Sonic Geography: Mulhouse, France

For MusicWorks Issue #101
BY KEN WAXMAN

During late August when some streets in Mulhouse, France take on a decidedly other-directed character associated with the Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) festival, it’s likely neither visitors nor locals realize the symbolic roots of the celebration, an integral part of the city since 1983.

Known as France’s Manchester, industry in this city of about 112,000 people in the Haut-Rhin region has been involved with the textile industry since 1746, when four locals founded the city’s first textile printing works. Annexed by France in 1798, Mulhouse was formerly a free republic associated with the Swiss Confederation. In the late 19th and early 20th century Mulhouse’s factories remained world leaders in the manufacture and marketing of printed cloth for both home and apparel, while students from around the world studied at the École nationale superieure des industries textiles.

Over the centuries the city also established enduring links with New Orleans, main port of Louisiana, from where cotton for its textile factories was imported. Isn’t it appropriate then, that one of Europe’s most sophisticated improvised music festivals should have this long-time attachment to the purported cradle of jazz?

Not that there’s any sort of languid Crescent City feel to this city, 30 kilometres northwest of Basel, Switzerland. Its distinctiveness comes from being a French city in close proximity to Germany and Switzerland. Annexed by Germany following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1918) and from 1940-1945, there’s a Teutonic bustle in the streets and a few restaurants where German-styled dishes such as baeckeoffe, meats simmered in wine, markknepfle, sausages with potatoes and spätzle noodles are available. Additionally, there’s that Swiss connection, and not just from visitors. As Adrien Chiquet, JAM’s artistic director notes: “The specificity of Mulhouse is that part of the supposed middle class works in Switzerland and earns a lot of money.”

This money means that Mulhouse is able to support artistic endeavors such as the Musée de l'Impression sur Étoffes (printed textiles) and the Musée National de l'Automobile de Mulhouse, initially located within a textile mill. There’s also La Filature, the theatre/opera house, which is dark throughout August.

In contrast, during JAM, day-time concerts take place in the austere 12th Century Chapelle St. Jean, midtown, and at night at Le Noumatrouff, an expansive rock club in the suburbs, next to the tram terminus. “Even if Le Noumatrouff is not so comfortable, it’s more appropriate for what I want to do,” confides Chiquet. “Free-Music has more to do with punk venues than opera houses.”

Considering that JAM now hosts rock-improv, and electronica as well as acoustic Free Music, proves his point. In 2007, for instance, the rock-influenced Alsacienne duo Donkey Monkey and the Basque punk-improv Billy Boa trio were featured along with improvisers such as computer manipulator Thomas Lehn, saxophonist Evan Parker and pianist Irène Schweizer. The affiliated Jazz en ville/À La Campage concerts earlier in August are more conventional. This reflects the festival’s origins as a standard summer jazz fest, which as recently as 1990 featured boppers such as flugelhornist Art Farmer. The improv concentration occurred two years later when founding artistic director Paul Kanitzer gave up direction of the cultural center to concentrate on JAM.

It’s not as if there are many well-known musicians of any stripe living in the area. Although since the Beatles-era there has been a militant alternative rock scene – witness the airport hanger-like size of Le Noumatrouff – but with larger cities like Basel and Strasbourg, France nearby, committed professional musicians move on. Rather than a musician, probably the most famous Mulhouse native was Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), the French army captain whose trumped-up treason conviction exposed the country’s latent anti-Semitism.

Still, JAM tries to encourage appreciation for music in the area. Over the years concerts have been held on the streets, in bars and shops and in 2006, even at the Bains Municipaux, with a multi-media soiree fluid including videos, dance, and an electro-acoustic group led by Parker.

Off season JAM also co-presents improv-rock and electronica concerts, organizes electronic music workshops and sponsors a year-long series at the Mulhouse conservatory where visiting improvisers work with music students and non-professionals. During the festival young players come from all over – about 30 per cent of them locals, estimates Chiquet – to participate in intensive improvisational workshops, which in 2007 were directed by Parker, pianist Sophie Agnel and guitarist Noël Akchoté. The previous year sound designer Jérôme Noetinger led similar workshops.

Expressing a profound improv ethos, Chiquet sees the expansion of local musical activities as the workshops’ and the festival’s underlying objective “I think that 35 years of creative music in Mulhouse – because of Paul Kanitzer’s activity – has produced a lot of musicians here even if, in the end, they don't play ‘improvised music’ but turn to rock, jazz, singing, electro, etc.” he affirms.

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Ken Waxman (www.jazzword.com) writes in Toronto and internationally about jazz and improvised music. This is another of his reports on the sonic geography of selected European cities.

July 2, 2008

Nagel, Bernstein, Akchoté, Jones

Big Four Live
hatOLOGY 637

By Ken Waxman

A unique recasting of the timbres created by a classic Swing Era combo, this mixed American-European quartet proves that profundity can result from post-modern transference. Mostly performed portamento, with just enough growls, echoes and spikes to be distinctive, the nine tracks here add intellectual rigor to andante swing.

Never to be confused with Dixielander Muggsy Spanier, American trumpeter Steven Bernstein still works old-style references into such slangily titled compositions as “New Viper Dance” and “Muggles 2000”, while making full use of plunger digressions, braying rubato tones and showy triplets. In the Sidney Bechet role, Austrian alto saxophonist Max Nagel replaces wide vibrato with sudden intervallic jumps and rasping obbligatos, while his solos range from velvety to – on his aptly titled “Monx”, of “Epistrophy” not ecclesiastical reference – irregular chirping and sibilance.

Providing downward plucks as did Wellman Braud, father of the walking style, American Brad Jones showcases an intermezzo rife with thick slaps on “Muddy”. Meanwhile France’s Nöel Akchoté hammers out metallic, resonating licks, recalling Chicago blues guitarist Muddy Waters rather than the original Big Four’s Carmen Mastren, who would have been similarly shocked by Akchoté’s cranked bottleneck whines and distorted below-the-bridge picking elsewhere.

Still, that 1930s guitarist would have approved of Akchoté’s delicate finger-picking. Wedded to Jones’ felt-but-not-heard pulses and the antiphonal call-and-response vamps from both horns, the result crystallizes the appeal of this modern-traditionalist date.

In MusicWorks Issue #100

April 3, 2008

Jazz à Mulhouse gives a loving French kiss to Improvised music

By Ken Waxman
For CODA Issue 337

Impressive saxophone and reed displays were the focus of the 24th Edition of Jazz à Mulhouse in France in late August. Overall however, most of the 19 performances maintained a constant high quality. This may have something to do with the fact that unlike larger, flashier and more commercial festivals, Jazz à Mulhouse (JAM) is an almost folksy showcase for improvisation.

Located less than 20 minutes away by train from Basel, Switzerland, Mulhouse is a mid-sized city of 150,000 in eastern France long known as an industrial textile centre. Low-key, JAM is rather like the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV), with better restaurants.

Except for an opening concert by French guitarist Noël Akchoté, which this year was in a crowded downtown club that looks as if its standard fare is pop chansonniers, all other shows take place in two wildly dissimilar venues. The mid-day solo piano series is showcased in the acoustically austere Chapelle St. Jean. Located in mid-town, it’s a 12th Century stone church with vaulted ceilings, bas-reliefs at eye level and two gigantic sun dials, high up on opposite walls facing the stage.

In late afternoon, a JAM-organized free shuttle bus takes the audience out to the suburbs near the streetcar terminus for evening shows at the Noumatrouff, an expansive, hanger-like space that is usually a rock club, complete with grungy washrooms and a beer tent. With a two-hour gap between early-and-late performances, audience members mix, mingle, chat, chow down on their own food or what’s available from a couple of vendors, and sample the local beer.

What follows is a selection of most of the festivals highlights, with mention of a few less-than-stellar performances.

Disappointedly in fact, Akchoté opened the festivities with a nearly listless solo set that skirted shoe-gazing pop jazz. The Swiss Lucien Dubois trio which preceded him, featured a break-dancing drummer, a bass guitarist warbling lachrymose ballads and was only notable for the leader’s reed prowess..

In the piano series, Belgium’s Fred Van Hove and Switzerland’s Irène Schweizer represent the first generation of Euro improvisers and France’s Frédéric Blondy and Sophie Agnel the contemporary ones. With his waves of long white hair Van Hover, 70, resembles a caricature of a 19th Century classical virtuoso and his playing seemed to reflect this. Concentrating on easy-flowing glissandi and heavy-handed echoing timbres he created a waterfall of upwards pitched timbres with dense centres that were then smoothed down into sharp individual notes. Without using the pedals he exposed low frequency percussive rhythms that literally made audience members jump, then concluded with a calmer theme variation.

Harder and faster in execution, Schweizer’s recital exposed a cyclone of sharp note-twisting vamps that slithered between very low and very high pitches with references to classical music appearing and vanishing in seconds, plus slapped keys and subterranean pitches reminiscent of Herbie Nichols. Schweizer’s heightened rhythmic sense came through even when she used mallets to poke at the piano’s innards. With a continuous ostinato, her solo was more jazz-like than Van Hove’s, quoting “Blue Monk” and what sounded like “Prelude to a Kiss”. Despite her 10-finger flourishes, she telescoped variations so that the piece’s head was recapped before the end.

After a vigorous late-night concert the day before with fellow Gallic improvisers cellist Martine Altenburger and saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet, Blondy spent the first part of his recital exploring the nooks and crannies of his piano. With a mallet, a small cymbal and other implements he yanked buzzes, squeaks, pings and whistles from the strings. On the keys, he sometimes sounded like a combination of David Tudor and Knuckles O’Toole; on one hand creating high-frequency glissandi and suspended tones, and on the other alluding to “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Mumbling to himself and pulling faces while he played, Blondy’s frenzied key slashes, flying fingers and full forearm smacks led to an encore where his body language seemed to suggest that by nearly smothering the keyboard he could impale himself onto the sharp notes created.

A day earlier Angel, who along with Akchoté and British saxophonist Evan Parker, spent the week guiding and rehearsing separate student ensembles, was calmer than Blondy. More stately and sombre in her presentation than the other three pianists, much of her improvising focused on bottoming ostinatos and ricocheting timbres, as well as voicings that involved the piano’s wood as well as its keys. Paper clips, hard rubber balls and other objects were adhered to the piano strings before she began. During the course of her performance she would pluck a key then immediately stop it with a tool; create a series of lyrical patterns on top of vibrating drones, or wet her fingers with her tongue and apply those fingers to the piano strings. Climatic passages used the pressure of both hands to create throbbing, buzzing notes which worked their way into additional furtive arpeggios.

Masterful saxophone stylists were as well represented as keyboardists. Notable sets included one from British soprano saxophonist Tom Chant – with two unheralded but masterful French Free Jazz practitioners: bassist Benjamin Duboc and sensitive percussionist Didier Lasserre – who could be termed the discovery of the festival for a North American; Swiss soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, whose sparse adaptive unity with French pianist Jacques Demierre and long-time American expatriate in France bassist Barre Philips set a high standard for chamber improv; alto and soprano saxophonist Gauguet; and an utterly time-suspending set from Parker’s long-time British trio of drummer Paul Lytton and bassist Barry Guy augmented by Catalan pianist Augustí Fernández.

With Blondy in full Jerry Lee Lewis-like pounding form and Gauguet, a breath-machine using every variety of extended reed techniques plus altering his sound by pressing his bell against a pant leg or swaddling it in tin foil, it was Altenburger who provided lyrical, yet perfectly in-synch connective passages. More admirable than congenial, the overall impression the trio’s set left was that some levity would improve this impressive chops showcase.

Chant’s pant leg was also put to good use during a few of his bubbling, note-stretching solos as well. But his output of small gestures and concise tones plus the powerful thwacks and plucks of Duboc’s tuning-peg-to-spike and sensitive double-bow exhibitions were subtly overshadowed by Lasserre’s bravura percussion skills. Missing no necessary sonic despite using a miniature kit of one bass drum, one snare and one cymbal, Lasserre unveiled squeaks, pats and silences with his bare hands and a variety of mallets and sticks for a cross section of discordant yet complementary tones. Other praiseworthy percussionists were the expected – Lytton with Parker and long-time Free Jazzer German Paul Lovens in his two appearances – and the unexpected: Japan’s Makoto Sato, with his soft mallets and Butoh dancer cool. Unfortunately Sato was part of the Marteau Rouge trio, whose guitarist and synthesizer player’s droning jams and amp sludge were more appropriate for ProgRock freak-outs circa 1967 then a 2007 jazz festival.

Polyphonically connective, the Leimgruber/Demierre/Phillips set was probably the festival’s most unpremeditatedly visual. It featured the saxophonist slowly disassembling his tenor saxophone and methodically twisting and blowing through different parts; Phillips sawing on his bass’ shoulder with his bow and playing so passionately that the bow’s horsehair streamed; and Demierre’s jack-in-the-box leaps and elbow-on-the keys emphasis. Additionally, the pianist pumped out stubby contrapuntal lines and buzzy soundboard textures, perfect accompaniment for the saxophonist’s pseudo duck calls and animated circular breathing.

Climax of the festival was literally its finale, an intense, nearly 90-minute set by Parker, Guy, Lytton and Fernández. An exercise in controlled brutality, the surges of sound unified during three extended improvisations, which despite the breadth of technique on display found the four operating like a well-coordinated assembly line, with motifs and themes passed from one to another.

This was in sharp contrast to the Charles Gayle trio set that preceded it. Now exclusively playing alto saxophone, Gayle still overblows his characteristic squalls, squeaks and screams, alternately altissimo and with fog-horn-like echoes. But despite excursions to the piano where he seemed to delight in producing dissonant Monkish runs, and donning the slouch hat and clown’s red nose of his “Streets” character as he tried out Stride riffs, something was lacking. Perhaps it was because British drummer Mark Sanders was in the rhythm section along with Gayle’s regular bassist Gerald Benson. The disparity between the bassist’s low-key swipes and the drummer’s harder and thicker tones was obvious. Obviously uncomfortable Gayle’s attempted to solder this disconnect by animatedly barking out command and counting out “Giant Steps” with foot stomps before trading fours with the drummer.

Back to the Parker crew: whether it was the unseasonable heat in the auditorium, the late hour, or the privilege of watching master stylists at work, but most audience members stayed hushed – nearly mesmerized – during the proceeding. Aloof, Lytton busied himself displaying and manipulating various parts of his stripped-down kit; banging small hard objects on top of his cymbals when the mood struck; resonating woody tones other times, and massaging rhythmic surfaces with his palms and a variety of implements. Athletic and limber, Guy appears to have the ability to produce sounds from both the front and back of his bass, no matter where the strings are located. Not only did he slip, strike and slide along his strings, but he also shook the instrument itself, gathered its strings together for massive plucks and multiplied the available textures with two bows vibrating among the strings, plus thwacking on the string set with what appeared to be a drum stick.

Although Spanish, Fernández often applied body English to his arpeggios and chords and moved his arms crab-like across the keyboard. At one point he bounded from the piano bench to trap high-frequency tinkles at the top of the soundboard, then manually manipulated the string’ speaking length. At times he seems to be karate-chopping the keys into submission. This physicality was usually complemented by Guy smacking and tapping his strings at his bass’s southern portion beneath the bridge and Lytton creating a cluster of cymbal reverb.

Initially tongue-slapping and twittering long sweeping lines so that his soprano saxophone sounded like a piccolo, Parker filled his solos with circular breathing, verbalized honks and shouts. Always in control, his nearly endless streams of intense vibrated notes didn’t vary as he remained rooted on one spot while playing.

Other groups that made impressions earlier on, ranged from the gargantuan to the diminutive. In the first category was the 22-piece Lille (France)-based La Pieuvre band, the members of which were lead in a conduction by Oliver Benoit. The many-armed group, (“Octopus” in English) smeared and rappelled through accelerating crescendos, dark, dramatic pauses and a fog of buzzing and blowing. With blustering brass solos and a collective improvisation for its saxophone section, at time the Octopus seemed to suck all oxygen from the room.

Also notable were two duos: Kiff Kiff from Lyon, France and Germans Lehn/Lovens. Trombonist Alain Gibert and his son, bass clarinetist Clément, who are Kiff Kiff, played for the most part airy, “folkloric” tunes – sometimes with words – that brought to mind the original Jimmy Giuffre3. Nevertheless there was nothing effete about the improvisations, since when he wanted to, the older Gibert produced a roistering gutbucket tone, and the younger paid homage to Eric Dolphy in many of his solos. Still among five days of more-or-less “out” music, Kiff Kiff’s lightly rhythmic melodies probably sounded more Mainstream then they are.

No one could confuse the agitated improvising of drummer Paul Lovens and analogue synthesizer player Thomas Lehn with the Mainstream. A former pianist, Lehn uses his electronic instrument like a keyboard and lunges, swivels and sways as he plays. Divorced from too-clean electronic signals, his old-fashioned synth quacked like Donald Duck, expelled trumpet-like spetrofluctuation, buzzed, clinked and clanked.

Meantime Lovens – who the day before had a busier interaction with French bassist Joëlle Léandre and Anerican-born, German-resident vocalist Lauren Newton in a set that didn’t seem to gel – appeared more relaxed with Lehn and his playing more commanding. A photo of Lehn with his white shirt and narrow black tie, was prominently featured on the JAM program and posters and he wore this nearly traded-marked outfit each time he was on stage. With Lehn, whose input-output interface and triggered pulses were warm and humanistic, Lovens used a combination of single strokes and connective rhythms to cement moods..

The percussionist rubbed his snare top as Lehn plucked chords from his sythn, and hit his attached cymbals vertically and horizontally while sometimes spinning smaller, unattached others. A common trope was scraping a vertical drum stick on the ride cymbal creating a tone as constant as, but less irritating than, chalk on a blackboard. Textures from Lovens’ wood block were often exposed as were thumps from his bass drum. Overall, this unshowy exhibition of sensitive percussion styling was a festival trait he shared with Lytton, Lasserre and Sato.

A focus on music-making, not crowd pandering is what sets apart Jazz à Mulhouse from more commercial festivals Still, there was enough high quality audience-pleasing music to explain the respect it engenders.

January 9, 2008

AKCHOTÉ/AUZET/FERRARI

Impro-Micro-Acoustique
Blue Chopsticks BC12

DAVE TUCKER WEST COAST PROJECT
Tenderloin
Pax PR 90264

Eventually, it seems that when a musician truly wants to express himself most freely, he must get involved with improvisation. Take these two CDs as evidence.

Englishman Dave Tucker gained his greatest fame as guitarist for the rock group The Fall in the early 1980s. Since then he’s turned to improv, playing with saxist Evan Parker and drummer Roger Turner at home and matching wits with this Bay area crew on a visit stateside.

More fascinating still is the other session, for it features the improv debut of French musique concrète pioneer Luc Ferrari as an improvising pianist. Since the 1950s, Ferrari (born 1929) has experimented with different instrumental combinations, used tape in composing and even written scores that included space for improvising musicians. But it took the arrival of the freer 21st century, and his appreciation of the guitar mistreatments of Parisian Noël Akchoté to get one of the founders of the Groupe de Recherche Musicale to contribute instrumentally himself. Besides piano, Ferrari also utilizes hand-held mikes attached to an amp and loudspeakers in the studio to create what he calls new, real-time concrète.

His many decades-younger collaborators are percussionist Roland Auzet, founder of Cirque du Tambour, who has performed ultra-modern scores by Ferrari and Iannis Xenakis, plus guitarist Akchoté, who has collaborated with, among many others, Parker, plus British guitarists Derek Bailey and Fred Frith.

There isn’t that much of a generation gap between Tucker and his five California colleagues, which may be why TENDERLOIN appears to lack the same red-hot sense of discovery found on the other disc. Too many tracks that aren’t given sufficient time to develop, may contribute to this as well. TENDERLOIN’s 13 pieces, which take almost 67½ minutes to unroll, seem to engender a more drawn out program than what’s audible on the five tracks of slightly less than 67¾ minutes on IMPRO-MICRO-ACOUSTIQUE.

Not that Tucker doesn’t have fine backup for his work on guitar and electronics. Ernesto Diaz-Infante on amplified acoustic guitar has been involved in experimental sessions on both coasts. Bassist Damon Smith has recorded with German reedist Wolfgang Fuchs and British saxist Tony Bevan. Both he and Garth Powell, who plays drums, percussion and idiophone here, recorded with Italian saxist Gianni Gebbia, while Scott R. Looney who brings real-time laptop processing to the proceedings, has recorded with Bevan and local Free Jazz saxist Jim Ryan. Only cellist Danielle DeGruttola isn’t that well known.

On the other hand her contributions help define the basic tension between the acoustic and electro-acoustic impulses showcased. On “Nihonmachi”, for instance, the busiest and most representative piece, her slashing, tremolo work bridges the single note picking from Diaz-Infante’s acoustic guitar and Tucker’s sudden exposure of the wah-wah pedal. Sonic shape is provided by Smith’s unvarnished, forward-pressing bass, as Powell thwacks unattached cymbals and a bell tree, and Looney processes organ-grinder sounds from his laptop. Buzzing, ponticello from both low stringed instruments move the theme along as the other instruments stop and start around them. The end features higher-pitched, guitar-driven contortions.

Methodical bow-lifting from the cellist often makes her playing an island of calm among the extended techniques on display during the tunes, which are all named for various hip Bay area landmarks. Sometimes, as on “Cow Hollow”, the rural-sounding, flat-picking, configurations become paramount and mix with double-stopping shuffle bowing from the bassist. “Mission Dolores” on the other hand, features the crackle and static of electric-emphasized delay, reverberated all over the sonic space with flanging and echoing effects from Looney and Tucker. Yet those sounds still face off against Africanized percussion spirals, as the rhythm takes on a modified, metallic berimbau pulse.

Elsewhere, oscillating waveforms shrill and quiver at different tempos, morphing into otherworldly whistles and screams. Guitar reverb increases in volume and adds feedback until shrill crescendos are reached, in contrast to the folksy finger picking that sometimes arises from the acoustic axe. And there are times when burbling video game timbres face off against solid rhythm guitar-like strumming.

However, there aren’t enough conflicting sonic impulses to properly illuminate each and every track here. As good as TENDERLOIN is in small doses, the overall appreciation of the CD as a single listening experience would have been vastly improved by cutting some of the sounds and making it a taut less-than-one-hour disc.

On the other hand, by limiting themselves to five tracks of no more than 11 minutes each, IMPRO-MICRO-ACOUSTIQUE’s trio allows the sounds to germinate organically. Interestingly enough as well, despite Ferrari’s background, the only piece which even touches on musique concrète is “Sur le rythme,” coincidentally or not the final track.

That impulse doesn’t arrive until the final one-third of the track either. It does so in the form of a welcoming phrase, that seems to originate from pulling the cord in a mechanized child’s toy and mixing the resulting sound with the other improvisations. As Akchoté flat-picks beneath-the-bridge kora-like suggestions and Auzet’s rim percussion motions sound as if he’s playing a berimbau, the other image created is that of a tribe of African percussionists set loose in a toy shop. Shortly, however, the vamp evolves to toque, referencing both Latin and African percussion, but with the tempo staccatissimo. Later, it appears as if the percussionist is playing the most traditional of European noisemakers -- spoons.

Additional percussion arrives from the pianist applying pedal pressure as he dampens the strings and hammering on the instrument’s sides. Akchoté adds harsh guitar strums; Ferrari abbreviated keyboard patterns, while working his way up the scale with his right-handed single notes; and Auzet’s output morphs from xylophone-like slides to batá-like drum beats.

This primitive-futuristic dichotomy is present as early as the more-than 15½ minute “Sur le contraste”, where rolling clave-like nerve beats from the drummer meet warbling guitar reverberations and a repeated, low frequency piano part. Circling this are unconnected timbres that could be paper being balled and crumpled, push button telephone dial tones, or squirrels munching on the piano’s wood.

Full force, two-handed piano crescendos and their echoes as well as arpeggio manipulation of the internal piano strings are then exposed. So are chromatic, banjo-like picking and single notes with bottleneck reverberation. Auzet adds to the sonic soup, at points by exposing sharp objects being dragged along cymbal tops, spinning unselected cymbals, and somehow creating an electric hand drill buzz.

With key clips and flailing guitar fills sharing aural space with distortion that works itself into Bronx cheer territory, organ-like tones that reconstitute themselves as a robotic cha cha cha, and wriggling, atmosphere-piercing sounds, there’s little downtime on the session.

Making a case for the sonic marriage of musique concrète, pure improv and folkloric impulses, the CD not only confirms one composer’s effort as an improviser, but is also a polymorphous listening experience in itself.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Tenderloin: 1. SoMa 2. Cow Hollow 3. Amoeba cleaned me out 4. Tenderloin 5. Tien-I-lou 6. Mission Dolores 7. Castro 8. Laguna 9. Nihonmachi 10. Crooked Lombard 11. Left Luggage 12. Presidio 13. Yerba

Personnel: Tenderloin: Dave Tucker (guitar and electronics); Ernesto Diaz-Infante (amplified acoustic guitar); Danielle DeGruttola (cello, electric cello*); Damon Smith (bass); Scott R. Looney ([except #11] real-time laptop processing); Garth Powell (drums, percussion and idiophone)

Track Listing: Impro: 1. Sur le contraste 2. Sur la pulsation 3. Sur le continu 4. Sur le minimum 5. Sur le rythme

Personnel: Impro: Noël Akchoté (guitar and objects); Luc Ferrari (piano and objects); Roland Auzet (percussion and objects)

May 17, 2004

MANUEL MOTA

Leopardo
Rossbin RS 009

NOËL AKCHOTÉ
Perpetual Joseph
Rectangle REC AL 2

More entries in the quest to find something fresh to play with the electric guitar finds two European musicians pursuing far different strategies. Portuguese guitarist Manuel Mota propels his solid body electric guitar through different variations of quietude, while Frenchman Noël Akchoté manipulates his amplifier as much as his strings.

Lisbon-based Mota, born in 1970, plays regularly with locals bassist Margarida Garcia and trumpeter Sei Miguel; while Paris resident Akchoté, two years older, has recorded with fellow guitarist Derek Bailey, played in the band The Recyclers and with a variety of other musicians including saxophonists Evan Parker and Sam Rivers.

Interestingly enough, Bailey has expressed his admiration for what he calls Mota’s “really interesting, quite radical” style. One can see why. On LEOPARDO, playing finger-style, Mota goes beyond Bailey-like explorations to almost pure microtonalism.

Closely miked, during the course of the nine tracks here, it appears that he’ll exert pressure merely with his fingertips and spend more time behind the bridge and near the sound holes than going full frontal on the strings. With sporadic, echoing, banjo-like tones, the sluice of fingers along his strings and the suggestion of bottleneck, sounds produced could come from a folk guitarist’s practice session. But considering that tones keep rolling along throughout each piece, and there is no resolution, negates that idea.

Sporadically, he’ll slide from one string to another without pausing or speed up and slow down creating duple ringing notes as if he was finessing two different guitars. Very occasionally, if his cuticles aren’t buried in the fret guard or near the pegs, he’ll come up with sharp, short tunelets. By the end, proceedings get sharper and spikier as he auditions a series of notes and tones, then snaps them off, exercising his amplifier using the electronic impulses and crackles as his sound base.

With a history encompassing noise bands as well as improv, Akchoté centres his achievement on his peripherals as much as his instrument. The third part of the Joseph Trilogy, PERPETUAL JOSEPH makes its points over the course of four long tracks. Often as stentorian as Mota’s CD is silent, Akchoté deals with intermittent amp buzzes and the oscillation of sound waves. Moving from maximum to minimum, he maneuvers the frequencies every which way. In fact, there are times the output more resembles a soprano saxophone tone or radio frequencies than anything arising from six strings. Among the intermittent drones his palm and finger pressure sporadically create two separate sounds, the undertone of a darker strum wiggling beneath the higher-pitched radio wave from the amp.

Like the game plan on Mota’s disc, Akchoté’s final track is also his longest. Here the amplification gets even more clamorous and varied and you begin to hear the overtones on top of the overtones. It’s a Cagean reversal, proving that pure noise no more exists than does pure silence. Soon, the oscillation is altered with strums and flat picking as the output takes on the siren-like properties of a circular saw or an air raid siren, often with a secondary drone joining, then superseding the first. Was it Andy Warhol who talked about the mechanized beauty in monotony? Well, that same near-automated rhythmic splendor is showcased here. Captivating, a singular on-off pulse makes up the coda, starting and stopping, then starting and stopping until the very end.

Traditionalists may not even recognize guitar sounds in these recorded equations. Yet if music history is going to evolve, electric guitar experiments like these must be taken into account.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Leopardo: 1. 01.43 2. 03.26 3.03.04 4. 05.23 5. 02.35 6. 04.57 7. 04.38 8. 04.16 9. 11.08

Personnel: Leopardo: Manuel Mota (solid body electric guitar)

Track Listing: Joseph: 1. Plage 17 2. Plage 18 3. Plage 19 4. Plage 20

Personnel: Joseph: Noël Akchoté (electric guitar, amplifier)

July 7, 2003

DEREK BAILEY & NOEL AKCHOTE

Close to the Kitchen
Blue Chopsticks 06

An outstanding example of pure guitar extemporization, this European dust up is a cross-generational, cross-cultural tryst as well.

On one side there's British improv elder statesman, Derek Bailey (born 1930), who practically invented the U.K. variant of free music and who continues to work with nearly every player with whom he crosses paths. In the other corner is young French guitarist Noël Akchoté (born 1968), influenced by noise bands and rockers as well a free music and who has honed his improv chops with musicians as different as Americans, saxophonist Tim Berne and trombonist George Lewis and fellow Gauls drummer Daniel Humair, reedist Louis Sclavis and bassist Joëlle Léandre. Known for his POMO band The Recyclers, Akchoté also writes for film and run the Rectangle record label, on which this session first appeared on LP in 1996.

Despite the nearly 40 year difference in their ages, there's no sense of a master-disciple relationship here; with Bailey there rarely is. Instead the older man gives as good as he gets on these six tracks recorded in a London studio.

In truth, with Bailey's experiments having influenced the entire guitar world, there are times when his playing and Akchoté's sound eerily similar. On "Impossible n'est pas Français", for instance, the two spend time throwing phrases, notes and finally little string scratches back and forth to make their points. If the younger guitarist creates a little melody of buzzes, then Bailey responds with what appear to be bass string burps and string fanfares. However, it's very likely that the feedback specialist on some of the tunes is Akchoté, the child of rock's excesses.

Most of the time though, you get a mental image of the two doing an aural Louis Prima and Keely Smith act. Bailey as Smith, plows along, head down, cycling through a series of tiny plectrum strokes, painstakingly constructing solos. Akchoté on the other hand is Prima, hyperactively, though metaphorically leaping around, countering the older guitarist's meticulous journey with spooky horror-movie style passages, and accelerated strums that could be introducing Led Zepplin's "Whole Lotta Love".

Bailey remains unflappable throughout, mostly concentrating on creating ghostly, echoing intonation. However, at intervals to counter Akchoté's fluttering bird cries or what sound like space satellite signals, he'll slowly introduce straight bass guitar comping or bell-like notes or slowly bang the instrument's side with his hand. Earlier, at the beginning of "Ankara-Boulogne" both appear to be having a great time launching bursts of metallic notes into the atmosphere, before settling down to some whistling lines and wire scratchings. You could call it energy music of unfamiliar gestures.

Although his play-with-anyone ethos has meant that Bailey has produced some missteps, this masterful disc isn't one of them. Having it available on CD as well, means that more than just the cognoscenti can hear it. Listen yourself to see how two men who could literally be grandfather and grandson can, congruent to a food preparation area, create beautiful improv.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Pas la montagne! 2. Dans distribution il y a distribuer 3. Ankara-Boulogne 4. Impossible n'est pas Français 5. ça s'aime, (society of authors and...) 6. Toi et moi

Personnel: Derek Bailey, Noël Akchoté (guitars)

September 24, 2001