Sarah Hennies and
Tim Feeney
Nests
PORTUGAL Rhizome.s # 20 cd-r
2018
Composed and performed by Sarah Hennies and Tim
Feeney. Recorded by Matthew
Saccuccimorano at Silo City, Buffalo, NY
August 2016.
An hour of languorous threading together of signal and
silence; repeated motifs overlaid against a patchwork of rests. The signal is reminiscent of droplets, but
could be in actuality generated in many different ways – perhaps woodblock
hits, or using toneblocks, or claves; even a Max/MSP patch or similar designed
for this specific purpose? Maybe we’ll
never know. There is the occasional
variance in pitch, so there’s clearly more than one of the thing the artists
are using to facilitate the piece; and reverberation and what could be heavy EQ-ing
or filtering of some sort is used at certain points. Gaps of silence are also employed at critical
intervals, seemingly of progressively longer duration.
You’ll need the time to commit to it, but given an
appropriate degree of concentration it gives results. I like it.
A sensitive, sensational appraisal of sound.
Dante Boon
Dusseldorf Recital
PORTUGAL Rhizome.s # 21 cd-r
2018
Known as a composer in his own right and a skilled
interpreter of contemporary piano music, Dante Boon presents his 2016 piano
recital at Jazz-Schmiede in Dusseldorf, which was part of Klangraum 2016. The concert recording was edited and mastered
by the authoritative hand of Bruno Duplant.
A beautiful hour of music. Not the most maximalist of chosen material, but
perhaps this is to be expected from a member of the Wandelweiser collective. In fact, Boon steers clear of anything too “experimental”
in his selections; these pieces by Coleman Zurkowski, Gil Sansón,
Anastassis Phillippakopoulos, Eva-Maria Houben, Assaf Gidron and Jack Callahan all
take a fairly orthodox approach to piano, albeit as orthodox as Wandelweiser
gets. The Wandelweiser link continues: Phillippakopoulos
and Houben are also members; Gil Sanson’s Untitled
(for Antoine Beuger) is dedicated to the Wandelweiser composer. Boon’s selection of the running order of the material
is effective, keeping an interesting flow and dynamic to his performance as a
whole. For sake of clarity and thoroughness,
here is the full repertoire:
Die von Blumen
reich ich dir (2013) by Coleman Zurkowski
Untitled (for
Antoine Beuger) (2015) by Gil Sansón
Piano Piece (2016)
by Anastassis Phillippakopoulos
Lose verbunden
(2014) by Eva-Maria Houben
Dim (2014/2016)
by Assaf Gidron
Blue Dream Excerpt
with Proportional Ending (2016) by Jack Callahan
Overall, highly enjoyable - this is a disc I keep
returning to.
affinities selectives
volume 1
PORTUGAL Rhizome.s # 22 cd-r
2018
Two live recordings on this disc. The first four tracks are from a session featuring Gaudenz Badrutt, Ilia Belorukov and Alexander Markvart titled “back-feeder
i-iv”. The beginning of this is
brilliant – it is mastered brutally loud so that you don’t miss a single
decibel of the abrasive feedback artefacts on offer; the kind of abrasive
feedback artefacts usually found in an inexperienced teenaged bands’ rehearsal
space between songs. However, if you’re a
fan of, say, Seth Cooke’s process works or Henrik Rylander’s feedback obsessions,
you are in for a treat.
Aside from a dash of radio, the sounds are characterized
by commonly-perceived “mistakes” and “errors” in standard methods of sound
reproduction. Pops, static, blasts of
electrical noise, stirrups, jumps, clones, piaffes, contact, no-contact,
engagement, flying change, half-pass, leg yield, on and back, piaffe,
pirouette, shoulder fore, shoulder in, travers, turn-on-the-forehand and so
forth, and in abundance.
For the detail-obsessed among us, Gaudenz Badrutt is
credited with “acoustic sound sources” and live sampling; Ilia Belorukov alto
saxophone, electronics, field recordings and samples and Alexander Markvart on
prepared acoustic guitar, guitar combo and objects. Recorded march 2016 at espace libre,
biel/bienne, Switzerland.
Track five is a piece called “gezeugt” or “Begotten”;
recorded at Le Non Lieu in Roubaix, France; this group comprises Quentin
Conrate on percussion, Matthieu le Brun on alto saxophone and electronics, Anne-Laure
Pudbut on tapes and electroacoustic devices and Frédéric Tentelier on organ and
electroacoustic devices. This second
grouping produces one single piece of music of a kind of desiccated drone; it
sheds its dried outer layers of sound like an aural confetti. Most pleasant, and a good complement to “back-feeder i-iv”.
Morgan
Evans-Weiler
Iterations and
Environments
PORTUGAL Rhizome.s # 23 cd-r
2018
Two pieces on offer here;
“Iterations” - spiralling cascades of violin; like a
drone heard by the unwary, but focus in and the strings fold over each other
like a murmuration of starlings or a particularly active beehive. Like when you are grinding coffee and you
watch the beans fall over themselves in slow motion into the vortex, slowly becoming
smaller and smaller particles. There’s a
gradual decay to the middle section of the piece, not unlike how the spin of that
fresh cup of coffee slows down its revolving after you finish stirring it, the
cluster of bubbles marking time as you eventually come to your senses before
leaving the house for work.
and
“Environments III” - here Evans-Weiler uses “electronics”
– no further detail – to produce waves of bass-heavy pure tone and occasional ear
motes in the higher registers, while accompanied by Emilio Carlos Gonzalez on
piano. Interestingly, I think I can still
hear violin-like sounds from time to time, which I presume is courtesy of
Evans-Weiler’s set-up.
Compared to Iterations,
there is far less turmoil over the course of this shorter piece, although the
intensity is ramped up toward the end of the piece by subtle shifts of pressure
in the bass information.
Morgan Evans-Weiler has previously worked with the likes
of Seth Cluett, Sarah Hennies, Ryoko Akama, Antoine Beuger and is director of
the Ordinary Affects ensemble who, interestingly, have premiered works by
Wandelweiser composers Jürg Frey, Antoine Beuger and Michael Pisaro.
