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

TOM ARTHURS/OLLIE BOWN/ISAMBARD KHROUSTALIOV/LOTHAR OHLMEIER
Long Division
NOT019
Not Applicable 2012
07 Tracks. 50mins26secs

A year and a half ago, clarinetist Lothar Ohlmeier, trumpet player Tom Arthurs and Icarus’s Ollie Bown and Sam ‘Isambard Khroustaliov’ Britton were invited to perform at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands, but neither Bown, who lives in Sydney, nor Britton, who was due to be on his honeymoon at the time, were able to attend. Still, the four did perform together, in some way, as planned. Arthurs and Ohlmeier did make it to the festival and played together on stage against a backdrop of sounds generated by software developed specifically for the performance by both Bown and Britton, the particularity of the software in question being that it would generate sounds and music on its own accord and interact with the two live performers as they improvised. This was further complicated by the equation between protagonists constantly shifting between the four, or in case of Icarus, their incarnations, performing either in pairs or trio.

Beside the North Sea Jazz Festival performance, this record also documents part of a similar set at NK in Berlin. Subtitled Suite For Autonomous Electronics, Long Division is an intriguing document on self-generative music and a very interesting example of applied artificial intelligence. What results of these two sets is predictably intricate and difficult to grasp in one sitting. The balance between the two live musicians and the computer generated sounds constantly shifts, at times bringing out the organic interactions between Arthurs and Ohlmeier, at others leaning heavily on the side of the machines, but it is when all these elements are combined fairly equally that things appear to take on a different dimension altogether. This is perhaps best demonstrated in the closing piece, its first half especially, Arthurs and Ohlmeier combining forces to fight off relentless assaults of glitches and noise distortion. Before that, a similar set up delivers a marginally more gentle piece on the second track while the album’s opening piece is resolutely geared towards textures and noises, which take on various forms here, some extremely electronic and distorted, some sourced from the instruments, but Arthurs and Ohlmeier steer clear of any remotely musical components to instead work from silent blows and breathings as they attempt to emulate the fragmented patterns generated by Britton’s software.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth pieces are all duo performances, and while the fourth provides Arthurs and Ohlmeier with a few minutes of complete acoustic freedom, the three other pieces display various scales of interaction between computers and musicians, ranging from sparse moments (the two involving Britton) to much denser and active constructions on the Bown piece.

Whether machines have souls may perhaps not be relevant here, but this experiment in self-generative electronics and how these can ‘interact’ with humans certainly poses more questions than it answers, and proves an intriguing work, which is made very accessible to all from the Not Applicable website for free – a £3 donation is suggested, a very small price to pay for a totally unique album.

The quartet will be performing Long Division live again at Kings Place in London on Monday 30 January. Visit the Kings Place website for further details.

4/5

Thomas Arthurs | Icarus | Not Applicable

PHILIPPE PANNIER & ISAMBARD KHROUSTALIOV
Chaleur
NOT17
Not Applicable 2011
07 Tracks. 33mins58secs

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Like most of the records published under the Not Applicable banner, Chaleur is before all a meeting of minds and the fulfilment of a unique vision. French classical guitarist Philippe Pannier and experimental sound artist Sam Britton met back in 2006 at IRCAM in Paris when they were invited to work on a piece for banjo and electronics to be composed by Sam. The pair exchanged ideas which were eventually realised on a piece called Junkspace, which was featured on Britton’s Isambard Khroustaliov’s album Ohka. The pair lost touch for a while, but rekindled their partnership following the release of Ohka, eventually getting together once more at the end of last year, this time in a north-eastern suburb of Paris, Le Blanc Mesnil. They spent two days rehearsing and throwing ideas at each other, and these exchanges were recorded and later assembled into a coherent work, lasting just under thirty five minutes and articulated around seven tracks.

Chaleur is expectedly challenging and angular, its fragmented components collated into miniature sonic clusters, which are then arranged into more substantial soundscapes to form the core structure of these pieces. The set up here is resolutely minimal and abstract. Pannier’s guitar and banjo contributions are, at times, so syncopated and disjointed that the hints of melody which result are rarely sustained for long when left in their raw state. They are otherwise split open, dissected, pulled apart and reassembled into components of varying density, which are then heavily processed and positioned deep into Britton’s abstract constructions, where they share the space with shreds of orchestral instrumentation, occasionally processed piano and sparse electronics.

Each piece has a very defined tone, some more intricate than others, yet they all contribute to the overall narrative of the record. Pieces such as Coïncidence, Légèrement or Unions are relatively free of tension, their infinitely minimal and detailed sound compositions appearing almost too fragile to retain any substance, but the hectic construction which characterise Habituellement or the intense collages of Arrivé or Entre Des are charged with bubbling energy, which, whilst never actually released, carry much of this album.

As Isambard Khroustaliov, Sam Britton has gone far beyond the complex sonic space he has been exploring for well over a decade as one half of Icarus to explore the outer reaches of sonic experimentation, but, while he has occasionally done this alone, he has found some extraordinary travelling companions to help him map these alien territories. Philippe Pannier proves a superb partner in this endeavour, and the result of their collaboration is a thoroughly uncompromising piece of work.

4.2/5

Not Applicable
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ISAMBARD KHROUSTALIOV
Ohka
NO011
Not Applicable 2009
05 Tracks. 55mins18secs

With Icarus, British musicians Ollie Bown and Sam Britton have, in the twelve years since their first release, progressively moved from relatively conventional electronic music to much more challenging work. Their more recent records, I Tweet The Birdy Electric (Leaf, 2004), Carnivalesque (Not Applicable, 2005) and Sylt (Rump Recordings, 2007) have investigated the confines of experimental electronica and electro-acoustic. With his own project, Britton pushes much further into electro-acoustic territories to produce music that is, in essence, much more orchestral. Having studied architecture, Britton then went on to complete a Masters course in electronic music and composition at the IRCAM in Paris. Recording under the name Isambard Khroustaliov, Britton has collaborated with Italian-born percussionist Maurizio Ravalico and Dutch saxophonist Lothar Ohlmeier on two separate electro-acoustic projects (Five Loose Plans, 2006 and Nowhere, 2008), both released on Not Applicable, has contributed soundtracks to a handful of short films and done remixes for Icarus and Four Tet.

Britton’s latest project collects five tracks, recorded over five years, and features a number of contributors, including Gareth Humphreys (prepared piano on Ping, Traum and Ohka), Philippe Pannier (guitar on Aporia, banjo on Junkspace), Lothar Ohlmeier (bass clarinet on Traum) and Oren Marshall (tuba on Traum). Far from being straightforward and linear, the music resulting of these various collaborations is taken apart piece by piece, blasted into minute particles, treated and processed, then finally assembled in entirely new configurations, retaining very little of the original aspect of the various instruments used as sound sources. Occasionally, remote elements of melodies subsist, often in advanced stages of decomposition, but they are only fleeting pointers lost in a vast ocean of abstraction.

The primary components here are the sound sources themselves. Taken out of their original context, these become unsettling and are at times totally unrecognisable, while at others, their nature remains perfectly clear, yet the use Britton makes of them is extremely abstract. The scope of each of these five pieces is incredibly vast, ranging from the poetic and delicate, on the more nuanced moments of Ping or on the majority of Aporia, to the incredibly dense and intricate, especially in parts of Traum or Ohka. Often, this record appears to go through alternate cycles of quietude and violence, as sounds are either delicately dispensed an applied or pushed forward in chaotic clusters.

The relentless assaults of information and the constant shift in the tectonic of the various soundscapes inflicted by Britton makes Ohka a difficult record to grasp in its entirety at any particular moment, but it is also a gratifying piece of work which continuously reveals new facets of its complex structure. With Icarus, Britton has only just scratched the surface of electro-acoustic composition, but as Isambard Khroustaliov, he is free to push as deep as he can afford to. With Ohka, he does so with panache.

4.7/5

Isambard Khroustaliov | Not Applicable

LOTHAR OHLMEIER/ISAMBARD KHROUSTALIOV
Nowhere
NOT008
Not Applicable 2008
05 Tracks. 33mins48secs

Nowhere is the first collaboration between Dutch jazz bass clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Lothar Ohlmeier and Isambard Khroustaliov, the alter ego of British experimental musician Sam Britton, who is more commonly known as one half of electronic entity Icarus. Ohlmeier studied music in Hannover and Amsterdam before establishing himself at the forefront of the Dutch improvised music scene. He has since collaborated with a wide range of jazz artists, including pianist Julia Sassoon and drummer Bart van Helsdinger, with whom he formed Azilut! in 2000. Now living in England, Ohlmeier continues to perform all over Europe. Meanwhile, beside his regular stint with Icarus, Sam Britton has been working on solo projects under his Isambard Khroustaliov guise, releasing a first limited CDR, entitled 8 Minutes, on the band’s imprint, Not Applicable, in 2002, followed by a collaborative effort with Italian-born percussionist Maurizio Ravalico, Five Loose Plans, in 2006.

The fruit of three years of work, the five tracks presented here, culled from recordings made during a residency at the IRCAM in Paris and at various music festivals across Europe, demonstrate the increasing connections between traditional improvised music and modern forms. While similar collaborations have been flourishing in recent years, that of Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden and jazz drummer and percussionist Steve Reid being the most high profile, Ohlmeier and Britton create here a rich and vibrant sonic space within which they freely feed from each other. Ohlmeier’s clarinet is the main focal element throughout, in turn floating high above the sonic backdrop or simple source component for Britton’s intricate constructions. It is as if every possible sound had been extracted from the instrument, from its most common to its most visceral. The clickety-clicks of the keys, the surplus air escaping through the tone holes, the breathing of the wood become as many structural elements for Britton, who creates here a tapestry as finely detailed and diaphanous as the wind chime-like drapes crafted with Icarus in their wonderfully poetic I Tweet The Birdy Electric album.

Here though, it is the organic nature of the instrument that commends attention. Both through Ohlmeier’s elegant flourishes and variations and Britton’s infinitesimal renderings, the clarinet comes to life, erupts in multiple forms, circles above and lingers below, lives deep within and far out, with only occasional external sounds (a prepared piano, most notably, on After Sunrise and Dusk as well as furtive found sounds) to widen the core soundscapes. The level of symbiosis between the two musicians is such that the boundaries of their respective interactions is at times blurred, but even when the roles are clearly defined, the work remains dense, coherent, and of very high standard, making this record an unmissable experience.

4.7/5

Not Applicable
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