Lasse-Marc Riek – SAISON CONCRÈTE

Semperflorens

That Lasse-Marc Riek is one of the founders of Gruenrekorder is evident from the similarities between some of the atmospheres informing Saison Concrète and the vague, half-tangible depictions of diverse environments in Merzouga’s Mekong Morning Glory (see above). This 44-minute work emerges from a protracted silence, after which all the possible variations on what we already know on the subject are presented one after another: buzzing insects, far-flung droning, tinkling objects, whimpering dogs, rustling steps, rain, children, birds, reiterative aspects of unknown mechanical processes. But what sets this CD apart from the rest of the worthless crowd is the way in which Riek has composed the whole, attributing the right specific weight to every acoustic illustration and deciding which details to highlight. The consecutiveness of the events is as carefully scripted as a piece of theatre, each occurrence a definite character moving across the stage and flawlessly reciting a part. The brilliant finale – a barrel organ emerging from a sea of bells and choirs to seal the envelope with a popular waltz – would seem an appreciative nod to some of Christoph Heemann’s ironic twists. But Riek deserves better than mere comparisons: the smoothness of his work’s overall impact is directly proportional to the sense of involvement it generates in the listener. Tedium is not a factor.

Merzouga – MEKONG MORNING GLORY

Gruenrekorder

Those who think “Morning Glory” is the third course of “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” on Atom Heart Mother might like to know that’s it’s also a tropical vegetable (aka water spinach) native to South East Asia, which influenced Eva Pöpplein and Janko Hanushevsky (aka Merzouga) as they sailed down the Mekong river across Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in 2008. As for the musical outcome, the voyage represents an interesting stab at combining field recordings and processed instruments, with a prepared bass guitar the lone extra-environmental source. The gradual increase in sonic concentration maps the transition from unspoiled nature to downtown bedlam, as sinuous oneiric washes delineate a virgin landscape progressively morphing into the typical traffic-burdened accents of a messy borough in the midst of its daily activity, with a number of scenes underscored by customized low frequencies. Throughout the journey we’re greeted by noisy animals and humans, with children mixed well up front, while the river itself remains relatively quiet, apart from the roar of the waterfalls at the Cambodian border. It all sounds much better than an average day at the office.

Lucia Mense – ELECTRONIC COUNTERPOINT

Satelita

Lucia Mense specialises in an instrument – the recorder – which immediately brings back memories of unruly classrooms. Here in the land of bel canto, educational programmes by successive governments (“left” or “right”, it doesn’t matter – is there a difference?) have always considered music as good as junk, and most “students” behave accordingly, using cheap plastic recorders to create teacher-exasperating cooperative chaos. But Mense is German, and has subjected her instrument of choice (a wooden one) to a steady diet of diverse genres, with particular predilection for contemporary composers – my first introduction to her work was Phill Niblock’s “Lucid Sea” on Touch Three. The program here is reasonably varied, primarily characterized, as the album title suggests, by the incidence of electronics on live performance, theoretically improved by algorithms and real-time interactions. That doesn’t imply that a “remarkable” sticker can be liberally placed everywhere, though. While Ulrich Krieger’s “Black Smoker” and Manfred Stahnke’s “ImpansionExpansion” prepare a terrain for the flute to emit semi-dissonant fluctuations and extended resonances (natural and artificial), providing us with momentous acoustic imagery and (a bit of) emotional response, pieces such as Georg Hajdu’s “Tsunami” and Sascha Lino Lemke’s “[Re:re Record a:re]” come across as little more than intellectual exercises, compositional complexity compressed into somewhat inconsistent statements. Marc Sabat’s six-part “Erbsen” stands unpretentiously somewhere in the middle. In any case, Mense’s prowess as an instrumentalist is above criticism, and allows us to forgive the weaknesses while remembering the strengths.

Dick Wood – NOT FAR FROM HERE

pfMENTUM

Reedist Dick Wood is something of a legend in the Californian new jazz scene, described as an “inimitable musician / raconteur / provocateur and general disseminator of freewheeling artistry, love and cuisine” by Nels Cline. In this long-awaited release he fronts a quintet whose members can extract improvising material from a pinhead and make you feel they’re having a lot of fun doing it. The leader’s alto flirts and tussles with Dan Clucas’s cornet and flute impressively throughout, their heterogeneous conjunctions and vixenish allusions steeped in knowledge of the past. But putting the hype of the press release aside (practically the entire history of music is namechecked, though Sun Ra, Zappa and Mingus might be vague indications of where this stuff is heading), what’s exciting in Not Far From Here is how, on close listening, one can size up the individual participants’ contribution to the collective interplay. Marty Mansour’s drumming waits for events to unfold, creating suggestions and spaces for the musicians to dive in, while bassist Hal Onserud’s punchy clusters and the Supercollider-fueled unpredictability of Mark Trayle’s electronics push the energy levels even higher. It’s a spicy recipe, combining playing at exceptional technical heights with amusing ironic twists and genre-dissolving disengagement.

Irène Schweizer – TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Intakt

When Irène Schweizer sits alone at the keyboard in Zurich’s Tonhalle in April 2011, two months before her 70th birthday, the magic in the air materializes fast. Broad-shouldered fairy tales are narrated with the impassioned grace of someone intimately acquainted with the instrument, acting as the causal factor of sound’s chemical reaction with the surrounding air molecules. Tackling a programme including affectionate homages (of which Carla Bley’s “Ida Lupino” and Thelonious Monk’s “Four In One” are both outstanding), the pianist questions the very meaning of the term “interpretation”, turning known quantities into utterly individual expression, a combination of concrete philosophy and extrasensory intuition – imbued with harmonic permissiveness – lying at the basis of convincing execution. And then there’s the veritable spiritual restitution of Schweizer’s own material: “Hüben Ohne Drüben”, chimerical and exact at one and the same time, “Jungle Beat III”, a sabotage of jazz triviality mixing wit and technical skill, and the masterpiece “Bleu Foncé”, an archetype of invigorating pulse and earnest polyphony that should be used as a tutorial in music schools. The older she gets, the better she plays.

Nils Petter Molvær – BABOON MOON

Thirsty Ear

The title of Baboon Moon‘s opening track, “Mercury Heart”, is an immediate (involuntary?) nod to David Torn’s Cloud About Mercury, a genuine milestone that came out back in 1987. It seems trumpeter Molvær and comrades Stian Westerhus (guitar) and Erland Dahlen (drums) have got themselves stuck in the same year – there’s a been-there-done-that sigh of resignation to these nine tracks, plagued by over-processed guitars, clichéd loops and Mark Isham-meets-Jon Hassell fog. Not to mention the headache of those whopping drum ‘n’ bass patterns. With its Marc Anderson-like steel drums (Steve Tibbetts’ percussionist, in case you forgot) and pseudo-theremin (“Blue Fandango”, possibly the record’s lowest point), the “texture” is straight out of a National Geographic documentary, complete with fake drama, weedy lyricism and predictable crescendos. An obvious kowtow to ECM at every available opportunity. Add a purportedly “suggestive” piece with superimposed female voices and a black and white close-up of the leader with serious facial attitude and voilà, the product is ready to be played nice and loud while driving on the highway in your 4×4.

Daunik Lazro – SOME OTHER ZONGS

Ayler

Here is the work of a man who relishes isolation, throwing out impulses with arresting fervour, each discharge of blood-and-guts cruciality a direct and dramatic connection with the heart. When an artist’s life is genuinely devoted to an instrument, there’s no danger of compromise, and in these six live baritone sax tracks, recorded between 2010 and 2011 in Le Mans (at the Europa Jazz Festival) and Paris (at the church of Saint-Merry), every pitch, every harmonic, every bodily process projects an almost painful tendency to the affirmation of truth. Ranging from the illustration of inner conflict – occasionally adding strained utterances to the quivering reeds, as in “Zong At Saint-Merry 3″ – to the quest for physical answers in the in-depth acoustic investigation of a specific location, Lazro’s mix of lyricism and dirty-nailed humanity, perfectly symbolized by the desperate raucous cries heard halfway through “Zong At Saint-Merry 4″, might trouble those who approach a solo saxophone album expecting to hear something familiar. Here instead they’ll find a receptacle of uncomfortable feelings disclosed in utter severity. What a splendid record.

Bonnie Barnett Group – IN BETWEEN DREAMS

pfMENTUM

Bonnie Barnett’s cheerful round face, accompanied by her permutations of ironically twisted jazz sensuality, deadpan soliloquies and made-up texts, is a welcome presence in the room. In Between Dreams is a classy set by the Los Angeles vocalist, who exercises her renowned skill in the company of reedman Dick Wood, bassist Hal Onserud and percussionist Garth Powell. They motivate her throughout a network of cultivated intuitions, their communication free from rhetorical staleness and permeated by the legitimate intention of transmitting artistry in fine expression. It’s not just fake poems and chomped syllables, though. “Matisse” and “Nothingness” are settings of, respectively, Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre, delivered unsmilingly as the guys around look for openings to tickle the leader under her dress of seriousness. Mission nearly accomplished when they turn stern recitals into absurdist scenes of sorts, our attention partially stolen by their impulsive nimbleness and awareness of finer details. A statement of intent against warts-and-all shoddiness, needing several spins to be successfully absorbed.

Janek Schaefer – PHOENIX & PHAEDRA HOLDING PATTERNS

Spekk

Janek Schaefer’s albums constitute a remedy against the cynicism spreading among the arbiters of avant garde taste who consider the act of listening within their own selves a deadly sin. Phoenix & Phaedra Holding Patterns, dedicated to the composer’s youngest offspring, was conceived as a piece to be played at the back of an auditorium, the stage left empty in order for the audience to realize that the sound, not the performer, is what really counts. A surround speaker system reproduces a “classic” superimposition of static harmonic layers generated through transistor radios alimented by a FM transmitter, a multitude of found sounds (including spoken snippets) and a sruti box whose mantric droning informs extended segments. The music moves across different stages of evocative imagery, textural grain and definition constantly varying, forlorn loops and melancholic arpeggios entwined inside a blur of reverberation. Crackle, hiss and what sounds like it could be a vacuum cleaner appear and fade away, as chordal washes in wavering calm introduce poignant flashes of soul-enhancing limitlessness. 2008′s British Composer Of The Year knows how to balance intuition, sentiment and physical reaction in the conscientious listener, the spectrum of our deepest feelings becoming broader with the passage of time.

Francisco López + Novi_Sad – TITANS

Gradual Hate

Manipulating the same source materials – environmental recordings made in Greece’s Ancient Olympia region – López and Novi_Sad (real name Thanasis Kaproulias) have created entirely different soundscapes, both compositionally brilliant and psychologically engrossing (high-quality headphones are recommended). In “Untitled #249″ the Spaniard lets a sublime faraway chorale evolve from initial subsonic activity, subsequently shifting the frequency balance through the use of spiky highs and metamorphic radiations, a veritable flea market in hell. The texture becomes progressively thinner until we’re left with barely perceptible signals at the borders of tinnitus preceding a classic finish in total silence. But what a difference between this breathtaking suspension and the boredom elicited by today’s abusers of hush. Novi_Sad’s “Ellipsis” leaves the original substance visible enough, the sequence of events beginning with a spectacular rumbling storm with relative downpour. Dexterous equalization highlights the “right” hues in the drumming reverberations of the water, and brings fantastic results in at least two extended segments, which sound respectively like a mesmerizing initiation rite and a superimposition of every existing type of chord played by a gliding string section. The volume rises to full throttle only for the ecstasy to be abruptly cut short at the end, leaving us pondering for quite a while. To quote a favourite philosopher of mine, come on the amazing journey and learn all you should know. A milestone release from a splendidly-named label.