Carnality in improvisation

[jkudler]

beresford FTW!

dan - are you able to paste in the masthead/editorial as well?

thanks,
jesse

[Wombatz]

Many critics are also musicians (of course I can’t think of an example right now ), and they handle the conflict of interests, or maybe just of outlooks, with more or less grace, and I find usually it makes no sense to hold the musicianship against the critical abilities or vice versa. Still, I took Beresfords’ hint and googled up the man’s music, and this is the most flattering clip I could find.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzLtTeJn ... re=related

I'd say that's complete cartoonland. Otoh, what I took to be a lame joke by a lazy journalist actually requires some real guts, sticking your head out that wide while you play like that, that’s some impressive commitment to a theory.

(And btw, I’ve recently seen Mats Gustafsson for the first time at two concerts with Bröetzmann (just to be on the safe side), and while he certainly looks the testosterone part, his playing wasn’t like that at all, it was deep. So we’d have to take the image and moves of Muscle Mary Mats and overdub them with the sound of David Keenan (who unfortunately doesn’t quite look the part himself) braying, to get the true musical King Priapus.)

[Dan Warburton]

dan - are you able to paste in the masthead/editorial as well?

I am.

“Improvised music, as genre, is rarely sexy.” Well, it depends what turns you on I guess. It’s not surprising that David Keenan’s broadside at the state of guitar improvisation, and of UK Improv in general (Soundcheck, The Wire 316) has prompted such a defiant response (see Letters). Keenan’s polemic, charging guitar improvisation with making miniscule innovations compared to the radical reinventions of rock, took Improv to task for its emasculation of the instrument, cutting off what Keenan sees as its essentially phallic character.

Now, I’m not saying Freedom Of The City was quite Sex And The City, but the festival in London this May did prompt other reflections about Improv and desire. A particular set from Sebastian Lexer, Jamie Coleman and Pascal Battus, while perhaps not quite as good as sex, was certainly deeply sensual. Coleman’s slow trumpet lines had a tenderness that evoked more physical kinds of intimacy. The trumpet became breath, warmth, vibration, in a way that got the skin prickling, the senses suddenly sharpened. Keenan’s critique of Improv suggested desire is what drives the most boundary-breaking improvisations, whether in sex or music, but as a listener, this feeling of pure sensation, of intimacy, of delightful uncertainty, was, I’d contend, pretty close to an erotics of sound (I’m not ashamed to say).

There were aspects of Keenan’s critique, though, that did hit home for me. Glancing through the masses of CDs that come in for our Jazz & Improv column ever month, I do wonder if improvised music’s ethos of fairmindedness between players – what Keenan identifies as a “prissy form of humanism” – can sometimes blunt its impact, and, whether it matters or not, its ability to produce enduring albums. It’s striking to glance through our 2009 Rewind issue from January this year, and having to go all the way down to number 27 and Peter Evans’s genuinely groundbreaking Nature/Culture to find a new work of what you could call Jazz or Improv. Improvised CDs are frequently over-long, and aren’t presented in a way that brings out and complements a particular aesthetic at work on that release, instead casually showing what went down and leaving the listener to pick through the bones.

Improv doesn’t always trumpet (so to speak) its greatest achievements.

The scrupulously democractic interchanges of Improv players can remind me, bizarrely, of Prog Rock. The vast majority of Prog is hilariously turgid and overwrought because bloated groups felt they had to let each of their players have their say. Result: double and triple albums. Improv sometimes dilutes itself in a not dissimilar manner – although I’ve heard some seriously good discs with Pascal Battus, for that set at Freedom Of The City, I spent much of it wishing he wasn’t there (the festival as a whole is appraised in On Location).

The notion of libido in music has been sweated over so much in the past that I won’t go much into it here, but Keenan’s surely right to stress the role of raw desire in music. Beneath the cognitive rationalisations, there’s a yearning to feel certain indivisible pleasures that can’t be assuaged any other way except through music. That’s what gets me going anyhow. With Improv, he argues that “the slightest of innovations is magnified and pored over”, but isn’t such fetishism just a symptom of desire? The name of the label under review – Another Timbre – seems notable here, a two word manifesto for seeking fresh sonic pleasures. For me, whether its Radu Malfatti’s close-miked trombone or T++ rolling out a new paradigm of granular synthesis, in both cases, something deep inside, largely irrational but with its own boundaries and triggers, pushes me towards these new sounds.

I’m reminded of Dylan Nyoukis’s time-honoured curatorial strategy for his eclectic Colour Out Of Space festival, quoted in his recent Invisible Jukebox (The Wire 313): “I only ask people to play who give me a stoner. You know what a stoner is? A hard on.” Sound itself can be an object of lust. For some improvisors, surrounded by all this delicious fruit, I wonder if this is what being in the moment is like.

[jon abbey]

"It’s striking to glance through our 2009 Rewind issue from January this year, and having to go all the way down to number 27 and Peter Evans’s genuinely groundbreaking Nature/Culture to find a new work of what you could call Jazz or Improv."

I like Derek W, but come on now. this says way more about the couple of dozen people submitting lists to the Wire and their ability to parse/pay attention to the world of improvised music (outside of the UK especially) than it does the current state of improvised music. it's hard to believe he's defending that piece in any way, but then again, it's hard to believe they ran it in the first place.

[mudd]

i just noticed that way back in april keenan reviewed kevin drumm's s/t and second for the wire.

he mentioned the sexual aspects of the music twice in that review.

dude may have a problem.

m

[Dan Warburton]

And there was this, on David S. Ware, from the same issue..

Onanism gets a bad name. There’s always some wiseguy ready to call you a wanker as soon as you reject the demands of the group or the audience in favour of the ecstasy of self-stimulation. As antisocial as punk might have been, taking a solo meant being a wanker, and wanking was too base even for punks. But there’s a more initiated interpretation that sees masturbation as a powerful magical act that gives birth to something – on whatever plane – every time.

I do like the image of giving birth on a plane At least David didn't say "birthing" this time (one of my pet hates, haha)

[bryan]

dude may have a problem.

He's a stoner.

[jkudler]

ah, thanks for that dan. for some reason had missed that until now. weird defense. he may as well have been talking about why people like the black eyed peas.

jon - there's another reading that maybe puts you and walmsley on the same page a bit, which is that improv is not best heard on recordings, or at least not in a way that fits with the implied goals of the year end list - to summarize the best and most "important" records of the year. i know you often say that improvisers aren't always good at making recordings, especially lasting ones, so maybe there is some overlap there. but yeah. . peter evans as the only improv record does seem a bit nuts.

-jesse

[jon abbey]

jon - there's another reading that maybe puts you and walmsley on the same page a bit, which is that improv is not best heard on recordings, or at least not in a way that fits with the implied goals of the year end list - to summarize the best and most "important" records of the year.

of course I absolutely don't agree with this, or what would be the point of running erstwhile for the last decade? some musicians have trouble translating their work to recordings, recordings are very different from concerts, a lot of musicians (and label owners) seem to suck at making records, but I certainly don't think that "improv is not best heard on recordings".

peter evans as the only improv record does seem a bit nuts.

the individual writers at the wire aren't all so UK-centric, but collectively when it comes to improvised music, they're hilariously so as I seem to point out every january. this isn't even taking into account that the wire lists are made so early that they basically only count the first nine months, if that.

I am quite certain that records like soba to bara, imaoto and contact (just to name three from 2009) will be far more 'enduring albums' than virtually anything on their list (which is at the below link if you're curious).

http://drownedinsound.com/community/boa ... ic/4209903

and to preempt one response, yes, I know that peter evans is american, but his release is on evan parker's psi label.

[jkudler]

i didn't mean to ascribe that view to you, jon. just to say that it seems to be what walmsley is subscribing to, and that you've had some concerns about representing improv on record too.

here's the wire's jazz and improv top ten (telling that they lump them together) from 2009, along with "outer limits," which has some overlap:

Jazz & Improv A-Z

Borah Bergman Trio Luminescence(Tzadik)
John Blum In The Shade Of The Sun (Ecstatic Peace)
Denniz González A Matter Of Blood (Furthermore)
Hoots And Roots Life And Death (Ayler)
Christian Lillinger's Grund First Reason (Clean Feed)
Joëlle Léandre Live in Israel (Kadima Collective)
Sebastian Lexer Daswichen (Matchless)
Eivind Opsvik Overseas III (LOYAL)
The Chris McGregor Trio Our Prayer (Fledg’ling)
Anthony Pateras/Max Kohane PIVIXKI (Sabbatical)
People Band 69/70 (Emanem)
Gino Robair & Birgit Ulher Blips & Ifs (Rastascan)
Alister Spence Fit (Rufus)
Trespass Trio "... Was There To Illuminate The Night Sky" (Clean Feed, 2009)
Ray Warleigh Rue Victor Massé (Psi)

Outer Limits A-Z

Astral Social Club Octuplex (VHF CD)
Blood Stereo Your Snakelike King (Pan)
Lucio Capece & Mika Vainio Trahnie (Editions Mego)
Raymond Dijkstra L’Opus Ch (Le Souffleur)
Emeralds What Happened(No Fun)
Richard Garet & Brendan Murray Of Distance (Unframed)
Grasslung/Pulse Emitter Grasslung/Pulse Emitter (Phaserprone)
Russell Haswell Wild Tracks (Editions Mego)
Kommissar Hjüler & Mama Bär Asylum Lunaticum (Intransitive)
Lee Patterson Seven Vignettes (Shadazz)
Keith Rowe Untitiled (Erstwhile)
Ghédalia Tazartès Repas Froid (Tanzprocesz)
Aluk Todolo Finistirnis(Utech)
Mika Vainio Black Telephone (Touch)
John Wiese Circle Snare (Helicopter CD)

there's almost zero interest in "contemporary" group improv - the little bit of IHM-y stuff they've included is mostly solo.

-jesse

[Dan Warburton]

Sigh.. looks like this has turned into yet another Wire bashing thread. FYI, the way it works is as follows: Wire journalists are invited to pick ten discs to cover the whole year, not in order (though we are asked to pick one favourite) - in the past it was "choose five jazz, five hiphop, five reissues" etc, but that was scrapped when they realised not everybody gets discs of every genre (I doubt I've bought five hiphop albums in the past decade). So they end up with 30-odd lists of ten albums. Given the sheer volume of stuff we receive, it's probably a fair bet that if three or four journalists all happen to pick the same disc it'll make it to the final top twenty. On that OL list I know I chose the Tazartès and the Kommissar Hjuler, for example. And things that appear near the end of the year (e.g. imaoto) are probably likely to get overlooked, as best of lists have to be submitted by early November.
Right, that's over, can we get back to the sexy stuff now please?

[bedouin]

...Right, that's over, can we get back to the sexy stuff now please?

Every discerning Wire reader should have a copy of Sax & Sex:



Jesus, there is a whole series of them

Edit:
Maybe the wire should stick them as cover CDs for the next few issues

[jon abbey]

Dan, when Derek cites the year-end lists in his editorial as some kind of official record to try to defend the original ludicrous points made by Keenan, of course they're going to be ridiculed.

and maybe the process you describe needs to be reexamined as the cumulative lists seem to get more and more irrelevant and detached from reality every year, not to mention they only cover nine months of the year, if that. alternately, they can just go ahead and change the name to Hypnagogic Monthly (all contents available via Volcanic Tongue) so the rest of us can officially stop paying attention.

[Dan Warburton]

Dan, when Derek cites the year-end lists in his editorial as some kind of official record to try to defend the original ludicrous points made by Keenan, of course they're going to be ridiculed.

Well, as Derek posts here (though I haven't seen much from him lately), maybe he should address that point. But I happen to agree with you.

maybe the process you describe needs to be reexamined as the cumulative lists seem to get more and more irrelevant and detached from reality every year, not to mention they only cover nine months of the year, if that.

Quite. I'm not very comfortable about submitting best of lists as you know, but they insist on it, so I have a go. Declined to participate in the "pros and cons" section though - that has always seemed pretty daft to me.

they can just go ahead and change the name to Hypnagogic Monthly (all contents available via Volcanic Tongue) so the rest of us can officially stop paying attention.

Well if someone could give me a clear and musicologically coherent definition of what hypnagogic pop is, I might be inclined to take it more seriously. It's always seemed to me a case of, shit, we need a nametag for some of this new stuff ("New Weird America" is getting old). I fail to see what many of the artists Keenan brings together in that piece have in common.
Meanwhile, get ur Keenan on here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VawPJcbBYU

[jpeatt]

Well if someone could give me a clear and musicologically coherent definition of what hypnagogic pop is, I might be inclined to take it more seriously.

Seems like 'new wave of new age' to me, in a great many cases. An equally buzzworthy term, IMHO.

[d.at]

alternately, they can just go ahead and change the name to Hypnagogic Monthly (all contents available via Volcanic Tongue) so the rest of us can officially stop paying attention.

Eating alone tonight (away for work) gave me chance to digest this month's Wire. You'll be pleased to know Keenan managed to write 8 words before he mentioned hypnagogic in a review.

[billygomberg]

would someone with a functioning scanner please post Steve Beresford's brilliant letter to the Wire in response to Keenan's review. everyone would benefit.

[faster]

would someone with a functioning scanner please post Steve Beresford's brilliant letter to the Wire in response to Keenan's review. everyone would benefit.

http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic. ... 40#p200833

[billygomberg]

would someone with a functioning scanner please post Steve Beresford's brilliant letter to the Wire in response to Keenan's review. everyone would benefit.

http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic. ... 40#p200833

well if The Wire would get my subscription to me on time we could all avoid this kind of embarrassment.