Readers and friends,

It’s been a fun ride. Effective immediately, bagatellen is permanently closing shop. What started as a joint music blog in early 2003 quickly grew into a community, so it’s saddening to have to put it to rest. Looking back over the archives in recent months, it’s been amazing to consider the wealth of content and information in these pages. Nobody’s crazy about the idea of letting it bleed out, so Derek and I have decided to maintain the pages at this address until, well, for a long time.

Comments (and registration to do so) will remain open unless policing becomes a necessity. No reason not to retain that function at this point.

Finally, I want to extend a huge thanks to the contributors over the year, whose dedication, patience, and friendship have been immense.

Brian Marley
Brian Olewnick
Clifford Allen
Dan Warburton
David Jones
Derek Taylor
Dominic Fragman
Ed Howard
Jason Bivins
Joe Milazzo
Marc Medwin
Massimo Ricci
Maxim Micheliov
Michael Anton Parker
Michael Schaumann
Mike Wood
Moné Peterson
Nat Catchpole
Nate Dorward
Nirav Soni
Patrick Farmer
Paul Baran
Phil Freeman
Richard Pinnell
Tom Djll
Tom Sękowski
Walter Horn

and to all the musicians who made “listen” such a rewarding and stimulating project.

bestest,
Al

The Rempis/Rosaly Duo FINALIZES TOUR DATES for December 2009

Dave Rempis and Frank Rosaly, two of the most active players in Chicago’s world-renowned scene of jazz and improvised music, have finalized the schedule for their twelve-concert North American tour in late fall of 2009, coinciding with the release of their first duo cd, “Cyrillic,” on the 482 Music label. With Rempis on saxophones (Vandermark Five, Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Engines) and Rosaly on percussion (Fast Citizens, Rolldown, Mandarin Movie,) this duo is a formidable presence, spanning a wealth of musical possibilities in their free-improvised outings.

Tour dates are as follows:

SU 11/29: Chicago, IL The Hungry Brain

TU 12/01: Buffalo, NY Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

WE 12/02: Rochester, NY The Bop Shop

TH 12/03: Montreal, QC Sala Rossa

SA 12/05: Middlebury, VT 51 Main (workshop and concert)

SU 12/06: Cambridge, MA The Lily Pad (w/Pandelis Karayorgis)

MO 12/07: Providence, RI The Gordon School (private workshop)

MO 12/07: Philadelphia, PA International House

WE 12/09: Columbia, SC 701 Center for Contemporary Art

TH 12/10: Asheville, NC Bobo Gallery

FR 12/11: Newport, KY Thomas More College

SA 12/12: Lexington, KY Al’s

The official release date for “Cyrillic” is January 12th, 2010, but copies will be made available before then exclusively at these concerts.

ABOUT THE BAND

Saxophonist Dave Rempis and drummer Frank Rosaly have performed and recorded together in countless projects since Rosaly arrived on the Chicago scene in 2001, including The Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten Quintet, The Outskirts, and The Thread Quintet. Both musicians have established themselves as prominent players in the active milieu of the Chicago jazz scene, and spend as much time on the road in North America and Europe as they do at home. Their duo, active since 2004, focuses on the wide-ranging possibilities inherent to free-improvisation. And while both musicians are comfortable in the more abstract sonic spaces pioneered by European improvisers, neither one shies away from hard-hitting grooves, nor are they afraid of melodies or swing. Having allowed this relationship to develop gradually over the years, they decided to record their first duo release for 482 music, a label with which each musician has a significant history.

For more information about this group, go here.

For hi-res photos and a downloadable press kit, go here.

For promo cd’s, or other inquiries, please contact Dave Rempis :

daverempis@hotmail.com

ABOUT THE MUSICIANS

DAVE REMPIS

Over the last decade, Dave Rempis has emerged as one of the most active young players in the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene. Rempis graduated from Northwestern University in 1997 with a degree in anthropology, focusing in ethnomusicology, and a year spent at the University of Ghana, Legon in 1995-96. Since 1998, his work with the Vandermark Five as the “other” saxophonist has established him as one of the up-and-coming voices of his generation, and has also provided him the opportunity to perform extensively in clubs, concert halls, and festivals throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. His own groups, including the Rempis Percussion Quartet, Triage, The Engines, The Rempis/Daisy Duo, and The Dave Rempis Quartet, have toured regularly throughout Europe and North America, and have been documented on the Okkadisk, 482 Music, Solitaire, Utech, and Not Two record labels. In addition to these groups, Rempis plays regularly with Ken Vandermark’s Territory Band, The Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten Quintet, The Outskirts, and the Rempis/Bishop/ Kessler/Zerang Quartet. His frequent ad hoc collaborations have included performances with Paul Lytton, Axel Doerner, Peter Brotzmann, Hamid Drake, Kevin Drumm, Paul Nilsson-Love, Tony Buck, and David Stackenas. As a founding member of the Chicago presenters’ collective Umbrella Music, Rempis curates a weekly concert series at Elastic, as well as the annual Umbrella Music Festival, now in its fourth year. Rempis has also been named as a Talent Deserving Wider Recognition in both the alto and baritone saxophone categories in the annual Downbeat Magazine International Critics’ Poll.

FRANK ROSALY

Frank Rosaly is a percussionist and composer currently living in Chicago. Over the last 10 years he has become an integral part of the Chicago scene, navigating a fine line between the vibrant improvised music, indie-rock, experimental music, and jazz communities. He contributes much of his time to performing, composing, teaching, and organizing musical events, while managing a heavy touring schedule that takes him throughout North America and Europe.

Frank is currently active in many different groups. Some of these include Rob Mazurek’s Mandarin Movie, The Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten Quintet, Jeff Parker/Nels Cline Quartet, Matana Robert’s Chicago Project, Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Valentine Trio, Keefe Jackson’s Fast Citizens, The Jeb Bishop Trio, Jason Adasievicz’s Rolldown, Jorrit Dijkstra’s Flatlands Collective, The Chicago Lucern Exchange, and The Daniel Levin Trio. Rosaly also leads his own quintet, Viscous, featuring his original compositions. Other recent performances include collaborations with Peter Broetzmann, Tony Malaby, Anthony Coleman, Paul Flaherty, Marshall Allen, Louis Moholo, Eric Boeren, Ken Vandermark, Michael Zerang, and Walter Weirbos, among many others.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Interpretations Presents:

Earl Howard and Edmund Campion

20 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand)

“Alchemies between music and theater, text, movement, and ritual”

– Benjamin Frandzel, San Francisco Classical Voice

The 21st Season of Thomas Buckner’s innovative series of new music continues on November 12, 2009, featuring work by two American masters of integrating composition, electronics, and live performance: Earl Howard and Edmund Campion.

Saxophonist, composer and electronic sound constructionist Earl Howard’s work seamlessly integrates meticulously sculpted electroacoustic textures with the visceral immediacy of live improvisation. Howard presents Strasser 60 for synthesizer solo, 2455 for saxophone solo, and Crupper, an electroacoustic duet with koto player Miya Masaoka.

“Howard successfully moves his composition[s] through different zones of rhythm and harmony without diminishing the buoyant ‘presentness’ which characterizes freely improvised music”– Ben Watson, The Wire

Connections between music and the natural world are major themes in Edmund Campion’s work, which mixes formal composition, improvisation, and interactive instrument design to focus on real-time interactive computer/instrument environments. Campion will be joined by Susan Fancher on saxophone and computer, and Nils Bultmann on viola and computer.

.:.

Coming Up on December 10: Interpretations Presents:

FLUX Quartet performs David First / Dom Minasi String Quartet

For more information on Interpretations:

Office Phone: 212-627-0990

Interpretations Online: www.interpretations.info

James Ilgenfritz, Publicist: james@mutablemusic.com

Cell Phone: 347.204.0899

For more information on Roulette:

20 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand)

General admission: $15

($10 students, seniors, Harvestworks & DTW members; free for Roulette and Location One members)

For reservations, call 212-219-8242 or visit online.

Murphy Records

This review is from new contributor Dominic Fragman, a drummer and student of Paul Murphy’s. Look for more of his writing in these pages soon. - CA

Innovation requires unimaginable knowledge, ability and devotion. It is no easy feat to move away from the convenience of a pre-existing groundwork to serve a unique concept. However, doing so is inherent in jazz. That is why veteran musicians, drummer, Paul F. Murphy, and pianist, Larry Willis, display the characteristics of pioneers on their new duo release Foundations. The record dances and stomps along with twelve completely improvised compositions. As a student of Murphy’s, I was fortunate enough to be present for the recording of the album and able to gain a clearer understanding of the concepts that fuel the compositional mindset behind the work.

Foundations is a follow up to the duo’s 2008 release, Exposé, and the pair’s third such recording. On the present album, Murphy and Willis use a creative approach to structure that draws from both the avant-garde and bebop worlds. The roots of this curious duo entangle harmoniously. Willis’ 40-year-long career began with the likes of Jackie McLean and currently has him on the international road with drummer Jimmy Cobb’s Kind of Blue Tribute Band. As such, Willis dexterously constructs impromptu motifs derived from bop, freely and cohesively beside Murphy. Though, just as often as he swings a brush soaked with these modes, he slides and bursts into an exciting and unanticipated vocabulary. Between Willis’ background and ideas, Foundations is kept from quickly flying too far “out.” Rather there is an exciting new perspective added to the endeavor of free improvisation.

Willis opens the record steaming down a track of unpredictable, unpremeditated interaction. Murphy’s cymbals and bongos highlight Willis’ initial one note piano roll. The duo’s sheer ability and focus allow for incredible unified improvisations. Tunes like “Preter” and “June Jump” are evidence of their collective intuition. As a team they work closely together, nimbly constructing clean lines and phrases. Their conversations are articulate and informative seminars, rather than directionless ramblings. “Khafre” and “Equinox” are excited engineerings of buoyant aural mosaics where piano and drums command the presence of a quintet and maintain the weight of a semi-truck in zero gravity. “Morel” and “Composite Drive” paint flowing waves of space and sound, shifting direction throughout in a showcase of control and consciousness. The lyrical “Dance Pointe” traverses tempo freely, from walks to sprints. In the studio, Murphy and Willis exchange laughs of satisfaction and enjoyment after each track, stopping occasionally for a breath in-between.

Murphy, coming out of altoist Jimmy Lyons’ band and having led several other groups, is an established member of the avant-garde. He conceptualizes the drums as an instrument that uniquely creates and shapes composition. His rhythms are circular and display what he terms an understanding of “music as a rotating sphere, resulting from harmonic and rhythmic intersections in time and space.” For Murphy, a single note offers several possibilities in both the direction and feel of a tune. By accenting a single note, the music can be shoved forward springing, yanked into a backwards run, kicked into an upward climb or dropped into a diving descent. Each piece on Foundations demonstrates these possibilities with a rhythmic push-pull that keeps the music afloat. As a result, the compositions sound as if they are circumnavigating a sphere that encompasses much more than a single piano and drum set. Foundations fuses bebop and the avant-garde into a fresh approach, an alluring and inspiring nod to both tradition and the cyclic contemporary mode.

~ Dominic Fragman

Touch

Following 2006’s monumental 3-CD set Touch Three, amid the uppermost pinnacles in Phill Niblock’s career, the latest bulletin by the Indiana dronemeister - who forces the aficionados to settle for just a double helping this time - is completely dedicated to string instruments, both electric and acoustic. The release was repeatedly postponed, generating the sort of anticipation that precedes almost every major artistic statement. There’s no doubt that Niblock’s recordings weigh heavily on the sonic movements of our era and Touch Strings is certainly no exception, especially in virtue of how opposite sensations are strikingly counterbalanced from the very beginning – “rationally brooding” versus “disquietingly awesome” distinguish the discs. A curiosity: the peculiar mini-damnation typifying the minimalist maverick’s Touch label outings continues. While the last two releases presented an incorrect title sequence, this one shuffles bits and pieces of the liners due to a pagination mistake. One starts reading about a composition and ends somewhere else, or a thought is truncated halfway through.

Disc one is taken up entirely by the 59-minute “Stosspeng”, the name a combination of Susan Stenger and Robert Poss, early associates who commissioned the work, which is scored for electric guitars enhanced with a sustainer and e-Bowed bass. The structure of the piece is reasonably straightforward – conspicuous stereo separation, a restricted range (E, F, F#), direct recording from the pickups (no amplifiers or microphones involved), and the muted quality of the derived pitches. These often result in a tight-lipped humming of sorts, bringing concentration informed by a subliminally comforting throb (typical, for instance, of the bulk of Eliane Radigue’s oeuvre). However, Niblock’s comes with a measure of conflict. In sections where overlapping overtones design noticeable patterns, they occasionally transform a somewhat unquiet murmur into subterranean inhospitality (principally unfolding in the medium-to-low frequency regions).

Interestingly, throughout the live rendition the guitarists make sure to minutely adjust the pitch and alter the mood “from calm and relatively consonant to thin and delicate to wildly dissonant and colossal” (to quote Stenger’s words). This is an example of Niblock’s trademark regulated emancipation – a representation may be modified to some extent, but the massive impact of the original notion is always there. “Stosspeng” definitely belongs to the realm of his better intuitions, privileging composure to dissension in extremely convincing fashion.

The second CD is opened by “Poure”, written for Arne Deforce’s cello. He’s already a protagonist in Touch Three’s “Harm”, among this composer’s most spectacular episodes ever. Here, Niblock returns to the method of calibrated sine tones (to which the musician tunes) and an oscilloscope alimented both by sine and microphone tones. Starting from the notes A and D he proceeded to choose pitches that were either slightly flat or sharp in relation to the fundamentals, until he amassed about 32 tracks of material. The result consists of 23 minutes and 30 seconds of disquieting suspension, encompassing indeterminate tonal centres, jarring “in your face” contrasts of upper partials, and an atypically pervasive sense of menace during the thickest superimpositions. A diverse study of space and, perhaps, the listener’s reaction to difficulty – needless to say, the brain generates virtual counterpoints of its own by the dozen – “Poure” is also a surprising shift towards areas of accumulated pulses, which establish anxiety rather than placidity in spite of being attenuated by customarily magnificent resonant mass.

“One Large Rose” closes the program in style by interconnecting old and new traits and contiguous areas of research. A revision of an earlier score for triple orchestra, “Three Orchids,” it was taped by Hamburg’s Nelly Boyd Ensemble, a collective specializing in “American classical avant-garde,” which in the past performed works by Cage, Feldman, Lucier, Riley, Stockhausen and Tenney. The instrumentation features cello (Robert Engelbrecht), piano strummed with nylon strings (Jan Feddersen), violin (Peter Imig), and acoustic bass strummed with nylon strings or e-Bow (Jens Roehm).

The players are allowed to tackle one of ten existing parts, each translation sounding differently depending on its relationship to the alternative. Niblock recorded four takes and layered the ensuing twenty tracks, superimposing altered microtonal contents in accordance to the execution of a selected part. The mathematical complexity of the concept is nothing for this group, which – in another variation on a notorious Niblockian canon of extreme post-production – played the item in real time, 46 minutes without editing. This is a remarkable achievement for such a physically difficult act. The overall result is sublime, a paradigmatic collision between a heightened state of awareness and the distress caused by uncompromising dissonance. The piano’s gaping snarl is frequently heard at the forefront, affirming its ascendancy in full harmonic rumbling, vaguely echoing a former milestone, “Pan Fried 70” (Touch Food, 2003). The immense jangle originating from these layers recalls a huge didgeridoo-tamboura hybrid, yet signifying Indian mantras or aboriginal reverberations lie quite far away.

To gain an accurate idea of what happens, the enquiring reviewer did the unthinkable – thrice, no less – by listening to the track via headphones (anathema!). While the power of gargantuan vibration is obviously lost in excluding the speakers, and despite persistently buzzing membranes once the session ends, it is uniquely fascinating to enjoy the music as it is being lived and breathed. The attack and decay of the notes, mentally visualizing the effort applied by the performers in a precise moment, all make “One Large Rose” the most visceral Niblock music on record to date – and also one of the most humanistic.

~ Massimo Ricci

Samadhisound

Blemish must have marked a mini-seismic ‘event’ for David Sylvian when it was recorded over a six week hiatus, marking a departure from his normal precision in the studio. The songs were stark, aching confessionals that recalled the work of the late modernist Samuel Beckett in the honest nature of their ruminations on everything from family dissolution to the spiritually redeeming values of nature (”Fire in the Forest”). The signposts for a new agenda in songwriting on that record were already clear in the recruitment of the grand master of guitar improv, Derek Bailey, and laptop troublemaker Christian Fennesz. If a term called “art prospecting” could be invented, then the initial trickle of inspiration of Blemish would eventually turn into a gush of creativity for his new album, Manafon, which is bent on proving conclusively that former pop stars, with the right sincerity, can stretch out and experiment on the margins as well as anybody.

Perhaps paying lip service to improvised music’s internationalism by being recorded in London, Vienna, and Tokyo, Sylvian has broadened the panoramic reach that was initiated on Blemish, and recruited English electro-acoustic improvisers Evan Parker, AMM legends John Tilbury and Keith Rowe; bassist/cellist Marcio Mattos; as well as the Polwechsel unit of Burkhard Stangl, Werner Dafeldecker and Michael Moser, and Onkyo renegades Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M. Each song on Manafon stands as deconstructionist ruin. Sylvian’s vocal acts both as a portal to the percolating electro-acoustic broadsides, as well as a fibrous tether that prevents these ‘songs’ from chaotic collapse. It’s a clever idea and it just about works, especially when he latches on to a distorted, melodic line by Fennesz (”Snow White in Appalachia”) or the rippling of neon-lit sine ticks by Sachiko M (”The Greatest Living Englishman”).

On this occasion, the pieces could be seen as new Twenty-First Century song cycle, with third person narratives providing a series of meta-fictional balladic portraiture. His pseudo-identification with marginal and lonely cultural figures are given voice, all united by extreme conditions of isolation in remote nature. Emily Dickinson and RS Thomas represent this in a literary sense, while “Random Acts of Senseless Violence” reminds one that such isolation can even have physically violent consequences for society. Paul Auster’s “Unabomber” character, Ben Sachs from Leviathan (who is based on Ted Kaczynski), seems to inspire the line “someone’s back kitchen stacked like a factory with improvised devices”.

Yet recent commentators have been mistaken about this recording’s rationale: Manafon is not an all-out improvisational album. Rowe, Fennesz, Yoshihide and co., are there to function as harmonic colourists. Sylvian would be the first to admit he is not Christof Kurzmann, or extended vocal specialist Ute Wassermann; he’s too considered and poised for that, and he places to a high value on the meaning of words. Instead this is an improvisational sound design album (a la David Toop) that attempts to marry the intuition of the human voice with the extension of electro-acoustic sounds. In this he succeeds, seeking to broaden the parameters of reductionist improvisation alongside a coterie of instrumentalists. Still, one might wish that there was more extended improvisational playing, on evidence of the Orwellian “Department of Dead Letters.” Summoning up cold corridors and musty state archives of the disposed, John Tilbury’s mesmeric piano modernism is nicely aided and abetted by Mattos’ shrieking cello exhortations. From being booed at the Glasgow Apollo venue, via ECM to Erstwhile his journey continues to be a fascinating narrative “until the end of time”.

~ Paul Baran

Next, and perhaps final, contest round. This time a really, really big take for the winner. As asked in the first contest…Care to have the ears kissed by some engaging music? I can tell you from my own hours spent with the music offered here, this is a really nice opportunity. Cathnor Records label honch Richard Pinnell has kindly offered the opportunity for one person to nab each title in Cathnor’s current catalog (as of 9/15/2009), including the now-out-of-print sight, from MIMEO, and all of the 3″ ‘vignette’ releases. One individual will be the winner of the following:

Hervé Boghossian, John Tilbury, Mark Wastell — Archi.Texture Vol.1 (cath001)
Will Guthrie — Body and limbs still look to light (cath002)
Graham Halliwell, Tomas Korber — The Large Glass (cath003)
MIMEO — sight (cath004)
Rhodri Davies, David Lacey, Dennis McNulty — Poor Trade (cath005)
Phil Durrant, Lee Patterson, Paul Vogel — Buoy (cath006)
Lucio Capece, Julia Eckhardt, Christian Kesten, Radu Malfatti, Toshimaru Nakamura, Taku Sugimoto — Wedding Ceremony (cath007)
Adam Sonderberg — Say No (cv001)
Mark Wastell — After Hours (cv002)
Burkhard Beins, Michael Thieke, Luca Venitucci — Roman Tics (cv003)

ENTRY: Email your answer to bagatellen (address can be found via the contact link (above right)). Do not post the answer in the comments section. Those who correctly answer the question below will enter a pool from which one name will be drawn. That individual will receive a copy of each Cathnor disc for free, postpaid.

Deadline: 8:00 pm (EST) Friday, 02 October 2009.

Here you go:
_______________

In his book, "The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World," (1974) R. Murray Schafer employs a term "...to refer to the split between an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction."

Schafer adds, "Original sounds are tied to the mechanisms that produce them. Electroacoustically reproduced sounds are copies and they may be restated at other times or places." And further: "Indeed, the overkill of hi-fi gadgetry not only contributes generously to the lo-fi problem, but it creates a synthetic soundscape in which sounds are becoming increasingly unnatural while machine-made substitutes are providing the operative signals directing modern life."

This phenomenon is more true even today, though some might argue (myself included) that it has made -- when knowingly applied, and with a measure of discipline -- for more engaging music.

What word did Schafer coin in discussing the above?
_______________

To those to which the answer is everyday knowledge: heavy props. Everyone else: happy hunting!

This is part 1 of a 3 part series. The second part will be an exclusive view of ten of his paintings, lithographs and drawings, and the third will consist of texts and excerpts from his manuscript “Vade Mecum.” These will also be at All About Jazz in the coming weeks.

Enjoy!

Table Of The Elements

Percussionist and composer Jon Mueller’s discerning creativity does not rule out a willingness to put the listener’s ears through the ordeals. His music is often bewilderingly violent, yet retains a pumping nucleus connecting it with all that matters in life, good or bad: bodily functions, natural phenomena, ecologic disasters, contagious enthusiasm. The title Physical Changes is perfect for the description of the diverse emotional states in which the audience is transported: tense puzzlement to serious angst, powwow-like repetitiveness to downright desolation. The release comprises three different items: an LP, a CD and a DVD. These recordings, we’re warned, should be played loud. This is feasible if you need to fight with the neighbours or live in isolation, we politely suggest. Such is in fact the quantity of amassed textural tissue that one might reasonably expect some sort of exudation from the speakers. Indeed, somewhere in the second half of the vinyl album, the grooves seemingly couldn’t manage to contain the thunderous frequencies, the turntable’s arm severely quivering, the stylus bouncing back repeatedly until a manual shift became necessary.

The black side of the LP, “Things Will Not Stay The Way They Are,” finds the protagonist in company of a secret hero of mine - James Plotkin, on guitar and electronics. An immediate blitz perpetrated via boisterous percussive outbursts is soon corroborated by semi-inert surfaces and hyper-stretched distortion, which shortly achieves stability through unremitting hammering and ominous chords that depict a state of blissful infection. Then, unexpectedly, the “big vibe” abruptly stops, Plotkin remaining alone in autistic reiteration for a few seconds – picture a Metal icon trapped in the quicksand of his own fingerboard tapping. Soon the cyber-tribal thrashing resumes as woofers cry “no more.”

“Change Is The Only Evidence Of Life,” on the white side, picks up where the volcanic activity of the preceding episode left off, a ferocious unaccompanied performance in which the drums are deformed by a heavy dose of studio treatment. In certain sections I was pushed to think of Z’EV: same no-nonsense attitude, identical desire to experiment beyond expectation.

The CD includes two lengthy tracks. “Nothing Changes,” with Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) and Jim Schoenecker (analogue synthesizer), begins with a Tibetan bell looped ad infinitum, Mueller establishing a steady single-tone pattern on a hammer dulcimer and reinforcing it with bass drum and cymbals. The plot thickens eight minutes in, bowed evolutions trying to emerge from the background without actually coming to light. Outrageously, the feel is one of minimalist bluegrass, Lonberg-Holm desperately attempting to let his anarchic organization gain a noticeable role in the track’s economy. This rebellious effort is brutally repressed as Mueller starts roaring and pounding without cease, a massive tumbling of rolls and crashes that sounds viciously hypnotic while keeping the pulse stable throughout, supposedly implying an absolutely shattered performer at the end. No finesse allowed: this is drumming carnage, other instruments just slightly visible as the hands of a drowning man prior to a definitive sinking.

“The Only Constant Thing Is Change” was recorded with the processing aid of Dan Burke (Illusion Of Safety), who also added electronics. It’s a fascinating display of electro-acoustic acumen, components mixing flawlessly yet behaving impulsively, perennially thudding beats and abnormally equalized snares declaring superiority amidst fearsome panoramas, where understanding what’s imagined and what’s radio static is quite difficult. The savage atmospheres, the merciless degradation process to which the timbres are subjected, the dictatorial rumble threatened by Burke’s acknowledged facility in generating unprecedented emissions and bleeping disturbances from various apparatuses, the final juxtaposition of uniformity and instability - everything contributes to place this chapter among of the very best of the project.

Still, my favourite things lie in “Survival Is Not Mandatory,” featured in the DVD. To Lonberg-Holm and Schoenecker add Markus Schmickler, whose computer omniscience is responsible for giving this spectacular composition its temperament. The mood is permeated with conscious desperation, as if Mueller wanted us to forget about illusions and get prepared for the worst possible fears to materialize - ominously resonating glissandi, disquieting vocal ectoplasm and droning threats drawing arcs everywhere, an enigmatic soundscape occasionally evoking the ghost of Daniel Menche but less explicit and, for that, even scarier. This frighteningly stunning piece must be filed under “soundtracks for the redde rationem,” definitely corresponding to Physical Changes’ zenith. The (mostly monochrome) static shots by David Dinnell are equally engaging, showing tangential urban areas beneath unpromising cloudy skies and alternative environmental settings through a perpetual veil of fuzzy indefiniteness which transforms the simplest picture (say, the wavering branches and leaves of a tree in the wind) into a disturbing vision. The blend of images and sonic grief is outstanding; savouring it for last is strongly advised, as it signifies a stamp of prominence on this artist’s finest outing to date.

~ Massimo Ricci

No Business LP 6

Sinners, rather than Saints is only the fourth meeting on record of English bassist-composer Barry Guy and Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson over almost two decades, and for that alone this vinyl-only release on Lithuanian imprint No Business should be more than a curio. The duo format is an interesting one, which the bassist previously visited with Evan Parker on a pair of LPs for the SAJ and Jazz & Now labels, but apart from a surface similarity of instrumentation, Sinners is a different animal. At this point in his career, Gustafsson’s mettle seems firmly planted in damaged punk-jazz fist-pumping with The Thing, a meaty, Nordic heir apparent to the Wuppertal axis of free improvisation. Guy, on the other hand, is a painter of lush sonorities on pedal-assisted five-string double bass, and though his lines can be scumbled and frantic, texture and orchestration are among the first-reached tools in his arsenal.

Gustafsson opens the set on alto flutophone, a delicate ocarina-like metallic warble offset by col legno harmonics and open-string rattle below the bridge. Guy’s rhythmic wood and metal knocks provide a deep backing for the reedman’s flight, which quickly peels paint before returning to whispery depths. It’s a hell of an overture, though the bassist’s one man orchestra of excited strings is considerably more colorful than his partner’s screaming reeds. Guy’s solo “Odyssey” is an extraordinarily romantic poem of technique and physicality, fleet plucks reminiscent of a tonal Derek Bailey underpinned by electronic drones. It’s possible that with such essays, Guy might be the Eberhard Weber of contemporary improvisation, the way his pedal-fleshed chords softly splay. On “Sleep Leaper” he builds a mass of multiple stops on the low end whilst furiously working reedy, high ponticello in delicate but ferocious play of grand gesture and teasing detail, a sound to behold. Fitting such a solo is dedicated to the painter Alan Davie, a longtime friend to several UK improvisers.

It’s unfortunate that the duos don’t hold quite the same majesty, for Guy’s ability to find nearly every sonic nook on the bass is nothing if not a boon to conversation. But a spar for tenor and bass like “Flisk the Thrapple” finds most of the risks taken at lower decibel levels as Guy’s arco scrapes and contrasts of muted and colorful pizzicato encircle Gustafsson’s brutish squawk. By the last cut, the pair seems to have found common footing, morose baritone trudge and slap-tonguing mating with athletic bowing and flying horsehair. Settling into low, steely lines, one is reminded of the blackened snow of Peter Brötzmann’s 14 Love Poems (FMP, 1984), a romance of inscrutable grit. While hard-won and mostly at odds, Sinners is a worthwhile document of two of Europe’s most estimable improvisers.

~ Clifford Allen