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dustedmagazine · 3 years ago

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Dust Volume 7, Number 10

Chillingsworth Surfingham is Dust’s first ever musical teddy bear.

That craptastic summer is done, no more heat dome, or fires, or inland hurricanes and or continual threat of catastrophe, and we greet the change of seasons with a sigh of relief. Now that things have calmed — and cooled — down, we can dig into the piles of new releases in acid folk, jazz, metal, punk, rap and, our favorite, unclassifiable, to find what’s good and what’s not. This month’s sonic explorers include Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Justin Cober-Lake, Ian Mathers, Chris Liberato, Bryon Hayes and Jonathan Shaw.

Adeline Hotel — The Cherries Are Speaking (Ruination)

The Cherries Are Speaking by Adeline Hotel

When we last caught up with Dan Knishkowy, he was mostly concerned with improvised guitar, tracing smoke-wispy blues licks in the ruminative Good Timing from earlier this year. The Cherries Are Speaking deploys a more varied collection of sounds: a jaunty, jazzy saxophone from David Lackner, some lush and evocative strings from Macie Stewart and piano, the instrument that Knishkowy turned to in the long months of the pandemic. The result is a set of songs that veer more towards baroque pop than stripped down country folk. The title track, for instance, swells with lavish sonics, a fluttery flute, some vibrato-laden violins, a blowsy soft-toned saxophone. The piano parts are clear but simple, picking out sparkly counterpoints to Knishkowy’s blues vocals on “Raspberry Stains,” adding arpeggiated flourishes to “We Go Outside.” Knishkowy’s longtime rhythm section of Sean Mullins and Andrew Stocker offers subtle, jazz-infused grounding, while guest vocals including Eric D. Johnson (more in Bonny Light Horseman mode than Fruit Bats), Caitlin Pasko and Vivian McConell (from V.V. Lightbody) fill out his quiet melodies. You might not even realize there’s no guitar at all in The Cherries Are Speaking until you check the credits. You won’t miss it. There’s plenty to hear without it.

Jennifer Kelly

Robbie Avenaim / Chris Abrahams / Jim Denley—Weft (Relative Pitch)

Weft by Robbie Avenaim, Chris Abrahams, Jim Denley

If I told you that there’s a new record by a trio that includes Chris Abrahams, and it consists of one 45-minute-long track, you might think that you have a pretty good idea how it sounds. And if you said, “it sounds like the Necks,” that would be understandable but also inaccurate. While this trio, does, like the Necks, operate in the zone of long-form, spontaneous music-making, both the instruments used and the personalities wielding them ensure that this sounds different from any trio you have ever heard. Abrahams sticks to synthesizer, with which he cultivates an insectoid environment embedded with quietly glassy interludes. The breathy curlicues, low blows and amplified keypads of Jim Denley’s bass flute lob sounds out of said environment as comfortably as frogs conversing in a country pond. But it is Robbie Avenaim, a frequent associate of Oren Ambarchi, who really sets this session apart. He plays prepared typewriter, running its rustle and clatter through an unidentified chain of preparations that makes one forget where the sounds came from and further focuses the ear upon the way this music establishes its own space for the duration of its existence.

Bill Meyer

Atræ Bilis — Apexapien (20 Buck Spin)

Apexapien by Atræ Bilis

This debut full-length from Canadian filthers Atræ Bilis is quite uneven and unoriginal. The band runs through all possible types of death metal (skipping only grind-infused ones). The lowest point is two tracks with the similar structure. “Open the Effigy” and “By The Hierophant's Maw” both venture too close to deathcore territory. The highest point is probably “Hymn of the Flies”, highly technical with sound signatures and changes in tempo and punchiest riffing. The rest of the CD falls in between and will be rightfully forgotten after a week or two.

Ray Garraty

Bevel — Angler Senses (Astral Editions)

Angler Senses by Bevel

You have to respect a man who tells it like it is. “I love my cat more than I could ever love you,” pledges Via Nuon, who is the singer, guitarist, and “all the other instruments not played by these jazz guys”-ist of Bevel. Many individuals who have sustained long-term relationships with both humans and felines know exactly how he feels. And as you listen to this album, which is confined to the humble realms of the digital and cassette-spheres, you will have other experiences of understanding. For while this album is being released on Astral Editions, which is mostly devoted to stuff too fringy for the Astral Spirits jazz label, a couple decades back this record would probably have gotten released on Secretly Canadian and gotten a high-profile review on Pitchfork. Maybe the latter will still happen, and maybe that imaginary reviewer will tell you the same thing as me — Mr. Nuon knows what he’s doing. His skills as a guitarist and baroque pop arranger are beyond reproach, and the vulnerability imparted by his singing makes up for his challenges at nailing each and every pitch. And when you listen, he speaks truths that are no less true for being as mundane as your life. All respect to his cat, and to him, too.

Bill Meyer

Cherry Cheeks — S-T (Total Punk)

S/T LP by CHERRY CHEEKS

Cherry Cheeks makes a brash, herky-jerk kind of punk rock, with clanky chunky bitten off bass fighting off brutalist drumming and a guitar crashing through from the floor upstairs. It sounds like a band, but it’s actually the one-person, pandemic project of one Kyle Harms, originally from Orlando, but now relocated to Portland, Oregon. There’s a degree of conflict in these songs that makes the one-person business faintly unbelievable, but if you haven’t had an argument with yourself these long COVID months, you’re probably doing it wrong. In any case, the stop-start aggro of “Go Outside,” will likely sound good to anyone who likes Bodega. The fanciful yet forceful stomp of “Two Bugs,” may call to fans of Terry. In “Boxes,” the bassline banks off walls and caroms off angles, while a firestorm of guitar rips through whatever it leaves standing. The cut, perhaps inspired by Harms’ recent cross-country move, rattles a chorus of “Everything comes in boxes, boxes” that is unnervingly aggressive. There are wild swirl of keyboard and tunefulness pushed to Jay Reatard-esque levels of agitation, and all in all, 25 minutes of pure fun.

Jennifer Kelly

Chillingsworth Surfingham — Chillingsworth (ATOM)

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Every few years we need a surf guitar revival. Usually, it takes a Tarantino movie or some indie-rockers taking a vacation. Probably it's no indication of an imminent revival, but the Bobbleheads' John Ashfield gets to the beach in a new way. He's created a teddy bear alter-ego named Chillingsworth Surfingham, and given him free range of his Dick Dale collection. Were Ashfield simply rehashing the old tropes, this Chillingsworth album could simply slide into your novelty pile and await its time in the cutout bin (or whatever the new version of that old pile is). Ashfield finds more interesting routes, though, adding some psych and some darker material to the sounds. After the first few seconds of opener “Coronado,” he never fully plays to expectations. “Cowboy a Go-Go” toys with the ideas, but undercuts any attempts to enforce solemnity. “I Was There” highlights the shadier side of the genre while adding synth flourishes for a strange sort of experience. Ashfield's joy in the music runs throughout the disc, but that doesn't mean he hasn't worked at crafting something original. Both fun and intriguing, Chillingsworth Surfingham turns out to be a stuffed animal that does more than just play around.

Justin Cober-Lake

Eluvium — Virga II (Temporary Residence)

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Matthew Cooper started his Virga series of ambient albums out of creative restlessness and nostalgia, not the kind of cooped-upedness that’s led to so much similar work (crucially, the first instalment was in late 2019), but the sonic darkness of the first half of Virga II might make listeners wonder if the focus of the project has shifted in the interim. Not that the growling static of “Hallucination I” or the billowing noise of “Scarlet Hunter” are totally new registers for him, it’s just that you might need to go back to debut Lambent Material in 2003 for comparison. In the second half, though, the calmly glowing shoals of “Touch Returned” and the title track get closer to what Virga I was doing; both sides are equally compelling, the storm and the calm after, and it will be interesting to see whether Cooper takes these new generative tools he’s built and goes farther afield with them; there’s clearly fertile territory out there.

Ian Mathers

Los Esplifs — Estraik Back (Self-Released)

Estraik Back by Los Esplifs

Los Esplifs reinterprets the clip clopping, side-swaying, heavily percussive forms of the cumbia with a lived-in love. The band, mainly a duo of jazz organist and multi-instrumentalist Saul Millan and Afro Cuban All Star Caleb Michel, brings jazz fusion and kraut rock into its fiery interpretation of “Y El Monsoon,” but plays “Otro Pais,” relatively straight, with intricate multi-timbred percussion and languid, ultra-romantic vocals. “Galaxia” puts a psychedelic sheen on cumbia’s off-beat thumping cadences, little frills of organ and swathes of wah wah’d guitar curling out of the steady rhythm. “Tekno Cumbia” pushes the traditional form even further out on a limb, with sing-song-y synths and rave-y four on the floor. The disc closes with an odd “Eskit,” in which gravel-voiced Spanish speakers seem to argue about whether they are Latino or LatinX, but why put things in boxes? Estraik Back certainly doesn’t.

Jennifer Kelly

Glenn Echo — Fixed Memory (Self-released)

Fixed Memory by Glenn Echo

Glenn Echo, an experimental songwriting project headed by Matt Gaydar, has been around for a little over half a decade, moving steadily during that time from a fairly standard, whispery, guitar-based confessional indie folk towards something odder and more elaborate. Fixed Memory layers scratchy found sounds, electronic elements and unsettling rhythms over its plaintive melodies, landing somewhere in the vast spaces between, say, Iron and Wine and Radiohead. Some of the songs, “Moon and Wine,” for instance, are well-executed but conventional, their feathery picking and soft harmonies needing not much more than a guitar, a mic and a stool to take shape. But “Hearth” is edgier and more remote, powered by chilly synthetic tone-washes and skittering electronic rhythms, and sung in an eerie tenor that evokes Thom Yorke (and it’s perhaps worth mentioning that one of the very earliest items on Glenn Echo’s bandcamp.com page is a Radiohead cover). And yet Gaydar never lets complexity swamp the pensive prettiness of his melodies. “Drink Up This Fire” has a careless, jazzy lilt to it, sung at a murmur and framed by the slightest, most transparent bits of guitar. Solo songwriters are a dime a dozen, but this is more interesting and better.

Jennifer Kelly

Havukruunu — Kuu Erkylän Yllä (Naturmacht Productions)

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These Finnish mutants are usually slotted into the pagan black metal subgenre but only the final track “Talvikuu,” describing an ancient battle, betrays the band’s pagan roots. It’s probably the weakest cut on the whole EP, and who needs another battle hymn in Finnish pagan upholstery anyway? Seven-minute-long “Mustan merkin enteen alla” is another failure, attempting cosmic metal but delivering only clichés, from keyboard to clean vocals. Still, the first three cuts save the day with straight ahead, no-experiments, filthy vomit of black metal at Archgoat-like speed and a no hostages approach to riffing.

Ray Garraty

Izzy Johnson — earth tones (Driftless)

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“If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you,” proposes the Michigan state motto. It seems that Izzy Johnson would agree. In a press photo for their debut album, earth tones, the lifelong Michigander sits serenely in a field of spent wheat, soaking up some winter sun. Meanwhile, in the video for “Loving,” Johnson and pup take a walk through the peaceful, snowy forests of the state’s southern nature preserves. But the album’s ethereal soundscapes are elemental in ways not implied by its title: Johnson’s vocals blink to life suddenly like fireflies, casting a warm, blurry aura around them before flickering out again. And their guitar playing has the fluid feel of a warm country breeze, with slow-picked lines that trail off like colorful streamers into the sonic ether, blending with harp, flute, keyboard, and more. It’s a beautiful place to visit, whether you’re just stopping to enjoy the view, or looking for somewhere to go get lost.

Chris Liberato

La Luz — S-T (Sub Pop)

La Luz by La Luz

Seattle’s all female surf punk band, La Luz, waited until the fourth full-length to make an eponymous album, but this one is good enough to want your name on. The band, led by Shana Cleveland (who has made some very fine solo albums lately, too), brings a cool, melodic polish to songs that flicker with Nuggets fire. “In the Country,” which circulated as a single earlier in the summer, layers cooing, sighing vocals over a desert dry instrumental that’ll remind you of Ennio Morricone. “The Pines” is even better with sharp, slicing surf licks, tambourine-jangling beats, and an undeniable undercurrent of wistful melancholy. Cleveland is a talented guitarist steeped in surf, soul and freakbeat, but she doesn’t wallow in history, instead bringing these forms cleanly and clearly into the modern day.

Jennifer Kelly

Sylvin Marc / Del Rabenja — Madagascar Now Maintenant ‘Zao (Souffle Continu)

Madagascar Now by Sylvin Marc / Del Rabenja

The France-based Souffle Continu label has reissued a handful of albums created by or associated with pianist Jef Gilson, and this one is the most exciting of the bunch. Multi-instrumentalists Marc and Rabenja, both from Madagascar, were in the jazz combo Gilson named after the African island nation’s people: Malagasy. On this recording they share bandleader and composer duties, with most of the compositions crafted by Marc. The A side features a modern take on traditional Malagasy song forms. Rabenja’s compositions feature the valiha, a tubular harp that sounds sort of like a zither. Traditional xylophones and tambourine-like instruments provide accompaniment. Marc takes Madagascar into funk territory, aided by the elastic bass of his cousin, Ange “Zizi” Japhet. Japhet and Marc also pull off some seriously bad-assed vocalising; could they just be Madagascar’s answer to James Brown? On the flip the band, which also includes Gerard Rakotoarivony on bass and Frank Raholison on drums, establishes themselves as a force capable of cranking out post-bop and free jazz. Rabenja switches to tenor sax and Fender Rhodes, while Marc takes up the bass. The three Marc-penned pieces swing either jauntily (“Del-Light”) or urgently (“Ô Ambalavoa ‘City’” and “Rotaka”). The latter is a fiery blast that shows off the instrumental prowess of this quintet. Lovingly restored on vinyl, Madagascar Now is an essential artifact for those interested in the Malagasy sounds — both traditional and jazzy — of the 1970s.

Bryon Hayes

MVW — CLASSIC$ (AWAL)

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Michael Vincent Waller has so far been known as a composer, and as MVW he’s not so much moving away from that world as applying it to a new context. Specifically rap, and the most striking thing about his inaugural CLASSIC$ EP under the new moniker is just how natural he and fellow producer Lex Luger make all the orchestral elements feel on these tracks. Whether it’s Jaydonclover providing sung interludes (and possibly the de rigeur producer ID at the beginning of many of the tracks) or the way Chicago rapper Valee nimbly darts around and through the beats, strings and other elements, CLASSIC$ makes what you might call orchestral trap and, even more impressively, never makes it sound like a novelty mashup. Among the brief tracks, the Valee showcase “Still Do” and trio cut “Really Wanna Know” stand out, the former for its loveliness cut with Valee’s verbal astringency and the latter for how woozy and off-kilter the looped string figure feels, perfectly underpinning each rapper. The possibilities are, to say the least, intriguing.

Ian Mathers

Yann Novak — Lifeblood of Light and Rapture (Room40)

Lifeblood of Light and Rapture by Yann Novak

Serial ambient producer Yann Novak’s music is a cathartic exercise for him. Slowly Dismantling, his previous album for Room40, dealt with impermanence and identity; this collection of compositions is meant to overcome a twisted sort of fatalism. Ironically, the actions we take to escape the destructive tendencies of our own species often lead to the destruction of our own minds and bodies. Novak sees the hedonistic escape of his past reflected in humanity’s reliance on technology and its various distractions today. It’s a very salient viewpoint, especially considering that certain social media channels have recently come under fire for poisoning our youth in the name of profit. Sonically, the four extended pieces that Novak offers are far more hopeful. He synthesizes organ-like chords that waft in bright, colorful patterns. This isn’t necessarily cheerful music, but it is the almost sanguine antidote to the gloominess of Ravedeath, 1972-era Tim Hecker. With Lifeblood of Light and Rapture, Novak intended to shine a little light in a time of almost insurmountable negativity, and he has succeeded.

Bryon Hayes

Offset Jim — Rich Off The Pack (Play Runners Association)

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Offset Jim runs out of things to say ridiculously fast – in the first minute of this release. For the next 21 minutes, he strains to find new ways to say the same thing, repeating words in different combinations. Always down to earth, he’s downright pedestrian here. His usual skill with hooks is missing, too. A few guests fill out his uninspired verses, including AllBlack, EST Gee, Babyface Ray and Aitch. It’s hard to believe but they have even less to say than their host. A song called “Make No Sense” says it all: if you are rich off the pack why record such dull music? It makes no sense, really.

Ray Garraty

Brigid Mae Power — Burning Your Light (Fire)

Burning Your Light by Brigid Mae Power

Fresh off a string of well-regarded full-lengths, which began with her self-titled Tompkins Square album in 2016 and culminated in last year’s Head Above the Water, the Irish folksinger shows no qualms about taking on the big guns. This six-song covers EP reinterprets canonical material in fragile, idiosyncratic style. What her version of Aretha Franklin’s torch jazz, gospel-choired ��It Ain’t Fair” gives up in sheer force and power, it makes up in flickering, soul-searching sensitivity. The manicured, polished twang of Patsy Cline’s “Leavin’ on Your Mind,” gives way to spare, pensive desolation. Dylan may swagger and howl and declaim in his original “One More Cup of Coffee,” but Power asks quietly, gracefully, stoically for a little more time with a lover on his way out. These melancholy songs—rounded out by cuts from Songs:Ohia, Townes Van Zandt and a traditional folk tune—don’t get in your face; they seem instead to ask you to respect the singer’s reticence. She doesn’t need to yell to get your attention.

Jennifer Kelly

Sorguinazia — Negation of Delirium (Iron Bonehead Records)

Iron BoneHead Productions · Sorguinazia - Black Spell Of Supremacy

You don’t hear a lot of black metal coming out of Canada — but it’s north and it’s white and it’s really, really cold. Conditions seem propitious. This new LP of kvlty, nasty black metal by Sorguinazia suggests that the Canadian tundra and charnel tar sands can produce music as hopeless and tormented as that which comes from more notorious climes in Scandinavia. Sorguinazia comprises a duo who identify as Xolaryxis and Axczor and make songs that have a sort of tidal action, swirling and churning with vertiginous, weirdly forceful playing. It’s pretty interesting: Xolaryxis’s guitar has the requisite icy brittleness, but his notes also bend and distend. At 42 minutes long, Negation of Delirium makes for a whole lot of bending and distending. Luckily, Sorguinazia saves some of the best stuff for the end of the record. “Saraswati” starts with a field recording of rain, a familiar element of many atmospheric moments on black metal records; eventually a distant drumbeat thrums under the sounds of rainfall, and there’s an occasional metallic jangle, perhaps a tambourine. The band lets that ride for well over three minutes. It’s simultaneously meditative and suspenseful. The sounds fade, there’s a moment of silence, and then “Neuromancy” commences; it’s a particular venomous version of the band’s characteristic black metal chaos. It’s hard to say why Saraswati, Hindu goddess of music, erudition and art, might be invoked just before such a savage sonic experience. Transcendence through decadent musical magic? But why Hinduism? Maybe the band digs the sensory overload of much Hindu iconography and ritual. At their best, Sorguinazia’s songs gesture toward such experiences. They’re a black metal band worth watching.

Jonathan Shaw

Zelma Stone — The Best (Self-Released)

The Best by Zelma Stone

Chloe Studebaker, who records as Zelma Stone, has had a rough few years, losing an older brother, her mom, her grandfather and a close friend in succession. But with this third EP this year, she seems to be gathering her strength and getting on with things, assuring us, on “Money Honey,” that “I’m fine now, I’m fine now, I’m fine.” She is certainly a velvet-voiced singer, murmuring soothingly then kicking it up into a blues-y diva-ish crescendos. And she’s got a way with laid-back rock tunes that simmer until they boil but never lose their tunefulness. A crack band helps her get these songs across, including Tyler English from Everyone Is Dirty, doing some evocative pedal steel and electric guitar, and jazz bassist Jodi Durst, here laying down a soulful underpinning. Studebaker reminds me a whole lot of an artist named Arrica Rose (sometimes heading the Dot Dot Dots). They share a vocal timbre, but it’s more than that. They’re both polished but genuine rock interpreters who can sing and play and lead a band in a rock goddess way that has become far less common than it used to be. I’d say she’s considerably more than fine.

Jennifer Kelly

Various Artists — Blackford Hill Transmissions Vol. 1 (Blackford Hill)

Transmissions / Volume One by Various artists

The Scottish experimentalists here run the gamut from unearthly folk to space age electronics and sometimes bring them into alignment. A 31-track compilation curated by Blackford Hill proprietor Simon Levin features a few medium well-known names like King Creosote, whose fragile tenor wafts over the hums and moans of wheezing synths in “Stopping Out (Concrete Antenna Reinterpretation)”, and Richard Youngs in full electronic mode in “Thought Plane 2020” with wobbly beats made of notes that phase in and out of pitch. Many of these artists seek to bridge natural and cyber-derived music, as in the gorgeous “Oxgangs Elegy” from Water of Life, which merges the sound of running water and wildlife with cool, meditative synth sounds and a dopplering siren that comes from far away. Rob St. John of Water of Life makes another rather impressive appearance in “Surface Tension,” which merges piano and autumnal string arrangements and a guitar in a cut that hovers magically about a foot off the ground in meditative tranquility. Classically trained Emily Scott, who sometimes performs with Modern Studies, contributes a serene chamber string-and-voice reverie in “The Garden,” while Mac Tella Nan Creag wreathes a stoic traditional Scots tune with whistling synth tones in “Lament for the Sons of Uislu.” Ultramarine’s “Ebbtide (from Blackwaterside)” is abstract and lyrical along the lines of Jon Hopkins work, while Andrew Wasylyk’s “Adrift Amid a Constellation (Tommy Perman Remix)” sets percolating synth motifs atop a steady four-on-floor dance beat. There’s a lot here, and you will undoubtedly find your own favorites. The search is part of the fun.

Jennifer Kelly

Various Artists — Tymbal (Fuzzy Panda Recording Company)

Tymbal by Destroyer of Worlds

Depending on the type of news you consume, you may not have heard about Brood X at all, or it might have been practically all you heard about through May and June of this year. One of the many notable things about cicadas, of course, especially en masse, is just how loud they can be. So, DC’s Fuzzy Panda Recording Company provided 25 different musicians with hours of field recordings of Brood X, and then asked them to produce tracks using only those sounds as source samples. Given the number of those trying their hand and the rather singular nature of cicada sounds, it’s not too surprising that a decent number of the resulting tracks on Tymbal sound at least part of the time like anyone who’s lived around cicadas might expect them to sound. That doesn’t mean those more straightforward attempts don’t have their own buzzing, restless energy, though, and the places where contributors do stretch further and turn the cicadas into something more striking (the stuttering computer sound of Chester Hawkins’ “Plague Madrigal,” Small Craft’s luminous “they, like the comets, make but a short stay with us,” and the closing and impressively self-descriptive “Brood X Mechanical Dancebot '38” by Love of Ruins, to take just three examples) make Tymbal something special.

Ian Mathers

Wreche — All My Dreams Came True (I, Voidhanger)

All My Dreams Came True by WRECHE

Surely one of the more bizarre recordings to be issued anywhere this year, Wreche’s All My Dreams Came True is the product of one John Steven Morgan, an Oakland-based composer and keyboard player with a serious love for black metal. So far, so good — but check out the first half of “Mysterium,” a combination of flowing, new-age piano; lush, melodramatic synths; percussion that manages to blast but also to sound jazzy and restrained; and Morgan’s strangled screams. It’s completely bananas, a synthesis of musical styles that have no business being in conversation with one another, much less being in a band together. The song’s second half gives itself over to compositional forms that are recognizably blackened — especially if one has in mind the more performative and epic modes of black metal — but the instrumentation and musicianship retain the stamp of Morgan’s singular hand. And the record only gets more spectacularly strange; see “The Darkling Thrush,” which starts with what feels like a nod to Chopin, and then explodes into operatically scaled intensities. And then the song goes on like that for over nine minutes. The freaks at I, Voidhanger have an ear for this sort of wackiness, and a knack for presenting recordings like All My Dreams Came True without any winking or smirking. The record itself is an undecidable thing, dancing forever on the threshold that separates access to idiosyncratic genius from uncomfortable voyeurism—that feeling you get when you’re prying into someone’s private obsessions, with all the infernal distortions that inform an obsession suddenly on naked display. The more you listen, the more you’re convinced that there’s something profoundly moving about Morgan’s music. He sure can play.

Jonathan Shaw

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daveolivetti · 5 years ago

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What is Music Festival By David Olivetti Published - Drum Media 2000

"As a guitarist, I'm interested in expanding what a guitar can do and what a guitar is meant to sound like," says Oren Ambarchi. "There's a lot of different aspects that you'll just pull together and it becomes a language. Your language."

The idea of defining or categorising music has infected sound throughout centuries. People have been traveling from the rainforests of the Amazon to virtual Las Vegas in search of an answer. Some cultures fail to understand such a question. "There are many languages," wrote musicologist Kofi Agawu, "that do not have a single word for what in English is meant by the word music."

Which brings us to the What is Music? festival. Celebrating its sixth year, Australia's premier avant garde and experimental music festival is underway, returning from a run of shows at the Big Day Out. The festival organisers do not claim to have the answer of what music is. "When we named it, it was more a joke off-the-cuff,” admits Ambarchi. However, upon close inspection the list of players to have performed at this annual 'meet' offers light to such spheres of debate.

Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim have been the festival's organisers since its inception. As musicians, their relationship stretches back to Australian terrorist noise outfit, Phlegm. They have continued to work together and seperately; Ambarchi reeasing impressive solo records, making sufficient impact to tour with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and The No Neck Blues Band.

"It's music that's vital and it's happening," says Ambarchi, translating the music the festival promotes as a living, breathing organism.

"It's music that's constantly evolving. We do it and we're also fans. We're into it. The first line-up was basically all local - Jon Rose, The Machines for Making Sense, Phlegm, The Mumesons... It was like this weird cross-section. Four nights and only one act a night in those days. It's much bigger than it used to be and it's more well-known."

Indeed, what started as a one-off has blossomed into a full-fledged world class event. This year's festival is shaping up to be the most exciting yet, featuring artists from all over the globe including artists from the Mego label roster, avant garde guitar legend Keith Rowe, English improviser Simon Wickham-Smith, American funnyman Neil Hamburger, Melbourne quartet Dworzec and saxophonist Jim Denley.

The festival brings together a dynamic mix of artists exploring a soundworld through acoustic improvisation, digital technology, free music and far-out collaborations. It's sure to raise the hairs on the back of one's neck, fire the senses and offer insight into a mysterious music world. The line-up suggests a retreat from the terrifying wall of noise characteristic of previous What is Music? festivals. However, the chance of a surprise attack is never out of the question.

"Well you never know with those guys from Mego," Ambarchi smiles, suggesting artists suc as these are in a constant state of metamorphosis and impossible to pin down. "In the beginning those Mego guys were connected to the techno community and minimalism. Since they've taken off, all their new releases are really noisy. Mego has inadvertently become a focal point for this year's festival. The label's most accomplished artists - Peter Rehberg, Simon Bauer, the acclaimed Fennesz and video band Skot - are all performing.

An Austrian label, Mego works across the field of electronic media choosing digital technology as it's chief source of musical mischief. However, Mego reflects a new music state, where sound created through software packages, computers, modulated synthesisers and effects units have become the modus operandi, inventing a new computerised language.

"I'm happy about the Mego label coming here because I think it's something happening right now. It's not something that happened two years ago and then it comes to Australia."

Peter Rehberg and Simon Bauer are two artists at the forefront of the digital music scene. They write and perform their own compositions as well as running the Mego offices. "I've always been interested in the latest developments of music," says Rehberg, discussing his movement from an ambient/experimental DJ to digital innovator. "It developed from the wider availability of software. Prices coming down in computer hardware made it an easier thing to do. You can make sounds now on a computer, which you couldn't make on an analogue machine 10 years ago. I think that interests me more."

On the other side of the spectrum, Keith Rowe is arguably the festival's biggest name. Best known for his ground-breaking work with British group AMM - a post-John Cage improvisation collective than began in the sixties and still perform today. He continues to astound audiences as a one-man sound laboratory. His role as a 'tabletop' guitarist sees him exploring and extending the possibilities of the guitar. Often, he places the guitar flat on a table and with a clear mind and a box of preparations (nails, screws, electric motors, rulers) he begins his compositions as you see it. Much like a painter in the studio. He is very much looking forward to the festival.

"One thing I've realised is that 30 years ago, the freely improvised music that we developed in Europe and North America was particular to a few towns and a few cities whereas now it's across the world," says Rowe. "That music spread everywhere. I'm looking forward to seeing that development happening on the other side of the globe. It’s fantastic."

As a senior member of the avant garde movement, who has been performing for close to 40 years, Rowe finds working alongside the current crop of artists propose new challenges and offer insightful collaborations. "I find it really invigorating because they have a completely different agenda to us older guys in the sense that when we started to make tis freely abstract kind of music without a repertoire we were really fighting against the established giants like [John] Coltrane. We were trying to develop our own music, our own agenda, our own aesthetic. Of course, the young guys have got something completely different. They are much more with computers and technology. I'm a primitive in that respect."

The What is Music? festival is essentially grounded in its enthusiasm, but like the music it promotes the festival itself is evolving. The very act of the festival finds itself (sub)consciously peeling open the systems of established states of performance for both the performer and listener, and offers space for new spheres of thought. Its alive both as a free music enterprise and an ideas factory.

On what influences his current playing, Rowe says, "I think challenging new ways of assembling material. The way a performance is shaped, you know, what happens in a performance. What is a performance?".

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