#Magnus Granberg

[hawkmoths17]

Magnus Granberg - Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth

[garadinervi]

أحمد [Ahmed], Giant Beauty, (Boxset: 5 x CD + 96 page book in rigid slipcase (first and second edition); Digital album), fönstret 9–13, Fönstret, 2024 [Boomkat]

Compositions by ahmed abdul-malik, re-imagined and arranged by [ahmed]

Pat Thomas: piano Seymour Wright: alto saxophone Joel Grip: double bass Antonin Gerbal: drums

Produced by John Chantler and Seymour Wright

Recorded 10-14 August 2022 at Fylkingen, Stockholm by Mattias Hållsten and John Chantler Mixed by John Chantler and Seymour Wright Mastered by Andreas [Lupo] Lubich

Cover Photos by Leif Wigh and Christopher Landergren

Book texts by Silvia Tarozzi, Magnus Granberg, Nate Wooley, Valerie Mol, Pär Thörn and Lars Grip Drawings by Guillaume Delcourt and Aliocha Delcourt Camera op for inner sleeve photos: Feronia Wennborg

[dustedmagazine]

Magnus Granberg and Skogen — Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost (Another Timbre)

Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost by Magnus Granberg & Skogen

Magnus Granberg has drawn on sources as diverse as songs by English Renaissance composers John Dowland and William Byrd, the 1930s popular song “If I Should Lose You,” Schubert song cycles, Frank Sinatra’s interpretation of “None but the Lonely Heart” and Irving Berlin’s “How Deep is the Ocean.” So, it should come as no surprise that for “Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost,” he mused on “O Death Rock Me Asleep,” a song attributed to Anne Boleyn (assumed to have been composed whilst she was imprisoned in the Tower of London) along with Bill Evans’ interpretation of Michel Legrand’s “You Must Believe in Spring.” As always with Granberg, these are just starting points. He talks about this approach as “letting preexisting musical materials (rhythmic fragments, tonal materials) serve as a creative impulse which then are interbred with certain methods which transform the original materials and turn them into something quite different… Without perhaps being able to grasp these musics in their totality, I can at least approach fragments of them, getting more intimately acquainted with the music via these smaller fragments, and letting them become part of a new music which in turn is very much informed by fragments of other musics. And all these fragments together are formed into a new whole where the different impulses may not always be immediately traceable, but are still in some way present in the subtext of the music.”

The piece, commissioned by the Berlin-based Splitter Orchester for their 2019 music festival, was written for an extended version of the group Skogen, featuring Anna Lindal on violin, Leo Svensson Sander on cello, Rhodri Davies on harp, Ko Ishikawa on sho, Simon Allen on vibraphone and amplified springs, Erik Carlsson on percussion, Henrik Olsson on objects, friction and piezo, Petter Wästberg on contact microphone, credit card, mixing board and loudspeaker, Toshimaru Nakamura on no-input mixing board and the composer on prepared piano. Granberg has been tapping this pool of musicians for over a decade and they are acutely keyed in to his approach toward compositional frameworks built around strategies of constant flux. It is left to each participant to navigate tempo, timbre and the fragmentation and repetition of the materials while adhering to the overarching form of the piece. Central to the framework is a thorough integration of tonal and timbral instruments, amalgamating the harmonic resonance of strings, the percussive attack of prepared piano and vibraphone, the quavering, reedy oscillations of sho and the abraded and gritty textures of amplified surfaces and electronics into an active fields of striated simultaneity and ever-shifting detail.  

Listening to “Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost” is a bit like sitting and listening to a marsh at dusk. Individual voices prick out and recede against a freely evolving tranquil sonic field. Each of the musicians progress along their own arcs, informed by what is transpiring around them without ever being directly swayed from their individual trajectories. Granberg talks about having spent time listening to Javanese Gamelan music and Gagaku, and while he doesn’t draw specific techniques or forms from those traditions, their approaches to ensemble structures is certainly evident. The piece starts out sparely, with Granberg’s prepared piano, plucked strings, metallic percussive plinks and sputters of electronics sounding across each other. While the voices slowly accrue, there is a constant balance of density and dynamics which maintains a transparency to the ensemble sound throughout. The choice of tonal material creates pools of harmonic fragments which play off of each other interwoven with the breathy microtonality of the sho and the abraded and scuffed textures of amplified surfaces, electronics and no-input mixing board. It is that changeable mix, in particular, that gives Skogen’s readings of Granberg’s music an unmistakable sound.  

This performance was recorded in Stockholm in November 2019, with performances at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival directly before the session and at the Splitter Music Festival in Berlin directly after (captured on video here). Watching the Berlin performance and listening to this recording, one is struck by the balance of form and freedom that Granberg creates, and the sympathetic focus that Skogen so fully embraces. Each performance encapsulates the overarching composition while displaying the spontaneous tacks of the ensemble. This marks Granberg’s seventh release on Another Timbre, and his fourth with Skogen, clearly a fruitful relationship that continues to deliver captivating results.  

Michael Rosenstein

[mermaidinthecity]

haleyreinhart: My new single, 'Roll The Dice' is officially out now!!! Feels like I’ve already hit the jackpot 🎰 with all of the love that I’m receiving from you dolls… 🖤 Thank you for streaming, sharing, & watching the new video I co-directed! I am eternally grateful to my incredible team that I get to call my friends listed below who helped me bring this song & vision to life. 🎲 #rollthedice #newmusic #newsingle

'Roll The Dice' Written by: Haley Reinhart, Anders Grahn, & Magnus Tingsek Recorded & produced by: Magnus Tingsek & Anders Grahn Lyrics by: Haley Reinhart Mixed by: Carl Granberg Mastered by: Hans Olsson Lead vocals and Haley harms engineered by: Rob Kleiner

Haley Reinhart: Lead & Harmony Vocals Anders Grahn: Guitars, Bass & Harmony vocals Magnus Tingsek: Drums, Piano, Mellotron & Harmony Vocals Peter Zimny: Flugelhorn & Baritone Saxophone Tomas Pettersson: B3 organ & Celeste

Video Directed by: Joshua Shultz & Haley Reinhart Editor & colorist: Joshua Shultz & Haley Reinhart Filmed at: Circa Resort and Casino Single cover photo by: Alex Lang This photo by: Joshua Shultz

Starring: Haley Reinhart Ryan Bergeron (Snowbank) Jess Smyth (Biig Piig) Blake Lewis Beverly Lawrence Oliver Padilla

[159sutton]

November / December 2019

November 2019

Atlas of Dreams

New work by Nafis White November 20 – December 13

Opening Thursday November 21, 6-9PM

Atlas of Dreams is an exhibition of new work that centers landscape, ancestry and the interstitial space between dreams and consciousness using accumulation, intricately woven materials, carefully selected ready-mades and densely layered surfaces. White centers the portal as device, using sculpture as a vehicle by which material is intertwined, cast and knotted linking concepts of power and display using color, scale, time and beauty.

Featuring eight new Afro-Victorian works of art titled Oculus, pairing African and African American hair styling traditions with Victorian Era hair working techniques, White centers divergent themes ranging from topography, botany, interconnectivity, body as site, abstraction and meditation finding harmonious confluence between process and intuition. White will create an active, site-specific sculpture during the exhibition, wherein the public is invited to add plastic cast hair baubles to a large-scale work Untitled (All In, after Tony Feher), paying homage to the late artist, utilizing many hands to generate new pathways in thought and practice. Flanking the entrance to the exhibition is Strand (Double Helix), two large, vertical sculptures composed of rope, hair, cotton, beads and other inclusions, referencing the DNA structure, ancestry, resilience and embodied knowledge through complex knot-work.

The Atlas of Dreams is inspired by the writings of Howardena Pindell in her book titled The Heart of the Question – The Writings and Paintings of Howardena Pindell and in particular her essay titled The Aesthetics of Texture in African Adornment as well as Arnold Rubin’s essay titled Accumulation - Power and Display in African Sculpture. White expands upon the author’s concepts regarding accumulation, highlighting the dynamism and strength of the experiential, ancestral and contemporary using pattern, texture and color to create resonant objects that defy gravity.

See http://www.nafiswhite.com/ for more info

Textures of Time

New works by Morgan Evans-Weiler November 3-16, 2019

Opening and Concert Sunday November 3, 2019 3-6PM

Join the artist for an opening reception and a concert, featuring compositions performed by J.P.A. Falzone, Laura Cetilia, Ashley Frith, Morgan Evans-Weiler and more. 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1361008500724105/

ABOUT THE WORK:

Historically, we have imagined units, containers, and chains to help us make sense of the world and our engagement with it. Things, bodies, and objects have been linked together throughout the building blocks of life. More recently though, our thinking brings us to the potential of the line. At each moment we are putting lines out into the world, hoping for crossings, connections, and knots to be created in our sympathetic and empathetic engagements. The line embodies a commitment to processual thinking. The line attempts to create a way of thinking in which all objects become verbs—we imagine assemblages of motions, connections, and resonances. Built into lines is the potential of our traversing the world, thus we have put upon lines a sense of our temporal concerns. Our directions are agitated by a sense of temporal mobility. This is especially present in considerations of a simultaneity. Each of us in our process is creating lines of flight that are always already in simultaneous connectivity. But our awareness of this is infinitely limited. We are unable to comprehend a simultaneity beyond the ego—we can’t imagine the possibilities of nowness outside of ourselves. The nowness is not just the present moment, but all of the presents that contain within them the meshworks of potentiality that have produced them. Into this place of virtuality, we fold ourselves unknowingly. This is where the inquiry in ‘Texture of Time’ begins. What is it for material, motion, and time to be bound up in a practice of life? How do we imagine the visual affect of a simultaneous now of empathetic connection that exists through our practice of putting out lines? By drawing on and cutting into paper; through making connections and constellations of motion, Morgan Evans-Weiler engages with the process of putting lines out into a world of temporal uncertainty and listening into our connected sociality. Through this accumulation of paths and trajectories, further imaginings of the resonance of traversals and simultaneity can be engaged. For Evans-Weiler, ‘Textures of Time’  is a practice. A practice that can potentially reveal something to us about the totality of a passing-feeling process. Each work is enmeshed in an engagement of social everyday being—each drawing is a patchwork of passage. Works in this way are not ‘works’ in the traditional sense, they are resonant surfaces of a vibrational, affective tone. ABOUT THE ARTIST: Morgan Evans-Weiler (b. 1984) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Ithaca, NY. His work is concerned with issues of time, process, materiality, and the social considerations of cartographic lines. His visual work has shown throughout the U.S. at Rhizome D.C. (Tacoma Park), Washington Street Art Center (Boston), Midway Art Gallery (Boston), Reflection Gallery (Hancock, MI), and Oliver Art Center (Frankfort, MI). His compositions have been performed at venues such as Conrad Prebys Hall (San Diego) and Rhode Island School of Art and Design Museum and by ensembles such as Skogen (Sweden), a.pe.re.od.ic (Chicago), and Extradition Ensemble (Portland, OR). As a performer, he has been featured at venues such as Jordan Hall, Issue Project Room, MIT List Museum, and many others. He is the founder of the New England experimental ensemble, Ordinary Affects, which has performed alongside Jürg Frey, Eva-Maria Houben, Christian Wolff, and Magnus Granberg. Ordinary Affects has received grants from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts and Pro Helvetia, and has been in residence at Avaloch Farm Institute. In 2016, along with Jed Speare, Evans-Weiler founded the concert/book series ‘Standing Waves.’ This series has produced a dozen concerts and three books of artist writings by artists such as Aki Onda, Bonnie Jones, Derek Baron, Sarah Hennies, and Jake Meginsky. Evans-Weiler’s music and performance is featured on record labels such as Another Timbre, Edition Wandelweiser, Elsewhere, Suppedenaum, and Weighter Recordings. He is currently an MFA candidate at Cornell University. 

[podilatokafe]

awesome jazz: Magnus Granberg, Skogen – Nun, Es Wird Nicht Weit Mehr Gehn (2019) Πηγή: awesome jazz: Magnus Granberg, Skogen - Nun, Es Wird Nicht Weit Mehr Gehn (2019)

[fileunder]

Magnus Granberg - 'How Deep is the Ocean...'

[dustedmagazine]

Magnus Granberg — How Lonely Sits the City (Another Timbre)

How Lonely Sits the City? by Magnus Granberg

“How lonely sits the city that was full of people,” begins the book of Lamentations. In 2019, the ever-resourceful Magnus Granberg accepted the challenge of writing music concerning issues of world crisis. Little did he or anyone else suspect the challenges of 2020 and beyond which would shape the piece now on offer, performed by a modified version of his malleable Skogen ensemble. While the piece is loosely based on Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, that’s only a metaphysical grounding for music that is, typically, nothing more or less then Granberg’s own.

To suggest that is not to diminish his work in any way, merely to state the originality of his voice. Return to 2017’s Ist Gefallen in den Schnee to hear not so much a progenitor as the continuum along which his music had been developing. Point and line are his gateways, and they can be easily confused as they intersect. Lonely is somewhat louder than the two pieces on that earlier album, but even that is a relative pronouncement concerning a dynamic world of crystalline gentleness rendering the moments of transgression, as at the 20-minute mark, even more poignant.

I wonder about the actual debt paid to Messiaen. Could it be the repetition, which, beyond the stages of dynamic intrigue as the nearly hour-long piece develops, drives the music forward? Messiaen’s own language is rife with it, even as it incorporates various levels of Darmstadt influence along the way. Repetition isn’t even a good descriptor, as it prescribes some sort of regularity. These are returns in continuous and cellular modification, dots forming constantly evolving shapes of increasing familiarity. They’re complemented by the subtle timbre shifts that are Skogen’s prerogative. One generalized description might involve a gradual motion toward sustains over points as the music progresses, but even that fails to capture the spatial counterpoint that is a hallmarkof Granberg’s work. The fluid sound world eventually provides a backdrop for beautifully executed passages of solo strings, most notably near the work’s conclusion.

What emerges, when all is added and subtracted, is a kind of fluid tableau. Just like the title suggests, we are placed above a moving panorama, a bustle as viewed from Brucknerian heights that can be heard either as serene or as continually self-agitating, depending on perspective and choice. As usual, the superb recording ensures that such a choice can easily be made without the effort of ear-straining. Like the label that houses so much of his work, Granberg moves from strength to strength, and this newest disc is no exception.

Marc Medwin

[dustedmagazine]

Dust, Volume 3, Number 16

We finish this edition of Dust as the last remnants of Thankgiving leftovers disappear, as the dark comes early and as the new release schedule wanes to a a dreary succession of box sets, surprise releases from commercial titans and holiday music (which Bill Meyer rather likes, it turns out, as long as it references Albert Ayler).  2017 is pretty much kicked (though we’re not saying there won’t be another Dust before the final curtain), and we’re glad to see it go.  That’s not to say that there hasn’t been some worthy music this year, and this week’s dust touches on some of it -- from glittery neo-soul, to out-country-rock, to free-jazz percussion, to Scandinavian drone, to some swinging Hammond B3.  Dusted writers including Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Justin Cober-Lake and Derek Taylor pick at the oddiments of the year’s fading feast and invite you to have a taste, as well.  

Amp Fiddler — Amp Dog Nights (Mahogani Music)

AMP DOG KNIGHTS | M.M-41 by Amp Fiddler

Amp Fiddler

If you know anything about Amp Fiddler, it’s likely that he taught a very young J. Dilla how to make beats on an MPC60 — up to that point he had rigged them DIY-style on a cassette player (you can learn a lot about his formative influence on Dilla in this podcast, which is highly recommended). But there’s more to know, obviously, the Detroit based artist has also worked with George Clinton, and this one, Amp Dog Nights, is his fourth solo recording. It’s a blast of intricately plotted, neo-soul-into-hip-hop artistry that features contributions from Slum Village’s T3, Ideeyah (who has worked with Theo Parrish), the velvety voiced singer Neco Redd, Moodyman and, on a couple of tracks, the late J. Dilla himself. The Dilla-produced single “Return of the Ghetto Flyer” channels slinky 1970s funk, in its twitchy, slouchy beat, its spikes of staccato guitar, its deep voiced narrator (that’s Amp Fiddler), surrounded by lush female-voiced choruses. “Put You in My Pocket Babe,” floats closer to Mayfield territory in fluttery, mystic falsetto runs and gospel choruses. Neco Redd, a Michigan-based comer, takes over the main mic in the Rhodes-shimmering, classic soul “No Politics,” her slippery, note-bending runs simmering, insinuating, soaring. Amp Fiddler may be best remembered for his protégé, but his own music is well worth checking out, too.

Jennifer Kelly

Hans Chew — Open Sea (At the Helm)

With fourth album Open Sea, pianist (and more) Hans Chew marks a shift in sound. The country rock and the early rock 'n' roll are still there. Tennessee hasn't disappeared, and the sound of Chew's roots and his Southern rock remain, but he explores further terrain. For every touch of moodier Allman Brothers sound, he digs into British influences, moving between psych and folk comfortably in mixing his own blend. He's cited Crazy Horse as a prominent influence and while that sound remains audible but not overbearing, the best touchstone now might be Steve Winwood. Opener “Give up the Ghost” owes its groove to Blind Faith, and traces of Traffic permeate the album.  

As Chew and bandmates (including vital guitarist Dave Cavallo) expand their sound, they also stretch out. Never beholden to short pop structures, the group now reaches past six minutes for five of these six tracks. Even so, none of these tracks rely on jams or noodling; the lengthy run-times give the group time to shift from Marshall Tucker into some psych into pounding rock across a single track. Chew makes big musical statements and they take time to deliver. If, as the title suggests, he spreads across a vast space, he does so without wasted geography. He claims his territory and refines it sharply.

Justin Cober-Lake 

Magnus Granberg — Nattens Skogar (Version for Four Players) (Insub) 

In his compositions for the Stockholm-based group Skogen, Magnus Granberg embeds improvisational opportunities within a specifically prescribed, generally unemphatic sound world. This is a guy who can place Toshimaru Nakamura into a performance of music inspired by Schubert and have it make sense. It’s all about balance, and that principal is also at work in Nattens Skrogar. Granberg has just three accompanists on this album length piece, and while its progress feels more open, there’s a similar exercise of restraint in order to accomplish a particular feel and sound. Magnus has credited “Monk’s Mood” by Thelonious Monk and Erik Satie’s nocturnes as inspiration; I’d bring up Morton Feldman as well. Each instrumental voice has plenty of space around it, which makes the moments where sounds blend feel quietly momentous. Granberg’s prepared piano playing creeps so slowly through scraps of melody that you almost forget they are there; Skogen violinist Anna Lindal’s long tones string them together like a lit-up suspension bridge spanning a misty stream at dusk. His touch is less vigorously clankety than Monk’s, but similarly effective at making you aware of what isn’t around it. The quartet’s other half, the Swiss duo of d’incise (electronics, harmonica) and Cyril Bondi (percussion, harmonica), partner with Grandberg in plunking down sounds so that you feel their ripples in time.

Bill Meyer

 Daniel Levin – Living (Smeraldina-Rima)

Living isn’t improvising cellist Daniel Levin’s inaugural solo venture, but it does present a first in another respect. The packaging breaks ranks with his past works in featuring paperback-sized fold-out cardboard packaging and screen-printed artwork that slips into an embossed plastic sleeve. Five pieces recorded over two days at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, CT in the summer of 2015 feature Levin communing intimately with his instrument and environment. “Assemblage” assembles a ghostly aural edifice from scrapes, whispers and muted cries. “Generator” also mimics its succinct title through the stark generation and hum of scabrous arco scribbles. Combined, “Baksy-buku” and “The Dragon” account for almost half of the recital’s running time and Levin fills their contours and corners with bow and fingers-driven investigations that reach across an expansive and elastic range of dynamics. Culminating with the abstruse and capacious “Mountain of Butterflies”, the disc ends with a stark insularity akin to as it began. If there’s arguable fault to be levied it lies in the lingering feeling that the absent visual components of Levin’s sustained synergy with his strings might have allowed for a welcome and felicitous point of ingress as well. 

Derek Taylor

Gregory Lewis — Organ Monk Blue (Self-Released)

The definition of a deserving musical conceit is one that carries both immediacy and longevity. Organ Monk Blue is Gregory Lewis’ third foray into the oeuvre of the eponymous composer/pianist (fifth overall) and the strong results show that there’s still plenty of fuel in the proverbial tank. Guitarist Marc Ribot brings additional cred to the project alongside Lewis’ regular Jeremy Bean Clemons on drums (both were also on board for his last project The Breathe Suite). A possible danger with transmogrifying Monk through Hammond B-3 lies in the instrument’s available amplitude and aggressiveness of sound. Lay it on too thick with pedals and stops and the subtle harmonic crevices and crannies endemic to Monk’s music can get paved over or sanded off. Lewis’ diligence toward close study of the songbook swiftly allays any such concerns. Groove-infused renditions of “Green Chimneys”, “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are” and the relative rarity “Blue Hawk” couch the program in the lead instrument’s soul jazz lineage without feeling retroactive or rote. Ribot in particular seems to revel in the emphasis on greasy gut actuation over arid brainpan overthought. 

Derek Taylor  

 Jake Meginsky — Gates and Variations (Open Mouth)

Some music falls between the cracks. Jake Meginsky pushes back the walls and walks like some cartoon character out on the air. But where Wile E. Coyote lost his capacity to float as soon as he became aware, knowledge enables Meginsky to hover in space without fear of disaster. The Massachusetts native has a background as a percussionist, and in that capacity he studied with free jazz drummer Milford Graves; his current live performance places him with free musicians of varied allegiances, from noise to jazz. But this recording feels like the work of solitary scrutiny, not interpersonal interaction. He deploys a few high tones, low thumps and crackles into vertiginous sound environments that propel you through time and space without letting your feet touch the dance floor or collide with walls of sound. It’s a rarified and unique space, but an easy one to spend time experiencing.

Bill Meyer

 Luggage—Three (Don Giovanni)

Three by Luggage

The picture of the Sears Tower (don’t even bring up any other names, OK?) on the j-card says it all. This music is Chicago business, monolith division. Drummer Luca Cimarusti, guitarist Michael Vallera and bassist Michael John Grant have spent enough time studying the hard-hitting sound of combos like Tar and Rapeman to know that they had to spend their dimes on a couple days at Electrical Audio to get that big, face-smacking sound. They also knew that if they were going to record there, they’d have to get honest, so what you hear is essentially a live recording, bar a few guitar overdubs and Vallera’s singing. The one-note dourness of his vocal delivery recalls that of another more recent Chicagoan, Brian Case of Disappears and FACS. Vallera, who also records solo and in the duo Cleared, fudges geography a bit by adding some reverb-swathed, Cocteau Twins-style guitar flourishes. This is sturdy stuff, just the thing to soundtrack your next drive through a part of town where potholes make AWD the right way to roll.

Bill Meyer 

 BJ Nilsen — Massif Trophies (Editions Mego)

Massif Trophies by BJNilsen

After four years of collaborations with Alan Courtis, Johan Johannsson and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, BJ Nilsen (formerly known as Hazard) is on his own again. At least, his is the only name on the cover; as his field recordings testify, a trip up Gran Paradiso, the highest Alpine peak in Italy is not something you undertake alone. There are passages on this LP where all you here is weather hitting earth, making sounds that preceded humanity and will most likely persist past any extinction event that might take us off the planet. But Nilsen isn’t a mere observer. The banter of workmen, the lowing of cattle, layers of wind chimes and buzzes of radio static let you know that he wasn’t alone, and electronic wobbles and rumbles confirm that he won’t leave well enough alone. What emerges is a hybrid of external environment and internal reverie, richly detailed and immersive.

Bill Meyer

  Peter Oren — Anthropocene (Western Vinyl)

Anthropocene by Peter Oren

“Where will I go, when I don’t want to be, with idle hands, awaiting catastrophe?” sings Peter Oren in the title track of this second full-length. It’s a good question, made better by the way it’s framed in a gentle, resonant baritone, a spare tangle of folk-blue guitar notes, the unexpected solace of strings. These are all traditional elements, most often pressed to service to reinforce the status quo, but Oren uses them instead to question the way things are. Whether it’s environmental degradation as in this cut (“We need bees for more than honey”), cog-in-the-machine complicity in “Chain of Command” (“Better you than me, said the dog to the sheep, keep your place in the pack, or else feel my teeth in your back.”), or queasiness about certain historical figures (“I don’t why I came, from this place Columbus Indiana, but it sure does feel strange coming from a place named after a killer and a misnomer”), Oren laces laid-back melodies with confrontation. The music itself is quite good, whether evoking dark-toned acoustic Smog (“Canary in a Coal Mine”) or full-on Crazy Horse country rock (“Throw Down”), but it’s the message that sticks. Oren isn’t out of hope — check the solidarity-celebrating fiddle romp “New Gardens” – but he isn’t letting anyone off the hook either, including himself.

Jennifer Kelly

 Speaking Suns—Range (Anyway)

RANGE by Speaking Suns

Speaking Suns has a drummer named David Byrne, but it’s not that David Byrne and indeed, for a university town art band with mostly rock instruments, they could hardly be less confusable with jittery, funk-wrecking Talking Heads. This five-some, led by guitarist and vocalist Jacob Diebold plays woozy, psychedelic sunshine grooves more along the lines of the Beachwood Sparks or, given the presence of trumpeter Jonathan Jacky, certain laid-back Elephant 6 outfits (Beulah especially). It’s a beach-y, tranquil, breezy spell that Speaking Suns cast in semi-title track “Out of Range.” A placid jangle of guitars frames soothing melodies, bright bits of trumpet light up the corners. “Wasting Time,” an extended daydream of a cut, evokes flow of all kinds – highway traffic, rivers, even music – in a shambling, whiskery-warm way that might remind you of War on Drugs before it got so damned clean. Like most of the Anyway roster, Speaking Suns hails from Ohio, but a singularly unabrasive part of the Buckeye State, about as far from jittery, weird-ass Cleveland or bubble-fuzz Dayton as possible. This is a double album, so get yourself an ice tea and take your shoes off; it’ll be a long sunny afternoon.

Jennifer Kelly

 Mars Williams — An Ayler Xmas (Mars Williams)

Mars Williams Presents: An Ayler Xmas by Mars Williams

Mars Williams isn’t the only guy to have this idea; there’s a saxophonist in Ottawa, Canada named Bernard Stepien who has hosted a semi-annual “Very Ayler Christmas” since 2006. But no one can own a good idea, and this one is unassailable. Consider the similarity between Albert Ayler’s compositions and actual hymns. Consider that Williams first learned about Ayler from one of his close associates, Don Cherry, at Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio in Woodstock NY and has been going back to the well ever since. And consider that he has kept an Ayler repertory band, Witches & Devils, going since the 1990s. Who wouldn’t want to have some egg nog with that? Williams (of Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble, Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Liquid Soul, the Psychedelic Furs, the Waitresses, and Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, amongst many others) started his Ayler Xmas concerts in 2008, and since 2015 he’s held them in towns besides Chicago. Their MO is to lay holiday themes on top of Ayler tunes, and it works quite well. This CD reproduces three medleys from a concert at Chicago’s Hungry Brain in 2016, and each taps authentically into the energy of mid-to-late Ayler groups. Cornetist Josh Berman makes a solid stand-in for Don Ayler, Jim Baker’s spacy keyboards honor the presence of Call Cobbs without sounding quite like him and Mars manages to sound big enough to step into some mighty big shoes.

Bill Meyer

[dustedmagazine]

Jürg Frey and Magnus Granberg—Early to Late (Another Timbre)

Musical connections are often made via circuitous routes. I found myself thinking about this recently when attending a performance of Renaissance composer William Byrd’s music composed for virginal (a transverse plucked keyboard instrument similar to a harpsichord) played instead on a concert piano. I was drawn to the concert by the utilization of Byrd’s music by Jürg Frey and Magnus Granberg in two new pieces, rather than by any particular passion for music of the late 16th century. With that listening background, the transposition of the pieces to an instrument suffused with rich sustain and expansive decay brought a focus to the variegated polyphony that readily connected back to the recordings captured on Early to Late, a recent release on the Another Timbre label.

The genesis of this project took its own circuitous route. In the autumn of 2015, Simon Reynell met with Frey and Granberg to discuss commissions for pieces with a relation to Renaissance music to be performed by the two along with Grizzana Ensemble at the 2017 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Reynell was completely open as to how this would manifest itself, other than a desire that this hint of a connection be a guiding influence. The two centered in on two pieces for source material, “How Vain Are All Our Frail Delights” by Byrd and “Déploration sur la mort de Binchois” by Johannes Ockeghem. Each absorbed and refracted the foundational material in ways that underline their respective approaches to compositional forms and group interplay. Granberg’s piece coopts the title of Byrd’s piece, while abstracting it into a changeable temporal framework for clarinet, piano, strings, celesta, dulcimer, glass harp, flute and electronics. Frey’s “Late Silence,” instead makes direct use of the melodic lines of the source material as ephemeral melodic and harmonic threads for an acoustic ensemble.  

In an interview on the Another Timbre site, Granberg reflects that “my piece basically consists of a few different pools of materials (containing melodic and rhythmic fragments, extended melodies, single notes, chords, suggestions regarding timbre etc.) notated in conventional staff notation, along with some suggestions as to how to treat them, as well as a temporal structure which regulates when to play from which group of materials. Within these groups or pools of materials the musicians are free to choose what to play and when to play it, and the final outcome is very much a result of the superimpositions, juxtapositions and interactions of the musical materials, as well as of individual and collective processes of listening, deciding (intuitively or consciously), acting and interacting, or not interacting, with one another.” Granberg’s choice of instrumentation and performers, a component long central to his practice, is the key to the potency of the piece. Running throughout are grains of a melodic thread (a ‘cantus firmus’) played by Frey on clarinet, derived from melodic fragments of the source material as well as Jerome Kern’s “In Love in Vain,” which reappears and morphs through the ensemble during the course of the piece.  

The score specifies that “the Cantus Firmus is (...) to be played very softly, almost silently. And later: (...) the Cantus Firmus at times only being present within the mind of the performer.” These instructions and the textural range of instrumentation provides a plaint, ever-shifting focus of attack and sustain, with pizzicato pops and sharply articulated knocks countered by arco scrims and quavering overtones. The tonal elements mix effectively with subtle, abraded electronics which add an additional layer of timbral depth. Over the course of the 40-minute piece, the ensemble navigates these wafts of thematic memory with an assured conviction. In the interview noted above, Dominic Lash, a member of the ensemble, explains that “the process of playing required great attentiveness, but was actually a calm and comfortable experience as long as you trusted the group and the music – in a sense the fragility seemed to lie more in the sounding result than the execution.” Listening, one is struck by the way that the strata and gradations of the parts continually intersect, break apart and overlap informed and guided by patience and careful listening.  

In his program notes for the Huddersfield premiere Frey describes “Late Silence” as follows. “The material is raw but delicate. The language is non-rhetorical and precise. The form has a clear architecture; sounds and sections become present and disappear but don’t dissolve. The work of the composer is elemental – as is its absence when the composer lets the music go on without interference. Tonality is vaguely touched on, a soft, slightly wavering light in the music. Silence, memory, presence – this triad shimmers in the background and keeps the piece in a balance of clear decisions and wide horizons.” In writing the piece, Frey utilized phrases and themes from Byrd and Ockeghem with minor transformations, adding in his own melodic lines. He lays out these kernels with his usual resolute lucidity, plying instrumental lines against each other with measured composure.  

The ensemble traverses the score with assiduous resolve, as various instrumental groupings reveal themselves. Tonal relationships and melodic line play a far more central role in Frey’s piece than in Granberg’s with calm pools of silence serving as central compositional elements. Just as central to the score is Frey’s usual attention to the slow, unrushed passage of time.  While tonality and harmonic relationships are paramount, Frey calls on Granberg and John Lely to use stones (a possible homage to Christian Wolff) to add in hints of abraded textures at points along the way. But it is still the way that Frey places the long, drawn string arcos, crystalline piano part (played with command by Phillip Thomas,) pairing of clarinet and harmonicas, or the resonance of double bass within the unfolding sound field that define this piece.  

Hearing these two pieces together makes for an entrancing listen. The Granberg piece edges out Frey’s for me, but with patient attention, each listener will find their own way to navigate these absorbing readings.  

Michael Rosenstein