Polwechsel Archives of the North Beauty and the Perfect Imitations of Failure and a Dramatic Reconfiguration of the Individuals’ Approaches

Polwechsel Archives Of The North Beauty and the perfect imitations of failure and a dramatic reconfiguration of the individuals’ approaches. As a composer/performer ensemble Polwechsel has They consistently present work of striking integrity which forged a unique production ethos repre- strives upon the terms of re-invention and transformation. sented in a serial body of work in which On the recording Archives Of The North, Pol- Archives Of The North is the 4th chapter. wechsel has switched again. The unit has transformed itself by This is the first recording to represent the adding the two percussionists, and these works all deal the work of composers Werner Dafeldecker application of percussion as centrifuge. This is a generative (bass) and Michael Moser (cello, comput- music which stems and blooms from a controlled and deliber- er) with John Butcher (saxophones), Mar- ate structural center. This work ascends from common notions tin Brandlmayr and Burkhard Beins (both of musicality and sound production, where obliteration, feed- drums and percussion). back and the extraneous are emancipated into a fully blown Over the past two decades dialect which could be defined as expanded technique. Polwechsel’s output has thrived on a dem- Polwechsel work with a stringently refined vocab- ocratic process of specifically composing ulary of techniques in sound production and sonic choreogra- for the abilities and techniques of its cast phy. Their works often patiently study and extract beauty from with each member possessing a unique and the bare elemental juxtaposition of techniques. They explore Dean M. Roberts, December 2005 developed voice in instrumental perfor- strategies where form and function are radically and frequently mance. During this period Polwechsel has challenged – the start-point is an expanded musical discipline produced divisive compositions, structured which deals with the mechanics of beauty in her many per- improvisation and electro-acoustic works spective distortions and variations. It renders poetry through which have all spoken intricately and ex- process, is littered with perfect imitations of failure and aleato- plicitly on the organization of noise, the ry justifications that occur with stunning clarity of gesture and locus of technique, and the dynamism of purpose. the ensemble. What defines a Polwechsel piece is singular The Polwechsel project has approach to the textural and temporal. This is work which been exponential in defining new approach- speaks volumes on its medium by revealing the details of its es to the composition/improvisation para- architecture, each piece splays from a keystone which will digm and in doing so have created a music define its internal workings for the duration – which sets this that defined, examined and radically re- work apart from free improvisation – is that it works within a assessed its own genre. Each phase of framework which balances outré exploration with highly con- Polwechsel has been marked by a defining sidered logic. The work could be described as a stayed and con- Of The North document and the releases of their record- scientious debasement of the notions of conventional musical ings have frequently book-ended trends form. The work can at times be excruciatingly delicate, yet it and movements in improvisational and ex- contains an anger and directness that demands consideration perimental music – Polwechsel has had a of its magnificence, of its explicitness, which insights a drastic direct and profound influence on the agen- re-consideration of the state of music as material – every note da of a genre coined ”electro-acoustic im- resounds with a question of its own integrity. provisation” for example. Each consecu- A key influence on Polwechsel would have to tive release has revealed itself as both an be Helmut Lachenmann’s work – which strived to simulta- entirely unique exposition of their own craft neously create and destroy genre by examining the inherent Archives governed his works to desire failure and through examining that polemic The unthinkable and the already thought brought about unprecedented challenges to the ethics of tech- to death nique. Helmut Lachenmann saw the resonating body as the em- bodiment of convention – what Lachemann called extended tech- In music, the notion of ”new” has nique or an ”instrumental musique concrète” came as loaded with quite unpredictably manifested in a non-commit- notions of deconstruction as it did claims to aesthetic pregnance – tal and often light interpretation of an ”avant- a calculated resistance to convention which Lachenmann main- garde” – the aesthetics of which has filtered tained, presented ”an offer of uncompromising beauty.” While he through into idioms defined as ”ambient,” ”elec- was determined by the subversion of conventional notions of beau- tro-acoustic,” ”improvisation,” ”IDM,” ”post rock” ty, he geared his work rather toward a ”beauty of possibility.” and so on, which are areas rife with minor chal- Quite possibly, his notion went against out-and-out subversion – it lenges and suggestions of an ”avant-garde” form was not noise as resistance to convention, but a sincere and direc- re-evaluation. These tokens run rife through the tive approach toward a new western musical notion ”after” avant- popular music spectrum, making evident objec- garde. A catalogue of distressed and damaged aesthetics, his tions to meaning and shunning the notion of an music was a language forged from extraneous noise and un-ortho- integrated responsibility of action – propagated dox performance techniques – every fraction a highly considered by a vagueness and lackadaisical regard for con- question of form. These were his perfect imitations of failure. tent, and frequent shying from statement of pur- Polwechsel is a group accustomed to such non- pose. That said, this era may be remembered as idiomatic approaches – that is to say their work is indebted to one in which – with relative ease – practitioners Lachenmann for it expands upon that approach – extended or can adopt the stance of being punk, the frivo- expanded technique is a dialect in which they are exceedingly well lousness with which ”experimental” music prac- versed. In Polwechsel the notion of desire, realization and discov- tice is defined, not to mention the self-appoint- ery of beauty is hinged tightly to the process of improvisational ment of moral guardians and fetishists who pub- play. A beauty which blossoming depends upon varying degrees of licize genres from the sub-surface of the music abrasion, much like a jeweler shaping a crude object with saws, industry and its marketing prowess, which has files, sandpaper, hair, silk, fluid, and finally their breath which blows the last call of defining the new. the last piece of dust off the jewel. Not to mention that the element Polwechsel have actively re-con- may have been hacked from a much larger stone. textualized aesthetics common to all of these Polwechsel’s work is not as much about aestheti- defined genres, which would suggest that with- cally defining narrative musical events and achievements as it is out claims to revolutionize the eclectic epoch, focused on the exposition of process, ”in the jeweler’s studio” he the work is conscientious of the suggestion that is making process explicit, the notion of process becomes integral we are in the midst of a pregnancy for a music- to each of these compositions, which all differently, and radically ethical transformation. In this difficult, saturated explore – a self-reflexive process. realm of post-modernism or eclecticism, Archives Of The North address a necessity of re-thinking the system and purpose of the perpetual mon- tage of the “avant-garde” signifier, that is, the extended technique. lenges of the mechanical and physical condition present during process sound production. He Polwechsel’s music pertains an chal attitude toward this, its stance is an expression of confidence, self-awareness and humility achieved through will most frequently and effectively borrow. Which is to say dedicated practice and mastery of technique and form. An air- that Archives Of The North employs the full spectrum sonic ing of Powechsel music has political undercurrents evocative potential of a jazz band, composed with the austerity and cal- of a general aspiration for a justified newness in that it sets up culation of musique concrète – and duly asserts itself as nei- a territorial scenario which accommodates tradition and avant ther. Indeed it is the play-out of this work that states where very tenuously, and by doing so provokes reconsideration of and how its context is invented in the room of the magnifi- the function of the ensemble. cent, where details are brought forth under excruciating light. As Lachenmann, Globokar, Dumetrescu, Kagel, Appropriately the opening piece ”Datum Cut” AMM, Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuovo Consonanza et al. has derived its process in part from Alvin Lucier’s ”I Am Sitting have challenged the performative construct, a Polwechsel In A Room,” which is a striking reminder that the exquisitely performance can gouge at the parameters of the performance/ simple and effective piece has had an undeniably resonant recital construct – acoustically and physically – but especially influence in electro-acoustic techniques, while having another when we consider this music as a post-digital art-form, and life as a poem on the subsuming and disappearance of the per- arena where recital itself is automatically situated in a struggle former through permutation. As an expanded approach to en- with the expectations of the entertainment question. And one semble performance, this appropriation of technique best de- can’t help but sense a kind of controlled anger in which a scribes how Polwechsel explores self-reflexivity. Elaborating stand-off with convention is conducted, all the while revealing upon themselves and their place within an architecture. This the interiority of the performance, knowingly, this is their most piece goes on to reveal its process in a structural manner, its potent signifier of resistance.

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