Thinking in-the-box (I almost called this one ‘Four-By-Four’). A little something that I walked away with from my last performance. Not quite as… lyrical or inventive, I think, as what transpired at the gig, but it is a one-take. And a hat-tip to Richard Scott for mentioning EP last week.
The music on this album transports me to scenes from retro-scifi stories to those of present-day mass transit. It is, to my ears, the sounds of junction crossings, signals from space, and mysterious telegraphy; sometimes evoking impressions of walking by streams under footbridges, at others, of rushing through Manhattan Chinatown. Recorded live at Cafe OTO during the trio’s first meeting, we knew then that we had something special.
I think the sounds and the performances on this disc are all ’round captivating, gripping and fascinating, and the production work, exceptional. Take the journey with us: I’m super proud of the music, and I am thrilled to finally share this with you!
Get ready for the latest release of challenging and imaginative music from Ramble Records with Juno 3, the debut album from the trio of Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas. Recorded by Shaun Crook live at Cafe OTO, London, and mixed (refracted and rephrased) by Han-earl Park, the album is a particle sim of sounds which spelunks from derelict urban ravines to cybernetic rainforests, while catching auditory glimpses of crashing robotic waves, and strange telegraphic messages from space.
Nautiloid capsule tumbles
across field lines.
An impracticably agile,
graceful derailment.
Juno 3 is Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics). The eponymous album document the first meeting—interactive, relational—by this trio as it takes a journey: launching from the familiar of the Hackney club space into future imagined By Others. We coax it into our space.
Motion and motifs. (Switching gears, shedding engines.) Modes of transport change from first principles: future-past transit networks give way to bioengineered surfboards.
Bodies collide, unwind, and we’re up again. Reaching crossings; navigating junctions.
Intermodal is the only game we know. Networks (and bodies and vessels) weave, twist, cross then interweave, intertwist and intercross. (We, nocturnal monstrous shapes, turn and return to the deep.)
And, as the album comes to a close (thump’n’snap—bodies unwind), we find ourselves awakened back in the familiar club space. Or: half familiar. The same chairs, the same tables, the same staff. But not the same chair, not the same table, not the same staff.
Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
Recorded live March 20, 2022, Cafe OTO, London.
Recorded by Shaun Crook.
Mixed by Han-earl Park. Mastered by Chris Sharkey.
Art by Han-earl Park. Design by Atharwa Deshingkar.
Thanks to Richard Barrett, Heather Frasch and Richard Scott; to Fielding Hope and everyone at Cafe OTO, Laura Cole and everyone at Fusebox, Wesley Stephenson of Jazz North East, and Peter O’Doherty of Northern Lights Project. Shoutouts to Corey Mwamba, Graeme Wilson, rit. and Una Lee. The performance was presented with funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Grunting tonal bursts? atmospherics? weaving sinuous melody? In his review of Eris 136199’s Peculiar Velocities, Paul Acquaro at Free Jazz describes a “masterful slice of trifurcated dialog” by turns “haunting, gracious and grating”, with tones that cut “like an exacto-blade.” He writes that, by the third track (‘Peculiar Velocities I’) of the album:
The guitars have adopted a slightly different aesthetic, using choppy, brittle sounds, they lay down a fractured soundscape replete with sonic barbs and suspended tones. Sikora finds her footing on this shifting ground and plays freely. As the track continues into ‘Peculiar Velocities II’ the fascinating part is realizing how connected the three actually are: this is not parallel play, rather it connects deep in the sub-systems. [Read the rest…]
Meanwhile Todd McComb’s Jazz Thoughts finds “vignettes within an overall urban fantasy soundscape”, and according to Ed Pinsent at The Sound Projector:
This music does stem from a knowledge and practice of free improvisation, and can fit inside various ‘art music’ categories, but on one level to me it feels as good as any ‘noise rock’ served up by Sonic Youth, The Dead C, or any new-wave influenced beat combo who tend to attract the ‘angular’ adjective. [Read the rest…]
Having previously selected Peculiar Velocities as one of the Best of 2020, Dave Foxall writes in aJazzNoise that:
It’s mind-twisting stuff. Intensely ‘musical’ (whatever that means) and harshly jarring, gently testing Broca’s convolutions, seeking points of entry and storage, delicately inserting sounds, probing for reaction, disconcertion and delight. (i.e. It gets inside your head)….
An uncomfortable joy, a can’t-be-reproduced-in-the-laboratory combination of rare elements, a new musical alloy, an ongoing experiment, the perfect distillation of uneasy listening. [Read the rest…]
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*†
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
Of Life, Recombinant
And finally, in his LondonJazz News review of Of Life, Recombinant, Tony Dudley-Evans describes a music of ‘industrial sounds,’ by turns ‘ambient’ and ‘dramatic,’ with elements of minimalism. Plus:
Sinister sounds reminiscent of a hospital MRI scanning machine. [Read the rest…]
Elsewhere Corey Mwamba (Freeness, BBC Radio 3) describes “exquisite music-making” with musicians that “fuse and create this gorgeous glitchy stew together”, and, writing in Vital Weekly, Nick Roseblade describes Peculiar Velocities as an album in which “everything feels pushed as far is it can go”:
Like what rock music could, and possibly should, have sounded like it if musicians like Ornette Coleman became the norm. There is a freeness to the playing that is astounding, but there is also organisation. During sections, the guitars work together to give Sikora something tangible to stand on. When this happens ‘Eris 136199: Peculiar Velocities’ becomes something very special indeed. ‘Polytely I’ sees the guitars constantly churning to create vortex-esque soundscapes why Sikora’s light and airy saxophone wafts above it. Like stream on a freshly brewed tea. This is an album that reminds you of how good it is when musicians don’t care about the rules and just play. [Read the rest…]
And while Brady Gerber’s ‘7 For Seven’ finds a space in which “a nervous guitar fills an orange sky and empty beach”, and Takeshi Goda in JazzTokyo writes of velocities, perception, collisions, fusions, joy and brain-reforming experiences:
それはあたかも地球外の異境から到来した明滅する運動エネルギーによって脳外科手術を施されるような驚喜の頭脳改革体験である。 [Read the rest…]
And finally, Ken Shimamoto/The Stash Dauber writes about sounds that “slither and spatter like radio interference, shimmer like molten silver, or ring like a cymbal’s decay” music in which “the spirit of electricity becomes a living thing”:
The best type of musical conversation, abstract and oblique as it might be at times…. I’ve listened to this thing a half dozen times since I started writing yesterday, and am happy to have its company to help me get through what looks like it’s going to be a very tough winter… and the hopeful spring to follow. [Read the rest…]
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*†
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
Two+ Bagatelles
And one more thing: In his survey of solo guitar recordings, Paul Acquaro at Free Jazz reviews my recording released by, and in support of, The Vortex Jazz Club:
[Han-earl Park’s] playing was unusually expressive…. On Two+ Bagatelles, this same musical spirit that has stuck with me for so long, has been captured…. Melodies becoming almost like the sounds of an 8-bit shower. [Read the rest…]
Available from The Vortex’s Bandcamp page, all purchases of Two+ Bagatelles go towards helping their continued work presenting the very best jazz, improvised, and experimental musics.
Peculiar Velocities is Eris 136199’s first studio album, and captures the trio during their 2019 European tour; between the first date at The Vortex (London) and their performance at Jazz em Agosto (Lisbon).
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*†
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
https://soundcloud.com/hanearlpark/mix-engineer-works
Wondering what mixing strategy could possibly work for your recording of noisy, pretty, gentle and disorderly peculiar music? Hit me up if your left-of-field recording is in need of some…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jewNzu1KL1Q
Violence and cruelty? Fantastical, twisted, dark, deeply affectionate humanism? Improvisation as embodiment and personification? Place, subjectivity and interiority? As part of the Free Jazz: Sunday Interview, in response to a…
An uncomfortable joy, a can’t-be-reproduced-in-the-laboratory combination of rare elements, a new musical alloy, an ongoing experiment, the perfect distillation of uneasy listening.
Formed in New York in 2012, Eris 136199 is the chaotic-slamming one-person rhythm section of Han-earl Park (Sirene 1009), the deep melodic intelligence and big-tenor sound of Catherine Sikora (Clockwork Mercury), and the anthems of glitch, experimentalism and riffage of Nick Didkovsky (Doctor Nerve). Recorded during the trio’s 2019 European tour, Peculiar Velocities (BAF002) is Eris 136199’s third CD, and first studio album. The album is the follow-up to the eponymous Eris 136199 (BAF001, 2018) described as “like letting an insane brain surgeon in through your ear” (aJazzNoise, Best of 2018), and Anomic Aphasia (SLAMCD 559, 2015) which was described as “a beautiful noise” (KFJC 89.7 FM).
Surprises abound on this disc from the collision of three seemingly incompatible notions of time and rhythm in [the title track] ‘Peculiar Velocities’; to ‘Sleeping Dragon’ which insistently claims to be one thing but reveals itself to be something else; to the aural love letter to No Wave that is ‘D-Loop’….
Moments of absolute clarity, where two of us may deliberately hit exactly the same notes, are juxtaposed by equally comfortable bursts of raging chaos and easy silences.
— From the liner notes‡
Recorded with a lean, efficient boldness by Sean Woodlock, and mastered by Richard Scott, the album captures music that leaps from wispy, delicate webs to massive weather-beaten mountains. Recorded over just three hours in a single live room, Peculiar Velocities catches Eris 136199 between the first date of the tour at The Vortex (London) and their performance at Jazz em Agosto (Lisbon).
Insectoid ASMR glitches to powerful ballads of weight and light; gentle, languorous shimmers to startling No Wave noise; raspy double-guitar hockets to gutted, dismantled chorales.
Han-earl Park is the instigator and mastermind behind Eris 136199, as well as groups including Sirene 1009 with Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and rit. (f.k.a. Caroline Pugh), and co-conspirator in projects with Richard Barrett and others. Park is the constructor of the machine improviser io 0.0.1 beta++, and of Metis 9, a playbook of improvisative tactics. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Josh Sinton, Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen, Ingrid Laubrock, Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, Andrew Drury, Pat Thomas and Franziska Schroeder. His ensembles have performed at festivals including Freedom of the City (London), Brilliant Corners (Belfast), ISIM (New York), CEAIT (Los Angeles) and Sonic Acts (Amsterdam).
Saxophonist, improviser and composer Catherine Sikora, known for her big sound and lyrical melodic work, works as a solo performer and with Eric Mingus, Enrique Haneine, Brian Chase, Han-earl Park, Ethan Winogrand, Christopher Culpo and Ross Hammond. In recent years Sikora has toured in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. She was a featured soloist in Eric Mingus’ radical reimagining of Tommy by the Who (Adelaide Festival 2015), and was artist in residence at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in 2014 and in 2020.
Guitarist, composer, and computer music programmer Nick Didkovsky has composed music for Kathleen Supové, ETHEL, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Meridian Arts Ensemble, New Century Players, ARTE Quartett, as part of the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, and his own bands Doctor Nerve, Vomit Fist, Häßliche Luftmasken, and others. His compositions and guitar performances appear on more than 50 records. For over 30 years, his avant-metal big band Doctor Nerve has fueled Didkovsky’s intricate compositions with the energy of rock, punching holes through the walls between heavy metal, contemporary music, and improvisation, and performing at festivals including Moers, FIMAV, and the Whitney Museum’s ‘Whitney Live.’ With computer music pioneer Phil Burk, Didkovsky developed the computer music language Java Music Specification Language (JMSL).
Ballad of Tensegrity I (≥ 5:12), Ballad of Tensegrity II (2:28), Peculiar Velocities I (3:46), Peculiar Velocities II (3:36), Sleeping Dragon (5:22), D-Loop I (≥ 6:16), D-Loop II (5:13), Polytely I (≥ 5:01), Polytely II: Breakdown (5:33), Anagnorisis I (2:09), Anagnorisis II (2:19). Total duration ≥ 46:54.
A big thanks to the backers of our Kickstarter project for their awe-inspiring generosity; helping bring this music to you! A massive thanks to Phillip A., Bruno Bissonnette, Mike Borella, Colin Cahill, Jeremy Clarke, Gary Couse, Nicholas Croft, Don Davis, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Tom Duff, Erik Ellestad, Lee Rice Epstein, Goldi, Owen Green, Rich Hollis, Martin Hoogeboom, Terry Kattleman, Gary W. Kennedy, Liam, Bartholomew R. Mallio, walt mattes, Andrew McKenzie, Rob Miller, Eric Mingus, John Minnock, david m morris, Neil, Matthew Nolan, Michael Rogers, Steffen Schindler, Ken Shimamoto, Craig Sines, j. sinton, Marte van der Loop, Tom Ward, Bernd Wimmer, aJazzNoise, and the Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music, and to our anonymous backers.
Track listing: Therianthropy I (≥ 3:43), Therianthropy II (8:56), Therianthropy III (3:55), Therianthropy IV (6:30), Adaptive Radiation I (6:44), Adaptive Radiation II (8:48), Adaptive Radiation III (5:54), Universal Greebly (10:58), Hypnagogia I (8:03), Hypnagogia II (4:45). Total duration ≥ 68:25.
How does “barnstorming saxophone” relate to “alien facehugger tendrils”? “a mad scramble up loose terrain” to “incendiary guitar wrangling”? and “shimmering vibrating guitar screeds” to “subversion of traditional rock guitar tropes”? Find out in Paul Khimasia Morgan’s Sound Projector review of Eris 136199:
I’m impressed…. I’ve found myself coming back to this album again and again. The more attention you give it, the more you get out of it. I find it an exhilarating, intense space to inhabit for an hour and ten minutes. Park, Sikora and Didkovsky have constructed an extremely captivating slew of wistful improvised post-jazz noises. Han and Nick’s guitars are approached as sound-making devices much of the time, and as such take on tight supporting roles for Catherine Sikora’s barnstorming saxophone in muscular and fascinating ways. This is none of your dour, worthy, self-sacrificing hair-shirt improvising or take-no-prisoners blast of willful abandonment; you can hear the musicians bouncing off each other and having fun. These musicians are working at their limits, both physically and psychically. [Read the rest…]
And as a bonus, according to Morgan, the CD’s “geometric designs on the sleeve recall a hyperactive quasi-sci-fi futurism of late 80s and early 90s rave/acid house flyers”!
Thanks so very much to Morgan and to The Sound Projector for the wonderful review. It’s the kind of review that would’ve persuaded me to go get the album right then and there 🙂 (Plus, I think “a kind of melding of prog-jazz and No-Wave” might be tied as my favorite description of the album.)
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*†
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
*† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
A “control of noise”, “saturated electricity” and “fighting… with the underground”? or “free-wheeling” with experiments in sound injected with lyricism? or “electronic mayhem” with “a full bodied sound”? In among the reviews of Eris 136199’s performance at Jazz em Agosto, David Cristol, writing in Jazz Magazine, follows “a trio of an absolute radicality”, and concludes by discovering “art music!”
Pour la dernière soirée, le directeur artistique Rui Neves nous a réservé un trio d’une radicalité absolue, proposition courageuse voire casse-gueule dans le contexte d’une salle de plusieurs centaines de places…. Et même pour les spectateurs aguerris, il s’est agi sans nul doute du concert le plus difficile d’accès du festival, présentant peu de repères auxquels se raccrocher. Il faut ici saluer la grande majorité des spectateurs, déterminés à suivre les musiciens dans leur recherche ou idée fixe, voir où le voyage va les mener. Le son est magnifiquement restitué. Park joue beaucoup de l’accordage de la main gauche, dans le registre de la basse. Les guitaristes dessinent des paysages métalliques, via un jeu non conventionnel, selon leurs propres codes, multipliant les dissonances…. Catherine Sikora est une révélation, son jeu oblique, sensible et lumineux offrant un contrepoint idéal aux élucubrations crépusculaires de ses partenaires. Le ténor adopte une approche décidément tonale et mélodique, et néanmoins exploratoire. D’un bout à l’autre un set sans concession aucune, dont on ressort essoré, mais ravi que de telles expériences soient tentées. Art music! [Read the rest…]
Meanwhile, Erik Ellestad, reviewing Eris’ most recent album, sketches a verisimilar portrait of the trio (Han-earl Park “functioning as the de facto rhythm section in Eris 136199”; Catherine Sikora’s “unvarnished and unapologetic sound… while at the same time maintaining a core of melodicism”, and Nick Didkovsky expressing “digitally warped washes of static-like sound and angry slashes of melody”):
It is 50-plus minutes of riveting music making from three fantastic and fascinating musicians. I’ve been listening avidly to Eris 136199 all week on my commute and have looked forward to it every day. Wondering what new thing I will discover in Sikora’s technique while at the same time trying to pay attention and tease out which guitarist is playing what.
Obviously, Eris 136199 isn’t Lawrence Welk, however, there is something in the players expressiveness and in their interactions which prevents it from being too harsh or overwhelming.
Rough enough to keep it exciting, yet tender enough to keep you coming back. [Read the rest…]
I think I might want “Eris 136199 isn’t Lawrence Welk” on a T-shirt.
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*†
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
*† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
A science fictional foray? the specter of drumming giant Rashied Ali? searing, erupting explosions? striking song-like passages over the rumble and din? climbing over a breathless downpour of sound? John Pietaro writes in the February issue of The New York City Jazz Record that: “In a field of experimentation and free music, Eris 136199 stands as singular.”
The closing work, two-part “Hypnagogia”, begins with the most electronic of sounds in [Nick] Didkovsky’s canon and as it fades the saxophonist blows an aerial passage that turns expressionistic as [Han-earl] Park hurls rapid- fire fills about her (think Interstellar Space as a starting point). By the time Didkovsky returns, his guitar embellishes Park’s and [Catherine] Sikora closes with lush postbop improvisation that will give listeners chills. [Read the rest…]
I love this review! Not just for its generosity and not just that it’s evident that the writer listened carefully (though, of course, it’s both of those), but I appreciate that it devotes space, in turn, to each musician of the trio. So big thanks to John for the review, and thanks, John, for hearing the Ali-connection back in 2013.
Mike Borella at Avant Music News finds monstrous extemporizations; jangling, twisting uneasiness; and an internal battle of self-restraint:
Eris 136199 is much more than deconstructivistic listening. Putting these three explorers together results in a surprising pleasant, if not angular and abstract, experience. Sikora and Didkovsky are a wonderful stylistic matchup – a sax player who is both aggressive and understated with a guitarist who seems to be fighting an internal battle of self-restraint. Park hangs around in the background, adding texture and an ephemeral context for their parts. [Read the rest…]
He concludes by writing: “Great stuff and highly recommended.”
Elsewhere, Avant Scena writes that “the music is just wonderful and charming – all kinds of colors, rhythms, expressions and sounds are condensed together in one form.” And Dolf Mulder writing in Vital Weekly describes a complex music emerging from the meeting of three very different individuals: “A radical kind of music.”
And finally, in Free Jazz’s survey of the recent albums by Catherine Sikora, Fotis Nikolakopoulos describes, in his ☆☆☆☆ review of Eris 136199, dismantling of the rock guitar solo pose, multidimensional timbres and atmosphere, and a constant battle of metallic guitar sounds and the organic feel of the saxophone: “like-minded improvisers who try to find their way through collective thinking and playing…. Eris 136199 is an album that blossoms after repeated listenings and deserves more than a quick listen….”
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*†
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
*† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
Boiling down 2018 to this list involved many very difficult decisions. We stand by all of the records on this list and think they will stand the test of time.” [Read the rest…]
Thank you so much, Cisco and everyone at Jazz Right Now! And a special thanks to Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn who wrote that honest, most unique of reviews:
At times guitarist Han-earl Park reminds me of what my bones and muscles would sound like if this speeding vehicle had in fact crushed or torn any of them (I do not have any broken bones, but I am still awaiting test results on my foot muscles). The sometimes slow, sometimes fast plucking and riffing literally makes me cringe today while writing this. My screaming at this speeding driver a split second before their vehicle crashed into the back of my bicycle might recall the blare of Catherine Sikora’s tenor sax throughout the album. I think of my repeating “WOAH, WOAH, WOAH” slowed down and amplified for full effect; loud enough that people heard the crash and my descent into the concrete of Nick Didkovsky’s improvised patterns. [Read the rest…]
Exquisitely constructed, spontaneously messed-up, endless depth, kind of like letting an insane brain surgeon in through your ear. [Read the rest…]
I’m very proud of the noise/music that is Eris 136199, and I am very proud to find it listed among such stupendously noisy music. Thanks also to a Jazz Noise for their amazing support of our work (in case you missed it, please have a read of the interviews with Nick, Catherine and me that were published in the run-up to the album release).
Big thanks again to Cisco Bradley, Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn and everyone at Jazz Right Now, Takeshi Goda at JazzTokyo, to Dave Foxall at a Jazz Noise, to Lee Rice Epstein and Paul Acquaro at Free Jazz Blog, and to Mike Borella of Avant Music News for their continued support!
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
*† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
A descent into the concrete? rafting over a boiling river? a collisions of thousands of years of musical history? music to communicate cyclists’ collisions? and who are the “bass/drum/guitar boys”, and do they “keep it in their pants”? Fascinating first set of reviews for the newly released Eris 136199 (BAF001) by Han-earl Park, Catherine Sikora and Nick Didkovsky, and a review from earlier this year of Sirene 1009 (BAF000) by Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh.
Eris 136199
Writing in Jazz Right Now, Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn discusses the music in the context of his recent accident:
At times guitarist Han-earl Park reminds me of what my bones and muscles would sound like if this speeding vehicle had in fact crushed or torn any of them (I do not have any broken bones, but I am still awaiting test results on my foot muscles). The sometimes slow, sometimes fast plucking and riffing literally makes me cringe today while writing this. My screaming at this speeding driver a split second before their vehicle crashed into the back of my bicycle might recall the blare of Catherine Sikora’s tenor sax throughout the album. I think of my repeating “WOAH, WOAH, WOAH” slowed down and amplified for full effect; loud enough that people heard the crash and my descent into the concrete of Nick Didkovsky’s improvised patterns. [Read the rest…]
An intense and honest review, Vanlandingham-Dunn concludes that, despite being “no place near a pretty listen”, the album has value in its ability to help personal experiences and histories: “‘Yo man, you ever been hit by a car?’ ‘Yeah, but maybe we should listen to this album I just picked up before I tell you about it.’”
In a more poetic, if no less personal, review, Massimo Ricci of Touching Extremes finds music that explores “avenues of acrid timbral contiguity. It’s still unconventional music, mostly with a strong skeleton”:
It’s a persistent burbling of memories and conjectures revealing decades of accumulated experiences and data, not fully untangled, with a definite explosive potential. At times a need arises to recapitulate a bit; the interplay becomes less loaded, the fingers caressing and cherry picking rather than snapping and ripping. Sikora is practically flawless in oscillating between the roles of moderator and source of linear alternatives. Her jargon is fluid, quasi-effortless, deprived of angst in spite of the occasional labyrinthine reiterations and squiggling restlessness. [Read the rest…]
Meanwhile, in the JazzTokyo review, Takeshi Goda imagines a project “based on the history of music on the earth for thousands of years”; a music of all-encompassing knowledge, and a music of deviations:
襤褸を纏った侍従に付き添われた茨の冠の王女のような三人の図は、中世の教会のステンドグラスにふさわしい。無名の小惑星の名前を持つトリオの演奏は、地球に存在しない未知の物質だけでできている訳ではなく、地球上の数千年の音楽史を源に持つ。名状不明な音響のスキマに、グレゴリオ聖歌、吟遊詩人の竪琴、ニューオリンズの葬送マーチ、バルトークの弦楽四重奏、大都会のストリート・ミュージシャンなど、あらゆる人類の演奏行為の断片を聴きとることが出来る。逸脱を極めれば極めるほど、古典や伝統への親和性が高くなる。それはまるで「光速に近づくと、時間の流れが遅くなる」という特殊相対性理論（Special Relativity Theory）のようだ。彼らが目指す先は、まだ誰も提唱していない「特殊逸脱性理論（Special Deviation Theory）」の確立なのかもしれない。[Read the rest…]
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*†
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).†
Sirene 1009
And finally, Stuart Marshall at The Sound Projector finds in Sirene 1009 a music free from “vocal histrionics” and “virtuoso runs/cacophonous jams” that lack “musical structure,” stating that “this awesome foursome, who know when to let rip and when to keep it in their pants”:
For further proof of the UK improv scene’s vitality look no further than Sirene 1009. Though not everyone is a household name (nor British), at least two of this four-piece are scene mainstays, and the whole squad sounds as at-home with each other as they are with the promiscuous goings in English jazz dens. The much frequented Cafe OTO is our virtual venue for most of this set, where visceral freeform unscrunches itself into being, sparked by Caroline Pugh’s tempestuous, syllable-timed glossolalia and billowed by flurries from the bass/drum/guitar boys, with lashings of warm vibrato throughout. [Read the rest…]
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.*
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).‡
Notes
* Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
*† Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
Eris 136199 may construct music in the way that is closest to my imagination’s music, even as it continues to confound my moment-by-moment expectations. I have no a priori knowledge of each bloop or bleep or klang or fizz or honk or skronk… nor do I have any specific sense of the strategies at play before we make that first sounding.
But as the music gets underway, and the initial gestures get sounded, I think: yes, of course. There’s that succession of choices (constructive, difficult, obvious, oblique) that have brought me (brought us) right here, right-now; choices that, however perplexing in the moment, retroactively comes to seem almost inevitable. And then it’s time for me to make that next choice, secure in the knowledge that Catherine [Sikora] and Nick [Didkovsky] are ready to make their choices, (ir)responsibly, care(ful|less)ly, with unhurried/spur-of-the-moment deliberation that real-time constraints offer.*
I’m enormously proud of the music recorded here, and blessed to have worked with all the wonderful people who all brought their best game to this album. In particular, I am very grateful to Troels Bech and Charlie McGovern who recorded the performances with clarity and great care, and to Richard Scott who mastered the whole album, giving it a stunning punch and immediacy. Enjoy the noise!
CD: €11 minimum (‘name your price’) plus shipping.†‡
Download: €8 minimum (‘name your price’).‡
* Liner notes are only available with the CD.
† Limited edition glass-mastered CD. CD includes additional material (liner notes, artwork, etc.) not included in the download version of the album.
‡ Both digital and physical purchases give you streaming via the free Bandcamp app, and option to download the recording in multiple formats including lossless.
Mathy grindcore? tubular gates? shrieks of crustaceans? 100% perishable skills? guitars burning-up on reentry? what do Special Forces snipers and saxophonists have in common? and what is The Shitty Gig Foundation? In the run-up to the launch Eris 136199’s new album, a Jazz Noise has been running a special series of 7 Questions with each member of the trio, plus it is hosting an exclusive preview of the Adaptive Radiation suite.
When asked about the balance of preparation vs. improvisation in her work, Catherine Sikora says:
It’s all about the preparation, for me! The saxophone is such a demanding instrument that if I am not totally prepared, in good shape to physically manage the instrument, then the improvisation will be negatively affected. The act of merely producing a good tone requires daily work, there is no escape, and I love that about the instrument. Practice is what I do every day, regardless of whatever else is happening, because the skill of playing is 100% perishable. The more prepared I am for a performance, the more freedom I have to execute my ideas. [Read the rest…]
With Eris 136199 we just set up and play (that’s my impression anyway, maybe I am overlooking some secret preparation rituals!). It really feels like everyone’s been sort of preparing for years before every performance. When we play I feel like we are being dropped back into a continuum that has been periodically interrupted. We really don’t discuss much ahead of time other than the notion that the silent shrieks of crustaceans may be ensconced in shrimp crackers and are released when you bite them. [Read the rest…]
I get the honor of stepping over the 7 Questions border when I get to expand upon how Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy affected Sirene 1009:
Aspects of VanderMeer’s writing compelled me to push the Sirene 1009 mix away from the vérité that is the vernacular of recorded free improvisation….
The solution [to issues with mixing the recording] turned out to be to ratchet up the artifice of the recording…. The differences and transitions are, hopefully, subtle enough that the listener are not consciously jolted out of the moment, but it weaves an extra narrative. Like VanderMeer’s manipulations in writing craft, genre, etc., I was working to accentuate, through the mixing process, the improvisative journey taken by the ensemble in performance-time. [Read the rest…]
Big thanks to Dave Foxall of a Jazz Noise for championing the trio’s thoughts, words and music.
exclusive: Adaptive Radiation I, II and III
Finally, there a very special, exclusive preview of the Adaptive Radiation suite hosted at a Jazz Noise. Have a listen; you won’t find it anywhere else! [Listen…]
Track listing: Therianthropy I (≥ 3:43), Therianthropy II (8:56), Therianthropy III (3:55), Therianthropy IV (6:30), Adaptive Radiation I (6:44), Adaptive Radiation II (8:48), Adaptive Radiation III (5:54), Universal Greebly (10:58), Hypnagogia I (8:03), Hypnagogia II (4:45). Total duration ≥ 68:25.
Track listing: Psychohistory III (≥9:47), Cliodynamics I (10:44), Cliodynamics II (12:22), Cliodynamics III (5:11), Hopeful Monsters (9:41), Psychohistory V (≥10:40). Total duration ≥58:25.
