Where is the “new” in new music? Some composers work in a style that seems to present something modern, at least on the surface. To what extent is this based on an understanding of the ideas and means of living that are distinct from previous times, and how much of it simply reflects an ear (or an eye) for fashion? Some composers actively try to advance beyond the received idea of concert music, such as Rafał Zapała and his electroacoustic pieces recorded on Futility (Kairos). The blurb describes it as “a provocative album that reimagines the concert experience, fusing music with technology to challenge the traditional performer-audience dynamic”, but then concedes that “this album presents music without interactive layers…. experiencing the full versions is only possible in a live performance”. Neither this nor the “!!! ReadME” file that came with the download push the suggestion that these recordings are alternative versions and thus read more like a disclaimer that we’re not going to hear what this music is really like. No doubt it’s a frustrating situation for Zapała, possibly one that would make a meatier subject for his next project than the gently used concepts presented here. The listener has carte blanche to dismiss the music, as does the composer to dismiss our criticism of it. Members of the Hashtag Ensemble (they’re real) challenge themselves to tricky playing, typically commented on, or guided by, a synthesised voice. Violinist Kamil Staniczek adroitly mimics the intonation of the computer voice in Ablinger-like manner on No Meaning Detected. The voice in these pieces is disappointingly typical of its genre, detached and cynical, superior yet glitched, familiar to everyone through HAL 9000, Max Headroom et al. It rises above the second-remove cyberpunk in certain places with some neat twists in the narrative, such as the title work for the ensemble until the musicians are pressed into some self-conscious acting, and in the final solo (duet?) Scrolling to Zero, where Lilianna Krych plays out a sampler keyboard to fatalistic reductiveness, albeit marred by smug irony. By contrast, Judge Me Again featuring Ania Karpowicz on solo flute with live electronics plays out as a relatively straight and impressively rendered instrumental take-off with deep and crunchy digital processing. The most impressive work is Introverts’ Collective, a piece for ensemble and mobile digital controllers that eschews verbal justifications and presents its cultural dilemma directly, through leading the group into ever-decreasing circles of degenerating loops from which they can only temporarily escape. This one really does seem to touch upon something lurking in today’s polite society, rather than simply assert a received idea. What gives me pause here is that there’s nothing I can hear which suggests how these pieces may come across differently if I heard them live, as intended.
Šalter Ensemble operates on the border between free improvisation and composition (it sez here), so it’s either good or bad that you can guess this from listening to each of the three pieces on their album Tri dela (Bruit Editions). There’s something very much of its time in the way they use a collective approach to composition, in combination with other observed cultural signifiers such as amplification, noise (acoustic and electronic), purported spontaneity and a choppy, quasi-linear approach to time. That last aspect is the main feature of Tomaž Grom’s My Wish Your Command, where rapid changes in texture and material at erratic intervals create the impression of something more controlled than the other two pieces, which each appear to allow a single process to unfold. It’s a late 20th Century conception of modernity – fast, noisy, knowingly irritating, with an increasingly insistent snare drum that steps all over the rest of the group. Interstices / Interferences is jointly credited to Jonas Kocher and Gaudenz Badrutt, both of whom I’ve previously encountered individually (see index). It’s a pointed contrast, with a slow, open texture and varied dynamics. The broad palette of sounds and uncrowded pacing work together to create something ambiguous, if not downright vague, but Šalter maintain a level of energy to sustain momentum and dodge the “listless” tag I’ve used on Kocher’s earlier work, while also perversely working as a composition. The final piece, Elisabeth Harnik’s šum II, is the one that seems most like an improvisation and as such works more as a performance than as a musical statement, with vocalist Irena Z. Tomažin leading the group in a slow crescendo into a loud, impassioned whatever.
Just played Brian Baumbusch’s Polytempo Music (Other Minds) a couple of times and, like with Zapała’s Futility, I’m struggling to hear in the music what’s in the sleeve notes. This is a large, ambitious work for chamber ensemble, ably played by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, which like Futility appears intended to be heard live. Besides the stereo audio version here, there’s also a “virtual reality application” and a phone app (natch) for appreciating the work – it’s immersive, see? I don’t think being immersed would help me as the music rubbed me the wrong way. On the page, it’s technically impressive, with Baumbusch mapping out different tempos and rates for each of the instruments to play through the same material to create multiple polyphonic (and polyrhythmic) textures. Nancarrow and Gamelan are namechecked as expected, as well as minimalism, in its present-day meaning as a synonym for Hollywood. Much of the material is made of simple diatonic arpeggios and ostinati, which makes the performance at least theoretically possible for the ensemble but, even if they nail it as well as they do here (the recording dates imply it’s multitracked), makes for textures with rather threadbare harmony and polyphony, without the rhythmic drive that makes both Nancarrow and repetitive minimal music compelling. The music segues through a dozen movements of different moods, which I assume is the main expressive objective, with the technique a means to an end. If you read the notes and hoped you’d found something to tide over your John McGuire cravings, you’ll be disappointed. Some affecting moments, which seem to be Baumbusch’s true strength, are swamped in reams of aimless roiling for the sake of it. To my ears he’s taken a complex, roundabout route to produce something akin to either John Adams, as a soundtrack for a Virtual Reality app.
