Matt Choboter’s Hypnopompia

By Ken Waxman

Aiming to reflect hypnopompia, hallucinations that occur while waking up, Vancouver pianist Matt Choboter has created an eight-part auditory suite that turns subconscious dreamscapes into musical exploration. Featuring input from clarinetist François Houle, guitarist Jacob Wiens. bassist James Meger and percussionist Andrew Thomson, all of whom add electronic impulses to Choboter’s preparations and drone collages, the result is compelling rather than disquieting.

Working with sequences of harmony and fragmentation, undulating voltage hovers in the background, moving upfront to anneal or temper reed squeaks, string buzzes or strums, percussion rebounds or piano key clips and then retreats to simple oscillations. For instance the two parts of “converging diverging” and its coda “pagan rainmaker” amplify with wave-form drones a climax that melds Houle’s clarion tongue slaps and Thomson’s drum rattles. This is after distended voltage programming has framed the clarinetist’s circular breathed trills developed in counterpoint to the pianist’s delicate key tickling, to create thematic variations without losing the introductory head.

Dramatic tone extensions with wailing guitar riffs and splattering keyboard runs ensure that interconnected textures are energetic as well as erudite. The most extended instance of this is “sleep inertia” where billowing wave forms precede drum backbeats, and disconnected guitar frails, as reed tongue slaps propel a swing section, only to have the electro and acoustic motifs flow together as the finale. A production of waking imagination, Choboter’s hallucination examination is a realized musical dream not a miasmatic nightmare.

Track Listing: 1. Knecht 2. converging diverging part I 3. converging diverging part II 4. pagan rainmaker 5. sleep inertia 6. Narcissus 7. Teslin Lake 8. Goldmund’s Chautauqua

Personnel: François Houle (clarinet, electronics); Matt Choboter (piano, preparations, drone collages); Jacob Wiens (guitar, electronics); James Meger (bass, electric bass, electronics) and Andrew Thomson (drums, percussion)

–for MusicWorks Winter 2022/2023