Even though I'm trying to write about (some) matters in more detail, not every post has to be like that... right? So this one is really just a pointer to some things that are out there...
Back at the beginning of September, on the verge of moving house, I first mentioned on here my having listened to the new release Duet (Other Minds) 2021, with James Fei. I had just listened to the music online; the actual CD was not technically even released yet (although I think it was out the following day). [At time of writing, and to the best of my knowledge, this is actually the only new release under Braxton's name this year. Times are hard.]
In that same post I linked to another site, Soundohm, because in its listing for the CD it gives more detail than I could find anywhere else: specifically, it provided a name for the new musical model employed by B. for this piece, Composition 429. The new system is called Lorraine (apparently). As it turns out, all this same info is available on the Other Minds webstore page linked above: everything on the Soundohm page, including the false identification* of the electronics as "Diamond Curtain Wall", was taken directly from Other Minds. (Whether that wasn't the case on 1st September, or I just somehow missed it, cannot now be established with any certainty. Ahem.) And don't bother trying to order the CD from Soundohm either because it shows as sold out. However, they do list various other Braxton goodies on there. The Bologna Duo with Jacqui Kerrod is available, and they are also still listing copies of the 1995 album Two Lines with David Rosenboom; what's more, they list as available a CD which commands rather higher prices elsewhere, the Victoriaville duo concert with Fred Frith. As it happens I don't (yet) have any of these recordings in my collection, but the one with Frith caught my eye in particular as it's one I have always especially wanted to get.
Frith is a player far better known to many others than he is to me: in truth I only came to know of him in the first place via John Zorn, who cast the British guitarist as a bass guitarist in his group Naked City. Much later I discovered that Frith had a long career already behind him playing experimental rock and that kind of thing; but (more than) thirty years after I first heard Torture Garden, I still basically only know FF in connection with Zorn, really**. Nevertheless he has always impressed me any time I've heard him. On the face of it, he didn't seem a natural playing partner for B. - but then since when did that ever stop anybody, in the predictably-unpredictable world of free improv..? (Nobody expected B. to play with Wolf Eyes, either, but that same Victoriaville Festival in 2005 saw precisely that meeting.) Somehow, though, this recording never fell into my lap and it was only very recently that I heard any of it.
The Soundohm page includes some samples, although caveat auditor: four of these appear to be provided, but the fourth has nothing to do with this release (if it is a Braxton recording at all - which it might be - it must presumably be an excerpt from the EEMHM album, yet another Victoriaville release - albeit this time not from their festival as such). Rather jarringly, even if one plays clip 1 it will then segue without warning into clip 4, bypassing 2 and 3 completely (these are from the duo meeting with Frith). Still, between those first three clips it is possible to get a pretty fair idea of how strong this meeting must have been. There's nothing essentially new or surprising on there, that I heard; B. does what B. does, in various moods, and Frith supplies expert and intriguing backing. (At least some of the pieces are available in full on Youtube; I can't work this out because the first and second tracks, for sure, are posted via the AB channel I've mentioned before (virtually passim in September's posts); but the reason I hadn't noticed that before is that if you go to the actual channel page, these pieces don't show there..? not gonna mess my head up too much trying to get to the bottom of that one.) Actually, I am listening to these full pieces right now and they sound fucking amazing. The sheer multiplicity of Frith's approaches to guitar playing seems to bring out a particularly inspired performance from B., or possibly B's renowned virtuosity brings out the best in FF, or... more likely, both of them have reputations which rather precede them and they both made certain to bring their "A game" to the stage. (Not that B. ever really brings anything less... maybe we should think in his case more in terms of his "A game" and his "A+ game", I dunno...)
I do have to get this recording, sooner rather than later. If I end up buying it from Soundohm, I will report back on how that goes***. [They do also have some other stuff showing as still in stock, although they also list plenty of stuff which is out of stock, rather unhelpfully; the sextet from Victoriaville '05 is available at time of writing, as is yet another Victoriaville event, the solo concert from 2017. They also seem to have copies still of the 4CD-set Old Dogs with Gerry Hemingway. (Honestly, trying to keep up with all this stuff is practically a full-time job... )]
***
More duos: I recently came across a listing on Youtube for a reading of B's Comp. 305 by Payton MacDonald and Gideon Forbes. Neither name was familiar to me, but MacDonald is evidently a percussionist and Forbes a reedman, although it's posted on the former's channel (which sort of makes it look as if it was his idea, etc). I had to hunt first of all for where - if anywhere - I had come across that particular opus number before; and eventually I located it, on the album which B. cut with his heir apparent in 2002. I don't own a hard copy of that one, but I do have the mp3 files, so I dug out the original (?) version of Comp. 305 - which presumably, then, is specifically a duet on the score - and earmarked it for listening, the idea being that I would attempt to make some sort of comparison between the two renditions. This, however, proved beyond me for the time being; which is to say, I could probably do it, but the result very probably wouldn't be worth reading. The version with THB is dense, absolutely beautiful (of course), but covers a lot of ground - and there is some collaging, as Comp. 44 is worked in there at some point, as well as some "language improvisation"; the recent interpretation - which has been up for about a year or so and has rather fewer than 150 views, at time of writing - looks to be a faithful reading of Comp. 305 only, straight from the score... although even that is somewhat perplexing, as I couldn't help noticing that when MacDonald turns the page on his music, Forbes doesn't; very possibly, the written score for this piece has different materials for the two players - ? The vibraphonist turns the page as early as forty-four seconds into the piece, and at around 8.30, he turns it again, but appears to go back to the page he was on originally. Forbes, as far as I could see, doesn't turn any pages at all although he does seem to have a wider set of pages on his music stand to begin with, so maybe he just has all his sheets laid out at once... who knows. Playing soprano sax here, Forbes appears to follow the score very closely - although it's quite hard to work out how he can possibly have more than ten minutes' worth of notated music in front of him at one time. What do I know? Both of them play gorgeously on this, I can say that much; Forbes in particular - given that he has the unenviable task of replicating the maestro's part on soprano - really gives a great performance, and overall both of them fully commit to the music. It definitely deserves more attention than it's been getting, but (again) such is the lot of the serious artist, in our world of reality TV and shallow celebrity culture - and for that matter, such is specifically the lonely lot of the Braxton interpreter, since MacDonald's Youtube channel has rather more than three times as many subscribers as this particular video has views...
... it definitely needs some love, and I haven't completely abandoned the idea of trying to do a comparison piece; that's just more ambitious than I thought, at first. Something for the future, then... in the meantime, I am going to stop teasing McClintic Sphere and write about Thumbscrew, at long last..!
* DCW, just to clarify this point, is a musical model unique to B. It entails small-group playing over interactive electronic backing, the software for which was called SuperCollider (if I remember correctly). The write-up for Comp. 429 online wrongly assumes that Diamond Curtain Wall was the actual software itself and hence further assumes that the electronic backing for the recent performance uses the same application. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't... but either way the resulting music is not DCW.
** Frith duetted with JZ for one of the latter's 50th birthday concerts - one of the ten or twelve (? can't remember offhand) which were deemed good enough for official release. He also played in the quartet with JZ, Bill Laswell and Dave Lombardo which is retroactively known to collectors as Bladerunner - although as far as I know the band was never billed as such. It certainly wasn't when I saw them, at the Barbican in London more than twenty years ago now. (It was a memorable concert for various reasons, but I do remember being fascinated by the range of sounds conjured up by FF.)
*** We all know how my last foray into the world of online-shopping-from-untried-sources went. Soundohm gives the impression of being quite well established at this sort of thing, and tempts the potential buyer with the idea of becoming a member and getting free shipping; what that actually means, though, is paying 60 euros a year for membership - and shipping is only free if you're buying at least 140 euros' worth of stuff. OK, shan't be doing that, then... but I may well end up ordering something from them, so wish me luck..!
No comments:
Post a Comment