Alexander Berne is a world unto himself. Although this double album nominally features him and “The Abandoned Orchestra,” the latter is no more—and no less—than an expansion of self through the art of multi-tracking. Emoting through a variety of wind instruments, piano, percussion, and electronic treatments, he crafts brooding soundscapes for the discerning ambient listener. But don’t let the word “ambient” fool you. This is music that burrows with its own bronze sheen into the darkest corners of the soul and by that light inscribes reams of verses from makeshift biological desks.
Flickers of Mime is in eleven parts and is one of Berne’s most focused atmospheres yet. There is a magical consistency at work in the near-continual drone of Flickers I through IV, bleeding through psychological lattice with the persistence of solitude. Flicker V, however, transgresses a different skin altogether with its persistent, swirling luminescence. And yet, it doesn’t mark a turning point so much as a turning, period—a metamorphosis, if you will, of the self into an alternate signature. Overtly classical inflections speak not of earthly art but of an intergalactic pigment, whereby the unknown becomes the only frame of reference. By Flicker VIII we are caught in the machinery of linearly bound time. The electro-acoustic blend of crunchy break beats and organic breath forge enough heat in their center to turn dark matter into diamond. The flock of piano and reeds that is Flicker X gives glimpse into every occlusion, while the unconsummated matrix of the final Flicker gives rise to sinking.
Death of Memes is in nine parts. Its title comes from poet Michael Bonine’s sonnet sequence “August 12th, 1996.” There is indeed a feeling of raw poetry in the more industrial textures at play. From an introduction I can only describe as “comatose grunge,” it compresses anarchy into a single drop of ink and unfurls its dragon’s tail in a glass of water. This far more contemplative collection of impressions feeds on nutrients of the forgotten, the left-behind, the ruinous. Like the early tape loops of William Basinski, it embraces the aesthetic of decay as the only path toward completion. The sounds here are less locatable, more of a piece with outer spaces than with inner logics. In Meme VI the architecture begins to vibrate so intensely that it bends to the limits of its structural integrity. The droning textures are filled with promise, leaving the piano to resurface in Meme VIII like a floating dream, so that only in the final hour can angels touch their own ears.
This is asylum in sound. Welcome to your hermitage.
Although the word “enigma” refers to hidden meanings and messages, the music of composer-instrumentalist Alexander Berne discloses itself in starkness, not darkness. Nowhere so clearly as in this triptych of albums released in 2010 on the progressive Innova Recordings. Closest in spirit to the multi-tracked worlds of Stephan Micus, Berne’s universe expands well beyond the binary of flesh and spirit into geometries of neither.
The Soprano Saxophone Choir opens this 158-minute path by slowly melting away any obscuring hinges of expectation until the door falls away, leaving the listener between the infinity of two opposing mirrors. The ensuing soundscape unfolds a variety of topographical textures, each suited to its theme like light to color. The initiatory “Shores,” for example, paints miles of coastline with a minimal palette, evoking waters and coastlines with a fisherman’s intuition. It doesn’t so much tell as comport its story, as a dancer would favor gesture over pen. Yet it is not only bodies but environments themselves which move with mammalian self-awareness, moving stealthily through the sun and groundswell of “Gardens” and picking the “Hyacinth” that grows in its soil. What follows is a spectrum of nodes, moving from the isolationist jewel that is “Eschaton,” through the science fiction scope of “Reaches” and the ritual motifs of “Uhm,” and linking to the cellular origins of “Magic,” where modal poetry glows like desert canopy.
The Saduk takes its title from an instrument of Berne’s own invention. Something of a cross between a saxophone and a duduk but of a sphere all its own, it unfolds the very map charted on the first disc and adds names to its rivers, mountains, and geographical regions. The “Aubade” is a morning love song by name, a migration of geese and cranes reflected in sunlit waters that sets a viscerally focused tone, by which the tenderness of Berne’s performance sheds skin to reveal a syncopation free of clots in “Wanderer,” whereby the itinerant body reveals the lessons of its calluses and sunburns as if they were scripture. In contrast to this arid passage, “Clepsydra” (Greek for “water clock”) pours its liquid song from one vessel to another and back again in a droning piece that absorbs brief rhythmic elements to count the seconds. Filling the chasm framed by the eternal golden braid of “Sirens” (wherein one can hear the inner beauties of the saduk in all their glory) is Christo Nicholoudis, who provides vocals on two tracks: “Tridoula” and “Supernal.” His presence subtracts a feeling of architecture and substitutes cavernous breathing in its place. A stirring at the biological level.
The Abandoned Orchestra is Berne’s self-styled refraction, an expression of self that finds union in multiplicity. “Plumescent” is the first of seven steps into this more colorful anatomy. Pulses provide requisite traction, but feel almost accidental in their flips of grace. “Lustening” dips into Muslimgauze territory with its distorted break beat and fading reed lines, while “Kenosis” (another Greek word, this referring to the processes by which one empties the self to receive divine will) diffuses a mind interrupted by its own vocal desires. “Najash” refers to the snake in the Garden of Eden, enchanting with charmer’s croon but disappearing into the self-replicating spiral of “Arise” before being blasted into strands of infinity by the soprano saxophone in “Auriga.” Named for the constellation better known as the Charioteer, the latter does indeed pull its charge from one night to the next, unrelenting in its quest for fire.
Standing out like facial features along the way are three “Chronicles,” each a summary of what came before that treats every lilting line with the care of a mother bird warming her eggs. Averaging at 16.5 minutes each, they constitute a nomadic horizon at various stages of recession, and leave us wondering just how long it will take for our shadows to stretch until we step on our own heads.
My latest review for RootsWorld online magazine looks at Second Movement, the sophomore album from Danish folk trio Dreamers’ Circus. This is sweeping, dreamlike music that should appeal to fans of Ale Möller. To read the review, click on the cover below. Also check out the live video below that to see the musicians in action.
My latest review for All About Jazz is of multi-reedist and composer Klaus Gesing’s solo album reaLTime. Gesing will be known to ECM listeners for his collaborations with Norma Winstone and Anouar Brahem, but his solo work should have strongest appeal to fans of John Surman. Click the cover to discover!
My latest review for RootsWorld online magazine is of an album of rare musique concrète recordings by famed writer Paul Bowles. A fascinating glimpse into a fertile mind. Click the cover to read my thoughts and hear samples.
Remember thy creator before the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher shattered at the fountain or the wheel broken at the well. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. –Kirill, Andrei Rublev
Bernard Oglesby is a quiet crafter. He works his trade like a night boatman, oaring creative waters with a carriage of intuition that can only come with repetition. More than the realization of experience, such action translates into the experience of realization. It can be no surprise, then, that Oglesby should cite “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” as a cornerstone of his personal expression. To one who works across media, André Bazin’s seminal 1960 essay addresses a core truth of representation that resonates through his principled output. “It is perhaps the interrelationship of past, present, and future,” explains Oglesby, “that best characterizes my underlying philosophy and it is in Bazin that I find the clearest indicator for my whole practice: that of the ‘mummy complex,’ where time is slowed and preserved through a process of embalming—or, in my case, recording—in order to transcend death.” His relationship, as of any artist, to acts of transcendence is not one of seeking and achievement, but rather of bloodletting and enmeshment. For to see the self as fallible is to necessitate unfolding into light itself.
Alongside his establishment in the fields of photography and painting, Oglesby has submerged his hands in currents of filmmaking and music. In some ways, his films are more musical than they are visual, while his music is decidedly filmic. His 2011 Mandrel, for instance, is on the surface a detail-oriented montage of foundry workers’ tasks shot in crisp black and white. But it is the incidental rhythms of said tasks that make its composition such a fine one for the senses.
The relationship between his imagistic and sonic practices is, I daresay, indivisible. “I am convinced that music is the most visual of all art forms,” Oglesby agrees, “and by its nature, nonhierarchical in its direct ability to connect with people on many personal and social levels. It was with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and the score by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov that I began to experience and understand just how life-changing the relationship between visual art and music could be.” Yet where Tarkovsky sought to show through that classic film the artist as a hub of worldly creation, Oglesby in his own compositions is concerned with the spokes emanating from it. Like rays to a sun, each can be traced to a generative source.
Without End (Levenshulme, 2003) Silver Gelatin Print
Mapping his musical evolution is a likeminded task and finds the young Oglesby seeking priesthood at a Franciscan monastery, where a different path was revealed to him on the cusp of retreat: “I left to become a church window designer,” he recalls, “before attending art school, where I failed my degree. It’s clear now that music formed a very important subconscious role and experience for me, as I come from a musical background with many of my forefathers and current family involved as musicians, singers, and producers.” Despite the constant evidence of music at home, and skipping over the obvious recovery from his nominal “failure,” Oglesby showed no direct interest in music early on. Film soundtracks, however, had what he terms a “deep and permanent register” in his growth as a listener, the scores of James Bernard and Bernard Herrmann being held in his highest esteem. Since then, his ears have subsisted on a contemplative diet of Frédéric Chopin, Valentin Silvestrov, and G. I. Gurdjieff. It is to the latter we might draw the darkest vein of kinship, wherein pulses a notecraft as vivid as his painted photographs.
“Writing music does not come easily or naturally to me. My hand was forced as a composer, as I found the process of working with other composers extremely difficult and unproductive. A film project I was working on about the sinking of the ship Mefkure required a score to be written and produced. Unfortunately the composer for the project had very different ideas regarding the score and we constantly banged heads. At the time the production team dared me to write the score, so I did. It took 18 months locked in my studio. I approached the task as a novice and initially began learning to use a keyboard as an immediate point of entry into writing and composition. Quickly apparent was a disconnect between my practice as a visual artist and a composer, and the only way for me to reconcile this dislocation was to embrace music solely as a visual language. At this revelatory point my approach to music composition changed, as I no longer looked to the traditional structures of score writing and began to create a visual code to which I could assign sound, expression, pitch, and percussion. Since my early experiments with the Mefkure score, I have established a working method that involves extensive research centered around each project. This research includes making sound recordings, collecting stories, making short films, taking photographs, then using this material and mute boards to map out the form and context of each composition.”
Mefkure (2012) was actually the second in a trilogy built around the words of Ovidiu Nimigean (b. 1962), to whose poetry Oglesby was introduced while making a short film about Romanian immigrants digging for scrap metal just to get by: “Principally, it is his ability to invest descriptive fact with deep emotional content about the strain of death and dislocation,” says Oglesby of the Romanian writer. The minimal nature of the music is like the pitch to every gaseous ball of sentiment and finds its genesis in the forested pathos of Departe (2012).
Side projects such as Torah (2013), a collection of solo piano works paralleling Erik Satie’s The Gymnopédies, and Jannah (2013), a suite for string quartet and keyboard written around the concept of original sin, followed, each appearing like an inexplicable line in a fingernail and representing a major leap inward toward the realization of compositional identity. Over the progress of that identity, Oglesby is still unresolved: “What I am clear about, however, is that those early unconscious moments, as a child, were seminal in priming me for my current creative output.” To be sure, the formative albums feel like a hermit’s sketches, their primary audience a congregation of shadows along cave walls. But with the 2015 release Roumania he has yielded a finished painting. For the composer, it “represents a moment of pure clarity, when all the elements of gestation, encompassing 15 years, come together and speak with elegance, economy, and stillness about slow time and its moral implication. The earlier, fledgling works had more of a narrative structure and graphic framework as I began to explore and test my theories about the relationship between image and sound.” The present recording furthermore completes the Nimigean trilogy.
Roumania is as much a musical construction as conversation, in this instance of and with the beloved “Ballad” for violin and piano by Romanian composer Ciprian Porumbescu (1853-1883). The original work engages the doina, a traditional improvisational form with Arabic roots. The mood of the doina is contextually dependent, and takes on devotional textures in Oglesby’s reimagining. The album’s heart pumps in a fair share of its nourishment from pieces for solo piano and prepared twin pianos scattered throughout. The musicians in question, Anton Heart and Marracha Ward, approach the playing with as much solemnity as went into the writing. At once long-tailed and close enough to hear it breathe, the music drags chains of heavy memory as it washes its own skin and hangs it to dry in a wind of reflection. There is a mental substance to its labor, which finds grayest acumen in “The 4th Way,” the title of which makes reference to Gurdjieff’s anti-institutional path to spiritual awakening. Its pigments are notes incarnate, as are those of “In Deep Silence,” which like Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel speaks to the untethered mind.
Roumania also makes use of field recordings. Originally taken as research for the aforementioned Mefkure but shelved for a film that never materialized, they were gathered by the composer and Janez Hovec in the lower Carpathians and Black Sea. Their addition triangulates the axes of sound and image with that of space. Lapping waves (“Night Roumania”) disguise the piano as rocky shoreline, while cries of birds (“The Black Gulls”) dislocate us from the light of dawn. Like a Theo Angelopoulos film or Eleni Karaindrou soundtrack thereof, these environments sing for time, out of time, and with a strength that cares little for numbers. In “He who loves and leaves,” vocalist Mija Aleksiss and cellist Ontak Ayer join Ward at the keyboard to mark the waters of trauma with multiple voices, each a buoy signal of vivid light.
Two pieces—“Laegan” and “From Abroad”—feature the otherworld of spoken word. In the first, Romanian poet Ana Blandiana, who is responsible for introducing Oglesby to Nimigean, reads concavely, as if her language were a cinematic fade. The piano blends into view, while holding on to the rhythms and patterns of that speech. It strikes up a chord, a dance past midnight, a melancholy that lingers whenever one can’t sleep for the dead. The second is Nimigean himself, whose lo-fi aesthetics breed hi-fi effects. He steps through a door, taking the listener outside of all clothing and shelter, until the only language left is that of breath without song.
My latest review for All About Jazz is of zBug’s powerful live album, Splitting Glass / Twilight Sunrise, which you can read about and preview by clicking the cover below. Those who enjoyed ECM’s Lumen Drones should feel right at home in zBug’s crushing universe.
My latest review for RootsWorld is of the Kronos Quartet’s collaboration with Canadian composer Derek Charke. Click the cover to read more and hear samples of this wonderful album.
My latest review for RootsWorld online magazine is of Ensemble Ériu’s self-titled debut, a refreshing and “ambient” take on traditional Irish music. Click the cover to discover!
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 