Ernie Althoff has been a mainstay of the Australian experimental music scene for decades: a situation that often ends up with one’s presence being taken for granted. It’s been good to hear what he’s gotten up to lately, particularly as the new work is so strong. Althoff builds kinetic music machines; partly or entirely self-playing instruments and other homemade devices from simple found materials. This post(?) Covid release consists of “two overly lengthy tracks” using a couple of these automated devices and Althoff playing and egg-slicer and elastic bands attached a cardboard box. HRWT extends over 50 minutes, Half As is, well, half as long. Despite the daunting dimensions, these two works are the most successful recordings of Althoff’s music I’ve heard. In shorter pieces, they can often sound like little more than demonstrations of a novel instrument, or documentation of a sound scultpure – a common drawback to this type of music-making. In long form, the small variations in sound from the machine instruments take on a life of their own, with incidents becoming part of a more organic process. This is enhanced by Althoff using digital manipulation of tempo and pitch, with manual instruments adding enhancements and subtle variety. The sleeve notes cannily draw a connection to his earlier work in field recordings: the complex but undemonstrative sounds in Althoff’s instruments emulate the interplay of small sounds in nature. As with field recordings, it’s easy to immerse yourself in this composition, responding to it as it evolves in its own way. Easier, in fact, as the surface indifference of sound is focused and guided by the musician’s responses to the material. Half As takes a different approach to form, with Althoff playing a slow ostinato on elastic bands throughout the piece, its simplistic melody and persistence paradoxically emphasising the work’s duration while exerting a mesemerising effect.
Kinetic instruments are also at work in Clinton Green’s Relativity/Only. A few months ago I reviewed his collaboration with Barnaby Oliver, The Interstices Of These Epidemics. The four pieces here focus solely on machine-driven percussion and again draw comparisons with field recordings with their haphzardly interacting objects. In this case, I found them less compelling than Interstices or Althoff’s long works and my old complaint about the limitations of recorded kinetic instruments came back to haunt me. The four pieces are arranged so that each is less densely textured than the last, which left me speculating on how the music could have been arranged more effectively to bring out the practice of hearing more in less. This is probably my problem, overthinking and backseat driving rather than hearing what is there to be heard.
