i disappeared again. what happened?

tsk... promises, promises.

so what did happen? just the usual - ? well, yes and no... it is true that after my (all too brief) burst of energy back in june, i totally lost the momentum, in a manner which is by now entirely (tediously) predictable; but even i never dreamed it would take this long for me to get back to the blog - and in this first instance, just to explain why i haven't been active here. i first started this particular post back in july, and quickly abandoned it... other posts, with actual content in them, are as inchoate as they are numerous.

yes, and no... late last year, i had given up smoking ganja - and bemoaned the complete lack of mental and spiritual direction which bedevilled me as a result. and then, of course, i fell off the wagon rather spectacularly, fell back in love with everything, and started posting again. what's happened this summer has been similar, yet compeltely different. last year i gave up not because i really wanted to, but because i had been convinced that it was necessary; it left me feeling terrible, and although i stuck to my resolution for some time, underneath it all i had changed my mind: i still wanted to smoke, to be high. i detested being constantly "straight" and feared that it would see my life become purely dull and grey, with no interest in anything. for a while, that's exactly what it felt like.

this year, having got myself diagnosed with asperger's syndrome (for work-related reasons; let's face it, at my age i didn't really need a diagnosis), i allowed myself to get talked into taking SSRIs as well, in a minimal does prescribed not to counter depression, but as an anxiolytic, and to take the edge of my notorious mood swings. i had no intention of stopping smoking at this point, and didn't try to do so. but... over (not much) time, it just happened: by the end of june, i found i no longer had any desire to smoke, and was coping just fine without it. an unusually hot july came, and my birthday with it; old habit saw me scoring ganja for the occasion - though it turned out to be far from straightforward, and took several days of uncertainty, as if the very universe were trying to keep me from recidivism - and i spent an entire week in a pleasant green haze, not having to work, not really bothering about very much...

... but what i thought would happen, simply didn't. you see, as i've complained (or confessed) before, my journey of discovery with avant-garde music, and with anthony braxton in particular, has been very much tied up with my use of psychoactive drugs, and without them, i seem to have no ready access to the realms opened up by, within, the music. those few weeks before my birthday, i was feeling perfectly level and content, and i was listening to plenty of music; but i hadn't listened to any jazz-based or (semi-)improvised music at all, and (so i told myself) by indulging my old habits and altering my mental state, i would give myself the chance to get posting again, reclaim the momentum which had suddenly faltered.

...

- didn't happen, this time. i carried on listening to the music i had been exploring for the previous few weeks (lots of hardcore punk and grindcore, some experimental rock), thinking initially that this would merely confirm what was lacking in such musics, and send me in search of deeper and richer materials; but that just didn't quite take place. in fact - and this scared me a little - when i pushed myself to listen to july's tcf download, it passed in an hour-long blur and left no impressions behind at all. straight, stoned, whatever, i seemed to have lost the thread completely now.

- and i am yet to pick it back up. hence the total lack of engagement with this project; hence my continued silence. for weeks now i have been intending to write at least this post, and tell such occasional readers as may be left that i will be back at some point, i just don't know when; and for weeks i have been prevaricating. finally i am forcing myself to do it, ever so belatedly, and at the time (and here's where the sunshine peeps through again) when i am close to re-engaging with the music.

there are doubtless a few other reasons which underpin all this lack of braxton in my recent life, in no special order:

1. that last post posited a preponderance of duets-with-bass which i ahd just presumed was there, without really bothering to check beforehand. when i actually went through the discography to list them, i was surprised to discover a lot fewer than i thought there were, and this left me feeling a bit silly. (i still think there is something especially personal and apposite about the maestro's meetings with the contrabass - but there's no denying that they don't stand out in the discography nearly as much as i thought.) so, i will get back to that thread and finish it off at some point - even if various other posts never get completed now, having passed the stage where they can be picked up again - but it doesn't surprise me that i felt a bit sheepish about doing so, for a while back there...

2. as most if not all of you will know, tcf have discontinued the monthly membership scheme. they have replaced it with an annual subscription, which i can't curently afford (having found myself with rather less disposable income than i thought i had, at the beginning of the year); hence, for the time being at least, i am back to feeling cut off from that organisation and all it entails...

3. i have long since identified in myself a strong tendency to recoil from deep and lasting commitment. ok, so i have been married more than seventeen years and a father since 2008, and i have not turned my back on my family; but in most other aspects of my life, i still seem to be terrified of committing to anything in particular. hence, i created this monster in part to distract myself from my studies in oriental medicine, at a time when i was "supposed" to be getting myself fully qualified as a shiatsu practitioner, then branching out in my own therapeutic direction (never happened, despite my completing the actual course); and a year or two on from then, i allowed myself to be distracted away from even this blog by a renewed interest in tai chi chuan (and comics) which took up most of my attention for a good long while. the last two years have seen a complete change in my professional life, and that itself has entailed a veritable rollercoaster of excitable, hopeful highs and gloomy, miserable lows; at a time when all the forward-moving parts of me are trying to cut ties to the entrenched and anchored parts, it's (again) no surprise that i have been led away from the one thing in which i was trying to do my best.

- and, you know, let's be clear about this: i've built the braxtothon up into something i can't quite seem to live up to, because time goes by and i never seem to get back there. will i ever actually continue it, now? i still intend to; but what are my intentions worth?

still... lest this all sound terminally pessimistic... i am basically not doing too badly, and here's the major difference from this time last year: i still don't have any urge to get high. i am doing just fine without it, and as enjoyable as that week in july was, it really didn't do for me many of the things for which i had come to rely on it: in particular, i found no increase in insight or mental clarity, never mind resolve and inspiration. if it can't do that for me, what use is it? better that i try and achieve what others have had to do: build it up natually, over time, without taking shortcuts to it. and as for the music, i know that that will come, as day follows night: psychedelic it may have been, but there was never anything illusory about what i found in those realms. and, you know, my ears have always needed change from time to time and i can't keep sandpapering them with hardcore punk forever (as much as that does satsify them, to an eyebrow-raising extent). where this post, so long deferred, would previously have ended with a big ??? - in terms of when the return was likely to come - i now feel that it's probably just around the corner.

keep checking back... and you will find out if i am right :)

next-level studies, inst. 2: the reed(s) and the bass (pt. 1)

- or, the duets with mark dresser are on permanent hold -

... and when it comes to duo encounters with bassists specifically, our man really comes into his natural element. he has explored this one over and over again...which is why the omission, at time of writing, of dresser's name from the list of contrabass collocutors seems striking, egregious even. i mean... still not ready yet? well, it only took twenty-four years, give or take, to get hemingway in there... so far we are up to twenty-eight with m.d. ... and counting.

but bassists - and their prevalence among these myriad, multifarious duet meetings: a significant major trend and/or preference, or just a freak statistic to be noted and not built around? see, it could so very easily be the latter, but i keep coming back to the former and here's why:

- b's reed already reveals itself (over/over) as the mass of compressed strings it is;

- hence a chordophone is an ideal counterpart and collocutor;

- and the lower frequencies are themselves an endless source of fascination for our intrepid explorer

&c.

- that's pretty much it really, i think it's no statistical anomaly at all: i think b. very possibly above all gets genuinely excited at the chance to dance with (yet) a(nother) contrabass, and one could hardly blame him. and besides - goddamn but there have been some amazing players of that instrument. b's own (extensive) cv is in this regard putatively deficient only in terms of transatlantic meetings, logistics and total lack of funding etc, but altena (*1), guy, kowald, and yes even texier and tommaso, are all names "missing". well, but europe is not entirely unrepresented after all, as we will discover in due course -

now let's just run through all those damn bass duos in chronologorder, and make a few pertinent observations about each in turn:

a) the earliest (as-yet) documented duet with a bassist is - i believe i am right in saying - with a brit, and a long-serving (and possibly much-maligned, perhaps not for me to say... at any further length) one at that: david holland, as he was wont to be billed later that same year ('72) ... but it's only a fragment; and in any case it's a ringer, holland was playing 'cello on this'n. ok, so moving on to the list proper, then, and leaving fragments much as they were before i rudely disturbed them...

b) to (base/bass) business: we actually don't get started, amazingly, until 1982 (after all that build-up), to wit

i)  with john lindberg, six duets (1982) 

- starting the (as yet) faithful student. it's not necessarily widely known, but lindberg was actually named as a member of the new working group as early as maybe even 1977, if the dates given for the interviews in the appendices to the collected writings are to be taken as strictly correct (dubious... but, ) - '77, ground zero for british punk and the year david murray finally "made the scene", was a mystery year for me for ages as it happens, in that the personnel of b's working group at this point becomes immediately far from clear, since the various quintet appearances with muhal cannot really be taken as "working group" workouts as such, mra participating always on the euro festival circuit and ever the special guest, i would hazard a guess (?); so who was in the band? well, according to that interview (*2), john lindberg certainly was, before the year was out. hence, by now he is in his fifth or sixth year of tenure and no greenhorn at all. 

so, the programme is suitably academic-oriented - as regards the six core compositions themselves, all from the songbooks, but including what are ostensibly some odd choices, such as comp. 23j which is normally used a tension-vehicle for group interplay and development, but which works here just fine, albeit still sounding a little underweight. suitably academic, because wherever the leader found lindberg, it wasn't just in some club or whatever, he came from a background which i'm sure (not checked) must include plenty of time behind  and among the cloistered and closeted confines of some conservatory or other... he learned fast, thrown in with very fast company in a band including clarence "bobo" shaw and (g. lewis' crosstown twin) ray anderson... anyway, it's lovely to see comp. 6a given the treatment on this one as well, since dave holland had played so well on the '71 version and all that. right, well, there is also a standard(ish) in there tacked on the end, "four" by miles davis (who rarely bothered to flex his muscles much as a writer), and included in two takes. ok, so moving swiftly(ish) on:

ii) with buell neidlinger, 2x2 as discussed previously
- two sets of high-end, frequently high-octane mutual encountering and coexploration of territories both esoteric and familiar, captured on an april evening at mccabe's guitar shop in santa monica, CA back in 1989. (and seven years further up the continuum from the previous entry - i know, i know, my thesis is looking pretty weak at this point...). understand that i am not (usually) relistening to any of these recordings as i type, just trying to allow the information to flow and drawing on absorbed memory... but i was sufficiently impressed by this double cd (despite its decidedly unappealing cover) to consider that all the krystallhype regarding the actual release (a high-point even among braxton's career as a duettist, etc) is pretty fully justified, there is something extra-special about what took place here - and the only reason they (neidlinger and marty k) sat on the material for as long as they did is cos they just could never decide which pieces to include and which to leave out, finally deciding once and for all that the only viable option was, indeed, to release both sets in toto and just allow the listener to wallow and drink deep. sufficiently impressed to attract the attention of buell himself, who sounded me out about whether i was the right guy maybe to undertake his life story (clearly he had never heard of me before mr krystall showed him my emails and pointed him to the blog, otherwise he would know what a space cadet / notorious lunch artist i am when it comes to following through on my stated intentions, &c, and as you can imagine nothing ultimately came of it, which is probably only fair since although i am an admirer of mr neidlinger and his playing, i have little or no experience of much of the music/s in which he has chosen to involve himself, and i'm sure a better ghost can be found, not to mention about 100000 more reliable ones as i say - still time for me to change all this mind, i will still only be 43 when the summer is out and my daughter not yet five..!).

- but yes, this recording pretty much answers any and all questions about why the experience of duetting with a contrabass would be so appealing to the maestro in the first place. 'nuff said, go lissen...

iii) with peter niklas wilson, 8 duets hamburg 1991
- haha, and this one is a bit good as well, indeed i got all hot under the collar when i finally strapped it on back in february (another story as-yet begun but not completed...), could barely sit still for the fidgets. the opus numbers on this - and btw i really know nothing about the late herr wilson, but whoever he was this is (funnily enough) another case where the label (in this case the well-established music and arts of san francisco) proclaims the release to be special even among b's career as a duettist, stop me if you have heard this one before and so on, but bugger me if they don't have a point there also, since as it turns out wilson, whoever he was, really throws himself into this incredibly challenging set of totally fucking new music fresh and quivering and still bleeding from the tender minstrations of the cutting edge - just go back and look at those opus numbers, the only thing missing from that fever-inducing list are comps. 158 & 159, explicitly to be unveiled as pieces for the reactivated working quartet, just round the corner, four months up the line to be precise, in willisau - comp. 159 in particular will obsess this band for several years to come, no doubt at the cost of many a night's sleep but yielding so much in terms of richly layered understanding of what it means to play group music in the first place (free-sliding tectonic plates underpinning, if that's the word, the potentially-maddening repetitive line which carries and defines this number) - wilson, i say, properly commits himself to the material (also including the mighty old warhorse comp. 40a for good measure, amidst the flurry of totally new music remember - as if i am about to let you forget) and these explorations are just thrillingly exciting to witness.

- woah, dear... [slap} thanks, i needed that... too much coffee (...) - i'm off for some fresh air and a shower and we'll reconvene.

***

(in keeping with my current - enforced - policy of shorter posts without cutting back on the barely-controlled rambling and playing-with-punctuation, all in the interests of helping it flow ..., i am cutting this one short for the time being. the entire thing would be a bit indigestible in one sitting anyway, even for me... but i am on it, this one will almost certainly be continued in the immediate future...)

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... yep, still back (and counting)

first keystroke, 46.53 at 2348 my time (the blog and i sort of keep different time, though not exactly *) - we were at the point of experiencing comp. 363c - an early (as yet) appearance for the beauteous creation that is falling river music, as previously mentioned tonight. nowhere near as early as this release, admittedly - which i neglected to hyperlink when last i mentioned it, soz - which was (if all is as it shd be) recorded in july 2003 (*1), released in 2006... but as things stand, we are only just now getting to know frm properly, or indeed at all, as far as that goes.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's so fucken amazing

something about the circumstances turns at least two of b's three (female) (*2) collocutors/coexplorers into (g.) "robairs" so to speak, achieving such incredible degrees of precision over the manifold means of their expressions and utterances that they - well, match the maestro himself to all intents and purposes, certainly on the night, and just leave me continually marvelling - these two are violinist erica dicker and pianist sally norris - if i haven't retroactively included bassoon-charmer katie (formerly credited as katherine) young in this brisk sweep, it's because i didn't notice the same of her playing (while i treated this as semi-b/g music, inevitably under the circ's) - and, well, because that is one difficult instrument to master i should think, and apparently the range of tonal/timbral variation available on it is relatively limited for a reed instrument (*3). - to some small extent, there may even be a familiarity-bred contempt as it were, since i have heard ms young's voice on several recordings previously, usually making a fourth at a hand (or so) of dcw. sally norris is a new name to me altogether, i think, whilst erica dicker only recently elbowed her way (ever so elegantly) into my consciousness as the smiling one, whenever there is a pair of violins (*4); evidently she was on the (braxtonian!) scene somewhat earlier than that (bearing in mind that the first time i was clearly aware of her was in last year's italian gtm reinterpretation)...

... but getting back to my point: something about the music, or the occasion, or the leadership, or all three and (potentially, as ever) more, elevates the musical expressiveness of b's sidewomen to a really extraordinarily level. - yes, i repeat, that of the maestro, the master, of the masters themselves. (pause.) (*5) not voices come forth at times, but choirs. b. himself launches his singing voice through the sopranino such that both are separately audible in concert (fully in the case of the voice, less so the saxophone *6). just - just stop reading me, and whatever else, until you have these sounds in your ears, in your head. it's that good. in fact -



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baaaaackkkkk...ish...

(...again)

after weeks of resolutely not listening to that music which promises to do me the most good (whyyyyyyyyyyyyy??? mrmrmrmrngngngnghhhhhh), i am back again - for the time being breaking loose from a tidal spiral of near-sanity which has accompanied the recent process of officially getting myself diagnosed (reasons would make a long story but can be condensed down to one word: work) and surfacing, allowing myself all of a sudden to partake, drink from some of the deepest waters the muses have to offer, and -

- and at once benefit therefrom, quelle choc  {{doh}}

what light from yonder window breaks

('tis... the sun)



programme thus far for tonight goes like this:

1. comp. 220 (+23c) (*1)  (first half of this beautiful release *2)

2. comps. 153 & 155 & 154 (bites four-six from this slice of gorgeousness)  (*3)

3. comp. 363c (hot off the m-f'ing press) [well... ten days late actually! (told you i've been denying myself)]

ok, so... cut to the chase: when i can find the receptive state for listening, i am so much nicer a person and feel so much better; whether or not i communicate better is a moot point ;-)  (*4) - but in any case, i speak, i arrange my thoughts and for whatever reason/s, some people out there still read them whether i post regularly or not. this is encouraging, though not in any ego-massaging way since a) i have rendered myself (almost) completely unapproachable over the years, in all sorts of ways - so i seldom get comments; and b) by internet terms, the page hits are still laughably minuscule (though steady and appreciable (with all the obvious riders and codicils that qualification entails!, regarding limited-interest subject matter, aforementioned (auto-)alienation (*5) and all that)). but yes, when i allow it to be, - it is encouraging.

and yet -

yes, but this is neither the time nor place for those (ever) darker reflections... this is a time for light and clarity and joy and above all, in this case, for listening since the new release, the 2007 falling river music, is now underway. i'll get back to you later -


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birthday card (on time for once!)

- it won't have escaped the regular reader's notice that i failed to follow up the previous "duet" post as i promised; actually, there have been any number of posts recently which i started but haven't finished. (i have all sorts of interesting challenges going on both at work and at home right now.)

in the meantime, today is our man's birthday and i just wanted to mark the occasion. this musician continues to be committed to pushing back boundaries and exploring new territories, to developing the role of women in creative music (previously very much a male-dominated province), and to helping younger players and composers to work out their own systems which incorporate their complete range of influences. there are not many like him and let's all just be grateful that he's still here!

***happy birthday sir***

i wish you good health, and many happy returns of the day :))

next-level studies, inst. 1: duo update

[y'see, the order with which all this gets revealed and clarified even for me is of crucial importance in this sort of work, never mind the decisions and strategies concerning the order in which the information is then encoded and disseminated(ish) to you guys, the listening readership-at-large (*1);

- next comes another mini-burst of several linked posts, on a contextual-conceptual development-based theme:]

ONE of these days, i will i will, i will actually put up the much-delayed-and-further-delayed student studies 3 post (of course, it might ease the process if i wrote it first...). meanwhile, we are stuck back at the level of scholarship as notified here, two short-long years ago plus weeks-and-counting, so that the most important conclusion from the readings i had done throughout the published braxton materials at this time - namely the centrality of the duet, as opposed to the solo concert - never yet got published. two years, some weeks and counting. [it's not really such a big deal, is it... let's all remember, the reason we can justifiably use a term like avant-garde is cos the rest of the world still aint catchin up any time soon. i say let's all remember, i never got round to that post either (i.e. the state of the term avant-garde *2 and whether there is yet any utility in deploying it)]

so anyway, without further ado and all that, here it (belatedly) is:

1. when "they said" ("they" being the scottish critic in this case) that braxton's continuing creativity and longevity is fuelled by his frequent returns to the good old american songbook, they were way off target. ok, this bit isn't actually anything to do with the update is it. that's true, but:

2. when i said (passim up till that point, though mainly on and around the old radio 3 jazz messagebored) that what actually fuelled said continuing creativity and longevity was b's frequent solo recitals, i was wrong also. haha, actually - as i found out when i read some of the interview materials appended to the books of composition notes - those solo concerts were really just a pragmatic way of getting around the euro tour circuit on the (ultra-)cheap, i.e. travelling and playing alone, and knowing that if and when even a friendly promoter was weighing up whether to book a "free" act they would immediately be thinking in terms of the number of people onstage as separate hungry open mouths, the obvious conclusion was to sell himself as act which could always be booked solo. this, in turn, quickly became reputed as an act well worth seeing, so that no-one ever really had to worry too much about whether anyone would turn up for it and sit through it; and besides, it was hardly unique by that point anyway. (the aacm, they really knew what they were about. let's all be clear on that for a sec)

3. - no, what actually actually fuelled said continuing creativity and longevity was:

THE DUET EXPERIENCE.

{{ta-dah}}

heh

en bref, then: the reading material updated me about the fact that playing solo gigs frequently wasn't (ultimately) anything much to do with spiritual advancement or refreshment or anything else (albeit these were beneficial side-effects), it was driven primarily by economics, and backed up by considerable nerve and courage (albeit both born of grizzled and road-tested experience); it was only later (or was it? *3) that i concluded that actually the duets were where it is at in terms of the major long-distance deep-reserve fuel source. again, to sum up: exploring an open space with one other mind and voice is a unique opportunity which is entirely different from the trio, where all sorts of further dimensions are opened in terms of sub-relationships and extrapolations, either in different directions or with different weighting or balancing; and if the trio represents a different paradigm then how much more is that true of the quartet, and onwards and upwards... no, the duet encounter offers possibilities which can only come and go within larger ensembles. two minds together - where minds now encompasses hearts, guts, voices and every other damn thing - the upward spiral, the virtuous circle, that begins here. ground zero.

and that concludes inst. 1

stay tuned ;-)

c x


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(meanwhile) a vanity mirror

the ridiculous thing is, for once i actually did what i said i was gonna do, the very next day - laboriously copied back over the lion's share of my "braxtonphiles" to the re-virginised laptop, - and indexed them all properly this time dammit (grrrrr... chsuis une asperge) - then settled down at last and played april's tcf downloads, the two new(ish) ones... and was, indeed, utterly enchanted and charmed and delighted by the whole experience. so much so, that i did indeed start writing about it at once... then never quite had time to finish it, ... and so didn't. (yet) *

meanwhile - one thing i teased about back at the beginning of my hot streak was the possibility of a "best of braxton" list after all these years of refusing even to entertain the idea. i drafted one at the time, but bugger me if i could find it this evening so i'll just do another one. after all, it merely involves speed-reading the restructures recording index (which i have never found a chore!) and the whole point is not to fetishise the bloody thing beyond absolute basic "necessity". it's incomplete, it's imperfect and i hope i will spend the rest of my life adding to it, but:

for alto
complete braxton 1971 (first true quartets)
town hall 1972 (trio and quintet)
4 comps 1973 (jap.)   {{magnifying glass}}
new york fall 1974  (remember other reviews are available!)
five pieces 1975 *1
montreux/berlin (both early quartets, orch.) *2
creative orch. 1976
elements of surprise (w/lewis)
duets w/braxton (mitchell) ***
comp. 98
london-birmingham-coventry 1985 (great quartet)
victoriaville '88
2 comps järvenpää '88
eugene 89 *3
seven comps trio '89 (roidinger, oxley)
willisau 1991  (great quartet)
trio london 93 (parker, rutherford)
quartet santa cruz 93  (great quartet) *4
charlie parker project
duets with brett larner 95 *5
comp. 192 (w/lauren newton)
yoshi's ninetets 97 (all)
quintet london 2004 (thb, mary h.)
iridium box set 2006  (12+1tet)
..?

[non-album, super-boot special mention: trio pisa 1982 (bailey, lewis) ]

- like i say: it's incomplete, it's imperfect
-  the whole point is not to fetishise the bloody thing
- but it happens to include twenty-five albums, and for what it's worth, these listed above are the recorded albums which i believe capture our maestro at his highest level qua maker of albums. and yes, that's my quasi-professional, guerilla-musicologist's assessment (rather than a wholly subjective, emotionally-contaminated personal opinion).

... there's tons of other stuff which very probably belongs on there (solos and duos really cry out for their own lists; hell, we could do one just of duet recordings with bassists). some of it i haven't heard enough, or haven't heard recently; some stuff i still haven't heard at all, of course. the syntactical ghost trance choir very probably belongs in there, but technically (ahhhhh...fergodsake) i haven't heard it, only the boot. [gtm (syntax) 2003 is erroneously titled, among minor but irksome distractions i find in the album's production on this occasion, otherwise it would pretty much be a shoo-in. mrs testa, anne rhodes belongs in there somewhere for sure :) ]

that's me for the time being... more on the way though... and btw i'm right now downloading this month's aural treat :)))

cent x

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