Andrew Pekler’s third full-length is an exercise
in structuralism: piano vignettes from Morton Feldman
are employed, decomposed and recomposed in such a way
that certain functions become all the more visible.
A grim editing style is on display as Pekler cuts chords
without mercy, rarely allowing a cluster to hang about
or rest in its own identity. Distant melodies flutter
to the foreground now and again, but are chopped up
and granulated, choked and are more a tease than anything
else, a gasp of air before the next jagged wave of sonorous
notes, laptop belches and mix board squeals come crashing
down upon one’s head. It is an approach that evokes
the dislocation, sensory overload and extremes of delirium
that lay coiled in Feldman’s compositions.
By focusing on the murky buzzes and saw-toothed edges
of Feldman’s music, Pekler alters fragments that,
although perhaps meaningless in themselves, entail great
changes to the sound on a whole. Pealing, buzzing drone
fields are populated by sustained string vibratos, asymmetrical
loops and shimmering high register rustles that prove
strangely hypnotic in their drunk, slurred warbling.
After these pensive tidal surges ebb around upper-register
enharmonic whistling for three tracks, Pale Fyr
introduces nocturnal noises wrapped in dense fogs of
warm hum, suggestive of a troubled stillness. Its a
territory explored to greater depth on Mirrorise,
as sadly isolated piano notes chirp away at the higher
registers, punctuated by swathes of tightly edited feedback
and the deep, rolling call of sirens beckoning the credulous
traveller to their bewitching doom. Soon thereafter,
however, the wood tones and comforting earthiness is
discarded and, like a traveller lost in the forest,
it is back to square one, that is to say, amidst tactile
crumbles, austere gong-like sounds and lowercase explorations
of static and hiss.
One would not err to label these excursions musique
concrète or, indeed, to place it amiably alongside
the efforts of John Duncan, Janek Schaefer or even Kaffe
Matthews. As may sometimes be the case with these artists,
by about midway through the nearly continual din borders
on maddening and yet, as the final yawning drone wafts
out of sight, the impression left is that this work
was wholly engrossing. As an imitated object, Strings
+ Feedback makes something appear which remained
invisible in the original work, something which finds
curious corridors and contrasts in an aged, often seen
structure.
Max Schaefer
3.5/5 |
