Touching Extremes Archives 2001-2008

Reviews from E to K

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EAGLE KEYS - Eagle Keys (Even Stilte)

Eagle Keys are Francisco Meirino (aka Phroq) on computer and "acoustics", and Tim Olive on electric bass. While I'm familiar enough with the latter's work and enjoyed his Supernatural Hot Rug And Not Used records with Nisikawa Bunsho quite a lot, this is my first approach to Meirino - unbelievably, one would say, since he's released over 30 albums in various formats, working "on the tension between programmed and accidental results". Introduced by the fabulous artwork of Marc Bell, the CD is riveting all the way, presenting loads of miasmatic drones and knotted contortions that spell "freedom" without the need of a programmatic manifesto. For large portions of the first track, Olive seems to be the motor after a series of impenetrable hums - often graduating to "impressive rumbles" - that create substrata over which Meirino clatters, chatters, wheels and deals, his riposte to his companion's calmness an ever-dangerous, lucid destruction of conventional codes that maintains a firm stranglehold on our aesthetic desires. At the same time, we're left contemplating finely chiseled sonic tissue and sparkling details, a testimony to the extreme care put by these musicians in their cultivated articulations; the jangling low-resonance string layers in the final section are a thing of beauty, propagations recalling motor airplanes in the sky before a massacre of Merzbow-like noise discharges. The same hypnotic mantle wraps the beginning of the second part, deranged music boxes and bell clocks lodged in what sounds like distorted shortwave to determine once and for all our extraneousness in a conversation that is as subliminal as bodily. Piercing high frequencies and half-discreet interference put a worn-out cloth on a subterranean pulse, then we're back to desolation all over again, the final ten minutes of the album reminding of how charming ugliness can be, if only observed by a different perspective.

MATTHEW EARLE / WILL GUTHRIE / ADAM SUSSMANN - Bridges (Antboy)

"Bridges" is made of resonance, strange invading frequencies and semi-sparkling, fetching hypnotic daydreams. Its 37 minutes are enough to daze you, stuck in front of your monitors trying to figure out why you left that transistor radio on in the other room; of course, there's nothing except your personal aural mirages. The sound never becomes daunting, tending instead to deactivate most of your defenses even when maintaining a light touch of venom, just adding to the overall subtlety. Earle's underspoken electronics, Sussmann's zinging pinches and Guthrie's use of abnormalities in his self-made world of percussives take no heed of conventions: they stamp their feet deeply in the ground thanks to this stunning murmur of radioactive quagmires that will be repeatedly enjoyed by every electro-static lover.

EARZUMBA - Hermoso movimiento/Florece escondido (Dialsinfin)

Christian "C.D." Dergarabedian, sound artist from Argentina also known as Earzumba and founder member of much hyped (and a little overestimated) Reynols, was kind enough to submit this impressive record which, I tell you, is truly involving and full of emotionally charged moments. Fusing two complete albums on a single disc, Earzumba is at home with surprising schizophrenic atmospheres; it can start from the mutilation of a rhumba to proceed through shadowy nebulous post-dark low freequency loops, to give finally place to concrete/field recordings of natural elements. While Christian is always balanced between a keen sense of humour and an almost sad outlook on certain aspects of his musical microcosmos, I'm sincerely struck by his audio collaging capacities and pretty enthusiast about his approach to an art that's very difficult to master correctly. This release makes a person listen attentively and think for a while when it's over; that means we're in presence of excellence.

EARZUMBA - Simulando un refugio (Old Gold)

Finding a definition or a niche for Earzumba's abstractions is not easy: "Simulando un refugio" is yet another collection of improvisations and juxtapositions sounding at the same time celestially absurd and totally unironical. The often surprising chains of events set in motion by Barcelona-based Argentine Christian Dergarabedian create instant apprehension, curiosity for future underground activities, resurrection of dead sensitiveness; in a few words, Earzumba discards the easy ways through the confused mind of a superficial listener, forcing the attention on those details which seem futile but constitute instead the missing link to coherence. Looking into the trashcans of audio rejections Dergarabedian, with effortless acumen, knits and seams engrossing parallel worlds of sonic mayhem and delicious instability of our auditive mechanics.

EARZUMBA - Cuccioli incatenati (AAB)

Christian Dergarabedian was asked to contribute to a project involving seven artists in various fields, who had to "react" in their own way to a series of gifts they reciprocally received from the others. In Earzumba's case, the stymulus produced a CD EP containing brief audio pictures ranging from light electronic hypnosis, to a strange homemade funky, passing through distorted guitar chords, tons of sampled voices (both regular and slowed/accelerated) and a final meditation for superimposed harmonicas. Funny stuff, not deep as usual, but with the same enthusiastic vibe by the Argentinian, here sounding like a hyped kid in his room with dozens of instruments, a 4-track and a whole weekend in front of him to record every bizarre idea.

EARZUMBA - Bestia infernal (Dialsinfin)

This is probably one of Christian Dergarabedian’s best albums to date, if not THE best, presenting his greatly enjoyable, truly “delihilarious” work with samples and cut’n’paste in the first half and an engrossing exploration of the low realms of “cosmic vibration” in the very last track, which is a 30-minute live performance. A pretty strange thing that occurred to me is that - as it often happens in the back of one’s mind - these days I was repeatedly thinking of Billy Joel’s “Just the way you are”, without apparent reason. Then I put this disc in the player and - bang! - it begins with the massacre of that very song. This was enough of a signal for me, and the best was yet to come: bone-wrenching lunatic blues, Latin folk songs shredded into small pieces, a fantastic nightmare of loops based on David Bowie’s “Let’s dance” and a track full of James Brown-meets-heavy-metal-singer screams which is absolutely energetic. There’s also a piece which juxtaposes snippets of lounge music, minus the body of the song (example: the band leader’s count going straight into the final chord, with consequent audience applause, or a single piano note saluted by more enthusiasm…you get the picture, a wonderful idea). The fascinating final trip, 30 minutes of entrancing low-frequency radiation, shows how Earzumba is at total ease with this kind of sonic scenario, too. I still wonder why Reynols’ output is more considered than its single components’; listening to this and other Earzumba albums (and also to the solo works by Anla Courtis) is really a greater pleasure - and C.D. should be much less an underground phenomenon than a well known talent, which he certainly deserves to be. Maybe he prefers that way?

EARZUMBA - Real ruido pastizo (Editions Zero)

More sonic deconstruction by Earzumba, whose style does not require a rocket scientist to be decoded, all the while guaranteeing a lot of fun in his sampladelia world of broken illusions and harsh realities. "Real ruido pastizo" is another pretty short bulletin of disjointed beats, distorted television and disassembled instrumental parts, which in the hands of Dergarabedian lose their apparent discontinuity to become a whole mass of ambiguity covered with the dirt of a real life whose snippets are there to be observed bit by bit but never entirely, in order for us to keep the certainty of failure at a safe distance. "Failure", taken in the mechanical acceptation of the term, is a good starting point to describe what Earzumba presents through his machines, which include "key sampler, harmonica, cintas y maus". Sounds that are not supposed to work together, yet unquestionably do, incessantly, unpredictably, with that touch of naïveté typical of this man. This very earnestness in depicting scenes that could be defined as "normal", but become instead the representation of a fractured truth is - together with a thorough unpretentiousness - what makes this and other releases by C.D. always welcome on this desk.

MAX EASTLEY / GRAHAM HALLIWELL / EVAN PARKER / MARK WASTELL - A life saved by a spider and two doves (Another Timbre)

These three improvisations were recorded at the Church of St. James The Great (North London), a venue whose mystical quietness seems to actively contribute to the lesson in restraint that the music appears to teach. It remains to be seen if there are enough alumni to learn, though, as it’s next to impossible finding an equal balance - let alone a superior one - in such a mixed-media kind of quartet, furthermore captured here during their very first encounter. Luckily, they decided to go on from then, and are currently active as a more or less definitive entity. Two voices are instantly recognizable: Parker, his soprano saxophone locating the environmental sweet spots in consecutive phraseologies that abandon typically reiterative outbursts in favour of delicate snippets of bird-like expressiveness, and Wastell’s tam-tam which materializes in rarefied moments, emerging from the background with the silent authority of a monk to assure everybody that a cosmologic order is going to be respected any time. The remaining gradations - Eastley’s electro acoustic monochord and Halliwell’s computer and electronics - are not so easily attributable, constituting the element of utter suspension that positively characterizes the most fascinating segments. In particular, on top of everything, the fabulous final minutes of “The chessboard cherry tree” where a minimal fluttering is the basis of a spellbinding alien counterpoint, the lot following an undercurrent of unidentified nervous satisfaction, the listener unaware of what’s really happening yet ready to accept all consequences. An album that leaves speechless for a long time after its conclusion, leaving us to ponder about the following move, both in the artists’ career and in our own life.

JOHN ECKHARDT - Xylobiont (Psi)

Enlightened double bassists such as Stefano Scodanibbio, Jöelle Léandre, Mark Dresser and Christian Weber have been unceasingly revealing the massive potential of an extremely difficult sonic tool, which in the hands of a technically advanced perceptive soloist can repay any effort with flashes of stunningly irrational beauty. With “Xylobiont” - a neologism for “organism of wood” according to Richard Barrett’s liners - John Eckhardt formally asks to be included in the pantheon of new music’s solo performers, not without a reason. For starters, the instrumental competence shown in these eight pieces by the Hamburg resident is nothing short of awesome, his curriculum portraying him as a teammate of important chamber groups (Klangforum Vienna, Musikfabrik NRW, Ensemble Intégrales to name but three) and a composer interested in the interrelations between dissimilar artistic forms and genres, including drum’n’bass (!). Still, no written explanation will get you prepared for the tremendous incisiveness of Eckhardt’s razor-sharp playing, which lays a hand on numerous facets of present-day creativity without losing an ounce of clear-headedness. Indeed what the bassist does best is finding a spot on the instrument and probing it up to the perfect combination of cyclical particles, incessant repetitions and choral prosperity that, quite often, places the results in districts adjacent to minimalism. An ideal exemplification in that sense is “Noo Bag”, where Eckhardt applies a continuous rebounding of the bow on the strings in the under-the-bridge region, extrapolating tiny notes and muffled partials that remind of intrinsic micro-cellular activities. Elsewhere, as in “Filum”, he executes a series of movements on an isolated string, generating surges of resonant incidents and minute linear units through the different positioning of the arco. Although declaring himself a jazz player in the depth of the spirit, the severe essentiality of Eckhardt’s concept makes him look like a contemplating being rather than a swinging lost soul. “Xylobiont” is unquestionably a major statement, a proclamation of existence for an extraordinarily accomplished virtuoso performer.

HARRIS EISENSTADT - The all seeing eye + Octets (Poo-Bah)

Composer and drummer Harris Eisenstadt has been recently featured in many amongst the most satisfying jazz-oriented projects on the U.S scene, and this record confirms that his young age - he was born in 1975 - belies his flourishing maturity as a composer and arranger. One of Eisenstadt's main influences is Wayne Shorter's "The all seeing eye", thus he decided to pay homage to that album with a new version "by re-imagining it with new forms and different instrumentation", assembling an impressive group of musicians including Chris Dingman (vibraphone), Andrew Pask and Brian Walsh (both on clarinet and bass clarinet), Daniel Rosenboom (trumpet), Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon), Scott Walton (contrabass). Eisenstadt reports that his intention was to create something like "open-ended chamber music with grooves" (which he beautifully achieves in "Face of the deep", featuring a splendid solo by Schoenbeck) but the result is unquestionably jazz of the finest blend, with the right amount of time and space given to all the performers to shine, inventively executed themes and a rhythm section where the leader and Walton fuse their multiple-idiom knowledge to create a basis for the smooth resolution of any inconvenience that might have happened, and of course didn't. Exploiting the potential of his partners in full, Eisenstadt decided to put reduced versions of his large ensemble pieces "Without roots" and "What we were told" to tape in the same day. Here they're presented in forms of octets conducted by Marc Lowenstein and played by the same musicians, with Aaron Smith as a second trumpet. The first is a semi-tonal contrapuntal network without loci classici of sorts, "non cantabile" for its large part but still containing a few unballasted riffs and improvisations that could put feet in motion, provided that you're familiar with odd metres. Instead, the fifteen minutes plus of the second octet sound like if the pages of the score had been scattered around by the wind, found after a long search and hastily positioned in a different order, which produced a better music than the original. Here, too, Eisenstadt's command of sonic languages runs parallel to the methods that he applies to deliver them from the locks of commonplace, his snappy drumming adding meaty substance to an already robust piece which oddly ends with the most memorizable (so to speak) melodies of the whole CD.

MAX EASTLEY / MICHAEL PRIME - Hydrophony for Dagon (Absurd)

This haunting music was recorded in 1996 at "The Four Elements", SKRAEP Copenhagen. Every sound was generated underwater by an array of instruments including hydroarcs, bubble machine, tubing, fans, motors, tapes and objects. Coherently with their work, which many times has employed water as means or texture, Eastley and Prime develop a convincing narrative whose obscurity is made desirable by a challenging exploitation of aquatic reverberations and refractions. This means that we're neither in presence of a soundtrack for a dolphin exhibition, nor ambient music for swimming pools; try instead to conjure up images of an Organum/Noise-Maker's Fifes hybrid whose clothes are slowly washed by a humongous machine that puts us in a suspended state through its monotonous cycles of deep regurgitations. Never intimidating, rather comfortable, this womb of gurgles is nicely balanced between abstraction and tangibleness, which results in a very appreciable release.

JULIUS EASTMAN - Unjust malaise (New World)

Thanks to the hard-headed commitment of composer Mary Jane Leach, who spent seven years in search of recorded and written material about his old comrade, we have now the chance to unveil the lost treasure that is the music by Julius Eastman, a black gay artist whose scores belong for the large part to the post-minimalist area (even if the opening track "Stay on it" dates from 1973, well before several masterpieces by Reich, Glass and Riley). Eastman was a deeply inquisitive man with a strong political conscience fueling a "chip-on-the-shoulder" attitude towards the musical establishment, whose members often considered him as "outrageous", which was barely acceptable at that time. It is safe to assume that his life was destroyed by the lack of recognition for his art: Eastman could not accept that such a great talent lacked public appreciation and dissipated his being until he died homeless in 1990, less than 50 years old, this 3-CD set being the very first release presenting him as a composer. The first disc contains the above mentioned "Stay on it", a truly great piece based on an obsessive cadenza alternated with improvised sections, that reaches its deepest level in its final part, where a well-perceivable irony leaves room to a reflective "rallentando" over pretty sad chords, developing a mournful atmosphere which already gained a high spot in my own graduatory of emotional minimalism; somehow, I associated this section to Gavin Bryars' melancholically beautiful "Hommages". The nicely titled "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is a chromatic study for large ensemble, pretty hard for the uninitiated even if its architecture is perfectly detailed and comprehensible. "Prelude to the holy presence of Joan D'Arc" finds Julius in a vibrant solo voice performance which makes us clear why he admired Meredith Monk (he sang in "Dolmen music" and "Turtle dreams") while the main section of the piece, scored for ten cellos, is an incredibly modern vision where a dissonant chain of repetitive figurations mix Led Zeppelin, Bela Bartok, Tony Conrad while predating Mikel Rouse and Andrew Poppy - but it's unquestionably Eastman in his unique rhythmical/contrapuntal perception. The same insight moves the last works found here - divided onto the second and third disc - meaning the pieces for multiple pianos: "Gay guerilla" is an eight-handed creature whose lyricism spans through constantly morphing harmonies installed on a semi-spiral form reminding of Simeon Ten Holt's ever-lasting piano cavalcades, only with more refined systems of chordal multiplication. "Evil nigger" is a propulsive series of rainbow arcs whose ends fall into raging tonal phenomena and melting dissonant ambiguities, its driving pulse affirming it as the most energetically intense composition in the whole set. "Crazy nigger", the longest one here, alternates delicate raindrops with vehement redundancy, its passionate character mixing "traditional" minimalism and more uncontrollable tendencies to the disgregation of tonality. In various moments of this collection I clearly felt the pure desperation of a strained will force; no words or notes could help this man to break free from the mental prison which is injustice, the very same evil force deciding that mediocrities become rich and famous, while fiery intelligencies like Julius Eastman's remain a mystery for decades. With the release of "Unjust malaise", a deserving soul is not unknown anymore. Let's just hope he can smile, now.

E.C.F.A. QUARTET - Die Mitte (Lenka Lente)

Tenor saxophonist Carl Smith's E.C.F.A. collective came to my attention in 2005 thanks to their excellent "Die Fäden", which is now followed by an equally intense chapter. Reportedly influenced by "late 90s free jazz in NYC, free improvisation and modern compositional techniques and traditional jazz", this music resplends of intelligence and heart applied without inhibitions to every single note played. The emphatic phrasing of the Carl Smith/Holland Hopson sax tandem is obviously a strong point of the group, but it is the fine contrapuntal texture between the reeds and James Alexander's entangling viola that renders all pieces appreciable both by "jazz" audiences and aficionados of the "new thing" - whatever that means. Jason Friedrich's variegated drumming sustains the rhythm and contributes to the visceral feeling of the whole, a mixture of maturity and genuine productivity which affirms this beautiful Texan ensemble's unique vision.

E.C.F.A. TRIO - Die Fäden (Pecan Crazy)

Emanation, Creation, Formation, Action - currently a quintet led by saxophonist Carl Smith - are here featured as a trio, with Jason Friederich (drums) and James Alexander (viola). The record is full of compositional excellence and improvisations based on restraint more than raging - and often meaningless - outbursts; themes and sketches are intelligently developed, not without a sense of humour, while the intercommunication among the musicians is one of the finest I've heard in recent jazz-and-beyond explorations. The coupling of viola and sax is consistently anti-metaphoric, elegantly fleshy, as Alexander and Smith work wonders understanding reciprocal directions without even thinking about their position. Friedrich sustains the rhythmic picture all alone, contributing with his own eclectic palette, underlining and stroking with utmost artistic education and gentle perspicacity. Alex Coke lends a fabulous flute in "3 eggs", a piece that somehow reminds me of early Curlew. This is music for connoisseurs.

EDDIE THE RAT - Drop me off in Denpasar (Comfort Stand)

Active since 2000 and led by Peter Martin, Eddie The Rat is an avantgarde music collective that has been featured on Negativland's Seeland label and is now at its fourth release. "Drop me off at Denpasar" is a 5-part composition lasting about 17 minutes, influenced by Balinese gamelan structures but with a strange ironical twist. Martin states that the piece originally took form from a series of exercises he wrote for his finger independence; he then glued some of them together in order to create a "real" score. Two pianos, drums and homemade percussion (played by Martin, Ches Smith, Dan Ake and Bianca Austin) constitute the skeleton of a lovely mixture of intersecting patterns and repetitive rhythms which sound like a small orchestra of puppets playing tiny instruments with enthusiastic sapience. Strange, curious, enjoyable music in every aspect.

EDDIE THE RAT - Once around the butterfly bush (Edgetone)

"Music made of wood, wind and wire", played by Dan Ake (lobro, spike, 2x6), Ronnie Camaro (bass, vocals), Peter J. Martin (piano, cajon & bass drum with left & right foot respectively, vocals, balinese gangsa, long-boy, proto) and Molly Tascone (vocals, recorder, glockenspiel, steel drum, triangle). You can see for yourselves that this is not a rock group. "Once around the butterfly bush" is indeed a pseudo-Partchian structure, at times sounding like a strange kind of operetta, wholly based on the superimposition of polyrhythms and whose Indonesian influence and bastard minimalist complexion evolves until, in certain circumstances, we're treated to complex arrangements recalling entities like early 5 UU's and Motor Totemist Guild. Eddie The Rat highlight a sort of atavistic dependence on beat, here eviscerated in multiple ways without becoming a reason to overlook the compositional aspect. The unusual orchestration, which mixes the dynamics of a gamelan and the nervousness of avant rock, contributes to our embarassment in finding a starting point for definitions. Pulse rules, and everything follows accordingly; patterns that could be considered as ancient are modified in new combinations and meanings, while the piece's overall architecture makes sure that room for improvisation is more or less inexistent. At the same time, the vocal arrangements mesh the luxurious and the primal in surprising mixtures. Like the interlocking figures that animate this score, we can treat "Once around the butterfly bush" like a rough kind of mandala, noticing its single geometric shapes until the picture is complete.

JOHN EDWARDS / MARK SANDERS - Nisus duets (Emanem)

It would be easy to define this music as "gesture/texture". A duo of percussion and acoustic bass, as rightly told by Martin Davidson in the booklet notes, is almost entirely uncommon outside the usual "rhythm section" concept. Instead, Edwards and Sanders paint, construct, choose ways to play the very guts of their instruments that are absolutely new to ears; of course, prevailing timbral shades tend towards low, a rumble here, some tremor there... everything goes to achieve the best result: string plucking, grunting arco, a multi-dimensional drumming approach. But what actually must be observed and enjoyed in "Nisus duets" is the almost theatrical value of a simple instant decision, that note which is there because it has to be, without thinking too much about the reason, instead imagining a fitting choreography to this strange, introverted, untranslatable train of thought by John and Mark - two masters of their craft, if you ask me.

EFTUS SPECTUN - The tocks clicking (Public Eyesore)

Only 25 minutes, but almost perfect. A typical Public Eyesore chemical solution of craziness and geniality, this time illuminated by a well-developed technical expertise. Uncontrollable tempos alimenting skeletal arpeggios and dissonant riffs, played with thorough knowledge of the fretboard and without fussiness of sorts. A lot of different instruments appear in the mix, including what sounds like very cheap ones. Both the sounds and the (splendid!) babbling are clearly influenced by Captain Beefheart in my humble opinion (circa “Doc at the radar station”, maybe?); remaining in that zone, Zoogz Rift could also be a good comparison, yet Eftun Spectun are instrumentally more disciplined. In a word, these guys can really play - that’s what gives this music its value, together with a pungent irony (fabulous mellifluous-to-crooning vocals, but try to intone those intervallic jumps yourselves: not easy for sure). All the tracks are short and sharp, often ending inside a minute, except “Mullusc mollusc”, a description-defying, delirious studio monster lasting alone half the CD. Truly great stuff, quirky, intelligent, difficult and easily digestible at once.

EFTUS SPECTUN - The Talons Snag Binary (Void Of Ovals)

Fifteen minutes of improvised-with-discipline music by a group that doesn’t want to know of sounding sloppy, as already demonstrated in previous releases (check the archives). Acrid guitars - either jangling, saturated or just knocked - on a basis of semi-regular drums whose figurations are only partially trouble-free but always perfectly working, lots of breathing space left to the rest of the elements. Alternances between single hits and notes and jarring chords, with (rare) lunatic vocalizations for good measure. A sense of improbability defined by the permanent suspicion about what’s going to come after, abundant touches of ominous purposefulness that keep the overall level well over average and, in certain spots, near it to a worn-to-shreds excellence. These guys are seriously searching for new ways to express their vision, and mostly succeed.

EFZEG - Würm (Charhizma)

An electroacoustic quintet formed by Boris Hauf, Martin Siewert, Burkhard Stangl, Dieb 13 and Billy Roisz. Music full of enigmatic qualities and gentle curiosity, creeping around almost unnoticeably but manifesting itself very clearly. Sounds loaded with character, imposing themselves through softly radical contrasts - the gentle touch of guitars against sub-rumbling lows comes to mind. The musicians' commitment appears as strong as ever; sharing common knowledge and aims, the companions raise a freezing humidity that reveal feeble sunrays leading the path to awakened memories. Potentially, this album is a milestone and its excellence is ready to be enjoyed at first listen; surely it's one of the overall best Charhizma releases, mixing rigour and deliciousness.

EKKEHARD EHLERS - A life without fear (Staubgold)

One stumbles upon potential masterpieces almost by chance, but this time I must admit that the delay with which I came to this raw jewel is my exclusive fault, as I decided to give it a try after reading about it on various alternative sources. “A life without fear” is certainly a sleeper - and a keeper. Composed for "Lazarus Signs", a coreography by Christoph Winkler, it’s a very lively album of disembodied blues, not necessarily American style (even if there are a few magnificent sequences that seem to be taken from a distant past and inserted in Ehlers’ personal time capsule) and no-genre, reflective atmospheres that mutate into dissonant preoccupation (check out "Maria & Martha"). At various times, Ehlers (processing and amps) is flanked by Joseph Suchy (guitar, balafon), Franz Hautzinger (trumpet), Howard Katz Firehart (vocals, mouthharp) and Björn Gottstein (viola). The many different nuances of the leader's explorative manipulation elicit our visceral response only after a while, also because they almost sound ironic at a first listen. This music does not behave according to "canons" but looks for an aggregation point where all the confluences fuse in a single spiritual unit. The shining stars in this collection are many; my personal poor man's Grammy goes to the heartwarming “Misorodzi”, a beautiful balafon-based African song which shapes as a perfect fusion of political and religious consciousness even without definite words. But it’s just the way the whole record sounds that is definitely attractive: it's a homeless bastard that beats your heart remorselessly and, as a final touch, ends with an infinite loop transporting us into transcendental incoherence.

DIETRICH EICHMANN - Entre deux guerres (Oaksmus)

Composer and improviser Eichmann has kindly sent me a copious bunch of his recent and past releases, and I’m happy to report about them pretty regularly, since the man fathers music that is difficult, stimulating and provocative, often all of the above in a single outing. Such is the case of this “concerto for solo piano and fourteen instrumentalists”, where everything was carefully notated but I’ll be damned if these scores don’t sound like a complex collective improvisation, except for selected moments (for example pianist Christoph Grund’s soloist spots, which reveal him as a brilliant interpreter, very much in line with Eichmann’s score and intentions). The concert, of which the CD contains the première, was recorded in Karlsruhe on October 1999 and executed by the soloists of the SWR Symphony Orchestra conducted by David R.Coleman. Its concept is essentially based on the “beastly” characteristics of war, although detailing this without quoting large chunks of Harald Borges’ explicative notes would be too complicated for the scope of a review. Let’s just say that there is neither a “hook” or “refrain”, nor anything that could be memorized or instantly sung back. The aspects of Eichmann’s architecture range from bitter to violent: many bursts and explosions, scarcity of smooth sections (in any case scarred by acrid dissonances). A potentially unifying instrumental element may be Teodoro Anzellotti’s accordion, maybe the only fairly “static” presence in an otherwise perennially boiling cauldron, yet even that is soon swallowed by the general sense of barely repressed rage that the music seems to exalt. It’s an intriguing record that nevertheless won’t emerge as “appealing” after twenty tries. Certainly not for everyone, significant just the same.

DIETRICH EICHMANN ENSEMBLE - The hot days (Leo)

Instant creativity should ideally be observed while it happens, for no recorded medium is able to correctly reproduce the exchange of energies that occurs when high-calibre improvisers perform. Still, “The hot days” possesses the qualities of a live album while maintaining the essence of rare, pretty hard to delimit self-generated chamber music. The involved instrumentalists, featured in combinations ranging from duo to quintet, are Dietrich Eichmann (piano, harpsichord, bombarde), Gunnar Brandt-Sigurdsson (hearing aid, vocals, percussion), Michael Griener (drums, percussion), Chris Heenan (alto sax, contrabass clarinet), Alexander Frangenheim (double bass) and Christian Weber (double bass). No need to hide the truth: Eichmann’s procedures are complex, at times utterly impenetrable, mostly revolving around threatening silences only to explode in harsh outbursts and strident confrontations. The obscure crawl at the beginning of “The worm from the void” introduces a radical reshaping of an already bitter reality, dramatically underlined by the juxtaposition between the clarinet’s purring drone and the next-to-Armageddon intimidating mumble of the basses, here co-recruited to enforce the law of “no escape from the inevitable”. The initial “Sweets from above” and “Hot stuff” contain ironic exploitations of Sigurdsson’s electronics, a hearing aid becoming the means for duck-talking and compressed snorting, Eichmann hammering our stupefied reaction with clumsy dissonances produced on industrial scale. At almost 18 minutes, “Five star tragedy” is a histrionic piece where the immaculateness of the artist’s ideal is put through the ordeal, the musicians trying to reciprocally counterbalance despite a continuous push from those extraneous forces - the same ones that wrap superficial listeners with the “refusal of the atypical” cloth - that often define the exact junction point between experiment, constriction, emancipation and acceptance of the uneven, the latter being a major problem nowadays.

BRUCE EISENBEIL SEXTET - Inner constellation Volume One (Nemu)

In 2001, guitarist and composer Bruce Eisenbeil had a sort of epiphany while working in a 40-piece ensemble conducted by Cecil Taylor, feeling the urge to deepen his knowledge of Taylor’s sextet of the late 70s (Taylor plus Jimmy Lyons, Raphe Malik, Ramsey Ameen, Sirone and Ronald Shannon Jackson). Consequently he started writing himself for sextet, substituting the guitar to the piano, in search of that “development of individual voices in a clear democratic system” which he achieves through stratification-based (as opposed to imitation-based) counterpoint. Eisenbeil needed five fellow researchers in this venture, and he found them in Jean Cook (violin), Nate Wooley (trumpet), Aaron Ali Shaikh (alto sax), Tom Abbs (acoustic bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums). The 27 short movements of the title track, which took two years for Eisenbeil to complete, were composed by the guitarist through a computerized notation program, each musician learning the part by ear; he parallels the score to the image of stars in the sky at night, where everyone tries to figure out shapes and faces by virtually connecting the dots. On record, this results as a fertile ground of singular intuitions, reciprocal acceptance and ironic swing, often corroborated by thematic materials which somehow break the ever-mounting tension that the contrasting instrumental statements constantly ease. There’s a strong link to - get this - “traditional free jazz”, yet a name that crossed my mind at one point was Richard Woodson, another bright young man active on this scene whose compositional lucidity could probably be compared to Eisenbeil’s in more than one way. Still, the leader quotes people like Xenakis, Ligeti, Lachenmann, Ellington, Coltrane and Braxton among the many influences of “Inner constellation”, and who am I to dissent? Kudos also go to Wooley and Cook, who win my prize for the most interesting solos on offer, but believe me when I tell you that it’s the GROUP that burns - whichever way you try to handle it. It’s not over: as three is a perfect number - or so they say - the last three tracks are, you guessed it, trios; Eisenbeil, Abbs and Waits work at their acoustically-inspired best to picture wet dreams where Derek Bailey dances with Trilok Gurtu while listening to chanting shamans. The bassist and the drummer shine throughout these final ten minutes, Eisenbeil approving without interrupting their excitement, only reserving the final word to himself in the tranquil chordal shimmer of the very last song “Receding storm”. After “Carnival Skin”, another Bruce Eisenbeil must for those who are tired of eating “Autumn leaves” from the guts of corpses. This man here plays jazz with a Strat, you know.

EKG & GIUSEPPE IELASI - Group (Formed)

Mostly made of quietly unobtrusive concoctions of electronica and acoustic improvisation, "Group" sees Ernst Karel (trumpet, analog electronics), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn, analog electronics) and Giuseppe Ielasi (electric guitar, piano etc.) trying to locate invisible niches, in order to hide their timid inspections of vibration and hum right there, all the while working "in between" those zones where electroacoustic manipulation and quasi-biotic tranquillity are integrated in a coherent context. The qualities of the "regular" instruments are carefully put in reciprocal contact during short static contrapuntal segments, seemingly to represent a series of "stations" where the musicians gather to regroup and plan new theories for the exploitation of the concealed qualities of their sources. Yet it takes only a raise of the volume to bring out unexpected facets of deep resonance, riveting pulse and educated noise peeping at us behind an ever-lurking calmness. The "Providence-Middletown" track is my own highlight, with a splendid deformed cycle - about 2'30" into the piece - opening the heart and preparing the expectancy to being brutalized by distorted overacute frequencies and slightly unsettling vignettes meshing earthquake and contemplation; one detects an AMM-like spirit, also enhanced by a discreet radiophonic presence. Taken in the right frame of mind, this is a gorgeous release.

ELLENDE - Natto (The Locus of Assemblage)

Pretty mysterious atmospheres where slow currents and high-pitched electronics mesh in a future(less) view. Without sounding grating "Natto" evokes organic if imperturbable intelligence, like a system appearing perfectly self regulated with no space for any kind of insurgence. Ellende's mini CD is interesting throughout, with lots of anaesthetic vibrations to keep you snug and warm, but always with eyes open; it's music you can't stick an adjective on, well functioning and profound without being an exercise in pretentiousness.

LISLE ELLIS - Sucker punch requiem (Henceforth)

Bassist Lisle Ellis assembled a who’s who of sorts for this recording, which constitutes a personal homage to Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of his biggest influences. The names involved comprise Pamela Z (voice, electronics), Holly Hofmann (flutes), Oliver Lake (saxophones), George Lewis (trombone), Mike Wofford (piano) and Susie Ibarra (drums and percussion) besides Ellis himself, who also utilizes electronics and is credited with “sound design”. The music - initially modelled after the same structure of the Mass for the Dead of the Roman Catholic Church and subsequently modified by an “overwriting” process - is certainly conceived and played with class and knowledge, all the participants having been fitted in a role exclusively designed according to their creative character. The jumps between modern conceptions of jazz and “acousmatic” tracks full of concrete snippets, synthetic malformations and Pamela Z’s cut-up vocals are at times intriguing, often slightly displacing. For sure the composer wasn’t thinking about an “obedient” kind of score in the beginning; still, as the time flows the whole becomes a bit comfortable, losing the initial push to adapt a little more to conventionality, despite several sumptuous moments (in certain sections, “For blues and other spells” sounds like a mixture of Bacharach and Zappa). What largely defines the album is the functional interconnection of different instrumental voices, their personality adding depth to the pieces. An interesting concept, developed through intelligent ideas and with plenty of pleasant moments - yet somehow I perceive the target as partially missed.

ELOINE - Green stump (Unread)

Recorded in 2004, “Green stump” is another short and sweet presentation by one of Bryan Day’s many aliases. Five genderless improvisations, all of them sounding as if they were mostly played on homemade instruments, or cheap ones in any case. There are strings, blown tubes (I am a little hesitant in calling them “flutes”, although that might be the case), various kinds of percussion and whatever we can imagine in terms of “get what you want if you’re going to have fun while improvising”. The nice part of this is that the CD - similarly to every Eloine record that I’ve heard - doesn’t really sound like “fun”, at least not in the commonly intended meaning. A distinct scent of ritualistic gesture, facilitated by reiterative rhythms, is often perceptible amidst the apparent chaos; and even that mess seems to be born with an intrinsic logic. Music that meshes acoustic and electric purity in equal doses, perfectly acceptable as it is without tricks or elaborations. The brief duration makes the whole all the more welcome, pushing us to immediately restart the listening session as soon as the disc has finished its spinning.

ELOINE - Sagebrush / Deimos (Stentorian Tapes/Public Eyesore)

Bryan Day, label honcho and improvising artist, is among those individuals who leave the music do the talking. In fact, he often sends me handfuls of great releases under various monikers, Eloine being one of them, usually lacking press releases or letters. The problem is that the CDR edition analyzed here (dated 2005 but released in 2007) doesn’t feature notes, either - only the track names - so I’d have to guess that this is a reissue of materials previously published on cassette (OK, it is - I checked the website, heh heh). Despite the absence of information, these thirty minutes for strings, percussion, noises and heaven-knows-what-else are, again, great. Unusual brilliance springing out from everywhere, zings, scrapes, howls and slight returns contrasting any plausible insurgence by something remotely associable to a “pattern” or a “groove”. Bizarre mixtures of hyperactivity and somnolence (check “Cloudkiln, the”. What a title, huh?), distortion and controlled feedback taking command towards the end of the disc, the sensation of being caught between “stylistic islands” without having a clue of what this stuff is all about, frequent detuning of strings recalling antique Asian instruments. A lot of movement which, curiously, sounds fairly tranquil throughout. Undecipherable music, appealing all the way and - on top of that - sounding beautiful from the first second to the last. Who needs liners?

ELOINE - Short community (Digitalis Industries) 

Bryan Day, best known as founder of the perennially boiling Public Eyesore label and the mastermind behind the Eloine moniker, recently sent me a batch of releases where he’s involved as a player, and which I’ll be glad to report about in the upcoming issues of this webzine. “Short community” is an excellent introduction to Day’s improvisational methods, consisting of three lengthy segments in which he calmly deploys acoustic, electric and environmental sounds to create the equivalent of an aural Zen garden, but with a slightly deformed view of the objects comprised by the latter. “Bonanza illusion” is a perfect example, built as it is on the constant presence of a placidly plucked zither (or is it?) with minor intrusions and background noises. On the contrary, “Apples on a cutting board” is rather darkish, the acute frequencies leaving room to distant recollections of unquiet atmospheres where the manipulation of an electric guitar’s resonance generates a semi-ethereal concoction that moves the piece according to an unsteady, yet well-aimed intent. The initial “Dangling filaments” is developed over the sound of water à la Darren Tate and - differently from the rest of the album - is a little more variegated, boings and zings deriving from various sources to be fused with guitar and percussion in a peculiarly heartwarming kind of psychedelia. Remaining indecipherable enough, Eloine’s music is nevertheless a very welcome company whatever the occasion in which one enjoys it; in this writer’s opinion, it works the finest at low level in a tranquil setting.

EMBRACING THE GLASS / HASLAM - Split (Cohort) 

Here we go with another chapter of the Cohort saga of split releases. This time, we are travelling towards lands featuring pseudo-lysergic explorations of a few remote corners of the psyche and consonant (but still pretty powerful) synthesizer-based washes of sound. Embracing The Glass is the duo of Sean Carroll (guitar-controlled sounds) and Jeff Sampson (voice-controlled sounds), creating improvised tapestries that range from quasi-religious invocations born from crystalline chords and intense vocal humming to abstract paintings where everything becomes blurred, mostly dissonant, at times characterized by reiterated electronic cascades seemingly out of a Star Trek episode yet going much deeper instead. Although not describing myself as a regular consumer of this kind of music, I surely detect love, care and seriousness in Carroll and Sampson’s attitude, which means that I appreciated the track enough to like it, naïveté and all. Haslam (Byron Paladin) responds with three pieces that one can’t do better than keep playing as a nice everyday life soundtrack, since they’re too simple in terms of harmonic movement to stand there and analyze them with a microscope. Still, the pulses generated by Paladin’s reassuring synthetic waves are something that is felt as beneficial, never disturbing, and that’s certainly positive. Sure enough I prefer no-frills, if quite elementary stuff like this as opposed to being annoyed by someone who camouflages incompetence under a pretentious appearance.

EMERGENCY STRING QUINTET - On the corner (Market and Sixth) (Public Eyesore)

Recorded in San Francisco in 2001, here's one of the nicest string quintets I've ever heard. Jeff Hobbs and Kevin Van Yserloo (violins), Jonathan Fretheim (viola), Bob Marsh (cello) and Damon Smith (double bass) take the listener by the very ear and close him in a cellar where there are not many lights, just a lot of changes in mood and atmospheres. Emergency go from parallel glissando to scratching and hissing in a split second; they're capable of producing the most involving phrases - always firmly circumnavigating any consonance, of course - and letting you fall deep down in a cluster inferno. Also, the percussive aspect of their music is something you have to do with; some of their parts are not so far by Frank Zappa's music for strings contained on his "Yellow Shark", at least as a distant impression. This is a group putting Kronos Quartets and similar yuppies to sleep, once and for all.

EMITER.ARSZYN.GADOMSKI - 29/30.11.06 (Sqrt)

The quality of the proposals churned out by this Polish label never lies under the limits of decency; quite often, it tends to excellence. Furthermore, the targets to which this imprint aims are variegated and multi-faceted, ranging from EAI-derived improvisations to low-budget electronica and educated noise, but with a typically genuine attitude that distances these elucubrations from the rest of the productions in the same fields. Not necessarily for the better or worse: this is just diverse stuff and as such it must be appreciated. This album was born from a 2-day recording session at St.John’s church in Gdansk; the sounds were captured direct to DAT by two microphones, the result left unmixed. The musicians: Tomasz Gadomski and Krysztof Topolski are percussionists, Marcin Dymiter plays electric guitar. Other participants, heard softly in the background, were “workers renovating the church”. Music of frequently changing dynamics, spanning through AMM/Morphogenesis introversions, next-to-silence tasting of the thin air surrounding the players, sudden raging outbursts where the six strings are bent to the rules of full acidity, the appearance of a “sample-and-hold” device helpful in creating nervous loops that occupy long segments. The calmer traits of the trio’s complexion are the ones that I like best, though, and the final meditation for (I believe) steel drums and clean-toned guitar - a Reichian pattern that goes on and on, resonating deliciously - closes the CD in style.

ENCOMIAST - Mers de sommeil (Mystery Sea)

Encomiast is the "nom d'art" of Ross Hagen, who studies at Colorado College of Music, where the great Stephen Scott is one of the professors; I wonder if Hagen is somehow influenced by Scott's bowed piano compositions. Most of Encomiast's pieces move slowly in impressive unidentifiable harmonies, surrounded by obscure vapors of disorientation. In some of the parts, unrelenting waves of shifting low frequencies create a chordal comfort for the soul to abandon in ("Reef" and "A visible myth of origin" being the example AND the best overall tracks) while more disturbing currents of melting dissonances build an environment where doubts and anguish prevail, leaving the sonics suspended between foggy power and repetitive nonentities. It's for the most part an engrossing experience that highlights Hagen as an artist with solid fundamentals, which make the difference in his sound world's consistency.

ENCOMIAST - Havens (Crucial Bliss)

Don't let Megan Garland's initial flute evolutions fool you into thinking about some sort of improvised 20th-century chamber music: after a few moments, Ross Hagen's creature materializes to take you right into the glorious death of your senses in a furnace of gloomy dreams and textural oxidification. Reportedly generated by modifying the timbre of various sources (guitar, gamelan, shakuhachi, violin, vina, voice, flute and field recordings) until they become virtually unrecognizable, "Havens" is an enticing desolated landscape that brings right back to a time when this kind of music still had a meaning; Hagen explores the most obscure corners of those states of mind in which everything converges to a single desire, that of being completely alone in delusion. From a thick haze of condensed views, a giant wall of echoes from a visionary world slowly rises: their refractions are better enjoyed without headphones, in order to have your room's natural reverberation contributing to this evocative blur of removed - but still scary - memories.

LAWRENCE ENGLISH - For varying degrees of winter (Baskaru)

This CD has plenty of reasons to be appreciated at a first listen, and several ones that will make you return to it often. Despite its title, it is full of digital sounds and looping atmospheres that sound, well, warm, ever since the very first minutes of the initial "End game"; then again, its inherent movements make me think about the prolification of bacteria under experimental conditions, small cells and minuscule fragments continuously reproducing in a sloping luminescence of uncertainty and dejection. Never for a moment the laptop criteria applied by English generate that unwelcome sense of overwhelming detachment typical of this kind of records, all the frequencies acting like directional instruments rather than auricular weaponry. Most sources are barely identifiable and I much prefer that way, remaining in the limbo of alien chorales ("Fleck") and post-Thomas Köner degradation ("Swan", the highest point of the whole album). Should you need a genuine subsonic brain-bombing instead, look no further than "Desert road". Everything sounds familiar in a way, yet we often experience the same childhood feeling of being lost in a supermarket: lights, colours and faces a whole undifferentiated blur, while we anxiously wait for our mama to retrieve us. Less than 40 minutes long, "For varying degrees of winter" is almost perfect.

LAWRENCE ENGLISH - Kiri No Oto (Touch)

There’s a strange sensation in me after having spun “Kiri No Oto” for the third successive time and been somehow unable of breaking the cocoon of its buried secrets. If those secrets do exist, they’re barely discernible in the bulky amassing of mainly distorted frequencies characterizing the music. At the end, this writer even speculates about the original plan as being exactly that: no actual access to the quintessence of the sonic matter. The album title - something like “the sound of fog” from Japanese - also seems to be revelatory in that sense, which is in effect a contradiction in terms. The eight tracks are seamed uninterruptedly, as in a single piece; the sources include both normal instruments (definitely guitars, one would say) and field recordings captured in Poland, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. There are, in truth, a couple of dramatically stunning moments, the transition from “Organs lost at sea” to “Soft fuse” a personal favourite; breathtaking stuff indeed. The rest is predominantly spinning around that sort of harmonically cuddling saturated dispersion that could be, perchance, pretty warmly welcomed by fans of Birchville Cat Motel (minus the aggressiveness: the majority of the substance here tends in any case to rippled stasis, vu-meters on red or not). The choice of bathing the compositions in such a pool of corrosive liquids translates into a total incompatibility (at least for my taste) with headphone listening. Jury still out, but English’s earnestness is not debatable.

LAWRENCE ENGLISH / JEPH JERMAN - Lawrence English / Jeph Jerman (Compost And Height)

First episode for a label founded by Patrick Farmer and Sarah Hughes, aiming to focus “upon our responses to the surrounding environment and the development of awareness”. This 3-inch CD comes attached to a small wooden block, a limited edition of 50 copies (all the titles found on the label’s website are downloadable for free, though) and contains two pieces, both meticulous enough in their respective fields. Lawrence English’s “Gradually you feel the tide at your neck” is a sonic picture of what he calls “the grain of the ocean”, a sound deriving from the coupling of a fierce marine wash and the diverse kinds of sand - from very thin particles to bigger fragments - characterizing the Australian beaches. The outcome is akin to a series of muffled inward gurgles breaking silence up, plus other assorted turbulences, not exactly innovative (at times they recall damaged vinyl) yet successful in symbolizing the researcher’s effort, rendered all the more complicated by the raging waters. Jeph Jerman’s piece “9” is an interesting combination of “recordings of meteorites, sferics and radio emissions from Saturn” influenced by the concept of a hypothetical station broadcasting sounds from space 24/7, the whole originated by Jerman’s reminiscence about his continuous watching of a NASA cable TV channel while residing in Tucson. Aesthetically satisfying, maybe slightly elusive compared to English’s track, bizarrely resembled in a few spots. In general a nice artefact, more a collector’s item than a “can’t miss” release.

ENSEMBLE 0 - Music of wheel (Creative Sources)

"Music of wheel" is a composition by Joël Merah, in which the performers should follow "a course generated and determined by the tossing of the dice which decide and direct the musician towards the action of silence or the action of sound". Thus, different interpretations yield music completely new each time in a style that, generally speaking, should remain "soft" according to the originator. The quartet is formed by Merah (piano, toy), Sylvain Chauveau (electric guitar, toy), Maitane Sebastian (cello, toy) and Stéphane Garin (trombone, glockenspiel, cymbal, toy). It goes without saying that there is an obvious point of reference in this kind of approach to chance composition, and I won't even name it; on the other hand, a distinct Feldmanesque trait is clearly audible throughout the disc, which presents six extracts from the three versions that Ensemble 0 recorded in the studio. Given the above mentioned conditions, the sounds seem to respect silence all the way; after the rolling of the dice, clearly audible at various times during the piece, we get long pauses, rarefied shadows and elongated tones whose frailty is much more than a sheer nod to that kind of meditative concentration that this music requires and quite often generates. Every gesture seems to imply something deeply necessary, but we can't really understand what it is. Nevertheless, the picture of seriousness resulting from these tracks remains bright and pretty easy to decode, making this album one of the most accessible releases by the Portuguese label.

HANNES ENZLBERGER - My dear Ferenc! (Löwenhertz)

Franz Léhar was a "celebrated operetta composer who failed as an opera composer" whose music has deeply affected Austrian double bassist Enzlberger, prompting him to record a program dedicated to his work. Celebrated or not, I had never heard a note of Léhar's music until today; now, thanks to Enzlberger - who has been a member of Anthony Braxton's Tricentric Ensemble among other projects - my ignorance about the subject is at least partially diminished, even if the cover says "All compositions Hannes Enzlberger". Oh well... Scored for a quartet that includes the leader plus Thomas Berghammer (trumpet, flugelhorn, altohorn), Petra Ackermann (viola) and Oskar Aichinger (piano), "My dear Ferenc!" is an elegant album appreciable under several points of view, played in extreme composure yet not exceedingly formal. Parts of this material could be defined "chamber jazz", since the classic approach of Ackermann's viola and Aichinger's piano, which move in accordance to something that's silently intended to be precisely predetermined, contrasts in fascinating ways with the improvisational techniques deployed by Berghammer, who sounds a bit like the "wild card" of the group. On his side, Enzlberger figures as a tranquil supervisor dictating the music's pace while keeping a steady pulse under the musicians' feet. Although the compositions are for the large part exquisitely comprehensible even in their most dissonant sections, not once we experience that kind of tediousness which is typical of a too intellectual approach. On the contrary - between a touch of mysterious sensuality and the recurring East-European postcards that animate tracks like the captivating "Podgorica", where Jacques Nobili's trombone is guest - the CD flows with ease, absorbing attention without overstaying its welcome.

SABINE ERCKLENTZ - Steinschlag (L'innomable)

Here’s a compact, effective solo trumpet album which needs only 27 minutes to express a whole series of concepts that transport the instrument far enough from those EAI explorations memorably described as "fffplschpllllkrrrschfff" by good ol' Dan Warburton. Five concise tracks (one uncredited) in which every sound heard was produced by a trumpet; some of them sound just like that (well, sort of) but when Ercklentz's computer intervenes the scenario changes quite radically. The record starts with a kind of air flux behaviour highlighting the trumpet as a complex hydraulic system which no human element can render more effective than that, hiss and pop as the basis for rupturing a basic tranquillity within the realm of a still "comprehensible" approach. Then we shift to the core of bionic traffic jams-cum-ghoulish pastorals, whose dissonant alignment is something that could cause serious distress to Dave Douglas and Wynton Marsalis fans. Gradually, distortion and crunch attack our aura in lethal doses but, strangely enough, everything remains confined in the appearance of a metaphoric monologue, maybe with a few psychosomatic consequences for the non-experts. No pleasures allowed. It’s all fragmented in a multitude of (dys)functional parts, yet it works exactly as requested by our stretched biorhythms. This music's cycle is short and eventful, its dismembered body dead on arrival after uselessly trying to look attractive. After a few listenings, you realize that its inherent beauty is right there. This is the best result that Ercklentz could have achieved, making us accept an ungodly nature as an accomplished and fully structured methodology.

SABINE ERCKLENTZ / ANDREA NEUMANN - Oberflächenspannung (Charhizma)

This couple's sounds evacuate their original birthplaces (piano interiors and trumpet) to fill an evanescent atmosphere with laconic statements, electronic traps and computer nooses. To the non-specialist, Ercklentz and Neumann's aerostatic pads and dirty water bubbles could almost appear like a joking reminder of acousmatic furore; on the contrary, a track like the beautiful "Rost" stands to demonstrate that manipulating sounds to make something interesting out of them is not for everyone. "Oberflächenspannung" is kindless in its absolute refusal to add some sugar to serious cells of uncompromising aural manifestations; yet, you get curious to know more about its structure, hitting the "play" button once again.

ERIKM - Sixpériodes (Sirr)

Described as a "display of ErikM compositions for dance, theatre and cinema between 2001 and 2004", this album is a charming alternative in the congested field of laptop/acousmatics, being imbued with a determined research for a sonic biology whose purpose goes far beyond the "soundtrack" definition. ErikM's target appears to be the action of freezing what moves into aural snapshots: he reduces his perceptions to the bare minimum, using fragments of intuition and sampled snippets to find a connection with the functions of the body, which most of this music seems to represent in an almost graphic manner. It feels like there is a strong correlation with the automatic reactions of our nervous system, most sounds zapping around like a stimulated grasshopper, therefore effectively fulfilling their scope of demarcating choreographic schemes and underlining images. This music is indeed extremely visual, yet absolutely suggestive when taken as pure electroacoustic circumstance, completely original and honestly transcendental but at the same time very substantial.

ERIKM - Variations opportunistes (Ronda)

Using short fragments of pre-existing music and synthetic materials, all the while subjecting CDs to heavy preparations with substances such as silicone (synthetic too, but in a different way...) ErikM designs new variations on contemporary minimalism and a few abstractions, never letting us without orientation points. A snippet of harpsichord music by Jean-Philippe Rameau is multiplied and superimposed to assume the semblance of a Reichian tapestry; an even shorter segment by Igor Stravinsky becomes a psychic elaboration of ample spaces, exalted by barely detectable oscillations. The final track makes good use of addictive and subtractive synthesis to cancel the contours of reality in an obscure electronic elucubration. ErikM started these studies in 1997; he refers to them as analyses of the degeneration of frequencies. I don’t hear this music as such, my instant reaction one of rather imperturbable, conscious tranquillity. No indigestible timbres, abstruse codes or pirate broadcasts, only the right touch of transcendence in an otherwise pretty consonant setting. It could very well amount to a nice introduction to this artist’s music for the uninitiated ones; the record stands on its own pretty strong legs, though, showing several alluring pictures disseminated throughout its 27 minutes.

ERIKM / GUNTER MULLER / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA - Why not bechamel (For 4 Ears)

There's a long track here - "Kabel" - where this trio's sound is really hallucinogenic: it starts from random pulses, revolves around an axis linking Zoviet France and Jon Hassell then proceeds to wrap your ears in such a frequency cocoon that waking up your nerves from certain sections of the piece will take quite a little bit. This sort of neo-futurist suite is preceded and followed by two improvisations where silence, feedback and cold-blooded killing tones make their respective part to redefine the concept of "harmonics". The adventurous three use their devices maintaining full control of timbre and space, managing to capture the essence of a perfectly organized exchange of almost bruising statements. It's just incredible how reaching for an extreme level of freedom is often made easier by a structure that seems to impose its own rules on the participants.

ERIKM (LUC FERRARI) & THOMAS LEHN - Les protorythmiques (Room40)

This 30-minute composition was originally intended to be presented by ErikM and Luc Ferrari at Musique Action Festival, 2005. Unfortunately, due to his declining health, Ferrari had to renounce and was duly substituted by Thomas Lehn, whose analog synthesizer has become an important element of the piece. Instead of the "open working process" upon which the original idea was based (a semi-improvised mix of composed and concrete segments) "Les protorythmiques" was then developed by following the highly evocative power of ErikM and Ferrari's samples, prepared while working on the latter's "Les archives sauvées des eaux", in deft conjunction with the unpredictable waves and sequences that Lehn brings out of his instrument's viscera. Uproarious masses of choked utterances and over-segmented phrases constitute the most evident colour, giving the idea of an expanding universe mostly based on sensory overload and dissociated behaviour. Elsewhere, intense synthetic attacks throw us in the middle of a war game that, after a while, morphs into the soundtrack of an afternoon in some Italian province, tourists and natives gathered in a massive whirlwind of insignificant words. Indeed Luc Ferrari spent his last days in Tuscany, and I find pretty ironic that one of the most crystalline personalities in acousmatic music's history ended his life in a country whose musical "achievements" in the last century look no more than a faded photocopy of something that occurred elsewhere way much before. But the final bleeps and farts, mixed with a splendid foundation of singing birds and additional oral cut'n'paste, tell me that what I perceive as mundane can sound delightful to someone else's ears. Then again, Tuscany is so beautiful.

XABIER ERKIZIA - Entresol (Antifrost)

This is the debut of Basque sound/multimedia artist Erkizia, who works with sounds at the threshold of inaudibility for most of this CD, even if a violent discharge at the beginning of the second movement could cause a stroke to the fainted heart after the almost subsonic relaxation of the first part. "Entresol" creeps through holes, walls and pavements like electricity in your home's wiring: sometimes you manage to perceive something through the ears, most times you just feel its invisible presence manifesting itself like passing breeze - or in form of ultrasonic waves that a bat or a dog could hear in full. The listener's role in this case is defined by the efficacy of his/her body functions; of course, clear ears and total silence should be a must when approaching sonic materials standing between the mutism of sources and a nuclear catastrophe. Then you arrive to the last track, that sounds like a cross of field recordings and shortwave radio, and realize no word can do justice to this highly skilled work: again, silence should prevail.

ERRATIC - The invisible landscape (Mystery Sea)

Belgian sound artist Jan Robbe works under the Erratic pseudonym to explore the perilously slimy waters where dark ambient and musique concrete meet, places where dozens upon dozens of powerbook/loopstation/synthesizer/exotic instrument owners break all their bones when the music they believe "oh so deeply impacting" clashes against the crude reality of another hundred thousand albums like their own "masterpieces", the whole resulting in a bunch of meaningless music. But this is not the case: Robbe knows a thing or two about the different perspectives of event placement, applying a serious dose of skilled engineering to his creation. Although not exactly chilling, Erratic's pieces maintain a firm grip on the listener's attention; they are mostly well-connected, splendidly detailed cinematic soundscapes. In several moments of the "Til" series, the engrossing crescendo of alarming muffled frequencies introduces a slide show of impressive still lives and unclassifiable energies, underlined by a contrast with rustling noises and pre-recorded environmental sources that light up a candle of hope for the presence of someone in an otherwise distressing desolation. The final track "Okaasan chi" touches the heart gently with faint luminescences and superimposition of insects - of all things - that sound like they're reciting a supplication.

KIKO C. ESSEIVA - Sous les étoiles (Hinterzimmer)

When composers decide that their music will need, in the midst of everything else, environmental or concrete elements to better depict their vision, they’re entering the classic “some folks got it, some folks don’t” territory. Kiko C. Esseiva certainly “got it”, as this superb record demonstrates. Esseiva stands among those sound artists who - like, say, Cedric Peyronnet (aka Toy.Bizarre) - are able to provide an impression of ongoing life to their structures, thus rendering them not only palatable but also highly gratifying, a sense of delight hanging on even in the most dramatic sections. Although the sources are definitely too many to be listed or just guessed - and I know for sure that most soundscapers aren’t too anxious to reveal secrets - the essence of “Sous l’étoiles” is strictly electro/acoustic, in that we perceive the presence of real instruments amidst the unfamiliar ambiences created by the practised studio handler. Every incident is placed exactly where and when it should be, episodes succeeding according to a far-sighted architecture that nonetheless tends to forget rules every once in a while in favour of a healthy anarchy (well-regulated, too). Esseiva’s music is “hybrid” in a very interesting acceptation of the term, in that he constantly meshes the properties and the characteristics of the chosen bits and pieces to fuse them into a nimble-footed consecutiveness, where a natural occurrence is all but the obvious consequence of a scheme made of knowledgeable choices and subplots. This is the kind of listening experience that often leaves with the mouth agape, wanting more when the disc is over. Then it’s back to the miserable normality of “regular” everyday noise.

CHARLES EVANS / PETER EVANS AND THE LANGUAGE OF - No relation (Greatbend)

I often wonder “What am I looking for in jazz these days?” and, truth be told, rarely come up with a satisfactory answer. Too many times I listen to players showing disfunctional conditions and evident discrepancies between a fabulous technique and the correspondent absolute lack of sense of humour - not to mention the ability to WRITE serious music without resorting to the habitual (and often unconsciously used) formulas and definitions. That's why I’m enjoying time and again this lively, articulate and - yes - humour-gifted album released in 2005 by Charles Evans (baritone sax), Peter Evans (trumpet and piccolo trumpet), Moppa Elliott (double bass) and Jan Roth (drums). As the title could suggest, no blood relation exists between the Evanses, but LOTS of relations are instantly audible as far as ingenious playing is concerned. This CD is what you'd usually call a "breath of fresh air", in that it mixes excellent soloism and ensemble interplay of the highest calibre in eight tracks ranging from post-Braxton regulated freedom to various kinds of bipolar behavior during the exposition of more “popular” (?) motifs. The interaction between Charles Evans’ baritone sax - he's a stunning virtuoso with irony to spare - and Peter Evans’ trumpet is such that one can sustain long minutes of microtonal nuances and unpredictable mental processes without any strain, feeling the buzz of an energy that is certainly not too common among today’s jazz groups. There is some sort of "unbalance" at work here, which gives the music an eccentric character, but there's also a sense of ethical seriousness corroborated by an ever-active reciprocal listening (Elliott and Roth swing, mourn and - when necessary - rumble like madmen, for good measure). The booklet artwork is great too, in perfect line with the stimulating music and compositional intelligence that I perceive throughout the disc; the "counter-liner notes" (written in an undecipherable, fabulous jargon which could rival Christian Vander’s Kobaian in terms of incomprehensible meanings for us poor mortals) are alone worth a good laugh. This project spells "advanced communication", representing a perfect antidote against the frigidity of many current composers - jazz or non-jazz. These guys are working at the margins of the market yet manage to fulfil our needs of smart syntactical deconstruction, and if you love body building there's an additional reason to appreciate Charles Evans (don't ask - check for yourself).

MICHAEL EVANS / JEFF ARNAL - MEJA (C3R)

Childhood secrets time. As a tiny toddler I was MAD for drums, to the point of convincing my parents to buy me a miniature set which I banged with nice attitude; they even used to carry Massimo and his drums around various Roman parks in order for me to make all the noise I wanted without breaking the condominium's peace (well, in the early seventies there WAS some peace in condominiums every once in a while). I still can behave myself well enough with odd meters (sigh). With all the due respect, the great drumming that’s presented by Evans and Arnal in MEJA reminded me a lot of those happy times, such are the fantasy, the brisk joyfulness, the incredible variety of techniques and sources that these men apply in their music, in almost a full hour of genreless percussive delight. No wonder that these players have been active on many fronts of the improvisation warfare, including working with dancers and actors, as this music is an experience of gestural freedom that we can elaborate over or simply enjoy as it is, conscious of the fact that we’re in front of serious artistic value from every point of view. Structures and functions subside to unpredictable sketches, colours and timbral weights, the whole continuously shifting in total absence of complications - even if this is far from being an easy listen. Everything that Evans and Arnal play seems to be in logical correlation, whatever the form. Very, very nice.

PETER EVANS - More is more (Psi)

In "More is more", the separation between the player's physiology and the imaginary entities evoked by his effort is minimal, with a definite tendency to disappear. Peter Evans plays piccolo (and "regular") trumpet but he sounds like a tabla player, a fly captured in a bottle, a helicopter, a nervous wreck. He's gifted with a phenomenal fantasy, being able to carve small nicks of melody in the ancient trunk of undeserved freedom - once an apparent dreamland, now too often an oppressive set of plotless formulas - all the while saturating the surrounding air with trembling gurgles and bellowing invocations. Evans' complex vibrations are felt in the nape of the neck, gripping statements of multivision authority that thoroughly use the instrument/body connection to steal our attention and nail it right in the middle of our own head, the only place where these signals could ever dream to nidify. This man doesn't play a note half-heartedly but puts his whole spirit into tubes that propel his special brand of virtuosity towards an extreme consciousness, his and our bodies the only means through which these sequences of messages can be transmitted and translated. "More is more" sounds like it is dedicated to every shattered being who's somehow capable of receiving it; it's an album so intense that it almost scares me, but is also one of the very best instrumental solo recordings that I've heard in 2006.

EVAPORI - Na katarynce (1000Füssler)

The source material used by Oliver Peters, aka Evapori, for this inspection of cavernous resonances is, unbelievably, a seven-inch record found in a flea market containing an old Polish waltz after which this mini CD was titled. The only discernible vinyl trace is some initial crackle, but after a short while Peters takes off with a thorough processing, immersing the whole in an amniotic liquid made of semi-electronic morphing, a combination of chiaroscuro flanging, warped nightmares and impressive rumbles. Only in the last four minutes we manage to pick up deformed glimpses of the original song, under the guise of distorted piano fragments and incorporeal voices. An interesting end for a well composed, absolutely intriguing piece.

EVAPORI - Fumes (Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien)

This label brings my memory back to the second half of the 80s, a time in which I was going through a serious post-industrial trip and names such as Cranioclast, Core, Werkbund and Mechthild Von Leusch were the menu du jour at the house, usually through limited vinyl editions that nowadays command impressive prices when located on eBay. Oliver Peters (aka Evapori since 2002) is one of the younger elements of this breed of composers, his music being based upon “field recordings, processed found sounds, self built objects and special treatments of acoustic instruments like cello and piano”. That’s not all; the way in which Peters seams these sources is not exactly predictable, thus the outcome is perceived as one bad anarchic beast. Starting with noisy eruptions, listeners are pushed into mental confusion; beats from hell blind the eyes, throwing the poor men again in infernal cauldrons of menace. Then, suddenly, a magic loop or a hypnotic repetitive formula clears the sky all at once, giving them a chance to memorize at least a snippet of their previous state. Then again a pause of silence, wondering if the record is over; of course, when going to check the LP on the turntable, another salvo of pre-fabricated clangours and electronic emissions welcomes the unsuspecting victim. Pretty much unclassifiable, creatively assembled, this album is seriously considerable as an introduction to Evapori’s sonic world.

EVIDENCE - Out of town (Deep Listening)

Scott Smallwood and Stephan Moore perform together as Evidence since 2001. Their main goal, as far as I can understand from this nice release, is blowing the dust of humanity all over urban environmental recordings, creating a magical aura around what could be erroneously be confused at first glance with "postindustrial" sound. No way: "Out of town" is as alive and kicking as the heart of a patient just out of the emergency room. We're talking about music with roots into the very concept of deep listening: Smallwood and Moore are really two masters in shifting the centre of your attention in any single moment of their artifacts, creating a pulse with the noises from a bathroom or using badly received voices on the edge of radio waves to picture entities from another galaxy trying to get in touch. In a word, Evidence jazz up sounds of everyday life and make art of them.

EXIT IN GREY - Nameless droplet (Mystery Sea)

Moscow-based Sergey and Stas are the motors after Exit In Grey, whose sound is established over guitar drones, field recordings and not better defined "analog devices". Their CD presents more than a few characteristics that I liked, despite being part of a genre which rarely makes my pulse race for the emotion. First of all, these boys are good at choosing the quality of the low frequencies they use, which is not a given in this area: every throb, growl or thrum possesses its own particular light, and only those who are gifted with good measures of "inner ear" when working in creative sound manipulation (believe me, not too many) are able to avoid useless jumbles and indecent emotional sterilizations. Luckily, Exit In Grey seem to be competent enough, in that their music vibrates from the underground rather than annoying with promises of fake heavens. The environmental sources - always discernible in the mix - and the sensible flanging treatment utilized in certain segments do the rest (with special mention for the splendid second movement), putting these gentlemen amidst the names to keep an eye on when looking for drone music with a modicum of significance. Sometimes transcendence is better achieved by maintaining at least one foot on the ground: "Nameless droplet" fully demonstrates this theory.

EYES LIKE SAUCERS - Still living in the desert (and mostly inside my own head) (Last Visible Dog)

A man and a dog living in a van and traveling through the desert is already an inspiring concept per se. That the man also records on a 4-track cassette machine his improvisations on instruments such as harmonium, toy piano, glockenspiel, oscillator, Farfisa minicompact organ and ukulele adds further spice to the recipe. Throw in a drunken Robert Wyatt cover (“Sea song”), a series of clear references to Nico (“meet me on the desert shore”, repeated in “Desert song”, plus the main instrument’s choice) and serve with a bit of tape distortion and lo-fi attitude, and you’ve just had a faint idea of what Eyes Like Saucers does. Still, there are additional surprises; one for all, the fact that several moments of the harmonium-based tracks, built on repetitive washes and hypnotizing, if irregular phrases, had me thinking about a Moondog/Philip Glass mix (I hope that Mr. Glass won’t sue, even if ELS’ pieces are certainly more interesting than most of his music from the last 20 years or so). The title track features the protagonist playing a majestic-sounding Wurlitzer Theatre pipe organ (it saturates the mix, but you’d been already warned) and can easily be considered as the album’s most engrossing moment. I don’t exactly know how it happened but this record, which in other days I could have foolishly judged as a minor item, made me feel so trapped in a still-minded vicious circle that I suspect that something magic hides behind this man and his canine comrade. I must discover what it is.

KAI FAGASCHINSKI & BERNHARD GAL - Going round in serpentines (Charhizma)

This is an acousmatic handicraft of the finest cloth, made with clarinet and computer. The listener's receptiveness plays a fundamental role here, as trying to interpretate the snippets of evolution transmitted by Fagaschinski and Gal requires maximum concentration and single-mindedness. Ear-stretching superimpositions of adjacent tones and snapshots of concrete sounds/voices and field recordings hammer - but at the same time disinfect - our auricular membranes, forcing our disposition to retreat to an almost defensive posture. The naked truth of these sounds is almost cruel in its effectiveness: we hear what the brain decides to let us hear, after the defoliation of every useless decoration or - god forbid - futile beauty. It's a brutally honest representation of a mathematical poetry, where there is no way out of a consequential logic which sometimes gives the illusion of a better future, but finally asks us not to judge, because we as humans are not intelligent enough to understand this kind of fractal charm. Like it or not, sonic progress needs its victims.

FERRAN FAGES - A cavall entre dos cavalls (Creative Sources)

This record is pretty unusual for Fages; those who know him as a noise priest with Cremaster will have a hard time recognizing his hand in these segments, played on a guitar without effects, with just a naked "string-and-finger" approach to a slow meditation. Devoid of any trick, just left there like an immobile stone, these 33 minutes show Ferran in intimate settings studying combinations of resonant strums and humming bass, slight detunings and detached calm. Everything is left as played, including uncertainties and crackles, so that the whole work sounds austere and sombre throughout. Standing halfway through the quietest work by Noel Akchoté and Loren Connors, it's likely one will appreciate "A cavall" more and more through repeated listenings; I suggest doing it through speakers more than headphones, as the peculiar mixtures of frequencies are better helped by objects and walls refracting them.

FERRAN FAGES - Cançons per a un lent retard (Etude)

Despite having composed this music to “accompany the slow decay” of his late father, Ferran Fages also states that “it is not a posthumous homage”. Indeed it doesn’t sound like that: no plangent melodies, no gloomy atmospheres. Only an acoustic guitar and its strings, which Ferran touches with surprising conviction and decision, mostly concentrating on the relations between the different harmonics’ resonances and contrasts with a slight experimental aura, at times sparkled by the use of real-time detunings. He shows intelligence, restraint and sensitiveness at one and the same time. Halfway through the barely moving lines of a “new silence” outing and Loren Connors’ post-modern blues, “Cançons” is a long meditation on death - yes - but also a hymn to the necessary simplicity of an expressive means applied to a far-sighted aesthetic, equal to the one characterizing the Catalan’s work with entities such as Cremaster, Will Guthrie and Norbert Möslang. It is not a short record at over 70 minutes, yet there’s not a single instance in which it overstays its welcome. These “songs” are skeletally defined but complete, made even better by well-placed choices which, in a way, dehumanize their structure while letting us peep at a course of action to which Fages himself seems to participate with a degree of detachment. It’s the sonic reproduction of that feeling of just apparent coldness acting as a protective barrier against the grieve of such a fundamental loss, and FF makes perfectly clear that he’s learnt from this experience rather than having been overwhelmed by it. The final result is a definite step forward from his previous solo CD “A cavall entre dos cavalls”, an important artistic statement, an overall satisfactory release.

FERRAN FAGES / RUTH BARBERAN / ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO - Atolon (Rossbin)

Stop for a moment. Listen carefully. Inhale what you're hearing. Don't be scared if your eyes burn - it's only normal; did I ever introduce you to my friends? Of course I did - read the Cremaster reports for example. Now, there's the third of a perfect pair here, trumpet player Ruth Barberan. Well, I dare you to recognize a single "regular" trumpet emission here - Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis are revolving in their graves right now. What? Did you say "inhospitable"? Well, you never know - one day, this could be the only music you need. Isn't the daily life just like that? Motors, electricity, animals, screaming people, litigations, hotheads and those unbearable kids of your neighbours that you'd want to kill every time you hear their voice. Ferran, Ruth and Alfredo portray everything but the proverbial kitchen sink through turntable, trumpet and accordion and - guess what - they do a much better coffee than your neighbours.

FERRAN FAGES / ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO / RUTH BARBERAN - Istmo (Creative Sources)

A feral antidote to the "regular" concept of trio is furnished by these lucid assassins, who keep releasing great music standing halfway through dual-purpose jumbles of noisy poormouthing and a radical reinvention of the act of stripping sound of every tourist beauty. This is aural toxicity at the very top, in kindless perpetrations of instrumental throwaway: what Fages does with a simple turntable would make Pierre Henry proud - or envious? - while the damp air coming out of Barberàn's trumpet grottoes meets Costa Monteiro's accordion in catarrhal metamorphoses of phlegmatic triangulations. No need for hocus-pocus, hand tricks or complex organizations of useless gentle movements: feel yourself like crossing a creek, tripping on a rock, being overwhelmed by your own ridiculousness - then you realize you just fell into an industrial sewer.

FERRAN FAGES / RUTH BARBERAN / ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO - Semisferi (Esquilo)

"Semisferi", a double CD recorded in studio (Barcelona) and live (Paris), is the occasion to promote a virtual round table about the path of Fages, Barberàn and Costa Monteiro and the places they have visited with their music, of which this release shows several new perspectives. If it's true that the ever-changing combinations of this trio yield different results, it's also a fact that the aesthetic choices implied by their improvisational adventures is doubtlessly unique, having nowadays found its nest in an evolved, if deformed acousticity which is detectable even in the less smooth inseminations. The studio disc comprises two tracks, in which a new percussive element is brought forth since the very beginning, also courtesy of Fages' bass tom - not to mention his motorized deconsecrations - and Barberàn's penchant for having stones and rounded objects rolling and bouncing on (usually) an upside-down biscuit tin. If a more polite emission happens to spring out of those things by chance, the nice fellows promptly tarnish its potential purity with some kind of humongous fluctuation or through their home-made hornblowing, the allure of which is contagious in its brazen-faced beatitude. And if you hear "chords" (it happens, too) be aware that you won't find them in Schönberg's "Harmonielehre". More probably, it's your head that has reached the zero point of the easy listening scale. The live concert presents a series of miniature meltdowns where short-tempered reflections grow and expand until there's no escape from their genuine plentifulness; additional accordion dissonance, the clatter of the multitude of objects utilized by Fages on his acoustic turntable, Barberàn intent on blowing against flexible surfaces to elicit distortion, it's all part of a lexicon that these artists have created without caring too much if it sounded "good" or, heaven forbid, like "someone else". The sonic matter is eviscerated until exhaustion; a few seconds of regrouping is all they need to launch more signals around in search of questionable values and thorough intolerances, at times manifested with quivering intensity in a series of self-recycling spurts of - why not? - violence. Patience and concentration are a must, unless you want to get distracted on purpose by something more pleasing and surely mundane, too.

FERRAN FAGES / WILL GUTHRIE - Cinabri (Absurd)

Would you allow your daughter to date Fages and Guthrie? Disbelievers in everything remotely resembling the regular sound of an instrument, this HispAustralian odd couple manages to subvert most usual improvisational practices in less than 28 minutes of amplified consternation, whose effects on the psyche stand halfway through a virulent galvanization (while listening, I walked around the house doing four different things without finishing one) and the sudden depressing realization that you will make no new friends if you play them this album. Pragmatically deranged, the emissions coming from Guthrie's amplified percussion are trackless ways to the discovery of your cranium's secret broken bones; those splinters you just found can't be glued together, yet they might be nicely used by Fages, who could feature them on the surface of his acoustic turntable together with his nylon threads and twanging springs, everything moved by ill fantasies overburdened with gracious cynicism. The effective interchange between these artists' personalities calls for a scribbled condensation of adequately shredded timbral errata, which in the hands of Fages and Guthrie become as important as the contextual unpredictability they ferment in. Glazy eyed, you will nail-pinch your arm to understand if it's true that sometimes bleeding for noise is healthier than crying for boredom.

FAGUS - Dans l'involucre entre ouvert (A question of re-entry)

Fagus is the duo of Ferran Fages (acoustic turntable) and Pascal Battus (acoustic walkman). Since the very first moments of the disc one is lulled into a false tranquillity - some tweaks and creaks, hissing, familiar noises - then all of a sudden a hell of piercing high frequencies, like a bat chorale through an overdrive pedal - had yours truly (with headphones on) instantly lowering the volume in order to avoid brain scathing. I could imagine Pascal and Ferran obliquely sneering at me in that moment. The whole album is an exercise in effervescence of circuital burns and - especially in its final parts - the music seems to embody a miniature hommage to cheap machinery, implying several tips of the hat to AMM and Morphogenesis minus the low frequency range. It is virtually impossible to depict the complexion of this difficult sampler of uneasy misprints; I'd rather define the six tracks herein as herpetic appearances on an already deformed mouth. Any aesthetical pretense is left out of the equation.

MICHAEL FAHRES - The tubes (Cold Blue)

Dutch composer Michael Fahres presents three gorgeous examples of his compositional skill, alimented by a responsive ear which allows him to translate a simple idea - or a few of them - into music that makes us dream at first, then also think hard about the gifts provided by a life that, more often than not, gets wasted by running after stupid things. Armenian singer Parik Nazarian lends her voice in "Sevan", a haunting piece somehow reminiscent of Akira Rabelais' "Spellewauerynsherde", in which she sang through huge metal pipes that once were meant to be used in a water-recycling project but, on the contrary, had fallen in disuse. Mazarian's voice evokes ghosts of lost memories, blurring our visual with limpid tones that Fahres modifies for us to get lost in hypnotic haze. The long title track is mostly based on the breathing quality of the ocean water pressed in the underground caves of El Hierro (Canary Islands); the roaring hiss and the wash of the waters are complemented by didjeridoo and trumpet - by Mark Atkins and Jon Hassell - adding further hues of impressive power to a piece that runs miles and miles away from any hypothesizeable new age canon, instead putting us in touch with an essential force of nature that owns probably the most beautiful voice on the earth. "Coimbra 4, Mundi Theatre" takes its name from an event organized by Carlos Alberto Augusto and R. Murray Schafer in the Portuguese city, but doesn't use sources from that occasion. It's a splendid specimen of modern acousmatics, a proximity of field recordings, crying children, sacred choirs and what sounds like a funeral held in an underwater cathedral - possibly the very best moment of an already excellent album that establishes Fahres among the elects in the contemporary electroacoustic field.

FAKTURA - Faktura (Absurd)

My suggestion is to listen to this without headphones, at good volume and walking around like in a sound installation. Mark Wastell and Graham Halliwell use amplified textures and saxophone feedback without wandering in meaningless bell-and-whistle types of audio art; they use noise and feedback like if trying to encode messages for future insightful analysts, making sure these studies in spectral refraction and subterranean trembling get marbled in a mantle of almost suffocating torrid air. "Faktura" is neither a conversation, nor a mere experiment; instead, it must be viewed as a series of aural protuberances springing out of an overwhelming sense of void. It's a recording that could convert lots of non-believers into supporters of restriction - and also one of Absurd's best CDs.

FANTASTIC MERLINS - Live (TFM)

Debut EP for a quartet playing an exquisite assortment of contemporary styles and whose lineup comprises Nathan Hanson (tenor sax), Jacqueline Ferrier-Ultan (cello), Brian Roessler (bass) and Federico Ughi (drums). Although some incontrovertible influences are caught here and there - Curlew circa Tom Cora, to name one - these people know what they're doing; desolate themes, vigorous lines and engaging improvisations are intertwined with delicate concentration and a masterful pacing of every section, the tension/release ratio remaining at a constantly balanced grade. On top of everything, the musicians look for a collective coherence rather than straining themselves to put their excellent technical value in front of the listener, which is a major plus in this 30-minute CD anticipating a full-length album that I'll be very curious to listen to.

FANTASTIC MERLINS - Look around (Innova)

This is a group that seems to be growing with each new step. My second encounter with the quartet, “Look around” doesn’t want to assail the senses with futile rage or drooling melancholy, neither is strictly classifiable in a category. It obviously shows jazz roots, but possesses the qualities of an enviable stylistic maturity explicated through the soundtrack-like features of several of the tracks. Curiously enough, cellist Jacqueline Ferrier-Ultan, probably the most prominent voice of the ensemble, is also the only member who didn’t originate a piece (except being credited in the final improvisation). Yet her heartfelt lines are the ones blurring the border between harmonic consciousness and desire to evade the canonic aspects of composition. Drummer Federico Ughi and bassist Brian Roessler don’t strive to capture a place in the sun, focusing instead on their capacities of generating the right tonalities for the music to evolve, while Nathan Hanson’s tenor sax is the “complementary alternative” to Ferrier-Ultan in the band’s choice of thematic delivery. Atmospheres are quite differentiated from a section to another, with predilection for a gradually opening slow motion revealing a multitude of facets that the ears welcome as a reminiscence of situations that we used to enjoy, and that now are no more. There’s even a riff-based, pseudo funk song (“Lenny”) that demonstrates Fantastic Merlins’ versatility and will to change the cards on the table throughout the game. Forget all the names and comparisons (hey, did anyone realize that Bill Frisell hasn’t been playing something meaningful for a decade?) which render no justice to this ensemble’s determination in finding a unique language. They’re doing pretty good in that respect.

FAR BLACK FURLONG - Far Black furlong (ICR)

An obscure, delicate gem - somehow belonging to the “contemporary psychedelic ambient” area (OK, I made up this one) yet starting with a recited poem - that needs to be brought to a wider audience’s attention, likely to be appreciated by people willing to open their channels a little bit more than usual to the elements of existence that should be considered fundamental and are plainly forgotten instead. The project’s components are Mark Baigent (baroque oboe), Andy Cotterill (electronics), Bryony Lees (poetry), John Letcher (dulcimer), Richard Moult (composer), Ian Tengwall (guitar) and Amanda Votta (flute). Six movements of “music that describes tides”, mostly recorded in outdoor spaces. The whisper of the wind, the wash of the sea and the singing of the birds cannot be ignored, and there are moments in which one literally feels like rewinding the tape back to childhood. “Far black furlong” crosses influences as diverse as celtic folk, experimental acoustic and drone-based electronica, amalgamating them in a synthesis of hypnosis and self-awareness. In a way, this record could make a nice pair with the Fovea Hex trilogy on Die Stadt, even if the vocal element is almost totally absent here, replaced by trance-inducing reverberant instrumental serenities verging on the bucolic, without added sugar. A gentle intensity that radiates warmly throughout a full hour, human problems momentarily left outside the window. Do yourself a favour and get a copy of the limited edition, which comes with a second disc featuring a masterful 34-minute droning remix of the original album, as spellbinding as the summer moon mirrored in the rippled waters of a harbour (and often very near to Paul Bradley’s most fascinating work). You know which side I’m on.

FAST COLOUR - Antwerp 1988 (Loose Torque)

Great stuff came out, on an August evening in 1988, by this septet including Pinise Saul (voice), Dudu Pukwana (alto and soprano saxes), Evan Parker (tenor sax), Harry Beckett (trumpet), Annie Whitehead (trombone, voice), Nick Stephens (double bass) and John Stevens (drums). Subtitled "Suite for Johnny Mbizo Dyani", this concert is a mixture of invocations, African rhythms and chants and, in general, musical artistry of the finest class that leaves pretty dumbstruck for its intense spirituality. Great cohesion is to be found between Stevens and Stephens, truly the septet's heart in their incessant four-legged run through the core of a primary instinct which animates the whole album. Parker and Pukwana foster a slender feeling of liberation via ceaseless reciprocities and invasions of forbidden territories, which they visit with nonchalant studiousness corroborated by a high degree of passion. Beckett's trumpet is featured in a stubborn solo in "Johnny Dyani's gone", but he also performs beautifully as a team mate in literate decodings of certain aspects of free jazz. The lyrics are sung with ardent animosity by Whitehead and Saul, who inject their interventions with determination and fortitude in a square-shouldered effort to pay homage not only to their late friend, but seemingly to a whole current of artists whose fate was sealed before they could even have a chance to show their greatness to wider audiences. Thanks to this archival material, Loose Torque is affirming itself as one of the labels most enthusiastically interested in keeping an important slice of English jazz's pie still preserved and palatable.

TIM FEENEY / VIC RAWLINGS - In six parts (Sedimental) 

There are hundreds of systems that can be used to break the protective cocoon of an early morning’s hush. Certain silence-breaking records do so while remaining confined within sonic restraint, nevertheless giving an idea of potential trouble lurking behind. Tim Feeney is a percussionist interested in the most frictional aspects of his set, which he exploits both with manual techniques (scraping, bowing) and by subjecting it to the uncontrollable response of an array of machines including no-input mixer à la Nakamura, contact microphones and pedals. Curiously he’s also a performer of classical repertoires (one wonders about the conversations he entertains with that area’s colleagues). Vic Rawlings is “an improviser and instrument builder, specializing in modifications of existing instruments”, but his forte is something defined “open circuits”: an unstable electronic setup interacting with exposed speaker elements which generates unpredictable reactions and subdued turbulences, well beyond a synthesizer. The outcome of this juxtaposition of personalities is a music that, believe it or not, sounds pretty much composed. Each part exists in the very moment when we expect it to, living its life for five seconds or two minutes, then giving room to another manifestation which, miraculously, behaves according to a thorough logic of consecutiveness with what preceded it. It’s an experimental kind of chiaroscuro for which we might not feel at ease in expressing an opinion. And silence? It’s still there, ready to be splintered into quick particles, feedback and tiny noises playing hide-and-seek with our inner ear illusion, a “tinnitus versus subsonic radiation” match that manifests its grudge in the final fifteen minutes, the environment invaded by corpulent hums, piercing shrills and regular appearances of more concrete percussive shapes.

FEIGNER - Laughter only feigned reproach (Scrapple)

Feigner is the trio of Brendan Dougherty, Aaron Meicht and Matt Mitchell, who all play electronics. The anatomy of this album is quite complex, yet the overall sense is basically one of straightforwardness, although after a couple of listening sessions I still had to figure out what attracted me the most in its sonic genetics. We hear anarchic alternances, dichotomies and strict correlations, starting with noisy outbursts nourishing a growing sense of displacement to evolve into sections that may be calmer but still show an extraordinary variety of facets. Undistinguishable sonic snippets, at times similar to munchkin vocal emissions but more often travelling the lands of distorted spatiality, constitute a fruitful environment for a rational technology of buzzes, harsh caresses and - in general - unconventional electronica. The evolutionary network developed by this trio is unpredictable in its multidimensional nature, as patterns and schemes are completely thrashed in favour of a lumpy molecular structure which seems to represent the metaphor of a deficient organization. Of course that’s not the case; the logical destination of this long trip is a state of semi-relaxation, the most tranquil part of this suite being its conclusion, a quasi-static conformation of slowly unfolding, ghoulish composite waves. And it’s not over yet, I’ll be listening again and again, probably still without a clue about any material and/or verbal definition.

MORTON FELDMAN - Early and unknown piano works (OgreOgress)

The interpretation of these intense compositions by pianist Debora Petrina achieves the difficult aim of balancing the accumulation and release of tension that's essential in Feldman. Even at a young age - the earliest piece here is from 1943 - the composer already had well printed in his DNA a trademark style evocating shades of doubt and unanswered questions, most striking when the music is listened at low volume in a tranquil environment. The contrast between the chordal affirmations of "First piano sonata" and the sparse clusters of 1966's "Two pieces for three pianos" resembles a path to illumination rather than a change of perspective; young Feldman put well defined frames to a vision that has been rightly considered fundamental in contemporary music's history. What's more, these beautiful tracks sound like opening the door of an ancient room and smelling the rememberings of something we won't be able to catch anymore.

MORTON FELDMAN - Violin and string quartet (OgreOgress)

Composed two years before his death, "Violin and string quartet" is probably one of the most strikingly beautiful pieces by Morton Feldman; you have to give OgreOgress a lot of credit for uncovering this one. Here Feldman seems to embrace most of his technical principles while keeping his paintbox devoid of everything except the strictly necessary tonalities of colour. The scores are, more than ever, stripped to an almost skeletal form where whisperings and slow phrasing find their place among moments of reflective sadness and peaceful figurations. Most of this music is permeated by a quasi-minimalist flavour, yet it remains exquisitely fructiferous from other perspectives; clusters and harmonics are like a magic powder capable to transform an apparently weak statement into a vision of future artistic illuminations. Dwindling away until disappearing, this deeply affecting work can be considered Feldman's definitive affirmation of his original style and - without sounding too ceremonial - maybe it's the aural photography through which he would have preferred to be remembered. Either way, it's fundamental.

MORTON FELDMAN - Complete violin/viola and piano works (OgreOgress)

This double CD set is yet another breath of that rarefied air which contributes to the fascinating atmospheres of Morton Feldman's music. Christina Fong and Paul Hersey give a masterful display of sensitive playing, tracing a narrow way through the immaterial world of recollections that listening to these tracks inevitably brings out; through this difficult path, the open structures and the delicate gradations of pieces like "[Composition]" or "The viola in my life" assume the role of functional architectures for a malleable melancholy, itself the most beautiful colour in this profound collection. Fong and Hersey fulfil the scores' potential while eliciting murmuring echoes from a past existence, stimulating our relations with the inner self through unobtrusive technique, carefully overlapping their reciprocal awareness. Apart from the initial "[Sonata]", written by a young Feldman in 1945 and pretty different from the rest, all the material contained here keeps its promise of suspending our memory in a difficult position between shadowy disorientation and thoughtful research of another starting point, to better savour the inevitable silence that this music breaks just slightly, like in the 66-minute "For John Cage", the perfect lock in a casket of harmonic apprehensions.

MORTON FELDMAN / DAVID BEARDSLEY / DAVID KOTLOWY / JOHN PROKOP / DAVID TOUB - For Feldman (OgreOgress)

"For Feldman" is a self-explanatory audio DVD in which the Rangzen string quartet (Karen Krummel, Heather Storeng, Christopher Martin, Sieu Mahn Phong) and violinist Christina Fong tackle Feldman-related compositions by four young disciples, plus a series of short pieces for string quartet by Feldman himself, fragments from 1954-56 appearing as glimpses of noctambulism radiating from the lights of comprehensible dissonance, intermissions of past memories amidst the profound contemporary awareness of the young heirs. David Toub's "MF" is the most agitated, so to speak, work on offer here, a continuative analysis of a series of interlocking cells and patterns that go back to early Philip Glass with a hint to Stephen Scott, but with a curiously oblique aura surrounding it. David Kotlowy's "Of shade to light" alternates the most Feldmanesque "few notes, many thoughts" considerations to gorgeous, full-scale waves of droning strings that just can't leave us indifferent. "New England, late summer" by John Prokop is defined by the composer "something that would not call attention to itself", yet its back-and-forth, slightly alterated quiescence is like a sloping undertow in a moaning sea, causing the opposite effect on my own concentration. The final and longest track is David Beardsley's "As beautiful as a crescent of a new moon on a cloudless spring evening": Christina Fong's interpretation of this piece tuned to just intonation is exquisite, the score's soberness juxtaposing distant reminiscences of La Monte Young and a stripped bare version of Phill Niblock to the internal hums of our body when we're immersed in impregnable hush.

FELIPE CARAMELOS - Se prohibe cantar (Waystyx) 

Philippe Blanchard (aka Felipe Caramelos, aka bis Lieutenant Caramel) is a serious electroacoustic composer, worthy of comparison with the cream of the genre rather than being inserted in the post-industrial cauldron like it frequently - make that “always” - happens. This music, strangely divided in two CDs whose length is about 18 minutes each, lavishly packaged in apparently identical sleeves (that instead contain different artworks), constitutes the anticipated return by the Frenchman, who hadn't released anything new for a long time. It is also a confirmation of his great ability in bringing out the most from very basic materials, which include masterfully recorded human activities and simple sketches and sequences based on sampling, looping and synthesis, gentle melodies accompanying myriads of sentences and reflections by disparate segments of mankind (prevalently in Spanish language). There's not much else to say, except that the high quality of the work resides exactly in this sheer musicality, which should bring to a higher appreciation of the world that surrounds us - not an easy task these days. What's curious is that placing people's chatter within a compositional structure renders that a “colour” while, more often than not, the same voices experienced directly - especially when one's nervous - are just a pain in the ass of tranquillity. There lies a composer's touch, and Blanchard transform his and our ears in conduits for the correct reception of the flux of everyday life, this outing's main inspiration being slavery, of all things. But people are indeed natural born slaves - of money, regimes, ideologies, pitiful quests for enlightenments that will never be - therefore it all makes sense.

SIMON H. FELL - Kaleidozyklen (Bruce’s Fingers)

Those who are interested in the interaction between an orchestra and selected improvisers need a copy of this CD from 2002, containing what’s defined as the “magnum opus” of this perennially thought-provoking musician. Originally, Fell’s composition no. 57 was intended to be a concerto grosso including the SFQ quintet; funding problems forced a change of plan and the creator to decide, among other things, of giving bigger “responsibilities” to certain soloists. The core of this concept is the attempt to “create a classical music realized with the sensibility, techniques and flexibility associated with experimental jazz and improvisation”. Over the course of five movements, that’s exactly what happens: the work - conducted by Simon Baines and basically informed by a “modified” approach to serialism - has a decidedly XX century aroma, especially because it comprises quotations and references to earlier composers such as Stravinsky, Strauss, Ives, Mahler, Messiaen and Brahms - which should also reveal that attentive students of Frank Zappa’s output are going to appreciate long segments of this piece more than likely. Each part revolves around well determined technical tools, all the instrumentalists (members of the ensemble LSTwo plus clarinettist Rachel Cocks, pianist Paul Kosciecha and the project leader on double bass) intent in attributing a beating heart to what, in other hands, might sound like a succession of sterile exercises. A fascinating investigation occurs in the third movement, which features “experiments in real-time xenochronicity” that required five assistant conductors to keep the complex architecture of different tempi and tonalities working without excessive clashes. Yet my personal favourite is the fourth, “(In)articulation”, which uses Mahler’s material re-interpreted by the strings after a computer treatment with a music-reading software designed to reproduce the scanned score with minimum accuracy. The result is a warped soundtrack for a hypothetical documentary about the Brontë sisters, the most mesmerizing section of an important recording still deserving the highest attention, six years from its original release date.

SIMON H. FELL - Composition No.62 (Bruce's Fingers)

Trying to convene words for the countless ramifications of Simon Fell's music is certainly not an easy task; this is clearly evident listening to the extremely mercurial score of "No.62" (subtitled "Compilation IV"). Gathering a monstrous mass of top virtuosos, the Leeds University Postgraduate Improvisation Ensemble and the Anglia Sinfonia directed by Paul Jackson, Fell goes deep down the meat with his slicing writing - corroborated by elegance and irony - in about 80 minutes of difficult performance where emphatic approximations, curious orchestral hybrids influenced by Stockhausen and Henry Mancini and swinging unconventional structures are set in motion by their designer’s extraordinary fantasy and executed by "la creme de la creme" of the most gifted improvisers around the house - we're talking Evan Parker, Clive Bell, Alex Ward, Philipp Wachsmann, Rhodri Davies, and the list goes on and on. This material is a veritable kaleidoscope of intuitions and hommages, with Fell tipping its hat both to "serious" contemporary music and to a more approachable, post-commercial nostalgia; everything's solidified in a classical sense of mystery and shines with a genuine love for complex orchestration. Simon shows his elegantly dissenting compositional skill seemingly without effort, just like if the responsibilities for the functioning of such a large group were only a secondary concern.

FENCEPOST - Fencepost (Evelyn)

Graham Williams, from Leeds (UK), uses many monikers for his musical output and Fencepost is one of them. A CD-EP, this short essay on homemade electroacoustics is very well conceived and exquisitely balanced; it all starts with a glitch-cum-silence track, but the best comes later: four more pieces where the main principle appears to reside under a contraction/expansion zip code. The graphics of sound are finely granular, the use of space just perfect; though most sources remain obscure, the tracks are instead consistently brilliant. It's a good example of a right attitude to experimentation where there's more substance than flashy tricks.

FENNESZ / MAIN - Split (Fat Cat)

Another good one in the split 12" series by this label. Christian Fennesz shows his usual care in destroying "normal" sounds without exaggerating, so that you can mantain a glimpse of the original source in your head and follow it, as the day comes to an end. Very evocative, sometimes tender, but also disturbing in its tentative, deconstructive way. Robert Hampson, back to his old self, presents a long static track in which guitar, cymbals and piano frame through a powerbook let rise a droning vibration, rarely interrupted and instead complemented by some electric pulse or by fragments of extraneous noise. Main fans will love it of course. Both sides of the 12" are excellent and I urge you to listen.

DOUGLAS FERGUSON - No.2 (Black Orchid)

Using mostly treated guitars until making them virtually unrecognizable, Ferguson scores an excellent point with this "limited means/maximum result" release for this Slovakian label. "Dawning" starts with a deviated Eno/Fripp-like trance wash of abstract, pretty consonant chords that get harsher after a massive superimposition, all bathed in a nebulous atmosphere forcing all sounds in a small metallic globe. Other interesting tracks are "Front end loader", where a flock of apparently unmovable clusters puts the listener straight into an incinerator; "Viriginia insects" (sic), a purgatory where no correct door to heaven is shown, like being lost amidst running tape reels and failing lights. "Extraterritorial" puts the accent upon a nice Krautrock similarity, while the final "Morning" is a collage of anguish and unresolving, nerve-wrecking tensions. But what really gets me pleasantly lost are the dark room fumes of the droning "Brooding": I could listen to this piece for hours indeed. Excellent, personal music with lots of influences perfectly digested and synthesized by a man I'd really like to hear much more of.

DOUGLAS FERGUSON - Lexical passages (Evelyn)

"Lexical passages" is the third solo release by Texan guitarist/soundscaper Douglas Ferguson, whose work is consistently improving with each new record. A double CD, this is mostly based on atmospheric drones, icy static landscapes and jangly guitars (plus some other instrumental source) put into heavy effect treatment, sometimes with a few fuzzy lines lurking from the outside. If I linked this artist to other experimental guitarists you'd only perceive him superficially; instead, Douglas' approaches the whole length of this opus with carefully constructed hoards of impressive, thoughtful sound remodeling. Unrecognizable shadows infiltrate an apparently serene setting while the mass of frequencies tends to petrify in a hardness you couldn't break with a pick. This sort of stagnation does not filter out the listeners because, right from that layering of stillnesses, lots of moving harmonics and delightful timbral halos fly out, forcing your complete attention like you were put in a pillory. What remains when the music's over is a sense of void, like getting used to a presence felt as unsettling but that instead was vital.

DOUGLAS FERGUSON - Untitled (Distillery)

It's a cold, limpid November afternoon; while I'm writing the sunset is doing its slow course and Douglas Ferguson's bewitching loops of guitar-and-who-knows-what-else have already thrown yours truly in what Frank Zappa would call a "semi-catatonic state". Spirals of powerful dronegames mix with metal caresses, appearances of vocal subway ghosts, remote memories from deserted aircraft hangars. I should close the window, restore some order on my couch - but I'm nailed right here, like if an invisible body forced me in an uncomfortable sitting posture. Every once in a while, screaming masses of overdriven electric winds last five-minute eternities, in a whirling-flanging-reverberating celebration of six stringed disembodiment. Elsewhere, clouds of harmonic blasphemousness spell the death of consonance, sounding like a depressed church organ with a perforated lung. The CD timer becomes a useless option; this music wants your jugular like a seducing vampire. Fans of static deformation and solid-body illusion melting - you've all been warned.

MARCOS FERNANDES / HANS FJELLESTAD / HACO / JAKOB RIIS - Haco Hans Jakob Marcos (Accretions)

This music was improvised in a studio of Tijuana, Mexico in 2003. Four musicians/sound artists with pretty dissimilar backgrounds were riunited in an improbable place to set up a series of exchanges whose main result is a curious intersection of affected balances and discarded identities. At the beginning, Fernandes' drums seem to prevail in the mix; but soon enough, synthetic eruptions and stuttered affirmations by Fjellestad and Riis begin to mould an ambiguous bed of thorns for Haco's electronics, toys and (in "Speak") quiet introverted utterances. Instantly, the whole gets instinctively connected to a bizarre underworld of biotic agglomerates with a collective lunatic personality, in which percussive fragments and an inexhaustible simultaneousness of electronic idiosyncrasies join, acquiring a soft polymorphic consciousness. An utterly impalpable sense of extraterrestrial counterpoint does the rest, giving our perceptive channels the right amount of time to get used to this strange concoction.

MARCOS FERNANDES / MIKE PRIDE - A mountain is a mammal (Accretions)

Fernandes and Pride are two renowned percussionists who have been active in the free music scene for many years, playing with a virtual who's who of the most inquisitive minds of the "no pigeonhole" areas which include, among the others, George Lewis, Haco, Jack Wright, Anthony Braxton, Eugene Chadbourne, Nels Cline, Otomo Yoshihide (and counting). The splendidly titled "A mountain is a mammal" presents percussive dialogues that accept no stylish compromise, focusing on textural analysis and event-related spontaneousness. Austere if fantasy-gifted, this music offers a lot, ranging through various aspects of an anti-pattern approach that bristles with effervescent energy and denotes scrupulous attention for what the partner has to say. Metal, wood and skin are all parts of a context in which every component weights the same and no influence is noticed. There seems to be a struggle to achieve a controlled structural freedom, a semi-fractal kind of expression that borders on the ritualistic but also sounds rationally well behaved. Muscular playing is also featured, especially in the aptly named "A little more dangerous", while "More than everything" is a great moment of serenity, rippled by electronic processing and rebellious clattering, ending the record in a "dadaist" light, Pride's vocals halfway through a goose and throwing up his cookies. This stuff is made of many hits and few misses, moving with natural compulsion but always remaining extremely manageable as far as the degree of acceptability is concerned; Fernandes and Pride prove themselves to be two competent, keen-eared players with the capability of enhancing a conversational flow. The whole makes for 40 minutes of sober yet often exciting improvisation.

MARCOS FERNANDES / BILL HORIST - Jerks and creeps (Accretions) 

Three improvisations that sound innovative, fresh and surprising, different outlooks on electroacoustic microcosms that hide many untold secrets worthy of being revealed. Fernandes works with “phonography and electronics”, while Horist is a great exponent from the latest wave of prepared guitar manipulators. Two segments were recorded in Kobe and feature Japanese experimental artist Haco (once the singer in After Dinner), herself distorting and camouflaging her voice behind electronic processing; the third was taped in Osaka together with Masafumi Ezaki (trumpet), Bunsho Nishikawa (electronics) and Tim Olive (electric bass). The tracks with Haco are probably better developed and, if I’m allowed to say that, a little bit glossier, the ones that tickle the unconsumed aesthetic sense of the audience, subjected to repeated doses of amorphous slinging, resonant clatter, colliding strings and introvert contractions spreading all over the place in about 32 minutes of truly alternative, almost neurotic action against sensual immobility. Hums and zings, mumbles and moans, radios and unrecognizable timbres, at times reaching unexpected apexes of incongruent beauty. The Osaka performance is certainly harsher yet not the least provocative, distortion and hiss more evident in the mix but very far from the “sheer noise” approach. Halfway through tenebrous and shattered, the sounds put forth by the quintet are enough to raise the eyebrows of sleepy consumers, forcing them to pay the utmost attention to a network made of myriads of tiny cells that - taken as a whole - transport the players in a collective poor man’s nirvana. An increase of the urge of freaking out will likely be measured in unstable by-passers.

AGUSTI' FERNANDEZ / MATS GUSTAFSSON - Critical mass (Psi)

At one and the same time refined and hungry, Fernandez and Gustafsson's music explicate its immeasurable intensity through ten piano/sax duets that touch aspects of improvisation ranging from lively conversation to fuming quarrelsomeness. While many fantasticate upon spiritual bonding and communion of intents, these hot heads like to show their discrepancies: ruinous stumbles, forced contrapuntal meetings, crumbling shouts, mouthfuls of saliva-drenched tough cookies and rumbling digital jugglery form a large mass of inequable, essentially anarchic sounds looking for the nearest way out of normalcy. Utterly unpredictable, always puzzling, all the tracks of which "Critical mass" is made contain scorching attacks to the casual listener, who will be scared by such a sclerotic tissue of dissonance; instead, this stuff is for long-standing connoisseurs, people whose renitency to artistic cheapness is well proven. To those ears, this album will sound as an instant classic.

FESSENDEN - Capture/Create (Entr'acte)

Hailing from Chicago, the trio of Joshua Convey (bass) Stephen Fiehn (CD players, guitar, iPod) and Steven Hess (drums, vibraphone) presents us with a pretty austere minimal music, much in the vein of labels like For 4 Ears and Longbox as far as the silent organicism of their sound is concerned. Recorded directly to minidisc using a single "strategically placed" stereo mike, these two compositions are born from a structured improvisation in which the three musicians exchange accomplice glances while remaining concentrated on hypnotically drifting circles, mostly building their rustling murmurs upon the cross of rumbling frequencies and gently clattering loops, amidst which Fiehn's guitar plays sparse clean chords in a slow crescendo that's abruptly cut off by the sudden end of the CD. A captivating release which left me curious to hear more.

FESSENDEN - Inside the ice factory (Utech)

Cyclical structures and timbral mimetism are the most evident features of this unadorned music, recorded in Chicago in 2005. Convey, Fiehn and Hess use bass, CD players, guitars, iPod and drums to move around organic systematizations of partially educated noises and found sounds converted to an inexhaustible mesmerism which is the main asset of this beautiful disc. In the hands of Fessenden, instruments become combustible, generating a growing penumbra of ruinous premonitions that never seem to really materialize. Playing on a rusty knife edge, these artists mould a new genre of inquisitive reduction of technical abuse, once again nearing the area of Günter Müller-based electroacoustic improvisations, with just a little less refined language but with the same amount of substance. "Inside the ice factory" encroaches new territories without too much of a movement, its latent shamanic energy well disguised by an appreciable "no frills" attitude on behalf of the players.

FEU FOLLET & MIINA VIRTANEN - The icicle lectures Vol.1 (Ex Ovo)

Looks like working in sub-human conditions brings nice side effects sometimes. While Tobias Fischer (aka Feu Follet) was intent in his writing job on the house journal of a huge German call center, he noticed repeated ads for piano music CDs. He checked them out and got in touch with Miina Virtanen, whose instrumental piece "Silence thoughts II" is at the basis of this collaboration, a very tranquil record featuring two tracks. In the first, played by Virtanen alone, an uncertain flute introduces pianistic phraseologies that border on the new ageish, very melodic and relaxing although not really saccharine-imbued (Tim Story is not too far away). The long suite that follows raises the bar quite a lot: fragments of Virtanen's playing get processed and looped to create a mixture of minimalist ambient and mantric reverberations and arpeggios, exploiting the natural resonance of the instrument. Without throwing La Monte Young and Terry Riley out of their bed, as this music's depth is not on par with those composers, the overtones caressing the air show respect for the audience. If you choose the right moments, this CD reveals a degree of seductive power with repeated listenings, its absence of emotional peaks notwithstanding. But you have to live in a silent place and avoid headphones, or it will make no sense at all.

JOE FIEDLER TRIO - The crab (Clean Feed)

A trombone, bass and drum trio that moves around coordinates of atonality and funk, featuring the leader plus the exciting rhythm section of John Hebert and Michael Sarin. Shaped by a 20-year studying period with Albert Mangelsdorff (whose music he had been tackling in a previous Clean Feed CD) Fiedler nevertheless propels his playing via large quantities of spicy angularity over the course of nine tracks. Modulating the compositions through harmonic progressions that sound all but not prefigured, the trombonist demonstrates himself to be a keen-scented researcher of the negation of predictability, managing to jump here and there according to intervals that probably look like graphic symbols of bungee-jumping on paper. Fiedler's instrumental voice avoids magniloquence in favour of a lean and mean tone, which lies upon odd metres and tangential bass riffs with the same sweated sweetness of a satisfied lover after hours of funny games. Hebert shows technical prowess, not only via ever-involving solo spots but acting as an equable timbral counterpart to the leader's fantasy. Sarin possesses tremendous sensitiveness and a quizzical capability of swinging for the fences when necessary, revealing his wrists' elasticity in repeated occasions, all the good intentions of keeping the things straight ending in a dirty alley where the chief uses his friends' comprehension to throw bumblebee-like lines up to the sky. They seem to go everywhere, as a hundred doves would do once set free.

ALVIN FIELDER TRIO - A measure of vision (Clean Feed)

"A measure of vision" was recorded - in six hours! - by Alvin Fielder (drums and percussion), Chris Parker (piano) and Dennis Gonzalez (C and Bb trumpets) with the occasional help of Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez (Dennis' sons) on acoustic bass, drums and vibes. It's a one-of-a-kind mixture of influences, glorified by uncommon sensitiveness by all the involved instrumentalists. The beauty of execution and deep feeling that the trio expresses in Federico Mompou's "A mon frère" is a rare thing, followed straight away by the very lyrical "Camel", a piece by Dennis Gonzalez that recalls - both in title and general disposition - some of Frank Zappa's music in the "Hot Rats" and "Grand Wazoo" eras, something whose complexity belies a bottom structural limpidness that renders the listening a sheer exercise in pleasure. Fielder's illustrious past collaborations (Roscoe Mitchell and Sun Ra to name just a couple) are present in spirit but, curiously enough, it looks like all the energies were channeled towards a pretty rational exploration of moods and states of mind, with only few moments of true liberation, if always in full check of the nervous levels of the music itself. Parker's chordal work represents the most evident touch of grace in several of the tracks, which often become a hybrid canvas of harmonic architectures and impromptu decisions highlighting the musicians' creative input. Gonzalez's lines are as always serenely heartfelt, and the leader's drumming is so discreetly knowledgeable that its presence is almost more guessed than heard. In these 68 minutes there's not a single misstep.

SCOTT FIELDS ENSEMBLE - Beckett (Clean Feed)

"Beckett" was recorded by a strong quartet consisting of Scott Fields (electric guitar), John Hollenbeck (percussion), Scott Roller (cello) and Matthias Schubert (tenor sax). The leader uses "post-free jazz" and "exploratory music" as definitions to help us poor reviewers writing about his vision, in this case setting Samuel Beckett's short plays in terms of sonic rendition. The CD contains five tracks of what one could call "radical comprovisation", a no-genre-all-genres series of structural possibilities for instruments to dialogue calmly or look for litigation. On a first approach we could think about entities like Curlew or Doctor Nerve; sometimes things get a little more complicated, though. Fields privileges a clean timbre on his axe, which is fundamental to maintain absolute clarity in his pretty entangled lines. Roller excavates imaginative figurations while remaining an ideal partner for dissonant unisons and ever-evolving, intertwining dissertations with Schubert's non-conservative vocabulary. Hollenbeck is a bright-minded participant to a collectively sensitive interplay that never ceases to amaze, alternating basic patterns, uncontrollable rolls and sheer bedlam with self-controlled gestural balance and almost exhilarating musicianship. Everything in this disc tends to the instantaneous generation of attitude-permeated linear and textural counterpoint, whose results add spice and intelligence to a music which is only apparently difficult to penetrate, revealing instead many layers and secrets that will make adventurous listeners seriously happy. An advertisement for well-regulated iconoclastic playing, "Beckett" is one of those releases carrying the same weight of a powerful political statement. Listen and learn, then decide if you still need the velvet touch of deadly boring "jazz".

SCOTT FIELDS ENSEMBLE - Dénouement (Clean Feed)

Guitarist and composer Fields assembled a double trio to interpret the complex nuances of his half-written, half-improvised scores, giving the players circumstantial instructions in order for the compositions to sound like “puzzle pieces”, the six instrumentalists effectively intertwining rhythms and phraseologies yet resulting as a coherent, and ultimately delightful whole. No wonder that this stuff remained unpublished for years, while - to quote its originator - “label owners fell in and out of love with the music”: this is fairly difficult material, which in its presumed calmness offers many and one points of observation for a series of crosscurrents mixing modern jazz and quasi-chamber apparitions, spiced by mostly clean-toned if pretty dissonant guitars (Fields and Jeff Parker - yes, Tortoise’s), elegantly austere, beautifully sustaining basses (Jason Roebke, Hans Sturm), swinging-but-also-pensive drumming (Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang). Divided into seven tracks, whose names are a joy to read - take a look at the full title of “…His late wife…”to have an idea - the 72 minutes of “Dénouement” do not carry excessive weight at any moment, being instead gifted with considerable musicianship which transports the ensemble towards those heights where the rarefied air of clever interplay is present and easily breathable. Minimal in a way, communicative at various levels, these arrangements show Fields’ lucid vision and ability to remain within the realms of circuitousness while avoiding those sterile dialectic supplements that uncork the bottles of vintage listlessness typical of dead-end jazz. This is a commendable album to savour delicately, repeatedly, consciously.

SCOTT FIELDS FREETET - Bitter love songs (Clean Feed)

Everything in this CD - from the extremely sour liner notes, to the cruelly sneering track titles, to the leader’s “chip-on-a-shoulder” photo in the inlay card of my promo copy - reports of someone who is about to explode following a series of unlucky existential affairs. What better method to channel a potentially destructive fury into a handful of composition for guitar trio, and making them appear delivered from jazz stereotypes as well? That’s what happens in “Bitter love songs”, the latest news coming from Scott Fields, whose clean-but-not-too-much tone characterizes a fine brand of dissonant, almost irritating at times, angular tunes where he’s sustained by Sebastian Gramss on double bass and João Lobo on drums. Hammering down phrases that appear as acrid as one’s mood after a rollicking from the office’s chief, Fields sounds similar to a man obsessed, totally unmindful of the establishment of a harmonic permanence. Ostinato-based figurations and chords full of minor seconds and augmented fifths are served like hamburgers at McDonald’s, one after another in deadpan pessimism, until every honeymoon picture on the wall gets ripped off the frame. The calmer settings are tackled with a sort of extreme aloofness, all the more enhanced by a rhythm section that doesn’t want to know what “regularity of pace” means. The guitarist declares to have kept the words of these bitter songs to himself, but there’s no question that his music stings worse than a lawyer’s bill. If John Scofield (note the curious assonance) decided to go harmolodic, maybe he could ask here for a few lessons.

15 DEGREES BELOW ZERO - New travel (Edgetone)

Recently I've been surprised quite a bit by Edgetone, whose roster has enlarged to the point of including realities that one doesn't exactly suppose as belonging in that context. Who are we to spit sentences anyway? If the music is good, fine with me. 15 Degrees Below Zero are Daniel Blomquist, Michael Addison Mersereau and Mark Wilson, their instrumentation comprising everything but the kitchen sink (read: laptop, samplers, keyboards, effects, mixing, processing, guitars, vocals, harmonica, pedals, contact microphones - whew). The record is a fascinating mixture of unknown and familiar, definitely recalling the sonic worlds of people such as Peter Wright and Howard Stelzer. That means a lot of mangled fragmentariness, disfigured voices, devastating drones and earthquake-like rumble. Does this mean that the stuff sounds the same throughout the CD? Hell no - the dynamics at work in “New travel” are impressive, so much that I had to repeatedly lower the volume in my headphone to avoid aural scathing. Still, when the engines get going we’re right in the eye of tornadoes of pure bliss: uncomfortable groans and jangling intolerance become a constant presence in soundscapes that might very well be the soundtrack to the last day of our life before the final judgement. These boys don't cheat, don’t disguise fake ideals behind blasé façades and detached attitudes. There is some serious blood drawn in this collection of maelstroms that can drag depression out of a being, transforming it in a kind of rage that bubbles within while remaining unexpressed, thus alimenting the will of resisting for another couple of hours or so.

KEVIN FIGES QUARTET - Circular motion (Edition)

In the artistically enlightened area that’s Great Britain one can make a decision of undertaking the study of saxophone at 22 and find Elton Dean (RIP) as a first tutor, just by chance. This happened 20 years ago to alto saxophonist Figes, who went on to take part in diverse frameworks, including Keith Tippett's Tapestry. Figes, who until that moment in time had only played in rock bands and never heard a note of jazz, was captured by a book given to him by his mother as a present. The kid learnt swiftly: his music is in fact a captivating integration of influences - he quotes Wayne Shorter, Chris Potter, Kenny Wheeler and Dave Holland - communicated with poise and empathy, nonchalantly neat but not at all inconsequential. The timbre is warm and charming, always in charge of the whole textural perspective, and the rest of the band (Jim Blomfield on piano, Riaan Vosloo on double bass and Tim Giles on drums) performs a laudable work of support, being also allowed a fair share of soloist evidence - a beautiful piano reflection opening the elegiac “Pastoral scenes”, for example - that not once gets wasted for egotist, look-ma-no-hands purposes. A lovely experience throughout, an album that accentuates level-headedness in your chance transits through mild unhappiness.

KEN FILIANO & STEVE ADAMS - The other side of this (Clean Feed)

Two extraordinary players do not necessarily imply the accomplishment of a good duo, but Filiano and Adams are endowed with a unique blend of exquisite discernment and listening ability which takes their improvisations to the highest realm of "modern chamber jazz", if you forgive the definition. Twelve dialogues in which we enjoy the result of a light housekeeping between a crystal gazing bassist, whose sound is molecular, creamy and from time to time subjected to a discreet effect treatment to build whirlwinds and continuums, and one of the most eclectic reedists on the scene, a visionary who's lucid enough to never let either lyricism or geometry take a leading role during his fabulously inventive linear investigations. It's one of those cases when I'm left fence-sitting, unable to divide the merits of the musicians in something that's equally intricate and heartwarming. These artists explore several directions with identical inspiration, their ideas igniting a far-reaching interplay whose appeal is inversely proportional to this music's commercial potential. "The other side of this" does not contain anachronisms or conventional concepts; it's rather a demonstration of the unnecessariness of being radical-viewed in order to create something remarkable and unpremeditated.

KLAUS FILIP / RADU MALFATTI / MATTIN / DEAN ROBERTS - Building excess (Grob)

I realize that I'm listening to a milestone whenever hearing sounds coming out of every small corner of my room, like silent creatures invisibly giving me their hand while heartbeats slow down and breath is almost stretched into stillness. Klaus Filip and Mattin's computers are - paradoxically - a sort of guideline in the mist raised by Radu Malfatti, whose trombone is sanctified by the attention to textural speleology that only this man is capable of. Dean Roberts' few statements deliver telluric news to silence, imposing their presence for a while before laying on the ground in a fantastic mimetism with the computers' feedbacks and elongated drones by Mattin and Filip. For long moments we could be justified in giving up any physical activity, just to aspirate these ceaseless sonic wonders; but the manner in which this music finally takes control over everything else cannot be described by sheer words. Pity the unlucky people who won't share this listening experience, or whose ears are still deaf to the evolution of broken silence.

MILO FINE - Ikebana (Emanem)

Milo Fine epitomizes the figure of a multi-instrumentalist improviser; this double CD sees him in company of illustrious fellow spirits during his 2003 London visit. "April radical" mingles various strings, electronics and voice with clarinet, piano and drums in an imaginative piece crossing chamber settings and piquant segmentation, with three double bass players (Tony Wren, Marcio Mattos, Simon H.Fell) in beautiful growling balance. Three clarinet (plus drums) duets with Alex Ward seem to file the cutting edge of a tetanic flick knife carving mouthpieces to deviate the regular blowing, until "Skinny frog" (with Gail Brand and Paul Shearsmith) brings back a measure of tranquillity - not without some flickering flame of ironic ludicrousness. The whole second disc is made of "May radicals", a five-part sextet (including Hugh Davies on "invented instruments" and Charlotte Hug on viola) where the coordinates vary according to the spur of the moment: now a next-to-silence exploration of hollow timbral interiors, then a couple of piano reflections amidst a remarkably self-regulating group autonomy; all of which brings the musicians to a series of fair-minded exchanges of scrutinizing looks to each other. Philipp Wachsmann, Angharad Davies, Matt Hutchinson and Marj McDaid also appear in various parts of this excellent release.

JAMES FINN TRIO - Plaza de toros (Clean Feed)

If jazz is not method but purity of intents, then James Finn should be regarded as one of today's saviours of the genre. His unrepressed, almost desperate spiralling pulmonary storms possess a propulsive energy which avoids any esoterism, his tenor sax a link to the visceral rage of total non-belonging. More than the hommage to the "corrida" that it symbolizes, "Plaza de toros" sounds like a fight against the worn out friendliness of many passionless lessons in futility; Dominic Duval's fantastic arco work - listen to him in "El tercio de Varas" to get the picture - is like the silent companion of a crying man, ready to sustain him through lucidity of analysis and strength of limbs. The fractal drumming of Warren Smith is the completion of a long series of perfect natural spurts of life, which are also luminous portraits of three egoless artists whose playing is refreshingly deep and outrageously spiritual.

DAVID FIRST - Dave's waves (Ants)

Four studies for sine waves, ring modulation, pitch shifting and - generally speaking - frequency superimposition, each one timed at 19 minutes and 33 seconds in a record that's charmingly effective to the brain and geometrically perfect as far as sound diffusion is concerned. There's no trace of weirdness or irregularity in this music; even if certainly not groundbreaking, the vibrational impact of the tracks is quite often inspiring and "traditionally relaxing". Remaining autonomous in relation to the sacred realms of American trance mavericks, First achieves the goal of separating himself from the music - which is a plus in this case - and take a well definite position amidst the oppressive ambiguities and distracting overhypes that lie under the contemporary spotlights. All that said, "Dave's waves" - except maybe for the more dynamic fourth part - should appeal to fans of Eliane Radigue and the likes, even if on a slightly detached, less profound level.

FLIM - Ohne Titel, 1916 (Plinkity Plonk)

To better enjoy this CD you should avoid headphones at all costs, as it shows its most beautiful shades by exploiting the natural reverberation of a room. That said, Enrico Wuttke (aka Flim) is a German pianist and composer who has released several albums, yet this is my very first encounter with him and unfortunately this happens in a sad occasion, as this music was composed in order for Wuttke to exorcise the pain deriving from the loss of his 8-year old daughter, Fanny. Needless to say, the atmosphere is far from happy. Picture a rarefied version of Roedelius’ gentle melodies cross-pollinated with Tim Story’s most melancholic expressions (if you never heard Story’s “Wheat and rust” you have missed something, by the way), the whole played with an array of keyboards, toy pianos and xylophones, additional assorted instrumentation and minimal processing, which gives the music a slightly sobbing quality - and I’m not riding Wuttke’s sorrow to affirm this, it’s really so. A few sparse piano droplets, shards of broken glass in a green field populated by frail-looking flowers. Grey afternoons and cloudy aggregates. An organ piece that's as simple as closing the eyes in silence. These are a few of the visual and aural suggestions that I could recall while listening to this album, which elicits contrasting sensations but is certainly a deeply touching homage to an angel.

STEPHEN FLINN - Architect of adversity (Creative Sources)

One looks at the photo adorning the cover of this CD and sees a real lot of things: every conceivable object is there to be hit, scraped or somehow made appropriate for appearing in what we still persevere in defining a “solo percussion” record. But Stephen Flinn is among those artists for which the medium really doesn’t count. He makes music whose staying power in the brain is straight away evident, constructing entire soundscapes on a lone recurrence or circle - like, say, a rolling ball in a jar - or merely mangling and jumbling a thick layering of materials that may be born from direct gestures applied on wood or plastic yet sound, in truth, akin to collaged tapes containing disjointed mayhem left to putrefy in a soggy room then retrieved and put in a garden to dry under the summer sun, together with underpants and socks. In a word, amasses of distorted, transfigured colours and bitter dissonances whose inherent musicality might be unearthed through the listener’s facility to decipher their cloaked harmonic content. The equilibrium between the mechanisms looks nearly ideal, in that both the relatively short extent of the disc and the composer’s will not to surpass certain parameters of noise encrustation assure that illusionism and resourcefulness live in the same street.

STEPHEN FLINN / NOAH PHILLIPS DUO - Square circle (Pax Recordings)

Slipping this series of atypical improvisations into the envelope of a cathegory is not an easy task. What on paper reads as a guitar/drums duo is actually a mousetrap game of unpredictable sonorities taking their shape from basic elements - Phillips' chordal tapping or Flinn's lumpy snare rolls, just to name a couple - then planting uncertain roots in the quicksands of electronic modification (by Tim Perkis, who joins the duo in several tracks). The musicians deliver the "right" energetic mass from the rust of excessive prankishness, like scientists winking to each other after reaching an interesting result; the strange atmosphere generated by some of these conversations belies the accurate pondering that an expert ear will surely perceive in the large part of "Square circle". Abstract propulsion and bulldozing methodology are parts of a complex vocabulary of adventurous sapience and inquisitive sonic exploration championed by Flinn and Phillips with scrupulous application.

FLORE DE CATACLYSMO - Flore de cataclysmo (Sedimental)

The trio of Michel Doneda (soprano & sopranino sax), Giuseppe Ielasi (guitar, electronics) and Ingar Zach (drums, percussion) is an unusual one, the three pieces here showing their combination of independent styles and cohesive functionalities. "Floating on the mass of blossoms" is heavily coloured by Doneda's airy spurts and gurgles ripping the straightjacket of etiquette off himself; Zach builds arthritic percussive skeletons upon irregular blocks and rough tumbling materials, while Ielasi's sparse plucked notes and frying pan-like frequencies define some kind of limit for the others to respect, in order to give the whole a frame of sorts. The shrilling highs in the last section of the track sound like a rebellion to that system. "One wing of matter" grows on an incessant subterranean pulse, Zach being the main protagonist at the start with increasingly complicated juxtapositions of potsherds, hits and collapses, Doneda following with unattached perturbed articulations and ear-splitting whistles, Ielasi acting as a sage through a compound of textural restraint and spirit of observation. The sum of the ingredients gives birth to an increasingly intriguing piece, the three instrumental voices morphing from anarchy to coalescence in a single spumous current over the course of the improvisation. "Run fingers over turquoise" approaches reductionism at first, Doneda and Zach exchanging roles and dresses in a who-plays-what silent representation of EAI's most common aspects. When Ielasi's electric friction comes in, everything moves towards a more uncertain future, flanging resonances and rough bowing as the main nuances of a nocturnal, ghostly undulation classifiable among the album's best moments.

J.B. FLOYD - Transporting transmittance (Mutable)

The main working medium for Floyd is the Yamaha Disklavier, a programmable grand piano able to reproduce any part that a composer could conceive. You'd expect something similar to Conlon Nancarrow's piano player masterpieces. Not this time, as J.B.Floyd's scores maintain a "human" character that's pretty evident throughout this excellent release. Particularly beautiful are the three poems by Daniel Moore, of which I appreciate both the melodic choices in the vocal lines (by Thomas Buckner) and the involving harmonic context, underlined by arpeggios and chordal colours that had me thinking - you won't believe your ears - to Christian Vander's solo sections with Magma and Offering. Also noteworthy are the excellent flute textures in the initial "Transporting transmittance", courtesy of Lisa Hansen, while the variations on two Robert Ashley's pieces are easier while keeping their own strong spiritual meaning in the overall record design. The CD ends with the boogie-influenced "Solos and Sequences II", where intertwining patterns and tangential runs result in a very exciting tapestry, the perfect signature on a surprising discovery by your reviewer.

FLUE - Beyond the edge of nowhere (Diophantine)

I remembered guitarist Mason Jones from having reviewed his solo CD "The crystalline world of memory" on Public Eyesore back at the beginnings of Touching Extremes. I'm glad to find him again in Flue, still on guitar (and synthesizer) and together with Jason Stein (bass) and Chris Miller (guitar) plus guest Geoff Walker, the latter credited with "other sounds". The password to this music is "heavy processing"; as a matter of fact the album reminds a lot of what in the 70s many people would call a "cosmic trip" through an ample spectrum of sonic deformations and ever-changing waves and resonances. Pretty undefinable stuff as far as a proper "genre" is concerned, but surely a mind-altering listening experience under the guise of fourteen tracks fused into a continuum, like in a suite. The basically analog character of the sources used by Flue makes sure that adjectives like "warm", "boiling" and "distorted" are more convenient in the description than something like "articulated" or "glacial". Rarely the guitars are heard in their regular timbre, and that sensation lasts just a few seconds; the rest is a call from the translucid edges of outer space investigation where nothing is really as it appears, any simulacrum of harmony refracted by hundreds of deforming mirrors. A psychedelic record, then? You bet, and even a pretty interesting one.

ELISABETH FLUNGER - Songs (Löwenhertz)

This record is my very first contact with the art of Elisabeth Flunger, who was born in Italy but is a long-time Austrian resident. She makes music with metals, but not according to the usual percussive canons and schemes; as a matter of fact, Flunger uses what she calls “heaps of metal pieces” to execute materials that do have a structure, usually based on some sort of pulse that does not behave like a “pattern” or a “sequence”, but seems more related to a precise choice of gestures and physical activities, thus maintaining a “minimal” architecture that nevertheless is extremely variegated and, for lack of a better expression, natural sounding even in their most circuitous versions. These objects are the sort of “instrument” that have more to do with installations than concerts (although Flunger regularly performs live, both alone and with other improvising artists); she makes good use of “found stuff, trash, tools, instruments, toys, souvenirs and presents” to start fascinating processes of conscious deconstruction which, in the case of this CD, preserve the purity of her artistic intent rather than alluding to disguised messages. It’s an interesting outlook on the sonic properties of many objects that people meet and use on daily basis, without realizing that they can also be a means to creative ends.

FLUORESCENT GREY - Gaseous Opal Orbs (Record Label)

Robbie Martin is the deus ex machina behind Fluorescent Grey and this is his second outing under this moniker, following the impossibly titled debut (let’s call it “Tijuana Motel Room”). One thing is for sure, this music is chock full of any kind of data: sounds, files, waves, rhythms, voices, noises, whatever. It might be exciting for someone, horrible for others - especially if those “others” don’t appreciate the complexity of hyperactive techno. But, contrarily to the previous release, which was literally too overwhelming for yours truly and not really “musical” (to me, it actually sounded like a crazed catalogue of studio tricks), this time Martin has allowed the creature to breathe a little more (well, sort of - the velocity is still dazzling), thus giving us the chance of appreciating the compositional techniques inside the whirlwind. And, quite often, that work is indeed good: there’s a track (short, alas) where all kinds of Celtic samples were used to engender a curious hybrid of tradition and cyber-disco, truly great stuff. Elsewhere, this writer cherished the pleasure of being completely surrounded by swarms of buzzes, clicks and purrs - not to mention altered utterances - while looking, like every morning, at the absurdly ugly faces of commuters talking about their usual shit (that means soccer or TV shows - the highest average culture level around here). Should Martin be willing to cut a few overloaded repetitions in some of his pieces, reducing the whole to a 35-to-45-minute program with the very best ideas, the next CD wouldn’t certainly suffer. This one functions better than expected, though.

FOCUS QUINTET - 1-8 in 1 (Sachimay)

Focus Quintet are Anita and Dan DeChellis, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Chris Forsyth and Jeff Arnal. This recording's tracks range from "comprovisation" to absolutely free music, played with the skills and capacities that are always to be expected from improvisers at this technical level. Anita DeChellis' vocalism is like an instrument in a collective rather than a real "protagonist" and this is a plus, because I often have problems listening to egocentric female voices when they're not a simple "colour" or part of a structured composition (unless we talk about Diamanda Galas, Meredith Monk or ladies belonging to that class, of course). Diaz-Infante, Forsyth and Dan DeChellis act sparsely and intelligently, and Arnal keeps looking for nuances while fracturing rhythms all over the place. Ultimately, Focus Quintet are serious - and that's all we want.

JEAN-MARC FOLTZ / BRUNO CHEVILLON - Cette opacité (Clean Feed)

Foltz plays clarinet and bass clarinet, while Chevillon's instrument is double bass. With irreprehensible discipline, they give up every milligram of flamboyant lettering in order to achieve an emotional standstill, which is reflected by a wobbly inertness breaking its frail cocoon to become an obscure conversation between two souls waiting in limbo. Indeed, this duo's interaction - excellent by all means - does not detract from their personal technical prowess: Foltz's commitment to inner feeling gives his consistent tone a push towards an almost torturous path, where useless humour is banned in favour of a detached shelving of countless discoveries, while Chevillon's playing is mental, eclectic, relentlessy logical in its outstanding control of passing ideas, his knowledgeable attitude perfectly balanced in this performance's give-and-take.

FORBIDDEN FIELDS - Field 1 - Night (Nulll)

It's not easy leaving a distinct mark in the world of atmospheric darkness, especially today - an era in which home recording and the pushing of a few buttons plus a ton of digital reverb turn any trick. Forbidden Fields comes to fight for a premier position, thanks to this long segment of spacey low drones, rarely punctuated by sparse percussive snaps. "Field 1" is a perfect companion in those moments when one gets that intense feeling of being alone, troubles and all, really desiring to find an escape towards a new kind of life. The sound is beautifully mazy, like watching the blackest part of the sky, being able to do absolutely nothing - except the proverbial deep sigh. This music is not flaunty yet arrives where most "ambient" musicians don't: intense vibration and rational thought interlock to make a further step towards mental shelter from the bad influences.

FORCH - Spin networks (Psi)

Here’s my friendly advice for the wretched ones who look for big doors, black holes, celestial harmonies and pearly gates of heaven: stand well clear off “Spin networks” or you could be in for a heart attack. The quantity of sonic information that this 2-CD set contains is inhuman but, needless to say, it’s just what the doctor orders for brains able to perform three or four tasks at once, because the uncontrollable fragmentation of these pieces is a multi-vitamin injection for increasing the capacity of instant reaction to an impulse. Yet, I wonder, how many braves can afford to be affected by this work without running to their favourite Tibetan bowl scraper after thirty seconds? Very few, one surmises. Forch is the sum of Furt (Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer on electronics) and six monstrous improvisers (John Butcher, Rhodri Davies, Paul Lovens, Phil Minton, Wolfgang Mitterer and Ute Wassermann). The gathering of these living wires occurred for the first time in 2005 at the NEWJazz Meeting of the South West German Radio. Later on, Barrett and Obermayer started labouring on a basis of ten hours of recorded music (live and in the studio) to build a cerebral millefeuille with multitudes of layers, each one of the participants’ evident attributes scientifically mutilated, with particular attention to Minton and Wassermann’s vocal utterances that - in real time or heavily altered, pitch transposed, somehow processed - constitute the fulcrum around which most of the creative process rotates. The successive phase, namely the diverse combinations of improvisation and rearrangement of the subsequent results are better explained by Barrett in the liners; summarizing would be pointless. I’ll leave to the most audacious among the readers the weird pleasure of discovering a reality that’s light years different from what those hoggish jacks of all trades and master of none show as “the Truth”, camouflaging an utter ignorance under sampled choirs, soft caresses of Korg presets, thick fudges of reverberating nothingness. In Forch’s music, samples strain nerves, pianos pinch and sting, voices appear as fiendish burps and purulent screams until they sound like drunk seagulls, saxophones encourage the imbalance of the senses, percussion is everywhere. Here you can’t lay that fat boy scout ass on the couch while pretending to get illuminated by a holy loop set in action by a musical retard. Put this stuff in your car stereo, an accident will happen within two minutes unless you’re gifted with a serious data-retaining system. Play loud, using speakers to be hated, headphones to keep hating. It’s gonna take a few more pills and the customary dose of imbecility to see those doors, holes and gates, and the third eye is blind. But thoughts are clouds, aren’t they?

CHRIS FORSYTH / CHRIS HEENAN - Forsyth Heenan (Reify)

Silent creeping and articulated flurries come out of guitars, sax and clarinet like the most natural thing in the world. Even in its "uneasy" parts, Forsyth and Heenan's speech flows and pads, making itsy-bitsy particles on the course to an absolutely non-viable consonance. The music, characteristically imaginative and full of breathing spaces, also consists of plunks and whirring hoaxes likely to have your nose itchy and your ears in need of a good reassessment of their sound-catching capabilities. Sudden illusory hooks make you follow invisible patterns, through which the two Chrises will leave you naked with all your presumptions while their instruments keep the placid sabotage going, its results finding you still wandering clueless.

FORWARD ENERGY - Where are they? (Jazzheads/Edgetone)

I'm always glad when I find musicians whose spirit is rooted in real, pure free jazz; Forward Energy - led by poet and sax/flute player Jim Ryan - is a fantastic collective including Eddie Gale (trumpet), Alicia Mangan (tenor sax), Scott R. Looney (piano), Kristjan Bondesson (bass) and Marshall Trammell (drums). After the initial title track, a poem by Ryan about people suffering because of "the US war of greed", all that follows is fabulous playing from everyone in a continuously shifting dynamic memory which is imprinted with the lessons from the past (well represented by Gale who, among others, has played with Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra and John Coltrane) but is also looking for the very future of jazz expressionism. The tracks condense rage, desperation and intelligence in an amazingly beautiful music which really seems to know no boundaries in his sensual and - at the same time - staggering force. Never the intricacies of a sextet sounded so naturally poignant; "Where are they?" stands right there, among the top recent albums of the genre.

Jim Ryan's FORWARD ENERGY TRIO - FE3 Oakland (Edgetone) - FE3 Portland (Edgetone)

The world needs more people like Jim Ryan. This incessantly active poet, musician, conscience agitator and visionary sax player is one of those artists who render subdivisions and classifications meaningless, in the name of a single torrential flood of creativity that mixes exuberance, enthusiasm and meditative portions of extraterritorial improvisation, the whole reinforced by a technical knowledge that only many years of playing at the forefront and on the fringes of convention can develop. Ryan has fine-tuned his skill with the likes of Shepp, Ayler and Braxton - enough said. The Oakland disc is probably the most satisfying as far as the recording quality and artistic level of the music go: flanked by Stephen Flinn on drums and Scott R.Looney on piano, Ryan produces the goods during outasight improvisations that move on the borders of recognizability, harmonically evolved in a short-distance biochemical combination that causes reciprocal listening and involuntary communication to produce that extroverted entanglement of anti-singalong lines and incomparable suspended transitions that characterizes only the players at the very hilltop of unadulterated music. The Portland Trio features Ryan with double bassist Robert Jones and drummer Andrew Wilshusen. It’s the (relatively) calmer of the two recordings, a trait d’union between a symbolical - and material - communion of intents and the firing, blazing representation of those instances in which the music dictates the path to the artist and viceversa. Ryan grows his beautifully intricate lines in a favourable timbral environment, but also finds the time to elevate deep thoughts to the memory of his mentors, his music self-regenerating with every change of wind, the three players fused in a single voice, with the leader as the most visible light. There is actually no sense in listening to these albums separately, as they seem to be born together, even in their different complexion. Either way, absolutely great stuff.

JACQUES FOSCHIA - Clair Obscur (Creative Sources)

The artist’s family name is an Italian word that translates “haze” or “mist”, yet there's nothing in the music of this clarinettist that could even tenuously make us believe about a lack of clear-mindedness. Using three different clarinets - bass, Eb and a homemade - the man interprets a cycle of ideas that straddle the majority of the existing techniques, more or less extended. Contrarily to many colleagues in this copiously inhabited area of improvisation, Foschia is not averse to letting the voice of the instruments go: the listeners are in fact treated with an assortment of sounds that come across either as weird or purely striking for the density of their harmonic constituents, at times substantiated by the principal’s uttered grunts. We perceive the vibration of the reed and the hot dampness in the pipe, and it’s just great. Two are the discs comprised by the set: one realized in the studio and dedicated by Jacques to his mother, the other a live recording. In “Puff pull”, on the first half, we’re given a display of exceptional bravura, nervy phrasing and broken scales interchanging with airy disappearances of tone. Then Foschia switches to distressing gradations, halfway through a cello and a throat cancer, in the subsequent “Phoenix”. Listening to the beautiful timbre of the bass clarinet in “Noodly way” is untainted delight instead, a prosperity of emissions liable to persuade both experts and non. Equally demanding for the player - and rewarding for the audience - the live improvisations introduce a larger quantity of sweat and blood, so to speak, but the value of these instant designs remains unhurt.

JOSEPH FOSTER / ALFRED HARTH - Heart/Po$ter (Rasbliutto)

The CD cover, a beautiful black and white close up of what looks like a beehive (but I wouldn't bet my house on it) credits Foster and Harth with "trumpet, etc." and "reeds, etc." respectively. Now, it's just that "etcetera" that gives this album its distinguished personality; as a matter of fact, "Heart/Po$ter" is a record that mixes improvisation and musique concrete, an audio documentary full of unusual thinking patterns ("unusual" being the rule when dealing with this particular breed of musicians). Standing well clear off populist declarations, Foster and Harth are not afraid to get their hands dirty with the soil of unlawful object rustling, which they practice without premeditation even when the land appears unfruitful. Tampering with the exhalations produced by their instruments, they feel compelled to show the grainy details of noise as generated by everyday's objects, be it a radio, a Tibetan bell (I know what you're gonna say, but every fashionable zen home has its own "Tibetan something" nowadays - therefore that's an "everyday object", too), a Jew's harp or some other sonic infection. Trumpet and reeds themselves describe a special way of navigating against the odd current: at times it looks like the multiphonics and the tiny wheezing cries of desperation coming out of that blowing wrestle would be better returning into Joseph and Alfred's lungs and stay there, observers - from within - of an unlikely landscape. And what's the method of understanding if what we hear is an helicopter or just a slowed down tongue oscillation? What's the line separating the uniqueness of these artists' voice from an involuntary portrait of Meredith Monk's glottal lamentations? No answer. Not from musicians that never mince tones, preferring instead to surprise their audience with a homemade poetry in which every sound acts as a birdcall for concentration. Thus, the most correct approach to this release is standing firmly in front of its almost nihilist appearance, sure about the fact that Joseph Foster and Alfred Harth will lead you through their impromptu structuralism without reticence.

FOURM - Fourm remixes Keith Berry (White Line)

As I’m writing, the player is spinning this disc for the fourth consecutive time. One of the many things that define Keith Berry’s seriousness is his reluctance to publish unnecessary albums, in an obvious countertendency with practically everybody in the world of in-depth electronica. Therefore, along the wait for the next official CD, this 3-inch by Fourm (B.G. Nichols) can help in reminding why people should always remember the Londoner’s contribution to the elevation of post-ambient soundscaping to a real form of art. Although starting with a pretty dramatic, almost cinematic throbbing drive, the 21-minute composition “Void path” possesses a sacred aura of sorts, particularly explicated in the second half, which sounds like a muted funeral mourning wrapped by a bubble of liquefied rubber foam. The current generated by these pseudo (?) vocalizations - slowed-down records, maybe? - evidences its low-frequency component by spreading all over my listening space, while being slightly disturbed by abundantly reverberating noises and samples that agitate the music only the strict necessary to avoid a complete standstill. A luxuriously intense piece, where both the original sources and the manipulation work contribute in equal measure to the achievement of the prefixed goal. The hunger for new material by Berry is now even more biting.

FOVEA HEX - Allure / An answer (Die Stadt)

Many years ago, when Jochen Schwarz first got in touch by sending me a still treasured copy of John Duncan's "Crucible", I'd never have imagined that Die Stadt would have arrived at the current level of value and respect by listeners and musicians alike, although expert ears (and eyes) could already understand that, beyond the music and the artworks, lied the heart of a man who really loves sound in all its components and whom Clodagh Simonds - mastermind behind the Fovea Hex vision - thanks on the cover referring to his "calm wisdom". Let's not forget that this wise man's creature, among hundreds of beautiful things, has published the best releases by Mirror including their epochal masterpiece "Front Row Centre"; that alone is enough for this writer. But I'll throw other names up: Tietchens, Jackman, O'Rourke, Basinski, Hafler Trio (also a participant in this project). These are the stigmata of high quality and "Allure", third and final episode of the "Neither speak nor remain silent" trilogy, confirms the axiom in style. The CD itself lasts about 25 minutes, sufficient to realize that the three tracks are just like a wholesome dream where "contour" and "definition" are virtual concepts that never translate into reality. Indeed the sonic circumstances follow a continuous flow and a scheme of sorts: a hypnotic background where acoustic instruments such as violin, zither, bodhran and harmonium blend with an exquisitely evocative electronica is complemented by Simonds' detached yet delicate voice singing her own lyrics in the first half of the songs. After she's through, the soundscapes reveal an underworld of conscious loss of control on the senses for long moments, finely enhanced by humble contributions by illustrious guests (this time Steven Wilson, Robert Fripp, Donal Lunny and Percy Jones). As usual with Fovea Hex, the only advice is to listen carefully, bearing in mind that Nico, Current 93 and Irish roots are influences that work splendidly as parts of a whole that doesn't cease to amaze. The first limited edition includes a bonus disc ("An answer"). Sixty minutes by Hafler Trio reworking and remodeling the allure (pun intended) of Simonds' compositions according to his well known enigmatic vision, muffled drones, oneiric scenes and, at one point towards the end, resonating whangs vaguely recalling Organum's "Amen" (on Die Stadt, by the way) that are better left undescribed: either you vibrate or you don't, and there are at least a couple of sections here that will send the ready ones up there with the satellites and the shooting stars. Of course, H3O fans won't live without this one, the perfect complement to a gorgeous release coming in a black box that should include all three chapters.

BILLY FOX - The Uncle Wiggly suite (Clean Feed)

Billy Fox is a percussionist and composer who for the occasion surrounded himself with a medium-size band (12 elements) whose names may be relatively unknown - except Mark Dresser on bass - yet their enthusiastic, technically gifted participation to this melange of "composition, arrangement and improvisation" yields many moments of considerable interest, especially when one realizes about the extreme variety of influences that this material presents. While most everything was born from fragments of inconsistent playing performed by Fox as an experiment while on the verge of sleep, the result certainly doesn't cause the same reaction to the listeners, who are treated with a no-nonsense recipe in which dissonant lines and propulsive interplay lead to music that is both dense in thematic significance and driven by the desire of "sounding different". An example is "Guzzle", whose Arabian flavour is enhanced by a bass groove that could even be associated to some kind of rock vamp; over this, a series of pretty spectacular yet effective solos from reeds and violin throws us right in the middle of a desert. "Eyeball eyeball" is a finely textured jazz ballad in 3/4, in which Deanna Witkowski's chordal work on the piano lays the pavement for an inspired trumpet solo by Percy Pursglove in one of the most enjoyable spots of the CD, followed by a tenor sax improvisation by Gary Pickard that remains lyrical enough to be savoured even without excess of concentration. Again, Witkowski closes the section with her own solo, which defines a track that according to Fox was born from "harmonic and melodic patterns that I never intended". On the contrary, "The ghost of Col.Cobb" is a one-minute minimal experiment for shamisen and strings, as lighthearted as you might want to have it. When one's reasonable enough not to expect complexity from everywhere, that's the moment in which an album like "The Uncle Wiggly suite" comes and saves the weekend.

ROBIN FOX / CLAYTON THOMAS - Substation (Room40)

All sounds contained in "Substation" derive from Clayton Thomas' double bass and various objects, to which Robin Fox adds many measures of transformation via live processing (he's an authority in the MAXMSP program). The improvised sketches get projected and disjointed in a multitude of ever-moving crystals of sound that create an abstract yet essential quilt of tangential refractions, transcendental obsessions and incessant dispotic tickles. The fractal-like irregular forms that Fox and Thomas are capable of drawing with their experimentations direct our attention towards their objective gravitational pull, as the listener spirals into an individual bliss of continuously looping contingencies and more-than-perceptible rotations. This music is neither strident nor confrontational - it just wants your ears to have some unconventional fun; but, in its most evocative segments, its approximations of nocturnal activity awaken a hidden desire of abandon of our alertness.

FOXES FOX - Naan Tso (Psi)

In 2004, Louis Moholo-Moholo - the only survivor among the legendary "Blue Notes" - returned to live in South Africa after decades in London, where he became one of the leading forces in a field crowded with hundreds of beautiful artistic souls. "Naan Tso" is a goodbye concert featuring Evan Parker on tenor sax, Steve Beresford on piano and John Edwards on double bass flanked by Moholo, whose anti-rule drumming is the launching ramp for many long moments of uncontaminated jazz. Playing with teenage fervour, Parker nods respectfully towards the Coltrane icon, at the same time affirming his own royalty during intense opinion exchanges, while Beresford often forgets that he only owns ten fingers as he shapes chords upon chords of nonpareil harmonic sapience released little by little, therefore avoiding any chance of a "devil may care" stampede. Edwards confirms his technical solidity and fanciful grammar on the bass, celebrating a communion of intents that should always be a given in such occasions. Heart and class transpire in healthy doses from this album, a deserved salute to a great percussionist - and to freedom at large.

RICHARD FRANCIS - Together alone, together apart (CMR)

Still wondering if the water in New Zealand contains a tiny dose of nuclear power enabling its artistically endowed inhabitants to produce music whose depth is always in direct proportion with pertinence and, quite frequently, characterized by the harsh beauty of contemporary uneasiness (that often borders with the approximation of awareness - but that’s a story that words don’t explain, whatever one tries to find in them). Richard Francis - participant to/father of over 40 releases since 1996 - conceived these three tracks around “field recordings of indoor and outdoor spaces; handling of fabric, wood, plastic; self noise of home stereo amplifiers, loudspeakers and record players”. The composer reports that the pieces were inspired by “sound moments”, something captured from the surroundings and somehow combined in segments of 10 to 20 seconds “until each piece took on a feel and sense of its own”. The outcome is indeed repeatedly breathtaking, a vibe of utter suspension-in-tension that waits for the flick of a switch to be released in copious quantities of fury. The problem is that the switch can’t be found anywhere, so everything remains unexploded in between corpulent quakes from the underground, shortwave densities and hissing parameters for the garnishment of a weakened rarefaction. A blurred parallelism could be delineated in a hybrid of John Duncan, Asher and Bernhard Günter, minus the dynamic oscillations, more towards the “dissipation of energy” zone. An impression of penumbral reclusion - lasting under 30 minutes - that places this artifact just a step below the chef-d’oeuvre pinnacle.

FREE BASE - The ins and outs (Emanem)

Alan Wilkinson (sax, voice) Marcio Mattos (double bass, electronics) and Steve Noble (percussion) use an instant performance setting for the development of a language which is firmly rooted in free jazz - if this definition still has a sense - and they are not afraid to let everyone know it. This trio washes away any doubt through intelligence and belligerency in a wide-ranging multitude of involving sketches; the squawking alto and baritone detours by Wilkinson satisfy the need for a meaty presence amidst a remarkably intelligible fusion of individual spirits; Mattos' engaging playing shows his full commitment, not only to this elaboration of openness but above all to an extensive, ongoing enchantment with the mirage of transforming the role of bass into a powerful lyrical source. Noble's drumming shows his understanding of these improvisations' complexion while elegantly remaining within the margins of a politically incorrect ascendance to pristine forms of self-expression.

FREE RANGE RAT - Nut Club (Clean Feed)

The association of John Carlson (trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn) Eric Hipp (tenor sax) Shawn McGloin (bass) George Schuller (drums, percussion) and special guest Douglas Yates (clarinets) yields some considerable results in "Nut Club", a record which tackles several aspects of free jazz - does this definition still carry some sense anyway? - without disguising the players' main influences (admittedly, Sun Ra on top of them: they execute "The satellites are spinning" in stunning fashion) all the while channeling the whole in a complex intersection of both cerebral and physical efforts. Free Range Rat also play a great version of James Blood Ulmer's "Non believer" and a very intense rendering of Bob Marley's "So much trouble in the world", where the group's extremely conscious energy transforms the music in a sort of invocation for a peace that will never exist. The always splendid, truly Clean Feed-style vividness of the recording does full justice to these musicians, whose exciting enthusiasm and well detailed mastery is captured in all of their gestural nuances. Strikingly muscular yet delicate as a rose petal in more than an instance, the sound of this album is similar to a concentrated conversation among strong personalities: everybody is persuaded about the strength of their own affirmations but this does not prevent the others from expressing a valuable opinion that, in turn, is analyzed and dissected.

FREIBAND - Leise (Cronica)

Simple, yet effective idea by Frans De Waard, who let his daughter Elise (note the title's anagram of her name) play with "sheets of metal, paper, sticks, plastic and other junk" on which he placed contact microphones, then elaborated the resulting sounds via computer translating them into a 10-part electroacoustic performance. Elise's voice opens and closes the record (I particularly love the end, the tiny lady singing "toot toot" with her voice slightly deformed by De Waard's software) but there are several noteworthy moments in there, the most beguiling ones when loops and interlocked pulses are brought forth in the mix amidst glitches and clicks that not for a second get annoying, thanks to a perfect percentage in the treatment of the sources and an even better timing of the related sequences. My favourite track is the fascinating "Daisee", a hypnotic landscape with short background disturbances which, somehow, brought memories of Jon Hassell. At the end of the day, "Leise" is a nice, classy work by this hyperactive artist.

FREIBAND - Sijis_rmx expanded edition (Sijis)

There are records that just refuse description, as their sheer existence is the very reason of their meaning. Just like certain kinds of metaphysical phenomena should be enjoyed as they are, without asking what, why or when - those nerve-wrecking questions that ignite most people’s struggle with depression - this CD is one of those objects that we should use as a “presence”; if it can also help to achieve the goal of relaxing, reflecting, or even canceling the surrounding people's pandemonium, that’s perfectly fine. Originally released in 2004, “Sijis_rmx” is Freiband/Frans De Waard’s try to synthesize the back catalogue of this label into a static soundscape, which to this day remains splendid in his protective impenetrability, one of those drone/non drone tapestries that one could just put in eternal reply mode and be happy. Five artists from the world of contemporary electronica (Sluggo, Scott Taylor, J Torrance, Srmeixner, Mutton Deluxe) offer their own remodeling of that remix, each one altering or just slightly transforming the pre-existing material to bring out new particulars, deeper growls, ambiguous rhythms. The excellence of the basic source allows the project to function at its very best, constituting a fascinating introduction to the many possible ways to create what REALLY should be called “trance music”. This stuff predisposes the audience in “full receive” mode, all channels ready to accept the most abundant flows of transcendental energy. Speakers recommended.

FREIBAND - Replicas (Monochrome Vision)

Utilizing the tracks of Asmus Tietchens’ “Daseinsverfehlung” as a starting place, it took Frans De Waard approximately three years to finish “Replicas”, his “last analogue work” as he calls it despite a sonic nature noticeably recalling the digitized sounds of a laptop. Indeed digital is at the base of the Freiband project, which began when De Waard had access to an 8-track machine that produced “an extraordinary scratching sound”. Not that scratch is actually the root of this music, which is tending to microsounds on the one hand and, more occasionally, to the examination of hardly classifiable, often discordant frequencies and their correlations in an aesthetic background made of disruptions and irregularities, something that, time and again, might be compared to a faulty radio whose signal goes on and off intermittently. What we hear during the “on” phases is usually complicated to depict, a nonexistent harmonic content and extensive moments of stillness turning the CD into the ideal means of active listening in the absolute peace of a hot August day. Essentially, Freiband’s substances are frozen in the absence of canonical delight, hybrid matters that stimulate - or just baffle - according to the circumstance.

FREIBAND / BOCA RATON - Product (Cronica)

While it's true that many concrete/electronic projects on the current scene sound more or less similar, some of them are made with a care for the detail which distances them from the crowd. Such is the case of this split CD: Freiband, one of the many names of Frans De Waard, produces music through the reworking of pre-recorded materials going into a process of hard disk scratching; just another glitch and noise release, right? Dead wrong: the sounds mostly manifest themselves in pretty tranquil spirals, their slowly mutating skin showing a mixture of static sweetness and menacing sub-distortion inviting not to lower your guard any moment. Boca Raton (Martijn Tellinga) works within the realms of pregnant austerity through acousmatic tracks mixing field recordings, white noise whirlwinds, small-sound activity à la Asmus Tietchens and more than one wink to silence itself. The sapient assembling and scarce processing of the source material adds a touch of spontaneous ingenuity that elevates this music from the cauldron of the "already heard"; it meshes fine with my own environment, too - and the last track "Circle '8" is a profound Ilios-like planetary vibration.

HERIBERT FRIEDL - Raumzitate (And-Oar)

"Raumzitate" is a brief essay on microsounds by Viennese Heribert Friedl, whose work is centripetal towards silence - itself an important factor in these pieces. Observation and purpose yield a series of sonic fingerprints which stand alone or accompanied by suggestive faraway drones, like in a fascinating segment of the final track "Proposal". The crumbling of patterns juxtaposed with these distant evocations are always of interest, while the rippling hiss of certain separated frequencies works well when listened amidst the sounds of outside world, provided it's not a noisy urban ambience. Friedl seems to know where his direction is and I'm willing to trust him for future elaborations: for sure, there's more than glitches and pops than meets the ear.

HERIBERT FRIEDL - Converge (Conv.net Lab)

Another short composition by sound artist Friedl, "Converge" is mostly made of micro structures of quiet feedback and barely audible crackling in a well designed alternance with longer conjectures of metallic dragging and softly resonant timbral phantoms. Like in his previous "Raumzitate", the external ambience comes out as basic in the overall listening process; there is no complacency in these naked sounds, only the curiosity of seeing their air-rippling effect once they're almost randomly thrown in silence, just like children throw a small handful of stones in a calm lake, breaking the tranquillity just for those few seconds needed to understand they're alive. While listening to "Converge", reflection and looming remembrances seem to be unavoidable.

HERIBERT FRIEDL - Bradycard (Nonvisualobjects)

In "Expand", first piece of the CD, an engrossing field recording of a rainstorm comprises a series of improvisations on the hackbrett (a kind of cymbalom) by Friedl, who has rapidly become an outstanding member of my listening circle thanks to his deeply affecting recent releases. The body of vibrations propagating from the bowed strings generates a concrete kind of compensation between an ample space for reflection, constituting this music's main individuality, and a state of preoccupied uncomfortableness which is even more pronounced in the second track, "Contract"; here the digital processing of the hackbrett elongates shapes and resonances until a grudging scepticism opens slightly, remodelling the sound into a shadow mantra where the fear of humans walking alone in realms of apprehension is almost tangible. A powerful statement, moving Heribert's position towards the highest rank of evocative composers such as Andrew Chalk, Christoph Heemann, Jonathan Coleclough - not to mention Bernhard Günter, who mastered this album.

HERIBERT FRIEDL - Back_forward (Nonvisualobjects)

Tackling a whole album with a single instrument is a difficult task in itself; when that instrument is not a guitar or a cello, but a hackbrett (or cymbalom, or hammer dulcimer) the chore becomes even more prohibitive. Heribert Friedl, who certainly is not the kind of glossy useless virtuoso who isolates himself from the rest of the world releasing sterilized plunk-plunking records, decided to record his improvisations on the hackbrett in a naked, crude setting, then subjected the live playing to an effective processing which lets the sounds breathe and fluctuate at one moment, then modifies them radically the next. The instrument is at first intuitable in a stark, almost scrappy aesthetic, a cross between the raw yet delicate shining of Rhodri Davies’ harp and the rusty noise escalations of Michael Vorfeld’s selfmades. When the electronic treatment comes in, the shapes get morphed and reconfigured according to a not-too-bizarre scheme that, on a distract listen, could appear as the result of some sort of stochastic mechanism but, in reality, is totally self-sufficient. On a pure level of aural pleasure, this is not one of those nerve-caressing releases which one plays for hours; it’s rather the documentation of a honest, no-frills experimentation which Friedl decided to make public and - given his artistic depth both as an improviser and a composer - represents an important chronicle of one of his creative phases.

HERIBERT FRIEDL - Trac[k]_t (Line)

In an interview published on the excellent “Extract” book on his Nonvisualobjects label, Heribert Friedl states that, when creating his music, he’s mainly interested in the “soul of the sound”. One would think to a form of purity, to some sort of unadulterated timbral research; but the sounds contained by this disc will rather convince you that the acceptation of the term “soul” differs pretty much, depending on who uses it. “Trac[k]_t” is the final chapter in Friedl’s exploration of the cymbalom, an instrument that he started playing as a young kid then abandoned for a while, only to return to it in recent years in an obviously more radical fashion. Friedl uses every nuance of his stringed machine as food for a complex apparatus of digital processing that transforms the original voice into a series of electronic outbursts, percussive throbs, electro-static activities and ill-conceived Morse-coded messages. Just every once in a while, the original source makes itself heard in one or a few hit-and-pluck peek-a-boos, just to remind us about the cymbalom’s real (?) character. I can’t help but think to the buskers playing it on Rome’s subway trains; sure enough, they won’t go beyond Beethoven’s “Für Elise” and I wonder if they’d have a nervous wreck if hearing what can be made with that box instead. Like his previous explorations of the same area in albums like “Bradycard” and “Back_forward” (both on Nonvisualobjects), Friedl’s music is glacially austere, almost uninviting, yet gifted with the disciplined intelligence of a multi-talented artist for whom a scent, a shape or a sound are only means to a creative end, or to a new definition of “tone”.

REINHOLD FRIEDL - Xenakis [a]live! (Asphodel)

Every once in a while, someone decides that your reviewer must be subjected to a showcase of “profound cognizance”. A common method is talking in my proximity about matters that, hypothetically, should stimulate admiration or at least a minor response on my behalf. Enjoy this nip and tuck exchange between two nerds, captured a while back by these very ears. “Oh, come on, you don’t know Xenakis? He was the one who used stochastic principles in his music!” “Uh, that means that everything happens by chance, right?”. Et voila, a too common example of nano-brained ramblers putting names and terms in their mouths without even knowing what they’re talking about (which, let’s make this perfectly clear, is Italy’s second national sport after soccer, but I’m currently verifying that the plague is spreading on illustrious international sources, too). Among the appropriate correctional (…repressive?) methods that I would apply in such an occasion is strapping those flag-bearers of cerebrosclerosis to a seat and forcing them to listen, full blast, to this homage that Reinhold Friedl dedicated to the late Greek composer, music which - to quote Andy Partridge - sounds “louder than tanks on the highway, louder than bombers in flight”. And it is just outstanding, if you ask me. Performed with scary intensity by Zeitkratzer (in this instance comprising the leader plus Burkhard Schlothauer, Anton Lukoszevieze, Uli Philipp, Frank Gratkowski, Franz Hautzinger, Melvyn Poore, Marc Weiser, Maurice de Martin and Ralf Meinz) “Xenakis [a]live!” lasts 54 minutes that, except for the dust-settling, pre-standing ovation finale, are perceived as a continuous eruption of held notes, contrasting tremolos, membrane-drilling highs, rippling oscillations, majestic drones, awesome rumbles which, taken as a whole, recall the terrifying power of a destructive natural phenomenon, its ever morphing mass a death sentence for the comfort of those who “know” someone’s art by reading a couple of lines on a magazine. Paradoxically, the huge wall of sound created by Zeitkratzer is somehow comparable to Phill Niblock’s domes of clashing frequencies. Both in fact are received as all-embracing massive entities despite being formed by a myriad of components which, in Friedl’s case, are born from different instruments while in Niblock’s the overtones of a single source do all the work. Far from “reassuring” whichever way we look at it, this is a crucial demonstration of force that should be played LOUD for best results. Pacemakers and peacemakers will be put at risk, though. The same composition constitutes the soundtrack to a DVD containing an experimental video by Lillevan (from Rechenzentrum) who fathered unrecognizable shapes and gradations from photos and fragments of films of the Iranian city of Persepolis. This is also beautiful, but the real winner is Friedl’s electroacoustic roar, which might even be a candidate to “my favourite thing” of 2007.

REINHOLD FRIEDL / MICHAEL VORFELD - Pech (Room40)

These improvisations, recorded at Berlin's Podewil in 2005, were performed on inside and prepared piano (Friedl) plus percussion and "stringed instruments" (Vorfeld). We're talking a fractal kind of beauty here, an aural chiaroscuro landscape hardened by contrasting overtones running through the whole length of the strings to their maximum frictional degree. The sounds are forced to find a difficult equilibrium in a sonic body whose pigmentation tends inexorably to "metallic harshness" and "dynamic stridency" gradations; the softer sections woke up memories of +Minus in my mind, but another term of comparison is certainly "Message urgent", the CD that Vorfeld and Friedl recorded with Bernhard Günter, both trios working in the same realms of extracurricular string bowing. "Pech" really takes off when the opposite harmonic forces clash, sharp acute frequencies and acrid streaks invading the space and propagating in a sort of cajoling threat that won't sound extraneous to the adorers of the Organum/Dave Jackman sacrament. Without the need of fathering a new breed of monsters, Friedl and Vorfeld manage to have us sleep with one eye open, scraping sapient nails on the surface of a blackboard containing the mathematic formulas for captivating apprehensiveness.

REINHOLD FRIEDL / BERNHARD GUNTER / MICHAEL VORFELD - Message urgent (Trente Oiseaux)

This is quite a departure from the main Trente Oiseaux aesthetics of ghostly shades of uncertainty and masterful explorations of silence. Hazarding a decisive step into stringed dissonance, Friedl (inside piano) Günter (electric cellotar) and Vorfeld (stringed instruments, percussion) raise serious questions, bringing out spectral rumblings and cavernous basses, rejecting heavenward messages, replenishing the air with an abundance of evil crunching and tsunamis of vociferous fuzziness. Full of sense of incumbency, "Message urgent" speaks its language through holding back every memory, leaving a stark naked impression of some hidden threat the artists just leave at our own guessing. It's thoroughbred improvisation, impartial and dangerously sincere, depositary of an uncommon grade of crudity that's also its best value.

FROM BETWEEN - No stranger to air (Sprout)

Michel Doneda, Jack Wright and Tatsuya Nakatani recorded this album in Le Havre (France) in 2005, using saxophones, percussion and various objects. Opulence not included. Splashy panoramas of restricted areas are sapiently sabotaged by these undersellers of expressive freedom, their urge of playing coalescing with omnivorous fantasies in fertile terrains of impetus and geniality. Doneda and Wright are two cavaliers of the unpredictable, launching questions without thinking about the efficacy of what should have been planned in advance and instead was discarded; their saxophones gauge the thickness of presumed inquiring minds, demonstrating that there's still too much to learn before being able to instantly decode their gestures. Nakatani closes the doors after them, sometimes through impressive bass drum thunders, somewhere else finding a percussive lyricism which he loves to strain until it shatters into lyophilized metallic riptides. Given the less than normal circumstances, it's a miracle that the brain is still working after listening to this material. Then again, mine seems to work much better now.

FROXEL / KARINA ESP - Turbine wars/Lightfall (Evelyn)

Evelyn's quest for low-budget-high-quality productions continues with this 8-inch transparent vinyl featuring two short industrial ambient niceties. "Turbine wars" by Froxel has a little movement, behaving like a muffled soundtrack to an imaginary documentary about the effects of a radioactive disaster, with static waves and minor disturbances joining in a gloomy atmosphere. Better still is Karina ESP's "Lightfall": unidentified sources generate a mass of drones which - pretty inharmonic and lo-fi oriented in their 4-track aesthetics - immediately throw in a state of pre-prostration and anguish, where one feels surrounded by a vulturous absence of perspectives.

LIMPE FUCHS - Pianobody 2002 (Seven Legged Spiders & Co.)

German sound artist Limpe Fuchs is not the kind of name that one sees popping out in trendy festivals and hip "avant" magazines. This is confirmed by the wholly spartan black and white cover lodging this CD: no modernist graphics, no liner or biographical notes (her website, as far as I could see, doesn't feature an English version), no explanations whatsoever. But, once the disc starts, it dawns on us that no words are necessary when music speaks for itself; and speak it does, with Fuchs using the few means at her disposal to translate them into first-rate instant compositions and impromptu (or less) installations. "Odessa" pairs the instrument with a ring modulator and "metal discs rolling in a tube" to stretch the sounds until different kinds of resonance moisten the furrows of our old listening habits. "Pavolding" exploits the overtones deriving from the uncertain tunings and the preparations of an old piano, filling the air with infinite dissonances that sound celestial to these ears. "Erlangen" is a curious duet between an escalator and Fuchs' harmonium, a "machine-rhythm versus airy clusters" tolerance that Pierre Schaeffer would have applauded and early Kraftwerk could have been willing to steal. "Orplid" sees Fuchs accompanying herself with dissonant touches while vocalizing in a style not too distant from early Meredith Monk's, while "Karpathos" juxtaposes more prepared piano with the ambience of a sea cave, water sounds enhancing the artist's expressive freedom. But my soft spot is for the two versions of "Berlin", ironically the only piano-less tracks of the album, being performed on an harpsichord which sounds more like a koto or a harp; Fuchs reaches for perfect chords and gentle arpeggios managing to level any residual thorn in our spirit, which receives this timeless music like some sort of gift from a delicate-looking, sad-smiled creature. It's almost like a soundtrack for a fairy tale, the most evident example of sensitiveness by an often overlooked artist who, in this particular instance, has given birth to what's likely to become an obscure masterpiece.

LIMPE FUCHS - Vogel Musik (Robot)

Limpe Fuchs’ performances and music are animated by that kind of ingenuous purity that connects all the elements - really present or just implied - which develop that instantaneous sense of amazement deriving from a new discovery, all the while avoiding any excess of mushiness. “Vogel Musik” collects seven live improvisations where Fuchs utilizes an array of self-made instruments (lithophon, ballaststring, tubedrums, kettledrums) together with her violin and voice in duets with Christoph Reiserer (clarinet and saxes); Julia Schoelzel adds her piano in “Flying”, easily the most abstract improvisation on offer. There’s no chance of finding intuitions yoked to typical aesthetic canons here, as a basic concept of artistic freedom is well visible, but still needing to be reaffirmed until hoarseness every once in a while. Structures of sorts are obviously there to be respected at first, disintegrated a minute later; “Dialogue” crosses chamber-influenced finesse and anarchic detours in an absolutely unclassifiable piece, while in “March” the pairing of Fuchs’ metallic timbres and Reiserer’s delicate insufflations gives the music an almost ritualistic flavour, which brings us back to certain aspects of theatrical action where sound is strictly linked with the movement of bodies. Still, the title “Vogel Musik” (which means “Bird music”) refers of course to volatility, but we struggle - without the aid of the visual aspect - to associate that idea to the material consistency of most of the sources. This notwithstanding the album, whose cover was beautifully illustrated by Christoph Heemann’s pictorial mastery, remains an example of uncontaminated artistry by a sensible woman who has really nothing to demonstrate. Fuchs is not a mass agitator, rather a silent leader of an intelligent team of one.

FULL CIRCLE - Explorations (Red Eye)

Equimolecular improvisation by a Welsh multi-instrumentalist quartet whose youth contrasts with the maturity of their proposal. Using a well assorted range of timbres (sax, trombone, didgeridoo, wooden flute, piano, bass, guitar, electronics, percussion and drums) Deri Roberts, Dave Stapleton, Matthew Lovett and Elliott Bennett have been playing together since 2003 and their debut is soulful and balanced throughout a perfect length of about 45 minutes. Waiving sterile noodling to erect a sound platform as distinguishable as an emerging series of rocks from navigable waters, Full Circle touch several points of lyrical interrelation while keeping a firm foot on the harmonic ground. The contrapuntal combinations show a high degree of idiosyncrasy to any "jazz" formula, revealing emotions and establishing patterns for consciousness. The music is never cumulative, privileging airy vistas to hypertechnical virulence; nevertheless this group can really play and if this first step is well worth an applause, their path will lead pretty far.

ELLEN FULLMAN + SEAN MEEHAN - Ellen Fullman + Sean Meehan (Cut)

This CD features a live recording of improvisations by Fullman and Meehan, whose "combination tones, sympathetic resonances, beating and even cancellation of each other's sound" are all generated by the sheer juxtaposition of two sources, namely Fullman's long string instrument and Meehan's snare drum with cymbals. The former is an impressive creature, counting on dozens of strings whose length can reach up to 20 metres, played with rosined fingers while walking along the installation; the harsher, frictional timbres deriving from Meehan's atypical use of percussion instruments are almost perfectly complementary to Fullman's invention, the whole often raising a true "overtone symphony" whose results in terms of sonority range from Stephen Scott-like majestic chordal suspensions - only in a more skeletal harmonic environment - to the upper partial-derived hypnotic howl characterizing the final segment, which somehow reminds of Alvin Lucier but with a number of slight variations and peculiar morphologies underneath. To better enjoy the multiplicity of shapes and morphing rebounds elicited by these fine sound artists, listening from the speakers - possibly in a large room - comes once again highly recommended, as corners and walls are the places where these reverberant tones take their energy from, before coming back to the listener with stirring force, even in moments of apparent tranquillity.

FULL MONTE - Spark in the dark (Slam/Happydays)

Looking for humoral, questioning, undepreciated improvisation? Chris Biscoe (sax, clarinet) Brian Godding (guitar synth) Marcio Mattos (double bass) and Tony Marsh (drums) have all the necessary tools for one abundant hour of jazz-stereotype removal music, histrionics-free virtuosity and emotional mordancy. "Spark in the dark", recorded live and in the studio between 1990 and 1994, wraps you like slipstream smoke: you'll find yourself around flares of massive turbulence sapiently alternated with whispered suggestions amidst spurious atmospheres - satisfaction is guaranteed. This is craftmanship at its best, a collection for any season, integrity and seriousness of the participants out of any doubt; each one of the involved artists comes out a winner in this motley, forward-looking meeting of half-brother inquisitive spirits.

FURT - Dead or alive (Psi)

Two long electroacoustic patchworks by Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer confirm the current interest of Evan Parker's label in releasing music from the radical fringes of contemporary electronic piercers. "Mice" and "Sad fantasy" are two relativistic journeys through extreme unease and syntactical dismemberment, a saturated conjunction of strategical audio traps revealing a false sense of jauntiness where, on the contrary, menacing perspectives are lurking. Miraculously variegated and brain-stimulating, Furt's music doesn't follow any protocol; instead, it jumps right out of its corner with bunches of ubiquitous incidents, leading to labyrinths of incognoscibility and displacement. "Dead or alive" is a magnifying glass over a whole world of undefined microanxieties.

FURT - Omnivm (Psi)

No regular brain can pretend to be able to absorb the thousands of rapid changes of scenery that this incredible piece presents in over 77 minutes at a first try. "Omnivm", whose title derives from one of the infernal visions of writer Flann O'Brien, is a four-part acousmatic wonder by the duo of Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer, who created a "composite" of two live performances to give birth to this beguiling million-headed monster. The composers speak about "four centres of gravity" around which the piece moves; these are formed by sounds of gamelan instruments, distorted voices that speak in different languages, an analogue synthesizer and the playing of Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Paul Lytton. At the beginning of the second movement, a "forgotten Xenakis sound" is also featured, in a sort of homage to one of Furt's greatest influences (read the CD booklet for details). The unbelievably quick, yet totally intelligible hypermutation of the sources gives the music a head-spinning quality that, absurdly in a way, often becomes the reason of a tendency to physical relaxation; after the first approaches, I even tried listening to the CD while reading on a train and it worked fabulously. This happens - at least in my case - because the perceived sounds are quite familiar in their extreme variety and, modified or not, are all part of an alternative conception of music that probably belongs to the ones who are not afraid of radically changing their listening perspective when necessary. Although there is not a single peaceful moment throughout the album, every percussive eruption, warped voice or instrumental alteration seems to be placed right there where it's needed but incidental at one and the same time. This intelligent method of mixing spontaneity and pre-designed hypotheses is the very reason of "Omnivm"'s value, and at the moment in which I'm writing I can't remember a more interesting recent release in this genre. Shuffle play without the need of pushing the shuffle button. Amazing.

FURT PLUS - Equals (Psi)

It is by now extremely clear that FURT, the electronic duo of Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer, is the right pick to obliterate any lingering attachment to “average” music, at least in the logic of “event-mental digestion of the event-move to the next event”. The course of action underlying an oeuvre this intricate can’t be accurately described by a simple review and, what’s more, Richard Barrett’s extensive liners give an ideal account of the involved mechanics through the narration of the origin of these performances. Let’s just say that in this scenery the machines assume a dynamic role, responding to thousands of inputs bequeathed by the soloists as if endowed with their own individuality, and that the project’s management does a masterful job of connection of the right wires. The contributors here include Phil Minton, Paul Lovens, John Butcher, Ute Wassermann (the track where she’s featured is extraordinary), Rhodri Davies and Wolfgang Mitterer. FURT lay bare, once and for all, that truth is only a gadget: by listening to such a recording one discovers dozens of different realities amassed in time frames of milliseconds. Obsequiousness? Forget about it. We’re attacked more often than not, although many spots exist where an indisputable will of scattering the elements at work around becomes evident, the gibber-and-chatter of instruments and voices occupying our psychological space in ways that, apparently regular, reveal instead to be reasonably paranormal. A series of electroacoustic dismemberments that might cause serious damage to the unprepared (Where is my rhythm? Where is my melody?), no way to retaliate: this is physical matter that must be shipped, swallowed and acknowledged, a corpulent wrestler jumping on a frail body, forcing the victim to listen - in painful detail - to all the sounds that squeezed muscles and fractured bones emit. There isn’t room for that sort of coyness that renders improvisational units a marketable commodity after the initial illusion of self-sufficiency, that blasé, bourgeois stance transforming free music into a “class” giving shelter to flocks of inverted snobs. The aesthetic of the grotesque and the sharpest kind of reactivity to the impulse share a roof in FURT's vision, alimenting our only recent hopes in the struggle against musical obsolescence. Tremendous substance everywhere in a greatly recommended (plus) release.

KENNETH GABURO - Lingua II: Maledetto/Antiphony VIII (Pogus)

Firstly conceived in 1967-68, “Maledetto” is a composition for seven virtuoso speakers that sounds as modern as anything in the last five years, a commanding statement by a largely ignored composer. What Kenneth Gaburo declares in the notes is essential to comprehend the aesthetic significance of this work: “One can view each human as a unique and complex linguistic system, capable of generating more than one kind of language at a time (…) Thus each human can be viewed as a contrapuntal, rather than a mono-lingual system”. This explains just about everything. The building block at the core of this piece is the word “screw” in its various connotations, both in terms of meaning and sonic structure; from that, a whole edifice of intersecting expressions is raised, up to a point in which the attentive listener gets gradually pushed away from any theatrical interpretation of the score (which, oddly enough, is indeed part of a six-hour theatre performance) to enter a thoroughly musical realm, the voices perceived as assorted typologies of unusual instruments. Over the course of these 45 minutes, whose complexity can’t possibly be illustrated by a sheer review, we’re literally immersed in technological imagery and, above all, bodily reactions, either described or simply perceptible (sibilance, syllables, breath, chuckling, call-and-response). As Warren Burt rightly states, this is “a deep and profound celebration of the body, the physical, the sexual”. The power of this material just overwhelms the other music contained here, even though the latter deals with the important issue of people reacting to the notion that “nuclear war has made their lives expendable”. A percussionist interacts with tapes of individual views (or non-views) about the main topic along the lines of a dramatic performance that should be seen live for better understanding. Having the gravity of the implication been established, there’s not a single minute of the (still interesting) “Antiphony VIII” that equals the emotional and technical intensity of “Maledetto” which alone is worth of the purchase of this disc, as it’s definitely indispensable listening.

CHRISTOPH GALLIO / BEAT STREULI - Hits / Stills (Percaso)

This release is indeed a double layer disc: one side CD, the other DVD (in European Pal format). In both sides the music was composed by Christoph Gallio and interpreted by Claudia Rüegg on piano. The "Hits" are eighty short segments (that's right, eighty) of sketches, glimpses and delicacies that follow a kind of artistic ideal which I share completely, as I myself have always been fascinated by the idea of suggesting without concluding, like planting a small seed that the receivers will water with their own imagination. These vignettes alternate refined harmonies, barely imagined scale fragments and ironic outbursts (OK, very few of the latter ones) but never leave the ambit of an inquisitive, reflective mood that, in some moments, made me mentally define them like a compound of Chick Corea's "Children songs" and certain well-known pages from Erik Satie's book. Rüegg plays with competent technique and semi-detached approach, the compositional depth clearly audible throughout the program. On the DVD, the tracks accompany a series of photographs and "Stills" by Beat Streuli, shot in Tokyo in 2006. The strange pairing of Gallio's music with images of huge buildings and people from the street (the large part of them dealing with a cell phone, one would say) works well, the highlight being Rüegg's digital adroitness underlining splendid nocturnal visions featuring the anti-crash red lights of the skyscrapers, continuously on and off in a flickering game of hide-and-seek with blackness.

CHRISTOPH GALLIO / MÖSIÖBLÖ - Ample food (Percaso)

In little more than 33 minutes, Swiss reedman and composer Gallio managed to musically transpose 92 questions, those published in Fluxus artist Robert Filliou’s book “Ample food for stupid thought” (dating from 1965). This obviously means that the pieces are extremely short - one-liners, like in the written version - but their brevity is exactly what exalts the perfection of the concept. In fact, I don’t hesitate in calling this one of the best albums of 2008 - a strong, concise record that must be carefully considered and savoured, and that will be admired by many different specimens of genre lover, including those who are well acquainted with RIO and posthumous derivations. The players sustain the work of a technically impeccable soprano, Sylvia Nopper, who performs a basic role - giving voice to those “stupid thoughts” and rendering them marvellous. The rest of the small (tiny?) chamber ensemble that’s Mösiöblö is tightly rehearsed and absolutely surefooted: guitarist Marino Pliakas, clarinettist Thomas Eckert and the leader on saxophone manage to enshrine the pure lyricism of scores that are redemptive of all the hopeless noodling that often I’m forced to listen to, in the name of nondescript freedom. Here the audience can appreciate the fascination of the rule instead: every sound falls precisely where it should, without foppery or affectation - just sheer clarity of intent, setting the music at heights where artistry can’t possibly be mystified. Other participants include Peter Schärli, Bernhard Bamert, Dominique Girod, Martin Lorenz, Ernst Thoma. High recommendations are reserved for this surprisingly great CD.

GANELIN TRIO PRIORITY - Live at the Lithuanian National Philarmony Vilnius 2005 (Nemu)

I vividly remember the original Ganelin Trio being constantly quoted - together with the late Sergey Kuryokhin - as the torch bearers for free music in the Soviet Union, real symbols of a movement that would explicate through a sound that was as free of predictability and constrictions as the wildest dreams of people living under a regime. After the dissolution of U.S.S.R. Vyacheslav Ganelin went to Israel and practically disappeared; yet, surprisingly, the Ganelin Trio is back in action, with a slightly modified name but also new maturity and consciousness to fuel their most recent music, which in this magnificent DVD was captured in its deepest essence. The leader's new companions respond to the names of Petras Vysniauskas (alto & soprano sax) and Klaus Kugel (drums and percussion). Two long tracks range from melancholic themes, hinted by Ganelin on his Korg synthesizer, almost evoking ECM-like atmospheres full of chiaroscuro intersections, to furious improvisational surges in which the musicians play like possessed by an inner strength multiplying their efforts until the sunlight seems to enter the hall and shine brighter on players and receivers alike. The final encore is instead a beautifully mourning tune, "Homage to friends", magnified by additional impromptu ramifications that confirm the reciprocal responsiveness of the involved artists, not to mention the mental and physical participation that they show throughout the concert. It's a must-see documentary of a great performance, and a virtual applause should also go to the incredibly silent, attentive audience of Vilnius whose age span is noteworthy - young kids to elderly indeed; but this didn't prevent them to respond to the Trio's heartfelt communication with all the respect that serious music should always receive.

MARGARIDA GARCIA / MATTIN - For permitted consumption (L'innomable)

Just over 33 minutes of ear stinging, brain scathing radiographies by Garcia on electric double bass and Mattin on computer feedback. Complex, refreshing, the noise/sound perfect placing by the pair yields lots of rippling distorted waves alternating with bass frequencies often sounding so underneath, you could probably measure them on the Richter scale. Trying to give a name to this genre of sound deconstruction is an unpronounceable heresy; but - lo and behold - I opened my window in this torrid summer day and everything fitted magnificently with cicadas chanting in the outside fields. Concise and straight faced, there is nothing that could be said against this effort.

RICHARD GARET - Intrinsic motion (Nonvisualobjects)

"Intrinsic motion" is a record whose beauty is revealed in the very moment in which we become able to penetrate its many subtle layers. Only a repeated attentive listening in a quiet environment can let us decipher its contents in their essential significance. Richard Garet created these four pieces through "combinations of various sound sources such as field recordings, found sound appropriations, contact microphone play, feedback and studio processing". "For Shimpei Takeda" is a fulgid example of Garet's poetic: imperceptible frequency modulations intertwine in religious silence, then it rapidly cuts to birds singing in a garden and distant road sounds that, once treated, become similar to a nocturnal backwash, the piece ending with a hypnotic feedback blemished by a more evident, if scarcely decipherable rustling noise. "Ascending" fuses overacute waves, some of them pretty near the ultrasonic range, to additional field recordings (water and barking dogs can be heard) then it gradually starts to alter - probably reinforce - our sense of equilibrium through a progressively denser, thicker amassment of splendid drones bringing the piece to its completion. While the initial "Endless scenery" is a sort of muted meditation about the uselessness of words in trying to define what a "sound" is, and a preparation for our brain to be delivered from preconceptions, the 25'46" of "Field of monochrome" combine the album's basic ingredients in a wonderful succession of solitary experiences and faraway echoes of a surrounding life which still has some significance in terms of aural colours, but not anymore as far as intellectual motivations are concerned. Throughout this track - and the whole record - time seems to freeze in a delicate sequence of compelling, profound memory snapshots.

RICHARD GARET - L’avenir (Winds Measure)

The difference between the future and “l’avenir”, according to Jacques Derrida, lies in the almost planned predictability of the former as opposed to the eventual unexpectedness of the latter. For Richard Garet, the concept “played a significant role in scoring the work from a subjective and intuitive perspective”. The composition was “constructed” in 2006 and 2007, no information given about its generation, although we can assume that laptop-processed found sounds and some kind of complex synthesis might have been used. The results are not too far away from the aesthetic vision of another Richard (Chartier), maintaining a general stillness often adjoining silence. Everything starts with a few minutes of softly rustling secretions, after which we’re initiated to the first layers of temperate electronic drones which take only a short moment to start diffusing all around our body, a little bit of holographic sonic architecture whose vibrational power is fair but firm. The beneficial effect of this mild-mannered rubbing is instantaneous, as one experiences that sense of fitting in the immediate environment that masterful soundscapers are able to elicit. Garet shows that he belongs, both in the above mentioned background and the upper echelon of contemporary sound artists, his music both a considerable means for vanquishing the gravitational pull and the key to reach a state of respite of the nerves.

RICHARD GARET / DALE LLOYD / JOS SMOLDERS / UBEBOET - Territorium (Nonvisualobjects)

"Circle" by Richard Garet is a gorgeous juxtaposition of field recordings and studio treatments, in which inherent manifestations and mechanical sounds create an ambience accepted by our ears like a perfectly natural thing; the powerful images conjured up by Garet can be filed in the archives of the most deeply captivating electroacoustic music. Dale Lloyd underlines that there aren't actual insects or amphibians in his "Anamorphic_AT"; indeed one could be deceived by the cricket-like sounds characterizing the piece, a high frequency electronic meditation over an underground rumbling whisper, akin to the wind as heard from afar. Speaking of which, the wind itself is the leading source in Jos Smolders' "Aiolos (Vangsaa exterior)"; the composer mixes "the continuous pushing and tearing" of several air currents, what he calls "tiny bell-like anomalies" made with Bhajis Loops and environmental sounds for what's maybe the most "concrete" track of the disc, which itself is ended by Ubeboet's tracks, "The wait", "Doubts" and "Waking up (Misty)", three shorter nocturnal pieces defined by their creator as a sort of reproduction of "urban, unnatural environments without human presence" - and I could not put it better than this; these enigmatic textures constitute a "post-industrial" conclusion for another intriguing album by this excellent label.

GARRICK’S FAIRGROUND - Epiphany/Mr. Smith’s Apocalypse (Vocalion)

Michael Garrick - born in 1933 - is a peculiar character of English music who undoubtedly should be better known and appreciated by a larger segment of record-consuming population. His compositional attitude shows both admiration for traditions and the urge of trying new solutions in settings and orchestrations that mix lots of different ideas and influences. This probably derives from being self-taught (hey - the best talents own gifts, did you ever notice that?) and, in fact, he was once expelled by a piano lesson for inserting a quote from "In the mood" during a pupils' exhibition. The main feature Garrick is remembered for, though, is the fusion of jazz and poetry, of which this CD - reissuing an LP from 1971 - is a great example. The basic concept underlying poet John Smith's writings is that "god never seems to listen, never intervenes when most desperately needed and prayed to" (this was then; one wonders what Mr. Smith would have written today). The leader, who plays organ throughout, adapted the lyrics to the score in such a fashion that the outcome, a so called "jazz cantata", sounds like a cross of twisted excerpts from musicals - "Jesus Christ Superstar" to "Tommy", to name a couple that sprang to mind - enhanced by strange intervallic designs and harmonically complicated passages nearing the whole to the most intricate progressive rock. The principal vocalists are Norma Winstone, George Murcell and Betty Mulcahy besides Smith himself; the band comprises Henry Lowther (trumpet, flugelhorn), Don Rendell and Art Themen (tenor & soprano saxes, clarinet, flute), Coleridge Goode (double bass), Trevor Tompkins (percussion). Eccentric, abnormal music that requires attention in large doses and repays it in full. The reissue is completed by two tracks, "Epiphany" and "Blessed are the peacemakers", that came out in the same year on an EP, then disappeared; the latter in particular is a splendid song, somehow recalling the work of Christian and Stella Vander in Magma and Offering, a reinforcement of my suggestion to get a copy of this forgotten gem. Bizarre, yet so interesting.

GART & SEEKATZE - The secret life (of Alvin Tsunoda) (Audiobot)

If this music had been released by Hafler Trio or Rapoon, we'd be praising it as just another example of their masterful work on hypnosis and transcendence; instead, this is a thoroughly spartan edition - no cover notes at all - containing two long segments of immobile beauty, something like an infinite lo-fi loop of a hybryd entity comprising the two above mentioned artists, the muffled noise of a boiler, the menacing clouds of a bad winter afternoon and the quiet depression of someone already knowing their death's exact date. Everything resonates around a more or less fixed spurious frequency made with guitars, eBow and layered tapes, slightly crippled by small disturbances sounding like the wind as heard from within your house with windows shut; very rarely, a tiny gong toll apparently defines the length of these ceremonials. This flux is interrupted by a final crackle, which abruptly stops the ongoing hallucination.

STEPHEN GAUCI TRIO - Substratum (CIMP)

Tenor saxophonist Gauci demonstrates his ability in maintaining a balance between restraint and urgent momentum in “Substratum”, a snake of an album that sounds just like classic jazz at a first listen, but sinuously excavates tunnels of attention-eliciting virtuosity delivered by any patina of gratuitous technical wizardry (that’s right, the cat can play the damn instrument: the CD’s head and tail, “Threshold” and “Here and now”, are truly incendiary tunes in that sense). The lyrical aspect of the leader’s voice is also fascinating, embodying a style which mixes influences only to instantly discard them in favour of a keen linearity that renders the music vivid, touching, serenely meditative at times. This prepares for the frequent outbursts of emancipated phraseology pushing the trio towards dissonant shores. The rhythm section of Michael Bisio on bass and Jay Rosen on drums is perfect, amalgamation and elegance distributed in equal doses throughout the compositions, Gauci leaving ample room for both to exhibit their mastery: in “Song of Sundaram”, Bisio meshes tranquil composure and his will of frequenting the most dangerous zones of uncoagulated improvisation, Rosen swings and shifts accents with the same detached coldness that he’d use during a poker game. The bassist’s arco work in “This cannot be lost” is impressive to say the least. “Substratum” is definitely a pleasurable experience, giving us back some measure of trust in the future of jazz.

STEPHEN GAUCI’S BASSO CONTINUO - Nididhyasana (Clean Feed)

This is a quite atypical lineup, in that it presents two double basses (Mike Bisio and Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten) as a thick backbone for the evolutions of Stephen Gauci on tenor saxophone and Nate Wooley on trumpet. Upon reading the instrumentation, one could be justified in thinking of a god-awful jumble of low-frequency pumping with squealing swords agitated everywhere. Not so, and I had no doubt about that after having seen the involved names. There’s no abundance of moonbeams here: every note coming from Gauci and Wooley seem to derive from triturated melodies whose crumbles scourge the face of the listener like burning sand carried by the desert wind. In there, we can easily locate refined scribbles of intuitive geniality, which cancel whatever remote influence might have been traced (it takes a good auricular effort to realize that the leader was a student of Joe Lovano). Flaten and Bisio do what expected and a little more, building a booming cage of buzz, drone and pluck lodging their speculative philosophy of the bass, all the while remaining in the undetermined area of instant creation without losing a longitudinal vision of the whole. Being struck by the music at a first try is not easy: give it the necessary attention and the reward is all but assured, also thanks to a fabulously vivid recording quality.

BERTRAND GAUGUET - Etwa (Creative Sources)

"Etwa" is a pretty harsh work, not easy to absorb at a first try but full of propulsive energy anyhow. Gauguet is one of the several saxophonists exploring the peculiar aspects of his instrument; he's from the "air team" of the Bosettis and the Donedas (the first track of the album is dedicated to the French improviser) yet his bubbling saliva, incredible harmonics and most of the sounds coming out of those tubes and keys are permeated by a kind of "lo-fi" character, like if Bertrand had placed microphones in experimental manners or even used some effects, which gives the music a spartan, "post-radiation" pale skin. That doesn't detract in any way from the pieces, all very interesting and expressing a well definite identity in a not easy to penetrate sense of aesthetic value that is surely the most notable character in Bertrand's world. I really believe that repeated listening will help in a full comprehension of this musician's attitude.

CHARLES GAYLE - Shout! (Clean Feed)

Feasting on the remnants of perishing modulations and switching metrical tails, this trio - Gayle on tenor sax, Sirone and Gerald Cleaver as a fractally propulsive rhythm section - stands between controlled racketing and the need of curbing cries, for they will never resign to a complete disembodiment of their primal sketches. Gayle's harassment of commonplace thematic rituals footstomps its authority through pieces that pour a hangdog spiritual reverberation over precarious lightings, like hearing the last notes coming out of desperate individuals struggling for a cheap ticket to innocence. Questioning each one of their steps, the musicians leave no room for easy neighbourliness as their interplay takes all of your concentration to be fully acknowledged; yet, theirs is that sort of constructive empathy that - even during the most dust-encrusted pages - links the need to escape from life's ugly evidences with the desire of belonging to a disintegrating tradition that Charles has absorbed in full. The fascinating perfume emanating from his (uncredited) piano in the fabulous version of Vernon Jordan's "I can't get started" is yet another tasteful morsel of his uncompromising talent.

CHARLES GAYLE TRIO - Consider the lilies... (Clean Feed)

Soul can be extremely pierceable, and Charles Gayle is one of those musicians that is able to perform the job. One listens to such a strong collection of cries, emotions and intensely visceral communions, and the ground just subsides under your feet, preventing any further description or interpretation. "Consider the lilies..." was recorded live in New York in 2005 and features Gayle on alto sax and piano, Hilliard Greene on double bass and Jay Rosen on drums. These guys don't lollop around, instead going straight to the core of their music with short excursions through thematic expositions that immediately get transformed into furious altercation and scorching free jazz granules, sometimes alleviated by slightly calmer, predicative solo sections. The colours never change, it's all there: a peculiar kind of brazenness meshed with an almost religious fervour, the whole causing the same effects of a sparkle on a matchbox, with Rosen and Greene prolonging the duration of the flame until Gayle reaches the point of no return with his endless quest for rousing phrases and fierce enthusiasm for life. No more words; it's just great stuff, truly "blood, sweat and tears" and highly recommended.

PHILIP GAYLE - The mommy row (Family Vineyard)

One has to wonder why, in times of abundant self-release jackoffing and overexposure to "talents" destined to eternal oblivion within months, an inquiring musician like Philip Gayle puts out a solo CD so rarely. Listening to "The mommy row" I came up with an answer: too many good ideas for these days of one-chorded sapience, too many directions taken - it can't be used as background music like the 99% of people do while immersed in something else - timbral variety like a pouring rain, detuning of strings, toy pianos and tibetan bells, complex stratifications of guitar and...water. In his explorations Philip goes for parallel significances, passing through Henry Kaiser/Derek Bailey wastelands of harmonic bending and behind-the-bridge picking to find his own, unique voice which refracts in every corner of our being through hundreds of pleasant diversions, each and everyone with its well defined meaning. This is Gayle's best work and also one of the nicest improvisation albums I've met in many years.

JEFF GBUREK - Virtuous circles (A question of re_entry)

Taping environmental sounds and releasing them is one thing; using those recordings in the context of a proper composition - or, as it happens here, in a live performance (Berlin, 2007) - is another matter altogether. This usually distinguishes the ones who jumped on the field recording bandwagon only to see their name on a publication from serious men like Jeff Gburek. The composer closes his insightful presentation of the work with this sentence: “There is God in Godless. But there is also more in less”. He proceeds to demonstrate the axiom with an intriguing bastard piece that uses both electronics - at times pretty evil-tempered, check the piercing tones and the vicious distortions taking command from around minute 17 - and sources captured by Gburek in a large variety of places (Berlin, Paris, San Francisco, New York, Java, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt and Iraq). Halfway through the fascination of Francisco Lopez’s absorbing solitudes amidst the natural elements and the semi-desperation deriving from the view of a desolate suburban landscape, “Virtuous circles” subtracts rather than adding, revealing human presence (mostly Middle-Eastern voices, with a few beautiful faraway calls to prayer) in a finely textured laminate where events succeed without prior notice in fluid consecutiveness. We have heard similar things before, no question about it; still, Gburek applies the right lights and the perfect doses of noise to bring out details otherwise invisible and pollute silence just that tiny bit necessary to synthesize a state of precarious suspension which is all the more welcome, inviting me to an immediate replay when the record ends.

GUNNAR GEISSE - Meta (Creative Sources)

The mystery surrounding this music is equal to my ignorance about the composer, but this is one of the most fascinating releases that I’ve heard in 2008. Geisse used electric guitar and bass, signal processing, field recordings and voice to father a fairly unpredictable album that stands halfway through serious acousmatics and the living room experiments of an evolved home recording geek. “Per sona” opens the CD with a mix of rarefied movements and contrasting frequencies, mostly remaining on the dark side of the sonic spectrum. The title track exploits processed hums, vocal fragments, interference and various types of glitches together with extended techniques on the instruments, the whole manifesting its significance in ever-surprising spurts where scenes changes continuously in a concentrated exposition of accurate tampering and heterogeneous noise. “Grattager”, the longest selection on offer, is also the one where bass and guitar - although treated with effects - are initially recognizable, chiming harmonics and rumbling tremolos sparkling ethereal combustions of long reverbs and delicate dissonance. But after a few minutes the piece becomes a nightmare of slanted waves paralleled by morphing ambiences, dramatically turning the whole into a rather inharmonious picture - which is even more absorbing from this point of observation. “Das diskrete Jetzt” is a cross of free improvisation and selected studio manipulations, coming off as the most anarchic segment of the lot (it recalls both Tim Olive and Paul Dolden to these ears), while “Die Quelle” ends the show with a juxtaposition of elongated utterances and electronic titillations. A record that deserves repeated attentive listens from a musician whom I’d easily define as a revelation.

GEN 26 - BLN (Self release)

A very peculiar item comes from Slovenia's Matjaz Galicic, who recorded this 3-inch CD using a microphone and a set of deflated coloured balloons which he rubs and drags around the mike's capsule obtaining a "sheer raw microcosm" of hand-generated noise. Surprisingly enough, the outcome is some sort of low-budget micro-concrete music which sounds like if it was generated by a laptop. The matter crumbles and breaks in absolutely uncontrollable ways, at the same time maintaining an overall cohesiveness comparable to more "evolutional" projects; it could well be a recording of a volcano's rumble and you couldn't tell the difference. I'm looking forward to hear more from Galicic - maybe a structured noise piece?

GEN 26 - F*/Jesen/Live (Smell The Stench)

Matjaz Galicic's relationship with inanimate objects is unbelievably creative: he manages to get usable sounds from a floor, various pieces of furniture, rubber. In the vein of early Daniel Menche, Gen 26 puts contact microphones in every conceivable spot to generate a world of distorted babbling, jet-propelled chorales and electrostatic discharges that seem to spring out of a high-priced laptop, while instead are just the result of this Slovenian sound artist's curiosity and love for self-expression. Unconventional to the bone, Galicic never loses his focus on the core of significance, showing aspects of his music which we could not be completely accustomed to; yet, his imagination makes sure that the sounds he conjures up keep their artistic value while establishing a new interesting lingo.

GEN 26 - A door to… (Mask of the Slave)

Two tracks on a 3-inch, yet another example of Matjaz Galicic’s explosive noise potential through ridiculously cheap means like rubber balloons, kitchen forks, spoons and electronics. The first: screaming fire, subversive violence, piercing distortion, unclassifiable stridency, compressed steam, ears in jeopardy. No aesthetic of sorts, no declaration of intents; the sounds comes out as it is, and it blows your socks off. The second: disturbed hum, pops, zaps, scratches, interference upon hissing, crackle, pernicious tranquillity, prelude to devastation. Non-biodegradable birds chirping a single ultrasound after being splattered on a grill machine, or - if you prefer - a referee who ingested his whistle and dies suffocated while trying to throw it up. All of this was made with domestic materials, but it sounds like a crazed computer circuit. Move over Merzbow, there’s a new kid in town.

GEORGE STEELTOE ENSEMBLE - Church of Yuh (Heat Retention)

Active since 1999, the George Steeltoe Ensemble is an ever-changing group of multi-instrumentalists and performing artists; "Church of Yuh" - a vinyl album - is their first release. In this particular occasion, the instrumentation comprises electronics, basses, vocals, guitars, saxes, trumpet, flute, piano, contact microphone, tin can, tone generator, percussion and tapes. Nine musicians in different combinations were recorded in two different sessions, each featured on a side of the LP. One of the keywords here is "free jazz", but there's more than just powerful blasting and liberating clangour. At times - especially at the beginning of the second side - the performers engage in hypnotic repetitions and interlocking arpeggios; picture La Monte Young(er) relaxing in a NYC avant-jazz club. Yet, when the group's engine gets going, the Steeltoes build thick walls of dissonant belligerency, interspersing flows of hoarse rage with strange languages that mix treated vocals and electronic undercurrents. It's difficult but not intimidating music that does not look for appreciation at all costs but rather seeks the best way to leave a lasting impression.

GESTALT ET JIVE - Gestalt et Jive (Creative Works)

The concept behind Gestalt et Jive is pretty easy to explain, and inversely proportional to the complexity of their music. Comprising members from three different countries and languages, the group was founded in 1984 by Alfred Harth with the intent of creating “hot and danceable free improvisation”. The original line-up was made of Harth, Ferdinand Richard (of Etron Fou LeLoublan fame), Steve Beresford and Uwe Schmitt. The latter was replaced on drums by Anton Fier and, later on, Peter Hollinger. All of these astute musicians except Hollinger were involved in the “Mark I” version of G&J, well represented by their first album “Nouvelle Cuisine” (which I’ll talk about in another occasion). But I felt necessary to start this argument with the “Mark II”, as the skeletal-yet-athletic trio of Harth, Hollinger and Richard is an accurate example of the so-called “poetic” of such an abnormal band. This record - originally released as a double vinyl LP in 1986 - fully satisfies Harth’s demand of “never making up pre-concepts and never playing compositions” in this setting. The instant architectures of “Gestalt et Jive” follow a modicum of rules, one of them being the development of several “fragments” (“Versatzstuecke”, in 23’s words) within a single “tune”, snippets that the musicians can mix, destroy and shift in a brain-wrecking cut-up (John Zorn is not the only one who used to do these things, you know...). To facilitate this feeling of perennial mutability, the artists also included sudden changes of instruments during the performance; while Hollinger “limits” himself to drums and percussion (which is enough to send many colleagues into hiding for years; Hollinger is BAD), Harth uses tenor and alto sax, trombone, trumpet, bass clarinet, mouthpieces and voice, while Richard gives birth to oblique figurations and odd-metred arpeggios on the neck of his Fender VI. There is much to like for everybody, including - well, yes - fans of Etron Fou (are there any still around?), as Richard’s timbre is very influential in its unmistakable coolness, at times literally cloning the irony of that group’s peg-legged time signatures. The riff-based follies characterizing some of the “tunes” highlight the unstoppable cerebral activity of the players, Harth genially fathering one incongruous coup de téte after another while he transforms himself in a depraved muezzin first, a dejected Tuvan later on, all the while incinerating everyone trying to get to terms with his honking promiscuity and blaring rage. Hollinger, whose semi-obscurity is totally unjustified, is one of the best drummers of the last thirty years, a scary independence of the limbs at the basis of a style that lets us picture sparkles flying from his set. Get revitalized by three ugly ducklings who, more than 20 years ago, were already looking down from the top of the hill; matter-of-factly, there’s nobody today playing music at this technical level with the same evil intentions. Dance on that 15/8, nerd, or these piranhas will eat you.

GHIDRA - The sound of speed (Sol Disk)

Arrived at their second CD on this label after “Strawberry Skinflint”, Ghidra rekindle a stagnating evening with lightning attacks, hitting the audience with a solid punch to the liver under the guise of an improvising power trio which could rival the first version of Massacre (Frith, Laswell, Maher) with saxophonist Wally Shoup emitting competent cries and barbaric howls in lieu of the bass. The other members are guitarist Bill Horist - who can appear both a unique specimen and an imitator at the same time, given a schizophrenic sonic personality that brings him to play loquacious nonsense and Frisell-esque chordal swells in the space of thirty seconds - and drummer Mike Peterson, a punkish scrambler whose scratch-card style would make many “names” envious, the veritable motor behind the flexible bedlam generated by the unit. Having already quoted another famous group, you’ve been warned about the places where Ghidra are going to take you: technical command and velocity, extreme bombast and sudden rallentando just to let us breathe a little bit before plunging again into the refractive angularity of this music. Shoup’s will to emphasize and corroborate Horist’s playing makes for an awful lot of mortal combat exchanges, the sharpened blades of irrepressible anarchy ready to cut through the butter of self-complacence. No scumbled contours in this recording, only that kind of bright creativity needed for a substantial confrontation with the incipient decline.

GHOSTS ON WATER - Ghosts on water (Faraway Press)

Another treasurable item by Faraway Press, adorned by an exquisitely evocative artwork and rendered in sounds by Naoko and Daisuke Suzuki with Andrew Chalk. "Pale shadow" whispers its intentions to the wind amidst gentle melodies (courtesy of Chalk's keyboards and kantele) whose East-tinged imperturbability attribute a deep thrust to something that, coming from other hands, could even have been classified as an outtake. Both "Fall and flow" and "In October skies" are heavily typified by Naoko and Daisuke Suzuki's voices, first through uncertain lines on a field recording-based, extremely subtle background, then in a dissonant prayer made of intersecting improvised chants that depict strange colours and shapes for about three minutes. "Snowy fields sparkle aglow" is the record's top as far as sheer beauty is concerned, a mix of melancholically tranquil piano figures over murmuring layers of uncertain origin, moving between remembrance and pastel-like sadness with the right touch of naïveté. "Wings of day" ends this (unfortunately) short CD with the same atmospheres, keyboards and vocals informing a barely seamed tapestry whose levity is directly proportional to its soulful substance.

JOE GIARDULLO - No work today: nine for Steve Lacy (Drimala)

With this brilliant effort, Joe Giardullo not only succeeds in celebrating one of the finest soprano saxophone masters; he also reinforces his right to be considered among the most accomplished virtuosos in today's panorama. Even more noticeably, he does this without reaching out for transcendence or - worse still - for that sensual deterioration which often lurks behind the apparent freedom given by a doleful distruction of what seemed a bad world of constrictions and was instead the chrysalis of a structural charm. Giardullo wanders around linear sketches whose hard-boned skeleton is perfectly delineated in modal improvisations where silence and notes have veritably the same specific weight; the evidence of this unbelievably limpid dexterity stands out in the gorgeous rendition of "Prospectus", a piece that Steve Lacy wrote using all the notes in the C major scale; in Joe's hands, it becomes a softly confident preparation to a clear-headed dimension of ambivalent intelligence and geometric poetry. Giardullo's own creations "follow the music", as he writes on the liner notes of a beautiful booklet, meeting his dedicatee's concepts and furtherly adorning them with a composed expressiveness brimming with emphatic simplicity even in the moments where the saxophonist lets the reins just that bit necessary to direct the sound towards the fringes of the soprano's range, in exciting attempts to portray the molecular movement of the surrounding air waves.

JOE GIARDULLO / CHRIS SULLIVAN / MICHAEL THOMPSON - Language of Swans (Drimala)

This is a work resplending in its sheer beauty, perfectly balanced in a mixture of delicate and complex atmospheres. Multi-instrumentalist (saxes, flute and bass clarinet) and composer Giardullo, who I remember involved with Pauline Oliveros among the many, has utter command of the linear aspects of an improvisation - this means he's one of the few people who can sound like playing written parts while instead he's creating them on the spot; here, he's flanked by the great duo of Carl Sullivan, whose bass is punchy and articulate at the same time, and Michael Thompson on drums and piano, both played with elegance and sense of deep meaning. No need to find a genre or a precise definition for this music, just think about serenity, awareness of life and a little bit of primordial energy.

JOE GIARDULLO QUARTET - Now Is (Drimala)

Third effort by the excellent Giardullo on this label, "Now Is" presents four musicians at their very expressive high. Starting with the swinging, jazzy outburst - with a " full freedom" imprint - of the title track, the record guarantees skill and heart in enormous doses in the following pieces, where the magnificent eruptions and flights of the saxes and the deep inquiries of Joe McPhee's pocket trumpet's lines are perfectly at ease with a rhythm section consistently imaginative and turbulent when the right moment comes. While Joe Giardullo and Joe McPhee are those kind of masters you can always trust because they'll NEVER fail to produce emotional moments, I'd just like to take my hat off in front of the technical capability and soulful equilibrium of a great bassist, Mike Bisio; last but not least, the scintillating drumming (not to mention his djembe) of Tani Tabbal also deserves a spot in the light - that very light that surely was caressing the heads of these four gentlemen while recording this beauty. A must for lovers of contemporary jazz.

CARLOS GIFFONI - The beauty of skylines (Feld)

An unquestionably rich soundscape, Carlos Giffoni's 3-inch is just 21 minutes but sounds like a whole CD collection put into an electric egg-beater and eaten by a six-head insect that vomits sound fragments all around while flying zig-zag trajectories. Noise eruptions, minimalist orgasms, skipping discs and decomposed organs play their fundamental role in a piece which is intelligent and funny, with nary a moment of dullness. Giffoni is rapidly establishing his name around; based on this work the credit is deserved.

CARLOS GIFFONI / LEE RANALDO / JIM O'ROURKE - North six (Antiopic)

Antiopic presents a mini CD with three gunslinging noisemakers at their raging best. Chirping cybersynths and short circuit sparks by sulphurous guitars at full blast constitute the complete plot of "North six": the three take no prisoners, attacking the Brooklyn audience from the first bell and never leaving them off the squalls. Exhilarating sputters and wobbly distorted fingerings transmit a sense overload all around the place; no time for judgement or comprehension. This is do-or-die listening, like being slapped by violent rain while riding a bike.

LISA GILL / KURT HEYL - Mortar & Pestle (Reckless Faith)

The pairing of a poetess delivering her verses with almost deadpan voice (somehow reminiscent of Annette Peacock) and an improvising trombone player who defines coyotes as his main influence could sound absurd on paper, but it works just fine in "Mortar & Pestle". It's a collection of 26 poems plus a final trombone/voice solo by Heyl, born from the meeting of two strangely akin sensibilities whose difference in age (Gill was born in 1970, Heyl in 1942) is not a factor in the artistic equation; indeed, Gill describes the duo as an "intense partnership" in the liners and it shows throughout. Every poem becomes a "vis a vis" dialogue, in which Heyl establishes a coherent pace for his phrasing while managing to underline, court and at times embrace his partner's vocal presence. The poems are not transcribed on the CD booklet (although they're recited with good intelligibility) thus I enjoyed listening to this curious album with an open attitude towards two "instruments" morphing into each other (Heyl uses his own voice and various preparations to complement the trombone's timbre). If you want to know more about Lisa Gill visit her website (lisagill.org) and discover a one-of-a-kind artist.

JOE GILMORE - On Quasi-Convergence and Quiet Spaces (Cut)

The last couple of Cut releases tends towards the harsh side of the sonic spectrum and - except for the long conclusive track “U+221E” which is as hypnotizing as we can get, and verily desirable to these ears - this CD by Joe Gilmore is a fine specimen of that kind of experimental computer-ism that manages to sound fresh enough to erase any doubt about the fact that its creator is for real. A multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer, Gilmore has published his music on various labels (I recall a pretty lively split 3-inch with George Rogers on Entr'acte). He privileges a certain rawness as opposed to over-refinement, which is very helpful for the sounds to lacerate any chance of indifference and, better still, to cover quite a bit of extraneous chit-chat if you decide to isolate yourself and your walkman amidst the urban tribes that infest an already scarcely digestible social participation. A veritable festival of impractical frequencies, rusty impermanences, flexible grumbles, but also several moments of rewarding investigation of deeply convulsive, revolving figures that look for a stabilizing mechanism - which they usually can't find. Uneasy yet, at the same time, pretty accessible if you're well acquainted with problematic improbabilities. Many convergences, dearth of quiet spaces. Finding the latter ones within ourselves is the key to better penetrate Gilmore’s procedures.

JOE GILMORE & GEORGE ROGERS - Elseif (Entr'acte)

A quarter of an hour - yes, it is just another 3-inch - can be enough to declare war to tranquillity. Try to play "Elseif" at a good volume, then expect your relatives to knock on your door to check if you're OK. Me, I was delighted by this alternance of ear-stinging synthetic needles and pins; three tracks are similar to a vinyl record played with Freddy Kruger's nails, while the remaining ones are sorts of "parallel convergences" among spaghetti-like bunches of more static lines. All were made using dynamic stochastic synthesis, a topic that's too difficult to be explained in a few lines - go study a little Iannis Xenakis on the web. Even if quite serious in its intentions, I had a lot of fun by listening to this music, which should be enjoyed as the unexpected result of peculiar experiments.

GINTAS K - Lengvai/60 x one minute audio colours of 2kHz sound (Cronica)

I'm certainly not attracted by the large part of contemporary glitch-and-skip electronica, but this double CD by Gintas Kraptavicius is surely a good antidote against the "light-hearted laptop" syndrome that is affecting the world today. Will anyone ever prevent all these nondescript twiddlers from releasing neat-sounding "bell-and-whistle" tiny songs slightly disturbed by electrostatics to give them that oh-so-experimental aroma? Luckily, Gintas K is not one of these entities. "Lengvai" contains five pretty long pieces of "techno vs industrial" with perfectly clean, but also horribly dirty crunches to spare (a few sections sound like a cybernetic version of Muslimgauze's late production); ear-tickling frequencies and harsh stabs of hissing noise alternate with nerve-massaging combinations of distorted/flanged waves. The title of the second disc is self-explanatory: starting from a single 2kHz tone we're pierced, intrigued, distracted and often amused by the bleeping hypnosis and test-like pulse of this digital ultra-minimalism. Near-inaudibility deprivations and ice-cold headaches are all contained in a simple concept that work better than honey-dripping, third rate Fennesz-ism. With this stuff you could even punish, if so desired, your "thing-that-wouldn't-leave" kind of undesired home guests.

GIRAFFE - Hear here (Eh?)

“Composed in real time”. Now that’s an expression that I appreciate. It’s true: some improvisations sound, well, improvised; other ones could indeed be exchanged for compositions. The third case is that many improvisations are shit, but this is not the right moment for a tirade. Joseph Jaros and Luke Polipnick generated this nicely bubbling brew while probably having fun, since the resulting music is very lively, intelligently concocted and variegated enough to sustain the attention test, although not without pauses. Circuit bending and tape alteration would seem to be the name of the game (just guessing - the sleeve doesn’t help and I’m not willing to surf at 9:30 AM). There are additional kinds of oddities, too, such as a syllable-uttering baby appearing out of nowhere at one point amidst sci-fi noise and humming warfare. Mixtures of distorted emissions, piercing shrieks, electronic pulses, even beautifully unusual radioactive frequencies. An FM station tries to unwrap from the mud in the last track. Untranslatable blather and nerve-stimulating dynamic shifts flying all around during one’s try to give a sense to a Sunday morning besides feeding the cats and watching the fight taped the evening before. A day at Cape Canaveral after the officers have smoked quite a lot of pot; the astronauts are still waiting for technical advice from ground control, yet more likely they will end like Major Tom.

FRODE GJERSTAD / DEREK BAILEY - Nearly a D (Emanem)

Classic free music from two excellent conversationalists. No need to tell you about Bailey's importance in new areas of playing, throughout his life; both on electric and acoustic guitar, his sound becomes better the more he gets older, getting free from the last remaining pieces of web to pick the occasional crystal in the sky. Here, his chordal approach transforms even the harsher dissonances into melting malt, a complete pleasure to listen to. Gjerstad's phrasing is often very fragmented, trying to escape from cliches at any cost, always reaching a good compromise point between technical difficulty and freshness. He could sound a little frosty at times but you can detect a multitude of melodic electrons under the crusty skin of his talkative runs. This is a recording you have to doublecheck in order to get its maximum potential; it will be worth the time you put in there.

FRODE GJERSTAD / LOUIS MOHOLO / HASSE POULSEN / NICK STEPHENS - Calling signals (Loose Torque)

In the liner notes Nick Stephens describes this music beautifully: "...four voices in conversation agreeing, disagreeing, shouting, soothing, answering the question or not, but always listening". During several of these parallel dialogues one gets the picture of a division between the ones who talk more calmly (Gjerstad's ever-articulated emissions, Stephens' patient excavations in the multiple opportunities offered by an acoustic bass) and those who instead mostly hit, run then stop thinking about their next move but decide to do the opposite (Poulsen's phrasing mixes Frith, Rypdal and noise in equal doses). Moholo is just wonderfully selective, always in the thick of the action with controlled angularity, his playing showing no sign of repetitiveness whatsoever. The menage a trois between Gjerstad, an arcoed Stephens and Poulsen in "Dots and dashes" is highly charged and totally vicious, while "The breeze and us" whispers memories of Ovary Lodge. "Calling signals" is an album permeated by sheer sincerity and bursting with lucid visions by four artists whose aerials fear no interference or bad weather, totally contradicting the theory according to which records of improvised music should ideally be listened only once.

FRODE GJERSTAD / EIVIN ONE PEDERSEN / KEVIN NORTON - The walk (FMR)

Certain trios move according to an utilitarian way of thinking, which privileges the “less is more” only because they have indeed nothing much to say. Not this time, as Gjerstad (Eb and Bb clarinets), Pedersen (accordion) and Norton (vibraphone and percussion) submit a kind of crepuscular music which is based on a softly dissonant psychological dimension that implies more than declaring. A steady, slow flow of reflective atmospheres bathed in a sort of conscious dejection characterizes most of the tracks; Norton’s glimmering phrasing maintains the music in a space between concreteness and magic, generating a series of images that are used by Gjerstad for putting himself in relation with many non-existent tonalities at once. Pedersen is the trio’s glue and also their "droning factor", his accordion seaming and stroking hypnotic textures and almost transcendental, wavering chords that balance the whole splendidly, his movements always gifted with quiet harmonic knowledge that anchors the music in a pretty safe harbour, made nonetheless of commestible difficulty. It's that kind of improvisation that seems to make the most of a preconceived terminology, but it's that very security that pushes it towards the highest level of reciprocal perception. An excellent outing by three of the most technically proficient names involved in such a difficult art, "The walk" is a persuasive statement and comes highly recommended.

GLASGOW IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA with BARRY GUY - Falkirk (FMR)

Although they have already released two discs with the likes of Evan Parker and Maggie Nicols, “Falkirk” marks my first encounter with the GIO, a collective of clever musicians coming from the most disparate backgrounds (the press release defines them as “jazz, contemporary classical, experimental pop and sound art”). The CD, recorded live at Falkirk’s Callendar House in 2005, contains a graciously variegated 16-minute improvisation and a very long piece by double bassist and composer Barry Guy - a collaborator of the Orchestra since the beginning in 2002 - called “Witch Gong Game II/10”. In this track, which is obviously the album’s backbone, the score consists of a set of panels containing painter and percussionist Alan Davie’s graphic signs, which should indicate “different kinds of music floating over a black void”. This implies a symbolic message of unity and communion through the act of playing together, whatever the genre and the technical expertise involved, in “the darkness of an indifferent universe”. Besides Guy, violinist Maya Homburger is featured as a special guest. The aim is high given the artistic intent, yet the ensemble is tight enough to guarantee several moments of really interesting emotional outburst, swaying music that changes in speed and intensity at the flick of a switch but succeeds in making the listener “reflect about the difficulty” rather than “look for distractions”. In a few occasions, the mixture of articulation and freedom made me think of Keith Tippett’s Centipede; elsewhere, beautiful horn arrangements lead to territories associable to Frank Zappa’s work with the London Symphony Orchestra. This stuff blasts frequently and rubs rarely, all the while giving the idea of a serious commitment from the concerned parts.

GOALKEEPER WANTED - Mouthful of cherries (Void Of Ovals)

This has to be one of the best band names in years. Goalkeeper Wanted. Gosh, what do these guys drink, I wonder. And they do sound lovely to these ears: an incoherent-yet-delicious series of improvised rough copies and first attempts, with a prevalence of uneven thumping, outlandish timbres deriving (just maybe) from collapsed keyboards, guitars that look at an average logic of tuning with absolute horror, resonating nicely nevertheless. There are also camouflaged fragments of melody and, in general, a large-limbed predisposition to sonic encrustation that grows as time elapses. As the disc lasts less than 15 minutes, we’re left wanting for more morsels of this cake, dredged with hallucinated dissonances and pustulous microenvironments. I’m asking myself until which age of my life I’ll be prepared to appreciate stuff like this but really don’t care after all, as this is sincere, if not exactly meaningful music.

GILLES GOBEIL - Trilogie d'ondes (Empreintes DIGITALes)

The sound world of Gilles Gobeil mostly revolves around the philosophy of "break" or "rupture", where "large-scale musical gestures are developed and brought to their acme before being immediately crushed to silence". This audio DVD contains three impressive tracks scored for taped/computerized sounds and Ondes Martenot, the latter fabulously handled by Suzanne Binet-Audet, who studied the instrument with the inventor himself; the resulting soundscapes affect our sense of doubt deeply, carrying an unforeseeable, almost fearful aura which puts them on the same level of excellence of the best electroacoustic mavericks we highly revere. "Voix blanche" is a highly creative mixture of slowly unfolding irregular drones and digital descriptions of an outside world we are not allowed to judge, where the violence of facts is just a pretext to transform our susceptibility through the congruous reward of a rehabilitated brain, able to classify any new colour just to achieve the pleasure of scare. "Là ou vont les nuages..." sees more dramatically intriguing junctions among the railways of hope and despair; slow glissando vapors meet pre-recorded voices, strings, car horns and percussive outbursts in a monstrous acousmatic pandemonium which has one reeling punchdrunk at times, oneirically displaced moments later. "La perle et l'oubli" is based on "Hymn of the Soul", a gnostic text by Bardesanes, and in its 21+ minutes length is maybe the narrative high of the whole set, alternating the feeling of total loneliness with outgrowths of sapient, relentless sonic activity in which samples of eternal void and heartbreaking choirs by invisible creatures are underlined by a masterful use of the "event-silence-event" consecutio; the striking puissance of these explorations of the listener's psyche closes "Trilogie d'ondes" with an exclamation mark, immediately awarding it a "classic" stamp.

GILLES GOBEIL - Trois songes (Empreintes DIGITALes)

“Cinema for the ear” is a much exploited expression in the acousmatic field - including the description of Gilles Gobeil’s work on the liner notes of this DVD - yet there is no doubt that few artists are able to challenge the Quebecoise’s visionary aptitude when it comes to assembling materials that fuse concrete matters and ethereal essences in such a masterful fashion. “Trois songes” was entirely realized in Karlsruhe, Germany over the course of four residencies between 2005 and 2007, the designer of these complex, often breathtaking architectures inspired both by literature (Jacques Lacarrière, Dante Alighieri) and an unemployed scenario by mythical movie director Andrey Tarkovsky. The most graceful piece on offer is “Entre les deux rives du printemps”, an impressive consecutiveness of events characterized by large quantities of nocturnal ambiences, crickets underlining unfathomable secluded reverberations, and a magnificent recurrence of echoing ghosts of early polyphonic music. The latter element is indeed a foundation for various circumstances in the record, whose aura is repeatedly wounded by distressed utterances (usually equalized until they become unrecognizable), natural elements - an example being the storm at the beginning of the splendidly exciting “Le miroir triste”, complete with different species of birds, bells and additional voices - and, last but not least, the surprising presence of René Lussier’s daxophone, a disembodied timbre sounding at times like a voice from the netherworld (the composer describes the instrument as “stunning and rather frightening”). The initial “Ombres, espaces, silences…” is more or less self-explanatory while trying to sonically describe the life of the “Desert Fathers” at the beginning of the Christian age, strikingly dramatic for the large part with a disquieting closing chorale that might give you the urge to cry. Needless to say, sacred music is again an essential tool in Gobeil’s compositional method for this chapter, but it’s the whole album that deserves to be eulogized for poignant substance and sheer brilliance of the overall result. The best of 2008 for the Canadian label, together with John Young’s “Lieu-temps”.

BRIAN GODDING - Slaughter on Shaftesbury Avenue (The Wild Places)

No matter what anyone could think, Brian Godding is a Touching Extremes' hero. If there's a musician that I believe has been unjustly overlooked, this has to be the Welsh/London based guitarist, a master of integrity and an example to follow according to your reviewer. I've been waiting a digital reissue of this 1988 album for years; now here's my chance to do something right and invite those who don't know to enjoy a collection of bloody jazz rock instrumentals played with absolute commitment, soul and explosive energy. Beautiful chordal rainbows, volcanic runs, chromatic blues riffs, Brian has something for everyone; he's backed by gorgeous companions making "free" music even if the pieces are generally composed. Godding's not afraid to be scrutinized, he leaves everything on the floor forcing me to nod approvingly in any minute of the record, enjoying complexities and quirks, perfect harmonies and little errors. Everything defines the vision of these artists, people who hasn't accepted anything but a harsh reality, even if that reality means making no money. Brian is currently active in the English improvisation area: keep an eye here for future reviews of his works in those contexts, already available at his website (www.lotsawatts.co.uk).

BRIAN GODDING - Kebab ala' twang (Happydays)

Directly from Brian Godding's vault, here comes a series of real-time guitar synth improvisations recorded at the end of the 80's. "Kebab" is lively and variable, mostly permeated of an almost childish disbelief in front of new harmonic discoveries (which always should be the first goal during these kinds of self-absorbing playing experiences). Linking his Stratocaster to a Roland GR-50 and an array of delays, reverbs and additional modules Godding crosses a lot of different fields with results going from an ironic outlook on apparently "serious" progressions, all the way through controlled chaos regurgitating plastic spasms and discarded phrases rebelling to their fate. Many "infinite repeat" moments also constitute the backbone for more open-air solo meditations that will be appealing to more hypno-oriented people. The remains of this "warts-and-all" concoction are tasty and sincere; among hundreds of overhyped so-called "avantgarde" guitarists, Brian shows an intriguing side of his musicianship that will surprise many listeners if they approach this record with the right frame of mind.

BRIAN GODDING - The colour of sound.. (Happydays)

More six-string explorations by Brian Godding, these very beautiful - sometimes I'd say radiant - aural landscapes are sensitively touching and delicate in their open-hearted process to see "what comes after". Orchestrating guitars has always been Brian's forte: just listen to his "Blue sun" piece in "Slaughter on Shaftesbury Avenue"; here you'll find chorales and spacey textures mixed with more radical twinkling of noises and metallic parts of the instrument, plus additional dynamic moments that could fit perfectly in a movie soundtrack. Pretty striking to me is Godding's will to uncover different shades of timbre (...the title is self explanatory in this sense...) without losing focus on the general concept of the music itself, which often sounds like an "instant well-regulated composition" rather than improvised. This CD is so highly enjoyable and impregnated by Brian's character that I can't help but inviting anyone to discover it, thereby helping this unsung hero to get more of the credit he deserves.

HEINER GOEBBELS / ALFRED HARTH - Hommage/Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler (FMP) - Vom Sprengen des Gartens (FMP)

We're in the middle of the seventies, punk and new wave thoroughly dominate the music world. Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth couldn't care less, though; their own time capsule contains the germs of true evolution and such a process cannot occur without an accurate study of the past. "Hommage" is just that: a tribute to Hanns Eisler through heartfelt versions of some of his songs and pieces, plus duo compositions that graciously nod to the great German artist. The album was recorded live in Berlin but luckily the audience is completely mixed out; we can thus enjoy robust doses of bloody virtuosity balanced by the peculiar mixture of modern and retro typical of Goebbels and Harth, a distinct trait that can be counted among the basic influences of many groups belonging to the Rock In Opposition area. "Vom Sprengen des Gartens" came out in 1979 and, from this receiver's spiritual point of observation, is a little more complex. In it, the two companions find many ways of exploring profound emotions with a preference towards an introspective melancholy, like in the intensely pensive "Almelo" on side B. Eisler is still revered, but there's also some Bach, Schumann and a gorgeous rendition of Rameau's "Le rappel des oiseaux". Both albums constitute a fulgid example of how respectfully music, whatever the genre, should always be treated. The enormous multi-instrumentalist abilities of both men (Goebbels a fantastic pianist and accordionist doubling on reeds, Harth a monster sax and clarinet player) are never used as an excuse for meaningless boring exercises. Offering coherent richness of expressive means and abundance of stirring playing, these two FMP releases should be regarded as milestones, while instead are criminally overlooked. Here's my hope of a fully detailed reissue of Goebbels and Harth's opera omnia - no compilations, please, we want them all and COMPLETE. Meanwhile, spend some eBay dollar on these two; I'll be returning soon to talk about the rest of this pair's production.

GOEM - Acht centimeter (Testing Ground)

A short essay about gradual growth, permutations of repetitive straitness directed to hermetic centres, Goem's music is made of brilliant crystal particles rather than electronic gases. Suggesting dominance of machine upon human element, nevertheless in this series of stellar cracks Duimelinks, De Waard and Meelkop trace a direct sign, releasing energies without chaos, adapting their above average mastery of sound to a more common way of listening. No need of gratuitous noise or useless shouting for this project, perfectly sequential in Testing Ground's gallery of interesting recordings.

[sic] TIM GOLDIE - Abjector [sic] (h.m.o/r)

Trying to convince people about the good and the bad in a record like this is completely useless. A classic love/hate dichotomy: someone will think that it’s art, someone else that it’s shit. Tim Goldie himself seems to have chosen a black/white approach in releasing this pair of CDs. In fact, the first one features a piece - “White peristaltic interrogations” - where the experimentation with drums and voice reaches points of high interest, as Goldie transforms the instruments (which also include credit card and bird whistle) into machines producing several kinds of groans, growls and thunders, the whole interspersed with long silences in the final section. Some of the materials are not too distant from Z’EV, but there’s probably a larger dose of anarchy in what we find here (you’ve got to love the absurd track subdivision, take a look to your player while listening). The second disc finds TG in full-scream mode in “Devocalised Fluchtverdächtiger”, as he meshes his shrieking rants with the resonance of a snare drum or throws them up by themselves, overdriving the mess via a guitar amplifier. This is obviously the part that you might want to keep secret to your relatives, a pure act of anger and liberation that has no musical sense at all yet perhaps does imply a degree of artistry, more or less on the coordinates of Viennese Aktionist movement - or nearby areas. Not that the depth is the same, though. Or is it? I can’t decide myself. Still, this is a keeper if only for disc one, which contains seriously absorbing, brain-enhancing noise in abundant quantities.

MALCOLM GOLDSTEIN & MASASHI HARADA - Soil (Emanem)

Against the pestilential self-contradictions of many and one duets that I often happen to watch on the classical music channel, where the search for a standing ovation is in direct proportion with amplitude of gestural pomp and musical vacuity, here come Malcolm Goldstein's visceral playing of a violin that often crackles and vibrates under his intensity, in conjunction with the piano of Masashi Harada, who frequently can't contain the energies which animate his system during these fervent conversations, therefore he releases them through guttural utterances and far-from-formal chanting. Diabolically contorted but - in many cases - desperately lyrical in their melting of any preconceived significance, these fourteen improvisations reconcile with our barely disguised indiscipline, which is now free to champion these artists as an example of seriousness of intents and indiscrimination between what sounds "good" and what instead would be instantly eliminated from the above mentioned contexts, which sure enough sounds even better to yours truly's callous ears.

VINNY GOLIA QUARTET - Sfumato (Clean Feed)

Assuming a neutral stance in front of this music is like pretending not to be there after being testimony to a car crash at a crossroads. The difficulty of adapting our "regular" predisposition to the wildcat venture that is the serious comprehension of "Sfumato"'s many directions is largely repaid by this spectacular ensemble, comprising Bobby Bradford on trumpet, Ken Filiano on double bass and Alex Cline on drums in addition to the leader, splendidly articulating his spontaneous ideas on saxes, bass clarinet, piccolo and contrabass flute. The quartet chops like a double-edged knife through a series of dissonant themes - proof of Golia's variegated list of influences but also of his total non-acceptance of commonly used jazz idioms - which are nothing more than the erudite description of processes in which the only possible result is a prodigious species of anti-histrionic, extremely complex improvisation by a group of artists who simply refuse to accept the easiest solution as a given. "Sfumato" is arduous to grasp with just a couple of tries: it deserves many, each one more attentive - and it's a great album in every department.

VINNY GOLIA / AURORA JOSEPHSON / HENRY KAISER / MIKE KENEALLY / JOE MORRIS / DAMON SMITH / WEASEL WALTER - Healing force: the songs of Albert Ayler (Cuneiform)

One day Henry Kaiser, a man with very open ears and extremely nimble fingers, decided that the critically destroyed late recordings released by Albert Ayler before dying - “Love Cry”, “New Grass” and “Music is the Healing Force of the Universe” - were due an attentive revision, to enhance what the press release calls “ideas that were not fully realized at the time, nor appreciated up to the present”. By reading the names of the participants, we realize that: A) Kaiser has a lot of extraordinary musicians as friends, and B) there is no limitation of fantasy in approaching the artistry of a musician that literally epitomizes free-jazz. Still, linking jazz stalwarts such as Vinny Golia and Joe Morris with Zappa alumnus Keneally and a pair of rather uncontrollable improvisers (Smith and Walter), the whole complemented by the suave-voiced Josephson, who’s adept in both academics and improvisation, means that troubles might surface. There are some indeed. Not in the correct functioning of the interplay, which is fabulous everywhere - the long “Music is the Healing Force of the Universe” and “Japan / Universal Indians” are alone worth of owning the CD. What leaves a tad perplexed is the multi-genre procedure for the rendition of Ayler’s music, which probably would benefit from a measure of channelling in this circumstance. As good as they sound, sometimes the tracks appear a little light for their original goal (“Oh! Love of Life” and parts of “New Generation” being the perfect example in that sense) and in a couple of instances the intensely refined sax of Golia, who does a great job throughout, is just displaced amidst rock-ish energy, hyper-processed overdriven guitars and crashing drums. Josephson herself sounds too educated to these ears, her technical posture noticeable even in the potentially most liberated segments. On the other hand, we have to appreciate the seriousness of the artistic commitment, undeniable from the very start. Part of the problem is mine: I’m not a lover of tribute albums anyway, yet listeners can rest assured that at Cuneiform only instrumentalists whose prowess is all but ascertained are featured. The fact is that, as earnestly as this material was interpreted, it’s neither achingly deep nor usable for social purposes, if you get my point. A modicum of scissoring would have certainly helped.

NIKITA GOLYSHEV - Solaris (Monochrome Vision)

I’m rather flabbergasted by the excellence of this album, marking the first time in which the fruits of Nikita Golyshev’s mind grace my ears. This Russian composer started doing his things in 2003, when he was involved in a duo called CD-R (that’s right). Golyshev’s prior work, we’re told, ranges from “rhythmic noise mayhem to diverse and heterogeneous experiments”, but “Solaris” is clearly a disc of static electronica in the best tradition of those artists who individuate our soft spot with just a couple of elements and make them work for about one hour. Divided in two parts, the composition is almost immobile for lengthy tracts: a single suspended chord, not exactly consonant yet not really pungent, goes on and on for the initial half, only faintly disturbed by nearly unidentifiable backdrop presences that remain unconcealed at the end of the section. The second part is characterized by a splendid roomy drone who lets the imagination portray a typical flight amidst thick clouds, sun rays filtering through the algid amassing. A release that every enthusiast still believing in - don’t laugh - the “healing power of serious esoteric music” (with a tendency to acute stillness) should enjoy no problem. This writer, unbelievably enough, liked it very much: a faultlessly executed straightforward concept. It takes a little intelligence and a “less is more” attitude to do way better than overproduced bulimic odes to the gods of ridiculousness.

ANDRE' GONCALVES & KENNETH KIRSCHNER - Resonant objects (Sirr)

The principles and the necessary setup for this piece were conceived and designed to create "a soundscape of resonance frequencies triggered by sinewaves moving in tidal motion". André Gonçalves and Kenneth Kirschner recorded this fabulous thing at Phill Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Foundation in March 2005 and, quite sincerely, no words of mine can describe the pure intensity and the breathtaking tension that these slow oscillations are able to originate, a perceptible aura which is only broken by the presence - inevitable, one would think - of some idiot coughing loud between minutes 35 and 38 of the flow (I can't help but hate these acoustic polluters). But the sheer magic of these sounds speaks for itself: we're in front of a two-headed creature with Alvin Lucier's brain and Eliane Radigue's beatitude, gently raising its eyes to allure us in a false sense of security only to start stinging our membranes with the sweetest frequency torture, as the waves remember their place in the room like if they had always lived there. For the lucky ones who participated, a beautiful reminder; for all the rest, a must.

DENNIS GONZÁLEZ 'S SPIRIT MERIDIAN - Idle wild (Clean Feed)

Since the very first minutes of "Elechi - Elegy for Malachi Favors" one can detect the perfect functioning of this combination of gifted musicians, as Spirit Meridian keep a convincingly balanced attitude, playing with devotional fervour yet not devoid of cerebral challenges; the final "Document for Toshinori Kondo" could have been penned by early Curlew, such is the detached independence of the thematic lines. The interaction between the leader's trumpet and Oliver Lake's alto sax is extraordinarily coherent, both during their burning blowouts and in its calligraphic beauty; bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Michael T.A.Thompson form an addicting rhythm section whose timbral palette and instrumental dexterity are sapiently captured by a highly skilled recording. The four companions create their own special alchemy without macho postures, their personality already greatly evident throughout the whole record.

DENNIS GONZÁLEZ BOSTON PROJECT - No photograph available (Clean Feed)

This band was assembled by Gonzalez during a quick trip to Boston and New York; he wanted to play with musicians he hadn't met until then and spread this wish around the web. The resulting group includes a peculiar double bass duo (Joe Morris, Nate Mc Bride), a sax (Charles Kohlhase) and a young drummer (Croix Galipault) besides the leader's trumpet. The music is built on two basic foundations, namely the "rounded angularity" of the themes and the obstinate alternance of passionate melodies and free-form dialogues. The bass-to-bass conversation between Morris and Mc Bride raises several stimulating questions, while Kohlhase runs the whole distance between bebop and Tim Berne. Despite his age, Galipault's drumming ignites serious accidents while keeping all soloists in check with a coordinated swinging feel when necessary. Gonzalez's tone is luscious and serene; as usual, he's virtually incapable of playing an out-of-context note, remaining anchored to a quite accessible combination of elegant dissonance and consistent improvisational phraseology.

DENNIS GONZÁLEZ NY QUARTET AT TONIC - Dance of the soothsayer’s tongue (Clean Feed)

This record was born from a rescued 34-minute tape of a performance that Dennis González (trumpets), Ellery Eskelin (tenor sax), Mark Helias (contrabass) and Michael T.A. Thompson (soundrhythium percussionist) delivered at the now dormant New York’s Tonic in the August of 2003 complemented by a studio recording from 2004, directly inspired by the previous year’s set. The whole can be considered as a homage to that historic site, which in 2007 was forced to closure due to the excessive raise of the rents in the Lower East Side. González doesn’t play too much yet he makes sure that every note counts heavily, the timbre softly scorching, the phrases always puzzling under simple dresses seamed with economy and intelligence. Indeed, this music might appear as deceptively skeletal, all the instrumentalists seemingly taking ideas from patterns and shapes that frequently get thoroughly disintegrated, ending their regular life in the clamour of scarcely controllable rituals. The most prominent presence as far as this writer’s feeling is concerned is Thompson’s - probably the true protagonist of the large part of the disc - who is often left free in expressing a total command of the anarchic mathematics of drumming in lengthy solo spots. Eskelin symbolizes the intricacies of jazz more than anyone else here, his reversible logic at the basis of smouldering fragments of lyricism camouflaged as blowing fuses. Helias’ bass is strong-armed and long-ranged, shouting the will of abandoning the constrictions of a rhythm section with thudding mementos that don’t go unnoticed, but also accompanying the leader’s voice with brilliant arco counterpoints when necessary. Bloody passion and killer-like coldness. Just perfect.

GOREHALLREIDER - A blow to the head (Cohort)

Much more than "psychedelic ambient", which is how John Gore calls his project with Steve Hall and C.Reider, this music sounds like a machine washing away the sins from the blemished souls of those who believe in the relaxing power of ambient itself, the presumed "real thing" which sometimes makes us even more nervous due to lack of contents. On the contrary, "A blow to the head" is an accomplished work, a group of abstract reminiscences where the apparent absurdity of contorted voices from the ground suggests multidimensional narratives wandering through emotional relationships between uncommon synthetic parabolas and slowly falling black angels. The quality of these suggestions grows with the passage of time, so that concepts started with a touch of nice violence find their own significance at last, mirroring themselves in a finely displayed droning.

HELENA GOUGH - With what remains (Entr'acte)

A sending station of messages that we could even perceive as takeaway illuminations, fragments of glorified externalizations whose significance is not born from casualness but derives instead from the very kernel of sound, modified by the skills of a bright-minded electroacoustic architect who is "working to create something from nearly nothing". This is "With what remains", a brilliant effort by Helena Gough, a Birmingham-based academically trained composer and violinist, currently interested in exploiting the "abstract properties" of everyday's sounds, which she deploys with extreme care and accuracy through a sensitive multicellular method rarely observed before, at least by this listener. The intrinsic qualities of what might just seem a collection of noises to untrained ears are right there for the intellect to process, but it takes much more than a distracted look to fully unveil this record's enormous value. Speckled mirrors, bumpy instantaneousness, biotic pseudo-tranquillity, all are just illusions of a forward movement that we must repeatedly postpone to make sure that these messages and codes are properly assimilated. The germinations of Gough's complex connections of decomposed frequencies and impenetrable permanences produce superb aural emulsions of otherwise extraneous substances, keeping us suspended between a surgical reviviscence of our secret fears and a special kind of ecstatic indecision that - once again - highlights the retard of the human brain's predisposition to "classify" and "define" when facing pure acoustic noumena. It all translates as "unpigeonholeable masterpiece", one of Entr'acte's most precious releases.

GOVERNMENT ALPHA / PBK - Auditory hallucination of drowsy afternoon (Xerxes)

Yasutoshi Yoshida and Philip B. Klinger are neither the kind of desirable guests at a typical lounge party, nor advisable as neighbours (just kidding, I'd be happy to share tea with them). Their collaboration was recorded during a 2004 tour named “Family Reunion”. I know for sure that certain family reunions end in dishes thrown from a relative to another, but nothing approaches the level of noisy intractability and corruption of tranquillity that this disc presents. If you're thinking to the “dark hypnosis” side of PBK, forget about it - here we're dealing with acrid looping, deviated turntablism, whamming-and-thrumming cycles of violence. Yoshida is happy to oblige, featuring all sorts of extravagant mauling of whatever instrument he may be willing to use, imposing a malignant if intelligible regime of perforation of the poor auricular membranes who are going to enjoy this via headphone (once more, be careful if you do). Artistry at work, even in this not exactly pleasing context - and that's enough with me. Still, don't play this as a soundtrack for your wedding, or the priest will call an exorcist. Not really a fundamental outing, yet functional at the right time.

PAWEL GRABOWSKI / THE BEAUTIFUL SCHIZOPHONIC / JAMES ECK RIPPIE + PAULO RAPOSO - Product (Cronica)

Sixth in the "Product" series, here comes a beautiful split CD which is rather different from the usual criteria of this ever-so-surprising label, being mostly centred around hypnosis and bewitching soundscapes, with engrossing effects on the psyche as a primary consequence. Ireland-based, Poland-born Pawel Grabowski presents a long composition called "But I'm not", where obfuscated resonance and electronic haze ensure a lot of room for the mind to roam; his music springs from pretty unrecognizable sources, a malleable yet quite mysterious matter generating what's the most static piece on the album. Portuguese Jorge Mantas (The Beautiful Schizophonic) who - like Grabowski - has had a recent release on Belgian ambient label Mystery Sea, here offers his most accomplished work to date; "Love songs for a psychoacoustic girl" is made of ten interesting episodes where voices, environmental sounds and samples - even from thrash and death metal - find a unique confluence into an alien marine atmosphere in which subsonics and haunting repetitions get their due space without overstaying their welcome. But the disc's masterpiece is "Natureza morta": James Eck Rippie's fascination with turntables playing looped snippets of classical music is finely balanced by Paulo Raposo's puzzling digital disturbance and attentive processing. The couple takes our hand to lead an incomparable dance towards oblivion, forgetting everything else around in almost 20 minutes of blissful indetermination.

ANDY GRAYDON - At bay (Winds Measure)

Influenced by a quantity of factors, such as “musique concrete, minimalist and environmental art, cinema auteurs and the constellation of artists and musicians he works with today”, Andy Graydon is a name to keep an eye on - and an attentive one, too. Concerned with having the listeners “experience natural or found sounds in new ways”, the composer presents six soundscapes - mostly superlative - dealing with the diverse derivations of a well-definite aesthetic, that leaving those “found sounds” impose their weight on the psyche smoothly but definitively. “At bay” is, in that sense, both a record that does not actually strike as an awe-inspiring discovery, as it tends to a poetry of the unspeakable more than an in-your-face explicitness of meaning - this if we really want to find a connotation in there. What Graydon seems to be looking for is the traceability of an internal logic in something that, at a first glance, could emerge as a study on a particular kind of aural stimulus or the different viewpoint on materials that other explorers might have examined according to dissimilar perspectives. Field recordings, static electronic waves or almost indistinct, bottomless activities all belong to a single vital organism whose sonic rendition is decidedly anti-intellectual, wholly in touch with a material necessity of perceiving the emission as an ordinary phenomenon, not the result of a microscopic test. Accordingly, this is also a just right example of forward-minded ambient music. In any case, the results are worthy of being not only mentioned, but conscientiously measured.

BURTON GREENE - Live at Grasland (Drimala)

Exquisitely savoury, Burton Greene's pianism is a perfect mixture of thematic exploration and free runs. Lots of influences spring out continuously during the abundant hour of "Live at Grasland": fractured Eastern Europe melodies or Bill Evans-ish harmonic ghosts get further fragmentation by a dancing left hand depicting the utter power of a tangent bass line, while on the right side of the keyboard Greene lets droplets of percussive sketches fall like exploded popcorns. The playing is emphatically rich of humour and - yes - romanticism, but only if strictly necessary. This is music that needs no stylistic framework to be appreciated; it only gets better with listening, while several shimmering moments distance it from the bunch of "automatic pilot" piano solo releases, those with lots of technique but desperately lacking the will of being apppreciated by all.

GRILLY BIGGS - New Orleans : Katrina = Santa Fe + Chicago (High Mayhem)

Defined as a "not-so-traditional drum'n'bass band" by the press release, Grilly Biggs is the quartet of Matthew Golombisky (bass, live samples), Matthew McClimon (vibraphone), Quin Kirchner (drums, live and recorded samples) and Milton Villarrubia (same as Kirchner). The band "was formed with the intention of making people dance, think and scream"; it sure produces a good wealth of entertaining music. The first improvisation is conducted along the lines of loopscape-based hypnosis, all parts converging to a focal point lasting several minutes, in which cyclical patterns à la David Torn lull us into semi-oblivion. "Frantic fix" is a decomposed jazz-rock experiment, uncertain obliqueness and odd-metred phrasing apparently dissociated yet cohesive enough to establish a sort of groove. McClimon's vibes are pretty central to the whole discourse; their evidence in between the pre-recorded sources of "Twenty-one" is what produces a sense of hurry that at times becomes vertiginous. Brand X, Gary Burton and Last Exit seem to have been pillaged into a low budget, but not disfunctional three-head replica. "Doo Doo Cha Ka" is moulded upon samples and driving percussion, a strange alternance of thunder and repetition that could be useful for a modern choreography, then it becomes an unglued nightmare where TV snippets and electronics gain the spotlight. "Dig on McClimon" starts as dub, then works as a launchpad for the volcanic "Coda" in which I was reminded - at safe distance - of certain explosions and flurries typical of Mothers Of Invention, minus the iconoclast factor. Permeated by enthusiast creativity and gifted with technical expertise, this stuff is not bad at all.

JOE GRIMM - Brain Cloud (Spekk)

The familiarity with an artist’s oeuvre can be a double-edge sword sometimes, and Joe Grimm’s “Brain Cloud” falls precisely in the land of the reviewer’s indecision. What are we to do? Be thankful for the aesthetical gratification - because there is pleasure in listening to it, indeed - or dismiss it as a too-obvious reverence to something that already exists and, in this case, is firmly admired? Having participated in a 100-guitar symphony by Glenn Branca (“Hallucination City”, I surmise) and, subsequently, deepened his interest in overtone-based composition by scrupulously studying Charlemagne Palestine’s body of work, Grimm decided to write “music that presents itself as a single mass of varying density, comprised of tens of thousands of individual events”. The five tracks are unquestionably well realized, one of them - the initial “Brain Cloud IV” - approaching superior status; yet there are very few, if not zero, elements here that we might deem isolated from the Great Influence (that’s right, Palestine). Resounding quietude, hovering harmonics, throat singing, stationary superimpositions of violins and horns. “Brain Cloud III”, for three pianos played by three persons (18 hands total) concludes the whole, and it’s also quite beautiful to hear. Still, nothing new under the sun. Ear pleasing material, not exactly innovative; while in a particularly constructive spirit, several parts of this record could be related to certain chapters of the Cold Blue book. Which is a compliment.

ERIK GRISWOLD - More than my old piano (Clocked Out Productions)

Completely conceived and executed on prepared and toy pianos with no overdubs, this CD reveals that we definitely have a new arrival in the gallery of interesting musicians. Erik Griswold plays his keyboards in eloquently brilliant fashion, without thinking too much if he's doing right with an Ellington cover or if he can mix Brazilian patterns with minimal harmonies that one could compare to Steve Reich. None of these names should detract from the uniqueness of Griswold's personality, though: his sense of spacing and timing is so accurate and carefully developed that listeners are always participating with some or all of their body parts - boy, does this music invite you to dance and play yourself. Ever present in Griswold's mind are Chinese folk tunes, which through his hands become beautiful artworks. All in all, this is a masterful release, full of positive vibration, splendid technique and rare intelligence.

GROSSE ABFAHRT - Erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien (Creative Sources)

Somehow dedicated to John A. Morrell, visionary builder of a potentially revolutionary airship whose dramatic technical failure is narrated in the CD leaflet, this work gathers an octet of improvisers consisting of Serge Baghdassarians, Boris Baltschun, Chris Brown, Tom Djll, Matt Ingalls, Tim Perkis, Gino Robair and John Shiurba; the instrumentation comprises electronics, piano, trumpet, clarinet, analog synthesizer and guitar. After an initial period in which microscopic high frequencies literally struggle to be heard, the music begins to shape up and combine its different elements through various settings, not totally devoid of moments of quasi-silence. Frictional proximities between trumpet and clarinet are complemented by apprehensive touches from the piano innards; side-to-side analog waveforms and hyper-acute emissions create a background over which the guitar is manipulated like a percussive tool, almost losing all its stringed instrument features until a weak reminiscence of vibration advise us that the "spirit of the axe" still has a pulse. The dynamics brought in action by the players often inhabit the "ppp" neighbourhood, forcing our attention to appreciate the exquisite finesse that these strained synchronies involuntarily generate, the "lowercase factor" still in evidence during various segments of almost imperceptible "pneumo-electrology". The final movement reveals the large part of the missing links, fusing the instrumental voices in a marginalization of the unnecessary aspects of technique, nearing the whole to a more recognizable collective exchange, though ever deprived of any chance of typical interplay. A difficult, stimulating record that gradually uncovers fibres of grimy beauty.

GROSSE ABFAHRT - Everything that disappears (Emanem)

Is headwork allowed in collective visions? Sometimes, slight traumas can be experienced even by those who presume to know everything in today’s improvisation. A good flogging might be arriving from this, the latest effort by Tom Djll’s Grosse Abfahrt which for the occasion employs the talents of Matt Ingalls, Frédèric Blondy, John Shiurba, George Cremaschi, Lê Quan Ninh, John Bischoff, Tim Perkis and Gino Robair. Recorded at Oakland’s Mills College Ensemble Room in March 2007, these four tracks were conceived following a single directive by Djll: “strive toward long structures”. The longest one lasts almost 39 minutes, of which we almost didn’t realize about the flowing; the music is vivid, pulsating, a perennial burning coal under the ashes of an only apparent tranquillity. Frustrating our attempt to categorize the happenings, the musicians move in, out and around their instrumental characters, reciprocally reacting to whatever exhalation they sniff. The nominal leader, besides its deceptively vacant trumpet and pocket cornet disguising a voraciousness for anything unpredictable, is also credited with “preparations”; indeed, the continuously appearing extraneous factors disfiguring the regular acoustic voice of the machines, in conjunction with entities such as Robair’s “voltage made audible” and “energized surfaces”, are exactly what gives this concoction a unique tone, something that stands halfway through an incomplete vision (which is already enough to undermine a non-selfgoverning personality) and the moderate incoherence of a somnambulist walking on rusty nails and broken glass. There is no frequency left unattended, not a minimal tonal fraction whose activity is not felt. Electronic bleeps and harsh scraping coexist, different ethnic minorities in a suburban neighbourhood, fighting or embracing depending on the circumstance. Cremaschi’s double bass in “Geometric undulating driveway symmetrical, all the road of masters” (the titles are fragments of Jean Baudrillard’s “America”) is akin to the peculiarly reassuring presence of an old dog in a shabby garden. Doesn’t defend the property, but growls and barks anyway. Excellent record, a typical “new-layer-with-each-listen” release which creeps on you like ivy, sucking juices from trunks and bodies.

ANTHONY GUERRA / NISHIDE TAKEHIRO - Scopa possibilities (TwoThousandAnd)

Compressed in a series of "appearances" from an almost silent background, the extremes of a chaotic world capsule are contained in this concise proposition by Guerra and Nishide, using guitar, electronics and "various" to send their unconventional bulletins to people with sharp ears. This landscape does not preview neither the threaten of claustrophobic strategies, nor any opening to a better disposition if your mood is not in the right frame; these guys report from the wayside, controllers of an interchanging assemblage of muffled eruptions filtered by undetectable radio codes, noisy frequencies and the wonderful "silent rumble" of Anthony's guitar, coming every once in a while to remind us that all the bedlam generated by billions of different voices notwithstanding, there's always one power ruling the universe: a big vibration, better still if coming from an oddly tuned string instrument.

ANTHONY GUERRA / PAUL HOOD / JOEL STERN - Low resistance group (Paradisc)

Due to the extremely various types of sounds used and also to the high degree of human element carried by the resulting music, this electroacoustic patchwork by Guerra, Hood and Stern is lively and convincing. The mix of guitar, electronics, turntable and field recordings is a nice multidimensional concoction of dynamic ranges and "beyond-the-limits" sonic palettes, conducing the listener through the six improvisations without effort or ear straining. Textural abrasions are sapiently alternated with oneiric gatherings in a place where originality and creativity are not confused with amateurish tentativeness. Everyone knows exactly where to put his hands, so that apparently raw sketches gradually evolve and morph themselves into a dense architecture of fresh ideas. Substantial and intelligent, this kind of stuff is what the "new music department" needs to get a shot in the arm by well deserving and inquisitive-minded sonic experimenters.

ANTHONY GUERRA / MATT EARLE - In (L'Innomable)

"In" is an album of classic electr(on)ic lowercase, where extremely acute frequencies keep company to silence, which in itself contains a few static crackles, amorphous structures, fluorescent hums and late-night searches for a light switch that reveals itself to be already zapped. Guerra and Earle don't have time to waste with bell-and-whistle production, instead concentrating their attention on epileptic microsounds and subatomic particles of burning oils; their self-restraint works finely in a tightly designed record whose effects we can actively contribute to, thanks to head movement and body placement according to which the frequencies cancel or reinforce themselves, showing their various gradations in a demonstration of non-standard deceiving complexity. Or - maybe - this is just how disconnected synapses sound like.

JEAN-LUC GUIONNET / SEIJIRO MURAYAMA - Le bruit du toit (Xing Wu)

Recorded in the hon gaku temple in Mishima, Japan, this is a thoughtful and rewarding duo for alto sax (Guionnet) and percussion (Murayama) that starts from invisible gestures and utter quietness to carve a sonic niche out of the wood of respect. What kind of respect, you might ask. Firstly, reciprocal consciousness - the basic form of regard, perennially forgotten in this era of “I am here occupying this space, don’t care about the others and want their place too”. Then, the obedience to the rules of environmental harmony: in “Part I” the instruments seem to look for a tuning with the resonant spaces of the setting, Guionnet exploring the thin nuances of a quarter tone interval and selected overtones, Murayama responding with delicate colours first, with a modicum of roll, wash and tumble a moment later. The nods between the musicians can be intuited when, all of a sudden, the sounds stop and die in silence again, slightly broken by a subdued clatter. Only during the second part we are allowed to hear a few peaking saxophone dots and pops, but they soon return to that species of nonverbal reflection which attributes dimensions to an otherwise unmeasurable large room. Short cries and rapid strikes are thrown in the air, to see if the temple’s ceiling is ready to absorb these strange prayers. This lesson in restraint is all but classy, the winning feature of a disc yielding unheard results even if known constituents were utilized.

JEAN-LUC GUIONNET & TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA - Map (Potlatch)

This couple of intelligent silence-breakers uses alto saxophone and no-input mixing board in three of the pieces, Guionnet playing organ in the final track. Somehow I was expecting total quietness, which is not the case. First of all, while listening through headphones we distinctly perceive radio sounds in the background - a little bit of Keith Rowe in there - thus one wonders if Nakamura made unconfessed use of shortwaves or it is just an interference. The Japanese artist often slips the horniness of his signals in front of the mix, finely complemented by Guionnet’s fragmentary gymnastics based upon pages ripped off the book of unconventional technique. Both explore the barely visible hues of a semi-noisy tranquillity, only rarely rising over the horizon of a wrinkled immobility built upon implausible, disturbed murmur and pre-operative gestures. In the fourth movement, the organ attributes a droning factor to the music without remaining in the same places for long; strangely enough, this is probably the most satisfactory segment of the album when compared to the protagonists’ past frequentations, although we all know that Nakamura is a multifaceted feedback-manipulating cat, so it is not correct to necessarily link him with Onkyo-related activities. The French saxophonist confirms what he already had been demonstrating in recent years, namely being one of the truly sensitive reed players active in the EAI scene. This CD, actually not a major statement but a very interesting listen throughout, is a worthy addition to their career’s documentation.

AREK GULBENKOGLU - Points alone (Impermanent.Recordings)

Melbourne-based Gulbenkoglu's solo debut "highlights the visceral sonic possibilities of wood and steel" in acoustic and amplified wooden guitar. That said - after reading the list of artists who have played with Arek, which includes Will Guthrie, Anthony Guerra and Mattin among many others - I expected new observation angles to deform a lowercase reality which, in truth, is currently risking to welcome too many dilettantes aboard. My fears were dead wrong: Gulbenkoglu sounds like the result of a cross-pollination of fertile artists of the genre - I thought about Michel Doneda, Nikos Veliotis, Taku Sugimoto (yes) and many more; indeed, the final track - nameless, like the others - is a massive dance of spurious frequencies for (...eBowed?) guitar strings which Phill Niblock would certainly bless. The guy is serious, then; he plays with silence while playing in the silence - and after long minutes where all I heard was the rain pouring on the outside, he proceeded to pierce my brain with the return of the son of a killer test-tone which I presume is controlled feedback (Arek is credited with "preparations", too...). Short fragments of concrete sounds from the various parts of the instruments are used - especially in the first half of the disc - to let everyone remember there is no electronic involved; but this man does everything so attentively, he could have found a way to put that ingredient too without ruining an already tasty plate.

AREK GULBENKOGLU - Document 09 (Document)

Get this: the only featured instrument is an unamplified acoustic guitar and the record's length is indicated at about 19 minutes. Instead, here's what happened: I was instantly incinerated - right after wearing my headphones and turning the volume up - by a discharge of something cruel, sort of a crazed Morse code transmitted through the electric instruments of those who kill animals and peel their skin off to make furs. After that, what sounds like a brushed cymbal vanishes into silence in less than three minutes. To avoid a new cardiospasm, I lowered the level just in time for the second coming of the mother piercer, which is finally cancelled by a few minor disturbances. Then - I'm not kidding you - my CD player's timer began to go backwards, starting from -95'45" for a minute or so, then I heard a crackle and a whirr and saw "error" written in the display. An acoustic guitar. Yeah, right. Time to get a camomile and go to bed.

GUM - Vinyl anthology (23five)

The short and very intense adventure of Andrew Curtis and Philip Samartzis as Gum is entirely contained in this revitalizing double CD that could turn many late-hour aficionados of turntablism to a bitter truth: yes, before the advent of installation messiahs and their auras of momentous looping majesty, two young lads from Australia ruffled some feathers with dangerous attitude, amassing rotting corpses of disco desperation, noises of skipping/hiccuping chanteurs, miscellanea of classical piano concerts and war bulletins, hotline beauties moanin