Ed Lawes springs out of nowhere, scaring the cattle
and holding onto his liner notes much too tightly. This
man needs an old fashioned bobby to raise his hand,
palm outwards and say NO! to him. Take for example the
following (brief) quote from the liner notes: '... from
a minimal range of means (the returned trumpets at the
beginning) to ‘a’ maximum range (a maximum
within the limits I have set) (at their most... 3 violins,
3 double basses, 3 clarinets, 3 tenor saxophones, 3
trumpets all retuned into quartertones instead of semitones
as the smallest unit of interval/harmony)...'. Such
obsessive detailing doesn’t bode well for the
music it describes. However.
Actually Real begins in Autechre
airspace, its rhythms all sudden surges, left turns
and momentary sustains. It is over too quickly, succeeded
by something altogether sparser: More Time Honoured
sounds like it is played on multiple cellos and hovers
plaintively in the lower registers. It is an interesting
companion piece/contrast to the opener. The music continues
into starker territory still with Bowed/Caused
which heralds a partial return to electronics convincingly
mixed with struck gongs and bowls. And murmured words.
Lawes’s music paints pictures of bleak, lonely
landscapes. Brief Junk includes a welcome reappearance
of rhythm - however unpredictable the tempo itself is
- which continues into Aclear. Halfway through,
the percussion seems to turn to mist and float away.
It is the contrast between acoustic/orchestral/modern
and electronic/percussive that makes this music effective;
one without the other would be a significantly less
engaging experience. There's a lot of space (silence)
here, married to sparse instrumentation which alternately
stretches and keens like queasy hymns.
14 Tracks/Pieces recalls the less jazzy parts
of Spring Heel Jack's recent forays into the worlds
of free improvisation on Masses & Amassed.
This isn’t easy music; it is brave, singular,
even perhaps courageous. Perhaps to the unenthusiastic
these pieces will sound like laboratory experiments,
too cool and clinical by far. To others, they’ll
generously repay persistence.
Colin Buttimer
3.5/5 |
