Saturday, January 05, 2013

Marc Behrens - Unit (and/OAR)

A 42-minute recording of a sound installation wherein speakers hung over fiver pair of frame drums emitted pre-recorded sounds from several sources (including rocks, crickets and cymbals), causing them to resonate. Man, would I love to have experienced this in situ. The sounds themselves are wonderful, having a rounded, liquid aspect, the fullness of the drums' tone reverberating thickly in the room. The sequencing is large-scale irregular though with small nuggets of iteration, if not "rhythms" per se. There's abundant space between segments, imparting a Noh kind of feeling (though the inspiration derived from a trip through the Qinghai province of China). The listener feels (gently) propelled between the speakers; given their appearance, it's not hard to think in pinball terms, a slow, soft pinball machine. Again, the desire to more directly experience the installation is quite strong, but the disc performs quite ably and fills one's room with fascinating and intricate sounds.

Giovanni di Domenico/Arve Henriksen/Tatsuhisa Yamamoto - Distare Sonanti (either/OAR)

Di Domenico (piano, Fender Rhodes, synths, electronics, editing), Henrikesn (trumpets, electronics), Yamamoto (drums, percussion). Leaps into a post-60s Miles thing from the get go and attractively so, with Henriksen (from Supersilent) veering toward a much more Jon Hassell-like approach. It's almost unfair using a Fender Rhodes--those of us of a certain age are cast directly back to the glory days of Corea and Jarrett with Miles. The trio play so solidly and impart just enough of a new spin on things that they manage to pull off what could easily have been a pastiche. Listeners familiar with and enamored of that tract between Miles of that period and Fourth World-era Hassell will find much to enjoy here. And that includes me.

and/OAR

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Although,the Fender Rhodes is great,I still prefer,The Wurlitzer electric,which was never deemed as 'hip'...

But,listening to Ray Charles play a Wurly on,'What'd I Say';hearing is believing.