Touching Extremes Archives 2001-2008

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DIANE LABROSSE - Musique pour objets en voie de disparition (Ambiances Magnétiques)

In the late 80s/early 90s Ambiances Magnétiques was among my darling labels but, inexplicably, with the passage of time I kind of lost contact and became less aware of their production. My loss, as this CD from 2007 is indeed a clever-sounding artifact needing to be rescued from a dimension of implicit oblivion. Diane Labrosse has always been a bright-minded artist, collaborations with the likes of Jean Derome, Michel F. Côté, Geneviève Letarte and Joanne Hétu just a small fraction of a career expanding through the whole gamut of avant-garde. As the record title explains, the tracks were constructed around the utilization of “objects on the verge of extinction”, such as alarm clocks, black and white TV sets, old printers and electric percolators. Labrosse, who’s gifted with a wholehearted compositional wisdom allowing her to understand what’s the ideal balance of the ingredients in a piece, utilized the “voices” of the machines in relatively comprehensible contexts, typically featuring a maximum of one or two instruments. She was helped by Marie-Soleil Bélanger, Jean Derome, Bernard Falaise, Lori Freedman, Jean René and Pierre Tanguay, stalwarts of the Quebecoise scene who contributed with efficient proposals and untarnished inventiveness to Labrosse’s conceptions. This is a delightful assortment of physical antiquity and instrumental individuality that leaves plentiful spaces for the intellect to take action, moments of charged standstill to be found amidst systematic reiteration and mechanical interplay. Above all, the sense of joyful mischievousness characterizing the album causes us to realize why there’s no need of disproportionate solemnity to conceive stimulating music.

ERIC LA CASA - Secousses panoramiques (Hibari)

Dedicated to Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki, this 3-inch CD collages about 20 minutes of recordings of different elevator noises that Eric la Casa made in France, Belgium and Australia. It's one of those simple yet effective ideas that transforms what we hear every day into an art work, and Eric was great in his choice of sound successions that are truly akin to a proper composition, with whirring hums, snapping ropes, computerized voices and slamming doors encapsulating our persona in a sub-human womb where solitude, muzak and the subway train's roar become the glacial companions of a few instants of inexplicable fear. Reading the technical data on the plate within the cabinet won't help.

ERIC LA CASA - Air.ratio (Sirr)

As his installations have repeatedly demonstrated, Eric La Casa has a keen ear for those phenomena of regular (or less) occurrences whose musical character can be conveniently exploited from an artistic point of view. Such is the case of "the flow of air in modern architecture", of which this album presents thirty examples, each one two minutes long, that range from soft to quite hard and were recorded by La Casa - "with or without authorization" - in restaurants, hospitals, libraries or even illustrious toilets (Radio France, the Georges Pompidou Art Center). Some of these currents sound like a gentle wind resonating in a tube, bringing out the disguised harmony in an invisible breathing organism; but as the record goes on, there is a distinct intensity growth of the air volume, in every sense. This translates into some of the tracks becoming a sort of industrial chorale, with extraneous clicking and creaky sounds adding spice to the pressure on the auricular membranes: imaginary moans take place in our mind during a progressive alienation from the surrounding world, made easier by the consecutiveness of the thirty samples which bring the duration of the disc to over 63 minutes of non-idiomatic droning. A pulmonary system that works wonders from the speakers (maybe you can add your own ventilation; the inventor also suggests a random playback or even more copies of the CD listened at the same moment to increase the variety). Given that "La Casa" means "The House" in Latin language, this feels like a necessary exploration for the inquisitive French artist.

DAVID LACEY / PAUL VOGEL - The British Isles (Homefront)

Still resisting to the assaults of the “reductionism is dead” factions, Lacey and Vogel defend themselves with ease: firstly, because “The British Isles” might appear as a reductionist work on a first listen, and it’s not; and secondly, their music is so marvellously encrusted in the griminess of threadbare timbres that one looks for the densities of an orchestrated effort even in its extensive moments of stillness (which, in this situation, mainly correspond to the stretched out frequencies characterizing the initial part of “Soft houses”, an authentic flash of revelation: certain sounds really go and strike the exact nerves that disclose the secreted memories of an earlier period that we didn’t know of having lived). Another thing that I truly love is when sound artists decide to introduce substance for the mind's eye by not spelling out the instrumentation. Of course, you realize that a saxophone is in there, somewhere. Right, that screeching to and fro is indubitably a (insert object here). And these guys’ drones - there are some, yes - sound like they’ve undergone an immersion in corrosive liquids; they don’t caress, they bite. These four tracks enclose the crucial principles of what has made this kind of expression the preferred option for many improvisers in the last decade. Lacey and Vogel demonstrate themselves to be familiar with history, but also that they’re more “composers in the soul” in regard to different field comrades, this record appearing as a somehow predetermined construction as opposed to a truly freedom-fuelled encounter. Either way, a required addition to your assortment of poverty-stricken beauties that do not necessarily like silence.

STEVE LACY / ROSWELL RUDD QUARTET - Early and late (Cuneiform)

It’s difficult to imagine musicians who started playing the Dixieland circuit in the 50s, tackled the repertoires of Thelonious Monk, Cecil Taylor, Duke Ellington, Kurt Weill among many others, collaborated with the radical fringes of modern improvisation, being featured on a Cuneiform release in 2007. On the other hand, this double CD demonstrates that anything is possible when two masters of their respective instruments function as a single body, all the while redefining technical boundaries and amplitude of significance through their artistic soul’s extensions, not without repeated pinches of irony (listen to the frequent references to popular melodies, also during the most gawky particles of the solos). That’s exactly what transpires from listening to “Early and late”, a splendid collection whose temporal range spans from 1962 to 2002. The first CD contains six tracks from 1999 (captured in Amsterdam and Tucson), where Lacy’s soprano sax and Rudd’s trombone are counterbalanced by the truly brilliant bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and sustained by John Betsch’s knowledgeable drumming. The music is bright, effervescent, thematically digestible despite its knife-edge suspension between consonance and absence of reference points, exalting both leaders’ familiarity with a complex world of unusual templates and unlikely patterns, an elaborate geometry where forms and figures coincide from different observation angles. Lacy and Rudd extract the quintessence of unadulterated jazz in every move they make, this distillation process yielding an intense scent of forward-looking dialectical advancement in which the players find comfortable shelter. The second disc comprises live takes of Rudd’s “Bamako” and Herbie Nichols’ “Twelve bars” (New York, 2002) plus Lacy’s “Bone” (the latter a gorgeous, energizing version, again off the Amsterdam reels), but the real treasures here are the four archival demos of the 1962 quartet, with Bob Cunningham on bass and Dennis Charles on drums. This is genuinely astounding material, the only evidence of this ensemble except the “School Days” album from 1975 (originally on Emanem, reissued by Hatology in 2002). Monk and Taylor’s covers are executed with such a fervid concentration and care for the slightest hue that these tapes sound like they were made last week rather than being 45 years old. If one thinks about the nonentities who sign Blue Note contracts nowadays, then listens to these beauties, the desperation for the irrecoverable quality loss we’ve been experiencing lately in these lands becomes even more pungent. Translation: five stars and an affectionate heavy pat on Jason Weiss (research and release coordinator) and Steven Feigenbaum’s shoulders for giving us the chance to strengthen our musical culture by making unheard recordings at this level of historical relevance available.

MÁRIO LAGINHA TRIO - Espaço (Clean Feed)

Always a pleasure having the opportunity of quietly enjoying a piano trio such as this, which includes Laginha on the main instrument, Bernardo Moreira on double bass and Alexander Frazão on drums. Portuguese jazz is steadily increasing both on technical and creative level, but what’s all the more surprising is the growing number of “inner mechanisms” that these musicians are able to set in motion with their playing, so that listening to an album like “Espaço” becomes almost a reward after digesting hours upon hours of ungrateful dissonance. The title alone suggests that the concept behind the record is the juxtaposition of sound and architecture, justified both because Laginha was inspired by “the idea of regular and irregular structures, continuous and discontinuous lines, plane or distorted surfaces, space and absence of space transferred to the sound world” and by the commissioner (the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2007). Despite a few soft contrasts, Laginha’s vision is extremely accessible, his only “difficulty” - so to speak - the classically influenced harmonic progressions that illuminate a track such as the beautiful “Tanto espaço”, which might even remind of Bach, or Rainer Brüninghaus for that matter. Still, when Moreira’s corpulent lines and Frazão’s elegant drumming join the leader in the most animated pieces, what we get is a brand of clear-minded interplay that brings us back to the best of the early productions of (ahem) Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. And when I refer to THAT period’s output by those sold-outs, it’s meant as a big compliment.

LA GRIETA - Hermana hostia (w.m.o/r)

So you wanna be a rock'n'roll star? First of all you should learn some sincerity, use your best irony and deliver yourself from any useless post-production gimmick. After this, you're only halfway through the brutal in-your-face honesty of "Hermana hostia", a project by Mattin and Inigo Eguillor that sounds punkier than punk itself, a raw collection of totally lo-fi songs, most of which sound like intelligent variations on Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray"; the only instrumental (the 15-minute title track) is a no-nonsense calvary of aesthetical conventions moved by disjointed drumming and feedback-driven hypnosis which will have your nerves reeling at the end. Apropos of irony, lyrics like "Tu cerebro se desnuda en busca de viagra" and titles such as "Vivo en un frigorifico" are enough to love this release; but my overall favourite remains "Porvenir desierto", a post-atomic radiation slow swing with demented modified vocals going from a drunkard's rant to alien chipmunks which makes me laugh heartily every time I play it. Mattin confirms once and for all his unpredictable attitude, an example of absolute "I-do-what-I-want" purity that should be followed.

RICHARD LAINHART - White night (Ex Ovo)

A calm, meditative mantra of about 29 minutes for Moog synthesizer that was composed in 1974 and rediscovered only in recent years, “White night” takes its title from the snow storm characterizing the moment in which the composer was completing the final mix of the piece, an edited and remixed version of the same already heard and appreciated on the Ex Ovo compilation “I, mute hummings” a while back. The root tones of the single chord informing the track were processed by separate sine wave oscillators, in turn regulated by different sequencers; the static harmony is indeed moved “inside” by wavering morphing caresses. Despite the fact that this music is somehow lauded as a predecessor of Brian Eno’s “Discreet music” on the press release, the most evident term of comparison is probably Charlemagne Palestine’s work with electronics in “Four manifestations on six elements”, although Lainhart’s composition lacks a tad of neural intensity compared to that milestone. This doesn’t imply a lesser consideration of the record, which remains as pleasing and mind-depurating as any in the genre, confirming what good the man had shown in albums like “Ten thousand shades of blue” on XI. A typical case of “infinite repeat” at moderate volume, to let that lone chord resonate in all its richness of beautiful chromatic hues. More than ambient, less than experimental, very charming throughout.

ROSS LAMBERT / SEYMOUR WRIGHT - Lucky rabbit (TwoThousandAnd)

If "Lucky rabbit" is an indicator of the current state of improvisation, we're in for pretty interesting developments. When sources get almost indiscernible the listener's imagination does the rest, being forced to draw some lines between process and result; such an attitude can substantially change a judgement in a recording like this one, depending on personal taste or incidental happenings. Lambert seldom emits "regular guitar notes", instead privileging undetected noises and small sounds that reverse the logic of his instrument; Wright explores the subtle leakages of air and purrs, leaning towards chirping/kissing, toungue-splitting outbursts with a little exacerbation for good measure, never assaulting a basic tranquillity. On three segments Utah Kawasaki, Tetsuro Yasunaga and Ami Yoshida add computer and vocals to the already semi-ebullient setting. This is an interesting excavation of hidden sound fossils just waiting to be rescued from silence and also a satisfying listening for the almost whole duration.

LAMBS GAMBLE - Memory collapse (Evolving Ear)

Fritz Welch is part of Psi (or "Peeesseye"), one of the most idiosyncratic improvising groups on the American scene; George Cremaschi has played with a lot of big names such as Evan Parker, Fred Frith and Nels Cline. Nothing of the above will prepare you to "Memory collapse", which is a collection of miniature oddities for percussion, objects and double bass that rips several pages from the comic book of free music while also massaging the skull with some eerie drone-based acousti/cution, fascinating like menacing your neighbour's children with a Swiss knife only to give it to them as a present after you scared them to death. Repetitive-but-not-too-much clangorous procedures and the fairly splintered interplay between Welch and Cremaschi contribute to establish a fractured, involving narrative that stands behind an intransigent ideology made of extravagant adornments and endless convulsion. A plausible choice for two musicians who accept no boundaries as far as ramshackle aesthetics is concerned.

ADAM LANE'S FULL THROTTLE ORCHESTRA - New magical kingdom (Clean Feed)

An objective review needs persistence like a small plant needs water. During my first tries I was listening to this album in the wrong way, trying to isolate concepts and determine non-existing links, following single instrumental voices without a clue. Then, in an idle grey summer afternoon, I found the key: "New magical kingdom" must be enjoyed as a collective sardonic smile against the fake coolness typical of most modern jazz ensembles. Take, for instance, "Without being": it's a poignant tune whose theme could very well become a classic, but it's also characterized by sulphuric guitar distortion unbalancing the whole, until this loss of lyricism becomes the piece's best asset. Right after, "Avenue X" swings like one could never expect from such forward-thinking musicians. All over the record, minimal insinuations are used as a source for inquisitive contrapuntal improvisations that never leave the listener without a return ticket. "Objects" is an exercise in dissonant discipline amidst utter silence. Reductive blues, free-form sax grunts and peek-a-boo comping are contained in the few minutes of "The genius of El Segundo", while "Serenity" sounds like Terje Rypdal becoming the newest member of Chris Mc Gregor's Brotherhood of Breath. I'll let yourself discover the final track. The Full Throttles are: Vijay Anderson (drums), Aaron Bennett, Jeff Chan and Lynn Johnston (saxophones) John Finkbeiner (guitar), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Adam Lane (bass). Exquisite.

ADAM LANE QUARTET - Buffalo (Cadence Jazz) 

The music contained here was captured live at Buffalo’s Soundlab, the final act in a series of recording sessions that occurred on February 24 and 25, 2005 and which produced a total of three releases. The trio of Adam Lane (bass), Vinny Golia (tenor and soprano sax) and Vijay Anderson (drums) was augmented for this concert by trumpeter Paul Smoker, whose whole-hearted phrasing constitutes one of the album’s best assets, mixing with Golia’s tension-and-release style in impeccable fashion, the couple leaving no room for doubts during several toe-to-toe exchanges that enlighten players and listeners alike. Lane and Anderson are certainly not lacking in energy, the bassist with his perennial chip-on-the-shoulder riffage always ready to follow a Coltrane-ish inspiration or an absorbingly meditative solo. Anderson is a complete drummer, swinging for the fences when necessary but also able to really penetrate the essence of a deep listening ability that not all percussionists possess. “Free” begins with Golia on wooden flute, beautifully evoking spirits of native Indian ancestry before the group takes off for another rewarding improvisation. Indeed the constant alternance between conscious thematic flights and burning exhalations of liberated expression is the most notable character of this CD, which shows a quality of jazz that’s definitely near the top of the class as far as positive vibes and respect of good intentions are concerned, a fine balance of primitive influence and invigorating polyvalence.

ADAM LANE / KEN VANDERMARK / MAGNUS BROO / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE - 4 Corners (Clean Feed)

I don't remember ever hearing a double bassist playing a heavy metal-ish riff while plugged into a distortion pedal, but that's the exact kind of welcome that I received with "Alfama (for Georges Braque)", the furious opening track of this album. In "Tomorrow now (for Lester Bowie)", he overdrives the arco, too. The Four Corners are occupied by Adam Lane (yes, THAT double bassist), Ken Vandermark (baritone sax, clarinet, bass clarinet), Magnus Broo (trumpet) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums). This must be one of the punkest jazz records of the decade, if memory serves; intoxicating grooves are abundant, the solos are indeed incendiary, alimented by equal doses of technical expertise and rage. What Vandermark plays in "Spin with the EARth" or at the beginning of "Lucia" is definable as uncolonized virtuosism, his lines creating instant angles and rapacious shrieks that animate incredibly energetical vortexes. A great surprise comes from Broo, until yesterday an unknown musician for this eternally ignorant writer, whose playing is at one and the same time propelled by the general excitement and supportive of an incoercible fantasy, which allows him to jump from the wagons of tonalities to find himself covered with the cactus spikes of multiple dissonant convergences. Nilssen-Love ("a drummer who seems to have four arms and four legs") is captured in all his octopusness despite the quality of the live recording, his convulsive metres and muscular rumbles exalting the torrential shouting of his companions. Apart from Frankenstein-like "harmolodic-cum-funky" bass designs, Lane confirms himself a fine crafter of heavy-duty low register melodies, furnishing the quartet with a steady drive that projects them towards the high spheres of contemporary jazz. Still, the monster octave walk that moves "Ashcan Rantings" is not exactly what I call blasé, but it rocks like a dinosaur plucking a Fender Precision, or a five-meter-tall Jack Bruce. If you crawl to that piece's conclusion, look for your hair to turn orange and blue.

ADAM LANE / LOU GRASSI / MARK WHITECAGE - Drunk butterfly (Clean Feed)

These musicians are unmuzzled dogs who refuse biting despite the repeated chances they’re given to. That means that there’s mental discipline at work here, in spite of the fact that absolute freedom is at the basis of many sections. It all translates into gratifying jazz, a record that you’ll be able to play three or four consecutive times without feeling the urge of spinning Ted Nugent after ten minutes. Listening to Lane’s arco in “Chichi rides the tiger” could have someone believing that the bassist is painting and playing at one and the same time, wailing harmonics and fleshy plucking defining the innumerable influences - life events included, probably - that define a distinctive style. The gratification generated by the brilliant excursions for alto sax and clarinet Whitecage gifts us with goes in parallel with a never ending quest for offering accurate finesse even in spots where one would expect rough manners; the guy is a class act, and it shows. Grassi’s drumming is as rambunctious as highbred, sustaining the interplay with tasteful morsels of cocksure swing and scattered rolls in an ideal setting for the diversification of a trio’s intentions. Speaking of which, I was wondering if “Sanctum” is a variation on the theme of Frank Zappa’s “King Kong”: the initial notes are matching - in a different metre - and the tune’s key too.

STEVE LANTNER TRIO - What you can throw (HatOLOGY)

“What you can throw” is the third release by the Steve Lantner Trio, the second consecutive with the same lineup - the leader on piano, Joe Morris on double bass, Luther Gray on drums. It is a top-rank jazz album, built upon five compositions (two by the principal, one by Morris plus renditions of Anthony Braxton and Ornette Coleman’s tunes). What immediately transpires is the clearness of the participants’ playing, their articulated phraseology maintaining openings on the whole lot of contrapuntal perspectives. Lantner’s fluid mobility is expressed through a style which mixes influences as diverse as Albert Ayler and Meade Lux Lewis, although he declares to have deeply analyzed Scarlatti and Schubert’s dances to enhance his ability of simultaneous independence of the hands. Able to flick the (Cecil) Taylor-esque switch whenever necessary, the pianist’s fingers are almost visible during oblique eruptions and more linear expositions. Needless to say, the basic concepts leave room for soloist interventions: in “All around” Morris introduces a forthrightly discursive elaboration of instant bass movement, totally deprived of formulas, elegantly accurate in the choice of intervallic shapes. I am still undecided about which Morris - the bassist or the guitarist - is better (not an easy task indeed) but one thing is for sure: he plays freely yet seems to think deeply while doing it, in a mixture of fractured autonomy and soberness which only refined ears can truly appreciate. Gray epitomizes the “generative drummer” archetype, owner of an impressive ubiquity which allows him to implant swinging certainties in the most anarchic segments and, at the same time, deliver the music from the segregation that rhythmic constrictions often cause. Coleman’s “Broken shadows”, ending the disc with a nocturnal mix of rarefied harmonic irresolution by Lantner corroborated by mumbling pensive interplay from his partners, is the best signature we could ever hope for.

ELODIE LAUTEN - The death of Don Juan (Unseen Worlds)

The welcome reissue of a long unavailable LP dating from 1985, “The death of Don Juan” is an unusual opera in two acts that still captivates, despite the use of a by now prehistoric sampling instrument such as the Fairlight - plentifully featured in recordings by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush in the 80s - and post-minimalist choices that, without Lauten’s genial work of concurrence, would sound rather out of time. The libretto is developed via a “nonlinear storyline” where an archetypical Don Juan looks at a death that resembles a woman, several concealed implications attributing additional significance to an otherwise pretty straightforward succession of scenes. Three levels of instrumental activity are present: the sampled orchestral segments (either fast plucked strings or slow woodwind patterns), the half-improvised instrumental parts and the multiple-language vocal involvement by Lauten herself and soprano Randy Larowitz. The “free” inserts comprise Arthur Russell on cello, Peter Zummo on trombone, Bill Raynor on guitar and the very composer on her custom-made Trine (a self-devised Lyre). Those who love the music of David Borden or Daniel Lentz should become fond of quite a few portions of this opus. There’s a sort of romantic underlining of the inevitability of passing away which lets the listener understand the essence of an unwanted occurrence in the guise of a healing experience (the final “Kyrie”, wholly constructed on abnormally wavering superimposed voices, is exemplary in that sense) and the structural faultlessness of the large part of the album - graced by a good dosage of polite idealism - helps us through reiterated listens, aural strain completely missing from the scene.

BRIAN LAVELLE - Fallen are the domes of green amber (Diophantine) 

Let’s throw the only negative aspect out of the review first: I think that the second track “In the desert of gilt” is too long at 58 minutes, half of which filled by two chords repeating over and over that, in the end, overstay their welcome. Luckily, the remaining three quarters of Brian Lavelle’s release are good enough to let us forget the finale and fully justify our interest, being constructed upon a series of resonant washes and consonant drones, which enjoyed at “ambient” level in several occasions are truly, essentially beautiful. Lavelle is active since 1990, recording both under his real name and various aliases; even this work contains some of his earliest tape recordings (from 1991) which he juxtaposed to recent materials to conceive the album. Do not expect anything more, anything less than a fine brand of electronica, composed with the precise intent of furnishing the listener with a space for the attention to roam, without necessarily focusing on objects or particulars. There are episodes in which the sounds conjured up by Lavelle seem to introduce a new light in the house, all the sources (which include also birds and shortwave, from what I could guess) well disguised in a mix that privileges the “whole” rather than the single parts. Music that doesn’t require a science degree to be penetrated, in its best moments surely rewarding and, for the large part, tranquilizing in the “right” way.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE - No comment (Red Toucan)

In case you missed it in 2001, here’s a second chance to enjoy nine notable improvisations - all titled “No comment” - by Madame Léandre, obviously on double bass and voice (…and what a voice! The French artist is a monster bassist - that’s carved in stone - but let’s focus on the quality of her singing: majestic, to say the least). Recorded in 1994 and 1995 in Italy and Canada respectively, these tracks show a good quantity of the untouchable virtuosity through which Léandre is able to conceive an instant composition exclusively by taking a couple of elements, sometimes even only one, and dress them with ironic intelligence and inimitable lyricism (those melodically advanced harmonics can solely be heard when this lady, or people like Stefano Scodanibbio, are involved; I mean, one thing is just “bringing the upper partials out”, another is building cathedrals of sound and silence around those phenomena). Yet, there’s also a clear indication of rational balance at work in this stuff, as if the centrifugal force of the pure act of creation were channeled into moulds and shapes necessary for everyone to comprehend what is being played. This very attribute is what transforms improvisation from a “been-there-done-that” Polaroid to a multidimensional chromatic figure, and we must be thankful for this artist’s truly astonishing consistency, both in terms of extraordinary playing and level of releases. This CD might be considered as a valid introduction to Lèandre’s career, provided that you keep tracing at least another half-dozen of these often scarcely diffused pearls. No possibility of delusion here.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE / MASAHIKO SATOH / YUJI TAKAHASHI - Signature (Red Toucan)

A 2-CD set in which Joelle Léandre profitably uses any kind of instrumental nuance and continuously lends her hands, brain and heart to a rich, deeply skilled kind of improvisation that pays high dividends to the listeners. "Complex and lyrical" is my (abused) favourite definition coming to mind as soon as the record starts; both duets are for acoustic bass and piano. If Léandre, as we all know, is one of the world's best bass players, I never heard Satoh and Takahashi before (my fault...) and this was a most pleasing discovery. I notice a very distinct character in their approach to harmony and counterpoint: the former privileges abundance of fingers and swarming chords, the latter is a little more spacy in his phrasing and brings an intelligibility that needs no key to be enjoyed. On her side, Joëlle plays logically and coherently without sounding pretentious for a moment. Harmonics, ostinatos, arco hits, anything you can get from the instrument is just like drinking a glass of water for this woman. Music from the highest sphere, a mix of intelligence and emotion: it can't be overlooked by no one.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE / INDIA COOKE - Firedance (Red Toucan)

Recorded live at the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2004, this bass and violin improvised set engages the listeners in a headlock while procuring cerebral frictions and lots of rattling stimulations. This coupling of arco feelers generates languages which, if apparently coming from extraneous associations with snapping gruffness, are most of the times both pronounceable and carved in the memories of tradition. Léandre deconsecrates any iridescence in favour of timbral choices bordering on the "fabulously inharmonious", yet her colours assume the role of foundation in the exchanges; Cooke's violin becomes uproarious at times, lifting the curtains over an endless juxtaposition of styles which are indeed a unique flavour. Just in the very moments when everything risks becoming smothering, India and Joëlle do some mind-boggling elegant gasconade, shifting our focus a couple of frames forward, up to where ideals have already flown.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE / PASCAL CONTET - Freeway (Clean Feed) 

After their rare "Grave" from 1994, Léandre and Contet renew their alliance, treating us with twelve duets for double bass and accordion showing that the "genretrotters" definition of the press release is a correct one. Antagonism is not an option here, although the timbral difference - a sharp dichotomy between a fretless string instrument and a tempered keyboard device - contributes to the general cleverness. The pair seem to have played together day in, day out for decades, such is their absorption of the reciprocal styles and sensibilities. This determines a sort of "total mix" in their expressive range, Contet's low drones often complementing Léandre's murmuring arco in the most reflective improvisations. What should really be emphasized, though, is the unmitigated fusion of stylistic elements that both artists represent. Between the two of them, they have performed the works of influential composers such as Scelsi, Bussotti, Cage, Globokar; considering also the innumerable partners shared during their careers and the "popular" derivations surfacing in their voices, the record comes out as a literal demonstration of “omnivorousness”. Self-determination, technical command and undifferentiated circulation of impromptu information are among the many constituents that manage to put us in full syntony with the duo's glorious abilities, features that in "Freeway" are never sidetracked. There is nothing here that could elicit something different from admiration and positive enjoyment of the music; the album possesses so many different facets that, after reiterated listens, still leaves us both puzzled and willing to play it again.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE & KEVIN NORTON - Winter in New York - 2006 (Leo)

The names involved in this live set, recorded at The Stone in New York, leave no doubt as far as artistic coherence, instrumental command and overall seriousness are concerned. Double bass and percussion - with a decided prominence given by Norton to the vibraphone - are barely tameable beasts both in terms of juxtaposition of timbres and contrapuntal approach. It is also my conviction that capturing the full dynamic range of these instruments on record is never an easy task (as a matter of fact, some of the most spiky peaks cause a noticeable saturation in the headphones, something which listened via speakers is not so evident). But enough of this basically useless blather concerning the recording troubles; let’s talk about the music, the only thing that counts. Léandre and Norton possess an ingrained consciousness of everything that happens, their minds giving birth to concepts and instantaneous creations effortlessly and simultaneously - and the good part is that they often sound composed. The main preoccupation lies in listening to what the companion plays, more than affirming personal sentences or, heaven forbid, “tricks”. In this particular occasion, the French bassist shows us the less theatrical aspects of her performance, privileging a generous, fleshy tone that is a joy to receive - punchy, yet at the same time soft as a cotton cloud. When the percussionist underlines with swooping cymbal strokes and rolling chemistries after having found all the sweet and sour spots in his vibes, one can easily renounce to a judgement, simply dedicating the whole experience to the acknowledgement of two fundamental talents producing intriguing sounds under any condition and circumstance. Not an immediate winner, this CD is a sleeper that reveals its values - plenty of them - following the third or fourth try.

BRIAN LEBER - Till (Alluvial)

The sound of stones is of primary importance for Leber, who uses them in all the three pieces comprised by "Till". Don't you think about some edulcoration of raw matter, though; this music unfolds with gradual, shivering authenticity in a discolored world of organic and instrumental layers that are totally alluring in their unassuming bareness. In "Isobar", wind and shortwave radio are channeled in a single current of isolation from the rest of the world; both "Tracing stones" and "Mountains and rivers" use the riveting breath of a double bass, whose frail spurious notes lose splinters of harmonic rust during intimate dialogues with wood, leaves, water sounds and bowl gong. Leber does not look for powerful appearances or tricky imagery; one figures him doubled over the ground, intent in the discovery of a primordial source of inspiration for his intriguing hoards of precious understatements.

MARTIN LECLERC - Horizons du silence (Empreintes DIGITALes)

A qualified classical guitarist, active in a number of groups as a performer, Martin Leclerc (1976) studied with Yves Daoust, getting a Master’s Degree at Montreal’s Conservatory in 2004. The focus on electroacoustic composition finds an outlet in the six pieces comprised by this DVD, which displays both a measure of vision in the grouping of different settings and a flaw that’s becoming moderately standard in this playground, specifically the surplus of academic connections in determinate circumstances (in this occasion coinciding with the long - and frequently boring - title track, in effect a rotation of trumpet solos and rather obvious juxtapositions of concrete sceneries and “inevitably dramatic” vocal outbreaks). This should not discourage the listener from trying out other sonic revelations in the program: Leclerc does possess abilities, and the contrasting methods in parts of his work are definitely first-rate (“L’Odyssée” and “Sauf dans la brume” come to mind). We just can’t draw a parallel to a “current” or a “style” - which is a praise - and the same apparent incoherence of certain successions sounds like a compositional preference on a subsequent listen. Still I’m not entirely sold on this release, my own vu-meters pointing to the red of “inconsistency” more often than welcoming the absorbing qualities of extensive fractions of the material. As in many analogous cases, a cutback down to strictly considerable matters should have been implemented.

LE DEPEUPLEUR - Disambiguation (Auf Abwegen)

Le Dépeupleur is the duo of Zbigniew Karkowski and Kasper T.Toeplitz and this is their third collaborative release. Contrary for definition to any kind of code or system in music, they decided to create a huge, powerful "amass of masses" under the guise of semi-educated, stratified white/grey noise. The result is something that can't be described through concepts but only with adjectives and sensations: impregnable, hissing, growling, incessant, choking, menacing, nuclear, tempest-like. We could continue ad infinitum. What really is to be admired is Karkowski and Toeplitz's unadulterated search for sounds that, in their immeasurable complexity, remain astonishingly pure even after being subjected to a first-class compositional treatment. This is noise minimalism of the highest rank, a gradual shift of dangerous expression towards the area of those recurrent phenomena acting as a soothing means for burning repression. In that sense, "Disambiguation" is a small revolt against a still undefined establishment.

STEVE LEHMAN'S CAMOUFLAGE TRIO - Interface (Clean Feed)

It may sound strange but the only musician I didn't know before listening to "Interface" was Lehman himself; it's nice adding an excellent saxophonist to my own gallery. Flanked by Pheeroan Aklaff on drums and Mark Dresser on double bass, the leader conducts the dance through a modern jazz full of freedom yet apparently pretty well regulated. Crossing his combative lines with a less-than-memorizable bunch of "quasi-themes"(which is a compliment on my behalf) Lehman sounds hard-faced, integer and mean in a no compromise list of interesting pieces. Aklaff and Dresser add some more magic to the whole, accelerating at the right moment, doubling their own phrasing, manifesting themselves through an interplay that goes from pensive to powerful, while the solos show all three artists in their majestic technique and enormous sensibility. It's a record needing more tries to be completely understood - but its value is high.

STEVE LEHMAN QUARTET - Manifold (Clean Feed)

An “em vivo” recording of saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman - here on alto and sopranino - is enough to kindle the fire of interest, as what I had heard by him until now elicited a positive response from my neural systems, not easy to satisfy despite this writer’s infinite goodness (just kidding, but hey - one can build an unpaid career upon writing reviews that sound like press releases). In this set, recorded in Coimbra at “Jazz ao Centro” festival, Lehman’s cutting-edge scores are seriously interpreted by Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, John Hebert on double bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The group sounds compact, but the music grows instant branches by the minute, alternating furious reed assaults - the leader exercising pulmonary devastation in obstinate whirlwinds (“Interface A”) - and spots featuring Finlayson affirming a striking fantasy spiced with a promiscuous evilness that renders the solos a cross of torturing virtuosity and orgasmic frenzy. Hebert and Waits, besides enjoying consistent solo exposures - it happens in every respectable live album - work splendidly within the pieces, both functioning as a classic rhythm section and mirroring themselves in the lake of timbral knowledgeableness, without throwing Narcissus down from the sofa. In a word, they sound great independently from their companions’ omnivorous approach. Lehman closes the show with four minutes of solitary exploration of his instrument’s squealing properties, the definitive stamp on an excellent disc.

THOMAS LEHN / PAUL LOVENS - Achtung (Grob)

There's no way you can write about this music. Maybe an old Zappa title, "Absolutely free", would fit. Thomas Lehn plays an EMS synthesizer and Paul Lovens everything that's hittable. This is a sorcerer's cauldron of little and big explosions, apparent silences, cat-like purring, funny expressions, minimal resonance, noise and concrete sound. Radical improvisation has never been better interpreted; everything gathers under a crazy umbrella but, in reality, any sound you hear MUST be right there in that place. Of course, besides being undescribable, "Achtung" is completely unpredictable - and you know this is a major plus from Touching Extremes' point of view. More words are just useless, just look for this CD and give it a try: you could become addicted to these two guys.

URS LEIMGRUBER / GUNTER MULLER / ARTE QUARTET - e_a.sonata.02 (For 4 Ears)

Written by Leimgruber for the Arte sax quartet - the real protagonists in this CD - "Sonata" is a difficult composition where both electronic and acoustic sources materialize bit by bit, as time goes by. Sounds come creeping around, from the back of your monitors and under your shoes, completely surrounded by an invisible pellicle provided by Müller with his instrumental array. In this boiling liquid saxophones breath lightly at first, putting their head out like a newborn creature, then crawling to find some light, finally liberating most of their power over the course of the record. At the end, Arte's musicians have coalesced their different timbral masks into a single lamentation, like if all the efforts to affirm an existence had been in vain. Incomparable to other genres, this inquisitive music is deeply affecting without becoming disturbing, confirming the high degree of these artists' valuable choices.

URS LEIMGRUBER / JACQUES DEMIERRE / BARRE PHILLIPS - LDP - Cologne (Psi)

These improvisers - recorded in Köln in 2003 - play with concentrated organicism, their flux of consciousness perfectly complementary to near silences and sudden outbursts of brilliant collective autonomy. Leimgruber, on soprano and tenor saxophone, paintsprays his canvas through harsh sincerity that manifests itself in an unpronounceable lyricism, alternating fluency and staccato in a sort of pneumatic jargon. Demierre's plurality of telluric movements and caressing condescension justify every single required gesture in his invigorating sound. Phillips' overtones and glissandos add the definitive light to this inspired trio, changing shapes, timbral consistencies and relationships until one is almost forced to hold breath to understand what's really going on under the music's surface. Difficult - but totally rewarding substance all over the record.

LEO MARS - Lightears (Naivsuper)

Leo Mars are the Berlin-based duo of Marcel Türkowsky and Stephane Leonard, “Lightears” being their inaugural outing. What they do is pretty much in your face: roaring distortion a go-go, harsh layers, dissonant bitterness, absolutely merciless puncturing of the auricular membranes through a choice of frequencies that’s not an actual “choice”, rather a penalty. These guys kick hard, though not always intelligibly. On a first listen I thought about the customary replication (there are hundreds by now) of the wall-of-guitar sound of Birchville Cat Motel and the likes, but a closer look (to the press release, too) reveals that also mangled field recordings and overexcited electronics are a part of the game. Whatever, the sonic spectrum investigated by the couple mostly belongs to the regions of aural pain, especially if you decide to sting yourself at more than medium listening volume. Yet a strictly musical aspect besides the noisy factor does exist, and is precisely what saves the record elevating it to another level in certain occasions. It’s explicated by a powerful purr, an underlying pulse that appears in a few instances - particularly at the opposite extremes of the CD - furnishing the music with entrancing features that turn the fundamental vibration into a rainbow connecting the ears across the back of the skull. Everything becomes tolerable in that moment. I’m willing to believe that, by concentrating on these droning matters and not on ear-killing acridness, Leo Mars could engender something important in the future. Let’s wait and see.

JASON LESCALLEET - The pilgrim (Glistening Examples)

Much has already been written about the sad circumstances that originated this album, Lescalleet's homage to his late father Harrison. Those conditions are explained in detail by the composer in the liners, therefore I won't mention them again here. "The pilgrim" - which spreads over an LP and a CD - revolves around a fulcrum constituted by the parallelism between death and security, two concepts that lie closer than most people think. In the complimentary letter to his son reproduced on the cover, and read by Jason with broken voice at the beginning of the program, Harrison Lescalleet recalls the time when he was driven to the hospital by his dad, his feverish body lying on the floor of a '32 Chevy. Lescalleet Snr compares that memory to his son's music, thus attributing a positive quality to something that at a first analysis shouldn't be: illness, fever, uncomfortable trip conditions. Yet his mind retained the basic information, the "steady deep rumble" he felt in his body, which Jason's "Figure 2" brought back to him in all its physical presence. I wondered if the feel of "low-frequency protection" that many sensitive people seem to experience is indeed the most conscious (or less) perception of the constant nearness of death, symbolizing in a way the aspiration to knowing "what comes after" that human beings have felt over thousands of years. This seems to be Jason Lescalleet's principal motive of attraction, as about half of this opus is based on the recreation of the droning cocoon by which we love to be wrapped more often than not. The first side of the vinyl sees Lescalleet using analog tape saturation "to rumble and vibrate the stage and the air with the fullest of sound waves from the lower end of the spectrum". Half of the CD puts our heart into slow-beat gears, my room impressively throbbing from the uncontrollable pulses and muffled roars belonging to that inner realm about which I'd never dare to describe my sensations through mere words. Again, the idea is one of safety, probably the same felt by young Harrison in his daddy's car, and also by Jason over the full course of his relationship with his father: in that sense, the heartwarming 1970 photo that graces the booklet is the most explicative one. Needless to say, the audio-verité segment recorded during the last meeting between them at the hospital - shortly before Harrison's death - generates some measure of uneasy breathing to the receptive listener; but if we put that moment in the context of the whole piece, including Jason's "angry" musical reaction to the event in "My petition" (a droning numbness slowly evolving into disquieting oscillating surcharges of barely repressed tension ending in devastating distortion) everything seems to fit just as expected. It is a perfect circle, wherever one starts drawing it: life flowing into death - but death is somehow secure, while life will never be. Furthermore, death generates life in terms of energies - in this case, Harrison's death process affecting Jason's brain in such a way that he was pushed hard to create something that transcends the term "memorial". And, referring to "The pilgrim"'s final minutes, Harrison represents death and his niece Audrey is the continuing line of life, yet, without awareness, she sings about a dying girl. The point is that our wishes, projects and aspirations account for next to nil in the great scheme of things, and the earlier we realize it, the better. It only remains to ask the final, purely artistic question: is this record a masterpiece? My answer is a shouted "yes" on all accounts: when a release manages to provoke deep reflection, a debate in the new music's world and the sort of physical reaction that I noticed at various times while listening - and believe me, I'm not one who's easily moved by love or death matters - then it's got to be a milestone. It only takes the first of a long series of plays to realize.

LES KLEBS - Les Klebs (Ouie/Dire) 

Coming in a gorgeous package containing both the disc and a booklet with a short pictorial story (which I’ll leave you to enjoy), Les Klebs is a group mixing improvisations on acoustic instruments - Xavier Charles on clarinet, David Chiesa on double bass - with the analog synthesis of Marc Pichelin, the “phonographic projection and live analog tape” of Jean-Léon Pallandre and the live mixing and processing of Laurent Sassi. Active together since 2004, these artists present a kind of electroacoustic jurisprudence whose codes appear as vastly unrespected, if not thoroughly destroyed. Exciting vicinities between resonant arco patches and fibrillations of multiphonics are assembled with location recordings and electronic deformations in sonic architectures where only a concentrated, scrupulous attention is the key to access a complexity which, in the end, reveals to be analysable in each and every one of its constituents. This does not imply that we’ll find something “easy”: despite the vague familiarity of certain sources - water drops, exotic languages in hypothetical flea markets, altered frogs - the overall feel is one of conscious displacement, the music constantly remodelling itself in the ebb and flow of noisy mirages, chimeras of a quietness that will never be completely achieved. Cuckoo clocks and carillons are the soundtrack of insufferable nightmares where there’s no place to hide while escaping from ugly masks, and even walking is impossible without tripping in dwarf cats meowing all over the place. Masters of a unique blend of hit-and-run acousmatic piracy, Les Klebs are yet another welcome addition to a world where even improvisation is inexorably getting standardized.

LESSONS AROUND US - Open air (State Sanctioned) 

Tim Kirby was not a name that resounded as familiar, until I discovered that he was one of the members of Sonic Catering Band, a peculiar improvising unit working with normal equipment and kitchenware (check their release on Absurd). He’s also performed with Michael Prime and the Bohman Brothers, so you already have an idea of what (not) to expect here. Surely not “regular” music; Lessons Around Us is a tape-based, real life-influenced project (and the cooking element is still very present, yes: frying pans and popcorn are quite abundant) which Kirby describes as a collage of sounds from daily activities that somehow grasped his attention “because of their timbre, rhythm, dynamics or sheer beauty”. Editing these snippets in a context that, at different times, also includes regular instruments, washing machines, dictaphones, prepared CDs, vinyl and much more allows Kirby to generate pretty innocent instant openings on a low-budget materiality where even birds sound like they’re chirping from the drain hole and treated with flanging crumbles. Elsewhere, pre-recorded voices are mixed with Roedelius-like obfuscated piano recollections, while the self explanatory “Forests and bushes” is enriched by filtered traffic sounds that render the track one of the overall best. Strange electronic beats à la Tuxedomoon and a general sense of “letting things happen as they come” complete a strange album that reveals its disparate layers only through a careful listening approach. Oh, and the cover artwork is splendid. Oh again, it’s a 200-copy limited edition.

LEVEL - Cycla (Spekk)

With the exception of a more "normal" final track, "Cycla" is an engrossing album, finely conceived and structured by sound artist and designer B.G.Nichols. All over the disc, streams of otherworldly resonances and distant echoes of semi-sculpted rhythms accompany the listener, playing hide-and-seek in every invisible corner to reveal themselves again, enhanced by their self-regenerative projection, in the space between the ears and the outside world - and, if possible, showing even more grace. Although pretty consonant, often with a tendency to sadness, "Cycla" maintains a perfect evenness between the obvious will to discover "what lurks behind" the sound and a long-desired passivity, continuously caressed by sonic architectures which seem to contain the teachings of Brian Eno, Steve Tibbetts and Suso Saiz, disassembled and lyophilized into a sense of undescribable gratification of the nerves. With this release, Nichols has managed to put out one of the best "accessible" soundscapes heard in recent times, music which is elegant yet profound.

DANIEL LEVIN TRIO - Fuhuffah (Clean Feed)

An atypical format - cello, double bass and drums - for an album that mixes improvisation, melodic lyricism of the slanted kind and a well perceptible vocal quality in the conversations between two stringed essences. Cellist and nominal leader Levin exalts the singing features of his instruments through a systematic implantation of presentiments and harassments in the evolvement of a three-way trade, a garrulous law-breaker always happy to verify how the decline of jazz can be counterbalanced by an instrumental approach that sounds both materialistically paint-stripped and utterly freehearted, all regulated by an extraordinary technical literature that steals remnants from the mummy of Anton Webern to burgeon - with succulent fruits - in the paradise of dissonant-loving peasantry. Bassist Ingebrigt Häker-Flaten - owner of a superb timbral expressiveness besides a fabulous taste - is able to occupy interstices, tune to the deepest regions of subcutaneous vibration and tread the most impervious paths of resonant winsomeness while keeping eyes wide open when the partners decide to abandon themselves to unconsciousness in the lap of that giant wooden fellow. Gerald Cleaver’s drumming is ideal for this context, hyperactive yet often subdued swinging alternated with wise silences and instillations of moonstruck hobnobbing, the proverbial accompaniment nebulized into a myriad of rhythmic cells, a truly steadfast-in-adversity companion for one hour of exceptional legitimization of instantaneous indispensability. This is a splendid recording, a veritable breath of fresh air also representing the perfect showcase for a triplet of bright talents.

ANDREW LEWIS - Miroirs obscurs (Empreintes DIGITALes)

Born in 1963, Andrew Lewis belongs to the premium class of young electroacoustic craftsmen, “Miroirs obscurs” being a striking illustration of razor-sharp compositional systems. A student of Jonty Harrison and an original member of BEAST, the Englishman also creates music for orchestral, vocal and chamber ensembles. Still, the major strength lies in the masterful handling of concrete sources, and it becomes instantaneously evident that Lewis’ perceptive facility in placing episodes and incidents in a broad electroacoustic context benefits from his earlier studies. What turns out from this DVD is that, for once at least, the program’s length - in this instance, almost 85 minutes - is not going to test the listener’s resistance. This material lacks the academic lacquer and intellectual weightiness of many and one similar presentations, alternatively orientating our interest towards sapiently designed time cells, the commemoration of times and places contextualized by quite a lot of stretched elements that, in a virtually alien acoustic environment, let the door open to memory and its implicit disintegration. In that sense, the composer appears to be interested in maritime settings to a great extent, constructing entire works around them (in the case of “Benllech Shells” he employs the archetypal sonic circumstances of a typical day at the seaside), or applying a systematic alteration of the same constituents until they become an overall different setting (“Penmon Point”, “Cable Bay”). In the final 35-minute long “Danses acousmatiques”, the composer tackles the noticeable superficiality with which the large part of acousmatic pieces deal with the intrinsic qualities of sound - which should be the basis of the whole movement - presenting an assortment of graphic representations of those multidimensional features, a kaleidoscopic succession of virtual realities sounding like flashes that can’t be framed in any possible way.

LGAMBLE - 80 mm O!I!O! (Part 1) (Entr'acte)

I must admit that, after almost 40 years of listening to sounds of every conceivable species, there are still records that leave me at a loss for words. Enter Lee Gamble, father of "seven virtual-hybrid models of spontaneous and ordered (non essential goal) related Celomund O!I!O! computer audio compositions" (of course, Lee, I trust you). Comprised in little more than 19 minutes - it's a 3-inch, folks - there are more abrupt changes, sudden discharges, alien burps and ultra-short complex melodies here than in the zapped circuit of an electronic pinball machine. Fizzing white noise, extreme panning and continuously morphing timbres - which could have been conceived either by a mad scientist or a deranged dentist - are featured in this (unfortunately) short briefing about the best of what computer music has to offer nowadays. Could have been released only by Entr'acte, the only label whose record covers must be scissor-sliced to access the content. Incidentally, there's still someone around talking about "seven notes".

ALAN LICHT - A New York minute (XI)

You could describe Alan Licht's music as classic minimalism and not be too far away from the truth; this double CD set shows his skills very accurately, mixing his guitar based compositions with more peculiar material, like the initial title track where Alan superimposes weather report bulletins to create an involving "voice-whirling". Of course, Licht is mostly known for his droning, almost geometric fretboard work and naturally we find lots of it; the best moments in that sense come from "14, Second, Fifth": about 37 minutes of strings played through various methods, the most prominent apparently a little battery fan who brings out harmonics and a (dis)conforting resonance, like a cloud of motorized insects coming out of nowhere; on the contrary, the final "Remington Khan" is not always lucid like the rest, bringing also lots of recording distortion into the equation, a fact that I don't fully comprehend in a work of this importance. Nevertheless, the standards set remain pretty high, with an absolute stunner in the gorgeous 6:41 minutes of "Muhammad Ali and the crickets", where boxing fans from Zaire keep bellowing "Ali, Bouma Ye" ("Ali, kill him", referring to George Foreman in their famous 1974 match), accompanied by the incessant punching bag pattern, pseudo-metal noise and - of course - the crickets, helping your blood to boil and your feet to keep the steady beat of the piece.

ALAN LICHT & AKI ONDA - Everydays (Family Vineyard)

Tape-based composition will never be out of fashion, although there’s concrete evidence that the world of field recording is steadily becoming yet another way for giving people who don’t know shit about properly making music a chance to inserting their invasive persona in contexts where they’re not welcome, at least by this ever-grunting listener. This doesn’t touch Alan Licht and Aki Onda, who all through the five tracks of this singular record show us intensity and originality in plentiful doses. It takes a sturdy artistic individuality to produce momentum from poor elements, and both the involved parties are up to the task in this case. Onda’s lyrical use of the cassette as a means of evocation and remembrance - but also as a generator of curiously extracurricular patterns - spouses Licht’s cruel maltreatment of his guitar perfectly, explorations of virtual unawareness recalling a past that not even those who lived it might be able to bear in mind. A brilliant demonstration of how sound, prosperous or meagre that it may be, remains the most powerful tool for the improvement of intelligent recollection. A lovely sense of achievement and the perplexity of noticing “wrong” happenings are equivalent facets in a music that transcends genres to turn into pure eloquence. Crawling away from middle-of-the-road avant-garde, Licht and Onda observe unlikely realities with the right attitude, letting everybody realize that birds and looped guitars (the magnificent “Tiptoe”) do not automatically mean that they won’t be trying, a moment later, to disembowel our pet nirvana (“Chitchat”) without losing an ounce of pleasure. The first environmental sounds of our life were the muffled ones that we experienced in the womb; several parts of “Everydays” made me think of something comparable. You wouldn’t say that after listening to the cacophonic, feedback-ish cadenced mess of the conclusive “Be bop”, though.

STEUART LIEBIG / MICHAEL VATCHER / VINNY GOLIA - In the cusp of fire and water (Red Toucan)

This has to be one of the best improvising trios I've heard in 2004: excellent interplay, fresh use of instrumental prowess, entwined articulations among exuberant trips. Golia's reed technique is limpid to say the least, with a creativity that's continuously fruitful while proposing new sketches of sapient alternative to the obvious. Liebig plays contrabass guitar getting the best from each one of his timbral ranges - from bass currents flowing at the threshold of audibility to free-form fingerings in more uptempo settings. Vatcher's arsenal is typical of an intelligent percussionist, someone who prefers listening to the others rather than forcing himself upon them; right then you can appreciate a variegated and conspicuously genial personality, capable of distinguish itself without shouting in the chaos. The resulting music is clearly enjoyable and self-selective, leaving out useless memories to look the future straight in the eyes.

STEUART LIEBIG / THE MENTONES - Locustland (pfMENTUM)

This The Mentones' 2004 album, which gravitates around the very same coordinates of "Nowhere calling" and is just as energetic and beautifully composed and executed. Liebig's bass riffs, a dissonant mixture of robust, slightly oblique "rockbluesyjazzy" cat walks, are sustained by Joseph Berardi's sensitively brisk drumming; what could at a first listen be comparable to offshoots of Curlew and Virgil Moorefield is instead shifted to wholly different scenarios by the extraordinary prowess of alto saxophonist Tony Atherton, whose solos incinerate conventional idioms with good degrees of sensual rage, and chromatic harmonica virtuoso Bill Barrett (also a member of Gutpuppet with guitarist Scot Ray, check them out!), one of those players who completely redefine their instrument's vocabulary while maintaining both feet firmly grounded in their influences' humus. The final results coming from this commission of lucid visionaries are utterly galvanizing, their ironic diplomacy well portrayed by a track like "Honky Tonk Burn", which crosses dramatic goofiness à la Nino Rota with Brecht and Eisler on dope, the whole sounding like a demented circus band led by a Daniel Denis/Lars Hollmer hybrid. The Mentones are a group that transcends genres by touching many of them and, as such, are destined to be appreciated and dissed in equal measure. I appreciate.

STEUART LIEBIG / THE MENTONES - Nowhere calling (pfMENTUM)

There are trend followers and unrepentant free birds. There are also free birds who feel it's their duty to teach us, poor daily jobbers, the necessary techniques to learn to fly, at least in our mind. Steuart Liebig's Mentones (Tony Atherton on alto saxophone, Bill Barrett on chromatic harmonica, Joseph Berardi on drums and percussion and the leader on contrabass guitar) are bad muthas that will seduce your joints into crackling out some dancing life while stealing your girlfriend with a quirky smile. "Nowhere calling" is a fine 13-piece collection of angular onslaughts, cynical delicacy and concentrated, yet accessible difficulties that rank right there with the best unclassifiable American bands (think Curlew and Motor Totemist Guild with just a few more pinches of rock'n'blues rudiments). Most of these tracks impose a predominant groove, often quite dissonant, over which Atherton and Barrett go for the jugular with unison counter-themes and scarcely predictable sadistic contrapuntal turns. Barrett, in particular, is probably the most complete harmonicist on the market today, able to offer low-budget Delta abstractions and Allan Holdsworth-like lyrical contrivances in the space of thirty seconds. Yet, Mentones' real strength is their ensemble narrative: picture some sort of fusion group from the 70s undergoing an electroshock lifting that turns the band members into reactivated-brain orchestral engineers. Play loud.

STEUART LIEBIG / MINIM - Quicksilver (pfMENTUM)

I politely suggest starting with the last piece on the disc; in fact, most of the second half of "A single rosehip bursts in praise" is a heavy tour de force through heavier still percussion patterns that risks being skipped if listened at the end of an already demanding record. But Steuart Liebig's Minim quartet (Liebig on contrabass guitars, Ellen Burr on flutes, Jeanette Kangas on percussion, Jeff Gauthier on violins) is so skilled that the sheer force of their musicianship carries a physicality that makes even the most contorted counterpoints sound light and refreshing. The 23 sonic haikus forming "Mosaic" lean towards a modern school of "comprovisation" mixing freedom, Reich, Stravinsky and Braxton - plus additional influences you'll be able to hear yourselves - with an always open eye to well travelled technical shapes; "Chrysantemum" is another important statement of almost classical literature, where the multiform artistic culture of Minim trades previous urgencies with arcane suggestions and background connections. 80 minutes of this music must be listened with top attention and the most liberated brain you can wear that day - but the reward is a sure thing.

STEUART LIEBIG / MINIM - Sulphur (pfMENTUM)

The intellectual element is highly evident in every move characterizing Steuart Liebig’s music. “Sulphur” comprises three pieces that contain references or plain influences related to a series of compositional means and technical circumstances that have to do with the syllabic rules of haiku poetry (“Kaleidoscope”), Jorge Luis Borges (“Necrological pieties”), palindromes and terza rima (“The cherry blossom is only perfect when it’s falling from the tree”). Liebig, a master of the contrabass guitar, which he plays in different tunings and combinations of strings, is flanked by three sensitive monsters who respond to the names of Andrew Pask (clarinets), Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon) and Brad Dutz (percussion). The leader structured the pieces in order to respect precise mathematic recurrences - be it the number of solos, the different kinds of grouping or the quantity of measures - over which he tried to set his instrument, handled with preparations and “less bass-like techniques” than usual. In essence, we’re in front of an ultramodern chamber quartet that sounds immaculately complex, therefore extremely rewarding for listeners whose single-mindedness is very high and who own a solid background as far as dissonant counterpoint and thought-out improvisation are concerned; Anton Webern and Igor Stravinsky would have been appreciative of a good portion of these scores. Speaking of the single members, Pask and Schoenbeck’s reflective intuitions and resolute skepticism towards everything sounding stale allow their lines to assume an identity of their own, while Dutz is surely one of the finest percussionists around today, his playing mostly based on subtraction and breathing spaces in a great demonstration of “total control”. Liebig’s timbre is immediately recognizable (even more so for his writing style), nimble dissertations and obstinate knottiness confirming him as a bright mind in California’s new music scene. Those who esteem the label from Ventura already know what I’m talking about, and won’t be deluded.

STEUART LIEBIG / STIGTETTE - Delta (pfMENTUM)

When I listen to half-composed, half-improvised music my curiosity is usually about the level of the performers' musicianship and the global balance of sound; in "Delta" I found a positive answer to all questions, as this beautiful effort is certainly well decipherable and conspicuously fruitful, thanks to an uncommon level of "semi-approachable difficulty" which expert ears won't take too much to link to realities such as Motor Totemist Guild, even if - strangely enough - the body-beautiful contrabass guitar played by Liebig would fit nicely in Mikel Rouse Broken Consort's "A walk in the woods"-era timbral palette (just a fantasy of mine). Instead, these scores range from Stravinskian derivations to obscurely amorphous, Gavin Bryars-tinged reflections, constituting a solid foundation for the dexterous, no-nonsense technical attitude and total dedication to the cause by flutist Ellen Burr, bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and clarinettist Andrew Pask who - together with the leader's conceptual elasticity - contribute in equal measure to the objective beauty of the large part of this album, one of the best by the Californian label so far.

STEUART LIEBIG TEE-TOT QUARTET - Always outnumbered (pfMENTUM)

The emblematic wealth of practical intricacies informing both the playing and the compositional aptitude of contrabass guitarist Liebig is only slightly less conspicuous in “Always outnumbered”, a record where the reverence for time-honoured genres such as Dixieland and blues meets the perpetual determination in trying something innovative in terms of raw-boned phraseology and not exactly standard rhythmic notions. Liebig is assisted by three teammates of undeniable ability: Joseph Berardi (drums, percussion), Scot Ray (dobro) and Dan Clucas (cornet). Tee-Tot work remarkably amidst arrangements that fit the familiar and the bizarre together, calling to mind impressions from distant eras immediately pushed away by sequences of contrapuntal malice and successions of solos that might let us think of a juggler and a clown swapping heated opinions and a few glancing blows in the middle of a circus ring. The musicians seem to recognize no impediment to cooperate in whatever the score imposes, evidently complying with the leader’s directives yet gifting the pieces with a rare sensitiveness even in the most intricate sections. There’s much to be glad about everywhere in the disc, and I’m sure that this album is going to persuade the students of the respective instruments, too: the guys play with virtuosity and gusto, never exceeding the limits that divide skill from dullness.

LIEUTENANT CARAMEL - Early tape works (Monochrome Vision) 

Russian label Monochrome Vision has been showing its value through the release of exciting archival materials from the likes of Frank Rothkamm and Das Synthetische Mischgewebe. Another intriguing chapter in this book of marvellous stories from the 80s (...and 1993...) comes with this double disc set containing, for the first time on CD, the earliest works by Philippe Blanchard aka Lieutenant Caramel (but also Denier Du Culte, Pierre Bouchet and Felipe Caramelos). In appreciating people experimenting with tapes there’s a fractured feeling, based on my usual attitude which tends to privilege artists showing at least a hint of compositional method as opposed to someone who - in the name of a not really specified independence - throws random sounds calling their mess “music”. Fortunately, Lieutenant Caramel does not belong to the latter category, as the particular mixture of cut-up tracks, disjointed melodies, real world recordings and vocal treatments is always presented with some sort of vague formal structure, which allows a better comprehension of Blanchard’s intentions. The fact that he “organizes and assembles” his material via computer certainly helps in avoiding too many dead spots. What’s indeed noteworthy, especially when considering that the large part of this music was composed more than 20 years ago, is the “puppet show” quality of several of these mini-documentaries, with situations and characters alternated in a continuous succession of dada scenarios mixing influences that range from musique concrete to everyday life. This theatrical attribute - especially visible in the second CD, which comprises compositions where the use of voice is more insistent - could even keep one at security distance. A common error in such a case is trying to decode what happens. No, you just have to treat those utterances and deformations as additional colours in an already rich palette, thus transforming these concoctions in “presences”, radios perennially tuned on the stations of parallel dimensions which appear unemotional at first, then reveal their secrets with repeated listenings.

ANDREW LILES - Drone works #7 (Twenty Hertz)

Twenty Hertz's "Drone works" series is augmented by this impressive CD EP of Andrew Liles, whose oneiric soundscapes are silently wrapping and deceptively complex. Liles works at the margins of unfamiliar worlds; using electronics, percussion and found sounds he spirals around our ears, immobilizing our sense of alertness, putting everything in the middle of abstract savours and fuscous contemplations. Sounds get disembodied and ethereal without losing their strength during a 21-minute piece that flows much quicker in the head, the result of a mental standstill that's just apparent. Brilliantly haunting, it is without a doubt one of this collection's best.

ANDREW LILES - Mother goose's melody or sonnets for the cradle (ICR)

Should you try to lull your baby to sleep by playing this record, be ready for strange surprises when he'll be growing up as Andrew Liles has written a series of warped melodies and droning songs, mixing them with more "traditional" narration taken from classic children literature to hassle your aural balance with this bunch of contrasting elements. Backward voices, animal sounds, morphing synthesizer waves and guitars create a fabulous world where nothing is like one could expect - and even when it is, there's always a lurking fear of something suddenly coming out from nowhere to change the rules of the game, therefore destroying every notion of comprehension that our brain might have been memorizing during the process. Those who follow Colin Potter's label will find their natural environment here, although a little submerged by bubbling oleaginous waters; make no mistake about it, this is not some sort of luxury joke for kids, instead it is an album whose peculiar shape and delicious craftmanship will bewitch you at first listen.

ANDREW LILES - In my father's house are many mansions (Fourth Dimension)

By now affirmed as a uniquely talented soundscaper, for this occasion Andrew Liles called fifteen artists to the task of remixing his own music. The few lines of a review are not enough to decode the complex messages disclosed by these disfigured contemplations, as Liles' work is truly mythical in its impossibility of being pigeonholed. His overtones are bathed in engulfing frequencies, sapiently interspersed with ironic convolutions and aural descriptions of transfigured wonderlands where rabbits eat Alices spitting their pieces in kaleidoscopic whirlwinds. That said, at least four remodelers of shadowy tales stand out in excellence; Irr. App. (Ext.) emphasizes the nostalgic and the sublime, Hafler Trio transmutes everything he puts his hands on into grey ice, Nurse With Wound seem to include Liles in their lineup while Colin Potter's remix somehow reminds of Salvador Dali's surrealist pictures. But all of this music brims with extravagant views on forms of life we aren't likely to meet often.

ANDREW LILES - The dying submariner (Beta-Lactam Ring)

Andrew Liles pumps out CDs by the dozen and it's just obvious that I am not able to keep his pace, that's why I listened to "The dying submariner" - subtitled "A concerto for piano and reverberation" - with a lot of delay (no pun intended). It's one of those cases in which I bought the CD out of the many positive reviews I read, and let it be known that they were right. The composition is divided into four movements, more or less similar as a general concept but slightly different as far as little nuances and colours are concerned. The activity is mostly centred around the low-frequency range of the piano at first, then the nebulous figurations and long-distance echoes elicited by Liles' hands shift all over the keyboard in grey-tinged snapshots of solitude, at times sounding more like a silent movie soundtrack than a marine landscape. The sea is nevertheless evoked, thanks to hundreds of overlapping chords which - in the haze generated by the infinite reverbs - mesh and gently clash, giving birth to even more extraneous shades, all of them perfectly acceptable to these ears, which every once in a while need a little relief after hours upon hours of relentless attacks (and not always by good musicians). Only at the end of the album the piano morphs into a metallic entity, then Liles closes the show with uncertain muffled articulations that look like a signature of sorts. Another considerable effort by this talented artist.

LINES - In Australia (Emanem)

Axel Dörner, Jim Denley, Philipp Wachsmann, Marcio Mattos and Martin Blume are Lines. They recorded this excellent, highly skilled record during a session in Sydney, in 2000. What I like best about this group is the continuous shifting among instrumental characters: part of the material sounds like it was composed and carefully orchestrated - but it's not so - and while you're enjoying that fullness, you are suddenly thrown into small conglomerates of linking electronics, anarchic percussive sounds and brash melodic ideas that never let you catch their beginning or their end. When all is said and done, this CD flows like pure water, never tiring your ears and leaving you asking for more when it's over.

LISBON IMPROVISATION PLAYERS - Motion (Clean Feed)

"Motion" is a very enjoyable piece of work by a beautiful multi-faceted ensemble. The plurality of evolutions in Rodrigo Amado and Steve Adams' combinations of baritone, sopranino and tenor saxophones is what most jazz should be looking for these days; emancipating their music from slipslop low-key atmospheres, the two sustain continuous conversations without going astray, not even for five seconds, while Ken Filiano on double bass underlines or smears the picture, depending on temper and feeling, at the same time maintaining himself well distant from overexcitement. The variegated drumming of Acacio Salero calls our attention to another extremely gifted player: his decomposition of regularity is something to listen carefully, his colourful approach totally refreshing and diverse from any other percussionist. The quartet's fine amalgam makes any comparison useless: this is a record full of positive energy, the perfect sum of four distinguished precious artists.

LISBON IMPROVISATION PLAYERS - Spiritualized (Clean Feed)

In this release, the quartet of Rodrigo Amado (alto and baritone sax), Dennis Gonzàlez (trumpet), Pedro Gonçalves (double bass) and Bruno Pedroso (drums) is joined by cellist Ulrich Mitzlaff in the two final pieces, "Meeting of our Times" and the title track. Here, more than everywhere else, the music is clearly structured in a superior level of improvisation, the kind that makes you think of it as a hybrid, but still jazz-influenced, composed picture. Most of Amado and Gonzalez’s colloquial coordinates are determined by brief spurts that repeat and progressively clone themselves a la Gremlins, increasingly extending their influence until they become a mosaic of shards in a trance of sorts. The couple gets more and more excited with the ongoing flow, beautifully sustained by Barreto and Gonçalves which of course don’t behave like a typical “rhythm section” - but they still are, and work egregiously as such, their pulse the gauge of an irregular heartbeat that seems to symbolize appreciation for life and accumulation of conscious elaborations. This symbiotic experience starts with deep roots in the past, yet it never becomes sheer homage or, worse still, dependence. To summarize it all, listening to this album is an extremely pleasant affair under any circumstance; it does not hit with the strength of free jazz, nor it bores with traditional memories covered with dust, and it works just fine. When the strings come in, a lovely aroma of elegant chamber music enriches our personal enjoyment of the whole.

LITTLE WINGS - Magic wand (Ahornfelder)

Songwriters are not the most frequent object of review here, yet when a record like this appears I’m more than happy to deviate from the norm. Little Wings are the ever-changing (in the line-up) creature of Californian Kyle Field, who besides composing and playing also “gets through making drawings and riding waves”. The songs comprised by “Magic wand” are extremely simple, informed by harmonic progressions that we’ve heard at least a billion times and that, theoretically, anyone able to generate a few chords on a guitar or a piano might conceive; furthermore, a couple of tracks are definitely under average. Still, Field’s approach is particular, warmly detached yet melancholically driven, sung with a voice that sounds as not wanting to even try to look for different timbral hues or melodic solutions. You know what? That’s exactly the point that saves the CD. This cross of softly lamenting crooning and arrangements that recall psychedelic pop and a mixture of typical instrumental characterizations from the 70s resulted quite pleasing after my Sunday morning had begun by cleaning the house and having trouble in breathing given the terribly damp hot weather. I was instantly put in a relaxed condition, appreciating a musician that in another moment could have been easily dismissed. Sometimes it’s just a question of coincidences. Give this man’s music a listen and keep me informed; this writer might be getting old but it smells like there’s some talent in there.

JIANG LIWEI - Caged (Live @ Knitting Factory) (Post-Concrete)

The piece begins with enigmatic interferences suffused by modified ambiences, like the sound of dozens of typewriters sped up first, then gradually set together in a relentless rhythm that makes them appear as a frightening machine ready to mangle the hands of those who try to operate it. Echoing disturbances and computerized transformations succeed in constantly changing dynamic units, but the progression sounds consistent and coherent. At the halfway point, an ominous unfathomable thrum becomes the exclusive focus, only to instantly be silenced and pushed off spotlight in favour of a hasty cut-up of female voices morphing into total incomprehensibility, the whole generating hallucinogenic effects as the millions of fragments become a single flood of electroacoustic data, preferably warped and in rapid revolution. The conclusive section starts with something apparently deriving from nature - maybe water, maybe wood, who knows - shifting the balance of the composition back to tiny ticks and overwhelming buzz, until the abrupt end. Fresh stuff, worthy of your attention.

DALE LLOYD - Aionios the fundament (Mystery Sea)

Preserving the essence and the spirit of his field recordings, Lloyd showers our ears with elemental beauties, incorporating concrete sounds and expert processing in five austere, almost sacral assemblages. Ominous landscapes, made wet by sapient dissolvences, alternate with hisses and crackles seemingly out of some extraterrestrial backdrop, while darkness and light find their correspondence in a mutual respect. Time fathoms our chaotic life disposition, disregarding our imperfections to fog our nerves in a gauzy perceptivity: this is a vast and involving soundworld, where changes and mutations occur very slowly. We're given all the necessary tools to adapt to this well developed set of spectral experiences.

DALE LLOYD AND VARIOUS ARTISTS - Amalgam (Conv.net Lab)

For his first release on Conv.net Lab, Seattle's Dale Lloyd decided to collaborate with eleven sound artists instead of working alone. Considering the seriousness of all involved parties (Robert Horton, Nathan and Darcy McNinch, Omnid, Ben Owen, Josh Russell, Stuart Dodman, Ubeboet, Scott Taylor, Heribert Friedl, K.M.Krebs, Jon Tulchin) the results could not have been less than excellent. The convergence of apparently opposed worlds - drones and microsounds, organic and processed, acoustic and electronic - seems to constitute the basic complexion of such a deeply penetrating music; there seems to be a secretly predetermined walk through progressively immaterial states, as we move from sounds of glass and water through clicks, hums and controlled feedback in preparation for what expect us at the end, namely the semblance of a protracted blur of time suspension, a framework where seemingly endless textural delights push the compositions to the highest spheres of sonic meditation. If these men and this label keep such a focus on the development of sound treatments, we're definitely in for hours upon hours of important electroacoustic discoveries.

LNGTCHÉ - Music for an untitled film by T.Zarkkof (Etude) 

It’s good that Spanish soundscaper Lngtché, whose influences range from Cecil Taylor to Stephen O’Malley, hasn’t called his album “music for a non-existent (or imaginary) movie”, as this kind of title has become a worn-out cliché that I really can’t stand anymore. The above mentioned names don’t give a clue about the content of the CD, though: on a first listen, this sounds like one in a thousands of darkish electroacoustic releases that “grace” the life of reviewers: treated guitars, the gurgle of water (warning: this, too, is inexorably becoming a cliché), pretty innocuous drones and a slight degree of “not knowing where to go” after long moments of obscurity. Yet one detects something better than average, such as the sound placement in the mix and a little additional care in the elemental consecutiveness. The composition decidedly takes off in the second half, when Lngtché adds several slow parabolas, murmuring glissandos and conflicting distortions at the basis of a thicker mass of frequencies and noises that shifts the whole to another dimension and level. The expectations of the listener begin to be seriously fulfilled, with that feeling of “something’s gonna happen” that characterizes the best recordings in this area. The atmosphere gets nearer to some of Christoph Heemann’s work in the early 90s (circa “Invisible barrier”) and the overall structure is now completely revealed. I surmise that watching the images while listening to their soundtrack should be an even better experience. At least we know that this film exists.

ANNEA LOCKWOOD - Thousand year dreaming / Floating world (Pogus) 

“Thousand year dreaming” - composed by Annea Lockwood in 1990 and originally issued on What Next? - derives from an improvisation called “Nautilus”, conceived the year before by Lockwood with Art Baron and Scott Robinson. The definitive line-up for this version also comprises Libby Van Cleve, Jon Gibson, J.D. Parran, Michael Pugliese, John Snyder, Charles Wood and Peter Zummo. It’s a very sensual tapestry, whose ritual aspect is enhanced by the fairly unusual counterpoints happening between different instrumental families. The most evident feature resides in the exploration of ample resonant spaces, greatly highlighted by the timbres of didjeridoos and conch shell trumpets which, together with a variety of exotic percussion, alter the reality of an otherwise tranquil landscape by engaging sweet-sounding contrasts with clarinets, English horn and oboe, the trombones acting sparingly as elements standing halfway through apparently distant worlds. The composer describes the idea for this piece as “the gradual awakening and release of sonic energy”; indeed the call-and-response mechanism at the basis of this music is a nice representation of that process which, except for slightly more agitated drum patterns appearing towards the end, remains well visible throughout, as listeners can follow the development of a primal impulse into a fully fledged creature step by step. The reissue is completed by “Floating world”, a 1999 collage of splendid field recordings commissioned by Lockwood to all her friends working in that area, who were asked to contribute sounds from locations “of personal spiritual significance to them”. The prominently aquatic character of the track, enriched by repeated cameos from the local fauna, made me recollect about Alvin Curran’s “Maritime rites”. But even in other circumstances, such as Lockwood’s seaming of Steve Peters’ oak tree branches-cum-wind and Ruth Anderson’s sonogram of her own jugular plus a lake in Montana, we’re totally in rapture with the exquisite limpidness of these unprocessed sources, sealed by a conclusive, soul-stirring moan - an aeroplane, a power station, I don’t want to know - which leaves us ever doubtful, yet serenely detached at one and the same time.

ANNEA LOCKWOOD - A sound map of the Danube (Lovely)

In 2010, Annea Lockwood will see her 40^th year as a river-recording expert. In 1989 she released “A sound map of the Hudson river” on this very label and now, after five trips to Europe over the 2001-2004 temporal span, a triple CD documenting the forms of life inside and across the Danube, the second longest European river. The set comes with a real map tracing the course of the Danube from the German Black Forest to the Black Sea where it ends; here we can also read the English translations of the interviews realized by the composer for the project, the interviewees including characters as different as teachers, fishermen, police officers, pension owners and artists. Lockwood recorded all the available voices - waters, animals and humans whose daily activity revolves around the big flux - assembling them with typical mastery and an evident inner ear, which is what distinguishes a serious environmental artist from those who just flick a switch, roll the tape and wait while picking their nose. This particular sensitiveness determines that every element possesses the same weight in the composition, although the almost perennial gurgling flow constitutes an ever-present reminder of who the lead actor is. As it often happens, the deepest levels of introspection are reached through simple means: Lockwood chose to put under focus well determinate sonic features, by which the listener is accompanied in regular cycles. Especially noteworthy is the musical quality of the water wash - gulping plops, dripping melodies, dynamic modifications, violent bursts at times. This is something that is perfectly described in the notes: “…the river has agency; it composes itself, shaping its sounds by the way it sculpts its banks”. Of the three records, the most fascinating is probably the first, which comprises the tolling of bell towers whose majesty seems to rise directly from the undercurrents. Highlights of an important release, worthy of every single minute of the attention that you’ll give it.

LOKAI - 7 million (Mosz)

Florian Kmet and Stefan Németh create oscillating chiaroscuro images of perturbed tranquillity through an interesting use of guitar and electronics. There are involuntary allusions to several recent similar project - see the above reviewed Arden CD - yet the duo distinguishes their broken-dream atmospheres with a larger employment of noise and disturbance: good examples come from the distorted drones of "Chuuk" or the initial mass of radio transmissions opening "Histoire DS". Florian and Stefan's sensibilities shift the focus nicely, spanning from clear articulations and circular mind-benders to adventurous investigations of electroacoustic implantations breaking an imperfect calmness. Choosing to reduce the record's duration at about 37 minutes they also show an appreciable will to avoid overstaying their welcome - a rare commodity these days.

FRED LONBERG-HOLM - Dialogs (Emanem)

Look at that nice woodpecker disintegrating a tree with its turbo-charged beak; watch temerarious jugglers handling high-tension sparkles. The wood, the electricity, the nerves: everything is visualized in Lonberg-Holm's music. Fred shows he's not a teleseller of low-octane gasoline for spent acoustic engines, nor an outbuilding type of new kid in town. "Dialogs" is almost marginalizing backwards, as the crude sincerity of these improvisations sounds like a finger pointed under the nose of an unpolite audience member, showing him the way out. This is music to be divided among few in a room, a communion of energies that launders cheapness and harmonic imitations of plastic nirvanas; it's ragged, loaded with sonic goddamnedness, strong and fighting with rocks in its hands. The muscular definition of this cello saboteur is neatly contoured in the blinding light of artistic significance.

FRED LONBERG-HOLM QUARTET - Bridges freeze before roads (Longbox)

Four individual voices overlapping in convulsive fragmentations, yet never exceeding the threshold of a barely disturbed imperturbability; even if Lonberg-Holm is indicated as the "leader", this is pure and simple "anarchic democracy". The abundant fruits generated by the artistic sensitiveness brought in by Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet, Glenn Kotche on percussion and Jason Roebke on bass are tangible since the very first listen; the development of a common, if atypical language seems to be the only thing that matters for this quartet. Gregorio's clarinet is obviously the most prominent voice together with Lonberg-Holm's cello, the high register completely dominated by this acute double identity; Kotche and Roebke choose to remain mostly in the background, conscious about the equal importance of their fundamental role of titillators of ultrathin atmospheres, where every sound becomes a necessary pawn in a complex game of untold secrets. It all amounts to pretty difficult music, played by bright-minded musicians for the listening pleasure of the most focused aficionados of the "genre" (?)

FRED LONBERG-HOLM / BREKEKEKEXKOAXKOAX - Split (Cohort)

Interesting departure from the standards in the series of split CDs by the label from Monticello, Indiana. While we were used to mainly receive sets of intangible electronica and, in general, variations on the theme of investigational space/drone music, this time John Gore paired a couple of well-known names in the field of lateral thinking, attributing a totally different character to the release. No need to repeat who Fred Lonberg-Holm is, his name linked with just everybody in the most disparate circumstances. Astounding indeed are the cellist’s three “studies”, built upon emaciated structures - often made of a single sound - that in their sonic dearth emanate the apparent inventor’s will of closing the doors to any reading. Harsh, rusty tones, feedback and scarce movement, a physicality that recalls the still present beauty of a top model suffering from anorexia. Brekekekexkoaxkoax (Jacob Green, Glen Nuckolls, Josh Ronsen, Genevieve Walsh) play a lone 27-minute improvisation that explore the nuances of a droning inconstancy, its content not distant from Third Ear Band (in very small doses), ruptured by a non-virtuoso approach to the instrumental depiction. Overall, a rather sincere blend bordering on the drowsy, adding a few precious particulars to a generally calm scenery.

LONDON IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA - Responses, reproduction & reality (Emanem)

The explorative illuminations presented in these seven improvisations, recorded during the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Freedom of the City festival, set the parameters for artistic philosophy and combined intelligences within a sonic chemistry that destroys canonical subdivisions to raise questions often impossible to answer through sheer words. Echoes of serialism, Zappa and Ligeti seem to appear here and there, like benevolent ghost presences over a horde of gifted musicians who would have made even Duke Ellington willing to go for transcendence. Serpentine elucubrations and blasts of regulated vehemence go hand in hand in these involuntary montages of impressive idiosincrasy to the rules. The imagery gathered by the Orchestra, while effortlessly creative, is a gallery of contributions from the most important names in the free music area; too many great artists to be listed here - and they all deserve the same applause; but, to name just one, it is impossible to resist to Paul Rutherford's captivating developments whenever he enters the scene. On his chest I appoint a symbolic medal to show my gratitude to all the members of the L.I.O., the kind of resistent warriors constantly trying to save today's music from certain death.

LONDON IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA / GLASGOW IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA - Separately & together (Emanem)

I usually have a hard time in reviewing records by improvisation-based orchestras. Such is the wealth of circumstances, dynamics, instant thinking and abandoned rationality at work that defining the whole with three or four scribbled concepts sounds almost offensive to the players involved. In the liners, David Leahy correctly poses himself this question: “What is the role of a conductor with a group of talented improvising musicians, who have more than enough experience to not need someone in front of them telling them what to do?” Paraphrasing Leahy I’d ask myself how one should reasonably describe the meeting of two large groups including soloists of the calibre of Harry Beckett, Terry Day, Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker, Veryan Weston, Raymond MacDonald, Neil Davidson, to name a few only. Therefore, let me stick to sheer facts. The 2-CD set features the entire concert at the 2007 Freedom of the City by these entities in distinct combinations (LIO and GIO alone, plus an intertwining of both). What members and conductors alike were trying to concoct was a continuous flow of sound which, in different phases, is improvised or conducted. Not even the most expert ears can really determine when a setting is free and where conduction begins, although clues are definitely present. But we’re not here for guessing, thus the best alternative remains discussing this music as a natural phenomenon, forgetful of who’s there, only perceiving changes, eruptions and subversions similarly to the weather signs that make us close the windows when we realize that a storm is approaching. Let’s just say that the first disc is a little “theatrical” in some of its aspects (the participants use the voice too, for instance in Day’s “Too late, too late, it’s ever so late” which deals with human insensitiveness in climate change-related issues), while the second is essentially and inherently musical, the sonic events appearing and disappearing without an express notice of the instrumentalists’ operations, although one can appreciate their absolute dedication to the collective aim. Either way, and there were no doubts about it, these materials demand a lot from the players but especially from the audience. A single listen won’t do it - a minimum of five is required before starting to understand at least the basic connections.

SCOTT R. LOONEY - Repercussions (Edgetone)

An album for solo piano and hyper-piano (that means with semi-prepared elements and techniques) shows that Looney is one of those artists who can make his voice heard in a large crowd. Not a surprise that he has played with the best improvisers on the scene - Oliver Lake to Joe Morris to Henry Kaiser - and collaborates with contemporary dance companies such as Savage Jazz Dance. Gathering stylistic qualities that could be associated to people like Keith Tippett or, why not, fellow Edgetoner Thollem McDonas, Looney explores the instrument with the same audacity, fancy and perception while constantly keeping an eye on the overall scheme of things. Freelance runs and exploded harmonies appear and fade away, clouds pushed by powerful breeze. Significance hurtles out of the holes of boredom, the protagonist always in charge of his aesthetic establishment even when deciding to let the horses run faster. Timbral instabilities and crystalline chords alternate in differently charged settings, no surplusage of notes necessary to explain concepts that just flow from Looney’s mind as balls from an expert juggler’s hands, going up and down without falling on the floor. A style that’s as trenchant as classic, enclosing many facets of present-day pianism but sounding totally personal. Very good things indeed.

LOOPER - Squarehorse (Utan Titel / Absurd)

Those of you who listened to the wonderful "Radial" by Nikos Veliotis will be happy - just like me - to savour once again the magic potions of this sensible cello player, here in a trio with Ingar Zach (percussion) and Martin Küchen (sax). As in the previously quoted record, there's a fantastic wealth of sustained arco trance; Looper, though, often mix these drones with placid yet ear-piercing frequencies, resulting in soundtracks for an imminent apocalypse, only once in a while interrupted by long moments of total silence where an already enhanced brain can regroup for a while and start again from zero. If you experience minimal improvisation like if you're deep into meditating, this is one of those cases where one must wear the music all over the body: enjoy the vibrational impact of the cello, the energy channeled by the air blowing into the saxophone, the sparse blessings of a percussive path transforming into pure electric flow. Is this "sacred" music? Absolutely not - but when you play with serious dedication, the enchanting beauty comes out of her abandoned castle.

LOOPER + JOHN TILBURY - Mass (Esquilo)

If we look into a picture long enough, our mind is likely to notice impressions and particulars that do not exist in reality, just like it will generate imaginary patterns when we listen to repetitive music. The whole concept of "Mass" revolves around this experience, which - in my case - was one of deep transcendence and, although I'm adverse to this kind of overabused terminology, very near to pure meditation. This DVD contains two performances - from 2005 and 2006 in Oslo and Stavanger, Norway - by Martin Küchen (sax and pocket radio), Nikos Veliotis (cello) and Ingar Zach (percussion) with the addition of John Tilbury, naturally on piano. The video (realized by Veliotis) consists of a continuous superimposition of pictures, mostly based on sacred images and portraits; users can choose to accompany the visuals with one of the two audio tracks, both lasting almost one hour. The DVD also comprises three video extracts from the Stavanger concert, very useful to understand how the four artists move to elicit the often overwhelming drones and hums that characterize the most engrossing segments. But the real deal is listening to the music while staring at the screen, with all those colours and faces slowly morphing into each other in a perennial shift of masks that gradually lose their human features to assume the semblance of animals, leprechauns and demons but also seem to contain additional mini-countenances that appear and disappear, all of the above - let me stress this point - through sheer concentration towards the TV set and thanks to the great music produced by the quartet (in case you ask, I don't drink, smoke or get stoned in any way). Just let your brain do the work, kaleidoscopic mutations and disfigured physiognomies contrapting and elongating in intriguing coalescences; the fabulous combination of piercing harmonics, lingual patterns, pulmonary exhalations and decadent inertness devised by Looper fuses magnificently with the typically subdued approach by Tilbury, who only once in a while releases some powerful low-register chords and a few rare arpeggios that remain suspended in between nowhere. But describing the music in detail would be foolish, as this is one of those instances in which the participation to the ceremony is not completely effective without the optical contribution, despite some contrary opinion that I read elsewhere. A veritable trip for ears and eyes, "Mass" instantly secures a place among my favourite EAI releases of all time.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Untitled #119 (Lapilli)

I'm sitting in front of an audio representation of the minutes preceding the apocalypse and there's no way someone can convince me to move. A little more than 17 minutes is enough for López to show, once again, why he's so highly rated in today's soundscaping: from total silence, Francisco nurtures a slowly growing mass of burning frequencies that make me think about a nuclear catastrophe; something you hold your breath for, rather than listening. Just when the explosion seems imminent, everything stops abruptly, leaving you in exclusive company of your body sounds. A terrific miniature masterpiece.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Untitled (2004) (Moso)

While many composers struggle to find new ways and materials to aliment the flickering flame of their artistic void, López keeps releasing fascinating music without the need of deviating from his main path, which remains perfectly delineated by his creations, always full of unusual acoustic phenomena and distinctive soundscapes born from a series of raw sources recorded by himself or given to him by fellow sound artists. "Untitled (2004)" contains nine rousing examples of Francisco's aesthetical point of view, including a fabulous homage to Pierre Schaeffer - "Untitled #163" - which in less than 20 minutes juxtaposes finely detailed field recordings, silent reflections and subsonic movements establishing a direct connection with the core essentials of our biological entity. Several shorter tracks manage to keep us constantly receptive, the most emotional being "Untitled #161", based on the pulse of human breath (by Cecile Martin); this piece seems to represent the perfect balance between man's need of survival and the artist's urgency to exorcise the unnecessary complexities of inner research; it's just another enthralling chapter in one of the best recent works by López.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - El dia anterior a la emergencia de los adultos de magicicada (Purplesoil)

The music is there but only your house's walls and selected parts of your auditive system respond to the connection. The piece lasts only a little more than 15 minutes, yet it is a masterpiece; a single subsonic drift comes out a little, then withdraws, then again returns to occupy the corners of the ceiling, slowly taking possession of your essence. Moving around the room, the sound becomes more intense or is almost completely cancelled in a sort of illusory phase whose gradual consumption is completed just when the body recognizes this throbbing code as familiar. Impossible not to be impressed by this game of contrasts between tension and comfort, which confirms López 's current state of grace. The "repeat" button is absolutely recommended.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Untitled #164 (Unsounds)

Another impressive work by Francisco López, this time based on urban field recordings made in Brussels (together with TMRX, Johan Vandermaelen, Martiens Go Home and Building Transmissions) and reworked by the Spanish sound researcher to respond to a commission by Argos Festival in 2004. This composition is a game of contrasting energies taking their nourishment from the very silence they come from. The first part is built upon a deep pulse sounding like a sleeping giant's heartbeat, a fabulously suspended sensation of invisible life happening under the surface of the unknown. About 20 minutes into the piece, the treated sounds of the city become a powerful wind whose impetus constitutes an ominous presage from which we feel strangely protected, like being wrapped by a thick cocoon - but not for long. Cyclical clicks and mechanical breaths bring us back to more concrete revelations while whooshing ectoplasms - apparently, running cars in tunnels - emerge as a charming element even if acting as a sort of distraction from the basic soundscape. The central section presents the strongest "industrial" intensities, whose hypnotic allure is soon replaced by ghost-like clouds of introspection, undercurrents of low frequencies and percussive clatters. City sounds are also perceptible as "presences" in the final movements, just like moans from the souls of mariners whose life was claimed by the sea; this is the most emotional section, a mass of droning streams and scents of desolation leading everything to the end.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Untitled #180 (Alien8)

This time we got a slightly more agitated soundscape from López. Even if this composition has no shortage of long, breathtaking moments where we're left alone within natural (or less) reverberations, subsonics and our own heartbeat, there is also an incredible amount of cut-and-paste of the most various sources, such as breaking glass, animal growls, closing doors, walking on snow, powerful winds. And many additional noises, often coming in fragments so short that we don't have the time to understand what they are. As usual with the Spanish composer, the quality of the recording is at the highest level; the listener is subjected to a continuing series of changes in the sonic scenario, abrupt shifts that always seem to catch us off guard, forcing a mental reorganization. One tends to expect "the worst" even in the tranquil sections - and it usually happens. The piece ends with about five minutes of buzzing hiss, another enigmatic choice for the prolific López, a man that never releases anything under the "very good" grade.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Lopez Island (Elevator Bath)

The title does not refer to a personal possession of the composer, it's just an American island in the Pacific Ocean; the namesake album deals with piecing together sources recorded in that remote area during the winters of 1999 and 2000 and subsequently subjected to some degree of studio treatment. After a silent portion, we're welcomed by sounds of raindrops, some of them heavier than others, thus causing sharp ticks and snaps that, in their pure nudity, surpass all the digital micromolecules heard in most laptop releases nowadays, all of this surrounded by perennial winds and distant washing. About 17 minutes into the piece, a short nocturnal segment introduces a series of unhappy sounding moans by some unidentified inhabitant of the forest. A typical segment of "López silence" divides this part from the next and longest one, which begins with something like looped and processed thunderstorm somehow dampened by the very same wind that rips through the majority of these recordings; it gradually rises both in volume and extraneous noisy appearances until it becomes a menacing - make that evil - presence whose voice is coloured with a metallic/shortwave-like gradation, accompanied by an ever-present rumbling foundation. Although recorded in an island, all of the above recalls urban desperation, as elliptical murmurs and flanged spirals of lamentations wrap us with an uncomfortable tissue. It finally cuts to silence again until the very last minute, in which a final helping of deeply affecting howls in a marine climate kisses us goodbye.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Wind [Patagonia] (and/OAR)

This is the last CD that I listened to in 2007, right in the middle of the final December evening - so much for firecrackers and champagne - and the opener of the subsequent morning. While I’m writing, as it often happens, the windows are open and an icy winter breeze in a glowing sunny afternoon is being heard, the effect on the fallen leaves that of an irregular rustle interrupting the first day of January’s somnolent reprise of activities. From here, this is seen as the completion of one among the innumerable cycles of which our existence is full. In this same frame, Francisco López’s recordings of winds from the Argentine regions of Patagonia (Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego) finalizes the triptych started in 1998 with “La Selva” and continued with “Buildings [New York]” in 2001. As he explains in the liners, the composer was (is) interested in “an extreme phenomenological immersion led by anti-rationality and anti-purposefulness” in a “world devoid of human presence”. López, a trained entomologist and accomplished deep listener of this planet’s many voices, is also among the very few who have an actual chance to experiment with the above described conditions, his recordings documenting situations where nature and self-consciousness become parts of a whole set of drastic states of mere being that only the fittest can endure. In a strictly “musical” sense, three basic kinds of wind are captured in this album: furiously ripping discharges that seem to destroy the microphone’s capsule, distantly roaring whooshes whose voice is akin to hearing a faraway jet, progressively calmer settings that close the show reducing the level of perception down to a typical “López silence”. It’s the depth of the implications that transforms a potentially normal document of natural sounds into a galvanizing, reinvigorating event. The Spanish soundscaper needs no additional words to highlight an already recognized mastery in this game.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Live in Auckland (Monotype)

“Live in Auckland” was recorded at the School of Creative and Performing Arts of that city in 2004. Our favourite entomologist takes us by surprise at the beginning of the concert, almost instantly projecting the listeners in a thrumming, hissy, essentially industrial environment full of clanging and thudding eruptions. Quite a difference from the interminable gripping quietness which the Spanish usually subjects us to. About ten minutes into the performance everything stops abruptly to leave room to distant echoes of winds and insects - we're back to classic López, my headphones accusing distortion from the inexorable whams that define this section. The intensity of the buzz increases, a sense of pre-explosion placing its hands on our throats, yet nothing happens. A series of irregular clatters is submerged by rapidly advancing drones that end suddenly in favour of stranger manifestations, something like bionic woodpeckers attacking long-suffering trees. Another pattern appears, followed by superimposed clock ticks in a truly surreal moment, whose hypnotic magic defines one of the best sections of the whole disc. The impressive mass of scarcely recognizable sounds shifting the track's weight to the drone zone is also strategically placed, and extremely engrossing; yet there's always something rumbling or mumbling somewhere, either underground or on the soundscape's surface. The piece proceeds according to these systems and rules until the abrupt conclusion, a great aural experience without second thoughts. What's to be learnt from this lesson is that one may try and recur to silence to be considered a serious composer these days, but it's the method through which silence is evoked - even with sound and noise - that makes that artist special. Francisco López has been working on this for years now, the fruits of his research never resulting in unsatisfying music. You just got to be open to the inevitable surrounding din of human activities which, channelled in the right way, might near poetry sometimes.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ - Untitled #188 (Con-V)

Approximately 72 minutes of the most typically unfathomable López in this edition, which comes in an entirely black digipack (it’s not the first time that a record by the Spanish composer is characterized by such a kind of exterior, a delight for finding the CDs amidst piles of thousands of releases indeed). The attention-grabbing feature in this circumstance coincides with the lack of absolute silences, the fundamental element that habitually distinguishes long fractions of this artist’s work. The quietest sections incorporate some sort of perceptible movement, too: might be an uneven breeze resembling a cross of spurious electrical energy and asymmetrical interference, or remote roaring presences that we won’t succeed in accurately deciphering. Suspensions that - like in every other subdivision - last for interminable instants, the following chunks either gradually introduced or suddenly appearing, just an abrupt cut to a new prospect. Interestingly enough, there’s also a revisiting of certain settings erected upon thumping rhythms made up of intimidating concurrences of urban noises (or so it seems - with FL one is never sure about anything, the man rendering singing birds akin to the murmur of a ghost). The mastery shown by López in connecting the right dots and lines even when the whole appears just as an untidy heap of clanks translates into this writer’s hypnotic somnolence, caressed by the ever present harmony underscoring that dominant amassing of hostile machines. Or are they?

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ / STEVE RODEN - Le chemin du paradis (Fario)

As always in the case of this kind of material, the debate is open: how does silence affect a composition? How can one accept a record that can be listened only at high volume, in headphones, or in utter silence? How can you judge emissions bordering on an infinite silent bliss? "Untitled n°129" by López, contained here, lasts almost 30 minutes in which very few sounds can be heard, all at exceptionally low volume. Still, one can detect a rumbling underground vibration in the head, always fearing that something's going to explode sooner than later. Roden's "Slab/Tilt" is slightly more accessible, moving indescribable blowing electronics from the left to the right - and vice versa - in the stereo field. The collaborative track giving the record its name is the most "continuous" one, full as it is of low reverbs and lunar halos. At the end, I keep thinking that this is only another way of listening, for which we must increase our perception level. The jury is still out, but my own vote is always favourable to deafening silences.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ / SCOTT ARFORD - Solid state flesh / Solid state sex (Low Impedance)

This double CD pairs two of the most eminent manipulators of expansions and contractions born from a competent work on electroacoustic derivations. In "SSF", López explores a vast dynamic range, his phenomenal experience on the thresholds of audibility partially put aside in favour of a painstaking process of impressive modifications and overwhelming energies whose effect is comparable to a separation of your senses. Torrents of electricity, pumping lows and shattering vibrations take this music to the highest level of magnitude, putting López’s work in the same rank of John Duncan's and Daniel Menche's best; this is one of the most complete compositions I've heard from Francisco, his controlled disorder also being a powerful means of self-introspection. Arford's "SSS" fuses more concrete sources with equally awesome low-frequency engineering; as opposed to his Spanish counterpart, Scott's scenarios change abruptly, often surprisingly after our psyche is lulled during long moments of semi-displacement. Arford places his morphing sounds in an evolving framework of resonant interferences, hisses and utterances that have "anxiousness" spelled all over the place. Getting the brain and the auricular membranes used to this shifting bubbling takes its time - but once you learn going with this overloaded flow, the reward in terms of nerve power is a sure thing.

LOS ANGELES ELECTRIC 8 - Los Angeles Electric 8 (Self Release)

The name of the ensemble makes the intentions apparent: eight electric guitarists articulating digital dexterity through “classic vacuum tube amplifiers”. Ben Harbert, Felix Salazar, JohnPaul Trotter, Brandon Mayer, Marc Nimoy, Andy Nathan, Chelsea Green and Philip Graulty produce mostly clean or mildly saturated tones from their axes to tackle a variegated kind of repertoire that includes names such as Shostakovich and Mendelssohn (reproducing this kind of scores without descending into nonsensicality is not an easy task indeed - not to mention that, quite often, the originals sound ridiculous themselves by now - yet this group somehow succeeds) and compositions by Nathaniel Braddock, Randall Kohl and Wayne Siegel, the latter’s lengthy “Domino Figures” being the most interesting track of the program, a coalescence of modern minimalism and skeletal harmonies with lots of beautiful resonant halos. Braddock’s “III Tempered Lancaran” is clearly influenced by Balinese gamelan, the strange tunings making sure that the metallic qualities of the rhythmic pulse are improved, thus suggesting just intonation. The classics are finely executed but, for obvious reasons, the pathos deriving from these versions is negligible: LAE8 behave brilliantly, but I’d have a preference for them to focus exclusively on contemporary composers, as it’s there that collective spirit and solid skills get better highlighted. A pleasurable record, in any case.

HANNES LÖSCHEL - Messages (Extraplatte)

This CD demonstrates that Hannes Löschel is one of the best new music composers today. Fronting a quintet with keyboards, strings, electronics and bass clarinet, the Austrian explores the concept of the wrong/absent messages that we all find in our answering machine when back at home (in fact, the typical intervallic beeps and telephone noises are crawling under the music's skin throughout). What we get is a very well conceived scheme of modern chamber music on the verge between score and improvisation, bathed - in typical Löschel style - in careful filtering and sampling backgrounds. The four movements are all extremely beautiful in their non-definition of a genre; the bass clarinet of Ernesto Molinari is brilliant whenever present, and Michael Williams' cello is played with intelligence and heart. All instruments speak directly to the soul, even in the most difficult sections: in my book, that means excellence.

HANNES LÖSCHEL - Herz.Bruch.Stück (Loewenhertz)

I must admit that I’m particularly affectionate to Hannes Löschel’s music, not only for its undoubted quality but also because the Austrian was one of the very first artists reviewed in Touching Extremes in 2001, the year in which he kindly started to send me his ever-interesting works. Of course the pleasure of listening to Löschel’s releases remains intact to this day. “Herz.Bruch.Stück” is his most atypical project until now, defined as “a life’s journey from the wedding to the grave” in Peter Ahorner’s liners. This is better explained by the record itself, a splendidly executed melange of original compositions, traditional Viennese songs, rearranged pages from Schubert and Strauss’ repertoire and, needless to say, improvisation. The leader (on piano) is at the forefront of an octet formed by Klemens Lendl (voice, violin), Michael Bruckner (guitars), Walther Soyka (accordion), Karl Stirner (zither), Thomas Berghammer (trumpet, flugelhorn), Bernd Satzinger (bass) and Mathias Koch (drums). Gorgeous musicians, all of them, with a particular mention for Bruckner, owner of a technically gifted, literally unique guitar style (listen to his solo introduction in “Warum”, probably the best track of the CD). While many sections are strongly typified by Berghammer’s heavy-hearted trumpet playing, Lendl’s vocal timbre recalls Lars Hollmer, and it’s to the fans of that great Swedish artist that this album could appeal very much given its unpredictability, based upon a continuous genre-jumping even in the space of a single song. Dramatic modulations, theatrical crescendos mutating into slow-rock riffs, vibrating jazz moments and local folklore are masterfully mixed in something that may even sound “easy” at times, but certainly is not. It’s only the multi-faceted photograph of a hundred experiences, synthesized by the coherent knowledge of a young, remarkably mature composer.

HANNES LÖSCHEL / PAUL SKREPEK / MARTIN ZROST - Albert (Loewenhertz)

Starting with a pure jazz feel, the first moments of “Albert” could make you think that this is actually an old fashioned "live at Ronnie Scott's" by a new trio of young turks; but when elegant piano chords are placed into infinite repeat by a loop, you start to realize that a strange dream is unfolding in front of your eyes. Albert is the name of an old New Yorker that used to tell his stories to Löschel when he stayed there; his voice can be heard in some of the tracks, speaking normally over an hypnotic background or completely modified by the trio's machine dabbling. The CD often reaches the highest levels of sound treatment and - sonically speaking - is one of the most ear-pleasing among the ones produced by Hannes and his entourages, alternating static parts in which my head wanders around in semi-conscious state and direct, punchy slabs of found/sampled sounds and free percussion. To be listened at late night, in silence.

HANNES LÖSCHEL / ACHIM TANG / DAVID TRONZO - KINDS - The very life of arts (Loewenhertz)

Maximizing the potential of their wonderful eclecticism, Hannes Löschel, Achim Tang and David Tronzo sideswipe many different areas of contemporary music in an interesting coalescence of composed and improvised material. There is no dominant factor or genre, only a series of concentrated dialogues where the mainly percussive/prepared voice of Hannes' piano and the strange machinations of Achim's bass architectures introduce David's elucubrations on his slide guitar, which certainly does not suffer from egotism, perfectly fitting in the sapient prose of this peculiar trio. Like in every scheme involving the Austrian composer, "easy" is not an adjective to be used as this music offers repeated changes of perspective, requiring the most concentrated approach to enjoy subtle intricacies and raw liquefactions which are rendered with total technical command.

LOS GLISSANDINOS - Stand clear (Creative Sources)

Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet) and Klaus Filip (sine waves) offer their gradual process of frequency disintegration through this meaningful duet, articulated in three movements. The amazing control of every minimal nuance by Fagaschinski guarantees photocell dynamics in sounds that are unbelievably surgical, sometimes barely audible while they mix with a surcharged silence, broken only by suffocated inner ear noises and - just maybe - by some skipping heartbeat. Filip moves his waves with molecular precision, remodeling the cerebral equilibrium while making wax residues of every malleable substance in a try for a controlled torture of the membranes, which vibrate until your audio memory tells them to go with the flow, without opposition. The duo obtains your full attention through a deceptive understatement, in which aggression is subtle, almost chemical; the outcome of these procedures is uneasily distant from the expected: a clear sign of progress.

RUSS LOSSING / MAT MANERI / MARK DRESSER - Metal rat (Clean Feed)

It is difficult to accept that music so deeply affecting has been recorded in a single session, which lasted less than four hours (I chuckle when I think of U2 taking years to release two arpeggios and three chords - but let's not digress). In fact, the responsiveness between the players that characterizes "Metal rat" is on such a high level that it just sounds like it was pre-conceived or at least discussed in advance. No dominant voice here: Lossing plays in delicate, ever-conscious spurts that let us breath the rarefied air of instantaneous cleverness. Maneri's unique microtonal phrasing makes a virtue of uncertainty, suspending every judgement or consideration about the path to follow until a moment later - but that moment is likely to bring more doubts, if not sheer sorrow. Dresser is one of the most discerning bass players in the world with a reason, his tone infusing the pieces with a touch of needed security while at the same moment seducing Lossing and Maneri's voices with sympathetic veils of resonance. The music we receive is like an unexpected present, a virtual box containing the very things we needed in that particular moment. The language used by these artists belongs to the high spheres of improvisation, a combination of sadness, hopeful determination and clairvoyance which defines greatness, separating regular releases from rare jewels, of which "Metal rat" is certainly one.

LOW DYNAMIC ORCHESTRA - Low Dynamic Orchestra (Alice)

A masterful effort, mixing six improvisations that sound like they were composed and scraps from the repertoire of John Cage ("Five"), Cornelius Cardew ("Treatise") and Mats Persson (four pieces among the best of the CD) whose scores are open to a kind of regulated freedom. The quintet comprises Kjell Nordeson (percussion), Sten Sandell (piano, harmonium), Amit Sen (cello), Peter Söderberg (lute, teorbo, guitar) with the illustrious guest presence of double bassist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio, whose marvellous tone permeates the whole album, wrapping it in a massive yet delicate cocoon of textural fascination that includes magnificent harmonics and roars from some sort of underworld; one can almost smell the wood in his "Bass solo". Sandell's piano depicts figurations whose knottiness is directly proportional to his harmonic expertise; never expect to hear a platitude coming from those hands. A special mention must also be made for Söderberg, whose sober playing is splendidly complementary to any direction the group decides to follow. What really stands out is the balance reached during the combined improvisations, detailed and unobtrusive as an autumnal sunset in which every tree is surrounded by an oblique light exalting the different gradations of its leaves. The Orchestra creeps out of your speakers with elegant needleworks that just wait for the right receiver to be appreciated in all their seductive grace, in one of those records we feel the need to return to on a regular basis.

BJÖRN LÜCKER - Aquarian drum song (Creative Sources)

An academically trained percussionist and composer, Lücker is a free-lance artist who has collaborated in the most disparate settings - jazz to rock, improvisation to fully fledged orchestras. His knowledge is well perceivable throughout “Aquarian drum song”, a three-movement composition which, apart from very few piano notes, was completely performed on drums, cymbals, timpani and percussion. I don’t possess the technical expertise needed to read a drum score (assuming that this piece was scored) or understand how many hours of practice or what level of skill development is necessary to execute this work. I can only suggest that it does sound composed, not improvised, and pretty linear in its components - even in the most agitated intersections, which do not abound. What’s also to be said is that listening to a long piece of similarly conceived and arranged music is demanding in terms of patience, especially because of a timbral palette which can’t certainly be defined as “wide”. Lücker seems rather interested in the structure of the “song”, not too much in colour (which is visible, but not as prominent as its rhythmical essence). Therefore, at times one is left with an impression of having witnessed the unfolding of a refined exercise more than a proper creation. Of course this is not the case, and the seriousness of the effort is not in discussion. Let’s just say that a bit of additional complexity and a little less duration would have helped to avoid the sense of flatness creeping out here and there.

LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM - Brusnika (Drone)

A 7-inch by Russian Evgeny Savenko, "Brusnika" presents two tracks full of different strokes. Mixing synthesized, atmospheric and vocal sources Savenko creates nice multiform structures enriched by a sort of mystic feel that - for once at least - does not sound like a trendy posture. In this music one can detect various recollections, most of them probably involuntary, incarnating an amorphous entity that meshes Feldman's "Three voices" for Joan LaBarbara and whiffs of electronica from the seventies, everything enhanced by a competent exploration of the low-frequency abyss (pun intended).

LUNT - Broken words and lost answers (Hitomi)

This nice artifact is my first meeting with Gilles Deles' music under the "Lunt" moniker; in fact, Gilles has already released several records since 2002. Basically working with guitars, electronics, small noises and ambience, Lunt creates repetitive atmospheres with looping devices without sounding too derivative, if not for very rare moments somehow bringing back a few Eno/Fripp memories, promptly faded after a while. The best comes in most static tracks, such as the very beautiful "I left the light to fade behind my windows", where everything seems imprisoned under a melancholy spell; also the closing track "Paradox of floating arrow" stands as highly introspective and must be enjoyed - like the rest of the record - at low volume in "ambient" setting for best results. Never completely tranquil, Lunt's palette has many new openings I'd like to see exploited in future releases - maybe adding even more "static guitar" layers?

RENÉ LUSSIER - Le Trésor De La Langue (La Tribu)

Examples of unjustly forgotten artists abound in my memory, one of the most recurrent being René Lussier, an adroit composer and accomplished guitarist from Québec who, instead of receiving accolades for outstanding merits, to this day is shamefully overlooked: no articles about him on hip magazines, no release advertised if not in low-diffusion publications. Not a word wasted for Conventum either, the magnificent RIO-derived group formed by our man in the 70s that the "progressive" world seems content to ignore (although someone still dips the pen in honey for overvalued byproducts like Stormy Six, go figure). Hell, even the CD reissues of Conventum's two LPs went out of print in the blink of an eye. Over the course of 30-plus years, Lussier - who turned fifty last year - has produced a formidable body of work, scoring soundtracks, operating in the acousmatic field, releasing solo albums that stand proudly in the élite of probing music, the large part issued by Ambiances Magnétiques (trust me: you can't actually get any respect without a copy of “Le Corps De L’Ouvrage”).

Now is your last chance to jump on this creaking and scarcely populated bandwagon. As a matter of fact, this is probably THE reissue of 2007, re-establishing “Le Trésor De La Langue” as the most recognized among the Canadian's records while adding TWO discs worth of unheard tapes that complete the project, attributing the definitive shape to something that started, pretty timidly, in 1986. That was when Lussier got illuminated on what he calls "a sonic road movie", a conception that would use French language - a fundamental issue in Québec, where the French community is under the constant menace of being more or less overwhelmed by American habits and idiom - as the basis of a musical piece. The "treasure of language", according to its seeker, was to be found by listening to people talking in the streets, on the phone, in a bar - but also to the library recordings dealing with that area's folklore and politics. The composer says: "It's remarkable what melodies we speak to each other every day! And no one's the least bothered by these phrases, but transpose them into music and they can become surprising, even disturbing! "

"Disturbing" for this writer is the scary, if apparently light-hearted command shown by the involved musicians (both the "names", which include Jean Derome, Fred Frith and the late Tom Cora, and the less known, equally magnificent Claude Beaugrand, Richard Desjardins, Alain Trudel, Claude Simard, Pierre St-Jak, Jean-Denis Levasseur, Céline Chaput) in transforming the "treasure" into a complex, furiously odd-metred polyphony of fantasy-drenched sketches, ever-changing flows, intricate counterpoints that assimilate this Frankenstein-like creature to certain Zappa (who, in truth, had roughly tried the same approach in 1983, Steve Vai's guitar doubling FZ's improvised vocals on “The Man From Utopia”), and also to Henry Cow, Albert Marcoeur, 5 UU's, atonal pop and disjointed jazz, the whole sounding simply like René Lussier. Difficult music with a purpose, the penetrating, lucid vision of someone who does not feel comfortable in stylistic clothing. Hypothesizing the hundreds of hours needed to put all those "irregular" voices on staves is enough to make one reel; hearing the stunning final result could have anybody out on their feet. Distinguishable in the source materials are Charles de Gaulle's "Vive le Québec libre!" speech from 1967, and a reading of FLQ's manifesto. Everything rocks in a different way after the "Lussier treatment". Still, the truly puzzling situations involve "regular folk conversation", male/female exchanges highlighted by compositional choices in opposite timbral ranges - flute vs trombone, bass vs cello, and so forth. Astonishing stuff whose richness, ironically, can't really be described by flimsy words.

The archival discs feature a more recent track, "La mort du Concorde" (dedicated to Pierre Bourgault) and a "best of" collage of live performances (1993-94) of “Le Tresor”, obviously resulting slightly different given the technical impossibility of reproducing the original's exact details on stage, despite the occasional appearance of snippets from the studio album (mostly synchronized by Bob Ostertag's expert sampling). The "treasure" refracts a different light, pungent irony and enthusiastic fervour substituted by an almost bitter tendency to dissonance and closure. This notwithstanding, the playing remains amazing throughout. The concert fragments are seamed to selected parts of the soundtrack to "Le trésor archangel", a 1996 documentary by Fernand Bélanger dedicated to the venture. 

I had not been listening to “Le Trésor  De La Langue” for years, yet this is one of those albums that overcomes the "test of time" commonplace; the additions are deeply meaningful, not previously discarded accessories refurbished for the occasion. The cultural weight of this opus is heavy, now like then. If René Lussier were to be remembered for a single affirmation, this must be it. Here's to hoping that this superb re-edition will help in giving him his due, for this is mind-stimulating, intrusive music that should receive a much wider exposure.

LUTNAHIMAT - Kleine Mietzekatze (Entr'acte)

In the unique series of 3-inch CDs by this intriguing label comes this 13-minute single piece of hypnosis that sounds like a cross of Nurse With Wound and Cranioclast in their most minimalist maquillage. It is all based on a strange, involving cycle of repetitive low frequencies spiced with scraps of slowed down taped voices (luckily, just a little, as this is one of the things that I like less in experimental music at any level) and something like a pitch-transposed looped feedback. A humming deep pulse in the background completes this nerve-rubbing experience, once again showing Entr'acte's will of dealing with many different fields of contemporary electronica. To be put in "repeat" mode, ad libitum.

LUV ROKAMBO - Maze (Public eyesore)

Japanese improvisers Toru Yoneyama and Osam Kato are Luv Rokambo. This absolutely lo-fi CD captures pretty well the essence of their music, which in my opinion has solid foundations that need to be developed and carefully crafted. Through instruments and several toys - plus percussives - the duo ranges from almost silent and lulling atmospheres, based on plucked and arpeggiated strings, to distorted washes of echoing guitar and suffering, free-sounding vocals. I'd like to hear more of them, but above all I'd hope to listen to a better-quality recording to get all their details in full.

LUV ROKAMBO - Do the glimpse (Public eyesore)

Yoneyama and Kato are quite a duo: with just guitar, vocals, keyboards and toys they're able to raise some serious psychedelic hell. Meandering through repetitive trance mayhem, native indian-like chanting, bastard rhythms, noisy assaults, Luv Rokambo manage to fill the gap between Keiji Haino and Merzbow, never disguising their almost naive attitude - better still, making a major force point of it. Ear-flogging segments explode after long hypnotic parts in a dissonant river that, even in a lo-fi setting, is floriferous and full of micro-organisms apt to fill your room with good, tasty soundcurrents difficult to be contained by any sort of floodgate.

SU LYN - Clay angels (Bruce's Fingers)

A peculiar record produced by Simon H. Fell (who also plays in it), "Clay angels" is a collection of lunatic songs by vocalist Lyn, moving along coordinates which I have not been able to link to much else; the nearest comparison that came to my mind is Barbara Gaskin's work in duo with Dave Stewart, but Lyn's material is much more "tangential", based as it is on a 4-track cassette aesthetic principles and rather ingenue dreamy lyrics. Every once in a while, the music opens up to "regular" chords and progressions, yet most tracks are based on scarce dissonant strokes, preferably from samplers or keyboards played by Lyn and Fell. Stuart Braybrooke on drums and Roger Chatterton programming rhythms complete the lineup of this atypical - even for Touching Extremes' standards - record, made of recollections, whispers and interesting melodies but also of strange fastidious arrangements.

RAYMOND MACDONALD / GÜNTER BABY SOMMER - Delphinius & Lyra (Clean Feed)

A hi-energy duo that’s also capable of infusing refinement and reflection in their music, which is a first-class mélange of robust tone, expert drumming, tribal expression and free jazz. MacDonald has recently come to be known as an accomplished instrumentalist, having collaborated with names of the caliber of Keith Tippett, Maggie Nicols and Lol Coxhill; besides, he’s a psychologist working with sound applied to mentally handicapped people. Over the course of these eight tracks he often lets his channels completely open to spontaneous manifestations of vitality, under the guise of vocalizations, utterances and laughs. Still what strikes the most is the fervor of his saxophone playing, which presents all the right proportions needed for him to be recognized as a great soloist, a mix of strength and finesse that gives birth to technically advanced, yet extremely fresh-sounding excursions in the most exciting improvisational meanders. The dexterous capabilities of Sommer, rightly defined a “monument” in the press release, are definitely a stimulating term of comparison for his younger comrade, potent rolls, multiform accompaniments and African-influenced patterns always remaining perfectly delineated even when the excitement of the moment is fully visible, at times almost overwhelming (“Down at The Tonne” kicks some serious ass). It’s difficult to dig out something really original from a percussion/reed juxtaposition, but MacDonald and Sommer have achieved a functional formula to maximize the fruits of their healthy-minded conversation in an album that sustains the weight of reiterated listens, each time yielding new discoveries and refreshed pleasure.

YOSHIO MACHIDA - Hypernatural #3 (Baskaru)

Third volume of the “Hypernatural” series, started in 1997 and to date culpably ignored by your reviewer, this CD from Japanese Machida identifies oblivion as its core notion. “Nature consists of a myriad of different memory-oblivion circles”, the composer writes before applying a knowledgeable touch of magic to a cycle of field recordings, mostly captured while involved in international cooperation in locations such as Tanzania and Myanmar. Machida knows his tools inside and out, working with steel pans and regular instruments besides Max/MSP and Live4, being perfectly conscious of how often a circumstance should be recurring in a mix, applying the right processes for a thorough decontextualization of the same, the powerful effects of a source rendered unrecognizable at the basis of the whole. This music is not what we're used to call “evocative”, though, as the composer largely (but not exclusively) prefers suggesting a primary shape, a morphing glimpse of audio non-verité that must somehow be finished by the listener’s imaginativeness. The upshot is an electroacoustic blend where material foundation and inspirational emotion work in concert to aliment the will of finding smoothness in what appears unreachable at a first glance, that zone of our brain which we never visit but sometimes spits out, unsolicited, painful recollections of something that wasn’t actually experienced. Sounds acknowledged yet unfamiliar, an abnormal disorientation that’s also among the best places to be lost in.

MACHINEFABRIEK + STEPHEN VITIELLO - Box music (12k)

Dutch sound artist Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) got in touch with Richmond, Virginia’s Stephen Vitiello in occasional fashion while exchanging emails for the purchasing of a CD; the idea for an active musical collaboration came shortly thereafter. Usually, a long-distance artistic rapport is based on the swapping of files; instead, the couple decided to reciprocally send boxes containing the most disparate materials to make music with (which, essentially, are listed in the title tracks). The sources include everyday objects such as egg slicers, chocolate sprinklers (!) and plastic bags and more strictly sonic derivations like broken records, speakers and cassettes. The resulting amalgamation is fairly thought-provoking, but at the same time completely in line with the canons of Taylor Deupree’s imprint. Ensconced behind a timid notion of dynamic ambient, these sounds walk surreptitiously amid flashes of concreteness, still maintaining a veil of mysterious intangibleness for the large part of the record. Duskiness of all meanings, qualms about an unpredictable future; there’s no actual description for this music if not a sheer association to familiar states of mind. The whole without an ounce of nostalgic factors, the presence of warped vinyl notwithstanding. Those boxes were enshielding the foundations of a strange kind of awareness-enhancing allure, nourished by subliminal pulses and far-flung recollections immersed in slightly corrosive digital liquids.

MACHINE FOR MAKING SENSE - The act of observation becomes the object itself (Rossbin)

The quartet of Stevie Wishart (hurdy gurdy, vocals + electronics), Amanda Stewart (voice + text), Rik Rue (analog and digital manipulations) and Jim Denley (wind instruments + electronics), Machine For Making Sense are intent in the exploration of “relations between linguistics, poetry, speech, music and notions of sound, science and politics”. They have been active as a sonic project since 1989, after meeting at the Ars Electronica festival, progressively orientating their work towards site-specific situations. Describing these creations is not simple, although familiar factors are all but frequent and a good portion of the ingredients is detectable. For starters, let’s just say that MFMS elaborate snippets - instrumental or vocal, yet essentially snippets. There doesn’t seem to be an actual hierarchy in these structures: successions of events cause listeners to focus the attention on what happens in the very moment, without letting them think about what could follow, leaving no apparent trace of the previous happenings. The voice-related aspects are definitely central, always tackled with unusual intelligence: no useless improvisation, no stupid cry-outs, no virtuosity. Instead, labial segmentation, rhythmic glottology, gulping instability - in a word, almost total unpredictability of what a human body can throw out as shapes of phonemic diffusion. Denley’s winds are one of the few traces of long emission, held tones and upper partial sapience - and also “customary” extended techniques - accompanying the irregular constructions of his companions’ elucubrations in the rare moments where the whole might be smelling like a well-known brew. The electronic element is intelligently applied - utterly invasive or a little phosphorescent according to the circumstance, gloriously at the forefront in the final track “Observance 11”. As it happened with another Rossbin release - Alessandro Bosetti’s unsettlingly wonderful “Il fiore della bocca” - this CD is more something to reason about than a sheer “record to enjoy”. Still, as a listening object per se it stands among the most satisfying - and original, if you will - listening experiences of the last two or three years.

MAGICICADA - Everyone is everyone (Public Guilt)

The press notes narrate that, in order to spread his music around, Christopher White (aka Magicicada) dumped 25 copies of his "Static line" CDR without permission in the avantgarde bin at Tower Records. The 25 unsuspecting buyers who took the risk found just one of the many facets of this Atlanta artist, who is also a sound designer and photographer. "Everyone is everyone" is variegated, brisk and well crafted, a teapot of deviated psychedelia, rancid electronica and sounds coming from forgotten offshoots of Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from outer space", all of the above floating in a broth of Biota and Zoviet France with exhausted batteries. Using dozens of acoustic and electric instruments, manipulating tapes, voices and elastic looping, deforming most sources until an imminent overload, Magicicada succeeds by not taking himself too seriously; his music maintains that "homemade vibe" that makes me prefer this CD to hundreds of "one-zither-note-in-a-300-second-digital-reverb" releases dressed in Zen philosophy but totally meaningless. At least, White lets us share some of his fun - and the drones of "Cause" are blood-icing in their beauty.

MAGWHEELS - Evebuildingbomb (Ad Noiseam)

David Sullivan is Magwheels. Announced by a wonderful cover - a little girl looking up the sky while holding tight to her doll - this is a strong statement, by all means. Guitar sounds come from everywhere, creating waves of distortion alternating with washes of chordal superimpositions. The wall of sound produced by Magwheels in his deepest moments is so massive that you can hardly realize what's going on, while your speakers struggle to bear the low frequencies of all those powerful drones crawling around. This record won't leave you indifferent, one way or another: its violent kind of attack, though sweetened by several more lyrical sections, is gifted with a raw beauty that will repeatedly ask for your attention.

MAGWHEELS / STONE GLASS STEEL - Pane (Ad Noiseam)

Operating on the thin border that separates dark ambient and noise treatment, Magwheels (David Sullivan) specializes in a cross of onrushing grey areas of harmonically suspended soundscapes and cold glances to desolation, this last character nearing him to the best "post-industrial" projects without losing an ounce of his distinctive traits. Sullivan's new tracks are a collection of presages, a handsome wealth of creativity through guitars, samples, field recordings and computer. Stone Glass Steel's work on this CD is admirable; Philip Easter puts some magic dust to Magwheels' entire output, reassembling it into a new hydro-electric central of spectral unpredictable chords and powerful droneworks. Definitely a major result, where Sullivan puts the fundamental seeds and Easter grows the plant to its full beauty. "Pane" is best listened to when the sky is full of huge, menacing clouds.

RUDI MAHALL - Solo (Psi)

Entirely performed on bass clarinet, these seven tracks by Mahall tell a lot about his ability to communicate via angular messages, calls and responses, pauses, short melodies. Sometimes he seems to play the speech of a bird, but most of all Rudi is extremely conscious of the limits of his instrument, which paradoxically ignite his determination to the point of ignoring them. Occasional spurts of harmonic flotsam and irregular multiphonics cause a slight difficulty in the translation of these particular codes; the improbable patterns and configurations of the clarinet's lines mesh very well with a little bit of voice - a mix of deep breath and grunt - that Mahall adds to the recipe. This music's physical presence is not huge, yet it sinuously penetrates both mental attitudes and domestic corners, establishing a closeness which grows up with the passage of time, finally convincing even the most cynical listener.

ASHIS MAHAPATRA - Orange of (True-False)

Debut release by an Indian musician whose creations are guitar loop-based transitions through various states of gradual alteration of otherwise pretty regular harmonic figurations. To me, the difference between listening to "Orange of" by headphones and from the speakers is evident, and I definitely have a preference for the latter; in such a fashion, the rather simple structures of Mahapatra's tracks fuse in a mire of fuzzy waves, interlocking patterns and hazy repetitions that work well as an accompanying background or - if you're in the right mood - hypnotic distraction from reality. I've already found several comparisons in the press, the most common being Fennesz, and we're indeed not too far from there, even if this music is a little more commentary-oriented and probably less profound. Aidan Baker it ain't, either. We're talking of a nice album whose straightforwardness makes its undulating character the reason for a good try, without too many expectations but in the certainty of appreciating the honest effort of a sensible artist.

TONY MALABY / WILLIAM PARKER / NASHEET WAITS - Tamarindo (Clean Feed)

Tony Malaby’s playing calls your attention violently without sounding brutal. One just needs to leave material things going their way and dive down in the flow, especially when his soprano starts dictating the rules of an otherwise untranslatable jargon, where notes are not squandered around but are given as precious presents in a beatitude of furious consciousness and linear home runs. The rhythm section of Parker and Waits endorses the saxophonist’s vision with the ease that’s typical of trustful comrades, each one influenced by a different credo which, miraculously, reveals itself to be the same for the whole trio at last. The six tracks of “Tamarindo” fly away shortly, mixing a juvenile-like indifference to danger and the rapacious hunger of those jazz players who know, deep in the heart, that they’ll still need to learn something at the end of the path they’re following now. Music that invalidates the theory according to which inundating someone with ideas equals rendering the audience frustrated. In this case, it’s our body-and-soul totality that asks for more, be it Malaby’s whirlwind of prattle and invocation, Parker’s growling similarity to a severe father reproaching a son, Waits’ limb-stretching labour that refuses to negotiate with percussive cheapness. A sample of improvisational purity that must not pass unobserved, standing amidst the overall best Clean Feed releases - no questions asked.

RADU MALFATTI / ILYA MONOSOV - Radu Malfatti / Ilya Monosov (Bremsstrahlung)

As all the double-name releases in this label's series, these two discs come in a square metal box with archival cards as inserts. Radu Malfatti's "Discrete moments" - erroneously indicated as "Selbander" in some of the copies - features Nikos Veliotis' grey-and-lead cello amidst long (VERY long) silences, ruptured by the appearance of mournful harmonics and whispered drones that sound like if they were recorded near an urban traffic area. The expectation gets at times overwhelming during the interminable portions of total hush, but I'd gladly put this piece in infinite repeat mode, if only to listen to those fabulous arco insufflations. Ilya Monosov's "Music for listening" is computer-and-trumpet extreme reductionism: again, long silences and sporadic emissions, some of them pretty polite, others slightly distorted, all very short. It lasts about 13 minutes and I tend to consider it as a nice, funny game rather than a real "composition". Overall, an interesting pairing of not-too-distant conceptions of new music, but in this case one of the parts is decidedly superior to the other.

RADU MALFATTI / MATTIN - Whitenoise (w.m.o./r.)

Consisting of two pieces about 20 minutes long, "Whitenoise" is one potent excursion into petrifying umbrae. While the first half is sort of a "question/answer" between ectoplasmic presences manifesting themselves in between an overwhelming silence, the second track is more of a continuum where Malfatti's airy textures and Mattin's thinking memories create a tapestry that's a cross between a distant sea and an even more distant highway, both listened at night from a corn field. When the end is about to come, a stroke of noise introduces to new frequency drenchings, a mixture of crickety tongues, hums and glass-perforating overacutes counteractive to each other, yet impeccably sheltering me from any movement I may have wanted to make towards elsewhere. Help yourself through broken nothingness.

RADU MALFATTI / MATTIN - Going fragile (Formed)

Clusters of quietness. A concept that many years ago would have been object of derision but today - thanks to recording like “Going fragile” - is the basis of a movement consisting of almost no movements. These improvisations, recorded in October 2005 in Austria and Italy, are quite different in their structure; the Vienna segment is made of long silences broken by Malfatti’s soft breath and murmuring gurgles, along with Mattin’s feedback taking different identities, from short shocks to promiscuous frequencies and again to abnormal air currents. The track recorded in Tarcento is (a little) more extroverted, being for its large part characterized by a sort of communion between the sources, which seem to privilege a parallel interaction yielding a caressing layering of barely touched tones, unlikely harmonics and the weak distant noise of what sounds like an amplified fan. This music’s depth makes sure that finding words to describe it become an almost impossible challenge.

ROBERTO MALLO - Vribación (Taumaturgia)

Mallo is a drummer, and this is indeed a 34-minute album for solo drums and percussion, part of it (…or everything?) recorded live, with just a modicum of electronics. Once upon a time I’d have killed to hear a record like this, as drums were my very first instrument as a kid. Now it’s a little different, but let me tell you: this CD will not last in our perennial memories, yet this man can play. We’re not witnesses to a lacklustre set of thuds and crashes, or the attendants of an accelerated course on paradiddling dullness; this music is performed with gusto and, quite often, an adequate compositional logic underscoring even the most repetitive sections. The tension of the skin, the smell of the wood, some feedback and a bit of sample-and-hold recurrence, straightforwardness all around and, in general, an innocent sense of lack of restrictions and freedom from rules made me appreciate the effort enough.

MANDARIN MOVIE - Mandarin Movie (Aesthetics)

Rob Mazurek's new project is full of chaotic fury, unrepressed rage and a high degree of raw beauty. This sextet (Mazurek plus Alan Licht, Matt Lux, Steve Swell, Jason Ajemian, Frank Rosaly) starts from rusted fragments of non-existent themes to produce hellish cries from distorted sound treatments and mangled dissonant chords played belly-ached in full turbulence mode. At times sounding like a three-legged cross of Fred Frith's Massacre and Mnemonists' first utterances, Mandarin Movie also have a sweeping urge of continuous migration from elegance per se, preferring instead the blinding lights of a kaleidoscopical evisceration in order to let everyone know their music's enormous staying power; just listen to the final track "The highest building in the world" - then don't talk for at least a couple of hours.

MARC MANNING - A skeleton, soon and then forever (Dragon’s Eye)

“Life is only a fraction of the time that the body endures on earth”. That is the concept behind this CD by Marc Manning, a San Francisco artist and musician whose work has been produced under various aliases and is defined as a “veteran of several Philadelphia atmospheric bands” (although the names “The legend of Boggy Creek” and “Everything is fine” don’t report to my memory). This could be described as an ambient/installation album based on a mixture of clean and just slightly saturated guitar tones, overlapping and superimposing until a wavering sea of chimes, plucks and notes is generated. Many records have utilized these means to arrive to the same shores, and Manning is not exactly innovative in using his bag of tricks that contains no actual trick. Most of these wanderings revolve around the standard six-string tuning (namely the typical open E chord) and there’s no way - especially for guitarists - to avoid a sense of “extremely well known”, to use kind words. We can’t really say that this is a bad record, as there are sections that gently accompany your activities without disturbing. But the whole results rather inoffensive to these ears: a few changes should have been introduced along a path of over 50 minutes. Exclusively for collectors.

MARC MANNING / YANN NOVAK - Pairings (Dragon’s Eye)

It’s been a long time, but I can finally start a review by using the dreaded word “ambient” again. That’s right, “Pairings” - a series of elaborations for electric and acoustic guitars and voice (Manning, aka Heavy Lids) and laptop computer (Novak) - could easily be placed in that zone especially because of its basic melodic and harmonic content (with a couple of intensely droning allusions: the second part of “Pairing 1”is splendid in that sense) which “showcases the tender relationships between songs, instruments and musicians”. Hold your horses, though - it’s not really all sugar and candy: the processing work that Novak applies to the sources, which allows the material to remain in a safety area of reverberating consonance, sometimes becomes a way of disturbing an otherwise excessive calmness. These hazy guitar waves undergo slight discharges, minimal fragmentation, discreet pitch transposition while maintaining their essential placidity, letting us enjoy the “barely there” presence of the music, halfway through a backward rubbing of our securities and the peek-a-boo appearance of sonic leprechauns that seem to have fun by rotating knobs and slides when the artists are turned somewhere else. This element of controlled intermission is what distances this release from the mountain of useless records systematically churned out by the frequenters of this genre. Instead, this CD is intriguing enough for at least two consecutive spins at late night.

MANPACK VARIANT - Sticky wickets (Digitalis)

Everything that gets touched by someone belonging to Peeesseye’s genealogic tree is transformed in muddy rust, delicious electroacoustic vomit, devastating blackouts of those parts of the brain that decide cheap shots towards fellow humans. Manpack Variant (Jaime Fennelly and Chris Peck) are no exception. Coming in a sleeve whose artwork (by Jason McLean) is nothing short of delirious, this artifact presents seriously distorted hypnotic treatments for the neurons of those who still want to do something different from spending years of their lives learning how to cut human resources in relation to a budget. No instrumentation is given - guitars must be there, though, and lots of pedals too - but it doesn’t matter. This is an utter demonstration of brute ignorance about what’s commonly intended as “beauty”, a pissed-off hymn to bad behaviour that might cause damage to the ears if the headphone’s level is excessive (no kidding, folks: be careful, these guys don’t give a damn if your nephews will have to use the language of signs when trying to communicate). Acrid electricity choking stomach and neck like a poisoning solution, with a few exceptions (the subterranean hum at the beginning of “AC Ferries”, for example - I’ll leave to you the pleasure of discovering what comes after). Dangerous stuff for people who cry easily, indigestible for those in search of a guru, thoroughly incomprehensible for the ones who get next to enlightenment every six hours or so, but whose only interest is money.

LIONEL MARCHETTI - Dans la montagne (Ki Ken Tai) (Chloe)

Chloe presents us with a 3-inch CD containing an impressive 1996 short composition of musique concrete by Marchetti, mostly built upon human desperation and pain materializing themselves through heartaching cries and whiplash-like percussive cracks over an unstable background of haunting vocal "presences", whose timbral range goes from birds through malevolent spirits. The twelve minutes keep the attention alive throughout, never losing the grip on our tense nerves thanks to a constant momentum that seems to put even the expert listener in a sensational jeopardy. An emotionally charged, very touching piece.

AL MARGOLIS / IF, BWANA - Rex Xhu Ping (Pogus)

Through his amazing detachment and synthetic focus fused with a maniacal analysis and placement of every single sonic detail, once again Al Margolis has found a way to tell us something worthy of "Magna cum Laude" appreciation, such is the uneradicable beauty of his freakish conglomerates of musical literature edging the boiling waters of acousmatic autism. "Natraj" and the alluring "Frog field" are deviated specimens of hunchbacked minimalism, "Bwana style"; instead, "Tattooed love muffins" sees the scarce light of mutilated speech in a crescendo of creative processing and piercing frequencies - yet, it still sounds like a static block of constantly changing coloured auras. "Cicada #5" is an engrossing performance of Adam Bohman's talking tapes accompanied by a dark underground electronic background, while "Quaderni" is a tape/voice piece exploring more oneiric realms, even if it has a degree of "psychedelic" temperature in its anxious oscillations. But my overall favourite track is "Oy Vey, Angie", where a small group of loonies - "Orchestra D'Fou" - starts from scratch in slowly taking your cerebrum away with a delicious ode to aural mucilage or - if you prefer - a meditation on the contortion of a blind creature's fantasy stimulated by nine entities use their improvising sagaciousness while locked in a tanked aquarium.

AL MARGOLIS / IF, BWANA - An innocent, abroad (Pogus)

Idiosyncratic as hell, Al Margolis’ music must have told something strange to the mind of some director at WDR Köln Radio, commissioners of the American composer in 2006. Upon hearing the material, the liners explain, they stated that it sounded too “new music-y”, deciding against broadcasting it. Did these people really believe that If, Bwana would supply them with a neo-classic score? As Mr. Wilson said, god only knows. The CD features two compositions, both based on Lisa Barnard’s utterances. The title track, subdivided in four movements, was generated by a 16-minute improvisation that AM/IB “duplicated and extended”; then he gave different tracks to flutists Jacqueline Martelle and Jane Rigler to interact with, assembling all the parts in a nightmarish patchwork complete with electronic treatments of Lisa’s vocal trips. The result is a mix of XX century avant-gardism and lysergic atmospheres, a dissonant sinuousness that could be difficult to digest for newcomers, certainly not for those in the know of this man’s artistic consistency throughout an unlikely career. It works even better at whisper volume, functioning as a series of ghostly presences that seem to come out of the remote corners of a room accompanied by delirious tweets and gurgling moans. The final and shorter selection “Issue” sees Barnard and Margolis alone - voice cum electronics and processing. It’s a gorgeous piece, halfway through the lamentation of my cat Jerry when his stomach suffers after eating a rat (I’m not kidding: he emits a modulated “oyoyoyoy” that verily recalls fragments of this work) and a drugged meeting of yodelling muezzins about to fall into convulsions. What I love most in this man’s oeuvre is exactly the eternal suspension between intense experimentation and the will of trying solutions that no academic institution will ever accept as “serious”. Needless to say, for this reviewer “academia delenda est”.

BOB MARSH - Viovox (Public Eyesore)

Thanks very much to Bob Marsh for having written my review, since everything that happens in this CD is perfectly described in the sleeve notes, including the explanation of the ever-present peculiar vocalizations. What? I can’t do this? OK. Let me start with the instrumentation: voice, violin, cello, looper, harmonizer and a Kaoss pad. Fifteen tracks, which Marsh rightly catalogues as “rantings, ravings, sermons, scenes, little operas and whatever else they might be”. Indeed, given also the lo-fi quality of the recording which renders most of this music pretty murky, I instantly recalled the bedroom experiments that this writer made in the 80s with a couple of friends and a pitch-transposing vocoder. Ah, the laughs. The protagonist here is a couple of tads more serious, despite the fact that many of these words are just processed fragments of utterance. Then again, reading titles such as “I’m a sucka”, “Fuck it all” and “Calm down” one thinks of psychological problems (but no, it’s only another Public Eyesore oddity, god bless). At the end of the day, this is a nice specimen of sci-fi-meets-padded-room absurdity where murmurs, bellows and instruments become one and the same, boiling and bubbling like a hot quicksand which could even try to swallow your attention. One manages to take a last breath before saying goodbye to normality.

BOB MARSH / THERESA WONG / BRYAN EUBANKS - Luggage (Last Visible Dog)

San Francisco's Luggage Store Gallery is described as "the tolerant home of the longest running avant/experimental music scene in the country". With all kinds of extraneous voices and outside noise available for improvisational exploitation, it was the perfect place for two excellent sets whose common denominator is cellist Bob Marsh. In his duet with Theresa Wong, herself a cello player, indetermination and style mockery are just two of the many aspects of the game, which is often played in consideration of the particular "edge-of-silence" expressive ability of the two artists, who are constantly aware of the meaning and direction of their inventions while being involved in open-minded rhapsodies full of cello harmonics and spiraliform embellishments, with vocal interjections (by Wong) added for good measure. The conversation between Marsh and saxophonist Bryan Eubanks is equally rewarding, and even more reflective; the couple catches elongated reluctances from the air, transforming them in slowed down birdsongs and polypetalous flowers of imagination where graciousness and freedom of spirit get happily married, despite the divarication between these players' enormous sensitiveness and the suburban atmosphere surrounding their exhibition, police sirens and everything else included.

AGUSTÍ MARTINEZ - Are spirits what I hear? (Etude)

Agustí Martinez is a saxophone player from Barcelona who grew up in several chamber orchestras and jazz bands, then began to perform solo in the mid-nineties. This is his first release, a very good one. The initial "Serie B (for Scelsi)" is a one-note theme alternated with lyricism spotted by irony and desperation, a firm statement of intents under any circumstance. "For Pau" nears certain areas of John Butcher's work, but instantly runs away from the dangers of classification, becoming infectiously multicoloured and rhythmically unpredictable; Martinez is a player that loves silences and pauses, which deepen the meaning of every note he plays. Even the occurrence of (by now commonly used) lingual-and-salival spurts is more welcomed than accepted. In "Meeting", voice is added to augment and expand the palette; sharp outbursts and membrane-carving harmonics precede a whistling anti-song whose body is boned by additional glottolalia. Indeed, Martinez's personal approach makes him different from most saxophonists, essentially due to a more pronounced rhythmic presence (check "Cross-Light" for reference). "Moc and Caniche (to Paula)" is the most rage-and-enthusiasm act, where smoothness and elegance are thrown into a pot of dense articulation and sulphuric straightforwardness; the result is probably the best in terms of compositional interest. "Che Collons!" - a title that makes me suspect that Martinez knows Italian idiomatic expressions quite well - is a long improvisation whose balance of collateral significance, serene melodicism and disturbed spontaneousness is probably the best summary of everything that Agustí is able to conjure up from his right mind. Instead, "Tic" allows him to mix bubbles and rainbows in a metamorphosis of technical prowess, as effervescent scalar runs collapse all at once, delivering the instruments from jazz impediments. The title track is based on the tube-ish sound of the air, things we heard in a thousand records of the genre, but executed with precision and musicality by the Catalan. Overall, this album is permeated by an evident mastery of spacing and timing that renders the listening an extremely pleasing experience any time.

ANDREA MARUTTI - The subliminal relation between planets (Nextera)

Recorded live in the small rural town of Archiaro (Calabria, Southern Italy) during a festival of electronic music in August 2007, this is a classic dark ambient album of today - very long, slowly unfolding, apparently menacing but in truth rather innocuous. In typical fashion, the instrumentation is not specified, although synthesized and sampled sounds - heavily processed to become interminable shadows - should be at the basis of the performance. Those who read this website regularly know that I’m not an enthusiast of this kind of release. Apart from my well-known position against the myriads of amateurish dabblers proliferating in this area (from which Marutti, who seems honest in what he does, should be excluded), what’s utterly ridiculous is the “cosmic” angle generally attributed to drone-oriented soundscapes, usually by people who don’t have a clue about what “self evolution” really means. That said, taken at the right moment and considering the fact that this is a live recording, this CD works alright in spurts. This listener can’t find new words to indicate how a rumbling mass takes centre stage in the mix, or to applaud the precision of cross-fades that put a mourning pseudo-choir in the background to bring forth echoes of metallic clatter instead. I do like when the whole gets near immobility, so that one can stop for ten seconds, hold the breath and mentally nod “yes, this is good”. Overall, a few interesting moments amidst things sniffed as pretty regular. Best used as a soft presence at late night (for me) but the hardcore fan of the genre will certainly be satisfied.

JEFF MARX & JEFF “SIEGE” SIEGEL - Dreamstuff (Ayler)

Tenor saxophonist Marx and drummer Siegel showcase bright talents in ten improvisations where the right balance of freedom and regulation seems to be the main bedrock of their approach. Except for “Bird’s Sanctuary”, whose character is pretty ritualistic and deeply meditative, most of the tracks show lots of percussive sinuousness and melodic resourcefulness, resulting in a thoroughly gratifying experience. Marx’s corpulent tone never falters, delivering lines upon lines of forceful malleability which ranges from an extreme to another of the improvisational fantasy’s rainbow arc. No chance for him to be inserted in some heavy-duty shelf: after one’s convinced of having systematized that voice in a context of influences, off the man flies from our fist with swirling insurrections contradicting the previous codes of his playing. Siegel is one of those drummers whose polyrhythmic mastery transforms the “skin factor” into something that can be digested either as an unsophisticated marvel (“I don’t understand it, but it’s beautiful!”) or a demonstration of anti-egocentrism, as he privileges thoughtful interaction and sensitive underlining of his comrade’s virtues rather than exposing himself in full bodybuilder booming pose (case in point, the gorgeous “Kind Of Like Talking”). Nice effort from both artists, a veritable breath of fresh air that will find you satisfied, if not energized at the end of the album.

PASCAL MARZAN & ROGER SMITH - Two Spanish guitars (Emanem)

A guitarist is speaking here yet, from this point of observation, very few things are more boring than records for two or multiple guitars (well, maybe except the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet). From your typical jazz duo (one plonks inversions over II-V-I whilst the other sticks modified Superlocrian scales to nothingness as insignificant mosquitoes in the torrid summer air. Splat!) to “Friday Night in San Francisco”, among the most horrid examples in that sense - and the perfect explanation of John Belushi’s raptus in “Animal House”, when he crashes a guitar against the wall. That said, for our good luck this is not that kind of cheap-trick uselessness. For starters, Marzan and Smith are not that specimen of polished virtuosos who exist only for winking to themselves in the mirror, Mennen-style, while playing (not that I would expect this on an Emanem album). These segments were recorded at Smith’s home - take a look at the domestic setting on the photos adorning the cover - in total freedom, not an ounce of stress, using every available inch of strings and wood to produce a fine blend of improvisation that will draw garlands of acknowledging smiles around the neck of those who don’t want to hear a standard anymore, not even having a revolver pointed to the head. The guitarists casually throw fragments of probabilistic intersections like enlightened litterlouts, without caring about their destination or the eventual need of some sort of aesthetic law to obey to. Coming down to the nitty-gritty, the rationale behind this method privileges the instantaneous exchange of information - whatever it is - as opposed to six-stringed sob stories and mellifluous vacuousness. Conversations that easily sustain the whole length of the CD, and we know that this label does not issue 35-minute discs. Significant free music played on guitar is for a special breed of elects. Marzan and Smith received the call many years ago.

MIYA MASAOKA / JOAN JEANRENAUD - For birds, planes & cello (Solitary B)

The title may be self-explanatory, but if you think about some sort of new age relaxation program you're very far from the truth. Miya Masaoka recorded the sounds from the San Diego canyon - including more than 150 species of migratory and native birds, passing aircrafts, motors and distant unclassifiable signs of additional human activity - with the help of Marcos Fernandes in the early morning of March 15, 2004. She later asked cellist Jeanrenaud, a former member of Kronos Quartet, to use advanced techniques in order to match or highlight some of the sources previously captured on tape. Given the highly evocative power of all this material, it's all the more incredible how - especially at good volume - one can still feel a lone wolf just by listening to this enormous mass of frequencies, the perfect cross between the repetitive character of some of everyday life's noises and the unpredictable behaviour of our responsive systems when we're left in front of that very vital pulse which we never listen carefully enough, if not when it's too late to be overwhelmed by its frightening beauty.

MASUL - The arousal city (Creative Sources)

The duo of Paul Giallorenzo (synthesizer, piano, found samples, computer) and Thomas Mejer (contrabass saxophone, found samples, computer), Masul are a pretty mysterious proposition since the very first minutes of "The arousal city", a recording juxtaposing two live performances from 2004 and 2005 in Chicago. Darkish loops and pulsating asynchronisms depict dejected atmospheres in which Mejer's saxophone recites an important role, underlining faint remembrances and flickering nocturnal lights with long sighs, sputtering syllables and apparently incongrous abstractions. Giallorenzo works undercover, but the fact that I didn't hear a single recognizable synthetic timbre for the large part of the CD is the best certificate of programming intelligence I could attribute in this instance. The treated voices of "Arousal City #2" and "Pops" sound like a disquieting nightmare where all the senses are drowned in molasses, while "Arousal City #3" is the only segment with the pretence of a proper "rhythm" and a few elegant keyboard lines over it. Half theatre soundtrack, half suburban meditation, this series of sleepy, blurred snapshots is one of the most atypical releases in Creative Sources' recent output and, in a way, one of the most unsettling ones. We're never sure of what's going to happen, remaining completely entangled in this strange deformation of reality, a kind of disturbed trance that wraps us inexorably, just like a spider does with its prey stuck in the web.

STEPHAN MATHIEU - On tape (Häpna)

Contrarily to many self-made living room pretenders releasing records that are long and pointless, Stephan Mathieu decided that a little more than half an hour is OK to express his concept. Of course he's right: this is beautiful electroacoustic simplicity, where field recordings and extreme minimalism find the way to avoid a polarization, growing organically through the whole piece. If not totally peculiar, this record is certainly a sort of a peacemaker amidst torrential flows of coldness; though slow and detached, "On tape" actually outpaces twisted awkwardnesses and arrested developments, sounding refreshingly vital and politely warm with its processed sources and stable design. Sometimes a little is enough and Mathieu just proved it.

STEPHAN MATHIEU & JANEK SCHAEFER - Hidden name (Cronica)

There are times in which the real, essential beauty of a sound is better discernible through its misshapen version, its hidden harmonic contents suddenly appearing before our ears like an acoustic aurora borealis. There is also a good chance that the very spirit of that sound come out - even more clearly - by discarding its potential role as a part of a structure, in order to simply enjoy its mind healing power in terms of physical gratification, through a process of sheer repetition. This kind of result is usually achieved by the best minimalism, a quest for the zero of the significance through the pursuance of a complete mental void (in the positive meaning of the term). "Hidden name" is an album that joins the crux of all the above described phenomena. Mathieu and Schaefer used a series of instruments (including piano, clarinet, cello, flute, trumpet, accordion, sitar singing bowls and bells) plus field recordings, voices, games and found records, to generate elongated layers of static chords, environmental reflections, heartbreaking parabolas and nostalgic juxtapositions of ancient melodies and vinyl noise, which they later edited to create this absolute masterpiece. The eleven pieces are not linked in a single suite, yet maintain a visible coherence that blends their core meaning in a unique wholeness, and the sources are manipulated in spectacular fashion. A belltower is the basis for a quivering slow loop in "White Wings", then is engulfed by a muffled mix of instruments. Pizzicato strings are repeated ad infinitum in "Aisle". A piece called "Quartet for Flute, Piano and Cello" surprises the listener with a Jon Hassell-like concoction that seems to be reproduced by a cassette player forgotten in a subterranean cell, then ends with the most menacing low-frequency throbs one can conceive. "Maori Love Songs" is a postcard from a world that I can't just imagine as existent, voices wailing in absurd arrangements of rhythm guitars and inhuman reverberations. "Fugue" is a chorale that one would like to use during the body-to-soul transition while tripping to eternal silence. The final "The planets", the longest track at more than 19 minutes, is an emotional detachment of sorts but works as a conceptual link between our will to penetrate the unknown and the acceptance of our uselessness, all the while remaining suspended in never ending galaxies that nod to Yes' "I get up, I get down" from "Close to the edge" (those who will laugh at this reference are hopeless nincompoops, I really mean it). Stephan Mathieu and Janek Schaefer have created music that I really feel as moved by a special kind of grace, and that also touched me very deeply. To be listened for many decades to come, "Hidden name" should be an example for many pretenders, a good reason to put laptops away and start listening to life itself.

KOUHEI MATSUNAGA - For Gemini and back to Heian (Feld)

Should you try to do something else while listening to this 3-inch, Kouhei Matsunaga's torrential liquid of chipmunk electroacoustic outrage will force your attention back up to the maximum limit while hitting your membranes with high-frequency oblique uppercuts, fracturing abstractions and fusing contraptions in heterogeneous hints to Asmus Tietchens (to which one of the two tracks is dedicated) and to several other ragged glories of low-budget tape-laptop-glitch-noise music. Still, a headphone listen reveals subtleties that not many people can afford nowadays, giving this music a "fully grown up" character; not bad at all, in this world of meteoric itineraries.

KAFFE MATTHEWS - CD eb + flo (Annette Works)

Playing a theremin and "converting live things" is what Matthews does in these reconstructions of performances held in various sites. Straight out of my chest, I'll say I felt a prominent "Alvin Lucier vibe" as soon as I immersed myself in this not-so-easy listening. The best method to catch the whole Kaffe Matthews' frequency spectrum is either walking around the room so that corners and obstacles help refracting and reverberating the waveshapes and feedback layers all around your membranes. On the other hand, wearing headphones will surely help defining the granular images encountered during these 104+ minutes; sometimes you're just forced to stop in your tracks whatever your activity is at that very moment. Going from Eliane Radigue-like warm, slightly undulating timbres to the borders of grey-to-white noise in a low frequency galore, for sure Matthews knows her way to give a good refreshing to your well worn music making/listening concepts.

WADE MATTHEWS - Absent friends (Sillon)

One could easily compare these electronic improvisations ("100% software synthesis", writes Matthews) to abstract painting, as no trace of linearity is to be found here; textural morphing and disturbed glissandos alternate with white noise, bubbling bombs and dynamic fractures in a collection of irregular manifestations bursting with struggling energies. Although the variety of forms generated by Matthews is nothing short of enormous, listening to "Absent friends" is a pretty easy task, as this music sounds like looking for your biological sore points, confronting them with harsh perfection, making nerves and brain muscle stronger after the cure. Without a hint of rambunctious sensationalism, this album succeeds in keeping our attention awake for its whole length, confirming Wade Matthews as one of the names to keep our eyes on.

WADE MATTHEWS / INGAR ZACH - Morke / Lys (Creative Sources)

Six improvisations for electronic synthesis and percussion - each one titled with the translation of "Darkness/Light" in various languages - show Matthews and Zach doing damage to the imperturbable smoothness of regularity, thanks to temperamental exchanges of multiform epithets and magmatic advices. There are various instances in which distinguishing the sources is pretty difficult, such is the firecracker-like exposure of what sounds like a pillhead's dream and the amplified noises of spermatozoa swimming in sulphuric acid. This music wants to blow everything out of proportion, yet it is ready to accept unforeseen events as a primary reason for its very existence; the utterly anarchic behaviour one can detect in the creative process becomes the origin of a set of new peculiar rules, in which paradoxically the concept of "interplay" is less important than the chance of allowing each sonic emission to fully achieve its completion, therefore defining the overall texture of these engaging pieces.

MATTIN - Broken subject (Free Software Series)

Eliciting controversy is the name of the game for Mattin, and I myself am not really convinced by some of his numerous projects (the “Songbooks”, for example). But when it comes to using a laptop the man knows what he’s doing, and the presentations that he pretty regularly churns out are thought-provoking, psychologically impacting and often noisily beautiful - a raw beauty, that is. “Broken subject” contains all of the above mentioned features, its functional mixture of muteness and extremely gritty sonic gravel at the basis of a 30-minute performance recorded in Berlin. The album works well both by listening to the tracks’ original succession and in “random” mode; the result is the same, a modernist brand of computer music that takes no prisoners. At the beginning of the first track one almost believes that what’s heard is not so hurtful, but nothing could be more wrong, as we’re soon incinerated by furious winds of harsh, skin-ripping sibilance scarred by granular instability. We get used to that after a while, and it feels nice - so, take these three minutes of hush on the chin to spoil the party. No problem: that, too, is great. Then, what does Mattin do? He restarts the process, adding a measure of oscillation (there are fragments that sound like wavering sirens processed by a distortion pedal for midgets). Bits and pieces of this composite are meshed, alternated and erased at once. Then, silence again. Half an hour has gone, it seemed much shorter; good sign, I’m instantly replaying this thing. Very solid outing - among the Basque’s best in my book.

MATTIN / TAKU UNAMI - Shiryo no computer (Hibari/w.m.o./r.)

Both men look around with circumspection, precursive of their openness to incidental factors; Mattin and Unami unbalance our conventional scrutiny of taciturn habits with a well equipped depot of muted signals and blistering feedback. Their thick-skinned coolness between petrifying silence and scattered flotsam of spare mechanical gadgetry has the same look of an old neon lamp that's losing its grip: flashing or just slightly flickering, nevertheless it still hypnotizes, giving an aura of decaying straightness to the impurity of a deserted street. In this uncultivated economy of means, the sheer postural noises of our body and the wind that rumbles under the roof become ambassadors for the slow death of routine sonic itineraries.

MATTIN / TAKU UNAMI - Attention (h.m.o/r)

The thing lasts 74 minutes, long silent segments broken by a clean guitar (by Unami) that sometimes - peculiarly - sounds like a Fender Rhodes electric piano. No noise, no explosions of rage, no screaming. Therefore don’t be scared when Mattin (on voice only) appears and invites you to “turn up the volume”. I won’t be telling more, because no surprise should be spoiled. This is conceptual stuff, and one has to listen. That’s not enough indeed, we should pay attention. Did you read the title? The listening subject is continuously invited to do that, as in a test. Other kinds of consideration are present, too, but the essence is there. Understand or not. A few guitar notes, a few sentences, silence. It’s all here, and if “this is good quality music” that “deserves your concentration” (the Basque artist’s not-so-subliminal message…), that will have to be determined at the end. Unami, and especially Mattin, have grown us used to this kind of exercise, and I’m one who loves to feel challenged - or plain stupid - in front of similar outings. Still, those who give up before the arrival declaring that this is rubbish are all the more stupid. The point is: why writing a review of such a CD? The answer would be: we do what we want in our own website. Even typing words about this record while playing a Ray Russell Quartet album.

MATTIN / AXEL DORNER - Berlin (Absurd)

Acoustic phenomena. Noise. Silence, but a silence enriched by our own heartbeat, the buzz of the blood flowing and the pumping of the auricular membranes. What is the perfect observation point for a record like “Berlin”? The answer lies in finding the right spot to allow our system to reach its maximum adaptive response, which - at different moments - can be an individual aggregation of stimula or just a distracted reaction, like waving a mosquito off your nose while you’re concentrated on reading. Mattin’s lower-than-lo-fi computer discharges and functional attacks on the ears via stinging highs and ultrawhite noise mix very well with a very concentrated Dörner, a man who can guarantee many long moments of intimate gratification through an array of trumpet sounds that range from utopistic exhalations of bronchial freedom to affirmations of frequencies that would make my lonely boiler happy to have finally found a partner for life. Three sections that proceed in spurts and attempts, most of them successful, to delineate a logic for those sentences which logic would like to destroy, all the while maintaining a functional link to a near future where these raw materials will become a socio-physical means of vibrational consciousness (which is not always good, though: opened are the doors to many not-so-bright minds, as most people aren’t able to perceive harmony in mind-bending circuits, much less use this acoustic phonetics coherently) but also the signature that distinguishes those who are born “sound artists” - Mattin and Dörner definitely are - and their totally useless sub-shadows. The rest is all for our sensitive discernment to distil, and those of you with the right inner instrumentation will find “Berlin” a very meaningful release.

MAUGER - The beautiful enabler (Clean Feed)

An extraordinary rhythm section (ha!) featuring bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway - two authentic stalwarts indeed - evidently creates much more than “rhythm”: they devise in fact composite textures of intertwined patterns, contrapuntal inventions and even short silences encouraging alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa’s flights of fancy. This line-up brings back the pleasure deriving from listening to jazz as it should be properly conceived and executed, their interplay concentrated and spacious at once, actually giving the idea of a distinct unit without a real necessity to focus our interest on the single voices. Yet by doing precisely that we have the opportunity of enjoying the unpolluted ability of three terrific artists. The spiritual correlation among the musicians is substantial since the very first notes in creations as effortlessly palatable as the clear-minded discoveries of an advanced soloist. While there’s no shock in finding out, once again, that Dresser and Hemingway approach the music with warm passion and strenuously intelligent zeal, at times sounding like in awareness that this is the final day on Earth despite maintaining a marvellous coolness, the prominence of Mahanthappa’s voice is what probably identifies the overall tonality of the album: unrestrictive melodic cleverness, composed ponderings and probing investigations of angularity functioning in concurrence with the sound of wood, strings and skin to stamp a seal of authority on a classic trio release.

ALBRECHT MAURER / NORBERT RODENKIRCHEN - Hidden fresco (Nemu)

The name of Albrecht Maurer kept ringing a bell in my head, then I suddenly remembered him as a part of a fantastic Emanem project by Kent Carter's String Trio; conversely, this is my first meeting with Rodenkirchen. Both artists are virtuosos in their respective trades, coming from different backgrounds that somehow found a perfect trait d'union in the music they perform as a duo. Using gothic violin, medieval flutes and harp, the couple conceived an album containing almost one hour of outstanding music, motivated by many factors but definitely sounding like a strange brew of middle age, native Indian and traditional Asian, the whole in a modern classical dress. Even more impressive is the fact that this stuff is mostly improvised, because the bulk of the pieces contained in "Hidden fresco" is more or less comparable to scored compositions with just a modicum of variations. The title refers to Leonardo Da Vinci's theory according to which artists see the object of their creation in advance when observing a rock formation or a stained wall, and several tracks refer to pictorial and visual techniques ("Tempera", "Craquelé"). But this is not so important when compared to the splendid timbral poems that Maurer and Rodenkirchen bring out of their instruments, which the high quality of the recording exalts and enhances. Like every other Nemu release, this is a gorgeous example of over average sonic craftmanship, a record whose beauty does not depend on genres or classifications.

MAWJA - Studio One (Al Maslakh)

Featuring Michael Bullock (contrabass and feedback), Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet) and Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics), for sure Mawja are a trio whose attitude is not overly expansive towards the audience, their music being based upon a consecutiveness of mostly subdued plumbeous scenarios, essentially characterized by background spurious inertia over which the players examine various combinations of unfriendly improvisations and noisy transmissions. There are tracks in which certain gradations are more evident, but the general sense is one of collective edginess, each one of the musicians trying to find a way to place additional measures of anxious harshness amidst strange frequencies and instrumental utterances that cross-pollinate animal voices and radical electronics. The fifth segment is the most convincing example of what I mean, a deadpan undergrowth of semi-controlled feedback and grumbling intricacies whose volume increases with the passage of time, Kerbaj’s trumpet sounding (as usual) more like some mechanical appliance or malfunctioning vehicle rather than a blown-up brass. Occasionally, the music almost seems to stop altogether, like if Mawja were searching another way to render their creativity even less charming to the ears; their ideas remain nevertheless interesting, exposed as they are in a half-scientific, half-segregationist costume. A difficult album, scarcely communicative and without bright colours yet presenting us with several fascinating moments. The artists’ seriousness is out of question.

MAWJA - Live One (Chloë)

Neither Michael Bullock (bass, feedback) nor Vic Rawlings (cello, surface electronics), who have been playing in duo since 2000, had an idea of who Mazen Kerbaj was when the Beirut cornet-and-objects player went to the US to look for improvising comrades in 2005. They gave a chance to a suggestion by concert organizer Mary Staubitz and met, 30 minutes before the very first set (who said “rehearsals”?). There is no question of who, what or when if a human being is able to perceive the core essence of a vibrating pattern; needless to say, Mawja are in the condition of doing it. The two improvisations presented in this disc were respectively captured at Chicago’s WNUR and Washington’s Warehouse Next Door, both constituting a fulgent example of what these guys can do when applying their sympathetic knowledge to the sound sources. What’s played represents a holography of scattered remains, where timbral detritus, hum, hiss and (un)controllable discharges move, in a way, windingly, surrounded by atmospheric conditions ranging from the metallic degradation to the frequency saturation. Over-acute emissions and scraped strings encyst themselves in a seemingly hostile environment, managing to transmit security codes and ciphered messages the sense of danger notwithstanding. Working feverishly around the margins of grittiness, the musicians reach a level of semi-industrial poetry that I only heard from the most respected protagonists of this long-running snagged electro-acoustic saga (yes, AMM and Keith Rowe but also Morphogenesis). Often it’s virtually impossible to determine what instrument is giving voice to its bowels; that’s usually the sign of excellence, and this CD contains plenty. Extremely concrete yet elusive music that defies interpretation, nourished by lapidary gestures of intolerance towards neutralism.

MAGDA MAYAS / KOEN NUTTERS / MORTEN J. OLSEN / CARLOS GALVEZ - On Creative Sources (Hail Satan) (Creative Sources)

Should we take the album’s title as a pun on famous jazz editions? Just asking, because this quartet for piano (Mayas), double bass (Nutters), percussion (Olsen) and bass clarinet (Galvez) is an unambiguous look back to the origins of Ernesto Rodrigues’ imprint, the years in which even the less audacious among the improvisational units were beginning to take account of the extended techniques that are considered as a given nowadays in their “impromptu repertoire”, although they probably sounded fresher at that time. EAI was starting to develop its (frail) muscle, and everything from the scraped strings of a piano to the exploration of the over-acute regions of a reed instrument was saluted as innovation. I’m not telling that this album sounds dated, not at all. The four musicians regard the entire palette of their machines as a permanent source of timbral fulfilment, implying a perceptible eagerness and an attitude unmistakably defined by eloquent track titles (“Pitch”, “Non Pitch”, “Loose Surface”, and so forth). The adjustment of a pair of ears with these sequences of well-positioned swaps - whose qualities range from oversensitive give-and-take to mildly surprising intermissions breaking quasi-hushed settings - comes pretty effortlessly. Neither a real zenith, nor new tricks to get wonderment from are to be individuated; instead, this is an unswerving action of examination of instrumental dynamics all over 38 minutes. True, we’ve heard numerous correlated records in the last decade, but this particular one is very good. It emanates integrity, and that’s what this listener loved more than anything else.

JIM MCAULEY - Gongfarmer 18 (Nine Winds)

Half-composed music - or structured free forms, if you will - is probably what I like best when listening to solo acoustic guitar. Besides owning a dexterity which could silence many pretenders, Jim McAuley has an unique gift of transforming his imagination and dreams into untarnished grace; he's capable of putting your heart in full-resonance mode with delicate ornaments and evocative counterpoints and arpeggios then, all at once, he mutates his machine in an Eastern instrument through string detuning, a trick he performs pretty easily despite the fact he does it while playing the tune! Atonality and romanticism - minus the sugar - are both present, too (listen to the succession of "1+2" and "Nika's waltz") but great news also comes from Jim's use of the 12-string, as he is the first guitarist I've heard in a long time trying to tame this beast without sounding like a Ralph Towner clone. At the end of this record you feel a little more optimist and somehow relaxed - and that speaks volumes.

DARREN MCCLURE - Softened edges (The Land Of)

Quietly, unassumingly, The Land Of is becoming one of the labels to keep an eye on. They do their thing almost unnoticed, each release possessing a singular dignity that is also gifted with natural beauty. Darren McClure alternates slowly unfolding meditative electronics and field recordings, the latter at times slightly disturbed by electrostatic interferences - check “Pink river”. This disc might be a cure against the excesses of hedonism typical of self-made products: modesty and absence of theoretical mendacity are at the basis of little miniatures whose unobtrusive character remains in evidence even when the sonic mass gets thicker. In that moment, we are confronted by a nucleus of pulsating frequencies and magnetic radiations that float around the air at first, then stand in place while being in movement, dead flowers on the surface of a placid sea. There’s a strong rhythmic component in a track like “KG court” that wouldn’t be out of context on For 4 Ears, its subterranean drive vaguely reminiscent of atmospheres usually elicited by people such as Günter Müller or Norbert Möslang, only with a definite touch of humanity. Elsewhere, old tricks like the “locked groove” effect still appear fresh enough, when accompanied by lulling, trance-inducing harmonies. Lyophilized minimal sapience delightfully rendered in a finely crafted album.

THOLLEM MCDONAS - Solo piano (Pax Recordings)

Maybe the correct definition for Thollem's incredible, all-genre pianism is "large-scale". In about 46 minutes you can experience a series of tripping flights through the suspensions and the affirmations of a technically over-advanced magician whose grip on every cognoscible aspect of those 88 black and white keys is as strong as a garrotte on Bela Bartok's neck. The variety in McDonas' garden of chordal laboriousness and melodic saltations can't receive justice from my words; this music's longevity is directly embossed in a genetic code which bears the stigmates of experience bleeding with a profane interest for what's still behind any digital discovery...and quite often those fingers seem to know the answer to most of the upcoming interrogatives in good advance. Intimate and lyrical, overpowering and broken-boned, these thirteen compositions never tell a lie to our inquiring minds: Thollem McDonas is for real and "Solo piano" is yet another sample of his highly entertaining mastery.

THOLLEM MCDONAS - Racing the sun, chasing the sun (Creative Sources)

When one listens to Thollem McDonas' keen-scented navigations of harmonic seas, every chord or flurry coming from his piano transports right back to a past time where learning to actually play an instrument was not an option if you wanted to become a musician. "Racing The Sun, Chasing The Sun" is wonderfully complicated - you could well get seasick if trying to thoroughly follow those monstrous digital precognitions - yet it has that talkative contrapuntal hyperalimentation, typical of Thollem's most enthralling playing, which will force your body and soul to become a small part of it. Fecundating those silences that still linger in his music every once in a while, this passionate artist mixes reflection and effervescence - often in the very same moment - to establish his unique citizenhood in a one-man universe amidst the frazzled specimens of "free-thinkers-once-corporate-today" musicians who carry on despite the fact they're without a clue of what they're doing since years. Instead, Thollem McDonas is a justicer of the worn-out, his instrument a magic machine of rejuvenation of a vocabulary which can still be redintegrated in a fantasy world where we can go astray without ever feeling an ounce of fear. For this reason only, we all should thank him.

THOLLEM MCDONAS - Poor stop killing poor (Edgetone)

This live album delivers more pearls of wisdom by that magnificent lone wolf specimen named Thollem Mcdonas. This man's ardent playing seems to be modeled after centuries of musical knowledge; helped by the peculiar resonance of Detroit's Bohemian National Home, Thollem wanders helplessly in search of lost recollections, which he finally finds only to immediately neglect them to turn his attention towards the end of another rainbow. During this quest, rare delicacies and absorbing shuffles find their shelter in his out-of-any-standard hut made of brain, heart and fingers, where he makes sure of nurturing these creatures even when facing the hardest of times. Once again it's time for some lese-majesty crime, in order to savour the moment in which the isolated being gets out and mentally destroys the certainties of those virtuosos who get more consideration just because they landed a luscious contract on an important label. Mcdonas has a gift, the same that ancient bluesmen and griots had: he carries the past within himself, even the events that he didn't live, and lets us feel them through chordal successions that fuse Stravinsky, silent movie soundtracks and what Zappa called "bionic ragtime" referring to Conlon Nancarrow; we can find Charlie Chaplin, Friedrich Murnau, our grandma's photo and an ectoplasmic Charlemagne Palestine in the space of a single track (try to dip your toe in "The clown of war" to get an idea). This music is revolution, respect for the heritage, sorrow; it's a slap in the face of those who still pay hundreds of dollars to hear a few yelps and watch selected ass oscillations over a single D-major arpeggio lasting 20 minutes - yes, that's still you Keith, did you think I had finished? In a word, Thollem Mcdonas is a remnant of that dying macrocosm where our cultural background was generated and in which we now stand as frozen witnesses of a progressive annihilation, which musicians like this one desperately try to postpone through their art. Let's stick to all this and try to survive, even if the office and the TV dinner are still lurking.

THOLLEM MCDONAS / ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO - Intuition, science and sex (Edgetone)

These duets for beat-up piano (TM) and bass clarinet (ADD), at times underlined by drones that sound like bagpipes or hurdy-gurdies (but probably aren’t), are a revelation of sorts if you recall the ebullience of the protagonists’ characters in various unconventional projects. This time, though, the proverbial hyperactivity of Mcdonas’ hands and the fury habitually brought into being in De Dionyso’s improvisations are kept in check by the very temperament of this production, structured in four parts that start similarly to an invocation and conclude by celebrating a still strong sense of free will. The clarinetist’s timbre is often stunning, his command of the overtones beyond belief, the corpulent mass of vibrations coming from the reed and the instrument’s inside conduits relentlessly overpowering. Mcdonas responds with sparse notes at first, then he enters the scene gradually until the integration between the respective visions is complete, different types of resonance - instrumental, corporeal and of the soul - entirely merged in an exceptional display of assimilation and uprightness. Certain artists gaspingly try to appear inventive, yet end up raising only bubbles and foam; on the contrary, these musicians let the interior currents indicate the truthful route, calmly waiting for the music to unfurl in front of their ears, which - just in case - are always more than equipped for that indispensable touch of fine-tuning of the whole.

CHRIS MC GREGOR’S BROTHERHOOD OF BREATH – Bremen to Bridgwater (Cuneiform)

Every once in a while, a lucky find of old tapes from some obscure vault uncovers musical treasures we can subsequently relish in a joyful celebration of love for the highest calibre of art. When we become aware of the fact that most of today's music, including jazz, is rapidly downstreaming to stagnating nothingness, then a spectacular record like this gets released, reminding us there's still a sparkle of hope. A mix of three different concerts, "Bremen to Bridgwater" is a showcase of great tunes and gutsy improvisation, like rarely one expects; the absolute devoutness to the cause showed by Mc Gregor's orchestra is coupled with their elevation to an uncommon grade of instrumental literacy igniting the sacred fire of freedom. Take a look at the list of the involved musicians and you instantly know you'll be hooked: it's almost 2 hours and 40 minutes of torrential great playing by everyone and there is not a minute of dullness even if you search with a gas lamp. In my opinion, this is one of the best live albums of the last decades.

CRISTOPHER MCFALL - Four feels for fire (Entr’acte)

This must be one of the most impenetrable albums that I’ve heard recently. After five tries, though, I feel able to pronounce its quality as superior, yet a proper description still eludes me. McFall is not short of explanations, indeed: a composer since more or less 1997 he first worked on music based on piano and computer, later switching his focus on “the distillation of minimal sound compositions from field recordings and audio tape experiments”, with particular relevance given to “the seemingly endless heat, grit and turbulence that is typical of summer in the mid-western United States” (McFall has been living in Kansas City for the last six years). In between the various acknowledgements we find Miguel Tolosa, Jos Smolders and Asher Thal-Nir. But there is nothing really associable to those artists in terms of sonority; on a purely conceptual level, a comparison could be made with Marc Behrens’ recent “Architectural commentaries” on this very label. Still, “Four feels for fire” is obscure, muddy in a way, analog-sounding, often subaqueous in its “no-light-at-all” character. It all starts from processed tapes of course, but what’s on them seem to perennially revolve around a poetic of no escape, like in a world populated by hunched entities born to perform their one and only task, lacking any ambition to look for a better future. An aesthetically uninviting mixture of hissing interferences, groaning parabolas, urban malaise and gliding sonic slime that works wonders as a complement to the uncertainties of our own rationality, a swamp that we can easily fall and drown into without no one caring, bordering on an engrossing nocturnal landscape which no human has been able to see until now.

CHRISTOPHER MCFALL - Solemn words for a fabled apparatus (Gears Of Sand)

Christopher McFall is a poet of the urban solitude. The sources for this gorgeous record were captured during a time in which he was “contending with a series of abrupt transitions”, his reaction being arming himself with a recorder and walking through the city, “recording endlessly, searching for answers”. Honest: no one better than this presumptuous observer will get near the understanding of this kind of feeling, including the above mentioned search, for reasons that don’t need to be explained. Let me just tell, though, that Mr. McFall gained my full solidarity. And after playing the CD, there’s another word to be added, and that’s “respect”. This is an example of how a field recording-derived album should be conceived; all it takes is a keen ear and a good dose of profoundness, which I’m sure the composer owns. Increasingly obscure situations where cars, steps, aircrafts and clatter mix seamlessly constitute the backbone of a creation which obtains the simultaneous results of having the listener forget reality for a while, still focusing the attention on frequencies that reality itself generated. The treatment applied to the tapes is “scientifically natural”, filtered out shades and enhanced pulsations changing the sonic morphology of otherwise regular events (check the short fourth movement, an understated masterpiece). Sounds that own inherent musical qualities, this man capably transforming their apparent inharmoniousness into materials to which the psyche can lean upon, and learn to defend against sudden bursts of idiotic behaviour. Details are unnecessary: it’s a whole world of subterranean beauty, needing total tranquillity for a thorough appreciation. A splendid work, confirming the Kansas City-based artist as one of the right names to follow. “I have no answers or philosophies to provide”, he declares. Believe me, Christopher: this is what we’ve been looking for, and you got there. Not everybody’s able to.

ZELJKO MCMULLEN - Disorder (Shinkoyo)

The looped piano superimpositions of "Gently" are alone worth the price of this CD: they appear abruptly after long moments of "harmonic noise" coming from a series of instrumental patterns and sources (...I'm almost sure there is Steve Reich hidden in "Dissolve"...) expressively altered by Zeljko McMullen, a New York resident who works in the field of musical phenomena applied to our conscious and unconscious perceptions. For McMullen, noise - if treated like a meditation process through reworking and transformation - has the power to "pull one into another space" as it manifests itself as pure experience. While the concept is not exactly new, Zeljko shows finesse and explicitness during his beautiful "rumble-to-discharge-to-heavenly-destruction" cycles, through smothering hallucinations and infinite displacements that will be appealing to fans of repetitive music at medium difficulty level. Don't let these considerations fool you anyway, because all through the duration of "Disorder" McMullen comes out as a talented autonomous personality and an entity which I expect to materialize often in this saturated area of work.

MECHA FIXES CLOCKS - Orbiting with screwdrivers (Alien8)

Mecha Fixes Clocks is Michel F.Coté, whose multitask approach to music making has always yielded good results, his albums under the Bruire moniker an excellent specimen of lively imagination enhanced by the freshness of his systematic change of perspective. "Orbiting with screwdrivers" carries a combination of mystery and extraneousness from any given canon, its flavour determined by a painstaking work on every nuance of the many instruments used; its creator alone is credited with "electronics, percussions, keyboards, accordions, computer and home mades", but he's flanked by a who's who of Canadian independent musicians which includes - among the many - Diane Labrosse, Martin Tétreault, Jean Derome, Tom Walsh. Most of this music sounds like a presage; no recurrent themes, no moral obligations for macrocephalous orchestrations or pompous contrapuntal developments. Every sound seems to exist just for the short section it belongs to, a barely perceptible continuity broken by piano or guitar drops and deeply resounding bass coming from nowhere amidst complex relationships of underground electronics and weak string lamentations; the finest example can be heard in the cinematic "Nano rotary for nothing", which somehow incarnates the whole aesthetic of this project. Coté does not want his vision to become too popular, remaining hidden behind this series of fantasies that one could compare to a black-and-white dream where all the components move in a sad choreography despite the absence of a defined meter or - heaven forbid - a "rhythm". It happens that many of these pastels are in synchrony with the muted qualities of our most reflective self; yet they disappear after a while, leaving no trace of their evanescent significance - just the vagueness of a frail beauty.

MECHA/ORGA - Holder (Absurd/A Question of Re-entry)

An interesting aural document by Yiorgis Sakellariou, who underwent several medical examinations at the hospital after he fainted while being treated by his dentist. After the recovery, he went home with a tape containing the sounds of the Holter (yes, this is the correct spelling), an apparatus that records heart and body rhythms for extended times; this CDR is all based on that source. In about 36 minutes we hear the unadulterated sound of the machine, an irregularly oscillating buzz similar to the wave emitted by an ancient analogue synthesizer, at times contrasted by spurts of distortion and electrostatic charges transported by a radioactive wind. But Sakellariou saved the best for last: he sampled and edited some of the original sounds to create a gorgeous piece that crosses subsonic rumble - think a distant storm slowly approaching - and the sudden growth of a monster speaking through mangled distorted emissions, comparable to Daniel Menche's "incinerating" visions.

MECHA/ORGA - From a piner (Lab For Electroacoustic Media)

After having enjoyed his "Holder" CD on Absurd, I can't help but also strongly recommend this effort by Greek sound artist Yiorgis Sakellariou, who gives us the gift of about 40 minutes of amassed clouds of intense electronic swirling that start calmly enough to lull us into a benevolent hypnosis - think Nurse With Wound's "Soliloquy for Lilith". This initial spiraliform tampering is the prelude to the appearance of impressive frequencies which - in the second and longest movement - juxtapose the breathtaking rumble of an earthquake with overacute sibilances similar to crickets in a summer night, everything slowly evolving into an almost unbearable, catastrophic power that, at one point, forced this reviewer to quickly lower the headphone level (which wasn't high in the first place) to avoid ear destruction. A fabulously fierce imposition of sonic pressure, only partially replaced by the final track showing a "gentler" side of Mecha/Orga that nicely contrasts the disruptive John Duncan-like energy of the previous section.

MECHA/ORGA - 56:24 (Absurd)

I don't even want to know what was used by Yiorgis Sakellariou to generate the drones that give life to "56:24"; it's just one of the best albums of its kind and I'll take it as it is, starting from the great photos on the cover, a cafeteria that somehow reminds me of the place in which Jimmy (actor Phil Daniels) finds himself alone and desperate after his life has gone awry, towards the end of "Quadrophenia". Back to Mecha/Orga, the vicious circle of oneiric rings and harmonic spiralling starts quite softly, almost as a background. The plot becomes more intricate after a few minutes, as the loops begin to reciprocally interact, generating a growing state of dissonant tension that lasts about 35 minutes, amidst engrossing sub-basses and highly vibrational rumbles. After that, Sakellariou shifts gear with stomach-gripping glissandos and frequency accelerations, elevating the music to a higher sphere while also turning the record from a "good drone album" to a "can't miss" example of static hypnosis that generates anxiety rather than comfort. The final twenty minutes are in fact a transit through the Styx of dissonant stridency which nevertheless maintains that "sacral" element that distinguishes it from the mass of one-key shamans about whom I already spent too many words in the past. The Greek sonic terrorist puts our brain on the edge of expectation, a nuclear explosion is anticipated, we're ready to duck and cover, the ears are about to melt...but it suddenly ends, quite abruptly. No casualties. Great stuff, the best I've heard from this composer.

ROEL MEELKOP - Momentum (Nonvisualobjects)

In the liner notes, Meelkop stresses the importance of the difference between listening to these sounds at home as opposed to the installation settings for which they were created. Nevertheless, "Momentum" lives comfortably in a domestic (and possibly very quiet) situation, being composed with a keen sense of dimensional analysis where every sonic entity follows trajectories which could seemingly be aleatoric at times, yet they often have a guided missile-like precision, arriving exactly where one's expected to receive them. Appearing like faint signals, these emissions inhabit silence with educated discretion bordering on a self-centering inwardness; fragments of human voice and electronic surges rarely surpass intensity levels near to subsonics, but when they do - like in the reclusive fallout of "NU"'s drones - the whole body gets crossed by a sensational overcharge for a few wonderful instants. It's that kind of aural world where sultriness is left completely out of the picture - and it's delicately addictive.

ROEL MEELKOP - Numbered four (A question of re_entry)

Concise and straight to the point, "Numbered four" is made of great stuff. One feels a little worried when the sounds coming from the headphones are surpassed in volume by the computer's hum. That's how the record begins: microsounds of the most inaudible species - but we do hear them, nicely deployed amidst electrostatic discharges and irregular rumble, similar to a storm as heard from long distance. About five minutes into the piece, a static background enters the picture: imagine a post-nuclear landscape, additional tiny secretions and an icy wind containing what I perceive as a slowed down metallic croaking of a frog, but it could be a sampled-and-processed-until-unrecognizability "something" (maybe a percussion?). Halfway through the track, something akin to fake jingling bells is soon destroyed by distortion and hiss, which remain in command for a few minutes, until another background noise - like a malfunctioning boiler - slowly comes to the fore, changing the cards on the table once again to introduce us to the piece's finale with electro-bubbles and subsonic activities spoiled by sparse alien interferences. Thus Meelkop's dedication: "Put together in two thousand five for my boys". What have these kids done to deserve such a treatment?

LUBOMYR MELNYK - KMH (Unseen Worlds)

The “black hole” of my minimalist ignorance, facilitated by several hopeless researches after reading the artist’s surname wrongly spelled on an Italian book (indeed this man’s oeuvre was so obscure that even Google didn’t suggest the transition from “Melnick” to “Melnyk”) is now finally explored. Yes, there is evidence of Lubomyr Melnyk’s music on this planet, this being more or less the first official release of his magnificent work, which was previously (un)available via extremely limited private editions. Based on the concept of “continuous music” - a concoction of repetitive structures and dramatic nuances with many more harmonic shifts than in, say, Palestine or Glass’ early pieces - Melnyk’s compositions took their shape in the mid-seventies while he was working with choreographer Carolyn Carlson, whose figurations the pianist described as a “virtual explosion of the entire physical plane”, developing “the moving and the standing still all at once phenomenon”. This pretty much sums up the music, an incessant vortex of interconnected arpeggios exploiting the natural resonance of, and also the contrasts between, the upper partials - something that the composer declares impossible to absorb by just listening to a record; one has to be there while the music is played. It’s indeed static but ever-moving, at one and the same time romantic and mesmerizing, doubtlessly remarkable in terms of technical proficiency and aesthetic luxury; yet it remains, so to speak, humble, and it’s better enjoyed at medium-to-low volume. Talking about Carlson, those who have watched her performance “Dark”, accompanied by Joachim Kühn’s solo piano commentary, will find several contact points (not necessarily musical, I’m rather referring to the perception of the surrounding space) with “KMH”, which also reminded me a lot of Simeon Ten Holt’s magnetizing multi-keyboard marathons. Yet, Lubomyr Melnyk immediately gets appreciated by this writer as a one-of-a-kind specimen, as I imagine his transcendent yet penetrating look while he’s still trying to locate that invisible point where music in its physical essence is left behind and more important issues of indivisibility and wholeness are emanated either by the spirit of the player or the sounds generated by his creativity. Passive listeners, fake musicians and mere record collectors can’t do better than just hope that something similar happen to them one day. In another life. Which does not exist.

MEM1 - Alexipharmaca (Interval)

Described as "an electroacoustic hybrid" by the press release, Mem1 are Laura Thomas-Merino (cello, electronics) and M.Cera (electronics), "Alexipharmaca" being their second full-length release, inspired by poems written by Nicander of Colophon (a Greek pharmacologist) about "plant and animal poisons and their antidotes". Not that one could guess this influence from the music, a fascinating mixture of cello loops and real-time manipulation that possesses dissonant angularity and beguiling ambient charm in equal doses, and which I haven't been able to compare to anything else - a major plus for my judgement's criteria. Twelve improvised tracks show the full extent of this duo's capabilities, mostly based on a gentle materialism in which modified sources and virtual environments constitute a sort of parallel world that, when listened at "slightly-more-than-a-whisper" volume in a quiet setting, appears populated of microscopic creatures and alimented by faintly warming energies that establish a direct connection with our nervous system, helping it to discard extraneous disturbances. An elusive, instantly captivating album that I strongly recommend to be enjoyed without headphones, "Alexipharmaca" is a positive surprise on all accounts and the demonstration that, no matter how many records we listen to, an everlasting curiosity is the key to welcome discoveries.

DANIEL MENCHE - Invoker (Antifrost)

By now Daniel Menche's music has reached the very top in the "statically monstrous" gallery. Leaving behind a past mostly made of (excellent) wall-of-noise releases. the Portland artist raised his bar higher with his recent output, a series of wonderfully inspiring albums where few sources - usually regular instruments - build cathedrals of deep perceptions. "Invoker" starts with a low-register frequency pulse, grows until sound's like it was recorded right into a reactor, changes to vibration of bass strings until harmonics mix with the whole room's reverberation (and with the sounds outside my window, for that matter). Finally I'm left alone with a low rumble introducing the frying electric magma of the last track, ironically near to the older harsher production. What comes out of my speakers is similar to uncontrollable radio spectra, penetrating ears and brain until exhaustion, driven by the urge of a well channelled rage. The closing is almost silent, it all started there...

DANIEL MENCHE - Skadha (Antifrost)

Menche is a sonic scavenger who's able to present evolution through the analysis of electroacoustic spare materials. Manipulating all sorts of frequencies to a paralyzing effect, Daniel's approach in "Skadha" is another look to the ever changing midstreams generated by tormenting crunchy discharges mixed in a magmatic liquid of educated noise. Low vibrations bicker with masses upon masses of growing tension, lulling the body to the point of total indifference to what's happening nearby: I was enshrouded by a crusty cloth of chemical substances in acousmatic camouflage yet completely irradiated by Menche's face-slapping transients. Even at low volume ears are thoroughly solicited all the way, so that the dynamics' changes get their maximum impact on each one of your sensible organs. Self complacence has always been out of the question in this artist's career but - without a doubt - this release confirms once and for all that his trip to excellence has reached its destination - and the guy is probably looking at the map to see where he's going next.

DANIEL MENCHE - Eye on the steel (Substractif)

This album marks the return of Daniel Menche to some of his more violently noisy output, even if still there are moments of bubbling drony frequencies and calmer sketches of pre-earthquake subterranean activity. After an intense growth in the first minutes, the incredible variety of sources and colours by Menche captures attention through seducing the ears and making them addicted to a charming, not disguised evilness. Where there's no mercy for "good sounding" sonic pastry, right there Daniel operates his tumbling spurts, releasing fleshy bits of nervous energy while keeping the reins of exuberance well tight. Desolation and shredding seem to alternate in this displaced meditation on sound disembodiment; yet, I tend to compare this music to a giant fire you have no way of estinguishing - once you think it's over, right then new sparks have begun to raise higher flames. Their lights you won't escape, until you become ebrious and finally reduced to ash.

DANIEL MENCHE - Drunk gods (Lapilli)

"Lapilli" is the perfect label name for these fabulous twenty minutes, a cauldron of interference, electric hum, crackling drops which grow in tension and periodicity, just like hail starts with a couple of little icicles then transforms itself into a roof bombardment. "Drunk gods" finds Daniel Menche returning to his primordial virulent fervour that stands between overflowing wrath and vehement momentum. The excruciating forces that this performer is able to put forth in his disciplinarian use of noise is something to behold; lows and highs struggle for life in the frequency dominion, discolouring the sky and fading in a single stroke of natural, almost physiological rage. Somehow, when the sound has finished its devastation, the soul is relieved: we have been raped and baptized - at the same time.

DANIEL MENCHE - Heavy (Banned Production)

Issued on a 3-inch CD and lasting less than 20 minutes, "Heavy" is a powerful single drone centred around a fixed frequency area, like an extraordinary "Om" delivering bodies from spurious residues. It only changes in intensity and equalization, as every once in a while repeating cycles of electricity and sonic radioactivity take that single buzz and apply a stratospheric spin to its already enormous centrifugal force. Just when we're nearing the explosion point a disintegration happens, concluding this short composition with a total mangling of every known significance. The sounds stop abruptly - so does our sense of expansion of an evil awareness - but my ears are ready to start all over again.

DANIEL MENCHE - Together we shall melt mountains with our blood (Waystyx)

Another dose of the "Menche therapy", this rare CD won't catch you unaware if the man from Portland has already reanimated your dying speakers in the past. Like in a well-rehearsed ceremony, the electric flow starts from silence, soon becoming the intense invocation of a million desperate souls, whose force resides in the vibrational impact of dissonant mantras where one figures metal rubbing, alarms ringing and voices screaming in a total abandon of senses to an eviscerating imagination. In Daniel's music there is an apparent duality between movement and stasis that changes the listening perspective without the need of additional procedures; it's a mass of self-regenerating potency, based on a concrete body of absurdly intense sounds surrounding our small entities with frightening vehemence, only to open up to reveal itself an emotional outbreak. Those who are touched by these bony hands are doomed to remain in the realm of the dumb forever - let this monster of contrasting frequencies do the speaking.

DANIEL MENCHE - Flaming tongues (Blossoming Noise)

Never mind that Daniel Menche's recorded output is reaching Muslimgauze-like proportions, with an average of almost one monthly release; fact of the matter is that this man's passionate battle to transform "percussion/concussion and sound/noise" in an exhilarating mass of fundamental frequencies has brought him to the highest positions in the roster of sound artists who have a total deconstruction of our senses as their principal objective. "Flaming tongues" finds Daniel looking for new paths through a bigger involvement with harsh percussive discharges that progressively transform themselves in large waves of radioactive pleasure; all resonates in perfect tune with a sort of cosmology where planets and satellites are organized in gradually morphing frameworks. The deriving emissions - scary as they may sound at first - find their way to a complete homogeneity with the nerves; the effect on the listener is akin to being treated by a dozen masseurs whose hands release small doses of electricity while they slap our muscles with controlled violence.

DANIEL MENCHE - Radiant blood (Substantia Innominata)

The first release in a new series by the German Drone label, "Radiant blood" is a 10-inch vinyl where Daniel Menche deals with two completely different aspects of "furious resonance". On the first side, the Oregon shaman evokes a magmatic sea of shimmering noise generated by the fusion of various distortions, extracting textures and harmonics even from what sounds like a hopeless slow destruction of every human trace. Yet the best is saved for the second movement; what I perceive as a repeatedly stricken piano key in the lowest region of the keyboard slowly leaves its places to a mysteriously appealing chant of undefinable layered drones, disturbed by more noises which - with a modicum of imagination - one could think as the devil's voice. Truly impressive stuff, confirming Menche's overwhelming dominance in this artistic field - and that includes Merzbow.

DANIEL MENCHE - Jugularis (Important)

"Jugularis" is one of the most intense releases by Daniel Menche and that's saying a lot. Its three movements explore one of this composer's favourite fields, that of interlocking percussive patterns of various length and speed mixed with the resonance of metals and the sheer auricular pressure given by a few raw sounds. Cloned and repeated ad infinitum, these cycles become hordes of unrestrained elemental manifestations that render this music comparable to the prelude to a huge catastrophe. Yet, the preamble never gives way to a real event, it just grows and grows until the muscles feel the need to exercise, the legs want to start walking, the hands would like to play the head like a conga. It's that involving. Amidst this auricular ordeal, multitudes of rhythmic prototypes (often in composed meters: I distinctly perceived figurations in five and seven) characterize a ritual during which a state of trance is reached by the receivers - at least the ones who can afford to sustain such a test - who are at the same time annihilated and so full of energy that they would be able to front any opposition. At the end of the album, a sigh of relief is the first reaction; but it's soon realized that one has become addicted, as there's an immediate feeling of something missing. We're back to our mental and corporeal decay. What would I do without this man?

DANIEL MENCHE - Beast resonator (Roggbif)

Is it possible to achieve equanimity through agonizing trance? “Beast resonator” shows that it is. The formula is classic Menche, a frightening recipe of “percussion and concussion” which includes tribal drum patterns, something similar to handclapping amidst rattlesnakes, and - in this particular instance - treated voice (also by Menche) generating long “oms” that appear as a deviant mantra from hell at the end of the first movement (of three). What intimidates is usually avoided like the plague, but this man has by now established an impressive control on every aspect of his music, defining a style which took years to finally attract a well deserved wider audience (...indeed, many of today's worshippers around my geographic area, at that time probably intent in revisiting Spandau Ballet, were nowhere to be seen when "Incineration" and "Static burn" came out, but let's not spoil the party). This album could very well be considered as the second part of the recent “Jugularis” as far as rhythmic information and energy transmission are concerned. There is no virtual reality here, only blood-curling helplessness in front of a basic force that's able to shake both a body and the ground from which that body absorbs its vibration. One feels connected with the earth, part of a complex design through which our being achieves a fulfilment of sorts; meanwhile, our nerves are barraged with hit-and-no-miss punches of intersecting raw patterns which excite our sensitive organs, pushing them to the maximum limit in an apparently ceaseless sensual overload. But it finally stops - after about 72 minutes - and this beast's brain is still resonating the morning after.

DANIEL MENCHE - Kanticle (Ferns)

When artists define a genre or a style, confirming their abilities with each and every disc they release, the task of reviewing records that are consistently excellent without repeating ourselves becomes quite hard. Such is the case of Daniel Menche, whose recent focus has been directed on two major areas of work, namely "mildly harsh" string treatment and reiterative percussion. "Kanticle" is a 3-inch that uses sounds of zither as the basis for a magnetic track, starting with slow touches and asymmetric oscillations that introduce us to a typical crescendo of intensity culminating in quasi-violent resonance. As in his fabulous "Deluge & Sunder", Menche's vision benefits from splendid chordal adjacences that clash and arouse, blossoming into a fecundity of scintillating sonic possibilities not distant from the insides of a grand piano. It's not an out-and-out attack, then, even if teeth-grinding overtones instil some degree of apprehension here and there. But the fulfilment of the listener is a sure thing with this obscure little gem.

DANIEL MENCHE - For the beasts (P Tapes)

Menche is a renowned animal lover (check his blog for some photo of wonderful creatures that he himself portrays or even rescues during his trips) and "For the beasts" is a fine dedication to the matter. The heavy drumming characterizing the piece - which comes in another mini-disc - is reminiscent of his work with KK Null, continuous intersections and superimpositions of percussive patterns growing into a fiendish ceremony in which no human mind can determine the beginning and the end of the rhythmic designs conceived on the spot by the Oregonian. The kaleidoscopic process of augmentation of the parts also generates a sort of implicit hum, like a surrounding halo of electricity that seems to protect the music by external interference, while contributing to a state of physical exhaustion in these 20 minutes of idealistic, if embryonic shamanism.

DANIEL MENCHE - Wolf’s milk (Utech)

“Wolf’s milk” represents the deepening of a different interest for Menche, in that it explores those zones of vibrational resonance - mostly around the extreme regions of the frequency spectra - that have already caused many people to credit this work with a citizenship in areas that coincide with terms like “darkness”, “ambient” and “drone” (this, one would say, denotes once again the extraordinary fantasy of reviewers). It could be easily pointed out that the Portland artist has been droning - definitely with a personal style - since the early nineties, way before many respected saints of the humming groan; yet this is Menche’s first real congress with those presences whose manifestations explicate through the power of repressed bellow and moaning slow motion. The composition is divided into three movements defined by different, at times barely recognizable sources: organ, gongs and trumpets, alone or in combination. In terms of sheer sonority, the first section is impressively quivering, the second owns a metallic ill-tempered disposition gravitating around a pre-explosion state while the third is probably the most satisfying one, fusing all timbres into a mantric perturbation that places the music in the same territory of albums like “Deluge and Sunder”, with less repressed tendencies to deflagration. I surmise that some of the original timbres have been altered in the studio, since I still can’t conceive how trumpets can sound like mosquitos (hear for yourselves). As I already wrote elsewhere, this new course of Daniel Menche’s production should place him nearer to classic minimalism more than anything “industrial” or “post-watchamacallit”, as this man’s intuitions demonstrate that he’s in possession of something that many “artists” are sorely lacking: a spirit.

DANIEL MENCHE - Bleeding heavens (Blossoming Noise)

Let me tell you a short story. When I first listened to "Bleeding heavens", the heating system was still dormant in the house, therefore my limbs were freezing that night. As soon as the music started, nourished by a customary eruptive crescendo where membrane-quaking subsonic discharges corroborated by grimy distortion blitzed the control room of compressed nerves, it dawned on me that enough was enough: I would use the sounds conceived by Daniel Menche to set my own body on “full sizzle” mode. In about ten concentrated minutes of listening, the mission was accomplished: closed eyes, relaxed muscles, fingers willing to move again, breathing coming much easier. Everything achieved through a complete abandon of physical defence, those spontaneous tight postures that we assume to protect ourselves, mostly from stupidity but also from the elements. Thus, the abnormally radiant, harmonic-doused communion of flesh and spirit generated by the Portlander's vision (in this instance derived by the "deconstruction" of trumpet and organ, yet it's more like a smothering nuclear massage) functions in a way that one can't help but define psychosomatic, provided of course that the listener is completely open to this kind of dynamic stimulation. The record comprises four movements that, short transitional spans aside, are seamed in a coherent suite. As usual, Menche controls the mass expansion and the overall pulse totally, not allowing any element to become preponderant in the mix, the whole resulting in a pulverizing amalgam of fury and mantric annihilation. Love or hate it, this man's output is steadily evolving into something even more serious than I myself expected years ago, as he keeps changing perspectives, timbres and conceptions in the eventual consecutiveness of his pieces, all the while subjecting us to a skull-numbing stranglehold that sends radical information to our being, arousing dispatches of vibrational libido that cause veritable addiction. Instead, it’s a brain-rejuvenating cure.

DANIEL MENCHE - Glass forest (Important)

Looks like Daniel Menche’s intention is to release music only though LP and DVD in the future. I’d subscribe to the latter format right now, convinced that the Oregonian’s sonic materials should be extended over the course of very long temporal distances. Then again, it is said that the pieces will score experimental movies in that medium - my drooling increases by the minute. More about old-style albums later (and look for the review of “Body melt”, the companion vinyl release to this CD, here). For the moment let’s enjoy “Glass forest”, three movements of classic Menche trance, each one with different compositional spices to savour. The first recalls the most “tribal” albums - think “Raijin” - with a series of superimposed rhythmic patterns causing the skull to get crushed by a cross of a dozen of freight trains and an African baptism alimented by bionic energies. The second meshes ultrasonic pierces and crunchy matters, a tranquil walk by a marsh ruined by stinging killer insects injecting corrosive liquids in our system. The veritable masterpiece of the disc is the final section, where the composer reaches the perfect balance of ingredients typical of his best work: a basic pulse - could be an electronic source, but we’ve often been tragically wrong in guessing what this man uses in the studio - is just blemished by background rumbles and irregular percussive outbursts, until a reiterative metallic template takes centre stage shaking the nerves through alien resonances and on-and-off throbbing potentials. Imagine being overwhelmed by crumbling rocks while trapped in a car on the railways of one of the above mentioned trains, which is inexorably approaching. With a DVD you might still hope to postpone the inevitable end and remain happily terrorized; in the “other” situation, you’d have to wake up and flip the side of a long-playing. What’s your preference?

DANIEL MENCHE / KIYOSHI MIZUTANI - Garden (Auscultare Research)

"Garden" is the sound of dead silence breaking into an endless dawn, it's the mountain's heartbeat, it's the rebellion of birds to any conventional wisdom - and much more. Sharing duties on "high" and "low" sounds respectively, Mizutani and Menche walk on the thinnest rope separating a microcosm's real life from an extraordinary transcendence. There are no words to express the shocking beauty of this environmental composition; its sounds go from the barely perceptible movement of insects to very distant barking dogs, from chirping loops to monumental shakes of the inner part of the ground. The slow intensity growth characterizing the piece is both tantalizing and menacingly unstoppable. Reaching this level of fulfilment when working with such a scarcity of elements will be hard for anyone; while I hadn't met Kiyoshi Mizutani's work before, I can safely assume this is one of the best Daniel Menche records ever.

MERCANSER - Mercanser (Void Of Ovals)

How would you like being treated to some seriously warped muzak-cum-composed-metres by someone who can arrange pretty well (or maybe is just able to program a sequencer in the right way), the whole reproduced on low-budget keyboards and drum machines? And what about plain idiot songs to counterbalance the instrumentals? OK, here we go. Mercanser are a nightmare of easy melodies, robotic stupidity and cheap preset-fuelled emotions as conceived by a third-grade cousin of Vangelis and played by the friends of Ken and Barbie after a barbecue party. This is badly artificial mental contortion, something that - should someone spin it while attempting to have sexual intercourse with the lady of their dreams - will most definitely metamorphose that woman into a rubber doll. It’s dreadful, yet fascinating - the sleeve photo, idem. Fans of Residents could definitely find a measure of congeniality in it (there are also voices, yes) and I smile approvingly, in loving memory of my old experiments with a 4-track Fostex decades ago.

MERE FEU - 40 tetes (Absurd)

According to the liner notes, the over 31 minutes of "40 tetes" are the audio documentation of a crematory ceremony attended by Lionel Marchetti (who mixed and edited the whole) Christophe Cardoen and Emmanuel Petit. This is finely crafted musique concrete in the wake of the late Luc Ferrari, where every sound owns a deeply affecting intrinsic value: from the whispers of the crickets and the barking dogs to the slowly burning flames putting in motion a mechanism of popping and clicking noises while sparse metallic percussives appear, the piece finally lies upon a soft bed of relaxing frequencies leading this aural trip to its worthy conclusion - the return to the silence of the night. Without breaking any rule, a beautifully detailed and truly perfect short electroacoustic story has been penned by the very essence of sheer sonic occurrences, captured by the recorders in a quite mystical moment.

TODD MERRELL / AIDAN BAKER / PATRICK JORDAN - Nagual (Archive)

The beautiful photographs - a forest and an amass of superb clouds - that adorn the cover of “Nagual” give only a faint idea of its musical content. Looking at the instrumentation (shortwave radio, guitars, electronics, processing) and remembering the ambits in which these artists have worked, we realize in advance that an experience of altered perception will be likely met. The four tracks - recorded live in Hartford, Connecticut in 2004 - are presented as a single unit, a 60-minute suite that easily reaches the highest positions in my personal space/ambient rank of the last five years. The feel of proximity given by the ethereal qualities of Baker’s loops, the otherworldly voices and the modified emissions coming from Merrell and Jordan’s radios generate a state of perennial floating that, for a change, doesn’t sound like refined new age. Depths similar to the ones reached by the best Lustmord are observed, segments of gentle guitar arpeggios and powerful tempests of indefinite aural matter representing a stimulation for the being to remain awake, all the more in those moments when the tiredness of living amidst stupidity starts knocking at the door of our mind. The beginning of “Cygnus” is just memorable in its simplicity, a graceful line repeated over and over by Baker upon a fairly static background whose sonic appearance resembles a cross between the slow breathing of a whale and an aircraft taking off, before wailing moans by bionic mermaids define the evolution of the piece towards completion. If this cynical grumbler liked this one so much, then lovers of the genre should consider “Nagual” a must.

MERSAULT - Raymond & Marie (Formed)

I dare to detect a hint of deep-seated individualism in each of the components of this trio, arrived with "Raymond & Marie" at the second outing. Curiously enough, this three-minded sharp-sightedness is exactly what makes this music work so well. Differently from other EAI collectives, Mersault are perfectly conscious of the value of the single parts; if the total yields excellent results after all, it's only because their sense of self-restraint and will of not over-exceeding prevails on the potential struggle for the affirmation of a specific idea. Strong personality and egoism are indeed very different things, and these men know what they're doing. In this particular instance Tomas Korber (guitar, electronics), Christian Weber (double bass) and Christian Wolfarth (drums) seem to privilege the addition of strata, rough lacquers and laminae as opposed to subtractive processes and consequent quietness. While there are several instances in which one of the musicians might be found naked in front of an open door, exposed to a chilly current ("have to do something to get out of this hush"), the ensemble playing is hardnosed as rarely heard in this zone, often capping a seriously boiling violence (mostly courtesy of Korber's electrically charged undulations and uber-hissing manipulations and Wolfarth's frictional use of cymbals and metallic objects) which explodes only in the final two minutes. Amidst the evil winds the tent is nailed to the ground by Weber, whose style has become deservedly recognized in recent times, quality low-frequency garnishing and unchristened plucking preventing the music from following the siren chant of undesired abstraction. Engaging moments of cohesive brutality see Wolfarth adding fractured rolls and skin mistreatment, alternated with sections where both Weber's arco and Korber's drones wrap our shoulders in a deadly embrace which is also the carrier of the most intense quaverings of the whole album. "Raymond & Marie" comprises thought-provoking, stimulating, unpleasingly beautiful playing for those who don't like security.

SZILÁRD MEZEI ENSEMBLE - Nád / Reed (Red Toucan)

Inexorably, the name of this composer - a Hungarian who was born in Serbia - is becoming increasingly visible on the up-to-the-minute jazz scene and, from what I’ve heard, deservedly so. Mezei is able to achieve a complex stability of influences in the material he pens, which is strongly rooted in the popular traditions of the geographic areas he grew in. Fronting a large band (14 elements including himself) in this occasion, the violist fortifies a quest for authenticity which is perceptible in every instant. Music made of familiarities, furtive crossing of borders and rankling wounds, in which the orchestration constitutes a fundamental terrain for the growth of floriferous melodic plants. Dissonant themes and folk reminiscences interlock in a context where nothing sounds passé, yet one clearly feels the weight of earlier periods that will never be forgotten. Ample spaces of theoretical chaos (often generated by the out-of-phase superimposition of precisely written parts) make sure that the collective endeavour is rewarded by a multitude of energies working without loss of concentration, renewing the intention of bringing the composition to the level of “inspired suffering” typical of the acceptance of an unavoidable fate. The many directions towards which the score pushes are not mystifying, otherwise representing a metaphor for independence, the one that’s desperately longed for and is still reachable within. The mission is problematically thorny, but it can be done.

SZILÁRD MEZEI QUINTET - As you (Ayler) 

There is some serious grit to be found in this quintet’s music, comprising Szilárd Mezei on viola and kaval, Albert Márkos on violoncello, Kornél Pápista on tuba, Ervin Malina on bass and István Csik on drums. Mesei, who was born in an independent area of the Serbian Republic named Senta, is the composer of the four extended tracks on the CD, yet he sounds just as a nominal leader in a finely balanced group that repeatedly crosses the boundaries of everything standing in between free jazz and folk tunes, all the while showing a galvanizing fury that after a few minutes makes us feel invigorated to the point of enthusiasm. Mezei’s intricate lines draw inspired diagonals and oblong protuberances amidst Csik’s rabid drumming in “Outside the game” (which is opened by a great solo by Malina), eventually managing to join Márkos’ cello in a series of parallelisms leading towards a serene detachment from the by now remote concept of “tonality”. And when the going gets really tough, the tough get going: Pápista enters the scene in the second half of the CD, both in “Rain, rain, rain” (the most nostalgic theme on offer, by the way, even if it soon gets disintegrated into cells and particles) and “Thistle”, his tuba reinforcing the collective’s tissue with a powerful presence that not only helps his companions in their vigorous statements, but causes an impressive augmentation of the sonic mass’ thickness, which doesn’t contrast the ensemble’s struggle to preserve the spirit and the fervour animating every minute of this material. Believe me, it won’t take long before you’re hooked: when musicians are still hungry, we can even keep calling this damn thing “jazz”.

SZILÁRD MEZEI / ALBERT MÁRKOS - Korom (Creative Sources)

Viola and cello make for a magnificent combination, this duo celebrating a wedding typified by present-day romanticism and witty improvisational options. The subdivision of “Korom” in diminutive sections (down to 19 seconds) comprised between the longer pieces beginning and ending the album attributes an inner symmetry to the whole configuration, a welcome addition to an already exquisite experience. The players investigate singular aspects of sonic free will with self control and moderation, absolutely not afraid of letting the horses go every once in a while. What starts like an almost regretful look to far-flung temporal landscapes often turns into a restless consecutiveness of calls and responses, the “scrape, scratch and pluck” factor gaining considerable weight over the course of the set. Yet the most striking attributes of this music reside in the artists’ quest for extrapolating newness from unplanned sketches and designs which, at the same time, seem to have been conceived a hundred years ago, such is the magic aura of improbability and secluded grief that these phrases originate in the soul of the sensitive listener. There’s not a moment in which we were caught unprepared by this unpretentious splendor. A seriously involving record, the unforeseen gift from two musicians whose curricula are definitely impressive (check them and remain in awe, especially in reference to Mezei’s) yet still worthy of being exposed to bigger and bigger audiences.

MHA - 11:46 – 09:01 (Aposiopèse)

A beautiful aquatic photograph adorns the cover of a nice 3-inch CD by a gentleman from France, whose name is James (I don’t know if Mha is his real surname, but this is not important) and who used guitar, bass, glockenspiel, microphone, minidisc and field recordings to conceive two tracks - titled exactly as you see, with just their duration - that keep a pleasant company over the course of 20 minutes, especially at low level in the early hours of the morning. The first takes its shape from unidentified voices to remain suspended mid-air with gentle chords and volume swells, while the second introduces a few additional harmonic movements, most notably within the realms of string-ish gradations that contribute to change perspectives a little bit, although leaving the general character of the music quite similar to the rest of the disc. Think about a mix of certain sides of Eno’s more melodic materials and, for those who know him, Hypnos label’s guitarist David Tollefson, the whole covered with a charming simplicity giving this artifact a graceful warmth which is much appreciated from this observation point.

MI & TRIGGER - Error_05/Auto_Face (Chmafu)

As idiosyncratic as a variation on a fiendish process of decomposition, this stinging improvisation was recorded live yet it sounds more like a studio cut-up in which past experiences and future dreams meet to chew the voices of regular instruments and throw them up, snippets of a reality that refuses to be observed from any angle whatsoever. Swantje Tessmann (violin), Sebastian Berweck (Nord Modular G2 synth), Eric Dresher (flutes) and John Eckhardt (acoustic bass) implement noise principles within their unquestionable technical proficiency by fragmenting the sonic scenery into a million of torrid crumbles of feedback and layering rheumatic fevers of teared up synthetic oscillations. The sturdy ostination applied by Trigger to disintegrate improvisational conventions is well represented by the sputtering profane lamentations of the strings, which amidst the volcanic fumes of Berweck's synthesizer assume the role of balancing forces in this finely (de)tuned reproduction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

MIBA - The corplate porblem (Pax Recordings)

Mark Bartscher and Kristin Miltner create sound patchworks paying just a little debt to minimalism and "classic" electronic music, yet maintaining a well definite personality that separates their art from the myriads of computer-based projects sprung out of every living room and studio recently. Using mostly animal and human samples, mixing them with contrasting frequencies and arranging rhythmic tapestries with multisound strata, MiBa show us a jumble of memories and feelings, pulling out a few pages of their aural diaries and showing us the complete reversal of them. Their pollination results in a music that can't be immured by schemes - concrete? acousmatics? - and also has a mark of sincerity and freakish intoxication leaving me with jagged thoughts and a plurality of imaginary escapes from reality.

MIDWICH - Natural wastage (Evelyn)

This short (30 minutes) CD is one of the best Evelyn's releases, being a single "minimalist" track centred on a hold organ chord, surrounded by several variable shades coming from different kinds of electronic generators. Like most static compositions, "Natural wastage" is better enjoyed trying different listening positions and walking around the room so that sound refracts differently according to angles and head posture. The beautiful layering combinations will do the rest, gently lulling your suggestions and encouraging that torpor we all need every once in a while. This is music gifted with simple, effective beauty.

EMMANUEL MIEVILLE / ERIC CORDIER - Dispositif: Canal Saint-Martin (Xing Wu)

Many individuals are unable to properly listen. Dissecting noise until harmonic components are found and deployed, detecting a logic in what superficially amounts to sheer din, elaborating contrasting messages and different impulses until their core is reached. Sound artists Mieville and Cordier tend a helping hand to those who want to learn a bit about the process of active listening with this project, a real-time composition that took its form in 2005 at the Centre d’animation Jemmapes in Paris’ City Hall. Placing thirty microphones all over the place, which comprises various halls and offices plus “several floors of rehearsal rooms for dance, music, theatre”, the two comrades originated a sketchy yet efficient acousmatic piece interspersed with laptop-triggered “sonic objects” and movements from the surrounding life and activities, with emphasis on the urban landscape and a pretty evident human participation. To this, a few sounds captured in Normandy were also added. We hear people chatting, singing and whistling. In the background, a marching band or the wheezing currents of familiar hullabaloo filtered by a ventilation duct appear, rendering the whole as a flanged reproduction of the buzzing bustle of a large amount of beings whom we can’t distinguish singularly but all contribute to the final patchwork. The work is a valid example of what can be achieved through the exploitation of subjective approaches to perception and, although a tad predictable in some of its parts, deserves careful consideration.

SEI MIGUEL - The tone gardens (Creative Sources)

"The tone gardens" is a three-movement suite that materializes a peculiar kind of iconography, where rhythm and space are arranged irregularly but follow an inflexible logic. The link between unbrokenness and fragmentation is subtle, but the interest of the whole composition lies right there: Miguel's pocket trumpet courts Fala Mariam's inquisitive alto trombone - both instruments played muted and full-tone depending on the section - like in an intelligent chat between two neograduates during the final party at the university, each one trying to explain the reasons of their choices for the next future. This reciprocal succession of affirmations and questions evolves over a basically static surrounding environment - Cesar Burago's "dead radios" are a primary reason - that becomes progressively unquiet, thanks to Burago's excellent work on bio-percussion and, above all, to the involving textures generated by Rafael Toral, who uses different sources in each movement - computer sinewaves, portable amplifier feedback, modulated white noise system - to weave non-subliminal backgrounds and ear-catching bursts full of fascinating contradictions and misquotes, organically ephemeral but whose nutritional value for the ears is quite high. Miguel's scoring expertise shines brightly throughout the CD; he radically alters the coordinates of expectation by developing an architecture of clear figurations and roughly delineated shapes. This composition represents a landmark in his career and it must be scrutinized at least half a dozen times before getting an idea of the extent of its cleverness.

DAVOR MIKAN - Täuschung (Cronica)

Based in Vienna, Davor Mikan “creates music about failure, beauty, lust and delusion in the context of psychoacoustic effects and in a personal sense (self-delusion).” Translation: this is a 37-minute CD with 31 very short tracks, which the composer developed in the last four years. His procedures include algorithms, handmade music (meaning what?), generative graphic tools and granular synthesis. These descriptions give only a faint idea of how the record appears, although understanding is not difficult given the label we’re dealing with: “fragmentariness” is indeed the necessary password. There’s no chance to get used to something, because that something is not even there. Glimpses of ideas appear then crumble and break, disfigured by the studio treatment; sheer noise accompanies the subsequent disillusion. Milliseconds of silence, then a graceful looped melody sounds as if termites were munching its core. Flint-hearted noises and ultra-distorted rejects form bodies whose shape and colour is nevertheless accepted and, in a way, loved like an ugly sister. The canon is more or less the same throughout the duration of the disc, which is a realistic example of manipulation of sonic snippets that sounds good without being historic. Still, this is a stayer, made with extreme care and respect for the overall artistic concept, whatever that be.

MIKRONESIA - Iris or comfortable too (Gears Of Sand)

Mikronesia is the nom d’art of Michael McDermott. Piano has been his favourite instrument since, as a small child, he was sitting on his grandmother’s lap while she introduced him to the infinite world of the 88 keys. Yet, as life brought in its influence under the form of other involvements (namely playing with various bands and solo electronic music), the artist left the original object of interest alone for a long time. In 2007, though, McDermott decided to go back to the big box, exploiting its timbral properties to conceive a brand new composition mixing the best of two worlds (with a Harold Budd/Brian Eno inspiration, just for starters). Modifying the results with a laptop and an assortment of pedals, Mikronesia serves now an album that surely doesn’t sound neither “Eno” nor “Budd” and is indeed quite personal, this being the feature that made me focus on it a little bit longer than my usual average in these genres. Many of the sounds heard are kind of suffocated - like perceived with a pillow on our head as we desperately try to sleep, the neighbour’s daughter practicing her solfeggio exercises in the contiguous room - and, when in headphones, sometimes a distinct distortion creeps in. Not sure if it was meant to be there - we’re not talking Vangelis-like engineering here. But all those strange electro-deformations - reverse reverbs, glitches, broken waves and interrupted drones - amidst this general atmosphere of “ugly beauty” somehow work well, and in the right conditions and circumstances this is a CD that could introduce several nice revelatory moments. Give it a good test. “Amorphous ambient for discriminating minds”, anyone?

STEVE MILLER / LOL COXHILL - The story so far.../…Oh really? (Cuneiform)

There’s a revealing moment in the Steve Miller interview contained in this set’s booklet, as he explains the reasons of a lengthy withdrawal due to a profound dissatisfaction with his technique. “I was hearing music that I couldn’t play”, says the late pianist. This tells everything about Miller’s honesty, while also indicating what every artist should do when they feel that inspiration is not coming in the right way. Still, this double CD is another important item in Cuneiform’s history of relevant retrievals of forgotten materials and deleted releases, as it puts back in availability two long out of print collaborative LPs recorded by saxophonist Lol Coxhill and Miller in the early 70s, which remained practically covered with the sand of oblivion until now. As it often happens with reissues of obscure records, no master tapes were available; the copy on CD derives from a vinyl-to-disc transfer with various kinds of digital cleaning. Assuming that, since you’re reading this website, you know who Lol Coxhill and Steve Miller are (…and if that’s not the case, I can’t certainly narrate their careers in pills in the space of a review - surf the web!), the material comprised here owns that fascinating aura, halfway between nostalgia and youthful enthusiasm, characterizing most of the Canterbury-related expressions of that era. Besides the ingenuous purity of the duo improvisations, one can already catch glimpses of Coxhill’s future developments as a solo performer, Miller complementing his “absolutely free” explorations with phraseologies whose structure is evident - those technical habits that he came to hate, indeed. For collectors and avid fans, there are good portions of previously unreleased goodies, including live recordings (in glorious mono) and 20 minutes from the “proto-Hatfield and the North lineup of Delivery” (Miller and Coxhill plus Phil Miller, Pip Pyle, Richard Sinclair and Roy Babbington). Those who are into this stuff will enjoy this one a lot, treating the lo-fi quality and the frequent naïveté as archival manna.

MIMEO - Sight (Cathnor) 

A one-hour composition, the result of Marcus Schmickler's synchronized juxtaposition of eleven one-hour CDRs containing about five minutes of sounds - place, source and method unknown to each participant - according to a "rule" inspired by painter Cy Twombly's occasional choice of blindfolding himself while creating; "Sight" is also a pun referring both to this occurrence and Twombly's name. In this occasion, MIMEO were Gert-Jan Prins, Thomas Lehn, Kaffe Matthews, Peter Rehberg, Jérôme Noetinger, Marcus Schmickler, Christian Fennesz, Phil Durrant, Rafael Toral, Cor Fuhler and Keith Rowe. Let's just put aside the most obvious approach - the "where is Rowe, where is Toral, where is Fennesz" one - because "Sight" finds its relevance in one thing only, and that's SILENCE. What breaks silence is a signal of presence, a "being there", a "still alive" factor that makes sure that the music still has a pulse, and we too. It's neither important hearing electronics on a regular basis, nor realizing about a stick placed amidst the guitar strings causing a bouncy jangle. We won't have our life changed by farting analog waves, distorted shortwave outbursts and - by now omnipresent - fixed hiss. If I restricted myself to determine and judge those components, I could easily place "Sight" in the number of excellent EAI albums that I experience daily, declare it as another of reductionism's last stands and come home dry. No, the most important aspect of "Sight" is the relationship between what's in the record, what's outside the record and silence. If a sibilant mixer, an overdriven radio and a synthetic oscillation come together, fine - but we've heard hundreds of more or less similar concepts. But if a rumbling drone and a remote hollow bell happen to meet amidst an overwhelming silence and - being extremely lucky - an airplane moans in the faraway skies in the meantime, something serious moves within the receiver of that combination. Chances, indeed. Let's not delude ourselves, then: the average record collector will probably be unable to penetrate the essence of such a release (to be honest, I think the same for most everything nearing these territories) because very rarely given the possibility of listening as it always should be. In silence. Something that's becoming scarcer than water. Cy Twombly may have wanted to experience blindness while painting, but I wonder if people will ever try subjecting themselves to muteness, being them "artists" or not. I don't think it will happen anytime soon. Still, there's an awful lot of dumb music around already.

MIMIR - Mimir (Streamline) / Mimyriad (Streamline)

A god of wisdom from the Old Norse mythology, Mimir (pronounced with the accent on the first “i”) is also a multifaceted artistic project that rarely I have been able to literally delineate and/or classify, such is the impenetrability that welcomes the approaching listener behind only apparently easy ways of access. Then again, it’s difficult not to remain puzzled when a talented visionary such as Christoph Heemann is involved - HNAS to Mirror and In Camera is a long, long path indeed - and this gathering of individualist geniuses (founded by Heemann together with Legendary Pink Dots’ Edward Ka-Spel) is the exact type of object that slips away like wet soap when trying to stick a label on it. Luckily, the two earlier releases by this collective - which includes Elke Ka-Spel, Andreas Martin, Phil Knight (aka Silverman) and Jim O’Rourke besides the originators - are now obtainable on a larger scale after having been (un)available on scarcely diffused vinyls and CDs in the past.

Although points of continuity between the albums do exist, they’re as diverse as brothers from a different wedlock. “Mimir”, originally a double LP on Flabbergast, mixes echoes of psychedelia, Krautrock, and shapeless disjointed trance with repetitive guitar patterns that could link it to a kind of “progressive minimalism” typical of certain settings from the 70s. It also features parts that one should ideally sentence as Pink Floyd or Popol Vuh-influenced, but what would you say if Klaus Kinski brought out his (six-stringed) axe instead of acting as a proper Aguirre, and started arpeggio elegies with a filtered melting background of keyboards, flutes and strings? There’s a sublime section during the longest track, where superimposed monk-styled voices raise thick clouds of ancient doubt in a foaming density of significance that goes much beyond the mere concept of a “recording”. This could very well be the symbol of an album that remains a gorgeous unsolved mystery, now like 17 years ago. The distant pianistic unhappiness that ends the first movement, or the pre-Mirror glissando washes at the beginning of the third, are alone worthy of the whole set.

“Mimyriad”, rather shorter at about 38 minutes, preserves the semi-acoustic factors - guitars are much in evidence throughout - and the general unpredictability of these artist’s concepts, sounding a little more “folkish” to these ears (it’s a compliment, mind you) despite the presence of elements that certainly wouldn’t apply to Pentangle. Again, we sniff a vaguely circumstanced Syd Barrett guidance yet it must be noted that, all over both discs, there’s not a minute of music that sounds photocopied from someone else’s. The beauty and, at the same time, the problem of Mimir’s expression for many people is precisely this refusal of pigeonholes. Synthetic rollercoaster hand in hand with looped tapes, fairly unrecognizable derivations constituting the tissue of altered states whose aural character appealed, and will probably appeal, more to fans of realities nearing, say, Nurse With Wound than static music aficionados.

All in all, these are important pieces of stateless musical culture; weighing the merits of their relevance - not to mention their unquiet attractiveness - would mean killing the chance of letting them penetrate our life, which would be a shame. Still, if just single shots were allowed, the first album is unsurpassable.

MINAMO - A herdman's life (Esquilo)

Compared to the usual canons of this Portuguese label, a little different music comes from Minamo, a Japanese quartet comprising Keiichi Sugimoto (guitar, computer), Yuichiro Iwashita (acoustic guitar), Namiko Sasamoto (keyboard, saxophone) and Tetsuro Yasunaga (electronics, small drums, harmonium). In about 26 minutes, "A herdman's life" presents various facets of a half-bucolic, half-electronic quietness which uses the acoustic features of the instruments and drenches them in pretty digestible settings, meditative digressions moving at a regular pace. Sparse percussive backgrounds and simple piano/guitar chords suggest pictures of latent sleepy non-concentration, like if Minamo just wanted to enjoy the morning light during a walk through the country; as a matter of fact, there's even one section in which cowbells become the basic rhythmic device. It's a strangely conceived kind of music, pretty "normal" yet not obvious in any way; its presence is felt as welcome, but probably you won't remember its complexion after less than 24 hours. But, quite often, it's better that way.

MINIMAL SELF - Formula of reversal (Wavetrap)

John Everall, AKA Minimal Self, sampled and radically transformed his own speech to create "Formula of reversal" and there is absolutely nothing here that could make you think about vocal sounds: minimal patterns, noisy oscillations and irregularly percussive electronic fragments are built in a music that won't take too long before finding a spot in your brain and decide for itself about the psychological effects it may have. No easy escapes or tepid vapors, it's more like taking a bath in mucilaginous waters, where even the force of tense muscles can't get you free of a general sense of being uncomfortably sticking to something you don't even want to think about. These sounds constitute an immixible composite you have to accept just like it is; impassibly repeating themselves all over the record, sensations remain firmly planted and impossible to treat with indifference. Human voice can take you so far.

PHIL MINTON - No doughnuts in hand (Emanem)

This is a classic case of “I don't know what to say”. Probably we should start by writing something along the lines of “WWF must protect PM”. I believe that any career mention or methodological depiction is by now futile when analyzing this gentleman’s output. Minton is 68 this year, but the spirit animating these improvisations is invigorating for just anyone who has a heart (Bacharach pun intended). His portrayal of hysteric wives, strangled ducks, interference-scarred radio speakers, multi-voice drunkards is as unique as the bumbling, uncoordinated stutter of a baby trying to emit the first utterances. This is not the place to write of the “mechanical aspects” in free improvisation; this has to do with phenomena telling apart someone who’s really, truly special from the masses of wannabes populating the music world. Oh, right - what about the CD, you ask. 37 petite pieces to be guzzled like chips, one after another, for circa 51 minutes of entertainment, absolutely exhilarating, outrageously multifarious in their flight-of-fancy purity. Countless characters, virtuoso effervescence, well-dressed rage, cutting intelligence. Everything contained by a little disc, yet I'm in literal awe when thinking to the baggage of skill and quantity of discernment that can be enclosed by a single brain. A listening experience that brings back the joy of living, and the will to have a good laugh. A forgotten urge, nowadays, in the lands of intellectually contorted idiots who “study” for decades only to be found speaking to themselves in the street at the end, having miserably failed every shot at intelligent action. Phil Minton, we owe you.

PHIL MINTON / ROGER TURNER - Drainage (Emanem)

This duo is more about arguing than exchanging opinions, but - mind you - it's absolutely not a misalliance, as Minton and Turner channel their constantly renewing energies to an audience of enthusiasts applauding crazily at the end of every set, in admiration of their unrepentant "anti-everything" heroes. How right they are: while Roger's array of percussion and found objects is exploited to the very bone, his timbral research and manual dexterity fills the two discs without having our ears replete, tenaciously gripping a strong hold over the unpredictability of Minton's great expressiveness. Phil is incredible as never before, hardly comparable to anyone I can think about. A pot-pourri of trombone, Tuva singing, alley cats meowing and battling each other, a couple having an argument screaming from one room to another, lung illness used as a sound source, a harmonizer/pitch transposer having its last moments before the battery fails. To paraphrase Zappa: "The present day improvisers not only refuse to die...They'll gladly kill YOU!"

PHIL MINTON QUARTET - Slur (Emanem)

Perhaps it might sound strange, but when "Almost there" - first track of the CD - began to introduce this jamboree of like-minded bastard virtuosos, the first term that came to my mind was "restriction", given their total control of the dynamic processes of the piece. But this is a quartet whose components' names would scare any superficial listener: Phil Minton (voice), John Butcher (soprano and tenor saxes), Veryan Weston (piano) and Roger Turner (percussion). Politeness is out of the question. We could associate this material to the image of someone trying to follow the fickle directions of a fly to swat it away, pursing lips, sweating because of nerves and heat, only to finally splatter the insect on the white wall with a grin. "Lower down" juxtaposes Minton's polymorphous guttural emissions and contorted wailing with a splendid crossword between Weston and Butcher, who play convulsive staccatos and inhuman counterpoints in the most natural manner. In "Higher", scintillating beams come from Turner as breaking-through admonitions not to forget the squealing element, Minton singing a deviated requiem in the meantime, while "A bit more" ranges from conversations between a Tuvan expatriate and a sociopathic chamber combo to additional idiosyncratic cultivations of fantasy, with a great Butcher on the tenor responding to the vocalist's duckish spurts. "Far off" is characterized by the saxophonist's dexterity in alternating saliva-fueled silent waves and multiphonic jams, Weston and Turner sustaining Minton at his most "hysterically restrained" level of absurd bravura. "Closer" looks for the rupture of conventional interplay by running amok between silence, full-steam crescendos and choked disarticulations by the ever-incredible Minton (if he's not a damn genius, you tell me who the hell is one). "Back" is an obscure, crawling chant where Turner accompanies hums, wheezes and sparse piano notes with a sinister creaking background before Minton decides that his overtones must compete with bats and mice's, the quartet fusing in a grand finale that recalls the disjointed voices and sounds heard when surfing through AM radio at late night, until the conclusive mini-mayhem. "Length" is a (not less interesting) short post scriptum that seals another Emanem must, a high-caliber release that gives the word "improvisation" its due lustre.

PHIL MINTON / YAGIHASHI TSUKASA / SATO YUKIE / HIGO HIROSHI - Nippara-Tokyo (Austin)

I happen to believe that three quarters of an hour or just less is the perfect duration for an album, as in the majority of our beloved old vinyl LPs. When the music is good, that’s the icing on the cake: a not-too-long program usually invites to repeated pleasures. That, one suspects, will occur with this fine CD, which Minton and all of his big band of vocal characters recorded in March 2004 in Japan together with Tsukasa (alto sax), Yukie (electric guitar) and Hiroshi (electric bass). Six improvisations, from little more than two minutes to about thirteen in length, running the whole gamut of dynamics with a certain degree of preference to situations that start very calmly, at times “quasi pianissimo”, then gradually lose composure and - in large part thanks to the Englishman’s absurd guttural and esophageal prowess - become a parade of tempers, outbursts and stomach-derived moods, with the participation of various kinds of walruses and other assorted entities. Still, don’t mark this as a “Phil Minton with accompaniment” kind of release: the sounds generated by the Japanese partnership possess a harmonic significance that appears even more noteworthy in those moments where everything stands ready to descend into mayhem. But it never does, almost like if the skeletal instrumental presences of Hiroshi and Yukie, intertwining with Tsukasa’s flurries and Minton’s carnival of blather, drew a frame of sorts to an otherwise too anarchic design. This balance of opposing contrasts is the winning card of a record which is - needless for me to say but I’m doing it anyway - unconditionally guaranteed against any irksomeness.

MIRAGE - Now you see it… (Vocalion)

For starters, let me thank Brian Godding for having introduced this listener to the world of forgotten gems that Vocalion symbolizes by sending the releases by this label reviewed here to date. That said, the left-handed slinger is one of the protagonists of this earnest album, originally released in 1977 by Mirage, a band formed by himself on guitar (acoustic, electric and tenor) plus George Khan (tenor, alto & soprano saxes, flute), Steve Cook (basses) and Dave Sheen (drums & percussion). The project developed around the Godding/Khan duo when they were together in Zagunga! (a “co-operative group of musicians and performing artists”, as per the liners’ description), the guitarist also a member of Mike Westbrook’s Solid Gold Cadillac band at the same time. “Now you see it…” was recorded in a converted pig farm who used to belong to Yes’ singer Jon Anderson, exploiting the then impressive capabilities of a 24-track system. Mirage were invited to use the studio by their friend engineer Mike Dunne while he was assembling it, therefore feeling delivered from economy-related pressures. The record reflects both this and the classic sense of creative freedom typical of the 70s - which, in case you didn’t realize, are thought as the last fertile decade as far as true artistic progress is concerned from this angle. This could be called jazz-rock for many aspects but indeed it’s just good music, a mixture of right attitude, sweaty virtuosity and elegant roughness. The playing is sturdy from all the participants, the Godding-penned tracks “Time less words” and “Underneath the arches and beyond” being personal favourites (consider my admitted partiality towards the man: I still believe that his “Slaughter on Shaftesbury Avenue” is an example of underappreciated desert island disc). Two long live outtakes, also featuring Geoff Castle (keyboards) and John Mitchell (percussion) constitute a nice addition to the original LP sequence. Great quality, no more blathering needed. Make it yours.

MIRIODOR – Parade + Live at Nearfest (Cuneiform)

Hazardous scores, plainspoken technical command and an effective sense of humour are three of the many great riches of this collective from Quebec, active since the eighties and now back with a vengeance. "Parade" is their most recent studio effort, showing their compositional attitude as sharp-cutting as never before; a cross of puzzling instrumental dexterity and inquisitive curiosity gives birth to sixteen tracks which easily find their place in the best avant-progressive music I've heard in the new millennium - and that includes sacred cows, supergroups and post R.I.O. incarnations I won't name here. Lars Hollmer - a hero of mine - joins the band in three pieces, of which "Bonsai givré" is maybe the top of the whole package with its thematic twists and savoury components; indeed, all the pieces contribute to place Miriodor among the greats of the last two decades. The second CD "Live at Nearfest" is the document of a 2002 concert in Trenton, New Jersey where the typical atonal minimalism and multi-angle perspectives of these exquisite players is once again fiendishly alluring, as the difficulties of the respective parts doesn't affect their ability at all; the audience reacts enthusiastically - so do I. Truly one of the Cuneiform classics, trust me.

MIRROR - Eye of the storm (Streamline)

I am happy to see Mirror's rare vinyl albums beginning to be reissued on CD, for I think that's the perfect medium to enjoy their fantastic long-droning compositions. "Eye of the storm" is the very first release of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann working together and, needless to say, it's an enormous bridge towards a new way of listening to the one and only "inner vibe". A perfect cocktail of low frequencies, gong-like percussion, found sounds and environmental presences that elevate the spirit, causing the heartbeat to shift gears to a slower pace: I just forget what's going on around the place, while I remain staring to a fixed spot. The perfect compliment to Mirror's music is that its complex deep aura transforms even the most fervent anti-mystic, like yours truly, in a believer to a superior scheme of things.

MIRROR - Front row centre (Die Stadt)

This was released in 2000 and I do think it's one of the most wonderful records that I've ever heard. Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk gave life to a slowly burning candle of immobile harmony, comparable to the best of Roland Kayn, Klaus Wiese, Phill Niblock, Michael J. Schumacher - you get the picture. The key word is once again "static", the unrecognizable sources slowly building momentum without violence, generating ghosts of notes that are heard but haven't actually been played. The music reaches a climax then abruptly goes back to a pregnant quiet, and more than once. But no hollow words of mine can explain what I define a celestial harmony. Peculiar phenomena occur during the listening: I went to my window once, to look for a motor airplane in the sky, and found out that the roar was coming from the record. An absolutely indispensable album, like all Mirror's outings; it makes me resonate with emotion each time I give it a spin. Limited vinyl edition, worth of any price. POST SCRIPTUM, APRIL 2007. Feeling that "Front row centre" deserved a much deeper analysis, I wrote a feature about the record in Paris Transatlantic several years after this (later updated) 2001 review. Check it out.

MIRROR - Islands (Die Stadt)

A double vinyl album, plus a seven inch (in the limited edition only). Six parts of absolutely unrecognizable guitars, played by Christoph Heemann, Andrew Chalk and Andreas Martin live in Austin, Texas. Nebulous, grey and hypnotic material; static droning with rare notes appearing to "disturb" your favourite dream. Each side of the album gets suddenly interrupted, to start again in the next part and lull you - once again - in the amniotic liquid of this great sound. Mirror get better with each release and I can't sufficiently tell how much we need projects like this to keep hoping in something different from the things you watch on television every day. Mirror's records are rays of pure beauty that move the inner depths of my feelings when I listen to them. You must get them all. I really mean it.

MIRROR - Die Spiegelmanufaktur (Die Stadt)

This release by Mirror, previously out on a limited vinyl edition, adds the prestigious presence of Jim O'Rourke to the abitual work of the Heemann/Chalk duo. The CD version contains a splendid new 17-minute track that was absent in the LP; the overall sound quality is absolutely better and brings this music to even higher levels than before. Though the static soundscapes typical of this project are more or less the same we all know (and if you don't, be damned!) "Der Spiegelmanufaktur" is a little more "gently noisy" than usual; it almost reminded me of Organum in some instances, particularly in the very first minutes. Mirror are not new to these explorations anyway, and they know what they're doing; then, their famous droning charm starts and caresses the mind like nothing else, making us forget everything we did during the day until that moment. The new track, beginning and ending with a fixed chord of something like a harmonium or hurdy-gurdy with an aurora borealis of electric reverbs, is alone worth the purchase.

MIRROR - Solaris (Idea Records)

This is quite particular, as - maybe for the first time in Mirror's history - there is practically no droning in the 41 minutes of the recording. "Solaris" is a silent, sparse landscape made of strange detuned piano notes, small percussive touches, long absences and natural reverberations. The cover presents Chalk and Heemann walking in the countryside, completely alone: this photo gives a good idea of what this music is. It's Mirror in their spirit, though not via the usual sounds you're accustomed to; their depth and sensitive humanity is just as strong and, at one and the same time, beautifully frail as always.

MIRROR - Nights (Three Poplars)

Previously issued in an ultra-limited CD edition, "Nights" is just as positively warming as you can imagine; it only has one defect: it's too short at about 37 minutes! The first side (yes, this was reissued in vinyl...) presents a sad, grey morning music coming from a forgotten pond; not as static as Mirror have grown us used to, but with a slow piano melody repeating itself, bathed in ambient effects and wrapped in nebulous low frequencies. If Brian Eno listens to this, he'll be back trying to write something serious again. The second part is - once more - astounding in its complex delicacy, being based on strings running after themselves, in a series of chords not far from Christoph Heemann's solo works like "Aftersolstice" or "Days of the Eclipse". All of these explorations are masterpieces of contemporary music and I strongly confirm Mirror - and Heemann, yes - among my favourite artistic entities in these years of blank hearts and brains.

MIRROR - Into the wood (Three Poplars)

I really can't find a comparison with anything else when listening to Mirror. From 1999 until now, Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann have released one masterpiece after another, be it in vinyl or CD, always looking for that "something" existing between music, silence and natural surroundings. This last effort by the duo is sort of a summary of Mirror's main temperaments; the record mixes classic slow droning, trembling chordal subterranean painting, airplane engines used like a touch of colour, ambient sounds, abandoned piano keyboard pluckings, rusty metals and strings screeching (but harmonically sublime). I don't feel the passing of time when Mirror are spinning in my player, they just fantastically blend with the place, accompanying my life's most thoughtful segments, reminding us that there's always a good reason to be completely silent and absorbing. This is the best musical experience I've met in years: intelligent, sensitive and positively communicating, all this resulting in an exciting wait for each of their releases.

MIRROR - A pilgrim's solace (Three Poplars)

Being an extremely limited edition and clocking at about 32 minutes, this artefact by Chalk and Heemann is a trembling candle light, an uncertain look to a dubious future. Contrarily to most of their records, where Mirror sooner or later take out their "big chord" after a while, "A pilgrim's solace" is all built around a single static cluster, a never resolving timbral group made of strings, metals and vibrating parts, giving very few clues to find a way out of our hypnotic trance. It's music permeated with the usual sense of depth, a distinct sound that separates Mirror from any other self-defined "shaman" in the current "isolationist" area; any release by this duo is a marvel, a storm of thoughts, a movement at the bottom of your consciousness. The customary beautiful hand-made cover contributes to another piece of art.

MIRROR - Live in Bern (Three Poplars)

Somehow Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann are always up to the task of giving me lots of emotional chilling. "Live in Bern" is centred upon major Mirror features: the distant drone, the slow tolling of bowls and metals, the out of tune piano notes. Everything comes and goes away before you can impress anything in your memory as one's left with just a nebulous remembering working for the best. Mirror occupy the forgotten corners of life, puzzlers of a few brains, soothers of a thousand souls in search of an unprobable calming. Like two sonic geologists, Christoph and Andrew's observations are always right on target: without an ounce of idyllic fakement, they importunate those bad presences each one of us absorbs daily, to the point of pushing them away. What's left is an unrealistic, caressing, scary in a way, silent imposition of an invisible force: that very element keeping man aware of himself, if only he decided life is much more than a chain of humiliating compromises.

MIRROR - Under the sun (Three Poplars)

Maybe the best thing should be writing the record's title, then leaving a blank space to be filled with your own sensation. Reviewing Heemann and Chalk's magnificent albums is getting difficult without repeating, a task made worse by the extreme continuity of high-level emotional contents of their work. "Under the sun"'s two sides are similar in their basic structure, beginning with environmental recordings that are pretty near to Darren Tate/Monos territories (the distant cars are always welcome for my own taste) later leaving room to familiar, ever changing subtle superimpositions of notes and harmonics forming a multiform plasma of slightly dissonant stability. The effect on my psyche is, as always, staggering and there's more than a few moments where this album almost reaches the deep visions of "Front row centre", their absolute top.

MIRROR - Shadows (Three Poplars)

I can see the reason why I already saw an autographed copy of this CD at about 180 USD in an online auction. Firstly, the beauty of Mirror's creative flux speaks for itself; then again, each work is so unique (and in this case limited to 40 copies or so...) and lavishly packaged that it instantly becomes art of the highest calibre. This particular album opens with new mysterious vistas over the expiratory prowess of Chalk and Heemann, here in quartet with Vikki Jackman and Timo Van Luijk. Everything is generated by an unstable group of deep clusters, whose unsubstantiality is as good-looking as a celestial creature with a masked face. Slowly as usual, the music collects itself in junctures that cross drones, stringed-instrument-multi-chordal waves, static black holes, oscillations of ruins from unreachable galaxies and field recordings, mostly beautiful bird chants. The ruffled waters of this hypercharged mass of choirs from the centre of the earth conjoin and fragment into multiform rituals and unemphatic prophecies, radically changing our perceptions' direction until finding a new way of listening to our conscience, without feeling delivered from our uselessness anyway. I really feel sorry for the ones who missed the Mirror bus.

MIRROR - Places of light (Three Poplars)

After several excursions into more abstract realms, via environmental recordings and a pronounced utilization of electronics, "Places of light" is a swift return by Mirror to their absolutely best music (which is difficult to decide, since everything they release is some kind of "best") namely the kind of sacred stasis characterizing their earliest records. Sounds are born from the abandon of any kind of movement and word; infinite sustained harmonies hold their own against the evil attacks of a melodic impulse that would love to put some fingerprints on the translucent glass that Chalk and Heemann have fabricated right in front of our eyes. This filter shelters us from an excess of exposure to the light, creating a series of shadowy corners where the psyche stays, anxious to get out yet still too afraid to know what is expecting it outside. Time passes slowly but inexorably during these haunting suspensions; massaging our imagination and developing the best aspects of our inner comprehension, Mirror manage to transform the pain of another senseless day into the kind of concentrated serenity we all need to avoid giving up to the material desires of ill-minded entities.

MIRROR - Viking burial for a French car (Plinkity Plonk)

One of the most atypical Mirror releases, this beautifully ethereal composition is also among the best works by Heemann and Chalk, here with the help of David Keenan, Gavin Laird and Alex Neilson during live segments recorded in Scotland in 2003. After a long silent introduction, a gaseous matter formed by superimposed loops and sparse, distant clatterings by percussives and guitar establishes its presence to stay throughout the piece, its pleasing malady spreading all over the place in a deep-laid plan to take over our consciousness. The flutey chimes of these repeating circles assume an appearance of tranquil demeanour at first, but slowly and incessantly transport their recipients in a semi-controlled state of proportionate magnification of the deeper self, something that Mirror lovers know extremely well by now. This is not territory for ombrophobous creatures, but the luminescence of this infrasonic revelation constitutes another message that's there to be comprehended.

MIRROR - Still valley (Die Stadt)

Following a tradition typical of many Die Stadt albums, the CD release of "Still valley" comes - with additional bonus material - after a first vinyl version. The music of Heemann, Chalk and O'Rourke reaches for the highest spheres of spiritual trance, being based on the cyclical layering of rotating sounds - presumably generated by synthesized waves and processed metals and strings plus other undecipherable sources - that move forwards and backwards in slow circles. The soothing effect of the three movements is astonishing: delicate mysteries and swelling hypnotic dances unfold before our very ears, measuring our heartbeat, calming down the flux of thoughts, finally preparing our essence to the acceptance of silence as delivery from pain. The beauty of these lullabies for the psyche makes even harder thinking that this marvellous team of artists does not exist anymore. We must treasure our rare LPs, yet the hope of a CD reissue of Mirror's whole discography still burns.

MI3 - Free advice (Clean Feed)

Mi3 are Pandelis Karayorgis (piano), Nate McBride (bass) and Curt Newton (drums). A trio that works on a multitude of levels, with an evident influence: Thelonious Monk, despite the absence of Monk pieces in this album (instead, Duke Ellington and Sun Ra tunes are featured). The M-factor is especially explicit in the leader’s style, which privileges frequent tangential runs and semi-flourished chords in which minor second intervals are dropped like obvious consonances. But it’s not all there: Karayorgis is also very adept in polyrhythms, the composed meters that he displays throughout “Case in point” constituting a great example of fresh virtuosity over a freely swinging, liberal rhythm section. Speaking of which, McBride confirms himself as one of the most interesting bassists around, his timbre at once marauding and tradition-rooted, the interpretation always perfectly on cue with what the screenwriting of an improvisation calls for. On the opposite side, Newton is the third of a perfect pair, in that his fragmented percussive curiosity indemnifies those - such as this listener - whose capacity of bearing jazz’s “codified freedom” has sunk to an all-time low. This music is not literally unpredictable, mind you; yet the drift-anchor elements that it contains are more welcome than undesirable, providing a few points that, once linked, define an already well-developed sketch. A large-minded method of approaching one’s past while keeping both eyes on the future.

KIYOSHI MIZUTANI / DANIEL MENCHE - Song of Jike (Niko)

The second chapter in this gorgeous kinship between Mizutani and Menche is articulated in three different versions of their common vision. The quiet ambience of a country village characterizes the first part; Mizutani’s field recordings - water, birds, people chatting and working - alternate with the appearance of long darkish sounds created by Menche through instruments and an "antique phonograph player", in an enchanting alignment of musique concrete and mystery. The second section is a more intense disposition of treated voices (both animal and human) and monstrous rumbles and hisses, gaining momentum minute by minute without hastening the respiratory functions of our perceptive systems. Mizutani's bucolic soundscapes return in the final segment, bringing back limpid weather and acoustic linearity just slightly disturbed by additional reworking of source material. Two precious men ploughing our gradual detachment from cheap obsessions, two fantastic sonic visionaries unjustly neglected.

MJANE - Prayers from the underbelly (Pax Recordings)

This piece's concept builds upon a close encounter with death during a birth, something that was experienced by Molly Jane Sturges, composer/improviser of these prayers along with mJane members DJ Ultraviolet (turntables) CK Barlow (sampling) Moustapha Stephan Dill (oud) Jefferson Voorhees (percussion) plus the additional voice of Julie West. We're often into Diamanda Galas/Meredith Monk territories as far as sonority and influences are concerned; suffering voices and lulling lamentations dance with harmoniums and electronics, while the oud gives a touch of spicy poetry whenever entering the frame. Every once in a while the musicians take off in ritual flights where the rhythmical scansion nears the listener to a native indian kind of invocation. "Edie" is maybe the best part: a highly engrossing mantra whose hypnotic charm is broken only by the oud/voice final beauty which is "She"; but there are many beguiling moments in this exquisite act of remembrance.

MLHEST - Another cross to bear (The Locus of Assemblage)

In a word, Mlehst is good. This is music with a mixture of influences carefully fused into one distinct trait, roughly undetermined yet often impeccably hurting, present and concrete but also with nice home-made evanescence. There's no mention of the sound sources, though I'd swear there are guitars and radio waves somewhere - but I could be wrong. Violent feedback studies and pastiches of singing birds and taped human voices are followed by static layers of electric white light and Kayn-like electroacoustic molasses; everything sounds right to these ears and it's always fine discovering - even with years of delay - intelligent soundscapers carefully hidden somewhere, trafficking with interesting combinations.

MNORTHAM - Memoirs of four discarded objects (Edition)

Like many other people working on sound physics and installations, Mnortham's sense of event documentation is enriched by the intrinsic musicality of many of his chosen sources. Adjusting levels, intensities and irregularities up to the point of a complex space reconfiguration, the man behind these "memoirs" gets metals, waters, thunders and various spare parts of everyday's activities to intimately cohabit an imaginary world where mangled dreams and faint gutters benefit by that ample non-structural interconnection of textures that fits right between unconscious and self-guard. If you have an inclination towards emotionally charged electroacoustic wonders, this excellent music envisages a very bright future for the ones still believing in the centralization of mind power via different species of auditive perception.

MNORTHAM - Automnal 2003 (And/OAR)

Constantly working on the borders between nature and unconscious, Michael Northam is one of those artists who is almost impossible not to appreciate. "Automnal 2003" consists of three long haunting tracks that, according to the composer, are "taken from three moments/locations" during the "re-collection of my life dispersed across North America and Europe" (Northam relocated 13 times between 2001 and 2003; and I thought that my own four moves in five years were a sort of record...). The album is full of magnificently sounding faint luminescences, carriers of barely defined frequencies which contribute to a state of perturbed serenity. Pseudo-aquatic emissions and environmental subtleties mesh with what sounds like misshapen aural documentaries of life in a termitarium; ghostly undulations and uncatchable harmonic constellations put your head into their huge, yet impalpable hands to caress it until acceptance becomes mandatory. At the end of the first movement I seemed to perceive joyously tolling bells, filtered and processed to sound like they were underwater, but maybe it was just an acoustic mirage. Yet, I felt such a warmth in my heart at that very moment that I wished it would never stop.

GUIDO MÖBIUS - Dishoek (Dekorder)

If you're looking for little more than half a hour of pleasing distraction from the heaviness of too many difficult listenings, "Dishoek" could do well. Extremely linear in its basic structures, Möbius' music comes forward without stretching the nerves; most tracks start from fragile melodies played by real instruments - kudos to Bettina Weber, whose violin graces many moments including the record's best, "Zwölf" - which follow trajectories remaining within the borders of a slightly perturbed consonance identifying an accomplished "easy minimalism". These nine miniatures never overstay their welcome, indicating useful traces to the listeners since the very beginning, maintaining a serene limpidness which remains consistently enjoyable until the very end. This delicate approach works much better than a frigid laptop galaxy of purrs and clicks - Guido knows best.

MOE!KESTRA! - Two forms of multitudes: conducted improvisations (DKM/Pax/Edgetone)

This is an orchestral "semi-improvisation" led by Moe! Staiano, a percussionist and composer based in California. Being active in an already ebullient area as far as free music is concerned, Staiano mostly works with large ensembles, alternating anarchy and sets of rules with the scope of finding the perfect combination of both worlds. This way of making music guarantees both some kind of elastic scheme and unexpected results, as this CD demonstrates: two long pieces where Moe!'s conduction has the musicians breaking through difficult intersections, percussive/metallic clangors and clustery harmonies, leaving the listener with a sense of desire for further developments as sounds fly around potently without caring too much about "elegance", each instrument carrying a blood-red force. Certainly not easy to grasp at first listen, Moe! Staiano's concepts will be better enjoyed by people with affinity to Elliott Sharp's Carbon and improvising large settings in general.

MOGAMI - Mogami (Public Eyesore)

I love when an unexpected good CD comes in my hands; Public Eyesore often provides several of these finds. Jeff Arnal and Ryan Smith work with amplified percussion and computer to produce interesting and intelligent electroacoustic turbulences that are neither pretentiously snotty nor ear-disturbing - quite the opposite. Mogami show a certain degree of love for sound inquisition, developing a conspiracy of new timbres against the murky hollowness of academia; theirs is a world of acute integrity where sardonic looks and perilous discoveries are often more than casual appearances. In tracks like "Spiral scan", Jeff and Ryan launch their attack to "regular" computer music, obtaining fresh stimuli and good-natured resonances; their most hypnotic work is perfectly opposed to cascades of metallic sparkling and rumbling from unknown holes, like in the grand finale "Minor rotation".

MOLJEBKA PVLSE - Driftsond (Gears Of Sand)

Mathias Josefson, this time you got me: “Driftsond” is one of the best drone-based albums of the last five years. I had already received a couple of Moljebka Pvlse’s earlier records from other labels in the past but, despite Josefson’s appreciable effort to create something worthy to be remembered, I never managed to bring myself to like them completely, for various reasons. No such problem here; the four movements, named “Chinshu”, Shunryu”, “Genjo” and “Junpo” for a total of circa 55 minutes of engaging disturbed quietness, constitute - at least for this reviewer - the first occasion in which this Swedish sound artist captured the true kernel of this kind of music. Subtraction, restraint, absence rather than presence, unrecognizable sources - you name it. Here’s the secret: to concoct a good drone piece, leave the pseudo-spiritual/esoteric factor out of the door or, better still, your life. The “holier-than-thou” approach that brings button-pushers to add layers upon layers of indigestible ceremonials wetted by field recording-based dilettantism is indeed what kills the very stuff, even when it starts interestingly enough. How many singing nuns amidst moaning synthesizers can we tolerate again? When will cisterns, glaciers and deserts finally swallow the Johnnies-come-lately? Is anybody ever going to be found virtually strangled by a Lexicon loop? What is really needed is an attentive ear, an impregnable mind, the perfect balance between the physical functions; otherwise, it’s impossible to detect the instants in which “that” oscillation or “that” frequency juxtaposition deliver the magic. A solid technical preparation helps, too. Ignorant about harmonics? Then it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to use them, though someone has the luck of casually striking a few dashes of nicely sounding shit. But shit it does remain. To end this digression, and back to “Driftsond”, there’s no hesitation on my behalf in inviting the genre’s fans to get a copy of this disc pronto, hoping that future researches linked to the Moljebka Pvlse project forward this kind of outcome also in upcoming releases.

RAVISH MOMIN'S TRIO TARANA - Miren (A longing) (Clean Feed)

Drummer, percussionist and composer Ravish Momin, violinist Sam Bardfeld and oud player Brandon Terzic (with the addition of violist Tanya Kalmanovitch in "Fiza") function together like breathing in "Miren", a word that means "a deeply-felt sadness resulting from a longing for closure on something from the past" and a record that looks straight in the eye of a future hypothetical globalization of languages in music. Momin works on the pacific coexistence of uncommon patterns and pseudo-ancestral themes, mostly composed by him, with a couple of exceptions (a rearranged traditional tune and a Terzic solo). He creates exquisite combinations of polyrhythmic motion over which Bardfeld's phrasing moves with inspired pan-cultural expertise - one immediately thinks about the best Shankar, but I detect more substance here - which brings him to scumble the edges of the brightest tonalities to adapt his voice to a context where the collective gravity is stronger than any tendency to soliloquy. This notwithstanding, Terzic's brisk soloing likes to venture outside the lines, trying to apply a borderline improvisational fantasy that pushes the playing to a wider dissonance gap; yet, when he returns "into" the ensemble his contrapuntal acumen matches Momin's odd metres with ease. The leader's mix of influences - he studied North Indian classical music besides being a student with Andrew Cyrille and Bob Moses - aims to a very difficult target (that's right, "fusion", and I don't mean Yellowjackets or UZEB). Let it be declared that, with "Miren", many of the potential preys were actually put in the bag. Ain't "What reward?", fifth track of the CD, a blues after all? Sure it is, but you could also charm a snake with that one.

GORDON MONAHAN - Theremin in the rain (C3R)

You don’t know how much I like record covers that, like this one, synthesize the release’s content in a couple of lines. “Recordings from a theremin controlled sound installation consisting of amplified water drops and long piano strings vibrated by motors, solenoids and pneumatic cylinders”. Right, a bit of sci-fi, the usual environmental touch, what else? Hold your horses. First of all, when one looks at the complexity of the installation’s scheme (also to be admired on the digipack’s interior) suddenly feels like an utter ignorant. I couldn’t locate a lone wall socket to attach a cord to in that perfectly designed rational chaos. And of course this music is different from what we expected, despite the title track’s literal rendition of its sources, classic theremin sounds in dripping water. First of all, the piano strings’ contribution is indeed important, to the point of frequently igniting contradicting drones and unsettling inhuman modifications of an empty space. Certain segments (try “Flex strings”) might even recall Z’EV or Pholde - the latter another Canadian favorite - in their irreligious clangour. “When it rains” sounds like an army of kalimbas falling down a stairway, followed by the strange peg-legged alternance of wood’n’metal patterns and engrossing howls from the main instrument’s lower registers in “Aerial drop”. Monahan is one of those engineers of self-sufficient apparata who would perfectly fit those contexts - like, say, the Experimental Intermedia area - where the interactions between artist, electronic machinery and chance occurrences often produce results that are as hardly classifiable as a rare animal specimen. John Oswald’s role as a producer, mixer and editor had to be a revealing sign about the quality level of this fine outing.

GORDON MONAHAN - Speaker swinging / Piano mechanics (C3R)

This CD present two different facets of Gordon Monahan’s music, both related to the material aspects of the execution and the very physics of the dynamic forces at work. “Piano mechanics” is completely based on the excitation of the instrument’s strings in their extreme ranges, according to principles of vibration and perception of disguised notes and patterns that are extensively explained in the liners (although I’m sure that the majority of parrots who consume their “Chopin-for-dummies” transcription booklets would be unable to understand them, but you never know). The score makes good use of the properties of harmonic string theory (namely, multitudes of tones and pitches springing out at once from a single vibrating string - Glenn Branca knows something about this). The overall result is a variegated composition where percussion and resonance play a fundamental role in transforming the regular sounds of a piano into pseudo-synthetic exhalations and unholy roars. Impressive stuff, headphones warmly recommended. On the contrary, “Speaker swinging” for “three or more swinging loudspeakers and nine sine wave/sawtooth oscillators” necessitates of all the available space in your setting to affirm its simple beauty, laid upon the laws of Doppler modulation. The performers juxtapose minimal elements from the speakers - so that the “science experiment” character of the set is maintained - superimposing them to miscellaneous tones and oscillations in a progressive move towards hypnotic zones typified by evocative virtual calls. The final track is a remix, a diverse compositional means that nevertheless keeps the same traits of the basic piece in evidence, and it’s probably the most satisfying one of a gorgeous triptych. Monahan is a serious artist whose methods deserve to be more widely advertised.

MONOS - Window (Fungal)

There's no equal to Monos, as it's very difficult finding a project working more or less on the same coordinates (that means treated environmental sounds) but nevertheless able to please and surprise everyone who dares listening. This time, "Window" is a little more droning than usual and there is a bi