Moment's Notice Reviews of Recent Media Faradena Afifi + Steve Beresford + Paul Khimasia Morgan
What distinguishes bee Reiki from most other recordings of electro-acoustic improvised music is its genial temperament. The music is uncompromising without being confrontative. The three improvisers demonstrate keen responsiveness; but instead of triggering furious volleys and off-putting overloads, this frequently results in one or two of them receding to the midground or temporarily laying out altogether. In doing so, Afifi, Beresford, and Morgan, give their spectra of sounds ample space, which is conducive to the flow of individual improvisations, as well as the overall flow of the album. More importantly, it promotes the listener’s proximity to the music. All but unknown to US listeners, Afifi and Morgan are improvisers worth following. Whereas Morgan is fully committed to the specificity of his instrument, Afifi is a multi-instrumentalist who also works in contemporary folk music. Continuing to be one of the most resourceful of improvisers, Beresford proves to be a sturdy linchpin between the austerity of Morgan’s aesthetic and the playful openness of Afifi’s. Together, they have a unique homely chemistry.
حمد [Ahmed]
The collection documents performances on five consecutive evenings at the edition festival held in Stockholm in August 2022. The British pair of pianist Pat Thomas and alto saxophonist Seymour Wright first began playing with Swedish bassist Joel Grip and French drummer Antonin Gerbal under the banner of Ahmed some ten years ago, having discovered a shared love of Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s music. By that point Grip and Gerbal were already playing with Thomas in a trio Ism اسم [Ism]. However, the addition of Wright and the focus on Abdul-Malik’s music, transforms the chemistry in a unique way. As the expansive interview with Wright in the accompanying booklet makes clear, the group’s concept is one that was created communally on the bandstand without prior discussion. And so successful was it in respect of audience appreciation and artistic endeavor that they have continued to explore that framework ever since. How does it work? “Oud Blues” offers a representative case study. It begins with staccato saxophone blurts, shortly joined by first Grip’s loping bass vamp and then Thomas’ bluesy piano outlining the contours of Abdul-Malik’s bare bones chart. Subtly the drums kick in, pacing them through the key changes. They remain more or less in the neighborhood of the tune for the first six minutes before Thomas’ intermittent clusters presage a gradual departure, as they deconstruct the melody into short rhythmic units which they replicate until they have scant connection to the original. Parts seemingly vary and mutate without any preconceived signals. There’s nothing complicated in the individual contributions, but the intuitive ways in which they interlock and combine imbues the results with immediacy and power, and at times a visceral intensity. It’s an approach which demands extraordinary concentration, and great physical as well as mental stamina. They sound like nothing else. The Necks, Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, or Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music are the most proximate parallels, but none possesses the same whiff of danger. While there is a minimalist aesthetic in play, they harness the potency of repetition to astonishing effect, more heavy metal than Steve Reich, less hypnotic than nerve-shredding. It’s a communal practice in which there are no solos in the conventional sense, other than in sometimes unaccompanied preambles. Or perhaps they are all soloing all the time. Certainly, everyone plays almost continually. The discipline of Grip and Gerbal is crucial to the band’s effectiveness. Their relentless patterns ensure a driving forward motion which is foundational. Although he emphasizes specific elements of his kit in certain instances (note how he marks the return to time by shifting to cymbals on the theme restatement in “Oud Blues”), Gerbal’s hyperactive drumming conjures an underlying drone. For his part Grip fashions a propulsive swing, no matter how far out things go around him, although he unsheathes his bow on occasion to cut through when the needle flickers into the red. Apart from themes, Wright is not inclined to melody. Both he and Thomas accentuate the percussive aspects of their playing. The saxophonist co-opts abrasive experimental timbres: staccato plosives, multiphonic shrieks, false-fingered bleats, fluid slurs, and sour notes, which he normalizes through reiteration. Fiercely rhythmic in this setting, Thomas stomps, pounds, and crashes. His clanking dissonance places him firmly in a lineage which includes both Monk and Taylor. Wright and Thomas frequently lock into hammered riffs, especially on “Nights On Saturn,” the first night of the run. At times it suggests turntablism or a vinyl LP getting stuck, then jumping on and getting stuck again. When the others pile on, which they do sparingly, it induces a primal throb familiar to head bangers everywhere. For anyone who has wondered how one performance might differ from another, the answer is in small but vital ways. Each rendition retains some of the original DNA, haunting the improvisations. Just when the tension reaches unbearable levels, they can drop back into syncopated cadences reminding of the starting point. Thus, whilst recognizably the same outfit and ethos, each album has a different character. Grip alone etches a riveting intro to “Rooh (The Soul),” the news of the recent death of cellist Abdul Wadud hanging heavy in the air. They maintain the droney feel of the original for some 10 minutes, contrary to the much more rapid digressions elsewhere. On a raucous version of “African Bossa Nova” the infectious tune recurs like a watermark. A crescendo comes with a wheezing, squealing alto exhortation which is the nearest Wright gets to a solo in the set, prompting Thomas to cut loose too, atop a juggernaut tattoo, as the band takes on the guise of the most extreme noise crew. A similar manic end-of-term mood pervades “El Haris (Anxious)” from the final night of the residency. Repeated listening reveals allusions to other influences. One notable example is the appearance of a fragment from Sun Ra’s “Next Stop Mars” chant in “Nights On Saturn,” referenced first by Thomas and subsequently reprised by Wright. It’s a common enough series of intervals, but with such musically literate protagonists, its occurrence on an Afrofuturist title seems more than coincidence. With such lengthy expositions other such delicious references undoubtedly wait to be uncovered. Thomas apart, everyone’s first acquaintance with Abdul-Malik came via his performances with Monk’s quartet on the brace of LPs recorded live at the Five Spot in 1958. That hints at one possible answer to the question, where next? In a four-day residency at Cafe Oto in London in April 2024, they subjected four Monk tunes to the same treatment, alongside four from Abdul-Malik’s repertoire. Ahmed looks back only to look forward. They can seem like a jazz band teetering out of control, offering a soundtrack for a dystopian nightmare. Though in a gesture of hope, it’s one from which the listener ultimately awakes, as the band finally inches back towards the initial inspiration, to find it was only a dream and all is well. But you can’t help but be changed by the journey.
Marco Baldini Nomi Epstein Paul Newland Paul Paccione
A reasonable objection might be made along the lines that from Apartment House, we’ve heard precious little of the complex composers following in Webern’s arcanely serial wake. True, where compositional aesthetics are concerned, the group tends toward the Cage end of my arbitrarily constructed spectrum, but Webern’s soundworld leads in directions disparate from the numerical organizational unity of his compositional methods. So, unlike other composers of his generation, his timbral bait and switch and resultant dotted planes of sound open vistas moment to moment, vistas to composers as diverse as Pierre Boulez and Harley Gaber. If we hear, just to proffer one example, his orchestration of a section from Bach’s Musical Offering as performed with glacially “Romantic” reverence by Bruno Maderna, an entirely different aesthetic is in evidence. Paradoxically, a kind of post-Webernian Rigor dominates in another way, and therein lies the Apartment House connection. In an interview on Another Timbre’s site, Marco Baldini, one of the four composers under discussion here, cites the group’s attention to such minute details as to which overtones might prove most effective in a given moment. Such minutiae could appear negligible but for the aural results. The ensemble has developed a sound based in part on obviously intense calculation concerning minuscule sound objects, and subtlety of overtone and microtone are certainly integral to it, but as each sound drags timbral and performative histories behind it, many other areas of inquiry open as each unfolds. Maniera, Baldini’s second disc on Another Timbre, is a particularly fascinating case of a referential hyper-present. Baldini’s work is often indebted to composers of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods, an aesthetic which Apartment House enhances. The iridescent “Plutone,” based on a Monteverdi symphonia from the fourth act of L’Orfeo, shimmers as each chord, shorn of any excess and elongated in the compositional process, floats past with the iridescent timbre of each overtone burning a hole in the ozone layer. Daggers of upper register form a razor-thin halo adorning the triadic harmonies as they swell to breaking point. Each sonority bursts at the seams with a rich intensity both like and unlike a consort of viols or an early operatic string section, a fact reinforced when revisiting various period instrument version of Monteverdi’s opera. Despite reference, this is no Seconda Pratica rehash. The harmonies eventually blur and all but disappear as the centuries are leaped, leaving only the crystalline shell of straight-toned serenity. No such transitional gestures are necessary in a piece like Arpocrate, where chord and tone form something akin to parallel lines that converge on absolutely exquisite open fifths before finally dissolving on what might, in other circumstances, be heard as a dissonance. Baldini’s work forges a direct link between the 17th century and the present, Apartment House providing the sonic cement. Baldini’s music forms the most tangible link with a past in phantasmagorical reconstruction, but the other three composer portraits speak to similarly complex layers of referential intrigue. Nomi Epstein’s evocatively titled Shades travels the malleable interstices separating Alvin Lucier, Morton Feldman, and Gyorgy Ligeti, though each waits in the shadows for a moment of near visibility. The beautiful Sextet, lasting nearly half an hour, finds each gesture emerging from piano or plucked strings in liquifying Feldmanesque phrases, but its most extraordinary feature is the way breath and tone converge and diverge, each melting into the other with precious little remaining solid. The titular piece normalizes the glissando until strategically placed clusters decenter it, paving the way for its return amidst the expertly timed bouncing bows and windy susurrations these string players layer with such care. Triads drift in and out of focus with the sneaky subtlety of snatched breath, and a more perfect blending of the ever-evolving repetitions and ambiguous pitch relationships of Feldman and Ligeti’s soundworlds is difficult to imagine. The aesthetic of the Berlin-based ensemble performing Sounds for Berlin proves them equally comfortable in Epstein’s timbral labyrinths, introducing voices and whistling as variables in an increasingly complex compositional equation. There is something more overtly visceral in each gesture of their performance, a bone-and-muscle approach that contrasts winningly with the music’s inherent delicacy and with Apartment House’s transparent clarity. The other two composers, Paul Newland and Paul Paccione, represent grayer areas of the compositional spectra, but they bring the rigor/spontaneity dialectic more sharply into focus. Simply traversing sonic grounds, the most overtly inclusive disc comes courtesy of the former. Newland’s music over the last fifteen years encompasses repetition in flux, like the chromatically pointillistic Monotonous Forest, but the scope of that flux is wide indeed. Another of the superb composer interviews offered for each disc explains that Locus represents a series of loops in morphing juxtaposition of various types involving sounds, found and otherwise, chosen by the performers. In that, Cage is the most immediate model while Feldman, via Webern, imbues Monotonous Forest’s evolving restatements. Switching gears, listening to the way field recordings drift in and out of focus in Apartment House’s realization of Locus conjures the varyingly transparent densities informing portions of Harley Gaber’s final compositions while never sounding as urgent. Instruments may or may not be readily apparent as the music oozes along, a direct contrast to Difference is Everywhere (Altered Again), the third in a series of string quartets readily, and refreshingly, identifiable as such. Here, as with the gorgeously pithy piano miniature “Laurence Crane on Whitecross St,” a sonority leads miraculously to another and then to the next, but in the quartet, each stands in the shadow of silence. As the piece unfolds, glissandi akin to Epstein’s begin to permeate, a tone first emerging from a chord until finally each sound warps as if from mid-summer languor. Strangely, and this could be a result of the silences and swells providing contrasting points of focus or the piece’s unified approach to register, that opening sonority never leaves the memory, whatever dynamic and durational changes occur. Like the Webernian counterpoint of Das Augenlicht, each element is absolutely essential to a complete picture even as it changes or dissipates. By the end of Newland’s quartet, that opening chord has become a center in nostalgic disarray, fragments melting in and into increasing stillness. To these ears, Paul Paccione’s music is the most extraordinary discovery in a superb batch of discs rife with them. The five works were composed between 1980 and 1990, but they anticipate many of the developments explored by Baldini, Epstein, and Newland. Violin, here presented in a recent revision, is a wonder of microtonal inflection and timbral subtlety from four violins in communion with silence. Shades of the past float to the fore as counterpoint is suggested even as any of its traditional implications are thwarted. A quick glance at Paccione’s Another Timbre interview exposes mentorship from Harley Gaber, whose epic The Winds Rise in the North anticipates but does not define Paccione’s string writing. Moments of Violin are startlingly diatonic, as is the gorgeously dotted and pulsed Still Life, a remarkable piece for winds that it’s tempting to suggest travels by fifths but only by melodic implication, ending with its opening material in slightly skewed reiteration. Again, Paccione’s interview describes a love of counterpoint, but unlike Baldini, sonoric blocks appear less than do melodic strands, each implying harmonies never quite resolved, as in the labyrinthine Exit Music. Yet, the most exquisitely formed piece on the disc must be the relatively brief but dynamic Gridwork. It eases by in post-Webernian patches of sound but slowed to a tortoise crawl, swells and rounded points against a backdrop of Cagian pauses. The occasional pizzicato or piano articulation brushes against these achingly rich sonorities, the layered quasi-dialogue of galaxies in rotation. Suddenly, at 3:26, a bowed string bristles to bursting point with vibrato, and a door opens onto a startlingly Romantic aesthetic elsewhere jettisoned. The effect must be similar to the shocking moments experienced by 18th century listeners at least given what the “period” instrument performers rediscovered in Leopold Mozart’s writings regarding vibrato use only in special circumstances. There, and in moments of perfectly executed unison, octave, or microtone, is Apartment House’s supreme accomplishment. While so much on these four discs leaps from the speakers illuminated by the spontaneous freshness of discovery, listening in layers discloses attention to detail hardly to be comprehended. Of course, the recordings are all superb, and they have to be in order that every nuance is captured in microdetail, but attention continually returns to the players and their nuanced interactions. As fine as each instrumentalist is, the ensemble vanguards itself; this is how it should be, each moment bridging gaps between method and conception, philosophy and practice and all adjacent historical concerns, the least utterance quietly heroic.
Mira Benjamin + Zubin Kanga + Scott McLaughlin
At the outset of his liner notes, McLaughlin states that their music developed from two ideas, “that of entanglement and that of ‘material indeterminacy.’” Let’s go with “engagement” rather than “entanglement” to describe the close rapport between Benjamin with McLaughlin’s electronics on “the endless mobility of listening,” a piece with origins in a McLaughlin string quartet written for Quatour Bozzini during Benjamin’s tenure. There are delicate layers of sound on this and the other two lengthy pieces that provide for an immersible listening experience, rich in harmonics from bowing on acoustic and electric violins, Ebowed piano, electromagnetic resonators, and live electronics. Kanga’s initial keyed prepared piano chords on “in the unknown there is already a script for transcendence” signals the hovering calm one found in early Cage and Partch, boosted by frequent, pregnant pauses throughout the piece. It is a circling back to the opening title piece for electric violin, piano, and electromagnetic resonators, which wafts with purpose for more than a half hour. Change does not occur in this music quite at a Feldman-like snail’s pace, but it takes its sweet time to insinuate itself. It's well worth the wait.
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