Let’s pick a few descriptors out of a hat here, just to match what’s going on with this disc…deconstructionist, anarchic, proto-avant-garde, experimental. Or, more to the point, the sound of a busload of jazz musicians driving off a cliff. On fire. Robert Pepper of the noise/experimental collective PAS gathers a small crew of like-minded adventurers and assails jazz structure on Two. By “assails” I mean “clubs it to within an inch of its life with wild abandon.” Let me say right off the bat that this isn’t for everyone. Bring your high tolerance for improvisation, load yourself a bag full of “Huh?” and give it a try. In places this crew almost adheres to a listenable structure, as with the opener, “Swift Time DNA” and the early stages of “Flower Cacophony” before it gets torn to anti-music shreds, but for the most part it’s about jamming wildly around the concept. There’s humor at work here, buried under the multiple-car-crash sensibility. Pepper and his cohorts are playing with ideas of jazz’s free-ness, the sense that often informs the artform that no one’s really steering the ship, that the sound is just veering wildly of its own accord and will find its way back sooner or later. At the root, though, there’s some sort of mad intelligent design at work. That is, if you can stand it long enough to try to find it. This will not be easy.
Find it at CD Universe.
On his first release since his 2007 debut, In Waking Moments, Justin Vanderberg ushers his listeners through gossamer-winged ambient drifts and homages to the “masters of the sequencer” who inspired his own musical explorations. Vanderberg’s modus is to craft drifts that are as substantial as a cloud–airy, high whispers of chord–and layer them into rich, calming musical breaths. Over these he places minimal touches of more concrete sound. Take the deep flow of “67,” for example, where a pair of notes patiently rise and descend in a simple call-and-response match across the expanse of lower-note pads. Or the graceful “Drops,”which Vanderberg accents with rain-glistened piano notes and a light touch of twirling flute. Vanderberg’s comparatively uptempo pieces work well, too, although “uptempo” might be too strong a word for these rhythmically laid-back songs. “From Below,” where Vanderberg is ably assisted by Spotted Peccary head Jon Jenkins, kicks the disc off in gear with a steady, borderline-tribal drum line that pulses through a rising narrative. Jenkins’ presence here, musically and as co-composer, definitely calls to mind the cinematic sound that’s the signature of his work with David Helpling, but does so without over-riding Vanderberg. “The Path” brings keys and light hand percussion to play with the washes in a mix that will likely set the toes tapping. The title track is a classic sequencer piece, squared-off math constructs pinging and bouncing in a mix of rhythmic permutations. A distinct homage without just sounding fawnish. Synthetic Memories is a very soft disc overall, which lets the punchier elements, the twitching sequencer lines and percussion, pop just a bit more–but never to the point of taking the light away from the carefully constructed drifts. It’s a great low-volume listen that stands up to scrutiny, and it doesn’t wear out its welcome in repeat plays. Expect to listen to this one often. Synthetic Memories is an excellent and long-overdue return from Justin Vanderberg.
Dark, claustrophobic ambient is in store for you on Twilight Transmissions’ Subterranean. This is the musical equivalent of walking through a bad neighborhood in a moonless midnight, assailed by the constant certainty that something bad is going to happen at any moment. Christopher Alvarado takes aggressive beats and makes them plod through the murky sound on tracks like “Palace of Silence” and “Tenebrous.” They’re more like a threat of imminent harm than a rhythm, time signatures stomped out in iron-shod boot-falls. And then there are spaces like “Essence of Dust” and “Eternal Remote,” pieces that exist just to test limits, to put us very much alone somewhere with only unease to keep us company to see what our minds conjure out of the depth shadow. The collection of sound sources at play here make you take notice and drag you in. They’re uncomfortable, mutilated industrial sounds, the collective grinding of rust-aged machinery and jagged edges–dangerously compelling sounds that, craftily modulated and manipulated by Alvarado, keep Subterranean from being just another dark ambient album. A disc well worth enduring, Subterranean will reward you for your bravery with a deeply engaging, if not entirely safe, journey.
Meteo Xavier harnesses the power of the computer to carve out eight distinct soundworlds on his first full-length release, Espers. Xavier’s touting of the disc as “a unique, professional, conceptual album of music [made] on a single computer” could be seen as a warning sign, the worrisome “look what I can do at home!” mindset that sometimes plagues electronic music, but as Espers moves through its octet of identities, the statement becomes more “this is what can be done with a single computer.” Not only are Xavier’s creations workably distinct from one another, they also alter their appearance as they go along, like movements in a set of 8-minute electronic symphonies. The first track, “Tritochiark–Vestigial Dreamcatcher for the Heavenly Integer” (each track here has a novel-length title) begins in darkness with minor-chord choral voices, temple bells and discordant flute–but only for 90 seconds. A silent pause of nearly 10 seconds and then it restarts with lighter, chime-like tones and a subtle beat. Late in track a guitar takes the forefront and eases the flow down to its finish. The first taste of Xavier’s diversity comes as soon as the second track kicks in. “Ornamekias–A Slight Wave from the Hill Above” drops in with a club-friendly beat and a chill attitude. Airy pads support the background as Xavier lets the drumbeat control the feeling. Everything else takes a quiet backseat, all the elements getting brief moments to step forward. The shift here comes with just under 90 seconds to go. The beat drops, the airiness falls away, and we’re left with a simple combination of a sequenced rhythm cadence and a melody riding on a sound somewhere between an electronic sax and an electronic voice. None of these changes, whether between tracks or within them, ever come as an unpleasant jolt. They make sense. The changes between tracks are just a matter of looking out a new window. “Amenemhetopelzai–Ancient King Lost in Memories” takes us to the rainforest with hawk-circle flutes and, for lack of a better term, a Central American feel in the percussion. It has a strong New Age feel (my brain is racing for the reference, and it’s escaping me). “Icidina–Royal Highshiva of the Glacierplains” grabs hold of a spacemusic feel and bolsters it with more flute and glistening chimes. It builds in drama, gaining power and imagery as it goes. When this one hits its breakdown point, it almost comes as a relief. (And reminds me, with its bass-pulse bottom line and whistling higher tones, of Ministry of Inside Things.) “Navi Whisperwilde–The Forest Sprite and the Mana Spirit in Eternal Recurrence” offers a combination of bouncy sequencer and windswept pads that reaches into my electronic-music-listening brain and pulls forward feelings of Ray Lynch crossed with Suzanne Ciani–the playful meeting the graceful in a relaxing combination. Espers closes with a 10-minute piano piece, “Sagatellah–The One Who Waits for the Life to Come,” featuring pianist and composer Michael Huang. It’s pure New-Age pleasantry, a nice organic touch at the end of a long electronic voyage. Even here the feeling shifts as the piece progresses (it’s nearly 10 minutes long), a wind-down concerto that moves through Winston-esque passages and neo-classic frameworks with equal grace.
Michael Allison, who records as Darshan Ambient, has had a widely varied career, from playing in rock bands with the likes of Richard Hell to knocking out 80s post-punk pop to crafting melodic New Age and ambient music. Now, with Dream in Blue, he sets his sights on his jazz influences, notably Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and creates a soft-edged fusion CD that’s quite simply one of the best releases of 2011. Allison warms up the listener with “Upon Reflection,” which starts off feeling like it would be at home on previous releases like A Day Within Days or Autumn’s Apple–a cool downtempo groove with twinkling keys and what sound like electronic drums. As you listen, though, the drumbeats begin to change, becoming analog and picking up more of a shuffle-and-crash affair with an unmistakable jazz pedigree. It’s a “welcome to Dream in Blue” moment that gets reinforced as soon as the trumpet kicks in on the next track, “When Will My Someday Come?” (A nod to the classic Miles version of “Someday My Prince Will Come.”) This is a straight-up jazz track with a live-combo feel that belies the fact that everything here is played by Allison, from from keys to drums to trumpet to guitar. And let’s talk about the guitar, not just here but through the disc. While on this track it’s got a viable classic jazz tone, mathematically perfect runs picking out the melody, work your way toward “Sahara Sun” to hear Allison unleash his six-stringed beast across drumwork that would do Art Blakey proud. The track works even more due to the quiet, pastoral melody ambling innocently along in the back as the guitar builds to a wild, fuzzy howl that drops out at exactly the right time. He shows his guitar’s soulful side as it smoothly dovetails with a classic slow-beat rhythm section on “As You Were.” (The bass here is thick enough to chew–just the way I like it.) The guitar trades leads with piano, played with late-night-lounge cool. The piano is at its most stunning on “Silent Smile (Angelo’s Song).” A romantic solo line slowly picks up quiet strings and bass. Midway, Allison brings in the trumpet, high and proud, to speak a short phrase that feels weighted with true emotion. In the last 30 seconds he reverts to solo piano save for one final chord. An amazing track. I like that Allison also keeps his ambient side in play here with the meditative “Waiting on a Dead Man’s Horse,” with its long, watery pads and ringing wind chime tones.
Hypnagogue Music Reviews 