This double CD release on Touch Tone presents a concert
recording that follows on from 2004’s Spire
– Organ Works Past, Present And Future. That
release saw the likes of Toshiya Tsunoda, Biosphere
and Chris Watson
explore the role and potential of the organ. Five of
the six pieces on this follow-up are performances of
contemporary compositions by Marcus Davidson, Andre
Jolivet, Liana Alexandra. The sequence is completed
by probably the most well known of the composers on
this disc, Henryk Gorecki. The music is striking, magical
even, in its power and bracing stridency. It is occasionally
reminiscent of Philip Glass’s works for the instrument,
perhaps most famously Koyaanisqatsi. For anyone
who has experienced an organ recital in a cathedral,
it is clear that no recording could beat experiencing
the music in the moment and physical space of the performance.
However, the quality of this recording is impressive
and at times it leaps out at the listener with a vigorous
power. Interestingly, there is also a fair amount of
ambient sounds: the reverberating clatter of footfalls,
coughs and audience movement… Instead of proving
to be irritatingly intrusive, these add a sense of life
and clarity to the musical experience.
The final three pieces are performed by contemporary
stars of the glitch/noise scenes; B.J.
Nilsen, Philip Jeck and Fennesz,
and are indicated as having taken place away from the
nave in a side chapel and the crypt. Nilsen’s
piece gradually builds into a buzzing miasma like a
circular saw patiently slicing through the toughest
of tree knots. As the sound mutates it becomes lost
in a deep storm of white noise and becomes gravel falling
down an endless scree slope. Halfway through the 30-minute
piece, this cacophony dies away to reveal the sustained
organ note that initiated proceedings. Five minutes
later a new, keening note appears accompanied by an
occasional clang like the hull of an ocean liner being
hammered in dry-dock.
Philip Jeck’s 44-minute piece begins with warm,
ululating tones pierced by what might just be (but probably
isn’t) the whistling of a kettle on a stove. At
the five-minute mark, the mesmerically building whirrs
and tones build are repeatedly interrupted by the sample
of a heavy metal riff that is played over and over again.
Accompanied by a loop of a swelling organ chord, perhaps
this is intended as comment upon the use of certain
musics to impress the listener. Whatever, the effect
is comic and strange, and as the layers of sound accumulate,
the experience becomes increasingly claustrophobic and
nightmare-like. At 16 minutes, the magisterial progression
of the organ loop starts to stutter and fade, only to
be supplanted by a sequence of descending chords which
is recognisable from Jeck’s contribution to Live
In Leuven, a trio recording with Jah Wobble and
Jaki Liebezeit. It is soon subsumed by a clanking, peg-legged
rhythm accompanied by organ that is both seething and
constricted. Think Terminator 2 meets Nosferatu
(in the crypt). Jeck’s piece feels cumulatively
like both a sonic sculpture and a travelogue at whose
heart is the roiling, screaming madness of the cathedral’s
organ tones which are eventually tempered in the final
few minutes by a sense of sympathetic absolution. Fennesz
concludes proceedings with organ samples that are massaged
at various rates to produce a warm river of sound, which
is reminiscent of Steve Reich’s percussion instruments,
only replaced with organ loops. The piece’s gentle
fluidity is gorgeous to behold, its architecture perhaps
mirroring that of the structure in which it was performed.
Highly recommended.
Colin Buttimer
4/5 |
