Two from Marginal Frequency

Sandy Ewen & Chase Gardiner

Transfusion

USA  Marginal Frequency  MFCD B  CD  (2018)

An interesting pairing here, from the consistently excellent Marginal Frequency imprint run by Laminal Audio’s A. F. Jones out of Kitsap County, Washington USA.  Sandy Ewen is described as “an experimental guitarist, artist and architect” whose playing is “centred around found objects and extended guitar techniques”, while Chase Gardner “is an artist with a focus on exploring the abstract elements of art in order to express his personality and ideas”.  The music they present here is extremely well-presented as you would expect from a Marginal Frequency release and has a close-up, surgical focus I particularly enjoy in material derived from prepared instruments.  These are very brutish - in a good way - and upfront guitar extrapolations featuring lots of interesting techniques not least of which is a process Gardiner describes as “divided pickup”.  Are we to assume a physically divided guitar pickup?  Divided how, I wonder?  Physically by splitting the output of said pickup or by making two movable pickups or theoretically - by way of separate EQ-ing, perhaps?  Intriguing, but no further explanation.  Perhaps none is needed.

Interestingly, Ewen spent much of 2017 performing solo sets and in collaboration with Steve Jansen (tapes and electronics) and Maria Chavez (turntables) around Europe – Chavez is performing in the UK in the early part of 2019 I believe – while in 2018, she performed at the Sant'anna Arresi Jazz Festival, Experimental Sound Studio Option Series and the High Zero Festival.  There is also evidence of a performance with Keith Rowe and Damon Smith from 2012 on YouTube.  Gardner is involved in a variety of different projects such as his experimental music duo with Adriana Valls, Cut Shutters and appears to be involved in various North Texas-based improvised music ensembles.

Transfusion is a compelling document of these two artists’ current practice.  Certainly the sounds they have developed for this album are very curious; there is an emphasis on a percussive approach as well as the generation of unusual timbres, particularly on “Molded”, for example.  There is a sense of urgency as well, which I like; the pace is set pretty quick from the outset but despite this, there are no lulls in the performances, no surfacing for air.  They take their feet off the gas briefly during “Sync” but even then, they demonstrate an intensity of action with even the slightest movements and adjustments.  Mastered by the afore-mentioned A.F. Jones at Laminal Audio.

  

Howard Stelzer

Across the Blazer

USA  Marginal Frequency  MFCD C  CD  (2018)

Howard Stelzer is an artist whose palette is almost entirely made up of domestic tape machines.  The way he employs those devices, for me, give an overall effect that is rather like the sound your ears make when you are underwater.  In other words, you are still hearing the world around you, going about its business as usual, coexisting blithely as it always does, but with a big, dense filter getting in between, clouding your perceptions.  It’s a comforting filter, almost imperceptible, momentarily cloaking and protecting you from your surroundings; hiding your existence in time and place, but with the unspoken threat of unintentional harm; the element of surprise – forget not to breath and you’ll be thrust back into the open in a violent and sudden explosion of panic…

You may also be familiar with the label Intransitive which Stelzer ran from 1997 through to 2012.  The Intransitive back catalogue features many big names in the “experimental” arena; Roel Meelkop, Richard Chartier, Jim Haynes, C. Spencer Yeh, Kapotte Musiek, and many others.  Stelzer himself has worked with Vic Rawlings, Jason Talbot, Frans de Waard, John Hegre, Jazzkammer and David Payne.  Stelzer’s pivotal solo release seems to be 2008’s Bond Inlets, which Stelzer himself refers to as “my first artistically successful proper album after numerous false starts.”

Here, the first piece, “Selective Memory (You Never Know Absolutely Quite Where You Are)” presents a broad range of tape detritus from channel-tuning television static to a distant thunderstorm heard through earplugs.  Relax, as all our changes are smoothly transitioning.  It could be that we are hearing sounds of tape itself, or the mechanisms of various machines, or sound recorded onto tape in certain and multifarious lo-fi ways.  Either way, a good way to unwind at the end of a stressful day.

The second of the two pieces is “Across the Blazer”.  What is this “blazer” I wonder?  Possibly complex distilled strings with a classic crescendo model in terms of dynamic, additive composition.  I found it less obviously relaxing than “Selective Memory…”; its dynamic alone ramps up the anxiety, even before the amplified distorted driven-into-the-red bell chimes make an appearance but composed as it is from the sharpened essence of brittle shards of orchestral strings, the overall sonic effect is harrowing.  My new favourite bedtime listening.

http://margfreq.laminalaudio.com/

Duets with Blanca Regina

Various

Duets with Blanca Regina. SPONTANEOUS MUSIC

UK  Unpredictable Series  no number  CD / DL  (2018)

A video artist and lecturer by profession, also “…involved in creating audio-visual performances, sound works, multimedia installations, photography and book arts…”; in this project, improvisor Blanca Regina brings a different facet of her musical practice to each duet.  Sometimes she utilizes her voice, sometimes instruments or objects, sometimes software, sometimes combinations.  With the exception of the inclusion of a live performance with Wade Matthews in Madrid, these recordings were made in a London studio by Syd Kemp, (who I believe at the time of writing is gainfully employed as bassist with Ulrika Spacek), this year, all in one summer day.  As Blanca points out in the notes for this release, there is “…a strong tradition of free improvisation (or spontaneous music) for which London is renowned throughout the world…”  Indeed, the title itself makes reference to the late great John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME).  In Trevor Barre’s overviews of the London Free Improvisation scene in the 60s/70s, Plink Plonk and Scratch, and Covergences, Divergences and Affinities, the SME were a key grouping along and sometimes overlapping with AMM and Derek Bailey and his Incus label – players who came to be known as the “first generation London improvisors”.  Those with an interest in this area should peruse Trevor’s works and also David Toop’s excellent recent book, Into The Maelstrom and Brian Olewnick’s new biography of Keith Rowe to get a nice rounded overview of the scene.

It’s a nice idea for an album; Blanca chooses other Londoners with whom to collaborate, friends as well as fellow musicians, no doubt, such is the nature of London’s improvising scene; a small – although much bigger now than it has ever been - friendly and supportive community of like-minded practitioners.  She possesses a strong voice and is clearly as familiar and comfortable with traditional song form as she is with extended technique and improvising freely.  On “Elrington” where she duets with long-time collaborator Steve Beresford, she extemporises in an almost Kurt Weill-ian manner while simultaneously rippling and squashing her vocals in real time through the processing software on her trusty laptop.  There is a playful use of a tape-speed effect on “Lavender”, for example; the first of two pieces with saxophonist John Butcher.  Another long-term collaborator is Matthias Kispert, and on “Wilton”, they produce a very intense experience; close-mic’ed, claustrophobic, intense, familiar…

Blanca has collaborated with John Burton aka Leafcutter John since 2013 as far as I’m aware, and they certainly produce an intricate and effective piece in “Nayim”, as you might expect from a five-plus year working relationship.  Keyboard-type sounds are detourned by John while Blanca repurposes a variety of sound-making objects, thumb piano, whisks(?!,) and wordless, cocktail-jazz vocal irony.

“Penpoll” is a detourned torch song of sorts thanks to the pop-classicist in pianist Jack Goldstein, while on “Forest” Hyelim Kim plays Taegūm; a “large bamboo transverse flute used in traditional Korean music”.  Limpid, restrained, flowing, like a really great acupuncture session or an Indian head massage.  “Pitwell” teams Blanca with fellow vocal improviser Sharon Gal; both musicians playing to their strengths and on “Navarino”, Aneek Thapar gets powerful tones from a Bechstein grand using only a handheld fan.

Other tracks feature violinist Benedict Taylor, whom I know from his involvement with Carousel Collective and the Brighton improvisors Thomas Mindhouse, Wade Matthews, where Matthews’ electronics/software produce a Pointillist, conversational approach and glassy electronic tones.

As the sleeve-notes state, Blanca’s “…presence on each track gives the resulting recording a unity…”

A lot more can be gleaned from Pierrre Bouvier Patron’s short film about the session, here:

https://vimeo.com/291279150

http://www.unpredictable.info/

Jason Kahn - Circle

Jason Kahn

Circle

AUSTRIA  Editions  008  DL  (2018)

Voice and resonator guitar from the prolific US-born Zürich-dweller.  But if you’re expecting something like Charlie Parr, you should probably look away now.  Neither is this project bathed in sepia-toned cod-“authenticity”, thankfully.  For those not familiar with Kahn’s activities over the last twenty years or so, his recorded output has most often been concerned with field recordings and associated recording techniques.  He began his music career as a drummer, spent many years practicing improvisation and making field recordings while simultaneously developing his art practice, but more recently has toured using analogue synthesiser, or voice.  (STOP PRESS! I’ve just seen a short film on social media promoting Jason’s current duo with guitarist Beat Keller wherein Jason is perched behind a drum kit!  You heard it here first!)  I attended a recent duo performance with Jason in vocal-only mode in collaboration with master percussionist Christian Wolfarth last year which was absolutely breathtaking, if you’ll excuse the pun.

“Circle_1” is cranking away nicely until at 7 and a half minutes, Kahn’s voice begins to sound like static.  It’s unique, I think, in the field of vocal improvisors; at least I’ve not heard anything quite like it before.  It’s my favourite sound Kahn makes, I think.  On “Circle_2”, his vocal shifts pitch and key; exploring microtones.  Quieter, beautiful.  For me, the beginning of “Circle_3” creates a desolate atmosphere not unlike Nico’s Desertshore.  In mood - not sound or instrumentation, but mood.  This may or may not intend to denote a similar kind of disconnection or disunity with ones surrounding or situation.

On “Circle_4”, “Circle_5” and “Circle_6” I particularly noticed that Kahn plays his Resonator guitar with a slide.  Probably these pieces are the nearest to a “traditional” approach; or at least, the tradition can be heard in Kahn’s playing.  A sharecropper’s blues lament abstracted through the 21^st century mind-set prism.  You could almost say it could be an emotional tribute to musicians like Tampa Red and Son House.  “Circle_6” is actually the last piece of recording from this session at Zürich’s Kunstraum Walcheturm arts space.  Kahn utilises the natural reverb of the hall with his skilful microphone placement really nicely.

Kahn talks about Circle in this way: “…Guitar was actually my first instrument, a few years prior to beginning music in earnest on drum set. Returning to the guitar after all these years is in a sense coming full circle for me over my musical lifetime of forty years.”

All six tracks have a duration of between nine and ten minutes, so at nearly an hour of material, there’s plenty to get immersed in.  Kahn is as rigorously experimental, perhaps searching is a better word, as is usual on Circles so it’s best to get comfortable and treat this album as an intimate concert in your own front room.  I would have liked to set this album in some kind of context and mention certain other experimental musicians known for utilizing Resonator guitar.  But outside of Sherry Ostapovich, whose superb album The Red Thumb was released under the name Musicforone back in 2008, there aren’t many other avant-resonatorists, at least that I’m aware of.  BJ Cole has used one, I’m led to believe, when he isn’t playing pedal steel.  So, it seems here, Jason Kahn is currently working in a very small field.  Not a bad place to be.  As with all of Kahn’s endeavours, this one rewards careful listening.

https://jasonkahn.bandcamp.com/album/circle

Rapt

Rapt

Rapt

UK  Self-released / Bandcamp 008  DL  (2018)

Brighton Books closed this month.  Hot on the heels of other Brighton institutions such as record shops Borderline and Rounder.  Sticky Mike’s and The Haunt are next.

Before there was Greggs, there was Forfars.  Before there was Graze, there was Real Food Direct and Infinity Foods.  Before Terre à Terre, there was Food for Friends.  Before the Vans Store there was Vegetarian Shoes.  The Eagle was the Eagle, then it wasn’t; now it is again.  Before there was The Eagle, there was the Basketmakers Arms.  Long before Phoenix Residents Association there was The Freebutt.  Before Brighton Pier there was the West Pier and look what happened to that.

Food for Friends abides.  Vegetarian Shoes abides.  Infinity Foods abides.  The Basketmakers Arms abides.  Before the Gladstone there was the Kenny.  Before the Kenny there was The Eagle.  The Prince Albert abides.  Jump The Gun abides.  The Cowley abides.  The Verdict abides.  At The Coachhouse abides.  The Metway abides.  The Fish Brothers abide…probably.  The Labour Party Conference, Sussex Heights, St Peter’s Church, that weeping silver lime tree in Queen’s Park…

I’d like to think that they’ll still abide long after all the Great Escapes, Moshimos, Nero’s, Costa’s, Gresham Blake’s, The Ivy’s franchises and FatFace have all gone.

Before Rapt, there were any number of electronic process/drone-based projects and after Rapt there will be any number more.  “Inspired by music concrete/insomnia/thought loops.  'Rapt' is the product of a search for mental headspace and the desire for a world to get lost in.”  Rapt is the alias of Jacob Ware, a Brighton-based mastering engineer.  His stated influences are “…Wolfgang Voight, Brian Eno, William Basinski, Magnus Alexanderson, David Toop, Phillip Glass, Arvo Part…”  You will hear the Basinski and Voight influences straight away.  This is GAS without Voight’s beautiful aimlessness and nostalgia; Alexanderson without the rigour; Disintegration Loops without the ennui.  An ocean of sound set to the ubiquitous 4/4 beat.  A monumental piece of sound engineering, Ware’s warm production creates an environment I didn’t want to leave.  Five tracks, all seemingly derived from the same sources, considered very differently; simply titled as Roman numerals.  Pressure builds.  Like emerging from the darkness of the labyrinth of Knossos, into the clear bright light of a southern European mountainside, the weighty synth pads of Rapt will cleanse your mind and your soul.  Particularly in the early hours of the average Sunday morning.  It’s a clear day, there’s no clouds in the sky and the sea and the coast seem within easy reach of a day’s walk.  Have fun.

https://rapt.bandcamp.com/releases

a pair from Infrequency Editions

Lance Austin Olsen and Jamie Drouin have been releasing interesting artefacts on their Infrequency Editions imprint for a fair while now.  At the time of writing, there are twenty-eight releases available via the Infrequency Bandcamp account, mainly the work of Messrs Drouin and Olsen, but also with items by Johnny Chang, Sabine Vogel, Thomas Anfield, Yann Novak, Jeffrey Allport & Chandan Narayan.  Infrequency concerns itself with “…new forms of electroacoustic improvisation and documents of conceptual sound installations”.  This Canadian imprint was established in British Columbia in 2001 “…as a platform for artists to experiment with sound…” and “…focuses on new forms of electroacoustic improvisation and documents of conceptual sound installations.”

Lance Austin Olsen has represented Canada in a number of biennials with his large-scale painting and drawings.  Also in 2018, Dark Heart was released on Another Timbre featuring three of Olsen’s scores realised by Apartment House, Terje Paulsen, Ryoko Akama, Katelyn Clark, Isiah Ceccarelli and Patrick Farmer, plus Olsen himself performs a score by Gil Sanson.

Jamie Drouin describes himself as an “…electronic sound composer and visual artist”.  His minimalist works highlight the unique perceptual experiences which can emerge from reduced palettes, and the confluence of tones over time.”  Drouin has collaborated with several international artists, including projects with Christian Weber, Lucio Capece, Crys Cole, Olaf Hochherz, Karl Kliem, Hannes Lingens, Yann Novak, Mathieu Ruhlmann, and Sabine Vogel.  Also worth a mention is the Simon Reynell-organised concert recently immortalised on disc by Mikroton; The Holy Quintet featuring Drouin along with Johnny Chang, Dom Lash, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga and David Ryan.

Jamie Drouin

Paysage

CANADA  Infrequency Editions  no number  CD-R  (2018)

A drone work, of sorts.  Different elements arrive and depart, ebb and flow, come and go in this single 40 minute piece.  With this kind of “constructed” work, I often find myself trying to imagine how the piece was built.  A clue is given on the inside of the sleeve; “recorded and composed between 2005-2009”.  So, Drouin made the recordings before he composed the piece.  .  Drouin himself describes the piece thus; “Paysage is an album of several viewpoints upon an ever shifting landscape – an ‘exquisite corpse’ of sounds which combine in the listener’s mind to form a singular experience of a place.”

Aside from the omnipresent sine tones associated with any synthesiser system, Drouin coaxes some very untypical sounds from his “traditional Moog-style 5U modular” analogue synthesiser.  Gaseous bass-heavy drones, static-y growling, choral whines, hollow tube-like, voltage hum, heavy electrical devices being switched on and off, a waterfall…  Over my shoulder, in the kitchen, the refrigerator is failing; loudly grumbling away to itself for the last four days as I wait for the repair man.  In combination with playback of Paysage, this is the first time I’ve been able to bear it.

At 10 minutes, the piece becomes a kind of slowed down Morse code message, although the transmission of a message like “JOQ90” repeated is unlikely to be deliberate on Drouin’s part, and reflects only my own obsession with looking for hidden meaning in the unlikeliest of places

At several points, the bass information induces rattling activities of objects in the room, which puts me in mind of David Velez’ excellent Unaware from 2015, whose stated purpose was to set up an orchestra of noises derived from the contents of the listener’s space through sound waves when played over domestic hi-fi speakers.  At 27 minutes a series of short hits of bassy static, becoming overlaid.  A propulsive drone paired with drip-like sounds emerges only to be subsumed by a spiky return of the object-rattling bass artefacts, reducing the heat toward the very end.  A grey cloud passes overhead without precipitation.  This is an environment you inhabit.

Lance Austin Olsen

Plato’s Cave

CANADA  Infrequency Editions  no number  CD-R  (2018)

Lance Austin Olsen is a painter who also operates in sound.  On this single piece of music, he presents an intriguing artefact - you could almost describe it as a picture rendered into sound.  The piece consists of a series of interesting bumps and crashes as if the artist recorded himself dropping things while moving around his studio one morning.    Perhaps unsurprisingly, being a painter, Olsen carefully presents the sounds of things you would expect to find in an artist’s studio; paintbrushes stored in tin cans, the ironwork innards of an old upright piano.  A flash of tremelo’d guitar one minute; a minute later Olsen plucks a curtailed staccato out of one of the bassier piano strings.

Olsen supplies the following to put the work in context:

“The philosopher Plato posited that, a person chained inside a cave, and unable to see the outside, would formulate their ideas of the physical world based on the shadows projected onto the cave walls.  To a large extent, our individual views on almost everything are based upon shadows and fragments, and each of us constructs a world to our own liking based on the same fragments, yet experienced in endlessly new combinations.  Each moment, or grouping of sounds in a performance, creates a visual map in our mind that would bear no resemblance to the map produced in another listener’s mind. The performance is being experienced in the form of audio shadows, filtered through that individual’s particular life and viewpoint.”

Glassy synthetic washes are gradually introduced.  Seasons change, spiders build their cobwebs in the corners of the studio, life goes on.  Olsen paints.  The piece is dynamic and robust.   At 26 minutes I was left wanting more, but Olsen is prolific and there is plenty more work to explore.

http://infrequency.org/

Rhizomes four

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.

http://rhizome-s.blogspot.com/

Distant Animals - Lines

Distant Animals

Lines

SWITZERLAND  Hallow Ground  HG1804  LP  (2018)

New work from the UK-based composer Daniel Alexander Hignell.  There is a previous collaborative album, Bambi with Hákarl under his own name on dsic’s LF Records from 2012, where the drones and distant, distressed vocals were underscored with reverberation and ghostly drum machines; Hignell’s machinations more understated, existing as an environment for Hákarl’s violin to manoeuvre within.  As good as Bambi is, a lot of time separates these two releases, and Lines should be seen for what it is perhaps intended to represent; a starting point of Hignell’s art practice proper.  It takes the form of two pieces of music, each around 17 minutes in duration.  The press release suggests the influence of La Monte Young, Morton Feldman, Eleh, and Mauricio Kagel in Hignell’s work.  It goes on to describe the work thus: “Inspired by a 130 page text-score, and performed upon a modular synthesizer, the work explores participatory approaches to performance, utilising text that leads its performer to undertake emergent and evolutionary changes in timbre and rhythm over extended time periods.”  There is also reference to other aspects of Hignell’s activities; performance/participatory works in particular; in a nutshell – regarding this work specifically - I’d say where side A is about the drone, side B concerns itself with analysis and deconstruction of noise musics.

Side A is A Pure Drone.  Like a cloud of a thousand passenger jets flying overhead simultaneously.  Hignell employs a dense overlaying of sounds to form the drone; quite unlike Eleh’s more recent, singular investigations into the sonic possibilities of electrical currents.  The opening and closing of potentiometers and the fine adjustment of rotary controls becoming more and less raucous over time.  Heavy.  Ideal for kicking off your mid-week psychological excursions.

Side B is named Lines Made By Walking.  Drone plus abrasion?  Subsonic and multi-layered.  A more “composerly” dynamic.  But lighter than A Pure Drone, somehow.  More of a “composition” in the layman’s eyes, perhaps.  The greater variance of sounds; a wider palette, although not that much wider – we’re still barely out of monochrome and considering a trip to L. Cornellissen.  Pitch elements emerge from the fog, reminiscent (to me) of Kaleidophon:’s late 90’s White Dwarf.  There’s immense power here.  The breakdown into ambient hum halfway creates the perfect environment for the loud, bell-like shards of crystal that announce the maelstrom of the second half of the piece.  Even here, buried just behind each façade are unexpected references; techno/rave at 10:20, albeit very briefly; the tone generators of Wendy Carlos a minute later…

Sometimes, it seems to me that we are running back towards obsolescence as fast as we can with our arms open wide ready to desperately embrace aging machinery and formats; analogue synths, reel-to-reel and cassette tape, for example.  But we are optimistically wanting to wring the last, untapped crumbs of beauty out of them before it’s all over for good.  For me, Lines is an exemplary example of this.  Recommended.

www.hallowground.com