Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet at Cafe Oto, 20/04/11

Ever the contrarian, there were in fact eleven members of Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet for their three day residency at Cafe Oto. Eleven. This was more than an attempt to simply be “one louder”: in an interview conducted for the BBC beforehand, tentet member Ken Vandermark was rightly insisting Brötzmann’s reputation as the crazy shrieking sax player was – at least in part – a lazy journalistic invention. There is so much more to him than this; even when paired with Japanese noise guitarist Keiji Haino at Oto the previous week, the subtler side of his talents was still apparent. What the big band format in fact gives Brötzmann, aside from a financial headache, is sonic possibilities, different formations of musicians, from solos, duos, trios, quartets, right up to and including the full force of all eleven blasting away at once. Over the three days, the formal lineups included, as well as the tentet+1, Joe McPhee’s Survival Unit, a brass quartet, the Sonore saxophone trio, as well as solo sets from tuba player Per Åke Holmlander, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, and the bass player Kent Kessler. And that is before we get to the countless combinations which assembled and disassembled organically during the course of the big band sets. Read the rest of this review over at The Liminal.

Ryoji Ikeda’s Datamatics v2.0 at the Barbican, 18/04/11

This was a show to make the head spin. In some ways, this was to be expected; the art of Ryoji Ikeda is quite an extreme audio-visual event. The sounds he uses go right to the very limits of human perception, while the images are of starkest black and white. Sections of seeming quiet and inactivity slam into thunderously loud strobe-lit passages which contain far too much for the brain to comprehend. In a sense, this is an art installation with rock show dynamics, which probably explains the excitement engendered in some members of the Barbican crowd, who whooped deliriously as Ikeda took us on this extraordinary journey which ultimately touched on concepts so grand they were dizzying. Read the rest of this review over at The Liminal.

“Look Mum, No Hands – Volume 1″ – a mix by John Chantler

The Luminous Ground is the concluding part of the architect Christopher Alexander’s four volume treatise The Nature Of Order, a project which took him from considerations of architecture right through to musings on the intersection between matter and spirit, between order and chaos, between logic and emotion. John Chantler has borrowed the title for his new album for the Room40 label, an album which sees him explore some of the issues Alexander raises via the medium of his modular synthesizer, in particular the notion of machines making music, music which is somehow imbued with life. And he has succeeded: despite the fact that this music was created using the synthesizer’s logical processes, electrical signals being patched from module to module, there is an unmistakeable warm, emotional core to the album; and despite the inherent unpredictability of the output, Chantler manages to create a cohesive sense of narrative. This is skillful stuff. To mark its release, we asked John to put together a mix for us which celebrated the modular synthesizer in all its modulating, oscillating glory. And here it is: a selection which includes not just pieces by pioneers like Eliane Radigue and Keith Fullerton Whitman, but also a couple of his own as-yet-unreleased works. You’ll find it over at The Liminal, of course.

(photo by the Liminal’s Andrew Bowman)

Jóhann Jóhannsson, The Miners’ Hymns (Fat Cat)

“I’m still down there where the seams are deep
Digging a hole, away in the coal, go down…go down”
Ewan MacColl, The Big Hewer

The opening of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s latest album features the sound of a church organ playing huge, slow, mournful chords, rising in volume as if asking a question in increasing desperation. The call goes out into a huge and seemingly empty chamber, echoing and gradually falling away into a dark silence. After a few minutes, it finds an answer, a two note response from a solitary trumpet, initially hesitant, but gradually growing in strength. Still here. Still here. Still here. The church is Durham Cathedral, and the brass is provided by members of what was once the band of the nearby Pelton Fell Colliery. The Pelton Fell Colliery was sunk into the hill in that locality in 1835, and the men of the village served it until 1965, when the mine finally fell silent forever. The colliery was a prop for the whole village, and when it snapped, much else came down with it: the Miner’s Institute, the working men’s club, the two pubs that the miners frequented, and the entire livelihood and social fabric of the village in a foreshadowing of the events of the early 1980s. Read the rest of this post over at The Liminal.

Viral Mutations: An interview with Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto

Through their four collaborative projects to date, the German experimental artist Carsten Nicolai, operating under his Alva Noto pseudonym, and the Japanese pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, have explored the space between the acoustic and the electronic, and between music and noise. In doing so, they have not just invented a language, but continued to refine its grammar and syntax. After their last release _utp saw them expanding their tonal palette, by working with Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern, they have pared the sound back to its basic elements for their new piece S. In advance of its premiere at London’s Roundhouse on 12 May as part of a showcase for Nicolai’s Raster-Noton label, I spoke to them about how their working relationship had changed over the years, and how that working relationship had changed them. Read the interview over at The Liminal.

Keiji Haino and Voltigeurs at Cafe Oto, 09/04/11

In the run up to this show, someone told me that Keiji Haino once insisted upon playing so loud that the sound engineer at the gig quit in disgust. Someone else told me that, despite the volume he plays at, he thinks earplugs should be banned at his shows (Oto, having somewhat more sense, dispensed them for free). What is the purpose of this merciless pursuit of maximum volume all? And why does the audience willingly submit to it? Despite the forewarnings, I parted with my cash for the first of two sold out nights of a mini-residency which were to match the Japanese avant-garde guitarist with two rather different practitioners of the loud arts: Matthew Bowers’s Voltigeurs project, and on the next night the fiery German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann. The evening which paired him with Bower was to show just how important a weapon volume can be, both in the form of a sustained barrage of noise and in short, dramatic explosions, but also how it can be so easily sapped of its power if handled carelessly. Read the rest of this review over at The Liminal.

Entr’acte at Cafe Oto 31/03/11

The name of the Entr’acte record label translates as between acts: the gap between parts of a play, the precisely measured silence, the purposeful incidental. The label shares that mixture of the seemingly unassuming with the highly designed, inviting the listener to pay close attention to a microscopic level of detail. Just look at the releases: the typography may initially appear like an unremarkable monospace font, but examine it more closely: it is a customised version specifically created for the job by label boss Allon Kaye.  The packaging too is unusual, vacuum-sealed so that the foil and plastic cling to the LP/CD/cassette; at first glance there isn’t a lot to see other than the shape of the medium, but then you notice the beauty, the way the silver sinks into the spindle hole, or that the sticker on the side of a cassette bulges through. But above all, consider the effort that must go into producing these, of forcefully squeezing out every last drop of air, and think about why they bother. I’ve already mentioned (in the intro to this mix that Kaye produced for The Liminal) that there seems to be a comment on the freshness of the contents, and even almost on the futility and artificiality of the process of recording improvised music: this was a one-time only event, which just happens to have been captured and preserved for eternity. This sort of music is therefore arguably best experienced in a live setting. And so to this Entr’acte label showcase at Cafe Oto, with performances by Adam Sonderberg, Olivia Block, Lee Gamble, John Wall and Alex Rodgers, where such was the level of attention to detail that even the traditional Cafe Oto marker-pen-scribble-on-the-back-of-the-hand-on-entry had been replaced by a custom produced E31 label/date stamp. Read the rest of this post at The Liminal.

Liminal Minimals – April 2011

Half a dozen short-form reviews by me went up recently in a post over at The Liminal: new albums by Eleh, Julia Hulsmann Trio, Grails, Seasons (Pre-Din), Russell Haswell and Tape. Also features reviews by Rich, Matt and Andrew of some great albums by the likes of Phaedra, Ekoplekz and Cleared. Read them here.

Ghédalia Tazartès and Rashad Becker

The London public’s appetite to be challenged knows no boundaries: here we had two consecutive sold out, well-received nights of avant garde music from relatively unheralded French musicians. Michel Chion (who played the previous night in what I’ve heard was an immersive ten speaker musique concrete experience) and Ghédalia Tazartès are two outsider figures who have been known to each other for decades, if not necessarily to the wider public. Thanks to a reissue programme by the Italian label Alga Marghen, Tazartès, the more obscure of the two, has had an increased level of attention in recent years, but I still didn’t meet anyone before this show who really knew quite what to expect (and I talked to plenty). Read the rest of this review over at The Liminal.