Beta-Lactam Ring Rec.
Textile Orchestra : For The Boss (UK,2008)****
I expected this was not going to be the easiest album to listen to, but with a concentrated mind I think the whole recording made much sense, like a free music improvisation in two parts, with a conscious evolution and a couple of elements showing its musical aspects in naturally appearing sections. These musical elements can be regarded as ‘musical instruments’ or better, musical concepts of sounds or sound-containing qualities that contribute to the rhythmic evolutions. The evolution itself sounds logical. It sounds like a patchwork of syllable themes or sound themes that lead the construction into space and time, with peeping metallic sounds appearing first, and rhythms of click clack and slashing, dragging and slaying at first more randomly into time, with windy sounds and some woop-woops, quickly they become like rhythmical accents, as something like “trlllp, trlpp, plllmm” at first and other returning and evolving accents like this, followed by peeping high notes on violin/cello, contemporary in nature and colouring the evolution, while also distorted sounds can be heard and be some other additional contributions. Thoroughly even ‘voice’ is added to the score as well as with the expression or phrase “who are you?”. Some new additional sounds seems to be more electric and distorted, towards the addition of a sort of tape or also electronic equipment noises. The aforementioned rhythmic accents then evolved over “trllp” to “qshhck” and “shjktk “ or towards more cymbal-sounds percussion, with the addition of new peeping and plucks, as well as sounds of handbells, some peeping balloon and such. The addition of distortion then also becomes heavier and more loaded with percussion, and the tension in general becomes electrified. But then suddenly, an old LP recording with an orchestration is mixed in. This vinyl recording has a scratch/crack and thus loops itself ; the violin changes its mood with it, from the high electric peaked notes playing, to something more melodic, as if forced to be falling down to earth, and also the drumming finds with it a steady rhythm. And while this new drum rhythm is overdubbed as well, in a different timbre, with contra-rhythmic layers, also this, at first still sounding logically contributing/interacting this evolves to a new sort of, still organised but somewhat decomposed, distortion. A good moment to end its first part.
The second part starts once more from a steady rhythm, on bass, like a loop ready to receive its improvisations. Electronic peaks of sounds find more, at first still natural-random, rhythms moving in time, with violin on top again, the contribution of electric equipment distortion becomes once more, more dominating, like the sort of crackles or distortion, and fastened tape pre-recordings, with additional peeping sounds and such. This seems to disconnect the steady rhythm so that it seems to have been flushed away or abandoned as being less important when discovering this new world of expressions where the noisy and fast tensions have become something much more interesting formations. There’s a high intensity in the air (violin/percussion/electric sounds,..), and the drums improvise fast, but while doing so they seem to produce more sounds with it rather than rhythms. And thoroughly also this nervous tension finds its own easiness, you easily get used to it. Within its walls of this world I notice that I am able to feel relaxed…
Acoustic free music improvisations are often associated with jazz. If it’s more associated with folk there often is some escapism or pretension involved. The members here are much more independent from all these worlds. And within the not-really playing much of a recognisable style, the patterns which are used for it are not only honestly expressed with directions evolving towards each others presence, it is not too difficult to follow once you let yourself go into this world. There is lots of rhythmic and sound sensitivity involved and the music reaches towards some sort of very natural free-melodic, even descriptive power, with its own evolutions and schedule of expressions. This reached a descriptive free level of expression that shows there were some very good musicians involved who were one with what was happening, and had the right elements and skills to make this convincing.
Features Aaron Moore of Volcano the Bear.
First edition of 1000 copies comes in a bound book-format case.
