JOHN CHANTLER
The Luminous Ground
RMV442
Room40 2011
06 Tracks. 39mins50secs

Can music be ‘created by machines’? This is often the starting point of one of the main arguments hailed by detractors of electronic music, who see electronic synthesis and computers as the cold and inhuman antithesis to music played on ‘proper instruments’, by human beings. Yet, machines can’t work on their own. They cannot power themselves, have no natural creative will and depend on human interactions to even exist. Machines have to be programmed in some way, and, like musical instruments, are only as good as their users.

This is what John Chantler investigates with his latest album, published on Room40. For the last three years, he has amassed a handful of electronic devices into a modular set up which now regularly serves as a platform for live experimentation, and is here put to extensive use to create a rather intriguing soundtrack where human interaction and accidental machine input both play equally important roles. The six untitled improvised pieces are incredibly dense, forever morphing into new forms, switching from randomly generated sound formation to rhythmic motifs with no apparent order or rule. Under Chantler’s control, the machine becomes alive with rich tonal sequences which, while always evolving in totally unpredictable ways, do so with great fluidity. There aren’t any melodies as such here, the generated patterns never materialising in anything substantial enough to qualify as a fully developed theme, yet the repetitive characteristic of these patterns create accidental musical fragments which often vanish as quickly as they appeared as the synthesis process continues. And this is as much these fleeting moments as the auto-generated sounds which continuously fascinate here. While Chantler undoubtedly understands out to create these sequences, there is something totally ephemeral in the resulting recordings as sound clusters continuously disintegrate. None of these patterns can ever be reproduced in that exact same sequence.

While the sonic range can appear somewhat narrow on first impression, it is actually quite vast, extending from deep rumbling low ends to extremely high-pitched piercing high ends, and from clear and sharp to extremely saturated and distorted. The mood follows, at times harsh and abrasive (A1), austere and introspective (B2) or sombre and oppressive (B3), at others peaceful and dreamy (A3) or surprisingly pastoral (B1). Chantler alters the emotional aspect of this record by simply working on specific tonalities and continuously moulding them, each piece displaying subtle variations in its own scope, while all sounding very distinctive and unique.

There is a strong correlation between the machine’s random sound and pattern generation and the human control to which it responds. Chantler actively seeks the incidental aspect of what his machine is capable of creating, yet he is ultimately in charge of what is happening and constantly influences the end result, making this record a truly hypnotic aural feast.

4.9/5

John Chantler | Room40

MINAMO + LAWRENCE ENGLISH
A Path Less Travelled
RM427
Room40 2010
05 Tracks. 42mins02secs

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The latest release to come out of the Room40 workshop is a collaboration between multi media artist and head of label Lawrence English and Japanese experimental quartet Minamo, which uses the latter’s extremely minimal template, built from electronic textures and processed and live guitars, as a platform to expand from, with Lawrence English adding electronic processing and field recordings as well as contributing bass and harmonium. In just over forty minutes of delicate grainy soundscapes, split into five tracks, Minamo and English create a very evocative soundtrack, set somewhere in between their respective sonic realms.

The album was recorded over a couple of years in both Brisbane and Tokyo, but there is nothing in its course that hints at such a time frame. The natural ethereal textures, melodies and composite soundscapes show a great level of consistency throughout and convincingly serve the overall narrative of the record. The pace is particularly slow, dictated by the quartet’s typical improvised ambiences, which stem from a variety of forms here, with guitarists Keiichi Sugimoto and Yuichiro Iwashita serving melodies and loops which are then processed by Namiko Sasamoto (Keyboard) and Tetsuro Yasunaga (electronics and objects). Lawrence’s contributions are often at granular level, bringing in layers of field recordings and additional processing to accentuate the relief of the compositions. Album opener The Path is a deeply reflective piece, filled with sparse gossamer guitar textures, harmonium drones and fragments of melody, which all become more potent in the second half. Things remain pretty understated on the following two pieces, but Headlights is backed by echoes of nature which underline beautifully the delicate recurring acoustic guitar theme and give it an idyllic rustic appearance. Background crackles and statics, combined with darker overtones, give Glimmer a much grainer and more rugous appearance, while the surprisingly straightforward Fireworks, which closes the proceedings, combines guitar brushes, piano and dense sound forms.

Before this though, the epic seventeen and a half minute Springhead explores the space occupied by the five sound artists through a series of progressive tableaux, from field recordings-based sequences to drones and much more musical moments. The transition between each section is almost imperceptible as components enter and exit the spectrum totally unnoticed, but, at their most present, they in turn redefine and recontextualise the piece. With so much space to fill and no restrictions on how to do so, Minamo and English are at their most evocative, lyrical and cinematic here.

Over the years, Lawrence has collaborated with a number of musicians from around the globe, always keen to go beyond his own musical universe, and this latest joint effort doesn’t disappoint. But, as his imprint, Room40, is celebrating ten years at the forefront of contemporary explorative music, he is typically found looking ahead rather than reflecting on the past. This work with Minamo is utterly rich, challenging and exquisite, and proves a stunning addition to his catalogue.

Room40 are hosting two nights at Cafe Oto as part of the London branch of this year’s OpenFrame with performances by Chris Abrahams, Scanner, David Toop, I/03 and Andrea Belfi tonight (Thursday 4 November) and Grouper, Lawrence English and Rafael Anton Irisarri tomorrow (Friday 5 November). For info and tickets, click here.

4.6/5

Lawrence English | Room40
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RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI
The North Bend
RM438
Room40 2010
05 Tracks. 40mins37secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD | LP Boomkat: CD | LP

The year is proving one of the strongest yet for Australian imprint Room40, which, not content of celebrating ten years at the forefront of experimental music, culminating with a series of concerts during their annual OpenFrame events in Brisbane earlier this month and London at the end of next week, and a stunning retrospective CD given away free to subscribers of The Wire recently, have also seen some of their strongest releases to date come out this years.

One such release is Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest opus, The North Bend, the follow up to his Reverie mini album, published on Chicago-based Immune earlier in the year. Counting five compositions, and spanning just over fourth minutes, this new album is a much hazier and clouded affair than its predecessors, as the subtle piano motifs that found their way through Irisarri’s debut, Daydreaming (Miasmah) and Reverie are shrouded in dense layers of freezing fog, appearing now only as vague shapes, if at all distinguishable. In fact, the textures used here are much closer to those Irisarri has been experimenting with as The Sight Below, but while much of the work published under that banner is ultimately beat driven, the five tracks collected here are entirely beat-less and ethereal, feeding on something much more primal and cinematic. What Irisarri has retained from The Sight Below is the hypnotic nature of the vast soundscapes used. Irisarri builds each piece from a slow recurring core theme, and expands outwardly from there. The process is the same all the way through, and the soundscapes remain very consistent from start to finish, creating a single powerful narrative.

There is something very pastoral and ecumenical about this record, as echoes of acoustic guitars and piano motifs are superimposed on sweeping orchestral loops, relentlessly ebbing and flowing  over the course of each track, from the autumnal opening piece, Passage, a piece that remains somewhat modest and fairly minimal compared to the rest of the record, and epic moments Blue Tomorrows or Traces, each continuously gaining momentum through their respective course, to the much more contrasted terrains of A Great Northern Sigh, which opens with heavily filtered reversed field recordings and ends with vast orchestral swirls, and closing piece Deception Falls, which progresses through three very distinct stages, the first defined by statics and crackles placed over a minimal melody, progressively supplanted by a second, richer, set of slow synthetic waves, itself overridden by the last, once again clustered around vast sound waves, but comparatively less expensive.

The North Bend represents a shift in Rafael Anton Irisarri’s work, seemingly bringing closer his various entities, yet actually taking a different path altogether. The delicate motifs, minimalist melodies and textured found sounds of earlier recordings are still present here, but set against much more ambitious and rich soundscapes, they at times become almost anecdotal. Here, Irisarri contemplates incredibly cinematic and ambitious musical forms, which may not have the exquisite touch of his more delicate work, but prove equally as absorbing.

4.6/5

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI – Blue Tomorrows by ROOM40

Rafael Anton Irisarri | Rafael Anton Irisarri (MySpace) | Room40
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CHRIS ABRAHAMS
Play Scar
RM437
Room40 2010
08 Tracks. 57secs41secs

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Chris Abrahams is one third of acclaimed Australian improv outfit The Necks, with whom he has been recording and playing live for over two decades. As a solo performer, his work takes on a different path as he expands his sonic palette far beyond the piano and, in the space of four solo records and countless collaborations, has continuously pushed back the boundaries of his experimentations.

His latest album, Play Scar, his third appearance on Room40, is a mesmerising collection of granular electro-acoustic pieces caught in a haunting aural claire-obscure where nothing appears totally defined and sharp, instead leaving the mind to fill the gaps in between notes and establish the nature of the sounds used. Armed with piano, Hammond organ, Rhodes, church organ, guitar, keyboards and electronics, he proceeds to weave together extremely tight soundscapes from fragmented sounds sources, some left in a fairly recognisable state, others processed into much more alien forms. Abrahams’s music sits somewhat uncomfortably with conventions, his visionary approach instead driven by its own codes and rules. This is neither avant-garde jazz nor pure sonic experimentation, yet it is much more than the sum of these. The scope of his compositions vary greatly here, from pretty melodic pieces, at times disarming simple (The Same Time) at others much more complex and layered (There He Reclined, Running Out) to extremely abstract constructions (Fly Them, Twig Blown, Birds And Wasps), but there is throughout such an attention to details and a unity in the process that the whole record feels extremely consistent.

Play Scar opens with voluptuous waves of Hammond organ which continuously comes crashing over the first section of of There He Recolined, but, as Abrahams introduces brushes of guitar and sonic interferences, the tone slowly changes to become richer, and, as a broken piano line comes into focus, the piece is thrown once again into a much more ascetic form. This is also a process that informs part of Running Out, although here the set up is very different. Lost in layers of electric guitars and organ, minute particles of electronics gather into a progressively textured metallic structure, but later on, Abrahams calls upon musique concrète to assert a strong element of gravity to the piece. This is however again turned on its head in the last two and a half minutes of the track as he applies a sparse melody over a minimalist backdrop. Later on, he draws beautiful light jazz piano motifs on the opening sequence of Jellycrown, although the shortness of the notes played gives it a noticeably dry feel, but the second half of the track proves altogether more dissonant and angular as he forces a church organ into extreme tonal contortions. The closing Leiden appears by contrast beautifully pastoral and serene, even when slightly corrosive electronics rise to the surface for a moment.

At its most abstract, this album enters totally unfamiliar fields, which echo with statics, glitches, founds sounds, fractured electronics and shards of rhythmic structures, which often disappear as quickly and mysteriously as they appeared. Twig Blown is a particularly dense and challenging example of this, but Fly Them, in much more minimalist form, also pushes the notion of abstraction in Abrahams’s sonic space well beyond the realm of music, particularly highlighted in the crystal-like piano motifs which are found in the second half of the track. The epic Birds And Wasps takes on a very different challenge, Abrahams building what is, at first, an isolationist sound form, which evolves later into a much more austere drone, but as it slowly disintegrates into fragments of distorted interferences, it becomes a much more intricate, enigmatic and fragile edifice.

With Play Scars, Chris Abrahams has created a truly magnificent piece, with so many different facets that it is impossible to fully take it in in any one listen. This album requires a considerable level of attention to unveil even a fraction of its content, and never appears twice in the same light, so complex and rich is its range. Abrahams defies here conventions and challenges the mind, but he also, very cleverly, lets enough float to the surface to make Play Scars a thoroughly enjoyable, and ultimately extremely rewarding, record.

5/5

Room40
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TUJIKO NORIKO, LAWRENCE ENGLISH & JOHN CHANTLER
U
RM435
Room40 2008
08 Tracks. 38mins57secs

Room 40 captain Lawrence English, musician John Chantler, and chanteuse Tujiko Noriko tumble together and tug apart over the course of U, inexhaustibly stitching the strong physicality of melodic lines to acoustic nuance, whilst crisp, agile, insistent digital tattoos envelop them and insinuate into every interstice.

Far from the jerky, skewed cut-ups of some of Noriko’s earlier work, U develops a judicious restraint to create a space for listening.  The album, though hardly esoteric, and sometimes lacking the edge of discovery honed by a confidently individualized voice, is thus easy to get lost in. There’ s a reasonable spread of material, from spacious pieces, where layered loops become extended rhythmic units and the hidden harmonies of drones are highlighted, turning static approaches into fluent, open-ended ones, to others which feature nodding rhythms and still others that are haunted by mutant guitar outbreaks.

A certain vitality is present in this approach.  The trio steamroll their way through loose jams without meandering or gushing.  Most of the tracks are edited to run seamlessly into one another, heightening the sense of organic momentum generated by the group’s thick, murky textures, subdued grooves, and swirling keyboards.  Though it goes without the experimental edge of past works, then, it represents Noriko’s finest melange of pop songs.

Opener 12 O’Clock On The Highway is anchored with a heavy, nearly dub-like density, which keeps things rolling, as discrete events get tacked on like barnacles and Noriko’s voice begins to hypnotize.  In some of the shorter pieces, a guitar cuts through the fat sound with jabbing precision, directing the content of these works to the melodramatically lurid and grim.  The group then picks up the pieces and reassembles their musical shards into intimate forms that remain reasonably consistent with what came before, but which stretch out into other abstract sound worlds.  Compositions thus form an implicit and vague unity.  Rather than one of artifice, though, it’s largely characterized by a certain sensitivity, demonstrated in the themes and moods canvassed and the relations that characterize the players on a whole.  In this manner, U is a white feather in Noriko’s colorful cap.

3.7/5

Tujiko Noriko | Lawrence English | John Chantler | Room40
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