Studio Dan

Enlarging its personnel from its last disc and playing the music of a single composer Vienna’s Studio Dan continues to experiment with varied styles and concepts. As the music bounces among Jazz, improv, notated, noise and electronic influences, the now 13-piece ensemble pinpoints welcoming and wanting themes. Austrian composer Axel Seidelmann’s eight themes purportedly deal with the modern world’s reaction to autocracy and conflicts, but its relation to Aldous Huxley’s classic novel is as nebulous as the composer’s insistence that these are eight improvisations.

Instrumentation and performance leans more closely towards New Music than Jazz except for the juxtaposition of Michael Tiefenbacher’s piano and Martin Siewert’s electronics on “Lonely Hacker On A Data Highway” where voltage splays and jiggles underline what appears to be a pastiche of lounge piano clichés. Similarly “Keine Angst, Sie Werden Überwacht! (Hörspiel)” or “Don’t worry, you’re being watched!” voiced by Christian Reiner and Kirstin Schwab may conceptionally deal with surveillance and government overreach, but unless one understands German the plot is opaque.

More generic are tracks that use the violence and aggression implicit in the instrumental mixture to reflect Seidelmann’s themes, though sometime obliquely. Ascending and descending percussion rumbles and extended quirky string patterns are most common with plunger and triplet brass extensions integrated into the programs. The introductory “Plutonium City” is an example of this as cacophonous tutti sequences move the exposition forward as dissonant motifs including piccolo-trumpet like shakes, matched electronic and vibraphone vibrations and strained string clips. These embellish the narrative until the ricocheting straight ahead or fragmented melody ends with a rippling brassy trombone blast.

The concluding “Be Happy”, which is probably an ironic comment, adds snatches of well-worn songs like “Happy Birthday”, “America the Beautiful” and “Jingle Bells” to characterize the concept. These asides also evolve during sequences that separate continuous tutti peeps with police whistles, running water slurps, door bell chimes, car horn blasts, the crash of breaking glass, human screams, and maniacal laughter. With the climax the noise of a thunder storm, followed by a bedside clock ticking then ringing, a dream/nightmare is represented. So too is the suggestion of modern life as a variant of both dream and nightmare.

Woody percussion clanks, string stops, voltage static, keyboard tinkles and half-valve brass smears and drones add more substance to the suite’s thesis. Studio Dan’s interpretation confirms those ideas still further as it mates controlled sonic protrusions with subtle timbral elaborations.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Plutonium City 2. Lonely Hacker On A Data Highway 3. Plastic People 4. Die Denen Mächtigen Tagtäglich Den Scherb’n Ausleeren Und Ihn Hernach Recht Häufig Aufhaben… 5. Fahrenheit 451 – Oder Celsius 273.15? 6. Keine Angst, Sie Werden Überwacht! (Hörspiel) 7. Megapolis Tower At Sunrise 8. Be Happy!

Personnel: Damaris Richerts (trumpet); Daniel Riegler (trombone); Michael Tiefenbacher (piano); Sophia Goidinger Koch, Olivia de Prato (violins); Martina Bischof (viola); Maiken Beer (cello); Raphael Meinhart, Margit Schoberleitner (percussion); Martin Siewert (electronics); Christian Reiner, Kirstin Schwab (voices); Xizi Wang (conductor)