Tag: CS 201 cd

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The Sound Projector: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

“Amplified Derek Bailey meets Thomas Lehn”? “A lively and sizzling session of fierce interplay… between… two boxing kangaroos”? Ed Pinsent of The Sound Projector reviews Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd):

[Han-earl] Park is one of those scary polymath guys who seems to have a tremendous facility for music, both improvising and composing it, and he has played in many groups and at many festivals, appearing around the globe in seemingly ubiquitous fashion. Scariest of all is his intense and speedy guitar technique, which on parts of this album presents a rush of tangled information that would require a bank of dedicated computers to solve it…. Never too “glib” in his phrasing and throws in multiple fishhooks and other barbs to snag our ears, otherwise we might be tempted to switch off in the face of his effortless glides and spiky dense riffs. It’s also good to find him in this duo set-up where the detail of his playing can be more clearly heard than in Mathilde 253. The Englishman Barrett is also a composer, like Park sometimes situated in an academic and teaching context, and is no stranger to using electronics in the live situation having formed the FURT duo with Paul Obermayer as long ago as 1986…. Regardless of whatever intricate and dazzling shapes are thrown at him like crystal spears by his sparring partner, he responds in kind with impossibly twisted gurgles, shrieks and salivated electronic utterances. Throughout album, a lively and sizzling session of fierce interplay is staged between these two boxing kangaroos, with sqwawks and yelps a-plenty as another blow is landed on the respective muzzle or snout. The striking thing is that neither player appears to be breaking into a sweat at any time, and I have the abiding mental image of two unfazed chess players sitting in a deep-freeze unit, weaving complex theorems while remaining almost immobile in large leather armchairs. The music has that degree of rigid control, of brittle precision, even when the structure appears at its maddest and the musical data is flying wildly beyond the point of interpretation. The value of this music as a form of invented language is emphasised by the odd titles, ‘tolur’, ‘tricav’, ‘ankpla’, ‘uettet’… as if counting upwards in Venusian. [Read the rest…]

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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Dalston Sound: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

In a review that spans Richard Barrett’s Dark Matter and Han-earl Park’s io 0.0.1 beta++, Tim Owen (Dalston Sound) praises Barrett and Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) for its “multifarious attractions” found in a “wealth of microscopically teeming detail”:

Numbers is a complex melange of retro/futurist synth sounds, glitch electronica, guitar-sourced whammy-bar pitch-bending and hard-scrabble picking over bridge and pickups: a volatile stream of fractal note-data and complex electro-acoustics, all slippery switchbacks and other such abrupt transitions.

This makes for kaleidoscopic music, a rubato flux of superimposed noises in which lightning-fast progression from one galvanising sound event (noise thru silence) to another, and the musicians’ constant attention to overall form, carry far more weight than developmental foresightedness or melodic thrust: it’s music of the moment, a process of constantly tweaked evolutionary recombination.

The duo are tenacious in their work of sonic abiogenesis, and the six Numbers pieces are all longish…. The sound events comprised by tracks like “Ankpla” and “Uettet” are as disjointed as they are contiguous, but the overriding sense impression is that each whole flows nicely, and the album as a whole rewardingly absorbs attention. [Read the rest…]

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) [details…] [all reviews…]

Performers: Richard Barrett (electronics) and Han-earl Park (guitar). [About this duo…]

© + ℗ 2012 Creative Sources Recordings.

‘io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) CD cover (copyright 2011, Han-earl Park)

io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) [details…] [all reviews…]

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.

arts council logo

The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.

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Downtown Music Gallery: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

The “intense exchange between these two gifted improvisers.” Bruce Lee Gallanter of Downtown Music Gallery reviews Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd):

Featuring Richard Barrett on electronics and Han-earl Park on guitar. Richard Barrett is a UK composer as well as an improvising electronic musician who plays in Furt, Forch and with Evan Parker, all of whom record for the Psi label. Originally UK-based guitarist Han-earl Park has been living in NY for the past couple of years and working with many Downtown players like Louise Jensen & Michael Evans (who he played with here at DMG last Sunday – 1/20/13), Harris Eisenstadt, Tim Perkis and Anthony Braxton. When Mr. Park was living in the UK, he worked with Paul Dunmall, Charles Hayward and invented a device called io 0.0.1 Beta, that played its own improvisations. An impressive resume for sure. Han-earl left us with this duo effort and I’m glad he did.

I dig the intense exchange between these two gifted improvisers. There are a number of bent sounds which make it hard to determine who is doing what. What electric guitar sounds I recognize are sharp, focused and quickly formed & let loose. Han-earl does not sound like a jazz guitarist and doesn’t play any of those popular licks. More often he is playing a series of broken yet tight phrases which fit perfectly with Mr. Barrett’s more rounded electronics. The fractured phrases that erupt throughout this disc often sound like just one musician playing by himself since we never know where one sound begins or ends or what it will turn into. There are a few rubbed string sounds which remind me of Fred Frith at times but that is the reference I can pull out of my own listening encounters. Otherwise this is duo is completely unique, exciting and engaging.

[Original newsletter…] [DMG catalog page…]

You can get the CD from DMG for a limited time price of $14 (normally $16)!

btw, I have yet to perform with Mr. Braxton (I assume Bruce meant Wadada), and I’m from California, but otherwise the description, especially “fractured phrases that erupt throughout this disc often sound like just one musician playing by himself since we never know where one sound begins or ends or what it will turn into”, is pretty accurate! Thanks for listening, Bruce.

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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Le son du grisli: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

Do you feel the need for some gargling? convincing? crawling? craziness? dizziness? …or telegraphs? Luc Bouquet’s take, at Le son du grisli, on ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) by Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park:

Le gargarisme est convaincant. D’un côté les electronics de Richard Barrett, de l’autre la guitare d’Han-Earl Park. Tous deux grouillent et cisaillent les volumes, réactivent la matière folle, rendent la télégraphie à sa fonction première : transmettre (Tolur). Leur improvisation en miroir engorge leur transe succube, fait déborder le vase, bouche la robinetterie (Tricav).

Parfois, au milieu des monstres soniques qu’ils viennent de créer, émerge une guitare façon Bailey (Ankpla). Mais rarement rassasiés (Uettet pour me faire mentir), les voici rassurant leur nervosité naturelle en un final aux brûlures fatales (II……). Le gargarisme est convaincant. Le vertige, tout autant.

[Original article…]

And, by the way, on Tuesday (December 18, 2012) François Couture (Monsieur Délire) will be playing selections from his 2012 Demanding Music Top 30 at Délire Actuel (CFLX 95.5 FM, Sherbrooke, Quebec). Along with some other great music from this year, it might be an opportunity to hear a little of ‘Numbers’. [More info…]

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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Top 30 des musiques exigeantes 2012: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

François Couture (Monsieur Délire) has selected ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett for Délire actuel’s 2012 Demanding Music Top 30:

The demanding music radio show Délire Actuel (CFLX-FM 95.5, Sherbrooke, Quebec) unveiled today its top 30 experimental music albums you shouldn’t have missed in 2012. This list culls 30 titles, the 2012 crème de la crème in demanding music, i.e. the avant-gardist or experimental fringe in every music genre (contemporary, avant-garde jazz, free improvisation, avant-rock, electronica, etc.)….

Two special editions of Délire Actuel will be broadcasted tonight (December 11) and next Tuesday (December 18), from 8 pm to 10 pm (EST), on CFLX 95.5 FM in the Sherbrooke area and live on the web at www.cflx.qc.ca/en-direct/. The show is broadcasted in French, but the music is universal. A track from each selected CD will be featured. The Top 30 was posted this morning on Mr. Couture’s blog Monsieur Délire…. Shows are available to stream or download from CFLX’s website for a week after their broadcast date. [Read the rest…]

I’m honored to find our record in such distinguished company.

  1. Westerhus, Stian: ‘The Matriarch and the Wrong Kind of Flowers’ (Rune Grammofon)
  2. Drake, Bob: ‘Bob’s Drive-In’ (ReR Megacorp)
  3. Bishop, Jeb/Blonk, Jaap/Mallozzi, Lou/Rosaly, Frank: ‘At the Hideout’ (Kontrans)
  4. Perkin, Miles Quartet: ‘Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear’ (ind.)
  5. Adkins, Monty: ‘Four Shibusa’ (Audiobulb)
  6. Zorn, John: ‘Mount Analogue’ (Tzadik)
  7. Carvalhais, Hugo: ‘Particula’ (Clean Feed)
  8. Berne, Alexander: ‘Self Referentials Vols. 1 & 2’ (Innova)
  9. New Songs, The: ‘A Nest at the Junction of Paths’ (Umlaut Records)
  10. Smith, Wadada Leo: ‘Ten Freedom Summers’ (Cuneiform)
  11. Homler, Anna/Hallett, Sylvia: ‘The Many Moods of Bread and Shed’ (The Orchestra Pit)
  12. Ratchet Orchestra: ‘Hemlock’ (Drip Audio)
  13. Endresen, Sidsel/Westerhus, Stian: ‘Didymoi Dreams’ (Rune Grammofon)
  14. Barrett, Richard/Park, Han-earl: ‘Numbers’ (Creative Sources)
  15. Bernier, Nicolas: ‘Travaux mécaniques’ (empreintes DIGITALes)
  16. Cactus Truck: ‘Brand New for China!’ (Public Eyesore)
  17. Bruckmann, Kyle: ‘On Procedural Grounds’ (New World Records)
  18. Capece, Lucio: ‘Zero by Zero’ (Potlatch)
  19. Petit, Philippe: ‘Hitch-Hiking Thru Bronze Mirrors (Extraordinary Tales of a Lemon Girl, Chapter 3)’ (Aagoo)
  20. Nicols, Maggie/Hargreaves, Phil: ‘Human’ (whi music)
  21. Huijbregts, Nico: ‘Dialogue Dreams’ (Vindu Music)
  22. Esseiva, Kiko C.: ‘Drôles d’oiseaux’ (Hinterzimmer)
  23. Plaistow: ‘Lacrimosa’ (Insubordinations)
  24. Grimal, Alexandra: ‘Andromeda’ (Ayler)
  25. Normand, Éric 5: ‘Sur un fil’ (Setola di Maiale)
  26. Zorn, John: ‘Templars: In Sacred Blood’ (Tzadik)
  27. Dilloway, Aaron/Lescalleet, Jason: ‘Grapes and Snakes’ (Pan)
  28. eriKm/Rivière, Arnaud/DJ Sniff/Tétreault, Martin: ‘Drift 01’ (Art Kill Art)
  29. Perelman, Ivo/Shipp, Matthew/Dickey, Whit: ‘The Clairvoyant’ (Leo Records)
  30. Trapist: ‘The Golden Years’ (Staubgold)

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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Jazz Convention: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

Density and expressive urgency. Romualdo Del Noce at Jazz Convention reviews ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) by Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park:

Assai suggestivo l’interattivo duo protagonista: Barrett… sospinge oltre l’ostacolo dei vincoli della forma le pulsioni delle elettroniche di cui dispensa e vaporizza esponenzialmente le valenze e i caratteri timbrici, laddove Park, forte della sperimentazione viva e costante sullo strumento a sei corde, assai esagitato nel potenziale armonico-melodico, dilata le ispirazioni a nervi scoperti e le destrutturazioni alla Derek Bailey, e il tutto scattando un’immagine in movimento ed (es)agitata di una avant-garde – già, di suo, indocile soggetto – e che qui trova convinti e motivati praticanti – esegeti.

Cinque tracks-passaggi per un’ora esatta di forte urgenza espressiva che si staglia dimensionalmente per impeto psico-attivo, densità partecipativa ed acidità di smalti e pigmenti – reinterpretata e rivissuta dal concentratissimo duo Barrett-Park, Numbers si fa “danza interattiva ad alta energia e a passo veloce, scriteriata, looping a due mani, danza contorta, interattiva e resa udibile, unità di estemporizzazione intensa e da brivido” secondo la concitata definizione autoriale e che, così enunciata, lascerebbe assai poco di accattivante al pubblico generale – ma poco importa, data la vocazione settoriale e la dedizione (peraltro con coscienza perseguita e coronata) all’acting gravido di rischio e all’esplorazione avventurosa.

[Read the rest…]

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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Revue & Corrigée: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

Sporty and dynamic! The September 2012 issue of Revue & Corrigée prints a review of Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd):

Je connais de nombreuses pièces de Richard Barrett enregistrées, écrites ou improvisées. C’est une figure importante de la musique contemporaine, malheureusement sous-estimée en France. Je vous invite vivement à écouter ce répertoire et vous plonger dans cette solide radicalité: l’écoute de la pièce symphonique Vanity (1996) devrait remettre de nombreuses pendules à l’heure. Lorsqu’il improvise (compose en temps réel), m’avec un dispositif électronique lui autorisant avec souplesse les parcours les plus inattendus.

Nous connaissons déjà plusieurs disques avec Furt, où il intervient avec Paul Obermayer, se jouant lui aussi d’un système électronique.

Je découvre ici sa collaboration avec le guitariste Han-Earl Pak [sic] (un autre créateur plutôt discret sur les scènes hexagonales), qui s’inscrit dans la tradition “post Derek Bailey” avec une saine volonté d’en découdre (cet artiste est aussi concepteur de systèmes interactifi originaux).

Sportif et dynamique.

Thanks to Lê Quan Ninh for helping source the text of the review.

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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CD reviews: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

How’s your Portuguese? Rui Eduardo Paes reviews Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd):

Quem partir para a audição de “Numbers” com uma ideia feita do que esperar de Richard Barrett e Han-Earl Park ficará, com certeza, surpreendido. Se o Barrett compositor de música contemporânea e o Barrett improvisador de electrónica no duo Furt e no Electro-Acoustic Ensemble de Evan Parker são, já à partida, bastante diferentes (apesar da sua convicção de que improvisar é apenas outra forma de compor), o que deste ouvimos agora distancia-se do “sampling” esquizóide a que nos habituou – os seus “outputs” neste disco identificam-se mais com as sonoridades sintetizadas dos antigos jogos de computador e videojogos. Por sua vez, o Park que aqui está não é o inventor e construtor de robôs e próteses musicais, mas o guitarrista. Percorrer outros caminhos implica neste disco aspectos positivos e negativos, mas verdade seja dita que a energia, o “drive” e o labor de sedimentação do ruído que vão desenvolvendo depressa nos conquistam. [Original article…]

— Rui Eduardo Paes

Meanwhile, Massimo Ricci at Touching Extremes suggests the recording might be a way to have your “brain zapped and scrambled by the rivalry between transonic beauty and extreme structural atomization”:

…It is… impractical to verbally interpret the bazillions of events that this CD warrants, for the joy of individuals who take pleasure in getting their brain zapped and scrambled by the rivalry between transonic beauty and extreme structural atomization. This is in fact a full hour of frantically jagged live improvisation that will definitely expose, in a good number of subjects, the inability of receiving and synthesizing a large quantity of data, given the inborn impossibility of switching to multi-channel mode in their neural constitution. These persons will end describing this barely imaginable tit-for-tat as unendurably non-brooding, or just “out of fashion”. Indeed the methods through which the (mostly) clean sounds of the electric guitar get stretched, warped, mangled and thrown back at the source demolish any propensity to rumination. As if a premix of Fred Frith, Hans Reichel and – why not – Christopher Willits had been subjected to a journey inside the circuits of a billboard. Mere seconds before its explosion, that is. [Read the rest…]

— Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

I wonder if Ricci had anyone particular in mind when he wrote of those with an “inability of receiving and synthesizing a large quantity of data, given the inborn impossibility of switching to multi-channel mode in their neural constitution” 😉

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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Monsieur Délire: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

Catch me if you can! François Couture at Monsieur Délire describes a complex music that moves in multiple directions in his review of Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd):

Electronician Richard Barrett (of Furt) and guitarist Han-earl Park are working together to create music both spontaneous and premeditated, music that launches into several directions at a time (that’s Furt’s trademark). The guitar is wildly spatialized, and the electronics intermingle with it, manipulating in real-time, adding pointillistic fluries of sounds that make it impossible de isolate a single contribution. The result is lively, relevant, dizzying electroacoustic music; music that seems to be daring us to try and catch it.

[Read the rest…]

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

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Chain D.L.K.: Numbers: Richard Barrett + Han-earl Park

CD cover of ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) with Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park (copyright 2012, Creative Sources Recordings)
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) © 2012 Creative Sources

Death of an Accountant? In his review at Chain D.L.K. of Richard Barrett and Han-earl Park’s ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd), Vito Camarretta imagines an unfortunate scenario for an “accountant, a computer expert or an operational researcher”, and describes an “acoustic lucid computational delirium, whose trajectory is impossible to outguess”:

You can easily imagine an accountant, a computer expert or an operational researcher in the act of falling prey of frightening hallucinations after a session of intensive work on numerical models, impressive balance sheets or other number-covered screed and their colossal equations or string while getting turned into ominous entities which paralyze their own maker in order to obsess, harass and torture him till death while listening to this amazing and fuzzy release by Welsh electronic musician and performer Richard Barrett (some well-trained listeners could know his collaborative project FURT with Paul Obermayer as well as his work within the Elision Ensemble) and guitarist, improviser and very talented performer Han-Earl Park. By means of an intricate web of sonic hiccups, scrapes, scouring, gluts, gargles and cuts, they build an acoustic lucid computational delirium, whose trajectory is impossible to outguess.

[Read the rest…]

‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]