarkably well blending with the synthesizer or rising above it, the orchestral sweep of the synth often oriented on reedy timbres itself. The blending or not of various squeaks & squawks (& whispers & whistles...) indeed seems to articulate something of a symphonic tone poem, here presented in two distinctive installments from Zurick (WIM again, per the Espresso Galattico entry last month) & Lucerne in October 2018. I've had occasion to mention Foussat on synth in the past of course, e.g. with João Camões on Autres Paysages & its "travelogue" style (discussed here in December 2017), and there the synth does indulge what I tend to think of as "spacey clichés" in articulating landscapes above or beneath conscious experience.... The orientation on Face to Face seems to be more that of the post-Romantic symphony, however, and forges a shifting tapestry against which Leimgruber then interacts as "soloist." (One might thus suggest that this harmonic & timbral style explores "psychological realms" more than "physical" travel — including in the latter's extended guise to the womb or outer space, although it does project a more concrete windswept scene or even trickling water in some moments. The "voice" credit also extends to creating muted vocal choirs as well as part of the almost Mahlerian sweep, which can even encompass seemingly de rigueur barking dogs in the background....) It's also still the case that I don't have much understanding of the Swiss improvisation scene, including its foundational (political) dynamics, but Leimgruber is another talented Swiss musician, someone working at the highest levels of improvised music for decades, here performing in his home country in a richly featured setting: It feels very much like a statement, and my summary barely touches upon the various sonic interactions involved in these two imposing one-movement sets of approximately three quarters of an hour each.

Monopiece + Jaap Blonk raises a number of largely disjunct thoughts — intersecting, perhaps, in a guise similar to the album's own fractured juxtapositions.... For instance, I don't know what to make of the fact that Blonk (b.1953) recently described himself as retired, and so formed a band: This isn't it, but this collaboration from last year in Oakland with Mills College graduates does extend a recent explosion of Blonk releases, with Hillside Talks with Udo Schindler (& Readings - Gileya Revisited on Leo, in the same entry last month) & the self-released Improvisors with Ute Wassermann (from March) being the most recently discussed in this space. (Blonk's site doesn't say what he's retired from, but apparently it's not music....) And while North of Blanco (recorded in Texas in 2013) had already explored an experimental array of timbral weirdness around Blonk (in various vocal guises), that album also involved longer forms, and at times a more diffuse interaction, leading to a sense of landscape.... Instead, Monopiece + Jaap Blonk is relatively tight, with timbral variations undertaken in short bursts & often in clearly articulated forms. (It's thus a bit different from Coluro, which does feature an array of timbral interrogations, albeit without voice, but again in longer forms & with more of an ethos of sonic transformation, rather than the almost "ready-made" aura of Monopiece.) Indeed, as its provenance on Shhpuma — a label mentioned here four times prior, but often with a different orientation — might suggest, Monopiece + Jaap Blonk evokes more in the way of "pop" formats. It's also an album where I immediately enjoyed the sound, and in fact it continues to engage.... Still, it's something of a departure in its orientation on shorter, motivic alternations in timbre, wrapped around the voice which can itself be looped via electronics, and into a more generally "electronic" package to which all the performers contribute: There's also quite a bit of presence to the recording, meaning that in practice I find myself turning the volume down compared to other material, which does mean it's easy to hear, having been "edited and subtly processed" after being "spontaneously generated" (in a single day) per the included notes. (In this, Monopiece + Jaap Blonk could be compared to e.g. World of Objects — as discussed here in September 2014, seemingly so long ago! — which likewise features electronics & post-processing, there around an improvising horn trio.) The "quick changes of timbre and texture" also yield "hallucinatory, electronic songs" per the notes by Chris Brown, and even — per Monopiece percussionist Timothy Russell — a sense of storytelling, with songs "staying in your head," even if you aren't singing them.... I don't find a real earworm quality to Monopiece + Jaap Blonk, though — but I'm generally anti-earworm, as that becomes about marketing as much as anything, at least as far as I'm concerned, so that seems like a positive. (I might then compare to e.g. Wooley's Knknighgh, discussed here in August 2017, which does seek to construct an earworm, pop music style, and which I found consequently annoying, despite appreciating the effort in other significant ways.... Farther afield, perhaps the timbral sense of storytelling engaged here can be compared e.g. to Braxton's language music....) In a real sense, then, crudity & elegance collide in music such as this.... And the voice can be quite aggressive on Monopiece + Jaap Blonk — serving to give the timbral weirdness a "corporeal focus," again per Brown — but can also be subtle, from seemingly cartoonish episodes to strains of muted trumpet, met by ringing timbres, twittering, metallic percussion, snaps, pops... within a generalized percussive tapestry extended even to voice via electronics. (If not for the pervasiveness of the electronic component, I'd compare the album most closely to Eye of the Moose by Hot Four, another quartet featuring voice — there with bass instead of electronics, in what is largely an acoustic ensemble. Still, its quick & compact interactions project a similar aura, again resting perhaps on pop music inspirations, and with an open sense of varying sonority that's likewise never overwhelming.) The electronic aspects are quite pervasive, though, in keeping with recent trends (including in this space) of featuring electronics in improvisation — for which Brown notes the precedent of Musica Elettronica Viva, whose performance of Rzewski's Symphony No. 106 was discussed here in December 2016 — something that's still characterized as rare in general, at least when not "relegated to creating novelty" within broader ensembles. (I would add real-time mixing as having been happening for quite some time as well, if not necessarily acknowledged as artistically significant....) I might also note e.g. Jean-Marc Foussat on Face to Face, all the way back in the previous entry, so there's been more happening (& more to be reported here, soon, as well) with improvising electronics than these characterizations seem to acknowledge.... Still, one might suggest that Monopiece, despite a sense of embodiment projected directly through Blonk, also emphasizes more of an acousmatic scenario, and thus works in what I've been calling post-concrète music in general: Joining Russell (as already noted) are Nathan Corder (credited with "electronics" & as producer) & Matt Robidoux (guitar) — & I was not previously familiar with any of the members of this trio, which apparently prefers to perform with a guest. It's also my own fault that I haven't been getting out in public much lately, and so haven't heard Monopiece live, as those opportunities do exist. (This situation reminds me of the also-local Animals & Giraffes & their album Landlocked Beach on Creative Sources, as discussed here in April 2018: I don't want to keep making excuses for myself, but I do wish I could find the time & energy to get out more often to support people. Maybe again at some point....) I should also note specifically that Robidoux works with & writes about adaptive musical instruments & inclusion practices for improvisation exploring various embodied modalities.... Although Monopiece + Jaap Blonk ends up having something of a slick "pop" feel via mixing & post-production then, it also retains a real DIY vibe, the result of various "crunchy" electronic textures that aren't about smoothing: A distinctive sense of space is created, seemingly almost effortlessly, and even if that space takes on a sort of thin or brittle quality, its projection continues to pack a punch.

Thanos Chrysakis is someone I noticed relatively early in this project, and especially since the pace of his album releases is more modest than e.g. Ernesto Rodrigues, albeit still steady, I've been discussing many or most of them since. In fact, it's kind of funny to reflect back on this space, and the feeling that I'd started from much more traditional or conservative music: That's certainly true to an extent, but (as noted last August) I'd already mentioned Rodrigues in early 2012, and then first mentioned Chrysakis in November 2013 (with Zafiros en el barro) & again in March 2014 (with Garnet Skein). Both of those albums are what I might characterize as more keyboardistic than his recent output, but I already noted how Chrysakis was able to highlight particular lines & relations in order to create a sense of balance, i.e. a sort of order from chaos, something that I'd noted again more recently (in January this year) around Iridescent Strand. Chrysakis seems to be moving away from even non-traditional keyboards, though, into more of an electronic environment that emphasizes manipulation of pitch & timbre, and this direction reaches a new level of sophistication with the marvelous Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics. One might even note something of a trilogy then, beginning with the similarly generically named Music for Two Organs & Two Bass Clarinets (discussed here in May 2018, so a little over a year ago), an album that both interrogates a broad sonic landscape & more specific timbres (doubling an earlier duo release, which one might thus compare to e.g. Face to Face, as discussed earlier this month, in its overlapping timbral relations between synth & reed). After that acoustic album (with Chrysakis credited on chamber organ alone), Iridescent Strand had projected more of an industrial tapestry, largely because of the metallic contributions of guitar, but also due to broadly chaotic interactions around instrument changes & electronic manipulation. Rather than illuminate a line of exploration within rumbling chaos, then, (the also five movement, as seems to be a predilection for Chrysakis) Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics retains a more contrapuntal (or broadly textural) emphasis, while restricting electronic participation to Chrysakis himself, yielding what at times feels like a horn trio being interrogated & manipulated — not unlike on World of Objects as just mentioned, or indeed even the acoustic Empty Castles, where "the space itself" takes on the character of an electronic framework via physical reverberations, etc. Electronics tend to be subtle in that regard here, although sometimes burbling or hissing in the background, or perhaps in fragile ringing overtones, but then emerge more explicitly into the foreground with what seems to be samples of military radio in the 4th track. (It's strangely affective within its broader musical context, but if the discussion of "Weasel Island" is supposed to evoke any specific historical event or context, it doesn't for me.) Despite the title, the horns do also change sometimes in the person of Jason Alder, an impressive technician who was new to me, but who does (surprise!) have a new duo album soon to appear on Creative Sources, Contradictions. Joining Alder & Chrysakis — also from the English scene, the edges of which seem to supply most of Chrysakis' performing colleagues in general — are then Caroline Kraabel & Yoni Silver: Kraabel, who is originally from Seattle, is also credited with voice (although that isn't apparent sonically), and has performed extensively with the London Improvisers Orchestra, from which I'd heard some of her compositions, as well as writes liner notes of late (e.g. for Vulcan). And I'd mentioned Silver in conjunction with (prior Aural Terrains duo release) Home around Ag in February 2018.... Perhaps its difficult to render such a generically titled album as Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics as distinctive & revelatory, but besides the strange military radio presence in the following track, e.g. the central (& longest) track presents another sort of recitative feel (which had seemed to be the goal of Iridescent Strand at times), with difference tones & small scratchings moving from a low roar into chirping atmospheric shifts & beats, finally into what can only be described as a novel lyricism.... (One might say that it involves a Scelsian concept of melody & perhaps even a Scelsian sense of time.) Indeed, Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics is often brilliantly lyrical — in an emergent sense — while usually remaining disorienting, as it generates its own sense of space. Clearly it also involves some planning in its "symphonic" form, which isn't discussed, but presumably improvisation within a conceptual plan & perhaps editing longer takes... track breaks generally presenting affective changes as well. (I should further note two other Chrysakis favorites of yore, namely Carved Water, discussed here in January 2017, with its sound installation approach, and then Skiagraphía, likewise with double electronics as discussed that April, with its relatively silhouetted wave of activity, both featuring viola & reed.... There, contrasts emerge more from major technical differences in the instruments, whereas here they're derived from the finest grain of articulation.) The use of radio might evoke another sound installation, but Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics comes off more as "absolute music," i.e. as "instant composition" as it's increasingly observed today, and does so within a broadly shifting field of frequency relations that never seems content with traditional Western (discrete) forms, i.e. as a truly postmodern (or postcolonial) production. (One doesn't hear echoes of Mozart, then, as one might on some earlier Chrysakis albums....) Rather than the constraints of the traditional keyboard, one hears the electronics as a source of timbral & more broadly, relational innovation. Intensity & exploration track all the way down to the smallest particles, the grain of reed articulation, and up again into a broadly symphonic form — including subtle structural unfoldings via tempo relation (around maintained linear tensions) to yield a strongly balanced & coherent synthesis across perceptual levels. Chrysakis thus seems to have completed a real arc of development in this latest, affectively satisfying album: It can leave one (subsequently, immersively) listening to silence for quite some time.

Continuing the recent theme here of improvising ensembles featuring electronics alongside traditional instruments, Sitsa actually seems to be something of a followup to last year's Coluro — with Ernesto Rodrigues joining a regional Iberian collective to form a sextet with two members on electronics, and a general tendency toward transformative timbral exploration. Sitsa was recorded in March 2018 in Bilbao (only two months after Coluro was recorded on two dates in Madrid), and features Miguel A. García (b.1980) paired with Creative Sources regular Carlos Santos on electronics: García has already appeared on Creative Sources, as well as elsewhere, including in a solo setting, but also e.g. on Golden towers and electric frictions (recorded in March 2016), featuring the two Rodrigueses in a quintet with Abdul Moimême, who also appears on Sitsa (on which he's credited with both guitar & metals): The former can seem almost like a study for the latter, involving a sparser setting with more of a central focus of activity, rather than a general tapestry spanning auditory space more polyphonically.... (This notion of "focus" will recur.) In contrast, Coluro might be heard as investigating somewhat different concerns, with a sort of lightness emerging from balancing both timbral colors & pitch ranges across the ensemble spectrum, an investigation of a sort of coordinate spanning space as previously noted.... The sextet on Sitsa is filled out by (previously unknown to me) Oier Iruretagoiena (electric organ) & Lorea Oar-Arteta (paper & contact mics), however, giving it more continuity & center, but with pitches (often simultaneously) across the gamut: After an initial signal clank or clunk, it thus moves into a deep roar, hiding, scuttling, broadly shifting & escaping resonances (both high & low) sometimes turning to searing intensity around a generalized atmosphere of vibration. (Sitsa definitely benefits from better speakers in a real stereo setup.) Its layers of activity might also be compared to Stratus (recorded a few months later), which is a "more acoustic" ensemble (meaning that the electronics, also from Santos, tend to remain more in the background focusing on audibility), and projects a sort of sparse open air delicacy (of color, etc.), in contrast to the "indoor" industriousness of Sitsa. Returning to the beginning of the recent trilogy (of discussions here) with Monopiece + Jaap Blonk, then, one might indeed observe a more "static" (or ready-made) pop vibe there in the way that timbres jump out from a largely nonexistent background, whereas Sitsa transforms sounds into other sounds as grounded in a deep rumble: It's thus rather more assertive than many albums from Rodrigues (& indeed García, etc.), emphasizing continuity within its own (more mysterious, even elemental) DIY vibe: It might thus be compared to Skiagraphía (discussed here April 2017), with its own dual electronics setup producing a sort of broad wave or crescendo across various twittering timbral details, or even to the more recent guitar trio album Magma (also with Moimême, in a followup to Basalto, in what had been a starker recording of the same trio released in 2016...), the latter involving a sort of rock-based assertiveness transformed into another forceful timbral wave.... As noted, though, Sitsa is generally more polyphonic, including articulating counterpoint across a variety of extremes — & involving more presence than many Rodrigues albums — via various clanks & rumbles, boings, creaks, quasi-sirens, etc. This variety is then rendered basically continuous — except for prominent track breaks — via the interiorized quasi-industrial relation of a dull roar. (One might thus suggest that Sitsa interrogates continuity: Such exploration extends into concepts such as individual notes, which tend to appear only as moments of transformation. One is instead presented with a more generalized sense of evolving sensation.) Transgressing discrete impositions of individual notes marks Sitsa as having a very contemporary orientation, and indeed not only does one find a post-serial or post-concrète exploration, but the original core of "lowercase" (now rendered in this space as a kind of generalized mixing emphasizing sonic details) appearing explicitly in the paper & microphone combo. And in keeping with an exploration of continuity, one would be hard-pressed to pick out the specific sound of that paper.... In all of this, technical descriptions of Sitsa tend to miss its transformative & especially affective quality, though: It achieves a powerful, if paradoxical, effect of concentration & calming — with the industrial affect of contradictory physical space somehow rendering disorientation into flowing presence. (The album title, if one believes online translation, is apparently in the African Bantu Chichewa language, meaning to reduce or unload, and unloading tension does seem to be the affective focus of the album. Track titles are then in other languages, some — including Chichewa? — seemingly unconnected to the musicians....) There is consequently both a sense of austerity & a lot happening at any particular moment. (One might then compare to the sophisticated, symphonic summation of Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics, particularly for its rather different approach to "making audible" via electronics, a tapestry contrasting & highlighting detailed timbres, projecting its own sort of "organ" feel....) And so I've found Sitsa to be consistently potent & transformative, particularly in its ongoing & extensive combinations of highs & lows.

Having been recorded more than a year ago, Sitsa seems almost delayed per the usual standards of Ernesto Rodrigues, but of course many musicians release recordings only years later: Its release is actually contiguous (in catalog number) with Kuori (discussed here in December 2018), another album including Moimême, there in a double guitar setup (and for which the "shell" meaning of the title reflects an image similar to that of the recently mentioned Spiegel), but with more of a central focus — albeit becoming larger or smaller according to perceptual expansion or contraction. Kuori might thus be contrasted with Magma (as noted above), on which Moimême & Rodrigues are joined (again) by metallic percussionist Antez in quite an eruption, less about twittering details of counterpoint or perception than an assertive, quasi-singular (& often violent) line of articulation. (In contrast to the post-serial investigations of Sitsa, then, Magma can be heard more as a distillation of heavy metal, perhaps in literal terms....) One can of course compare to (the more directly ambient?) Sîn (recorded "way back" in 2016, but released only last year) as well: Like Magma, it's the relatively rare second album by an identical improvising ensemble (after Nor, originally discussed here in April 2015) & involves more presence & polyphony (in the post-serial mode) per Sitsa. However, Sîn is also acoustic, and so still reflects primary audibility concerns — or perhaps even a sort of hermeneutics, not so unlike those of Spiegel & its explicit re-interrogation of an earlier performance (as mentioned last month).... Rounding out this rather oblique survey of recent (& otherwise) Rodrigues releases, let me also mention A late evening in the future more specifically: It was recorded by a quartet in Berlin (with Rodrigues himself also on zither) in October 2018, and likewise (per Sitsa) projects an affective calming, there focusing more on central figures (rather than counterpoint or generalized spanning): The feel of A late evening in the future thus recalls the similarly string-based Dethick (as discussed here last month) rather closely for me, whereas its sparse focus can recall Golden towers and electric frictions (among many Rodrigues albums) per above. Finally, as also mentioned in a summary last month, larger productions from CreativeFest #12 are appearing, most recently a new String Theory album (of eighteen musicians), Krypton (as another rather singular, surging wave), as well as a new Suspensão nonet, Rayon Blanc — again reaffirming a focus on quiet (& the tension within or between notes, in an ongoing interrogation of musical continuity per above) & even fragility (perhaps akin to that of the latest IKB, there via biological figuration). So although Rodrigues has been producing albums with more presence lately — & a variety of weaponry largely (or at least sometimes) depends upon audibility — he's also reasserting an emphasis on ambivalent articulation, quietness & restraint — i.e. affirming the fragility of so many relations in our world. (And I expect to be discussing some other smaller, perhaps more intimate, releases soon.)

In a May discussion of the sax & drums duo album Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc?, I suggested notions of neo-paleolithic music absent strings, and promised to take up the topic of "primitivism" at a later date. (I quote the term not only in order to question the value judgments it might imply, but because it's already been used in specific ways in art history. I'm thinking simply in terms of prehistoric musical means, defined especially by the absence of strings or other more involved sound production technology.) As mentioned then, in contrast to that album, which suggests a basic sonic fascination & immediacy — as mediated technologically by close mic'ing, which in some sense simply illuminates the musicians' own more intimate experience for a larger audience — e.g. Trio (New Haven) 2013 (also with horns & drums only) presents as far more abstract, particularly around its multiplication of time streams. (This sort of temporal abstraction, moving away from simultaneity or presence per se, is exactly what e.g. Harry Partch wanted to undo about Western music history.... On the other hand, a vaguely similar approach to structural segmentation & granularity of time streams can be observed in e.g. Carnatic niraval, i.e. outside the Western system.) So in that sense, Quand fond la neige, où va le blanc? might be framed — paradoxically to most contemporary ears, I imagine — as more about sound & expressivity than abstraction per se. So what of prehistoric music, then, outside of the orbit of stringed instruments (which extended into Africa, and of course across much of Eurasia, in pre-Columbian times)? This is no place for an exhaustive survey or deep theoretical reframing (if the latter is even possible), but I do want to offer some musings: In particular, whereas I already discussed some "new releases" by Z.M. Dagar (i.e. Ragas Abhogi & Vardhani & Raga Yaman) on Ideologic Organ last August, I'd also been listening to a recording from New Guinea released at the same time, Crying Bamboos. That's actually the second double album from the same set of ethnomusicological recordings made by Ragnar Johnson in Madang Province in the 1970s, the first of which (Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea) had been released by David Toop at the time, and was re-released on Rounder before being re-released again by Ideologic Organ. The second double album was apparently newly issued, however. (These releases also thank e.g. Evan Parker & Steve Beresford for their help, so they've been associated at least tangentially with free improvisation, and I learned of them via DMG....) I don't know that one really needs four discs of this material, since it's all fairly similar — with the exception of two "inland" tracks on the first set, which are still rather similar, but more like a didgeridoo in the way the flutes are played — but it's also remarkable music: There's a certain austere power to the two paired (bamboo) flutes, tuned a tone apart, and played by two men staring intently into each others' eyes, alternating breaths, and moving into clashing cadences. (One might pause here to consider the "paleolithic" term that I invoked above: This isn't hunter-gatherer music, because people on New Guinea are settled farmers. However, the neolithic is more often associated with the kind of large-scale & systematic agricultural operations that can — eventually — be traced to the modern slave plantation & from there to industrialization. This distinction between small- & large-scale, industrial farming then tends to loom large again in our era....) This is male initiation music — & one should note that New Guinea has an enormous range of cultures, such that interactions between men & women can be very different in different places — with minimal accompaniment, formerly performed in secret, although one sometimes hears some (human) voices echoing the flute lines, with percussion appearing on many tracks (especially the garamut, which is used as far away as Africa, especially for communication over distances, but also shell rattles & seed pods, etc.). The reedy tone & clashing cadences, but especially the focus on breath, can sometimes suggest the khene (Thai-Laotian mouth organ, itself from a culture that moved a substantial distance in historical times), for instance, and the players are similarly critical of breath control as a means of expression: These breaths become the cries of spirits, after all, and so need to be articulated carefully as taught (but aren't taught anymore). There's an animating, even uplifting quality that emerges, and of course a sense of solidarity. And although the interiorized, breath-based sense of musical articulation & timing suggests more the concerns of mensural music, one might also compare to some formally rhythmic systems in Asia: Carnatic nadhaswaram can present a similar sort of raucous alternation between horns (& isn't a raga the "cry of a particular spirit"?), as well as characteristically different percussion instruments, while Gagaku (which has much more of a beat, with clear progressions, at least in comparison) produces similar reedy clashes. Given the dispersion of musical ideas over the millennia, one might even suggest that an earlier layer of sonic articulation was subsequently imbued with a clear rhythmic framework as part of large-scale (neolithic) systemization per se.... (Repetition is, after all, what animates system.) In any case, since Melanesia has so many cultures, there are many sorts of music, with these double albums from Madang illustrating only one (or maybe two), and so they're hardly the last word on the region, let alone prehistoric music in general (i.e. music from before recorded history, which is again not a value judgment, and can differ substantially from place to place in chronological terms), even as they continue to present distinctive & evocative interactions. (Not long after these recordings were made, New Guinea was seized by the "string band" phenomenon, with a variety of Westernized popular songs emerging. And the speed with which this transformation occurred underscores the sheer power of cultural production as intertwined with daily life & its regulation: For me, it's certainly not the power of Western musical technology & form per se that's striking about this prominent example, but rather the speed & thoroughness of forced cultural adaptation — and what that says for the increasingly intimate power of our marketing-driven culture today....)

While I'm in the middle of such topics, then, I want to engage some even broader musings: The Gagaku reference above, admittedly rather different, already engages music with Buddhist connections, and so can be related at least abstractly to that of Tibet more broadly. (The dissonant wall of reedy sound with ringing percussion does seem directly evocative.) Moreover, although I hadn't taken a very thorough interest in Tibetan ritual music back when I was studying various other Asian styles, it does appear to exert a continuing influence in the West, extending into free improvisation: E.g. Sorey's Pillars (discussed here last October) evokes it specifically, and one might even compare the roar & tinkle of Sitsa (as just discussed) — whether that's a conscious reference or just a "convergence" of sonic priorities around focus & release, I don't know. (Neither engages the sort of throat singing that stretches all the way to Tuva, although that's also been an inspiration for other contemporary improvisers. To further reprise a topic from elsewhere, then, one might also speak of a "politics of frequency" expressed in the low-pitched Tibetan ritual music, which is also confined to paleolithic sound technology, or rather to metallic versions thereof....) And whereas I'd heard most of the prominent (classic) ethnomusicological recordings of Tibetan ritual music, I'd somehow missed Tibetan and Bhutanese instrumental and folk music (here in a fine reissue by Sub Rosa), originally the fourth volume of the 1970s Lyrichord series recorded by John Levy. I'm highlighting that album now, though, not because it further interrogates Tibetan ritual music (at least not much), but because it seems so very different: The voice & string styles (such that we're well into the neolithic here, pace the above) evoke a variety of other styles, including (at least for me) from as far away as Yemen & Ethiopia (i.e. Musiques des Hauts-Plateaux), maybe a bit of Javanese singing later in the anthology, some shifting choruses, maybe a hint of Chinese zheng, but barely any recognizable influence from major Indian (or Burmese or Vietnamese...) music.... It was thus the geographic incongruity that struck me (& I'd probably dismissed this music a few decades ago, in part, for its incongruous character...), lending further questions around whatever prior pan-Tibetan culture had existed in the general region (i.e. far beyond Ladakh). And I'd even mentioned Bhutan here recently in the person of Tashi Dorji (around Hiljaisuus, also last October, but not consciously connected to Pillars!), knowing nothing of the Bhutanese string technique on dramnyen... such that perhaps his emphasis on contrasts makes more sense now. So whereas some online reviews suggest not to bother with this secular volume, I actually found it to be powerfully evocative of hidden & forgotten layers of Asian musical interactions (as obscured by e.g. the Iranian-Turkish Central Asian anthologies I'd favored here). One might thus further compare e.g. to Balochi music, very different in sound, but similarly suggesting a powerful musical culture with enigmatic historical relations: In that case, not only does the otherwise Indian- or Iranian-style musical articulation focus on (presumably more ancient) pentatonic scales, but the "cut" (or asymmetric, chapu) rhythms seem to connect to distant regions.... Balochistan — as does Kurdistan — even features the double flute (likewise called male & female) tuned a tone apart... there played by one person, one flute per hand. (And some musical terms are strangely conflated & reversed with those of surrounding cultures, suggesting a sort of complementary evolution....) What do such musical outposts & diasporas say about the various settled cultures in these regions? Perhaps very little, at least not that we can retrieve today, but perhaps one can still get some different glimpses of music from before the rise of large-scale (i.e. proto-industrial) agriculture in the broad (Afro-Eurasian) neolithic period. Anyway, besides wanting to suggest some intriguing (& not very recent) albums, these are some far-flung musings from here in the midst of what seems to be shaping up as an epic battle for the future of human culture per se....

After investing some more time in Anthony Braxton's relatively recent boxed sets, starting from a discussion of GTM (Syntax) 2017 in April, and incorporating some material released in 2014 (as well as new bootlegs) into more discussion in May, I feel primed to discuss new releases from Braxton — & of course to wonder what's already been recorded but remains unreleased. In particular, the 4CD box set Quartet (New Haven) 2014 just appeared on Firehouse 12, returning me once again to 2014 (specifically June here), which seems to have been an especially important year for Braxton: The four separate, hour-long improvisations (as has become Braxton's most standard format) do apparently involve some written material, but Braxton also advised the quartet "don't worry about it" & "have fun" (per the brief, accompanying discussion from October 2017 by Taylor Ho Bynum), so this isn't exactly a set of Braxton compositions & thus presents another point of departure in his recent recorded output. (The comments suggest that he's mostly been working on the operas, as far as composition goes....) In fact, the four sessions (recorded over 2 days, which has again become a Braxton standard) are each devoted to a seminal "rock" musician — & I quote the genre because they're collectively associated more broadly with blues, country, soul, funk, folk, etc. Of course, jazz itself was a major ingredient animating rock music (while blues had already prompted jazz), while the included musicians also stand historically astride the end of the classic (for so much music, including jazz) 1960s era, i.e. at a powerful nodal point for popular style.... (They also range from twelve years — James Brown — to two years — Janis Joplin — older than Braxton, i.e. as senior contemporaries of the same basic era....) That Braxton's tributes go far beyond mere quotation is as expected, and each of these albums presents a broad & abstract tapestry within which its inspiration's music seems to haunt the proceedings in powerful ways, but also ends up sounding very much like a Braxton project. Before continuing, it's worth asking whether I'm actually "into" rock music, and so the extent to which I'm the audience for this set & indeed who might be my audience for this discussion: As noted in the past here, I often feel less oriented toward rock music than many artists & labels today (not to mention audiences), but I mean that especially with regard to the various "alternative" & post-rock styles, which were never a part of my regular musical life. On the other hand, there was a period of my youth spent enjoying classic rock, and I continue to hear it in almost every public establishment. (That's certainly a mixed blessing, at best, and serves to blunt any enjoyment I once had under the sheer repetitive tedium to which so much of this otherwise impressive body of work is commercially shackled.) That said, the series of musicians honored in the set proceeds, without a doubt, from someone with whom I'm (relatively speaking) most familiar (Jimi Hendrix) to someone with whom I'm least familiar (Merle Haggard). And this was actually the first I'd stopped to study Brown's legacy in any detail: There's a lot there, including the various tragic effects of fame (& talent that still seems almost under-recognized despite the many accolades), and that (third) album even ends with what might be described as a lonely, ongoing alarm... i.e. an extended, tragic end. Joplin & Hendrix then both had short lives that perhaps spared them a similar fate, but also limited their influence, again relatively speaking.... (And when it comes to Hendrix, I'd already featured Mess Hall by Joe Morris here in January 2015, i.e. the final installment of his "big loud electric guitar trilogy," there around Hendrix's basic "sound," as reprised in a discussion of Shock Axis in July 2016. I also just mentioned Magma last month, which doesn't have an explicit Hendrix reference, but takes up a similar "heavy metal sound" as a broad, timbral wave....) Meanwhile, Haggard was the only one of the four who was living when this recording was made, and he seems to have gone the opposite way, becoming more professional & open-minded in his later views.... So that said, besides Braxton on various saxophones (from sopranino to contrabass) & Ho Bynum on various brass, the quartet involves two musicians known for their work in avant rock, Nels Cline (electric guitar) & Greg Saunier (drums): Saunier was totally new to me, but Cline first appeared in this space in April 2012 (& again in July 2015) around The Gowanus Session with Thollem McDonas & William Parker.... Those inclusions make perfect sense, and of course electric guitar is featured at significant points, in keeping with rock priorities, in what might otherwise function as a classic free jazz quartet (with guitar as bass) around brass & reed: The inclusion of Ho Bynum does seem superficially strange, then (i.e. for a rock project), but works in broader ways (not so unlike Quartet Live at Sesc Pompeia, itself with three horns — & no percussion — & recorded a couple of months later, August 2014), making for a powerful (& even wild) & dense sequence of performances channeling the relentlessness of rock through Braxton's highly developed & empowering rhythmic-harmonic principles. (There are some lyrical moments as well.) There are many rock-tinged free trios & quartets out there, of course, but this one enacts a powerful hauntology as dissected & reimagined by one of the great composers of our era... another monument. Beyond that, though, I'll leave further discussion to people who are more attuned to the rock influences (not to mention the in-depth Braxton histories).

The discussion of Espresso Galattico in May got me to thinking more explicitly about music from Zurich (with which I have no live experience), and musicians such as bassist Daniel Studer in particular. (I'd referenced e.g. the discussion of Raw with string Trio Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin here from January 2017, along with Kontrabassduo Studer-Frey.) And I've known there were a couple of other albums from Studer on the horizon, the improvised Suites and Seeds by quartet Anemochore on Creative Sources, plus the composed Extended for Strings & Piano in Hat Hut's new "ezz-thetics" series. Both albums involve Frantz Loriot, who moved to Zurich, so that's another attraction for me: I first mentioned Loriot here with Baloni in January 2012, and again e.g. with Natura morta (first) in June 2013, and have long admired his technique on viola, even if his albums haven't always spoken to me as directly.... In any case, Extended (recorded February 2018) involves adding Loriot to Trio Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin to form a "jazz" string quartet, as well as Philip Zoubek on piano to make a (semi-classic) piano quintet: There seem to be five different compositions (all by Studer) involved, and some variation in instrumentation, in a generally intriguing exploration of interactive string technique (of which much appears to be improvised). Extended thus provides a sort of "take the temperature" opportunity to sample some ideas, whereas Suites and Seeds (the album & group names for which seem to have been swapped in the Creative Sources listings) is more in line with my focus in this space: Recorded on a single date at WIM in October 2018 (i.e. eight months later & by Jean-Marc Foussat, as it happens), it's a rather substantial album on which the previously (mostly) unknown to me Sebastian Strinning (tenor sax, bass clarinet) & Benjamin Brodbeck (drums) join the two string players (in a quartet that's also recently toured Japan, per online calendars). Suites and Seeds further suggests biological inspiration — as so many albums on Creative Sources do, among other things, as well as does e.g. indigenous music from New Guinea (e.g. birds, etc.), as discussed here earlier this month — and consists of two dense yet sparse three-movement suites (themselves totaling around 39', so of typical album length for this space) along with a half dozen shorter, more gestural (or process-oriented) tracks. The latter can be thin & technical (i.e. like sometimes austere studies), but the former forge an intriguingly polyphonic sense of time via quick figures across this mixed quartet, including sections that might almost be said to swing: The music is sparse at times, then, but features a sense of emergence (that's likely inspired specifically by biology, as noted), and its own sort of intensity around quasi-jazzy rhythmic concerns. It's a worthwhile (if segmented) debut, and seems to suggest that there's more to come from Anemochore (& the Studer-Loriot pairing in general).

I've been loosening some of my formerly arbitrary restrictions here — made simply to limit the field, so to speak, within what can sometimes be an overwhelming variety — and writing about more albums I might not have noted in the past, especially (& certainly not as a novelty) duos: Continuing with a recent Creative Sources release, Toxicodendron radicans (recorded in Ghent NY in August 2018) features Nikolaus Neuser on trumpet & Carlos Quebrada (b. Colombia, now living in Argentina) on electric bass in a series of miniatures to form a relatively short but stimulating album. I was unfamiliar with Quebrada previously, and have no idea how this meeting in Upstate New York happened, but Neuser has appeared here with Trialectics (recorded in 2016) & receives broader attention for his Mingus tribute trio, I Am Three. In fact, Trialectics seems like the perfect comparison for Toxicodendron radicans, with Quebrada's bass providing sounds similar to both the classical double bass & synthesizer there: This is thus both a more "economic" pairing offering similar timbral combinations, and an opportunity for Neuser to expand his trumpet articulations to become fully half of the ensemble. (Toxicodendron radicans is also recorded more closely, with a more aggressive presence, although Trialectics is not itself especially quiet....) One thus hears breathy horn against growling strings, both often percussive beginning from a great opening sequence, and sometimes becoming quite assertive or even raucous around various rhythmic shifts & displacements. (The bass does sometimes take up a "guitar" sound as well, but rarely, while the trumpet can project e.g. a cartoon voice after piercing tones....) The rapid clicking of the bass at times particularly conjures electronics — as well as does the occasional squeak, crackle, grind or shrieking resonance. The last track even involves a distinctive fluttering quality (leading into a brief, calming drone), as the album again comes to seem like an aggressive series of studies.... I don't know what's supposed to be poisonous about this music (per the "Poison Ivy" title, i.e. another biological reference, continuing into the track names...), but it does forge an intriguing & dynamic paired style on trumpet & bass: Although it's more in miniature & often timbrally innovative, more broadly, one might imagine a comparison to e.g. Bill Dixon's sonic landscapes (as "punctuated" by percussion), and so raise the potential of the trumpet-bass pairing in general.... (There are various trumpet trios around, for instance, although not that many relatively speaking, and some trumpet-drums duos, but subtracting the drums from the trio to form this other sort of duo seems to be that much less common — not even counting the "electric" quality here.) Despite the timbral variety, then, the result is not only surprisingly direct & affective, but suggests far more possibilities....

Another relatively brief duo album to appear recently — coincidentally also in eight tracks — is Incunabulum (recorded in Switzerland, but not in Zurich per recent entries, on two dates in May 2018) by Hans Koch (reeds) & Jacques Demierre (spinet, piano). I've been paying more attention to Herbal International since "discovering" the intense "acoustic" tapestry of Sawt Out (discussed this past March), and whereas Incunabulum doesn't present the same level of timbral or emotional transformation, it does involve close mic'ing of the instruments, as well as close attention to detailed articulation across a novel variety of preparations. Like Toxicodendron radicans, it can seem more like a set of studies or miniatures, but does leave one listening to a satisfying silence by the end. It does this in part by developing a charged variety across its short tracks, starting from the opening dominated by the noisy spinet, soon into a very mellow interaction around piano, and eventually into tracks where one is unsure which keyboard might be involved. And meanwhile, the reeds are correspondingly involved in various percussive pops, wind, static, etc. — in addition to the occasional melodic turn.... Incunabulum thus begins by alternating from noisy to mellow — & its specific sense of timbral mellowness recalls e.g. Drought for me at times — but also comes to conflate the two. Of course, I'd mentioned Koch here before, beginning from May 2014 (around Koch-Schütz-Studer, but he's mostly been appearing in duos, so tangentially to this space), but hadn't mentioned Demierre: He's actually appeared on Leo Records, Confront, Victo, Creative Sources... and I appreciate the choice of spinet for much (some?) of this interaction. It's a relatively practical instrument for playing around inside, and its brighter harmonics (as so evident to start the album) provide a different timbral palette than does the ultimately more earthy piano. In any case, the resulting merging or conflation of timbral profiles yields a fine sense of balance here (as undoubtedly aided by the sound engineering), sometimes mellow, but sometimes involving rumbling growls or crunchy counterpoint. Incunabulum thus seems to document a model, small-scale duo exploration of contrasting instrument potentials.

Continuing with recent Creative Sources releases, I was struck immediately by Nauportus, from a trio of two of the better known English improvisers of the younger generation together with Slovenian percussionist Vid Drašler, and as recorded for the Ljubljanica River Exhibition in March 2018. Drašler was new to me, and although generally understated in his contributions (& honoring Zlatko Kaucic as his mentor elsewhere), he surely serves to spur the subtly distinctive feel here... such that I expect to hear much more from him soon. That said, Nauportus seemed like an unassuming release in a long list from Creative Sources, but my interest was piqued by the participation of both Tom Jackson (clarinet) & Daniel Thompson (acoustic guitar), two musicians whose improvisations I seem consistently to enjoy: Jackson appeared in this space with Thompson on long-time favorite Hunt at the Brook (first discussed here in June 2015), so already involving two thirds of this new trio, but also on various other productions (e.g. Four Quartets as discussed here in November 2016). And his wonderfully sustained lyricism does much to animate Nauportus, suggesting (at least at times) easygoing music that seems to encompass an alternate sense of history.... Meanwhile, I should probably be saying more specifically about Thompson, who seems to be becoming a fixture in this space.... Here again, though, his contribution often seems understated & in the background, weaving around the others & never indulging in showmanship. However, he currently appears on four favorites here, including Runcible Four & Ag, the latter both with Adrian Northover on reed (rather than Jackson), such that his playing must appeal to me strongly if less obviously. And all four of those albums do have superficial similarities, particularly involving the striking melodicism that they tend to bring to a post-serial orientation — perhaps engaging a sense of nostalgia or even primitivism, but beyond the confines of Western tonality (& any other specific tradition). But whereas the larger Runcible Quintet allows for a wider variety of counterpoint & interaction (including via two overlapping trio structures, as discussed here back in May 2017), Ag involves by far the most similar feel to Nauportus for me, thus highlighting Thompson's centrality to both: In either case, guitar & percussion might work together tightly, perhaps as a duo for a while, but also interact with the reed both as support & in a more balanced tapestry — often yielding the sense of a timeless horn & percussion duo buoyed by contemporary guitar within an overall acoustic setting. In this, Nauportus involves longer lines on the clarinet, i.e. is more thoroughly lyrical, as well as projects more sense of quiet & space in general — right from the slowly emerging, languid beginning. In contrast, Ag involves more staccato or pointillism, and begins with striking combos around gonging or chiming metallic percussion. (The latter also serves to undermine any simplification I might otherwise be inclined to make, particularly as oriented on comments from earlier this month regarding a "paleo" vibe to the general horn & drums combo — although notions of genuinely ancient music are certainly evoked. But e.g. the gamelan involves striking metal, i.e. beyond found objects, and so there's still a kind of pan-global ethnomusicological vibe layered beneath the more specific addition of the guitar & its strings. These albums do seem to prod me with thoughts about adding iron age string technology to a quasi-paleo horn & drums setup in general, such a trio suggesting a minimal or canonical sort of fusion in that sense — albeit all three musicians actually employing more complicated, industrial age technology.) There's also a basic lightness to the articulation on these acoustic albums that resists notions of primitivism (or the past in general, according to common & deceptive modernist norms) as heavy or plodding or indeed overly harsh & aggressive, and if anything, Nauportus is rather mellow (& maybe sometimes a little eerie). Bent tones are also prominent across the trio (& can be subtly metallic themselves), but particularly buoy many of the extended lines on clarinet, adding both to the timeless feel & delicacy of the album. Later there's also a bit of a more tangible "modern jazz" feel, as well as some forceful or insistent sections, but most of its evocations do seem almost timeless: Not only does Nauportus (& Ag) involve more of a mensural universe, i.e. soaring melodies without the overall rhythmic conditioning of bar lines, but there's also a sense that the basic ingredients of the performance could have been combined in earlier decades. (A review elsewhere of the first Runcible album basically stated as much, wondering what made it new or notable at all. The answer is not in the ingredients of the mix, but the fluency with which they're combined & articulated. The same might be said of the development of medieval music performance practice since the 1970s as well....) It's thus a rather personal — yet collective — quality of post-serial — yet melodic — articulation that's being explored in these albums, including via extended technique, but not with an emphasis on novelty. (Returning to Hunt at the Brook, then, there's already a real sense of nostalgia being projected, and indeed that drummerless trio does seem to engage with an English sense of melody more specifically, combining with a sort of naturalism as previously noted. Its spacious articulations also come to build considerable density, making for what increasingly seems like a classic production. Apparently the trio does also continue to tour....) The result is fresh & sophisticated, but also doesn't seem especially fussy or complicated: Given the evident lyrical orientations of all of these albums, I'd also be curious to learn what unprepared listeners who explicitly hate dodecaphony (or believe that they do) have to say. (I mean, I very much enjoy the melodies, but I'm accustomed to post-serial music, and so I'm genuinely curious.) In any case, for me it makes for a very engaging combination, such that I'm finding Nauportus to be independently compelling alongside these other, similar albums involving Thompson.

The inclusion of another reed-string-drums trio here — about as classic (at least in the later 20th century sense) a jazz trio as can be, details aside — also prompts me to recap some other notable (but not new) albums from similar configurations: In particular, a discussion here in May 2017 around PEN gave a more extensive recap at the time, self-auditing as I called it then, and indeed one might compare Evan Parker's famous circular breathing technique with the frequent legato orientation by Jackson (on clarinet) on Nauportus. Likewise with acoustic bass as its string instrument, though, the recent Espresso Galattico takes a rather different tack, in that case with various cut-up lines from the tenor animating a subtly sophisticated (modernist) cubism. And whereas trios such as Nauportus & Ag involve acoustic guitar, I also want to note a couple of sax trios here involving electric guitar, likewise rendering shifts from "rhythm" to "front line" more continuous: Both Pool School (which has been a favorite here since May 2011) & the more recent Tipple Live at Elastic Arts (with its own squeak & rumble timbral pairing, per recent remarks on Tibetan ritual music) consequently involve more of a "rock" sensibility, in the former case especially around the subtly layered rhythms that underpin its three-way interactions, and in the latter especially via its often raucous sonorities per se. Do these engaging albums involve more rock evocations because they're from the US? That's surely a simplistic response, but there's also probably a general correlation.... (And so I should have also referenced the deconstructive approach of Pool School when discussing Braxton's recent Quartet (New Haven) 2014 earlier this month: There are some definite correspondences that I guess I didn't note earlier because of the different geometry implied by the two-horn setup, with the latter's Joplin disc probably being the most similar sounding overall....) In any case, these "driving" & often rhythmically animated albums project quite different moods from the almost floating, timeless globalism of so much of Nauportus.

Despite focusing on some related albums in the previous entry, or perhaps actually as illustrated by the overall breadth implied there by my more specific selections, as well as the relatively awkward attempt to articulate my interest, I still feel a certain distance from the English improvisation scene: I've expressed some of that wariness here in the past, but in doing a self-accounting, I also see that among the items I've feature here, the percentage originating in the UK continues to rise. Of course, I've also explicitly stated that I began with an internal mandate to focus on (young) US musicians, but that orientation has been evolving for a while — particularly around postcolonial concerns & articulations. And the reality is that as I've increasingly shifted toward an orientation on improvised music, the sheer number of talented players from or working in England begins to swamp my relatively uninformed preferences (which have hopefully become more informed over the years) with basic musical quantity & quality. Backing up then, my original impetus here continues to be felt in the earlier musical engagements in this space that both extend directly & condition subsequent responses, but that basic trajectory does become less idiosyncratic (as it almost had to be at first — unless one were, say, to orient only on the most popular etc.) with exposure. And so I've had to admit to myself exactly what I read many people say right from the beginning, that the UK has the most great, improvising musicians — although e.g. the US does retain significant niches. (This isn't really the time to elaborate on the latter, but I'll note that corresponding to the increase in UK-based albums being discussed here, there's been a decrease in NY-based albums in particular. Why? My only conclusion at this time is that — at least for more prominent productions — young New York performers are emphasizing composed music. There's a lot of underground, of course, but relatively fewer resources seem to be devoted to fully improvised albums....) As mentioned previously, my wariness around the UK has been partly a political wariness — although I've tried to remind myself that no country is monolithic politically — & so involves apprehension around both historical exploitation & postimperial hegemony, but I also need to acknowledge that it's sometimes been about being (relatively) overwhelmed by the history & styles involved. What I want to add to a general awareness of such intimidation now, though, is the recent realization that my apprehension of musical style has involved various ambivalences around the UK for my entire life: I've commented (mostly elsewhere) on the sheer novelty of so many people in the West today growing up within a media saturation campaign (both marketing & propaganda per se) constructed in modern technical terms & increasingly delivered by television & now smartphone, etc. We simply have no living experience of not being immersed in messages designed to manipulate us for profit, occasional (brief) escapes aside, and the same is actually true for me of English music, as I was born during the British Invasion. And so much English improvisation emerged from the same period, intertwining similar concerns.... I wrote about (some of) my intersections with rock music around a discussion of Quartet (New Haven) 2014 earlier this month — and one might even consider the music interrogated there (with the possible exception of James Brown, who had more career high points) as a later 1960s US reaction to (renewed) English influence — so perhaps I should further note that the "classic rock" I tended to enjoy involved classical music sounds & influences. Whereas US popular music was always grounded in Western music history via the technology of its instruments themselves (& the sort of music that they were designed to play), if nothing else (to ignore the cultural imperatives of the invaders), the reinsertion of further elements of classical style did also strengthen that historical connection — & as I've mentioned often enough, it was to an imperial history. And that's exactly where I want to locate a continuing ambivalence, particularly within the orbit of the "progressive rock" that was a sort of reaction to the (more rural) US reaction noted above, as well as being a move past the mod/rocker distinction the Beatles had straddled. (And let me be more clear here: Those innovations, the mere possibility of reaching a larger audience, involved money, lots of money. Further, any sort of irony involved in the origination of styles of hyper-consumption associated with these musical movements is long in the past. Rock soon glorified consumer society directly — perhaps also ambivalently, but canonically.) So I suppose this is an overlong introduction, but I do want to set a clear context for my reaction to progressive rock ideas lingering within more improvisational tapestries out of the UK, and so to discuss the recent Landscapes, from a quartet fronted by Paul Dunmall, more specifically as example: Landscapes was recorded in Bristol in September 2018, and forms something of a followup to another recent chamber quartet album, Seascapes (as discussed here in June 2018). Both include Philip Gibbs (a fixture on Dunmall albums, although also noted here in October 2018 for Sezu, an album featuring Adrian Northover on horns) on guitar & Ashley John Long on bass, and Seascapes had included Neil Metcalfe (flute), whereas Landscapes is rounded out by Benedict Taylor (viola). (Both of these more "chamber"-oriented albums were also paired on release with more traditionally jazzy or energetic albums from Dunmall, Freedom Music & Soultime respectively.) I'd just featured Taylor's colleagues from Hunt at the Brook in the previous entry, and in fact my first mention of John Long was also alongside Taylor on — an album with similar influences as Landscapes — Four Quartets (as first discussed here in November 2016, and as mentioned again around Nauportus). Four Quartets features Dunmall's bandmate from Mujician, Keith Tippett, and likewise involves a wide range of striking contemporary technique (including dodecaphony etc. from the strings) assimilated to an underlying tapestry that still simmers with a progressive rock vibe, if submerged beneath a rather broad musical tapestry, there in a pianistic mode. On Landscapes, it tends to be Gibbs on guitar who asserts the progressive style beneath other activity, and so tends to maintain continuity — such that the opening track not only appears to involve a symphony of traffic sounds, but an overall groove.... Various contemporary figures are assimilated to such an underlying continuity in a variety of ways, but the sort of post-Romantic symphonic harmonies that animate e.g. classic Moody Blues tend to recur, if subtly. Dunmall's use of soprano sax & flute (& not tenor) tends to emphasize the chamber orientation, and provides some fine timbral interactions around the strings (bolstered here by Taylor, with Dunmall embracing more of Metcalfe's role from Seascapes), but there's also an underlying feel of post-romantic drama that occasionally involves solos, and often yields to the dynamic of film music (buoying a "popular" sense of what's otherwise sometimes elaborate contrapuntal music). So particularly given my own personal history, it took me a while to sort out my reactions: In fact, what makes that "sorting" process so difficult is the sheer ubiquity of the underlying style, i.e. its cultural hegemony. That's not to say it's a bad style — obviously it's a generally appealing style — but that it embeds a certain kind of normalization, i.e. recreating the historical feeling (& explicit statement of many) that music is "inherently like that." Such naturalization & hegemony has been similarly articulated, as also noted here earlier this month, in e.g. distributing Western musical technology (e.g. guitars & radios) to indigenous people elsewhere. (When they use the equipment as designed, it becomes "proof" of Western musical superiority — & of course of the inevitability and/or desirability of cultural homogenization.) For that reason, politically, I believe that this music actually supports the status quo or worse.... (And I've already contrasted e.g. Nauportus & its lyrical yet non-idiomatic style. And hence the continued relevance of the non-idiomatic per se — yet another English notion....) As I noted of Seascapes, then, Landscapes has a "leisurely vibe" & suggests "filling time with music." That's another way of calling it entertainment, and the richness of its references will surely please many listeners in this general space, in a sort of haunting that also articulates to an increasingly conscious ambivalence (at least) on my part.

Particularly in the wake of some recent albums featuring electronics, I also want to make note of Triplicates, a recent duo release (on Relative Pitch) from Zeena Parkins & Jon "Wobbly" Leidecker, but recorded back in 2014 (in Oakland). Besides featuring electronics heavily & in a provocative way, Triplicates recalls some other locally recorded albums, both Monopiece + Jaap Blonk for its insistent weirdness (as discussed here last month), and Landlocked Beach because of Wobbly's electronic participation (on what is otherwise a rather distinctive "spoken word" album, actually recorded later, in March 2017, and discussed here in April 2018). One can perceive some of the precedents for those albums on Triplicates, an otherwise rather more crude (& sonically dense) album: Parkins is credited with her usual electric harp, itself already capable of a range of sonorities from ringing plucked tones to horn-like (or accordion-esque) hums, while Leidecker is credited with mobile phones & tablets, Booper Feedback Oscillator & mixer. Brief notes suggest that some of the latter objects were set in a sort of automatic mode, such that they'd attempt to respond to what they heard, making both for an iterative response to machinic weirdness, as well as an ongoing reduction of more complex developing timbres to those the crude electronics could (re)produce. Beyond a variety of string bending, then, there's also sometimes a truly raucous sense of sonic experimentation.... One might even characterize the result as a multi-movement symphony of noises, albeit one involving evocations of rock or even pop & new age, & in which the underlying duo can sometimes be perceived behind the automaticity.... Mild or dreamy at times, it can also make for a broad roar (& benefits from big speakers), swirling, echoing, sometimes insistent or spacey, sometimes forging the kind of contrapuntal density that I've called "crunchy" elsewhere.... Some intriguing textures & trajectories can result, although the musicians are usually ready to move on to the next track, rather than to pursue more implications around what's happened. (Indeed, I wouldn't say that this music is normalizing anything. And perhaps I should explicitly add apropos the previous entry that conscious explorations of tonality, as in so much contemporary "classical" music, do not automatically tend to reaffirm a status quo.)

Turning to some other recent (or upcoming) Creative Sources releases involving Ernesto Rodrigues himself, I first want to mention Merz — recorded in Lisbon last November, also as part of CreativeFest #12 — with tubist Gil Gonçalves joining the Lisbon String Trio for its tenth album (or perhaps eleventh, counting Rhetorica with pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro, which has yet to appear). Gonçalves (b.1983) has already joined Rodrigues in e.g. IKB & VGO ensembles, but hadn't been noted here yet.... Having a tuba join the Lisbon String Trio also recalls the trombone iterations, Intonarumori (discussed here in August 2017, as part of the original series of six albums) & Tactile (discussed last July, and what I've called the "most diffuse" in the series), as well as the trumpet concertante-style album From Faust with Sei Miguel (also discussed here in July 2018). Of course, the latter involves a higher register, as most of the early Lisbon String Trio albums did, and so a more brilliant sound from the horn. However, presumably in part via mic'ing & mixing, Merz features the tuba quite prominently too, likewise lending a sort of concertante feel, in this case unusually so considering the instruments involved. The sometimes pointillistic strings are generally more active than the more restricted, often growling, legato tuba, but a fine balance is achieved in overall ensemble articulation & audibility nonetheless.... Indeed, such string & brass combos continue to appeal, and warrant further exploration — here in a more assertive mode that does sometimes recall e.g. Polyorchard (e.g. Sextet | Quintet as, once again, discussed here last July). Merz moreover seems to encompass both study & exhibition, making for a rather energetic & directly appealing "tuba album." It thus seems to be an album that could have wider appeal than any of the other (at least new) items mentioned in this entry (& with the possible, upcoming exception of Rhetorica, which I have yet to hear...).

Continuing, not yet released on CD (but already on Bandcamp) is Percolation by a new mixed sextet of Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Yu Lin Humm (cello), Philippe Trovão (tenor saxophone), Pedro Frazão (euphonium), Andre Hencleeday (piano) & Ryoko Imai (bass marimba, percussion): The sort of quietly layered articulation of the single movement recalls Stratus in some ways, but also involves new participation & a generally acoustic setting. (I say "generally," because I do believe that some lowercase mic'ing is at work.) Also, as with e.g. Suspensão, there's a focus on dynamic balance, here with various reduced forces active much of the time — until a full-bore ending that seems almost out of place. Among the other musicians, Hencleeday is the only one I've mentioned here, and he's appeared in several contexts with Rodrigues, but Humm & Imai have also appeared in some larger ensembles (& have fine moments here, e.g. the marimba producing a hum that sounds almost electronic). Of the previously unknown performers, Trovão mostly plays a textural role on tenor, but apropos the previous paragraph, Frazão is quite prominent at times on euphonium: After some initially quiet scuffling & tinkling, he calls out strikingly against the texture, seeming to set the mood.... The ensemble tends to be careful & precise in its interactions in general, injecting a renewed tautness into the style, but I'm also not sure about the balance of the overall sextet, e.g. pairing piano with marimba.... Still, Percolation seems to point to some new ensemble ideas & articulations. Finally then, let me also note the upcoming new Isotope Ensemble (now with 21 members) album ("only" their fourth), Radium, also from CreativeFest#12 last November: It's a rather ominous, shearing production, slowly building over a single track (as on the two albums featured in this entry) to a raucous end....

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