Learning To Listen

Here today, gone tomorrow

2008-09-18T14:51:00.001+01:00

I've moved!!

This blog, and all of its contents, can now be found here:

The Watchful Ear

Thank you for your patience!

Pier today, gone tomorrow

2008-07-28T22:54:00.016+01:00

I heard a sad piece of news driving to work today. the Grand Pier at Weston Super Mare, one of mine and Julie's favourite haunts burnt down early this morning, leaving only the base of the Grade II listed Victorian structure intact. What is it about piers and fires? Something to do with water and electronics not mixing too well? Since the beginning of the twentieth century there have been no fewer than 24 major fires recorded on UK piers.

This isn't the first time Weston's pier has been ablaze, the first time back in 1930 completely destroyed it. Brighton's piers seem to spend more time alight than not, with the West pier remaining a burnt out wreck to this day, its sad image providing the sleeve to Martin Brandlmayer and Marin Siewert's2003 album Too beautiful to burn. In 2005 Southend pier burnt fown for the fourth (yes thats fourth time) in fifty years, whilst the pier at Colwyn Bay has burnt down twice, as has Great Yarmouth Pier. Hunstanton pier in Norfolk is barely a beginner having only burnt down the once, though the damage on that occasion is thought to have topped the £2M mark.

Amazing figures, but this is such sad news today. I visited the pier earlier this year as my ongoing love of the nostalgic decadence of slowly dying English seaside resorts leads me back there at least once every twelve months or so. Some of my earliest memories are of running up and down that pier, trying not to step on the cracks in the wooden floor for fear of falling (impossibly) through them to the sand below. (Not the sea mind, noone has seen the sea that close to the seafront at Weston for a century or so) the English pier is nothing great to see, not something I would ever recommend to a tourist, but if you are English, older than 25, and you ever went on a family holiday to the English coast as a child you will feel the same pain as me when you see the mess left of Weston pier.

So I was very sad to hear this news. Here are some of the many hundreds of photos I've taken around the building over recent years...

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As for music, I spent the duration of the train journey home from London after presenting audition last night listening to Toshimaru Nakamura and Annette Krebs' excellent album Siyu, recently released on the SoS Editions label. I'd already played something from it earlier on the show, and listened right the way through twice on the train, with the rush of wind into the open windows adding to the music and cooling me slowly against the heat of the late evening humidity. As I sit here now nearing midnight its still far too warm here, and as thunder rumbles around the hills outside the second track is softly playing on the stereo behind me. So good.

An epiphany a day keeps the stress levels at bay

2008-07-26T22:47:00.003+01:00

All this last week my drive into work every day has been a nightmare. Something called the CLA Game Fair has been taking place at Blenheim Palace. I have no idea what this event may actually be, but it has made my usual 40 minute drive take at least twice as long every day, and on Friday it took almost three hours. So why am I telling you this? Well this morning I was heading into work for the late shift and set out at around 9AM, a good hour earlier than usual for this shift, anticipating the chaos. As expected I ran into a jam in the usual place and, resigned to the same wait I'd had all week I opened a window and flicked on the radio, which was tuned to BBC Radio 3. (The main BBC Classical music channel for anyone reading that may be unfamiliar) I was immediately hit by a deep, resounding and jawdroppingly beautiful solo cello note that caused me to instantly forget the stress of the journey and turn the car stereo up.

My relationship with classical music is an unusual one. Whilst I would like to think I know the works of more "contemporary" composers such as Feldman, Cage, Nono, Lachenmann etc pretty well, my understanding and knowledge of older composers is very much in its infancy, having spent maybe 18 months now slowly investigating this area at a leisurely pace. As such, I am not confident or knowledgeable enough to be able to identify particular composers when I hear their work. I perhaps only know Mahler's symphonies and Shostakovich's later string quartets well enough to be able to instantly identify them.
Anyway I have been picking my way through the world of classical music essentially by ear. By that I mean I know what I like and then go and investigate more in that area when I hear something good. Much of my exposure to this music has been through Radio3 on my drives to and from work.

So this morning when I heard that cello I was immediately captivated. I immediately fell in love with the music, alive, powerful, vibrant. The piece blossomed out into a full orchestral piece, the cello solo at its heart. I knew I liked this music, I knew I had to hear it again in different surroundings, but what was it? I sat captivated until it ended to find that it was in fact a new recording of Shostakovich's First Cello Sonata, a piece that I have a couple of recordings of but have yet to actually play, as my classical listening time is sadly in shorter supply than classical CDs I have waiting to be to listened to. However, I felt a huge amount of satisfaction and a strange personal pride that I could respond like this to a piece of music I had not heard before by a composer I like a great deal. this probably sounds odd to seasoned classical listeners out there, but to be able to identify a piece in this way, respond to it emotionally and then find I have a version sat waiting to be played was rather a special moment to me. The journey to work, which had been a big stress all week turned out to be highly pleasurable today.

By the way the new version of the piece that was played by Radio3 was on the Orfeo label, played by daniel-Muller-Schott with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Yakov Kreiberg. I've just ordered a copy, naturally.

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A little birdie told me this week that Annette Krebs will return to Dublin this October to play a trio with Messrs Lacey and Vogel. You have plenty of warning dear readers, book your flights now!!

Listening in the dark

2008-07-23T00:16:00.002+01:00

I’ve been meaning to write this post since a moment at a concert early this year made me think about how I listen to music, particularly in a live situation. As I wrote here a few months back I attended a gig in London at the Chisenhale Dance Space that opened with a set by the trombonist Matthias Forge, playing acoustically in a very large room. The music was very good indeed, but what struck me about the set was how much easier it was for me to concentrate on the music when my eyes were closed.

Now I’ve often been known to close my eyes at concerts, partly because I have very sensitive eyes and the glare of certain stage lighting or even the strain of trying to see in the dark can be a pain, and partly because I find it easier to concentrate that way. (It used to be the case that the smoke from people’s cigarettes in the hall would irritate my eyes a lot as well but thankfully the one decent law this government has ever passed corrected that problem) Many a time people I have sat beside have nudged me, thinking I may have drifted off to sleep when in truth I have merely remained very still, eyes closed. But let’s go back a few lines there, I have often closed my eyes at gigs “because I find it easier to concentrate.” I wonder why this is? Does shutting down one of the senses make it easier to respond to one of the others? I’m no biologist, but I suspect not.

At that gig back in March, I found myself sat in the front row of the audience when Matthias placed his chair right in front of me, literally a few feet away, and sat down to play. He came so close to the assembled crowd because his music was played quietly without amplification in a big room. If he was further back some of the audience may not have heard much at all. Forge set about extracting all kinds of beautiful yet alien sounds from his instrument, using a series of plastic and cardboard tubes pushed into the bell, and blowing and scraping just about every inch of the trombone. The effect this had on me was basically to create a series of “that’s a nice sound, ahhh that’s how he makes it” moments. I found myself as much interested in the visual spectacle as the aural.

Now such attention to what was happening and how it happened might make good material for the live music reviewer, but there was a point about ten minutes into Forge’s set when I suddenly realised I had paid very little attention to the overall structure and progression of the music. I knew how the sounds were individually made and the skill required to generate them, but I didn’t really know what the sum of the parts totalled up to. At this point I closed my eyes, sat back and let the shape and form of the music come together in my mind and the impact on me was something of a mini revelation.

I kept my eyes closed for the rest of that night’s performances and have done so for the majority of concerts I have attended since. Therefore when later that same evening Mark Wastell surprised the audience by introducing a blast of digitally produced chatter into an otherwise quite austere saxophone / tam tam duo with John Butcher I was as shocked as anyone. I didn’t see him reach down to turn a dial on a mixer or press a button on a CD player, I just heard this new characteristic enter into the soundworld in my head. I can’t help but think this was a better way to experience the music.

At first this seems a bit strange to me. I am very much a visual person. I trained in school as a visual artist and a day doe snot pass without something catching my eye or the camera lens on my iPhone. I have a love of the packaging CDs come in and really dislike imageless Mp3 downloads. When I think about though it I am very comfortable listening to music on CD, and perhaps my listening methods are best suited to situations where all there is is sound to distract me. Its not that I don't like what I see on stage, its just that it distracts me from the art of listening. I have always struggled to connect with concerts that include visuals projected onto a screen, or dancers moving about the room. Equally the influx over recent years of DVDs featuring collaborations between musicians and visual artists hasn’t really been that welcome with me, as I just struggle to be able to focus on the audio and imagery in tandem. (I say this guardedly as a DVD by Olivia Block with Luis Recorder and Sandra Gibson sits by the side of my computer awaiting its first play, who knows this could be the first I really enjoy…) Perhaps I just don’t have the mental capacity to concentrate on the inputs to two senses at once, or perhaps my ability to listen has evolved to such a state that it requires supreme concentration. I don’t know.

Again, thinking as I type here I have always felt a little uneasy with musicians that present a big visual spectacle on stage. This dates back years, and I remember feeling so much at home with the late eighties Shoegazer indie pop movement that involved miserable looking guitarists standing motionless staring at their feet as they played. When I first took an interest in acid house music around the same time it was from listening to the music on the radio rather than from leaping about in a club. My few brushes with raves back then were soulless experiences, but when John Peel played the music on his late night show as I listened laying on my bed it worked so much better.

Even recently a lot of on-stage theatre merely distracts me from listening properly to the music at hand. Jason Lescalleet is one musician I find enthralling to watch, but inevitably leave the concert hall feeling like I missed the music completely. Joe Colley is another. My written responses to the occasions I have seen Colley perform live have always been more about what I’ve seen than heard. Perhaps this is all just a weakness of mine that others cannot share, perhaps it’s a common thing and I just haven’t noticed. One thing is for sure I’m either watching the stage or my eyes are closed and I’m watching nothing. I never pay any attention to the rest of the audience around me. Very often I’m asked how many people were at a show and find myself unable to answer. So maybe the rest of the room are sat there eyes with closed as well and I just haven’t noticed…

Anyway for now I’ll be sat in my own personal darkness for the majority of the live shows I attend. I’ll be able to report back on the music in detail, just don’t ask me to tell you what haircut Mark Wastell is sporting this week ;)

A cure for the summertime blues

2008-07-18T20:18:00.007+01:00

Bleeurgh its been a rotten summer. A rotten year so far if I'm honest. Cue yet another meta-introduction to a much delayed post... The last six weeks or so have been tough going, working hard, plus taking some time off from this kind of thing to focus on helping my much beleaguered other half Julie through endless hospital visits and finally a much needed operation. Add to that being involved in a car accident that wrote off my car (at 70mph) but left me physically unscratched and all the nonsense that comes along with that kind of thing and there's not much time left for anything else. I've had to ditch planned visits to Dublin last weekend and Portugal (for the fantastic looking Dinamo festival) in a week or two, and its been just about all I can do to keep listening to enough music to put together a weekly radio show.

audition has been a lot of fun over recent weeks however, about the only thing that's kept me close to sane. The most recent four shows should all have made it up online pretty soon after this post goes public, so we should be up to date in the archives again. Thanks to anyone that has been, or will be listening.

A ton of great CDs have come my way, even without me making any attempt to find any for a couple of months. I won't go into details here as a whole slew of reviews are planned for the Bagatellen and Paris Transatlantic sites as they both relaunch this Autumn. For now though I can thoroughly recommend a few not-to-be-missed releases; David Lacey and Paul Vogel's The British Isles is a wonderful CD, everything I had hoped it would be. David Papapostolou and Daniel Jones' debut release Leaving Room on the Adjacent label is a fine hidden gem, and I have Brian Olewnick's reliably excellent taste for pointing me towards Seymour Wright's brilliant CDr release (and thanks to Seymour for being kind enough to send me a copy when I couldn't find one!) Plenty more great music has fallen my way this year, but its particularly nice to be able to pick out a couple of releases made in the British Isles to recommend, plus a third named after them...!

I've made it along to a couple of concerts over recent weeks, though I've also missed far more than I'm used to missing. One that simply couldn't be allowed to pass without my attendance though was John Tilbury's masterful performance of Feldman's Triadic Memories at St John's Hall in Westminster, London. I was particularly interested with this one to see if, (like virtually every other recent Feldman performance by Tilbury) this realisation went slower, and took longer than previous CD released versions of the work. Suffice to say it was a lot slower, and all the more enjoyable for it on this occasion. I don't remember the exact timings. Alastair was given the task of keeping an eye on his watch for me (one way of keeping him from dozing off...) so perhaps he will chime in here and remind me.

Amongst the sizeable audience that evening was the composer Howard Skempton, who also wrote a special short piece for Tilbury to open the show. Notti steallate a vagli was written as a companion piece to Triadic Memories and as a homage to Feldman. I mention it here because it was truly very beautiful, the perfect way to prepare for such an evening listening to late Feldman, capturing the mood and presence of the great man's work in a short space of time. The concert was recorded for a potential CD release and I do hope if that happens the Skempton work will be added as a companion piece.

Then a couple of days ago, once Julie was home and recovering nicely I made it back into the big smoke to catch the last night of this year's Music we'd like to hear series of concerts at St Anne and Agnes' Church hidden away in a truly revolting part of London's financial district. The evening was a showcase for the music of Michael Parsons, who performed some of his own work at the piano, plus selected the other music of the evening.

Of the pieces Parsons played the best by far was the ironically titled Krapp Music, originally written in 1999 (for Tilbury again as chance will have it) as part of a programme of pieces based on Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape. In the play Krapp listens to and comments upon a spoken recording he made thirty years earlier. For Parsons' piece the pianist plays in response to two recordings made earlier in the same space, one at a medium distance from the piano, the other more remote.
The music itself was slow and softly melodic, but when Parson's live playing was joined by the distant recording of the same piano a strange sense of passing time came over me. The recorded sounded like it was being played live, but in an imaginary room somewhere off down an imaginary corridor, with the sounds taking their time wandering into the space. This was a really interesting piece to witness live. A CD recording just wouldn't have the same impact, as the sense of space created by the excellent quality recordings (made and then "projected" back into the hall by John Lely) couldn't be recreated on a stereo system at home.

The other real joy of this evening's music was the opportunity to witness a string quartet up (very) close in an intimate space. The Post Quartet are made up of young, very talented musicians, and watching and hearing them play together in such a relaxed, pleasant environment was fantastic. they played an assortment of pieces including Parsons' reworkings of traditional Scottish Highland music, Webern's String Quartet op.28 and Cardew's Second string trio. They also played two short works by 16th century composer Orlando di Lasso, but the real highlight for me was Parsons' transcription for string quartet of Henry Purcell's Four Part Fantazia (sic) No.9 written originally in 1680. This brief but powerfully uplifiting tapestry of echoing chords tumbling over each other just a couple of yards in front of me made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A string quartet in full flight is as near as I think you can get to musical perfection, and coming to this music with very little expectations made for a really enjoyable experience.

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On the way to the concert on Wednesday I took in the Cy Twombly : Cycles and Seasons exhibition at the Tate Modern. I am reasonably new to Twombly's work. After having been intrigued by one or two paintings at the New York MoMA back in 2006 I have only been able to see the four of the paintings that have made up the Four Seasons series over recent years as they have been on continual display at the Tate. For this show however a couple more paintings from this great series have been added, massive works that depict the changing moods and sensations throughout the four seasons of life. For me a great combination of the outpourings of human passion and a chaotic sense of disorder these paintings are worth the (actually quite extortionate) entrance fee alone.

Even these paintings were overshadowed for me however by the two versions of the massive works Treatise on the Veil. A sudden step towards minimalism in the late sixties brought about these works, which are based upon Twombly's responses to an Edweard Muybridge photo of a bride in motion. A series of studies accompany the display of these huge paintings (probably about fifteen metres wide by maybe three metres high?) and spending time with these in conjunction with the paintings themselves was a great pleasure. Twombly was most certainly not inspired by Cornelius Cardew's Treatise, that he would have been writing around the same time, but I found it hard to not see a similarity between Twombly's paintings and some of the more sparse pages in Cardew's masterwork. I spent a lot of time with these two works, and would definitely recommend a visit if you can get to the Tate before the exhibition closes.

The long (not very) winding road

2008-05-26T16:42:00.006+01:00

Yesterday, just for a change I went into London and attended the Tate Modern. Getting there early I took my usual stroll around my favourite haunts (For anyone that has visited in recent weeks and wondered where two of the Rotho Seagram paintings had gone to, I don't know either, but rest assured they are back now!) I also had a potter around the Duchamp / Picabia / Man Ray show, which left me a little cold if the truth is known.

If you have an interest in Duchamp then you probably know everything that this exhibition could tell you. Unless you had no knowledge at all of his urinal, and you walked into the gallery and were suprised by it, then you probably don't need to go and see it. In my opinion Duchamp was a genius, but at the end of the day its still just a urinal. Once you know its there and why its there then there's nothing more to be gained by going to look at it. At first I didn't fully understand the connection with Picabia and Man Ray either, beyond the fact they were friends at an early age, though their mutual links to the formative Dada movement did begin to show through in the work of all three as I wandered through. However the works on display were spread over such a wide range of styles and ideas that making sense of it all was very difficult. But then maybe thats the point.

I had another reason for attending the Tate yesterday however. As part of the somewhat bizarre Long Weekend series of events Luke Fowler and Lee Patterson performed their response to the La Monte Young score Draw a straight line and follow it. In typically Pattersonesque style the duo set off a few weeks back to the remote Hebridian Isle of Islay. Fowler is a film maker, best known to me as the creator of the excellent Pilgrimmage from scattered points documentary on Cornelius Cardew. Patterson is arguably the UK's best exponent of the art of field recording right now. Together they chose the B8016 road that joins Islay's two biggest towns Bowmore and Port Ellen. the road is very straight, and they walked its ten mile length, Patterson making field recordings along the way, capturing the natural environment as well as the hum of wire fences, insect chatter beneath the surface of stagnant streams and the occasional passing car. Fowler filmed the journey, and later he spliced the footage together into a 25 minute long impressionistic film that captured the essence of the walk, the place and Patterson at work.

Lee then made the soundtrack to the film from the assorted recordings he had made along the walk. Yesterday at the Tate the film was shown, and Lee added extra sounds into the room using items he and Luke had picked up from along the route as sound sources. Pine cones with contact mics attached were blown onto through a straw, and discarded plastic drinks bottles were used as simple feedback chambers held in front of tiny microphones to create sustained tones that could be tuned carefully by adjusting the position and size of the bottles.

B8016 2008 was a nice little event to experience. Its easy to sense that its creators took an enormous amount of pleasure from its creation. Remarkable simply because it was all brought together in about two weeks, and perfect as a vehicle for these two talented artists to do what they do best, this simple but effective response to La Monte Young's score made for a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

The photo above by the way isn't actually of the B8016. I couldn't find a photo of it online. It is however another straight road on Islay, just a few miles North, and well, who would know?

Edit: Here's a pic of the road in question, kindly supplied by Armin. (see comments)

The undeniable pleasure, and unavoidable guilt of voyeurism

2008-05-26T13:13:00.012+01:00

Last year The Guardian ran a weekly series called Writers' Rooms. The idea behind the series was to print a single photo of the room in which a writer did their work and accompany it with a paragraph about the room written by the writer themselves. This year the series has evolved into a similar series of Artists' Studios, though I cannot see an online archive for these yet.

This strangely voyeuristic series has fascinated me. I'm really not sure why, but there is something very interesting about the rooms within which creative people work. I don't think this is a Big Brother thing, I don't have any interest in seeing pictures of any old lived-in room. Perhaps I feel some common link to the people whose homes/studios we are intruding into, as many of the rooms don't look that unlike the one I am sat in right now. Perhaps there is a dark side to me that feels pleased that Salman Rushdie leaves old coffee cups and half eaten Marmite sandwiches lying about as much as I do, or perhaps its just a sense of envy at those able to make their living in such rooms.

This interest in artist voyeurism goes back quite some way with me. I have long adored the small town of St Ives deep on the Cornish coast, managing to get down there quite often in recent years. Barbara Hepworth, the sculptress and one of my favourite artists of all time lived the last few decades of her life in St Ives, sadly perishing in a fire at her studio. Before her death Hepworth had opened the garden to her home up to visitors, as it holds a vast number of works hidden amongst the incredible range of obscure plants that she collected in her life. You can still visit the Trewyn Studio to this day, and it is possible to look in through the windows onto Hepworth's working area, half finished scupltures eerily left as they were at the time of her death.

I find the Hepworth garden an incredibly calm, relaxing place simply because of the mixture of fauna and artworks in a quiet place within one of the most beautiful parts of the UK. Knowing that the studio sits to one side however brings a further, darker energy to the place, a sense of being close to the driving force behind the work. It somehow never feels quite right to be looking through those windows on to the chair in which Hepworth died, but at the same time there is an intensity to the place that makes it the feel like the correct site to be viewing Hepworth's work. Another, similar gallery has been opened in the small house that Stanley Spencer lived in, not far from here at all. I keep meaning to get around to visiting it and I will strive to do so this summer.

So when the opportunity arose this March to go and see Francis Bacon's final studio when I went visited Dublin I went hoping to feel similar feelings to the above. As it turned out though, the experience was far from enjoyable. The studio, famous for its chaotically untidy internal appearance was situated in London, where Bacon lived most of his life, and spent his last working years. Famously, ten years ago when the local authorities in London wanted something done with the studio, and with no arts organisation in the UK coming forward the Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin, backed by an extraordinary amount of Irish Arts Council money literally relocated the studio piece by piece and reassembled it back in Ireland. The studio then now stands as the centre piece of the gallery, encased in what is effectively a large perspex box.

It took about ten minutes to fly around the rest of the Hugh Lane gallery. A very tiresome exhibition of mainly uninteresting contemporary abstraction. I could possibly have spent longer with a room full of Sean Scully's paintings, but probably not that much longer, having seen the same (all very similar) collection before back in Oxford. As my two companions (Msrs Küchen and Carlsson) were both looking severely unimpressed we moved on fast to find the Bacon exhibition. Almost forgotten about in a small room to one side of the room containing the "studio" there is a collection of five or six of Bacon's final works, some of which remain unfinished. Bacon's painting is some of the most unnerving, grotesque, and yet strangely compelling work I am familiar with. Whilst a big space was given over in the gallery to the recreation of the artist's working space, the art itself was relegated to this small overcrowded room.

The studio itself just felt completely out of place, which perhaps isn't a surprise. Whilst peeking in on artist's homes is enjoyable to me, this felt like something else, a perverse fetishisation of Bacon's studio, brought miles, piece by piece at great expense and placed on view as effectively a work of art in itself. Which it quite clearly isn't. Its a messy room covered in paint that had a historical value if left where it was, but moved here all of that is lost. What's even more galling is the fact that Bacon wasn't really even Irish. Although born in Dublin this was to English parents, and he spent the vast majority of his life in London. Scooping up the studio and planting it down again in Dublin seems a desperate attempt to reclaim Bacon as Irish. All a bit silly if you ask me. Focussing completely on the studio at the expense of the paintings themselves then seems even more perverse.

We didn't stay long looking at the studio. All the trip really made me want to do was go and find the building it all came from to see whatever became of it. I also felt the need to go and find a decent collection of Bacon's paintings. Thinking back now I just wonder how many current artist and musician's grants may have been turned down so that funding could be given to this whole ridiculous enterprise... Well at least its better than using the money to build an Olympics stadium I suppose.

Torn apart by a Tragedy of Listening

2008-05-26T00:53:00.002+01:00

Well what can I say?

I've only really known Luigi Nono's Prometeo for about eighteen months, having discovered and immediately fallen in love with first the original 1985 release of the composer's final, triumphantly wonderful work and then late last year the new version recorded for the Col Legno label. Both of these remarkable recordings were overseen by André Richard, who worked closely with Nono on the music's original performance, and who also took the roles of artistic director and sound arranger for the UK premiere of Prometeo at the Royal Festival Hall two weekends ago.

I'd had tickets for this concert for nearly a year, such was my determination to not miss out on the event. As it was a few tickets remained on sale on the evening, though a considerable crowd of knowledgeable listeners still descended on the South Bank for this one. So again, what can I say? This concert completely blew me away. As it came to an end and a very long ovation rang out around from the audience I felt in a daze, as if coming out of a very beautiful, two-hour long trance. So yes, plenty of hyperbole, but what was so good about it?

Well for me Prometeo is far more than a collection of beautiful noises. It takes a small number of culturally loaded elements and brings them together into one perfectly constructed whole. At its heart are the remnants of assorted historic texts based on the Greek tragedy of Prometheus, but Nono pulls them apart, breaking up sentences into individual syllables, retaining the anguish of human despair through the overall crushing intensity of what remains. The structure of the work is everything for me though. Sounds come and go, sometimes electronically manipulated in the most subtle of ways, different elements of the piece, instrumental, vocal, electronic and the spaces in between them all are built up into a monolith of flowing sound, broken up frequently by sudden chasms in the music.

Prometeo is often described as an opera, but clearly it isn't. There is no story, no characters, no real narrative. It is possible to read a printed copy of the texts involved , but it is impossible to follow this through the work, even if you speak ancient Greek. Rather, Prometeo is the culmination of a career of Nono studying and understanding the human response to tragedy and injustice, and distilling all of this down into this one final work, that he himself gave the subtitle "A Tragedy of Listening"

Although obviously I had been anticipating this live performance of Prometeo for some time, I was totally unprepared for how different, how much greater the experience of the music was when witnessed in a concert hall compared to CD listening. This music has always felt like fine architecture to me, bringing together elements of the baroque, modernism, etc into something quite new. If then we consider Nono to be the architect then André Richard was very much the master-builder for these performances. Months of work went into the planning for Prometeo's UK debuts, (there were two performances at the RFH, one on the Friday, one on the Saturday) Every part of the massive hall was used to place musicians, singers, narrators or loudspeakers, so as to create a completely 360 degree surround sound environment, with the audience, plus Richard and his assistants sat behind a bank of computer screens at its centre.

Hearing sounds come from everywhere, above, below, behind etc... often from places out of view truly gave the work a third dimension, bringing the fine structure of the work even more to life, truly filling the enormous space. In this situation I found detail in the music that I just could never hear on the CDs. Spaces I considered to be silent before were filled with whispers and murmurs, instruments died away slower, sounds collided where they had merely sat adjacent to each other in my past experience. On CD you just hear voices and instruments. In the RFH this was confused as a chorus seemingly coming from one part of the hall would suddenly change as its sound would switch and appear from a loudspeaker elsewhere. All of this brought an incredible sense of being immersed in the middle of this music, caught in the centre of this tragedy of listening.

I rarely go to see fully composed music. This is a situation I would like to change in the near future, but as I am used to watching improvisation I guess I am rarely shocked to hear an arrangement of musicians sound quite different to how they appear on a CD. With this performance of Prometeo however, the added detail and depth within the room made this a completely different experience of what is essentially a fully composed piece of music. Even little things like hearing the work right the way through (rather than the forced break that happens on both CD versions as Prometeo will not fit onto a single disc) was a strange experience. The nine parts of the work felt like they belonged together here, as opposed to different tracks on album as I have subconsciously considered them in the past. There could be no getting up to make a cup of tea halfway through, there were no intervals, no coming up for air. An overwhelming experience that has made me stop and rethink my opinion of what is possible in a live music performance.

Soundtrack to a pleasant day

2008-05-25T10:29:00.004+01:00

Just a brief post whilst I mull over what to write here next...

Yesterday I had a rare day to myself. A day off from work following a very tough, exhausting week, and with Julie away for a few days I spent the day catching up on things at home, finishing that long post for this blog, clearing up a load of Cathnor business and sorting out the piles of CDs that every so often threaten to take over the town of Didcot.

Anyway, with the exception of a wander around the corner to the post office I spent the entire day alone indoors, and of course the day had a soundtrack... here it is for you, for no real reason really, other than to remind people that this is a blog, and blogs are supposed to be about the pointless events of the day aren't they?!

7.30AM Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring My internal body clock always wakes me early. On days like today I just reach out for the hi-fi remote and press play. Whatever I was playing the night before then plays, and if its something suitable to begin the day with it stays on, if not then I flick on Radio 4. Either way I invariably fall back to sleep for a couple of hours.

9AM - Luigi Nono - Fragmente-Still a diotima Breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon... (when you work for the company I do, meals are always good!) This Arditti recording of the Nono proved the perfect opener for a relaxing day.

10AM-11.30AM Asher - Ubeboet - Cell Memory (windsmeasure)
Helmut Lachenmann -- String Quartets (Kairos)

11.30AM At this point I went for the walk to the post office. I listened to the podcast of Friday night's edition of the hilarious Radio 4 programme News Quiz. Old ladies looking at me strange as I giggled to myself in the inevitable queue.

MiddayWhen I got home the first post of the day had arrived. (remember when this used to happen in the morning?) Lo and behold there's a copy of David Lacey and Paul Vogel's new album amongst the junk mail. I sat quietly and played it, taking the opportunity to spend time with it in a quiet house. I ended up playing it four times back to back. More about it soon, but its everything I knew it would be...

3.30PM- 7PM - Vanessa Rossetto - Misafridal (Music Appreciation)
Julien Skrobek - a rather nice demo he kindly sent me
Johannes Brahms - Klavierquintett (Maurizio Pollini on DG)
Phil Durrant - Sowari (spotted this while putting CDs away and couldn't resist giving it a spin)
Olivia Block - Live set on 23Five CDR
Steve Roden - Live set on 23Five CDR

I stopped to make dinner at 7PM. (Roast pork with all the veg trimmings if you're interested!) This took over an hour, during which I had on Radio 4, mainly a pretty bad arts review programme. Opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio... had a bath with my plastic duck while it cooked...

8.30PM Gustav Mahler - 6th Symphony (Claudio Abbado with Mahler Youth Orchestra on DVD) On quiet days like this I've taken to sitting down to dinner with one of my collection of Mahler DVDs playing. A lovely evening meant the back door was open so flies buzzed around a bit, but a nice meal with a good wine (actually that bit is debatable) is often accompanied well by Mahler.

9.30-Midnight Discs 1 and 2 of the Sugimoto/Okura/Unami - Chamber Music Concerts Vol.1 box set I worked through these again before bed in preparation for this week's audition programme. As the wine level in the bottle went down so the music on this discs sounded better and better. I must say though that when I reached out for the hi-fi remote this morning with a bit of a thick head Sugimoto's somewhat austere Tom and Jerry didn't stay playing for long. There's a time and place for everything..!

A well-placed trousercough in the void of silence

2008-05-06T21:26:00.015+01:00

You know the score, busy, stressed, no time etc...

OK I need to do some catching up again. Since that post from the internet café in Dublin I've begun five different posts here, all of which were sat unfinished on the server until I deleted them all just a moment ago as none of them are really relevant any longer. I'll try and summarise them in this and subsequent posts over the next few days however.

The end of March saw me attend a nice gig at the Chisenhale Dance Space beside the canal in Bethnal Green. The concert was great, four solid sets, the first an acoustic solo trombone piece by Matthias Forge that took place right in front of me, causing me to close my eyes as the visual distractions made close listening strangely difficult. More on that subject in a future post. Forge was followed by the electroacoustic trio of Daniel Jones, Paul Morgan and David Papapostolou, who played a richly detailed but restrained set that affirmed my faith in these three rapidly emerging musicians.

After an interval came another solo set from the inimitable John Wall, which followed his recent pattern of impressing me twice as much as the last time I saw him, much more spacious and with some changes in pace this time rather than the hell for leather avalanches of the last few shows. Slowly, and very publicly John is finding out how to really work well with his music in a live setting, and that really pleases me. The final set, a debut duo from Mark Wastell and John Butcher was as confusing as it was rather good. What at first glance seemed to be a sax / amplified tam tam performance was thrown off at a right angle when Wastell introduced pre-recorded passages of what I can only describe as post-Mego laptoppery into the fray. This completely threw me. At first I genuinely thought that Wall's laptop, still plugged in at the back of the hall had started up again somehow, but when I finally closed my eyes and concentrated on listening rather than trying to solve mysteries it all worked very well together. I think.

The Chisenhale Dance Space is a large room that occupies the top floor of an otherwise derelict old brewery building. Its a place I really like, as from the outside, and on all other floors apart from the top it remains deserted and derelict, all broken windows and large rubble filled rooms. The above photo of the rear of the building comes from the website Derelict London that has also spawned a neat little book of photos of derelict sites in the capital. There's something very beautiful and equally very sad about this kind of building, but in the case of the Chisenhale its wonderful to see this charming old place being put to good use at the same time as retaining its individual decadent beauty.

A few days later as my previous post revealed I headed off to Ireland again for the 2008 i and e Festival in Dublin. Again, it feels like an eternity now since the trip, so I'll keep my comments brief, but once again I had a really great time. Musically three performances really stood out for me. The best of them all was the set by Chipshop Music, the quartet I seem to write about an awful lot here consisting of David Lacey and Paul Vogel from Dublin and Eric Carlsson and Martin Küchen from Sweden. The performance was quite different from the group's CDR on the Homefront label, Carlsson most notably switched from the electronics of that release to an acoustic percussion set-up that featured tuned wood and metal. He used these to pull out oddly irregular yet superbly timed rhythms that provided a strong structure to the performance. Overall what struck me most about the set was the sense of timing, which was absolutely spot on, with just enough music happening at any one time and each musician taking time out from the fray, only to return at precisely the right moment. I think this was only the third time the group had got together to play, following successful shows in Ireland and a brief tour of Spain in 2007. Certainly a group right in their prime.

The Swedes also formed two thirds of a trio that shone for me on the second night of the festival. Axel Dorner's trumpet provided the other 33% of a slow, contemplative performance that began again revolving around a rhythmic pulse picked out by Carlsson, with Küchen and Dorner's breathy lines slipping and sliding over the top. The rhythm broke away after a short while here, and as the performance continued the two wind instruments became more boisterous, so Carlsson brought a series of piercing shrieks from his bowed metal, interspersed with a strange rattling sound that I assume came from the percussion, but with my eyes closed at this point its hard to be sure. There was a slight sense of nervous uncertainty at the beginning of the set, I think this was the first time the three had played together as a trio. As the music progressed however things coalesced much easier into a more assured, if always slightly fragile performance of thoughtful acoustic improv.

Dorner had played the night before as part of the No Furniture trio with laptopper Boris Baltschun and the clarinet of Kai Fagaschinski. For that set Dorner had attached a strange oversized box of electronics to the side of his instrument, with cables leading away to a computer. It was really hard to tell what this limpet-like construction was doing to his sound, particularly as the trio played a set drenched with thick converging tones within which it was often hard to distinguish the three instruments apart. This was the first performance of the trio for nearly five years, with their only CD release dating back to 2003. For this concert their music was much fuller than it appeared back then, opening with a techo-esque throb from Baltschun that set the scene for the rest of the set, a dark and brooding affair quite different to what I had been expecting. From one perspective though, once it got going there was a certain predictability about the performance that was counterbalanced by the musicians undoubted skill in its execution. Although perhaps there was little original here the chance to hear these three musicians together in full flight was highly enjoyable.

In general all of the sets at this year's i and e Festival were of interest, even if not all my cup of tea. The Quiet Club, an electronics / live scraping and bowing duo made up of Cork's Danny McCarthy and Mick O'Shea created a nice, if not particularly quiet soundworld that held my interest throughout. Paul Vogel's duet with Roy Carroll saw his clarinet matched by laptop processed clarinet, and it provided a great centre-stage for the enigmatic excellence of his playing even if the collaboration itself didn't always work well. Kai Fagaschinski had earlier opened the festival with a short solo clarinet set that was very beautiful while it lasted, his original and highly skillful techniques were a joy to behold again, but thinking back now his performance left no lasting impression beyond this.

Fred Van Hove's hour long work out sat at the organ in the Peppercanister Church was a dramatic spectacle to close the festival, and it was well received but if I'm honest it left me completely cold. I actually struggled to stay awake during the performance, mainly because the long alcohol-fuelled walk around a rain-soaked Dublin with the two Swedish guys that had preceeded the show wasn't the best preparation for respectful listening. I've since been sent a DVD of the performance that I have yet to watch, so maybe that will change my opinion when I get around to it.

The two performances that disappointed me most were the solos from Boris Baltschun and Jason Lescalleet. Baltschun sat in the dark, his lowered face and a vase of daffodils placed on his table lit by the glow of his computer screen. At first he placed isolated bleeps and glitches into the echoing silence of the Unitarian Church, but after a short while the sounds multiplied and merged into a somewhat impenetrable series of cold electronic constructions that unfortunately I found neither conceptually interesting or emotionally engaging.

Lescalleet's solo was as much of a theatrical event as the last time I saw him perform, a couple of years back in New York.I've watched many musicians set up their tables of equipment in the past, but not normally after their performance had begun! Clearly the whole process of building the machine that makes his music is an important part of the whole live process for Lescalleet. He began with a 7" single (I think it was Indian Reservation by Paul Revere and The Raiders) playing alone on a small record deck. It was allowed to play undisturbed in full as Lescalleet captured parts of it on worn old tape loops he had set up between two small recorders on the floor. These decaying loops were then used as the basis of the noise piece that he then built up, bringing in soundfiles from a laptop as well as material captured from contact mikes placed around the stage. Whilst a refreshingly enjoyable visual spectacle (at one point Lescalleet even went to the back of the hall to fetch something he needed from his bag) I sadly found the actual music it all generated to be of little interest, sonically powerful but only in a somewhat predictable way.

Besides the music the 2008 i and e Festival was yet another opportunity to catch up with some good friends and spend yet more time in a city that increasingly feels like my future home. Despite now being in its fourth year the festival retains its intimate, welcoming feel with no barriers at all between the musicians and their audience. The organisers work consciously hard to keep it this way, very much to their credit. I thoroughly recommend that anyone interested attends next year.

A couple of Sundays back audition staged its second in-studio live performance, this time a showcase of the Mask Mirror project by Alessandro Bosetti. Most commonly known (by me at least) for his saxophone playing, Mask Mirror utilises spoken word elements, both live and as samples together with snippets of instrumental sound. Having not heard the material before I was slightly concerned at how it might all sound, as spoken word is not the first section I head for when entering a record shop... but I really enjoyed how it all worked. Bosetti plays with language and conversation in an improvised context. He uses randomly generated samples of his own voice to effectively hold conversations with himself in a manner that sounds cheesy on paper, but was in fact equally amusing and thought-provoking. The show in question can be heard here.

The day before, I saw Bosetti improvise with his Mask Mirror arrangements at a shop gig for Sound323. Anyone that knows the shop will be well aware that there isn't very much room on the shopfloor at the best of times, and in the summer Sound323 is simply the hottest shop on the planet as the south facing windows turn the place into one big greenhouse. Well that Sunday was the warmest that London has seen in many a month, and so the heat coupled with the small crowd of people squeezed into the tight space with a closed door made for a very uncomfortable experience. I barely remember Alessandro's music as for most of the set I was actually struggling to stay conscious and stood upright! I am really pleased that Mark Wastell is finding a way to continue to put on these little concerts however and long may they continue.

Photos here by the good and great Fergus Kelly

A dreadful meal on the South Bank of the Thames with David Reid later I headed to the Royal Festival Hall to witness the long awaited London Sinfonietta performance of Luigi Nono's final masterpiece Prometeo. More about this wonderful experience in a forthcoming post however.

So I think that catches up everything from a live music perspective. I've listened to no end of excellent CDs of late, perhaps a round-up of all of those is needed soon too. Tomorrow I will attend a performance of a film made by Luke Fowler and Lee Patterson, with Patterson performing a live soundtrack at the Tate Modern. The film is a response to a La Monte Young score (Draw a straight line and follow it...) and will be performed again on Bank Holiday Monday should anyone be interested.

2008-04-28T00:31:00.002+01:00

If a word is worth a coin, silence is worth two...

Hebrew proverb

The Irish Post

2008-03-29T14:51:00.004Z

I'm in Ireland right now, posting from a little internet cafe that would be a really nice place if they didn't insist on playing Chris Rea records at you. I'm here for the i and e festival again, my third year in succession here. I nearly didn't make it over this time, with other stuff in life getting in the way, but I'm really pleased I made the effort again. The journey here was hell however, a two hour car journey was followed by the severe annoyance of having my debit card stolen by a faulty ATM machine at Stansted airport. Fortunately I had withdrawn plenty of cash earlier or I wouldn't be sat typing this here now. This was followed by a three hour wait at Stansted, the first two hours in the airport waiting lounge, which has apparently won various awards, presumably for services to soulless plastic places for people to look depressed in.

Anyway the music last night was fantastic, as is so often the case at this great little festival. More detail later when I have had the time to wrap my head around it all without "A road to hell" blaring in my ears, but the final two sets last night were great. The closing performance by No Furniture (Axel Dorner, Kai Fagaschinski and Boris Blatschun) was a subtle, assured set from three fantastic musicians. The real gem for me was the set by the Chip Shop Music quartet of Erik Carlsson, Martin Kuchen, David Lacey and Paul Vogel, really great and highly engaging music that had me right on the edge of my rather uncomfortable church pew seat. Later we enjoyed a game of count how many bowls of rice can be delivered to one table in a pretty bad Chinese restaurant, followed by a round of hunt the German musicians in ridiculously overcrowded Dublin pubs, but a great time was had all around.

Tonight there are four more sets, a solo from Boris Baltschun, a clarinet duo from Paul Vogel and Roy Carroll (having met him last night I can assure everyone that Mr Carroll has never played in goal for Manchester United), a solo from Jason Lescalleet and the much anticipated trio of Kuchen, Carlsson and Dorner. This great city feels like a second home these days. Right now after wandering around in the rain again today I'm off to bed for a few hours.

Oh yes and thanks Al for looking after audition alone again this weekend, much appreciated.

Extra large briefs

2008-03-20T22:02:00.007Z

Right, there's so much good music and stuff here right now. I wish I had time to write in detail about everything that's moved me in recent weeks, but as I haven't, I figured that (not for the first time) I'd take a page out of Brian's book and take the lazyarse route of mentioning things briefly here...

First up, a big thank you to everyone that has sent me CDs recently for one reason or another, every one of you is a warm fuzzy wonderful person. Without you, well there would be less CDs in my life and that can never be a good thing can it? Particular thanks are due to the incredibly generous, kind hearted Antoine Beuger who just about completed my Wandelweiser collection with one package of discs. I am very grateful, and hope to restart my all too brief series of Wandelweiser musings here soon.

So what have I been listening to? Well just recently I've been on something of a Martin Küchen pilgrimage. I was left a little cold by his solo release on Confront a few years back, but have always been a fan of his contributions to the group Looper. It was his involvement alongside fellow Swede Erik Carlsson and the Irish duo of Advice Lady and A Love Plug in the group Chip Shop Music that sent me back to listen to that earlier disc though, and also to pick up a stream of recent releases, the last two of which only arrived here yesterday. The best of the recent four may well be Küchen's solo Homo Sacer on the Sofa offshoot label Silion, a rare solo sax disc that really captivates me, partly because it doesn't sound much like saxophone for much of the CD. Its varies quite a bit, from the kind of extended sax techniques we have become familiar with through to strange percussive patterns and almost electronic sounding passages. Homo Sacer hits the spot for me ahead of the old Confront disc partly because it contains longer pieces that are allowed to develop and evolve rather than the short catalogue style of the pieces on that earlier disc.

Two of the other Küchen releases have been duos with the guitarist David Stackenas. The first, named Agape from a year or two back on the Creative Sources label is really good. These two musicians compliment each other well, all gritty textural conversations with a great sense of space and balance. Its clear they had played together quite a lot prior to that release as the understanding between the two is very evident. Far too many good discs seem to avoid my attention when they first come out simply because they get buried in the usual deluge of CS releases (can you believe the catalogue is now 120 releases strong?) and this is another one in that category, but I got there in the end. Yesterday I received a copy of Guardaropa Open/Closed, the duo's new release on the beautifully packaged Kning Disk label. For this release they named the duo Agape, taking up the longstanding (but slighty perplexing, why do musicians always do that?) tradition of applying the title of the first album as the group name. I played it once through early this morning and although it has yet to have the impact of the first album I enjoyed it. Stackenas plays the guitar in a traditional manner more often on this release, which gives the album a quite different dynamic here and there but hey, only one spin so far, more listens required. The final Küchen related release also came through the door yesterday, a duo with Carlsson's percussion entitled Beirut. This one seemed to be a quieter, brooding affair at first blush, I have a feeling this one will grow to be a favourite.

Other interesting items include a gorgeously packaged little 3" CDR by Matthieu Saladin that sounds one hell of a lot less cute than it looks. It is essentially a recording of the first ever released performance of John Cage's 4"33", but with the "silence" amplified up to maximum levels and resulting in a deafening roar of fascinating detail. proof indeed that there is no such thing as silence...

Kostis Kilymis has launched a new label entitled Organized Music from Thessaloniki. He's waiting for me to pass comment on the name of the label, so I won't do that and will keep him waiting, but the first three releases are all well worth hearing. Brian mentions them all in his post here, and I agree with what he has to say so I won't repeat his words. I'd like to write more on these discs if I get a chance soon however.

Two new releases from Simon Reynell's fine Another Timbre label arrived this week too. (I somehow forgot to order the third of his new releases, I'll catch up with it soon) I have a few problems with the first of the discs I bought, the quartet of Max Eastley, Graham Halliwell, Evan Parker and Mark Wastell. Well, to be honest only one problem, namely Evan Parker, whose playing I just can't abide. I was so hoping that this would be the group to move him towards something I could come to enjoy, but alas not. Well not after a single listen anyway. I need to hear it some more and stop being such a judgmental old sod. The other new Another Timbre release I picked up has just finished its first spin as I type this. Clive Bell and Bechir Saade's An account of my hut sounded lovely on that first outing, naked, unadorned traditional wind instruments, (shakuhachi and ney to be precise) played and recorded in a manner that nicely captures the human spirit behind these simple yet beautiful pieces.

A nice little curio came from the Crouton label in as delightful packaging as ever. Node and anti-nodes is a DVD put together by the percussionists (seems such a limiting term for these two) Jon Meuller and Jeph Jerman. It features a series of short films very tastefully made that capture the detail of the making of the musi of the duo, close-ups of vibrating metal, sticks and stones bouncing around etc... The disc also contains an Mp3 soundfile of the music to the films as well. A clip can be viewed here,

A couple of new blogs to mention that try and do a little more than waffle on endlessly like I do here: Compost and Height is a nice venture put together by Patrick Farmer and his girlfriend Sarah (alas I don't know Sarah's surname, sorry) The blog contains links to exclusive tracks of a field recording nature, so far by Patrick and by Jez riley French, who would kill me if I forgot to also mention his new blog here. Jez also includes links to soundfiles alongside writing in his own inimitable, passionate fashion.

On the reading front I finally finished Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered some seven months after I started it... Why so long? Well apart from the fact its some 600 pages long and I don't manage to find very much time to sit and read these days, I tend to have several books on the go at the same time. It would be good not to do this, and concentrate on just one at a time, but it never seems to happen. I buy books faster than I read them and so as soon as I finished this one I began Alex Ross's equally long The Rest is Noise a somewhat ambitious attempt to capture the spirit of the music of the 20th Century in one volume. Thirty-odd pages in its an enjoyable if whirlwind read so far, though I'm not sure that The Guardian's front page description of Ross as "the man that transformed classical music" is not just a tad over the top.

In other news the broadcasting behemoth that is the audition radio show trundles along, some 67 shows strong now. We achieved a first for the show a couple of weeks back when we got the trio of Phil Durrant, Lee Patterson and Paul Vogel into the studio to perform live for us. We are proud of how that one turned out. An Mp3 of the show can be heard here.

A new Cathnor release should also be in my hands this time next week, the first for far too long a time. More details on that one very soon and all being well a new Cathnor website to coincide. All being well I am off to Dublin again next weekend for the 2008 incarnation of the i and e Festival. Really looking forward to making that trip again.

Finally a new review of mine went up at Bagatellen this week, and one I am quite proud of too. It can be found here.

Oh and whatever you do, don't buy the limited edition Marmite with Champagne in it.

Bumbling apologies

2008-03-10T23:12:00.009Z

Its not been much fun around here of late. My long suffering other half Julie has been back and forth to hospital getting prodded about by any number of doctors and consultants. Despite early fears of cervical cancer we found out for sure today that she has nothing immediately life threatening. A significant and somewhat life changing operation now needs to follow, but we now know where we stand, and some of the stress and worry has been lifted.

Anyway, for once this isn't a post begging for pity, but a brief apology to the countless people I have let down one way or the other over the past few weeks. Delayed reviews, slow to appear Mp3s, a lack of posts here, CDs mailed out taking forever, emails not replied to, forthcoming Cathnor releases not being focussed upon etc...

Sorry guys, I'm catching up and normal (still very slow) service will be resumed soon.

Today though, out of the blue someone I'd never heard from before sent me a kind email about this blog and attached the above photo, which cheered me up no end. Thanks for that.

Just recently there's been a number of really great CDs landed here. Three in particular have really stood out over the last month, Toshimaru Nakamura and Jean-Luc Guionnet's MAP on the consistently strong Potlatch label is a really fine bundle of tension. I'm a bit late discovering Joe Foster and Kevin Parks' Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt but again a really great release, markedly different from much else out there right now and a really vibrant, exciting piece of music. Lastly Eric Cordier's disc of field recordings called Osorezan is also quite wonderful. Made up of brightly detailed recordings of a Japanese volcano letting off steam, the first three tracks on the album are really quite stunning. Reviews of all three of these are in the works and will appear at Bagatellen or here soon(ish)

A lick of virtual paint

2008-03-10T00:48:00.003Z

Well if you are reading this post for the first time, and of course if you have been to this page before you will quite possibly note that the page looks a bit different. If you are a worried mother that landed here after googling for websites about how to get your children to pay more attention to you, then you can ignore this post.

Anyway yes, they say when you need cheering up a spot of spring cleaning and redecoration does the trick, and as things have been pretty depressing around PInnell Towers of late I thought I would amuse myself by giving this blog a bit of an overhaul. I sat up until silly o'clock in the morning the other night challenging my somewhat limited html skills to the very limit reworking the code of a standard Blogger template into what you see now, and so far I'm pretty pleased with the result. The image behind the title will probably change from time to time as I get bored with that one, and there's still some tweaking needs to be done here and there, but it all seems to work. I'm interested to hear people's opinions on the new look; do you like it? (if not, tough its staying anyway after all that effort!) does it work in your browser? So far I've only viewed it in Safari and Firefox so I'm eager to hear how things look in IE.

Now all I need is some content.....!

I am sitting in a room...

2008-02-18T20:33:00.009Z

For three days in mid February, Antoine Beuger, Radu Malfatti and Manfred Werder, three members of the Wandelweiser collective of composers took up a residency in a room deep in the basement of the Arches music venue in Glasgow. They played music for approximately twenty-one hours across the three days. With the exception of a couple of hour-long food breaks I remained in the room throughout. On Saturday, the middle day, I made some notes throughout the performance with the intention of using them as preparation for this piece. Reading back over them now though they capture the feeling of that room quite nicely as they are, so they follow here (in italics) untouched:

Its around 12:30PM on Saturday lunchtime. I am sat on an old but very comfortable leather sofa. One of its three small red cushions supports my head. My eye seems drawn to the small constellation of five shapes formed by areas of peeled paint on the otherwise dark grey wall opposite. There are two upright pianos in the room. Both look to have seen better days and yet somehow they seem to belong here. There are three other people in the room, two of them are playing music. The third, Antoine Beuger writes quietly on a notepad for a while before setting it aside and sitting quietly to listen, just as I am doing.

Upstairs a group of musicians soundcheck for the concert they will play this evening. Its hard to make out much detail but they are lead by a somewhat frantic trumpeter who seems to be playing little or no regard to the others around him/her. They play so loud that the ceiling in this room below rumbles. Way above trains pass at intervals over the top of the building, which is built into the arches of a railway bridge. The slow thunder of the trains subsumes all other sounds. They seem to pass at different speeds, some closer than others, and often so slowly that each wheel turning over each loose sleeper can be made out.

People talk and laugh in distant coridoors, air conditioning and heating pipes rattle and purr. All of the sounds you might expect to hear in a place like this are present. Radu Malfatti is sat close to me. He plays a series of very low muted notes exceptionally quietly on his trombone, with long silences between them. Manfred Werder plays a single high note every so often for brief two second spells on a simple mouth organ.

It must be about 12:45PM now. Antoine Beuger's footsteps on the hard wooden floor as he walks across the room are slow but purposeful. He selects a CD from a small brown cardboard box and puts it into the cheap mini hi-fi system that sits atop of one of the pianos. The click of the Play button and the whirr of the CD starting up in the player are clearly audible, such is the hush in the room. As he returns to his seat a thick electronic tone creeps from the speakers out into the room. I recognise it as a version of his composition Silent Harmonies in Discrete Continuity. Malfatti turns the page of his score. He continues his soft trombone notes, the new sounds in the room seem to have no effect on his playing. The cup of tea I recently finished had been left to brew for too long. The acrid taste still lingers on the roof of my mouth.

At just after 1PM the band upstairs break into some kind of freeform blowout lead now by an electric guitar. The intrusions are clearly disturbing the players in the room, challenging their concentration. Five people enter the room in quick succession, but they are not all together. Four take seats and sit quietly. the fifth hangs around the door eyeing the proceedings in a suspicious manner before turning and leaving again. This has happened quite a lot.

At 1:20PM in a flurry of activity four more people enter, taking seats near to me. The noise from upstairs has intensified further, making it hard for anyone to focus on anything else. Manfred Werder, looking frustrated, gets up and leaves the room. A few moments later Beuger too rises, crosses to the CD player and sets the same disc playing again. he then turns and leaves. Malfatti continues to play his piece, seeming to get quieter as the incoming noise gets louder.

At 1:30PM Malfatti stops playing. It isn't clear if he has given in to the assault from upstairs or if he reached the end of the score. Outwardly he seems calm as he rearranges the items beside his chair, a book he has been reading, a small chess set, but as he gets up and follows his fellow musicians out of the room to eat lunch his frustration is apparent on his face.

The four people other than myself that remain in the room begin to look at each other as the CD player continues to leak Beuger's soft tones into the space. Two of them start to talk loudly to each other. Why they choose now to talk rather than whilst the musicians are present I'm not sure. After a few minutes they all get up and leave, the door slamming hard behind the last of them. I take out my book, Natsume Soseki's Kokoro to read.

3PM. Malfatti and Werder are playing again, simultaneously but independently. Werder slowly repeats a single high pitched note very quietly. Malfatti's trombone sounds are as distant as they were earlier, so quiet they are barely discernible at times. His playing is much more active now though, the notes change pitch this time. He plays from a score that was left on his music stand by Beuger whilst Malfatti was at lunch. The music consists of little melodic segments slowed right down, with each segment spaced apart by considerable silences.

I think I slept for a while. I was still alone in the room when Beuger returned from lunch to find the soundcheck upstairs had ceased to bombard us. The music from the CD seemed to sense his return and ended right on cue. Antoine sat down not far from me and began to quietly whistle, without any instrument, just soft, dry little whispers that seem to be directed at me. I remember wondering if he would be doing this if I was not in the room, but I don't remember him stopping this gentle, lulling whistle. I guess I dozed off.

[Note: I did go to sleep, I'm told for about 40 minutes. Antoine also told me later that his whistling was indeed part intended as a lullaby for me and he felt very happy that it had its desired effect.]

Now in the room it seems to be Beuger's turn to rest. The music played is very quiet right now. Werder sits staring silently ahead, Malfatti is making the quietest of occasional sounds. the air conditioning hums away and things are being pushed about across the floor upstairs. The trains continue to pass. My back really aches after what is now about seven hours in this seat over the last two days. A young guy is sat beside me wearing a blue coat, he looks utterly enthralled, perched on the edge of his seat. Nick Cain wanders quietly about the room, I wonder what he's making of all this? Perhaps my snoring will make his Wire review.

Its 3:45PM and what I assume to be the Incapacitants soundcheck has begun with a bang in the room above. This time the musicians continue to play. Something very beautiful is taking place in the room right now. A while back Malfatti put on a disc of his Hoffinger Nonet composition at very low volume. Its grey lines of sound separated by long silences merge nicely into the similar piece being played live by Radu now. (I think its one of his recent Kid Ailack compositions but I may be wrong here) The two sets of notes hang in the air, crossing each other. At the same time a young Japanese guy lays curled up on the sofa opposite me. He is fast asleep and snoring softly. Trains pass. Werder is playing his single note again at intervals for fractionally longer periods of time now. All of this together creates a gentle swaying effect in the room, a supple rhythm is there, some intended, some a complete accident, but the sounds all work wonderfully together. Sitting on the sofa I feel like I'm on a boat gently rocking on a calm sea. Instead of the call of seagulls overhead I have to contend with Junko's wails however.

4:21PM and as the Japanese guy has just woken and clearly embarrassed has fled the room (a real shame) the previous spell has been broken. Beuger rises from the chair he has been sat quietly in. He blows his nose into a handkerchief. He has been suffering from a cold this weekend and does not look too well. He lifts the lid on the piano beside him and slowly plays the same note seven times over a period of about sixty seconds. As if answering a signal the noise coming from upstairs begins to dissipate gradually. The young guy in the blue coat got up and left just moments before this first introduction of the piano. He had been sat quietly for over three hours. Beuger at least seems to be responding to the people in the room, or at least it feels that way. Maybe I'm wrong.

Over the next half an hour Beuger moves between the piano and his flute. Malfatti and Werder both continue to play their own compositions. There seems to be a new hum in the room now that I cannot identify. The trains seem to be less frequent, or maybe it just feels that way as their sound just feels like part of the music in this room now.

Just after 5PM as individual compositions are completed Beuger and Malfatti rise and leave the room. Werder continues to play his single notes. The room empties and I decide to take a break for food myself. Walking from the performance space out into the restaurant area of the venue is a strange feeling after five hours of concentrated listening. The rush of sound hits me not unlike stepping into a shower not long after waking. I join Richard Rothar, who also spent much of the afternoon in the room for dinner.

Its 6PM. Back in the room Robin Hayward has just joined the other three musicians. He improvises along with the collection of sounds drifting around the room. His contributions are very quiet indeed, tiny gurgles and hisses from deep inside his instrument. The tuba itself has an impressive presence in here. Its polished golden surfaces catch the dim lights in the room and from where I am sat it glows softly. Hayward leaves the room after about thirty minutes.

By 6:40PM only myself and Radu remain in the room. The concert upstairs has begun and its crashing sounds are coming down through the ceiling again. Malfatti has stopped playing. With a smile he goes over to the CD player and puts on a disc he knows well I enjoy a great deal, his composition Rain Speak Soft Tree Listens. We sit quietly for a while, enjoying the sounds, but the noise from above is too much. Its impossible to ignore it and Radu gets up and leaves again.

Just before seven as Rain Speak... plays Richard Rothar returns to the room with a pint of something cold and wet in his hand for me. We sit and relax. I feel completely and utterly free of stress here today, despite having more than enough to worry about in my life right now. Since the performance began at 7PM last night I have been in this room for about eleven hours and yet it doesn't feel a long time. My back hurts, but this physical problem is the only issue I have with sitting here for this long duration. Beuger and Werder return just after seven. Antoine goes back to the piano, picking out occasional notes as Manfred goes about his business, the same note repeated every so often. Malfatti comes back into the room, but as the noise from upstairs continues unabated he instead takes a seat and sits and reads his book, something by Peter Sloterdijk. Something vaguely resembling a dentist's drill comes down from upstairs. I swear the trains move slower as the evening moves on.

At around 7.45PM the roar of the noise gig upstairs intensifies. The strain on the musician's faces as they try and continue under these circumstances is really showing. Werder in particular looks very upset. Just after eight he gets up abruptly and leaves the room. Beuger, who has ceased playing follows. hortly after they return to the room and announce that they cannot continue tonight. After some discussion Malfatti agrees. We sit and talk for a while over a cup of tea before heading for the bar.

---

Reading back over these notes, they have a very matter-of-fact simplicity about them, yet I do not remember intending to write in any particular style on the day. Sitting in that room for four hours on the Friday evening and then eight and nine hours on Saturday and Sunday respectively had a strong effect on me. Over most of the three days the musicians played with a sense of calm precision that somehow had an effect on the way I sat, breathed, spoke, ate dinner, and wrote the above notes. With the exception of two remarkable hours late on Sunday when Malfatti was joined by Robin Hayward and Rhodri Davies for an impromptu improv session, the three musicians performed from a small number of scores they had brought with them. There had been very little discussion between the three in advance about the music they would play, only about the type of environment they wanted to create. Malfatti and Beuger played each other's compositions but never simultaneously, and assorted pieces overlapped with one another, existing in the same room at the same time yet going about their way completely independently. Somehow all of this music coalesced into one continual feeling of calm, slowness and uncomplicated beauty.

Other than when watching a clock to be able to write the notes on Saturday I lost all sense of time. Indeed the small pattern of peeled paint on the wall opposite took on a strange importance as it existed opposite me for eight hours, and the trundle of individual trains each had their own characteristics, subtle detail found in apparent repetition. Despite the music changing very slowly I didn't feel bored at any point. The brief lapse into sleep came as more of a natural response to the nature of the music at that point than any waning of interest. (That and a hellish night of very little sleep in an atrocious hotel, but thats a separate story) Rather, I found much of interest in the tiniest of details, the slightest fluctuations in the sounds of the room and the building above. This really didn't feel like a concert. There were no formal starts or finishes, no separation of the musicians from the audience, no intervals, no announcements, just a calm quiet broken only by the intrusions from upstairs.

Manfred Werder in fact played a single score throughout the entire weekend that requires immense focus and concentration. Ein(e) Ausführende(r) is a 4000 (yes, that's three zeroes) page work he has written that consists of simple time frames within which he plays a single sound. He began performing the work two or three years ago, picking up where he left off at each consecutive performance. By the time he reached Glasgow he had made it to page 295...

The patient, focussed clarity that drives Werder to perform in this manner sums up perfectly the music made in the Wandelweiser room over the weekend. Late on sunday afternoon this atmosphere was changed however when Robin Hayward made a second visit to the room, and sitting close to him slowly coaxed Malfatti away from the composition he was playing into a spacious, intense improvisation the like of which I haven't witnessed since the heyday of London reductionism. A very quiet, dramatically slowed down conversation took place over the best part of an hour, pulling a veil of tension over the room. Mercifully the noise from upstairs ceased for the duration, and Haywards tiny hisses and burbles brought more than dry tones from Malfatti for the first time all weekend, clicks, pops and the occasional brittle stabs sitting mostly in the spaces between Hayward's input.

After about an hour of this magical collaboration Rhodri Davies entered the room, wheeling a very large concert harp with him as quietly as such a feat can be achieved. Over the next hour he added maybe six or seven short bursts of ebowed sound into the proceedings, a small, yet highly impactful contribution, his face a picture of intense concentration between each note, collapsing on the sofa behind in sheer exhaustion at the end. Late on Sunday Davies returned to play a subtle ebow solo around Werder's occasional notes, and for a short while Hayward and Malfatti rejoined them to try and pick up where the intensity of the afternoon left off. However under pressure again from the noise coming from above, and with Beuger suffering from a rapidly worsening headcold Malfatti cut the performance off.

The weekend raised some interesting if old questions about which intruding sounds are "acceptable" in a performance of this type, and which are not. Why were the loud, randomly passing trains considered to be perfectly OK, perhaps an even welcome contribution to the room, yet the musicians upstairs were anything but? Why did the snoring of the Japanese guy add something quite charming to the music, yet the occasional chatter of bemused audience members was just annoying?

Over a medicinal drink later Antoine Beuger (possibly paraphrasing Cage) told me that the difference is usually centred around whether the intruding sound was intentionally made or not. The noise bands upstairs set out to make, well a noise, whilst the train driver's intention was merely to move a train full of people from a to b, the noise it made was secondary. So one set of sounds seems unnecessary, the other just part of the background. Following this through then the snoring was fine, but the deliberate chatter a nuisance. This lead me to wonder though, when an "unacceptable" sound found its way into the Wandelweiser room my immediate response was to be irritated, disturbed by its presence. Yet the trains, air-con, and heavy items being dragged across the floor upstairs sounded fine straight away, without any kind of consideration needed. If the question of intentionality is really the deciding factor here did my brain, along with the musician's brains really process that equation at that speed for each individual sound? I guess they did, but it certainly wasn't a conscious decision. That said I was asleep for some of the time....

These three days had quite an impact on me. I've never experienced such an elongated live listening experience before, the previous longest single sitting being around four hours. Being able to spend so much time, largely uninterrupted with the music of these composers was a really rewarding experience. This music requires time, space and quiet to be fully absorbed, something I just don't have at home every day. In Glasgow it certainly received time and space, and many thanks are due to the vision and good taste of Barry Esson and his Arika organisation for making this happen. Apparently the festival was originally intended as a multi-site event, which from one perspective might have been a better scenario for the Wandelweiser room, keeping the unwanted disturbances at a safe distance. However the ability for people to just drop by the room inbetween performances elsewhere in the building provided the room with much of its charm and the vast majority of its audience. Certainly I was very happy with the performance as it was, and I'd like to extend a big thanks to the composers/musicians involved.

The post formerly known as placeholder

2008-02-18T20:31:00.004Z

Hmm now I just need to think of something to put here that will make the following comments look even stranger than they already do! ;)

A black day for free music

2008-02-04T20:54:00.000Z

Tonight I heard the news that the Arts Council of England had rejected the appeal by the London Musicians Collective against the removal of all funding. This deeply depressing news effectively means that the LMC cannot operate in 2008. Whether other streams of funding can be found, or if free events organised under the LMC umbrella can take place remains to be seen, but either way this new effectively cripples all LMC operations as we currently know them. This is sad sad news.

The impact that the LMC has had, and has continued to have on experimental music in the UK is massive. Its impact on me personally is something I find hard to equate. Quite frankly I have no idea what I would be listening to now (if anything) were it not for the LMC. For instance, the first three times I saw AMM play live was at LMC organised events. These events alone changed my life. The first times I saw Taku Sugimoto, Otomo Yoshihide, Polwechsel, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Derek Bailey, Toshimaru Nakamura, John Wall, Sachiko M and many many many others was at LMC organised events, that simply would not have happened without the work of Ed Baxter, Ben Drew and the many other people that have worked hard to keep the organisation running through mainly hard times. No other organisation has been capable of introducing this level of quality creative music from around the world to me, and looking at what is waiting in the wings to receive the money that should have been going to the LMC, its utterly laughable to think that any other organisation is capable of anything close to what the LMC had achieved in the near future.

The LMC also launched Resonance FM. Clearly the station has had a massive impact on me. The radio station is entirely the brainchild of the people at the LMC. The Arts Council will be continuing to fund Resonance FM separately, so for this reason I doubt that Ed, Ben or anyone close to the running of the LMC will be able to criticise the ACE as they would really like to, but hey I can...

The Arts Council are simply clueless morons that just have no idea at all about the one thing they are asked to look after; the arts. They throw money hand over fist at anything that presses the correct trendy buttons, that fits in nicely with the washed out impotent ideas of art and music that they support. Resonance continues to get support as it happens by chance to fall into a neat little category created by the ACE. It ticks the right boxes, although they probably think they are funding something completely different. Unfortunately the LMC is a little too left of centre, a little too unlikely to draw the big government pleasing crowds, a little too unlikely to give "value for money" to warrant the continued support of an organisation that is supposedly in charge of keeping our arts vibrant and important.

There are no possible reasons that could be given by the Arts Council that can justify the removal of funding to the most important music organisation this country has ever seen. Whatever reason they give, be it low audience numbers, poor "value for money" or anything else cannot warrant these actions. I now await whatever media friendly watered down rubbish we are presented with instead.

Idiots

Really I feel like emigrating.

Oh, Life's such a strain

2008-01-25T21:30:00.000Z

Its been really tough around here of late to spend very much time just sitting and listening. Work has been very demanding of my time and energy over the last couple of weeks, so thats not a good start. Add to that the time it takes to prepare for and then present a weekly radio show, work hard on the design and production of several long overdue Cathnor releases, write a weekly review for Bagatellen, plus maintain a relationship with a long-suffering girlfriend, and well finding the time to listen about music and write anything interesting here at this blog is difficult.

So while I take the time to sort my life out here's a few links to some of the assorted stuff I've been up to, beginning with two recent reviews at Bagatellen, the first of two albums by Jez riley French, and the second of Mattin's new release Broken Subject.

audition, the weekly radio show I co-present for Resonance FM began again in earnest on 13th january after an extended Christmas break. You can listen to the shows as Mp3 files from our website. audition is always great fun to do, and I guess it does provide me with an opportunity to listen to music, but in truth we don't get much chance to really stop and listen in the studio as there's usually too much going on, and the preparation for the show usually involves editing music down to fit into the playlist, which does involve a degree of close listening, but not how I'd really like to be doing it. I present audition along with Alastair Wilson, who has returned to write his darkly humorous photo-blog after a brief hiatus whilst his camera was broken. I recommend checking in there daily.

So there is a series of Cathnor releases close to completion, both full length discs and a new series of 3" CDRs I am working on. I hope to have these out very soon. All are hideously delayed for all kinds of reasons, but I'd rather take my time and do them properly than make a pig's ear of them. I also hope to get a paypal payment option up at the Cathnor site very soon, and will probably hold a short sale on the existing catalogue soon too.

Music continues to fall through my letterbox here, Apologies to everyone that I haven't responded to if you sent me something, the truth is most probably that I haven't had a chance to listen yet. Some discs I've really been enjoying lately have included Radiu Malfatti's recent releases, string quartets from benjamin Britten and Robert Simpson, the cello suites of Zoltan Kodaly, a disc by two young UK improvisers named Daniel Jones and Paul Khimasia Morgan and an assortment of releases featuring Martin Küchen. Hopefully at least some of these will get written about somewhere soon!

No gigs so far this year yet though... thats depressing!!

Cor Fuhler sends me to sleep....

2008-01-13T11:13:00.000Z

Well I have continued to run as much as I can... yesterday I went into London for a long overdue visit to Sound323 and as ever came away with more CDs than I have time to listen to, so I didn't have time for a run, but instead I made sure that instead of taking the escalator on the tube I ran up every set of stairs available. (and yes for those that know Sound323, this included the long set of steps leading up out of the Highgate tube station!) But yes, the midlife crisis continues...!

The interesting part of all this though has been the effect that running has had on the music I've listened to as I've been trudging along, and perhaps more importantly how the music has affected my running. The first night was a confused mess, as I explained before. Jez riley French's Field Recordings Vol.21 really needs close listening to get anything out of it, and so listening to it under my puffing and panting, with the headphones contunally falling from my ears wasn't a very rewarding experience.

The next day though I took along Cor Fuhler's Slee, a CDR of piano improvisations that I hadn't listened to at all before setting out, so I had no idea what to expect. I didn't notice that the first track was entitled Sleep...

The music is a kind of slow, drowsy melodic piano piece, dripping with a lazy jazz vibe, perhaps the perfect music for a gloomy Sunday afternoon when you just feel like dozing off. As much as I quite like the piece, this wasn't really the sort of music you need when you are trying to spur yourself along on a run. It actually had the effect of slowing me down considerably, what I heard in my ears seemed to somehow control my heart rate, and the amount of energy I had available. Alone with only the music and a very acute consciousness of how my body was performing I was stunned by just how much music seems to effect what I am capable of doing. When the second track started, a brief, jerky electronic cut-up of the piano piece, I sped right up again, the more frenetic nature of the music releasing the spell I seemed to be under before.

The next evening I took along Public Enemy's A Nation of Millions... and I absolutely flew along...

I might be imagining all of this of course, but it really felt like the music to some degree dictated my speed in a manner that felt out of my control. I'm off out again shortly, with Derek Bailey and John Stevens' Playing as company, a frenetic yet also very detailed album. Lets see what happens...

How do you choose the soundtrack to a mid-life crisis?

2008-01-09T20:02:00.000Z

As pathetically unoriginal as it may sound I made myself a New Years resolution to lose some weight and try and get fitter. I've never really had to worry much about this kind of thing throughout my life, having remained the same weight for my first thirty or so years. Over the last eighteen months or so though I have begun to pile on the pounds, and like so many others I ate too much at Christmas and now feel the urge to have my first bona fide mid life crisis and worry about my health.

So, after spending the first week or two of the year contemplating my navel (whilst I can still see it) I started eating healthier this week, and have also gone out for a short run each of the last three evenings... I used to go out walking every evening when I still had dogs about the house, but over the last few years this has dwindled to maybe one walk a week. I used to really enjoy that time in isolation with whatever music I chose to take along with me, so I looked forward to compensating for the pain of starting to run with the prospect of some more quality listening time...

Well I've learnt one thing... you can't really run and listen to this kind of music. Apart from the fact that Jez riley French's Field Recordings Vol.21 album was accompanied by the additional sounds of blood vessels trying to explode in my ears and wheezing splutters coursing through my windpipe, the damned headphone buds kept falling out of my ears....

So tomorrow I'm going to look a plonker with a massive pair of headphones clamped to my head, and I'm uploading Public Enemy and Roni Size to my iPod to give the adrenalin a boost... God knows where all of this will end!

---

On another New Years resolution type note I promised myself that I would try and write more formally on music more often in 2008, and spend less time getting into silly online arguments... This coincided with our friend Brian's announcement of a year long hiatus from reviewing CDs for Bagatellen so that he can definitely without any doubt get his book finished this year without any question (I think thats what you said isn't it Brian? ;) So I am aiming to write one review a week for Bagatellen this year to cover in some unsatisfyingly insufficient manner for Brian whilst he has his own little mid-life crisis ;) The odds are very much against me achieving this, or anything close to it, but you never know, I can but try. The first review of a really great album is here.

CDs Acquired 2008

2008-01-06T21:43:00.029Z

As with last year's list this is merely a (very useful) record of the CDs that come my way throughout 2008. It will be continually updated and is for my own benefit more than anyone else!

January 2008

Jez riley French - Field Recordings Volume 21 (Engraved Glass)
Jez riley French - Generator Pieces 2727807 (Engraved Glass)
Benjamin Britten - cello Suites 1 & 2 (Britten, Rostropovich) (London)
Mattin - Broken Subject (Free Software Series) CDR
Julien Skrobek - Les Palais Transparent (Free Software Series) CDR
Cor Fuhler - Tcod (Conundrom) CDR
Cor Fuhler - Slee (Conundrom) CDR
Radu Malfatti - Claude Lorrain 1 (B-boim)
Radu Malfatti - Kid Aillack 5 (B-boim)
Martin Küchen - Homo Sacer (Sillion)
Various Artists - Rhythm (Cherry)
Martin Küchen, David Stackenås - Agape (Creative Sources)
Jason Kahn, Tomas Korber, Norbert Moslang, Günter Müller, Christian Weber, Katsura Yamauchi - Signal to noise Vol.4 (For 4 Ears)
Kenneth Kirschener - September 8th 2005 (Leerraum Audio DVD)
Asher - Instability (Leerraum Audio DVD)
Jason Kahn, Norbert Moslang, Günter Müller - Signal to noise Vol.5 (For 4 Ears)
Tony Buck, Cor Fuhler, Anna Zaradny - Lighton (Musica Genera)
Jean-Francois LaPorte - Soundmatters (23five)
Various Artists - Airport Symphony (Room40)
Hilda Paredes - Listen how they talk (Mode)
Daniel Jones, Paul Khimasia Morgan - S/t (The slightly off-kilter label)
Morton Feldman - Piano and orchestra etc... (Markus Hinterhaouser) (Col Legno)
Nicolas Collins - Pea Soup (Apestaarttje 3")
Earle Brown - Tracer (Mode DVD)
Luc Ferrari - Et tournent les sons (Ensemble Laborintus & eRikm) (Césaré)
rlw - The pleasure of burning down churches (Black Rose)
Various Artists - Signal (Finetuned)
Nos Phillipé - Shh... Camille (Confront Collector Series)
Mathias Spahlinger - Farben der frühe (Neos)
Zoltan Kodaly - Music for cello and piano (Sung-Won Yang, Ick-Choo Moon) (EMI)
Tandem Electrics - Intaglio (RAR)
Morton Feldman - For Bunita Marcus / Palais de Mari (Sabine Liebner) (Oehms)
Mathias Spahlinger - Extension (Hildegard Kleeb, Dimitris Polisoidis) (HatArt)

February 2008

Jeph Jerman, Jon Mueller - Node and anti-nodes (Crouton DVD)
Eric Cordier, Emmanuel Mielville - Dispositif: Canal Saint-Martin (Xing-Wu)
Eric Cordier - Osorezan (Herbal)
Eric Cordier - Breizhiselad (Erewhon)
Tarab - Wind keeps even dust away (23five)
Various - Annual Activating the Medium Festival Disc 1 (23five 2CD)
Various - Annual Activating the Medium Festival Disc 2 (23five 2CD)
Tim Caitlin - Radio Ghosts (23five)
Toshimaru Nakamura, Jean-Luc Guionnet - MAP (Potlatch)
Julien Skrobek - Membra Disjecta (Self-released CDR)
Dan Warburton, Frederick Farryl Goodwin - Compendium Maleficarum III (Incunabulae)
Ricardo Donoso - Solo percussion improvisations (Self released)
Calliope Quartet - Musiké Téchne (Self released)

March 2008

Graham Lambkin - Salmon Run (Kye)
Bryan Eubanks - Desired Climate Works 2006-2007 (Gmby 3CDR)
The Magic I.D - Till my breath gives out (ErstPop)
Cor Fuhler - Whistlelight (Conundrom)
Kevin Parks, Joe Foster - Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt (Self released)
Various - Pedair awr yng nghymru fydd / Brave New Wales (Fourier Transform 3CD)
Pascal Battus / Alfredo Costa Monteiro - Ductile (A question of re-entry / Organized Music from Thessaloniki)
Kostis Kilimis - .accumulated (Organized Music from Thessaloniki)
Matthieu Saladin - 4'33" / 0'00" (Editions Provisoires)
Various - That mysterious forest below London Bridge (Matchless)
John Tilbury, Evan Parker - Two chapters and an epliogue (Matchless)
Clive Bell, Bechir Saade - An account of my hut (Another Timbre)
Max Eastley, Graham Halliwell, Evan Parker, Mark Wastell - A life saved by a spider and two doves (Another Timbre)
André O. Moller - Musik für und eine(n) tonsetzer(in) ...2003... (Wandelweiser)
Eva-Maria Houben - Works for flute (Wandelweiser)
Eva-Maria Houben - Von da nach da (Wandelweiser)
Eva-Maria Houben - Works for tromba marina (Wandelweiser)
Michael Pisaro - Transparent City (Volumes 1 and 2) (Wandelweiser)
Michael Pisaro - Transparent City (Volumes 3 and 4) (Wandelweiser)
Michael Pisaro - Harmony series 11-16 (Wandelweiser)
John Cage - Early music (Buckholz, Becker) (Wandelweiser)
Agape - Guardaropa Open/Closed (Kning Disk)
Christian Munthe, Roger Turner - Ochre (Kning Disk)
Martin Küchen, Eric Carlsson - Beirut (Kning Disk)
Matthew Samson, Rhodri Davies - Live Uncut Vol.1 (A question of re-entry)
Werner Durand - Remnants from paradise (Absurd)
IMCA - IMCA (Absurd)
Grundik Kasayansky - Floating Point (Topheth Prophet)
Grundik Kasayansky - Light and roundchair (Creative Sources)
Rhodri Davies, David Lacey, Dennis McNulty - Poor Trade (Cathnor)
Graham Lambkin, Jason Lescalleet - The Breadwinner (Erstwhile)
Fergus Kelly - Leaching the pith (Room Temperaure)
Fergus Kelly, David Lacey, Dennis McNulty, Paul Vogel - Trinity College Chapel 8 October 2005 (Room Temperaure)

April 2008

Various - Signal to Noise Vol.6 (For 4 Ears)
LEMUR - 7 (+3db)
Hild Sofie Tafjord - Kama (PicaDisk)
Chris Burn's Ensemble - Live at Musica Genera 2002 (Musica Genera)
eRik M - Steme (Room40)
Various - Relay Eight (2:13)
Aubry / Emke / Krebs / Schick - Berlin Electronics (Absinth)
Harvard, Leduc, Morin, Ottavi - Digital live radio session (Fibrr)
David Papapostolou - One and two (Self released)
Michael J Schumacher, Stephen Vitiello - Untitled/Exchange (A question of re-entry)
Edgar Varese - Complete Works Vol.1 (El)
Ensemble Ca Tru Thai Ha de Hanoi - Le Ca Tru (Inedit)
Seth Nehil, Jgrizinich - Stria (Erewhon)
Benjamin Britten / Frank Bridge - Cello Symphony / Oration (EMI)
Benjamin Britten - The Young Person's guide to the Orchestra (Apex)

May 2008

Antoine Beuger - A Young Person's Guide to... (Slub)
Greg Headley 24-carat abnormalities (28angles)
Taku Sugimoto - Fragments of Paradise (Test)
English, Toshimaru Nakamura - One Day (Erstwhile)
Barry Chabala, Phil Hargreaves - Musick for two machines (whi)
Masahiko Okura, Taku Sugimoto, Taku Unami - Chamber music concerts Vol.1 (Slub / Hibari / Load Factor)
Radu Malfatti - L'effaçage (B-boim)
Johannes Brahms - Klavierquintett op.34 (Maurizio Pollini, Quartetto Italiano) (Deutsche Grammophon)
Toshimaru Nakamura, English - One Day (Erstwhile)
Vanessa Rossetto - Imperial Brick (Music Appreciation)
Vanessa Rossetto - Misafridal (Music Appreciation)
Vanessa Rossetto - Whoreson in the wilderness (Music Appreciation)
Andy Graydon - At bay (Windsmeasure)
Asher-Ubeboet - Cell Memory (Windsmeasure)
Civyiu Kkliu, Ilya Mosonov - Cartolina Postale (Windsmeasure)
Richard Garet - L'avenir (Windsmeasure)
Peter Cusack - Favourite Beijing Sounds (KwanYin)
Benjamin Britten - String Quartets Vol.3 (Naxos)
Helmut Lachenmann - String quartets (Arditti Quartet) (Kairos)
Mathias Spahlinger - Furioso (Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Recherche, Arditti Quartet) (Kairos)
Jakob Ullmann - Komposition für streichquartett, Disappearing Musics (Wergo)
David Lacey, Paul Vogel - The British Isles (Homefront)
Johann Sebastian Bach - Great Religious Vocal Works (VOX 10CD Set)
John Clair, Jed Shahar - Tennis (Fenimore Records)
Kanichiro Oda, Takefumi Naoshima, Mitsuteru Takeuchi, Takahiro Hirama - 1 (Encadre)

June 2008

Christian Weber - Walcheturm Solo (Cut)
Jakob Ullmann - voice, books, FIRE 3 (Editions RZ)
Toshimaru Nakamura - Dance Music (Bottrop Boy)
Rafael Mallo - Vribracion (Taumaturgia)
Josetxia Grieta - Sonrisas Vendo-¿Dónde Nos Llevan? (Taumaturgia)
Rafael Mallo, Roberto Mallo, Miguel Prado, Raul Garcia - Volonté (Taumaturgia)
Pateras, Baxter, Brown - Interference (Emd)
Taku Sugimoto - Shiisanputou (Slubmusic Tengu)
Taku Sugimoto - Three Speakers (Slubmusic Tengu)

July 2008

Michael Pisaro - An unrhymed chord (Wandelweiser)
Frédéric Blondy, Thomas Lehn - Obdo (Another Timbre)
Hugh Davies - Performances 1969-1977 (Another Timbre)
Hugh Davies + Adam Bohman, Lee Patterson, Mark Wastell - for Hugh Davies (Another Timbre)
Matt Davis, Matt Milton, Bechir Saade - Dun (Another Timbre)
Esther Venrooy, Heleen Van Haegenborgh - Mock Interiors (Entr'acte)
Esteban Algora, Alessandra Rombola, Ingar Zach - ....de las piedras (Another Timbre)
David Rothbaum - Monsturo F-44 (Rasbliuttto)
Andrew Lafkas, Bryan Eubanks, Rachel Thompson, Johnathon Zorn - ALBERTJZ (Rasbliutto)
Agustî Fernandez, Ingar Zach - Germinal (Plastic Strip)
Seymour Wright - Seymour Wright of Derby (Self released)
Lawrence English / Jeph Jerman - Gradually you feel the tide at your neck / '9' for Patrick Farmer and Sarah Hughes (Compost and Height)
Patrick Farmer - and leaves (Self released)
Patrick Farmer -Panshangar Aerodrome (Self released)
Patrick Farmer - Apiary (Self released)
Patrick Farmer -Fir Wood (Self released)
Goh Lee Kwang - Good Vibrations (Herbal)
Goh Lee Kwang - Goh Lee Kwang's Double Trio 2004 (Herbal)
Tim Blechmann - M (Why Not)
Juto Ativen - Water Music 1 (Why Not)
Eric La Casa, Cedric Peyronnet - La Creuse (Herbal)
Luis Recorder, Sandra Gibson, Olivia Block - Untitled DVD (Sos Editions)
Annette Krebs, Toshimaru Nakamura - Untitled (Sos Editions)
Janek Schaefer - Extended Play (L-ne)
Stephane Rives - Much remains to be heard (Al Maslakh)
Jez riley French - Pockilington canal head (Engraved Glass)
Takahiro Hirama - thr eat rhy thm (Encadre)
Claire Cooper, Axel Dorner, Cor Fuhler - CRAX (Conundrom)
Various - Breakdance the Dawn Compilation (Rhizome)
Arek Gulbenkoglu, Adam Sussmann - Untitled (Rhizome)

August 2008

Rebbecca Saunders - Stirrings Still (Wergo)
Morton Feldman (Breuer, Engler, Schrammel) - For Philip Guston (Wergo)
Otomo Yoshihide - Core Anode (Meena)
Christopher DeLaurenti - Favourite Intermissions (Binaural)
Jeph Jerman - Metal Drift (Fissür)
Greg Davis, Jeph Jerman - Sound Wheel (Self released)
Jeph Jerman - Grey (w/detail) (Self released)
Gerald Fiebig - Public Transport (Fieldmuzick)
Joel Stern - Objects. Masks. Props (Naturestrip)
Loren Chasse - The Footpath (Naturestrip)
Lucio Capece, Sergio Merce - Casa (Organized music from Thessaloniki)
Choi Joonyong, Ryu Hankil, Hong Chulki - 5 Modules V (Manual)
Lee Hanguin, Hong Chulki - Expanded Celluloid, Extended Phonograph (Balloon and Needle DVD)
Jason Kahn, Asher - Vista (and/OAR)
Kenneth Kirschener - 8th September 2005 (Leerraum AudioDVD)
Asher - Instability (Leerraum Audio DVD)
Tham Kar Mun / Yandsen / Yeoh Yin Pin - Shang (Xing-Wu)
Jean-Luc Guionnet, Seiiro Muruyama - Le bruit du toit (Xing-Wu)

Concerts Attended 2008

2008-01-06T21:40:00.009Z

Saturday 9th February 2008, Beaconsfield, London

Self-Cancellation

Sarah Washington (Solo)
Lee Patterson (Solo)
John Butcher (Solo)
Benedict Drew (Solo)
Mark Bain, John Butcher, Michael Colligan, Rhodri Davies, Ben Drew, Robin Hayward, Lee Patterson, Sarah Washington, Daniel Weaver (Nontet)
Mark Bain, John Bain (Duo)
Rhodri Davies, Lee Patterson (Duo)
Robin Hayward (Solo)
Michael Colligan (Solo)

Friday 15th February - Sunday 17th February 2008, Instal08, the Arches, Glasgow.

The Wandelweiser Room

Antoine Beuger
Radu Malfatti
Manfred Werder

Robin Hayward
Rhodri Davies

Sunday 2nd March, Resonance FM studio, London

Phil Durrant, Lee Patetrson, Paul Vogel

Monday 24th March, Chisenhale Dance Space, London

Matthias Forge
Daniel Jones, Paul Khimasia Morgan, David Papapostolou
John Wall
John Butcher, Mark Wastell

Friday 28th March, i-and-e Festival, Unitarian Church, Dublin.

Kai Fagaschinski
The Quiet Club
Chip Shop Music
No Furniture

Saturday 29th March, i-and-e Festival, Unitarian Church, Dublin.

Boris Baltschun
Roy Carroll, Paul Vogel
Jason Lescalleet
Erik Carlsson, Axel Dorner, Martin Küchen

Sunday 30th March, i-and-e Festival, Peppercanister Church, Dublin.

Saturday 10th May, Sound323 shop, London

Alessandro Bosetti

Saturday 10th May, Royal festival Hall, London

Luigi Nono - Prometeo

Performed by London Sinfonietta and others under the direction of André Richard

Sunday 11th May, ResonanceFM studio, London

Aleassandro Bosetti

Sunday 25th May, Tate Modern Starr Auditorium

Luke Fowler, Lee Patterson - B8016 2008 Film and sound response to La Monte Young's "Draw a straight line and follow it"

Tuesday 10th June, St Johns, Smith Square. London

Morton Feldman - triadic Memories
Howard Skempton - Notti stellate a Vagli

Performed by John Tilbury

Wednesday 16th July, St Anne and Agnes Church, London

Music we'd like to hear
Parsons, Purcell, di Lasso, Cardew, Webern performed by Michael Parsons and The Post Quartet

Widened Horizons

2008-01-02T19:13:00.001Z

2007 was a great year for me as a listener. Whilst my personal life underwent considerable upheaval there was always plenty of music to keep me going. The year began with me stressed to the hilt by a job I hated, and music proved to be the crutch on which I leant for support. The summer saw me take a big step in leaving that job (its turned out to be the best thing I've done in many years) and I spent a few months relaxing, travelling, and yes listening to masses of music. The extra time on my hands meant that I caught up on the backlog of unlistened to CDs before starting a new job in October saw the "to be listened to" build right back up again. Then as the year came to an end and I enjoyed my dayjob more than I have for over a decade, I found myself fighting to find the time to listen. Oh well you can't have everything!

Anyway before I'm accused of narcissism again, there's a reason for mentioning all of this. As my personal life went through a lot of change I found myself opening my mind and ears to a wider area of music, mainly classical, but other bits and pieces slipped in too. A tendency towards the romantic, the overly emotional aspects in music appeared in my listening habits, as if from nowhere. Bearing in mind I spent most of February listening to only Radu Malfatti compositions this came as a surprise to me as much as anyone. I mainly blame the influence of others for this. Spending time in the company of knowledgeable friends directly lead me to listen to Shostakovich, Mahler, Bach and others, but I think the sense of loosened restraints I felt in my personal life played a big part in all of this also.

So here are a few of the discs that I played the most in 2007 that for one reason or another weren't suitable for my Best of 2007 list...

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No.9
Versions by Claudio Abbado and Bruno Maderna

For some reason I had been meaning to investigate Mahler for a few years. I had a good idea what to expect so I think I probably had heard one or two of the symphonies on the radio at some point and enjoyed them enough to make a subconscious mental note. My "discovery" of classical music in 2007 meant I asked around for recommendations and the first symphony I bought was No.9, and the Claudio Abbado / Berlin Philharmonic recording on Deutsche Grammophon in particular.

I have listened to more than one recording of all of Mahler's symphonies over the last twelve months and I really enjoy them all to one degree or another. The construction of his music is incredible, although so many richly detailed elements are taking place at any one time they all fit together like a fantastically beautiful jigsaw puzzle. Reading about the symphonies and Mahler's personal motivations behind them provides a further dimension, sometimes its possible to almost follow the symphonies like stories, the emotional impact of some of them at least almost overwhelming on occasion.

The Ninth is one such symphony, written as Mahler entered his last months and fighting ill health. Impending death and its fears is one central theme to this incredible work. The infidelity of his wife had also been recently revealed to him as he wrote the piece, and this no doubt infused the composition with a further, deep sense of loss. Its not a happy work, ending with what is clearly a solemn farewell as the symphony comes to a final close after a few false endings. Its also probably the most musically adventurous of Mahler's nine (ten if you count the posthumously completed one) symphonies, written as it was when the young blood of Vienna's second school were finding their feet, and looking up to Mahler as their musical forefather.

Without getting up to count I think I have six or seven versions of Mahler's Ninth now. In my opinion its a piece that can withstand being performed "badly" and still maintain a large degree of its power, but three versions of it remain my favourite. The Bruno Maderna conducted recording by the BBC Symphony Orchestra is a sharp, precise version, the construction of the piece articulated immaculately and with real power. The version by Claudio Abbado that I originally purchased remains my favourite however, a really organic, passionate realisation that feels alive and thriving as it comes from the speakers. The last version I enjoy a lot is also conducted by Abbado, but comes on a DVD. The recording is of the Mahler Youth Orchestra, and watching Abbado in full flow directing this young group of incredibly passionate players is an amazing thing to watch.

I actually have bought and watched five DVDs of Abbado conducting Mahler symphonies over the last year. Having never actually attended the live performance of a full symphony (shame on me, I know) I find watching this master conduct music he is clearly in love with a spellbinding experience, one I intend to witness for real as soon as possible.

Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet No.15
Performed by Borodin Quartet.

I'm not at all ashamed to admit that my interest in this stunning piece of music originates entirely with Keith Rowe. Sitting in on a workshop on improvisation Keith gave up in Scotland back in June, he played this recording very loud to the room in an attempt to portray the level of immediacy he wanted to hear from the musicians. The moment I heard that first solo violin I was taken with the music completely, the shimmering essence of the powerfully sorrowful music made me shiver in the room, and I knew I had to buy the CD. I've since listened right the way through 75% of Shostakovich's composition (and read my way through 75% of Elizabeth Wilson's massive biography) and I think I started with the very pinnacle of his music, as nothing else has come close to his late quartets (the 8th, 11th and 14th are all also very wonderful.) The 15th string Quartet was probably the one piece of music I played more than any other in 2007... and thats saying something.

Mention should also be made here to the Emerson quartet 2CD set of Bartok's string quartets, which are also a very nice listen indeed. Still some way behind the Shostakovich however.

Johann Sebastian Bach - Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin / The Cello suites
Performed by Gidon Kremer / Janos Starker

Both of these recordings were given to me initially as CDR burns by a good friend. Bach is probably not a name I would have investigated without helpful suggestions from others, and even now I'm quite content having only scratched the surface of his work. The cello suites are just so so beautiful. The uncomplicated melodies, deeply mournful and moving in places, sprightly and uplifting in others are just perfectly complete, if that makes any sense. Starker's playing is beautifully rich and filled with passionate colour, each note ringing out vibrantly before the next, the playing of a musician clearly deeply involved with the music before him. I also purchased Pablo Casals' 1930's recording of the suites, as they were cheap on the Naxos label and are widely considered to be the best ever recordings. I liked the Casals a great deal for many of the same reasons, but I think I still prefer the vibrancy of the Starker, which of course may just be because of the advances in recording quality during the thirty years between the two versions.

Gidon Kremer has recorded Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo at least twice as I have two separate recordings, the first, from 1980 was the first I heard and remains my favourite, despite the CD quality of the later 2000 / 2001 set, though if you asked me to identify which was which in a blind test perhaps its only that recording quality that would enable me to do so. Kremer has a very distinctive style that I like a lot, a very rough, gritty sound that brings a raw, energetic edge to the music. Bach's pieces are again just fantastic little illustrations of simple, beautiful music. I find little else to say about them beyond this. I quite often play them late at night, very quietly, when the challenges of keeping up with the modern avant garde get a little too much and I just need to wind down before bed. Damning with faint praise perhaps, but for music written over three hundred years ago to still affect me in 2007 as this music does, well thats some achievement if you ask me.

Tommy Potts - The Liffey Banks

I wrote about this music here, and I have little more to say about it that I didn't write back in July, but six months later this disc probably still gets played once a week here, often when I'm in the bath for some strange reason that I can't quite fathom. I hope to visit Ireland a couple more times this year, once for my annual pilgrimage to the great i and e festival at the end of March, and maybe again in the summer, this time to investigate the beautiful country a little further. Tracking down more about Mr Potts will be high on my agenda this year.

There were two amazing recordings released in 2007 that I did not include in my Top 10 of the year. The first, the Editions RZ two disc compilation of David Tudor's piano music, including the quite incredible 1961 recording of Cage's Variations II requires a full review in itself. As does the other release, the new recording of Luigi Nono's masterwork Prometeo directed by André Richard. It may take me a while, but I hope to do my feelings on these two releases justice somewhere all in good time.

Favourite Live Sets 2007

2007-12-31T16:09:00.000Z

I posted this list elsewhere recently, my favourite live sets of 2007. I was lucky / determined enough to see over 80 sets of live music this year, and here are the best of them. Obviously I'm relying mainly on memory here and of course you can't compare two shows several months apart, but I've ranked them vaguely by the impression they have left on me now at the end of the year.

1. John Tilbury playing Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus, Dublin, March.
2. Keith Rowe, Toshimaru Nakamura duo, Parthenay, July.
3. Angharad Davies solo. Parthenay, July
4. Lucio Capece, Julia Eckhardt, Christian Kesten, Radu Malfatti, Toshimaru Nakamura, Taku Sugimoto septet, Brussels, May
5. Irvine Arditti playing Luigi Nono's La Lontananza.., London, October
6. Keith Rowe solo, Aberdeen, June
7. MIMEO, Huddersfield, November
8. Arditti Quartet playing Luigi Nono's Fragmente-Stille, London, October.
9. Andrea Neumann, John Tilbury duo, Dublin March
10. SLW (Rhodri Davies, Burkhard Beins, Lucio capece, Toshimaru Nakamura) Parthenay, July.
11. The Sealed Knot, Dublin, February.
12. Maurizio Pollini playing Luigi Nono's ...sofferte onde serene, London, October
13. Will Guthrie solo. Nottingham, February
14. Angharad Davies, David Lacey, Lee Patterson, Paul Vogel quartet. Dublin, July.
15. John Wall solo. Bristol, December.
16. Cranc, Parthenay, July.
17. Joe Colley, Eric le Casa duo. Dublin, March.
18. Angharad Davies, Michael Duch, Julia Eckhardt trio playing Taku Sugimoto's 29th November. London, November
19. Northern Sinfonia playing Radu Malfatti's Gateshead 21, Gateshead, May.
20. Angharad Davies, Tisha Mukarji, Andrea Nemann, Gateshead, May

Favourite Albums of 2007

2007-12-29T12:19:00.000Z

So its that time of the year again... Every year I ask myself if I should be doing this or not, but what the hell its just a bit of fun, and if you can't have fun this time of year when can you? Like last year this list does not include any Cathnor releases. Despite only putting out two discs this year I am very proud of both of them, and if someone else had released them they would both have made the top five. MIMEO's sight may even have been pushing The Room for the top slot as I really think its that special, but fortunately that isn't a choice I have to worry about. The list also does not include any re-releases, so as to truly reflect the music that was made in 2007. I'll probably do some kind of list of older music that has affected me this year soon, there's quite a bit of it! Anyway, here you are, my top twenty after considerable consideration. Feel free to argue!

1. Keith Rowe - The Room

Yeah the predictable choice, but really this wouldn't be here if it wasn't so damned good. The Room manages to pull together so many of the loose ends that have inhabited Keith's music over the past decade or so. It includes big references to each of his solo albums, Cardew's Treatise, Rothko, AMM, the list is endless. Its also an incredibly powerful, passionate piece of music that bristles with anger and frustration. There are patches of sheer beauty, others that confront you with their awkwardness, moments of complete surprise and that ending, with the last few moments recorded outside, an all together calmer state of mind putting the album to rest?

Yes I consider Keith a friend, yes I'm probably too close to his music to be completely objective (this is why I haven't written anything about this album all year) but I can only be honest, and when compiling a list of the albums that affected me the most this year The Room has to be number one. Buy it if you haven't already. Erstwhile

2. Taku Unami - Malignitat

Perhaps a slightly controversial second place, but when I listed all the CDs I'd played this year and ranked them by how often I'd played them, and how much impact they had had on me Malignitat couldn't be ignored. I wrote about this album here so I won't go into more detail, but I will say that right now Unami strikes me as one of the most interesting (if not always consistent) musicians working today. Hibari

3. Sachiko M - Salon de Sachiko

A late arrival, so a CD that hasn't had the time to affect me that some of the others here have, but has made an immediate impact. I have long admired Sachiko's music, but when considering her solo music I wasn't alone in wondering where on earth she could go after the finite minimalism of Bar de Sachiko. Salon takes a sidestep from the sinewaves yet retains the austere intensity of her previous work, small twittering sounds, scratches and bleeps spaced apart, seemingly without any kind of progression through the album, making careful listening an arduous, yet ultimately rewarding experience. Close focus allows you into the acute soundworld Sachiko is investigating, almost foraging into it as if seeking something hidden amongst the musical undergrowth. Given the right time and attention (sorry Mattin!) Salon is an engaging, captivating album.Ftarri

4. Lucio Capece, Toshimaru Nakamura - iJ

Since the release of between I've sensed that Toshi Nakamura's duo recordings have been judged (perhaps subconsciously) by many with his duo with Keith Rowe used as some kind of benchmark. This seems a little unfair to me. Toshi's work with Rowe is something special, perhaps unsurpassed in this area of music, but his duo work with other musicians each have their own qualities and concerns quite different again. Lucio Capece has been one musician to really impress me this year. His sensitivity as a collaborative musician really shines through on iJ, particularly at the start of the first track, as the duo allow their understated sounds to brew and simmer before they are allowed to bubble over. Nakamura's ability to control the wild unpredictability of feedback is probably better displayed on this disc than any before as well. Overall this is just a great CD that captures a musical conversation between two great players. I can't wait to someday hear the fruits of their recent trio work with Rowe. Formed

5. Klaus Lang - einfalt.stille

I wrote about this release here, so again little more to say. This CD is quite different from those listed above, choosing to project calm rather than tension onto the listener. I just find Lang's work immensely, stunningly gorgeous, and sometimes thats more than enough to win me over. Definitely the most beautiful music released this year, Robert Zank's support of Lang through his Editions RZ label is further testament to the man's exceptional taste.

6. Axel Dorner, Toshimaru Nakamura - Vorhernach

Another duo from Toshi Nakamura, this time with trumpeter Axel Dorner on the Ftarri label, wrapped up in a typically nice sleeve. Vorhernach is a million miles from iJ though. Again, my thoughts on it are here. Vorhernach seems to me to be more about the collision of two great musicians' contributions rather than the close interplay of iJ. Whilst iJ sucks the listener in, Vorhernach is a tough nut to crack, but its well worth the effort persevering. Ftarri

7. Radu Malfatti - Rain speak soft tree listens

One of the twelve CDR releases put out by Mr Malfatti during 2007. This is easily my favourite, and also somewhat ironically the most unusual of them all. A quiet, contemplative piece for string quartet, piano and massed whispered voices, I first heard Rain speak... played on the Wandelweiser radio stream and was immediately intrigued. The composition sets the slowly spoken words of a Robert Lax poem to a background of overlapping folds of dry strings, single piano notes and long silences, creating a room-filling atmosphere of eerie warmth. B-boim

8. Klaus Lang - Missa beati paperes spiritu

More from Lang, this time his virtually ignored mass on the Col Legno label. Lang reclaims the beauty of the mass form from religion, keeping the structure of the form intact, adding modern instrumentation and slowing things down to create a richly beautiful piece of music. As with einfalt.stille, this release merits its place purely as a stunningly gorgeous thing to behold. Designed to relax the listener rather than challenge them, Lang's music succeeds in an area where most other music fails. I wrote about this one in this post.

9. Angharad Davies, Tisha Mukarji - endspace.

Another late arrival, released only in early December, but one I had been waiting for. Violinist Davies has probably been the most consistently interesting improvisor in the UK for over a year now, but has been underrepresented on disc. This album, with another remarkably talented and under-recorded young improviser Mukarji (acoustic inside piano) goes some way to fill that gap. Precise, simple chamberlike structures, all very fragile in their construction. Restrained and made up of only the essential elements, but never really disappearing into silence. This probably hasn't been heard by too many people yet, that really should change soon. Another Timbre

10. Eric Carlsson, David Lacey, Martin Kuchen, Paul Vogel - Chipshop Music

Unsettling, muscular music from Ireland's two finest musicians in collaboration with Swedes Carlsson and Kuchen. This CD formed the soundtrack for my drive to work every day for several weeks. Engaging, demanding music with a real spark of vitality and joy at its heart. Self released by Lacey and Vogel on Homefront recordings. No website yet, drop me an email and I can put you in touch to buy a copy.

11. Mark Wastell - Come Crimson Rays

The third and final in Wastell's series of solo tam-tam releases, and easily the best of the bunch. This time a degree of silence finds its way between the swathes of agitated metal, breaking up the rolling washes of sound, leading to a solemn, haunting piece of almost ritualistic music. Late night music. Kning Disk

12. Bhob Rainey, RLW - I don't think I can see you tonight

The end result of months of swapping reworked, edited and added-to soundfiles, this album slipped out right at the start of 2007. A finely sculpted concrete collage of bits of improvisations, field recordings and other odds and ends, I don't think... manages to retain a vibrancy and originality despite its elongated method of creation. Sedimental

13. Ryu Hankil, Jin Sangtae, Taku Unami, Mattin – 5 Modules III

There seemed to be a never ending stream of releases in 2007 from just a handful of musicians in South Korea. Most were worth hearing, but this one stood out from the rest as something different, slightly unsettling and somewhat confusing. Its far from coincidence that the names Unami and Mattin are involved. I wrote about this release here back in September and to be honest I'm still not even sure that I like the CD, but its certainly one I've played over and over in an attempt to fathom it all out. Manual

14. The Sealed Knot - Live at the Red Hedgehog 29th October 2006.

One of my favourite groups in full flow, here in quite raucous, energetic mood. Its rare that a CD release of a concert I attended comes out sounding as good as I remember it being, but this is one such case. Ironically I saw the group play again a few months later in Ireland and they sounded very different, quieter, more sparse and perhaps even more to my liking, but that show didn't get recorded. Such is life. Top quality acoustic improvisation. The Confront website is temporarily down.

15. Annette Krebs, Robin Hayward - sgraffito

Chosen particularly for the great opening track on the album, sgraffito is a self released CDR of duets from two of Berlin's most established improvisers really coaxing the best from each other. Not your everyday call-and-response improv, with Krebs in particular playing in a fractured, erratic manner, bursts of radio and samples fly in and out of the music as commonly as the scrapes and fizzes from her guitar, all wrapped around Hayward's equally unpredictable tuba playing. There might eventually be a website for Annette's releases here, but drop her an email to purchase this release.

16. Radu Malfatti, Jurg Frey, Michael Pisaro – Three Backgrounds

Another from the glut of releases from Radu Malfatti's B-boim label. I wrote up all twelve discs here. This was an easy second choice from Malfatti, perhaps again as it sounds quite different from the other releases he put out. The room noise definitely becomes the foreground to the three backgrounds performed by the musicians on this one. A great release that I hear new things in every time I play it.

17. Taku Sugimoto, Mitsuhiro Yoshimura - Not BGM and so on

Yoshimura's appearance with his strong debut release And so on on his own (h)earrings label early in the year set people talking in hip circles. His duo with Taku Sugimoto released later in 2007 essentially captures the same kind of performance from Yoshimura, but this time with added curious interventions from Sugimoto to give the music an additional dimension. Yoshimura has certainly been one of the finds of 2007 with more promised for the coming year, and I could have chosen either of his releases as they show his music in equal light, but the duo disc gets the nod. My review is here

18. Takefumi Naoshima, Hirozumi Takeda, Utah Kawasaki, Toshihro Koike, Takehiro Kawauchi, Yasuo Totsuka - Septet

Writing these brief descriptions here I've actually surprised myself at how much I actually managed to write this year about the music I really enjoyed. A write-up of this disc is here. What happens when music is played so quietly that you can't tell the accidental shuffling of the musicians trying to remain still from the music itself? You discover a strange, alien soundworld for one, but how much was intentional and how much pure chance? Only you, the listener can decide...! Meena

19. Axel Dorner, Lucio Capece – s/t

Two of Toshimaru Nakamura's collaborators on disc this year together in a duo. Acoustic bass clarinet and trumpet duets full of writhing, bright interplay between two fine improvisers. These two also released a trio disc with the addition of Robin Hayward that could easily have made this list on another day, but tonight in a head to head battle this duo release won through. Rarely a year passes without at least one great release from the l'innomable label. This year was no exception.

20. Tomas Korber, Katsura Yamauchi, Christian Weber – Signal to Noise Vol.2

Swiss improv received an awful lot of (in my opinion largely unjustified) bad press in 2007, and this situation wasn't helped by the other two no-so-great releases in the Signal to Noise series on the For 4 Ears label. This release however, the second in that series blows the others away with its understated on/off structure of short blasts, tones and bass throbs. Guitar and electronics, (Korber) trumpet, (Yamauchi) and double bass (Weber) combine in an unusual and very satisfying manner. Tomas Korber's second best release of the year! ;)

So there you go. Sorry to anyone I've forgotten. I don't doubt that there will be numerous releases I will suddenly think of now that I've published this that I should have included, but hey ho, such is life. Writing this, a couple of interesting things occurred to me. Firstly the top three in the list are all solos. this is something that I hadn't noticed until now, and I don't know what that signifies (if anything) but its interesting to note. Also, six of the twenty are CDR releases, really highlighting to me that its the music that really matters, irrelevant on how much it cost to release the CD...

Lets hope 2008 is just as strong a year.

Catching Up

2007-12-26T20:31:00.000Z

Well I had intended writing at length about all of the concerts I caught towards the end of this year, but time and creative and physical energies haven't allowed for that, so here's a very brief round-up to bring things up to date. A few days after returning from Huddersfield I attended the three night LMC Festival in London of which I still aim to get a "proper" review up at Bagatellen before too much longer, so I'll move on to the 11th December and a London show at the Red Rose Club promoted by the increasingly influential No-Signal people.

The admirable premise that seems to exist behind No-Signal's concerts is to blend different forms of music and their audiences together within one event. This show entitled STFU followed on from other concerts this year that have attracted fans of both noise music and improvised music to the same event. This has resulted in some impressively large audience turn-outs, although the noise contingent have tended to outnumber their improv companions about three to one at the shows I've attended. So this concert sold out in advance, something I can't imagine has happened to a Red Rose show for quite a few years.

The main reason for the high attendance numbers was probably the appearance of Stephen O'Malley, the front man of Sunn O)) (sorry if I spelt that incorrectly) in a duo with Oren Ambarchi that closed the show. These two have played together a good few times in the past and I have been able to listen to recordings they have released together, so I kind of knew what to expect. Loud, deep and very very slow guitar chords from O'Malley trudged out around Ambarchi's scribbling electronics and heavy tones. I don't dislike this music as such, but as it went on for quite some time with only gradual shifts in form and slowly increasing in volume it was just very very obvious and somewhat boring in its construction. I felt the need to reach out and hold down the fast forward button to see where the performance ended up, but in the end as my companions decided to leave before the conclusion of the set I followed them out, left somewhat unfulfilled by the evening in general, but by this last set in particular. Maybe it ended in spectacular fashion, but I somewhat doubt it.

Before the O'Malley / Ambarchi conclusion to the evening we had had to suffer (I'm sorry but I can't think of a more suitable choice of word) the combination of the Portugese duo Osso Exotico and the percussionist Z'Ev. I'd wandered to the back of the overcrowded room for this one, fearing high volumes, so I didn't see what instruments the Osso Exotico trio were playing, but they made a kind of lolloping, off-kilter drone that lost my interest after just a few minutes. Z'Ev's contribution seemed to be scraping metal sounds and almost ceremonial strikes of a gong in a semi-rhythmical manner underneath all of this, but the end result, played at high volume really sounded flat, lacking in any detail and generally just wholly uninteresting. Whilst not displaying any of the onstage aggression of much noise music the performance still seemed to me to be reliant on the force of the music's volume to motivate the audience, which is never a good sign to me.

Working backwards then, the second set of the evening had come from the duo of Mark Wastell on tam tam and Joachim Nordwall on laptop and electronics. I had seen this duo play at the first concert I attended in 2007 in the basement of Sound323. Here, with the added dimension of a big PA the duo were able to play much louder than in that earlier performance. Nordwall, who runs the iDEAL label in Sweden and is one of the group The Skull Defekts works mainly within a narrow range of grey textures and post-industrial rumbling, occasionally bringing the volume up to levels approaching what could be categorised as "noise" music. Into this somewhat bleak backdrop Wastell fed his now trademark washes of subtle tam tam, all soft roars devoid of attack, and carefully placed strikes with a variety of beaters. For anyone that has not witnessed Wastell perform with this instrument live the degree of dexterity with which he addresses the metal disc these days is quite remarkable. Sounds seem to slip in and out of range with only the barest of physical movement applied by the musician.

The patterns in the music created as the acoustic and electronic sounds collided were interesting, but somehow I didn't take much more from this performance. The basic structure seemed to be for Nordwall to create a backdrop and for Wastell to add (admittedly very beautiful) sound to it at carefully chosen points. There seemed to be little communication beyond this one way conversation, not unlike a two-man graffiti team, with one filling the void with big patches of colour, and the other drawing the outlines, giving the work form. The end result was not displeasing in any way, but was perhaps a little safe and predictable.

The opening act of the evening was the acoustic guitar duo of Tetuzi Akiyama and Hervé Boghossian.The pair sat opposite each other in the centre of the room and played a kind of duelling blues improvisation, not far in style from Akiyama's early acoustic style circa Relator and reminiscent of John Fahey duetting with Derek Bailey, only not quite at that level. I quite enjoyed this set, which wasn't what I had been expecting, given Boghossian's usual preference for coaxing drones from his instrument and Akiyama's occasional penchant for throbbing electric riffs. The interplay between the two was left very naked in the centre of the room with the large crowd gathered around and they handled things very well, building a finely assembled web of picked notes and scrapes, and the occasional grab of false-starting melody. Maybe nothing dramatically original took place here, but I found this intimate little performance engaging all the same.

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The next day I drove over to Bristol to catch a small concert in the café space of the Spike Island Arts Centre housed in an old Brooke Bond tea factory on the banks of the River Avon. the gallery was closed for the evening when I arrived, which was a shame, and the café area was perhaps not the best of spaces to hold a concert, the long thin room reflecting the musicians sound back at them a little too easily, but having never attended a gig in Bristol before it was nice to venture out to somewhere new.

First on the two-performance bill was the trio of Ben Drew (laptop), Helena Gough (laptop) and Lee Patterson (all kinds of stuff!). In mid November I had barely heard of Helena Gough, but here less than a month later I was attending my third concert involving her. The first I wrote about a couple of posts back, a duo with Patterson in Huddersfield, the second had been a solo performance at the LMC Festival that I had also enjoyed. Here, Lee's input was considerably different to their previous show, as he utilised pre-recorded material more in combination with assorted guitar pick-ups and contact miked metal. It was very difficult to tell Gough's input apart from Ben Drew's as they played through a PA and the sound swirled around the small space, but generally speaking he seemed to provide cleaner, more linear sounds to her minutae field recordings.

Combined, the trio created a heaving mass of sound, shifting glimpses of detail, bits of field recordings strewn between bursts of colourful tones and Patterson's naturally occurring abstractions. The effect reminded me of looking through a kaleidoscope that is turning continually, the overall sensation one of beauty, yet made up of thousands of relentless individual events, none of which stay around long enough to study in detail.

The second half of the evening featured a rare solo performance by John Wall, who has recently taken to improvising live with a laptop, often in the company of Lee Gamble with whom he has struck up a seemingly fruitful partnership, but here he performed a short, sharp set alone. I should make it clear that John Wall's recorded work, meticulously constructed over many months on a computer has had a major impact on my life over the years. If I was to list my favourite albums of all time at least two, maybe three of his albums would make the top ten. John's improvised work is a very different beast however. On the surface it resembles many other Max/MSP styled laptop improvisations by other musicians. Many of the telltale characteristics of this kind of playing are there, the dramatic shifts of dynamic, the phased sounds, the familiar stretched qualities of music made with a soundcard pushed to its limits, but for me its impossible to forget that this is John Wall playing, and the bigger picture that that brings is considerably more interesting.

John has taken to improvisation almost out of desperation as his compositional work, always very slow to progress at the best of times has ground to a halt. In his own words he feels he had forced himself into a corner, and going out and experimenting with the wild freedom (by his standards) of live improvisation has given him a vehicle to break free from the cul-de-sac he felt he was trapped in. The music played at this concert was clearly the work of John Wall, the trademark sounds and intricate structures were still there, but here they were wrapped up in an almost violently intense shell, careering viciously at times, dropping into tension filled hollows at others.

Wall only played for about twenty minutes, maybe less, and spent the duration of the set stood up, rocking about around the computer, his face wrought with energy until the wrenching end of the performance when he stood up, shrugged to the small audience and went to sit down. Chatting with John after the show the creative energy flowing through him right now since this switch to improvisation was very evident, and whilst for all its power and tension this performance didn't come close to capturing the sheer magic of his composed work, John's hope is that this way of working will bring new energy and ideas to his more contemplative music. Personally speaking if anything helps this inspirational man continue to make the music I've come to admire so much then its got to be a good thing.

Its grim oop North (but I wouldn't want it any other way)

2007-12-13T22:45:00.000Z

Whilst oop in Huddersfield and with a few hours to kill on Saturday morning I made my way (in the relentlessly pouring rain) to the Huddersfield Art Gallery, housed in an old Georgian (I think) building that also contains the town's library. My main reason for attending the gallery (apart from the fact that there is absolutely nothing else to do of worth on a wet Saturday in Huddersfield!) was to catch the two installations linked to the Contemporary Music Festival shown there.

I didn't expect to see much else of interest in the gallery's everyday collection, but then I had forgotten that I was in Lowry country here, and I was really pleased to see a couple of his paintings hanging around the corner from an awful display of Contemproray Pakistani art. The above painting is called Huddersfield and was painted in 1965.

I'm not sure what it is I enjoy about Lowry's work. He doesn't tick any of the usual boxes that trigger my interest in a painting. There is however some kind of homely, warm feeling about his work that I enjoy a lot. This painting reminds me a lot of the St Ives school of painters that I have closely studied from time to time, the childlike friendliness of the painting reminding me of Alfred Wallis, the dodgy perspective of Ben Nicholson. Above all there is a resounding Englishness about his work that probably doesn't translate so well abroad. (I don't know, Brian?) This painting perfectly captures the charm of a Northern English industrial town, and whilst I might make jokes here about the grim, murky qualities of Huddersfield it certainly oozes its own deep-seated character that I find impossible to not be charmed by. The Lowry above somehow portrays this perfectly. Although forty years old the town is still there in the painting, the colours, the activity, the people. Finding this little gem put a smile on my face for the rest of the weekend.

The two installations linked to the music festival shown in the gallery were created (separately) by Michael Prime and Janek Schaefer. I have seen Michael Prime's work Ha! Where have all your mushrooms gone? before, though I struggle to remember exactly where. (Maybe the Sonic Boom show at the Hayward Gallery a while back?) It consists of three tanks containing live mushrooms growing, each with biosensors attached. When you walk near to a tank a further sensor detects your presence and begins to translate the natural biorhythms given off by the fungi into electronic sound, buzzes and gentle drilling noises. As more than one person wander around the installation the sounds come and go in quite interesting patterns, but I have to say that after the initial novelty of hearing mushrooms make music had passed there wasn't much of lingering interest for me here.

On CD Janek Schaefer has generally speaking managed to underwhelm me on almost every occasion I've heard his work. Its not bad in any way, just not that interesting either. I didn't get my hopes up too high then for his installation piece entitled Extended Play: Tryptich for the Child Survivors of War and Conflict. However I quite enjoyed this installation. Schaefer set up nine old gramophone players in the space, arranged into three groups of three. He then wrote and had performed a piece of music for piano, violin and cello and pressed each of the parts onto separate vinyl discs so that each of the three groups of players had one machine playing each of the instrument parts. The players were each modified so as to play continually, returning the cartridge to the start of the record each time it ended, but a hidden sensor in each machine detected the presence of someone stood close to it and stopped the player until the person moved away.

The music itself was a mournful, somewhat minimal piece of music, reminiscent of Feldman's later works, though not so remarkable in itself. The interesting part of the installation however came as the individual players stopped and started at random intervals as people came close, causing the different instruments to shift in and out of phase with each other, creating more of a mass of sympathetic sounds rather than one structured composition. I must also admit I had great fun alone in the gallery that rainy Saturday morning hopping from machine to machine trying to impact the overall sound as much as possible, or at least I did until the somewhat surly looking security guard came along and looked at me as if I was a lunatic....

I hope that Schaefer resists the temptation to ever release a recording of the Extended Play material, as separated from the installation it wouldmake for a pretty uninteresting listen, but here I quite enjoyed its impact. One thing, the installation was designed according to Schaefer to be "a contemplative, emotional, optimistic & uplifting experience of continuously unfurling sound ... a bitter sweet tribute to the child survivors of conflict and war." I would agree that it achieved some of these aims, but I certainly didn't find it particularly uplifting. Reading the associated notes in the gallery certainly caused me to reflect on the carnage caused by war, but I have to say it left me feeling somewhat depressed and pessimistic about the state of the world today.

When you've been brought down to earth by such a sombre experience walking out in the rainsoaked streets of Huddersfield town centre probably isn't the best medicine to give you that quick pick-me-up, but I found some solace in wandering around noting some of the more amusing shops in the town centre. Hidden amongst the many discount stores and cheap booze off licenses can be found Jack Fulton's World of Frozen Value (I'm not sure why that's funny but it is!) a shop called Fartown with a hand painted sign that really accentuates the Fart part of the name, and a hairdressers again with a handpainted sign, this time called Headquaters. Please note, it wasn't Headquarters as that essential letter R was missing, perhaps deliberately, but I quite like the idea that the sign was misspelt so they changed the name of the business.... Unfortunately my photos of these shops didn't come out as my camera battery died, but once I switched to my camera phone I did manage to take this last pic, possibly of the most oddly titled store of them all... poor Ivor, that's all I can say.

Its grim oop North (but the music's great) No.2

2007-12-06T21:48:00.000Z

Insert: Standard blog post introduction about how I've been too tired/busy/lazy to post for over a month
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Yeah its been a hectic few weeks, blah blah...
I have managed to make it out to quite a few concerts in the last few weeks though, and I'm going to try and catch up on them all in brief here over the next few days. A review of the LMC Festival is also nearly complete (its painful this isn't it?) and should see the light of day very soon.
A couple of weeks back now I also wandered up the M1 to again experience the delights of the Yorkshire town of Huddersfield, home of the often good Contemporary Music Festival and... well not much else really.

My primary reason for making the long trip oop North though was to catch the rare event on the Friday evening of all eleven members of MIMEO playing together in one place, something they haven't managed to do for quite a while. The group performed a ninety minute long live version of sight, their 2007 release on my Cathnor label, so witnessing this concert kind of closed a circle for me personally. As sight the CD project strove to reproduce the intimacy of a live performance between musicians completely separated in time and space, the live performance ironically attempted the reverse, bringing the dislocated intuition of the CD project to a concert hall situation (or a cotton dye blending shed situation in this case.)

sight the CD project explored the relationship between eleven musicians that had played together as a unit (albeit sporadically) for ten years. For anyone unaware (shame on you!) the CD was compiled (literally) by superimposing eleven sixty minute recordings made independently by the musicians to create one piece. The only rule being that each musician could only place approximately five minutes of sound onto their individual recordings. For the live recording the musicians were all tasked to find their own way of arriving as close as possible to the situation they were in for the creation of the CD, but to then bring the music alive in front of an audience.

The musicians used a variety of methods to recreate the physical disconnection. Some (mainly the laptoppers, but I believe also Keith Rowe) had pre-prepared soundfiles sat on their machines. These were then either partially manipulated live or in the case of Fennesz and maybe others, merely set running for the duration of the performance. Others played in a more traditional manner, either using a rigid score for their contributions or trusting themselves to play without regard for the other sounds around them. As Cor Fuhler played the inside of a piano, and Thomas Lehn and some of the other electronic musicians did not have the ability to instantly play back a soundfile we had an interesting mix of methods used. The musicians also all dressed in black and performed in an unlit room, reflecting the black-on-black minimalism of the CD sleeve.

The musicians also set themselves the one restraint of playing for roughly only five minutes each across the hour and a half. This five minutes could be broken into small sections and spread across the time, as with the CD. Listening in the room to the live result it was quite clear that some of the musicians chose to play quite a bit more than this however. The overall result was rather special. Although there was more music per square inch here than on the CD release there were still plenty of long, charged silences. It was incredible to hear MIMEO play this quietly, this restrained, something they have never achieved before. The half broken uncertainty of the CD was very much present. In some places sounds from different musicians came together beautifully to form lovely little vignettes, whilst elsewhere the random nature of the performance was all too clear.

I'm probably far too close the the sight project to write objectively on the performance, so I will leave it there I think. One last observation that amused me a little... as Fennesz (and I think also Marcus Schmickler though I am not definite) sat in front of me just listening to the performance unfold as they let a single soundfile run, it occurred to me that they had become as much a part of the audience as the rest of us, their input to the concert already decided and allowed to unfold on a machine. As we (the audience) sat on our uncomfortable chairs trying to remain quiet so did they, for a while breaking down the normal relationship between musician and listener. At one point Kaffe Matthews could be heard to cough during a silence and (I might be wrong here, it was dark!) Cor Fuhler seemed to wander to the bar at one point, returning with a drink. This blurring of the roles reminded me of how I felt when I first heard the sight CD, part label owner responsible for the release of the work, but also part listener hearing a new release for the first time, all a bit strange all round.

The following night I returned to the same venue, which incidentally is a fully operational part of the Bates' Mill cotton manafacturing factory, with the floorspace of the large room cleared for the weekend's events. Resting machines and pipes could be heard ticking to a slow halt on the first evening as MIMEO played, and on the second as it poured with rain outside (no surprise there) the guttering of the building could be heard straining against the force of the water high in the roof.

This watery intrusion was very much welcome for the first event of the Cut 'n' Splice evening that made up Saturday's events, (well for me anyway, others with less taste went and watched a Fred Frith string quartet ;)) The four or five performances of the Cut 'n' Splice event were all loosely based around the theme of food, cooking it, eating it, and digesting it. The first set, by Helena Gough and Lee Patterson began with that sound of running water in the background, and ironically water sounds were later heard amongst the musician's contributions as well.

Lee is a musician that you really need to catch live to fully appreciate. I have heard him utilise recordings of eggs frying in his perfomances before, but tonight he took things one step further, actually using a small electric hob to fry an egg on stage, the remarkably detailed and chaotic sounds captured by a contact mic and fed into the mix. That mix also included dissolving liver salts, Golden Syrup drizzled over a sheet of contact miked metal, burning pine nuts and no end of other paraphenalia. Helena Gough works with similar found sounds but keeps things far simpler by processing them on a laptop. Here she used a mixture of sounds, some provided in advance by Patterson that she sculpted around his mesh of interwoven detail to produce a very satisfying and somehow living and breathing soundworld.

I retired to the back of the shed when Sudden Infant performed (and that's definitely the correct verb here) the next set. Sudden Infant turned out to be one man, dressed in black, the sleeves cut from his top revealing a mass of tattoos. Essentially he miked up his body and set about running and dancing on the spot, as well as creating deep (and rather disturbing) sounds in his throat. These sounds were fed through a rack of effects he operated via pedals at is feet (plenty of loops there) and then blasted out through the PA into the room. A white light projected Mr Infant's silhouette up onto the wall at the back of the stage. On occasions some interesting things happened as different sounds crossed over each other, but in general I found this set musically tedious and if I'm honest somewhat amusing.

The last set of the evening that I saw was a performance by Tim Parkinson and James Saunders performing a series of kitchen related compositions. They began with the heavily Fluxus related John Cage piece 0'00, which was performed simultaneously with Kunsu Shim's for you.
The Cage piece merely instructs the performer to go about any disciplined action but to do so "in a situation provided with maximum amplification." Shim's piece seems to merely require that the performer prepare and present a cup of tea to a third party.

So Saunders set about cutting up fruit and veg and dropping them into a blender, turning it on every so often to make a smoothie and closing the performance by drinking the end result. Throughout this the table he sat behind and items he used were miked up so as his every sound, ranging from the chopping sounds through to the squeak of his chair were amplified into the room. Whilst Saunders completed this Parkinson boiled a kettle, brewed a pot of tea and presented it to a member of the audience. All in all my response to this performance was not dissimilar to how I react to most Fluxus events I've witnessed, finding the whole thing amusing and great to watch, but musically pretty uninteresting.

Following this the duo performed Alvin Lucier's Opera with objects, a piece requiring the musicians to rhythmically tap everyday objects to discover their individual resonances and, when coupled with other items being tapped their combined shifts in volume and timbre. That's pretty much what they did as well, setting about the table of kitchenalia with small sticks with which they beat out a regular, fast percussive pattern. Although the results were amplified I struggled to really make out the subtle changes in the sounds as the duo moved from object to object and I think I would really have needed to have been sat very close to get the most from this performance, but again it was a thoroughly interesting experiment to watch.

Parkinson and Saunders were joined on stage by John Lely and Andrew Sparling for the final and by far the most successful of the four works they performed, Michael Maierhof's Plastikquartett 2. The programme notes described the composition thus:

"The four players use a set of 6 different sized plastic cups fixed on a table which have quite clear pitches and 3 with more multiphonic qualities. The plastic cups are bowed. With different pressures, angles, velocities of the bow they produce a variety of sound qualities from highest pitches to multiphonic and rattle sounds. The piece is like a very cheap "string quartet" from the supermarket, a "string quartet" for "poor" people who can't afford real string instruments, or just don't like them."

Whilst perhaps that description would suggest a performance of no less novelty value that the preceding three works, (and indeed the sight of Saunders directing the four musicians as they set about plastic cups with bows was a fun one) the music itself was also very nice here. After a while I almost forgot how the brittle scrapes and soft pitches were being made as they overlapped and entangled with each other to create a simple yet continually changing music from a small palette of sounds.

So the icing on the cake of an evening made up from assorted ingredients slowly brought to the boil, left to simmer before being served with a light garnish of absurdity. A hearty dish...

Yearning to listen

2007-11-10T12:22:00.000Z

After spending all of the summer sat about doing little else but sitting about contemplating my navel and listening to music the return to work this last month has been a bit of a shock to the system. The ridiculously early start to my working day (out of bed at 4.30AM) has meant that my usual preferred listening time, late in the evening has become impossible to maintain as I'm now sound asleep by 11PM.

Listening to music in the late afternoon / early evening is a very different kettle of fish. There are more distractions at this time of the day. Obviously there is still some daylight about and more activity from outside the house seeping in. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the continual interruptions from my brother's appalling taste in music and the general noise about the house certainly are. I'm not used to the shops still being open when I have some free time, and often I end up cooking and listening to music at the same time. So the music continues to arrive here at its usual rate, but as I've struggled to sit down and listen the as yet unheard pile has begun to get out of hand again after I finally managed to clear it down over the summer. There's probably around 40 unlistened to discs about here right now.

So I was very pleased this morning to have some time off of work when I could spend some quality time with Mr and Mrs Left and Right speaker. Some great music absorbed this morning included the Mitsuhiro Yoshimura / Taku Sugimoto disc, more about which somewhere soon, the Tim Feeney / Vic Rawlings duo on Sedimental that I have enjoyed a few times recently, a dreadful recording of what I think sounded like a good performance of Mahler's First Symphony from a ludicrously cheap (and now I know why) box set I picked up recently, and finally a couple of years after its release Jean-Luc Guionnet's splendid Tirets recording for church organ on the Hibari label.

Why tell you all this? No idea really, other than to share my joy at being able to spend some time like this and to show that I am still capable of writing posts of less than 5000 words....

I've just put on Noid's You're not here, another good one. Wish you were though.

Views from across the water

2007-11-01T17:08:00.000Z

Its been a while since I attended a concert at any of the South Bank Centre venues. Their treatment of the LMC and other small, more experimental promoters a few years back put me off and my attendance at three concerts from their Luigi Nono - Fragments of Venice season this last couple of weeks has been through gritted teeth, but the performances were a little too good to miss.

First up a fortnight ago I attended a performance by the Arditti String Quartet at The Queen Elizabeth Hall. I had to really rush to get to the hall in time for the show, having caught a later train into London than I had planned, and it was whilst puffing and panting with sweat running down my forehead that I made it to the venue just a few minutes before the musicians took the stage. It was only once I was in place in my seat, working on slowing down the palpitations that I realised just how alien my surroundings had become. I'd been shown to my seat by an usher who tried to sell me a couple of folded sheets of paper for £2.50 and looking around even though the hall was only half full there were more people here than at even the biggest festivals I'd been to this year. Yet much of the music I had come to hear tonight wasn't so far removed from other performances I'd seen recently. Its amazing what the association of a "legitimate" organisation like the SBC can do.

The programme began with a performance of Webern's Six Bagatelles. I've listened a lot to these six short pieces this year and they were a nice way to open the evening. Totalling under five minutes I had barely caught my breath before they were over, but the rendition seemed great, perhaps slightly slower than the recorded version I have (by the Schoenberg Quartet) but that could just be my imagination.

This was followed by the main event of the evening (for me at least) and a performance of Luigi Nono's string quartet Fragmente - Stille. I've come to love the Arditti's recording of this music on the Montaigne label a great deal, so hearing it live was a special treat. The music is quiet, full of silence broken up by small, shadowy moments, indeed fragments of intense beauty, softly played small phrases that are not allowed to develop beyond a few seconds and separated by pauses that bring a charged expectancy to the piece. I've always found the recorded version a captivating work that drags you in, demanding your full attention whether you wanted to give it or not, and tonight I have no idea where the 35 minutes went to with this performance, although the music seemed to hang suspended in the air I was amazed how fast time flew by.

Whilst never removing the innate politics of his earlier work, by 1980 when he wrote Fragmente – Stille Nono had shifted his focus more towards an investigation of sound itself and its relationship to the silence surrounding it. This, his only string quartet is possibly the purest embodiment of this later interest.

It was a joy to witness this delicate composition unravel in front of me. Although the membership of the Arditti Quartet has changed significantly since the Montaigne recording the level of concentrated understanding of the music was obvious. Whilst I find it really hard to critically compare a performance of composed music like this to a recording I do know that the ability to watch the music carved out by the musicians in a live setting brought new insight in the music to me. Sections I had thought to be played by single instruments turned out to be combinations of more than one musician playing, the individual contributions of each musician so much more apparent here than on a CD. I was sat very near the front of the large hall for this performance and I'm pleased about this, as I can't imagine the quiet, fragile music travelling too well to the back rows. As it was, where I was sat I caught every moment, every swoop of a bow, every intense frown of a musician and the decay of each sound as it escaped high into the hall. I enjoyed this so so much.

Following an interval spent queuing for a drink that I never managed to get due to woefully inadequate barstaff numbers (get it together SBC...) there came a performance of Schoenberg's second String Quartet, with the addition of Claron McFadden's soprano. It felt strange following the Nono quartet with this, almost as if the evening had been put together in the wrong order. The piece is in four movements, the last two of which include the soprano part. Schoenberg wrote this music at a troubled time in his life, when his wife was having an affair, and its a richly romantic, occasionally melodic piece. It is said that Schoenberg's first attempts at atonal composition appear in the fourth movement here, the first three all being tonal. I'd never heard this composition on CD before, but having read up on it I awaited the fourth movement with anticipation to see if I could hear a significant difference. Whilst maybe not something I would have picked up on without prior knowledge the fourth movement did sound different, slightly more abrasive and expansive. I have to say that I didn't enjoy the addition of the vocal parts however. They seemed to overpower the intimacy of the small chamber group, causing me to somehow listen differently, trying to follow the words rather than absorb the patterns formed between the four musicians. Mcfadden did nothing wrong, I guess I just prefer string quartets without vocals.

One week later I returned to the same venue to attend two concerts, one following the other in the same hall. Arriving earlier this time I grabbed a bite to eat at a noodle bar nearby as I refused to pay the £5 asking price the South Bank placed on a chicken salad roll. (Is my contempt for the SBC obvious enough by now?!)

Tonight the Queen Elizabeth Hall was full for the first concert of the evening, with probably around 1000 people of whom I recognised about half a dozen. Given that tonight's performances bore an even closer relationship to many of the other concerts I attend I found myself wondering just who are all these people, and why will they attend the South Bank on a Wednesday night but not the Red Rose Club? OK, so that may not have been the best comparison to make, but the question is a valid one.

One good answer I guess may have been that the music for this concert was excellent. From start to finish. The first half of the concert featured performances by the pianist and close friend of Lugi Nono, Maurizio Pollini. Before he even touched the keys Pollini appeared moved by the music, swaying in his seat a little before beginning, tension written across his face, with a rendition of Schoenberg's Three Pieces for Piano.

Pollini seemed completely at home with this music. He played without a score, flowing naturally through the brief pieces. He followed with Six little pieces for piano, a series of vignettes by Schoenberg that I had paid only passing attention to the before this evening. Pollini’s passion poured new life into the music, his playing charged by many years of living closely with it. The last of the six, a restful, almost Feldmanesque miniature written just after the death of Schoenberg’s close friend and inspiration Gustav Mahler was particularly resonant. Based around a single romantic chord and ending with deep booming chimes at the base of the piano’s register this tiny piece hung in the air as Pollini brought it to an end, almost collapsing across the keys as he did so.

Following the obligatory applause routines (classical musicians must stay really fit with all that walking on and off of the stage) Pollini was joined by the clarinet of Alain Damiens to play Alban Berg’s Four pieces for clarinet and piano. Berg’s chamber music has been a recent infatuation of mine, its simple lyrical beauty seems to balance the romantic richness of Mahler with the relentlessly investigative spirit of his teacher Schoenberg. I was not familiar with these brief pieces before hearing them played live though, but this first impression was very favourable, the music seemed quite minimal in comparison with other Berg compositions of that time I am more familiar with, suggestively melodic yet actually only revealing small parts of a tune here and there. The spirit of Schoenberg shone through the most though, this piece followed on from the night’s earlier piano pieces seamlessly.

Pollini brought his contribution to the evening to a close with a rendition of the piece that Nono wrote with his assistance back in 1977, the curiously titled …sofferte onde serene… The nearest translation appears to be something like …serene waves suffering… which could suggest a link to Nono’s home of Venice, a city that left a considerable imprint on the composer’s work.

The composition is incredibly complicated and places great demands on the pianist. It is the first work that Nono wrote that pitched a live musician against a tape of his same instrument. Nono recorded Pollini back in ’77 and this performance saw the pianist effectively duetting with his younger self as the piece requires the musician to weave beautiful yet complex figures around the mirror image of the piano projected live from the tape, engineered here by Nono collaborator and expert sound engineer André Richard. (although ironically the original tape part now exists as a Logic software file running on a laptop…)

…sofferte is a beautiful work that plays with the naturally soft sound of the piano and uses the tape to reflect a gimmering shadow of the music into the hall for Pollini to play the brighter, more immediate live notes over the top. Despite his involvement in the composition of the fourteen minute piece and his subsequent multiple performances of it over the ensuing years Pollini sat closely following the written score here, testament to both the work’s complexity and the pianist’s desire to remain faithful to the score when it could be easy to wander off behind the tape projection.

I had watched a film of Pollini playing this work as a bonus feature at the end of the excellent DVD documentary about the friendship between Nono, Pollini and the conductor Claudio Abbado called A Trail on the Water. On recordings it is difficult to tell the live and tape channels apart but witnessing the mass of notes merging together live in the hall it was easy to tell the difference, and this slight contrast between the notes added a sense of density to the performance I hadn’t felt before. Fantastic music.

At the interval I wandered off outside and grabbed a quick coffee whilst leaning out over the Thames, lit by the lights of the City across the water. As I watched the multitude of lights flickering with their blurred reflection below, the music of …sofferte… was still with me. One of those nice little moments.

The second half of this first concert of the evening was equally inspiring, yet you couldn’t have portayed a more contrasting picture of Nono’s music to that from the first half if you tried. Before the main closing piece of the evening we were treated to a short song for solo soprano sung by Barbara Hannigan. The piece, entitled Djamila Boupacha comes fromNono’s 1962 Songs of life and love and tells the harrowing tale of Boupacha, an Algerian freedom fighter who was subjected to a terrible rape.

Despite not having a translation to hand on the evening the fraught emotional intensity of the song came through very clearly. In places the singing became almost wordless, Hannigan’s wrenching cries leaving the audience in stunned silence. This was about as pure an evocation of the trauma of mankind’s insanity as I’ve ever witnessed in a musical setting.

Hannigan returned to the stage as part of a larger group to perform Nono’s rarely heard work A floresta e jovem e cheja de vida (The Forest is Young and Full of Life) She was joined by a trio of vocalists, two female, one male whose part consisted more of chant than singing, Damien’s clarinet the Cologne Percussion Quartet, who stood behind impressive looking suspended sheets of metal which they attacked on cue with metal prongs and chains, and considerable tape (laptop) recordings overseen by Richard. The ensemble was conducted by the composer and Klangforum Wien founder Beat Furrer.

A floresta e jovem e cheja de vida was written by Nono in 1966 at the height of his overtly political period. The chants, that are captured on tape but also called live from the stage are selected from what Nono called “moments from the anti-imperialist struggle.” The words of Castro, Vietnamese fighters (the piece is dedicated to the Vietnamese National Liberation Front) and Italian factory workers are massed into a swarm of urgent, forceful voices, with Hannigan’s soprano and Damien’s clarinet used to layer continual tones that build the momentum and adrenalin up in the music.
At the music’s most powerful moments the percussionists attack the metal sheets with precisely coordinated strikes and abrasive rattles of the chains. The composition rose to these peaks of aggression and power several times, on each occasion the sheer anger of the music reflecting the fire of the chanted words.

Whilst projecting a firm and powerful political message with this extraordinary piece, Nono also understood how tiny and ineffective his contribution to the fight could be. Some of the clearest, most resounding chants come near the end of the piece, when the words of an American student protester calling “Is this all we can do?” turn the piece back on itself, questioning how much of an impact that art can really have on the injustices of the world.

This performance was mentally bruising as it was sonically appealing. The combination of tape, distressed metal and swarming voices gelled together into a gripping tumult of writhing sound that I found captivating and invigorating.
In the past I have said that I often dislike the overt application of politics to music simply because it has rarely resulted in music that I have found very enjoyable to listen to. My feelings on this subject have changed considerably since working my way through Nono’s output this last couple of years. One thing is for sure, this powerful, engaging music could not exist without its subject matter and driving force.

A while later at the same venue, after the hall had been emptied and refilled again with a new audience about half the size we were treated to a late evening performance of Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura for solo violin on tape and live solo violin, performed here by Irvine Arditti. In many ways La lontananza is similar to …sofferte… in that it investigates the possibilities of a musician performing alongside a recorded part. Nono worked with Gidon Kremer to make the original tapes who was the original performer of the piece that was again dedicated to him. However Irvine Arditti was later to work closely with Nono and recorded a wonderful version of the piece in 1991, just after the composer’s death.

La lontananza was the first Nono composition I heard, through a different version again made by Clemens Merkel for the Wandelweiser label. I enjoyed the piece so much that I ended up purchasing four or five different versions before going on to discover Nono’s wider body of work. Therefore this piece of music holds a special place for me, and hearing it performed live by someone as gifted as Arditti was always going to be a special moment.

Arditti used the size of the hall to its full potential, having set up six different music stands complete with score at various places in the hall, both on stage and off, in front of, deep amongst and way up behind the audience. As the tape of Kremer then played (André Richard again took control of “sound projection”) Arditti slowly moved from music stand to music stand, playing softly but assuredly. It was always just about possible to tell the recorded violin apart from the live playing, Kremer’s sound being slightly granier than Arditti’s deft touches, but on occasion, particularly when Arditti stood high up at the back of the elevated audience area and his actions couldn’t be seen, the two sets of sound became hard to tell apart.

The music of La lontananza is soft, slow and like Fragmente – Stille utilises silence as a fundamental part of the composition to separate small sections of violin, some on tape, others live, and often a combination of the two. Arditti and Richard made the most of the space in the music by extending it into three dimensions, using the vast hall as a compositional element. The playing was superb, Arditti’s longstanding involvement with the music abundantly clear. The fragile, lonely violin wove its way around the fragments of sound and folded into the tape parts with incredible poignancy, demanding complete silence from the appreciative audience.

I found this performance wonderful, rounding up an evening of inspirational music in superb fashion. These three concerts portrayed the range of Nono's composition very well, the juxtaposition of the later quieter work with the politically charged passion of his late sixties composition was both jarring and illuminating at the same time. Adding the work of Nono's influences in the Vienna school gave depth and context to the performances, as well as great enjoyment of the pieces themselves. The Nono season at the South Bank concludes next May with two performances of his final masterpiece Prometeo. I've pushed my dislike for the South Bank Centre to the back of my head for now as my ticket for this show sits proudly in my desk drawer and I’m counting down the weeks.

The two low-grade photos were taken with my camera phone. The first is a glimpse of the score to La Lontananza, the second taken during my moment looking across the Thames. I need a better quality camera phone...

How to bin trends and alienate people

2007-10-29T21:46:00.000Z

Years back when my youngest brother Neil lived here and I played music a lot louder than I do today, he perfected a good vocal impression of the 90’s improv that poured out of my room. His high speed, jerky, staccato approximation managed to sum up the music really well in a few seconds.

Back then it used to annoy me slightly that Neil, without trying too hard was able to recognise enough common traits in the music of SME, Bailey etc, to be able to distil them into one brief lo-fi comedy soundbite. It meant that much of this music that I considered to be so free from rules and formulas actually sounded the same to an outsider.

Its probably inevitable that any area of music that establishes itself over a period of time will begin to develop its own definable characteristics. When the first inklings of what has become known as EAI began to develop it sounded fresh against the backdrop of the improvised music that had preceded it. This new strand of improvisation continues to evolve and develop, branching off into several new directions over recent years, but at the same time there has formed a widely perceived idea of common characteristics, sounds and structures that inhabit the music’s middleground. It wouldn’t surprise me that if Neil was living here today he wouldn’t have too much of a problem impersonating EAI as he had done before with other music.

I should be clear at this point that at its fringes the music continues to explore new territory, and at its heart if familiar properties have developed in the music then they are characteristics I like a lot. As the music has gotten older it has increased in quantity and the cream of the music has improved a great deal in quality.

The inevitable bi-product of the development of settled forms of playing in an avant garde area though is the emergence of music that either completely ignores the established mannerisms or addresses them directly as part of the music. Maybe its just become a subconscious preoccupation of mine, but I’ve listened to a number of CDs over the last twelve months or so that seem to attempt the latter. Something I have come to question is whether there is any link between them.

One name behind a good number of these releases is Radu Malfatti. His bleak, featureless composition based more on the ticking of a stopwatch than the passion and immediacy of improvisation came as a response to the “talkative” qualities of contemporary music. The twelve CDRs Malfatti released on his B-boim label challenged the listener to maintain their attention by removing many of the common elements of music, such as progression, event etc. This resulted in music that forced the listener to think differently about what they expected from a CD. Long, grey, featureless sounds stopped and started abruptly, nothing faded in or out. Seemingly overlong silences sat between them leading the listener to wonder if they were hearing the same sound over and over or were there subtle changes. The music then became a test of memory as much as it was an enjoyable listen.

Despite appearing on three or four CDs that have proved to be important to the development of EAI (Polwechsel 1, Beinhaltung and Futatsu spring to mind) Malfatti has never really been considered to be part of any EAI “scene”, and his composition of recent years has come as a response to the traditional formulas of all music, not just one small section. His impact on a younger generation of musicians though is evident. Mattin, Taku Unami and Taku Sugimoto are three musicians that have all worked quite a bit with Malfatti that have in recent years made music that challenges the listener’s perception of how their music should sound. I wrote a while back here about Mattin and Unami’s 5 Modules III collaboration with Korean musicians Ryu Hankil and Jin Sangtae, a confusing, awkward disc that utilises deliberately ugly sounds combined with sharp changes in volume and abrupt shifts in dynamic. With that recording its as if the primary focus of the music is to remain one step away from any kind of listener comfort, but not via the extreme volumes that Mattin has worked with before. With 5 Modules III Unami has reassembled the music made by the quartet in such a manner that the CD rejects any kind of flow. Many of the characteristics we have come to expect from EAI are subverted, sounds appear out of nowhere before the music is ready for them, either disappearing abruptly or outstaying their welcome. The last third of the CD sounds nothing like the first, using sounds that jar our conditioned sensibilities of what should be heard on a CD. This all keeps the listener from settling into the music at all, and instead keeps prodding them, asking for extra attention.

Taku Unami has since released two solo discs. The first, the soundtrack to Ichimannen, go… a film by Isao Okishima goes even further again, mixing short blasts of static with extended silences, more unfashionable synth sounds and a series of field recordings that veer wildly between obscure Eastern marching music to an Albinoni piece for violin and ghostly Christmas Carol-like singing. Once again as listeners we are left confused, this time by the combination of the abstract and the semi-familiar placed together with seemingly no obvious connection.

On the Soundtrack disc it is unclear how much the construction of the piece is due to the music complimenting the film. This certainly wouldn’t be the first film soundtrack to sound extremely odd once separated from the associated images. The other recent Unami release though, the three part composition Malignitat on the Skiti label also seems to utilise this concept of sounds transposed from their more familiar habitat but then uses them in a manner we are less familiar with.

The first piece on the album, lasting like its two companions exactly fifteen minutes appears to be a composed piece realised on a computer. The form and structure of Malignitat I is somewhat austere, made up of two samples, played at differing pitches, one an extended sound, the other very brief. The short samples are scattered throughout the piece acting as tiny moments of counterpoint to the extended bursts, but with lengthy silences remaining present in the music, broken up here and there by false starting samples jabbing into the space as if triggered by accident.

The composition in itself is interesting enough. It could be seen as a natural continuation of Malfatti’s work, though the addition of the second, shorter bursts of sound bring considerably more complication to the music than Malfatti usually settles upon. Where this music takes a conceptual leap away from anything we have heard recently however is through the content of the samples themselves. Where we might expect a droning cello, a sinewave or a passage of digital static the extended sounds on Malignitat I are sourced from a single sample of a helicopter. Although slowed down here and there the sample is always obviously a helicopter, it isn’t disguised or used ironically. The first “instrument” on the disc is simply a sample of a helicopter.

The other sound we hear often is an electronic “blooping” sound that wouldn’t sound out of place in a 1980’s video arcade game. These short Pong-like jabs seem almost randomly sprayed into the spaces at the beginning and end of the helicopter samples, and occasionally randomly into the long silences, but above all they sound alien and somewhat unmusical. The samples are also stopped and started abruptly. The helicopter suddenly bursts into the silence and is then cut off brutally every time. There are no subtle fades to bring polish to the music. In fact if the music can be summed up in one sentence it could be that it perseveres to avoid the subtleties, expectations and craftsmanship of much contemporary new music.

Malignitat I is in itself an invigorating composition, but it is the use of the non-musical sounds that add a further dimension to the music. I find myself asking the question “would I feel differently about this music if the helicopter part was taken by a sinewave and the Pong sounds a guitar?” Unami seems to ask a very simple question with Malignitat I; Why are certain sounds considered musical and “acceptable” within an EAI setting and others not? Why are field recordings OK if they are blended into music but not when they are treated as an instrument themselves?

The second piece on the Malignitat disc utilizes the more familiar sound of Unami’s contra-guitar from the beginning. His playing is oddly stuttering, almost robotic at times, again sounding like the mechanics of the stopwatch lead the way over the human input we are used to hearing from a guitarist. For the most part Malignitat II is made up of entirely guitar parts, sometimes multitracked so that two sections layer over each other, but the listener is left continually alert because of the music that came earlier on the CD. Sure enough the helicopter suddenly reappears late in the piece, duetting this time with the stuttering guitar notes.

The final piece on the album takes just the helicopter sound and uses it at varied speeds, sometime sped right up to resemble something different, but again utilised in a rough stop-start manner and with no sense of progression throughout the music. The piece ends as if the tape had run out at the recording session, literally just stopping right on fifteen minutes. Perhaps we should expect nothing less by this point, but as the CD player stops spinning the disc I was left with a strange sense of “well what happens next?”

On several levels Malignitat seems to exist purely to play with the accepted ideas of how a piece of contemporary music should sound. I like this CD a lot, but its very hard to explain why. Its not something that could be described as beautiful, or even particularly nice to listen to. Its difficult to applaud any craftsmanship involved as I’m not certain that a large part of the composition isn’t completely random.

I like this music simply because it makes me think. It has already been criticized because it apparently ignores the listener, perhaps looking down upon them from arty heights. This is completely wide of the mark in my opinion. Without the direct involvement of the listener trying to decode Malignitat there is little here. Unami involves the listener centrally within this music. For me it exists as an awkward partnership between artist and audience, incomplete without the tension between them.

Malignitat will annoy those that are averse to anything conceptual and those that fear anything that challenges the sacred rules of improvisation. Unami and Mattin’s recent work has been dismissed as a second hand take on the Fluxus movement, but this comparison is also wide of the mark. This is not abstraction for the sake of it, rather a well thought through investigation of the form and structure of contemporary music and the listener’s response to its subversion.

Taku Sugimoto’s new album Doremilogy, not surprisingly also on the Skiti label captures three versions of a composed piece that proves to be as much of a musical enigma as Malignitat. This album furthers Sugimoto’s composed work of recent years into even more perplexing territory. As the title suggests the simplicity of the major scale lies at the heart of the composition, which is presented here in solo guitar form alongside two different versions for three multitracked guitars all played by Sugimoto.

The first of the three tracks begins with one continuous, twenty-one minute long sustained note obtained by holding an E-bow against a single string. The sound wavers slightly, reminding us that this music is being played live, but essentially all we get is one long held note. After twenty-one minutes Sugimoto suddenly brings the E-bow up through the strings to step the note up through the major scale. This last rising segment lasts just twenty seconds.

The second piece again plays with the simplicity of the rising scale, this time utilizing a more familiar Sugimoto technique of individual notes dropped into wide silences, though he does stop and run through most of the scale quite rapidly (by his standards!) at one point. The final piece returns to the extended E-bow notes, I think utilising the notes of the scale again, only slower and this time moving from high to low. Back in the summer I witnessed Sugimoto play this piece live as part of a septet and again it stood out amongst the programme of pieces played that evening as being somewhat simplistic and downright perplexing.

Aside from the resonance of using such a fundamental element of Western music to construct this composition, the music again sets out to challenge the listener’s perception of what to expect from modern composition. Even amongst a live programme that included typically austere compositions by Radu Malfatti and others Doremilogy stood out as awkwardly oblique.

As with the 5 Modules III release and Malignitat this CD seems to exist as much to make the listener stop and think about what forms music should arrive in as it does to present us with something to listen to. I find myself thinking of a couple of critical visual art works of the 20th Century in relation to these discs. Duchamp’s urinal is obviously a good marker, a work that shocked and upset its viewers as it asked questions about what art should consist of. As a sidenote Unami’s helicopter could be considered a “ready made” in the manner of Duchamp, unadorned, unaltered, merely placed in position for consideration by its audience. This isn’t quite true as the helicopter sounds are used as just one part of a carefully constructed work, but the similarities are food for thought.

Magritte’s Treachery of Images (This is not a pipe) springs to mind for some reason also, not for its surrealist considerations, but more for the confusion caused when the listener gets something other than they expected when playing one of these CDs. This is composed, recorded and released music, but then it isn’t, or at least not as we are used to hearing it.

I also wrote recently here about Antoine Beuger’s Silent harmonies in discrete continuity, another CD that seems to address related concerns. Beuger is a member of the Wandelweiser collective, related again to Malfatti and also an influence on the two Takus.

One other disc that might connect to this (quite possibly non-existent) trend of anti-music is Sind the recent solo disc by Berlin trumpeter and EAI mainstay Axel Dörner. On the surface Sind does indeed seem to investigate similar ground to Malfatti’s compositions as many short tracks consisting of minimal material are placed together with occasional lengthy silences between them. Its more probable that Dörner’s approach developed completely independently of the other releases mentioned here, there is nothing to suggest that there is any direct connection to them.

There are many similarities however. Listening to Sind is a difficult experience. The fragments of sound vary quite a lot in their form but somehow all retain an ascetic feel, small blocks of industrial waste carefully positioned with assorted silences placed here and there between them. Sind is beautifully structured, the piece reminds me of walking through an abstract expressionist collection in a gallery, different colours and textures playing off each other in small episodic moments, some closer together than others.

Whilst Sind may not be as willfully disarming as some of the other releases I have mentioned here it does utilise a structure that departs from any familiar forms we might expect from an EAI release, suggesting that perhaps the need to force new ways of both making and listening to this music could become more widespread than just a few linked names.

To finish I should make it clear that I am not advocating this kind of approach to music composition above any other. I have here merely tried to draw lines around what appear to be vaguely related releases to try and understand any common links between them. I will say that I find this questioning, challenging approach to making music a very healthy thing for EAI in general. Whilst there is plenty of room for many strands of the music to co-exist this dramatically conceptual direction can only serve to pose questions to other musicians that can either be considered or ignored. That a number of individuals are prepared to challenge any sense of status quo can only be a good thing for the continued vitality of this area of music. I look forward to being further confused in the near future.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

2007-10-29T21:01:00.000Z

OK so its been a bit of a long hiatus, neary a month, but sometimes life gets in the way...

I began my new job on the 1st October and whilst I have enjoyed it immensely (first time I could say this about my dayjob in ten years) its been pretty tiring as my body has adjusted to 4.30AM waking times and my brain has had to cope with no end of new information.

Outside of preparing and presenting the new series of audition I've not actually listened to that much music. Well I have, but its tended to be a small number of releases over and over rather than a wide scope. This has meant that even when I've had the chance to write here I've found that I had little to say (some would argue there's no change there) so I've stayed quiet. Over the last week or so however I have been pondering a few thoughts and this post will be followed by one long, sprawling monolith of a post, unedited, thrown together from a lot of short notes written during coffee breaks at work and as a result probably completely incomprehensible. Oh well, at least there's something new up here anyway.

One musical event I did manage to attend last week was a performance by the Arditti String Quartet of Luigi Nono's string quartet Fragmente - Stille along with pieces by Webern and Schoenberg. The music was great, but as I am hopefully to attend a further Nono concert this Wednesday evening I will try and combine the two into one write up. expect it sometime just after Christmas :)

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On a sidenote I've just noticed the visitor counter here has gone way beyond 10,000 hits since I installed it and daily visits continue to be average over 40 even though I've not written anything. Thanks to anyone that keeps an eye on the blog for anything new and sorry for keeping anyone waiting.

Photo of the Month No.7

2007-10-02T14:34:00.000+01:00

View of a river taken from a bridge directly above. France, Summer 2007

Even busier...

2007-09-29T11:06:00.000+01:00

Apologies again for the lack of posts around here, been another busy week. Put a tick against all of the usual excuses, new job training courses, spending time with people close to me etc, but another big event that has taken up a lot of my time has been preparation for the start of the third series of audition, the Resonance FM radio programme I present with Alastair Wilson. Much of this week I worked on completely overhauling the audition website, which you can see here.
My skills with website design are all self taught, so I am really pleased with how it came out. As a piece of graphic design its horrible, but the main thing is it works, and is easy to update and maintain. It might just be another website lost out there on the web, but I'm really proud of it, so there!

Last Monday Alastair and I interviewed a musician for a future special show (more on this at a later date) and we have been to visit the new studios at Resonance, which look amazing, some leaps and bounds ahead of the ramshackle disaster zone of the previous studios. We have been feverishly working on ideas for future shows (well I have anyway, Al has been lazing about in Paris) and as you can read in more detail at the audition site, we go back on air on Sunday evening. I hope some of you will find the time to listen, if you can't then Mp3s of our programmes will go up at the site soon after.

Another big happening in my life starts on Monday, when I begin a new job with a new company. Its very much a step backwards for me (with the hope of shortly taking a big leap forward) but I will be working for a company I feel far more comfortable with and with (I hope) far less stress than I had previously. Obviously the trade off of this is I will earn less money for now, but I think its the right move, time will tell.

I'll get back to less autobiographic posting very soon I promise!

Busy busy busy

2007-09-21T19:37:00.001+01:00

Been a while since my last post, sorry. This has been for a few reasons, the primary one being a lot of work in getting ready to return to work, but also I've been writing a bit for elsewhere, listening to some great demos that have been sent for Cathnor consideration and starting silly arguments in music forums (that last one I'll be giving a break for a while now ;)

So not much I can write about here that wouldn't bore you to tears. The CDs that have fallen through my letterbox of late have mostly been of high quality.The new Potlatch release, Propagations by the all saxaphone quartet of Marc Baron, Bertrand Denzler, Jean-Luc Giuionnet and Stephane Rives has been playing a lot today. Defintely a CD I like an awful lot more than I thought might, though why I say that I couldn't tell you. Another disc I've enjoyed a lot is Taku Unami's 1mannengo Soundtrack, the latest installment in his seemingly relentless mission to confound the expectations of us poor listeners.

The most playing time here recently has been reserved though for the new Col Legno release of Luigi Nono's epic Prometeo, a new recording of this monumental work. One day when I move to bigger, quieter place I'll go buy a surround sound system just to hear this release in 5.1... Its quite possible I'll churn out reviews for all of these releases over the next week or so, so I won't go into detail now.

On Sunday I meet up with my audition partner in crime Alastair to go visit the new Resonance FM studios and finalise the planning for a new series of the show, looking forward to announcing details here soon. Resonance announced our time slot in their Wire ad this month though, Sundays 7PM-8.30PM, so yes an extended show this series. Lots of good stuff planned including a new website, something else thats taken up my time lately!

Uncertain Times

2007-09-11T21:51:00.000+01:00

Ryu Hankil, Jin Sangtae, Taku Unami, Mattin - 5 Modules III

Manual

I'm a little late to this extraordinary recording, having owned it a while but only just found the time to play it. However as Mattin's partially incomprehensible sleeve notes suggest we all need to reclaim our own notion of time, this probably doesn't matter so much. Time is definitely a central theme of this CD. Ryu Hankil is credited with playing clockwork with a contact mic, and for much of the recording the listener is removed from any preconceived notions of how time is used in improvised music, left with broken parts of a strangely unfamiliar clock ticking, long silent spaces and periodic long passages of electronic drone that do not allow for any flow, yet also somehow also avoid tension. There seems to be little connection between the sound events that occur, and whilst the rhythmic turning of odd deconstructed clockwork-like sound features throughout the piece there is little symmetry to the overall construction that jumps viciously from pin pricks of sound dropped into silence to brittle blasts of digital noise.

I'll be honest I don't know what to make of this CD. It falls somewhere between the emptiness of some of Unami's past music and the raw, dirty electronic sound that is becoming synonymous with the fast emerging Korean improv scene. In places the use of mutated clock ticking and subdued laptop hum produces some interesting shapes picked out of the silence, but in other places the harshness and sheer volume of a drone and the overall ugliness of the sounds used make this a difficult listen. Here and there we are presented with long passages of repeated sounds that resemble the recordings of clockwork slowed right down, each "tick" extended into a rougher sound event. By all accounts Unami heavily edited and reworked the live recording in post production, and its possible these passages are the result of him slowing the music down, again playing with the notion of time. Its also possible that one or both of the laptops are responsible for producing these sounds in real time. There is a definite sense of uneasy imbalance thoughout however, caused in part by this feeling of slowed time.

The music is improvised but there has had to have been some considerable discussion about the shape of the music beforehand. On another sleeve note Hankil mentions that he gained a lot from the musical relationships formed between the quartet, which can be divided into two established duos (Unami/Mattin and Hankil/Sangtae) meeting for the first time. The odd, fractured feel of the entire 55 minute piece resembles more a Radu Malfatti score played with broken electronics than it does an improvisation, and it seems unlikely that this music was arrived at without either some degree of predetermined approach or massive post production treatment. If this music is indeed the result of four musicians playing together and discovering common ground then it is remarkable that they have all arrived here in this strange unorthodox place.

So a CD that has really got me thinking, the kind of challenge we are used to from Mattin and Unami. I can't help but feel I am missing something important here, something that has caused this music to take such an alien, uncomfortable form. Its miles from easy listening, an intriguing mystery at best, downright impenetrable at its worse, but a disc that has certainly got me thinking hard about its nature, and wondering what on earth I am meant to do with it. Challenging stuff, in the very best sense of the word.

Blasphemous Rumours

2007-09-08T20:21:00.000+01:00

Recently at the I Hate Music forum there have been various discussions around the question of whether it matters or not to fully understand a musician/composer's inspiration and intention for a piece of music to be able to enjoy it. Well after a short to and fro the obvious conclusion was reached by most parties that whilst it is far from necessary, further understanding could possibly add a new dimension to some people's listening. In the debate I made a post that stated that although I could see it possible that extra information about a piece of music could enhance my listening experience, I couldn't think of anything right then that could potentially detract from my personal response to the music. If I liked something I liked it, how could anything I could read about music change such an opinion?

Well I think I might have found something that comes pretty close. My utter contempt for organised religon is no big secret. I've hinted at it here before, but because its possibly the only subject in the world that makes me truly angry I don't often go into detail. Famously a couple of years ago at a friend's wedding, when asked by a particularly earnest and equally irritating vicar what I thought about the recent redecoration of a room attached to the church I replied "nothing that a spot of arson couldn't fix" I think I've been doomed for a future in the pits of hell ever since, so I'm not going to lose much by making this post.

As I've begun to delve into the bottomless pit of classical music's history for my listening pleasure I've come across a dilemma I've not really had to worry about before. There's a lot of music out there in this genre that has religon at its heart. I don't doubt I own many CDs that may well have religious thought inspiring them somewhere, but none that are abundantly obvious enough to disturb me. Recently though I've had music recommended to me that clearly has the lunacy of organised religon as its main motivation for existing. In the summer I was told about a late Mozart mass I really should hear, yet I refused to seek it out, just unable to bring myself to do it. I have similar thoughts on other pieces I might otherwise have heard, a lot of Bach's music springs immediately to mind.

Well a week or two back a friend whose opinion on music I hold very highly indeed recommended me an album by the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina entitled Seven Words. A piece for cello and bayan, a kind of Russian accordion. As the release is on Naxos it was both easy to find and very cheap, and for just £5 I picked up a copy amongst other items without paying much attention to it. It was only just after I'd put it in the CD player for the first time that I noticed the painting of the crucifiction (no typo there) on the front cover, and reading through the notes the very strong Christian influence to the music.

So what do you do in this kind of situation? My opinion of the music had become immediately discoloured. I found myself wanting to dislike the work as it began to play. I think it was George Michael that released an album titled Listen without prejudice, but I think I stood about as much chance of being able to do that with this Gubaidulina album as I would have with a disc of his crap. I did listen though, complete with prejudice. I have played the album twice now. Do I like it? Well yes, I do from an entirely musical perspective, although the bayan does tend to annoy me quite a lot throughout, making a sound that grates with me for some reason, something most accordion music tends to do. (The piece was originally scored for cello and organ, an arrangement I think I would much prefer) The intensity of the composition, and the obviously deeply felt and somewhat sorrowful emotions going into its realisation really come through in the music.

Yes I guess I do like this piece then, although it leaves me wondering why it takes this most common manifestation of human insecurity to inspire someone to make music of such power. Watching the Simon Rattle DVD set I mentioned in a post earlier today I think I have similar feelings towards Messiaen, a composer whose use of synaesthesia and recreated natural sounds interests me a lot, although the purpose he puts these methods to I find pretty revolting. I have long been annoyed that certain creative methodolgy is tied so closely to religious tradition. I wrote earlier this year about Klaus Lang's beautiful work Missa beati pauperes spiritu that takes the mass form and allows it to exist merely as beautiful music, separated from its religious history. I wish this kind of thing happened more often. I have attended many concerts in beautiful churches that were built years ago with the fear of religion driving their construction. Reclaiming a few more of these fantastic acoustic spaces for music and other arts would be nice.

I guess this question of testing my own personal morals will appear many times as I dig further into orchestral music. I imagine my response will evolve to being close to my interest in Michaelangelo. An unbelievable craftsman creating beautiful work with depressing subject matter. At least you all know what I don't want played at my funeral now anyway. ;)

Photo of the month No.6

2007-09-08T14:39:00.001+01:00

Been so busy I nearly forgot this month's photo... the sheer number of complaints I received regarding its absence underlines just how popular this feature really is however....

This month a photo taken from the inside of the garage here at Pinnell Towers, looking out through a window, just before several days were spent cleaning it...

Rattling my brain

2007-09-08T11:36:00.000+01:00

Been a busy old week here bouncing about the country sorting out employment. I'll be starting work again on the 1st October, though a few other options remain open, so you still have a few more weeks of me typing irrelevant drivel here on a more frequent basis...
The slow posting is partly because I've been home I've been deeply engrossed in Elizabeth Wilson's mammoth biography of Shostakovich entitled A Life Remembered, and I've been slowly working my way through the pictured box set of DVD documentaries, Leaving Home - Orchestral Music in the 20th Century. written and narrated by Sir Simon Rattle. The films originally appeared on UK TV (I think Channel 4?) a few years back, but not having any interest in that medium I never saw them. I can recommend the set though because although to the already knowledgable it will say nothing new (and I don't consider myself in that category) it features frequent films of Rattle conducting the many discussed works with the Birmingham Syphony Orchetra. His quiet, articulate yet simple discussions of the music are often illustrated by him at a piano, and this coupled with the full scale orchestral playing makes for a nice way to talk about music like this. Extended excerpts and discussions are held on everyone from Mahler to Takemitsu, via Schoenberg, (often) Shostakovich, (at length) Messiaen, Kurtag, Debussy and everyone in between, not ignoring Ives, Cage and Feldman.

I'm only four sevenths of the way through the set but its been a very useful and interesting experience for me so far that will probably offer something to longterm classical listeners as well. I picked the box up for just under £50 from Amazon UK, not too bad for seven 50 minute discs.

She wants the Young Americans...

2007-09-03T00:40:00.000+01:00

Quite enjoyed writing reviews lately, here's another:

Dave Barnes, Graham Stephenson - S/t (Self released CDR)

It'd probably really annoy these two musicians if I described this release as youthfully energetic, so I'll avoid doing it, but there is a real spark in this music. Dave Barnes and Graham Stepehnson are two American musicians in the first half of their twenties that have spent the last few years soaking up massive amounts of music from a wide spectrum of genres, before distilling the spirit and knowledge of those explorations down into music of their own. Barnes plays electronics, or more precisely according to the sleeve credit, electricity, whilst Stephenson is credited with Air rather than trumpet. Whilst perhaps just a playful use of words these descriptions may actually be more accurate. There is a real feeling of sculpture in these recordings, an intimate moulding of basic elements into simple, rather pleasing shapes.

Barnes and Stephenson make improvised music much in the "EAI" vein, although their sound seems influenced from many angles. The raw electronics feel of the recent swell of American improvisers is evident, with the likes of English and GOD serving as close comparisons but there is a language here that belongs to this duo alone. Clearly they have played a lot together before releasing this CDR, a smart move in today's times of easy instant distribution. There is a strong sensitivity evident towards each other's playing and a subtle awareness of overall composition that belies their age.

The track titles are dreadful (Sexists Exist, A Cyst etc...) and the packaging is typically raw, a white card sleeve wrapped in two bands of heavy duty insulation tape, but the music is what matters here. As is typical of the new breed of American electronics there are a few violent shifts in volume and texture, sudden blasts leaping out of quiet passages, but not many, their impact made all the more pleasing by their infrequency. The third track 35,000 Sq Ft. of Faith actually remains very subdued throughout, with Stephenson using just soft breaths of air (he doesn't play a traditional note throughout the disc) and Barnes working with low register swirls of sound.

Its never impossible to tell the two musicians apart, there are two distinct voices here improvising in what is actually quite a traditional manner, but utilising their own carefully developed set of sounds and above all playing together as if they had been doing it for a couple of decades. A sense of humour is very evident, obviously at the end of the first track when the sound of Stephenson clearing his throat is left in after the edit, but also more obliquely as a playfulness is apparent throughout. The music here is still a little rough around the edges in more ways than one, but this disc captures two promising musicians with a lot more than just youthful energy at their disposal.

Orderable from ErstDist

Hidden Treasure

2007-08-30T19:43:00.000+01:00

Takefumi Naoshima, Hirozumi Takeda, Utah Kawasaki, Mitsuteru Takeuchi, Toshihiro Koike, Takahiro Kawaguchi, Yasuo Totsuka - Septet

This CD is not a Wandelweiser release, and its character is actually quite unlike most Wandelweiser compositions, but on the slightly dodgy premise that the music on this disc is extremely quiet I thought I'd write about it amongst my Wandelweiser explorations. This is a new release on the Meena label, which is an offshoot of the Improvised Music from Japan imprint. I'm not really sure of the purpose of said offshoot, but that's neither here nor there. The typically beautiful sleeve includes notes from one of the musicians, Takefumi Naoshima, and also from Toshiya Tsunoda, from whom the following paragraph is excerpted:

"The question of audibility aside, the quietness of quiet sound is an unmistakable characteristic in and of itself. While playing music at very low volume has the effect of concentrating listeners' attention, this is surely a matter of degree. When sound is excessively quiet, it's hard to determine what one should be listening to--and the normal human reaction is not concentration, but irritation. The basis for evaluating sound volume (as in the case of the sound level meter) is the human being's sense of hearing. At the same time, the place and conditions in which sound is produced come into play as well. The dynamic range of our sense of hearing is related not only to the energy of the sound, but also to the structure of the eardrum. When a strong vibration shakes the eardrum, which is a very thin membrane, quiet sounds occurring at the same time are masked by this large wave and rendered inaudible--just as, when a stone is thrown into a big ocean wave, the ripples instantly disappear."

The music on this CD is very quiet. Very very quiet indeed. You need to turn the volume up just to hear anything at all. It was recorded at the Tanker studio in Tokyo with the input from the studio microphones turned up very high to capture the faint sounds made by the seven musicians, which consist mainly of little more than tiny clicks, whirrs and flutters. The list of 'instruments' involved is intriguing, ranging from the traditional, two guitars, a flute, and a trombone through to a mixing board, a compressor of some kind and Takehiro Kawaguchi's 'remodeled counters'. The musicians play very softly indeed. The effect of having the microphone gain so high is a continual hiss throughout the two tracks on the CD and every slight movement, rustle, deep breath or cleared throat from the musicians is amplified loudly and becomes part of the recorded matter, and according to the sleeve notes even external sounds from outside the studio space seep into the recording, though listening its hard to tell where any of the sounds are really coming

And that is just what makes this disc so interesting. The first track in particular contains very little that could be considered "musical" in any traditionally accepted meaning of the term, and so the intentional clicks and whispers merge with the unintentional rustles and scrapes, and it all reaches the eardrum of the listener as one collection of sounds, the difference between them unidentifiable. At one point a sound occurs that could eaily be one of the musician's stomach rumbling as much as it could be a contribution from an instrument. This merging of the deliberate and accidental is a very simple idea, yet one I really am not sure I've encountered before. For sure I have heard many discs of quiet, even near silent music that emphasises the musical qualities of external sounds creeping in, but never one where the muscians play so quietly that all of their actions could be mistaken for the ambient sounds of the room and consumed within them. Its as if they are trying to hide their sounds as a kind of musical camoflage. This first 47 minute track is of course not the most gripping of works if you are looking for an example of fluent interactive improvisation. Its highly doubtful that even the musicians were aware of which sounds made it into the recording and which did not. As a really interesting experiment and a document of the effect that this kind of recording can have on the listener (in contrast to Tsunoda's words I didn't find it irritating, quite the opposite) I really like this.

The second track, shorter at just under 20 minutes contains a lot more input from the musicians. A continual clockwork-like ticking noise features for the first half of the track (possibly the remodeled counters?) and a series of extended sounds actually make for quite a nice little improvised miniature. In a couple of places a very loud note appears (this happens once in the first piece as well, near the end, be warned if you're drinking a hot drink as it comes as a shock) and you have to reach for the volume control, only having to turn it right back up again straight after. This track works very nicely from a musical perspective. the background sounds and hisses are still there, very much so, but the musician's contributions are more distinct, and show a sensitivity and tension that the first track could never have portrayed. Its almost as if this piece is included as a reward to the determined listener that made it through the first track. That odd pink drink you get after the dentist has finished assaulting your mouth... (!)

If you buy the CD direct from the label you also receive an extra CDR recording of the septet playing live at Mitaka Arts Centre as long ago as November 2005. (The studio recordings date from November 2006) Again the music is very quiet indeed, and the CD is mastered very low, requiring a further turn of the volume dial to bring out what is there. Although quiet, the recording is very clear, consisting mainly of traffic sounds from outside the venue. The audience are either very few in number or impressively silent, and what we are presented with is a soft, gentle hum of the city with occasional pinprick moments of sound dropped in by the musicians. Personally I can listen to this kind of thing all day, but the intriguing experiments of the studio recordings are less impactful here, the microscopic alien soundworld replaced with a familiar ambience.
There is an obvious comparison to be made here with Taku Sugimoto's Live in Australia recordings, although with the solo guitar of Sugimoto's releases it is clear when the musician is responsible for a sound. Here, with such an obscure array of instrumentation involved (I am assuming the same items are used as on the main CD, though this isn't made clear) there is perhaps less tension, less personal engagement with the musician, and more intrigue. Was that sound Totsuka's 'compressor' or was it a passing bus?

Like the Wandelweiser releases I imagine this release will have far more detractors than supporters, but whilst it might sound quite different to any of the CDs on that label, Septet exists partially to ask similar questions of how we sit and listen to recorded music, and challenges our perceptions of what we should hear when we press Play. I may be in a minority but I like this.

Assumed possibilities

2007-08-27T22:48:00.000+01:00

John Cage, Burkhard Schlothauer - For Seven Players

Well I'm sure you'll be relieved to hear that this recent Wandwelweiser release doesn't appear to be dedicated to, or heavily influenced by, any visual artists at all ;)
This CD features two compositions, the first being John Cage's Seven, written in 1988, and the second Burkhard Schlothauer's 2002 work 15 similar events - septet. Both compositions were recorded on the same occasion by Ulrich Krieger (clarinet) Normisa Pereira da Silva (alto flute), Burkhard Schlothauer (violin), Julia Eckhardt (viola), Marcus Kaiser (cello), Guy Vandromme (piano), and Tobias Liebezeit (percussion).

Its probably no surprise to learn that both compositions are played in a quiet, studied manner and that both exude a gentle and beautiful charm. There are clear links to be drawn between the New York School of thought from the 50's and the work of the Wandelweiser collective today. These two works compliment each other well, both concerned with the balance of indeterminacy and prescribed composition. Each composition presents the musicians with a set of timings and restrictions on what they can or cannot play during these timeframes.

I have not managed to hear any recorded versions of Seven, before this one. Like all of Cage's late 'numbers' pieces the title merely refers to the number of players, who are then presented with time brackets within which they must play a prescribed set of sounds in order. Mostly the musicians are given precise pitches to play, (their selection made by Cage using chance operations) their freedom being where in a particular timeframe they place them (though always in order). The three stringed instruments are mainly instructed to play col legno, (with the wooden reverse of the bow rather than, or possibly with, the hair) and single sustained notes are most common from those instruments able to produce them. By composing in this manner Cage kept a reasonable control over the likely outcome of the music, with particular sounds and some of their textures defined, but enough uncertainty remains, to be resolved by the individual musician's choices and sensibilities.

So how does it sound? Well very nice indeed. The music has a restful calm about it, not falling into complete silence very often, but moving at a slow pace and with a softness not untypical of a Wandelweiser release. The events unfold steadily with elongated notes overlapping, punctuated by individual piano notes mainly formed from separate keys played simultaneously. With Seven Cage mainly replaces choice with chance, prescribing the vast majority of the musician's sounds, but arranging their realisation in such a way that those sounds come together differently with each performance. The sensitivity of the musicians remains a key factor however and all of these elements conbine here to produce a quietly beautiful work.

Schlothauer's piece is composed using a similar degree of freedom for the musicians, but without the use of chance operations to decide on pitches and timings. The seven musicians are given a list of five sounds that they should play within fifteen time brackets. Of the five sounds each musician chooses to use one of them five times, another four times, another three times and so on, thus allowing the musicians to decide to some degree which sounds will be heard more often. A complicated system of timings and instructions regarding who may play when causes the music to form into fifteen short clusters, with long periods of sound between them.

Again, the music is brought to life with great poise and the result is a work of real beauty. A much more sparse, empty performance results from Schlothauer's piece than did with the Cage. The two works sound different to each other, the blank space written into the more recent composition adding a sense of tension to the music, though it also lacks some of the progression formed throughout the music of the Cage piece.

So what is the role of the musicians in this music? They have a limited opportunity to shape how the music may sound in each of the compositions. yet are restricted the freedom of an all out improvisation. They are still given much more of a role in the music than a fully notated work however. Whereas the performers of a traditionally notated composition are able to impact a performance through their passion and emotional presence in the music, here the players are allowed a little further into the creative process, playing music that is distinctly the composer's, (or defined by the composer through the use of chance) yet allows a more social development to refine its form. In his sleeve notes Schlothauer draws an analogy with 21st century life in a time of great change; having lost certainties, should issues of probability and possibility now be addressed? Whilst it could be argued that Cage was investigating these areas decades ago there is still plenty of scope for interesting music in this area, as this lovely CD proves.

Why?

2007-08-27T17:57:00.000+01:00

Is it that no matter how what music you've been playing, no matter what books you've been reading, films you've been watching or concerts you've been at, it all pales into comparison compared with an hour in the company of Rothko's Seagram paintings?

Local delicacies

2007-08-27T09:43:00.001+01:00

Well it was nice to get out in the sun yesterday afternoon and wander slowly over to Oxford for the gig I mentioned in my last post. It was so nice to just pop down the road for a concert. Its been years since I attended an Oxford show, a mixture of laziness and over-pickiness on my behalf has kept me away really. I keep promising myself I'll do this more often. I won't go into detail on all four of the sets. Suffice to say that a couple of them weren't really my cup of tea, Divine Coils are a local, very young duo I'd not come across before who showed promise, crouched on the floor with a mixture of electronics and acoustic instrumentation, metal prayer bowls, violin etc. The soundworld they worked in was nice, but their use of the sounds was youthfully naive, just far too much going on, and it sounded like most of it going on just for the sake of it. Give them a year or two however and they could be really worth listening to.
The headline act For Barry Ray weren't really my thing either. Thats not to say they didn't do what they do very well, John Chantler's use of sampling and looping the live performance was masterful, but the music drifted between an ambient, folky wash and droning loops, all quite tastefully done but really not that interesting. The best part of the set for me was Benjamin, a youngster in the audience (around 3 or 4 years old I'd say) that spent the set tumbling around the audience that were mostly sat on the floor, singing and dancing along to the music and not really caring whose lap he fell headfirst into, at one point picking up a spare (fortunately not plugged in) microphone to join in.

The first performance I enjoyed was a brief solo set that opened the evening by Beautiful Screaming Lady, the solo project of Traw's Simon Proffitt. I can happilly report that at no point did Simon scream anything, he isn't a lady and he most certainly isn't beautiful. ;) Simon used what I think was some kind of oscillator to push tones through an upturned speaker cone containing ping pong balls and other detritus to make a short, pleasant soundtrack to a hot summers afternoon that didn't overstay its welcome and tuned the ears for the afternoon's music. Using speaker cones in this manner is not unusual these days, and as Simon played it amused me to think that somewhere out there there's a graveyard of empty speaker cabinets, their insides mercillessly removed by determined experimental musicians ;)

The main reason i came to the gig was to see the Traw trio play in a quartet with Oxford double bassist Dom Lash. For those not aware Traw are laptop trio originating from Cardiff but now spread all over the place that still manage to play together a few times a year despite one of their number now living in Paris. Lash had never before played with Traw, and as the set began this was clear, as the first five minutes or so saw the musicians tentatively seek common ground. An opening made up of an almost featureless ambience from the laptoppers made it hard for Lash to find a way in, settling for textural scrapes over the electronic backdrop, but soon after things opened up nicely. One or more of the Traw players began to use samples of Lash's own playing taken from his myspace site, something he wasn't expecting but this pulled him into the performance, and the last twenty minutes or so was very nice indeed. Dom is a highly skilled improvisor, splitting his time between playing in more traditional improv settings and more recently in more "EAI" settings, bringing a sensitivity and responsive ear to the music. Here his touch was sublime, despite him being troubled by a painful back injury, blending a series of dry textures and softly bowed grainy notes into the swirling collage of sounds springing from the laptops, but also not afraid to add the odd jarring sound as counterpoint to the electronics. Highly enjoyable.

Dom Lash's forthcoming gigs list is impressively long, but one concert certainly catches my eye on November 15th in London, a "double concerto" performance with Mark Wastell (also on bass) and a laptop ensemble (hopefully) made up of Phil Durrant, Ben Drew, Matt Davis, Louisa Martin and David Toop, a reprise of a similar concert Wastell played with Rhodri Davies' acoustic harp and a similar laptop group a few years back. One not to be missed methinks.

---

Arriving in Oxford early I spent a while getting annoyed at Oxford record shops, and then calmed myself down by buying a copy of Elizabeth Wilson's hefty bio of Shostakovich; A Life Remembered which I began reading last night having now finished T.J Clark's splendid The Sight of Death, a book I really enjoyed, and the impact of which will become clear over time.
I also came home with a CDR from Simon "Beautiful Screaming Lady" Proffitt which I couldn't resist as it came packaged in a large somewhat cumbersome (about six inches square, and an inch thick) bright red plastic box that apparently once housed DVD glass masters, but somehow resembles something created from Lego more than anything else. Not played it yet as the 'To Listen To' pile here has suddenly become quite tall again, but I'll get to it soon.

Off to London this afternoon I think to have a potter around the Tate Modern (just for a change). More Wandelweiser splutterings later this evening all being well.

Some blatant plugs

2007-08-26T00:07:00.000+01:00

A short post inbetween Wandelweiser musings to plug a few things by friends more than anything...!

I spent the afternoon at Sound323 today, and as new releases of interest seem few and far between I spent some time playing a few items fromt he second hand racks, mainly contemporary classical albums, and bought a good few discs that have so far been quite enjoyable this evening, one cut-price disc of solo cello pieces played by Taco Kooistra (previously unknown to me) is OK in general, but contains one little gem, a realisation of Helmut Lachenmann's Pression a piece of music I enjoy a great deal and this is a very nice performance. More about the other purchases in forthcoming posts I imagine.

So a couple of plugs; Simon Reynell is a nice guy with a long history as a fan of good music and has now launched a great looking label, Another Timbre with five (yes five) releases arriving in October. His catalogue can be found here. Some really promising releases there, and I've heard of some more intriguing projects planned. The Angharad Davies / Tisha Mukarji album is one I am particularly salivating over. Great to see another new English label starting up.

The other plug is probably a bit late now as its for a gig tomorrow (Sunday 26th) just down the road from here in Oxford at the Port Mahon pub at 5pm. I'm particularly interested in hearing everyone's favourite Welsh laptop trio Traw play with Oxford's double bass hero Dom Lash in a quartet, alongside the For Barry Ray duo of John Chantler and Carina Thoren amongst other acts. I know the chances of anyone living close enough reading this in the next few hours is pretty unlikely, but if you make it come and say hi, I'll be the old git sat wondering what hypno-improv dronesmithery is ;)

A monochrome set

2007-08-24T17:33:00.000+01:00

silence is not an acoustic phenomenon

there is silence, where depth disappears and expanse emerges:
on the surface

still waters are said to run deep,
but in reality it is the imperturbability of their surface that impresses us.

and a quiet person's silence hides nothing deep-
it hides nothing at all.

Antoine Beuger - Silent harmonies in discrete continuity

So to the most recent release from another of the Wandelweiser Collective's main names, Antoine Beuger. Composed and realised on a computer in 2002, Silent Harmonies in discrete continuity was released earlier this year. The music consists of twenty-four three minute "tracks" although it is clear to me that they are meant to be played in succession as one long piece. The only reason I can imagine for the separate track idents could be to play the music in shuffle mode, though this is not suggested anywhere amongst the minimal sleeve notes. The above short poetic words above do appear however, providing a thoughtful, if oblique reference to Beuger's thought processes in writing this music.

The music is in itself some of the most sparse, austere music I think I have ever heard. The twenty-four pieces each consist of one pure tone created by combining eight frequencies, one from each octave. The tones are consistent throughout their three minutes, fading slowly in and out of their allotted time frame, each containing a depth and a warmth individual to themselves, but essentially this is twenty-four three minute long tones spaced apart.

So what are we supposed to do with this music? Is there some hidden code? How are you meant to enjoy it? Is it meant to be enjoyed?

Beuger adds a note on the sleeve about the composition; "one sound goes, another one comes and so it goes, step by step, continuously" This in itself may not seem to help much, but then he also dedicates the piece to the American painter Marcia Hafif, famous mostly for her monochrome works. I read this dedication halfway through Silent harmonies... and at that point I brought the CD player back to the start and began to listen again. Each of the twenty-four tones is quite lovely in itself. Turning your head as they fill the room reveals the individual frequencies within. One moment when I yawned (no comment on the music!) revealed a completely different sound to the one I heard a moment before. So each of the tones could be seen as a colourfield, with the detail within resembling the brushstrokes used to create the work. Placing these pure tones / pure colours beside each other then causes simple juxtapositions akin to wandering through a gallery of Hafif's works (not something I have done but looking at photos its not so hard to imagine) I return to some of the ideas I considered about Radu Malfatti's works in previous writing, can we remember the sound that preceeded the one we are currently hearing? If so can we remember the one before that? Is there a natural progression? Have any of the sounds reoccurred?

Listening to this music is an experience not that dissimilar to standing before a room full of Barnett Newman paintings (something I have done) or maybe Callum Innes, or Rauschenberg's monochromes. How do you respond to this music / painting? Careful study will show changes in light and shadow over time, just as experiencing this music at different times will bring different background sounds. Studying those paintings up close will show the manner in which they were made. Stepping back and taking in an overview will reveal an overall mood, an atmosphere in the room that seeps into the people pasisng through it. I hear this music in a similar way.

The biggest mistake I think you can make in approaching Silent harmonies in discrete continuity is to treat it as just another piece of music and expect it to reward you in a similar manner. i don't think this will happen. I may have read the music entirely incorrectly (and I am sending these reviews to the composers concerned to try and find out) but for me this music works on a very basic, functional level, asking the listener to accept it for exactly what it is, leaving it up to them to find their own individual response to what they hear.

Clearly not for everyone, but I've found this CD intriguing and somehow rather inspirational.

Images are of Marcia Hafif's work.

A thousand colours, all of them grey

2007-08-22T22:07:00.000+01:00

I've written a little here before about my interest in the music of the Wandelweiser label, and as I've played a few of the recent releases over the last few days I thought I'd write a little about some of the more recent releases I've managed to pick up. I rarely see reviews of Wandelweiser discs anywhere so over the next couple of weeks I aim to do my little bit to help put that right. Here's a great one to start with;

Jürg Frey - String Quartets

Listening to this music today has come almost as a shock to the system after my recent obsession with Shostakovich and Mahler. In the brief sleeve notes to this disc Frey mentions how he was influenced by the painting of Agnes Martin whilst writing his first String Quartet in 1988, which appears here as one of four works recorded by the Bozzini Quartet in 2004. Frey draws a parallel between his music and Martin's minimal paintings: "clear-cut forms not overgrown with rhetoric and figuration. Instead sensuality, radiance and intensity gripped the entire space"
At first, after the rich, in-your-face emotions of Shostakovich and Mahler this paired back minimal music is hard to come to terms with, but very soon its immense beauty grabs me, almost halting me in my tracks and bringing everything I do down to a slow, quiet pace. That may seem a dramatic statement to make, but when the CD began I was putting away a pile of clean washing, and after a few minutes the clothes were left in a heap in front of the open wardrobe and I sat quietly listening.

Its hard not to mention a similarity with Feldman's second quartet when considering the first Frey SQ on this disc. The simple structure of the music consists of repeated two note passages that change every thirty seconds or so, mostly bowed softly, with some plucked strings appearing later in the piece. There are subtle changes in the notes played. A cursory listen may suggest the same notes played in a basic pattern over and over, but there is a gentle shift throughout. Here the similarity with Martin's painting is clear to me, an apparent simplicity containing a deeper intensity and detail revealed slowly over time in a manner not unlike the work of Morton Feldman. The composition has a distinct Feldmanesque feel to it, a sense of gradual movement across the music rather than any more obvious progression. The piece is played slightly quicker than you may expect from Feldman however, and lasts just short of eleven minutes, resulting in a beautiful miniature that I rather wish went on for longer.

The second piece on the disc is named (Unbetitelt) VI (I suspect this translates as Untitled, but Babelfish won't confirm as such) Written between 1990 and '91 the music inhabits similar ground, here utilising slowly rising musical figures slowly played in a clean, simple fashion, but again creating the feeling of gradually shifting movement as the ninteen minute piece progresses. Often we only hear a single instrument, and each note is separated cleanly from the next, sometimes with a momentary silence. Only late in the piece does a passage appear where a high note is held for an extended period as other instruments continue below, but there is a real clarity to this music that is maintained throughout. There are a couple of surprises here and there, just before the midway point a violin picks out a few lines of almost inaudibly high sound, yet these frail whispers fit perfectly into the music.

The third and fourth tracks on the CD make up the two parts of a very short work entitled Zwei allerletze Såchelchen (No idea again beyond the "two" at the start, help me out German readers! Tomas?!) The first of the two pieces, Mailied (May song?) is just 47 seconds long. As brief as it is the piece is songlike in its existence, consisting of twenty or so high pitched notes softly overlapping each other in a brief moment of beauty that slips away as fast as it arrived. The second half of the work is half as short again at just 21 seconds. Vorbei, (Past) resembles the opening to a more traditionally notated quartet, Shostakovich naturally comes to my mind, but the tiny piece just ends after ten or eleven elegantly arranged notes, a tiny glimpse of something very beautiful, but the listener is left wondering. Zwei allerletze Såchelchen was written at the same time as (Unbetitelt) VI, in 1990. I cannot help but draw more parallels with Feldman's experiments with the length of a piece of music, with Frey here distilling great beauty into a tiny opening in time, whilst Feldman's later works stretched themselves over several hours. Both approaches challenge our established listening conventions. With these brief pieces how is the listener meant to respond? My natural reaction has been to hit the "<" button on the CD player and play each of the pieces over and over, but was this the intended response? Does it matter?

The final piece on the disc is simply entitled String Quartet II and was written the best part of a decade later between 1998 and 2000. At nearly half an hour in length this piece is the longest on the disc, and addresses very different concerns to the earlier works. Here Frey uses extended techniques to create a very quiet, soft, almost noteless grey soundworld within which brief passages of bowed sound exist for two or three seconds, each interspersed with a second or two of silence, but again with the sounds used gradually shifting across time. This is hauntingly beautiful music. The playing resembles an ethereal vocal ensemble more than it does a string quartet. The opening to Ligeti's Lux Aeterna springs to mind, but even that isn't so close. You can certainly forget the Feldman comparisons here, this music takes a further step into inaudibility and a leap away from the musicality of the ealier pieces. For me this music moves closer to the Agnes Martin paintings, utilising the faintest of sounds, whispers of immense beauty, changing with every movement of the bow yet structured in a manner that careful listening reveals the natural rhythms of the piece.

One of the most common criticisms made of the Wandelweiser collective of composers is that the music they create lacks humanity, existing as a sterile exercise in mannered austerity. This may be true of some of the work, but this album in particular is achingly beautiful and is dripping with the intensity and sensuality created by a group of musicians playing difficult music with great passion. This music, and the final piece in particular has a cumulative effect on the listener, slowing the senses, heightening the attention, filling the space with the radiance Frey finds surrounding Martin's painting.

I think you can tell I really liked this release ;)

Untitled painting by Agnes Martin

"Wisdom is organised life"

2007-08-22T11:19:00.000+01:00

Well as I have been sat about waiting for news on the employment front, and as it hasn't stopped raining again in days I figured it was about time I sorted out my office / listening space at Pinnell Towers. A good clean up, clear out and reorganisation has been badly needed for a long time, and so over the last couple of days it finally happened. Seven full refuse bags of junk went out, (mainly remnants of my last job, so nice to clear it out of my life) and a few hundred CDs that I haven't listened to in years were boxed up and moved into one of the spare rooms here, joining other similar boxes from past clear outs.

It always feels great to do this, kind of a purge of my musical interests as much a belated spring clean of the room. Its interesting that whilst going through old CDs you manage (or at least I do anyway) to find discs that you have absolutely no recollection of owning before, and other long forgotten articles suddenly feel like they need to be played. I somehow managed to relocate the stereo (just out of shot in that photo unfortunately) without ever switching it off, so as these CDs leapt out at me demanding to be played in a last gasp attempt to save themselves from being boxed up, I had an ongoing soundtrack to the process.

Amongst the semi-forgotten items I played was the Revenant compilation from a few years back of old 78rpm records by The Stanley Brothers, old-time bluegrass music from the forties and early fifties. Played loud yesterday morning as the wind and rain whipped against the window this sounded good. I have several of the early Revenant compilations of early American music, and with the majority of them I tend to find the music refreshing to hear every now and again, almost cleansing the aural pallete, but this isn't music I can listen to for long, repeated listens tend to annoy me after a while.

Another CD I unearthed that had somehow escaped my main collection by accident was a recording of Feldman's Triadic Memories by Jean-Luc Fafchamps on the Sub Rosa label. Finding this was like receiving a new Feldman disc in the post, as I had no memory of what it sounded like, as it was probaby one of the first Feldman CDs I bought. Listening through though I found it quite disappointing, the piano sounding very bright and closely recorded and the playing a little stiff, lacking the richness and flow of the Tilbury or Hinterhåuser versions I own.

I also played a CD that I often seem to discover whilst tidying up the shelves and I can never resist playing as it always seems to make me smile. Jim O'Rourke's Halfway to a Threeway EP is the disc in question, and the title track in particular, a tale of one man's search in vain for a ménage à trois. I was never a big fan of O'Rourke's later song-based material. Whilst his arrangements and musicianship were quite beautiful his voice was so terrible it rendered most of the material unlistenable, so I have always preferred his work with other vocalists, Edith Frost's Calling over time a real favourite. Halfway to a Threeway though is just hilarious, a few minutes of silly dark humour, but it always tickles me.

A good sort-out like this is always good for the spirits, and today I set about clearing out my iMac hard drive of old audio recordings and ensuring my iTunes files are all nicely labelled. A little sad I know, but this kind of thing is addictive to me, and the sense of a job-well-done at the end is a nice one.

Interesting things to spot in that picture; (click on it for an enlarged view) a well worn early edition of Cardew's Treatise poking out from the shelf in the foreground, a Professor Yaffle figurine sat atop the rarely used Windows PC Monitor, (Professor Yaffle is a longtime mentor of mine) and the small silver UFO flying just above his head. Bored? Me? Never!

On reflection...

2007-08-18T15:07:00.000+01:00

Well over the last week I didn't get to listen to much music, a combination of employment assessment centres and spending some quality time with my better half kept me busy. This morning however I had some quiet time to myself, but instead of putting something into the CD player I sat and watched Andrej Tarkovsky's Mirror, a DVD I have owned for a couple of months now, but for some reason just haven't had the inclination to sit and watch.
I've written here before about the difficulty I have with sitting and watching films in this way. I've spent many years avoiding the act of sitting in front of a TV for long periods of time, but the recent few attempts I've made to sit and watch a few films I've been recommended have been enjoyable.

Mirror is beautifully constructed. To me, after just the one viewing it seems to be a collage of childhood memories and emotions intricately wound together to paint an overall picture that allows an understanding of how Tarkovsky felt as a child (the film is in a large part autobiographical) rather than tell a story with any beginning or end. Characters aren't fully defined for a long time and remain slightly distant, their secrets held back rather than explained, leaving you with their surface emotions and the occasional hint at something deeper. The film is put together wonderfully. Each short scene is beautifully filmed in itself, with recurring metaphorical motifs and faces appearing at different stages, with movements back and forth in time blurred by the reappearance of familiar moments. The film acts as a mirror on itself, the past reflecting the future, and vice versa, until the temporal structure of the film dissolves and we are left with just a sense of emotion, nostalgia, regret and lost vitality that as a viewer we can all understand. The screen showing the film becomes a mirror in itself. There's no way I can come close to understanding this film after just one viewing, and it may be some time before I see it again, but it left me in a state of melancholic contemplation as it ended, projecting onto me some sort of blanket of overall feeling and mood.

Beside this sense of reflective atmosphere the film is technically and visually very beautiful indeed. The movement between one scene and the next is often stunning, ranging from slow panoramic swings of the camera to precise cuts between places and times, often with some visual elements remaining from scene to scene. Tarkovsky uses several repeated devices nicely, rain falling at a window appears often, and one dreamlike sequence where the ceiling of a house falls around the lead female character echoes the rainfall. Mirrors and reflected images obviously occur often, and a small bird, captured in the hand at one point in the film is later released, and in late sequences in the film birds flying free may or may not hark back to the same device. The photography is gorgeous, a wonderful sense of compositional framing is evident throughout and the timing matches the slow, dreamy pace of the film superbly.

I'm miles away from really appreciating Mirror. So far I can only take it at surface value, take from it its beauty and sense of introspection. Clearly there are many layers in there, metaphors I don't understand, subtleties that are lost on me, partly becuase I need to watch the film more, and partly because I lack experience with cinema of this quality, but I know I enjoyed Mirror a lot and will return to it again.

Under the weather

2007-08-14T14:17:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the dirth of posts over the last week. I've not been well, the chest infection rendering me pretty low for much longer than expected, and the inspiration just hasn't been here.
Apart from the occasions when job interviews have seen me have to drag myself out into the real world I've had little energy to do much more than sleep, get annoyed at Sudoku puzzles, and sit in bed with a sketchbook. Today I feel well enough to be up and bouncing about and what happens? Yeah it doesn't stop raining again. Can't win around here!
I've actually done very little music listening too, perhaps a little burnt out after several months of intense investigations, but when I have been listening its either been to the BBC Proms on Radio 3 and any CD listening has been almost exclusively Shostakovich and Mahler.

Things are looking much brighter here today though as I have yet to cough all morning and a nice little bundle of CDs fell through the letterbox, which is always guaranteed to spark life into these old bones. Four separate packages, the first two were eBay purchases, and I'm pleased to say my copy of Patterns in a chromatic field is here safe and well, along with an old OOP disc of unusual Luigi Nono realisations under the eye of Bruno Maderna. Unusual in that they are less commonly performed works rather than unusual performances, though as I have yet to listen it may apply both ways.

The two new discs from Will Benton's Formed label arrived, looking good. Raymond & Marie by the Mersault trio of Korber, Weber and Wolfarth is a live recording from a Swiss festival that I'm looking forward to hearing.ij, the duo disc of Lucio Capece and Toshi Nakamura sounds very nice however, having given it its first spin this morning, more about that one later.

The final disc I received is a CDR packaged in a white card sleeve bound up roughly in heavy duty black tape and comes from the American duo of Dave Barnes (otherwise known as Dave Quam in certain circles) and Graham Stephenson, an electronics, trumpet collaboration. No idea what to expect, which is often the best way to approach a new CD...

Anyway, thats about it for now, I just wanted to put up a post to stop rust settling in, I'm off to make lunch and spend the afternoon with some new music :)

Yes we have Nono Mahlers

2007-08-07T21:44:00.000+01:00

Strangely melancholic mood today, possibly just exhausted from a few days illness and the effect a cocktail of antibiotics can have, but been a day of romantic and reflective listening. For some reason, on waking really early I felt the need to put on Luigi Nono's monumental Prometeo, and so at 5.30AM as I dragged my poorly rested body from bed Nono's self-declared Tragedy of Listening shone about the room. This is pretty unusual for me as I rarely play music in the morning, preferring to listen to Radio4 if anything, but today has been an odd one all round.

Still pretty under the weather I spent much of the day on the living room sofa, getting annoyed at a Su-Do-Ku puzzle and reading TJ Clark's excellent The Sight of Death about which I'll probably write more when I've finished it, but I also found time to sit and watch the A Trail on the Water DVD that I think I've written about here before, the story of the close friendship between Luigi Nono, pianist Maurizio Pollini and conductor Claudio Abbado. I think this Nono obsession today comes from my joy last night after booking tickets to see the Arditti Quartet play a couple of Nono works in October, but no excuse needed really.

Anyway towards the end of the DVD there is a passage of film that draws links between the three artist's love of Mahler's symphonies (another recent exploration of mine) and includes a lovely section featuring Abbado conducting Mahler's Ninth, his final finished symphony completed not long before his death. Then later this evening I headed over to Julie's and very soon after dinner her own exhaustion got the better of her (she's had a tough few days) and she fell asleep in my arms on the sofa. I have to admit to being very happy about this however, as believe it or not on BBC4 TV they were about to show the Proms broadcast of Mahler's Tenth symphony, reconstructed by Derek Cooke from Mahler's detailed, but unfinished sketches.

So a beautiful experience, a sleeping girlfriend in one arm, a mug of hot lemon and paracetamol in the other, dimmed lights and some gorgeous, melancholic music to boot... Unfortunately it had to end, I had to put Julie to bed, drive home and sit here now getting annoyed at my own irritating cough. Oh well, there's whisky here and I think I'll end the day as it began with Prometeo...

One of those nice little eBay moments

2007-08-06T12:55:00.000+01:00

I think most visitors here will have a list, however short, of recordings that if they ever saw them for sale, either in a shop or on eBay they would move heaven and earth to try and lay their hands on. My list is surprisingly short, just two or three items I always keep an eye open for, and down the years I have managed to find a good few things I've long been looking for, simply through patient determination.

One CD has long avoided me though, and has been on top of my list for years on end, the Rohan de Saram and Marianne Schroeder recording on the HatArt label of Morton Feldman's Patterns in a chromatic field. I've known the music for quite some time, having been able to get hold of some good quality Mp3s a while back, but I've never seen the discs for sale anywhere. Not in any shop, online or otherwise, and until last week never on eBay. Then after searching tirelessly on a regular basis a copy just appeared and I've watched it like a hawk for the last five days. The auction ended at half past two this morning, and so I set an alarm to make sure I was awake to fight off any last minute challengers, but none came. Earlier yesterday someone placed a $25 maximum bid against the disc, which wasn't even faintly close enough to topple my maximum bid, and so I ended up winning the disc for $26, or £13, some four or five pounds less than it would sell new over here. (If by some crazy chance my rival bidder should happen to read this, I'm sorry!)

So I'm not going to count my chickens until the disc arrives in the post, but I am a cautiously happy person this morning.

Doom, gloom and some rather nice music

2007-08-05T20:29:00.000+01:00

Feels like nothing but stress and gloom around here at the moment. My own health hasn't improved over the last day or so, a chest infection rendering me close to useless, coughing up green gunk by the gallon and sweating like a paedophile in a playground. If no improvement in the morning I'm off to get some antibiotics. Two other bad pieces of news in the last 24 hours though, Julie lost yet another family member and is naturally pretty low, as my youngest brother was rushed into casualty today. An operation he had to remove a benign cyst refused to heal properly and opened up spilling blood everywhere whilst he was out shopping. Neil visits these pages from time to time, and he's fine, waiting on some minor surgery to sort it out, but if you read this Neil, stop being a lazy sod, get out of bed and stop bleeding on everyone :)

So not much to report, dear readers, though I did make a flying trip into London yesterday to drop some Cathnor CDs off at Sound323 and to meet up briefly for a mug of tea with Travis Just, a New York composer and musician, and all-round pleasant and decent guy whose music I have enjoyed in the past on the rare occasions it has crossed my path. Travis plays and records a lot in Berlin, and was in London for just a few days en route to Germany. Working often in the orbit of the Wandelweiser composers' collective. He runs the Object Collection label to showcase his music, although from our chat I sense his music is best served in a live setting and he is less of a fan of the CD medium. His work can also be heard on the Wandelweiser radio stream if you have the patience to wait for one of his pieces to come around!
For those readers in the New York area Travis is organising a series of performances throughout the first half of 2008 at a place called the Ontological-Hysterical Incubator, bring over the likes of Christian Kesten and Radu Malfatti amongst others.
Anyway it was nice to meet you Travis, all be it pretty briefly!

So I made my regular wander around the (newly refurbished) shelves of Sound323 in search of anything worth investigation. In recent months these visits have seen me walk away with less and less music, mainly as so much stuff comes at me from many other angles these days. I bought five CDs though, and for once I can't wait to play them all. A 2CD set on the and/OAR label of what appears to be musical responses to the films of Yasujiro Ozu looks interesting. Amongst the many names on the discs, Taku Sugimoto, new work from Bernhard Günter and Toshiya Tsunoda stand out as possible winners, but I've played it yet, but looking forward to giving that a listen later.

The jewel in the crown of yesterday's acquisitions though is the new solo CD by Mark Wastell on the Kning Disk label. Come Crimson Rays is the slightly dodgy title (;)) of the third and final disc in Mark's solo tam tam series, the first two released under the Vibra title. This new, gorgeously packaged disc investigates the bass end of the instrument's possibilities, with most of the sounds coming from the lower end of the spectrum, Unlike the other Vibra discs though there is an awful lot more space on Come Crimson Rays, with the first and third of the three tracks in particular focussing more on small clusters of soft strikes of the tam tam, with each note allowed to decay sumptuously slowly and drift off into the silence. Much of Mark's recent solo work has been concerned with this notion of decaying sounds in a Feldmanesque manner, and the subtelty of his touch with this instrument lends itself perfectly.
The music on this disc is really quite dark, almost ritualistic stuff, and perhaps not the best thing for me to be playing to lift the gloom around here right now, but its really rather beautiful, fragile music I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Tonight I listened to the BBC Proms broadcast of Shostakovich's seventh symphony performed by a youth orchestra and I rather enjoyed the rousing, epic qualitites of the music on a ridiculously hot (come back rain, all is forgiven!) summers evening. I've been slowly working through the 27 disc Shostakovich set, which begins with the symphonies, and have so far listened to No's 1-5. It'll be interesting to hear No.7 very soon just after listening to this broadcast.

OK, I'm off to cough my guts up again.

Photo of the Month No.5

2007-08-04T10:20:00.001+01:00

A wall in Parthenay, Western France two weeks ago. I like this as it covers most of my favourite photographic subjects in one go, rust, crumbling walls and shadows. I like the way it contrasts nature's ever-present energy with the impermanence of everything manmade. But then I can be a bit pretentious at times ;)

A Grumpy Day

2007-08-04T00:00:00.001+01:00

I've been ill for a few days. Not completely bed-ridden but suffering from a pretty heavy chest infection. Today though I ventured out for the first time since my trip up to Uffington White Horse (making that trip in just a t-shirt late in the evening probably didn't help the chest infection to be honest, but hey-ho) Anyway today I went into London for a job interview for a job I probably don't want. Well when I say into London I actually barely scratched the edge of the city as the interview was held at the head offices of a company situated just outside Paddington station, which is where my train from London arrives in town.

So, as the railways over here are about as reliable as the Creative Sources catalogue ;) I left far too early and arrived with an hour and a half to kill before I needed to be at the interview. There was little point going anywhere far, as there was barely enough time to make it down into the centre and back and no point risking getting stuck there so I decided to kill the time on Paddington station. I know this station well. Very well. Too well after spending more than one night there in the past after missing the last train home after a concert. Its changed a lot in recent years though and a lot of new shops and fast food atrocities have appeared.

Going for a wander around the grotesque shopping centre unfathomably named "The Lawn" just depressed me very quickly. The window of the Monsoon women's clothes shop informed me I would be "very smart" if I took advantage of their summer sale. Either that or a transvestite anyway. A wander into a music shop that used to be called Sanity but now doesn't seem to want to admit to having a name and included Chris Rea and Phil Collins-era Genesis albums in their special section entitled "Great Journey Listening" nearly drove me to arson until a helpful tannoy announcement reminded me that there's no smoking allowed anywhere on the station.

As I wandered about it amazed me just how many people had the inevitable little white earbuds in their ears. Maybe as many as one in five people seemed to have an iPod or similar about their person somewhere. Has there ever been a period in history before when so many people have listened to so much music? Probably not. The depressing thing is its probably all dreadful music however. For a moment I wondered how many of the people buzzing about were listening to the something from the "Great Journey Listening" selection, but then I remembered that most people departing from Paddington would be doing so on either a First Great Western or a Virgin train, so the term "Great" was unlikely to apply to their journey.

Feeling peckish, but also feeling pretty repulsed by the fact that the Railway Inn pub on the station has been renamed The Mad Bishop and Bear I walked straight past very quickly and instead went to a favourite haunt of mine, the West Corwall Pasty Co shop on the station. This place always puts a smile on my face and it didn't fail me today. Its furbished inside in the most hilarious fake Cornish fisherman's cottage style you could imagine, complete with a Welsh dresser to hold napkins and cutlery, and signs on the wall warning to "Beware of the Coastal Path". Knowing West Cornwall very well I think its safe to say that the main bedroom in the Taj Mahal has a more authentic Cornish feel to it than this place, but I'm sure it keeps the thousands of tourists that flock through Paddington en route from Heathrow every day happy.

One thing I hadn't noticed in here before though and certainly did pay attention to today is the music. I noticed today probably because as I walked in and ordered a beef and stilton pasty (this took a while as my command of Polish isn't up to scratch yet) The Velvert Underground's Venus in Furs was playing. (A great tune about S&M in New York back in the 60's so a good fit for the Cornish theme to the place) This was followed by REM's Losing my Religon but then oddly by a track by S-Club 7, Culture Club's dreadful The War Song and Don't worry, be happy by Bobby McFerrin...
I'm really not sure that a more bizarre, random mix of songs could be possible, and what's more this was no radio station playing, rather a CD of prepared music for the place that was interspersed by the sounds of (presumably authentic Cornish) seagulls and adverts for assorted flavours of pasty... a little odd to say the least, but it kept me amused for quite a while. Its only when Genesis' Turn it on again came on that I hurriedly left the remains of my pasty and ran for it. I wonder if they get their odd CD compilations from the "Great Journey Listening" section at not-Sanity? We may never know.

At this point I left the station and headed out onto Praed Street which was just about visible beyond the haze of smoke created by all those people that followed orders not to smoke anywhere on the station and instead created a gateway of nicoteine intoxication just outside the entrance to ensure us passive smokers don't miss out on our fix. As I headed for the exit I passed the Paddington Bear merchandise stall. This is basically a mobile shop that is permanently set up on the station with a mission to sell a cuddly Paddington Bear figure to every stupid person that passes by. They always seem really busy. Today I noticed they had a sign announcing that the Paddington Bear in a Union Jack overcoat toy would be back in stock next Monday. This made me wonder. As Paddington was a very proud immigrant of Darkest Peru, and as he isn't (as far as I'm aware) a supporter of the BNP, why would he be wearing a Union Jack overcoat? Maybe they were in the Monsoon sale.

Wandering aimlessly along Praed Street in awe at just how many different ways you can spell Shish Kebab I stopped for a while at the Big Red London Bus Gift Shop, but it was whilst trying to decide which Princess Diana postcard I needed the most that I realised time was getting on and I should head for my interview.

So why did I make this post? Its got little to do with music...Erm no idea really beyond the fact that my ill health has put me in something of a Victor Meldrew mood and I thought I'd share that with you all. I'm going back to London tomorrow morning. Think I might drive this time.

Not a bad way to spend an evening alone

2007-07-31T22:32:00.000+01:00

Tonight, I took the short drive out to Uffington White Horse., a favourite place of mine, essentially a hill 800ft high made special by an enormous 3000 year old white horse carved into the chalk. I walked to the top, which takes about half an hour, and on the way, following Jon's comment in the AMM Poll thread I listened toThe Great Hall, the second disc from the Laminal set. (I only read Robert's further endorsement of this great piece of music on my return). Its weird, as the disembodied radio voices kicked in at around 17 minutes I swear it was Derek Bailey's voice talking...

I took a few photos as well, of which the one above is rather stunning. Combining such a view with such great music made for a pretty special evening. Just thought I'd share that.

A little bit of fun

2007-07-30T22:53:00.000+01:00

Waaaay too serious around here lately, so thanks to a nice new feature of the great Blogger software I am proud to announce the first (wait for it, drum roll.........) Learning to Listen Poll.

Its over there on the left, and we begin with one of improvised musics toughest questions, "What is your favourite AMM album?"
I know, I know, its a tough question, and I fully expect very few votes for a few days as many of you have sleepless nights deliberating over your decision, but it'll be there for a week so you have plenty of time to choose...

There are six albums to choose from, which I would have thought covers the most common choices, but if you don't like any of those click Other and you can always leave a comment here to say which album you prefer for whatever peculiar reason.

I'm intrigued to see if we can get the votes into double figures...!

Divine Interventions

2007-07-29T16:36:00.000+01:00

I'm not a religous person, not even slightly, but sometimes I get the feeling that someone somewhere is directing me towards certain things. Over the last few days since returning from France and as the weather has been so rotten I've worked my way right through the six disc box set of Shostakovich's String Quartets performed by the Borodin Quartet again interspersed with other music and several spins of Keith Rowe's The Room. I enjoyed the experience immensely (my favourites are now 8, 14 and the unbelievable 15th by the way) Whilst in France I got to hear one of Shostakovich's symphonies on CD and really enjoyed it too.

So this afternoon Julie and I went to her parent's house to check up on the place as they are away. Whilst Julie did all the boring stuff like water plants and pick up the post I undertook the important task of sitting in the back garden, which has a stream running through it, feeding baby moorhens pieces of bread. The weather has been lovely today (amazingly!) and so I stretched out on a sun lounger and put the radio on as I fed little hungry beaks. There was symphony on Radio 3 that immediately struck me as incredibly beautiful, but having joined halway through I didn't know for certain what it was. I guessed at Shostakovich, but not trusting my knowledge of this area of music enough yet I kept Julie waiting until the piece ended so I could find out what it was. Sure enough it was indeed Shostakovich, his fiftteenth and final symphony to be precise. So we left and I made a mental note to get myself a box of the symphonies as soon as I could, despite the fact I have been trying to cut down on CD purchasing and increase CD listening of late. (and I've been successful too! see how few discs I bought in July compared to other months this year!)

Later this afternoon I popped into Oxford for something and took the opportunity to nip into the Blackwells Music Shop (the best of a bad bunch of places to buy music in Oxford) to look for a set of the symphonies. Just inside the door I virtually tripped over a large stack of the Shostakovich Edition 27 CD + 1 DVD box set that contains a recording of everything Shostakovich ever wrote including all of the symphonies conducted by Rudolf Barshai. Not only was this stack placed right in my way where I nearly collided with it, but the sets were reduced from £71 to a mere £21...

I'm sure you can guess how the story ends. I'm now convinced that there obviously must be a God and his main interest in life is directing my musical discoveries.... Oh and two posts back I asked the rain to stop and that happened too, what more proof do we need? ;)

Trawling murky waters

2007-07-28T08:36:00.000+01:00

The following was left as a comment by Tom7865 in the Stop raining! post below in response to a comment I made on the Different Waters blog. I've moved it here to keep it in context and to address some of the issues it raises and add some clarity to my feelings on the subject.

dude- i know you're grumpy but next time just ask me to remove the post...... i respect the small labels which is why I try to buy from them and also local record stores (btw i spend several thousand of dollars a year on cd's i'm not the slimey evil pirate you accuse me of being)... just be nice, being nasty may have the opposite effect to other people who really don't care... i was posting Tudor because I know the most people who frequent different waters are into that and they also do go out and buy the cd if they like or delete it if they don't.... anyway cheers I also like your record site too... good luck (the post has been deleted)

The post at the Different waters blog effectively consisted of a link to a Yousendit (or similar) shared file containing Mp3s of the recently released David Tudor double CD set on Editions RZ, plus an image of the sleeve art and a couple of paragraphs from the CD sleeve notes. For the record, I did not ask for the post to be removed, and I didn't accuse anyone of anything. I merely (and politely) asked two questions: Firstly did the poster have permission to upload the files (and I offered to give Robert Zank's email address in case he wished to ask for it) and secondly (and most importantly) I asked if he himself had anything to say about the CD, some of which I consider to be amongst the best music ever made. I asked this as unless you knew the sleeve notes it could have been construed from the post that the text there had been written by the blog poster.

Anyway, Tom has deleted the post and chose to engage with me here rather than at Different Waters so I thought I would discuss this thorny subject a little here. Its no secret that I am no fan of indiscriminate file sharing of currently available music. Tom states that the readers of Different Waters will go and buy CDs if they like the download or will delete the file if they do not. I don't doubt for one minute that this often happens (although reading my way through the many comments in the many posts at DW I see no evidence of this happening, but thats by the by). I have also read this argument many times and I know several CD label owners who do not mind their releases being shared in this way as they have seen sales produced from the extra exposure. I do not doubt this happens... but I do doubt that it happens ENOUGH. Having spoken with many CD distributors and label owners over the last few years I am confident that overall CD sales are in decline. Whilst a lot of downloaders will indeed go and buy music they really like, many others do not. The cumulative effect, unfortunately is that less CD sales are happening and less money is fed back to labels and ultimately the musicians.

These issues can be debated to death, but having listened with an open mind to many people this is how I feel. I have one question though. What is to stop someone wanting to post an Mp3 file at a blog in this manner from contacting the musicians or the label to ask if they mind? If the label/musicians believe that their sales could increase then surely they will happily give permission? What I see though is people just posting files without asking and then getting upset when they are asked about it. It would be an awful lot more polite and respectful if a simple email was sent first.

I have a further, deeper concern about the free sharing of music as Mp3s though, and Tom's post at DW kind of illustrates this concern well. In my opinion the Mp3 is creating a generation of poor listeners. In these days of fast gratification on demand it is easy to read about a piece of music, go online and find it in a space of minutes. There are people out there downoading dozens of albums a week, giving them a cursory listen and then deleting them or filing them before moving on to the next file. Whatever happened to the real engagement with music? Why is the fantastic David Tudor album, a hugely important release with much to be said about it reduced to a copy and pasted paragraph and a bunch of comments merely saying "wow thanks dude" or something similar? I personally have a half written review of the Tudor sat on my computer that I have been struggling with for about two months, and I would much rather read someone else's thoughts on the music than just download the files. The Tudor post at DW said absolutely nothing new about the music in either the main post or the comments that followed. Am I the only one that finds this kind of thing depressing?

I should make this clear that my thoughts are not fuelled by some capitalist urge to make money. I run a record label, and even my recent release by MIMEO of which I only have about 100 copies remaining will make me a loss. If I cared about the money aspect a great deal I really wouldn't have any involvement with running a label. As much as anything I get upset by the impoliteness of "illegal" filesharing, and depressed by the lack of real discussion about music as people put as much effort into writing about music as they do obtaining it.

Thank you Tom for giving me the opportunity to discuss this, and yeah there are a lot bigger things to worry about in the world. I fully realise you are not slimey (sic) or evil. You are a music lover at heart and there are a lot worse people out there with respect to downloading etc... so this is not merely about you or Different Waters, merely a comment on the state of play these days. To answer the obvious question, no there's abosolutely nothing that can be done to change the way things are, but that doesn't stop this grumpy old man complaining about it.

Stop raining!

2007-07-26T23:30:00.000+01:00

Its a bit wet here. Oxfordshire has been hit by floods this last week, not as bad as over in Gloucestershire, but some of the villages closeby have been pretty badly affected. Anyway after receiving a few emails asking if all is OK here I thought I'd post to say all is fine and although driving about the county is pretty tough right now the town of Didcot remains OK. The photo there is from the next town over in Abingdon.
But really, I wish it would stop raining soon, this stuff is getting depressing. Since getting back from France I've barely been out. Roads are closed all over the place and walking anywhere involves squelching about in mud. Where did the summer go?

I think I'm going to get Lee Patterson down to do some hydrophonic recordings on the local cricket field... :)

Et ainsi au samedi

2007-07-26T18:52:00.000+01:00

And so to Saturday. The day started with a leisurely meal before we all made our way down into Parthenay's ancient old town for a solo performance by Angharad Davies that took place at the top of the Tour de la Poudriére, the only remaining and restored tower of a 13th century castle that otherwise sat as remains. The venue was beautiful but also proved somewhat problematic for this incredibly subtle, quiet set. The problems were created by the tiny narrow spiral staircase that brought people up to the top room of the tower. Every time Angharad looked to begin to play people appeared and took their seats, some of them music fans, others just tourists wondering what was going on. As the concert was free people came and went as they pleased.

This was the first time I've seen Angharad play a solo set. She sat in the centre of the round room with the audience sat 360 degrees around her. The music consisted of small two minute-ish sections in which she repeated single phrases, sometimes bowing, sometimes tapping, sometimes noteless. The performance resembled a composition, perhaps one by a Wandelweiser composer, belonging more to the classical oeuvre than any other, but I am assured it was entirely improvised. I really enjoyed this set. The careful, considered playing required real focus from the listener however as this was not "easy" music. Some of the sounds were very quiet, others less so, but at all times a respectful audience was required. Unfortunately the music didn't always get the response it deserved. Whilst most sat quietly some people whispered to each other, camera clicks were regular and on two occasions someone broke wind loudly, the second time followed by a chorus of stupid giggles. Such is life with a free concert.
As Angharad played she very slowly turned on the piano stool placed in the centre of the room. Over the course of the 42 minute performance she turned a full 360 degrees, stopping once she had returned to the position in which she began. This turning was almost imperceivable and I only noticed after having had my eyes shut for a while I repoened them to find her facing away. This motion obviously made no difference to how the music sounded but added a nice subtle twist to the concert overall. This was a really good performance by one of the UK's leading improvisors right now.

We then made our way the short distance down a hill to the Maison des Cultures de Bois where the duo of Keith Rowe and Toshimaru Nakamura were to play. This was the third time I had seen this duo play, each time two years apart from each other, and each time better than the last. I have to admit though that even though my expectations were high for this concert I simply had my breath taken away. Beginning with a thick, deep sinewave from Toshi with only minimal bursts of electronic crackle from Rowe the music dropped down into near silence, with only a very high almost inaudlble strand of feedback whispering from Toshi and quiet chirruping sounds and the occasional burst of static from Rowe. After ten minutes or so when the activity had fallen to pretty much complete silence a single strike on the strings of Rowe's guitar produced a deep bell-like sound that lead into a period of low level interplay with the volume never really rising above an intense murmur. Radio interference and the internal sound of a laptop hard drive were used with seemingly effortless precision from Rowe, with Toshi tending to stay in either the very high or low throbbing registers, allowing the odd cry of sound to escape occasionally.

This music and the space it existed in were filled with tension. The exchanges between the two musicians were almost visible in the darkened room, two improvisers with a fantastically deep musical relationship testing and stretching each other to create this dark, brooding field of restless activity. The reduced volume throughout seemed to increase the palpability of the tension, allowing the musicians nowhere to hide. The perfomance lasted just thirty three minutes but left me exhausted. Something special happens when Rowe and Nakamura play together and I'm so pleased to have been able to witness the latest chapter. Magical.

Following such a set was never going to be easy, and its possible that my intense negative reaction to the performance by a solo Andy Guhl was affected by the mental exhaustion brought on by response to Keith and Toshi. The rest of the hall seemed to like it, whooping and cheering as it ended, but I found very little to enjoy.
Guhl used video as well as sound in his set, using a camera mounted on a revolving platform to capture images from his table of electronic clutter and even the front row of the audience. These images then fed, with some rough effects added to a projector that placed the image onto a large screen in the hall. Guhl used perspex prisms to refract the image from the projector further and (I think) used a light sensor placed in the beam of light to drive some of the dirty, ugly sounds that made up the audio part of the performance. For me this set only had any appeal whilst I was trying to work out what was going on to make the images and sound. Once I had an basic idea of what was happening there was little left for me to enjoy. The music was made up of what can only be described these days as generic electronic sounds, all open circuit blasts of noise and roaring loops. I'm sure those jumping to his defence would suggest that as a member of Voice Crack Guhl was making similar sounds a decade ago, and indeed he was, but thats where the problem lies. While the addition of the video element has brought something new to Guhl's music its not that interesting a concept and the music doesn't seem to have come very far at all.

One rather nice pizza in a quiet part of town later we headed back to the Salle Diff'Art for the last set I caught of the festival by Trio Sowari, a group made up of Burkhard Beins (Percussion), Phil Durrant (Laptop) and Bertrand Denzler (Saxophone).I've been a fan of this group for quite some time and they produced another nice performance here, this time with all three musicians playing through the PA, something I'd not seen from them before as their intimate music previously lent itself better to acoustic settings in smaller rooms. The set began with a nervous section of jabbing interplay between the trio until after five minutes or so Durrant produced a loud drifting sine wave that was instantly joined by Beins' high pitched bowing of a cymbal. From here the sounds used were allowed to linger more, with the musicians imitating each other often, but never for too long, allowing the music to progress through different sections effortlessly. For me Trio Sowari are about the use of simple tools, uncomplicated sounds wound together in real time to create something greater. The balance between the three instruments is perfect, with no obvious hierachies in the music and a focus just placed on the combination of texture and dynamic to form a gradually shifting study using a muted palette of limited colours.

I didn't stick around to hear the last two sets of the evening, an audio/visual show from Texturizer didn't inspire me much, and my general tiredness leant itself better to wandering off for a drink long before Merzbow came near the stage. Before I am accused of anti-noise snobbery again I actually caught much of Merzbow's soundcheck earlier in the day and tried hard to grasp something in the music, but for the life of me I'm not sure what there is to grasp beyond a few rumbling textures blasted out at extreme volumes, sorry.

Overall the festival was great. Even when the music wasn't so fantastic (and it frequently was fantastic!) the opportunity to laze about in the sun in stunning surroundings chatting with some great people was gladly taken. It was nice to say hi to a few musicians I'd not spoken to much before and to catch up with others I knew well. Of the new faces to me it was nice to say hi to Jacques Oger of Potlatch Records who will I'm sure report back that I wasn't wearing odd shoes. :)

Thanks also due to Nicolas, the festival organiser for putting on such a great event.

Et maintenant la musique

2007-07-26T11:07:00.000+01:00

And so to the music at the NPAI festival. (I still have no idea what NPAI stands for by the way, if any French readers should happen to know please tell). The music was a mixed bag. It was always going to be that way simply as so many styles of improvised music could be found on one bill. I made my way by bus-train from Nantes down to the town of Pathenay. The "bus-train" is essentially a bus service put on by the SNCF railway service to replace the trains that no longer run as they closed that part of the line. I guess it must just be cheaper to run a bus back and forth than maintain the line. As a result however the journey took about two and a half hours, and as there was only the one service a day this meant I arrived in Parthenay too late to see Tony Buck's solo (which is a shame) and a few other acts that I'm not so worried about missing.

The main reason for going on the Thursday was to see the Sound Like Water quartet made up of Burkhard Beins, Lucio Capece, Rhodri Davies and Toshi Nakamura. As the bus was running late and I was cutting it fine anyway I feared I would miss their performance as I had no idea where the venue was situated. However when I arrived at Parthenay's beautifully derelict railway station I was personally met by one of the festival's organisers with a car who drove me first to my hotel to deposit my bag before taking me to the venue in time for the performance. Its this kind of example of considerate generosity that made the festival a really enjoyable event irrespective of the music. I never did discover that guy's name, but thanks all the same.

The Salle Diff'Art venue, where much of the music took place is actually just a large graffiti smothered corregated iron barn situated on an industrial estate on the outskirts of the historic town. My initial thoughts were just how far removed the place was from any UK Festival venue I've ever attended, but with a mobile kitchen cooking food and a bar selling a range of drinks set up outside the facilities were actually in advance of most events over here. Every set I saw at the festival was well attended, with maybe 200 people seated in the barn for the SLW performance.
I was a little brain frazzled from my bus ride and the following mad rush to get to the venue so I sat through the SLW performance in a slight daze, but enjoyed the music quite a bit. The PA was a little blurry to my ears which made the detail of the music a little hard to pick out, and the musicians seemed to compensate for this by playing very loud in places. These four musicians are possibly the best out there right now on their respective instruments and this quality did shine through into a varied set made up of occasionally textured drones, intimate little sections of interplay within which some of the group would drop out and allow smaller secnarios to develop and on a couple of occasions some full on testing of the PA's ability. Near the end during a quiet passage Capece made a series of sounds remarkably close to the sound of water dripping giving literal meaning to the (slightly naff!) group name. This group clearly has a lot of promise and I very much look forward to their forthcoming disc on the Formed. label.
I didn't stay in the hall for the last two sets of the night. I forget what they were, but when I saw Toshi Nakamura running from the venue, beer in hand crying "Argh Prog Jazz!" I figured it would be better to follow him to the beer tent.:)

The next day a full size bus turned up outside the only hotel big enough to handle the large influx of people into Parthenay and we all headed out into the countryside for a half an hour or so drive to the tiny village of Le Retail (an intriguing name for a place that didn't even have a village shop) where we unloaded at a disused, beautiful old farm where the next three sets were due to take place in one of the animal sheds. The first performance came from the saxophone / double bass duo of Eric Brochard and Eric Vagnon. This pairing played very much in the traditional free improv style, all bold gestural blood and thunder that was nice to see, especially in such an environment, but to be honest bored me from a musical perspective right from the off.

There then followed a wait of an hour and a half before the Cranc trio played. These long, lazy waits in the sun proved to be a theme to the festival, symptomatic of the laid back French way of life and providing ample opportunity to get myself a rare suntan with which to goad the rain drenched people back home.
Cranc, the trio of Rhodri Davies, (Harp) Angharad Davies (Violin) and Nikos Veliotis (Cello) make the most beautifully simple acoustic music. Veliotis plays his cello with a specially made bow that allows all strings to be played at once, and his carefully refined and highly skilled action results in a warm, low drone that sounds quite unlike a traditional cello note.. Rhodri played his harp with a single eBow, picking out single tones carefully and slowly to pair with Veliotis' hum, and Angharad flicked and scraped her bow across the violin to produce minute details in the group's music. Every so often Veliotis would break off and silences would sit in the music for a minute or so before beginning again with a slightly shifted cello chord. The affect of this music in low light and in such a beautiful venue was stunning, refined acoustic playing of the highest order. My only problem with Cranc's set was its length. At under half an hour I would love to have heard more, the soft drones lending themselves better to an extended performance and the silent intervals possibly more impactful if they had been allowed two or three minutes in length. This feeling was made stronger by the hour long wait in the courtyard before the final set of the afternoon, but who am I to complain? Lovely music.

I have to admit I was concerned before the performance by Diego Chamy and Tamara Ben-Artzi. The programme seemed to list one of this pair of Argentinian cousins as performing "dance" and the other "movements". This kind of event would usually have me running for the nearest pub before it could begin, but as we had all been effectively just dropped into the middle of the countryside with nowhere to go until the bus reappeared later there was little to do but sit and watch...

I really have no idea what the resulting performance was all about, but it kept me gripped throughout, although I must admit that this was often due to confused amusement as much as anything. Chamy spent much of the set reading aloud odd lines of poetry in French (I think... could have been Spanish) in a stuttered manner, often "jamming" on the first syllable of the line and repeating it over and over. Whilst this was going on Ben-Artzi danced quietly to herself in a cheesy "teenager in a disco" manner whilst listening to something on an mp3 player around her neck. She would occasionally strike up odd postures around Chamy and hold them as he did similar things, and they would both occasionally run off stage and sit in the wings for a few moments. Later in the set Chamy stood on a chair and feigned a striptease in slow motion standing for a while reading aloud as his fingers were slipped into the top of his underpants before Ben-Artzi handed him a laptop computer and he held it high to the audience as an old film of Brigitte Bardot singing played...
The performance ended in a fitting manner when one of the lights fixed high above the performance area broke away from its cable with a bang and swung violently for a few moments before coming to a rest. This accidental but opportune moment brought an amusing end to a humorous set. I have absolutely no idea if there was anything to take from the performance beyond mild bemusement, but it was a fun thing to see.

Late that evening back at the Salle Diff'Art there followed three more concerts of music that I doubt I would have attended had they not been part of a festival and I enjoyed to varying degrees. First of all we were herded (a careful choice of word) into a building opposite the main hall, which turned out to be a storage barn for goats and chickens before being sold on to markets. As we sat in this massive metal shell of a building awaiting the performance of Eric Cordier and Denis Tricot the occasional sound of chickens could be heard coming disconcertingly from a pile of seemingly discarded metal cages on the far side of the building.
The performance soon diverted attention away from this however. Cordier stood at a mixing desk behind the audience undertaking a "diffusion" of a pre-recorded piece. The music had an industrial feel, the sound of metal and wood crashing about empty spaces with various clouded field recordings thrown in. The music in itself wasn't so interesting, but Tricot's performance on stage was quite an eye-opener. He began by bending large planks of wood into arc shapes and tying them at each end with a piece of string, effectively creating a number of very large bow shapes, more Robin Hood than Violin bow in form. As he made these, he lined them up towrds the audience in formation, until after he had a dozen or so he began to cermonially push them towards the crowd, one at a time, in a careful, considered manner as if playing a strange oversized boardgame.The thing is, he didn't stop at the crowd, he kept going, pushing these constructions into and over the audience and out the other side, causing a few moments of mayhem as the onlookers found themselves part of his elegant sculpture.

After this Tricot turned to a further pile of these bow-like creations that he had made in advance of the show and began to dance with them about the space, taking first one, and then bundles of these large and probably quite heavy objects into spiralling, dancing patters that created quite beautiful Calder-like shapes, with massive shadows cast upon the metal wall behind. At times this dance became quite violent, on one occasion only quick reflexes kept a watching Jérôme Noetinger from a nasty bump as a flying plank swung at his head. Tricot built haphazard sculptures from piles of these pieces as they fell into heaps, and he also ran around them at quite incredible speed considering he was a man probably in his fifties dragging large planks of wood behind him. I found this performance rather nice. Separated from Tricot's exploits the music would probably have bored me to tears but here it worked well as a driver for his energies. Another intriguing show anyway the like of which I'm not likely to see again soon and I'm glad I witnessed.

After this we moved back to the main shed for a trio performance by Gunda Gottschalk (Violin), Peter Jacquemyn (Contrabass) and Ute Voelker (Accordion) I've little to say about this set beyond the fact it was a proficiently executed further example of the older free jazz related styles of improv I've witnessed any times since the late eighties.I have no problem with this music, and in fact I quite enjoyed the opportunity to hear something I usually would never have made the trip to see, but the enjoyment was short lived. The best of the three musicians was Jacquemyn who showed a real mastery of his instrument, but even he lost my interest when he took a small squeaky rubber ball from his pocket late in the set and used it to add to his input.

The final set of the day came from the intriguing Qway Neum Sixx group made up of Daunik Lazro's saxophone, Michael Nick's violin, Sophi Agnel's piano and the electronics of Jérôme Noetinger. This performance provided something of a metaphor for the festival in general, a clash of older and younger instrumentation and musical styles. Without Noetinger's rough, rumbling textures the remaining trio may have sounded closer to the preceeding set, but the mix of electronics into the sound gave the group an interesting palette to work with. Nick was particularly impressive, weaving angular idiosyncratic notes between the sax and Agnel's well chosen piano sounds, mostly coming from playing keys whilst addressing the strings with an assortment of objects. Noetinger was the glue holding this performance together however, steadfastly maintaining an even pace to the music, keeping it from running away into a velocity driven skronk-out but also bringing his own brand of electronic danger to the set. A nice way to end a day of musical overload.

Another amusing drinking session followed and then back to bed again. I'll write more about the final (and best) day of the festival a little later as this post is getting a little long.

Thanks Dan

2007-07-24T22:48:00.000+01:00

A short note here to say that four brief reviews of mine can be found in the new and possibly the final edition of ParisTransatlantic, which can be read here.

Whilst I can totally understand Dan's need to take a break from writing right now I'll miss PTA if it doesn't continue. Down the years its been a great source of info for me, and whilst I quite often disagree with Dan's musical opinions I envy his ability to listen to so much for so long with such passion and somehow put his thoughts into words for others to share.

Hopefully PTA will continue in some form or other, but if not cheers for all the hard work Dan.

Return of the stress-free blogger

2007-07-24T12:44:00.000+01:00

I returned last night from France, where I spent a week in the west of the country enjoying sunshine, great food, a relaxed way of life and some great music all in the company of some wonderful people. The experience was fantastic, and one I would not have been able to do if I hadn't chosen to take this break from work. I took in a good part of the NPAI Festival in Parthenay whilst there which included several really good performances including a stunning set from Keith Rowe and Toshimaru Nakamura. Thirty three minutes that made the trip well worth while alone.

More about the music in later posts, but I was very much taken with the slow pace of life and sense of local identity to be found in the area. Everything moved so much slower, and if people felt stressed in any way they certainly didn't show it. Shops opened and closed as and when they felt like it, seemingly immune to the need to maximise profits that the rest of the world is driven by. Every morning around between around eight and ten the inhabitants of every small town seem to make their way to the local boulangerie to buy a stick of bread, before walking back home again (usually very slowly). This practice seemed to be repeated identically at midday as people wandered out to find bread for lunch. Sitting having a coffee one lunchtime (and oh the coffee is good) in the ancient town of Clisson we watched people make their way around in this most inefficient yet somehow very admirable manner.

Clisson is a beautiful town ten miles of so from Nantes built around the ruins of an old chateau situated atop a hill. I took the photos in this post in Clisson whilst slowly burning in the sun in a none too healthy manner. Oddly Clisson also appears to be the venue for a heavy metal festival subtley titled Hellfest once a year.I really can't think of a less suitable venue for such an event, but it does amuse me to think that once back from the baker with their bread the locals sneak on a copy of Napalm Death's first album as they add cheese and whatever the correct wine may be for lunch.

Food is really important in France, and on the whole really good food too. Besides the exceptional meals cooked by my host Keith Rowe whilst I stayed with him a few days (if you think he makes good music you should try his quiche...!) I ate really well whilst over in France, and very cheaply too. One wander around the local hypermarket failed to produce any sign of Marmite however... Despite this one obvious error, food, wine and the correct use of both played a big part of life there. When I think of my eating lifestyle here, with at least three meals a week consisting of hastily thrown together unhealthy half-dinners or take-aways I feel a little embarrassed in comparison. Even the mobile kitchen meals served up at the festival were better than anything similar I've had before, serving up food I would personally have been proud to have made (although thats not actually saying much), and it must be said that improv festivals in the UK rarely get held in disused old farms in the middle of the countryside so the need for outdoor catering is quite small.

There is a real sense of placing location before anything in else in France. By this I mean that local traditions and ways of living are all very particular to the region you are in. Wine is considered by where the vineyard is situated rather than the type of grape for instance. Local cultures are deeply respected and preserved, people rarely move about between the small towns in the country. Building styles, and the colour of paint used for doors and window shutters tend to follow localised patterns, giving towns a real character, something we are rapidly losing over here. One of the big arguments in France right now centres around how the country could be left behind in Europe if it does not develop a cutting edge. Personally having spent just a few days there I think I know which way of life I would prefer, give me good food and a stress-free lifestyle any day. Not sure I'll ever work out the appeal of the Tour de France however...

Anyway enough of the geography lesson and apologies for the lack of musical content in this post. I certainly took in my fair share of music over there, both at the festival and also being educated by Keith, as we spent some time listening to everything from Brahms to country and western to some (pretty great) Argentinian tango music... fantastic times.

Big thanks are due to Keith for everything, and to Stephanie, Barney, Clem, Mati and Marmalade for making me feel very welcome.

Disappearing again

2007-07-12T15:19:00.000+01:00

Well I'm off wandering again for the next week or so. Fed up with all of the hassle involved with sorting myself out with a new job, Julie and I are heading for the New Forest tomorrow for a few days break away from music and away from the internet (that last break badly needed!) This last couple of weeks have really brought it home to me that sitting in front of a computer for half the day is seriously bad for your mental and physical health. It makes you grumpy and impatient and so an escape is needed.

I get back next Sunday night and will be about for one day before heading off again for a week in France. Whilst there I'll be catching the last three days of the NPAI Festival down in Partheny. The schedule for this great looking little fest can be found here.

There's quite a few sets there I am really looking forward to hearing. Alongside some really strong established groups such as Trio Sowari and Cranc and the latest chapter in the Rowe/Nakamura story i am very intrigued to hear the Sound Like Water quartet made up of Toshi Nakamura, Burkhard Beins, Lucio Capece and Rhodri Davies, a group with a dodgy band name but four fantastic musicians I am looking forward to hearing together.

Anghrad Davies solo should be great as well. i've not seen her play solo before so I'm intrigued to hear what she will do. Andy Guhl solo and Tony Buck solo are two other sets I'm interested to hear though I suspect there's as much chance I'll dislike them as much as there is I will enjoy them. Its this kind of set that make festivals so much fun though.

So if anyone else is going to be at the festival drop me a line beforehand, would be good to say hi. Otherwise I'm off to practice my 'O' Level French........ "Bonjour, est-ce que je peux prendre un sandwich à marmite s'il vous plait?"

Listen with your eyes

2007-07-10T19:47:00.000+01:00

I've never made it a secret that one very big reason I have for running my little CD label is so that I can design CD sleeves. Ironically there hasn't been a Cathnor sleeve yet that I have been completely happy with, but the act of responding to a piece of music with visual images is a very enjoyable and rewarding experience for me.

There are probably many ways to respond to music visually. More often than not I do not connect music to particular images straight away. What I do see however are colours and textures. I spent a few hours today playing about with some very early ideas for one of the next Cathnor releases. The music of this recording comes across to me in shades of deep purples (no, there's no axe solos there) with occasional flashes of bright orange and red. As it happens those colours will probably not appear in the design as they don't fit with the various ideas I am playing with, but they are definitely there for me as I listen to the music.

Textures are more obvious, easier to explain. Smooth sounds will appear shiny in my visual image, gritty sounds well, gritty. The colours I hear though are a more obscure and undoubtably very subjective phenomenon. Keith Rowe's recent masterpiece The Room for instance I hear in deep and dark crimson tones, possibly I am being influenced by these colours' appearance in the sleeve design that tips its hat deeply to Rothko, but maybe they would have been there anyway.

Another favourite of mine from this year, the Toshimaru Nakamura / Axel Dorner disc Vorhernach on Ftarri I hear in many shades of grey. I can virtually picture the music as sheets of textured grey sliding over each other, each a different tone, with some of the layers more transparent than others. The sleeve art to that disc though is bright turqouise and features a rather beautiful line drawing of a shark....

People process music in different ways I guess, but my listening experiences often have a visual element. I am often found with my eyes closed at concerts, a feature of my listening I have never fully understood, but perhaps this is to block out other visual stimuli, and experience the music as my brain would like to see it? Who knows.

I'm interested to hear if others see similar things in music or is it just me going slightly mad?

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By the way, if evidence was ever needed that this prolonged period of rest is turning me slightly senile... This picture of me was taken by Julie tonight, half an hour into our country stroll...

Bowing at the heartstrings...

2007-07-09T01:20:00.000+01:00

Whilst in Ireland, after reading some of my posts about my classical music investigations I was asked if I was beginning to recover some of my enjoyment of melody in music. Possibly this is the case, but I'd be more inclined right now to say that I am merely enjoying the passion that emanates from a strong, emotional performance of intelligent music, and for the first time in a few years I have opened my ears to really spend time with other musical genres than that which I devote most time to.

Its also very noticeable that as I've been able to spend a little time this year with knowledgeable people that I respect (something that is pretty hard to do generally here in deepest South Oxfordshire) then their recommendations will rub off on me. My recent investigations of Shostakovich for example comes directly from a Keith Rowe recommendation, and spending time with Paul in Dublin last week has only lengthened my list of music to try and check out.

This leads to Tommy Potts. I think I first heard Potts' album The Liffey Banks back in February when I went over to Dublin for The Sealed Knot gig. I know that in March this year I certainly heard it, in the same place, playing on David Lacey's stereo late at night after one or more of the i and e Festival shows. A large whiskey undoubtably helped my mood, but this music, this sole forlorn fiddle, played quietly in the room as we relaxed exhausted. I was captivated at the time by this album, and another by the Art Ensemble of Chicago that we listened to that night.

Subsequently I found the AEC disc, A Jackson in your house / Message to our folks, bought it and have enjoyed it, though not as much as I did that evening in good company fuelled by the latter stages of a bottle of 10 year Jamesons. The Tommy Potts record though I didn't look for. Not because I didn't ike it, but because I thought it was a long out of print release, as David played it on old well worn vinyl.

Unbeknown to anyone other than myself the record had preyed on my mind somewhat since then, and particularly recently as I have been enjoying such powerful, emotional music away from my usual musical comfort zones. When I left for Dublin last week I made a decision to get David to record me a copy of the album if after playing it I liked it as much, but when I mentioned this, to my great pleasure he informed me it was in print as a CD and available from Claddagh Records, a local traditional music shop that also put out the release.
So after another great evening slumped on David's sofa whiskey in hand and Potts lighting the room up in his own gentle fashion I went the next morning to Claddagh, a nice little shop staffed by a somewhat miserable gentleman, but I am pleased to say I came home from Dublin with a copy.

So what's all the fuss about, and does it still sound as good played here in suburban Home Counties England? Well to answer the second question yes it does... The Liffey banks is basically a 42 minute disc featuring 22 recordings of Potts performing his solo renditions of traditional Irish music. What lifts this disc so high for me is the deeply emotional playing, with Potts presenting his own take on the music, at once both raw, gritty performances and heartfelt sorrowful playing. This is basically one man and his simple instrument playing simple songs, yet there is such passion and feeling pouring from my speakers right now as the disc spins for the umpteenth time this week. I find The Liffey Banks best late in the evening, or right now at 2AM after a bottle of wine, played quietly, allowing the music to seep up from the corners of the room and get under your skin rather than blasting it loud.

Maybe this sounds like drunken nonsense from someone that can attain equal levels of enjoyment from the more ascetic corners of music's avant garde but its an honest response to what I think is a great piece of music. It doesn't surprise me to learn that Potts caused a considerable stir in the Irish music communities because his unorthodox, semi-improvised performances of the music broke the unwritten rules of the music. I hear on this CD a deeply honest and inspired musical voice.

The sleeve notes tell a tale of how Potts (who died in 1988 at the age of 76) would regularly come home in the evening to his Dublin house, and play alone in his sitting room until his tears kept him from going on. Need I say more?

Everyday life on the blog

2007-07-07T01:21:00.000+01:00

A quick plug for a new blog by my audition sparring partner and all round good egg Alastair Wilson. Commuted to Life consists of a photo and a brief paragraph posted every day that Al goes to work, the picture taken during the day, and the words full of his renowned dry wit.

I'm intrigued as to how long Al keeps this going. His journey to "work" is not the most exciting in the world so it'll be interesting to see what develops and how he continues to find insight in the everyday mundanity of commuting life. (By the way, I put the work "work" in inverted commas as Alastair is in fact a civil servant, so its not really real work as most of us know it ;) )
Its also very interesting to compare his carefully selected photos with the choices of music he makes every day for his journey. Quite often his choice of photograph is tasteful and subtley elegant, a beautiful reflection of inner city life... his musical choices however merely reflect his musical taste ;)

You can follow his progress here
Nice one Al!

Home from the Emerald Isle

2007-07-06T22:28:00.000+01:00

So I got home yesterday after a great few days in Dublin, my third trip there in five months. Only the one gig to go and see on this trip, a quartet of Angharad Davies, David Lacey, Lee Patterson and Paul Vogel, but more than anything I went for the break and good company, spending three days in total in ireland at a relaxed pace. We ate well, drank well and had a fine time all round, with the highlight being the concert at the Goethe Institute on Tuesday night. I find it hard to write in detail about the music, partly as I've already discussed it with the musicians, but it was made up of two very different sets, each benefitting from two long days recording in the studio beforehand.

The first set was made up of a series of sections where the quartet split into duos and trios, with a lot of space and room in the music, individual sounds clearly defined with the smaller groupings naturally evolving and changing rather than following any predetermined structure. Paul Vogel played clarinet alone throughout this set, before moving to computer, field recordings and his now trademark glass vase held over upturned speakers for the second set. Lee Patterson worked with a stripped back set-up from the one I saw him use just a week or so ago, with some of the more familiar items on his table left behind at home. This deliberate attempt to change things resulted in a quieter, more reflective and very impressive performance from Lee, with his input pinned back to occasional sounds rather than the layered textures of other performances. It also meant he managed to pack up his table in under three hours, a quite remarkable feat for Lee. David Lacey and Angharad Davies were also both on good form and the quartet sounded like a group that had really begun to gel well together over the past few days.

Lacey and Vogel know each other very well, having played together often for a good few years now. The rich understanding of their musical relationship shone through in two places in particular Tuesday night. The first came during the first set when Paul pressed the bell of his clarinet against the surface of Lacey's snare drum as he played, with Lacey adding weights to the surface of the drum to change the vibrations produced by Vogel's playing from time to time. Later near the end of the second set, which had an overall fuller, denser sound Vogel unexpectedly introduced a recording of Lacey playing in exactly the same manner he was at that point in the performance, but taken from a recording made a couple of days earlier, causing the percussionist to effectively play in collaboration with himself. Vogel also brought into the performance the sounds from the street outside via a mic sat at the window, and also left a pair of headphones amongst the audience, through which he played barely discernable field recordings, adding an extra dimension to the performance.

One theme of the performance was how the four musicians interchanged their sounds, mimicking each other at times, and in other places sounds heard earlier in the performance reappearing, sometimes coming from a different musician on each occasion. The second set ended stunningly, with a softly played rhythmic tapping from Angharad's violin reappearing from beneath Vogel's recording of Lacey, Lacey himself, and a beautiful soft ebow tone from Patterson, with each of the musicians dropping out from around the violin, with Angharad slowly reducing the tempo and volume of her playing.

Hmmm, and there was me thinking I couldn't write much about this concert! A great set in a nice venue, highly enjoyable.

I stayed with Paul whilst in Dublin, who looked after me beautifully as ever, this time feeding me with an endless supply of classical music recommendations that I tried to seek out in Dublin's not so great music shops with partial success. Mahler, Bach, Shostakovich and Bartok were added to the pile of classical discs I have to listen to now, more about these in a later post. Another great disc I purchased is by the late Irish traditional fiddle player Tommy Potts. The Liffey Banks is a CD that had soundtracked some late night whiskey sessions at David's house on my last visit to Dublin and had stayed in my thoughts this visit, so I am pleased to track it down. Again, more on this disc in a later post, but as I type this late at night its raw emotional beauty is drifting about the room around me, almost bringing a little bit of Dublin back with me...

We ate well, investigating Japanese, Chinese and Italian restaurants over the three nights, and on the Wednesday, after Lee and Angharad had gone home and the stress of their organising the concert had passed, David and Paul took me out by train to the nearby coastal town of Dun Laoghaire where we spent the day wandering the shore, walking out onto the two now disused piers on a windy, but otherwise beautiful day. Whilst we were there many children could be seen being supervised in various boating activities, and the following day as I flew home I heard that a freak period of high winds had resulted in 110 of these children being swept out to sea the next morning where they were fortunately all rescued in a massive emergency services operation. Seems we chose the right day to go for our walk.

A big thanks to Paul, Miso, David, Clionna (spelling?! sorry!) Lee, Angharad, Dennis et al for another great time in a beautiful welcoming city (and I don't care what you say, I still find it welcoming ;)

Some of my photos of the trip can be found here

Fergus Kelly's excellent pictures of the event can be found here from which the pic above of me watching the show is extracted.

Escape to the Emerald Isle

2007-07-01T22:36:00.000+01:00

Well tomorrow, as long as the currently pretty hysterical situation at UK airports doesn't get in the way I am going to pop over to Dublin again. (third time this year, is it obvious I like the place yet?) Although there is a concert happening, (David Lacey, Paul Vogel, Angharad Davies and Lee Patterson at the Goethe Institute) I am going for the break more than anything, staying with Paul and looking forward to spending a little time in really good company. Back late on Thursday.

Decent Exposures

2007-07-01T19:59:00.001+01:00

Posting this month's photo just below made me think about how much time I've spent lately browsing through Flickr, the photography showcase website. Just as the digital age has changed how people can access music forever, broadband internet services and the proliferation of digital cameras has done the same for photography. In a similar way to other media storage sites like Myspace or YouTube, Flickr seems to have cornered a market despite not really offering that much different to other sites. If they haven't already I guess they'll sell out to Google or Rupert Murdoch soon, but for now if you're willing to put the time in digging it out there's a wealth of great photography shared at Flickr.

The way I pick my way through Flickr is to find a photographer I like and look at his list of "favourite" other pics on Flickr and follow the links to other likeminded artists' photostreams. If you have even the slightest interest in photography this can lead to many hours digging and delving, so be warned...

The pic to the right is mine, but here are just some of the Flickr pages I've enjoyed recently:

Tashland
Fergus Kelly's "Dead" Collections
+Fatman+
Smoking Drum.
Daddy W
Chambe Noire
Johanna's Hackney pics

and these are just individual photographers, there are groupsand sets of similar photos to wade through as well.

I'm interested in links to other Flickr pages anyone can recommend...

Photo of the Month No.4

2007-07-01T19:53:00.000+01:00

Blue and white fairly lights hanging in a tree late in the evening. Taken with a slow shutter speed on the South Bank, London.

Reviews Elsewhere

2007-07-01T18:39:00.003+01:00

A list of reviews I've written (and will admit to writing!) that have appeared elsewhere at other sites

CD Reviews

Los Glissandinos - Stand Clear. Bagatellen, July 2005.
The Scotch of St. James - Live at AMPLIFY 2004: Addition. Bagatellen, August 2005..
Sabine Ercklentz - Steinschlag. ParisTransatlantic January 2007..
Radu Malfatti - B-boim 1-12. ParisTransatlantic, April 2007.
Axel Dörner, Toshimaru Nakamura - Vorhernach, ParisTransatlantic, July 2007.
phono_phono - phono_phono, ParisTransatlantic, July 2007.
Ellen Fullman, Sean Meehan - s/t, ParisTransatlantic, July 2007.
Klaus Lang - einfalt.stille, ParisTransatlantic, July 2007.
Mitsuhiro Yoshimura, Taku Sugimoto - Not BGM and so on. Bagatellen, November 2007.
Angharad Davies, Tisha Mukarji - Endspace, Bagatellen January 2008.
Jez riley French - Field Recordings Vol.21 / Generator Pieces 2727807, Bagatellen January 2008.
Mattin - Broken Subject, Bagatellen January 2008.
Radu Malfatti - Claude Lorrain 1 / Kid Ailack 5, Bagatellen January 2008.
Tandem Electrics - Intaglio, Bagatellen February 2008.
Kevin Parks, Joe Foster - Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt, Bagatellen March 2008.

Concert Reviews

Erstquake 2 Festival, New York. Bagatellen, November 2005..
Erstquake 3 Festival, New York, ParisTransatlantic November 2006..
LMC Festival 2006, London. ParisTransatlantic February 2007..
i and e Festival 2006, Dublin. ParisTransatlantic February 2007..