Asymmetry Music Magazine » Miscellaneous

Peter Playing the Shrubbery

michaelkarman — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:39:56 +0000

Hi All,

The editor is away at the Gaida Festival and ISCM World Music Days in Vilnius, LT. He almost never works on the site when he’s away so here’s something from the editor’s very own ~~demonspawn~~ spawn to tide us over.

Enjoy.

-Webmaster

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Busratch, memorium

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:34:29 +0000

People who are immensely talented should do more things. The two guys who constitute Busratch are immensely talented. They’ve only done one other project that I know of, which I haven’t located yet. memorium is wildly entertaining and exhilarating. You can still find it, if you search, though copies are getting harder and harder to find. If you like Christian Marclay, and who doesn’t, if you like Crawling With Tarts, and you do of course, then you will want to have memorium. It’s as wild a ride through turntable land as you are ever likely to take.

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Crawling With Tarts, Grand Surface Noise Opera Nr. 3 (Indian Ocean Ship) Grand Surface Noise Opera Nr. 4 (Drum Totem)

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:33:28 +0000

I first listened to this on lp, which gives an extra dimension of surface noise to the endeavor that cd copies will never have, viz. Marclay’s lp that comes sans sleeve. If you are old enough to remember radio, you will wet yourself at the opening of Grand Surface Noise Opera Nr. 3. If you are not, it may take a few minutes of this lovely jumble to make your bowels respond. Once they do, you’ll be hooked, I promise you. Mixed metaphors are certainly appropriate here. I quickly found all the other Crawling With Tarts albums there were, and though Madeleine is a mixed bag, literally, I enjoyed all of them thoroughly. If you’re intrigued by your first hearing of this one, I’d suggest Sarajevo Center Metal Doors as the next Crawling With Tarts you buy, if you can find it. Last I checked, Discogs had one for sale.

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Dockstader, Aerial

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:32:54 +0000

Tod Dockstader was a cult figure back in the seventies. At least in my house he was. This was back when KPFK still ran an electronic music show every Saturday night, and everyone who listened to that show was snapping up Owl records like mice. Well, it’s no news any more that Dockstader is back, and making new music with computer technology. How much the difference from the old Dockstader is owing to the technology and how much to David Lee Myers, I don’t know. If you were a fan of Dockstader in the Owl days, you won’t necessarily like the new stuff. If you simply enjoy good music, though, you will. Aerial, along with Pond and Bijou, is not as rough and gritty as the tape pieces were. I would have said I preferred the grit, myself, had I not had this adventure: I had Aerial # 1 in the six disc magazin that comes with the 2000 VW New Beetle. I hadn’t driven the car for several days, and when that cd finally came on, I’d forgotten which cd I’d put in which slot. All I knew was that what was on was utterly entrancing. That’s my story… (Pictured is the cover to Aerial 1. The other two are similar.)

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Enihcam

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:32:25 +0000

Yes, you can still spell common words backwards and get strange and lovely effects ybereht. Or perhaps I mean htiwereht. Either way, this is one of those strange under the radar discs that appear and disappear without a ripple. This hasn’t quite disappeared, luckily. If you don’t live near L.A., and cannot make it into the Hollywood Amoeba (and I may have gotten their last copy of this), then check out Staalplaat online. Staalplaat was the only place I found it (after an admittedly mere cursory search). It’s a lovely disc of noise.

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Heiner Goebbels, Ou bien le debarquement desastreux

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:31:46 +0000

This was the first Heiner Goebbels I heard, even though friends of mine had been praising Der Mann im Fahrstuhl for some time before. The opening is deceptively simple and naïve, so much so that my heart sank. But then the trombone cuts across that naive little tune, and then there’s some subtle but snarly electronics, silences, odd rhythms, a French narrator, and some outrageously interesting African singers plus several other voices, and the African and jazzy western new music stuff… Well, it’s a stunner and no doubt.

And the little tune? It recurs throughout. And it’s fine. But be warned; if you get one Heiner Goebbels, you won’t be happy until you have all of them. And that’s fine, too.

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Fritz Hauser, Pensieri Bianchi

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:31:11 +0000

Fritz Hauser is my favorite percussionist who doesn’t use objects and electronics. That is, he’s neither Chris Cutler nor Gino Robair. But for what he does, he’s the best, I think. And if I’m wrong, I want to know who’s better, so I can get all of their cds, too. Pensieri Bianchi is pretty spare compared to the other Hauser offerings, and its sparseness is its chief draw. From the first, isolated, schlag (which is by itself worth the price of admission), this is beautifully played music of the most sensitive kind. Or the most sensitively played music of the most beautiful kind. Take your pick. Anyone who likes Christian Woolf or Giacinto Scelsi will like this too, I’m guessing.

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Roberto Gerhard, Symphony #3, Collages

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:30:14 +0000

The first Gerhard I ever heard was the Prausnitz recording of this symphony on an Angel lp. If you’ve only heard this on the currently available cds, you haven’t really heard it, although Matthias Bamert’s recording is close. What neither of the cds do is play the tape part loud enough, so it sounds, even in the Bamert, a trifle apologetic. It’s as if the engineers for Chandos and Valois lost their nerve at all those horrible electronic sounds. Or perhaps it was the engineers’ employers. I’ve known a few employers, and they had all lost their nerve. Only on the Angel lp does the tape part sound as if it belongs in the mix. This is a splendid symphony, and the most successful blend of ensemble and tape until Dumitrescu and Avram came along.
(I found a reference to this online, in the HMV pressing: ASD2427, but no picture. http://www.qualityrecords.lavalink.com.au/classcat.htm#angel. It’s only seven (Australian) dollars!!)

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Musique Action ’98, Dumitrescu, Avram, Hodgkinson, Cutler

michaelkarman — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:29:14 +0000

This disc was my introduction to all four of these people. Needless to say, I soon had all the discs of all of them I could find. And I haunt the stores, looking for the next new one. With the first two, that used to be easy. It’s more difficult now, but you can still find them online.

Dumitrescu’s New Meteors and Pulsars for tape and percussion bursts through your speakers like, well, like a meteor. There’s plenty of soft sounds in this piece; they’re what follow the successive bursts of noise, either from Chris’s percussion or the tape, sometimes both. While the tape sounds are not percussive, this piece is not about contrasting tape and drums but about blending them. Dumitrescu was already, in 1982, the master of high energy electroacoustic music, of hollow, metallic, reverberant sounds that swoop and swirl through space and time. I last heard his music live last November—after 24 years, his music was just as fresh and just as energetic and just as subtle (yes, subtle) as it was in 1982. Indeed this piece, listening to it just now for this review, is just as fresh as it was when I first heard it about eight years ago.

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If anyone could match Iancu Dumitrescu in intensity, it would have to be Avram. Her Nouvelle Axe is played here by the extremely talented Hyperion Ensemble, founded by Iancu in 1976. Each instrument in it, even when several are playing together, is a unique and distinct voice.. The music here sounds ferociously difficult, but the players of the Hyperion follow every twist and turn—at bewildering speed—as if … well, they play like swallows fly.

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Life on Earth, by Chris Cutler, might strike you at first hearing as improvisatory—not that that’s at all a bad thing. It’s very definitely not. It’s just that that first impression, for this piece, is not born out by repeated listenings. Though it never loses that sort of made up on the spot quality, with long pauses and odd, little, unrelated gestures, even after the pauses and gestures become a well-made piece. (Given that Chris Cutler is one of the best improvisers out there, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find out that this piece was indeed made up on the spot. Just by the way…)

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Hodgkinson’s Black Death and Errors in Construction is a much more vertical piece than either of the other three pieces on this disc. That is, it’s made up of great clumps of sound (it seems feeble to call such extraordinary creatures “chords”) that stride across your brain … Hmmm. Stride. Yes, it does move through time, as any music must. But it relies more on the vertical sounds than on horizontal lines. Hodgkinson’s playing in this piece is spectacular, by the way. It’s no wonder the performers of Hyperion enjoy playing with Hodgkinson and Cutler. And no wonder Cutler and Hodgkinson enjoy playing with the Hyperion Ensemble.

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These four composers are extraordinarily talented. Buy anything by any of them, and you’ll be happy.

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