Slowly going viral

 

Now look - I know what "going viral" means. Hell, I have a teenage daughter! I am not that out of touch... so of course I understand that what is going to be discussed here today - the gradual spread of B's music and ideas across the wider musical community - does not really represent what we would usually mean by "viral" in the internet craze sense. Quite the opposite, probably... nevertheless, there is a real sense that this stuff is actually, finally, beginning to catch on. The metaphor was irresistible.

This post is somewhat out of sequence, in that the site which led me to the two videos I'm about to share with you is one to which I was led by McClintic Sphere, and the event he was telling me about is one which is not going to fit into this article... so there will still need to be a little follow-up. But you see, that page led me to quite an exciting video, and that in turn led to another one, and this all just feels as if it needs to be taken care of first...

What we have here is two separate, unrelated GTM performances, both recent, neither of which had (as far as I know) anything to do with the maestro. This is good, because it proves that the message is at last getting spread among musicians (if it wasn't already - and I'm not totally convinced that it was). Something else which is good, and which I know would greatly please the man himself, is that women are much represented in both groups: it's an established imperative for B. to try and encourage more women into creative music, and I can't help thinking that the well-balanced ensembles we're going to look at here are a sign that this plan, too, is working*.

***

The first video is undated (as yet, although I have asked Ictus if they can provide this information - so we'll see); but given that it was posted on 6th July 2022, it must be of a performance earlier than that. I found the video on the "Watch & Listen" page of Ictus' site; the institution itself is a Belgian enterprise, founded in 1994 as the live band for a dance company, but which has grown steadily ever since. Anyone who has been reading this blog since I resumed posting on it will not be surprised to learn that guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe is currently one of the (many) members; a quick scan down that list reveals that trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, one of B's most recent touring musicians, is also involved. Anyway, the video we're concerned with here is "the result of a 2 day workshop where Advanced Master students from the School of Arts Gent join forces with a squad of Ictus musicians" - and the workshop in question was given by Kobe Van C., drawing on what is by now a fair bit of time and experience working with B's music. He can't claim to the same sort of direct lineage as Roland Dahinden; unlike the trombonist, the Belgian has never studied under B. or collaborated with him. But he has immersed himself in the maestro's music to a degree that few "outsiders" can match: he leads a group which plays only GTM, and has himself recorded a solo album of GTM pieces, using tape loops and electronics for accompaniment**. It doesn't seem at all arrogant or inappropriate for him to be hosting GTM workshops - he has clocked up the mileage and established his credentials beyond doubt***.

The main territory for this triumphant performance, then, is Comp. 255 - a Syntactical GTM work which, in principle, is an eccentric choice for an all-instrumental ensemble. But although the syllabic content of the score must necessarily be missing, there is no other reason why any one work should not be undertaken by any grouping of voices, human or otherwise; and KVC's septet has already tackled this piece, so it's a score he presumably knows pretty well. He will have had his own reasons for preferring this territory for the ensemble to work from. As for the ensemble, it's a very Braxtonian tentet, albeit with rather unfamiliar instrumentation: two electric guitars, three woodwinds, one brass, keyboards, two drum kits plus one mallet percussion. (The full line-up is given on the website, although the instrument credits are not all that complete: Berndt plays piccolo as well as flute, (Dirk) Descheemaeker more than one clarinet; the leader switches from guitar to electric bass at one point.) As for who represented Ictus, and who came from School of Arts Gent: besides the leader here, Plouvier, Messler and Dirk Descheemaeker are all listed as being part of the Ictus roster, so let's assume for the time being that the others had attended the workshop as students.

Kobe Van Cauwenberghe is shown right at the beginning of the video, counting everyone in; a few minutes later, when the second guitarist (playing the red Strat) displays a prominent hand signal, the viewer could get confused as to who is who, but no, that really is him at the outset#. Not all players seem to be fully audible, at first, with the two guitars and two drum sets, plus the piccolo, dominating the sound - as the camera pans slowly around the room, this is if anything emphasised, but as the music develops, everyone gets plenty of chances to make themselves heard. It's not long at all before the written theme gives way to an open space, and from here on, freedom of expression is the order of the day. I have no intention this time of trying to run through the video describing the music - which incorporates secondary and tertiary materials, as one would expect (Comp. 115 is much used##, as well as Comp. 40i, and of course the repetition series Comp 40(o), which just seems to be everyone's favourite###) - but suffice to say, with top-class musicians given the right sort of instruction and encouragement, this is music which one can inhabit, not just hear. 

***

The second video, if anything, excited me even more, because none of the names meant anything to me at all - which potentially implies a completely new set of musicians finding this stuff for themselves (although I did eventually discover connections, as explained below). What we have here is a sextet performance (entitled simply "Ghost Trance Music") given by the Plus-Minus Ensemble, a British group "committed to commissioning new work and placing it alongside recent and landmark modern repertoire". The video was filmed at MINU Festival, Copenhagen, on 18 November 2023 and has only been up on Youtube since December. (The performance was one part of a four-piece programme, and this was the fourth time the programme itself had been presented^.)

It's not a new thing for an ensemble such as this to interpret B's work alongside that of other contemporary composers; but we seem to have come a long way since the Cygnus Ensemble gave a completely-straight reading of the written score of Comp. 186^^. Starting with what sounds like a second-species GTM theme - no opus numbers are provided on the group's website - the group takes us on a twenty-one minute journey through some very free and open territories, with the presence once more of electric guitar and synth (plus piano, bass clarinet and two strings) guaranteeing some pretty fiery and adventurous sounds along the way. Almost inevitably, Comp. 40(o) makes yet another appearance, kicked off by the pianist around 3.15, then played faster and faster by the whole group. What delights me so much about this rendition is the way in which the musicians have fully grasped the music's possibilities, leaving the written material far behind in their willingness to embrace the freedoms coded into the model. I have no idea whether the maestro is aware of what this ensemble has done, but if he is, he must surely be jumping for joy. 

With a little digging, I did discover that these guys didn't exactly find the music all by themselves: guitarist  Primož Sukič is a member of Ictus (although not one of the musicians present for the first video described above), and furthermore, selecting the keyword Braxton on the British group's website reveals that the very first public readings of a work entitled "Ghost Trance Music" were given in February 2022, led by none other than... Kobe van Cauwenberghe. But the fact that they have continued to nurture and develop the music all by themselves is nonetheless hugely encouraging. The human race finds itself in a terribly dark and dangerous place at the time of writing, but it's no exaggeration at all to say that this sort of creative art gives me real hope for the future. 

* There is absolutely nothing new about women playing serious music, if by "serious" we mean classical. The jazz world has tended to be overwhelmingly masculine, though, and B. seems to have been painfully conscious of this - and determined to prevent such an imbalance from spilling over into his ensembles.

** Both the septet's release and the KVC solo album will eventually get covered in these pages. All in good time, etc. (Both these albums include readings of Comp. 255, which is clearly a favourite.)

*** As it turns out, KVC is not the only musician - or even the only guitarist - keen to establish his credentials as a master interpreter of B's works. While preparing this article I stumbled across a recording of Comp. 115 arranged for solo guitar by Noël Akchoté; the Frenchman's is not a new name to me, but what I had no idea about is how prolific he has become in recent years, issuing dozens of recordings as digital downloads on his own label, including a huge range of B's pieces. Once I went looking, I was amazed at how many of these there were. (So much I have missed in recent years, and so many things to catch up on..!)

# If there is one thing we would expect to emerge from a workshop such as this, it's surely an emphasis on musical democracy: section leaders may or may not have been chosen beforehand, but in any case, each player must be at liberty to cue up certain secondary or tertiary materials as the mood takes them. There will of course be times when everyone is required to play from the score, but we know that these scores have extensive pockets of space written into them.

## Well, that's what it sounds like, anyway - although I can't shake the nagging feeling that I have misidentified this one, and that the group is actually playing something else. I am still a bit rusty here. 

### Marilyn Crispell may have been bitten by this number before anyone else was, but in any case, it's long since become an almost mandatory inclusion in any proper examination of B's work. Keyboard players just seem to love it - though evidently KVC does, too.

^ The three previous concerts were given in the last week of October 2023, all in Britain. (The other three pieces played are listed as world premieres - although I wasn't aware that a piece can receive its premiere every time it is played..! I suppose technically the actual premieres must have taken place on October 25th, in Edinburgh...) By the look of it, the Braxton piece was the final selection on the programme, each time. 

^^ The Cygnus Ensemble still exists, by the look of it. None of the current players are familiar to me - and I don't know if the reference (on their main page) to their having "commissioned" work from B. - among numerous others - is just poetic licence. I am not personally aware of their having played any of his music, except for that one time: at that point, the group's roster included violinist Jacqui Carrasco, who did have a previous direct connection to the maestro's music. 

Gold standard(s)

 

Well, I finally made it right through the massive NBH standards box... virtually, in my case... and I have to admit that in the end, it wore me down and won me over: if you're looking for a collection of standards* played by a band under B's leadership, I really don't think you will ever find one better than this. That probably seems like a pretty redundant recommendation - even for me - given that very few people are going to feel like shelling out for a 13-cd box set, even if they can find a copy; but don't forget, this stuff is available for streaming via Bandcamp, so there's really nothing stopping people from hearing this music, at the very least. As for whether the sheer size of it should put you off: look, if you're reading this at all you are probably familiar with the scale of the maestro's discography at this point, and are unlikely to be deterred by something like that. Right?

In case anyone is wondering, I haven't suddenly gone all sentimental for the new year; I still have my reservations about quite a bit of the material here, much of which is far too saccharine for my personal taste. It's just that on balance, the sympathy between the leader and the ready-made backing trio, and the quality of the playing which results from that, plus the adventurous nature of the interpretations (... when things don't get too saccharine, obviously), left me with the impression that there would be no point in looking for a level "higher" than this on this sort of project. Overall, the undertaking succeeds to such a degree that I'm happy to consider the release which documents it as a pinnacle of sorts. This is the yardstick against which I will be measuring any other such endeavours from now on**. (And yes, dammit, I missed the chance to see this band play in London... I know, I know.)

When I refer above to a "ready-made" trio, I mean that bassist Neil Charles and drummer Stephen Davis were already playing with Alex Hawkins by this point, and although I have no idea of the circumstances that led to Hawkins being sounded out for this project in the first place***, it can't have been a difficult decision to use his trio for it once that connection was made. Charles was playing in the Hawkins Trio back in 2014; at that stage, the drum chair was still occupied by Tom Skinner, and I'm not sure at which point Davis replaced him, but in any case by the time these 2020 performances came about, the three Brits must have had ample opportunity to establish the sort of quasi-telepathic interplay which is the proud hallmark of the seasoned improvising musician. On this material, they show themselves again and again to be comfortable in the most far-out environments, constantly busy and creative while never being obstreperous or overbearing. If anything, the elements of sweetness which are present here - and which I continue to struggle with - would appear to be down to the leader, not his sidemen. The impression I get is that they would be more than happy to play completely free at all times. 

Hawkins himself was already a player and composer for whom I had a high regard, before I took my long time out from these pages. Academic jazz programmes in the UK had been turning out highly-skilled players for quite some time already, but when it came to the projects led by such players - and to their compositions - I kept finding a mind-numbing homogeneity, doubtless the result of all such musicians being trained on the same materials, and feeding off the same set of modern influences#. To put it bluntly, everyone seemed to sound like everyone else, and this made it impossible for me to delve too deeply into the "British scene" (insofar as there was one). Hawkins, however, did seem to buck this trend and although it might be argued that I came to his work more favourably as a result of my having (sporadically) corresponded with him, I  don't think this is really much of an issue: I am too much of a cynic to allow any personal feelings to cloud my perception for very long, and if I spent plenty of time listening to some of Hawkins' recordings as a leader, that was because I found plenty to enjoy about them##. By the time I came back to him - as a player only, of course, in this quartet context - I marvelled at his ability to condense huge volumes of past musics into his own work, and reflect these back piecemeal in his playing, while retaining his own style. In this regard one might even think of him in the same terms as, say, Jaki Byard or Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Over the course of sixty-seven numbers here, I found myself mightily impressed by his qualities as an interpreter; he really does make an ideal playing partner for B. in this context - and Charles and Davis, in turn, provide ideal foils for the pair of them. What, as they say, is not to like?

It's always going to be the case that I come to this sort of recording with some reservations - and I feel as if I have done this subject to death already, so don't wish to bang on about it again now - and my initial optimism on hearing Gigi Gryce's "Minority" (the very first track) didn't take long to be tempered; overall, though, I found more to like than dislike. But the general seesawing continued right to the very end of the album. (It feels slightly ridiculous to refer to a collection as long as this one as an "album" - but I suppose that is what it is.) The last disc - which comprises six tunes - is particularly heavy on the stuff which I would never willingly listen to ("I'll Never Smile Again", "It's The Talk Of The Town", "Thanks For The Memory"), although the band doesn't really play these numbers like the old chestnuts they are; it ends on a high, with the Mingus composition "Peggy's Blue Skylight", but thrown in the mix we also get another modern jazz tune, "Strange Meadowlark" (by Mr and Mrs Brubeck), which is so honeyed up that it might as well be one of the old chestnuts, and I did struggle with this. On the other hand, the twelfth disc includes a rendition of "Django" by John Lewis - I don't know the original, but I think I am right in saying it's an MJQ number - which is so utterly "out" that there is nothing standard about it. There are two statements of the core theme, early on and towards the end, and in each case this is followed by passages of completely free expression, in which all four players dig deep into the bag of extended techniques, and take the music very far away indeed from what we might traditionally expect from a "standards date".

I suppose what I'm saying here is that there is probably something on offer for (almost) everybody: there are enough numbers which I struggled with (and probably won't listen to again) to keep happy those with more conventional tastes, whilst there is also plenty herein for B's natural audience. This makes the project worthy of its compendious dimensions, coming as it does so late in the maestro's career; and it makes it very easy to recommend. There was a lot of music here which I will happily revisit - and in the meantime, I have some catching up to do, with Alexander Hawkins...

***

Still on the subject of standards: something quite rare has just recently turned up for sale on Discogs... a new seller account has just popped up with quite a bit of B's stuff for sale, almost all of which I already have on CD###; one which I not only don't have, but have never heard, is the double-CD which B. cut with the Fred Simmons Trio in February 1993^. This is absolutely not an item which is easy to find, and I confess I am curious; but then I would be, simply because of the album's scarcity. My curiosity is not likely to be satisfied: the days have not yet come when I could declare that money is no object, and I just have to have any album of B's that I don't already own; and in the meantime, £25 is (I think) too much to ask for this, and certainly quite a lot more than I might be willing to shell out for it. Interesting, though...

* As always, when I say "a collection of standards", I don't mean a project dedicated to one specific composer; that type of undertaking is essentially different. 

** Just last April, I rather in passing gave this notional honour to the second volume of standards B's recorded for Magenta. I have now changed my mind.

*** Which is to say, I have not (yet) taken the time to read David Grundy's liner notes for the box set - not that I have the box set, you understand. I don't even know whether those same notes explain how this tour came about, but it seems likely that they might. [Sorry, David - if you're reading! I will get round to it at some point, and in the meantime: if it's any consolation, it's not any reflection on you... I do tend to put off reading this sort of thing. Undoubtedly this is one of my numerous shortcomings.]

# I am certainly not the only person to have come to this conclusion. A few months back, Youtube tried to tempt me into watching a video which purported to answer the question "Why do all modern jazz musicians sound the same?" I did start it, though I quickly lost interest - and it did seem very much as if contemporary academic syllabuses were going to get the blame (as well they might)...

## By way of contrast, having very much enjoyed Julian Siegel's unexpected moment in the sun - leading a trio with two vastly more experienced and in-demand sidemen - a decade or so ago,  I took the time to check out some of Siegel's other work as leader-composer, but lost interest very quickly indeed, once I realised that this was going to mean sitting through yet more of the same reheated MBASE-meets-Berne-via-the-Guildhall fare that I had already grown more than tired of. The point here is not to bash Siegel, who was really no more guilty than anyone else in that scene, but to emphasise that I went in with an open mind, and didn't like what I found at all. My occasional correspondence with Hawkins would not have prevented the same reaction if his music had been of a similar stripe. I carried on listening to his music, only because I actually liked it. [One of these days I may find time to make some related observations about Ingrid Laubrock... but this is not that day.]

### Pretty much any time someone lists more than a handful of B's albums for sale, these days, you are guaranteed to find Leo Records well represented - especially those albums which tended to come up in that label's annual sale. The same ten or fifteen albums do tend to keep each other company quite a lot, on eBay. (Of course, the Fred Simmons album is also on Leo, but must have sold out its only pressing; I'm sure it was deleted long before the label ever started its online sale.)

^ The only other time this album has previously even come up for passing discussion in these pages was last year, when the fifth footnote on my Parker post saw me mention Mr Simmons for the first and only time, before today...

... and now for the good news

 

This gorgeous poster image was produced for a solo concert given by the maestro on 6th October 2023, under the auspices of The Unwrinkled Ear: two nights after the reunion show with Wolf Eyes, B. played one of his solo saxophone recitals at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. So far, just two clips have turned up from this performance - and thanks again to McClintic Sphere for hunting these down and passing them on: a beautiful ballad structure (which I definitely recognise*) and a superb multiphonic piece. Filmed on an audience member's phone, these are far from professional, but they capture the sound pretty adequately.

The quality of the playing is not even remotely surprising - or not to anyone who has listened to any of B's previous solo recordings (live or otherwise). What is extremely heartening to see is that B's apparent physical problems of two days prior to this were an aberration of sorts: there looks to have been a chair available for his use during the solo recital - visible to his left, at the right of the "picture" in these two video clips - but he didn't need it, or at least not during these two pieces. The second number, especially, is very demanding from a technical point of view, requiring a substantial sample from the maestro's huge lexicon of extended techniques; and some of these necessitate quite a lot of physical exertion as well as a high degree of skill. This exertion, I am pleased to report, does not seem to trouble him.

I'm being realistic about this: none of us is immortal, and B's career is as finite as the next musician's; obviously, it will all end at some point. But there is a difference between knowing and accepting that, and having to deal with visual evidence of his struggling to fulfil engagements which have already been booked; the difficulties implied by what happened at the Wolf Eyes show are not something that any of B's admirers would wish for him. Clearly, some days are worse than others; but it does look as if the stumble-and-fall at the Zebulon Cafe was a one-off... for now.

This is arguably more reassuring in B's case than it would be for (just) any performer of his age, because unlike most musicians, the maestro is still pushing boundaries and striving to create new work even in his (academic) retirement. Terms such as Lorraine and Thunder Music have recently been added to the panoply of his existing compositional strategies, and his restlessly inventive mind shows no sign of slowing down. If his body is able to hold out for a while yet, this will mean that he can continue to lead from the front... and much as I might wish for him to enjoy some peace and quiet at his advanced age, I rather doubt that that is what he would wish for himself.

As for the music in these two clips - well, what more can we say at this point? B's approach to solo performance continues to be an inspiration: he sets himself a ridiculously high standard, and never fails to meet it. Heard here in an environment full of natural echo, carefully captured by multiple microphones (so that the percussive clacking of keys on the second piece is just as faithfully rendered as any of his actual notes), he displays yet again the immaculate skill and unmatched subtlety of expression that has been amazing us for decades now. Cherish him while you can.

***

McC also passed along to me a few other links at the same time - not to full sets but to "trailers"; but even these would seem to warrant a separate post in due course. The solo clips, in the meantime, demanded their own attention...

* I know for sure that I have heard this before, and I want to say that I've heard it on more than one occasion; but I can't identify it, for the time being. It sounds tuneful enough to be a standard, almost; and B. does play standards at his solos recitals, so we should never rule that out, but I think it's an original. His lyricism on alto is one of his more consistently underrated qualities (though not by me..!); but his original ballad structures tend to retain a level of abstraction that refuses to resolve into anything straightforwardly "melodic". I have a feeling that if I spent long enough trawling through my (admittedly rather large) collection, I would find this piece before too long. But I did have a quick attempt at it and was not able to do it. - As for the experiment in multiphonics, that would be harder to identify in principle: I believe that all of the solo series include at least one composition somewhat along these lines, and I am quite some way from being able to say with any confidence which one of them is being played here. Whatever it is, it sounds fantastic...

Reunion with Wolf Eyes

 

Wolf Eyes and Anthony Braxton

Zebulon Cafe, Los Angeles

4th October 2023

The notorious original meeting of B. with (former?) noise terrorists Wolf Eyes took place, of course, at the Victoriaville #22 Festival in 2005, and chances are that anyone who is reading this already knows the story of how it came about - but just in case: B. caught the experimental band's show at a festival in Sweden in 2004, and was so excited by their music that he bought all their CDs from the merch table, joking afterwards that he had been feverishly planning to move to Sweden so that he could play with them (not realising at first that they were American). When the band was booked to play at Victoriaville the following year, on the day between B's duo with Fred Frith and the working sextet's GTM performance, it seemed inevitable that the maestro would end up sitting in with the group. John Olson described the meeting as "a perfect match"; B. himself said "they felt like family immediately. The communication was immediate."* As we all know, this ended up being released on CD. 

Fast-forward eighteen years...

The "rematch" features a slimmed-down Wolf Eyes, now just a duo with longtime member Olson** partnering founder Nate Young. The concert comprised two sets: one of almost fifty minutes, and a much shorter one in which two brief pieces were played. [Thanks to McClintic Sphere for sending me the links to these clips.] In an ideal world we would only need to consider the music; unfortunately, that wasn't the main takeaway from watching these videos. For those of us who had been wondering if age would ever really start to catch up with the evergreen Mr B., the answer is found right here. We need to deal with this before we go any further.

The good news is that I'm not sure what happened is quite as bad as I probably just made it sound. B. begins the first set standing up, although a chair has been provided for him in case it's needed; within the first ten minutes, it becomes clear that he is struggling a bit. In full flow, he begins stumbling backwards towards his chair, and as the backs of his legs locate it, he sits down hard and immediately stops playing. (This occurs at 09.45 in the first video.) He makes an instant attempt to stand up again, but doesn't manage it; a second attempt is successful, and he takes a couple of steps forwards as he begins to play once more - with all of his usual fluency and power: Olson and Young are completely absorbed in their own work, and if either of them has noticed what just took place, they give no sign of it. When B's knees begin to give way again, he staggers backwards in search of the chair, finds only the front edge of it, and at 10.30 he commits his weight to the unbalanced chair, overturning it and falling to the ground in the process. There are shocked gasps from the audience, and Young and Olson stop playing and help B. back to his feet, righting the chair and settling him on it before returning to their places as if nothing has happened; after a few seconds to compose himself, B. begins playing again, rather tentatively at first, but by 11.25 he is in full control again. Some altissimo squeaks precede a short demonstration of his "harsh breathing" technique, one of his trademarks for years now, and this elicits a broad smile and rhythmic nods from Young. From this point on, it is almost as if nothing untoward has happened.

B. continues to play seated for the rest of the concert, which is evidently not his preferred way to do things, but the flesh is weak... or at least weakening. From the chair, he proceeds to give a perfectly good account of himself and although he lays out for several minutes late in the set, this does not appear to be forced on him. He plays with all his customary authority and control and does not seem to be overly discomfited by his fall - and to be clear, it's not precisely a fall that we've just witnessed, more that he sits on the wrong part of the chair, which then cannot hold him. But it's not nice to see, and I was quite glad that McC had already warned me about this. What is clear, and undeniable, is that much as B. wishes to play standing up, his legs - I presume it's really his knees - can't cope with this for more than a few minutes. This happens to us all eventually, assuming we live long enough; with all the musicians of the "free era" who have already departed from this plane, it's quite a wonder that B., Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill are all not just still among us, but still active and creative, but age will catch up with everyone and as much as I have dreaded having to address this issue in these pages, it was inevitable that I would have to do so at some point.

At the end of the first set, the applause is loud and enthusiastic, and B. rises cautiously to his feet to take a bow, and punch the air a couple of times; there is a quick consultation between the players, and Young announces that "Anthony wants to chill, then come back and play...". And this is indeed what transpires, although as outlined above, the second set is more like a double-encore really. The maestro wisely remains seated for this, but once again, he takes the applause standing up and repeats both the careful bow and the clenched-fist salute. Life in the old dog yet. As the three players make their way slowly from the stage, B. does like an old man: the brain - and lungs, and fingers - still functions as well as ever, but the appendicular skeleton is starting to feel all those long years. 

At the risk of delivering an anticlimax, then, there is relatively little to say about the actual music: not that there is anything wrong with it, it's more that it is just what one would expect to result from this sort of meeting. The maestro sticks to alto sax throughout; Young plays electronics exclusively, with just some occasional vocals (especially in the second set); Olson uses electronic processing as well, but mainly plays a small horn or pipe followed by a three-piece metal frame with a mouthpiece attached, apparently of his own devising. The ambience in the long main piece is mournful and ominous rather than harsh and confrontational (hence my wondering in the first line above if the group is now to be considered "former" noise terrorists, after all this time), and it need come as no surprise at all that B. feels at home within such a soundscape, which is really not that different from some of the more experimental DCWM pieces. At least some of the electronic processing appears to consist in sampling the aerophones in real time and playing them back in modified form, or at least that's how I heard it. The first short number in the second set is a little more aggressive in tone, with not just a regular electronic pulse but a sort of siren effect as well. None of this puts B. out in the slightest... but then, if he actually listened to his CD purchases back in 2004 and afterwards, he will have been fully prepared for all this and more ;-)

For the time being, at least, the live performances continue - it may be that eventually our man will be restricted to composing and will no longer want to play live at all, but let's be thankful that we aren't there yet. A few days after this performance, B. gave a solo concert, also in LA - I have been pointed towards some (short) clips from this, too, but haven't seen them yet. Another post will be in order, in due course...

* This event has its own fairly detailed Wikipedia page these days. (I had remembered the background and context to the meeting - but the direct quotes were new to me.)

** John Olson in particular is a hugely prolific noise musician, basically an American analogue to Masami (Merzbow) Akita. He also runs the American Tapes label - which, again, is ludicrously prolific in its output. Much of its catalogue was both strictly limited-edition, and regarded as highly collectible: I know that at one point our very own Avto G. used to find himself bidding for these items on eBay against Henry Rollins, a dedicated collector of such stuff who was (apparently) convinced that Olson's label and its output were the "new thing" of our time and would command high prices in years to come...

Looking forwards (Cent's 2024 manifesto)

 

This feels more than usually pointless, but... I'm going to do it anyway. 

After the last eighteen months, the question is not whether I can keep posting, but whether I can actually say anything worthwhile. I have mentioned before how acutely aware I am of being up against the limits of my musical knowledge when trying to get properly to grips with this stuff; that's not going to get any easier in the near future. Of course, I am also aware that "I can't read or write music" or "I haven't formally studied music" are no longer valid excuses: all of that was true in 2007, but I have had ample time to teach myself if I had really wanted to*. More than sixteen years on, both of those sentences are still true, but neither of them really counts for anything. Still, the fact of the matter is that I am very much an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to musicological analysis, and if I ever became tempted to forget that and adopt ideas above my station... an afternoon's intensive listening to the maestro's oeuvre would soon jerk me back to reality. I don't understand this stuff nearly as well as I would like.

But I've been through all this before, and it's never stopped me yet. I just make very slow progress... as anyone can see from how long it's taking me to engage with Herr Dahinden's 2013 Swiss offering. Trying to obtain a real understanding of this performance entails more than simply establishing whether or not we can substitute Comp. 147 for the posited Comp. 174 in the listed programme; it means internalising Comps. 94, 96 and 98 to the point where I will recognise any material quoted from any one of them as soon as it pops up. That, admittedly, would presumably be a hell of a lot easier if I could hear music as notes, as structures, rather than just as sound. But that's not where I am and it remains to be seen if I am up to the task. And bear in mind, it is entirely a self-appointed task, and one which probably no-one else cares about - ! As Nick Cave would have it, "Onward and onward and onward I go/Where nobody else could be bothered to go"**. 

So there's that... and my unfinished business with repertoire... and I'm still striving to get truly inside the massive phenomenon that is GTM, really get to the heart of it. What with one thing and another, there is plenty to keep me occupied here, even if hardly anybody is reading it***. Besides, B. is still out there, still active as both creator and player, and I will want to report on any news as I get it. If McClintic Sphere fancies chipping in as well, so much the better... I'd be astonished if 2024 yields another attempt at the "most posts" record, but I hope to remain active and post regularly over the next twelve months, and we'll see where that takes us. The world outside is clearly in a parlous state, and very little about the future can be taken for granted; but while there is still art and beauty in it, I still feel a need to play a small part in acknowledging that.

(Oh, and there is still the unanswered question of when I will get into the box of tapes, and what I will do about it... )

* This is actually somewhat debatable, as the times in those years when I was most strongly drawn to deep musical research coincided with other demands on my time and attention. Nevertheless, there must have been opportunities in the last sixteen years for me to teach myself a lot more than I already know; perhaps I am just afraid to commit myself fully..?

** "Do You Love Me? (Part 2)" (1994). [Let Love In is probably my favourite Bad Seeds album, when it comes down to it... certainly that and Murder Ballads are the two I listen to most often these days.]

*** At time of writing, we are already fourteen days into January - and the blog has not yet racked up a hundred hits for the month. This gives a pretty clear idea of what sort of attention it gets when there is no bot activity... but then, it's also rather obvious that I am avoiding trying to gain a wider audience at this point. (In an era when every bugger is seemingly spouting off on Youtube or TikTok or - wherever, I "ought" to be able to find my niche, but I'm far from sure that I really want to try...)

Looking backwards (2023 recap)

 

What a curious year that was.

I was starting out from a peculiar position anyway: having finally done in 2022 what I had vaguely promised to do for years - resume posting on here - I had then (predictably enough) run out of steam at the end of that year, and apparently I carried this inertia into 2023 with me. It was a slow start, and not a promising one. But it's true what they say: sometimes just reorganising your environment can help to achieve the same effect internally, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much of a difference it made to have all my Braxtoniana within (relatively) easy reach at long last. The focus which I had been sorely lacking then seemed to align itself into place, and in March I was finally able to deliver a piece of writing which had been gestating for more than twenty-one months. (This in turn confirmed a long-held supposition: that the more detail I include in a post, the fewer people are likely to read it*. Long-gestating it may have been, but when it finally arrived it was very slow to acquire page-views...)

March was an odd month in general, as I found myself needing to take a step back in my working life, and spent a few weeks away from work while a move to a different department was arranged behind the scenes: this allowed me time to write, and also to read; however, from April onwards what I found was that my continuing attention to B's music came at the expense of my reading, which itself died off almost completely for the next few months. I don't know about anybody else, but I only have so much "mental bandwidth" available, and the change of role at work - which entailed assimilating lots of new information - limited what I could do with my downtime, beyond simply decompressing. I managed to keep posting at a decent rate, but I almost stopped reading altogether. Pretty much anything I do, it seems, requires a certain degree of obsessiveness if I am to do it with any sort of success.

You can fairly well map out what happened after that by glancing at the blog's post count for the rest of the year. By the end of August, I was getting fed up with the piles of unread books and began trying to redress the balance, which meant a dip in the blogging activity. By the end of October, I was reading a lot more avidly again - and you don't have to be a genius to figure out what that meant. Only while I was absent from work was I able to maintain both interests at once. So it came about that a year which I thought for several months might end up being the most productive ever seen in the history of the blog eventually fell some way short; still, 57 posts is far more than we managed in any previous year, except only for 2008. The renewed interest of McClintic Sphere had a lot to do with this, for sure. As for my own stated intentions, I was able to follow through on some of these, while others have remained on my to-do list. And speaking of lists: I put together a long-overdue "most wanted" list, and promptly acquired about two thirds of the items thereupon... I also heard a huge proportion of the digital-only releases from New Braxton House, which I had been putting off for years and years. 

What I never came close to achieving is a greater understanding of how the blog's traffic works, at this late stage of its maturity. At times it seemed as if I could at least be sure that increased posting activity led directly to more page-views, but that has by no means always been the case. Daily "hits" have varied from almost none at all (i.e. 1 - 5) to some number too large to comprehend: I thought June had gone crazy when I started to see daily spikes of 200 or more, and a monthly total in excess of 5,000; but September saw more than 13,000 page-views, and by the last third of that month the daily count was well into four figures. This makes no sense at all: at the height of C#9's popularity, back in the Golden Age of Music Blogging, it was racking up about a thousand hits a day, and of course we were posting actual music files back then, as well as maintaining a lively discussion in the comments section. To see that level of activity exceeded by a special-interest site, on a marginalised and outmoded platform, offering nothing more than written analysis of music which isn't even being offered to the reader (and is, in many cases, not exactly readily available)... is beyond my ability to understand. Clearly the activity is not all human - indeed, in the "mad months" the activity must have been mainly "bot-driven" -  but even then, how this actually works, and what factors are responsible for the rollercoaster graph that would represent this year's page-views, are all things just as unknown to me as they were this time last year. (If anything, I can make even less sense of it all now.)

That's fine, though. However illusory it may be, the sense that "someone is reading" keeps me from feeling as if I am merely wasting my time; and I do know that a few actual, real people do continue to read, for which I am grateful; and besides, my own stark limitations as an amateur musicologist prevent me from being tempted to switch to a more contemporary platform (you know - the type where people actually try to monetise their stuff). I have written enough already about these limitations, not out of modesty but rather with a view to (re)setting expectations; my lack of formal musical training did overshadow much of my writing this year, and it will continue to do so from now on. Still, that won't stop me from wrestling with the problem, or from continuing to delve into the maestro's work. I am, as they say, in it for the long haul... here's to 2024!

* This puts me in good company, of course - as B. himself could attest. As a general rule of thumb: the more time and effort that goes into any human endeavour, the less anyone will be inclined to pay any attention to the results. Whether it surprises me that such a rule should extend to something as specialised as this blog, and its output, is another question. But given that I didn't post a rip of the Thumbscrew covers album along with the article, and that not everyone will have a copy (or otherwise be able to hear it), it is probably natural enough that few people were seduced by the prospect of an overly long and detailed analysis of said album...

Still here...

 

... just about ;-)

My "Hallowe'en post" contained no exaggeration at all, but it was a one-off: I failed to follow it up. This is ultimately just a cyclic thing, and does not signify any greater shift in my tastes or opinions or interests; I listen (in depth) to several unrelated* types of music, and in spending so much of my free time in B's world(s) this year I have inevitably neglected some of the other areas which are close to my heart. That imbalance rectified itself over the last couple of months.

It's also definitely the case that, once I decided I was no longer** going to be able to match or exceed the blog's post count for 2008, I withdrew my attention from B's music completely for a while. At the beginning of November I did listen to one long-unheard item from my collection over the course of three or four days, the misleadingly-named Quartet (GTM) 2006 (recorded in 2005, released 2008); this, though, was a set which I found rather uninvolving when it first came out, and my experience this time (having not heard any of the music for the best of a decade) was somewhat similar. I didn't find the impetus to write about it - despite my recent close examination(s) of the GTM phenomenon - and indeed I probably went almost six weeks after that without listening to any of B's music at all. Of course, by the standards of previous such gaps in my listening... six weeks is nothing; but still, I hadn't yet finished even listening to the Standards or SGTM "megaboxes", so this definitely qualified as unfinished business. 

Last week I got an ideal opportunity to put an end to that, and as is often the way, I gorged myself. On a couple of days when I was working from home, with a task to do which required quite a lot of time but only some of my attention, I managed not only to press on with those two box sets (working my way through another two discs of each), but also to replay some of the huge quantities of NBH digital-only content which have found their way into my ears over the last six or seven months.

The music making up disc ten of the Standards box is heavy on modern jazz rep and light on (what I will insist on calling) cheese: in fact it has an oddly-unbalanced feel, comprising three Coltrane numbers, plus one each by Mingus and Monk, and one - I don't even know what it is, a show tune or an ancient Tin Pan Alley pop song, but Bing Crosby (of all people) gets a co-writing credit on it, and that's sufficient to tell me that it's not the kind of material I'm looking for in my life***. Disc eleven, again, mainly features pieces by modern jazzmen; although one of these numbers - "Skating in Central Park" by John Lewis (... I don't know it) - sounds saccharine enough that it could easily be out of the "other category": this being followed, as it is, by something called "When Joanna Loved Me" - definitely out of the "other category" - the cumulative effect on me was almost nauseating#. As regards the Lewis/MJQ number, if what B. likes about this is the chord sequence, it did occur to me that he could have achieved much the same feel by playing "This I Dig of You" by Hank Mobley, constructed over very similar changes and not nearly as sentimental-sounding... but there we are.

These feelings aside, I found much to enjoy on these two discs, where for the most part, at least, the leader and his pianist (plus the latter's sidemen) are able to explore the outer implications of the music without resorting to - you know, playing tunes or anything so incongruous. Oddly, both B. and Alex Hawkins seem to struggle to get to grips with Mingus' "Self Portrait in Three Colours" - both of them apparently thrown by a decision to play rubato, even though presumably this was something they discussed beforehand - but I did find much to like about most of this music. (Hawkins continues to be drawn irresistibly to the same Andrew Hill-isms I've observed from him on this collection before: specifically, he is apparently fascinated by a sort of "rocker" motif in the right hand, where (presumably) the thumb and little finger alternate notes in a fast figure, the former remaining static while the latter ascends a partial scale.)

The SGTM material is, of course, utterly astonishing. Over those two days I heard Comps. 255 and 256, the latter of which I have heard before##, but not sounding like this. The ensemble for these recordings was at such a peak of collective creativity, and so secure in the support of the composer, that they pushed these works into completely uncharted territories, resulting in music which is never even slightly predictable and which covers pretty much all bases from childlike "vocal scribbling" upwards. Given my own awkward relationship with "clean" vocals###, it says a lot for this music that I love it as much as I do; I really don't think I could ever get bored with it.

As for the replays, there will need to be many more of these before I feel even vaguely au fait with the massive treasure-house of NBH digital material... I chose a couple of these pretty much at random on the day, but did also consciously pick out two "all-star" creative orchestra projects: NBH034 and NBH028, each of which is far too complex and layered for me to have absorbed it properly while working, never mind attempting any sort of analysis. They are recordings which will withstand much repeat listening, being interpreted by musicians who are chiefly (034) or wholly (035) selected from among B's own former students, and thus thoroughly familiar with his methodologies; that sets them apart from recordings undertaken by musicians of short acquaintance, and indeed from recordings made by experienced creative musicians, who nevertheless may not have had much experience of playing B's music. Who knows... maybe one day I will feel qualified to undertake some sort of comparative analysis of these three sets of possibilities.

For the moment, that's that; although I do still plan at least one further post before the year is out. It feels as if a "2023 retrospective" is in order... and in principle, if I am able to recover my own train(s) of thought, I would still like to be done with that pesky Comp. 136 piece as well... but it wouldn't surprise anyone, least of all me, if that doesn't materialise until next year...

* Zappa considered everything he liked to be "from the same universe": he posited some sort of qualitative connection between the (post-)modernist neoclassical stylings of Stravinsky, Charles Ives and Edgard Varèse on the one hand, and his beloved doo-wop on the other, not to mention all points in between. But the chances are that nothing really connects these musics apart from Zappa's own taste, unless it be a degree of artistic authenticity ( - which he felt was lacking in much commercial music). If that is the case, I can sympathise: but of course that doesn't mean that I would like everything which he liked, and it certainly doesn't mean that FZ would have approved of everything that I like. These distinctions eventually melt away into subjectivity and ultimately become redundant.

- Insofar as I have identified any common features in my own various musical pleasures, the matter of structural density arises fairly frequently, but not always... I am happy to indulge these pleasures separately and severally, and not look for commonalities on the whole. Would I feel that way, if I had studied under B. myself? Probably not, but I will never know. (I read an interview with Tyshawn Sorey where he said that B. had encouraged him to compose music which reflected all of his own listening - and in Sorey's case, that really was a very wide range of musics indeed. Whether the student succeeded in meeting this challenging remit is not something I am qualified to judge.)

** For much of the past year, I was intrigued to see whether I would be able to sustain the rate of posting enough to hit "the magic 64", and at the start of November it was still "on" - but it became apparent pretty quickly after that that it wasn't, any more; and once I accepted that, it freed me up a bit to step away for a while. (I am still slightly amazed at how much I actually managed to get done this year.)

*** It is clear that B. loves playing standards - he must do, he's done it often enough - and he seems to take some specific pleasure in rooting out obscure old numbers that nobody else (with the possible exception of Sonny Rollins) would dream of playing. I can respect that, but at a distance; I don't have to like everything which he likes, which is just as well, since in practice...

# ... I am simply unable to do it. If I were merely exaggerating grotesquely in using words such as "nauseating", I would long ago have forced myself out of the habit; it's a genuine reaction, both powerful and unpleasant, and I have spent quite a bit of time trying to work out whence it derives. It's not that I'm incapable of appreciating a pretty tune played simply, for all I might joke about being allergic to pop music, etc; but I do seem to be unable to tolerate it when it's done by the maestro, for whatever reason(s). With his voice, there (apparently) must be a minimum degree of complexity and harmonic abstraction in order for the results to be palatable to me. If I had to hear him lead a quartet through a "straight" reading of "My Funny Valentine" or something like that, I might actually be sick. Some of the stuff on this gigantic box set comes perilously close to it.

- I don't expect this to be a popular opinion, and (believe it or not) I do try not to bang on about it for that reason. But it is genuine, and it does only seem fair to unpack it a bit.

## The first ever recording of a SGTM performance to circulate among collectors was, in fact, a reading of Comp. 256; it was later released digitally as NBH031.

### The designation "clean" for uninflected vocal timbre is one derived from extreme metal, where it is usually contrasted with "harsh" vocals. I first heard the terms used in the '90s, by musicians whose first language was not English; the term "clean", at least, does seem to have caught on somewhat.