The group Diatribes mixes percussion, piano, and software in the interest of sonic exploration. As heard on their recent Insubordinations netlabel release, they take an approach firmly rooted in the clanky, fluid, theoretically rigorous yet sonically elastic techniques of European free improvisation. Witness Cyril Bondi (drums, percussions) and D’Incise (laptop, objects) mixing it up with a pianist (Jacques Demierre on three of the album’s five tracks, Johann Bourquenez on the other two): “Chants Évadés” (MP3) is all fragmented pianism and round-the-outside drumming, but shot through with wavering synthesized sound, a groggy drone that holds the whole thing together. “Et Puis Partir,” in contrast, is more willfully haphazard, less about anything closely approximating song, and more a matter of noise for its own intrinsic sake, each instrumentalist locating small sounds, from hazy upper-register playing by Demierre, to tribal taunts from Bondi (MP3). The introduction of D’Incise’s laptop into the sound world of free improv makes perfect sense, given free improvisation’s ever-present focus on using familiar instruments to make all manner of unfamiliar noises. The laptop expands that palette considerably, and at no point in these sets stands out as inappropriate or jarring. All five tracks were recorded live, the Demierre ones in Geneva in May 2008, the Bourquenez in Lausanne in September 2008. Get the full set at insubordinations.net. More on D’Incise at dincise.net.
Month: February 2009
1970s MP3 Documents of Tangerine Dream, Live
William Gibson once noted that the future is already here, but just isn’t evenly distributed yet. William Faulkner noted, further back, that the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past. On the web, what’s past isn’t necessarily readily accessible, but when it is, broad distribution happens quickly. The Internet is filling up with documentation of times gone by, case in point a pair of deeply trippy Tangerine Dream concert recordings from 1976. Reportedly recorded on February 9 of that year, the two MP3s showcase the group when it was a keyboard trio of Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann. If you tend to avoid Tangerine Dream, do understand that there is here none of the turbo-charged momentum or florid exhibitionism that led to the pervasive negative associations with the group’s name, virtually making it a synonym for everything wrong with synthesized pop music. No, this is heady stuff, rarely grounded in any sort of melody — it’s all free-flowing, an analog-synth stream of consciousness. [Update June 20, 2009: There had been a link here to the Zip files, which were hosted elsewhere, but I received what appeared to be an email from Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream (an attempt to reply got an error message) that appeared to be asking me to delete the link, so I’ve done so.] By coincidence, the concert was recorded in Brussels, as was the live Amon Tobin show posted last week here (disquiet.com). (Found via justanothergarden.blogspot.com, via synthtopia.com.)
Image of the Week: Piano Variant
A shot from the New York Times of artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s “Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano”at the gallery Gladstone in Manhattan:
The performer is Mia Elezovic. The article, by Ken Johnson, explains:
Working with a piano specialist named Ben Stallman in Berlin, the artists reconfigured an early-20th-century Bechstein [piano] by removing a section of strings and cutting a hole through the center of the cabinet. They have asked musicians hired for the show to perform standing inside the hole, which means they have to play the keyboard upside down and backward. And while they play, they walk, propelling the instrument, set on casters, slowly through the gallery.
Six musicians rotate every hour on the hour, and they all play the same work: a piano transcription of the fourth and last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with the choral finale, “Ode to Joy.”And this paean to universal brotherhood, well known and much loved, has a slippery political history.
Full article at nytimes.com. Visit the Gladstone website at gladstonegallery.com.