Barre Phillips
Music By…
Barre Phillips bass
Aina Kemanis voice
John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet
Herve Bourde alto and tenor saxophones, flutes
Claudia Phillips voice
Pierre Favre drums, percussion
Recorded May 1980 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Long before Twitter was a microblogging phenomenon, it was the name of the first cut on this out-of-print gem from Barre Phillips. Thankfully, there is nothing micro about it. Driven by train-like syncopation from drums and bass clarinet, this attention-grabbing burst of virtuosity introduces us to the bubbling acrobatics of daughter Claudia Phillips, a vocalist whose career as chanteuse found a niche in France in the 80s. Her sometimes-manic instincts are swept down the stream of Aina Kemanis, the voice of Journal Violone II. Together they form a magic triangle with John Surman’s own sinewy lines. With such exuberance and glottal depth as Claudia displays here, one can hardly keep one’s ears focused on anything but her brilliance. Her siren-like spindles prove to be a guiding force in the more freely improvised “Angleswaite” and, with Kemanis, trace fluid arcs in “Elvid Kursong” and drop like spores in “Pirthrite.” The latter is a bizarrely martial excursion that is at once march and requiem, made all the more so through the liquid alto of Herve Bourde. These facets contract into a single plane in “Longview.” Here, Claudia comes to life in a bubbling stutter, soon overtaken by Bourde’s tenor, left of center. “Entai” and “Double Treble” sound like an ice-skating bass and clarinet struggling for balance over a warping record, compressing the album into more rudimentary ciphers.
This is yet another fascinating cell in the stained glass window that is Barre Phillips, capturing both the thrill and pain of modernism and those quiet moments, few and far between, where the soul kisses the brow of alienation. The content is brought to fervent life by an impassioned participation that frolics at the intersection of speech and song. As a longtime fan of the Cocteau Twins and Elizabeth Fraser’s voice that drives it, I have sometimes wondered what she might have sounded like had she made an ECM album. With Music By… we begin to approach one possible answer.
<< Walcott/Cherry/Vasconcelos: CODONA 2 (ECM 1177)
>> Bengt Berger: Bitter Funeral Beer (ECM 1179)
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 
Of all of the vast ECM catalog, the music of Barre Phillips is perhaps the most unique in having a nearly “creepy” feel about it. This is such an obscure release, but I just love it – it creates an eerie, remote mood….the last cut in particular is quite chilling! Sound track to a horror movie? Companion to a travelogue to a remote, wild place? Who knows…but the fertile mind of Barre Phillips must be quite a fascinating one!
I couldn’t agree more! The many facets of his creativity only seem to reveal more facets, ad infinitum.
This is one of the few that managed to escape me. I am a MAJOR Phillips fan, he introduced me to the entire ECM world. But by the time I found out about this album (before the internet days) it was long out of print and i’ve been looking for it ever since. It was through Phillips’ earlier “Journal Violin” album that I was introduced to both John Surman as well as Aina Kemanis, who became easily among my favorites on their respective instruments.