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Gašper Livk
Introducing
Clean Feed CF 681CD

Usually, I would assume any album called Introducing would be on a single disc, maybe two. Why would it not? Such a title implies an album by an up-and-coming artist who might not have the name recognition or a fully developed voice to warrant releasing more than that. Introducing: a firm handshake and a quick hello that is just long enough to get a grasp of the person and to decide if you want to know them better. For Slovenian bassist and composer Gašper Livk, however, one handshake was not enough. On his debut recording, now out on Clean Feed, he went for five. Three and a half hours of music spread across five discs is quite an introduction.

Such an introduction is not only audacious, but risky as well. Unless they were of stunning quality, five albums from one artist might wear out their welcome very quickly. That is not the case here. Livk’s introduction carries its own sort of risk, in that one could see it not having been able to come together at all. Every disc features a different ensemble, approach, and sound. Aside from Livk, no player appears on more than one album. Recorded during nine sessions held between 2022 and 2024 and employing a total of twenty musicians, Livk’s Introducing is impressive in its logistic ambitions.

Each of the set’s albums constitute one movement or element of Livk’s larger System Coda, which breaks out as:

  • System Coda I, trio
  • System Coda II, duo
  • System Coda III, solo
  • System Coda IV, large ensemble
  • System Coda V, double bass octet

It’s unclear if System Coda refers to the title of a large work of which this set is either whole or in part of, a particular method or set of methods, compositional language, book of compositions, or any combination thereof. Explanatory liner notes or a booklet to accompany the set would have been a welcome addition to the rather bare bones packaging. In any case, each album is a distinct whole and showcases Livk’s approaches to solving the set of musical questions he created for himself in multiple contexts.

Livk’s first introduction opens with the most standard formats in jazz and improvised music: the piano trio. This trio, however, has four members: Livk alongside pianists Chaerin Im and Agota TamelytÄ— and drummer Giovanni Iacovella. Recorded over four sessions, the album is split into four sections that are each separated by a brief pause (although the album consists of just one track). Presumably, each session produced one section and based on the stark pianistic differences between the odd and even sections, Im and TamelytÄ— split time at the bench fairly equally. With a few exceptions, Livk’s trio specializes in the imply-but-never-directly-suggest-a-steady-tempo-or-regular-meter style of post-Trane free improvisation. Iacovella’s active drumming provides polyrhythms galore and he has a rather light, floating touch. His kit does have an odd sonic quality. It is muffled and the cymbals are barely audible, as if the engineer put a low pass filter on the whole kit (the exception to this is Iacovella’s piercing but surprisingly not annoying, dripping faucet wood block). This isn’t the only interesting engineering choice, as in the third section, the piano sounds like it was recorded rooms away from the main action while Livk’s bass almost momentarily disappears in a fog. The rest of the album, as with the entire five-disc set, sounds divine. Given that this album is by a trio that’s a quartet that’s really actually a trio that spliced together four sessions, the album hangs remarkably well together. It opens with Iacovella’s snappy snare accompanied by a very angular, very low, very loud piano that asserts its dominance with thick and sustained washes. Livk is content to let the pianist set the mood and joins Iacovella in moving the music forward. Things change dramatically in the second session, in which a much more reserved pianist takes a gentler, sparser, and less bombastic approach. Here, as well in the third and fourth sections, Livk generates an ostinato line or repeated pattern of similar shapes that he pursues – without much recognition from his bandmates – with great gusto, almost to the point of hypnotic absurdity. I found myself rooting him on to keep going no matter what happened around him. The final two sections somewhat mirror the first two: the pianist from the first section stirs up an even more intense storm of black clouds and straight-line winds, while the pianist from the second section glides over the keys in long running lines that drive the trio. The big rock ending finds Iacovella and the pianist – with possibly an overdubbed second pianist – banging away as Livk pulls his strings as hard as he can to help bring the captivating piece to a close. If this album was the whole of his introduction, it would have been a success on its own. Yet there is plenty more.

The duo and solo albums reveal Livk’s virtuosity and full mastery of the bass. Unlike the somewhat curiously constructed trio album, Livk and pianist Seppe Gebruers laid down what appears to be a single, contiguous thirty-four-minute cut. While they both dive in with gusto and late-Romantic angst, the opening is more of a feeling out period. Livk – who sticks to the bow throughout – and Gebruers offer myriad gestures before mutually deciding on a conversational back and forth where each participant might take over before his counterpart has fully made his point. A healthy amount of rubato feel adds to the ebb and flow of the discussion, which can range between a serious point-counterpoint debate or looser stretch of hide and seek. A rapport develops in which each player begins to make space and anticipate a response. Livk bows a dark heavy note and leaves a space for a left-hand piano bomb, which Gebruers gladly drops, and again: bowed note, piano bomb. Gebruers’s longer flourishes of interlacing runs and interlocking chords become more harmonically and rhythmically complicated as the album progresses. During one of Livk’s arco forays into the upper reaches of the bass, Gebruers dives deep in contrasting support. The piece begins its climax with Gebruers’s repeated series of steady block chords as Livk furiously works his bow. Livk cools down while Gebruers adds lush richness to the harmony. The pair reach a compromise, with arco bass embracing Gebruers’s left hand in unison as the final right-hand chords float away into nothing. A wonderful chamber improvisation session.

Where Livk kept to the bow for the entirety of the duo set, he opened up the full toolkit of extended and unorthodox techniques for his solo effort. He opens with a series of scrapes, plucks, squeaks, knocks, bumps, rich bowed tones, and pizzicato pops, which all seem to whorl about him in a cyclone of polyrhythms and kaleidoscopic colors. No extended technique or way to coax sound from a bass seems to go unused, and it’s incredible that it’s coming from just two hands. Mixed in with more traditional pitched bass sounds are sounds of a chair scraping across the floor, guttural groans and moans, and even at one point a light wheezy sound, as if someone was in the studio with him, catching their breath. And this cycle of shifting sound – which has a controlled randomness to it – continues. And continues. Eventually, it becomes clear that this is not an opening salvo that will evolve into something else: this is the piece. This methodology is what Livk has committed to exploring in full. There is no arc or narrative shape, no sections or scenes or discernible form. Just a steady, continuous cycling and variation of techniques, rhythms, textures, colors, and dynamic levels, each changing in relative intensity to each other. Alexander Calder as experimental bassist. As Livk continued, I wondered how just long he could keep going while finding new combinations of sounds and techniques without running out of material. What would dictate his sense that he was done? Ultimately unclear, as forty-two minutes in, he stops cold, with no indication the end was coming. No climb to a climax, no ritardando or decrescendo or distinct change in the patterns or sounds, no increase of tension and subsequent release, no fade out (which would have been a disappointing cop out), nothing. The piece could have been forty-two minutes or fourteen or four or seventy-four. While this album may not be something I return to again, or at least not in the near future, Livk wholly impresses with his inventiveness, chops, and stamina.


Gašper Livk © 2024 Veerle Bastiaanssen

Things change greatly between disc three’s solo recording and the “large ensemble” featured on disc four. The slipcase lists the ensemble’s personnel as Livk accompanied by eight, yes eight, pianists. It is hard to imagine getting eight pianos in one room, let alone tuning and micing them and then recording, mixing, and mastering the performance. But is that what happened? While it is difficult to tell, at most it seemed like there were no more than three or perhaps four pianos going at once, suggesting some level of overdubbing to ensure the participation of all eight pianists. Individual pianos seemed to be assigned their own task or sound: one sparsely laid down rolled and block chords and other pianistic gestures; a second featured the player’s right hand dampening the strings their left hand was playing; a third seemed to be heavily prepared with light percussive sounds throughout the keyboard’s range; and a fourth had its strings strummed on a semi-regular basis, from just somewhere around middle C toward the upper end of the instrument. Each pianist injected an idea or color or pattern, sneaking in and out. Sustain pedals fully engaged; polyrhythms, but no meter; plenty of shifting textures; minimal narrative development and little constant interaction between musicians. Midway through the forty-six-minute track it becomes clear that the ensemble’s vocabulary was somewhat limited. Near the end, however, things did begin to cohere around a more rhythmic and percussive collective sound that almost synchronized into a slightly nervous twitch. Livk’s deep, cavernous arco is the constant glue that holds the dynamic palette of dark timbres and lower tones together. The piece’s fullest moments come when the more traditionally played piano just simply gets louder; it was not a result of, “ah, there’s the sixth, seventh, or eighth piano.” For an ensemble billed as bass plus eight pianos, Coda IV does not deliver on what such an ensemble would seem to be capable of providing. Where is the strum und drang? If I had gone into the album cold without knowledge of the personnel, I am sure my response to the album would have been different.

Livk saved what is perhaps some of the collection’s most arresting music for the double bass octet. Where the large ensemble lacked in heft, the octet pushed the scales to capacity. Recorded over two sessions, the album opens with droning arco and overlapping continents of tone. A melancholy melody lightly floats in. The continents begin to drift, expanding the space between low and high. Think Jóhann Jóhannsson meets Henryk Górecki. Turn the stereo up, feel the room vibrate. Just as individual voices begin to take on their own personalities, the ensemble closes ranks, once again intertwining to a congealed mass that fades out. The piece takes a sharp turn, as the basses begin sawing away in a brisk march tempo. As they subtly begin changing pitch in contrasting motion their bows become lighter, creating an almost lovely calm that effortlessly carries the listener along. A brief, chaotic segue gives way to silence, out of which comes an odd brushing or sweeping sound that perhaps results from each bassist rubbing their instrument with an open palm. As minutes pass, the sweeping becomes less uniform and squeals emerge, which awaken a snarling, stomping beast that terrifies with its size and swagger. After having his say, he wanders off in silence, and the album ends as it begins, with droning basses, this time darker and ominously dissonant. Of the five albums, this one showcases the greatest variety of sounds, forms, colors, densities, textures, and instrumental techniques that Livk’s compositions demand as well as the balance between written and improvised sections they involve.

While it is hard to synthesize five very individual albums, several threads run throughout. Livk has an affinity for pianists who aren’t afraid of getting the most from the bottom end of their instrument or pushing the sustain pedal to the floor. Timbres and textures are generally dark and thick; there is much brooding to be found here. Although I wouldn’t pigeonhole Livk into any style or quality, he is at the very least post-minimalism curious, as displayed with his use of ostinato and generous repeating notes, rhythms, motifs, and cycles in the trio, solo, and octet recordings. And finally, his range and creativity as a player and composer. His virtuosity and command of his instrument in both conventional and unconventional approaches are unimpeachable, and who would think to set up a trio date in such a way, create a large ensemble out of bass and numerous pianos, or have eight bassists rub their instruments for several minutes? Livk has no lack for creativity or vision.

Livk’s introduction to the wider world could have been a poorly executed mess, and it is a testament to him, his fellow musicians, and all those involved that it successfully came to fruition. Most of the time I would argue that releasing five albums at once is overkill – even detrimentally so. I’m sure I’ve made this argument in this publication before. But, in the case of these five individual and largely compelling albums, little felt superfluous. Livk presented a range of visions – from left-of-center jazz trio and intimate chamber improvisation to post-minimalism and beyond – and pulled them off with aplomb.

Gašper Livk, well met. Well met, indeed.
–Chris Robinson


Intakt Records

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