Sarah Hennies: SOVT [elsewhere]. It’s a Sarah Hennies piece so I’m going to listen to it anyway without reading anything in advance to tip me off about what I’m in for this time. Is this one going to be stringent, or more atmospheric? SOVT is for solo piano, nearly an hour long. The piano is muted, strings muffled by preparations, and plays in a single voice throughout. The pianist, in this case Richard Valitutto, is assigned a regime of exercises, repeated drills in morsels of dexterity. So yeah, with all the diligence and rigour applied by Valitutto in this performance I guess this piece is stringent. I would say bracing, but it’s more complex than that. The repetitions gain force through Valitutto’s application, while strangely closing off any broader suggestions for the imagination that repetitive music frequently implies. Each change in episode confounds, neither building on nor negating what has preceded them: the only progress made is in the steady accumulation of experience. Hear without preconceptions, the listener follows the pianist through a comprehensive routine of mystifying purpose to an indefinite end. At first it’s easy to find yourself identifying with the pianist as much as the composer, but then by turns he sounds less than human, more than human, pranking us with a deconstructive joke, breaking into a sudden burst of lyricism, faltering, exhausted, capricious and systematic. At times you wonder if the piano is in fact automated or looped, until you’re grounded again by the consistent thudding of felt hammers on damped strings. By the end you’re none the wiser but a little bit transformed – how, you can’t quite say. Better listen to it again and find out.
Derek Baron / Luke Martin: Distinct and Concealed [Notice Recordings]. I’ve learned to expect aesthetic challenges and confrontations from Derek Baron; Luke Martin is new to me but, on this occasion at least, he plays with feedback oscillators. He keeps the feedback hum and rumble mostly stable, leaving the natural volatlity of his medium to add to the texture and aura. Both pieces are recorded live: on the deceptively titled Distinct Baron and Martin work assiduously to do as little as necessary – background sounds become part of the piece’s translucent fabric. In fact the whole piece sounds like background, with Baron playing long tones and isolated, repeated notes on a small electric keyboard, offset by Martin’s distant-sounding mixer. The aim isn’t to fill the room, but tint the space. Towards the end, it hints at becoming something else. Concealed is a rougher sounding recording, with ambient noise as a backdrop for Baron’s aimless doodling on an upright piano. Martin enters playing feedback noise and random snatches of cassette tapes, while Baron trails off. Longeurs open up as each pauses to contemplate a response to the other, when the time is right; a kind of glacial antiphony evolves between grey noise and languid piano doodles. It seems pointless, because music is pointless; these guys are just here to remind you of the fact by presenting two pieces that strip away all the surface appearances of music and leave you with the deeper substance, engaging your senses of sound, performance and the passage of time. For physical media buffs: if you get the download it sounds like a cassette anyway.
