Touching Extremes Archives 2001-2008

Reviews from Q to Z

Home - from A to D - from E to K - from L to P - Free Man in Paris

WU QUAN + YAN JUN - Viva la vaches (KwanYin)

This obscure disc was released in 2006: thirty-one minutes of electronic music without too many bells and whistles, generated by Quan and Jun via laptop, sound forks, audio signal generators, iPod, pedals and feedback. The whole remains pretty static, if a little crusty underneath, for the large part of the album, with a few exceptions in both senses: in fact, white noise, humming pulse and distortion often leave room to fairly tranquil soundscapes, usually loop-derived. In general, this is the sort of performance that unfolds visibly, the elements assembled with a clear mental design of how the piece should result to the listener’s ears at the end. Yet there’s a sense of disturbed peace that crawls under the skin, something that doesn’t allow us to completely relax. Danger that never manifests itself, if not through thrumming rhythms and throbbing crunchy matters, stuff that a regular brain can manage no problem. Just wondering if the title is a response to Staalplaat’s “Mort Aux Vaches” series. As a record it’s nice enough, but I’d be lying if I told you that it needs to be played more than once or twice. Hardcore fans of isolationist electronica might like it better.

AKIRA RABELAIS - Spellewauerynsherde (Samadhi Sound)

A tapestry of frail shards. Elliptical voices of ghostly presences are put under a lens that reiterates their silent cry rather than magnifying it; in the darkness of anachronism this swollen river of gliding sadness is barely visible. Old melodies standing inconspicuously behind our ability of comprehension, fragments of ancient knowledge we'll never be able to share, hard as we try. Possessiveness is left behind; we must learn a new language, which is silence itself, as only the silence solicited by many useless words is the right answer to the sourness of mechanical thought. Akira Rabelais tried to start reasoning about the signals sent by these distant calls and found a new way to show their ancestral beauty; we can only reap the fruits of such a homogeneous effort, just grateful of that handful of vocal embodiments smiling at us from nowhere.

BHOB RAINEY - Two bites of a bitter sweet (Evolving Ear)

Tranquil-yet-dirty, pleasant music by a saxless Bhob Rainey on a nice seven inch featuring one track per side. "A desert of consolation" seems to come out from an old radio in an abandoned attic, synthetic waves generating irregular oscillations amidst unquiet calmness, the whole finally blemished by extraneous noises and repetitive electronic discharges. "The summering unsound" is low-budget electroacoustic material: sounds of a beach and, generally, of water are slightly disturbed by a cyclically creaking "something", with an unknown crooner appearing like a ghost to introduce a sudden grand finale of jet rumble, bells and sirens. Throughout the piece, a pitch-transposed (and ring-modulated?) voice grumbles and moans. A full-length release of similar stuff by Rainey would be appreciated after this 15-minute appetizer.

BHOB RAINEY / RALF WEHOWSKY - I don't think I can see you tonight (Sedimental)

When two open-eared, inquisitive artistic minds decide to do something together, the magic can happen instantly, take several years before manifesting or not happen at all. It looks like "I don't think I can see you tonight" belongs to the second category, as Rainey and Wehowsky started this collaboration in 2001 and kept working on it in various phases, nicely described in the liner notes. The record is divided into three tracks, which demonstrate how different times and places can be juxtaposed to extract the finest juices from their elemental significance. "Awaken elsewhere, unforseen" is a highly charged exploration of the sonic synapses of an electroacoustic organism, a mixture of recognizable sources and wasteland abstruseness that leaves no chance for us to memorize even half a minute of its content. The title track moves from irregular drones, pseudo electronic/noise ambiences and subterranean bubbling to splendid location recordings of ice-skating children and passing planes, the whole underlined by truly fabulous glissando waves and peculiarly morphing resonances that create a breathtaking sense of standstill, broken by sudden increases in the level of the rough materials that often interrupt the hypnotizing flux of events. But it's a mildly threatening suspicion that lingers on, constituting both the aesthetic nucleus of the piece and the most engrossing factor of the whole album. "Re: Hi!" crackles the already weak bones of sonic common sense, alternating bionic memorabilia and disfunctional broadcasts from alternative channels in which the palimpsest is determined by how many people's heads explode during the vision. The final "vocal" chant amidst synthetic oscillations and brittle disturbances is alone worth the price of the release; it could be a questionable way to attract new fans, but sure enough it is one of the most lively examples of long-distance acousmatic composition that I stumbled upon recently - just plain great. Outstanding stuff, and I had no doubt about it.

RAIONBASHI - Chloral works I & II (Entr'acte)

Now, this is quite unique: a single-sided 45 rpm vinyl where Doreen and Daniel Kutzke-Löwenbrück recorded two bizarre present-day yodels - well, the beginning is indeed a yodel, but it's just an excuse to ignite a stretched vocal fire in which Doreen is elongated and superimposed to herself while "electroacoustic bodily functions" (mostly from the stomach, I'd say) act as a contrasting element to the beautifully looped yodels, which are absolutely not reminiscent of Austrian mountain villages, instead reminding me of contemporary computer minimalism - once again, Chinese composer Dajuin Yao comes to mind - and, in the second movement, of war sirens howling in desperation. The record comes sealed in a custom-made hand printed moisture barrier bag, making it also a nice collector's item (although you're forced to cut the bag to take out the goods...)

ROLAND RAMANAN - Caesura (Emanem)

Although signed by Ramanan, this record is a balanced mixture of fine musicianships by four great artists; Marcio Mattos, Simon H.Fell and Mark Sanders help the "leader" in further developing the sonic journey initiated with his first album "Shaken"; this masterful trumpet player, also doubling on wooden flutes, declares on the liner notes that this time he felt "more confident", therefore being conscious that "the music is better". Comparisons aside, "Caesura" is indeed an extremely mature statement; some of the material is composed while the large part of it is improvised, freely or upon pre-determined instructions. Every movement sounds perfectly accomplished, with Ramanan playing with intelligence and huge soul, Sanders being his usual wonderful self - namely one of the most sensible percussionists that I've ever heard - and the fantastic pairing of Mattos' cello and Fell's double bass representing a concentrated affirmation of technical ability and spontaneous combustion, well evident in their engrossing duo on "Post part". One of those recordings which give back some hope for the future of contemporary music.

HAL RAMMEL - Like water tightly wound (Crouton)

Whenever reviewers need to get out of the verbal quicksand they’re stuck in while trying to talk about artists they don’t really know, a “John Cage” or “Harry Partch” quote is typically dropped, in the often justified hope that many of their readers will swallow it. This time, though, the comparison could work a little bit, as Hal Rammel has clearly stated that he was influenced by Partch as far as inventing unique instruments out of raw materials is concerned. The Sound Palette used in “Like water tightly wound” is one of a series of variously shaped wooden palettes full of different-sized hacksaws and metal pieces that look gorgeous and sound, well, not exactly the way I expected. This 10-inch contains in fact two improvisations by Rammel, who elicits constantly shifting timbres that indeed may recall water - to be exact, the gurgling water in a conch shell (a sound that, ahem, John Cage used in some of his music) with all the related burps and bubbles, but naturally enhanced by the resonance of the metals, which quite often influenced the acoustic properties of my listening place in such a manner that wooden objects entered a "sympathetic vibration area". Yet I also figured a strange association of this music with Frank Zappa’s first Synclavier experiments (precisely, “The girl in the magnesium dress” on the “Boulez plays Zappa” album - if you don’t know it, fine with me) especially in the overall harmonic uncertainty, which Rammel seems to look for (in fact, he modifies the Sound Palette as soon as he hears something approaching a more conventional tuning) and that’s instead non-existent in Zappa's impossible scores, hence the curiosity of this link between the two artists. When all is said and done, and considering that this is a 300-copy limited edition whose vinyl is almost perfect (a rare feature these days), this is a highly recommended release that gave birth to a “full-length desire” in this writer.

RAPOON - From shadows sleep (Essence)

After almost two decades spent collecting every record that I could find by Robin Storey, who - let's not forget - was also the main creative force behind :zoviet*france:, I had to let go a little bit because I hadn't fully digested Rapoon's recent, more rhythmically oriented tendencies and, to be completely honest, I believe that some of those releases weren't on the same artistic level of his past masterpieces. Now he's back with a vengeance, and I'm still here to document the action. "From shadows sleep" comes in a fine set, complete with eleven cards of abstract paintings by Storey, each one presumably representing the respective track of the CD. Rapoon has returned to what he's always been good at, and I mean loops: he's a master in taking a couple of sound sources - often unrecognizable from the start - and generate states of total trance through sheer repetition, the whole usually bathed in thick reverb and multiple delays which render the mix quite twisted; but it's that very lo-fi complexion that pushes the music up to the highest spheres. Looming over the listener with an abundance of ghostly textures and liquid figments, these strange waveforms manifest themselves without revealing their true significance, keeping anxiety at bay by preventing us from formulating questions, busy as we are in determining if we're merely listening to a record or experiencing a mental ordeal. "The fall of Babylon" puts an attack-less bell sample in infinite repeat amidst various kinds of clangours and chilly noises; "The darkness of time" is quite an engrossing trip, disembodied sounds and ectoplasmic moans introducing an eternal reiteration reminiscent of Storey's best work. "The endless plains" will have you wishing that this dream never stops. An old friend is here again, and I'm happy to report that he's still capable of leading me through those paths I used to follow him along all those years ago. Rapoon is a true original, not a cheap imitation, and "From shadows sleep" fully proves this point.

PAULO RAPOSO / MARC BEHRENS - Further consequences of reinterpretation (Cronica)

Multitudes of totally irrepressible spectral colours, a plot made of acousmatic short stories where narrative oscillates between protruding bushes in a scrub-land and narcotic otitis. Paulo and Marc's project, as they say, creates "everything from nothing" and so, given the respective high level of skill in sound/space architecture, all I can do is remaining on an abstract level, trying to give you a faint idea of the constantly shifting scenario that this CD guarantees. Transforming vague glimpses into a concrete soundscape is no fluke when you have the tools for the job at disposal: Raposo and Behrens twist limitations, throwing any gesture like a backhand to our membranes, stimulated enough to raise your butt and take a walk around the room to better enjoy the extraordinary frequency game this work turns on. Just when everything seems to realign after a painstakingly complex process, something new comes out of that hidden hole in the corner wall and you just can't trap it: instead, hear it while it steals your ear space. Post-Scriptum: while I'm listening, a bird outside my window has started chirping repeatedly - the mix of his minimal chant with this wonderful record is heartwarming.

VIC RAWLINGS & MIKE BULLOCK - Fall of song (Chloe)

Using cello and contrabass, whose natural sounds get literally raped by open-circuit electronics and tone generators, Rawlings and Bullock concede nothing to conventional "beauty", yet their sounds are concise and straight to the point during 13 short manifestations where the dynamic contrast is at times extraordinary. Given the scarcity of sources, the whole CD is a smorgasboard of piercing highs, irregular bleeps, layers of crunching distortion and bitter rumbles, sounds that made me think of certain hardcore experimentations of the 70's, only updated to a more focused approach where the main objective remains a micro-structural analysis rather than a "search for freedom". It's all quite interesting and perfectly timed at about 40 minutes.

SCOT RAY - Rumi (Off The Grid)

Guitars are my main tools, therefore I always appreciate records that show love for the instrument and deep-thinking musicians who are not ashamed to lay bare their soul. Scot Ray, who is half of the fabulous Gutpuppet duo with harmonicist Bill Barrett, uses dobro, 6 & 12 string dreadnoughts and a 22-string Chaturangui (a guitar with addirional sets of resonating strings in the vein of sitar) to play thirteen heartfelt homages to the words of Sufi poet Jalal Al-Din Rumi, which comprise the track titles. Ray is endowed with a sensible touch that he displays to elicit the most beautiful tones from his acoustic machines. He plays a mean slide, too, and lets every wood particle and all of his strings vibrate with passionate composure, just like never ending calls in a sacred ceremony. His use of harmonics is totally masterful, and he loves mixing them in complex combinations with shifting positions and sparkling counterpoints. Even the improvised parts sound like they've been read on a score, such is the perfect mental architecture of this fabulous guitarist. I consider myself lucky to have received this gorgeous album; now I'm waiting for "Guitar Player" to bring the artist to the attention of a wider audience. He fully deserves it.

REALTIME - In the shaman’s pocket (Ayler)

RealTime are Ken Hyder (dungur, percussion, voice), Z’EV (percussion), Andy Knight (trumpet, flute) and Scipio (bass). This 42-minute suite presents all the characteristics of a ritual ever since its first movements, not a surprise considering the kind of projects and personal beliefs these artists are known for. Tribal patterns and slow, incessant thumps and thuds, underlined by Scipio’s quasi-funky bass walks, get highlighted by Hyder’s vocal emissions halfway through chant and uttered invocation. Z’EV contributes with a multi-timbral percussive arsenal, his command of the pulse dictating the changes in the velocity of the piece. Knight plays different things according to the instrument chosen: on flute, he flows into the shamanic essence of the moment, long dissonant whistles addressing the spiritual components in the correct manner, whilst his trumpet’s short blasts and deceptively simple lines can stand the test of our concentration alone, or sinuously surround Hyder’s throat singing while Z’EV and Scipio interact like sonic Siamese twins. When the sounds become more rarefied, we enjoy the value of single instrumental gestures as if the players were offering something, putting it directly in our hands. Whatever they decide to play, the physical response is one of pleasure - uncomfortable pleasure. It moves inside but we can’t quite determine what really happens. The secret of this album lies right there: a cross between the casual discovery of a clandestine ceremony and the sense of being invited to a practice which is guaranteed not to harm, yet remains somehow obscure. The whole is very interesting and definitely bewitching.

C.J. REAVEN BOROSQUE - Machine (Edgetone)

Furiously lo-fi, distorted to a mess, it would be easy dismissing this guitar/effects solo CD by Borosque as an "anyone can do this" release. Yet there's something attractive in the many loops created by this San Francisco artist that grew better in me while the music went on; the rumble of the bass strings mixed with a tortured sense of "no way out" in a torrid series of infinite-repeat-cries-for-help carry a desperate rage that I could appreciate only after a while. I'd happily listen to hours of these hypnotic segments, cutting out any additional intro, prelude or phrase. When all is said and done, it's a record worth approaching without prejudices and with your ears well clean.

REBECCA - Two variations (Charhizma)

Rebecca is the duo of clarinetist Kai Fagaschinski and guitarist Michael Renkel. The project's spirit lies here in the "process" of repeating an improvisation: that means the same piece is replayed -two times in this recording- with different results, even if conceptually similar. Fagaschinski appears to be mainly interested in basic forms of sound emission: first and foremost the simple use of straight air (with only few notes and harmonics played throughout the record's duration) blown off various parts of the clarinet, with no bravura shortage; the whole technical aspect is applied to "internal perception" rather than regular expression. Renkel plays acoustic guitar and zither with a certain grade of tranquillity, evidencing his love for Feldman more than once and using both fingers and treatments for his intelligent proposals; his sparse comping and single-note phrasing points out suspensions and perfectly placed events, never swivelling around, always sure about the road to take. Kai and Michael are extremely sympathetic to each one's modus operandi, thereby lifting artistry's level quite a bit during most of this fascinating record.

PEDRO REBELO / FRANZISKA SCHROEDER / STEVE DAVIS - Faint (Creative Sources)

Right after starting to listen to this music one realizes that its creators’ technical foundations are strong. Two CDs full of inventiveness, twist and turns, romanticism, acousmatic sapience, and much more: the whole gamut of dynamics and an abundance of ideas are explored in “Faint”. The project starts from the meeting of the Laut duo (Rebelo and Schroeder) with Davis at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, their instrumentation comprising piano with “instrumental parasites”, saxophone and drums. The trio improvises according to rather amazing processes, their sense of reciprocal listening utterly stunning, every note uniquely meaningful in the overall balance of each piece. Rebelo - an expert in digital media and installations - is above all an excellent pianist, responsive and coldly detached at once, able to generate a free-jazz outburst in a millisecond through dissonant runs and fragmented chords only to furnish us with sparse elegiac passages as in a bucolic promenade a moment later. Schroeder - a welcome revelation on these shores - constitutes a great addition in my book of favourite saxophonists, her attitude basically lyrical, sensitive competence just pouring out from whatever she chooses to release from a couple of soulful yet scientifically-oriented lungs. I’m not surprised to discover that she’s been active on the instrument since the age of nine - the perceived skill is undisputable. Davis avoids both reductionism and magniloquence, playing in an area that allows those figures to blend with electronic and acoustic sources in special fashion, his percussive organicism a major element of the collective feel that exudates just everywhere in the album. The set is a mixed collection, in that it juxtaposes improvised pieces and Rebelo’s nineteen electroacoustic tracks born from treatments of the same materials. The potion is guaranteed to cause instant addiction to the knowledgeable ones, for this is probably the best Creative Sources record of the 2007-08 biennium. High-class stuff all over the place, very highly recommended.

PABLO RECHE - Paredes (The Locus Of)

Like the large part of the 3-inch series of this interesting label, this 15-minute small artifact by Pablo Reche provides instant gratification for ears willing to absorb beautiful frequencies in a static setting. The two tracks of “Paredes” possess a whirring quality that instantly brought a comparison with certain aspects of Eric La Casa’s work with the internal structures of buildings. There’s scarce movement, even less interference; it seems that the only reference point is our perceptive system, which captures a muffled wind of introspection for long moments, getting soothed into an inconsequential numbness that is more than welcome, especially if you had a hard day at the university (just kidding, folks). One can abandon the whole body in this current of dull memories, ceding the rights of being angry at someone in exchange for a delicious hypnotic fixedness that the short duration of the disc interrupts too soon. We know what’s to push on our CD player then.

PABLO RECHE / UBEBOET - Duae (Retinascan)

Pablo Reche is from Argentina, Ubeboet is Spanish. Both work in the field of low-frequency reductionism, "Duae" being their second collaborative release (the first was a short online track on Zeromoon). Let me tell you straight away that this album is one of the best of the genre that I've had the pleasure to meet in years. Comprising four tracks, little more than 36 minutes - for me, the perfect length for this kind of music - the record was composed using, for the most part, field recordings that Reche and Miguel Angel Tolosa (Ubeboet's real name) made in their respective homelands and processed until they became more or less unrecognizable. Thus, don't expect singing birds or airplanes: what you'll find instead is a continuous deep harmonic radiation, an ominous hum like the whisper of a city at night as heard from the distance, a silently devastating sense of anguish affecting your calmness during the realization of something bigger than words. Some of the tracks feature a slow pulse camouflaged in subdural loops and wooshes; the second and longest one contains subsonic activities that a seismograph would record as a third-level earthquake, muffled eruptions against the auricular membranes working wonders when listened in the right frame of mind. A distant comparison, in this case, could be made with Daniel Menche and Kiyoshi Mizutani's "Garden", a one-in-a-million masterpiece that I won't stop to suggest to anybody who still has some taste when it comes to (erstwhile) deep listening. In short, don't let "Duae" fade away unnoticed: it's a sombre lithany for the soul that needs to be listened in total silence, repeatedly, and then some. Very highly recommended.

RED NEEDLED SEA - Time.Recall.Now (Sqrt)

Panos Alexiades is the composer of this album under the Red Needled Sea moniker. Five tracks in which the predominant colour is the blackest kind of black, and movements are often undetectable: the keyword for most of this stuff is "pulse". Music that needs large spaces to diffuse, to self-depict its whole body muscled by truly impressive throbbing low frequencies, perfectly delineated and heard even at lower volume. And when that's not the case, look for your crystals to tremble in fear. Elsewhere, subdued organ clusters remain in place for long mesmerizing moments, something that we'd never like to give up to once we've managed to enter their peculiar (non) patterns. We could associate Alexiades' vision to a premonition, or treating it like a description of human psychology's decay, an issue whose significance has reached the top among my own interests nowadays. Contact points can be found in the work of Lull, Hafler Trio and Lilith, but Red Needled Sea does have its distinct voice. The only thing that I really hate (and, sincerely, I was about to decide not to review the CD for this) is the grossly out of context melodic design that, in my opinion, ruins the final track "I say goodbye". If there is some irony there, I'm sorry but I didn't realize. Still, the rest of the album is so good that it absorbed that almost lethal blow.

JOSE LUIS REDONDO - La reponse est aux pieds (Etude)

Looking for heirs to the throne of kings Frith, Kaiser, Reichel? Among the ones who might want to aspire to this role one day let me introduce you to Mr. Jose Luis Redondo from Barcelona, here at his solo CD debut after “tons of different session recordings with local groups” and live performances. “La reponse est aux pieds” was created with an array of string instruments including dobro, banjo, guitars, piccolo bass. Mostly they’re played with half-extended, half-traditional techniques (sometimes what we know as “extended” has become accepted as normal, see the “pick-behind-the-bridge” approach). Redondo is good at what he does, which mainly deals with exploring acoustic nuances - he employs a nice slide, too - and processing strings quite clearly, by pitch transposing them or altering their timbre with objects, pedals or heaven knows what else. If it’s true that the forerunners of the genre created masterpieces by the dozen already thirty years ago - and following such a historic wealth of great records in 2008 is definitely uneasy - it must be told that this kind of gestural/textural improvisation with an ounce of deformed bluesy attitude can still entertain an audience, or at the very least this old fart of a writer. In any case, I’ll always prefer someone who seems to be able to determine the sweet (and sour) spots in a stringed instrument to button-pushing priests armed with six synthesizers and a sampler going “oooooooohhhhhhhh” (and a couple of rain sticks in the background). At least, this record comprises music that vibrates and pulsates for real; that only makes it worthy of an attentive try.

RICK REED - Hidden voices (for Hermann Nitsch) (Trans>parent Radiation)

The last time I listened to a Rick Reed album it was the magnificent “Dark skies at noon” on Elevator Bath. “Hidden voices” confirms those encouraging messages passing this new test with flying colours, a perfectly organized composition where instruments, ideas and aural pictures are deployed with the care that only really gifted artists can apply to their craft. The title comes from an installation in Houston dedicated to Austrian actionist Hermann Nitsch, for which Reed provided the sound sources. The instrumentation comprises a Moog synthesizer, ancient sine wave generators, shortwave and an assortment of hardware (which do not include computers). Starting with slowly modulating, oscillating frequencies the music progressively grows into a mildly dissonant mass of imperturbable electronic mourning, culminating - around minute 23 - in one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful loops that I’ve ever heard, a vocal moan repeating itself over and over that shoots an arrow right in the middle of the stomach in a truly breathtaking section. After that, the piece remains suspended between a complex kind of static minimalism with lot of microscopic occurrences under its thick skin and a silent ritual where everybody seems to be looking at the ground, eyes darkened by the excess of sleepless nights waiting for a revelation that will never come. The end is announced by a sudden discharge waking up from the state of trance that these gorgeous emanations threw us into. I can’t stress enough the importance of composers like Reed, who thrive in semi-obscurity and without the praises given to people worthy less than half their value, continuously finding alternative interpretations of the word “emotion”.

MICHAEL RENKEL / LUCA VENITUCCI - Still (L'innomable)

Moving around explicit canons of factual tampering, this duo creates difficult music through guitar, zither and accordion plus various preparations and objects. The prerogative of "Still" is its invalidation of some of modern improvisation's dogmatism; rather than surprising or deconstructing, Renkel and Venitucci put their interest in those zones of interrupted silences that need to be mended with a few touches of swerving counterbalance among unconventional sources - Luca also plays a flight case, of all things - while creating flurries of activity which can sound pleasing or fastidious, yet always look for the bone of the significance. These spots are often a rejuvenating bath in the cold waters of a soberness that's surely the best asset of this anti-fashionable recording.

CHRISTIAN RENOU - Gone with the wound (Taalem)

A 3-inch by the man who is also known as Brume, which confirms him as one of the most gifted artists in the territory of active ambient soundscapes. At first, taped voices throw the brain in a state of confusion; gradual crescendos raise the tension up to Cape Canaveral-like levels in an infinite growth towards nowhere. It suddenly cuts to the second movement, built upon a gorgeous long-distance, tremulating, fluorescent drone that's perceived as a sepia-tinged nostalgic recollection, complete with interferences, bumps and thuds. Magnificent harmonics complement a truly magical atmosphere, ideally burning in effigy the many pretenders in this sonic field. "Gone with the wound" is a fabulous example of how this kind of composition should always be made, one of the best among Taalem's mini CDs.

CHRISTIAN RENOU / ANEMONE TUBE - Transference (Auf Abwegen)

Christian Renou, better known as Brume, and Stefan Hanser (aka Anemone Tube) are two artists whose name I knew but whose work I was not familiar with. If this 2003 collaborative release means something as a first contact, all that I’d say is “Mea culpa”. In keeping with what Hanser writes on his website, namely “trying to put the listener into a delirious mental state”, the couple has managed to reach their goal with “Transference”, a finely intricate, genuine-sounding collage work of drones, found sounds and underground voices that I’d classify way higher than most of the obscurantist esoteric trash camouflaged by spiritual achievement I’ve been coming across for many years now. Renou and Anemone Tube alternate these exquisite moments of meditative yet unstable, if not painful exploration of the psyche with sudden discharges of distortion and carnages of melted percussive/looping elaborations throughout always intriguing tracks whose psychedelic percentage is quite high. Yet, my favourite moments are when “Transference” spreads like a bad November, calmly mournful as the feeling one experiences when lacking something important in life that, nevertheless, remains undefined; in those circumstances you could not be blamed for thinking of early Zoviet France. Although (very few) commonplaces of the genre are detectable - looks like this is inevitable in the dark ambient sector - this full hour of obscure submission to heaven-knows-what sustained my interest until the end.

JÚLIO RESENDE - Da alma (Clean Feed)

There is some measure of poetry in the music of pianist and composer Resende, in this occasion accompanied by João Custódio on double bass, Alexandra Grimal and Zé Pedro Coelho on tenor sax (in different tracks), João Lobo and João Rijo on drums (idem). “Da Alma” is a humble album that seems to voluntarily shroud thoughts and reflections with a veil of naiveté. Themes and harmonic relations are deployed with respectful delicacy, at times winking at the nostalgic factors (so to speak) that composers like - say - Lyle Mays might have hinted to in their past artistic choices. Elsewhere, like in “Filhos da Revolução, this is meshed with melodic intuitions that travel as fast as kids’ fantasies do when they hear a strange yet attractive lullaby. This mixture of candid simplicity and technical expertise works finely for the large part of the program, giving life to sensations ranging from relaxing to quite touching in short time spans. It’s pretty straightforward sonic painting, nothing that requires a degree in rocket science to be enjoyed; and it’s quite easy to digest, moments of refined intensity testifying about the deceptive trait of ingenuousness that characterizes it. There’s no trace of posing from the musicians; a fresh disposition to the interpretation of the scores, even a few uncertainties in a couple of tortuous sections are also evident. It all makes sense, the whole amounting to nearly one full hour of problem-free listening.

MARKUS REUTER & ROBERT RICH - Eleven questions (Unsung)

About 12/15 years ago, records like this were approached with great interest, which in the subsequent times has gradually but steadily vanished as this is the field that opened the doors to an utterly vacuous kind of “polished dilettantism”. Still, “Eleven questions” is - objectively speaking - a good album, well crafted and refined, based upon simple ideas corroborated by an ingredient that is often missing in these types of release: dissonance. Then again, the principals are certainly not latecomers: Rich’s “Trances” and “Drones” remain milestones, regardless of my current disposition. The tracks comprised by this CD are pretty short, similar to thought-out sketches; Reuter plays touch guitars, acoustic guitar and piano, Rich is featured on sound design, piano, flutes and lap steel. Female voice contributions by SiRenée complete the palette. We can notice several points of comparison in the music: Percy Jones to Tim Story, Suso Saiz to Robert Fripp. The winning card is probably the clearly audible, yet never harsh contrast between the elongated emissions coming from the guitars’ processed sound and the sparse chords that characterize the large part of the pieces. Rich provides various kinds of “presences”, which mostly seem to derive from the treatment of vocal and percussive sources; he also morphs ambiences in interesting ways (“Refuse” is an intriguing example of that method). Elsewhere, evocative environments and shadowy sinuousness are at the basis of atmospheric designs whose soundtrack-like qualities do not exclude moments of depth. There are neither actual highlights, nor negative aspects; what’s really appreciable is the lack of that sense of bogus ritualism and counterfeit sacredness typical of 98% of these outings. I can live with this one no problem instead.

REVERSE MOUTH - A child, a dwarf, a sickness (Phase)

I don't know who Reverse Mouth is (...are?) and even a rapid Google search didn't reveal much. But what I heard in the 27+ minutes of this disc is particular and revealing. It's obviously a homemade program, yet hitchhiking amidst these five tracks leads us to several highly gratifying moments; the spirit I detect is akin to other low-budget (but significant) meditative realities recently described here, Gart & Seekatze being one of them. Funny tricks and hypnotic segments create an intriguing structure of malaise and ear perforation; half-human, half-suffering beast utterances find a niche in a pleasant sense of perturbed indetermination where an imaginative use of instruments, found sounds and effects falsifies our mental tranquillity, throwing us right into the arms of the mopes only to sample a couple of additional combinations of crude nudity and oneiric leprosy. A quagmire of peculiarities, well worth of repeated visits.

REV.99 - Everything changed after 7-11 (Pax Recordings)

Imagine tuning to several different radio stations and trying to steal with your ears from each one of them. You'll get snatches of music, electronic disturbances, someone speaking, someone else laughing and a few good lines once in a while. Now, try to guess what happens when a crazy bunch of improvisers gets reunited under the law of a deranging sax player named 99 Hooker: they give birth to a mixture of sounds well similar to the above radio stations. If you add versatility, intelligence and - yes - instrumental technique (just listen to some of the music itself, for example the two "Iron engineer" tracks and "Radical Episcopalianism") you'll get something similar to this record. No words can describe "7-11", but presences like Donald Miller, Ernesto Diaz-Infante and many others should tell enough.

ROGER REYNOLDS - All known all white (Pogus)

Three pieces, one from 1978 and two from about ten years before - and the incredible fact is that they sound so fresh and "current", mixing the best facets of contemporary panoramas. The first track sounds -at times- like some orchestral Zappa (think "Girl in the magnesium dress" and you've got an idea, but please note that Reynolds wrote "...the serpent-snapping eye" BEFORE that - nevertheless their resemblance in a couple of instances is incredible). The rest of the material is a little more spacey and sometimes droning, using electronics and cello similar to long strings in addition to classic instruments. Every movement in this electro/acoustic wash is stimulating and coherent with their previous foundations. A great record, perfectly balanced between written scores and "free" eruptions, it's like a good graphic rendition of most space/time relations.

RF - Views of distant towns (Plop)

Californian Ryan Francesconi is both a musician and a developer of musical software; this work was influenced by a book by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, "The wind-up bird chronicle". Japan is also present in RF's music under the guise of field recordings made by him during a recent tour, sounds that appear and disappear amidst an assortment of acoustic instruments and almost invisible computer treatments characterizing a collection of pretty sad songs in which every event occurs necessarily in the place where one expects it. From melancholic mournings of violins and brass to unobtrusive glitches and pops, passing through gently plucked acoustic guitars and urban noise, Francesconi controls the narrative of his compositions in every single detail, putting lots of dilated spaces in frail structures of quiet, poignant emptiness underlined by processed vocals. It's a deceptively simple record - neither commercial nor very experimental - but it shows the refined craft of a talented artist.

EDOARDO RICCI / THOLLEM MCDONAS - Sono contento di stare qua (Edgetone)

After the wonderful "Poor stop killing poor", here we are with a new adventure by the pianist whose fingers defy the rationale of articular physics, this time confronted by an excellent fire-breathing companion. The Italian title means “I’m happy to be here”, and in this instance the “here” is “an old cold stone house in the Tuscan hills outside of Florence”. Ricci is an inventively intelligible alto saxophonist, whose mercurial lines and brisk phrasing pace obey to a logic of industrious chatter that never transcends the limit of annoyance; he seems to be always looking for the core of the matter with each droplet of its energy, while at times sounding like a summer bee hovering around discarded grapes. Mcdonas really needs no additional introduction from me, as I’ve sung his genius without hesitation ever since I met his music for the first time. The couple recorded these four improvisations in about one hour, Thollem using a beat-up piano that was in the house (I suppose he loves the recent Ross Bolleter CD on Emanem, then…) which plonks and sproings with undifferentiated non-harmoniousness every time the pianist digits his heartfelt combinations on it. The sublimation of the two instrumental characters is almost perfect, making for a vivid conversation that often borders on the row, but always with reciprocal patience and an ongoing will to listen carefully to what the other has to say. The circle is closed by the perceptible lonesomeness of the two artists, both captains of a team of one in their respective worlds, yet surely gratified by the chance of an unlikely collaboration, which yields peculiar phenomena and interesting exchanges of entangled information. A nice pair.

RICH IN KNUCKLES - Light in dark corners (Creative Sources)

There were times when you listened to a Creative Sources CD being sure of finding something in the area of broken silences and microsounds. The scope of the label has expanded so much in the late years that now we are even able to enjoy a saxophone quartet whose field of action is as far from onkyo as one can get. Markus Heinze, Christoph Reiserer, Raymond MacDonald and Graeme Wilson played these games “in hot windowless chambers” in Glasgow, letting the flow of their improvisations be influenced by “text, images or ideas” or simply following the instant development of a momentary concept. Not a groundbreaking working method, although functional in this case. The large part of the music is pretty fleshy, dissonant in an elegant way, complicated if not to the extreme. At times, listeners could nearly feel authorized to think “Rova” but we’re not there indeed, even if elements familiar to those monstrous reed architectures are found, scattered around the disc. There’s room both for shrieks and squeals, yet we still find minimal, almost geometric foundations over which soloists fight or walk together hand in hand. What emerges from this album is the absolutely stunning control of overacute harmonics and air-fuelled microscopic nuances by all the participants, who are able to imitate and invent at once, bending the instruments to their will. Forward-looking expressiveness by artists who maintain a high degree of respect for traditional sax playing, executed without an ounce of haughtiness.

HOWARD RILEY - Two is one (Emanem)

"Two is one" sees Riley playing a duo with himself, two overdubbed pianos, a four-handed virtual creature who is able to present your soul with a unique sense of gratitude, all deriving from the mixture of peculiar harmonic relations clashing in myriads of elastic digital games or, alternatively, caressing the ears with random romanticism combined with controlled tension. This artist's vision is based on a strangely functional chain of instinctive deviations and unexpected returns, his music a constant inpouring of bubbling energy which - just like the water of a mountain creek - breaks on the rocks of dissonance with a distinguishable, familiar noise only to settle in more placid moods every once in a while, confirming a rare transparent substantiality. Not only the ten tracks comprised here are the skeleton of another perfect album, they also demonstrate Howard Riley's subtle perspicacy in understanding in advance what's surmountable through sheer heart and what instead should be enjoyed as a phenomenon per se, technical instructions left aside, just being overwhelmed by unexplainable complex beauty.

HOWARD RILEY / JOHN TILBURY / KEITH TIPPETT - Another part of the story (Emanem)

To me, the correct title to this one should be "Another story altogether" (compared to other famous pianists' records) or maybe "A 66 minute piano lesson". I was totally sure in advance that this release would have had me salivating, as the three men involved are all among my very favorites. What I didn't expect indeed is their effort's general tonality, quite often nearer to more tranquil contemporary classic piano pages - Debussy or Ravel spring to mind - than to the masterful aggressive fingerstretching (enriched with "prepared piano" techniques) which I thought I'd find abundancy of. That's not to say there's no speed or intricated polychords: there are plenty, of course - and in every minute of the CD the quality level is consistently on the "excellent" tag. It's just incredible how three strong personalities like Riley, Tilbury and Tippett just don't need to over-impose themselves in the music course, preferring instead a fusion of tempers and a precise overlapping of their improvisational schemes. Then again, I had to expect it because we're talking serious stuff here: "Another part of the story" is a great, unrepeatable present we all have the chance to put our hands - and ears - on. Relax and enjoy those six magic hands.

STEPHANE RIVES - Fibres (Potlatch)

"Fibres" is more about unexpected irregular phenomena than "saxophone improvisation" in a strict sense. Stephane Rives wants his soprano to be considered a modifying machine, an altered extension of his breath waves; that said, we get an impressive array of incredibly "concrete" sonic natures: harmonics never ceasing pushing into the brain, the longest overacute notes you'll ever hear, saliva-and-tongue generated timbres that are a cross between your kitchen sink and the noise of a couple of factories working together at full steam. It's pretty difficult material but, surprisingly enough, it also works pretty well with external life (in my case, it's coupled right now with thunder and rain - and sounds great!). Strange and intelligent.

RLW - The pleasure of burning down churches (Black Rose)

For his new solo outing, Ralf Wehowsky used sounds that he recorded in different eras - the 90s and 2005/2006 - in addition to environmental materials captured in Vietnam, also in the mid-nineties. The album title refers to the enthusiastic descriptions of the damage done during the Vietnam war by an American veteran met on site by Wehowsky, the guy showing the ruins of churches and other buildings, destroyed by the bombs at that time, to everyone available. Apart from this macabre detail we’re in presence of another compelling piece of work by the German composer. Wehowsky is at ease both with the sheer editing of pre-existing sounds and the studio-produced disemboweling of a sonic matter that’s as unwelcoming as a dark alley populated by ectoplasms. The final track “Burning pianos” forces us to an implicit acknowledgement of everything that the alteration of a magnetic tape can yield, all the while piercing our fantasies with uncatchable sequences of distorted images and amorphous frequencies, subterranean drones appearing at the end to complete an impressive soundscape. At various times throughout the record the sources are mixed in a way that morphs the amalgamation of two separate worlds into an immaterial incompleteness, an experience that asks for the brain to fill some of the gaps with our own imagination. That’s not necessarily a good thing in terms of “being prepared to the worst”. The beginning of “Helplessly friendly” welcomes with distant calls from the other side of rational knowledge, but those ethereal shadows are finely contrasted by rustling sounds and a radio conversation (where a participant goes mad badly - listen and freeze) that attribute a concrete temperament to a piece whose background evolves with deformed waves, incoherent undulations and flirtations with derangement (another guest hints at the Pink Panther theme at one point) in an unsettling uprising of anguish and preoccupation. That’s the very best track in a record that confirms RLW as one of the overlooked masters of the game in the contemporary acousmatic field.

RLW - Contours imaginaires (Substantia Innominata)

“Built from a few seconds of piano and vocals. Everything else: imagination”. Thus the composer describes the concept of “Contours imaginaires”, which comes in a 10-inch vinyl and lasts - unfortunately - only 20 minutes in total. RLW leaves no doubt about his intentions ever since the very beginning: the mass of rumbling lows takes instant command amidst hissing turbulences, indiscreet disturbances and inharmonious spectra of non-definition. Every once in a while, one can perceive the presence of the piano in beclouded ectoplasmic chords that get instantly fragmented, chewed up and spit by the inventor’s heavy processing. There’s also a methodical usage of reversed sounds, attributing the whole a delirium-like quality that explodes at the end of side one in gurgling incomprehensible utterances. The second half brings on more deformations and slanted perspectives, voices first mangled then seamed in intriguingly disconcerting hallucinations. The obscure background patchwork electronically generated by the composer lets us accept even the most disturbing sections without flinching, confirming Ralf Wehowsky as the gifted manipulator that we always trust blindly, with good reason.

RLW / I.K.K. - Purpur (Sirr)

Neurodegenerative interpretations of a piece by Ralf Wehowsky, based on a Christmas song named "Ihr Kinderlein Kommet" which he recorded in 2001 as sung by his daughter Sonja - five years old at that time - then excruciatingly altered for his own compositional purposes. Some of the basic materials were later sent to Dan Warburton, Andrew Deutsch, Chris Halliwell, Strotter Inst., Stephen Vitiello, Johannes Frisch and Bhob Rainey who all invented completely new works for the occasion - alone or with RLW himself. The potential of these electroacoustic protrusions is immeasurable, but something stands higher than the rest for my own taste: both the principal’s opening track and Warburton's handpicked segments are ruthless and moving, juxtaposing elements of purity (little Sonja's breath intakes, to name one) and subhuman feelings; we're left incapacitated of redrawing the boundaries separating our instinctive attraction to something we don't know and the invisible guard forcing us outside the chance of fronting a bitter truth. Strotter Inst. manipulates Lenco turntables and RLW sounds to raise a growing sense of mental fuss, like if he wanted to melt us with boiling vinyl. The final collaborative track sees Wehowsky, Frisch and Rainey making acousmatic riptides of uncomfortable, user-unfriendly remarks which elicit welcome ruptures in our flavourless normality.

RLW / TITO - Mahlzeit (Hinterzimmer)

The word “Mahlzeit”, it is explained in the liner notes, is a German greeting at lunch time whose ironical sense comprises translations such as “nothing there” or “on the contrary”. The act of eating, the relative body functions and the noises that we emit while feeding ourselves are an essential building block in this record by Ralf Wehowsky (senior and junior) and Trans Industrial Toy Orchestra, which includes Peter Kastner, Ine Ophof and Jan Van Wissen. But despite the presence of belches, gulps, saliva-drenched sucking and farts in several occasions, this must be critically considered as a serious acousmatic CD. Starting from sources ranging from violin and flute to toys and kitchen tools, we’re besieged by twelve tracks whose content - let’s face it - has really no mercy and no soul. The wheeling and dealing is captured, splendidly recorded and - all the more interestingly - electronically modified and disassembled, showing us the graphic aspect of a concrete sound-derived work of art. The things that are not instantly decipherable - make that “striking for their untruthfulness” - are deformed, elongated, split in a thousand pieces that get paralleled with skewed melodies or just sheer tones, rendered with the utmost coldness by this cooperative juxtaposition of sonic researchers. It almost looks like RLW and TITO wanted us to experience the feel of bodily pain typical of digestive disorders, yet all that remains after a conscientious listen is a corroboration of brilliance: these people know how to toil over sounds, and only by putting the highest attention to what’s heard one can take the shroud off the artistic values contained herein. Intensely mind-altering materials for those who don’t give a damn about polite manners.

RM74 - Exkursion (dOc)

Reto Mäder (RM74) produces music which is among the most undecipherably warped in the current electronic/laptop scene. In "Exkursion" we find a gazillion of distorted crumbles of pre-existing material, deafening feedback and frequencies a go-go and strange interludes with electric guitar; what's more, Mäder also uses his great sense of irony - not far from Asmus Tietchens' most scrambled deviations - introducing oblique melodic schemes zig-zagging around like a drunk or dumb sequencing constituting the backbone of a delirium of progressively melting keyboards. The overwhelming mass of dissonant melodies and crunching noise is intelligently splintered into short bursts of bubbling expansions, like clusters of unclassifiable matter dancing under magnifying lenses. Alexei Borisov appears in the nicely absurd "Pocket-life"; the whole is truly a pleasure for the ones who want a little more than consonant crystals of digital hollowness.

RM 74 - Fireproof in 8 parts (Hinterzimmer)

I've been following, on and off, the moves of Reto Mäder since his "Mikrosport" CD on Domizil several years ago and find that he's amidst the few ones trying to cut the crap that prevents the huge mass of "new kids on the block" in the glitch/fizz laptop area from becoming individual-styled composers. Mäder is growing with each outing, also thanks to his increasing use of acoustic instruments and found sounds which give his pieces a home-recording quality that's often lovely. "Fireproof in 8 parts" consists indeed of 2 discs, the second being a "Part 9" that contains additional tracks advancing along the same lines traced by the main opus (and which includes a cameo by Ralf Wehowsky - his partner on a recent Crouton release, "Pirouetten" - who lends his own misshapen sources in the very last minutes). Among the other guests are Roger Ziegler, Alexei Borisov, Dave Phillips. The direction of "Fireproof" is the right one: many of these pieces sound "freshly raw" and only a few ingenuities separate this work from the "excellent" tag. For starters, I'd eliminate most of the (often boring) taped-voice segments, or at least reduce them to the very minimum, rather leaving room to the genuine domestic resonance of Mäder's simple yet effective elucubrations on piano and guitar bathed in uneasy electronics. This mixture of naively regular utensils, cheap musique concrete and computerized deviations is almost perfect despite some repetitions, and I perceive a general air of sincerity that must be appreciated. This is a good starting point to find the courage to jump right into the ship that sails from Average City to New Greatness.

DERI ROBERTS / DAVE STAPLETON - The Conway suite (Red Eye)

Recorded in Cardiff's Conway church, these six pieces - part composed and the rest improvised - bear a dramatic elegance mixed with a well exercised emotional impact, surely helped by the naturally viscous reverberation of the chosen location. Tonal affirmations tend to prevail in Stapleton's massive organ modulations, leaving a few doubts and many certainties upon which Roberts can librate his own charming flights. Repetition of ostinato figures create a perfect nest for this endangered species of instrumental prayer, where saxophone gets almost dissolved into faraway glimpses of melody just slightly reminiscent of some of the best pages of ECM's masterpieces of the 70's and the 80's - Terje Rypdal's "Descendre" and John Surman's "Such winters of memory" are two of my recallings, but just as a distant reference. A high-class record, worth of regular rechecking.

GARETH ROBERTS QUINTET - The attack of the killer penguins (GR)

A good sip of British jazz is what I need when I want to get some lessons in arrangement and a few moments of inner peace corroborated by fabulous musicianship. The Gareth Roberts Quintet provides this and much more in a stunning debut album whose cover is graced by a greatly funny artwork by Rhys Bevan Jones. Roberts quotes Charles Mingus and Horace Silver as a compositional influence, but his music is skilful and personal: it makes you want to dance but can also bring out memories from childhood. The quintet is formed by Roberts on trombone, Marcin Wright on saxes and clarinet, Paul Jones on piano, Chris O'Connor on bass and Mark O'Connor on drums. These gentlemen play composed meters like a drink of water (check "Dysgu cifri", that means "Learning to count", to have an idea), even constructing a whole piece on something like the 17/8 of the title track. Traditional melodies like the initial "Wrth fynd efo Deio i Dywyn" are rearranged in fine manner, themes and solos exposed with witty consciousness and brilliant tone. In that sense, the intertwining phrasing of Roberts and Wright is a thing of beauty; one moment raucous irony prevails, only to be replaced by almost mourning reflections ("A tribute to an axed piano", "Never ending journey"). The O'Connors are a refined force of nature whose interplay does not dare to caress the obvious, but Jones is maybe the real ace in the hole of the band: his chordal mastery is a malleable glue for Roberts' harmonies, which try to conjure up ghosts of Dave Brubeck, McCoy Tyner and Burt Bacharach all in the space of a single track ("Going nowhere fast" - incidentally, the superimposition of Roberts' quasi-ostinato trombone theme on the 5/4 groove of this tune is probably my overall favourite moment of the record) and constitute the effective link to an elegant authenticity shining in a class of its own. When one listens to a new release three times in about ten hours - which I did here - it usually means we're in presence of something truly special. I can only be thankful that young players like these ones still exist, people capable of writing music that's at one and the same time respectful of the tradition, accessible and gifted with virtuosity, music that will have you feeling much better after you've finished listening to it.

HERB ROBERTSON NY DOWNTOWN ALLSTARS - Elaboration (Clean Feed)

The interchange between obtrusive improvisation and thematic sketching - the latter intensively and autonomously frequented by the single players - is at the basis of this systematic pulverization of the orthodox mechanics of composition for jazz quintet. The music played by Herb Robertson's Allstars, which include Tim Berne (alto sax) Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) Mark Dresser (double bass) and Tom Rainey (drums) besides the leader's trumpet, does not stay in places for too long; instead, it moves according to narrow geometries in a multiplicity of scattered commotions which seem to be quite disorienting at first, but become the very essence of the piece as time goes by. The overcompressed nervousness of these spinning spirals behaves like if the interplay among the musicians could not find an opening; yet, it is indeed this continuous research around significant purposes that overcomes every difficulty of comprehension, resulting in several dazzling moments of fractured magic in which, after the subdivision of the parts, the recombined elements never look like the previous whole.

HERB ROBERTSON NY DOWNTOWN ALLSTARS - Real aberration (Clean Feed)

Difficult proposition: an all-star group, and a double album. Are we going back to the “Tales From Topographic Oceans” era? Kidding aside, this is a serious endeavour, featuring instrumental talents that on paper it’s natural to define “stellar”. Yet these people walk the walk after having talked the talk (or did they?), which results in a complex construction where jazz and chamber music - not to mention free improvisation - are eviscerated, remodelled and deployed in ways that sound fresh and traditional at once. Soloists get their due prominence in wide open spaces, investigating the feasibilities of unguarded exploitation of timbre, wail and intelligence fusing in well-balanced amalgams. One can relax (sort of) by listening to Sylvie Courvoisier’s romantic quadratures and incidental adjustments, knowing for sure that she won’t abandon her own inner logic. Mark Dresser is the one who pulls the strings - no pun intended - of genial forethoughts transformed into rational-scented odes to freedom, a fabulously, lyrically muscled bass voice. Tim Berne’s sax represents the perfect balance of overwhelming creativity and thoughtful restraint, which is not easy to reach for a man so full of vital energy. As far as Tom Rainey is concerned, suffice to say that his solo spots are my personal favourites of the whole project. What an anti-egotistic, ahead-looking drummer, using skins and cymbals like a master painter. And what a contrapuntal interconnection, the comrades all but seconding the lucid recusant in improbable rhythmic decisions. Herb Robertson - the host comes last - zigzags through diplomatic insertions amidst smudged intellectualism (of the sincere kind) and belligerent democracy. A tone that reveals years and years of experiences while positively maintaining a distaste for the obvious. Preponderantly lucid, this is music that requires a total decentralization of the senses to be fully treasured. But treasure you will - without a doubt.

STEVE RODEN - Oder delias or butterflies (Nonvisualobjects)

Based on a dream described by its originator on the CD cover, the peculiar name of this composition introduces to a sphere where repetitive morsels of gentle loops made with delicate percussion, modified low-budget (?) electronic impressions and a bamboo flute presented to Steve by Bernhard Günter constitute a fascinating case of geometric serendipity. Related to a tranquil fluctuation for the quasi totality of the piece, Roden's creation transmits comprehensible messages, almost inviting extraneous elements to join and enhance an already well-functioning organism; the substantial pleasure of this experience is limpidly non-turbulent, the music moving through a natural schematic reconfiguration between a castigated minimalism and the breathing cycle of a lethargic animal which no climatic variation or fortuitous event could ever accelerate. Roden confirms himself as one of the most heart-gifted among today's ear manipulators.

STEVE RODEN & JASON KAHN - Shimmer/Flicker/Waver/Quiver (Korm Plastics)

One always knows what to expect from Roden and Kahn in terms of timbral quality and high standards of sonic exploration. This CD, released in 2004 as the sixth installment of the Brombron series, shows the achievement of a perfect balance between the sublimation of a harmonic content (mostly associated with Kahn’s gentle cymbal rolls, one of his trademark sounds which is a consistent presence here) and a mixture of dirty hiss and electronic frequencies that we would tend to attribute to Roden. But considering this release as a disjointed effort would be silly. What’s immediately discernible is the impregnable organization of every timbral shade, which renders this music akin to a foggy halo of manipulated particles that’s as organically developed as a roughly filtered, complex gaseous matter. These sounds are totally egoless, and that’s what defines them in their most intimate core: as processed and unprocessed sources find their way to our rational perception, they’ve already manifested their soft-spoken conflict with silence in the form of mild pops and clicks that beautifully rub the generally tranquil temperament of the pieces. We can also appreciate a sort of ever-lurking subsonic “heartbeat”, like a biological clock setting the tempo of a mechanism which is as physical as one can envisage, and that in its self-regulated discipline functions as a consolidating, if quite occult, deposit of frequencies that enrich the 45 minutes of our life necessary to concentrate on this excellent disc.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / JORGE VALENTE - Self eater and drinker (Audeo)

I thought about fragments of life, caught glimpses of extra sensorial activities, intercepted dialogues between strange alien creatures...The duo of Ernesto Rodrigues (processed and prepared violin) and Jorge Valente (computer, synth) leaves a lot of space, both literally - by respecting the principle of silence and sound being equally fundamental - and to the imagination, as one is forced to use his own mind to figure out what's going to happen, right after the very first moments of their interconnection. The alternance between strange waves of hallucinating auras and the spiky hits of the strings mixed with computer-processed electronics is the strongest point of this record: eight movements flowing without any fatigue, showing everybody that no definition is necessary when intelligence is involved.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / JOSE OLIVEIRA - Multiples (Creative Sources)

Hard hitting shorts of trio improvisations played on violin, viola, cello, sax, percussion and acoustic guitar. Don't expect anything too light here, as Ernesto, Guilherme and Jose attack you with ear-splitting harmonics, diverging high notes going from "ppp" to "fff", bouncing balls on strings, strident contrapuntal monsters. No sound is treated without the due attention, and everything appears to spring right out of the players' guts. But mind you, this record is by no means cerebral, though it could be difficult to fathom at a first listen; each of these 28 tracks will reward your concentration and, at the end of the day, you will be happy for having discovered new talented instrumentalists in the "hard hat area" of free music.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / JOSE OLIVEIRA / MARCO FRANCO - 23 exposures (Creative Sources)

An abundant hour of extremely creative timbral explorations, "23 exposures" should ideally be approached after a training of hours upon hours of active listening. The sounds fall here and there like raindrops, mixing and combining themselves according to their inner essence - percussive, breathy, harmonic or squealing; everything is improvised but it seems like the parts were advance-planned, such is the coherence of the overall result. Even if I'm not unfamiliar with this kind of material, I could not compare this music to anything else; I find its fractured existence similar to a process to be necessarily followed from the beginning to the end, like a microscopical observation of a small group of living cells.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / GABRIEL PAIUK / JOSE OLIVEIRA - Ficta (Creative Sources)

Music born from a deafening silence and returning to silence itself; this seems to be the major concept behind this excellent recording. Consisting of six episodes named "Nihil", this CD is without a doubt on a high level of introspection and a nice challenge for the inquisitive listeners. I have a tendency to play this kind of records during quiet afternoons, which I warmly suggest; I loved following the nuances and the slightly dissonant counterpoints created by these musicians to find shadows or "presences" that one could not detect at a first glance but nonetheless are there, helping to define a certain feeling that leaves you freedom of thought and breathing space. Though it's not easy inventing something new every time a group of musicians gather, the two Rodrigueses, Paiuk and Oliveira walk their path and observe the surroundings with different perspectives, and always very interesting ones.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / ANTONIO CHAPARREIRO / JOSE OLIVEIRA - Sudden music (Creative Sources)

What would you hear if someone took you in a forest at night and left you there, tied to a tree? From my point of view, I'd be extremely scared at first but then I'd start to listen carefully, trying to discern any subtle whisper and catching sinister creaks and thumps just in time to not be surprised. If I survived the stings of mosquitoes and other insects and managed to control my fear, I'd enjoy silences and energies, the bursts and the little noisy manifestations and maybe I could even sing along with the crickets. This time, Rodrigues, Chaparreiro and Oliveira (violin and viola, electric guitar, percussion and inside piano) gave me exactly this kind of feeling; it was a highly surprising listening and one of the best releases of this Portuguese label until now.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / MANUEL MOTA / JOSE OLIVEIRA - Assemblage (Creative Sources)

Working halfway through the complete void and the small sounds coming out of everyday life, putting their instruments in that area where almost nothing is comparable to anything else, the two Rodrigueses, Mota and Oliveira create music that's just beautiful in this bare-naked snapshot. The balance between the ingredients is this record's forte: the musicians seem to foresee any upcoming reciprocal movement, their ears receptive to the slightest vibration of the surrounding air. The percussive sounds coming out of the strings (the quartet plays cello, violins, guitars and piano interiors) together with frail skeletons made of broken silences and fractured lines represent that underground world that listeners should always investigate before abandoning to an easement not always deserved. "Assemblage" is surely one of the best Creative Sources releases and one of the best improvisation records of 2003; I just hope it causes the stir these artists merit.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / MARGARIDA GARCIA - Cesura (Creative Sources)

This music is material, ductile and erudite at the same time; when four instrumental entities make you forget their original voice, fusing together into a single creeping lesson in economy of means, something good has surely occurred. "Cesura" is omnirange, pressurized, apparently of scarce visibility yet often quite knockabout...only to fall into the long arms of silence, again. The musicians maltreat their instrumental extensions, bending them to their needs; the instruments respond accordingly, turning into a mass of fuming ashes from where small firelights and tiny pops crackle incessantly. This is a sort of an auto-orchestration in the middle of a forgotten place where microsurgery and raw splinters of rotten wood weigh just the same - and where rusty is more beautiful than shiny. Another important chapter of Creative Sources' ever-so-involving history.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / GERHARD UEBELE / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / JOSE OLIVEIRA - Contre-Plongée (Creative Sources)

I've always thought that most music including Ernesto and Guilherme Rodrigues - here exchanging sounds with Uebele's violin and Oliveira's inner piano and guitar - has a very definite "nocturnal" feel. Crawling and silently morphing into multiform spirits, this is a reproduction of what your mind and body experience during those moments when you revolve around yourself without finding a solution for anything. The vibration of metal and wood according to canons of unexpected aesthetics is lightly touching and concretely nerve-stimulating. The air is carved via those instrumental oddities that one wouldn't even expect to be used; instead, they reveal all their magic precisely at the due moment. It's like a rheumatic fever - bones crackling and all the rest - but the very same cause of discomfort rapidly becomes a much desired presence in the room. This quartet manages to reduce everything to a dire need of something, without knowing what that "something" actually is.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / MANUEL MOTA / GABRIEL PAIUK - Dorsal (Creative Sources)

Three honourable representatives of the current free music scene are here subtly linked to a rippling yet unexploded energy that seems to organize the sound movement all by itself, with just a minimum intervention by the artists. "Dorsal" is a pathway walked by three men looking one another with the eyes of staunch friends, persons needing just a nod to immerse themselves in thrilling combinations of vibrant acoustic catharsis, where the resonant slipstream of a silent thought materializes itself in a percussive chord or a fluorescent wood crackle. Beauty is also obtained by abnormal use of less explored parts of the instruments - picking behind the bridge, hitting near the keys; an illusion of structure is always there, as to call the notes to their "regular" task. Luckily for us, those notes have other ideas: their close relationship with silence is cemented in an unbreakable pact.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / MICHAEL THIEKE / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / CARLOS SANTOS - Kreis (Creative Sources)

Someone is trying to enter your room. Only, it is not your room - it's a nightmare of labyrinths in your conscience. Interrogating the laptop divinities, Carlos Santos only receives an out-of-syntony blanket of spuriousness as a reply: "Mind your own path". Around this scenario, droplets of unknown fancies crash on the monitor systems of concrete failures, courtesy of Ernesto and Guilherme Rodrigues' plucky fingers and arco disintegrations: the two are able to reproduce any splinter of daily life, from nuclear tests to your coffee machine's whistle at 6:30 AM, without even caring if they made the appropriate choice at that very moment - and of course they did. Michael Thieke's winds from peripheral urban areas are so delightfully glacial, one would appreciate his sound alimenting an experimental tunnel where people are forced to focalize on fading lights until total blindness. Santos is still there, his will undefeated, trying to put some order in the chaos of these strained theories...For me, it's a marvellous quartet.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / GUILHERME RODRIGUES / OREN MARSHALL / CARLOS SANTOS / JOSE OLIVEIRA - Kinetics (Creative Sources)

The eight segments forming "Kinetics" - an improvised suite for violin, viola, cello, pocket trumpet, tuba, electronics and percussion - mark an important moment in Creative Sources' history as this is maybe the record in which the connection between the elements is heightened at the very top level. The music reaches several peaks of remorseless coldness, almost intimidating in its unalloyed brightness, but in those repeated machinations the warmth of an evolved acousticity is diffused all around, transforming splinters and chips in a cohesion of intents, a sharp-witted testimony of these musicians' uncommon capability to perceive a sound before it materializes. And once it comes, there's no looking around in confusion: every source is put at the service of a concrete, instantaneous development of a relational instability between often unrecognizable instruments. Pinched nerves, electrostatic halos and resonating suggestions constitute the ideal underwood for some peculiar animal that breathes through tubes and valves while sniffing around to locate its prey; plastic balls bouncing on strings generate multiform refractions, frisky snippets of already shattered "chords" that will never exist. Finally, scorching manipulations of feedback remind us not to trust our unplugged desires, mercilessly stinging our membranes. Every idea is strongly affirmed and counts an awful lot, everything makes sense, perfectly logical in the flow of impulsive creation. An unmissable release.

ERNESTO RODRIGUES / TOSHIHIRO KOIKE / GUILHERME RODRIGUES - Sen (Creative Sources)

While Ernesto and Guilherme Rodrigues are featured on their customary instruments (viola, cello and pocket trumpet) Toshihiro Koike - whose playing I meet for the first time - is a trombonist, here strategically placed at the centre of the stereo field in the mix, with father and son sharing the left and right channels. "Sen" is one of those episodes in which the sum of the parts gives exactly what expected; starting from pretty disciplined arco dragging, we walk across a series of sonic circumstances ranging from the über-shrilling to the acceptably dissonant, with the strings working as producers of feeble harmonics, metallic caressing and snapping bounces while Koike alternates various kinds of techniques to produce sounds that are influenced both by the gurgling liquids of the mouth and the belching, droning rumble of air pressure into the instrument's tubes. These timbral associations are not exactly new in terms of surprising results but give a pretty defined idea about the places the artists decide to stop in, their interest in combinations and parallelisms of harshness and malleability ever informed by their reciprocal listening capabilities. A little colder than other collectives involving the Rodrigueses, these two improvisations must be taken for what they are: experiments without any pretence of philosophical or ideological interpretation, much less aesthetic meaning - even if they do express an aesthetic of sorts.

ROGALAND HOT CLUB - One hour closer to death (Utan Titel)

A CDR contained in a folded piece of paper. The packaging brings back memories from the punk era, risking to be a diminishing factor for what instead is almost one hour of excellent music, recorded direct to minidisc during a concert in Stavanger (Norway) with minimal editing - warts and all, including background hum and disc skipping. Not specified on the "cover", the sources played by Bjerga, Egeland, Gjerde, Pettersen and Toft sound like a collection of stringed sculptures made with discarded objects and instrumental remnants (yet I believe that guitars and piano are also in there). Rusty borderland echoes and smells of rotten cardboard are in a strict relation with different streams of electronic treatment; dissonant ghosts of already shattered songs dance around with pale extravagance. Reminiscences of indefinite inhumanity are layered with less than Carthusian attention, so that the atmosphere of these tracks ranges from undetailed nonchalance to dangerous wordless rhymes where slow percussive patterns are similar to a frightening primal clockwork.

ROJO - Rojo (Unit)

A quartet formed by poet Bartolome Ferrando's voice and gesture, Markus Eichenberger (clarinets), Fredi Lüscher (piano) and Alfred Zimmerlin (cello), Rojo is a cross pollination between avant-theatre manifestations and chamber music with a touch of beautiful fertility thanks to a level of improvisational skill impossible for many to achieve. The vocal structure Ferrando suggests is more or less planned; not so much the fabulous instrumental parts, always stimulating and in any case very concise - never a note out of place, never a sound overstaying its welcome. Lüscher's dexterity on the piano keyboard is really in a class of its own; Eichenberger plays various clarinets with human voice-like control, a result you can get only through a stunning technique. Both are perfectly complemented by the knowledgeable lines and bursts of the always sapient Zimmerlin's string work. These musicians will surely take many pretenders down a peg.

NEIL B. ROLNICK - Fish love that (Deep Listening)

In the CD booklet Rolnick declares this music "is not jazz nor free improvisation but it's somewhere in between". All I have to say is that I feel strong jazz basics in most of these musicians' playing but the overall sound colour is greatly enhanced by an opening to several genres, which will bring this record appreciations from "traditional" fans but also from lovers of the most adventurous kind of jazz-influenced composers (I'm talking George Cartwright or the neglected but excellent Rich Woodson, just to give an idea). Rolnick's keyboards and his great use of samples contribute to the definitive result just like his fabulous companions: Todd Reynolds on violin, Andrew Sterman on woodwinds, Ron Horton on trumpet, the absolutely excellent Steve Rust on bass, Dean Sharp on drums. Each one brought his character and his passion, giving life to a concept that's pretty difficult to understand if you give it just a first try; instead, it will reveal its beauty piece by piece.

ALESSANDRA ROMBOLA' - Uruena (Sillon)

Five interesting pieces for flute, played by Rombolà with excellent use of extended techniques and masterfully recorded in the church of Uruena by Pierre-Olivier Boulant, with the surrounding distant noises of cars and even motor airplanes accompanying the soloist in an almost ritual atmosphere. The resonant percussive clacking of the keys, the incredible tongue-knotting-air-pumping games that the musician uses to generate sounds that we aren't accustomed to, an unbelievable ability in evidencing the harmonic content even in a single held tone: those are the best features of this classically trained, Madrid-based flutist, whose evolutions are often enhanced by sudden vocal bursts, like if some sort of little devil tried to get out of the instrument's holes to break the "sacral" environment in which these highly energetic statements were released. It's certainly an involving experience, a kind of music whose corporal character almost exceeds the technical details - which themselves are worthy of the maximum attention.

RENT ROMUS' LORDS OF OUTLAND - Culture of pain (Edgetone)

The Lords of Outland are Rent Romus (alto & C-melody saxes, zitherod, voice), C.J. Reaven Borosque (no input electronics, acoustic and electric guitars), Ray Schaeffer (6-string electric fretless bass) and Philip Everett (drums, percussion, autoharp), in this particular occasion reinforced by Jim Ryan (sax), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Scott Looney (piano) and Damon Smith (double bass). "Culture of pain" is made of a substance so extraneous to every known classification that it often borders on the intimidating, meaning this as a compliment. The Lords are not easily disciplinable people: they play with destructive attitude and serious musicianship, even tackling Albert Ayler (a great rendition of "Universal Indians") who looms like a ghostly father figure behind the group. Romus' sax rekindles that flame egregiously, thematic sketches becoming instant excuses for the instruments to coalesce into a gruelling mass of Pollockian sonic painting that plumps on the brain and self-adjusts until your synapses are completely disjointed. What sounds as perfectible is remorselessly liquidated by what Romus calls an "iron fisted mighty hand of destruction and power", namely a pushy, hook-beaked kind of improvisation which is infected by quick-and-dirty melodicism needing no hype besides its dissonant energy. "You vs You" is a hypnotic dance of treated saxophones in a multicellular structure; "Coagulation not cash" fuses Borosque's unpredictable string manipulation with clandestine embroideries by Schaeffer and Everett. "NYPDMDADOA" is a riff that could have been stolen from The Muffins' collection over a battle of Edgar Varese-like drum rolls, while "Xinolith Infinitium" redefines 21st century schizoid music and features fantastic playing by Johnston and Looney, human glue of the finest order in a complex of exploding pustules. This album will make you purr and howl; it's a right cross flattening that decrepit opponent named "inane jazz". I'll shake the hand of those club owners who will have the nerve of booking the Lords of Outland; meanwhile, a copy of this CD will work wonders if you suffer from commercial music depression.

(RENT ROMUS’) THE LORDS OF OUTLAND - You can sleep when you’re dead (Edgetone)

It's a miserable morning, waiting for the same train on the same platform, the daily parade of absurd faces looking at me - that’s a Discman, not an iPod, you jerk, so what? The convoy arrives, an older-than-usual model, really can't understand why. After getting on and finding a seat the noise of the wheels on the rails makes the bones rattle. “Damn” I think, “I won't be able to listen”. Enter Super Hero Rent Romus, armed with all kinds of saxophones (plus voice and accordion), leading a brigade of musicians - CJ Borosque, Ray Scheaffer, Philip Everett - that could cause an enlightened Buddhist to nervously twitch fingers before attacking his moaning fellows à la Mike Tyson vs Larry Holmes, round four (isn’t it peculiar that boxing comparisons appear whenever I listen to this man’s output?). Instantly a series of mayhem-fuelled lessons in contortion take care of the surroundings, at times completely covering the coach's clatter, often nicely mixing with it. Everything seems to scream and look for that additional dose of distortion, the music repulsive of whatever agreement with harmonic common sense. Borosque's work on no-input pedals is impressively smoking, rusty royalty hoisted to the heavens of mental obnubilation (anal-retentive Latin-trained writers use this word sometimes). Scheaffer’s 6-string bass affirms a growling entanglement with drummer Everett’s spastic terrorism. At last, an unreal feeling of deranged bliss dominates the whole trip (no pun intended). Carriage rumble and un-cerebral mugs - not to mention the ever-present stink, I wonder what these people fucking eat - are forgotten. The Lords are my saviours.

RENT ROMUS’ JAZZ ON THE LINE QUARTET - Filmtrax – ROBOT (Rats and other Memos) (Edgetone)

The soundtrack to a screenplay by Steven Marshall, this music is executed by a group that was initially formed in 1986 by Rent Romus, at that time attending the University of California in Santa Cruz. After years from the disbandment, the leader (here on alto sax and percussion) called old comrades Scott Looney (keyboards), Ray Schaeffer (6-string electric bass) and Philip Everett (drums, percussion, autoharp and “mallet cat”), with the addition of Andre Custodio on electronics and congas in the first track, to produce a weird infusion of jazz-rock from the 70s and modern-day improvisation, hullabaloo and peal excluded in favour of rather unruffled technical mastery and somewhat stylish solo-ism, which - given the massively anarchic character of more recent projects by the same composer - is actually quite unexpected. The act of listening to this stuff - Alphonso Johnson-like bass lines and démodé keyboard solos integrated in a tissue of quasi-nostalgic colours - comes pretty effortlessly, though, and if these men were really intentioned to renovate that semi-vintage vibe feeling while performing this material, they unquestionably succeeded. Then again, Romus’ pleasingly muscular timbre is a delight to hear, as always. Not a memorable album, but for sure one that keeps good company whenever you decide to spin it.

JON ROSE / VERYAN WESTON - Temperament (Emanem)

May I have your attention, please? This double CD is a MILESTONE of improvisation, a must for any person even slightly interested in new forms of sound expression and freedom of speech, an extraordinary pairing of two most intelligent musicians, exploring new languages through the use of different exoteric tunings, ratios and...temperaments. The juxtaposition between the physical results of those approaches and the creative mind of Rose and Weston brings us to the highest level possible in music today: something nearing total perfection. Using their arsenal of violins and keyboards (including a 16-string-long-neck instrument and something called "Rosenberg Orgonium", among the many) these geniuses range from just intonation to "Meantone 1/4 comma" with the urgency - but also the grace - of a waterfall breaking up in millions of new colours. You must have a really inquiring ear and a well prepared brain to capture the whole essence of "Temperament"; within this record lie the influence and the inspiration of Nancarrow, Berg, dodecaphonics, minimalism, free jazz, whatever...filtered through the wonderful hands of Jon Rose and Veryan Weston, also two real technical monsters, if you ever found similar ones. Already a follower since a long time ago, now I'm completely drugged on this stuff. To be listened for many, many years to come, this release belongs in my all-time top 20, for sure.

KELLY ROSSUM - Line (612 Sides)

Kelly Rossum is a trumpet player from Minneapolis who owns an enthusiastic, genuine timbre and a fabulous-looking hairdo. He’s accompanied by four excellent comrades: Woody Witt (tenor sax), Chris Thomson (tenor and soprano sax), Chris Bates (bass) and J.T.Bates (drums), a quintet that in “Line” was captured live in a room, warts and all. “This is a jazz record”, we’re warned. And good, healthy jazz is indeed what we get: expositions of themes, solos, attentive interplay and boiling energies. There’s more or less everything needed, with additional doses of finesse (“Seduction”, with a delicate muted trumpet in the protagonist’s role), a collective improvisation dressed like an EAI raga (“Places of the mindful”) and a series based on the six “Line” tracks - one being the full version, the other five sketched interpretations of its quirky, angular theme - acting as a skeleton for the whole album. The good news is that the ensemble looks ready to sustain both the opposite forces at work in the most dissonant networks and to let everything loose during pieces that sound easy-going to the point of appearing almost like a divertissement (“La vita a Roma”). The latter’s title, in conjunction with the note in Italian language dedicated to his friends in this country, makes me guess that - besides being a talented musician - Kelly is too good of a human being. These days, when I go to Rome for work, I feel the urge of running away within fifteen minutes.

ROSTIGER RIESENRAD / AALFANG MIT PFERDEKOPF - Figuren in der nacht, geführt von der leuchtspur der schnecken (Aalfang)

A split CD between two noise-and-music performing entities, this nice work lasts about 80 minutes without showing a moment of tiredness. The five pieces by RR are more concerned with desolation, urban abandon and, generally speaking, atmospheres recalling that kind of darkness made known by certain Swedish projects of the late 80's - does anyone remember Morthound? That said, the music has a certain distinct trait and a decisive elegance in its structure, separating it from intellectuality and self complacency. AMP's output is only slightly tangential to the above coordinates, rather moving around various continuums and abstractions that are sapiently reinforced by concrete/found sounds, voices and an almost scary use of electronic sources and distortions. For sure these pieces are nearer to a "Faustian" aesthetic vision than to common acousmatics, nevertheless they sound totally natural and discoursive, putting no restriction to a thorough research.

ROTHKAMM - FB01 (Rothkamm)

Frank Holger Rothkamm is a composer and computer programmer whose work I already had the pleasure of meeting in the past, in excellent collaborations with the likes of Alfred 23 Harth and Elliott Sharp. The FB01 is the very first Yamaha digital synthesizer module, an instrument whose architecture allows the creation - in Frank's words - of complex sounds with minimal effort. These tracks demonstrate this theory in full, generating an astonishing variety of unusual geometries and movements in the aural space, without a chance for our sense of intuition to predict their direction. We're taken back to the times where "serious" computer artists tried to open a whole new world of sonic possibilities (which, thanks to people like Rothkamm, are probably still there); it seems like an eternity ago, but I used to dream about extreme advances in the development of human perception, spirals and parabolas of sinewaves fluctuating in my room announcing the end of my listening habits. The obscure realms visited by this gentleman's music are a vivid recollection of mental galaxies that are no more: the era of the preset has swallowed any spare intelligence in the world of electronica, yet "FB01" gives hope and - why not? - returns us some of that evolutional feeling.

ROTHKAMM - FB02 - Astronaut of inner space (Flux)

The IFORMM is a "unique electric instrument" whose scale is tuned to 768 frequencies-per-octave (so much for the so-called "genial" Western temperament). Frank Rothkamm could well use it for expanding the harmonic consciousness of the poor ones who consider a Mozart cadenza an exciting sensation. Let's leave joking aside, though, since this is seriously complex electronic music, whose fascination resides in its significant dissonance vs enjoyability fight. In little more than 33 minutes we're treated with impressive multicolour shapes that hover around without giving the chance of being analyzed before they change, which happens non-stop. A constantly shifting mosaic of gracious timbral layers that could work wonders for pillheads trying to lose their addiction, "FB02" puts Rothkamm right there with the Spiegels and the Subotnicks, all the while maintaining a degree of accessibility for whoever wants to change their way of perceiving sound shades, at least for half an hour. On a final consideration, I still have to understand if the five-note sequence of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" casually heard in the title track is a quote or an accident. Frank?

ROTHKAMM - FB03 - E Pluribus Unum (Flux)

Prologue: while reading another review of this work, I had to swallow absurd references to Stockhausen (who nowadays fits anywhere, like Harry Partch and John Cage, when “journalists” don’t have a clue of what they’re talking about) and the “pioneers of musique concrete” (this album was entirely made with a synthesizer, so much for the “concrete”). And while we’re at it, Rothkamm is NOT also known as “Frank Holger”; that’s his NAME (ever heard about Holger Czukay?). I’m used to people spreading the virus of ignorance, but enough is enough.

Ironically, it’s because of characters like Frank Rothkamm that I still have some measure of hope in human intelligence. There’s no comparison between listening to something that smells of “commercial research of the inner self” and instead receiving this man’s promo packets and photos, his mad scientist-like face smiling wryly while one tries to decode the messages contained by his liners and, above all, sonic architectures. Most likely, many of these suggestions aren’t even comprehensible for a superficial analyst, not only because we’re talking about first-class microtonal developments in multiform isolationist sauce, but also because the wonderfully ironic, but damn true theory behind “E Pluribus Unum” (seriously accepted or not, and I mostly agree with it) contains the germs of true evolution, the one whose basis is still to be grasped by men in their infinite illusion of advancing, while instead they’re rolling back to the starting point. OK, I know what you’re asking for. What about the music? Electronic soundscapes à la Rothkamm, placed in that galaxy that is proud not to belong to any circle or school of thought. Abstract but precisely sequenced, collecting remnants of phrases that might appear as thrown out randomly by abstruse ungodly machines and were instead generated through a Yamaha FB01 FM Sound Generator that used to belong - of all people - to Blue Oyster Cult’s Buck Dharma and that Frank won on eBay with a $26 bid. Talk about maximum result with minimum effort.

Epilogue: to wrap it all, let’s just say that exercising the brain every once in a while with this stuff wouldn’t be harmful at all; when the saturation level is on red, you can always go back to your Jam Man and loop some obscure “oooh” and “aaah”, or even decide that a friend of yours doing third-rate dub is the next big thing. Now that’s what I call “burial of truth”.

ROTHKAMM - Just 3 Organs (Flux)

First question: is this an allusion to Steve Reich “Four Organs”? For sure the music is neither minimal, nor very accessible. Alright, a few sequenced arpeggios might recall a peg-legged version of Philip Glass, but what the hey. Let’s put this factor aside. Second question: is three really the perfect number? All the things heard in this CD derive from multiples of 3 and the reason should not be explained (learn to read the liners, at least when Frank Rothkamm is the person who wrote them). Suffice to say that this music took its shape from a peculiar tuning system and even stranger reproduction methods. How does it sound? Oh, god. I thought that by now I had figured out Rothkamm’s artistic mind, just a little bit of course. Instead he slams the doors of comprehension shut right in front of me, and one has to peep through the keyhole to get a grasp of what’s in there. For starters, a Yamaha Electone 205D is the source. The composer bought it in 2002 in Hollywood, thus making possible a reprise of his first contact with the same inspiration in 1979, while he was on a mountain vacation in Switzerland and found an out-of-tune church organ in a small village’s chapel. As an indirect homage to that circumstance, the timbre of this Yamaha is - ahem - cheap. The tuning (“a micro-tonal 33 cents apart” - take this, lovers of well-tempered harpsichords) certifies that the improvisations (are they?) are perceived as a cross of experimental entanglement and hoity-toity unwillingness to let many participants in. Which is, as always, better. The tracks are mostly on the short side, an additional puzzling element. No continuity, no boredom. Enigmatically unpigeonholeable stuff from the man who loves to smirk from postcards, to be pick-pocketed from the purse of ignorant oblivion.

ROTHKAMM - Opus Spongebobicum (Flux)

“40 variations on the secret formula from Spongebob Squarepants, our beloved yellow friend”. Gosh. A “recent cartoon” devotee this writer is not, but looking at a Nickelodeon trademark at the end of the liner notes I deduce that we’re talking about an animation here. Which won’t put in plain words the nature of this music for solo piano, coming from a man whose “repetitive strain injuries” limit the time that he’d like to set aside to enjoy a recently acquired 1968 Wurlitzer. Amongst the many, many things that Frank Rothkamm has done, we are now cognisant of a cycle of studies with Karl Heinz Witte (“a pianist renowned for his rare ability to improvise multi-voiced fugues”) that perhaps represents a key through which the probing ones can move towards this record without remaining all at sea (more or less what ensues with the preponderance of Rothkamm’s outings). Another tentative rationalization, most probably an essential issue underlining this “Opus”, comes from the composer’s designation of “piano music as a form of sitting contemplation”. Still, there’s not too much in this disc that could be used as a soundtrack for staring at the void: the nonstop shift between proto-classical forms and flashes in which the contrapuntal texture seems to break up into sweetly tolerable non-consonance is what, on the contrary, keeps the conscientious listener sleeping with an eye open. Sooner or later, something unforeseen happens even in apparently inoffensive passages. Is Rothkamm implying that he’s the actual sponge? Is this just an absorbing (pun intended) remembrance of the influences of his youth? Should I start watching Nickelodeon to comprehend? The view from this terrace: this gathering is - who dared to doubt? - a one-of-a-kind system for escaping expectations by utilizing refashioned past conceptions converted into a string of unquiet considerations. Very nice-sounding to these ears. Warning: not suitable for post office employees and customs personnel.

FRANK ROTHKAMM - Moers Works (1982-1984) (Monochrome Vision)

There are self-proclaimed “artists” whose music sounds like adolescent bedroom experiments, and there are instead experiments that, born in similar circumstances, already possess the seriousness and the sonic poise of important compositional efforts. Frank Rothkamm’s “Moers Works” belong to the second category, of course; not that I had any doubt, in consideration of Mr. Rothkamm's illustrious past and his penchant for inventing new instruments and tunings that make the Western systems look ridiculous at best. When Frank was a bright young kid, he assembled a basic setup to record his ideas: turntable, shortwave radio, phaser, equalizer, cassette and reel-to-reel tape recorders. By overdubbing masses of monophonic sounds and getting a pseudo stereophony through tape delay, he generated the twelve tracks that we have the good luck of hearing now (two of them also feature a Korg MS-20 synth). What we receive is an objective vision of hundreds of stacked, layered and fragmented formations that collect residual noise, hiss, malfunctioning and distortion to exploit their inherent force; but that alone wouldn’t be enough, hadn’t been Rothkamm's vision so clear even at that tender age. As a matter of fact, his timbral insight appears so acute that it just looks like he was already able to penetrate the essence of the elaboration itself, processing and counterprocessing even the tiniest details of an apparently shapeless matter to highlight its most functional characteristics. Therefore, a synthesized sequence, a looped segment of muzak, a shortwave interference and the cheapest musique concrete experiment weight just the same, as they’re all components of a continuous flight of fantasy alimented by the composer’s will to determine a structure behind the "flash idea", all the while establishing a kind of transcendental organicity which makes this music sound - for lack of a better adjective - natural, driven by a necessity of communication that goes well beyond the pure experiment. And, lo-fi or not, it's just great to these ears.

FRANK ROTHKAMM - LAX (Flux)

I recently got this piece of news: right after the completion of LAX, the Californian warehouse where Frank Rothkamm kept all his vintage machinery - including the instruments that shape the body of this very disc, comprising custom-programmed Atari and Macintosh computers - was destroyed by fire, except for a Hewlett-Packard sine wave generator that luckily was placed elsewhere (and is also featured here). Instantly, a symbolic “idiocy vs intelligence” alignment came to mind, reason unknown. By taking an advance peep at what Rothkamm writes in the liners, we find ourselves in front of a serious doubt: is he kidding bitterly, or life is indeed just a peculiar connection of stupid jokes that become destructive concepts in the hands of the masses? The only answer I can come up with at the moment is inviting the interested ones to give a(…nother?) read to Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power” and think again before declaring themselves happy to be a part of a social congregation whatsoever. One of the composer’s definitions of “LAX” indicates its ten tracks as “scenes that map the gradual collective re-wiring of reality to that of high-parallelism during the 2 years before the year 00 in the megacity of Los Angeles” (where he lives). Admit it: you’ve been among the ones who were terrorized by the Y2K propaganda. Well, this record could help in recollecting those oh-so-scary moments by forcing to ponder on the fact that the worse has yet to come, be it from an earthquake or courtesy of your office colleagues’ serpentine attitude. The complexities arising from Rothkamm’s sonic inventions are typically prosperous in terms of frequency shifts, granular noise and, in this case, concrete sourcing from the media (“Los Angeles OR LA TV” is self-explanatory in that sense). Questions are necessarily more frequent than answers, and it looks like the best way to approximate something vaguely similar to a solution is by trusting malconformations of analog sounds and computerized detritus which Frank somehow manages to render tasty as juicy fruits. The conclusive “Bellsine OR Ascent out of LAX” is comparable to a requiem for the progressive-minded human, as I picture an enormous commonplace-stuffed mouth gulping the remnants of healthy individualism and spitting them all over the place, scattered around parties, groups and collectives which live according to rules that try to rule out those who just want to live.

SEBASTIEN ROUX - Revers Ouest (Room40)

Paris-based Roux, born 1977, is the originator of a radiophonic work meant to describe the city of Nantes through “futuristic” text fragments mixed with processed-to-unrecognizable acoustic sources including moose pipe, cello, drums, field recordings, vocals and prepared piano. The resulting coalescence lies upon this continuous mutation, a constant whirlwind of displacement generated by various kinds of whispering voices (obviously in French), the whole wrapped in a tissue of acousmatic combinations nearing the compositional process to the territories of sound installation. One hears a suggestion for each step taken, like walking in a room full of sensors unlocking different capsules of vocal ooze. Yet it looks like we've been here already - not in a negative sense, rather due to a kind of familiarity that these mixtures elicit while we listen. The operations on the timbres are sophisticated enough, but do not emerge as sterile; the nervous apparatus of this music is reactive, consequently influencing our disposition. If we're physically altered before trying, in all likelihood the immediate response from our own systems will be one of involuntary annoyance. On the other hand, if the mind is clear, we'll consider this scheme of things in the same way of a beehive, every component adding a little piece of something to an entirety which at the end sounds intricate, at times riveting. Music that doesn't seem to really open new vistas at a first try, but still offers several observation angles allowing for complex functionalities and relational coherences.

KEITH ROWE - The room (Erstwhile)

Although he once admitted that he "looks at the guitar with absolute terror", Keith Rowe keeps designing scary patchworks of perplexing divergence, similar to the unbalanced forces that move life at large. Being only his third solitary album after "A dimension of perfectly ordinary reality" (Matchless) and "Harsh" (Grob), "The room" is also the first release in Erstwhile Records' brand new ErstSolo series. Any recorded evidence of Rowe's work is of self-explanatory importance, and this CD was all the more anticipated after several stunning episodes on this same label that saw him sharing moments of absolute thoroughness, John Tilbury and Toshimaru Nakamura having been his most sympathetic partners in that sense. "The room" presents a few basic elements whose cyclical recurrence endows the music with several points of orientation amidst an only apparently oppressive climate, principles of interfering concreteness attacking us in moments of rational absence deriving from quasi-motionless backgrounds. These periodic images are depicted through straightforward constituents: an ongoing motorized whirr caressing the strings into disconsolate droning, the appearance of a penetrating high frequency, fragments of music from the "real world" that last a nanosecond, a single bleep that comes out of the mix like a steeple on the horizon. Elsewhere, subtle cross-pollinations of manipulated pickups and crumbling noise shift the attention on the more cynical side of Rowe's approach, in stark contrast with the mesmerizing cavernous rumbles he often elicits from his machines. The short final movement is characterized by an overwhelming affirmation of shortwaves; in between, sounds of passing vehicles add an unusual colour to Rowe's precise documentation of his own view on materiality, a concoction whose value is represented by its sheer existence - not more, not less.

KEITH ROWE / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA - Between (Erstwhile)

Sometimes it takes quite a while, but what is indiscernible at a first try suddenly materializes right in front of you without the need of an explanation, a phenomenon of such intense inwardness that no word is justified to describe it. "Between" - 130 minutes of music on two discs - is one of those records where the sum of the parts (guitar and electronics, no-input mixing board) largely exceeds the expected total. Comprising four studio tracks recorded in Vienna by Christoph Amann - the third invisible member, one would say - and a live improvisation captured in Lausanne by Masaki Atsui, this is one of those most exceptional electroacoustic conversations that very rarely grace our life. Mind you, though - you'll have to be prepared. Especially on the first disc, the spell-and-rupture contrast on the auricular membranes is particularly effective, silence broken by transfigured pitches and tones which that very silence would like to eventually die within; this circle is made more vicious by the self-governing, slightly hostile interferences applied by the two gentlemen, who fight shrill frequencies with radio waves, white noise and electrostatics - a fertilizing detritus sounding like pulverized computer memory that, somehow organically, alters our equilibrium. Continuums of educated feedback are heard from different angles, leaving ample blanks for the listeners' imagination to insert their own judgements about the origin of these inscrutable tiny disclosures - judgements that result systematically useless, as Rowe and Nakamura gather additional mysterious imagery by mixing rustling emissions and sympathetic buzzing with low thuds, almost depicting the somnolence and the sporadic awakenings when one's in front of an out-of-tune TV set at late night. The frequency game is careful; tinnitus and subterranean throb are juxtaposed in impressive fashion. The second CD is opened by eight minutes of harshness where the concocted shades mix the might of an electric wind with razor-like slash-and-rip attacks. "Lausanne" sounds like a studio cut even if it was recorded live, a living body whose heartbeat is progressively replaced by pressurized outbursts of metamorphic periodicities. Salvos of quirky discharges play the role of tranquillity-breaking, hush-marauding entities whose offense is a necessary toll to prosecute this low-key celebration of the unexpected, reaching its apex about 27 minutes into the piece when a deeply emotional low resonance put me right "into the zone" - if only for a minute. Always keep an eye open, though, because the insect-like crawling efficiency of the most acute frequencies is ready to catch us off guard, at least until the final minutes of the track where a hardly maintained calmness is a prologue of sorts to the conclusive "Amann". This 20-minute inexorable underground rumble stops me in my tracks every time I listen to it; quivering lows diffuse all over the room, transforming it in a container of enigmatic powers that fuse together instead of wrestling each other. Every breath or small gesture must silently carve a microscopic niche in this ominous mantric radiation, whose position at the end of the record is the key to the comprehension of what had us puzzled and perplexed previously. The essence of this music is here, visible at last. It's an appropriate ending to an album that sets a standard which most artists working in this area will have to seriously consider before putting out something that - when compared with "Between" - could be irrelevant at best.

KEITH ROWE / JOHN TILBURY - Duos for Doris (Erstwhile)

This is maybe the perfect demonstration of what a musician can achieve after decades of iron-chinned resistance to any kind of musical trend; a record like "Duos for Doris" opens a path to an artistic enlightenment that few ones can affirm to have achieved in their whole career. Talking about Keith Rowe and John Tilbury's contribution to improvised music is completely useless here; rather, my duty is addressing you to a kind of almost silent gestural sound sculpting, where every touch, every hum, every chord gets its complexion from a slightly ruptured silence. The three pieces contained in this double CD set are all played with a not too understated sense of sorrow, shadows more than light, the two friends united in search of the "next" tone and the "next" aural description, the depth of sounds giving a sense to their whole existence as inquiring artists. Even when the music starts shaking the ground and wants to go out of the ceiling, when Tilbury treats his keyboard like a giant percussive palette and Rowe brings the more "out-of-the-guitar" colours into the picture, we're never left without the reassuring presence of a basic foundation; that's the very reason that gets me stuck in there, consciously accepting everything these two great men have to offer, their personalities resplendent in that dark room; but it's actually my soul that's sparkling after being exposed to this wonderful homage to Doris Tilbury.

JESS ROWLAND - 29.water (Pax Recordings)

As their very originator calls them "stream-of-consciousness" compositions, the focus of Jess Rowland's piano pieces is evident since the very beginning of the record; an absolutely genuine inner peace is translated into an engaging lonesomeness that never leaves doors open to rambunctious normality, not even in the reworking of a standard, say "As time goes by". Rowland takes her time between a chord and a flurry of speedy melodic droplets, so that listening to her music equals being surrounded by a series of illustrated observations of a still lingering past. That's not to say that the nostalgia factor prevails: when her fingers find unorthodox passages to the realms of dissonance, Jess also demonstrates a tougher attitude, comparable to the fractured obliqueness of pianists like Marilyn Crispell yet often dipping in creative ingenuousness.

JESS ROWLAND - The shape of poison (Edgetone)

Thus the press release’s portrayal of Jess Rowland: “Like an electron, she is neither here nor there, and like absolute space, she is neither up nor down. Mostly, she is sideways”. Yet the material contained by this CD, originally designed to accompany choreographies by Manuelito Biag, is somehow associable to formerly met situations (one being Carolyn Carlson’s “Dark” - Joachim Kuhn hitting the keys - although differences abound). The context of solo piano with electroacoustic treatments also includes “cut-up gamelan, crunched-out Casio tones and other uncharted sonic landscapes”. Divided in three movements, the material could be trying and travel far away, but I wouldn’t necessarily use the “pioneering” adjective. In truth, the loops, the cyclical fragments, the electronic warp have been seen before; what’s significant is the juxtaposition of brutality and romanticism that Rowland applies, snatching the music from the hands of expectedness to give birth to congruous artistic impact and, yes, the perfect soundtrack to a hypothetical intuition of new forms of body movement (you might want to try your own tai-chi variations while listening). Virtuosity is out of the question, the girl knowing her chops notwithstanding. This is all about a mental state, a position amidst the unwanted occurrences of everyday life allowing both a little dreaming and the partial abandonment of the usual dull attitude towards them. In that sense, what transpires from this album is enough to declare it successful.

RST - Axes (Last Visible Dog)

I get a growing number of albums by artists and labels that have found their favourite swimming waters in the guitar drone swamp. Let's face it: only a handful of them are masterpieces, yet there's a lot of people cramming earth loops, eBows and Echoplexes into a single idea; today, one can almost make a living by pushing a couple of buttons, pinching three strings and releasing twenty CDs per year. Hell, this is better than unloading cabbage and broccoli at 5:00 AM after all. What's all the more unbelievable is that even living-room stuff can sound nice, but I’m always afraid about the repercussions deriving from the customary excess of imitators in the contest. Andrew Moon, the man behind RST, was originally a drummer in Goblin Mix, but he's also - and especially - good at getting beautiful purrs from his guitars. After releases on Ecstatic Peace! and Corpus Hermeticum, Moon demonstrates with "Axes" to be the kind of dronescaper that must be carefully judged, a major point in his favour being not overly prolific, a positive sign if your family name is not Baker. In general, his tracks seduce through low-frequency hypnotic charm, mostly evidencing the processing work in a very audible way (the hiss of a flanger remains so fascinating), all of them non-invasive, at times sublime like a poor man's mantra. Something is perennially moving underneath, letting us savour every concealed message and semblance of "note" in a state of suspended tranquillity, halfway through a linear somnolence and cerebral standby. To be enjoyed quietly and repeatedly.

EDWARD RUCHALSKI - Territorial objects (Afe)

Hailing from Syracuse (New York), Edward Ruchalski is a guitar teacher and composer whose work has already been commissioned by important ensembles such as Bang On A Can All-Stars and whose recorded output has been featured on labels such as Humbug, Pseudoarcana, Foxy Digitalis and Taâlem. His main interests reside in "sound installations, motorized string and percussion instruments and playable percussive sculptures". Enough for this curious boy to try and deepen his knowledge of the artist, and - truth be told - my expectations were fulfilled. "Territorial objects" incorporates thirteen untitled tracks, mostly pretty short, in which Ruchalski traces moods whose temperamental contents - both concrete and symbolic - are often seriously charged. Helped by Michael Burton and Matt Broad, Ruchalski developed the pieces using cymbals, bells and artillery casings (!), to which the performers added water, field recordings, bells, guitar, toy piano and various samples. In this way, they generated a library of sounds on minidisc, from which they extrapolated the basic materials for the music, also by treating the primary sources with envelope manipulation, filtering and pitch transposition. All of the above should give you at least a faint idea of what this stuff sounds like: a mixture of ritual rhythms comparable to natural phenomena, powerful passages and slowly descending sonic sunsets engaging us in a rapture of sensual abandon, lifting our sense of belonging up to a too-soon-terminated climax, until the next picture appears. Everything assembled with careful consideration, typical of a purpose that doesn't necessarily appear like a propagation of the composer's ego. Beautiful and definitely recommended.

EDWARD RUCHALSKI - Dark night (Afe) 

Originally released by Foxy Digitalis in 2004, “Dark night” is a masterful example of Edward Ruchalski’s penchant for creating music that can’t be used as background wallpaper despite its pretty static basic complexion. Subdivided into eight parts on six tracks, the composition unfolds through a succession of impressive resonances that, especially in the first two movements, let us think about the work of another artist who utilizes “motorized strings”, Tim Catlin (father of a couple of recent splendid albums - solo and with Jon Mueller - on 23Five and Crouton respectively). Jangling suspensions are enhanced by slow descents and breathtaking glissandos, ululating chimes similar to animal voices evidencing the impossibility of maintaining an orientation point amidst this stunning appearance. After a while, several additional elements begin to enrich the music, with particular mention for a piano that sounds like played in a marsh by the ghost of Erik Satie, the whole surrounded by extraneous presences whose sibilant influence contribute to a fascinating mix of anxiety and awareness. In the seventh part, subtitled “Night pasture”, Rebecca Klossner’s singing bowls are juxtaposed to water sounds, but this is not your typical Zen-ish meditation for post office employees: the piece is indeed beautifully pure, representing a sort of oasis in between landscapes whose inaccessibility is only apparent, provided that one possesses the right means to decode the numerous messages that complex harmonics contain. All in all, a must-have album for connoisseurs of serious droning and lovers of guitars that whirr in sympathetic tunings.

ROSWELL RUDD - Blown bone (Emanem)

Recorded in 1976, "Blown bone" was originally released by Philips Japan in 1979; now Emanem reissues it with the addition of "Long hope", a beautiful piece from 1967 featuring the leader on piano instead of his main instrument, the trombone. The adjective "stellar" referred to a line up is pretty worn out, but in this case that's exactly what it is: just the names of Paul Motian, Steve Lacy, Tyrone Washington, Enrico Rava and Sheila Jordan are enough to raise my "70s detector" antenna. Rudd's imaginative writing leads the musicians through repeated highlights, in which swinging frameworks and lyrical suggestions mesh in no-nonsense scoots through a multitude of genres and influences, one of the very few times in which one can't go wrong using the term "fusion". Louisiana Red and Sheila Jordan's vocals add an unusual touch of "popular" energy, which is not so easy to find on this label's other releases; Rudd's sapient melodic sense brings his trombone to the fore in the most intense and enjoyable moments. A pleasing look to the past, "Blown bone" could very well appeal to many different audiences: from Gibbs and Westbrook back to Count Basie and Duke Ellington, passing through Afro-Latin recalls, if you love skilful orchestrations and heartfelt playing this could be a nice gift, a moderator of your "extremist avantgarde" processes camouflaged as a soothing listening experience.

ROSWELL RUDD / MARK DRESSER - Airwalkers (Clean Feed)

This is an album that leaves no space for misconceptions, "the result" (to quote Rudd's words) "of Dresser's insatiable appetite to play and, coincidentally, the fueling of my own appetite". With a duo like this, a falling-off of the quality level is out of question. Through nine (mostly improvised) pieces, Rudd's trombone and Dresser's double bass negotiate the readmittance to a world where "melody" still has a meaning; yet, there's still time to trace many furrows on its face, expressing the necessity of pushing the dialogue through the routes of lively irony, intelligible dissonance and illusory easy listening. The couple plays a few lines and, just like that, sparkles of effervescent humour fill the air. As Dresser says, Rudd destroys the tendency to "saxophonize the trombone" in jazz, performing the task with luscious tones and unconventional phraseologies which are a joy to listen to. The bassist rouses the low-frequency responding systems of our organic being by alternating kinky fingerings and abrupt arcoed scars while keeping a simulacrum of "swing" in sight for the ones who could feel lost in the party. "Airwalkers" is a fine demonstration of technical command enriched by gimlet-eyed musical intelligence. It must be played loud.

LX RUDIS / ANDRE CUSTODIO / ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE - CRR live (Pax Recordings)

This is the recorded evidence of two live performances that were held in June 2002 by the Rudis/Custodio/Diaz-Infante trio, armed with a DJ rig, two copies of the “Crashing the Russian Renaissance” CD, a modular synthesizer, microphone, darbuka, voice and amplified acoustic steel-string guitar played with extended techniques. Let’s leave the aesthetic factor out of the question, because an album won’t ever be able to represent what’s inside this kind of concert (including several minutes where the musicians chatter, probably gesture, or do faces, or…but we can’t hear practically nothing and, truth be told, I’d have cut those sections off the program). When the sound does manifest, it’s exactly what one would expect from these guys: unpredictable discharges, sudden appearances of disco vamps, noise a go-go, mysterious hums, electronic anarchy. Therefore, my advice to better enjoy this release is pretty simple: a Cagean approach. “Shuffle” mode at conservative volume, using this as a chance-based peculiar soundtrack. Even those incomprehensible silent segments will be more effective by being shortened up a bit.

MATHIEU RUHLMANN - Today I found the golden world (Somne)

As its creator explains, this music was composed for an exhibition of handmade books by David Ruhlmann and "uses sound sources and materials similar to the images depicted in the books to put the listener in an intimate relationship with them". The outcome is finely crafted "introspective ambient music" which indeed becomes much more with the passage of time. What begins as a mental accompaniment through deeply resonant low recurrences, reverberating with mystery and solitude, gradually evolves into more complex audioscapes where found sounds, multi-idiom speech fragments, small percussives and indistinct undercurrents mix with altered states of inner perceptivity, at times reminding of Paul Schütze's best work. My present-day dwindling attention to this kind of aural art is nevertheless still kept alive thanks above all to well conceived records like this one, a limited edition of only 50 copies of which I urge you to secure at least one for your collection.

MATHIEU RUHLMANN - The earth grows in each of us (Afe)

The main concept behind this album is "the regeneration of life cycle". This was something that struck Ruhlmann quite heavily, as he recently experienced both the arrival of his first son and the fear of losing his beloved sister, who barely survived a near-death accident. The shorter compositions refer to Mathieu's year of birth in terms of duration (one, nine, seven and six minutes respectively) while the three-part suite "Holding Light" lasts 30 minutes (in 2006 Ruhlmann was in fact 30) and it's divided into three-minute aural snapshots. Apart from all these numerological aspects, what struck me is the profoundly evocative aura that the composer was able to generate by using a plethora of regular instruments and more or less inanimate sources to depict states of mind that, in selected moments, had me truly reeling in streams of slow-breathing awareness. There are distinct references in several of the tracks, and "Eschenau, 1976" is in my opinion a clear homage to William Basinski's heartrending looping memorials; elsewhere, Eno-tinged recollections gratify our unconscious will of being annihilated by sorrowful stupor. Regardless of these evident influences, the high quality of sound treatment and the level of depth reached by Ruhlmann with several of his intuitions transform many sections of this CD in something analogous to a faded Polaroid, which one would like to definitively throw in the trash bin, but inevitably puts back in that old biscuit tin full of past remembrances.

MATHIEU RUHLMANN + CELER - Mesoscaphe (Spekk)

It takes specialist ears and rare profoundness to produce music, at the border between ambient and electroacoustic, that sounds gifted with sensitiveness, still communicating something vital to a listener whose persistence is by now worn out by the surplus of flatness and routine that has gradually destroyed a grassland chock full of unachieved potentials and self-believing idiots. “Mesoscaphe” was dedicated by its creators to “Ben Franklin”, the first naturally-propelled submarine, invented by Swiss physicist Jacques Piccard to be exclusively carried by the Gulf Stream in a fundamental experimentation that, in 1969, was unfortunately overshadowed by the Apollo 11 mission. To generate the breathtaking moans that, in this very moment, are putting your writer under a spell, Ruhlmann and Celer (Danielle Baquet-Long & Will Long) utilized a mix of field recordings and regular instruments (including piano, theremin, bowed ukelin, violin and kettle) plus tape loops, electronics and contact microphone recordings of the mesoscaphe, today lying at the Maritime Museum in Vancouver. I won’t be tedious in attempting to portray feelings by mere words; suffice to say that the record is splendid, a warm blanket of muffled frequencies and smothered noises that, intriguingly enough, made me envisage silent aircrafts and blurred memories rather than aquatic inscrutability. Among the absolute finest in these artists’ careers to date, this is mandatory listening for late evenings.

OLAF RUPP / TONY BUCK / JOE WILLIAMSON - Weird weapons (Emanem)

Drop yourself in the middle of this acoustic guitar/double bass/percussion trio and prepare to be dynamically assaulted, as the protagonists sound like three kids left alone in a room full of every kind of toy. At times hyperactive, Rupp's nylon-stringed elucubrations are a well received mixture of disjointed strumming, fine clusters, quivering rasgueados and sparse reflective chords that show the German's disguised harmonic sapience. Williamson's tone is made of enormous bass waves, particularly evident during the most dynamically powerful sections; he is maybe the ensemble's "assertive glue", leading his colleagues through the meanders of cacophonic jewellery and out of the "noise-at-any-cost" perilous waters. Buck's percussive arsenal helps him throughout his amusing indiscretions, as metallic shades and reckless tampering in clangorous sceneries are a signature of his overjoyed participation to this collective lingo. Tony compares this music to a "million restless cell" organism on the liner notes and I find his description absolutely fitting.

BRUCE RUSSELL - 21st century field hollers and prison songs (w.m.o/r)

One of the most intriguing methods to create new music is taking old materials and reconfigure them in such an unrecognizable fashion that it becomes "innocent" again. That's exactly what Bruce Russell did, as he used samples from "Midnight crossroads tape recorder blues", an album he released on A Bruit Secret with Ralf Wehowsky, who himself appears here in "Wehowsky loop blues" which contains radical alterations of himself improvising on the sitar. Apart from this (and some acetate surface noise in a couple of pieces) all sounds are derived from acoustic guitar and voice, yet what we hear is something crossing the border between cheap cassette experimentation and the illegitimate son of Pierre Schaeffer listening to a mangled version of the spliced-tape fantasies by Frank Zappa circa "We're only in it for the money". Most of this stuff is sublimely sincere, a joy for everyone's hidden desires of dadaist abolition of ordinariness in every aspect of sonic art. Russell forces us to rethink the whole process of studio work, applying coat upon coat of blue collar asymmetry over a series of naive collages that, after such a treatment, become nothing short of remarkable.

JOHN RUSSELL - Analekta (Emanem)

When one thinks about the recognizability of a "style" in improvisational contexts, John Russell's guitar playing stands up there with Derek Bailey's. His cutting acoustic shards are immediately identifiable, either in solo performances or in different settings like the ones featured in this disc, which presents three duos - with Garry Todd on tenor sax, Henry Lowther on trumpet and Chefa Alonso on soprano sax and percussion - plus a so called Quaqua (the Latin word for "whithersoever"), namely a one-off larger group of improvisers that the guitarist assembles in special occasions, in this case a nonet recorded at the Freedom Of The City 2006 festival. The guitar/trumpet duo "Blart" finds Russell in spectacular form, as he manages to render appropriate even the most disarticulated fingerings, subjecting them to his unique treatment of glowing harmonics and behind-the-bridge scintillae. In particular, Lowther's warm tone seems to complement and, at time, exalt a no-nonsense economy of means symbolized by Russell's choice of rasgueados and plucks, which need no amplification or effects to produce a wealth of perjurious limpidness. Saxophones are also good partners for such atypical methods, and both Todd and Alonso are up to the task. Through his own creative phrasing, the former eases himself during his comrade's trips through the meanders of sensible dissonance and swipes to the obvious in "The bite", while in "Chamarileros" the latter incarnates a little bit more that ideal of emancipation from the norm which free music sometimes loses its grip on, becoming somehow standardized. This is ably avoided in a track in which wind and string instrument sound more destructured than ever, both disharmonic in peculiarly enjoyable fashion, yet ending their excursion in better known territories. The Quaqua - "So it goes" - is more theatrical, richer in variations and colours, with vocalists Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg and Nicole Legros in good evidence during a collective performance ranging from the delicately chamberesque to the brutally primitive. Stephan Keune, Philipp Wachsmann, Ashley Wales, Steve Beresford, Ivor Kallin and Javier Carmona are the other participants - besides Russell - in this scattering of curiously different talents.

JOHN RUSSELL / UTE VOLKER / MATHIEU WERCHOWSKI - Three planets (Emanem)

In the liveliest segments of "Three planets" there's a curiously loose, almost playful atmosphere that's in direct contrast with the low undertones met somewhere else in the tracks. The whole recording lives off these extremes and that's a major plus in a CD that parallels the improvising merits of three musicians born one decade apart from each other. John Russell's at his usual great self, bracketing short spans of movement with slashing plucks and constellations of diagonal arpeggios, inserting harmonics in the potion with the same nonchalance of a cook putting salt in a soup. Ute Völker is a fabulously inventive accordionist, talking loud "organ style" when needed and whispering minimal circles that put you right into her sticky net - and it's guaranteed you won't move. Mathieu Werchowski's violin phrase eviscerations and tightrope-walking, high-pitch ostinatos add a measure of anarchy that's as welcome as an old friend returning home after a long absence.

JOHN RUSSELL / JEAN DEMEY / JEAN-MICHEL VON SCHOUWBURG - The Mercelis concert (Brussels 2006) (Inaudible)

I received this nicely packaged CD along with a very kind letter - in Italian! - from Belgian vocalist Van Schouwburg, who told me about the “love and patience” that were put into the realization of this artifact, recorded live at the Petit Théâtre Mercelis in Brussels. There’s no doubt that every minute of this record confirms those handwritten thoughts in full. Jean-Michel is an extraordinary performer, his flexibility and powerful agility crossing the borders between the styles of Demetrio Stratos and Phil Minton, with a little bit of muscle in addition. Comrades in this occasion were guitarist John Russell, really needing no introduction (as announcers used to say when calling Mike Tyson’s arrival in the ring) and double bassist Jean Demey who’s featured in two tracks, one of them a beautiful solo demonstrating an immaculate technique and the will to walk roads leading outside the habitual trickery. While Russell is at his usual semi-acoustic best, this time fusing snappy plucks and chordal bangs with an unheard before rock attitude (listen to the end of “Light stagin’”) and long moments of attentive silence (“The Mercelis trio”), Van Schouwburg is the force to be reckoned as a true revelation here, his constant research for new standards of vocal improvisation - which materializes without sounding wacky or excessively ironic, repeated rants and snarls notwithstanding - scuttling the certainties of what a “singer” is supposed to do during an exhibition. The innocent comments that a young kid in the audience externalizes every once in a while appear as a symbol of purity amidst a radically genuine kind of expression, unpedigreed music that can turn our mood for the better in the space of a few minutes.

JOSH RUSSELL - Sink (Quiet Design)

Despite knowing Josh Russell as the boss of the Bremsstrahlung imprint, I must admit a well-rooted ignorance about his recorded output. Shame on this scribbler, as “Sink” slaps this harsh reality in the face of the guilty with 42 minutes of hissing microsounds, nervous pulses, impressive rumbles, weak crackles and wavering oscillations among the most intriguing in my recent listening experiences. Russell owns an academic background in biochemistry and it’s all too easy to associate the infinitesimal movements, indeed almost biotic emissions of these pieces to the observation of micro-organisms at work, a continuous hurry of difficultly discernible patterns - but also irregular gaseous matters, subterranean throbs, invisible lights - whose effect is utter saturation of the ears when listened by headphones and a controlled turbulence when the whole diffuses in the room through monitors. Since this stuff lacks a harmonic structure, at least in the traditional sense, listeners could be justified in expecting a coldness of sorts. Not so: the vibration transmitted by this work is the right one, a feel of connection with a superior scheme that only certain kinds of sound are able to elicit. The composer determines changes and gradual developments in the consistency of the sonic materials with intrusive sapience, an acoustic photograph associable to the life cycle of a living entity. Russell’s music might let us hope in some kind of evolution which, looking around at this moment, appears as highly unlikely.

RAY RUSSELL - Goodbye Svengali (Cuneiform)

Virtuosity levigated by large doses of soul characterizes the new album by guitarist Russell, who dedicates his work to his major influence Gil Evans ("Svengali" being Evans' name anagrammed); the late master arranger is even featured on electric piano in a heartfelt version of Charlie Mingus' universally known "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat". Over the course of ten quite deep tracks we're given the gift of sensitive playing and lyricism diluted in technically advanced compositions, in which Russell is helped by some of jazz-rock's finest names, people like Gary Husband, Anthony Jackson, Simon Phillips, Mo Foster, Tony Hymas. Miles Evans - Gil's son - plays beautiful trumpet lines in the great title track, while Russell is also involved in a couple of atmospheric pieces (alone with his guitar or dialoguing with keyboards) exalting his impeccable control on tone and dynamic expressiveness. A timeless album that everybody - guitarists in particular - should analyze carefully, containing gorgeous melodies and most excellent fretwork in the middle of a triangle whose corners are occupied by Jeff Beck, Phil Miller and Yo' Miles!

RAY RUSSELL QUARTET - Turn circle (Vocalion)

From 1968 to 1973 Ray Russell recorded eight albums for the “Realm Jazz” series of CBS. It was a time in which practically every guitarist in the globe was under the influence of rock - fuzztones and wah wahs everywhere, even in “jazz” records. Coherently with himself and not with that scene, Russell decided to use a completely clean tone for this elegant statement, which sees him flanked by Roy Fry (piano), Ron Mathewson (double bass) and Alan Rushton (drums). The wonderful cover photo shows the members of the Quartet in black and white, the look of bank employees after the lunch break. Still, the music is as distant from credit scoring and loans as you might hope for, all pieces penned by the leader except Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” and Charles Lloyd’s “Sombrero Sam”, both rendered in exquisite versions. I’m a total sucker for anything well played - no genre excluded - that comes from the Sixties and the Seventies, so this stuff charmingly smiled at my nostalgic apparatus, which seems to need these shots of refined ingenuousness like oxygen. People still had hopes then, believing that pursuing a desire, whatever that was, would lead to something good at the end. It wasn’t meant to be - but these beautiful piano chords, that strange improvisation in “Tremendum” followed by a long yet reflective drum solo, these progressions seemingly known since we were in the womb, everything contributes to highlight a rare chance to look at a past that hasn’t developed into a real “progress” and that one can only keep deep in the heart, not being able to explain what “emotion” really means in a world where playing Tetris on a cell phone is among the daily priorities.

PAUL RUTHERFORD - Iskra 3 (Psi)

Visionary and inexpressible, the work of Paul Rutherford with Robert Jarvis and Lawrence Casserley - who process the sound of trombone through computer manipulations - resists to any kind of classification, as Rutherford’s rotund phrasing is morphed into quasi-indeterminacy, but always within the borders of imperfect - better, mangled - raw beauty. The CD notes suggest that, due to the intrinsic difficulties of these sonic representations, listening should be divided in two halves; yet, I contradicted this advice, enjoying a tumultuous elaboration of nightmarish hermetism in the first act, followed in the second section by a cloudy, amorphous improvisation that puts multi-faceted trombone mutations amidst backgrounds of virtual thunderstorms sounding like they were feeding an overdrive pedal. As in an abstract painting, one detects new traces with every new approach.

PAUL RUTHERFORD - Neuph (Emanem)

Originally issued in 1978, the re-edition of "Neuph" is augmented by two live segments from the Rome and Pisa concerts in 1980. This album sees Rutherford improvising solo and against himself through multitrack techniques (which are also used to add the delightful howling of the dog Judy in "Paunch and Judies"). Paul shows his methods via melodious morsels of persistence and thematic slipstreams bringing out his off-the-record statements, which to this day sound both relaxing and dangerous to normality. In "Phase 2/2" the old professor superimposes trombone and euphonium - two tracks each - layering series of squiggles that look like the most refined handwriting as we hear the final result. While listening to some of these improvisations, my mind thought about the music converging towards a high point right over my head, like if Rutherford's many short messages were an indication to a superior level of awareness. We all should try to follow these peculiar signs.

PAUL RUTHERFORD - Solo in Berlin 1975 (Emanem)

While enjoying the splendid documents contained by this CD I remained astonished when reading that their originator tried in vain for many years to get them published, and that the tapes came out from some hidden box only following the trombonist’s death in 2007. Shame, once again, to the wax permeating the ears and brains of people who lack the basics of comprehension and will never be able to feel what it’s like to be graced by the soul of a real artist. This also includes the members of the audience that apparently booed parts of these performances - recorded by Jost Gebers at FMP’s Workshop Freie Musik and Total Music Meeting in March and November 1975 - and that, luckily, Martin Davidson managed to erase from the final version of this edition. The pleasing duty of stressing concepts that the cognoscenti already know very well falls on us: Paul Rutherford was one of the true giants of free improvisation, no questions asked. The 75 minutes of “Solo in Berlin” literally run away too soon, and at the end it seems that we’ve just had a pleasant conversation with a trusted friend. The timbre: so warmly confident, perennially connected with a reality that speaks of bigger and better things even when we’re all starting to see the poverty line, both materially and as far as artistic values are concerned. Hey, he was playing this stuff 33 years ago, you could argue. Correct. Still, this material sounds as fresh as a rose and stays wonderfully intelligent, a rare feature indeed. The technical proficiency: a deadly weapon of tediousness in the wrong hands, merely the sign of a superior way of thinking music in Rutherford’s. The nullification of the need of systematizing matters: because when a wholesome musician plays an instrument and those who listen feel like that person is talking to their essence, this is usually the indication of something special. No sententious speeches from this man, who efficiently looked for the crux of sonic significance. Expressed by a note, a hundred notes, his voice, a series of unpredictable slides, slurs and glissandos, a few hissing vapours and a good-hearted smile. We can’t see it, yet it’s there somewhere. One of the best instrumental solo albums of the last three decades, and I’m writing this after the first of what is going to be a long chain of listens.

PAUL RUTHERFORD TRIO - Gheim (Emanem)

Though this music dates from 1983 it still sounds fresh and stimulating. In a tourbillon of interweaving fingerings, interscapular exhalations and pugnacious shuffling of accents and rhythms, Paul Rutherford's trombone leads the trio through organic explorations of advanced free idioms, his unique voice well distinguishable in the morphology of two live recordings (originally released on a tape by Ogun) augmented by three mordant improvisations recorded in a studio in the same year. While drummer Nigel Morris joins the context with sapient ruptures and slippery rhythmical extensions, one can't help noticing the early presence of Paul Rogers' great talent: his double bass radically extirpates any trace of submission to obviousness, jolting the combustibles in this lively rendezvous of twitchy freewheelers.

JIM RYAN - The Ghost Dog Tour Compilation (Edgetone)

Defined as a “musical bus trip” by the principal, the Ghost Dog Tour originated in 2007 when the main protagonist decided to start an improbable journey through the United States by bus, in order to meet and play with a lot of akin spirits and anarchic personalities constituting what’s described as “an underground vein of creative music running across the nation”. The names are too many to be listed here (although one spots Bruce Eisenbeil and Dave Hofstra) and, among the less known artists, special talents are individuated like “composer, improviser, sculptor and maker of masks and instruments” Douglas R. Ewart, his marvellous didjeridoo parts gracing a track recorded in Minneapolis. A great read, which I strongly recommend, about the concept and the development of this adventure can be found at the label’s website in the Jim Ryan page. As far as the record itself is concerned, in truth this is something that’s pretty unreviewable, such is the extreme variety of settings, moods and tape quality of the document, which lasts 74 minutes. Think of it as a series of Polaroids that, beautifully realized or not, will serve the memory of the traveller while helping us to realize that this was a tough task from the very beginning. What must be remembered is the half-poignant, half-raging sax voice of Ryan, an instrumentalist whose respectable expertise is at the same level of his commitment to the hard core of the purest free improvisation, and the absolute flexibility of all the involved players, who - be it on a demagnetized cassette or in some more acceptable recording medium - sound like if the future depended on the ability to sideswipe genres, thus remaining delivered from categorical impositions. Maybe not rich in money, certainly billionaires in their souls.

JOEL RYAN - Or air (Psi)

Elegantly packaged in a black and white graphic design , "Or air" is a series of acousmatic treatments of pieces and bits of Evan Parker's music. Though most sources are reassembled in extended tensions and quasi-minimal repetitive currents, Ryan is able to organize several examinations of a very difficult matter, creating orders upon orders of condensed microtonal realities, each one running out of the ordinary to catch the tails of a fractured narrative. In most instances totally fascinating, "Or air" speaks with eloquent authority, raising the curtain on certain aspects of Parker's sound that are astonishing in this new contextualization as much as they are when Evan plays on his own. When the shadows fall to end the record with the deep introversion of "Oran", one can't help giving Ryan his due, acknowledging his assembling mastery and his not too perverse fantasy.

JORGE SAD / GEST(U)ALT ENSAMBLE - Retransmisión (Self-Release)

An absorbing, somewhat disconcerting record by a group of improvisers from Argentina who also interact with live electronics, directed by composer Jorge Sad (who wrote the music but doesn’t play a part with any instrument in this interpretation). Based on Antonin Artaud’s radiophonic opus “Pour en finir avec le jugèment de Dieu”, “Retransmisión” interchanges a type of conscious instrumental emancipation - sophisticated in principle, still almost entirely free of clichés - to a cycle of materializations of voices from radio and television in a variety of languages (if I’m not off beam, mostly reporting about the war in Iraq), Artaud’s disturbing voice highlighting the whole via the original vinyl recording, left without any refurbishment in order for “the sound of time” to remain unmodified. The timbres of flute, clarinet, waqra-phuku and percussion are subjected to the treatment of Max/MSP software, yet the general nature of the performance remains in the province of blood, sweat and tears, several vivid snapshots with screaming people and anxious mindsets becoming the starting point of a severe uneasiness. The CD contains a bonus video track where a portion of the theatrical action can be witnessed. All in all, a release from which substantial doses of weightiness transpire, that constituent being particularly welcome in this era of shallow values.

DORON SADJA - A piece of string, a sunset (12k)

Working mostly on the borders of humanly audible frequencies and dividing the octave scale into 144 pitches, Doron Sadja gives life to music which is difficult, powerful, intense and delicate at the same time. To put it mildly, I don't think that everyone can appreciate this kind of expressive means: one must force a good measure of attention to really understand the way in which frequencies manifest themselves (you also have to be a bit careful not to over-expose your ears to them, but that's another story). But those who are gifted with the required patience will be surely rewarded by talkative pulses, purring lows, electro/splitting harmonic waves and the occasional regular instrument approaching the whole (as a matter of fact, electric guitar and violin are utilized in various parts of the record). Sadja's sound makes a good impression, revealing a unique depth while avoiding to run after someone else's shadow.

SAKADA - 30 November 2002 (Sound 323)

Eddie Prevost and Mattin's approach to improvisation consists of developing a neat gossamer of intimate conversations under the guise of computer feedback and percussives. In this mini CD - another little gem in the nice Sound 323 collection - everything's permeated with the right attitude: Sakada quiz and test each other, exchanging a lot more than simple suggestions, tending instead to reciprocate those little presents each one offers to his counterpart. In between calm moments, sudden fluxes of electroacoustic effluvia pounce into the room, the unmistakable sign everything's functioning at the right moment. This music is sturdy yet articulate, succeeding in carving a personal niche without borrowing from influences.

SAKADA - Never give up on the margins of logic (Antiopic)

This expanded lineup of Sakada was recorded live in London's 2003 Freedom of the City festival. The addition of three strings/texture players (Rhodri Davies, Margarida Gracia, Mark Wastell) makes sure that forms and expressions come straight from the gut rather than being dislocated in apparently extraneous capsules. Well proportioned systems work symbiotically and there's a slight AMM flavour somewhere; the details are exceptionally clear, the musicians maintaining a mysterious restraint which is the basis for a kind of laboratory soundtrack where each sonic alchemist wants to make companions aware of his important discovery. At a mere 17-plus minutes, this 3-inch is just a glimpse into a unique fascinating resonant network.

SAKADA - Askatuta (Therhizomelabel)

Eddie Prevost, Mattin and Xabier Erkizia are captured in a live recording from 2003 which most of all demonstrates the adaptability of unconventional sounds to different aspects of improvisation, also reproducing quite well their intercourse with the surrounding space, be it the performance or the listening's. Prevost rubs and strikes in his most personal jargons, percussive mastery sustaining the heaviest silences while his persona seems barely present, except for some more violent outbursts. He's finely embraced by Mattin and Erkizia, whose computers' feedback and various emissions (plus an ultra-minimal accordion) not only penetrate a concept of totality, redefining the relationship between raw sources and education of the unprepared, but also find a niche in the outside world's soundtracks, becoming part of a precisely framed interval of our life. The CD ends with a short segment where we hear the artists - in "rehearsal"? - talking to each other after emitting more sonic oddities; even this conclusion is out of any expectancy.

MATTHIEU SALADIN - Intervalles (L'innomable)

One should point out that L'innomable's consistency over the years has never diminished, thus making for some of the most interesting releases that regularly stuff this writer's mailbox. "Intervalles" confirms this positive trend, presenting nine segments of electroacoustic music of the finest blend, the one that confounds and astounds while delivering the senses from any residual non-cooperation with our body's functions. Saladin works with bass clarinet and soprano saxophone, subjecting them to a surgical computer treatment that distillates their timbral marrow until they become the purest sonic extracts that human ears are able to decode. Unsettling subterranean hums have our thorax resonating in consonance with the auricular membranes in "41", while tinnitus-inducing frequencies tinge the air in "18"; from another front, "17" hypnotizes through a Carl Stone-like organic minimalism. Although all the tracks are born from improvisations, Saladin is so attuned with the processes - and relative analyses - that he just seems to put a mechanism at work while standing in attentive observation. The outcome of these experiments, yielding not only stillness but also subdural ebulliency, is a defreezing element against the ice that covers our instinctive refusal of technological excess. In a way, "Intervalles" is comparable to radiotherapy - but it sure works much better.

MATTHIEU SALADIN - Stock Exchange Piece (w.m.o/r)

One of my most pronounced cultural limits (…alright, “culture” is an unrecognized concept here, but let’s just pretend it exists…) is the comprehension of the mechanisms at work in the Stock Exchange market, something which “real world” occurrences depend on, and yet I never cared a iota about that. Furthermore, every time I look at those sharp-dressed operators chocking themselves while performing their specialist language of signs, my mind decrees that pigeons could very well be designing our future political and economic developments. Now, Matthieu Saladin found a way for this man to appreciate at least a smidgen of Stock Exchange behavioural implications. He associated different frequencies of sine waves to the rates and indexes of gold and light sweet crude oil, then proceeded to generate an electronic composition out of their fluctuations. One would expect a sonic mayhem akin to a Wall Street chaos of bleeps, purrs and mumbles, right? Wrong. What’s left is a simple parallelism of high and low pulsating undulations, whose interior movement accelerates or decelerates in a gradually evolving pseudo-immobility. Picture a much colder, less rich version of Eliane Radigue’s “Trilogie de la Mort” and you’ll get a vague idea of how this stuff sounds like. A little more dope in the reproduction - speakers are mandatory - and the oscillating pulses become strikingly muscular, resounding presences all around the house, thickness varying depending on the position we’re in. Very installation-oriented, intelligently minimal. And you don’t even need an Armani suit to enjoy it.

MATTHIEU SALADIN - 4’33”/0’00” (Éditions Provisoires)

Now this is what I call a great cover of John Cage’s most celebrated statement, the key that - more than anything else - opened the door to thousands of nonentities all over the world affirming “I, too, am an artist”. Saladin amplified at maximum possible level the first released edition of “Four minutes and thirty-three seconds”, the one on the Cramps label interpreted by Gianni Emilio Simonetti. The outcome is just static noise: cranked-up sibilance with an avalanche of granular disturbance. All things considered, not sure if Cage would have appreciated this version - but if you put the mini CD in “repeat” mode the neighbours could manifest a less-than-Zen attitude towards your musical taste in the next condominium meeting.

PHILIP SAMARTZIS - Soft and loud (Microphonics)

With "Soft and loud", Samartzis has definitively arrived to the top class of acousmatic composition. The perfection of this sonic architecture - created with field recordings of Tokyo and artificial sounds mixed in a network of silences and complex intersections - must be appreciated in a totally quiet listening room, even if a total comprehension of the full spectrum of the phenomena is out of the question (in fact, this work was primarily conceived for an eight-channel surround playback). The extraordinary "concrete/abstract" relationship between the sources explicates itself in every moment of the disc: fire, birds, human voices, urban landscapes move around textural inventions and sophisticated interactions of normality with anxious anarchy. The details are finely crafted, yet the overall effect has a "natural" aura rarely experienced in modern electroacoustic opuses, which often suffer from chronic coldness and nonsensical difficulty. Making the right decisions at the right times, Philip stamps his highly personal mark with a record that, in my opinion, couldn't go any further in terms of emotional and rational balance, therefore becoming an instant classic in his genre.

PHILIP SAMARTZIS - Unheard spaces (Microphonics)

The two thirds of "Unheard spaces" are occupied by the title track, which Samartzis describes as his try of portraying Venice "in new and innovative ways by focusing exclusively on its sonic characters"; for their large part, the latter include various kinds of indigenous oral expression. Now, like every idiom in the world, Italian might sound "strange", "musical", "peculiar" to most non-Italians, as much as this writer receives the same feeling by listening to Vietnamese or Scandinavian people talking, but is left quite indifferent by hearing his own mother tongue spoken in an opus like this one. This means that my appreciation of "Unheard spaces" as a composition is necessarily partial towards its environmental sounds rather than the vocal ones; while I recognize the spectacular quality of the recording and the painstaking assemblage that the composer realized with all the sources, I can only push myself to really love just some of the field work heard here - most of all, the chug of the ferry boats, the tolling of the bell towers, the wonderful detail of the laguna's backwash and the gorgeous heavy rain that closes the album. But as far as human voices are concerned, I just hear them as a "normal" sound (at times even a little annoying for my own nature, which does not approve the typical Italian habit of making noise and speaking loud everywhere, kids and adults alike) for the very reasons explained above. That's not Samartzis' fault of course, and all of the above won't be a problem for most listeners. Therefore "Unheard spaces" remains a compelling piece of musique concrete on any level. The initial track "Absence and presence" is instead a splendid alternance of noise and hush, generated by Sean Baxter (drums), David Brown (electroacoustic guitar), Anthea Caddy (cello) and Thembi Soddell (field recordings and sampler) interacting with the principal (here featured on field recordings and electronics) and with four loudspeakers, according to parameters better described in the liner notes of the CD. This architecture causes the musicians to reciprocally "respond", so that two or three of them - never all five - give birth to multiform interplay. In several sections Michael Vorfeld improvises on percussion, acting as a human glue between the glacial character of electronics and feedback and the more natural, if equally complex, instrumental gestures of the players. Uncompromising music from every point of view.

PHILIP SAMARTZIS / GUNTER MULLER / VOICE CRACK - Wireless within (For 4 Ears)

Recorded in 2002, this CD contains the last audible traces of Voice Crack before Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang decided to part ways. As it's often the case with this magnificent Swiss label, what's captured on disc thrives for the most part on an unstable equilibrium of next-to-breakage electronic circuits and found sounds lodged in tiny holes; in this particular instance, an Australian rainforest also provides beautiful birds and annoying insects in exquisite dialogue with Voice Crack's "cracked everyday electronics" complemented by seriously stirring ambiences and piercing overacute tones masterfully served by Samartzis and Müller. One can't separate what happens by accident from pre-programmed events; everything belongs in the list of partially expected results from the analytical systematization of noise, which in the sapient hands of these mad scientists become as pleasing as one can hope. The music mixes perfectly with our ordinary activity, requiring only a modicum of attention for us to remember it exists and works for itself.

PHILIP SAMARTZIS / SACHIKO M - Artefact (Dorobo)

Sinewaves everywhere, silently building a new aural space right where you're standing, encapsulating all your sensations into a single body of thought. Everything is born from substantial frequencies and modified compact discs, whose skipping beat is the heart of this unknown yet fascinating world where equilibrium is just forgotten in favour of a new listening habit. Somehow linked to the core of our brain, Samartzis and Sachiko M slowly penetrate through the cracks of individual conscience, releasing their invisible energy with cold authority while remaining out of sight; their music is a powerful sign of change, a departure from the already solidified shapes of what too often computer music sounds like. Every stage of these unbelievable transmutations is a progressive immersion into something hitting the nerves remarkably hard, but which does not impose its will with that force, rather subtracting the sources of identification in our - by now expired - aesthetic codes.

STEN SANDELL TRIO + JOHN BUTCHER - Strokes (Clean Feed)

To an already difficult-sounding unit that features leader Sandell on piano, voice and electronics plus Johan Bertling (double bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums and percussion), the addition of a figure like John Butcher - here on tenor and soprano saxophones, amplification and feedback - constitutes yet another problematic element for reviewers to try and sketch what’s played by these amiable explorers. Divided into two long improvisations (“Study” and “Unsteady”) and a final short postlude (“Steady”), the album is one of the most irksome ever released by Pedro Costa’s label. This is not a surprise, given the ever-introverted, but often almost explosive nature of Sandell’s playing, his piano clusters and uncommon intervallic designs propelling the group in that kind of abstract expression that’s typical of unconstrained talent but also pretty hard to memorize, even only vaguely. Bertling’s work is excellent throughout, his constant try to alternate intense arco layers and sustained aggressions supported by the never-exhausted fantasy of Nilssen-Love, who seems to imagine his set like a flourishing rhythmic plant from which taking the right leaves and flowers of inspiration to reproduce them on the spot any minute. On his side, Butcher aliments the batteries of subversion with his trademark overtone-based trajectories and spirals of purposeful instant creativity. Yet he’s also the one who tries designing a couple of more detailed wreaths, at times tranquilizing his playing a couple of tads amidst numerous irregular protuberances. Nervous, intelligent music that necessitates all the passion that we, analysts of technically-gifted free expertise, can bring out from within. The first listen won’t give a clue; from the second on, you could be lured into a perilous quicksand which will likely swallow your reluctance.

STEN SANDELL / DAVID STACKENHAS / EVAN PARKER / BARRY GUY / PAUL LYTTON - Gubbröra (Psi)

This music has been recorded live at Freedom of the City 2004. The two long improvisations by Sandell and Stackenhas on piano, electronics, voice and guitar are moderate affairs where the pleasure of enjoying a large open space is complementary to the renitency to speak when not absolutely necessary. The duo has a good acoustic vibe - we can almost smell the instruments' wood during several interconnections where freehearted conversations are interrupted only by a look to each other's imagination. The intervention of the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio in the almost 34 minutes of the title track is tangential, yet it dictates a series of new instigations to movement: while Lytton and Guy build instant permutations of commonly intended bass/drums dialogs, Parker takes a handful of frisky periods and leaves them to mature in the pale light of a reassuring knowledge.

SANDOZ LAB TECHNICIANS - The Western lands (Last Visible Dog)

Renowned both for their “absolutely lo-fi” approach to recording and the scarce number of releases in many years of activity, SLT present three tracks - two shorter ones and a long suite, the latter being their very first digital recording - that show no interest whatsoever for any kind of classification. The ritual follows its own course of trippy-ish rhythmless wailing and fingering, be it through detuned guitar strings, sparse electric piano chords that would make us believe in the existence of a zombie version of Chick Corea, unusual reed instruments and more or less involuntary saturation of the amplifiers (and tapes, of course). For good measure, SLT add water in a couple of instances to give their playing a more “natural” vibe, but they really needed not to, as this music rather flows like an industrial sewer polluting the limpid seas of consonance. The best moments are the ones in which the sound remains confined in motionlessness, a modicum of dazed mantric radiation giving our ears a well-deserved "relief" after sustaining bings, springs, whistles and zings of every conceivable kind. But even the most inaccessible parts can offer nice deviations from the norm of improvisation, and I found them helpful in my walkman to cover the ongoing idiotic conversations around me. Useful and often pleasurable noise, whose gradations are atypical enough to overcome the risk of boredom.

MATTHEW SANSOM / RHODRI DAVIES - Live uncut vol.1 (A Question Of Re_entry)

Difficult to say what Sansom and Davies had in mind when they started these two improvisations, but that’s not a problem at all. The result is what counts - about 33 minutes of quasi-autistic, semi-silent poetry made of imperceptible frying hiss, glimpses of drones, liquid crackles, ear-drilling highs, rumbling distances, emerging nothingness, conscious restraint. Conveying the right words to represent certain kinds of music is getting tricky, especially when those emissions seem to point directly to the cerebral regions dealing with self-examination. Written sentences are actually useless if a listener is not gifted with the capacity of distinguishing colours in sounds (which is also the secret behind the famous concept of “perfect pitch” and - sorry - no study, exercise or meditation can help you there, despite what your favourite blather-master might be trying to assert). Here we find an apparently restricted palette that, on the contrary, contains hundreds of different harmonics - combinations, choirs and clashes of them. There are sections that elicited the conjuring up of abstruse images like “gong resonance filtered by kitchenware”, or “brain scanned through a hostile rainbow”. What do these expressions mean? Nothing. Did I feel better while listening to this CDR? Absolutely. Highly recommended, the Spartan sleeve notwithstanding - Nicolas Malevitsis has by now grown us used to disguising little treasures under poverty-stricken covers, so no real surprise in this case.

MICHAEL SANTOS - Matters (Benbecula)

Hailing from Leeds, Michael Santos is an electronic composer who works with guitars, synthesizers and minidisc recordings, “Matters” being his debut CD, a very nice one in its glorious accessibility. Harsh textures are interspersed with sharp descriptions of imaginary ambiences, the whole reconciling with that area of music which is inflated by third-rate Fennesz wannabes, crippled-crystal laptop abusers and the likes. There are truly significant moments in here: the initial “Sounds like déjà vu” is a vaporous concoction of static mutability and beautiful glissando loops that catches the ear and the heart, while “Early Nineties” comes out of your woofers like a kidnapped child who managed to escape from his prison and wanders at night in the country, trying to find a way to definitive safety. Even the “easier” tracks, which never surpass the “excess of honey” level anyway, own a distinct trait separating Santos’ work from the above mentioned mass producers of futility. "Matters" is a graceful collection of candid instrumental explorations; it works very well both by headphones and as soft ambient presence. Give it a try.

MICHAEL SANTOS - Soft pocket (U-cover)

Ever since the first moments of the opening track "Peak" one realizes that "Soft pocket" is a special record; melancholic loops and curious disturbances go hand in hand, then stabilize into a fixed, gentle drone until the music fades out. Coming in a limited edition of 155 copies and containing a beautiful insert with a black and white double exposure photograph by Koen Lybaert, this CDR confirms Michael Santos among the most noteworthy young electronic composers in recent years, one of those artists who exploit every creative germ until it becomes a fully developed virus of aural pleasure. Sequenced fragmentations and delicate chordal suggestions are at the basis of pieces that are as fragile as mudpies, ready to be leveled even by the most merciful wave, yet agonizingly beautiful to contemplate until they resist, only because they are the result of a pure soul's effort. "Hub" is another splendid moment of the album, beginning with a cross between an undecipherable subterranean choir and a deep contraption that resolves into a series of hisses sounding like compressed air, while "Energy turtle" recalls that very animal's struggle to the sea as soon as they have left their eggs. "Different draft" is dramatic and achingly radiant, distortion and illumination fused into one. The compositional talent of Michael Santos shines in the light of simplicity, his music a possible stimulus for many to forget abstruse concepts and let the heart do the speaking. I don't know if they already know each other, but this man and Taylor Deupree should collaborate as soon as possible, since they seem to share the same kind of aesthetic poetry. Meanwhile, catch this charmer fast.

MICHAEL SANTOS - The happy error (Baskaru)

This is Michael Santos’ first official disc following two limited edition CDRs, and its emergence on the French Baskaru label doesn’t actually come as a shock, given the territories frequently stopped over by the people who publish their music on this imprint. In virtue of my positive reception of Santos’ previous works, I was a little apprehensive after reading a particularly unenthusiastic review of this record elsewhere on the web. That occurrence confirmed - if there were lingering uncertainties - that one should never rely on reviews, except mine (just kidding). As a matter of fact, this is an admirable display of the Leeds-based artist’s knack for creating what the press release accurately defines as “songs without words in which digital glitches and computer filters replace vocals”. In truth, what distinguishes this man from the crowd of laptop-equipped dilettantes running around the lawns of inconsistency is precisely that element of sub-skin melody that is not reticent, coming at the forefront of a piece whenever the occasion arises. Be it a three-note phrase or a reiterative pulse, establishing a foundation upon which a whole not-so-usual harmonic citadel is built corresponds to a must for Santos, who indisputably uses digital pollution more “tunefully” than others. “The happy error” doesn’t contain the slightest degree of unruliness (except perhaps for a single, noisier track towards the end of the CD); everything is flawlessly structured, hardly stroked by a light sense of evocativeness often improved by evident throbs from the lowlands of frequency.

SANTO SUBITO - Xavier (Accretions)

"Santo subito" (in Italian that means "saint now") was the faithful's cry after the death of Pope John Paul II. Steven Dye plays bass clarinet and self built instruments that use a membrane "to excite or vibrate an air column", all defined by the name "Flubaphonics"; Milton Cross is an accomplished violinist and pianist active since many years, during which he collaborated - among others - with Tarentel and Dielectric Drone All-Stars. Does all this mean that "Xavier" is somehow definable? Not for a second. The uneven frequency beatings and android glissandos that reeds, membranes and strings elicit in more than one section are a heavenly dissonance often nearing the borders of a mild-mannered traffic jam; there are intense melancholies too, making me think about my old Dan Ar Bras vinyl albums melted by the heat of a malfunctioning stove. Lo and behold, a periphrasis for Steve Reich's "Violin phase" appears at the beginning of "Radiosonde", soon mutating in a vivid recollection of abraded chamber music invented on the spot by Dye and Cross in one of their previous existences. The final "Farewell Bouy" is pure slanted romanticism. Give this album a try - pronto.

SAP(e) - Sap(e) (Rude Awakening)

Arrived at their second release, Sap(e) are Aurélien Besnard on clarinet, Christophe Devaux on prepared guitar and Guillaume Contré on laptop, all of them active in various fields of contemporary music, from avant jazz to theatre and modern dance soundtrack. Interested in the "restriction of material", nevertheless they behave according to rules that neither belong to EAI's nor to reductionism's book, the three movements of the disc showing their consistency without masks or reticence. In the first, Contré's basic soundscapes constitute a pretty solid grounding of continuous noise, be it rumble, electronic wind or fixed synthetic drones, over which Besnard's clarinet emits long notes, purring exhalations and invisible wheezing spectres, while Devaux transforms the sounds of his guitar into disembodied repetitive figures and underground metallic boiling; the final section fuses clarinet and laptop in an unfriendly radiation broken by the dispersed laments of a bird about to be electrocuted. The second (and best) track is less tranquil, more dissonant if you will, with screeching samples interrupting the dialogues between a subdued pumping clarinet and lightly stricken guitar strings. After a while, volumes and intensities are raised up a few notches, the music nearer to free improvisation than minimalism; but it's not going to last and we're soon back to assembly-line repetition in a blurred, gloomy, loop-ish atmosphere, ended by Devaux with splendid featureless narratives contrasted by his frequency-fighting comrades. Beginning the third instalment, we're welcomed by the most tantalizing music of the whole disc, a distant deep insufflation the basis for additional spiraliform jangling and spurious computerized insertions; picture being trapped in an elevator whose motor keeps going even if you're not moving of an inch. Suddenly, the guitar makes its presence more noticeable, but is soon overwhelmed by a throbbing insistence which introduces a few minutes of mental discomfort, until we're left alone with a malaised, weak loop. The record is over and it's truly a surprise, a honourable effort by three artists who I hadn't heard of before. Almost one hour, and I didn't get bored for a minute. Bravo.

BERNARDO SASSETTI - Alice (Trem Azul) 

"Alice" is director Marco Martins' opera prima, a movie dealing with the anguish and solitude of a father whose daughter has mysteriously disappeared. He looks for her everywhere, to the point of placing many cameras throughout Lisbon in the hope of finding out where she is. Due to this search, his existence becomes a necessary routine, the only way to feel that she's still with him, because he's sure that, by interrupting this circle, he would lose her forever. Bernardo Sassetti realized the movie's soundtrack with his customary sensitiveness, deciding to limit the timbral palette to three colours - his piano, Rui Rosa's clarinet and Yuri Daniel's double bass - thus creating what's probably his most "minimalist" album, an opus that lives beyond its commentary scope and touches deeply with its simple structures and dejected melodic sketches. As a matter of fact, one of the main themes is a clear homage to the Philip Glass of "Glassworks" and "Koyaanisqatsi", but Sassetti adds spice by subjecting the chromatic line to a 7/4 structure that melts its hypnotic quality down a little. Rosa and Daniel's intense participation to the music's sad intensity complements the composer’s almost obsessive figurations in splendid fashion, letting us have a glance at the complex system of dazed gestures and desperate, if silent mournings of a man whose loneliness is concrete and burning. The sounds of the city appear every once in a while to highlight and, absurdly, enhance this incessant sorrow. If I'm not wrong, only a Portuguese version of the movie exists on DVD; while we wait for a larger distribution, getting yourself a copy of this beautiful score is certainly easier - and, of course, recommended.

BERNARDO SASSETTI - Nocturno (Clean Feed)

"Nocturno" is made of elegant jazz that moves with a mixture of laconicism and sadness, both typical features of this composer's music; the players comprise the leader on piano, Carlos Barretto on double bass and Alexandre Frazão on drums. Johnny Mandel and Paul Webster's "Time for love" starts the album with that kind of melancholic ballad upon which many artists have built their fortune on, while "Sonho dos outros" continues on that path, its sorrowfulness slightly adjusted in an atmosphere recalling certain seminal ECM releases of the seventies. The linear trajectories and overall clarity of the title track are its major strengths; on the other hand, "Olhar" strangely reminds me of Vince Guaraldi's instrumentals in the "Charlie Brown Christmas" soundtrack, except for its middle-eastern refrain. Federico Mompou is represented by two versions of "Musica callada Mov.1" - the first a poignant trio with a splendid arcoed exposition by Barretto, the second for solo piano - and "Cançon No.7", whose easier development is never perceived as a limit for beauty. One just have to read the title of "Monkais" to understand that this is the most angular piece of the whole disc, Frazão sustaining its dissonant architecture with excellent dynamism (plus a very nice drum solo). Even at its most accessible level, the music of Sassetti never fails to entice and, one way or another, conquer our soul.

BERNARDO SASSETTI - Unreal: sidewalk cartoon (Clean Feed)

The roads of contemporary jazz are often impracticable, due to the mud of complexity that makes the walk between freedom and pedantic rules difficult to the point of leaving the music dictate the moment when one doesn't want to know anymore. But an album like "Unreal: sidewalk cartoon", which touches genres with the same levity of a butterfly fluttering amidst spring flowers, is the concrete proof of the existence of pure talent, even in the total congestion generated by releases that we're often forced to swallow these days. What transpires from this music, first and foremost, is Sassetti's unbelievable sensitiveness; he's able to depict delicacy with a couple of chords crossing a marimba vamp ("Coreografia de um jogo lento") while confirming his bravura as a composer of soundtracks - although there is no movie here - using all the colours at his disposal with parsimonious genius (bordering on the Zappaesque, if only for short glimpses). He's helped by a wealth of splendid musicians: a percussion ensemble, a mixed brass and woodwind quintet named Cromeleque, the Saxofinia sax quartet, plus a few of the best instrumentalists on the Portuguese scene (except saxophonist Perico Sambeat who hails from Spain). Echoes of Eberhard Weber and Rainer Bruninghaus are traceable in my overall favourite moment of the disc, the melancholic "I left my heart in Algandaros de Baixo", whose precious piano work is among the best things I've heard in the last few years, regardless of the genre. A touch of Kenny Wheeler here, a Thelonious Monk cover there, some spicy cross-pollinations of Oregon, Mingus and Bacharach; there's also an ironic "parental advisory" sticker that alerts about a potential excess of polyrhythmics. But fear not intrepid listener, as "Unreal" is as much assimilable as every masterpiece - for this album is certainly one, a milestone in Bernardo Sassetti's career and a fundamental textbook for anybody interested in the art of arrangement and orchestration. A careful listen to the leader's digital mastery won't do much harm, either.

BERNARDO SASSETTI - Dùvida (Trem Azul)

Besides being a talented pianist and composer, Bernardo Sassetti is among the best soundtrack artists around today, the father of masterpieces such as “Alice” (a film by Marco Martins which he scored, touching my heart in every minute). “Dùvida”, which features the Orquestra Sinfonietta de Lisboa in several of its passages, is not on the same level of that milestone yet remains an excellent example of how to use different shades in an arrangement while exploiting one or two simple concepts by putting them at work in diverse circumstances. This is the commentary to a theatre performance held in 2007 at the Teatro Maria Matos in Lisbon, which Sassetti underlines and characterizes through his customary piano-based revelations mixing heavy-hearted melancholy and romantic variations on minimalism. What’s perceived as the recurring theme sounds a bit like a cross of Philip Glass circa “Glassworks” and the arpeggio of “Anyway” (Genesis, “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”). A too simplistic description maybe, yet this must not detract from the many qualities of the album, which utilizes repetition and delicacy as non-invasive reminders of the fact that life is not, and will never be, just something limited to the sheer trust in a “superior entity” without striving for the betterment of our earthly presence. Sassetti’s music is the kind of soul-opening expression that results as grieving as the passage from adolescence to adulthood in sensitive beings, giving the idea of phases of existence that can be recollected but won’t return.

BERNARDO SASSETTI TRIO² - Ascent (Clean Feed)

OK, in case you didn’t notice I’ve become an ardent Bernardo Sassetti fan. A latecomer if there was ever one, this won’t prevent your writer to ramble once more about a previously missed record - released in 2005 - that the kindness of Clean Feed’s Pedro Costa allowed me to receive and enjoy. “Ascent” was played by the leader on piano, flanked by Ajda Zupancic (cello), Jean-François Lezé (vibraphone), Carlos Barretto (bass) and Alexandre Frazão (drums), all musicians executing their parts with intense participation and top-flight technical preparation. The mixture of slightly dissonant thematic materials and heartbreaking mournfulness typical of this man’s sound, of which we also find special trace in an album like “Alice”, is here again. Zupancic’s cello lines, absolutely poignant in the rare occasions in which she appears, constitute an additional element of dejected reflection that gives this music a scent of graceful introspection and fragile purity. In that sense, “Naquele Tempo” becomes the symbol of the whole album in its beautiful sadness, and I instantly associated this feeling to an episode witnessed just yesterday, Christmas’ Eve: a tiny child walking in the street - parents there but mentally absent, avulse from reality in search of last-minute presents - inadvertently dropped his pink plush animal. Realizing about it, he ran back, picked it up from the floor, looked deeply into the toy’s eyes while gently brushing it to clean the road dirt, then planted a delicate kiss on its snout, continuing to walk amidst grown-ups who didn’t see a second of what happened. I just wonder how that little big man will do in this decaying world given the evident sensitiveness of his young soul. All of the above only to give you a comparison of sorts to what Sassetti’s art manages to touch in perceptive receivers, likely to be moved by a uniquely poetic way of making music. Something that’s never extraneous to a profound awareness that can hurt, and hurt bad if one’s not in line with the ever-expanding mediocrity of the present times.

SATANICPORNOCULTSHOP - Zap Meemees (Sonore)

While I didn't appreciate Satanicpornocultshop's previous Sonore release "Anorexia gas balloon" too much, this time I'm positively surprised by the quality permeating most of this record - sort of a "best of" by this Japanese plunderphonic collective - as in several tracks they reach pure excellence. Trying to describe this music is next to impossible; the best way to listen to it is putting your headphone on and let your equilibrium get scrambled and stomped by a high-octane engine of perpetual change where found sounds, traditional material and pop music are shaken, edited and deformed like in a deranged radio station whose DJ has undergone some "Matrix"-like data overload treatment. Enjoy these cut-ups while stunned in front of your TV during action-packed series - I tried with "Dark Angel" and the effect was astonishing - and listen to the great conclusion, a ghost track with Elton John, Black Sabbath and John Lennon among the sampled guests. Skip the useless covers (Kylie Minogue, Duran Duran, Velvet Underground) and play fabulous stuff like "Jag Meemee" ten times instead.

MINORU SATO (m/s, SASW) + ASUNA - Textures in glass tubes and reed organ (Spekk)

There are occasions in which the theoretical explanation behind a music piece is much more complicated than the opus itself. Japanese sound artists Sato and Asuna, who have worked with “pure vibration” in the live installation area under several circumstances and with partners such as Toshiya Tsunoda, justify their artistic act with the will of creating “a narrative about the phenomena which resonate through constructed sounds”. According to this view, the choice of glass tubes and reed organ seems appropriate, in that the resonating frequencies of the sources mesh very well both in a reciprocal sense and across the listening space. Translation: this is a record that should result quite appealing to those who love large rooms filled up with softly dissonant static waves leaving the door ajar until ears and brain do the additional work, i.e. generating imaginary patterns and pulses. Names that spring to mind: Folke Rabe, Jim O’Rourke, Charlemagne Palestine. I know, you were expecting “Phill Niblock” or “Eliane Radigue”, but the undulations heard here lack the corpulent thunder of the sub-basses characterizing the most enthralling offers by the above mentioned stalwarts, instead shifting the focus on the higher register of the organ and the brightest spots of the glass. It might resemble a classic album of meditative trance, yet an attentive look reveals a fine handcraft of interpenetrating textures that definitely pushes this effort towards the next-to-excellence rank.

JAMES SAUNDERS - # [unassigned] (Confront)

This piece is defined as an "ongoing modular composition" by its inventor, which means that each version sounds totally different, as new modules are added to pre-existing structures every time that it is performed. In this double CD we're offered interpretations for cello (Anton Lukoszevieze) and clarinet (Andrew Sparling), yet this music can also be scored for larger groups. Saunders, whose resume includes various prizes and performances throughout UK and Europe, suggests that the two discs can be played together - not necessarily synchronized - from different machines, possibly using the "random" function, so that each listening session can determine new colours and combinations in an ever-growing number of executions. The composer will forgive me if I didn't follow this advice but, given the reductionist clothing characterizing the semblance of this opus, whose 98% is based on tiny instrumental gestures, feeble harmonics and impalpable vibrations, I decided to listen to the CDs singularly - first on headphones, then by mixing them with the external environment of a torrid Saturday afternoon complete with cicadas, barely registered breeze and the faraway engines of the bikers tripping in the valley, this aural decoupage yielding the best results of the whole experience. Every note - even the apparently weak ones - seems to gain purpose while measuring against a scheme of things that emphasizes Saunders' deep knowledge of the relationship between sound and silence. Very seldom the players decide to let the steam go through sudden spikes in the intensity level, too short to represent a real change in the global structure. A closer inspection reveals a multitude of involuntary probabilistic occurrences, leading us to imagine the existence of some kind of recurring theme; but that's not the case. The excellent playing by both virtuosos notwithstanding, I must confess a slight preference for Lukoszevieze's cello, an instrument more congenial to the introspective aura which this difficult work is gifted with.

SAWAKO - Yours gray (And/OAR)

In this brief series of ear movies, where snapshots of real world activities are conveniently paired to disparate electronic sources, sound artist Sawako brings out her view of a singular - if quite hidden - tuning between what's perceived in our daily life and a combination of psychoacoustic materials which assume a leading role in developing the raw document of a location into a well determined mental state. In "Cache cache" Toshi Nakamura lends his piercing controlled feedback to the ambience of what's described as a "quiet residential area by the sea", while the best overall track for sheer compositional skill is probably "Night midlight", an insinuating intercourse between Sawako's processed sounds and voice and Mitchell Akiyama's looped/treated piano. Concentrating her efforts in 36 minutes or so, this woman breaks more than one barrier between simple brooding and active listening, keeping many things unsaid - but visible anyway.

MARCO SCARASSATTI / MARCELO BOMFIM / NELSON PINTON - Sonax (Creative Sources)

The big bang-like spreading out of Creative Sources’ catalogue reveals the emergence of a Brazilian trio who specializes in sound sculptures, juxtaposing the voice of weird metallic creatures and spare radiator parts with prepared acoustic guitars, piano and bamboo flutes. The non-homogeneity of this proposal could potentially push into dangerous waters: god only knows how many collections of throwaway noises and pushed furniture we have listened for all these years, in the name of supposedly advanced artistries hiding a widespread lack of substance. Despite the existence of tracks that do not exactly shine with superior inventiveness, “Sonax” is mostly a rewarding album, the haptic quality of its material making sure that elements of compactness are maintained even during the sections in which the music fluctuates between structural clarity and natural tendency to sonic indulgence. Fine flashes are especially to be found after the halfway mark: “Movimento pendular” resonates with intense vibrations and gleaming drops of ringing mellowness, then mutates into a rusted seesaw of chafed frequencies; “Estudo para uma improvisação sem desenvolvimento” begins with creepy symptoms and unsettling tremulous recurrences, the whole interspersed by echoing knocks and ululating strings which shift the piece’s gravity towards the more percussive phase of circumspectness until a full, if not excessively ample gamut of sonant nebulosity is exposed. The insufflations characterizing “Lacuna” - reverberations of flutes and night-time currents bathed in rumbling murmur - made me want to remain completely motionless, unwilling to disturb a suddenly materialized stillness.

JANEK SCHAEFER - Migration (Bip Hop)

Originally conceived as a soundtrack for a site-specific dance by Noémie Lafrance, "Migration" is also a fine specimen of Schaefer's audio documentary, music that crosses the boundaries between a sheer description of a trip - being it real or just imaginary - and the uncomfortable sensation of standing in front of a giant door introducing to an oneiric world where acoustic phenomena have the same importance of magnetic attraction in opposite poles. Through his well known ability to squeeze evocative images of sonic biology from the manipulation of locked vinyl grooves and competent sampling, Schaefer creates textural experiences that can be sublime - throbbing underground pulses accompany our heartbeat; organ loops depict the movement to a superior sphere - or, in some case, a tad more predictable, with natural/environmental sounds and city noises (which, thanks to Janek compositional dexterity, are nevertheless equally pleasing). Everything seems to spring from an extraordinary dimension, alimented by many unknown forces in conjunction with a strong interiority.

JANEK SCHAEFER - In the last hour (Room40)

Janek Schaefer's most recent output shows that he's currently kissed by the grace. After the "Hidden name" masterpiece with Stephan Mathieu here comes "In the last hour", another necessity for listeners still willing to deliver themselves from their affected alligator-mask cynicism. This piece was generated for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2005, but I didn't find anything that could be defined as "contemporary" in this amass of engrossing oneiric pictures that follow one another without interruptions. Schaefer used "Magnus chord organ, location recordings, piano, clarinet, vinyl and Town Hall organ" to proclaim, once and for all, that he is the person to call when one wants to revisit memories from the past mixing heartache and sad smiles. Divided into four movements, the composition possesses several moments of astonishing beauty typical of their composer, treated sounds and hesitant pacing letting us reel in a multiform discontinuity patching our sorrow with the most enchanting childhood discoveries. A consumed record emits a crackled old song to which Schaefer seams organ chords and road noises; loops not so distant from Basinski-esque melancholies leave room to minimalist clarinet figurations. It all sounds unpronounced, moistened by silent tears marking the unstoppable passage of that time that we consider as "precious" only when we realize that it's gone.

JANEK SCHAEFER - Recital in the old library (AudiOh!)

Released in MP3 format, available on the AudiOh! website exclusively for download, “Recital in the old library” is the recording of a 2007 performance at the Sound:Space symposium at South Hill Park, Bracknell. Schaefer was particularly inspired that night, due to the presence of “several members of my family, friends and neighbours there to hear and see what it is that I do when I leave the house”. The effort, although starting with spoken texts by T.S.Eliot (courtesy of Schaefer’s own record library), is a classic collection of sonic reminiscences, deployed and seamed with masterful skill by the composer, who used both extracts from previous recordings and sounds derived from his experiments with modified turntables, effects and minidiscs, all going into a Mackie mixer. An artistic summary of sorts, “Recital” stands nevertheless as a pretty impressive piece of work itself, cramming many of the most fascinating aspects of Schaefer’s vision within a timeframe of less than one hour. The “here and now” factor is often questioned in favour of warped recollections of a past so distant that even memory fails in tracing its coordinates. Still, there’s a lingering sense of almost childish, mournful perception of an existence that continuously mutates and, ideally, evolves (it probably degenerates instead, but that's another story), yet seems to leave no more useful reasons for people to relish their solitary excursions through self-discovery. A satisfying release, just slightly below the composer's very best outings.

JANEK SCHAEFER - Alone at last (Sirr)

Ever since the man’s music was heard for the first time in these quarters, Janek Schaefer was reputed as one of the most capable collectors of gathered memories, touching the right nerves in that practice of recall that somehow manages to methodically plant uncertainties in the mechanics of human improvement. “Alone at last”, which comes in a completely black jewel case - no artwork, no notes, totally unrecognizable if you don’t open it - is “a collection of commissioned compositions” recorded between 1997 and 2007. It’s quintessential Schaefer, with the addition of field recordings to his usual array of nostalgia-inducing vinyl artifacts, whose revolving seems to approximate the existential routine of cycles that, in the end, are exactly the same. Rich and poor, intelligent and stupid, thin-skinned and detached: perhaps the secret of life lies in accepting, once and for all, that we have to coexist with different levels of growth. Schaefer’s vision portrays the sudden change and the deluded hope with responsive concurrences of aural chimeras, finding the maximum level of accomplishment in pieces such as “A day in the good life” and the truly breathtaking “All bombing is terrorism”, lethargic gloom enhanced by looping materials and impalpable harmonic auras. As fine an introduction as any of this artist’s albums to start immersing the essence of your persona in a flux of destabilizing, yet wondrous looks at the past - and, who knows, maybe also at a not so radiant future.

HELMUT SCHAEFER - Isolated irritation (Post-Concrete)

As powerful as you can get, this recording could be dangerous for your house's glass objects if played at good level. Helmut Schäfer does not specify the sources of his soundscape; you're left alone with a growing mass of lava spreading all around, grinding and growling, halfway through an electric mantra and the multiplication of rumbling thundering explosions. Some of the sections are completely overdriven into a saturation point that has my woofers literally screaming, even at not-so-high volume. But the magic in this work springs right there: I can detect patterns and pulses in the middle of the apparent chaos, giving the whole mass an articulated life of its own. A fantastic burst of energy, "Isolated irritation" is a lesson in how to use noise and transform it in serious experimental music - Merzbow and the likes could learn something here.

IGNAZ SCHICK / DAWID SZCZESNY - The view underneath (Nonvisualobjects)

Coming from different backgrounds, which include hip-hop, noise and acousmatics, Ignaz Schick and Dawid Szczesny look perfectly at ease in the realms of sound art typical of this great label. The instrumentation comprises turntables, sine waves and laptop as the only sources, yet the final product is quite organic and, in many occasions, deeply evocative. All the tracks present intriguing mixtures of magnetism and feverishness, carefully juxtaposing the physical values of percussive sonorities and the cyclical reiterations of looping segments with the evident spacing-out of the “ethereally concrete” emissions of which the large part of this music’s body is made. Really following no one’s footprints, Schick and Szczesny find methods to depict melting imagery in hybrid successions where a way out is not an option. This doesn’t mean that oppression is included in the recipe: on the contrary, the contamination factor is also the cause of several openings in terms of minute particulars, as tiny structural fragments and tenuous rays of light coalesce at times into some sort of bionic “groove”. Rubbing intersections of uncertain nature and semi-harmonic resonances live together pretty peacefully, the overall feel one of conscious detachment from the necessity of cutting too deep in favour of the sheer observation of an unfolding process, to which each listener responds according to their own capacities. The whole sounds indeed finely crafted and rewarding on various levels of artistic consequence.

WOLFGANG SCHLIEMANN / MICHAEL VORFELD - Alle Neune: Rheinländer Partie (Creative Sources)

It takes a solid effort these days to raise attention with a record where “percussion, found objects and stringed instruments” are “hit, bowed, scratched, thrown and plugged”. Vorfeld is a master at this game and there’s no doubt about his sincerity, while I don’t remember having had the pleasure of meeting Schliemann’s expression before. Whatever; the first advice that must be thrown is “let the amplifier gain its salary”, as the overall level of the album is strangely tending to low (probably to avoid distortion, given the complexity of the harmonics involved and the potentially destroying peaks?). The music is exactly as described: precarious structures and semi-destructive traumas are made acceptable by otherworldly resonances, bumps and feedback-alimented drones. Not that the latter imply some sort of regularity, mind you: the occasional static segment is often immediately incinerated by overactive cymbal-ism and thudding indetermination. Yet, not once the improvisations get stray or trespass the limits of a tolerable freedom (how many people feed us garbage in name of that concept?). It’s a pretty interesting document of raw percussive maturity: the artists know what they are doing, and it shows. Not really a masterpiece, but it does contain a few memorable spots for tickling neighbours’ nerves. On the contrary, if played as an “ambient background presence” it’s going to be quite annoying. Pump up the volume, and the dynamics at work will be revealed.

SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO - Winterreise (Psi)

The only risk with the Schlippenbach Trio is an excess of non-expectation, meaning that Evan Parker, Paul Lovens and Alexander von Schlippenbach have grown us used to such a wealth of excellent, meritorious music that even a beauty like "Winterreise" could sound as a normal album to our ears, while instead it's a treasure trove of matchless, self-consistent improvisations fueled by lucid visions and peerless marginalizations of the been-there-done-that flavour of rugous jazz. Recorded in Cologne in 2004 and 2005, the two tracks are an instant movie about the fecundity of ideas, with the leader's piano assuming a paradigmatic role as far as inventive geometry and harmonic liberation are concerned, with a tip of the hat to Cecil Taylor for good measure. Side to side with such a nerve-straining artistic integrity, Parker and Lovens tread paths to a grudging magnificence without losing focus for half a minute, the musicians' chemistry always explosive at the right moment but still coloured with a unique impassibility in front of the sonic events, which they conduct, manipulate and bend to their will without letting the audience know that they're witnessing a homicide of the conventional jazz trio: check the cryptic beginning of the second set and judge for yourselves. Too bad that the record ends quite abruptly, but one can't have everything. Great artists, great playing.

MARCUS SCHMICKLER - Altars of science (Editions Mego)

I am always skeptical about contemporary jacks-of-all-trades, yet there is no question that Marcus Schmickler is usually serious enough in what he does and, whenever the inspiration or the right influence calls, he’s able to produce sonic materials that are worth a good attentive listen. Still, “Altars of science” is unlikely to be loved by your partner, being a computer-based composition in eight movements that sounds, well, ruthless for its large part. Working on the juxtaposition of different kinds of waves, distortion, silent intermissions and scarcely recognizable sources - even though I’d be willing to bet that human voice is there, camouflaged somewhere - Schmickler unloads a non-stop bombardment of violent discharges, threatening ellipses and howling discrepancies, reminiscent both of the pioneers of the genre and a self-destructive electronic pinball machine. It takes a while before our pleasure-seeking will accepts what’s offered, and despite reiterated tries there’s no chance to grant the piece a “nice” attribute. It’s instead an uncompromising ode to causticity that has to be valued as an interesting experiment, and it should be approached as such. But if one’s on the nervous edge of their current life, better stand clear off this stuff. The double-sided disc contains a stereo mix on the CD side, and a multi-channel version on the DVD side. More work for lawyers if played at high volume.

MARCUS SCHMICKLER with HAYDEN CHISHOLM - Amazing daze (Häpna)

Consisting of two long hypnotic segments - the first dedicated to Phill Niblock, the second to Bjork - “Amazing daze” is a very good album despite these declarations of love. It would have been easy falling in the traps of obviousness, putting out music that obtains the only result of having the listeners longing for the original; but Schmickler is not the last in the queue of compositional good taste, and New Zealander Chisholm - a saxophone player active in jazz and contemporary music who’s worked with Rebecca Horn among others - provides effective tones that Schmickler manipulates on computer and electronics to generate superimposed strata of held tones that work well at different volume level. The title track is the most powerful one, being based on a corpulent bagpipe timbre that first acts as a sort of tranquilizing affirmation, then gets slightly altered to move the sound waves according to the classic Niblockian search for frequency beating. Despite the absence of the New Yorker’s highly emotional and physical impact, the piece owns a distinct character that allows the music not to overstay its welcome. “Infinity in the shape of a poodle” is a subtle, yet deeply penetrating high frequency-based composition where Chisholm plays the Japanese sho, whose timbral semblance characterize splendid soaring glissandos that render the air quite rarefied halfway through the piece, the whole sounding like a decaying organ causing - at least in this writer - serious goosebumps. It’s this very moment that I like best, aural clouds shifting and morphing incessantly, opening new directions in modern minimalism that Schmickler would do well to keep pursuing.

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG - Early and unknown string works (OgreOgress)

In keeping with OgreOgress’ recent production, this excellent release comes as an audio DVD, whose contents are performed by the Rangzen Quartet & Strings and Christina Fong with the usual high technical standards that this enterprising label has grown us accustomed to. The pieces contained here will be surprising for those who instinctively associate the name of Schoenberg to his harmonic revolution or “Sprechstimme”; the reason is quite evident, since this collection begins with material that was written by the composer in his childhood, and which is pregnant of Romantic and folk influences (“Sunshine Polka”, “Alliance Waltz”). But when we shift our attention to the subsequent late tracks - including a lot of splendid unfinished fragments of string music that leave us almost depressed for the impossibility of knowing what could have happened had they been completed - we observe that the shirt of tonality was ever so tight for Schoenberg, as even in apparently “regular” passages one can detect bass lines that move along unusual paths or cadenzas that do not necessarily resolve according to what the Western ears would appreciate best at that time (or today, for that matter). Of course Schoenberg’s syntax contains the necessary germs for the destruction of the tonal system but, as everyone who studied his “Harmonielehre” knows well, at the same time that very system is given the utmost respect. The players' sensitive approach applies a patina of melancholy to the whole, meaning that - besides its obvious historical weight - we’re in presence of an extremely evocative and rewarding record that could very well be appreciated by “traditional” lovers of classical music but, above all, will be savoured by those of us who think that many icons from the past are highly overrated, only because some sort of establishment decided that they were the big thing. Let me be perfectly clear here: there’s more intelligence and soul in these Schoenberg scribblings than in half of Mozart's output.

GUNTER SCHROTH - Barcode music (Archegon)

Picture a deformed cross-pollination including the hardest computer music, sci-fi movie soundtracks, the first Synclavier experiments by Frank Zappa (circa "The perfect stranger") and some digital snapshots of kitchen sounds and electric circuits fusing together; then you'll have a faint idea of how "Barcode music" sounds like. Günter Schroth used an optic pen to read several lots of barcodes from different objects, transmitting these data to his system of computer and effects and controlling them on his own terms: the achieved results are for the most part very interesting as new synthetic permutations and lots of variable spectral refractions fill the air, cold as ice one moment, funny like an extremist cartoon the next; Franziska Quandt and Claus Van Bebber help with voice and vinyl in two of the tracks. Schroth doesn't give a damn about alluring the listener and this is a definite plus in his thoroughly demanding sonic output.

MATTHIAS SCHUBERT QUARTET - Trappola (Red Toucan)

This quartet consists of Matthias Schubert on tenor saxophone, Tom Rainey on drums, Carl Ludwig Hübsch on tuba and Claudio Puntin on clarinet. “Trappola” is a record that mixes, elaborates and reinvents elements from the past while keeping an inquisitive eye on the present. It features a collection of excellent tracks - including a Jerry Roll Morton cover - that make good use of the technical skills of the involved musicians but nevertheless sounds captivating and fresh to the ears. The lineup disfigures the traditional roles of a jazz quartet, in that a properly delineated “rhythm section” is nowhere to be found; the players like to exchange figurations, ruminations and harmonic heaps without flinching, lip-reading their reciprocal “regular” parts to create something that at one and the same time sounds unheard before and traditionally rooted. Trying to nail comparisons in this tasty morsel soon becomes a sterile practice of “what does it remind you of” useless exercises: linking destructured ragtime, quasi-experimental Dixieland and Kurt Weill-meets-Eric Dolphy semi-dissonant (but totally digestible) counterpoints is not an easy task, yet these artists pass the test with flying colours. We’re hooked by entangling crosses of erratic trajectories, but also suddenly incinerated by improbable darts of clarinet-cum-tuba peripherical aggregations which, in their difficulty, wink to a kind of advanced chamber music. A "marching band spirit" is perennially lurking behind, even if poisoned by copious doses of tangential simultaneousness generating synchronized conflicts and unpredictable jams a go-go. All in all, "Trappola" is just another example of album that might not have you shouting at some sort of miracle, but works perfectly in each of its single components and yields large quantities of aural gratification, especially for lovers of tightly arranged, neatly executed music.

MICHAEL J. SCHUMACHER - Room pieces (XI)

This double CD set is perfectly in line with Michael J.Schumacher's unique way of treating sounds and their relationships with the reproduction space; matter of factly, it's full of silences and barely perceptible shades of acoustic/electronic splinters (particularly in the long "Room piece XI" and the beautiful "Still", where Charles Curtis' bowed strings caress the nerves without even making their presence concretely felt). Being involved in sound installation, Schumacher conceives music that gets its best results when played through multiple speakers or, at least, in a room where the natural acoustics can contribute to different kinds of diffusion. At first, we're puzzled while trying to raise the ears waiting for something to happen; as time goes by, very much has happened but we just had a glimpse of what it was. The perfect closing is another "Still", a wonderful droning superimposition of contrasting sine tones in a crescendo that maybe represents the only moment in which the listener is completely surrounded - and helpless. Following a unique path, Schumacher has slowly built a style of his own.

MICHAEL J. SCHUMACHER / STEPHEN VITIELLO - Untitled / Exchange (A Question Of Re-entry)

"Untitled" begins with a rainy urban atmosphere underlined by outbursts of distant activity and a continuous rumble, halfway through a power generator and the blowing wind. Cyclical creaking of doors that open and close, cars, undefinable thud-and-clatter are heard both in proximity and far away. Some of these sounds are captured in loops until a hypnotic electronic background appears, engulfing the large part of these metropolitan presences; but the intrinsic musicality of the basic material is soon highlighted again, as gentle taps, light drops, engines and the ever-present nocturnal breath lead the listener through a mixture of relaxed concentration and detail-enhanced curiosity. It sounds like if a contact microphone had been stuck in the heart of the city, which is kept beating more regularly by self-made apparata that buzz and hum. Something curiously near to the whirr of a dentist's drill appears towards the end of the piece, before the final fade to black after the very last repetitions of whips and snaps. "Exchange" is started by an electronic drone slightly disturbed by purrs and synthetic waves. These irregularities soon take command over the initial dullness, which anyhow remains lingering in the background. Overacute frequencies and hyper-accelerated sequences (sounding like fast-forwarding tapes, but who knows...) introduce the listener to a different dimension, in which uncontrolled emissions, water, feedback derivations and resonant guitar strings constitute the soundtrack to an immobile balance of concrete appearances that nevertheless make the whole ethereal enough for lovers of trance-and-drone artifacts. Yet the "harmonic obstacles" keep popping up in the mix, rendering the piece even more interesting and full of unexpected surprises, especially on the waveform front. In the final minutes, everything seems to accomodate to a basic tranquillity but it's just an illusion, as the last noisy lashes cross the stereo field at different moments until the end. Impregnable, yet totally beautiful sound art by two masters of the genre.

SCHURER > STEINBRÜCHEL - <Falte> (Nonvisualobjects)

“Exquisite corpse” is a surrealist technique according to which words, pictures or sounds are put in a sequence where contributors are only able to see the final part of what was made before they add their own piece of work. Based on this concept, Schurer and Steinbrüchel created an eight-channel surround soundtrack for an installation at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, meant to be played in parallel to a four-channel video by Yves Netzhammer. The CD contains a compressed and more “composed” version of that sonic environment, the original context somehow miniaturized with optimal results. This is a pretty classic example of stimulating ambient music, brittle luminescences and muted crystals of tranquillity keeping good company to your strained nerves for long segments. The whole is not deprived of contrasts: we’re regularly shaken, a little bit, by sudden electronic discharges and irregular schizophrenic shapes similar to bolts illuminating a menacing grey sky. At a first listen, the surprise factor yields perplexity, but on repeated tries these variations on the usual canons of “just present” frequencies become a fundamental element of the composition, acting like indicators for the subsequent flows of sonic data, which lay upon a bed of silence to morph slowly and bend gradually until the next interruption. Particularly beautiful is the seventh section, a melange of “minimal” humming and under-skin sequences slightly deformed by “apparitions” that last for a few instants but manage to give a wailing voice to some kind of virtual soul hidden somewhere in the darkness. Conditio sine qua non: moderate volume in “repeat” playing mode, better in the very early morning or during silent sunsets.

SCHWIMMER - 7x4x7 (Creative Sources)

If you're tired of the plastic surgeries of today's idea of freedom, it could be a good idea listening to this quartet, formed by Michael Thieke (clarinets) Alessandro Bosetti (sax) Sabine Vogel (flutes) and Michael Griener (drums). Theirs is the sound of alienated volatile creatures in an enormous metal cage, looking for the door to a just imaginary escape. Since the very beginning, the musicians apply a cold stare to introspective dialectics, rubbing, blowing and tongue-popping their instruments' cavities until air is projected in a multitude of shapes and - sometimes - in almost painful icicles for the ear. Struck by the group's engaging attitude, I can't help but looking for imaginative comparisons, actually to no avail. The whole sound organization is remarkable; minuscule fragments and more violent emissions weight the same, accumulating anxiety and tension that don't ask for help. Self constraint can yield more power than you could guess, if it's channelled into the right conduits.

DOMENICO SCIAJNO / KIM CASCONE - A book of standard equinoxes [(1.8)sec]

A live recording from 2004, this complex improvisation by Sciajno and Cascone is a very well executed aural artifact where an excellent balance between organicism and coldness is reached without any compromise. It's an involving soundscape in which every proposed timbral shade seems to have a life of its own, as the piece moves through various phases where the matter becomes an ebullient liquid with microscopic mechanical fishes resisting to an otherwise unbearable temperature through a continuous modification of their morphology and capabilities. Although these artists do not certainly suffer from lack of sources in their digital armaments, they manage to avoid laptop obesity by a very sharp choice of colour, time succession and personality of the single electroacoustic event, depicting an extremely active - but very relaxing nevertheless - scenario that sounds fresh and gifted with a unique receptiveness.

DOMENICO SCIAJNO & RALF WEHOWSKY - Gelbe Tupfen (Bowindo)

The principal origin of this record is Wehowsky's daughter Sonja's voice, but her rendition of the Christmas song "Kinderlein Kommet" is not really audible in the final result, if not during almost undecipherable appearances. As a matter of fact, "Gelbe Tupfen" comprises two long compositions that walk long-legged towards the most enticing areas of computer-assisted music, the ones where sounds are stripped of every known attribute yet keep - and possibly increase - their intrinsic evocative power, furnishing us with disparate elements to put in reciprocal connection. Sciajno's "i.Dk.Sk." is an inscrutable suite in four movements and a coda, one of those enigmatic investigations of the most hidden properties of sound in which the information arriving to the ears lasts only the necessary time to leave a permanent impression in the solitude of that circumscribed temporal fraction. The piece was created with MAX/MSP, yet the feel is one of "biotic mystery", with a sapient definition of the time/space correlations that set the potentiometers of receptivity at their maximum level. Wehowsky's "Mneme Gelb" uses fragments of the Sciajno track, recordings of himself at work in his studio and re/deconstructions of little Sonja's interpretation, but only for short moments. Its character oscillates between spacey darkness and gentle irony, with a modicum of quirkiness that adds even more subtleties to an already delightful gathering of strange phosphorescences.

DOMENICO SCIAJNO + LAWRENCE ENGLISH - Merola shoulders (Phono-Statique)

No wider gap exists than the one separating the work of this duo and the music by the late Mario Merola, defined an “iconic Italian singer” on the press sheet but, in truth, one of those sub-cultural phenomena that only a socially underdeveloped, brain-deprived area like Italy can give birth to, a rags-to-riches career built upon ancient popular songs that are an insult to intelligence, trash movies (you’ve got to see them to believe) and dubious acquaintances. It is all the more ironic that his name was chosen for this gorgeous album, whose basic tracks were recorded in Palermo in 2005 while Merola was performing in a nearby square. The four movements follow an inflexible logic, originated by a poetic of field recordings disguised in abundant quantities of micro sounds, morphing ambiences, throbbing low frequencies - the latter ones very impressively rendered - and “presences” that almost take the listener by surprise, such is the scientific expertise with which Sciajno and English placed these voices and urban noises in the mix. Events happen for a reason, yet it’s impossible to predict the exact moment in which they do; quite often we have the impression of having someone talking at our back in between the development of the electronic plot. The dynamics of the piece seem to draw an arc of sorts: discreetly agitated with sparse moments of peace in the first half, then a shift to calmer regions in the second, mostly characterized by liquid entities and ear-piercing shrills letting us remember that laptops are the main motors of this engrossing soundscape. Still, I’ll be damned if this reminds of a typical “laptop release”; no, should I define “Merola shoulders” with a single adjective, I’d say that it just sounds “natural”. And beautiful, too.

SEHT & STELZER - Exactly what you lost (Intransitive)

Being welcomed by about two minutes of unmanageable "tape noise" doesn't let us foresee the true compound and the core spirit which this album by Stephen Clover (aka Seht) and Howard Stelzer, a New Zealand vs US collaboration that materialized via long-distance tape exchange, is made of. What is that "spirit", you might ask; the answer is not immediate, as "Exactly what you lost" is one of those "more than meets the ears" specimens where, behind the walls of viscous fuzz, growling lows and locked loops, something deeply evocative catches a spot of the brain deciding to stay there permanently. The ruined recordings that Seht and Stelzer subjected to their repeated processes of harmonic decay sound like if containing secret bulletins from various kinds of immaterial quantities; one detects muted children songs and choked choirs amidst shortwave eruptions and oxyde degradations, but then again it could just be a fruit of our imagination. Natural environmental sounds - a whistling blackbird being the most recognizable one - were also added to this thick mud of spellbinding frequencies, yet we still can't envision a garden of Eden. The oppressive crunching roar of the long suite that ends the CD overwhelms any residual hope, melting every resistance in a cauldron of tormented ecstasy.

7K OAKS - 7000 Oaks (Die Schachtel)

In the summer of 2007, after many months of intense correspondence and plans to subvert the order of things all over the world, Lee Cho and Pi Too decided to secretly meet in a remote place of central Italy. Oops, sorry - wrong tape. Rewind.

7k Oaks is a project born from a pre-planned Italian visit by Alfred Harth, who - accompanied by the indefatigable, clever-minded Mathias Schüler - made a long trip through Europe that year driving a BMW station wagon. In between the architectural beauties and the interminable highways there was some work to do, along the lines of “taking photographs, eating well, giving a poor man the chance to get a laptop and, at last, playing”. Five Italians were waiting for Mr. 23 and his sax and clarinet in a torrid August: an odd couple with about 18 cats as sons - featuring Microbo The Immortal among them - and three excellent musicians. Massimo Pupillo aka Zu, bass deconstructionist of ascertained fame who had already played with AH before, brought in Fabrizio Spera and Luca Venitucci who, besides being two nice instrumentalist specimens (drums, keyboards, accordion and various kinds of electronic and concrete manipulation) and having collaborated with people such as John Butcher, John Edwards, Blast, Tim Hodgkinson, Zeitkratzer and many others, are the organizational stalwarts thanks to which Roman audiences are today able to see and hear the world’s most advanced improvisers, from Jack Wright to Cremaster, not to mention the plethora of important names they invited in the past. Recorded in a single afternoon at the Diapason studio in Rome (defined “vintage style” by the uncontrollable Seoul Man), “7000 Oaks” is a CD whose main character lies in the incredible balance achieved by its frequently raucous voices, often heavily modified - as an example, Pupillo’s bass sounds at times more like an overdriven guitar (hear him squealing and sneering in “Foxp2”, a spectacular free-for-all punch-out peculiarly ending in quasi-tranquillity that just can’t leave indifferent, the players seemingly bitten by an army of pyromaniac tarantulas). No prominence whatsoever, a true collective effort that showcases the brilliance, maturity and raging abilities of seasoned creative artists, with the addition of electronics. The album’s nucleus is the 20-minute “Strategy of tension”, an initially restrained improvisation where sounds creep in little by little, an incipient tumour in an apparently healthy person. When after a while the music decides to abandon its cocoon, the contrast between the filtered curiosity of Harth’s sucking contortions and the destabilizing hue and cry of Venitucci’s wheezing machine introduces a final crescendo where, in spurts, Pupillo and Spera create a rusty structure to something that essentially has never taken a definite shape. “Pi Too” (here we go again) begins with Harth’s garrulous sax paralleled by Venitucci’s Tippett-like piano, then the iron pumped up by Pupillo and Spera raises the intensity muscle to dangerous levels in two minutes, only to shift to “full-fury” gear in the conclusive segment. Great piece, the best with “Foxp2” (a pattern, anyone?). Also exciting is the sinister bass riff at the beginning of “The invisible tower”, upon which the drummer applies a groove à la Pierre Van Der Linden before the alien melody makers return to the centre of the ring exchanging accordion left hooks and tenor uppercuts, while the rhythm section - does this definition make any sense? - observes sardonically how blood gets spilled everywhere, continuing the game with skeletal reflections on the verge of feedback and hum. Finalizing the deal, let me say that this album offers more than I could reasonably expect. It sounds hot - and not because of the high temperature of the day in which it was created - growing (and grooving) with each new listen.

SFQ - Four compositions (Red Toucan)

Simon H. Fell is very well known for his improvising talents on double bass; this release showcases his more "regulated" kind of compositions, where all the participants' skills contribute to achieve the difficult aim of a "moderately free" chamber sound that is neither sterile nor academic. "Three quintets" features Alex Ward (clarinet) Gail Brand (trombone) Alex Maguire (piano) and Steve Noble (drums) and it's a kind of a study in dynamics and contemporary swing (...) where the equiponderance of the instrumental tasks is fundamental in guaranteeing a purposeful determination in tackling all that passes between silence and full-speed blowouts. Ward's clarinet also graces the second CD in "Liverpool quartet" together with Guy Llewellyn on French horn and Mark Sanders on drums and electronics. The stylistic coherence remains, while the timbral research is even more tireless; contrarily to certain free-for-all stampedes currently defined as "new music", the fluttering subsistence of schematic paths leaves all spaces to a relaxed animation of various triangulations of rational elegance.

ELLIOTT SHARP - The velocity of hue (Emanem)

Music made with brain, heart, sweat and saliva. Never wasting a note, always in full control, Elliott Sharp stamps his supremacy with an "avant-blues" masterpiece where intelligence, audacity and fingerstretching know no boundaries. The New Yorker's highly individual style is a total pleasure even for a newcomer; his work on the fingerboard maintains a repetitive, almost ritual form resulting both accessible and extremely logical in his utter abandon of any six-stringed formula. Elliott's nimble lines fit nicely in many contexts, surprising listeners in more than one occasion while avoiding most of nearsighted guitarists' many and one cliché. I knew in my heart there was a reason why I was excited about this record; sure enough, I was not denied and now I'm convinced "The velocity of hue" is one of the overall best Emanem releases; still, Elliott Sharp never ceases amazing me with his genius.

ELLIOTT SHARP - Dispersion of seeds (Zoar)

It's not the first time that Elliott Sharp analyzes the possibilities contained in the most advanced sonic literature for strings; his past collaborations with Dave Soldier's String Quartet are well documented in albums like Cryptid Fragments or Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup, which constitute the perfect introduction to the matter for those who are curious enough. This time, Sharp is helped by another illustrious ensemble, Sirius (remember them in Nick Didkovsky's Doctor Nerve's Ereia?); Dispersion of Seeds comprises three movements lasting 16 minutes each, the first being completely acoustic and the remaining two slightly remodeled and modified by an adequate computer treatment by the composer. The title refers to a "recently-discovered natural history work from 1862 by Henry David Thoreau dealing with the mechanism of reforestation and the propagation of plant tree species, a ripe metaphor for the possibility of positive memes thriving and spreading in a time of crass stupidity, fear and militarism". Sharp's music is as always creatively dissonant, long waves of oscillating tones carving a preoccupied counterpoint in the haze of illusion, the false easiness of a consonant existence sapiently dismantled by spellbinding trips towards the periphery of reason. A discreet but efficient computer work transforms an already ill-tempered creature in a flanging aural ghost of harmonic development, as Sirius' undulations roam through our chakras trying to restart those processes that our entangled nerves are not able to perform anymore. One of the most used cliches by many reviewers is that "this music rewards repeated listenings"; for just once, I'm glad to join the queue in this commonplace.

ELLIOTT SHARP - Octal: Book One (Clean Feed)

Always at the forefront of guitar experimentation, perennially interested in discovering the varying gradations of resonance and in unusual orchestrations at large, Elliott Sharp is the prototype of the forward-looking artist with feet remaining well-planted in his predecessors’ soil of achievement. His love of the blues equals the passion for mathematic formulas applied to a musical design and, in “Octal”, all of the above reaches the boiling point through eight exceptional tracks performed on a 8-string Koll electro-acoustic whose technical features are painstakingly described by E#, together with the approach to the recording, in liner notes that alone are worth of owning the album. So much for those “slap a microphone in front of the soundhole and strum your ass off” nonentities who keep plaguing the guitar world. The reference felt as nearest in this instance is “Quadrature” - one of Sharp’s veritable milestones - although the tuning in this first “book” is more or less standard (EADGBE with the additional bass strings tuned to low E and B; Sharp promises to analyze different tunings in future editions). The resplendent timbre of the Koll, in cooperation with the performer’s ability in the execution of pieces that are basically notated yet open to interpretation and improvisation, allows the music to assume shapes and reverberations rarely heard in a solo setting. Percussive factors, droning halos - also courtesy of a sapient eBow usage - and unpredictable combinations of harmonics are all part of the recipe, the sonic matter benefiting from the mixture of thoughtful restraint and multidirectional ears that the adoptive New Yorker demonstrates throughout, “tribally minimalist” arpeggio flurries sealing the whole. A classic case of “enough with words, where’s my VISA?”.

ELLIOTT SHARP'S TERRAPLANE - Do the don't (Gaff)

I can't stand opening "Guitar Player" - yes, I still do - and reading about stuff like Eric Clapton's "Me and Mr.Johnson" described as a "blues" record. Pardon me? Then, something like this CD comes by the house and its substantial truthfulness saves the week. Elliott Sharp has always represented THE artist on the opposite side of what is mercenary; all of his countless projects discard obvious expletives in favour of a thorough groundwork, being imbued of ragged prestige and rejuvenating rage which never abandon him, whatever the chosen field. "Do the don't" interrogates the listener with some tough questions, then eases back with generous doses of unpolished benevolence; Sharp's fretwork is determined and pungent as usual and - should this be not enough - great Hubert Sumlin helps in the kitchen in three tracks. The late Sam Furnace places quite a few landmark twists throughout the record, often abandoning his own body to launch a left-handed celestial counterpunch through his huge essence. On acoustic and electric bass, David Hofstra is elegantly physical, planning straining courses to fervour while attending ceremonial duties with loosened rationale; the rhythmical counterpart, Sim Cain, camouflages his excellent technique through the fabrication of attractive patterns and even-paced jargons. There are three pretty attractive songs, too - "Lost souls" being the wailing best - sung by Eric Mingus and Dean Bowman. Charming and heartfelt, this is a great album that must be played loud and often, without any indulgence for your neighbours.

ELLIOTT SHARP & REINHOLD FRIEDL - Feuchtify (Emanem)

Thirteen improvisations, recorded at New York's Tonic in 2001, show the level of affinity that Sharp (soprano sax, dobro, electric fretless guitar, 8-string guitarbass, computer) and Friedl (inside and prepared piano) have reached in almost ten years of reciprocal knowledge and fruitful collaboration. The music of "Feuchtify" seems to harbour evil thoughts one moment and to release uncontrollable urges the next. It never sounds submissive, finding its motivation in radical challenges between rip-roaring, computer-treated sax lines, percussive bounces and metallic clangours. Amidst these insubordinations, the "regular" piano and guitar notes dwindle away, surrounded by surprising constellations of popping strings and imaginative deconstructions and deforestations. We feel just like a pickup, assimilating these irregular transmissions while pretending to be able to decode them; indeed we know it's impossible, as sound speaks in languages that human brain can only associate to something else. Hungry for words, we could even blather of "industrial Delta blues", "pregnant explosiveness", "dissonant tranquillity", "rambunctious chattering". What's really to be noted is the sense of absolute sturdiness of these mechanisms, which seem to have been immersed in a multipurpose liquid substance that renders each of its parts undestroyable. But a careful analysis demonstrates that this substance is the musicians' very essence - which, in the case of Sharp and Friedl, is unquestionably rich. A splendid effort, worthy of repeated spins.

ELLIOTT SHARP & CHARLOTTE HUG - Pi:k (Emanem)

This nice pair met for the first time in Sharp’s SyndaKit Orchestra, the American funnily describing Hug as a “blonde explosion of sound and energy”. They subsequently started playing duo concerts, an interaction made easier by the well-visible evidence of their creative brightness and the myriads of different facets that the respective expressions possess. “Pi:k” presents fourteen tracks for guitar and viola, eight of them - completely acoustic - recorded in 2004 at Sharp’s studio in New York, while the remaining six were captured live in 2005 at Geneve’s Cave 12 and make good use of electronic treatments. It would be easy, once again, hiding behind E#’s description of the music as “pixillated, angular, tangential” to escape with a fitting definition, but these visionaries have additional aces in the sleeves. When inexpert improvisers play without restrictions, it’s not unlikely to end in the realm of nonsensical horticulture (the fruits of a suddenly liberated “creativity” can taste really bad, you know). No such a problem in this case - one instantly realizes that Sharp and Hug are the sole owners of their instant ideas, the guitarist swirling, popping and tapping all over the instrument’s body to bring out contorted lines, chordal refractions and disobedient harmonics, gorgeously complemented by a viola that growls, sings, swears, hisses and lulls in the space of seconds. The electronics add a multi-dimensional variety of shapes and shades, generating soundscapes that travel across the borders of computer music to morph into ghostly undulations and reiterated complex dissonances. More than a contamination between two “styles”, the players stick to a jargon that leaves almost no room for thought, its volatile harmonic context acting as the optimal springboard for the attention to roam, thus becoming able to catch brilliance even in the most inaccessible crannies.

ELLIOTT SHARP / SCOTT FIELDS - Scharfefelder (Clean Feed)

Listen to Scott Fields’ opinion: “(…) collaborations between bald guitarists are, by their nature, irresistibly charming (…)”. Not a truer word. And the hairless virtuosity we’re given handfuls of in “Scharfefelder” is enough to make me stop thinking about those hyperglycemic crises I experienced decades ago, when the depleted puppy who’s writing these words thought of “Friday Night in San Francisco” as a good starting place to take the instrument a little more seriously. As Goofy would have it, gawrsh. This acoustic duet, recorded at Sharp’s zOaR studio halfway through August 2007, shows that one can still play full chords and let them resonate without being ashamed; and if those shapes proliferate until becoming three or four hundreds - and even badly dissonant, for Christ’s sake - strange halos of peculiar harmonics might invade your terrain and persuade you that flamenco is born again, in a bionic variety (“Doubleviz”) excluding predetermined progressions. Need slanted lines? There are things here which could convince that Sharp and Fields’ fingers are somehow disjointed (“Freefall”); they catch the exact spot where resonant note and wood-ish thud meet, transforming their artistic personae in human bradawls smiling at the listener while punching holes in the residual convictions about that erstwhile tool for serenades and beach hooking. If Ralph Towner and John Abercrombie ever get to hear this, they might be willing to drown in the Sargasso Sea (just kidding, huh? I like some of that stuff, too). Shaven craniums reflecting the open-mouthed admiration of a fellow instrumentalist still willing to learn, impartiality be damned. Not an easy record, in any case: give it the fullest attention and don’t try to use it as background, either you’re a guitarist or not.

SHELF LIFE - Ductworks (Public Eyesore) 

One of the most unclassifiable albums met recently is this collection of introverted improvisations by Shelf Life, the quartet of Bryan Day, Alex Boardman, Joseph Jaros and Jay Schleidt. They don’t list instruments on the cover, and that’s only the starting point; the thirteen tracks are all named with an anagram of the CD title, and we can survive that. Then this poor reviewer slipped the disc in and pressed “play”, and there’s not a similarity, a distantly associable genre or even a single clue about what this music sounds like. Mostly based on electric guitar tampering, for sure, yet also comprising an awful lot of different emissions tending to the low-key scrape, buzz, groan and fuzz, this material is truly excellent in its total closure towards stylistic and harmonic (?) compromise. The uncorrupted freedom of expression supported by these guys does not yell or scream, but creeps all over the place in a fascinating manner, all those digestible disturbances accepted as a welcome presence whatever the occasion (I even tried it amidst the kitchen’s noises while my wife and I were preparing for dinner, and it went great - she loved it, and me too). This record could be a nice answer to wallpaper ambient, as it certainly results lively and intelligent to these ears. Another fine example of the utter unpredictability of Public Eyesore’s intentions.

SHELF LIFE - Rheuma (Eh?)

As it happened for another of their releases reviewed here (“Ductworks”) I am at a loss for words when it comes to Shelf Life (in this disc Bryan Day, Alex Boardman, Joseph Jaros, Andrew Perdue) . After listening to the 70 minutes of “Rheuma” there’s no reasonable way to illustrate what kind of music this is. Is it serious, doctor? Can you see the real me, doctor? Ok - before going to steal that Vespa parked outside the hotel let’s just anticipate that this is a great record, but understanding why is very difficult. Several things that usually would spell “defect” work exceptionally fine in this disc. The tracks are stretched, definitely improvised (although forms of predetermination might exist), unfolding bit by bit, cancer cells spreading in an unhealthy body. The frequencies are rather muffled, everything sounding as if recorded in a burrow, at times hyper-compressed. The stereo image seems to have been reduced to an all-frequency jam. Guitars and amplifiers are most likely manipulated, and there should be some shortwave transmission around as well. Sampling, too (…right, guys? What about three-four explanatory lines on the sleeve, so that the poor reviewer who’s got no time to surf the web isn’t forced to a shitty figure?) The entire jumble often hisses like a hundred geysers and, wait a minute, what’s that - chords? - in the third track we hear vaguely Pink Floyd-ish chords, soon scrambled and macerated by yet another accumulation of crumbling distortions and waves. An aircraft flies, a train hoots in the distance (aural illusions, maybe). The sense of anguish never ceases yet the effect is somewhat glorious - principally in the hardly mobile drone at the start of the closing piece (whose title is “JBPAJBDNBRDLB” - does anybody see what I mean, now?). That also ends in Electric Mayhem-land. File under “suburban neighbourhood in the vicinity of Peeesseye and Phantom Limb + Bison”, with an ominous touch and more uncontrollable disorders.

SHELF LIFE - Concerning the absence of floors (Friend And Relatives)

Shelf Life - in this instance Bryan Day, Joseph Jaros, Luke Polipnick, Alex Boardman, Jay Kreimer - produce homespun improvisations that reserve quite a few surprises in the long-distance quest for new methods of enlarging our consciousness by the use of abnormal sounds. Through various combinations of instrumentalists (four quartets and a trio), this collective excavates holes where the listener observes rare lights and a myriad of different solutions. The instruments - as it often happens in Day’s project, not listed on the CD sleeve - are manipulated according to a gentle chemistry of barely touched percussion, scraped strings, controlled hum and frictional refractivity, bringing to mind the work of artists such as Adam Sonderberg, Jon Mueller and Jason Kahn, if only as vague references. Every once in a while the level of electricity is raised up to the threshold of bearable nervousness, dirty droning and acrid discharges at the basis of a jumble of frequencies and pulses whose poor man’s magnificence equals the ragged pleasure that they elicit, a much welcome tension that pressures for being considered heavenly, without succeeding (the fourth track “Obsolescence ∙ lflo” - sic - gets very near that result, though). Still, remaining with our feet in the soil of lo-fi pre-enlightenment is undeniably better that deluding ourselves of having “found the way”.

KEIICHIRO SHIBUYA - Filmachine phonics (Atak)

"I make music that nobody's ever heard before", states Keiichiro Shibuya in enthusiastic fashion. According to what's announced, "Filmachine phonics" is the first-ever tridimensional sound CD, where the sources move not only horizontally, but also up and down and even obliquely; headphone listening is obviously necessary to enjoy this new concept of sonic spatialization. Putting my own feet on the ground, this is a nice piece of computer music: in less than 20 minutes, we're treated to an avalanche of impressive roars, contrasting frequencies and dynamic shifts that indeed move in many directions, wrapping our skull in less-than-protective halos of cognitive disintegration. From nuclear winds to jet engines, these emissions run the whole gamut of overwhelming forces, slapping the listeners' attention again and again, forcing them to hold firmly to a virtual handle not to be thrown beyond the limits of bearable (careful with volume, ladies and gentlemen, as these cyber-insects do sting the membranes). An excellent example of engaging acrid electronica but - as far as the 3D sound is concerned - I sincerely didn't hear too many differences, compared to the other surround-based aural experiences that I had. This doesn't detract in any way from the artistic value of an intriguing release.

KEIICHIRO SHIBUYA / NORBERT MOSLANG / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA - Atak 008: Keiichiro Shibuya / Norbert Moslang / Toshimaru Nakamura (Atak)

Excellent material throughout this record, which comprises a collective improvisation and two individual compositions for each of the participants. In the three-way setting, hoards of rocketing emissions, immaterial crescendos and scabbed eruptions propagate in unpredictable fantasies in a kind of evolved, testosterone-fueled immunization therapy against bell-and-whistle laptoppery. Although the three distinct personalities are quite evident - even if I have a hard time detecting the "guitar" credited to Nakamura - the bionic clusters and futuristic wakes surrounding me do not resemble anything I've heard from the single composers. The solo tracks offer even more coherence, furtherly clarifying the respective approaches to this difficult matter; while Nakamura and Shibuya's unique sonic paradoxes exploit distortion, conceptual fragmentation and repressed feedback, Moslang confirms his current state of grace by processing his cracked everyday electronics, giving them a pulse, a life and an evolution which put his two tracks half an inch higher than the rest. But the whole album is first-rate as far as shortcircuiting one's brain is concerned.

SHIFTS - Vertonen (Humbug)

I'm very positively impressed with "Vertonen", a loop-based record that brought me back to the best moments of the genre bordering on post-industrial, dark minimal - in a word, quintessential solitude. Seven tracks with no name (at least on my copy) define a music in which - since the very first moments - you can almost taste acre syrups of rumbling drones and mesmerizing repetitions. There's an excellent use of medium-to-low frequencies, just stained a little bit by a few electronic clicks; sounds are placed with extreme care and even the isolated electro/acoustic event seems to follow a perfectly defined logic. Among the many useless releases of similar kind, this particular one stands well over average and presents several sections I could almost call "emotional" - certainly not so easy to say to everyone when entering the realm of contemporary hypnotic soundscape assemblers.

SHIFTS - Vertonen 9 (Public Eyesore)

Frans De Waard's "Shifts" project is surely one of the best showcases for his talents. Developing a net of deeply resonating, ear-affecting electronic pulses (which indeed are heavily processed guitars) Frans goes straight to the core of the experiment, lulling the subject in front of the speakers in a precise scheme of hypnotic continuums that evolve gradually yet almost cluelessly on our side. The best asset of "Vertonen 9" is its powerful capability of filling not only your head but your whole house with crowds of strange hums and moans; just try to go somewhere else during the reproduction and what sounded like a rumble will appear there too, like the shadow of a mermaid. This is one of those cases where the imagery of sounds can both be observed and kept undercurrent: the excellence remains just the same.

SHIFTS - Branches (Taalem)

"Branches" is one third of a triptych of recent compositions by Frans De Waard for his Shifts project, which at the beginning was based on modified guitar sounds, then continued by working on those results with a computer. Here, we're welcomed by a malformation of bagpipe-like tones in incessant resonance, a relentless superimposition of real and ghost notes, the virtual fusion of Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad and Jim O'Rourke around the "Happy Days" era. De Waard's motorized approach on the instruments (in this case, detuned acoustic guitars) elicits camouflaged tapestries and internal cyclical patterns, bringing us to compare the music to a cybernetic mantra whose components follow an independent path yet, somehow, resolve into a single torrential flow of galvanizing dissonant energy. Too bad that this is a 3-inch, as I would have loved hearing this combination for a longer time; the "repeat" mode is recommended.

SHIFTS - Trees/Leaves (Entr'acte)

This LP will likely constitute the last release by Frans De Waard under the Shifts moniker. Started in 1995, this project has probably gone even too far away in respect to De Waard's original intentions, but it has surely meant quite a lot for aficionados of string-based droning (even if once he did make a piece with a cymbal). This final chapter is exactly what one would expect in a Shifts album: two long mantras for superimposed guitars, whose strings are bowed or in some way stressed with motorized appliances. No changes in the harmony, no illusions of modulations, nothing. The only thing that we feel mutating is the frequency of the vibration, and this makes the sound range from a bagpipe-like drone to a harmonium replica. Imagine, if you will, a cheaper and mellower version of Tony Conrad's most entrancing material and you're almost there. Both "Trees" and "Leaves" are fine tracks, but I have a slight preference for the latter, be it for its relative tension as opposed to the rawer distorted amalgam of "Trees" - a real test for your woofers, this one - or maybe due to the fact that the tonal adjacences, especially towards the end of the piece, recall the voices of praying monks (hey, better this than sampling them). I maintain that static music is made for CDs, but I welcome exceptions.

SHIFTS / VERTONEN - Split (Cohort)

It's great when you find a record mixing the best qualities that electronica aficionados can enjoy, namely impressive sound treatments, unobtrusive hypnosis, discreet depth so that one can decide either to concentrate on the music or to use the sounds as an active background while doing something equally pleasing. In a bizarre twist of names, Shifts (Frans De Waard) creates his "Vertonen" tracks through heavily processed guitar sounds; his "Number 17" contained here is a truly engrossing example, applying these formulas in distant chorales of allusions propagating like a gas in the surrounding space for a total abandon by the nerves. A little more "present", but equally effective in its gorgeous manipulation of frequencies, "Six layers to a masquerade" by Vertonen (the musician) is a piece which tries to explore different areas of blurred repetition; the unpretentious standards of these static landscapes can be both mindbending and gently moaning - but the overall stunning effect remains.

SHINKEI - Binaural beats + reprocessing (Koyuki) / Binaural frequency (Koyuki)

This music needs complete silence, otherwise there’s no way of enjoying the eventual benefits that it should bring. We’re talking about sounds that, appearing under the guise of subsonic frequencies and extremely high, piercing tones, stimulate the hemispheres of the brain according to the phenomenon known as “frequency following response”, which enhances determinate activities of our mind or, alternatively, causes a state of relaxation. The whole works well if one listens to it - at a pretty consistent volume - in a large room which responds, together with the nerves, to the excitement generated by the strength and depth of the emissions. For sheer depiction purpose: lows that might shake the ground and highs almost on a par with the ones that only animals hear (make no mistake, animals are far superior - in this and many other kinds of sensitiveness - to men. But we can always try and better ourselves). For my personal taste, the “collaboration” of the environment is preferred, although the most direct effect on the cerebrum is probably obtained via headphone listening. Regarding the titles: the first is a double 3-inch CD, the “reprocessing” handled by Philip Lemieux who renders the original Shinkei sources more similar to an installation soundscape than a bombardment of waves. “Binaural frequency” is a 9-minute track downloadable from the label’s website. Both releases deserve serious consideration, though if you live in a noisy setting their presence will be awfully difficult to detect.

SHINYVILLE - No sleep till Babylon (Public Eyesore)

It's unlucky that I received this 2006 debut CD almost a year late, but I'm confident that their technical expertise and pop-ish, hook-ish bravura will guarantee Shinyville a sunny place in the restricted area of low-visibility rock bands that need to be exposed to further fame. I'm not kidding: these cats can play, and "No sleep till Babylon" is chock full of excellent music. They are Mr. PanTastic (vocals), Dr. Tao Honeybunsen (drums), Pope-bot 2012 ("makes guitar noises", they say, but he is very gifted if you ask me) and the fourth member, Golemite, is an iPod that reproduces "aural and visual samples"; the humans also work on "synths, programming and noise". Shinyville list a series of influences: Beck, Prince, Mr.Bungle, Bjork, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Violent Femmes and John Zorn; but most of all I hear them as a reduced version of the fabulous Tubes (one of my favourite bands - get this, EAI zealots). Besides, they hail from Omaha, Nebraska (Fee Waybill's birthplace) and, from what I could muster, perform masked. Any coincidence here? What I mean is that this CDs contains guitar virtuosity, synthetic nefariousness, harmonic detours and bastard vocalism in large doses, yet everything has been cooked following unusual recipes that include all of the above influences and much more (techno-lovers, there's something for you herein). These guys sound as tight as a green pinecone, and there are a coupla (make that five or six) tunes that will stay with you for a long time, one of my favourites being "Darren Keen forgot about all the little people". Try to get a grip on the lyrics, too and you won't be disappointed (start with "S.O.B."). There, I said it - Shinyville are great. We want more.

WALLY SHOUP / GUST BURNS / REUBEN RADDING / GREG CAMPBELL - The levitation shuffle (Clean Feed)

This is a scorching quartet playing music that can't be memorized or classified: it is rather destined to remain in our memory like a vague feeling - but only after causing an overload of our senses. Saxophonist Wally Shoup is one of those voices that like to scream, whisper and suggest regardless of his colleagues' background; he has played with Thurston Moore and Nels Cline among the others, yet the mechanisms of his phrasing fuse unaggregated sonic particles in an artistic vision that is centred around both free jazz and non-styled instantaneous composition. In this project, Shoup is flanked by three grey eminences of the Seattle scene; the most powerful voice seems to be that of bassist Reuben Radding, whose gnarling but well-rounded tone is also the cause of some momentary displacement, solved through the stabilizing presence of a “mother vibe” which sustains the quartet for the whole duration of the disc. Pianist Gust Burns - nomen omen - plays furious figurations when the going gets tough, while also acting as an element of harmonic balance between opposite forces at work. Drummer Greg Campbell is perfect for the task - one that’s virtually impossible to perform - of coordinating the unpredictable geniuses of these improvisers into some sort of next-to-derailment rhythmic train, but he himself is often happily overwhelmed by the sheer energy - at times diluted in vast spaces, but flaming nevertheless - of this magnificent ensemble.

SHUTTLE358 - Frame (12k)

Shuttle358 is Dan Abrams, and "Frame" is described as "one of the highlights of the entire microsound genre" in the press release. Now 12k reissues this work, which is among the most important and requested outings of the label, in a new sleeve printed with white ink; the disc also features a data segment containing the title track's video in Quicktime format. Not many words are necessary to describe this warm, engaging record that unfolds with tranquil detachment, putting the listener amidst repeated series of membrane-massaging superimpositions of looping circles and Enoidal synthetic waves that resound in typically oneiric timbral concoctions, while gentle pops and clicks determine a rhythmic structure that's often "barely there", yet discreetly functional for the development of the music. Although nowadays a few moments may sound a tad dated in their use of sampled chords and imaginary parallel dimensions, there is indeed an aura of importance surrounding the large part of the album, which remains a concrete demonstration of how this kind of composition has been useful to introduce many people to the wonders of electronica by starting their path with something that's accessible and, at the same moment, touching. This is still "Frame"'s most visible contribution, besides its obvious grace.

AARON SIEGEL – The cabinet (Longbox)

Structure is what separates a bunch of noises from the definition of “pieces for percussion”. Aaron Siegel, born in 1977 and a frequent collaborator of artists such as Anthony Braxton, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Nate Wooley among many others, is a graduate in music and English literature at the University of Michigan (now he's living in NY) who uses the above mentioned structure in the most intuitive manner to showcase his own collection of instrumental sketches. 21 tracks, each one clocking at exactly 2 minutes, ranging from pretty smooth wooden rustling and gong resonance through cryptic ruptures of a barely maintained silence via metallic squeaks, bowed cymbals and selected clangs of irregular objects. A couple of segments are dangerously harsh for the auricular membranes if listened via headphones, as Siegel often tends to work around uncomfortable frequencies that do not encourage raising the volume too much. “The cabinet” is not exactly what you’d define a relaxing listening, but certainly is not a joke either. It must be carefully scrutinized before even trying to express an opinion about it.

SABRINA SIEGEL - Grace / Precarious (Pax)

Right after my first approach to this album I checked an online interview with Sabrina Siegel, where I discovered that the girl records her music at home in peculiar settings, playing (battering?) her instruments with various tools and - get this - with rocks. She also reports that the strings of her guitar have been left unchanged for years now; I remember that the same thing was once affirmed by Henry Kaiser, and I myself love the sound of decay on old guitar strings. But it’s not exclusively strings that you’ll find in “Grace / Precarious”. Siegel is the archetypal improviser, dragging things around (the initial “Yom Kippur” reminded me somehow of Christian Weber’s “Osaka” 3-inch, with all kinds of growls and groans from what I believe to be her mistreated cello). She also puts some moan in, almost chuckling while performing acts that the lo-fi qualities of the recording let just intuit. Elsewhere, she accompanies that same cello with other kinds of vocalization: “I killed the chicken” is a cross between Maria Callas in underpants and the meeting of Eugene Chadbourne and Fred Frith in swimming outfit, while “Drop bow down cello” is my favourite track, Siegel singing along a simple arco movement unthreading many fascinating harmonics. The final “Light” is a stoned “au revoir” concluding a strangely effective, frictional outing that left me pretty unimpressed at first, but reveals substance with each new try.

SIGNAL QUINTET - Yamaguchi (Cut)

Signal Quintet was formed in 2004 by Jason Kahn to record "Timelines", and they have remained active as an improvising entity until the present day. "Yamaguchi", titled after the Japanese Centre for Arts and Media where this recording was made, is the document of their first tour. Consisting of Kahn (analog synthesizer, percussion), Tomas Korber (guitar, electronics), Norbert Möslang (cracked everyday electronics), Günter Müller (iPods, electronics) and Christian Weber (contrabass), this is probably the most illuminated conjunction of electroacoustic improvisers - born or living in Switzerland - that we can enjoy nowadays. It is almost futile to look for new terms able to describe what the cognoscenti are already aware of. These artists know the meaning of the words "measure" and "restraint", and those are exactly the main features of this music, which is finely tuned to a rational balance between the "microbiotic" boiling of the electronic sources and the evocative dances between the drone and the low-string tolling that Weber fathers, giving the music an aura of imperturbability and menace at one and the same time, besides gifting it with the most evident touches of acoustic consciousness. From this radiating cauldron, in between semi-natural deprivations of light and amidst cyberfaunae living in the mud, muted invocations - prayers that are too shy to get out of a mouth - are summoned forth during several bewitching states of altered reality. In those moments, one feels lucky to have the chance to experience something like this.

VALGEIR SIGURDSSON - Ekvílíbrium (Bedroom Community)

Every once in a while, a lovely “commercial” release comes forth on the reviewer’s desk, only to be declared “not exactly commercial” after two or three listenings. Let me be perfectly clear: throughout my life I’ve been loving pop records like no one can - I mean, the really good ones - therefore I’m never averse to one hour of divertissement placed in between torrents of earth loops and cascades of stridency. Valgeir Sigurdsson’s CD, though, reveals a touch of obliqueness amidst the most relaxing materials that transforms every session in a refreshing discovery of new particulars that you missed the previous time. Ten tracks, six instrumentals and four with vocalists (Bonnie Prince Billy, Dawn McCarthy and J.Walker/Machine Translations), whose skeleton at times looks techno-fied almost to the excess (like in the opener “A symmetry”) yet designed with millimetric precision and care for the microscopic detail that go along very well with delicate, warmly wrapping string arrangements, my overall favourite being heard in “Evolution of waters” (in this case by the composer himself, while in “Winter sleep” and “Kin” they were penned by the excellent Nico Muhly, who plays in these and other pieces of the album). This “natural-but-strange-anyway” aura takes the sophistication factor out of the equation, so that “Ekvílíbrium” can be roughly defined as a mixture of Scott Walker, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Pastels and (put your drum’n’bass choice name here) with crippled overtones appearing in selected moments, as to remind us that sugar and honey aren’t necessary.

SILLAGE - Sillage (Sedimental)

Gaspingly looking for a virtual box to file this recording in, I remained unsuccessful even after the second and third listens, becoming seriously convinced that there is no real chance of achieving the goal. Brendan Murray and Seth Nehil are mostly considered for their work with, respectively, “long form dense compositions of pure sound” and “multi-speaker installations” besides being acknowledged for clever contributions to various types of scene. “Sillage”, though, will surprise in different ways, especially because it features environments and settings nearer to acousmatic music than loop-and-drone-based soundscapes, despite flourishing from the seeds of what the two artists have been doing throughout their career. This doesn’t mean that de-structured field recordings and smog-smelling repetition are absent: there are indeed thick layers of that kind of colouring, but Murray and Nehil worked a real lot on a factor that elevates these eight pieces to the highest level of aural gratification, spelled “dynamics”. Abrupt changes, imperceptible pulses, awesome imagery and secret codes are sapiently mixed with the unsophisticated biotic qualities of natural timbres and that omnipresent metropolitan aroma which makes one feel lost in an unfamiliar soundtrack. Electroacoustic sceneries crossing the hubbub of a shopping mall and the invisible-yet-audible movements of a set of turbines get entwined with threatening passages full of harsher details and ever-growing sense of doubt. Saving the best for last, the pair drills the final track “Waving” into our cerebrum through a scary juxtaposition of sources whose mass - first scarcely mobile, then continuously morphing in panic-eliciting growth - looks for us, positioned womb-like in the tiny hole of presumption, to finally submerge a useless corporeal entity by enhancing the absence of relevance that paralyzes many people and, instead, is the basis of a primary principle of existence that they still refuse to accept. This impenetrability might leave many receivers puzzled in mental standstill, but hopefully someone’s willing to start the process all over again. If this is not a masterpiece, we’re very close. (PS: it’s Seth NEHIL, not “Nihil”…)

SILO - Silo (Utech)

Basically consisting of Audrey Chen on cello and voice plus Leonel Kaplan and Nate Wooley on trumpets, Silo document four improvisational settings alternating distillations of concentrated interactions between voices and trumpets and hair-curling, dramatic spontaneous ceremonies of initiation where all sounds seem to abandon their primary meaning to chime through extremely emotional landscapes. One could think that this music may have been played in a giant tank, as the recording's natural reverberation adds an extra touch of intense nervousness, sort of a "presence" which seems to propagate all around the musicians. Wooley and Kaplan measure their vibrating affirmations like native Indians do when tending their ears against the wind; Chen is the cardinal point of reference with her pregnant disfigurements of self-absorption and ever-present quest for truth. On two of the tracks, James Webster joins the expedition with traditional Maori instruments and voice.

ART SIMON - More of the same + (Cohort)

Coming in a slim DVD case are two discs by Art Simon, who performs all alone on guitar and MIDI Theremin and, additionally, programs computers. It must be immediately told that this is not a milestone, but somehow I managed to find some interesting trace in this strange pastiche (wondering if this is involuntary). Imagine a concoction that, in a low-budget setting, tries to fuse sparse components of Frippertronics, early David Torn and Muslimgauze over basic tracks built upon drum machine patterns that range from spastic meters to pseudo-techno. Throw in distortion - lots of it - and a pinch of space rock attitude; the result is not what one usually needs for a tranquil afternoon and furthermore, in several occasions, a slight measure of dilettantism can be smelled. Still, certain combinations of dirty resonance and Theremin warble produce strangely appealing gradations, thus delivering the music from the “pale imitation” yoke. Indeed, looking for something nice to be said, most of this material sounds bizarrely unique despite the similarities shown by its constituting elements. A release that slips in just by a hair, given its curious mixture of naiveté and cheap noise-making, where substance might be detected in spurts. Maybe a single CD would have worked better.

LUKAS SIMONIS - Stots (Z6)

A very interesting album, full of twists, quirks and ruptures of that ordinariness that often affects the "grand scheme of things" in improvised music (yes, there are schemes in there, too), "Stots" presents 16 pretty short sketches for guitar, voice, electronics, objects and field recordings, sometimes in the space of the same piece. Although Simonis has played with the likes of Eugene Chadbourne, Eddie Prevost and Jon Rose, his music is totally parentless, seemingly recognizing no influences; even the titles are in a "secret language", to help listeners not to be influenced by "dogmatic and misunderstood information". In that sense, the disc's high point is a track called "& Adoot", a fiendish arrangement where a fragmented voice is pitch-transposed all over the place and Simonis' guitar is, for lack of a better word, "corroded", while the rest moves according to a completely unique planetology. Over the course of the whole CD, one gaspingly waits for hooks or tunes, but all that Lukas gives is parching dissonance, arrhythmia a go-go and unpredictably fractured "melodies", whose chance of being remembered - much less sung - is nil. "Stots" is in a class of its own, it's dirty and gross but also splendidly refined (when the composer wants it to be). No parallelism is possible, just relax and enjoy a very bumpy ride through acousmatic miscreancy.

LUKAS SIMONIS & TAKAYUKI KAWABATA - News (Z6)

Lukas Simonis is not an overly productive type of solo artist, but what he has been releasing of late deserves the utmost attention and respect, showcasing the ideas of a talented composer and a rather unequalled personality in a panorama of too many shouters who have actually nothing crucial to say. What he does want to say, on the contrary, is that a language is “very suitable for massive misinterpretation”. I love this concept, as a firm non-believer in the common usage of words; transitively, I also liked this album, originally deriving from a “multiphonic” piece that Simonis wrote for cellist Kumi Otte Kondo, based on a text by Japanese poet Takayuki Kawabata. Intrigued by the latter’s writings, Simonis further elaborated the hypothesis by creating “News”, scored for his guitar, a female voice (Miki Sugiura) and two cellos (Kondo and Nina Hitz). The basis of everything is improvisation: the players recorded their parts following some “route descriptions” by the leader, who subsequently took the material to decompose and remodel it. What emerges from this manipulation is an absorbing music that jumps from one non-meaning to another, yet maintains a fascinating lyrical aspect (the cellos are undoubtedly responsible for the large part of this). Due to the uncommon vocalism of Sugiura and the scissoring zigzags of an almost unrecognizable guitar - appearing just every once in a while for additional destabilizations of the process - we often think about a hypothetical opera written by William Burroughs, unexpected cuts and sudden changes all over the place. Yet this is not someone rummaging through genres in the name of a presumed geniality. No, this is serious stuff whose pigmentation reveals weeks of hard work and passionate involvement. My applause for its excellence comes well deserved.

SUMUGAN SIVANESAN / DURAN VAZQUEZ - Product (Cronica)

Both these two electrocuting circuit breakers - splitting a CD like it was a vinyl, one side each - could be a new force, right now, in the new "post everything" scene, at least in the urban landscape/altered sound perception area. Sydney-based Sivanesan mostly works on those frequencies that change your listening as you move around, putting your monitors to severe tests even at medium level (look at the title of his work for confirmation). Waves shifting all over, holes punched in brains, patterns understood only after a few seconds of ear adapting. Plus, a few good old field recordings get treated and modified according a lucid creativity, in a series of frameworks that must not be ignored by any attentive new music follower. For his part, Vazquez gets to ears a little more pleasingly as his work, devoid of any academic study, is a bridge linking the best "industrial" aromas of the past (dark pulsating loops, low neon-light city soundtracks) with an outlook towards modern present-day pessimism; Duran seems to know there's no chance for smiling. Even his use of noise is near to social discomfort more than being sonic terrorism. I acknowledge these absolutely respectable entries in my gallery of recent favorites; keep an eye on them in the immediate future because I feel they won't disappoint.

JULIEN SKROBEK - Le palais transparent (Free Software Series)

This is a “composition for guitars and sine waves using Audacity under Debian”, dedicated to Radu Malfatti. The latter attribute is quite discernible, as the record is made of few discharges and long silences, yet the sounds are “scarcely frequent” in some instance, certainly more than in Malfatti’s music. What can we say? This is not a bad album, but it’s not very significant either. The guitar mostly appears in a rather consonant dress, indeed the characteristic that I like the least; alternatively, one’s got to appreciate the sine wave outbursts that every once in a while raise their head to set my house’s loose parts in motion, given the consistency of their frequency jumble. Silence, as usual, may host a multitude of elements, from your own blood pressure to outside birds, or maybe the TV from the neighbouring room. It remains to be determined how much we need a release that might be attractive in certain segments of your day but, on the other hand, appears as a low-budget version of concepts whose originality has already begun to show signs of wear and tear. This particular item is nice enough to pass the test, though.

SLAMMIN’ THE INFINITE - Live @ the Vision Festival (Not Two)

For some strange reason, the trombone has often been associated with irony or comic situations and, despite the immense artistic talents of virtuosos such as Paul Rutherford or Paul Hubweber (…or Bruce Fowler!), this instrument is yet under-considered as a creative weapon, much less in a front man’s hands. But we’re ever so lucky to have friends like Steve Swell, who plays the damn thing as if that was the last day of his life, injecting the music with huge soul, gravitational pulls towards the right energy channels and astounding technical wizardry. Swell is the boss of the Slammin’ the Infinite quartet, which comprises a truly fabulous Sabir Mateen on reeds, Matt Heyner on bass and Klaus Kugle on drums. For this concert, they were joined by the excellent pianist John Blum. The three tracks are exemplary specimens of what jazz can still produce when approached with the correct frame of mind. Taking off from short thematic sketches, the musicians are soon rollin’ and tumblin’ down the ravines of the most enthusiast freedom of choice, wasting no time in assaulting the audience with an educated fracas containing the germs of spontaneous rebellion mixed with the necessary lucidity for the pursuance of a fundamental aim. The continuity of exchange of sonic information among the players, involving feelings that run the whole gamut of passion and rage, is the basic foundation of repeated blasts of fierce musicianship which the “collective” quality of the recording does not hinder for a second. The virtues of the single members are well audible throughout, making for constant, unremitting shared excitement.

RAN SLAVIN - Product 02 (Cronica)

Blinding flashes, quick mirages and sad memories seem to be what Ran Slavin builds upon. Here he presents two works, "Tropical agent" and "Ears in water"; both parts very well functioning as "active ambient" material, perfect to be listened during other activities - nevertheless, the care in assembling sounds is total, guaranteeing a stimulating perspective from the listener's point of view. Tasteful morsels of ahead-thinking knowledge about the psychology of aural reception are continuously served during the 70+ minutes of the disc; the music itself becomes a mechanism for turning up a mellow unquietness which is essential in this "product" appreciation process. This music does not attack you directly, it rather settles into your humour transforming itself, helping filling those voids that are the first signs of uneasiness in a nice example of emotional juggling.

SCOTT SMALLWOOD - Desert winds: 6 windblown sound pieces and other works (Deep Listening)

Would you ever think about the abandoned Enola Gay hangar, full of rust and rubbish, having a sound speaking to your soul? Have you ever listened to the blowing of the wind through chairs and metal leftovers? Mr.Smallwood, a computer music teacher and active composer/improviser on the New York scene, has carefully recorded desert winds in those and many other field situations, presenting us with a great record: like a magician's mysterious touch, winds have their own distinct voice and interact with the obstacles they meet during their short lifespan. The last piece on the CD is an excellent treatment of sport fans noises, named "Trojan chant": quite different from all the rest, but absolutely perfect in its reiterative, involving mantra-like construction.

GARY SMITH - SuperTexture (Sijis)

This 2-CD set comprises a solo album by Smith, on electric guitar with no additional effects except a volume pedal, and a disc of "treatments and interpretations" of his improvisations by thirteen artists in close contact with his music one way or another, namely Bill Fay, Steve Roden, Elliott Sharp, David Tibet, Paulo Raposo, Bernhard Günter, Tom Wallace, the Zoltan Kodaly School for Girls, Peter Rehberg, Tianna Kennedy, Charles Hayward, BJ Nilsen and Aufgehoben. Both records are interesting and quite enjoyable. Smith conceives instant compositions with ease, his fingers picking and scraping strings, pickups and wood to elicit microsounds, roaring thuds, snarling groans and clickety-clackety snippets that at times might sound as computer-generated to unprepared ears, but absolutely aren't. Indeed an expert guitarist is able to more or less determine where these tiny capsules spring from, but listening to them remains pleasurable enough this notwithstanding. The second disc is quite strange right from the start (despite their long-time collaboration, the fusion of Bill Fay's voice and keyboards and Smith's freedom here does not yield very exciting sensations), yet there is a good choice of quality moments, most notably the tracks by Raposo, Hayward and Nilsen that, exploiting the guitarist's inventions by putting them in a significance-mincing, often loop-based context, create several sublime moments of pure groove-and-bliss, thus generating a striking contrast between the first and the second CD, a noticeable divergence which is probably "SuperTexture"'s strongest asset.

IAN SMITH - Tryst (Red Toucan/Happydays)

Thanks to Brian Godding I stumbled upon this great handicraft from 1997; it's a quintet led by a highly skilled soloist, trumpeter Ian Smith, in different improvising settings with Godding himself plus Marcio Mattos, Mark Sanders and Thebe Lipere. I'd really like to find a correct definition for this music, but it's virtually impossible: there are lots of variables each one looking for a path of its own, like airy currents stratifying themselves until forming delightful designs in the sky. Smith and Mattos appear as the carrying force in many of the pieces, with their companions silently and industriously working around them to paint impressionistic backgrounds and intelligent decorations. Most of this music is tranquil and relaxing, its best fragments being slow timbral affirmations rather than doses of overspeak. Even in the few "swinging" blowouts brain usage prevails upon uncontrolled freedom; last but not least, Godding's guitar synth solo is not to be missed: sarcasm and sweetness married forever!

IAN SMITH / SIMON H. FELL / HARRIS EISENSTADT - K3 (Bruce's Fingers)

Pursuing the ideal balance of dynamic interplay in a succession of loud/soft/loud incarnations, this trio collects photos of barely controlled freedom which sound concretely inquisitive, if a little rough-edged at times. Upon a complex rhythmical kaleidoscope built by Eisenstadt, who somehow glues the ever-growing polymorphous developments of multicoloured timbral nuances, Smith blows masterfully through a conglomerate of labyrinthine utterances and dramatic voice alterations, looking at a past in transit through many influences (heaven knows why I was reminded of Mothers Of Invention's "Weasels ripped my flesh" more than once). Fell's possession of the double bass is complete and wholly gratifying; he sustains tension with accurate technique and effortless efficiency, his conversational skills within the trio always intelligible, even in the most burning sections. The music climbs quite high in spiraliform paths, reinforced rather than disturbed by its own disorders, heading to a corrugated consciousness that acts as these musicians' manifesto; amidst all this uncontrollable movement, snippets of phrases and melodic twists appear every once in a while as to give some orientation to the ones who could get lost in the realms of this truly unpigeonholeable kind of improvisation.

ROGER SMITH - Spanish Guitar (Emanem)

After being positively surprised by the extremely enjoyable "Green Wood", I was most pleased to hear additional music by Smith. Playing in his usual "non troppo-delicate", nylon-string plucking style, Roger helps us discovering yet more facets of his well affirmed presence, starting from Bailey's shadow to arrive to soft acoustic meditations for strings, wood percussives and metallic noise (but...mind you: everything's coming from the single instrument or - in some instance - from the environment around, cars, a defective chair, just listen). Smith is an intelligent guitarist and his playing never stresses your nerves; in a way, you could almost say his sound is "relaxing" - even in the most contorted sections he keeps his musicianship on hand and does not allow any loss of concentration or clarity. All this makes for records that stand the "real music or just noodling?" test - with full marks by my side.

ROGER SMITH & LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO - The butterfly and the bee (Emanem)

It takes a while to get used to the maculate interplay between a perspicacious drum painter and a man whose style leapfrogs between sporadical windows of technical legalism and an all-out dance of the fingers on a percussive instrument - yes, his guitar. I don't know if the title refers to the famous Muhammad Ali motto ("Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee") but this music has many qualities that made me think to natural inexplicabilities and environmental infiltrations in our daily life, like when one can hear the distant rumble of an approaching storm preceded by the first rain drops. Smith and Moholo-Moholo don't offer easy escapes or safety handles: their total non-conformity - even in an open setting like an improvisation - swoops on the listeners forcing them to penetrate the details, to make contact in the flesh, to abandon diffidence in order to enjoy difficulties like if they were instant evolutional processes as opposed to an unwanted helter-skelter in their encrusted mental habits.

JOS SMOLDERS - Textures and mobiles (CONV net.lab)

The mutability and the mellowness of Jos Smolders' pieces for mobile ringtones is certainly surprising and extremely pleasant. Far from those undesirable bleeps and stupid melodies we've unfortunately grown used to during our everyday contacts, these sounds are small fragments of synthesis subtracted to silence and their presence rapidly becomes appreciated - even welcome - as long as the brain automatically finds small holes in its structure to allow them developing their not-so-superficial significance. This linear architecture expresses its most contemplative character during impressive radiations of incisive subfrequencies, like in the cerebral rubbing of "Texture 2" or in the slow glissando oscillation - similar to a takeoff sensation - in "Texture 4a". Even in its simplest forms, Jos' ideas resplend with the beauty of simplicity.

JOS SMOLDERS - Habitat (And/OAR)

The acoustic ecology of Jos Smolders manages to refresh the listener's brain through a sapient dosage of silence and events in a sort of sonic chemoterapy delivering us from residual particles of predictable manifestations. These sounds are best enjoyed in a silent environment, with just a modicum of external activity coming to enhance them, in order to be able to define their position not only in the surrounding space but also in that precise moment of your existence; street noises get filtered by effects, becoming an ever changing solution of fluorescent colours and concrete digital grains, the whole in a continuous struggle against predetermined shapes. Morphing voices of animals and humans are refracted in a thousand directions, yet they always remain within earshot, blending and fusing in shifting dynamic relationships with semi-organic external activities, thus reinforcing these soundscapes' evocative appeal. Everything sounds perfect in this veritable documentary; Smolders confirms his silent, steady growth as an assembler of suggestions.

SOCOS - Hyperythmique analogue (Triple Bath)

This man looks quite a character. The press release’s photo reveals him as a curious Pat Metheny/Frank Zappa facial hybrid. He’s Greek, yet the titles of the pieces and the writings on the CD sleeve are in French. He plays classical guitar alternating traditional and extended techniques. His curriculum speaks about several collaborations - among them the “cult rock band” Aera Patera - that I’m obviously completely unfamiliar with (hey, I can’t guarantee miracles yet). The 42 minutes of “Hyperythmique analogue” are subdivided into five tracks, each one with a different aura, all of them played with sober seriousness and restraint, except in a couple of instances where percussive elements and more relevant dynamic peaks are introduced. Socos utilizes the whole body of the instrument efficiently, tapping the strings to elicit micro-harmonics and skeletal zinging structures while thumping on the wood to have the air within expanding harmoniously in shades of chords and spectra of barely audible notes. He also applies metallic objects to the strings, causing a Frithian bounce during the changes. Scraping sounds and a slight measure of processing complete the experimental face of the album, which is finely complemented by two longer segments where Socos performs limpidly and without any preparation, highlighting the simple pleasures contained in compositions that mix medieval progressions and ingenuous minimalism reminiscent of Hans Joachim Roedelius’ shy piano pastels (“Louise Michel”). Enchanting material indeed. Not bad at all for a solo debut, especially considering how easy doing damage to people’s ears with a guitar is. Ultra limited edition of 96 copies, therefore act quickly.

SOLO ANDATA / SEAWORTHY / TAYLOR DEUPREE - Live in Melbourne (12k)

This limited edition of 500 copies is the recorded testimony of an evening at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne where two sonic entities gravitating around the orbit of 12k - plus the label boss himself - graced the membranes of the participants with a stimulating ambient-related piece each, “despite the ghosts of BBC hijacking the audio system” as Deupree reports. Solo Andata, the duo of Paul Fiocco and Kane Ikin, presented a delicately excruciating, diaphanous pastel where the calmness of the instrumental deployment orientates the character of the music towards the charms that only conscious melancholy can generate in a curious pot-pourri of oriental ceremonials and interfering urban hum that facilitates complete relaxation. Seaworthy's core member is Cameron Webb, a scientist of the environment who uses his own field recordings in extremely easy to the ears compositions based on gentle guitars and loops, quite reminiscent of Eno in their scarcely surprising, somehow reassuring progressions and - well, yes - Fripp in the conclusive junction of suspended, slightly saturated harmonics, although sweetened by dreamy clean-toned arpeggios. Taylor Deupree closes the show with a hypnotizing segment where everything appears as recognizable yet actually isn’t. What sounds like a repeated pluck of electric guitar strings stands out in a foggy static soundscape whose motionlessness is just a creation of the mind, as instead ripples and rivulets of self-reproducing viscous materials submerge any tentative opposition to this granular status quo. To paraphrase early Peter Gabriel, a river of constant, if scarcely visible change.

SONATA REC - …Und wir waren nicht die ersten Utopisten (AIC)

Behind this mystifying 3-inch disc hides Heidrun Schramm, of whom nothing I know. The whole appears to have been largely built upon vocal sounds, some of them unequivocal - snippets of speeches and radio programs, children, all rigorously in German - the rest somehow malformed, squashed, customized and suffocated by a painstaking work of processing. There seems to be something “clicking” in a different way, electronically prying, surrounding certain sections of the mix - breathing and saliva finding their way into the hotchpotch, too. Also concrete manifestations, if very rarely (then again, isn’t human voice a “concrete sound” after all?). The sense is one of chilliness and apprehension, just like being part of a reality that doesn’t welcome and is equally disliked. Well conceived stuff, by some means referable to the aesthetic laws of Asmus Tietchens’ world - with less cynicism and probably less depth - yet worthy of more than a single listen.

ADAM SONDERBERG / PAUL BRADLEY - Anoxia (Longbox/Twenty Hertz)

"Anoxia" moves around those coordinates where hypnosis and concrete soundscapes meet gorgeous timbral radiance in a severe reproach to the faint-minded. Bowing and rubbing deeply resonant metal sources with knowledgeable sensitiveness, Sonderberg establishes invisible patterns of almost mystical impenetrability that are stretched to the limits of different unconceivable structures by the sapient mix of Paul Bradley. The sound, at first just a rumbling presence under your perception radar, slowly becomes a combination of well proportioned arcane umbrae, whose impressive force seems to belong to superior levels of human of human development. This piece is stripped of any useless expansion, tending to an austere affirmation of elemental might through simple mutations of anguish into something that, at the end, is resembling a physical alleviation.

SONIC CATERING BAND - Live from the canteens of Atlantis (Absurd)

Cooking and improvisation, pretty fascinating link, huh? This 2-CD set presents the engaging, lifting, confusing and eye-opening aural results from various live sets by the Sonic Catering guys, including their last one in Geneva. These concerts were serious (?) rituals, where group members took large amounts of time creating a sombre mix of kitchen appliances and looping/reverberating treatments. While surely the visual aspect played a fundamental role in this new artistic philosophy, there is no reason not to appreciate the music itself, stripped of everything to the bare acoustic message. There's a lot to like here, especially if you're fond of realities like Noise-Maker's Fifes or old Zoviet France: the mantric infinite repeats, the distortion of never boring lo-fi grooves, above all a sense of sincerity and commitment to the project that transpires from any moment of the recordings. They were one of a kind indeed - and it shows.

SONIC OPENINGS UNDER PRESSURE - Muhheankuntuk (Clean Feed)

The title is a word from Lenape tribe’s language that means “river that flows two ways” in reference to New York’s Hudson. This comparison is useful to describe the outlandish mixture of thematic cleverness and fractal rhythmic disintegration - but always with a well discernible pulse - characterizing this trio, formed by Patrick Brennan (alto sax), Hilliard Greene (bass) and David Pleasant (Densemetrix/percussion, harmonica and voice). My instinct, while approaching this highly charged group for the first time, suggested to link their work with Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society, James Blood Ulmer. A spiritual link, not necessarily a stylistic one. The contrast between Brennan’s atonal flights, which nevertheless maintain a sense of regulation in between finely chiseled but totally explosive counterpoints, and the effervescent drumming by Pleasant (whose polyrhythmic mastery is astounding to say the least), is somehow rendered more functional by Greene’s elegant rebellion to the chains of obedience, his bass constituting the catalyzing presence that allows the music to remain cohesive as oil on the surface of an agitated sea. All over the seven tracks the musicians sound nervously determined, akin to prisoners looking into each other’s very eyes before trying to escape from jail. There’s not a weak point, not a moment when I thought “been there already”. The icing on the cake is the shortest chapter “The hardships”, a spectacular synthesis of rap, tribal and technically advanced instrumental interaction; if you aren’t tapping your feet or at least nodding in approval while listening to that one, you probably need a pacemaker.

SONIC SYSTEMS LABORATORY - Two vibraphones (Split)

Sonic Systems Laboratory are Robbie Avenaim and Dale Gorfinkel. For this recording, the duo equipped a pair of vibraphones with various alterations as in a sonic sculpture of sorts, looking for textures that might or might not be immediately associated with that instrument, utilizing simple yet effective devices to bring out the sweet and the harsh and setting them in acceptable terms of sonority. These mechanisms include motorized rotating disks, micro-tonally tuned bars and various percussive means, also activated by motors. The manual participation by the principals is reduced to the bare minimum in a music whose colours range from the piercing tones derived from beating frequencies to the almost biotic rustle of sticks and mallets agitated by the engines working behind the prepared vibes. Impossible not to appreciate the quality of the work for those who enjoy machine-driven composition: Remko Scha is one of the names that instantly came to mind during the most concrete manifestations of rhythmic fragmentation. Still, the beginning of the piece offers something to Alvin Lucier lovers too - and there are hints to sonorities heard by illuminated young improvisers like Adam Sonderberg, together with a slanted involuntary imitation of the final movements in Steve Reich's “Drumming”. Basically, also in consideration of its not excessive length, this is a concise exploration that works better as a curious experiment in timbral modification and dynamic shift than as a compositional accomplishment per se. It does sound very pleasing nonetheless, especially in the dazzlingly entrancing conclusive minutes.

SON OF GUNNAR, TON OF SHEL - Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel (Edgetone)

This project’s title derives from its components’ names. Gudmundur Steini Gunnarsson, from Reykjavik, studied at Mills College with Alvin Lucier, Fred Frith and Annie Gosfield besides graduating at the Iceland Academy of Arts and being influenced by Tristan Murail, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Clarence Barlow. In this instance he plays prepared guitar and electronics. Aram Shelton - born in Florida, currently based in Chicago, is a multi-instrumentalist here featured on sax, bass clarinet, trumpet (and electronics, too). The album starts with something resembling a subdued feel of repressed terror rapidly escalating to total fury, the instruments wildly screaming in a mayhem of treatments and shrieks, the strings hit with everything but the kitchen sink, signals deformed and heavily processed even if the core timbres remain more or less recognizable. After a while the rage releases its grip quite a bit, leaving room to placid clarinet and sax expositions amidst metallic showers and ripples of incisive tones. Towards the record’s end, one can surprisingly locate a few delay-drenched semi-romantic arpeggios, almost to remind that Gunnarsson is just playing a guitar after all. In spite of the fact that the main sonic factors of these seven improvisations are always visible, somehow the record defies a correct categorization, enjoyable as it is in (repeated) spots and rushes rather than as a whole. Clearly, these guys are knowledgeable manipulators, able to both wreak havoc and caress your hair - with sandpaper.

SON_OF_MUMRAH - Such a waste (Evelyn)

I'm not too much of a "laptop lover" but, admittedly, Son_of_Mumrah's effort is well conceived and nicely eruptive. Processing organic sounds through the computer, then assembling the results according to a mixture of order/repetition and casualty, the composer (Graham Williams, also recording under different pseudonyms) fathered a series of pretty minimal outbursts and corrosive exhalations, constituting a departure from the usually icy sonic deconstructions and glitching obviousness of most of this area's releases. Like all outsiders, Williams doesn't leave much room for mind roaming: either you like it his way, or you don't.

SON OF ROSE - Divisions in parallel (Dragon’s Eye)

A new acquaintance for this writer, Son Of Rose is the pseudonym of Seattle-based composer Kamran Sadeghi, whose previous work mostly revolved around “synthesis and altered recordings”. For this occasion, Sadeghi utilized a few basic elements such as grand piano strings, Ebow and computer to create seven tracks in which the pianistic element is absent altogether in favour of a series of soundscapes that alternate scenarios, timbral gradations and intensities like in an evolutionist theatre piece, often traveling in the proximities of microsound-based, glitching new ambient, with a few louder moments such as the final track “Eleven Eleven”. Characterized by a frequent use of “digital dust” and barely audible harmonics, emphasizing spectral layers and spatial openings that link the pieces to a mildly experimental side of abstract electronica, the music neither deploys too many groundbreaking themes, nor highlights surprising particulars. Still, it remains anchored to a plausible canon of “less is more” derivation, seldom finding the force to invade the aural environment with a truly preponderant presence. It works best as a complement to silence: the events - both those clearly definable and others that lie underground, still contributing to the overall body of sound - are glued by various combinations of textural fluctuations that the ears receive as very welcome, even when our focus lies elsewhere. Considering the acoustic source, and that everything was improvised, not a bad result at all.

JED SPEARE - Sound works 1982-1987 (Family Vineyard)

A still young age notwithstanding - he was born in 1954 in Boston - Jed Speare has had more experiences in the artistic field than lots of elders can declare in their curricula. Among his studies, immediately striking attention are “acoustic communication, ecology and design”, undertook at Simon Fraser University of Burnaby, British Columbia. Add to this an admitted influence by R. Murray Schafer, one of the men that better explored the concept of awareness of the surrounding voices of life, and you’re only halfway through a definition of the character. This double CD gathers five lengthy compositions which can be easily classified as “concrete music”. Contrarily to many modern composers, accused by Speare of having given up too early to the “electronic mermaid” (which in his words “elicits a lesser emphatic, human response than did natural-seeming acoustic sounds”) he is deeply, affectingly influenced by the “fundamentally richer overtones of acoustic sounds available for recording just about anywhere”. Through a meticulous work of tape splicing and pasting, Speare designed sonic forms where actively participating entities and industrial/urban din weight exactly the same - like in the splendid “At the Falls”, opener of this set - and intermissions might be coming from the patients of a psychiatric hospital grunting and moaning indecipherably. Disturbing, but essentially magnificent. The tracks are diverse and highly engaging, each one for the peculiar significance at the time in which they were created: 1982’s “Taboo Death” has to do with AIDS yet appears in the guise of a crazed mutation of a salsa piece, while “Wayside” features airport noise, weaponry (?) at work, dissonant cello and dining room piano amidst a lot of changing scenarios. A sapient usage of loops and (manual) cut’n’paste transforms spoken word into an insistent repetition of incomprehensible patterns, sounding gorgeous all the way. There’s still plenty to discover and a review is not enough to emphasize the many qualities of this fascinatingly dated, often sublime release, a must-have for those who appreciate the work of Åke Hodell et similia.

MARTIN SPEICHER / GEORG WOLF / LOU GRASSI - Shapes and shadows (Clean Feed)

The hunch of ignorance that prangs my presumption when listening to excellent musicians whose work I never met before reappeared after the first contact with this beautiful album, chock full of intracutaneous interplay, inventive ingeniousness and technical wizardry but also gifted with a passionate vibe which is rare to find these days. Speicher is an alto saxophone and clarinet virtuoso, capable to deliver burning dissonant flurries at the wink of an eye, or instead decide that a little less of foot on the gas can work wonders, a perfect example being the beginning of the title track, a fourteen-minute inning of immaculate improvisation ending the CD in splendid fashion. Wolf listens and digests, only to mentally rearrange what he just heard and instantly spit out well-rounded contrapuntal designs that sustain Speicher’s flight like a mother goose does with her ducklings. Grassi is the prototype of drummer who desperately tries to avoid having his skins behaving like…skins; in truth, he would extract the right nuances by hitting abandoned cars in a forsaken site. “Shapes and shadows” was the comforting soundtrack to my train routine in a horribly grey, rainy October morning. Looking at the buildings of the urban peripheries, then at the sleepy faces of the immigrants, then again at the affected laughter of the sharp-dressed yet penniless commuters while being pervaded by this record (to which I’ve already been returning several times since) made me feel somehow lucky even in a very hard period; that’s what consciousness can achieve through powerful music. This trio releases that kind of power in abundant quantities. Highly recommended.

SPIRACLE - Ananta (Mystery Sea)

The work of Japanese Hitoshi Kojo spreads its wings over various artistic fields: he creates sounds, paints and prepares installations, his curriculum vitae finding him in collaboration with people like Michael Northam, John Grzinich and Loren Chasse. Spiracle is Kojo's main project; under this alias he gave Mystery Sea a "special mix" of this recent composition of his, which is quite a bit different compared to the usual canon of the Belgian label. "Ananta" is a long, dirty mantra, centred around a single "tonality" - we never move from there. The sources are left undefined; the wall of sound has an imposing presence, even if the basic drone is gradually covered with the soil of interference (and by processed shortwaves, one would believe), never letting us completely penetrate its depth. It takes only a few minutes to get used to this strong presence, as the piece drifts without problems for more than a hour, during which our mind gives signs of appreciation, especially at a consistent playback volume - a move that will near "Ananta" to some of the most consonant (???) releases by David Jackman/Organum.

SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE - A new distance (Emanem)

This particular incarnation of SME with John Butcher and Roger Smith (plus Neil Metcalfe in a couple of segments) allows John Stevens' concepts to gradually ferment and expand until each separate sound - even the single parts of his drum kit - becomes a nestling, an offspring of undefined fantasies which, coming to grips with a well discernible enthusiastic quest for self-government, shows this music as a continuous metaphor of unrestricted social behaviour. Butcher's enormous talent shines throughout: one can already value his unbelievable timbral transfigurations among the deepest innovations in the recent history of the saxophone. Smith looks happier when his guitar sounds more like an eastern percussion instrument than a regular six-stringed extension: in this sense, his interplay with Stevens' morsels of changing frameworks reaches several intense varieties of articulation. Metcalfe's flute in "Peripheral vision" is astonishingly discursive and it's just a pity that this CD does not include more of his playing.

SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE - Biosystem (Psi)

This CD brings back to light an important Incus LP originally issued in 1977, adding 35 minutes of previously unreleased music rescued by Martin Davidson, who also gave the names to the resulting new tracks. The lineup consisted of John Stevens (percussion, cornet), Nigel Coombes (violin), Roger Smith (guitar) and Colin Wood (cello). It's very clear, as one can guess from the absence of horns and reeds, that this incarnation of SME was "high-register oriented", with Stevens only partially able (and probably not willing) to balance the uncontrollable urges of Coombes and Wood, who sound like not-so-quiet leaders of sorts. Smith is the most tangential player involved, but strangely enough his parts are maybe the few ones which sustain some kind of "definition". So, what does this music sound like after almost 30 years? In the 70s, a decade that probably was the most open to artistic suggestions and tendencies of the last 50 years, it could have opened the minds of many adventurous listeners (while obviously still being destroyed on the Melody Maker). Today, fine-tuned ears are still able to appreciate the children-like enthusiasm of four musicians who start with a few scattered ideas, from there building a whole hill of "irregular" notes (or, if you prefer, deluxe sonic debris that often becomes very exciting), at times acting like a freakout version of a contemporary classical string trio augmented by Stevens' indented drumming. On the other hand, I can't really think of "Biosystem" as the highest available example of communicative interplay, since in many moments the four seem to be paying a little more attention to their own pretty nervous muse than to their partners. I am probablly wrong, but that's how it's perceived from this angle. What remains is a very important document of mostly euphoric helter-skelter improvisation played by an equally influential collective which, in this occasion, seems to be animated by an ultra-democratic leader, two exiles from a chamber ensemble trying to come to terms with their newly acquired freedom from the score and a reclusive gentleman who keeps playing his guitar softly even amidst tumultuous acoustic clangour. Evan Parker's "precious stuff" definition in the liner notes is probably more derserved by the recently reissued "The topography of the lungs", but this is mandatory listening anyway.

SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE - Frameworks (Emanem)

The importance of SME in the history of modern music should never be underappreciated, and Emanem's ongoing effort to retrieve these archival gems from obscurity is, purely and simply, a cultural enhancement for everyone. These three improvisations were recorded in 1968, 1971 and 1973 respectively; John Stevens plays percussion and a small drumset throughout, adding voice in one of the pieces. "Familie sequence" is a quintet with Norma Winstone (voice), Kenny Wheeler (flugelhorn), Paul Rutherford (trombone) and Trevor Watts (bass clarinet) which starts with long notes accompanied by soft rolling-and-tumbling, to evolve in a fully fledged creature whose parts are totally interrelated and functional in the context of a surprisingly mature, austere kind of "free form minimalism". The first section's modal aroma introduces to the core essence of the piece, in which straightforward lines by Winstone and Wheeler mingle with Rutherford's meticulous exploration of the trombone's nuances, Watts and Stevens acting as neighbouring contrasting forces which drive the whole to a pre-cathartic state. This is interrupted by staccatos and glissandos that seem to divide the participants into different groups to finally reunite them in a collective implosion that still allows the instruments (voice included) to librate in the air in a last attempt of fading out of sight. "Quartet sequence" sees Stevens and Watts (this time on soprano sax) at work with Julie Tippett (voice, guitar) and the late Ron Herman (double bass). While I've never been a huge fan of Tippett's vocal style, her performance here - devoid of any useless embellishment and complication - is almost perfect, her voice dialoguing with Watts' soprano in several memorable exchanges over a complex intertwining of double bass and drums, a noteworthy contrapuntal research that yields large amounts of lyrical value and almost shamanic reiteration, not to mention some exquisite acoustic guitar playing. But the best has yet to come, in the shape of a deeply spiritual moment of communion between the parts, a siren chant-like segment in which the instrumental voices literally mourn their existence through our very soul in the most intense part of the entire album. The track ends with a "click" and a (splendid) "sustained" fragment, whose principles are too long to explain here: check the liners! "Flower" is a Stevens/Watts duo, defined as "hyper minimalist" by Martin Davidson, with a reason; sax and percussion play single notes that might or might not fall in the same place at the same moment, thus making the music sound like an old clock about to die and let all its springs out. Silence counts a lot here, even if the very last minutes introduce a change of sorts, Stevens' cymbals shifting the piece towards a more elastic interaction between the two musicians.

SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE - Quintessence (Emanem)

“Quintessence” is a 2-CD set reissuing performances from 1973 and 1974 that were originally released in 1986 and, for the first time digitally, in 1997. It’s a consistent collection, containing what many define as one of the best documents ever of improvised music - the 1974 concert at the ICA theatre by John Stevens, Evan Parker, Trevor Watts, Derek Bailey and Kent Carter - plus a clutch of interesting materials that, in typical fashion, range from the viscerally absorbing to the almost irritating, always stimulating a reaction from the listeners who can’t possibly remain in standstill mode when fronting this kind of impromptu expression. The ICA performance occupies the large part of the first disc, and is alone worth of the whole set. The interaction between reeds and strings is often phenomenal, the ability of the players to maintain single-minded lucidity amidst ruptures, outbursts and yells totally impressive. In the most “regulated” sections the quintet reaches Webernesque concentrated fragmentariness while maintaining a stunning cohesion throughout, Stevens hitting at the different parts of his instrument with elegant informality and genuine recklessness, Carter and Bailey pummelling, tickling and caressing the wood and the metal, Parker and Watts in reciprocal recognition, constant imitation, total abandon. Conjuring up words for music so dramatically intense is difficult to the level of pointlessness; a classic case of “let the sounds do the talking”. The second disc presents chronicles from the trio (same personnel minus Bailey and Parker) and the duo (Stevens and Watts). This is unmistakably a wholly dissimilar proposition, at times slightly weaker but still comprising passages that clock-punching musicians can only hope to play once or twice in a lifetime while, for artists of this calibre, this is just another beer at the pub. Stevens uses vocalizations - very much in a shaman-like approach - in the two versions of “Daa-Oom”, his interaction with Watts an acrid symbolism of earthly energies, and in “Rambunctious I”; be warned that if this sort of concoction is an unusual presence in your life, patience could be seriously tested. But a piece like the above mentioned “Rambunctious 1” features levels of interplay that most jazzbos will dream of, a fierce autonomy tasted with every morsel. As for other SME releases on Emanem, an obligatory stop for those who are serious in studying the laws of free playing.

SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE & ORCHESTRA - Trio & triangle (Emanem)

This CD contains material from 1978 and 1981, recorded in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and London respectively. The older music comes from a cassette of not extraordinary sound quality, which Martin Davidson managed to clean up until suitability for publication, apparently the only available recording of an excellent improvisation by John Stevens (cornet, percussion, voice), Nigel Coombes (violin) and Roger Smith (guitar). Indeed it would have been a pity not being able to benefit from the umpteenth display of shared receptivity by these semi-utopian philosophers. No matter how resonant the hall was, who c