In 2004, after a disagreement with collaborator Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe left the core AMM trio, whose other member, John Tilbury, remained with Prévost in AMM. Before then, Tilbury and Rowe had been playing together in various lineups for almost forty years. This duo recording, made live on December 17, 2010, at Les Instants ChavirésContinue reading “Keith Rowe & John Tilbury. E.E. Tension And Circumstance.”
Genre Archives
Eric Chenaux. Guitar & Voice.
Guitar & Voice, Eric Chenaux’s fourth album for Constellation, is arguably his most comprehensively representative recording to date, unselfconsciously connecting disparate parts of his musical personality. In addition to placing his delicate songs into a nakedly intimate and idiosyncratic soundworld, this disc also constitutes the best portrait of Chenaux as a wildly imaginative and extremelyContinue reading “Eric Chenaux. Guitar & Voice.”
Six Heads. Cardboard Oracle.
William Davison and his five sous-chefs have been cooking up—yes, this disc is thoroughly cooked—their signature stews for over a decade now. This vinyl release documents their improvisatory web-toed amblings through the mutant sonic kitchen: each member chopping and dicing various ingredients—both delicious and repugnant—while Davison hovers over the frothing pot, deciding the exact proportions.Continue reading “Six Heads. Cardboard Oracle.”
Brandon LaBelle and Cládia Martinho, Editors. Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear, Vol. 2.
Site of Sound Volume 2 follows a decade after the first volume, a period in time that has seen an increase in the activity of artists working with both sound and architecture. As LaBelle points out in the preface, the decade has also seen more discussion about the idea of the public and of artistsContinue reading “Brandon LaBelle and Cládia Martinho, Editors. Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear, Vol. 2.”
NINA. Place Where the Trees Stand in the Water.
This ten-inch record documents a live performance of NINA—Chris Cogburn, Bonnie Jones, and Liz Tonne—at the 2009 Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas. The trio explores their converging timbres—Cogburn on bowed and scraped percussion, Jones on electronics, and Tonne on voice—in a performance that highlights their subtle nudges of texture and the limits of expression andContinue reading “NINA. Place Where the Trees Stand in the Water.”
Nightjars. The Natural Playmate.
The Natural Playmate, apparently the final release in the Rat-Drifting catalogue, is a series of extremely concise and focused improvisations performed by Eric Chenaux (guitar) and Jason Benoit (banjo). The familiar misshapen melancholy found on many Rat-Drifting albums runs through this entire disc, yet amidst this sticky tremble and slouch there is an extremely refinedContinue reading “Nightjars. The Natural Playmate.”
Les Rhinocéros. Les Rhinocéros.
The eponymous debut album of the young trio Les Rhinocéros from Washington D.C. is a crazy, playful musical collage. On one track, birds sing, an elderly singer croaks a folk ditty, loops pulsate, a guitar’s spiky notes seem bent on puncturing a waterbed, a drumkit rolls and hisses, and then suddenly a klezmer tune emerges,Continue reading “Les Rhinocéros. Les Rhinocéros.”
OK.Quoi?! Contemporary Arts Festival. Sackville, New Brunswick. July 25–31 2011.
The mandate of OK.Quoi?! is to showcase contemporary art by bringing it to the people outside of gallery walls. This raises an important question—are people willing to allow contemporary artwork to exist in public spaces? Community member and artist Elizabeth von Rosenbach thinks so. “Having the work outside,” she maintains, “gives it a certain amountContinue reading “OK.Quoi?! Contemporary Arts Festival. Sackville, New Brunswick. July 25–31 2011.”
Freida Abtan. The Hands of the Dancer/The Temple of the Dreamer.
With her second release, Montreal-based composer Freida Abtan expands her very personalized idiom of abstract electronica. While she has assimilated the clarity of sound processing and the bold gestures of the Montreal acousmatic scene, her music is haunted by a resonant gothic murkiness that envelops the listener. This base of metallic reverberations is complemented atContinue reading “Freida Abtan. The Hands of the Dancer/The Temple of the Dreamer.”
Hammeriver.
Hammeriver is an ensemble brought together by Australian harpist Clare Cooper to pay tribute to the lasting influence of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda. It is an interesting collection of players for this type of project, incorporating Austrian improvisers Christof Kurzmann and Werner Dafeldecker, plus two members of the great Australian band the Necks, as well asContinue reading “Hammeriver.”