Category Archives: Electronic

Jon Hassell: Power Spot (ECM 1327)

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Jon Hassell
Power Spot

Jon Hassell trumpet
J. A. Deane percussion, alto flute
Jean-Philippe Rykiel keyboards
Michael Brook guitar
Richard Horowitz keyboards
Brian Eno bass
Richard and Paul Armin RAAD electro-acoustic strings
Miguel Frasconi flute
Recorded December 1984 and October 1983
Produced & engineered by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois

American composer and trumpeter Jon Hassell is best known for his music of the Fourth World, which he describes as “coffee-colored classical.” Take this as you will, for the definition becomes clearer once you immerse yourself in the sounds of Power Spot. Hassell’s career is as varied as his education. A student of both Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pandit Pran Nath, he is known for overlooking idiomatic barriers in favor of something far broader. Nath left an indelible mark in Hassell, who turned to the master’s voice for guidance in his own playing. His unmistakable tones are achieved by singing into the instrument, thereby drawing clusters of sounds from a single exhalation. This recording is significant for a number of reasons, not least for indicating a moment in sonic history in which the electro-acoustic universe was beginning to spin some of its richer, more majestic galaxies. The music on Power Spot radiates like a supernova waiting patiently for the traction of celestial bodies to fan its clouds away, revealing softly spinning globes of breath and vapor. With such evocative titles as “Wing Melodies” and “The Elephant And The Orchid,” one feels almost overwhelmed by the range of possible imagery. And yet, like any question of mode or genre thereof, these words disappear behind the music’s waterfall.

At first listen the album may seem to blend into a broad wash of sound, but lean in closer and you begin to hear the details emerge. The title track is perhaps the most potent, opening this portal to a wellspring of beats and train whistles. Brian Eno’s amphibian bass slithers through a pond of liquid mercury, fading into the gaseous darkness from which it sprang. Otherworldly connotations are bound to reveal themselves, and nowhere more so than in “Passage D.E.,” which sounds for all like the soundtrack to a documentary of some undiscovered planet. Notable also is “Miracle Steps,” where live percussion provides marked contrast to the synthetic overlay, drawing in the process the album’s most beautiful cartography.

Power Spot is one protracted aerial view, a bubbling primordial soup of circuits and blips, funneled through such progressive sense of direction and atmosphere as only Hassell can activate. Unlike much of the knob-turning to grace the many electronic albums of the 80s, its sound is strikingly effusive and organic. In this ocean, one finds that the light of life shines brightest on the inside. It is a light that no clouds can obscure, a light that no darkness can close its eyes around. It is a journey of transience, of transport, of futurism and antiquity, of none of these things. Influential? More than words can say. Just listen to Paul Schütze’s Stateless, or the works of countless others who’ve clearly drunk from the Hassell font.

A perfect specimen.

Kurtágonals (ECM New Series 2097)

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Kurtágonals

László Hortobágyi synthesizers, computers
György Kurtág Jr. synthesizers
Miklós Lengyelfi bass, effects
Recorded August 2008 at the Guo Manor, Budapest
Produced by Hortogonals

In the landscape of electronic music among European art circles, the name of Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) is a monumental landmark. A pioneer in musique concrète and its ancillary technologies, Schaeffer introduced a remarkable line-up of composers to new and exciting possibilities in audible media, not least among them Luc Ferarri, Iannis Xenakis, Jean Barraqué, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez. Boulez is particularly important in the context of this album, for he would go on to found the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, or IRCAM, where György Kurtág Jr. later studied. Boulez’s rocky association with Henry led to a schism between the former’s insistence on the integrity of electro-acoustic configurations over the latter’s “computer music.” I find this conflict to be a moot one, however, when considering that instrumental music immediately becomes “electronic” the moment it is recorded, and that electronic music becomes “acoustic” when played through speakers in any given environment. Also, much of Schaeffer’s pioneering work, such as his entrancing Symphonie pour un homme seul (1951), was fundamentally rooted in the acoustical properties of live instruments and the human voice. Whatever the argument may boil down to, this fiercely original album happily marries the two camps into a bustling commune of shared ideas. Kurtág is joined here by two fellow Hungarians: composer László Hortobágyi, who works much of his compatriot’s thematic material into the album’s infrastructure, and Miklós Lengyelfi, a musician of many stripes whose rock roots bring an edgier sensibility to the underlying aesthetic. The three are known collectively as Hortogonals, and through their triangular approach they create music that is undeniably spherical.

Intraga sets the tone for the album as a whole, its varied sounds barely discernible from the surrounding haze: a bass sings at our feet, a toy piano croaks into our ears, and a wordless voice flickers at the threshold of audibility. Kurtagamelan is appropriately riddled with its titular chimes. Their echoes are electronically transformed, seeming to inject a visible murmur into every struck note. A passing swarm of insects retreats into the background. And beneath it all, a muffled drum. The bass continues its subterranean journey, marking its passage through the earth with pitfalls and sinkholes. A brief chorus of voices swells, the wind blows. Interrogation is overlaid with a cicada-like drone and a distant wash of strings, contrasting effectively with the lovely rhythmic threads of Lux-abbysum, which put me in mind of Tomas Jirku’s early click-hop experiments on the Substractif label, though the “live” touches of triangle and other percussive samples add more variation to the music’s topography. Dronezone showcases some of Hortobágyi’s interest in North Indian music, and Kurtaganja a bit of Lengyelfi’s in the electric guitar. This and Twin PeaX form a whimsical pair, respectively characterized by less veiled beats and freer sampling. Necroga closes where the album began, its steady bass strummed like a large cosmic string boring into the center of our spines.

Although the music of Hortogonals is rich in implied silence, here it moves in a continuous stream of sound. The lack of gaps between tracks renders the titles almost arbitrary, even if they do provide the occasional clue into the goings on. The music is dark, but far from ominous, and when it is ominous it is never dark. The experienced electronic listener may not encounter much in the way of innovation in the album’s sound or construction, but will nevertheless find it bears a unique compositional stamp and that sort of haggard beauty only the collaborative object possesses.

Ambrose Field/John Potter: Being Dufay (ECM New Series 2071)

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Ambrose Field

John Potter tenor
Ambrose Field composer, live and studio electronics
Recorded 2007, Bishopthorpe, North Yorkshire, UK
Mixed 2008 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo by Manfred Eicher, Ambrose Field, and Jan Erik Kohngshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

As one of Renaissance music’s most beloved figures, Flemish composer Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474) has been represented through a slew of fine recordings from such groups as the Hilliard Ensemble, the Medieval Ensemble of London, and Pomerium. Though known more for his sacred works, Dufay’s secular chansons find new life here in English electronic composer and performer Ambrose Field’s awe-inspiring soundscapes, with the Hilliard Ensemble’s John Potter at their center. Potter recorded a mere eight minutes of actual singing for an album just shy of fifty, and from this throated nucleus Ambrose Field has cultivated a lush molecular accompaniment.

Potter sings an alluring chanson, bathed in a tender drone, in the introductory Ma belle dame souveraine. Both the melody and its nebulous aura seem to come from a distance. This is one of the more minimal arrangements on the album and as such carries us gently into its unique sound. Je me complains boasts a more pronounced electronic presence with its flanged vocal samples and extended metallic fades. It feels very digital, ending in a viscerally epic swell of synthesized chords amid a fine weave of heavily processed voices. Being Dufay begins with a highly processed and extended vowel, and from this Potter emerges with a more clearly articulated “live” form of the same, spinning from this massive jumble of threads a clearly discernible path for us to follow. Certain phrases become looped before being swept away in a tide of reverb. This density soon relaxes into an even deeper stretch of sound as Potter’s samples flit in and out of view until he reemerges from the cosmic static to gently hang his melody from the clouds. Je vous pri comes into being like a resuscitated lighthouse, not so much piercing as caressing the darkness with its fortuitous light. Along with Je me complains, this track is most effective at shifting between Potter’s solo passages and their ghostly afterlife. It’s also teeming with distinctly organic sounds, as hints of percussion, water, and wind are carefully placed throughout. This ends in a swirl of repeated motif, caught like a song fragment in the net of time before being hoisted out of earshot. Presque quelque chose is an electronic interlude, hovering just beyond the threshold of life and bringing with it the promise of a singer’s dream. Sanctus is built around a sacred chant, undergirded by a bass note that cuts out like a broken radio. Potter’s voice morphs into that of a woman (an effect achieved through Ambrose Field’s painstaking digital modeling), filling the space with a virtual choir. La dolce vista is very much like the first track, giving Potter’s voice full reign of its territory as it glides into finality.

In these settings, one can really appreciate the well-roundedness of the chosen melodies. This isn’t Dufay in outer space, for there is still something undoubtedly earthly about all of this. Even so, the album may not be for everyone. Avid listeners of electronic music may feel more at home, while Renaissance purists may find the electronics outrageously intrusive and might prefer an ensemble of carefully chosen instruments. Yet I believe this album strikes a happy medium between two forms of musical expression that are not so entirely different from one another, and I would encourage even the most reluctant to immerse themselves in its wonders.

This is a conceptually stunning project, one founded on the melodic strength of its source material. In a day and age filled with debates over authenticity and scholarship, and in which so much of the music we have from the early Renaissance survives only in fragments or without clear indication of tempo or arrangement, how refreshing it is to see two musicians taking a strikingly different approach that is no less attuned to the spirit of the music, allowing it to freely wander its own contours without having to fit into those of another. Ambrose Field’s electronics are not “supportive.” Rather, they are an audible extension of something in the music itself and in Potter’s exquisite voice. Regarding his compositional process, Ambrose Field says:

“Whilst being important for my work, I have a general dislike of computers, preferring to find the right sounds first instead of undertaking extensive processing later. This can be a lengthy activity, but has the result that the electronics here highlight the contributions of humans, rather than machines.”

This isn’t just humility, for his statements are clearly evident in his respect for the tactile feel of analog equipment. The combination of digital and analog sounds strikes a fine balance between the former’s “cooler” tendencies and the latter’s heavy warmth, making for an overall effect that is, well, ambrosial.

These pieces are the exact opposite of timeless, beautifully enmeshed in their contemporary technology, be it a band of minstrels, a church choir, or, in this case, an ocean of electronic information. In Dufay’s time, these songs were the supreme form of sound manipulation. They worked in real time, pulsed with an immediacy that required only a willing ear. And in today’s audio landscape, electronics have become equally ubiquitous. We are therefore privileged to hear Potter’s voice unmasked in such unobtrusive company. Even in the longest stretches of synthesized sound, Potter’s presence haunts and provides the foundation for much of the synthetic drive, so that we are never too far from the vulnerable pulchritude of the human voice.

For the sake of live performance, filmmaker Michael Lynch created seven short subjects, one for each of these pieces, from which we are given only a few screen shots on the official site, and which one can sample below. Perhaps a DVD is in order?