Eivind Buene Clear Frame A piece like Mise En Abime apes the the 21 cuts is either by Craig under one of his Asymmetrical Music Clear Frame soundworld of Feldman perhaps a little too many pseudonyms (Paperclip People, 69, SOFA CD CONTINUITY CD openly, but with musicians like bassist Ken Innerzone Orchestra) or remade/remodelled by Percussionist Ingar Zach and guitarist Ivar These days I doubt any group wants to be Filiano, and elsewhere saxophonists Marty him. Unlike Villalobos’s Fabric 36, though, it’s Grydeland have a special understanding, as tagged as the cream of British jazz rock, but if Ehrlich and Ned Rothenberg, Coleman shapes not a sideways strategy for finding a home for two earlier Sofa recordings of their freely we apply the term to Clear Frame (Hugh these peachy personalities into music that’s new or early-draft material, but a kind of improvised duets have shown. A close rapport Hopper, Charles Hayward, Lol Coxhill and shamelessly expressive and individual. The primer: the newer work is studded with of that kind can be exhilarating but it’s Orphy Robinson) it’s meant in the nicest Duke will be looking down with pride. classics central not just to Craig’s discography undoubtedly healthy to disrupt it occasionally. possible way. At the 2004 London Jazz Festival PHILIP CLARK but the development of the second and third That’s effectively what was happening when I saw a large audience respond warmly to generations of Detroit Techno and, in turn, the they invited composer Eivind Buene to Clear Frame’s intelligent and outgoing Courtis scenes they’ve influenced. collaborate with them. Buene recognised “an improvising. That day they were introduced by Las Sales Fundentes In some cases, this gives Sessions a slightly opportunity to combine and juxtapose the Robert Wyatt, who sits in here on cornet. OM:DISCOS 2ÙCD shopworn feel: Paperclip People’s “Oscillator”, different energies of improvisation and Onstage it appeared that Hopper’s bass was Legend has it that when Rahsaan Roland Kirk Innerzone Orchestra’s “Bug In The Bassbin” – composition”, and Asymmetrical Music, in nine the group’s fulcrum, and maybe it’s his calm first encountered a pocket calculator he original, foundational, brilliant they may be, but movements, is the outcome. Recorded live in leadership that results in the disc’s mix of immediately put it to service as a sound they’ve been worked into innumerable mixes. Oslo in 2004 the piece has Zach and Grydeland freedom and discipline – neither the life-and- source, composing a mambo for keypad touch Still it’s good to hear them in this setting, with as soloists fronting a mixed ensemble of ten death rock meltdown of, say, Ruins drummer tones. Something akin to Kirk’s irrepressible, Craig’s trademark openness to the lusher local musicians, conducted by Lene Grenager. Tatsuya Yoshida, nor a ramble over the hills of benign spirit and infinite curiosity regarding the pastures beyond Detroit’s rigid digital grid in The duo meet the challenge of this situation Improv County. Instead, Hopper’s fierce properties of sound seems to animate all the full evidence. Sessions ends virtually at Craig’s spectacularly well and it’s a consistently interaction with Hayward’s committed music produced by Alan Courtis. The evidence beginnings, with the proto-Jungle, tail-chasing absorbing release. drumming powers everything forward, while is all over this double solo CD, which compiles jazz break and stuttering organ stabs of “Bug Buene selected his instrumentation leaving enough room to slip in and out of seven unreleased pieces and tracks previously In The Bassbin”. On the way it takes in the imaginatively – a quartet of strings, a pair of time or whatever else is up Hopper’s sleeve. issued by labels based in Finland, Norway, pastel pop lilting of Junior Boys’ “Like A Child”, reeds, electric guitar and piano, bass marimba Robinson steps in with a refreshing cascade Belgium, Germany, the UK, New Zealand, the Afro-futurist take on Cesaria Evora’s and bagpipes. They are rarely heard as an of vibraphone or the exuberant clang of his Japan, the US (underlining this Argentinian “Angola” (all fidgeting synths and Cape ensemble but in shifting alignments, provoking steel pans. Coxhill is completely at home in this omni-musician’s frequent-traveller status Verdean chants) and Craig’s monumental mix the improvisors or meeting them on their own risk-friendly environment, spitting shards of sax among the international experimental jet set). of Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom’s ground. Buene avoids any suggestion that this noise or gliding around a spontaneous melody. Several of the pieces are droneworks. But “Revelee”, which has the courage (unlike so is a clash between predetermined orderliness When Hopper cruises on a single-note pattern, even as they describe a gradual movement many remixes) to do less rather than more. The and inspired spontaneity. Instead there are Robinson exploits the harmonic space to along a static horizontal plain, these drones glorious analogue architecture of the duo’s mobile structures that test the flexibility of the spread out chordal shifts. are ever changing, as multiple frequencies are arpeggios unfolds untouched over Craig’s crisp improvisors’ customarily fragmented language, As guest, Wyatt does whatever is the unleashed to interact through the vertical handclaps. This track closes the first CD, when confronting them with contrasts, tensions and opposite of grandstanding. His laconic laminates revealing a microtonal world full of it should have finished the second really, forms of coherence that require other kinds of comments on cornet are a mellow foil to drama and incident. “Tributo” is a good leaving Sessions looking forward, not back. response. In the course of the eighth of the Coxhill’s abrasiveness. On the closing track example, cutting the morbid fascination of a SAM DAVIES nine sections, a brief thunderous ensemble Wyatt uses FX to conjure a cornet choir, while Metal guitar riff played so slow Dylan Carson passage melts into a bizarre encounter Hopper treats the bass to a heavy dose of FX would think twice about it, with a Toba violin Cultural Amnesia between the string quartet, Grydeland’s glissando. Elsewhere, from the cheerful swing part that sounds like a tree full of birds in a Press My Hungry Button pulsating guitar harmonics, flurries of marimba of “Clean Slate” to the foot-to-the-floor rush of heightened state of agitation. VINYL-ON-DEMAND 2ÙLP and almost feline bagpipe wails. Fabulous. “Noise Gate”, it’s an exhilarating ride. Other pieces emphasise Courtis’s rare 1980s cassette culture was avant garde both in JULIAN COWLEY CLIVE BELL ability to produce gripping sonic art from often its sonics and distribution, prefiguring the immutable materials, or to inject mood and autonomous praxis of the MySpace Claro Intelecto Anthony Coleman tension into pure, abstract soundworlds. generation. It’s hardly surprising, then, that its Metanarrative Lapidation “Harmonica F’ever”, despite that title, is a protagonists are now reviewing those dusty MODERN LOVE CD NEW WORLD CD haunting meditation full of strange sonorities. C90s in earnest. Cultural Amnesia were a trio Not to be confused with the former Pop Group Any album offering a composition called I Diet “R&F: Soplo Animador” dredges up tonalities based “in a picturesque village” – they do not member of the same name, the Mark Stewart On Cod can’t be all bad. The sleevenotes offer familiar from electronic music’s post-war specify which – “40 miles west of London”. in question here is a Manchester Techno no explanation for Coleman’s whimsical title, futurist heyday, reverses them into each other They released three tape albums between producer who records as Claro Intelecto. This but the music is characteristic of the thriving and makes them weird all over again (as 1980–83 as well as contributing to numerous pseudonym is fitting, given the precise and fusion this New York composer-improvisor has opposed to killing them stone dead by turning compilations, and this double LP retrospective thoughtful nature of his compositions, from the forged between jazz and his fascination with them into yet more fodder for Atomic Age of their work is a timely reminder that there intricately wrought IDM of 2004 debut album iconic modernist composers like Webern, retro-fetishism). “Segun Retamas Bivalvas”, for has always been someone crafting brittle Neurofibro to the recent, more functional Varèse and Feldman. Anthony Coleman’s story “African 18 strings instrument”, and “Fractal tracks on the most basic equipment for the Warehouse Sessions series of EPs, a run of 12" is unique: as a teenager, as his schoolmates En Lonias”, for fractal generator, are sheer hell of it. releases blending the sounds of vintage British dug Sly & The Family Stone and James Brown, sequenced back to back and they sound like Musically, Cultural Amnesia recall club culture with the hypnotic minimalism of Coleman was an obsessive Duke Ellington fan mirror images of each other. The way Courtis Throbbing Gristle at their most accessible – labels such as Playhouse and Perlon. and subsequently came to know the great improvises similar results from such far-flung and Fad Gadget at his least – angular synth- This latest album, too, possesses a faintly man. Then, via the mentoring of Jaki Byard and sound sources supports the feeling that all based (un)pop which raises as many Teutonic air, but takes its cues from a slightly George Russell, he spent a summer studying these pieces emerge from a consistent and questions as it answers. At their finest, the different style. Standing more comfortably with Mauricio Kagel in France. rigorous aesthetic. group conjure up some exquisitely basic tones alongside the rounded, fulsome sound Coleman’s music is an unusually articulate No pocket calculators, then, but it all adds as building blocks for satisfyingly wonky frequently found on Cologne’s Kompakt label, hybrid of the disparate musics that inspire him. up to another engaging release (which has tunes. They also manage to squeeze stranger throughout Metanarrative’s eight tracks I Diet On Cod (2007) opens with a composerly been beautifully designed and packaged by rhythms out of a cassette deck with built-in delicate melodic counterpoints weave like four-note cell in the saxophones that provides Jorge Pruneda for the Argentinian Om:Discos beatbox than much of today’s more derivative smoke around rich, supple basslines and the DNA of his piece, as underneath label) from one of the most active musical dance music. elaborate percussive arrangements. ambiguous harmonies and an unpredictable minds around. Unfortunately this foundation is let down in Confidently executed, these songs reveal rhythm section backdrop with material that’s TONY HERRINGTON places by the vocals, which veer from deadpan deeper pleasures with successive listening, less fixed, more prone to deal up unexpected to quasi-Goth theatrics via stern shouting. That notably the charming “Harsh Reality” and perspectives. Lapidation (2002) starts with Carl Craig said, most songs are redeemed by lyrics that “Nodrex”. As such, with the exception of the instruments blaring registeral colour in a Sessions shift seamlessly between nightmares and the dreary “Gone To The Dogs”, Stewart can be manner borrowed from Varèse. Coleman builds !K7 2ÙCD mundane. This surreal thread in the group’s safe in the knowledge that his work is almost structures from the sonic rippling he’s Rather like Ricardo Villalobos’s superb sprawl makeup may explain their close relationship entirely successful: warm, inviting and provoked until the energy flows down to the of a Fabric compilation of last year, this is not with a young Jhonn Balance (later of Coil), generous with its rewards. pianist, who slows the pace to take a more only compiled and mixed by Carl Craig, it’s a who wrote the lyrics for three of the tracks. DAVE STELFOX reflective look at the hectic surroundings. compilation of Carl Craig tracks. Every one of JOHN EDEN

SOUNDCHECK THE WIRE 45

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