Glitches Brew
Glitches Brew as Freedom and Formalism blend with new Electronic adhesive.
Trio x 3 ‘New Jazz Meeting Baden - Baden 2002’ Hatology 2 – 607
Steve Lacy: soprano saxophone Peter Herbert:double bass Wolfgang Reisinger: drums Marcus Weiss: tenor & soprano saxophone Phillipe Racine: flute Paulo Alvares: piano Bernhard Lang: piano Christof Kurzmann: electronics Philip Jeck: turntables
Absorbing and exploratory music from the echoing border zones. Three fringe traditions ( avant jazz, contemporary composition and electronic music ) converge in a fascinating series of studio and live pieces that use Bernhard Lang’s piece ‘Differenz / Wiederholung 1.2’ as a basis for creating new organizations of sound. It is an unusual idea that works well. All fifteen tracks from this 2+ hour double cd provide the inquiring listener with a constant stream of fertile and engaging music, gradually unfolding a dense and active landscape that breathes with life and vitality.
Lang’s rhythmically complex composition is played by the Weiss/Racine/Alvares new music trio in four sections at different stages across the two discs, and is then constantly remixed, deconstructed, stretched, squeezed and twisted into a multitude of new forms as the improvisers alchemise the original source. All of the musicians’ earlier familiarisation with the original piece presumably enabled insight into the contours of its potential as a vehicle for mutation and extension. The resulting music is not purely free improvisation nor is it strict or even loosely constructed formalism, more something of both, from which another presence is born. Different size groupings, from solo up to the full nine-piece group offer another series of possibilities for instrumental variations on the central theme. Lang’s composition may be the only solid material that connects all of these excursions, but it is rendered unrecognisable for much of the time, with key phrases or textures appearing out of the mix as further material on which to launch improvising forays.
The balance of traditional acoustic and digital electric sources is sustained throughout. Lacy’s tinder dry, discursive melodic line is the perfect counterpoint to the loops, chugs, samples and multiple textures of the electronicists. Philip Jeck’s acetate sources are played out and manipulated in glorious lo-fi on ancient, decaying turntables. He is best heard in a long solo prelude of processed flute loops, surface buzz and layered dislocations, before a quartet of Jeck/Lacy/Herbert/Reisinger assembles for a long, slow climb towards a pulsating electronica-meets-jazz apotheosis. A studio-based Jeck/Kurzmann/Herbert/Weiss quartet explores a minimalistic ghost town loop-scape at length, while the apex performance would have to be the eight minute nonet recorded in concert at Karlsruhe, where a trio of trios listens hard and roams eagerly towards destination unknown. Clichéd as it might sound, you can actually listen to this music over and over again and discover new insights. Polymathic fertility this creative is rarely dull and almost always ripe with colourful incident.
Good and surprising music abounds on this adventurous collaboration. Organisers of the Baden – Baden New Music Meeting are to be congratulated for running with an interesting idea, selecting nine divergent but ultimately compatible musicians, ensuring necessary preparation / rehearsal time and arranging several sessions for these players to blow their and our collective ears and minds away. What’s more, it’s an enjoyable experiment that you’ll want to fully explore. Some clever on-paper notions end up sounding like academic exercises that communicate little. Not so for this great slab of sound. Glitches combine with the written note and merge with abstract swing to bring distinct listening pleasure and the shock of the new. Hats off to Hat!
Matt Krieg
Trio x 3 ‘New Jazz Meeting Baden - Baden 2002’ Hatology 2 – 607
Steve Lacy: soprano saxophone Peter Herbert:double bass Wolfgang Reisinger: drums Marcus Weiss: tenor & soprano saxophone Phillipe Racine: flute Paulo Alvares: piano Bernhard Lang: piano Christof Kurzmann: electronics Philip Jeck: turntables
Absorbing and exploratory music from the echoing border zones. Three fringe traditions ( avant jazz, contemporary composition and electronic music ) converge in a fascinating series of studio and live pieces that use Bernhard Lang’s piece ‘Differenz / Wiederholung 1.2’ as a basis for creating new organizations of sound. It is an unusual idea that works well. All fifteen tracks from this 2+ hour double cd provide the inquiring listener with a constant stream of fertile and engaging music, gradually unfolding a dense and active landscape that breathes with life and vitality.
Lang’s rhythmically complex composition is played by the Weiss/Racine/Alvares new music trio in four sections at different stages across the two discs, and is then constantly remixed, deconstructed, stretched, squeezed and twisted into a multitude of new forms as the improvisers alchemise the original source. All of the musicians’ earlier familiarisation with the original piece presumably enabled insight into the contours of its potential as a vehicle for mutation and extension. The resulting music is not purely free improvisation nor is it strict or even loosely constructed formalism, more something of both, from which another presence is born. Different size groupings, from solo up to the full nine-piece group offer another series of possibilities for instrumental variations on the central theme. Lang’s composition may be the only solid material that connects all of these excursions, but it is rendered unrecognisable for much of the time, with key phrases or textures appearing out of the mix as further material on which to launch improvising forays.
The balance of traditional acoustic and digital electric sources is sustained throughout. Lacy’s tinder dry, discursive melodic line is the perfect counterpoint to the loops, chugs, samples and multiple textures of the electronicists. Philip Jeck’s acetate sources are played out and manipulated in glorious lo-fi on ancient, decaying turntables. He is best heard in a long solo prelude of processed flute loops, surface buzz and layered dislocations, before a quartet of Jeck/Lacy/Herbert/Reisinger assembles for a long, slow climb towards a pulsating electronica-meets-jazz apotheosis. A studio-based Jeck/Kurzmann/Herbert/Weiss quartet explores a minimalistic ghost town loop-scape at length, while the apex performance would have to be the eight minute nonet recorded in concert at Karlsruhe, where a trio of trios listens hard and roams eagerly towards destination unknown. Clichéd as it might sound, you can actually listen to this music over and over again and discover new insights. Polymathic fertility this creative is rarely dull and almost always ripe with colourful incident.
Good and surprising music abounds on this adventurous collaboration. Organisers of the Baden – Baden New Music Meeting are to be congratulated for running with an interesting idea, selecting nine divergent but ultimately compatible musicians, ensuring necessary preparation / rehearsal time and arranging several sessions for these players to blow their and our collective ears and minds away. What’s more, it’s an enjoyable experiment that you’ll want to fully explore. Some clever on-paper notions end up sounding like academic exercises that communicate little. Not so for this great slab of sound. Glitches combine with the written note and merge with abstract swing to bring distinct listening pleasure and the shock of the new. Hats off to Hat!
Matt Krieg
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