Ring carbons
The ring carbon atoms in substituted benzenes exert a larger attraction on the valency electron cloud of the hydrogen atom resulting in an increase in the C-H force constant and a decrease in the corresponding bond length. I’m on the train, and that’s how it reads on the laptop of my next-seat neighbor. I thought you wanted to know.
I’m also sure that you’d want to know who you’re dealing with, so I’ve done a self portrait in the mirror of my hotel room.
Time to think back. The Moers Festival does state that it attempts to show the state of improvised music today, and though of course it necessarily has its leanings, and you cannot get more than a narrow slice of what actually is out there, how does the stuff I saw hold together?
Brötz won. I mean that’s clear as the sky. You just have to watch him backstage, he seems completely focused like all of the time, he’s, what? 69 years and again making some of the best music in all of his career. He will have staid family folk clapping wildly live who would run screaming if they had to listen to a record of his in their safe homes. Brötz totally rules, and I’m so glad I’ve witnessed him twice in his prime.
In not so good news, there is a lack of voices. There’s a lot of great ensemble play, but the excentric individual doesn’t seem currently in vogue. Some of those who did show a distinct voice somehow didn’t fare well on their repeat appearance, Tyshawn Sorey disappeared behind his music with his own group, Bill Frisell was shockingly clueless as to how to make music out of the duo gig with Henriksen, although his trio has been one of the highlights of the festival.
Overblowing your horn has become sort of the jazz lingua franca. Or make that esperanto. I find that somewhat lame, because the greatest of the screamers, like Sanders or Shepp or Brötzmann (or today Gustafsson) were never about blowing your top to create climax while the rhythm shuffles along. (Eg. listen to Don Cherry’s Symphony for Improvisers. It has Sanders weaving circles around tenor Gato Barbieri on piccolo flute. Then for the finale Sanders picks up the tenor too. While Barbieri is sure that emotion will translate into the listener’s ear whenever he honks, Sanders eats the sound from inside out. He’s not about projecting stuff, he’s deep into his medium. And that’s the difference, really, and if I stress this so much, it’s also because of the morning sessions I haven’t mentioned on the blog, which threw together the younger talent in free improvisations that were completely predictable, honking and hustling their way to a dutiful climax. There were a lot of third-generation Barbieris.)
More plusses: my childhood heroes are still going strong. (Does that mean I’ve now officially had a happy childhood?) And there’s such intelligence in the music, the last day sort of had the only drummers who would just hit on the kit without any scruples. Composition is the new improvisation (except for John Wall, where it’s the reverse, but I don’t think shuffling that around will change the meaning in any way).
Well, this time I’m really out for the unforeseeable future. Maybe some Plush folks can send me a CD now and then which I can officially, spontaneously, and unanimously embrace. Folks?
Until then, Lutz Eitel
Meticulously written down spontaneous folk music
Is prog a dirty word for you?
Ok, I will try not to bore you with childhood reminiscences again. But here we have one more guy who meant a lot to me when I was little. My favorite record is Gravity from 1980, and as I’ve made you buy no more than four or five records while writing this blog, get that and we’re cool.
Since then, Fred Frith has done a lot of stuff. He has become a legit composer. He is the one out of the whole festival roster whom I will have heard most often: he once lived near Stuttgart, where I grew up. Whoever has seen the rather popular film Step across the Border will know that he had no trouble mixing with the natives there.
Today’s music actually harkens back to Gravity times. You have all the melody that would come with a Breton folk-rock combo (I actually heard one on a summer holiday many years ago, so this is not just something I made up). You have wildly uneven measures. The band are great, Shahzad Ismaily, the brooding drummer, is on electric bass and hesitant percussion today, Zeena Parkins on accordeon and synth, but the real frontman is Carla Kihlstedt on violin. And she has a tough fight, one foot pedal going belly up and starting to do its own hum in mid-concert …
She’s at the center of the pic above. You can see that everybody has a music stand before them, and that is actually where things do not quite gel, since not everybody manages to translate notes meticulously written down into spontaneous folk music as well as Kihlstedt does. Now and then stuff is a little on the mechanistic side.
But I love that Frith revisits my favorite music from him for me, I love his Frenchified cap, and really this is the last concert before I go back into hibernation mode, with less concerts per year than I’ve now enjoyed over four days, so I don’t want it to stop …
Hypnagogic jazz
This morning I rode a shuttle with Andy Hamilton of The Wire. I wasn’t quite there yet, else I’d have brought up a serious subject you’d all be very interested in. Instead we mostly discussed the toad in the hotel pond which is quite the discovery of the festival. I mean, he croaks in tongues. He’s just so happy to have conquered a kingdom that I suspect it hasn’t really sunk down yet he’s the only one in it. See the pic above.
Seconds after I had wished Andy that he’d be kind, it suddenly struck me: we should have discussed hypnagogic jazz. Obviously. How close do you get to the theoretical motor behind the ruling trend in contemporary music? I was privileged to get that close, I blew it all. I discussed a toad instead.
For those of you not in the know, a Wire analysis of today’s music has coughed up the undisputable fact that the most exciting stuff these days is hypnagogic. The other catchphrase they have is hauntology. Now religious readers of this blog will prick up their ears. I mean, I have mentioned ghost harmonies here, right? I mentioned how Miles Davis resurrects in select Scandinavians (actually that was something Hamilton didn’t at all enjoy). But maybe I should try to explain the concept first. I think it says that you sleep through your adolescent years and then all the bad taste that you’ve snored over hits you back at the exact point in life when you accidently publish a record of your music. And that’s cool. You better sample Chris de Burgh to be on the safe side.
The fact is, that once reality has been structured by leading journalists, it cannot escape back into the chaos it came from. All music is now doomed to become hypnagogic by the sheer power of the word. And frankly I prefer that to musicians being under the influence. Also this should put a stop to all rumors of jazz being a dead art form. It’s maybe more thoroughly asleep than some other musics, but that, by the authority of The Wire, is now a virtue.
Not a single straight note
I’m sorry, I’ll have to take you deep into my past.
I’m the kind of guy that has A Taste of DNA on vinyl. That’s Lindsay’s no wave band from a long time ago. Can’t say I enjoyed it much, but when I was little, it was an important statement for me to have it. By the time I was aware enough to follow his moves, Lindsay played with the Golden Palominos and his own Ambitious Lovers with Peter Scherer, music that was too firmly sounded within the 80s for me to enjoy it then, maybe the productions would be easier to tolerate now.
Then, in 1996, Lindsay brought out O Corpo Sutil. He had incorporated his Brasilian thing while still not playing a single straight note on the guitar. Actually I was late to the game, because that record didn’t convince me then, I fell prey to Mundo Civilizado the year after. Still, Lindsay had started a stretch of four genius song records in a row, heavily informed by his part Brasilian roots, all of them potential fodder for desert island negotiations. It’s a strange thing about songsters, almost nobody can keep it up for more than three records, and four in a row is tied world victory with the select best of them.
The fourth, Prize, actually has two stupid songs, but also the tracks that make you dance on the kitchen table. Get them all.
Today, he was a little too ironic. He should take his heritage more seriously and play it straight. Then again, maybe he should work out choreographies and dance more. Of course his gig easily proved that pop music is still alive, despite some of the main acts here. And he still doesn’t play a single straight note, even though he surrounds himself with no-nonsense ability players, I love that. He enjoys every accident that happens on stage, but by disposition, his band is on the heavy side of things, and he jumps off them happily.
I’m glad to have seen him, and he remains a hero. Greetings, Lutz
We want our Tyshawn back
Strange gig from Tyshawn Sorey so far. Well, not really strange. It’s good music, Ingrid Laubrock and Kris Davis are on form, most of the material is written by Sorey and sounds distinct, they don’t just play stuff, they are a band, but … Tyshawn Sorey does not play like Tyshawn Sorey. I mean like I think he should. That static groove thing, that Steve Coleman thing with the jittery snare, where it would take you a week to just program him over four measures. He doesn’t do that. That surely is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We want our Tyshawn back! Please sign the petition below.
A sense of privacy
Back on the big stage a set from Mari Kvien Brunvoll. She sits alone on stage, with a loopstation and some small instruments, and plays music with herself that depends on a certain sense of privacy. Tough enough in such packed house even without cameramen bustling about, which is why she didn’t want a stream. That’s unfortunate, but it makes sense.
The sweetest melodies
Now that was amazing. Brilliant. If awesome would still mean anything, that would be the word. I’m sitting here pointing at something that is too great for words, making funny noises. I’m still in shock.
This was one of the side events, therefore unfortunately unstreamed, a trio of Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, and Ken Vandermark at the protestant church here. Let me get this straight, if I saw Vandermark as a weak link yesterday with the tentet, here he was every bit as good as his cohorts. He gave us beats and crazy double arpeggios (don’t ask me how you do that, some kind of overblowing involved), he often seemed like a complete backing band, circularly breathing textures, while Gustafsson went in search for the deepest growl hidden in his baritone, and like yesterday, there were plenty of ghost harmonies under the vaults.
Brötzmann started out on something that looked like a clarinet but sounded like an alto in need of some cough syrup. This must have been his fabled tarogato, and I’m glad he used it, because there are two things you simply have to mention whenever you write about Brötz today, and that is the tarogato and the fact that the old firebrand has become surprisingly … wait! It’s actually true. I don’t know what it was, maybe the stompbox built into his instrument broke down, but I swear he did his best Johnny Hodges emulation. When he was filing at his reed during the first track, I thought he would be roughening up his sound, but no, he played the sweetest melodies. Intermittently that is, then he tore up his sax in mid-flight.
Gustaffson probably didn’t play a single lick or line during the whole concert, he went for deep, cavernous sound, grounding the whole thing. His bari sounded so big they would have to build an extra aisle or two to make it comfortable. Plus he must have a whole jungle of ferocious beasts hidden somwhere in the bell of the instrument.
More than in the tentet, they were free to create spontaneous structures. Such intelligence, and freedom, and wildness, and tenderness. I’ve already written too much, I will now go back to pointing at the thing in amazement, stammering.
Floored, Lutz
The shadow of the girl on the flying trapeze
Oh, and I just notice I have a picture which sort of shows what Paolo Angeli was after yesterday. I listened in on an interview he did later, and he’s quite serious about wanting to enchant us all, about the spiritual background, and the fact that everybody involved is friends or family. Here he’s contemplating the shadow of the girl on the flying trapeze.
The middle of the road
Toshi Reagon & BigLovely. Before I start bitching again, let me quote a tech who shall remain anonymous: “This music lacks any kind of character. I don’t know, the main acts are quite weak somehow.” Amen to that. Everybody had fun, though.
Campfire music
We had advance warning. Bill Frisell and Arve Henrikson had never ever played together, not in public, and not even in a practice room. They blithely took the stage and drove the first number against a tree firmly.
What they did with the wreck of that was not exactly great music, but their attempt to make something work, and above all, to entertain the audience, was so honest and likeable, that it made you smile anyway. Henrikson mostly took the lead, he had canned atmospheres on his laptop, which helped the duo going until sombedy stumbled over a riff or something that would keep proceedings moving. Between the computer, stuff to augment the trumpet with (effects or a sax mouthpiece), and his surprisingly good vocals, Henriksen had quite an arsenal at his disposal to keep us all in a good mood, and for the finale he organised the least cringe-inducing singalong I ever croaked to. Frisell mostly just sat there, enjoyed the show and played some country licks.
I think these must be very nice people. Such warmth exuding from the stage. Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now as the encore. Campfire music.
Orotund sonorities
This is the second time today I see Paolo Angeli. He’s in completely different mode now, hammering out bass notes (on the one) while elegiacally bowing his Sardinian guitar (think an acoustic Sigur Rós). He’s accompanied by Takumi Fukushima on viola and very grungy vocals and Ganesh Anandan on frame drum and whistling. They do some kind of faux folk laced with lazy soundtrack muzak.
Sponde di Passione the project is called (Shores of Passion? that would be a perfect fit, but don’t trust me, I have no Italian). It’s quite the multimedia event, we have slides of catholic rituals, we have a light show, we even have a girl on the flying trapeze.
The music is slight, though. Oh no, now the guy even starts crooning. Orotund is a word that springs to mind … I’m back with the techs, watching a silent screen until the danger is over. As you can see, it ain’t over yet.
Ghost voices
So. What can I say. He came, saw, and delivered. And, one has to add, he looks really good. That was the first thing I thought, what a beautiful man.
It’s become sort of a critical trope to stress that the old firebrand these days also plays surprisingly tender passages. (Which is not really surprising if you’ve heard Schwarzwaldfahrt from 1977 with Han Bennink. Hey, I think it’s out again, you absolutely need to buy that one, and then something by Last Exit, let’s say the eponymous debut. Where was I?) I’m not sure if I would put it thus, I’d say the Chicago Tentet does the Pixies-loud-quiet-loud thing. They begin with a fanfare to the warriors that leaves one with ears burning, then move into a slow trombone choir before stuff explodes again. They make an unholy din, it’s beautiful.
Brötzmann is very strong. Gustaffson is a great team player. It’s interesting, he has a reputation for testosterone-filled playing, but he cries like shot deer. Solely as if to vent, while Brötzmann’s skronk always is musical. McPhee plays beautifully. I wouldn’t need any solo space for Bishop or Vandermark, the latter honking like a texas tenor with a stammer, but he gets standing ovations for that. Suddenly a nicely pastiche Arabian Nights setpiece with Brötzmann on clarinet. Before the thing explodes again.
What’s so beautiful about these totally wild collective improvisations is that you start hearing stuff that maybe is not there. It becomes more than just skronk, there appear ghost harmonies and ghost voices. Deeply satisfying.
It’s kind of amazing that this music nowadays is plain good fun. “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” somebody in the audience cried out.
The pic is of Brötz practising poses for a Blue Note cover.
A lifetime of tinnitus
I have a confession to make. I didn’t go see Grubenklang, although with Frank Gratkowski they had a true Plush artist in their midst. How can you ever forgive me. Instead I went to the Concerts in the Dark series because I wanted to hear John Wall. Definitely worth it.
He began with waveforms crashing on a digital shore. (This is pure computer music, where Wall improvises with prepared chunks of sound.) And I really mean crashing, this was rather loud for the tiny room. Unbelievable detail in the smears and tears of pixels, sounds gnawing their hearts out from within. After a while (and maybe helped by the fact that we were surrounded by 6 speakers so everything constantly changed position) I couldn’t help projecting a narrative into the noise. TVs were thrown out of windows. Lions ripped their prey apart. Galopping horses changed to machine gun fire in mid-gallop (that was sort of the refrain, it came up now and again). Hitchcock’s birds returned as mutant zombies. More and more, intolerably high notes crept up, like a lifetime of tinnitus rolled into this short cozy afternoon session. After 15 minutes, somewhere in mid-development, Wall just yanked the sound and mumbled something like “that will be enough.”
Pretty annoying, pretty cool. That’s him you can see at the laptop if you really strain yor eyes.
The second set was by Manu Holterbach. He began with field recordings from a forest in the Netherlands (you know, I have that kind of ear). To my right a brook was murmuring. Birds everywhere, it sounded like an invasion of song. A dog yelping. I am no fan of dogs. I don’t know, it was too active for me. There were two or three forests layered on top of each other. In the background, a smallish drone like from a harmonica. Then the only nice moment, when the whole environment slowly got eaten by computer glitches and static, but it was not brought to a logical conclusion, and we were back again with in your face pastoralism. The second track sampled birds from the Guadeloupe rainforest (I told you, I have that kind of ear) in a stammering loop, accompanied by the same three chords on a keyboard over and over. Holterbach did nothing but press play. Pretty boring.
The last set was from Jonathan Coleclough. In an unfortunate move, he began with another brook. I felt my heart sink into its shallow waters. As if to mock me, there were resonances from another harmonica. Do they all use the same patch? Luckily, things began to change, became more pointillistic. Little gongs, pings and tuned clicks and crackles. The harmonica changed to sitar-like drones, which now and then vanished into computer feedback. The brook slowly faded, thank god. When it was gone, the music was quite nice, digital temple music. The structure followed the Beethoven mode, ten minutes of exposition, ten minutes of fake endings … then for the real ending he held a nice, complex chord. Conciliatory finish to a mixed concert.
The Teufelsgeiger mode
Paolo Angeli’s modified Sardinian guitar is a thing of beauty. It has the head of a violin rammed into its guitar head, carrying a set of slack strings that lead to a double bass bridge glued unto the body right above the endpin of a cello. It has five footpedals that trigger metal claws which beat on the strings. It has a little motored ventilator inside which plucks at the strings in an ostinato. The whole thing seems so much extended techniques objectified that it comes as a shock, ten minutes into the concert, that one can actually play the thing. You know, it’s a musical instrument.
This was a duo with Jon Rose in the protestant church here. Very nice atmosphere, but if you now expect to read that they explored the resonances, ‘tis not so. They played a lot. Especially Rose (unsurprisingly, for those of you who know him) was all over the place. The centerpiece fittingly was a Rose solo and had him in his most unforgiving Teufelsgeiger mode.
Since they both went through their catalog of moves so quickly (Angeli threw crocodile clips all over the place), by the third track rote repetition had set in. Until the tantalising outro which was just toneless scraping noises coming and going in overlapping cycles and by far the best moment of the concert.
There were lots of notes harmed in the making of this music.
