Yet more reviews of ‘Anomic Aphasia’ (SLAMCD 559) with Han-earl Park, Catherine Sikora, Nick Didkovsky and Josh Sinton. Following up on Cisco Bradley’s profile in JazzTokyo, Takeshi Goda locates my work within the context of cross-cultural meetings in New York, and draws attention to the names and titles:
ジャケット写真に写るのはギターのピックとサックスのリード。アルバム・タイトルは「失名詞症（失語症のひとつ。ものの名称を言ったり認識できない症状のこと）」の意味。便宜的にトラック・タイトルは付されているものの、言葉のない楽器同士の対話である即興演奏に名前をつける事は出来ない訳で、ギターとサックスの音響が重なり合う物音の交歓を総称するのにこれほど適したタイトルはないだろう。
友人たちに「ハン」（ハン・ベニンクと同じ発音）と呼ばれているというパクの在籍するグループには他にも数字絡みの名前が多い（Mathulde 253、io 0.0.1 beta++、Numbersなど）。数学を突き詰めると具体的な数値の存在しない哲学思想に近づくというから、名詞化できない即興の極致を求めるハンたちの活動理念の表出かもしれない。
2013年末にアイルランドに帰国し、現在はヨーロッパ中心に演奏活動を続けるハンだが、このアルバムにスナップされたNYシーンとの恊働が、今後も失われる事なく継続することは間違いない。[Read the rest…]
— 剛田 武 Takeshi Goda (JazzTokyo)
And this is probably a good point to remind those in Japan that you can order the CD from Disk Union.
Meanwhile Beppe Colli at CloudsandClocks, while writing a detailed blow-by-blow account of the record (with two guitarists as Sunny Murray and Jimmy Garrison), also takes time to unpack the names and terms enrolled in the album:
Given my background in sociology, I thought I understood what ‘anomic aphasia’ stood for, but had a look at the dictionary anyway, and that’s what I found: that while words such as ‘anomie’ and ‘anomy’ are part of the vocabulary of social sciences, the Medical meaning of the word ‘anomia’ is ‘a form of aphasia in which the patient is unable to recall the names of everyday objects’. Interested readers are invited to think about the ways in which the above-mentioned definition and the questionnaire that appears in the CD booklet—a series of questions which investigate important issues with a light tone—relate to improvisation….
Then there’s the trio of Park and Sikora plus Josh Sinton on baritone saxophone and bass clarinet, a trio that on two occasions employs ‘tactical macros’ devised and specified by Park himself bearing the name METIS 9. At first I thought that ‘macro’ stood for ‘meta-rule’, but the ‘anomic’ episode made me interrogate my dictionary one more time, so I found a meaning of macro as “a single instruction that expands automatically into a set of instructions to perform a particular task”. In fact, the transition from Monopod—the long improvised track that opens the CD—to Pleonasm—a track that has musicians making use of ‘tactical macros’—runs parallel to a transition towards shared rules that are correctly understood by the featured musicians. [Read the rest…] [In Italian…]
— Beppe Colli (ClocksandClouds)
[About this recording…] [All reviews…]
Also from SLAM Productions…
io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) [details…]
Performers: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone). [About this project…]
© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.
Mathilde 253 (SLAMCD 528) [details…]
Performers: Charles Hayward (drums, percussion and melodica), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Ian Smith (trumpet and flugelhorn) plus Lol Coxhill (saxophone). [About this ensemble…]
© 2010 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2010 SLAM Productions.
updates
08–15-15: add new video trailer.