Peter Scherer : "Very neon pet"

(Metro Blue, 1995)

Peter Scherer is a New York based composer and producer with a multifaceted career encompassing music for film and dance, producing, arranging and playing with other artists from across the spectrum of contemporary music.
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, he studied piano, composition, theory and orchestration, among others with György Ligeti and Terry Riley. Shortly after arriving in New York in the early 80's, he connected with key figures of the New York downtown scene such as Kip Hanrahan, Bill Frisell and John Zorn, collaborating on numerous recording projects and performances. With Arto Lindsay, he founded the Ambitious Lovers, mixing elements of brazilian, experimental, funk and other popular styles resulting in the release of three albums.
In the early nineties, Peter Scherer started to further develop his unique style of sonic arrangements, exploring the potentialities of digital innovation combined with diversified musical traditions and sensibilities.
At the same time, he began working as a producer with such artists as Caetano Veloso, World Saxophone Quartet, Corin Curschellas, Ute Lemper and Nana Vasconcelos. And, as a keyboard player, he has frequently appeared in concert and recordings with Laurie Anderson and has lent his personal sonic fabric to numerous recordings by such artists as Marc Ribot, David Byrne, Marisa Monte, Waldemar Bastos, Cyro Baptista, Seigen Ono, Jun Miyake, Vinicius Cantuaria, Etienne Daho and many others.

"VERY NEON PET is a fascinating excursion through a multicultural dream-state. Building up from pulsating beats, Scherer adds layers of intricate detail with trumpet, sampled voices, spare keyboard figures, guitars, violins and occasional bursts of noise".
(Down Beat)

HERE

Takashi Kazamaki : "143 Ludlow st. NYC"

(Dossier, 1988)

143 Ludlow St. was the address of the Lower East Side (Manhattan) apartment of Japanese drummer Takashi Kazamaki during one of his extended residencies in New York. (It was also, I think, previously the domicile of Downtown Scene drummer, Katie O'Looney, who now lives in Southern France.)
On this LP, recorded in 1988, he works in two duos. Side one has Takashi playing with percussionist / electronic percussionist extraordinaire Samm Bennett. This series of brief highly focused duos treads a fine balance between Kazamaki's insistent, mostly acoustic drumming, and Samm's characteristic sampler-voiced playing. Sometimes Samm expands sonically and absorbs Takashi's rhythmic drive into his own more lyrical style; at other times Bennett gets underneath T.K.'s axle and pushes him out front, into some really hot stick-work.
Side two finds Takashi in duo with electric/acoustic harpist Zeena Parkins, who plays accordion on the final track. Here the pieces are generally longer, allowing Zeena to let fly with penetrating blasts and saw-edge staccatos from her wildly transformed harp (It's got a wang-bar on it!). This stands up against Takashi's convulsive snare drum for a music that is elegantly tenacious and virtuostic. Bumped and prodded, the harp speaks in a web of voices, a remarkable complexity of timbres that sound almost wrenched from the instrument with a crowbar at times, with a feather at other times.

(TAKASHIKAZAMAKI / « The improvisor »)

HERE

NB : an other great album called "Return to Street Level" (with Elliott Sharp, Tom Cora, Christian Marclay...) on LUCKYPSYCHICHUT blog : HERE

Marc Ribot : "Requiem for what's-his-name"

(Les disques du crépuscule, 1992)

On his second release as a bandleader, guitarist Marc Ribot is joined by players familiar from his gigs as a hired sideman, including saxophonist Roy Nathanson of the Lounge Lizards and the Jazz Passengers and multi-reed player Ralph Carney from Tom Waits' touring band. Though less swinging and fresh than 1990's Rootless Cosmopolitans, this album's original compositions and renditions of Duke Ellington and Howlin' Wolf tunes still leave plenty of room for Ribot's discordant guitar stylings.

Brian Beatty (Allmusic)

HERE

Jim Staley : "Northern dancer"

(Einstein, 1996)

Jim Staley occupies a unique position among trombonists, crossing genres freely between post-modern classical music and avant-garde jazz. He boasts spectacular technique, including the ability to spit forth clusters of notes at rapid speed. Usually concentrating in the mid-to-lower registers of the trombone, his big, gruff tone hearkens to an earlier era, though his wondrous abilities and style plant him firmly in the free music world. Raised in Illinois, Staley served in the armed forces as a member of a U.S. Army Band in Berlin, before receiving Bachelor and Masters degrees in music from the University of Illinois in the late 1970s. Since 1978, Staley has lived in lower Manhattan, where he has actively performed and recorded with many cutting edge innovators.

Recorded nearly a decade after the epochal Mumbo Jumbo, and using some of the same musicians, Jim Staley continues to effectively utilize the trio format, although he adds an effective duo piece with John Zorn (again on alto sax) and a deliberative solo statement on trombone. Every one of the nine tracks has its moments, but the emphasis on longer pieces and greater atmosphere mitigates the edge that made the earlier release so compelling. Still, admirers of Staley's gorgeously subversive trombone will not be disappointed, as he continues to impress with knotty runs, fat, globular splats, and riveting, muted jabs. The two tracks with electric harpist Zeena Parkins take awhile to get moving, but the attractive work of Ikue Mori on drum machines and Davey Williams on guitar adds nicely to the mix.

Steve Loewy (All Music)

HERE

Zeena Parkins : "The opium war"

(Einstein)

This fascinating radio play about the opium trade in New York at the turn of the 20th century is such a confounding, brilliant assortment of fragmented narrative — that tracks wonderfully for those who pay attention — and instrumental prowess it's a wonder of the soundscape form. Zeena Parkins has enlisted the aid of some of Downtown's finest to help realize Ana Maria Simò's text, produced the record, and turned over the entire project to Linda Chapman to direct. Centering on one family in transition in New York, the Parkins/Simò collaboration uses seven cast members to tell a conflicting tale of love, race relations, commerce, and the shifting perception of the narcotics trade in early-20th century New York. Parkins scripted sections for each of the instrumentalists here to play in tandem with one another or solo as an accompaniment to the narrative. DJ Olive, Margaret Parkins, Ikue Mori, Tenko, Chris Cochrane, David Shea, Jo Trump, D.D. Dorveillier, and Jonathan Bepler all lend hands toward creating a non-instructive, yet instrumentally and sonically compelling, musical narrative that suggests the narrative forward. Different sounds become associated with different characters; they appear whenever the character speaks. The play itself is a study in narrative brokenness, with the entire tale being revealed without a narrator. Tensions become nearly unbearable as they reflect the separation and brokenness in human relationships when economics becomes an equation for power within a household, within a neighborhood, within a city. This is arresting stuff. It may not be for everybody, but for those who are patient enough to take it in, it offers great rewards.

Thom Jurek (All Music)

HERE

NB : one fabulous (out of print) album by Zeena Parkins (with Christian Marclay, Tom Cora, Samm Bennett, Iku Mori, Wayne Horvitz...) on LAFOLIEDUJOUR blog : HERE

Elliott Sharp orchestra Carbon : "Radiolaria"

(Zoar)

This is E#'s fourth self-produced Orchestra Carbon release and it features an all-star downtown cast with Ned Rothenberg, Andy Laster, Evan Spritzer & Tim Smith on reeds; Steve Swell & Julie Kalu on trombones; Brian McWhorter & Eric Shanfield on trumpets; Zeena Parkins, David Weinstein & Luke Dubois on samplers, Jim Pugliese on percussion and Elliott Sharp on soprano sax, computer, composition and direction. It was recorded live at Tonic in March of 2001 by yours truly, DMG founder (and NY Downtown scene archivist) Bruce Gallanter! 'Radiolaria' begins with Elliott's snaking charming soprano sax which introduces that sly undercurrent of things to come. Elliott's highly idiosyncratic music has unique rhythmic sense, as well as some bizarre, alien harmonies which seem to push the saxes and horns in waves which both collide and connect as they slide through some strange exotic scale. Each part of this seven section work, seems to deal with different textures and combinations of difficult harmonic layers. I dig how on the third section, what sounds like the random rhythmic placement buzzing fragments, begins to evolve into a recognized pattern before it ends. There segments which I could quite get the first few times I heard this, but which are finally beginning to make more sense as I dig deeper into the undercurrent of connection. The fourth part features those morse code-like staccato horn parts that I find fascinating in the works of Xenakis or Penderecki. Part five reminds me of the Mothers when they start stretching those notes in a twisted, yet humorous way. The final section is the most startling, the shimmering, somewhat scary mass of shifting horns and saxes radiates a breath-taking wall of dense textures which create a challenging environment of refracted images like a twisted mirror or lens. If I played it too loud, my next door neighbors might freak-out, but at a more tolerable volume, it becomes a kaleidoscope or swirling colors. A must for the scientists and true explorers among us.

Bruce Lee Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery)

HERE

A confederacy of dances vol. 1

(Einstein, 1992)

Based in New York City since the late '70s, the Roulette collective has been sponsoring new music events for years. By the time this compilation was released in 1992, Roulette had organized nearly a thousand performances, many featuring some of the most outrageous cutting-edge music. This CD collects excerpts from some of the best concerts during a seven-year period, and unsurprisingly, the uniformly stellar performances sparkle with excitement. Whether a Billy Bang solo violin tribute to Albert Ayler, the premiere of one of John Zorn's game pieces, David Weinstein's deconstruction of national anthems, or the shimmering beauty of vocalist Jeanne Lee and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith in tandem, the 14 tracks should delight anyone open to adventurous sounds.

Steve Loewy (All Music)

notes :

*1) : Bill Frisell, guitar & effects (16/04/1988)
*2) : Christian Marclay, turntables (14/03/1987)
*3) : Tohban Djan : Ikue Mori, drums & drum machine. Luli Shioi, voice & bass. Hahn Rowe, violin. Davey Williams, guitar (12/11/1989)
*4) : Zeena Parkins, electric harp & electronics (22/03/1990)
*5) : Billy Bang, violin (26/02/1988)
*6) : Anthony Coleman, sampling keyboards. Jim Pugliese, drums & sampler. Don Byron, clarinet. Guy Klucevsek, accordion (30/03/1990)
*7) : David Weinstein, sampling & electronic keyboard (27/04/1989)
*8) : Chris Cochrane, guitar (14/11/1987)
*9) : Ron Kuivila, home-made electronics & microcomputer (25/10/1987)
*10) : John Zorn, reeds. Vicki Bodner, oboe & english horn. Carol Emanuel, harp. Wayne Horvitz, electronic keyboard. Robert James, tapes & sfx. Arto Lindsay, voice & guitar. Christian Marclay, turntables. M.E. Miller, drums. Ursula Oppens, piano. Robin Holcomb, prompter (27/04/1984)
*11) : Mary Rowell, violin. Erik Friedlander, cello. Jonathan Storck, doublebass (23/03/1991)
*12) : David Weinstein, sampling & electronic keyboard (27/04/1989)
*13) : Shelley Hirsch, voice. Ikue Mori, drum machines. David Shea, turntables. Jim Staley, trombone (18/07/1991)
*14) : Jeanne Lee, voice. Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet (21/10/1989)

HERE

David Shea : "Prisoner"

(Sub Rosa, 1994)

Prisoner is Shea's homage to Patrick McGoohan's paranoid BBC TV spy series from the 1960s (as well as other spy/adventure shows from the same period), and liberally uses samples from the show. He continues working with additional musicians after the solo effort of I, but the musicians are used to better advantage than his debut work Shock Corridor. He has compared the work to sound cinema, and the description is particularly apt in the way that he transitions from one scene to another, and where the later pieces in the suite harken back to the earlier ones. Each piece has its own character, but the transitions between them occur in a cloud of brief, noisy segments, mixing Shea's turntable work and instrumental improvisation. The instrumentalists get opportunities to solo without dominating the work, especially guitarist Mark Ribot (who gets a long solo on #2 and some great feedback noise on #6) and Cyro Baptiste, whose Brazilian percussion dominates #5. The four pianists get a long workout on #4, which includes a beautiful stretch of neo-classical piano writing. The paranoia of the show is reflected in the alternation between circus music and ominous sampled voices and sombre string music. Prisoner shows Shea moving away from the cacophony of Shock Corridor and working with longer forms, towards his excellent later suites, Hsi-Yu Chi, Tower of Mirrors, and Satyricon.

Caleb Deupree (All Music)

HERE

Butch Morris : "Current trends in racism in modern America"

(Sound Aspects, 1986)

Alessandro Cassin: What does the improvising conductor do, provided words like conducting, arranging, composing, qualify to describe the work ?
Butch Morris: The improvising conductor arranges the extemporized material of improvisers. He has a vocabulary of signs to instigate the events: I'm not conducting in the traditional sense, I'm provoking or asking for certain things to happen, but even of those things I have no idea until I hear them.
AC: Would you say of what you do that it's something between arranging and composing ?
BM: Actually I wouldn't truly call it composing, but I could call it arranging, yeah, granted that you cannot start to arrange anything before you hear the material, before you have the material at hand.
AC: As to the simultaneous process of listening and doing something with what you've listened to, how different is it from what a regular conductor does, and what about the risks of speed in this process, and the power trip which I guess shaping a whole ensemble should entail ?
BM: At certain times it does create a sensation of power, yeah. The power trip didn't start with me, it started with the idea that someone had to stand before an orchestra. There is a certain kind of aura, of position of authority that conductors themselves have created over the years. However, what I'm doing is similar and different. It's similar in the sense that I'm keeping a number of people in line and I'm giving my view of direction, particularly direction of music. Of course with me you have no idea what direction the music will take. The traditional conductor instead knows the direction of the music, what it's going to sound like. I have no idea of what a person is going to do, or play, or what the first sound is going to be, the second sound or any sound. But I know that as soon as I hear it, if it needs a certain kind of care I have to shape it.
AC: How is chance at stake here ?
BM: Chance is a word John Cage has used a lot in his writing. I don't like to see it as chance, I like to see it as risk. I think risk insinuates also a certain kind of challenge. Chance doesn't necessarily do that to me.
AC: Do musicians resist your method, what are the most common questions raised by people at work with you ?
BM: I have had resistance to the method, though that's generally when I'm called to work with an existing ensemble that doesn't know quite what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. One of the most common questions or statements is, yes — why am I doing it ? and — if you want me to do it why don't you just write it down ? What I'm trying to bring about is ensemble spontaneity; there are still a lot of people resisting any kind of total improvisation.
AC: Would you rather work with the same musicians on a regular basis, or do you envision being so familiar with the method as to be able to conduct improvisation with little or no rehearsals?
BM: I do have a core group in New York of about five or six people that I use all the time not only for conductions but for notated compositions and other kind of projects. It makes my ensemble more flexible when I hire people that read music well. Believe me, I like a lot of different kinds of music, and I like to write it, and I also like to improvise. One of the reasons I even started thinking of this conducting was really to control, make more flexible and lucid my notated music.
AC: Let's get to the second part of the question, do you envision being so familiar with the method as to be able to conduct improvisation with little or no rehearsals ?
BM: I would like that very much, I hope it's coming to that. That I could call up three people in every country I've ever been, but there is not really that kind of familiarity at this point and I feel obligated to at least run through the vocabulary one more time.
AC: You have been conducting for twenty years. How does progression in your work contemplate evolution ?
BM: It still feels very young to me and it still feels very fresh, Conduction #1 is completely different from Conduction #31. I think there's a long way to go... I want to take it a lot further, a lot. There's only been one composer to write for my particular talent, that was Misha Mingelberg in '87. He wrote a piece for me to conduct and it really worked quite well. His identity was still in the music, it didn't sound like me, I think this could be a problem with some composers thinking they are bound to loose their musical identity.

HERE

Elliott Sharp/Carbon : "Datacide"

(Enemy, 1990)

The band CARBON was first conceived in April 1983 to be an anti-silicon sound: earthy, jagged, pulsing, and direct. It emerged from work on the fringes of the early hardcore and improv scenes with my band I/S/M and with The Hi-Sheriffs of Blue and Mofungo...
After "LARYNX", I wanted to return to a small band-format and assembled Samm Bennett on drums, percussion, sampler; Linton on drums and tapes; and electric harpist Zeena Parkins (doubling on slab and keyboard). All players had a huge timbral range - anyone in the group could deal the woofer frequencies or the tweeters, beats, melodies, or pure noise. This group played a few versions of the extended piece "JUMPCUT"(released on the "Real Estate" album) and a number of short pieces, issued as "DATACIDE" in 1989. The focus was on song-forms, each defined by widely varied parameters.

Elliott Sharp

HERE

Elliott Sharp/Carbon : "Tocsin"

(Enemy, 1991)

TOCSIN was mostly song-structures with very little formality - I had decided that CARBON should not hew to any specific agenda but should be the carrier of many mutant strains. Central to the bands sound was the use of extended timbres - sometimes to orchestrate a melodic or harmonic idea, sometime to function as the entire sonic hook. To todays ears, a pungent sound can function just as a catchy melody or lyric refrain once did.

Elliott Sharp

HERE

Nicolas Collins : "100 of the world's most beautiful melodies"

(Trace Elements, 1989)

This album is played by an all-star downtown group: Nicolas Collins, Pippin Barnett, Anthony Coleman, Tom Cora, Peter Cusack, Shelley Hirsch, George Lewis, Christian Marclay, Ben Neill, Zeena Parkins, Robert Poss, Ned Rothenberg, Elliott Sharp, Davey Williams, John Zorn, and Peter Zummo. A tongue-in-cheek title, perhaps, depending on your idea of "beautiful melody," as the sounds range from electronically and physically modified instruments with a definite edge to the barely perceptible, awakening the ear. Collins is also part of the Impossible Music group (with David Weinstein, David Shea, Ted Greenwald, and Tim Spelios) who, performing live, manipulate CD players in the spirit of Plunderphonics and rap-scratch style, creating a new style of electronic ensemble with works like the spatial and surreal "Simulcatastrophy," a performance of Collin's "In CD" (a title pun on Riley's "In C," of course) often humorously re-thinking Beethoven and Mozart cadences and form (he has made some recent work with Ben Neill along this same line), and the dense work "Salvador Dali's Digital Cinema".

"Blue" Gene Tyranny (All Music)

HERE

John King Electric World : "Hot thumb in a funky groove"

(Enemy)

"Everybody needs a little funk and noise, and Electric World offers a hefty dose of both. This is rock'n'soul for the head and heart." CMJ New Music Report

"The classic guitar-bass-drums trio led by John King is held together by their virtuosic playing. This is an exciting crossover band that many funk-metal bands should look to, enviously, for inspiration." OOR Magazine (Holland)

"The unsuspecting audience was massaged with funk rhythms until we were completely wet. Then we were nailed to the wall with Hendrix-esque guitar solos. In one hour, the trio created a kind of music which made one long for citizenship in King's Electric World." Esmaspaev (Estonia)

"King didn't even have time to wipe the hair away from his face, his funk-passionate guitar creating solo after solo. It seems like this white man has combined training and tradition with Black ethnic sincerity and God-given talent." Kronika (Estonia)

HERE

NB : this is an other fantastic record from John King' Electric World trio with two swiss partners, JoPo and Markus Stauss called "JoPo + Markus Stauss meet John King electric World, NY" (XOPF, 1990) : HERE (on great Lucky Psychic Hut blog)