ERLAND DAHLEN
Rolling Bomber
HUBROCD2512/HUBROLP3512
Hubro 2012
07 Tracks. 35mins44secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

Having worked with an impressive list of artists across a wide array of genres (from Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset or Nils Petter Molvær to Hanne Hukkelberg, Mike Patton or as part of rock band Madrugada), Norwegian drummer and percussionist Erland Dahlen steps out in the limelights with his first album as a solo artist. Released on the decidedly inspired Hubro Music, Rolling Bomber was recorded early last year in Oslo during three sessions with long term collaborators Jens Petter Nilsen and Hallvard Wennersberg Hagen, who both regularly officiate as Xploding Plastix, and was mastered by former Deathprod mastermind Helge Sten.

The album takes its name from Dahlen’s main instrument here, a vintage Slingerland Rolling Bomber drum kit dating back from World War II, which had the particularity of having some of its parts made of wood instead of brass, copper, nickel and steel which were all required for the war effort, resulting in its sound being warmer than traditional kits. To complement his sonic palette, Dahlen plays anything from musical saw, bowed cakeform with strings and megaphone to a vast collection of steeldrums, logdrums, tank drums, timpani, bells, kalimba and cuicas, upon which he adds discreet electronic touches.

Rolling Bomber is as varied and open as Dahlen’s career, taking from rock, ambient, drone or avant-jazz and. As he expertly blends them together, he defines areas of various intensity which range from haunting (Funeral, a piece remixed by Hagen), brooding (Dragon) or sombre (Pyramid) to poetic and dreamy (Flower Power), hectic (Monkey) and hypnotic (Piratman, Germany).

The scope of this record is matched by its textural richness. Drums, expectedly occupy an important place throughout, but the assortment of bells and percussions used here renders these pieces in a variety of tones, at times evoking spellbinding gamelan rhythms, at others the motorik drive of Krautrock. Dahlen’s use of the musical saw, an instrument which has been part of his range for years, on Flower Power and Germany, adds an eerie touch to the record, while Funeral, with its deep rumbling or grinding noises and sparse electronic touches, is by far the most atmospheric piece on here.

Rolling Bomber exists in a world of its own, without clear influences or roots, yet Erland Dahlen creates a rather impressive and consistent soundtrack as he finely balances his pieces between sheer energy and more delicate moments.

4.2/5

Hubro Music
Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

In the fifteen years since they formed Alog, Norwegian musicians Espen Sommer Eide and Dag-Are Haugan have released some extremely original and fascinating records, made from a vast array of acoustic and electronic instruments, most of which they build themselves, With their new album, their fifth, they have worked with a number of other musicians and involved them in the creative process. In its complete version, the album stretches over four LPs and 2 and a half hours. Here, Alog talk about their formative years, how the new album came together, working with collaborators and how playing live has to be approached very differently.

It’s been quite a while since your last record was released. Besides working on the new album, what have you been up to?
Espen Sommer Eide: It is not important for us to release something every year. We like to take our time, and also like to bring some fresh ideas and directions before we are ready to release something. This of course often means that we need to program new software, build instruments and experiment from the ground up before we are happy.

What are your respective backgrounds? Did you grow up in families where music was important? How did you start making music?
ESE: Well, I definitely grew up in a musical home. My father played in the Norwegian prog rock band Popol Vuh (actually got into a lawsuit with the German band over that name…) and my aunt played classical oboe, and during my childhood, she taught me how to play various medieval instruments (she was an enthusiast for re-creating original instruments of the era).
Dag-Are Haugan: I did not grow up in a musical home. At least no-one in my family played any instruments. The interest in recorded music didn’t go any further than the top of the pop charts. I never learned to play any instruments when I was growing up, and I still have a love/hate relationship with instruments. I guess I have a more punk-attitude towards them.

You formed Alog in the late nineties. How did you meet, and what made you decide to start working together?
D-AH: The story goes: In Tromsø in the early nineties, in the middle of a concert with my shoe-gaze band Kant, a stranger from the audience jumped up on stage and started playing along on synth. He was immediately thrown off the stage by the strict band leader. This stranger was non other than Espen. Later on he got in touch to try to explain his strange behaviour and we started working together. I guess we were both fed up with the music we were playing in various bands at the time so we wanted to make something fresh, something freer. It was just for the joy of the experiment, we had no intention of releasing anything, but when Espen released his first album as Phonophani on Biosphere’s label (ed: Biophon) in 1998, Rune Grammofon’s Rune Kristoffersen got in touch and wondered if he had something else going on that might fit his newly started label. So we sent him a demo and it became Red Shift Swing.

Right from Red Shift Swing, your sound has combined acoustic sounds and electronic processing. How did this develop? Was it always what you wanted to achieve?
ESE: We didn’t have any plans for it to turn out this way. Often in hindsight it may seem that way, but one always has to remember that the development of a certain ‘sound’ and method is a very organic and complex process. For example when Alog started out, the possibility to manipulate sound through software on a PC (of the cheaper kind) was just starting thanks to advances in technology. Previously you had to either use expensive synthesizers, analogue equipment or samplers with limited memory etc. So it was all new territory at the time, like a whole new field of art opening up to everybody working from their bedroom studios. This new creative freedom was a great attraction to us at the time. So we collected all our instruments, the big-band record collection of Espen’s dad and other sound-making toys in a room (actually the basement of a kindergarten we could borrow) and started experimenting. We did not, as many others at the time in Tromsø, use synthesizers and electronic sounds as a starting point, so that is one reason our sound was a strange hybrid from the start.

The new album was recorded over quite a long period of time, and in a very different way to previous records. Did you have a preconceived idea of what you wanted to achieve with it, or did it develop in a more organic way?
D-AH: The only idea we had before starting making the new album was that we shouldn’t have any preconceived idea with it except make it as loose as we could and painting with the largest brush-strokes, making it a contrast from previous more homogenous miniatures made with the tiniest hairs of the smallest brushes. And we wanted it big – not modest in any way. We like to think of Unemployed as having been assembled, like on an assembly line in a factory. We asked some musicians to compose complete pieces for our album (without any tinkering from our side except mixing and mastering) and to make sounds together with us. Or we made tracks ourselves, either as a duo or individually. Actually it’s in line with an old Alog idea of having no hierarchy amongst sounds and sound sources, meaning it doesn’t really matter where the sound comes from, if it comes from some instrument (ours or other’s) or from recordings from a horse-race or some movie as long as the sound serves a purpose in the composition. So we had this vague ‘theme’ of work and non-work, rules and freedom, employment and unemployment as a guide.

Still, the (4xvinyl LP) album is absolutely meant as a cohesive long-player, as one piece. Each record form a thematic or formal unity that we also think connects with each other. The one record that stands out the most as a separate piece is the ‘black one’ (the other three are white vinyl). This record-within-the-record is made using reel to reel tape-loops, somewhat an homage to pre-digital electronic music pioneers like Arne Nordheim. In general we look for hidden family ties between tracks, so that even if they at first come across as completely different and eclectic they have a distant relationship that will become apparent after some time. This relationship is of course not always harmonious…

You have collaborated with a number of musicians on this album, some of whom you, Espen, had worked with on your last Phonophani album (Sigbjørn Apeland and Jenny Hval), others, like Sheriffs Of Nothingness and Dutch sound poet Jaap Blonk you hadn’t. How did these collaborations happen?
ESE: Unemployed was assembled over a period of three years. Some recordings were done with a long-time collaborator of ours, Sigbjørn Apeland who happened to have an enormous collection of vintage harmoniums and other keyboard instruments in a disused church in Bergen. Sadly the local municipality was in the process of throwing him out of the church, so we had to go there and put up our microphones before it was too late. We also recorded the minimalist fiddle improvisation-duo Sheriffs of Nothingness (Ole-Henrik Moe and Kari Rønnekleiv). And we asked Signe Lidén (resonating everyday objects), Jenny Hval (vocals) and the legendary Dutch sound poet Jaap Blonk (vocals) to send us some material. In these cases we often started by giving the artists some rules: we told them what we wanted from them structurally, harmonically, particular ways of singing etc. Then we received a lot of raw material they have made according to our instructions in our Dropbox, and then we built our track around that, or incorporated their material into our music. The collaborations often happened because we asked different artists to work with us, people that had something unique on their sonic palette that we thought we could integrate with our aesthetic.

On the album, you’ve used some old recordings which were taken from a collection of 78 RPM records that you apparently found while touring. How did you come across those, and what type of records were they? How did you incorporate them in your recordings?
ESE: Being record collectors we get hold of records all the time, so it is not easy to pinpoint in the end exactly where all the bits and pieces we sample come from. To finish up the new album we had to isolate ourselves, so we chose to travel to the far north east of Norway – Kirkenes, a mining town on the border with Russia. Espen’s family is from that place so they have a summer house there, near the huge artificial lake and mountains of small rocks created by the mining blasts. In that old workers’ home, there was an old Gerrard 78RPM player and a selection of old Norwegian and Swedish records (stone-cakes as they are called in Norwegian), which made it onto Unemployed, here and there.

Do you think that the way you’ve approached the new album has changed the way you will work in the future?
ESE: Yes, it is always like that. Either a future album will be a reaction against this one, or it will further develop on it. In a way our last three albums – Miniatures, Amateur and Unemployed, feel like a trilogy of sorts, and somehow Unemployed is the end of this cycle. But it is too early to say for sure.

The vinyl version of Unemployed contains almost eighty minutes of music not available anywhere else. Why did you choose to keep almost half of the project for this very limited release and not make it available elsewhere or on a different format?
ESE: For this album we decided not to be too perfectionist in our compositions and rather exhibit the compositional process, the experiments, the rough sketches and the stream of ideas that went into it. And therefore this album is quite long; 2.5 hours long over four full-length vinyls. Early on we wanted to do a quadruple album, but at the time it seemed like a megalomaniac idea that we didn’t think we would achieve, knowing our perfectionist attitude and also the general direction of the music business towards easy consumable packages. But gradually we started putting it all together and in cooperation with Rune Kristoffersen at the label we started to see how it could all come together as a 4xLP. Of course it is still quite a strange format, and such a long album really does not fit either CD or download in our minds. For example: You have to spend some time with a vinyl record, listening to one side after another. We imagine most people will enjoy a side better and maybe just keep playing that side over again a few times. Then you take a break doing something else, and when you return to the record you flip it over and start the next side. Twenty minutes is such a nice and ‘human’ length for a listening experience, also allowing full concentration. These kind of obsolete interactions with an album are really not possible on CD or MP3s.

Still we agree it may seem a bit odd and backwards not to have any download option for the full album, but for now it is an experiment. What is an album like in the 21st century? Is it at all viable as a format anymore? Maybe we will change our minds later on. And of course we are really happy with the tighter, digital version of Unemployed also. It’s just a different experience.

You have often worked with vocalists in the past, or used vocal components in your music, and you have a very particular way to treat the human voice. What does it bring that other instruments don’t?
ESE: Earlier we treated vocals like an instrument, putting in inside the mix like any other sound. But lately we have been experimenting with giving it more space, pushing it to the front. Unemployed is even the first album where we feature lyrics on the cover! What is going on? We asked Nicholas Møllerhaug, also a long-time collaborator of ours, to write some lyrics around the theme of work. We asked Jaap Blonk to sing the text and the challenge was of course that the text is in Norwegian and he didn’t quite know how to pronounce all the sounds. But he did a great job trying! We always enjoy moments where you can hear someone trying and exploring a given situation better than finished perfection. In the background we put a sample of a Saami church choir (recorded in northern Lapland) to give this road-workers’ anthem some ritualistic and holy feel. The result became Bømlo Brenn Om Natta, a song about road-workers putting down asphalt on the island of Bømlo.

There’s currently a double live album available on your website which documents two identical sets recorded in Osaka and Tokyo. Can you tell us more about that particular project, and how your live sets compare to your studio work?
D-AH: Our latest release, Twin concerts, is, as the title suggests, recordings of two concerts. They took place at AD & A Gallery in Osaka and at Super Deluxe in Tokyo in October 2008. This is a very special release that we made in a DIY fashion. We wanted to release fifty copies of the two concerts on CD, so we asked Junko Harada, a Manga artist to draw a fifty frame story for us called Tokyo Heaven and she drew every square of Manga-magic by hand directly on each sleeve. Even all the liner-notes are handwritten by her on the sleeves. So each CD is a unique artwork. You can still order it from our web page but be quick about it!

I’m not sure if it is our way of working in the studio that influences our live sets or if it’s the other way round, I guess it is feeding both ways. For instance my reel-to-reel tape loop contribution on Unemployed is a direct result of a live set we did at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam last year. We also played live with the Sheriffs Of Nothingness before we invited them to the studio. We have never made it easy for ourselves when it comes to live work. Using an unpractical blend of acoustic instruments, home-made instruments, electronics and computers. We have always acknowledged the fact that live and studio are two very separate things and have tried to bring another kind of concentrated energy to our concerts. When we play as a duo we have to be creative to find a way to present complex material, without relying too much on pre-recorded backing tracks. We’re not particularly impressed with musicians who looks like they have a daft day at the office sitting behind those tables covered with black cloth, with their Macs on toop when they perform live, even though their  music can be interesting. If the studio is an elephant, that works slowly but has a gigantic eye for details and a great memory, then the live set is a cheetah that moves fast, is super-focused and hopes to bring home the gazelle.

Are you planning to tour following the release of Unemployed?
ESE: There are plans for individual concerts, but nothing set yet. In the course of our touring with the Amateur album a few years ago our setup for live shows grew out of control and became a huge theatre of strange musicians and homemade instruments. It also became increasingly difficult to travel around with the show, in terms of logistics and costs. So we are not sure about doing a full blown tour again. We like the idea of having our concerts be special and unique events and need to develop them individually to achieve this.

Back in 2005, you released Catch That Totem! on Melektronikk, a compilation of previously unreleased material which also included three remixes I believe. Why did you release this on Melektronikk rather than Rune Grammofon? You have also released music on quite a few other labels (Creaked Records, Fat Cat, En/Off), often for very limited releases. Is this a way for you to explore different sides of what Alog is?
ESE: Not all kinds of releases fit Rune Grammofon, and also it is nice to cooperate with different people and audiences on other labels from time to time.

Espen, you also release music as Phonophani, and, as with Alog, you have increasingly been working with other people (Nicholas H. Møllerhaug, Maja Ratkje, Jenny Hval, David Grubs…) on your recent records. Is the way you approach your solo work very different from your work with Alog, and are you actively seeking collaborators for that project?
ESE: I don’t see the two projects as completely separate or different, very often I have released a Phonophani album at almost the same time as an Alog release. So I often experiment with ideas as Phonophani that make it into Alog and vice versa. The only difference is that I have the last say in Phonophani and don’t have to listen to Dag-Are Haugan, the last great European dictator!

Dag-Are, you released a solo album some years ago which was only published as a limited edition of just 500 copies. Would you ever consider re-releasing it to make it available to a wider audience, and do you think you will follow it up with another record?
D-AH: Actually, at one point we had the idea that the ‘black album’ in Unemployed was to be the follow-up to my solo-album, included in the Alog assembled package, but in the end we chose not to label it as such. But the track titles have a direct link to my album 9 Solitaires as they are called Solitaire 10, 11 and 12. A great part of the work on the ‘black album’ was done with me using mainly reel-to-reel tape loops in a similar aesthetic fashion as my solo LP. So in a sense that is the follow-up album. I actually have thought about re-releasing 9 Solitaires but I’m not sure how or if there is a need. Maybe it’s better to do something new. An upside to working alone is the absence of the other great European dictator breathing down my neck.

What is next for Alog?
D-AH: We don’t know, we are both a bit drained after the massive quadruple project.

If you had to name five records, books or films that have made a lasting impression on you as artists, which ones would they be?
ESE: We are not big fans of lists.

Email interview January 2012. Thank you to Espen Sommer Eide, Dag-Are Haugan and Jim Johnstone

Alog | Rune Grammofon

FENNESZ + SAKAMOTO
Flumina
TONE46
Touch 2011
24 Tracks. 124mins06secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Flumina is the third collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz, following Sala Santa Cecilia (2005) and Cendre (2007), and, with twenty-four tracks spread over two discs, it is also by far their most extensive. The project began when Sakamoto was touring in Japan some time ago; opening each one of the twenty-four shows of the tour with a different improvisation, each played in a different key to cover the complete steps of the western tonal system, and documenting them all, he then sent his recordings to Christian Fennesz in Vienna for him to add textures and ambiences before the pair reconvened in New York to mix the record.

Very much like their previous work, where the balance between Sakamoto’s modern classical piano compositions and Fennesz ambient soundscapes fueled the creative process, Fennesz here replicates Sakamoto’s minimal melodic treatment and sparse performances, the difference being that, on Flumina, the compositions are all extremely bare and pure, at times sounding more like sketches than fully developed pieces. Instead of treated guitars distortions, Fennesz opts here for much more restrained atmospheric soundscapes, built primarily from electronics and synths. He still uses guitars extensively, but he chooses to work from much softer sounds sources and processes them so heavily that they retain very little of their natural aspect once incorporated into his overall soundscapes.

Sakamoto’s improvisations are all extremely intimist and delicate, at times almost grinding to a halt or going through intensely quiet moments, at others building from note sequences which, whilst arranged into clusters, are so complex or disconnected that no melody as such can develop. His pieces are like miniature impressionist narratives, their angles purposely blurred and out of focus to leave space for the mind to wander, and this is how Fennesz approaches his parts too, emphasizing Sakamoto’s performance with restraint rather than completing it. It is therefore easy to get lost in this record, the relative absence of distinctive features resulting in the whole record sounding somewhat uniform and indrawn, especially considering that it stretches over two hours, making it easy to miss some of its most wonderful moments, of which the cloudy aspect of 0320, the pastoral feel of 0327 or the medieval tones of 0424 for instance are only the tip.

This is rather quite a shame as individually, each one of these creations is utterly exquisite and tastefully set, Sakamoto’s sparse and elegant improvisations beautifully showcased against Fennesz’s impressionist backdrops. There is no doubt that as a pair, Fennesz and Sakamoto form an intensely creative partnership, and that they instinctively know how to respond to each other. The downfall of this record may be that they ultimately have stuck to the original idea a tad too closely and lost sight of its overall harmony and balance.

2.7/5

Fennesz | Ryuichi Sakamoto | Touch
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

RADERE
I’ll Make You Quiet
FS001
Futuresequence 2012
05 Tracks. 46mins40secs

The solo project of Boulder, CO-based sound artist Carl Ritger, who has been experimenting with sounds and textures for the best part of ten years, Radere first materialised three years ago with a series of remixes, compilation appearances and collaborations, followed by releases on Full Spectrum, Install Sound or Moodgadget over the last couple of years. I’ll Make You Quiet, published in digital format, is the debut release from Futuresequence as it makes the transition, or rather expands, from blog to record label.

As Radere, Ritger creates sprawling organic soundscapes which develop over long periods of time. Built essentially from looped treated guitar textures, propped up by live instrumentation and electronics, his compositions are fluid pieces which often drift seamlessly from one piece into another. Whilst this is still very much a feature of this new album, Ritger voluntarily sets stricter boundaries for some of his compositions here to isolate them from the rest of the record and give them the chance to develop independently. Yet, I’ll Make You Quiet really works best as a whole as its flowing structures and changing tones resonate from one end of the record to the other.

If there is nothing quiet about this album, Ritger works his sounds until pretty much all sharp edges have been smoothened, leaving very little distortion or glitch. If there are any, as is the case on Stay Away from instance, they are polished in, worked into the grain of the overall sound as to never disturb the balance of a piece. A notable exception to this is the opening title track, on which Ritger chooses to leave the rough saturated texture of his guitar in full view and actually places it about everything else. This is no My Bloody Valentine, but it still results in quite a visceral moment.

There are brief hints of distortion on the opening seconds of Sometimes, I Can’t Make Full Sentences, but they are almost instantly swallowed by a dense nebulous cloud. Here, Ritger focuses almost entirely on low end sounds and noises, and while there are slight shifts in tones over the course of its nine and a half minutes, they are much subtler than on the sweeping cinematic …So I Left, by far the most overtly ambitious piece of the whole record, whilst also the shortest track on here by quite a margin. In fact, it appears almost as the pivotal moment of the record, placed as it is at its exact centre. As it eventually dissolves in a cluster of field recordings, it brings in the more muffled and rounded tones of Good Evening, Ghosts which slowly progresses, its overall shape forever morphing into something new, yet remaining almost untouched, slowly building up to the peaceful expanses of Stay Away.

I’ll Make You Quiet sees Carl Ritger refining his approach whilst continuously expanding on his sound, working it ever more precisely to allow it to evolve or remain untouched without ever losing any of its focus and retain all its atmospheric density.

4.1/5

Radere | Futuresequence

ROBERT ALLAIRE
Sacrament
Robert Allaire 2011
05 Tracks. 30mins56secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Robert Allaire is a Los Angeles-based musician and composer who works primarily in the fields of electro-acoustic and electronic music, providing works for experimental films, shorts and animations as well as interactive media. Besides these, he also creates music for stage performances which often incorporate dance or theatre.

Sacrament was originally created for a dance piece of the same title by fellow LA-based choreographer Natalie Metzger. The piece was premiered in Los Angeles last year. For this, Allaire created a pretty atmospheric half hour soundtrack articulated around five pieces. Working from processed feedback loops filtered through the sound of his own heartbeat and breathing, Allaire offers here quite a sombre organic piece which shifts from the deep introspective calm of the drone structures of What Remains Of Something Forgotten or The Voice Of God to the more tormented grounds of Proselytism, She Rises Without or Deicide/A Thing Not Quite Remembered. Each piece has a very distinct feel, yet their is a strong undercurrent binding them together.

In its most contemplative form, the music is extremely fluid and diaphanous as the drones which form the core of What Remains Of Something Forgotten and The Voice Of God appear to constantly shift in tone and structure. The former, stretching over nearly eight minutes of gently morphing low-end sounds, is brought to life by soft muffled pulses in its second half. Slightly more contrasted and covering a wider register, the latter is at first centred around a warm recurring pattern which becomes progressively clouded as it moves down the scale and is shaken by a series of underground blows in its second half.

This opens the way for the seismic thuds and gritty glitches of closing piece Deicide/A Thing Not Quite Quite Remembered. Once again, the piece appears split in halves, the first sounding like a giant machine slowly grinding everything in its path, the second drifting back into an icy drone-like state over which tiny distortions are sprinkled. Before that, Proselytism and She Rises Without, take on a much more angular approach, their respective structures subjected to earth-shattering pulses, but Allaire approaches the two pieces very differently. Whilst Proselytism threatens to collapse at any moment, its progression impaired by clouds of statics and noises, She Rises Without appears much more linear as he develops an electronic motifs which accommodates glitches much more smoothly.

Whilst clocking at just over thirty minutes, Sacrament makes quite an impression, its desolate soundscapes and the way they are applied proving particularly captivating. Furthermore, if the soundtrack was originally conceived to accompany a dance performance, it actually works extremely well as a standalone piece and truly deserves to be recognised in its own right.

4.6/5

Robert Allaire | Robert Allaire (Bandcamp)
Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Sacrament – Official HD Trailer from Natalie Metzger on Vimeo.

If the vast possibilities offered by the meeting of acoustic instrumentation and electronic processing have been explored at length throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and even more so in the first decade of the twenty-first, there seem to be an almost infinite capacity for the two to continue to coexist and develop in ever more complex and rich ways. This is precisely what British experimental trumpeter Tom Arthurs set out to demonstrate as he presented two different works this Monday evening at Kings Place, in front of a disappointingly scarce audience, each piece investigating a different approach, and relationship, between the two.

The first set involved Arthurs improvising over extremely bare electronic textures created on the spot by Simon Vincent. Apart for a very few sudden outbursts, most of which Arthurs’s, the pair’s set remained for the most part extremely introspective, Arthurs only occasionally drifting into the more musical end of the scope, favouring instead barely audible noises and textures, discreet blows or clicks and friction sounds of his instrument’s valves, as Vincent layered abstracts electronics, his part occasionally appearing to rework some sections of Arthurs’s performance, albeit in extremely processed and distorted form.

After over twenty minutes of such minimal treatment, Vincent opened a slightly richer path, which for a moment swelled to incorporate richer tones before returning to a much more basic bubbling state, whilst the trumpeter’s contribution was once again reduced to just a few discreet blows. This first performance relied on very subtle noises, which found echo in Vincent’s decaying textures, but at times felt too introspective to work fully, especially as the pair seemed to get so lost into their work at the end of the second section of the performance that they didn’t quite seem to know whether it had reached its natural conclusion, leaving the audience somewhat perplex.

The premise of Long Division is altogether more complex and visionary. Originally devised for the North Sea Jazz Festival as a four part improvised piece for trumpet (Arthurs), clarinet (Lothar Ohlmeier) and electronics (Icarus’s Ollie Bown and Sam Britton, in his Isambard Khroustaliov guise), the piece, receiving its UK premier this evening is set to be performed live by Arthurs and Ohlmeier, on a backdrop of electronics generated by computer programs created especially by Bown and Britton to react to the live performance, therefore making each instance of the piece totally unique. Whilst both Bown and Britton were present in the auditorium this evening they were simple witnesses of their own contribution. There wasn’t even any representation of their work, by way of computers, on stage. By nature more vivid than the previous set, Long Division is a strangely organic and fascinating piece which expands on the notion of improvised music by adding an additional unknown to the equation.

Like the two performances documented in the quartet’s recent album, the evening involved various ‘collaborations’ between the four, in duo or trio form, with the two live performers also duetting on bass clarinet and trumpet, with no computer assistance. Beside the pair’s clear enjoyment of playing an entirely acoustic and improvised piece, this also served to draw parallels between the way the two improvised with each other and the way the software developed by both Bown and Britton reacted to their respective improvised sections during the rest of the set. If machines lack the inane human flair for tangents and randomness, they surely can be programmed to imitate and extrapolate, and randomness is also, in its mathematical form, a machine-like feature which is largely exploited on such project.

This interesting relationship between machines and real musicians worked very well this evening, first with Ohlmeier performing with the program developed by Bown, then Arthurs taking on Britton’s. For most of the set, it very much felt as if there was some element of dialogue between the two musicians on stage and the soundscapes which developed in the ether. But, whilst the software were initially developed to react to the music played on stage, it at one time felt as if, instead of reacting to an event, the machines were deliberately triggering a reaction from the stage when a sudden burst of bird tweets derailed Arthurs’s miniature noise harvest and plunged it into a more bird-like sequence.

The two pieces represented very different aspects of improvised acoustic/electronic music. Whilst the Arthurs/Vincent collaboration was at times too introspective, there wasn’t any doubt that the two worked together as they proceeded towards forever more disintegrating structures. Long Division’s virtual aspect, confronted with its actual entity, made it paradoxically more concrete, and the absence of the computers’ physical representation was soon overshadowed by the interaction between the two musicians and the soundscapes they helped generating.

Tom Arthurs | Icarus | Not Applicable | Kings Place

TATSURO KOJIMA
16g
AB039
Audiobulb Records 2012
11 Tracks. 60mins45secs

Boomkat: DLD

As digital music is steadily gaining ground, CD sales have been increasingly declining in the past few years in the same way as sales of vinyls and cassettes slumped when CDs were first introduced, but some record labels are still willing to commit to the format and dare investing into special projects. One such project is the new album from Japanese sound artist, graphic and web designer and mobile app developer Tatsuro Kojima, whose album 16g is being released by the excellent Audiobulb in an extremely limited run (50 copies), each CD housed in a unique, hand-made packaging, which counts an individual cover photo, a duplicate of which can be found inside, with at its back, a personal handwritten message, in Japanese, from Kojima. The picture is also numbered and signed.

The music is equally as delicate and artisanal. Kojima works from field recordings, primarily recordings of footsteps in the snow or on ice, upon which he layers gossamer themes, fragile sonic structures built from a pool of rich acoustic sounds and chimes, and tainted with subtle and elegant electronics. There are no set forms or patterns here, instead Kojima makes use of his vast palette with extreme care, at times favouring light shimmering formations (16g, 0818, Inside And Outside), at others opting for earthier tones (Hidden, Out Noise, 0504, Room) or textured drones (0002, Composition6).

Kojima often blurs the boundaries between acoustic sounds, electronics and field recordings to creates his soundscapes, but, either in their raw natural or processed state, it is their inherent refined aspect that he seeks here. Whether he sets up to develop a defined melodic line and give a piece a clear path or settles for much more fluid and ephemeral constructions, Kojima’s sonic miniatures are intricately woven self-contained pieces which, like the packaging, never seem to sound exactly the same twice. Despite their relative diversity in terms of style and approach, there is an impression of unity which runs through the whole record. It is at times as if Kojima was aiming to create a set of similar ideas using very different components and processes. Whilst this certainly keeps the mind alert, it also creates a false impression of continuity which, ultimately, results in 16g feeling extremely fleeting and dreamy all the way through.

With this album, Tatsuro Kojima has created a rather wonderfully evocative piece which, while making very good use of field recordings, relies on the very nature of the music and on the soundscapes used to achieve this. Its extreme fragility is perhaps made even more potent by the rarity of its physical presence, and by the uniqueness of each of the CD produced.

4.3/5

Tatsuro Kojima | 16g on Audiobulb | Audiobulb Records
Boomkat: DLD

SANTIAGO LATORRE
Eclíptica
ALP054
Accretions Records 2012
08 Tracks. 39mins13secs

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Two years on from his solo debut, Órbita (Accretions), Barcelona-based experimental saxophonist Santiago Latorre delivers a second slice of sparse atmospheric avant jazz for the Californian imprint. If jazz is undeniably part of the man’s lexicon, his extensive use of electronic textures and atmospheric soundscapes hint at much wider terrains. While this was already fairly developed on Órbita, Latorre takes this to a very different level with Eclíptica.

Infused with his fascination for outer space, Latorre creates here a wonderfully light and peaceful soundtrack, where acoustic and electronic sounds combine to form a whole. If he relies less solely on his sax, he expands his pool of instruments to incorporate piano, accordion, tuba and vocals, but he uses this richer sonic palette with extreme parsimony, applying touches with the greatest of care. On Eclíptica1, he builds a beautiful introspective theme from a stripped down piano motif set against a textured backdrop upon which resonate woodblocks, with only a hint of sax heard in the second half. There is an almost mantra-like aspect to the piece which never finds an echo elsewhere on the record, yet, if the tone changes with the following tracks, the mood remains contemplative all the way through. This can at times take on quite a dramatic turn, as is the case on the nebulous Eclíptica6, on which Latorre experiments with distorted instruments and minimal drone forms for part of the piece, before moving towards sweeping orchestrations in the latter part.

Eclíptica2 also opens on fairly rarefied grounds, but here, Latorre places an impressionist sax motif over the muffled hum of what could be distant urban noises. Things rapidly take on a much more elaborate aspect as percussions first, then accordion, are introduced. Whilst in some ways more straightforward, this principle is also applied to Eclíptica4, but here, accordion and piano occupy the bulk of the acoustic space, cast against a prominent drum pattern, yet, as the latter fades out, Latorre finds himself amidst a dense cloud of statics and distorted noises, which is echoed on the opening moments of Ban Ge Yue Liang which follows as a very similar urban hum to that found on Eclíptica2 serves as textured backdrop for piano and voice; Latorre is a hesitant vocalist, his tone balancing dangerously to add to the fragile aspect of the piece.

This is not the only place where Latorre adds voice to the music. On Si El Sol No Caliente, he weaves an almost prayer-like monotone incantation over a single drone, and if his performance is slightly more coloured on Eclíptica8, his tone remains extremely intimate, feeling at times as if he was whispering straight into the listener’s ear.

With Eclíptica, Santiago Latorre has moved into much more introspective and emotional terrains, and his widened sonic palette actually allows him to trim down his delivery to its bear essential. The album was recorded whilst Latorre was traveling through Taiwan with aim to reconnect with his inner self, and this introspective quest for peace and equilibrium filters through ever section of this very personal and poignant record.

4.2/5

Santiago Latorre | Accretions Records
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1982
Pintura
HUBROCD2510/HUBROLP3510
Hubro Music 2011
08 Tracks. 34mins32secs

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If all three members of 1982 come from somewhat diverse backgrounds, their common interest in improvised music and, in the case of Nils Økland and Sigbjørn Apeland especially, taste for traditional Nordic folk music makes it a very intriguing formation. Together with drummer Øyvind Skarbø, Økland and Apeland have, with 1982, formed one of the most unconventional improv groups around. Using traditional Hardanger fiddle (Økland), harmonium and Wurlitzer (Apeland) and drums (Skarbø), 1982 work from openly folk-inspired basic structures, but they rapidly expand beyond these to create music which is truly unique and original.

Following a first album released under their three names and entitled 1982, published on NORCD almost four years ago, Pintura (the Spanish word for ‘Painting’, a name inspired by a visit that Skarbø made to the Foundation Miró in Barcelona), was entirely improvised and recorded over just one session at the end of 2010. As the trio continuously move from sections influenced by traditional Norwegian music to more angular rhythmic pieces and delicate and haunting harmonium-led sequences, they weave a beautifully epic, yet incredibly detailed soundtrack articulated around eight untitled pieces. Following two utterly delightful dreamy miniature pieces which swell and contract almost imperceptibly through their respective courses, the first relying primarily on Økland, the second on Apeland, the trio cast a more potent and intricate piece with the ten-and-a-half minute sprawling narrative of the third improv, which seems as if split into tiny movements, led in turn by Økland, Apeland and Skarbø. Later on, track five sees the trio collate once again a series of ideas into one piece, but there is much more of a consistent progression here, first focused on fiddle and harmonium, with just hints of brushes in the background, then, as the piece becomes much livelier in its second half, relying on all three instruments in equal dose, slowly gaining momentum until it collapses entirely.

On the fourth piece, the trio, led by Apeland, who swaps for a moment the celestial tones of harmonium for the much earthier ones of the Wurlitzer, drift much closer to free jazz forms, and this is taken further later on on track seven as they step away from the largely delicate and ethereal themes which forms the core of this album to investigate much more abrupt and at times somewhat dissonant soundscapes and ambiences. Track six and eight by contrast are much more introspective, the former taking the shape of a fluid drone which barely covers clouds of recorded voices in the background, while the latter is based around a series of gentle chords over which a recurring fiddle folk motif gently ebbs and flows until the end.

Despite clocking a little shy of thirty-five minutes, Pintura appears somewhat epic, its seemingly fragile set up often developed into much sturdier structures. It is in part this continuous shift between ethereal pieces and rawer improv which give this record its balance, but it is ultimately the unique correlation between instruments on one side and musicians on the other which binds it together.

4.3/5

1982 | Hubro Music
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LEGO FEET
SKA001CD
SKA001CD
Skam 2011
04 Tracks. 73mins49secs

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Over a year before their first appearance on Warp with a couple of tracks for the original Artificial Intelligence compilation, Rob Brown and Sean Booth had materialised, the time of an album, as Lego Feet. Infused with Detroit-style techno and futuristic hip-hop, this pre-Autechre output was the first, extremely limited, transmission from Manchester-based Skam, and has since been out of print and changing hands for small fortunes.

Twenty years on, this legendary album is finally getting a full CD release, with a second pressing of the vinyl due imminently. In its original form, the seventeen tracks of this album were presented with no title or information, although three appeared later on as part of the label’s Skampler compilation as Leaves On The Line, Northwest Water and Keyop. The actual pieces have been preserved for the CD version, they have been grouped into four parts, ranging in length from fifteen to twenty-one minutes.

This album is much more purely techno-infused that pretty much anything Autechre have produced since, but one can hear some hints of what the pair would produce for their debut album two years later scattered throughout. The major components which continue to fuel the pair’s sound to this day, techno and hip-hop, are heavily present here, but in much rawer form. At times, the similarity between these and early Black Dog is striking, but the pair’s experimental flair, although in its early stages of development, often pushes this album away from the dance floor into more subtle territories. Their soundscapes are minimal and elegant, but their beats often pack punches, as becomes apparent very early on and at regular intervals throughout, and if they are more straightforward than much of their later work, they are still complex affairs. Elsewhere, they become sparser and barely fill the gaps left in the sonic backdrop, or accelerate into hectic little structures which stumble over equally as frenzied electronic motifs.

The scope is quite vast here, from post acid squelches and smooth techno soundwaves to playful electro and bouts of hip-hop, all mixed up in various combinations to make the whole record work as a consistent piece. At times, Booth and Brown develop a particular theme for a while, taking the time to get into a particular groove and stick to it, yet at others, they jump from one idea to another without giving it a second thought, sometimes repeating the process in quick successions.

Although this album is very much of its era, the music has aged extremely well, and still sounds fresh and relevant today. While this may perhaps be in part due to the record’s lack of exposure over the years, it is nonetheless a strong testament of the pair’s visionary approach. Rob Brown and Sean Booth have moved on considerably since then, but this early document is undeniably extremely valuable as it lays the foundations of the work they would be producing for the next twenty years and counting.

4.7/5

Skam
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