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| | | table of the elements (usa) #toe 090 cd “a field guide to table of the elements - southeastern edition” double compact disc set - jonathan kane curl
- arnold dreyblatt star trap
- zeena parkins below the wall
- san agustin embers
- tony conrad indicting lully
- tony conrad with faust encore
- rhys chatham 100 guitars
- leif inge 9 beet stretch (excerpt)
| | double-disc compilation containing exclusive materials from a large part of the tote roster. the second disc is an excerpt of leif inge’s 24-hour timestretch of beethoven’s 9th symphony, and it worth the price of the compilation alone... |
| | table of the elements press release... |
| happy 21st century. here, on these eight unique tracks, is a field guide to the essential table of the elements. this sampler is more than a summary of label highlights, and certainly nothing so casual as an assortment of odds’n’sods. the performances make a statement as bold as their visceral impact and as rich as the conceptual process that underpins their creation. it’s no coincidence that jonathan kane jump-starts the show with “curl,” a low-down blues rumble powered by the drummer’s signature mule kick. the new york based musician has been the rhythmic motor behind so me of the singularly monolithic bands of the last 30 years. here, he summons the ghosts of slim harpo and junior kimbrough to commune with the shimmering harmonic textures his band creates. this blessed-out boogaloo may be the perfect response to the rallying cry: f*ck dance, let’s art! in the right pair of hands, gripping the right set of drumsticks, there’s scarcely any difference. dig in as north mississippi meets downtown new york. it’s the new, new, new hip-shake thing. and it’s superbad.
like kane, whose name is perfectly suited for a skin-slapping urban blues magus, arnold dreyblatt is a minimalist who never forgot that music is still the human mating call. anyone who has experienced the composer’s recordings with his marvelously-dubbed orchestra of excited strings knows how madly dreyblatt’s pieces swing. they’ve flaunt time as precise as a swiss watch. indeed, music like this can put you in the mind of the whirring cogs and pulleys of some small mechanized device. everything’s moving, twitching about, a bunch of individual sounds racheting up and down in a modulated relationship to all the other individual sounds. this animated playfulness gives “star trap” a real charm. springy rhythms dance with each other, as clipped percussion and purposefully bowed strings generate delightful harmonic chatter.
no less pixilated is the collaboration between improvising electric harpist zeena parkins and fellow traveler david kean – an engineer and instrument collector who oversees a most curious and impressive array of obscure keyboards at his audities foundation in calgary. here, the duo manifests some ticklish repartee between plucks and loops, as micro-sounds caper and vault through the spontaneous choreography of pure textural play.
georgia natives san agustin (david daniell, guitar; andrew burnes, guitar; bryan fielden, drums) have their own peculiar relationship with the sonic phenomena they create, awash in eddying pools of feedback and resonance evoked as if a natural event and as evaporative as a cirrus cloud floating high against crispy blue.
composer tony conrad and the german rock band faust partake of a different sort of conversation on a segment of their final live performance together: the encore from a feb. 18, 1995, concert at queen elizabeth hall in london. pitting conrad’s ferociously amplified violin against the primitive percussive onslaught of faust, and discordant shouts from the audience, the piece clangs and drones its way to an ecstatic pinnacle. conrad’s “indicting lully” hails from 1998, and an installation at the museum of contemporary art in los angeles. the piece finds conrad and alex gelencser on violin and cello, playing to the “orchestral” drone of three hurdy gurdy-like violins, turned upside-down, with the strings jutting against a spinning wheel, which agitated each string equally. the musicians performed while garbed in 18th century period costumes.
the concept of massed strings gets supersized in this excerpt from rhys chatham’s legendary “100 guitars.” this prelude to one of the most extraordinary works in the minimalist canon hints at the majestic potential inherent in chatham’s amplified imagination. eric burdon once fantastized about “10,000 guitars, grooving real loud,” but this composer makes a dream come true. and yet, if that’s not enough, check out the sampler’s closer. “9 beet stretch” is an instant milestone in modern music. think 100 guitars can’t be beat? try 24 hours of beethoven. this snippet comes from leif inge’s digitally realized adaptation of beethoven’s 9th symphony. extended to 24 hours by a literal “stretch,” which involved slowing down a recording of the masterpiece — with no distortion in pitch — so that it becomes a wholly new creature, “beet” opens up into an impossibly wondrous world of sonic phenomena. saturated in the rushing whirl of nameless angelic choirs, the listener is propelled forward into the eternal – no less a transcendent movement through the end of time than a passage through kubrick’s kaleidoscopic stargate. it’s a fitting way to conclude this compilation, stealing fire from the western cultural pantheon to fuel a voyage into uncharted territories, but it’s just such an enterprise that makes table of the elements such essential listening. happy 21st century, indeed. |
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