There’s a counterpart to those composed drones I was talking about last week, in improvisation when musicians make a piece out of sounds that remain mostly static, where development or progress is more a function of entropy than of a chosen direction. The success or failure of such music hinges upon the musician being aware of the difference between making a sound and digging deeper into it to uncover and identify unique details in the complex that makes up what on first appearance was a simple sonic unit. It can often resemble a process of following your nose, all the better to understand where you already are. Adam Pultz’s two bass pieces on his album Wade (Carrier) seem to take this approach, but he cleverly uses an external impetus to force his hand in a series of small but regular adjustments. In the title piece he bows amplified double-bass in long, regular drones which are further activated through a feedback mechanism; the substance changes more than it develops or accumulates. Some digital processing comes into play and field recordings gradually intrude, opening up the claustrophobic space with sounds that first resemble further electroacoustic enhancements before emerging as a distinct entity. In the second, shorter work the feedback-driven bass sounds more like an outright electric instrument, with a denser texture and higher level of energy. Analyzing each element, Pultz’s obstinate playing could be expected to bog everything down but his adept use of technology makes the whole more than the sum of its parts.
I’ve been listening repeatedly to Explore Ensemble’s superb album from last year, Perfect Offering (Huddersfield Contemporary), with works by Cassandra Miller, Lisa Illean, Lawrence Dunn and Rebecca Saunders. The last name seems like the odd one out, but Explore’s performance of murmurs is freighted with a similar sense of fragile repose, at once relaxed and coiled for action. I did not expect to get that same feeling from a set of improv duets on contrabass clarinet and percussion recorded one day in 2020 with a Spooky Scary Skeleton on the cover, but here we are: pianissimo etc (Tripticks Tapes) pairs John McCowen (former) and Carlo Costa (latter) on three untitled tracks, with McCowen staying still as possible while releasing a iridescent tide of overtones and harmonics while Costa underlines the clarinet’s fundamentals with bass drum. With each piece the clarinet recedes a little further, the low pulses from the first track becoming smoother harmonics seasoned with small gongs and high friction sounds, before finally being subsumed into a complex but still transparent texture of breaths, buzzing and reverberations. I wish more compositions were as lucid as these three tracks.
Phicus is a trio of Ferran Fages on electric guitar, Àlex Reviriego, double bass and Vasco Trilla on drums and percussion. Their album Ni (Tripticks again) is, uh, kind of an improvisation – it depends on how you look at it, but really it all keeps coming back to improvisation. To break it down: Phicus play live improvisations, Covid puts a crimp in their practice, the group gets a recording date, they’re conscious they lack time to get their intuitive chops back together, Reviriego writes a composition “trying to recontextualize and develop further” their musical vocabulary as a counter-intuitive way of stimulating their creativity, the trio take it away in other directions to move beyond consolidation of what they have already achieved. It worked. In Ni they improvise with elevated economy of action and telepathic coordination, making an extended piece which never loses momentum even as it appears to stay still. Reflective silences mark changes in approach and signal structural divisions. Its effect as a composition comes from the absence of any spare moments when you hear a process working itself out, as each new detail arrives as though fully integrated into the overall form. A long strange journey which leaves a strong overall impression, the incidents along the way still catch by surprise after repeated hearings.
