Necks drummer Tony Buck is worth checking out in any context. Here, he offers up a nearly 2-hour continuous piece of music that is a slowly-evolving and densely-overlapped amalgam of instruments that manages to both have direction and remain open-ended. Unsurprisingly, the most dominant sounds are from drums, cymbals, bells, and other percussives. These are played very much in Buck’s signature style, evoking abstractions with elusive patterns. Other instruments include piano and guitar, all played by Buck.
The track progresses in a fashion not unlike Riley’s In C, with short motifs repeating and combining before fading out and others taking over. There is also a resemblance to Anthony Braxton’s Echo Echo Mirror House works, in that there are several disjointed layers present at most points, none of which were necessarily designed to fit together but somehow they do.
This results in an exhilarating and mind-bending listening experience. Not exactly composition or improvisation, Environmental Studies is instead a modular framework in which explorations are made. Very well done.
Avant Music News 