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| | | matchless (uk) #mrcd27 cd organum / eddie prévost “crux / flayed” compact disc - eddie prévost - flayed (19:54)
- organum - crux (18:30)
| | matchless press release... |
| organum & eddie prévost: crux/flayed (1985)
crux an organum track.
flayed a drumming sequence played by eddie prévost.
flayed (19.54):
eddie prévost, drums, general percussion, acme thunderer whistle
david jackman, added bowed cymbals, electronic sounds.
crux (18.30):
andrew chalk, bowed gong
david jackman, drone flute, bowed piano
dinah jane rowe, drone flute
stephen stapleton, chair.
front cover artwork by david jackman.
this cd is a re-issue of silent records (usa) sr 8704a
mrcd27
...
'flayed/crux' dates from 1987, and was originally configured over two sides of vinyl and released by a small american west coast label called silent. the very astute/lucky amongst you may just have caught it first time around, although copies of the record were devilishly hard to come by and press notices for it were almost non-existent. these are the hard facts; reason enough for matchless to dust it off and give it an airing now. but time has moved on and commercial contexts, amongst other things, have changed.
however cosmetic it might seem to you, however misplaced it might appear adorning a matchless release, let us not forget that commerciality refreshes parts of the aesthetic. ambient music's second coming has, at the very least, reacquainted us with the qualities of sound beyond the surround. even ambient's cross fertilisation with dub music deals equally with textures and gestures; it reveals the complexity imbued in that most basic ingredient on the aural artist's palette. it has encouraged ears bowed by hearing to actually prick themselves up and start listening again. and it's certainly given this album a contextural anchorage it never had before.
i don't remember how i came across the album, but i definitely remember eyebrows being raised in the house when flayed was in full flow that first time. i had been lured to eddie prévost's work by his free jazz quartet, in which prévost handled the metrical flux like a master juggler: it was only later, on hearing amm playing in a disused church in north london back in the early eighties, that prévost's different drumming waxed its most lyrical to me in terms of sound. the two experiences part paved the way for flayed with its hyperactive rhythms and its steely surfaces; but what really surprised, even rankled me at first, was the rigorous production. the studio tools had clearly cast a presence over the proceedings. but that, of course was the point. flayed wasn't a solo platform for prévost, it was a duet with a longtime former associate, david jackman. they'd played together in cornelius cardew's scratch orchestra back in the late sixties; jackman had been a regular in the audience at amm gigs even before this; but that alone was no guarantee that there would be aesthetic harmony on the day. prévost had dedicated most of his creative being to live free form improvisation; jackman, in keeping with his origins as a visual artist perhaps, took to the recording studio, thriving on its means of application and its capacity for playing outside of real time. the focus of their experimentation is very much a shared one; the how and the why of it crackle with an electric friction which keeps the music on its toes. yes, it is very much a duet.
organum, jackman's chosen mantel over the last decade or so, comprises david himself plus whoever he fancies working with at the time. dinah jane rowe is very much a regular; nurse with wound's steve stapleton and current 93's david tibet are amongst the many who come and go. strangely, jackman's recorded work has become better known within new ambient circles than within the avant-garde portals inhabited by prévost and his immediate contemporaries, although most of it predates ambient's rebirthing by several years. if you like the dronescapes of traditional far eastern musics, you'll love crux ; if you wigged out to lamonte young at his most conceptual, you'll do much the same with this. (the bowed gongs and metal chair are a giveaway, of course, but like i said, time has moved on and contexts have changed.) better still, you may love crux having previously heard none of these supposed influences; you're simply wired for sound.
lamonte's detractors of the day branded him a self-important old fool, yet i came across a recording of his poem for chairs, tables and benches which left sonic youth aficionado in his late teens awedrunk and muttering. the charge of wackiness is what non-academics resort to when they want to get equally stuffed-shirted about an artist's desire to see what is one step beyond. no-one described flayed/crux as wacky or overbearingly academic at the time; almost no-one heard it, full stop. it seems daft to suggest that music which subverts time and context has finally come of age, but flayed/crux has. let good fortune and cosmetics battle it out for the honours - it's just good to have it around again.
david ilic may 1995. |
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