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Reviews that mention John Bisset

London & Glasgow Improvisers Orchestras

Separately & Together
Emanem 4219

London Improvisers Orchestra

Improvisations for George Riste

psi 08.06

Successfully guiding free-form improvisations and conductions utilizing the talents of independent musicians in a large orchestra is a challenge; trying to do the same with two outsized improvising ensembles can be foolhardy. Yet that memorable experiment is captured on Separately & Together, a two-CD record of a 2007 meeting between London’s 27-piece Improvisers Orchestra and Glasgow’s 17-piece Improvisers Orchestra. Separate sets by both bands are also featured.

Improvisations for George Riste is another notable achievement, since it gathers together four extended non-conducted improvisations from the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO), recorded in different configurations during 2003, plus one from 2007.

Subscribing to an antithetical set of dynamic, rhythmic, tonal and sonic considerations despite their numbers, there’s no way this combination of the LIO and the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) creates a cumulative sound close to jazz’s most famous orchestral meeting: that of Count Basie’s and Duke Ellington’s big bands.

Despite intermixing both bands’ players the immediacy of individual performers is still as evident as it would be in solo flights from any Basie or Ellington bandsmen. For instance “1+1=Different”, which is built on an undertow and nearly physical feel of percussion rattling and thumping, the surging performance maintains its distinct character due to individual players’ strategies. Punctuating the massed drones, pauses and tutti cries among ever-shifting orchestral color fields, are spiraling saxophone spurts and rubato braying from the trumpets; Veryan Weston’s vertical, low-frequency piano chording that keeps the surging line from dissolving into stasis; plus Jackie Walduck’s vibraphone splashes; and a series of flute chirps from Emma Roche and Matthew Studdert-Kennedy that maintain legato formalism.

Meanwhile Catherine Pluygers’ keening oboe sets up the gradual introduction of vamps from the brass, which serve as connective tissue between three percussionists’ marital beats and distorted waves from three guitars, bouzouki, five violins and three celli. As distending string squirms and aviary-pitched reed breaths coalesce, Evan Parker’s elongated tenor saxophone line signals this conduction’s completion.

On its own, the smaller GIO defines itself as the equivalent of the rough-and-ready Basie Band in comparison to the LIO’s stately Ellington-like near-formalism. Whistling brass flutters, thick bass clarinet splatters and an overlay of sibilant flute pressure characterize the GIO’s performances, especially “Seven Sisters (for Barry Guy)”. Evolving from andante exposition to adagio summation, the orchestral coloration makes room for raucous alto saxophone blurts from Raymond MacDonald and fierce triplet exultation from trumpeter Robert Henderson, along with squeezed vocal lines courtesy of Aileen Campbell. Arriving at pseudo-Impressionism, the composition’s sonic tinctures change color gradually, as first one sound than another leeches from the performance like air leaking from a balloon – with the ending built around an assembly of gradually accelerating cello slices from Peter Nicholson.

Playing on its own, the LIO demonstrates how a nine-person string section, two electric guitars and unexpected instruments such as oboe and bamboo pipes can be used for jagged pitch-sliding and solo elaboration as well as scene-setting. Throughout, as the group alternates crescendos and decrescendos of cumulative group improvisation and individual solos, the idea remains that like some of Ellington’s work, the LIO’s overriding impulse is to highlight unique instrumental settings rather than insisting on scene-stopping dramatic statements. That said, most of the improvisations and conductions take full advantage of most of the instruments’ full ranges to add three- dimensional effects to any track’s overall grisaille. For instance John Rangecroft’s high-pitched clarinet glissandi is matched up against, and contrasted with, ratcheting vibraphone blows from Walduck.

Violinist Phil Wachsmann’s conduction, “On the Point of Influence” and the improvisation that precede it demonstrate how any LIO performance can be orchestral and scene-setting as well as contrapuntal, with mercurial solo edging. Layering stratum of instrumental color on top of one another, the piece quickly puts aside a cacophony of pulled, puffed and brayed horn timbres for more lyrical tone extensions. Saxophone obbligatos and heraldic horn parts operate in broken-octave congruence with one another, while sudden rubato trombone plunges from Robert Jarvis feed off an overlay of vibraphone notes and kinetic piano lines. With a wide spread of pizzicato and arco string chords, the ability exists to highlight sul ponticello roughness, traditional walking bass lines from David Leahy and Dominic Lash plus a final mournful cello extro. Further contrast arrives in a coda of brassy flourishes and clattering and popping rebounds from the percussionist.

Four years earlier, different manifestation of the LIO, numbering from 17 to 20 pieces, put together the tracks collected on Improvisations for George Riste. In a transatlantic version of CanCon, the title(s) celebrate then tenacity of Vancouver’s Riste, who refused to sell his 30-room downtown hotel to B.C. Hydro, despite the fact that the giant entity owned all the adjacent property and wanted to build an office tower there. Riste’s reason was altruism; his hotel provided clean, affordable rooms for locals.

Metaphorically it’s Riste’s individuality rather than his altruism that’s celebrated on this disc, since the performances give free reign to committed playing from a clutch of London-based improvisers. “Improvisations for George Riste 4” for instance – which was actually recorded one month after Separately & Together – suggests some of the late John Stevens’ work with expanded versions of the Spontaneous Musical Ensemble. While individuals and sections move to the forefront, never is the expected separation between soloist and backing ensemble emphasized.

Using contrapuntal bridges and broken-octave connections, the idea is to operate on a vector, working polyphonic variants into a cumulative and cooperative formula. A smaller string section of two violins and two celli sound both legato pitch-sliding and sul ponticello chords; twittering, balloon-like huffs from the four brass players ping-pong back-and-forth; while the four percussion-like instruments link ratamacues and drags into an unvarying bedrock crunch. Even tongue-slaps from one or more of the five reed players and braying trumpet blurts merely add to the sfumato tinctures. Eventually guitar lick distortions from John Bisset and Dave Tucker, plus feathery flute vibrations from Neil Metcalfe help cement the interface.

Similarly, “Improvisations for George Riste 1” proves that despite what in other circumstances could be attention-drawing cross-pulsed reed cries, sobs and gasps from the like of Parker, John Butcher, Lol Coxhill and Caroline Kraabel, the improvisation remains low-key and pianissimo. This time the polyphony is thick, but it isn’t so blanketing that individual contributions – ranging from Amy Denio’s sluicing accordion vibrations, Metcalfe’s piercing flute shrills and cumulative warbling reed swells – aren’t obvious.

Anyone interested in hearing 21st Century variations on orchestral improvisations would be wise to investigate these CDs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Improvisations: 1. Improvisations for George Riste 1 2. Improvisations for George Riste 2 3. Improvisations for George Riste 3 4. Improvisations for George Riste 4

Personnel: Improvisations: 1: Roland Ramanan (trumpet and wooden flute); Ian Smith (trumpet); Neil Metcalfe (flute); John Rangecroft (clarinet); Harrison Smith (bass clarinet); Lol Coxhill and Evan Parker (soprano saxophone); Adrian Northover (soprano and alto saxophones); Caroline Kraabel (alto saxophone); John Butcher (tenor saxophone); Philipp Wachsmann (violin); Charlotte Hug (viola); B. J. Cole (pedal steel guitar); Steve Beresford (piano); Amy Denio (accordion and voice); David Leahy (bass); Tony Marsh (percussion); Orphy Robinson (percussion and electronics); Knut Aufermann (electronics) and Filomena Campus (voice) 2: Harry Beckett, Guillermo Torres and Ramanan (trumpet); Robert Jarvis (trombone); Catherine Pluygers (oboe); Rangecroft; Jacques Foschia and Harrison Smith (bass clarinet); Coxhill and Adrian Northover (soprano saxophone); Sylvia Hallett and Wachsmann (violin); Beresford; Dave Tucker (guitar); Marcio Mattos (cello); Simon H Fell and Leahy (bass); Marsh; Adam Bohman (amplified objects) and Aufermann 3: Beckett; Smith; Guillermo Torres (flugelhorn); Jarvis; Parker; Northover and Kraabel (alto saxophone); Susanna Ferrar (violin); Fell; Tucker; Beresford; Annie Lewandowski (accordion and musical saw); Marsh; Bohman; Aufermann and Pat Thomas (electronics) 4: Smith; Metcalfe; Rangecroft Chefa Alonso, Coxhill and Northover (soprano saxophone); Simon Rose (alto saxophone); Ferrar; Ivor Kallin (violin and viola); Mattos and Barbara Meyer (cello); John Bisset and Tucker (guitar); Beresford; Jackie Walduck (vibraphone); Javier Carmona and Marsh (percussion) and Bohman

Track Listing: Separately: CD A: Impro intro 2. On the Point of Influence 3. PW to AW 4. Study for Oppy Wood 5. AW to AB 6. Hive Life 7. Too late, too late, it’s Ever so Late 8. Seven Sisters (for Barry Guy) 9. Stagione CD B: 1. Big Ideas, Images and Distorted facts 2. 811 joint response 3. 1+1=different 4. Outlaw

Personnel: Separately: London Improvisers Orchestra [Beckett, Ramanan, Smith (trumpet); Jarvis (trombone); Pluygers (oboe); Terry Day (bamboo pipes); Rangecroft (clarinet); Alonso, Coxhill, Northover (soprano saxophone); Kraabel (alto saxophone); Parker (tenor saxophone); Alison Blunt, Ferrar, Hallett, Wachsmann (violin); Kallin (violin, viola); Hannah Marshall, Mattos, Meyer (cello); Veryan Weston (piano); Bisset, Tucker (guitar); Walduck, (vibraphone); Leahy and Dominic Lash (bass);Carmona (percussion)] and Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra [Matthew Cairns, Robert Henderson (trumpet); George Murray (trombone); Emma Roche, Matthew Studdert-Kennedy (flute); John Burgess (bass clarinet); Raymond MacDonald (alto saxophone); Graeme Wilson (baritone saxophone; George Burt, Neil Davidson (guitar); Chris Hladowski (bouzouki); Peter Nicholson, cello; Una MacGlone, Armin Sturm (bass); Rick Bamford, Stuart Brown, percussion] and Aileen Campbell (voice)

December 18, 2008

London Improvisers Orchestra

Improvisations for George Riste
psi 08.06

London & Glasgow Improvisers Orchestras

Separately & Together

Emanem 4219

Similarly, “Improvisations for George Riste 1” proves that despite what in other circumstances could be attention-drawing cross-pulsed reed cries, sobs and gasps from the like of Parker, John Butcher, Lol Coxill and Caroline Kraabel, the improvisation remains low-key and pianissimo. This time the polyphony is thick, but it isn’t so blanketing that individual contributions – ranging from Amy Denio’s sluicing accordion vibrations, Metcalfe’s piercing flute shrills and cumulative warbling reed swells – aren’t obvious.

Anyone interested in hearing 21st Century variations on orchestral improvisations would be wise to investigate these CDs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Improvisations: 1. Improvisations for George Riste 1 2. Improvisations for George Riste 2 3. Improvisations for George Riste 3 4. Improvisations for George Riste 4

December 18, 2008

Abs (.) Hum

No Heroes
Tiramizu Triacd

Angeli/Drake
Uotha
Nu Bop Records

Korber/Rowe/Müller
Fibre
For4Ears

The London Electric Guitar Orchestra
Sticks and Stones
2:13 Music

Jozef van Wissem
Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
BVHaast

By Ken Waxman
April 10, 2006

Strings in multiples sets are the focus of these CDs, which match electronics to traditional instruments in programs that in most cases could only be created in the 21st Century. Featuring musicians from five European countries and the United States, they also suggest that globalism can be beneficial – when it involves sounds rather than commercial trade. All the discs feature strings manipulated in different fashions, although the majority of musicians are playing some variation of the world’s most popular string set – the guitar.

Sticks and Stones highlights all that can be done with the six-string, when the 11 [!] members of the British-based London Electric Guitar Orchestra (L.E.G.O.) combine forces. Even more sound-oriented, Fibre matches up the six-string guitars and electronics of Zürich-based Thomas Korber and Keith Rowe of the United Kingdom with the ipod and electronics of Günther Müller of Itingen Switzerland; while Uotha is a first-time meeting between Chicago drummer Hamid Drake and Sardinian Paolo Angeli, whose cello-sized, guitar from North Sardinia, has extra strings and a bridge and is played with either fingers or a bow.

More minimally, Amsterdam-based Jozef van Wissem extends the timbres of his 10-course lute with electronics and pre-recorded airfield sounds on Objects in Mirror are Closer than They Appear. Finally, showcasing the most labor-saving method of preparing an instrument, No Heroes features both Charles-Henry Beneteau and Christophe Havard from St-Nazaire, France playing the same guitar, remotely controlled with a computer and mixer and extended with installations.

Concentrating many of the machine or man-made vibrations and pulsations that a full-sized electro-acoustic band would display, the 10-year-old L.E.G.O. runs through three semi-improvised/semi-notated tracks in less than 20 minutes. An augmentation of many of the sonic experiments art schools lecturer and conductor John Bisset has advanced with only one guitar partner – Alex Ward – or German drummer Burkhard Beins, the buzzing, clinking, tapping and slack key effects create one 66-string instrument, that here is played by Christopher Evans, Simon Williams, Perry, Viv Dogan Corringham, Michael Rogers, Ivor Kallin, Nigel Teers and Jon Lever; plus Jem Finer and Darryl Hunt of the Pogues band, as well as Bisset.

Extending ring modulator whooshes, delay, zooms and drones, the massed strings can sometimes be so overwhelming that they nearly suck all the available air from the compositions. Recurrent tremolo whammy-bar excursions and modulated feedback buzzes make things even more claustrophobic. Alternately by attaching alligator clips or raising the strings horizontally, then using knitting needles, the massed plectrumists produce bell-ringing, aviary-styled chirps that scramble upwards from metallic scrapes and widely-spaced harmonized strokes to whines and flanges. At times, as well, chromatic licks that could come from old-timey banjos are transformed into slurred finger picking and superseded by steady rasgueado strums – then reprised in different combinations.

Related to this sort of guitar retuning and rethinking but on a micro scale are Abs (.) Hum and Korber/Rowe/Müller, whose conceptions resemble one another’s. A maximum of two guitarists are involved in Fibre and No Heroes, with both aggregations using electronics and distinctive preparations to create wave forms that rarely relate to standard guitar sounds. A self-described tinkerer, who recorded on soprano and tenor saxophones with Rowe and the members of AMM, Havard has found the perfect partner for guitar à distance in the initially self-taught Beneteau, whose background encompasses rock, blues and multi-guitar chamber music.

Using small engines, and chord-pulling-initiated vibrations and tension, the two players glide among the strings without colliding with one another, diffusing distorted tones that range from walloped drones to bell-like sideband whooshes. Using delay for repeated effects, at points Havard and Beneteau resonate folksy strums ad infinitum and build up to jet plane-like quivering resonance elsewhere. Sometimes electronically triggered facsimiles of sounded timbres are immediately mixed with primary signals so the number of phantom guitarists multiples as well. Sharp, near ear-piercing noises shrill as do pseudo-cymbal cracks. When these blend with concentrated buzzes and drones, the texture suggested is that of a constantly revolving dust-encrusted turntable.

In spite of piezo pickups isolating individual string tones and split-second sound loops, flat-picked tones and palm-tapped string distortions are audible as well as are staccato finger-picking not to mention constantly rotating rasgueado rubs and associated echoes. The coarse overlay from the preparations allow triggered loops of sound to disappear, then appear and augment in volume and intensity until the two human performers subside into infrequent metallic clanking.

Linked even more to electronic fluttering and delays, Fibre extends first-generation electro-acoustic diagnostics from Rowe, whose playing partners have ranged from percussionist Beins to British saxophonist Evan Parker and Müller, who has partnered the Swiss cracked everyday-electronic band Voice Crack and British soundsinger Phil Minton among many others, with concepts from 27-year-old computer scientist Korber, whose collaborators range from ex-Voice Cracker Norbert Möslang to Japanese no-input-mixing-board specialist Toshimaru Nakamura.

During the course of two 20-minute and one shorter track, triggered sequences and droned static often complicate and stabilize the results, nearly stripping them of all string references. One example is the second track which, like the others, is untitled. Broadened with envelopes of buzzing motor-driven twists plus percolating watery billows, these high-pitched almost inaudible squeaks are resequenced into bell-ringing and thumping pulsations. More than half-way through, a single guitar chord reverberates as fingers slide up-and-down the strings only to have dial-twisting radio static – most likely from Rowe – divide the ensuing textures into faint drones.

Another echoing guitar chord and the occasional chromatic thumb picks characterize the primary scene-setting of the third track. But generated sounds accumulated from Müller’s ipod and the others’ electronics soon transform into dense, near hisses and pulsations, solid enough to slide up against immovable objects of equal hardness. Conclusively, a single organ-like chord subsumed all other noises into watery drones which eventually become a regularized sequence of gradually fading, well-spaced pings.

Comparing Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear to these other sessions makes its10 brief tracks appear to be a mixture of musique concrète and the early multi-string experimentations of non-jazz guitarists like Sandy Bull and John Fahey. Using backwards reading palindromes, repetitive flat-picking and flamenco-like strumming as his base, van Wissem adds loudspeaker announcements, passenger cross talk and luggage car wheel squeaks to his double-picked bass string passages – and inserts supplementary tension with percussive whacks. Using fretting hand pressure to vibrate nylon-string squeaks, by the conclusion he has reshuffled his string resonation in such a way that found sounds and created notes are nearly indistinguishable.

Percussionist Drake – the one non-string player featured on all these albums – constructs distinctive responses to anything Angeli’s mammoth strummed and stroked guitar can create during Uotha. Considering Drake’s musical associates have ranged over the spectrum of powerful and individualistic players from German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann to New York bassist William Parker, there’s little doubt that he wouldn’t have been equally unfazed by Abs (.) Hum and Korber/Rowe/Müller’s electronics, van Wissem’s palindromes and all of L.E.G.O.’s 11 guitarists improvising simultaneously.

Not that he isn’t willing to cooperate with the Sardinian guitarist. Especially instructive is “The Many Faces of the Beloved”, which features Drake chanting and rattling a frame drum in response to Angeli’s bowed cello-like continuo plus the plucking of multiple strings. In this case, undercurrents link Sardinian, Arabic-tinged sounds to North African memories present in Drake’s solos. As the American vocalizes, the surrounding musical gestalt is transformed in such a way that Drake could be playing a bata and Angeli a 21-string kora. The guitarist’s double-stopped accents easily complement the drumming, and introduce finger-picked vamps when Drake harshly vibrates his lathed cymbals.

Pieces such as “Fuga dal Mouse” and “Specchi d’Arancia”, may have traditional sounding titles. Yet resonating chromatic guitar lines and sharp bowed arpeggios augment to winging, Jimi Hendrix-like feedback as the drummer rams and plops intense flams and ruffs hard beats from his kit. While Drake’s American background can’t – and won’t – deny a jazz history, except for the odd, perhaps inadvertent quote, the guitarist stays clear of that music. Nor, despite an extended section of authentic-sounding chant-vocalizing mixed with string-snapping picks from Angeli is this unaltered ethnic music disc.

Instead, the end result is yet another example of the adoption of new patterns and new thinking to the playing of conventional stringed instruments. This leitmotif unites all these sessions.

April 10, 2006

JOHN BISSET

Smithy
213 CD017

PAOLO ANGELI
Bucato
ReR PA1

Both these CDs are described as solo guitar sessions, which is true. But so is the fact that a rowboat and an ocean liner are both water vehicles.

John Bisset uses a standard acoustic model to improvise on seven melodies from The Scottish Students’ SongBook, which were recorded direct-to-DAT in Cheshire, England. Recorded at different concerts in Italy and France, Italian guitarist Paolo Angeli plays his 20 selections on a giant, cello-sized Sardinian guitar. It’s tuned from one-fourth to one-fifth below standard, and “prepared” with an extra bridge, pedal-operated, piano-like hammers, a bow in the form of a mechanical claw, pick ups, microphones and many additional criss-crossed strings.

Bologna-based Angeli’s conversion to free improv of this folk guitar that usually accompanies monadic singing in northern Sardinia creates spectacular aural fireworks. Yet Bisset’s low-key approach isn’t without its rustic charm. Recorded on his 43rd birthday in his hometown’s smithy, it memorializes a relative, perhaps his father, with unshowy version of simple, tunes.

Part of the widespread European imaginary folklore movement, Angeli has been a member of ethnic dance and chamber groups and played with committed improvises such as Anglo-Australian violinist Jon Rose and British guitarist Fred Frith. Ranging in length from 42 seconds to a little over six minutes, the tunes here were recorded without overdubs, even though at times he sounds like an entire string band and more.

On “E Vai!” for instance, he begins with a solid theme made up of flailing downstrokes, then begins picking out a secondary theme on other strings as he continues playing the first. Soon vibrating string tones are moving back and forth between the two lines.

Tapping his feet at the beginning of “Linee di Fuga”, the massed strings that are then brought into play produce what could be a rock ballad played on acoustic instruments. Soon cello-like tremolos appear. Suddenly the tempo doubles and cadences get more frantic, as Angeli seems to be physically beating the instrument. Sampled female singing voices enter the mix, as does the sound of a Sardinian accordion. The squeezebox appears to be amplified through Angeli’s pick up so there’s as much static as melody in its sound. Ending is a thumping bass line that threatens to become the intro to Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”.

“Transit” resembles the sound of a jet airplane. It’s an exercise in shuffle bowing and all the overtones that can produce. Often you hear the torque of the strings popping with the pressure of the bow. “Discussione Inutile”, on the other hand, finds Angeli finger picking swinging licks on his nylon guitar strings as if was Charlie Byrd playing a bossa nova.

“Si Riprendre” has all the intense pressure of a flamenco showpiece, that is if flamencos end with what sounds like an aluminum pie plate banging on the strings. “Etterbeek” full of thumps, ponticello and shuffle bowing, and could be an Appalachian folk tune played by a hillbilly band that includes a cello. Meanwhile “A. Rieghe” features thwacks on the guitar’s wood and pick guard and a strummed line that evolves into enough slurred fingering to replicate two 12-string guitars playing at once. When claw-induced echoing scrapes and screeches are added and the tempo quickens, what results in a Gypsy Kings-like tune would sound like if improvising cellist Tristan Honsinger gigged with them.

Other places Angeli produces enough circular motion, pitch sliding and basso continuum that each sound seems to come from a different source. These include a Spanish guitar, a tenor banjo, a 10-course lute, bagpipes, generators and sequencers, a lead guitar with a delay pedal, a plinking, vaudevillian four-string ukulele and last, but not least a coffin lid opening and closing.

An encyclopedic introduction to what can be done with a prepared Sardinian guitar, BUCATO’s weakness is that Angeli often appears to be developing only one idea at a time on many tracks. Fewer tunes with a series of musical variations may have been more palatable.

A few of BUCATO’s tunes sound like standard folk airs, but contrasting his output with Angeli’s, Bisset is simplicity personified. Both men have particular agendas as well. The Sardinian has pushed a traditional instrument into the 21st century. The Englishman, who usually works with a avant improvisers such as harpist Rhodri Davies. and German drummer Burkhard Beins, may have seen this birthday CD with songs exhibiting “harmony of all pure, noble and joyous emotions” as the SongBook notes, as a way to recapture the bucolic ways of the early 20th century.

Frustratingly for an innovator with Bisset’s talents, many of the sounds are a little too down home and innocent. Lovely interpretations, without enough rhythmic impetus, a few skirt New Age background music. The more earnest ones could have come from the Ewan MacColl songbook.

“Summer - the birds of the air...” for instance, the longest track at more than nine minutes, may have been designed as requiem for the man to whom the CD is dedicated. Yet, although you’re impressed by the pure sounds of fingers sliding up and down the nylon strings, a little of this goes a long way. All and all the piece comes across as too sober and meandering. If this is what Stockport is like, no wonder Bisset lives in London.

More impressive and far livelier are pieces from the middle of the disc, although one listen to “Fire” despite its repetitive downstrokes and slurred string slashing will assure anyone that this is neither the tune recorded by Jimi Hendrix nor the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

However the tune does end with what appears to be match strokes. These also make their appearance on “Riding down from Bangor”. In actual fact, those sounds and the vacuum cleaner-like noises that begin the track are probably what can be heard every day in Luke Lister’s smithy. On that track, Bisset melds sliding finger picks and accelerating flailing with the crackle and snaps of the hearth. As he plays more quickly the vibrations multiply and soon the smithy echoes have become part of the music.

“Funiculi, funicula” is the only other standout track. Here the Italian song is reimagined by giving it a finger-snapping intro then, double timing a set of variation, before briefly introducing the familiar theme. True to the field recording aesthetic, Bisset downshifts his chording at the end as he stops to say “hello” to a passing punter.

A shorter than 38 minute home town souvenir, SMITHY is a defiantly minor work that probably has more resonance for its creator than any one else.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Bucato: 1. Lulas 2. Mesh Plug 3. Azulejos 4. A. Rieghe 5. Etterbeek (intro) 6. Etterbeek 7. Gocce 8. Tavole a Vela 9. Si Riprendre 10. E Vai! 11. Fuori dal Bacello (intro) 12. Fuori dal Bacello 13. Transit 14. Bagagli Smarriti 15. Discussione Inutile 16. Partenze 17. Linee di Fuga 18. Via Libera 19. Passe-Partout 20. Prexau

Personnel: Bucato: Paolo Angeli (prepared giant Sardinian guitar and vocals)

Track Listing: Smithy: 1. Dedication 2. Winter rain 3. Riding down from Bangor 4. Fire 5. Cock Robin 6. Funiculi, funicula 7. Summer - the birds of the air... 8. Old cabin home

Personnel: Smithy: John Bisset (acoustic guitar)

June 21, 2004

ALEX WARD/JOHN BISSET

Crypt
2:13 CD 016

ERNETO DIAZ-INFANTE/CHRIS FORSYTH
as is stated … before known)
Evolving Ear/Pax Recording EE07/PR90263

Put aside any ideas you may have about these duo guitar discs being another installment in the Great Guitars series or cozy adult radio fodder. Even though three out of the four guitars plucked here are acoustic and a good portion of the tunes hover around the three-minute mark, these aren’t your fathers’ guitar duos.

In truth, both discs have a slightly more subversive bent than you find in mainstream, Herb Ellis-Joe Pass duets, countrypolitan Chet Atkins-Les Paul meetings or Al DiMeola-John McLaughlin speed fests. Both duos -- Britons John Bisset and Alex Ward, and Americans Ernest Diaz-Infante and electric guitarist Chris Forsyth -- are trying to reach those sounds between genres, referencing jazz, New music and free improv in the former case and noise, microtonalism, free improv and electro-acousticism in the other.

Surprisingly, considering the sources, the linkage between the across-the-ocean duos arises from the amount of flat-picking and strumming here. Echoes of folk music teams like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn or John Fahey and Leo Kottke appear throughout. In fact, you might call the results avant folk.

A free music experimenter working with the likes of percussionist Burkhard Beins and the London Improvisers Orchestra, Bisset recorded CRYPT in a church located in Ward’s hometown of Grantham, Linconshire. Additionally, although he has recorded on guitar elsewhere, Ward is better known as a clarinetist in sessions with guitarist Derek Bailey and bassist Simon H. Fell.

Recorded in Forsyth’s hometown of Brooklyn, the other CD links that self-taught electric guitarist and member of the electroacoustic trio PSI, with San Francisco visitor and experimental music cheerleader Diaz-Infante, whose East Coast associates include pianist Dan Dechellis and drummer Jeff Arnal who have also played with Forsyth. CRYPT’s quirky song titles, incidentally, come from cribbage, a card game favored by Ward’s relatives. AS IS STATED … BEFORE KNOWN’s titles are as enigmatic as some of the playing here.

To get an idea what both duos are doing, compare “Some weeks of close scrutiny”, Forsyth and Diaz-Infante’s 9½-minute tour-de-force, with just about anything on the other CD. A dramatic, atmospheric instant composition, “Some weeks. . .” features the two strumming in unison on their bass strings until that’s succeeded by rumbling amplifier static on one side and the sound of guitar wood being hit with the heel of a hand on the other. As Diaz-Infante maintains an unvarying four-note pattern, Forsyth introduces irregular sine wave oscillations that could as easily come from a laptop or synthesizer. Soon the pulsation becomes so loud that that it threatens to drown out the guitar fills. Buzzing as if it is the audio of a malfunctioning TV set, the oscillations move into the foreground until the guitar chords become faint shadows and are finally subsumed.

Contrast that with Bisset and Ward’s “Muggins”, that’s replete with slurred fingering and reverberating bluesy runs. At one point one guitarist flat picks on the axe’s highest parts near the neck, then rapidly slides down to a more moderate tone, as the other offers some raggy Blind Blake-like finger picking.

Not that the Americans are uninfluenced by unadorned roots techniques either. As they’re passing chords back and forth on tunes like “How little observed … half a mile distant” and “This same afternoon” the results recall the sort of steady rolling flat picking that usually accompanies rambling folk songs. Of course the mood is shattered for nanoseconds by sharpened objects pressed against the strings. “One afternoon last year” references harsh, bottleneck styling in a sharp, short burst of atonal steel string blues picking. Imagine Elmore James in outer space.

Then there’s “Tomorrow”, where the doubled-gaited, authoritative unison strumming from the two suggest the open chord style of countryrockers the Everly Brothers. Further on, though, the ringing, foot-tapping beat gives way to secondary Bronx cheer decorations, humming effects pedal distortions and pulsating delay effects.

That’s the unstated challenge implicit in Forsyth and Diaz-Infante’s CD: trying to affect a mid-path between six string and non-guitar sounds. When concordance is made among machine-like rumbles, the cavernous reverb and near silent microtonalism that make up part of their performance, and adroit picking and strumming, the listener can set aside the discordant experimentation elsewhere.

With two acoustic axes, Bisset and Ward’s don’t have amplification to manipulate. But they do quite well without it. Placing themselves in the non-hierarchical centre of BritImprov, they come up with mitosis-like creations as on “Two for his Heels” where near equivalent sounds finally open up for flamenco-style strumming, country music flat picking and then the hint of bent blues notes.

Other times, as on “Pairs Royal”, it appears as if entire passages are being played on the tiny space underneath the bridge. Meanwhile objects are being rolled along and against the strings as well as flailing thumb plucks, wood beatings and knife-like pinpointed notes.

Applying World Wrestling Federation grapples to certain strings so they can resonate with abandon, doesn’t satisfy the two. Elsewhere they’re likely to diverge from that patch to sound out delicate, melodic chromatic lines. On a piece like “Fifteen six” one will strum while the other snaps out spiky flat picking”, while on “Fifteen four” one will confine himself to finger picking on the lower strings while the other goes into slurred fingering, sounding out arpeggio after arpeggio.

CRYPT reaches its climax on the eight-minute final track, where following the recitation of a T.S. Elliot text, floating, chiming phrases pass from one to another. A double quick counterline suggests “Flight of the Bumble Bee”; another slurred passage is reminiscent of the English folk dance tradition. Following an ensuing series of pauses and strums, then zither-like picking on higher-pitched strings, the two exit in a crescendo of swirling unison chording.

Two guitar duos, two separate, if equally legitimate, approaches.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Flush 2. Pairs 3. Two for his Heels 4. Pairs Royal 5. The Crib 6. Fifteen two 7. Muggins 8. Fifteen four 9. Fifteen six 10. One for his nob

Personnel: Alex Ward, John Bisset (acoustic guitars)

Track Listing: 1. The sun is shining 2. How little observed… half a mile distant 3. Tomorrow 4. Some years since (the moon, supposing it to be inhabited) 5. One afternoon last year 6. I once carried ... from time to time 7. This same afternoon 8. On morning five years ago (touched my trembling eras) 9. Some weeks of close scrutiny 10. Six minutes last fall 11. Six years

Personnel: Ernest Diaz-Infante (acoustic guitar); Chris Forsyth (electric guitar

January 19, 2004

ROMEN/SCHNEIDER

Disordered Systems
Durian 018-2

POCKET
Pocket
2:13 CD 013

ALEX DE GRASSI/G.E. STINSON
Shortwave Postcard
Auditorium 80 30037 00601 2

Guitars, guitars, guitars: can’t live with them and can’t live without them. With the six-string variety now more ubiquitous than the piano ever was in the late 19th Century, inventive guitarists have to figure out how to find their own identities.

As cerebral rock, so-called folk, contemporary classical and jazz musics have grown closer, extended techniques, unusual tunings and preparing the guitar with attachments have fascinated players in all genres. Many have turned to a form of improv. These CDs show how musicians from three different countries have attempted to meet the challenge. Each features two guitarists, with Pocket adding a bass guitarist and drummer to the mix.

Like other Viennese musicians such as the members of Polwechsel, who thrive on the dichotomy between sound and silences, and operate on the border between improvisation and composition, Barbara Romen and Gunter Schneider have adapted those ideas to dual guitars. On this disc, not only do they perform an important through- composed duo, Helmut Lachenann’s “Salt für Caldwell”, but using 13, so-called prepared guitar instruments show what can be done with fixed implements between guitar strings in real time on the nearly 32-minute title track.

Teachers as well as instrumentalists, both have enough technique and experience to glide through genres. Romen, for instance, has worked with the Tiroler Ensemble für Neue Musik and Ensemble ENIF, while Schneider has played with Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, Klangforum Wien and Polwechsel member guitarist Burkhard Stangl’s Maxixe. The duo, which have been professional collaborators since 1990, have also performed work written specifically for them by contemporary sound explorers like Stangl and trombonist Radu Malfatti.

The 533 bars of the “Salute,” spread over four tracks consist of a variety of usually hushed, but sometimes highly rhythmic passages. Among the barely-there sounds highlighted are the squeak of plectrums on the strings, the plink of strings in different formations, fretboard scratches, the repetition of child-like nonsense syllables by first one then the other guitarist, and what appears to be sandpaper rubbed on the strings.

In contrast, “Disordered Systems” modulates from the nearly inaudible to the almost loud. Created by fixing metal bars and knitting needles between the guitar strings so that they quiver, vibrate and oscillate with changing overtones and echoes, the piece sounds distant in some spots and in-your-face in others. Although at times it appears as if parts were electronically sampled, they weren’t, although the interaction between the instruments and the devices creates more than standard string sounds.

At times a constant, freight train-like beat creates a certain rhythm, while bright passages reference pealing bells. Sometimes the piece will open up for a sudden explosion of flat-picking strums, then fade away. Later a child-like melody will appear then disappear into a miasma of vibrations and string pulls. Most notably, a few memorable sounds are actually mere echoes on notes that have been played once, then because of the oscillations, bounced back like yodels unleashed in a Swiss mountain range. Subdued or resounding, the piece is continually changing.

Turning from the hushed to the lively, the 12 tunes on Pocket’s less-than-36-minute CD seem pretty off-kilter in a serious improv context. They certainly don’t appear to have that much in common with other work by British guitarist/composer John Bisset -- or BritImprov in general. Main organizer of an annual musical relay of randomly determined improv combinations, who in concert and on disc usually offers unique string plucks plus scraped and bowed metal tones, here Bisset and associates have created an album of instrumental pop music.

Initially attracted by the British New Wave in the late 1970s, Bisset was a pop guitarist and songwriter before becoming associated with more experimental music. In a way, POCKET could be seen as a return to his roots. But except for the breezy melodies of Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, who wrote lyrics as well, Pocket’s sound may even have been anachronistic 25 years ago. If anything the tunes Bisset wrote for this CD seem to relate most to those instrumental combos that went out of fashion with the arrival of the Beatles. Uncomplicated pop bands like the Ventures, the Astronauts and Duane Eddy’s various combs in the U.S. and the Tornados and The Shadows in Britain appear to be role models. But why turn to simple melodies now?

After all, Pocket’s bassist Christopher Evans is another member of what has been described as “the experimental dadaist” London Electric Guitar Orchestra with Bisset; and the other guitarist, Alex Ward has worked with such certified free players as Simon H. Fell and Derek Bailey. Yet the CD material includes ringing Beatlesque guitar runs, a Western swing-type waltz, a Spanish-tinged heavy rocker, drummer Oliv J. Picard playing a drum break that sounds like the one on “Wipe Out” and a weepy last-dance-style ballad.

Bisset, who was born in 1960 --and wasn’t old enough to experience those instrumental pop bands first hand -- has said that he wants to further explore song-based material. But does getting in touch with his inner Hank Marvin mean that he’s become a musical neo-con? Can’t melody be explored in a less poppy fashion? Surely Pocket isn’t aiming for Sonic Youth-style kudos and fame.

Free improv fans will probably be scratching their heads about this disc for quite a while. But if you know someone who has never really felt the same about music since “Telstar” and “Rebel Rouser” was on the top of the charts, here’s a disc for him.

If Pocket’s music is reminiscent of pop-rock, then the disc featuring G.E. Stinson and Alex de Grassi shows what happens when disillusioned popularizers seek different sonic frontiers.

With a background in formal composition and Chicago blues, Stinson co-founded the popular fusion/world music group, Shadowfax in 1972, and since then has also contributed to several movie soundtracks. Yet since the late 1980s he has collaborated with experimental musicians in Los Angles, including multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia, guitarist Nels Cline and violinist Jeff Gauthier. Around that time, de Grassi, influenced by progressive folk music, country blues and pianist Keith Jarrett’s solo work, began creating his own version of ethnic and jazz-inflected sounds.

Combined, de Grassi and Stinson’s influence have lead them to produce 17 short improvisations here that end up sounding in the main like wonky New Age work. Although there are enough clucks and plinks here to suggest an entire barn yard full of baby chicks, the end product seems to be more cinematic -- as in movie soundtrack -- then fully picturesque.

On “Map of the Night”, for instance, the amp buzzes and use of devices resembles that of a scary movie soundtrack, with the music regularly coming in and out of focus. Slurred fingering makes its appearance on “False Bottom”, with one man working on the highest part of the strings and the other picking out a lilting air. Imagine Doc and Merle Watson transformed to a 21st Century Gerde’s Folk City. “Bottled Up” has enough primitive, proto-heavy metal feedback noise in the background to be a Link Wray outtake, while de Grassi plays some gentle folkie fills in the front. And on “Tin Can Necklace”, the percussive melody appears to be coming from steel drum rather than a bunch of strings.

Elsewhere vocalized wah-wah tones and what could be ProgRock keyboard washes vie with Old Timey hard flailing. When Stinson on the title track uses his instruments to produce the sort of space voices that wouldn’t have been out a place on one of the weaker Sun Ra sessions, de Grassi seems to be fully into a gentle Mississippi John Hurt finger picking mode.

Taken together, all these guitarists have certainly come up with individual solutions as to how to experiment with their instruments. All of the discs will probably interest six string fanatics, although it would appear that Romen and Schneider have the most to offer every listener.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Disordered: Salut Für Caudwell 1. Bars 1 - 178.2. Bars 179 - 360.3. Bars 361 - 434.4. Bars 435 - 533 5. Disordered Systems

Personnel: Disordered: Barbara Romen and Gunter Schneider (acoustic guitars, voices [tracks1-4], prepared guitars instruments [track 5])

Track Listing: Pocket: 1. Pink 2. Stretch Marks 3. Liverpool 4. Wellingtons 5. Horatio 6. WC68 7. Catch (hit and run) 8. Wily coyote 9. Evens 10. Snap 11. Tumba 12. Lost

Personnel: Pocket: Alex Ward and John Bisset (guitars); Christopher Evans (bass); Oliv J. Picard (drums)

Track Listing: 1. Always Falling 2. Small Talk s 3. Map of the Night 4. False Bottom 5. Heavy Lifting 6. While You Were Sleeping 7. Subway Incident 8. Shortwave Postcard 9. Behind the Sun 10. Robot Shiva 11. Demon Crossing 12. Signal Drift 13. Slanted Morning 14. Tin Can Necklace 15. Exposed 16. Bottled Up 17. Some Have Departed :24

Personnel: G.E. Stinson (electric 6 and 12-string, baritone and bass guitars plus implements); Alex de Grassi (acoustic 6 and 12-string, baritone and high-strung guitars plus paint brush)

October 7, 2002