Cedric Theys, Eternity's Antechamber

So you may not know Cedric Theys. I did not so much until happily he contacted me on social media and sent me his album Eternity's Antechamber (Mad Ducks Records, available on Bandcamp).

It's Cedric on touch guitar and electronic digital delay processing. And as it turns out, that is a fine thing. His conception is orchestral and the sound universe is a spiral of density and spacetime, a program of cosmic sounds both ambient and tone-worthy.

It's all about shifting envelopes of sound color, soundscaping and such. It is something akin to my Aurora Dreaming I and Aurora Dreaming II, not to toot my own horn, but just to say that aurally we both are different but share an opening onto the universe that you might also hear on some of Markus Reuter's works (for example see Gapplegate Classical-Modern Review for an orchestral work of Reuter's that I also recommend).

So that is only to say that it has genetic affinity with things I like and sounds that exist in my own imagination. And it is on its own turf so that the liking is of a thing-in-itself wholly engaging and originally distinct.

I recommend this to the space-ambient prone. It's excellent.

Michael William Gilbert Paints Aural Soundscapes of Beauty

According to what I read Michael William Gilbert was taken in his formative years with the music of Varese and Pierre Henry plus the music of India, Africa, and Japan. Since the '70s he has been forging his own brand of electronic music, culminating in his latest CD I Can See From Here (Gibex 006). The early influences are embedded somewhere in his approach, but there is a decided contemporary, post-previous sound to what he does in 2010.

These are rock-inflected soundscape pieces that are aurally rich, melodious and almost visual in their immediacy. Guitarist Peter Kaukonen puts in a nice appearance on one of the pieces. The rest are Mr. Gilbert performing feats of musical wizardry by himself. That does not imply that the music has a "solo" sound to it. On the contrary this is a full ensemble of musical voices. The sources are electronically generated or sampled; they are transformed in quite imaginative ways.

This is music where world and rock grooves underpin the melodic envelopes, and that factor should help make the music accessible to a wider audience.

It is a fine outing. The music is engaging, lush and cavernous in ways that put you into another zone. Kudos to Michael William Gilbert for that!

Tim Motzer & Markus Reuter's "Descending" Creates a Brown Study in Sound

Tim Motzer was the guitarist-conceptualist on The Seven Dreams Goldbug album reviewed here a few days ago. Markus Reuter is the touch guitarist who has been involved with Tuner (see a CD review of their album on this blog) and others. Descending (1K 018) pairs the two with some select guests for a series of ambient soundscapes. It is a highly evocative, cavernous music of guitar loops and clouds of luminous tone clusters created in a post-Frippertronic manner. The six pieces don't really sound like Robert Fripp's masterful tapestries. Motzer and Reuter go it in their own way. Nonetheless there is a genetic affinity there.

Fact is though this is some very dreamy, very beautiful music. They take the winding old local road to their destination, with long tones and reverberant sounds that are in no hurry to resolve themselves.

The effect on this listener is relaxation and the tendency to drift in and out of various reveries. At the same time though, there is enough substance here in the handling of tone colors that it never feels like this is some mere mood music, the aural equivalent of a lava lamp. There's much more to it.

Very nice. You want to feel some space between your ears? This one will most definitely do a great job clearing the way for that.

Goldbug's "The Seven Dreams": Spacey, Fused Soundscapes

There is most definitely a trend out there, and Goldbug's The Seven Dreams (1K Recordings 016) squarely places itself in the center of it. Take the riff-rock psychedelia that comes out of Miles Davis' seventies electricity and combine it with the spaced soundscape orientation that Robert Fripp and Brian Eno pioneered. Now that doesn't mean that there are large grafts of borrowed riffs and motives from the original plants. Far from it. Goldbug make their own music and it's a goodly original kind of end result they get.

Goldbug is a studio project that centers around Eric Slick on drums (Adrian Belew), Barry Meehan on bass, Theo Travis on reeds (Soft Machine Legacy) and Tim Motzer on guitar. They aren't afraid to create textures and envelops that have electro-acoustic transformations as their basis, and they combine that with a group orientation. There are grooves, sax and guitar solos that fit sometimes fragmented lines into the overall matrix, and there are loose freeplay passages that create a mood. The objective is to make music that hits you in blocks of atmospheric sound.

They succeed in giving you a program that has a thoughtful way about it, yet has a great store of power in reserve that you can feel the presence of in various parts of the work. Perhaps next time they will unleash a bit more of that power, even if it means disturbing the brown study of the cosmically oriented listeners. For now that doesn't matter because the music is most stimulating as it is.

Cristian Amigo's "Kingdom of Jones" Beyond Category

Duke Ellington once said that great music is "beyond category." But if he were alive today, writing a blog on the internet, he'd be pulling his hair out. The internet and its search engines thrive on pigeonholing absolutely everything. Is it music? OK, what kind? Well that isn't always easy to put in terms of keywords. But they need that so that when somebody searches for Ugandan Traditional Tribal Music, for example, they get a ranked list of links.

Now that's fine in its own way but in the advanced worlds of modern music-making, categories that once were hard and fast seem to be breaking down. And that doesn't mean that it's all "Fusion," either.

Today's recording is a good example. Composer-conceptualist-musician Cristian Amigo has put together a program of music in his Kingdom of Jones (Innova 671) that proceeds, so to speak, from station to station, each station evoking a sound world that doesn't always easily translate into some musical category. You find contemporary improvisation, jazz and rock elements, electronics, ambient music, funk, a sort of drums 'n' bass sound, hints of electronica, hip hop inflections, a hint of world music influence, with some sampling involved, electronic collage, blues-like segments, musique concrete, new music, avant garde classical and things that combine more than one element at a time.

Cristian Amigo plays electric and acoustic guitar in parts throughout the recording, and so that's one factor that provides a point of reference. And he plays interesting things too. But the thrust of the work is contained in all the pieces and stylistic elements considered as a whole. Art imitates life, one well favored version of a world view has it. If that's so, Cristian Amigo has created the equivalent to a walk through Grand Central Station, where every imaginable sort of person may be walking by you. Would you classify the people in Grand Central Station as one sort of group? If you did, you would have to come up with generalities that are meaningless in some ways. "Travelers by train?" Mostly. But so what? I feel that way in trying to describe Kingdom of Jones in some straightforwardly ham-headed way. So I wont.

This is music. It is music that goes from point A to point B in a non-direct route through all kinds of geometric thickets. It is music that can be heard profitably many times because it is born of a complex aural orientation. It is not written out, apparently, as much as it is performed and assembled. So it is like a visual art assemblage combined with a performance piece? Not exactly.

What makes this recording worth hearing is that every piece in the puzzle somehow fits the whole; and every piece has intrinsic interest as music. There are quiet sections of dreamy contemplation. There are toe-tapping grooves, some psychedelic rock moments, sprawling but brief soundscapes, and some really interesting guitar work.

Don't expect a certain thing when you listen to this music. Take that tact and you'll be surprised and I would hope delighted with the various outcomes in any given section. Amigo makes music here that expresses a something that might not be defined in words to good advantage. It is the multiplicity of the modern experience.

Awakenings: New American Chamber Music for Guitar

The present volume exemplifies the diverse, multi-stylistic musical world we currently inhabit. Awakenings: New American Chamber Music for Guitar (Naxos 8.559650) centers around three modern classical works written in the last decade. The styles covered are of a widely contrasting sort.

Aaron Jay Kernis's "Two Awakenings and a Double Lullaby," written for soprano, guitar, violin and piano, combines an advanced harmonic standpoint with both rhapsodic lyricism and echoes of the post-serialist past. Kernis brings together the appealingly sensuous sound of the ensemble with poetic texts about the innocence and wonder of a child's first awakenings into the world. The second half of the work evokes the "putting-to-sleep" side of parenting by giving voice to "calling forth the angelic watch," typically a part of traditional Euro-American lullabies.

Jorge Liderman's "Aged Tunes" contrasts with a rhythmically lively piece for string quartet and classical guitar. This one has some interesting guitar parts and a neo-classical charm. The sound of the quartet with solo guitar has such presence you wish more had been done with this sort of texture since the days of Boccherini. As it is we have this piece and it stands out as a good example of inventive writing that is modern and directly communicating at the same time.

The final piece brings in a full guitar ensemble, both electric and classical guitars in a very interesting sort of post-minimalist confluence. Steven Mackey's "Measures of Turbulence" creates gong-like sonorances through ingenious uses of ensemble harmonics and some striking classical guitar ensemble passages that contrast vividly with the electric scoring. It is most definitely a piece of memorable music. Mackay takes on where Fripp's League of Crafty Guitarists leaves off. Ostinatos, chordal and multi-voiced writing immerse the listener in a fascinating ever-shifting soundscape. This work alone would be worth having even if the other two works were not interesting as well, which they are.

Performances and recording quality are both excellent. David Tannenbaum plays the guitar parts on the first two works and he sounds quite good. He conducts the San Francisco Conservatory Guitar Ensemble for the Mackey work and the players shine forth nicely.

The program has a satisfying flow to it and will most certainly be interesting to those who want to experience contrasting compositional approaches to the contemporary concert guitar both as a solo and an ensemble instrument. Recommended.

Trey Gunn's "Modulator" Breaks Ground in Advanced Electric Music

As was discussed in our interview with Trey Gunn several days ago (see below), Modulator (7d Media 1011) was created in novel circumstances. Marco Minnemann recorded a 50-minute drum solo with his own rhythmic muse guiding him. It's free ranging and very exciting drumming. He challenged multi-instrumentalist, touch guitarist and musical composer-conceptualist Trey Gunn to create a musical work based on the solo, using only Gunn's quite fertile imagination and the flow of drumming from the original track.

Trey responded with some of the most ambitious, interesting and satisfying music I've ever heard in the post-prog mode. Using guitars, touch guitars, bass guitars, keys and samples, he painstakingly built up a piece of orchestral dimensions. The stream of consciousness aspect of the drumming helped lead to a work that traverses an enormous amount of territory: rocking passages, incredibly complex rhythmic-melodic segments of rare beauty and interludes of reflective charm. It's not easily described because it has so much going on musically.

This is the kind of complex yet directly accessible music you could listen to for years and still get more out of each time. Every listen for me hits my ears in a different way than before; I hear more connections and underlying pattern and so enjoy an ever more rewarding listening experience. I would have to say that this one is a masterpiece of sonic sprawl. And there is some incredible guitar work, too. It's just fabulous!

Radio Massacre International: Space Rock & Soundscapes

There are musicians and bands that I don't get the chance to hear until someone is kind enough to send me one of their recordings. Such was the case with Radio Massacre International, a guitar-bass-drums-electronics unit that has a new 2-CD release, Time & Motion (Cuneiform). In many cases, such as this one, I am grateful for having the chance to be exposed to what they are doing. This is an aurally advanced unit that alternates between beatless and highly evocative electronic soundscapes and a sort of space rock jamming that is equally evocative.

The two-disk format gives the group plenty of room to stretch out and they do that exceedingly well. It enables them to wind out long tapestries of sound that end only when the statement they are trying to make has been fully articulated.

I like the band in the forward moving, pulsating mode but the entire presentation is about loosening the bonds to timefullness and then framing that with its grooved opposite. All three musicians play thoughtfully. They do not overplay but trust in their mutual musical objectives and the evocation at hand. The result is not a "wow, these guys have super chops," but instead, "hey, what interesting music they make!"

Guitarist Gary Houghton really gets off some nice sound sculpture sorts of solos. At times the band forms the current equivalent of middle-period Pink Floyd in the jamming, instrumental mode. Not in terms of a direct influence but rather in their epic approach to narrative space rocking.

It's not the sort of music you should be in a rush to grasp. They take their time and you must surrender to their presence to get on their wave length. Once you do that you are in for some very interesting and exhilarating sounds.

Based on this recording I would put Radio Massacre International in the top handful of current bands playing in this mode. In their own way, they belong up there with groups like Ozric Tentacles, and Robert Fripp and some of the offshoot Crimson related units, to mention only a few.

Good show!

The Debut Recording by blld

Today, blld's debut recording. Called Materia Prima (IAPETUS), it is a fertile collaboration between drummer, range bassist and vocalist 05Ric and touch guitarist/producer Markus Reuter.

Beyond those basic facts blld comes up with an EP that combines soundscapes, drumscapes and total-world musical spaces that are dramatic, alternatively blazing and contemplative, and always very interesting. They are in the lineage of musicians that build on the legacy of King Crimson and related groups.

There is some incredible drumming, musically enriching vocal passages and spatially expansive cosmic guitar work. It all molds together as a total gestalt that moves the mind and heart decidedly into the new decade.

A short but very fascinating musical program! If you like progressive/post-progressive channels of musical creativity, you’ll find this a very good listen. I look forward to their second.