Author: dbarbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Vaster Than Empires – Three Days [New Focus Recordings pan28]

Vaster Than Empires is the improvising trio of Erica Dicker (violin and baritone violin); Allen Otte (percussion amplified soundboards and shortwave radio); and Paul Schuette (synthesizers and guitar). The four longish performances making up Three Days, which the three recorded in the summer of 2021, consist of spontaneously arrived at and texturally arranged constructions marked by variations in density and timbre. Collectively, the group’s sound tends toward a thick sonic impasto drawn from the harsher end of the audio spectrum. Dicker’s contributions on strings, for example, eschew melodic lines in favor of drones, thickly bowed chords, and the more elemental hues produced by extended techniques; her instrumental voice is appropriately complemented by Otte’s tension-filled percussive excursions and Schuette’s abstractions for guitar and synth.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Tongue Depressor and John McCowen – Blame Tuning [Full Spectrum Records FS148]

There is much fascinating sound to be had in the elemental combination of double bass, pedal steel, and contrabass clarinet. That is the takeaway from Blame Tuning, a recording by the New Haven-based duo Tongue Depressor (double bassist Zach Rowden and pedal steel and lap steel player Henry Birdsey) plus reedist John McCowen. The ground on which the album’s two long, fully improvised tracks stand is the kind of dense yet variable drone environment in which Rowden and Birdsey specialize. The two have been creating drone-based music together since 2017, and their honed ability to elicit microtonal and timbral nuances from essentially static material shows to good effect here. McCowen, who has collaborated frequently with Rowden, is a natural fit; the low, grainy buzz of his contrabass clarinet is an almost tangible presence defining the music’s bottom stratum. Rowden is the binding force here, whether joining McCowen at the low end of the spectrum when raspily bowing the open lowest string, or reaching up to echo Birdsey’s shimmering notes with harmonics. A very rich, and richly recorded, essay in sound.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Nate Scheible – Plume [Warm Winters Ltd. WW030]

In 2021, Washington, DC area sound artist Nate Scheible created a series of recordings as part of a Community Supported Art Initiative. On Plume Scheible, whose compositional work often consists of processing and manipulating recorded sounds in analogue formats, used those recordings as basic material for the album’s series of eight compact collages that differ in their details, but share a certain family resemblance: each piece is a kind of tapestry of sound consisting of atmospheric washes of portentous electronic chords and drones overlaid with randomly intervening or cyclically recurring events of a generally harsher profile. Over elongated, often minor-key tones Scheible has carefully placed bursts of percussion, rain-like pattering (or actual rain sounds—field recordings are one of the constituents Scheible used as grist for his sonic mill), manipulated recordings of voices speaking, explosions of static, and miscellaneous sounds from sources unknown. Scheible, a fine percussionist, gives his trap drumming a brief cameo appearance on Plume 7, while Don Godwin provides some piano for Plume 5.

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Emilie Cecilia LeBel – field studies [Redshift Records]

On the evidence of field studies, her debut album, the chamber music of Canadian composer Emilie Cecilia LeBel embodies a distinctive type of minimalism based on resonance. Eschewing conventional melody, LeBel instead structures her work in terms of series of events consisting of individual notes or clusters of notes sounding at length and kept within a generally quiet dynamic range. On the programmatically titled…and the higher leaves of the trees seemed to shimmer in the last of the sunlight’s lingering touch of them… (2022), for electroacoustic chamber ensemble, short, repeated motifs are set out on piano against a sustained drone on baritone saxophone and flute. The center of gravity for the piece, as for much of the other work on the album, is—as the title hints–in the shimmering fusion of overtones produced by the overlapping of the instruments’ voices. LeBel approaches ambient territory with even if nothing but shapes and light reflected in the glass (2021) for baritone saxophone, alto flute, prepared drums, and electronics, a piece that moves in long tones broken up by rests and in which sympathetic resonances set up by the electronics play a major role. The work for solo violin, 2016’s further migration (migration no. 1) is an essay in overtones coaxed from rough-edged harmonics, with the occasional pizzicato punctuation.

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Christopher Chandler & Heather Stebbins – Roots [New Focus Recordings fcr364]

As much for their similarities as for their differences, Christopher Chandler and Heather Stebbins are well-matched in this album of recent compositions for orchestral instruments and electronics. Both are represented by works for solo instruments or small chamber ensembles, accompanied by electronics in various capacities, that focus on sound resonances rather than more conventional melodic or harmonic movement; while Chandler’s compositions tend toward a nuanced introversion, Stebbins’ range more freely into more variable dynamics and a somewhat harsher overall palette.

Chandler, based in upstate New York, is in addition to a composer a co-founder and executive director of the chamber music group [Switch~Ensemble], who perform the works on the album. His these old roots, for amplified bass drum and fixed media, opens the album with a surf and rattle of spatialized sound fragments. His Strata (2021) for contrabass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and live electronics has the acoustic instruments producing feedback-like sounds in slowly moving layers. Still Life (2022) for bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, and generative electronics is an open-form work in which the performers select the order in which they realize the collage of gestures—trills, glissandi, multiphonics, long tones—written for them. The resulting episodic movement and unsettled washes of harmony create a soundworld of suspenseful tension.

Stebbins is a composer on the faculty of Washington, DC’s George Washington University and an occasional presence on the local experimental music scene, where she can be found performing on cello with live electronics or on modular synthesizer. Her contributions to Roots demonstrate an interest in the characteristic personalities of the instruments she writes for. Sub Rosa for bass clarinet and electronics is an essay in elemental microsounds that foregrounds the physical processes involved in playing the instrument—the movement of its keys, the buzzing of the reed—over a foundation of rough-textured electronics. Ursa Major (2017) for piano, percussion, saxophones, and fixed media leverages extended techniques for an intriguing set of effects, most notable of them being the gamelan-like sounds of piano played with keys and plucked strings simultaneously. The highlight of the album is Stebbins’ three-movement Among Arrows (2021) for flute/bass flute, contrabass clarinet, cello, and electronics. The first and longest movement exploits harmonics, overtones, microtones, and fused timbres to set out a vertical structure of evolving complexity that builds to a very slow crescendo over crackling, rain-on-a-tin-roof electronics. After an interlude consisting of a repeated chord broken up by pauses the third movement reintroduces long, slightly jarring stacked tones for the acoustic instruments underscored by dissonant, close-interval chords from the electronics, culminating in a quarter note pulsed chord for the two strings.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Politàcito – Ricordi del Tardegrado [Setola di Maiale SM4530]; I Paesani with Günter “Baby” Sommer – Braastabrà [Setola di Maiale SM4520]

Italy’s Setola di Maiale label consistently releases provocative music from a wide variety of European improvisers. Two recent releases, one for trio and one for septet, continue this trend.

The trio album is from Politàcito, a group made up of percussionist Stefano Giust and flutist/bass flutist/tenor saxophonist Paolo Pascolo, both from Italy, and Colombian alto saxophonist/clarinetist María “Mange” Valencia. Ricordi del Tardegrado, a set of five pieces, was recorded live in Udine in October 2022. The group’s sound is dominated by a concern for texture in its various manifestations, ranging from densely packed to openly spaced. The interplay between the two wind instruments tends to take the form of a dialectic of massing and dispersing, whether on the basis of breathy, unpitched sounds as on the second track, or frenzied blowing, as on the third track. Tying it all together is Giust’s free-rhythm drumming. Giust here as on other recordings demonstrates himself to be a dedicated and discerning colorist with a sure touch, using sticks, brushes, and hands to elicit a wide world of sounds from all parts of the drum kit and cymbals.

In contrast to Politàcito’s relatively sparse trio format, I Paesani is a sextet composed of two saxophones, flute, mandolin, bass, and voice. On Braastabrà the group, based in Bari, is joined by German drummer Günter “Baby” Sommer, who also declaims Hugo Ball’s nonsense poem Karawane on the opening track. I Paesani’s sound on this nine-track album tends toward well-defined rhythms and vamps anchored in repeated bass figures layered over with interwoven reeds and flute, as well as sung, spoken, and whispered contributions from vocalist Loredana Savino. Much of the music seems at least partly composed, or at least arranged, but the title track has the group taking a turn into freer territory and includes a solo for Sommer. A colorful and enjoyable recording with a unique sound.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Filippo Abrate / Thomas Canna – Kumbu-tse [MUPE]

Kumbu-tse, by the Turinese percussionist Filippo Abrate and Rimini percussionist/modular synthesist Thomas Canna, takes its name from a peak in the Himalayan mountains lying on the border of China and Nepal. And in a sense, Kumbu-tse the album represents Abrate and Rimini’s way to create the musical analogue of a place of elevation, in this case of spiritual elevation. They do so with what in effect is a suite of eight naturally sequential parts.

From the first track, a clangorous call to order with gongs playing against synthesizer drones mimicking tamboura and Tibetan throat singing, percussion dominates. But this isn’t a noisy album. Abrate and Canna play thoughtfully and with restraint when called for, often setting out free-floating pulses with sticks and brushes on drum kit. On the sixth track, by contrast, they tap out regular rhythms on semi-tuned metal surfaces for a gamelan-like effect. Four of the eight tracks include guest tenor saxophonist Paolo Porta, who plays with a refined, elegant sound. The percussion-and-saxophone pieces here unfold with a measured and almost serene melodicism, and even when the playing heats up, as it does on the seventh track, there still is an underlying sense of formal proportion. As there is for the album as a whole. It ends on a quiet note—just the right denouement for the narrative arc the music has traced.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Castor Morse – Au bureau des rêveries [Plus Timbre PT143]; Boss / Magliocchi – Schnellissimo [Plus Timbre PT140]

The name of sound artist Castor Morse’s studio is La Poétique du Timbre—a perfectly chosen name, as his new release, the evocatively titled Au bureau des rêveries demonstrates. Working with objects, prepared gongs, samples, and electronic processing, Castor Morse put together a series of six sound collages based on the sheer sensuality of timbral contrasts, many of them produced by the sounds of various materials being struck, rubbed, scraped, and shaken. The compositions, which generally rely on unpitched sounds and gestural organization, tend toward the abstract, but the occasional appearances of flute, the human voice, and birdsong add a touch of the organic.

Like Castor Morse’s release, Schnellisimo, a duo recording by Swiss violinist Matthias Boss and Italian percussionist Marcello Magliocchi, situates itself within the fertile field opened up by timbral difference. Strings and percussion tend to occupy opposite poles of the textural spectrum; Boss and Magliocchi take this opposition as a given and a goad, and build on it with a set of improvisations that develop through elaborately prepared and resolved events of tension and release. Magliocchi’s cymbal work and freely metered pulses push and pull the collective sound through dynamic surges and ebbs, which Boss further shapes and intensifies with an expressionistically taut mixing of legato and staccato phrasing, and raw, extended technique.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Music from APNM Volume 3 [New Focus Recordings FCR363]

This is the third volume in a series of compilation albums presenting works by a selection of composers of the Association for the Promotion of New Music (APNM). Like the second volume, the current volume focuses on electronic music. (The first volume was dedicated to chamber works.) It’s a well-rounded collection of purely electronic and electroacoustic works that amply demonstrates the creative range and depth of the composers represented.

The opening track, Erik Lundborg’s Miss Anderson, takes as its source material a 1987 synclavier improvisation, which Lundborg subsequently processed into a derivative work featuring cavernous, drifting sounds. Miss Anderson has a contemporary sound, in contrast to which Ionel Petroi’s Huit Dances Surprise evokes the classic sounds of earlier, analogue electronic music, although it was created on the Yamaha DX7, an early digital synth from the 1980s. Hiroya Miura’s Chromatograph, inspired by stop-motion animation, convincingly emulates the sound of rapidly played mallet percussion—the aural image of movement seen under a strobe light. Michael Gogins’ Three Trees is a generative work superimposing consonant parts that give it a harmonically pleasant, undulating quality. Aine Nakamura’s The koma top is not for spinning is a bilingual English and Japanese sound collage made up of samples of the composer’s voice speaking, singing, and vocalizing. When the Sky Clears, by Peter Child, is another voice-based work in which Child sets the reading of a text composed of repeated and permutated brief phrases against a background of computer-generated sounds. Louis Goldford’s De la detente combines fragmentary sounds for pure electronics and samples of voice with acoustic violin and cello, the latter played with techniques that both liken and contrast them to their electronic surroundings. Like De la detente, Avots by Krists Auzniek also combines a fixed electronic part with an acoustic instrument–glockenspiel, in this case. Against a backdrop of surging synthetic chords the glockenspiel plays random-sounding cascades of notes, giving the impression of a harmonically sophisticated set of wind chimes moving in an electronic breeze.

Daniel Barbiero

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AMN Reviews

AMN Reviews: Bertrand Denzler – Low Strings [Confront Recordings]

Few instrumental combinations have as much sheer sonic power as a double bass choir. The massing of low-register string voices has a particularly dramatic multiplier effect that hits bodily, producing sounds grasped as much viscerally as aurally. Composer Bertrand Denzler’s appropriately titled Low Strings leverages this formidable force in the guise of a double bass quartet, here consisting of Sébastien Beliah, Jon Heilbron, Mike Majkowski, and Derek Shirley. The composition, two versions of which appear on the album, does indeed exploit the multiplier effect of having several double basses playing long-duration tones within a tightly bound range anchored at the bottom of the instrument’s compass. Think darkly dense, dissonant harmonies and unstable sound masses thrown off by the clash of overtones, like the crashing and grinding of tectonic plates in motion deep underground.

Daniel Barbiero