Peddling albums through eminent labels such as Tzadik
and Avant, David Shea presents aberrant, knotty amalgamations
of Eastern and Western musical technique, wedging the
sterile post-production of musique concrete and minimal
motifs of modern composition alongside Chinese traditional
music, Hong Kong cinema, exotica, and Latin Jazz.
For this particular work, players are endowed with violin
and piano and placed in different pairs and situations
for the sketching of each piece of music or scene. The
album takes classical arrangements and minimal electronics
as its fulcrum, and is less mercurial as a result, but
the odd spike of metallic percussion, outlandish sound
sample and ode to lounge jazz ensure a certain diversity
is upheld. As a practicing Buddhist, Shea's attempt
to crosshatch and uncloak these seemingly disparate
elements as mere veneers is none too surprising. The
musicians appear in complete control of their pitches
and the music unfolds by finding a harmony and then
coercing it into crisis or painful strains settled into
rhythmic exchange. When this occurs, seemingly contradictory
approaches, such as the big band jazz stomps and sharp
piano stabs of Exotique, seem strangely complementary
and dependent upon one another, perhaps articulating
the Buddhist claim that the ultimate stage of life is
not being or, in other words, independence, but rather
emptiness. It is a theme that runs rampant in Shea's
works. As viola screeches bounce off shards of noise
and feverish piano scales are interrupted by the din
of a crowd’s tempered applause, a deviously controlled
sense of chaos abounds.
Radio Weekend elaborates on this theme with
tenuous polyrhythmic shifts that are dappled with low
end piano murmuring, Morse code crackling and the babbling
of a brook; over a brief two-minute life-span, which
is the norm for this album, such elements are interspersed
and overlapped, until at last the piece seems a smouldering
swamp of glue. So many wild sonic flares sometimes means
these arrangements appear a trifle garish; and while
the spontaneous approach keeps the listener active and
engaged, they nevertheless have to swallow a sprinkling
of dry patches. Still, The Book Of Scenes distils
a vast climate, crisscrossed with lines of ascent and
decline.
Max Schaefer
3.8/5 |
