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REVIEWS
RECORDINGS
300 BASSES. Sei Ritornelli. PotlatchP212.
There's
something
wonderful about first
__;
hearing an instrument
transformed, such as
Eric Glick
Rieman
preparing a FenderRhodes electric piano
or Seymour Wright playing a saxophone by
tapping and amplifying it, not blowing it for
long stretches of time. As fine as those
experiences might be it's more striking still
to hear an ensemble playing the same instruments with results that bear no immediate
resemblance to one's expectations, as if a
new order of things has suddenly asserted
itself. The group name 300 Basses might
suggest an enormous orchestra or choir of
low-pitched strings or voices, but the CD is
stranger still: it's a group of three accordionists-Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Jonas Kocher,
and Luca Venitucci-who,
in an hour-long
program scarcely ever produce sounds
suggesting that they're playing accordions.
The instruments and one's expectations are
utterly deconstructed.
"Fuoco Fatua" is
silence gently massaged with noise. "Abbandonato" is a contemplative chorus of electric saws. "Gira Bile" is a groan repeated
and spaced with the care of an isolated
interval in a Morton Feldman composition.
"Maledetto" is a whistling sine wave. The
ultimate achievement is not the accordion's
transformation but the extraordinary collectively improvised music of this ensemble, in
which the distinct
identities
of Costa
Monteiro, Kocher, and Venitucci are as
submerged as the identity of their instruments. It's a spectacular achievement on
every level. -Stuart
Broomer
3008ASSES

John Butcher and Mark Sanders.
Daylight. Emanem5024.
The saxophone-drum
duo has a long history
in free jazz-a primal
pairing that achieved
an early high in the
1967 John Coltrane and
Rashied Ali recording
called Interstellar Space. Such fire-breathing
antecedents might seem distant from the
music of English saxophonist John Butcher,

54

mus1cworks#114I WINTER 2012

often concerned as it is with acoustic resonances, sounds found in the saxophone's
nooks and crannies, and the layering of
harmonics in richly textured improvisations.
But Butcher and percussionist Mark Sanders
often touch here on the free-jazz ritual of
energized liberation.
The title Daylight
derives from the music occurring in two
afternoon performances in 2010 and 2011.
The opening Ropedance is a half-hour tour,
with Sanders creating both rhythmic fields
and minimalist
melodic phrases, while
Butcher manages to execute lines with a
dense multi phonic sound. Nothing is stable
here and the two wander through diverse
phases until they achieve unity, Butcher's
saxophone seemingly part of Sanders' drumkit. On the shorter Flicker, the two individually explore high and low pitches, ultimately
creating multiple levels of simultaneous
exchange. After some eerie ceremonial
bowing and multiphonics, Glowstick seems
to celebrate the lineage, with Butcher
offering coiling, trilling soprano saxophone
lines in the spirit of John Coltrane. The
instrumentation
has rarely inspired the
variety of timbres or the identity transfers
achieved here. -Stuart
Broomer

Coat Cooke & Joe Poole. Conversations.
NOWOrchestraRecordsCLNOWooo6.
Vancouver saxophonist
Coat Cooke has always
been in full control of
his horn and is capable
of great heights of creativity. He leads the NOW
Orchestra
and is
extremely active in many parts of the Canadian
music community. But few projects have given
him, as this one does, the freedom to express
the full breadth of his artistry. Poole, one of
Vancouver's first-call drummers, here gives
Cooke the solid yet sensitive foundation that
allows him to soar. This is their first outing
together, and it's a fruitful one. The CD is
full of listening, perhaps even more so than
playing, and in the music world, that is a high
compliment. The music on this CD possesses
a rare clarity of expression such as comes
only with years of paring music down to its
essence. Although clearly free improv, the
playing is not subject to the self-absorbed
cliches that plague that genre. Instead, it
bursts with life, creativity, and discovery.
-Randy Raine-Reusch

Coat Cooke & Rainer Wiens. High Wire.
NOWOrchestraRecordsCLNOW0007.
The pairing of Coat
Cooke and Rainer Wiens
in High Wire, results in
a performance of dualities. Complexity versus
simplicity,
density
versus scarcity are all at
play here. Wiens creates complex sound
environments on eclectic guitars and thumb
pianos while Cooke soars overhead with
clear, clean lines. Interaction is evident and
the music is highly listenable. Drawing on
sax antecedents, Cooke's horn moves from
the lightness of John Handy to the warmth
of Jan Garbarek, ultimately shifting into a
voice that is singularly his own. Rainer
Wiens, for his part, evokes the spirit of
performers such as Fred Frith, Hans Reichel,
and the band Oregon, yet also creates his
own unique complexity of sound. This is a
CD that sounds familiar but is new, that is
comfortable but edgy, and that contains
an inner harmony even in its most discordant
moments. This is a mature work of sensitive
improvisation at its finest, and currently
one of my favourite CDs in this idiom.
-Randy Raine-Reusch

Pauline
Oliveros'
Eightieth
Birthday
Releases
Pauline Oliveros. Reverberations:
Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970.
Important RecordsIMPREC352.
Pauline Oliveros. Primordial/ Lift.
TaigaRecords
22.

Fleshtone Aura. On Rusticated Slant.
PleasencePR013.

Deep Listening Band. Octagonal Polyphony.
Important RecordsIMPREC358.

Similar to his other
group, Gastric Female
Reflex, Andrew Zukerman's Fleshtone Aura
project is an act of
cheeky
historical
revisionism. Evoking the
rubbery tactile sonics of musique concrete
through jump-cuts and slippery tape-speed
bends, Zukerman's pieces are also littered
with delightfully psychedelic humour.
Side one of this twelve-inch 45rpm vinyl
disc begins with pieced-together microscopic
musical tidbits and obscured squeals, both
gleeful and malevolent. After a prolonged
episode of varied gestural abstraction, Zukerman
teleports the listener into a broken-down bus,
seated adjacent to a muttering weirdo. Amid
piercing beeps, coughs, and pronounced buswhinnies, the driver announces sheepishly,"Can
I have your attention please? I'm having a bit

Deep Listening Band. Great Howl at
Town Haul. Important RecordsIMPREC359.
Deep Listening Band. Needle Drop Jungle.
TaigaRecords21.

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continued on page 56 ►

PAULINE OLIVEROS

I

"-

HERE HAS BEEN A FLURRY OF
activity around Pauline Oliveros' work
this year. The eightieth birthday of
this music pioneer has been marked with
celebratory releases, most notably by the
aptly named Important Records. This label
has now documented her very first and her
most recent offerings. Reverberations: Tape
& Electronic Music 1961-1970
is a compilation of Oliveros' early electroacoustic pieces
in a twelve-disc box set. It covers the years
during which she worked and recorded in
various Californian studios, among them
the Tape Music Center in San Francisco,
relocated later to Mills College in Oakland
and renamed the Center for Contemporary
Music, with Oliveros as its first director; and

PaulineOliverosin 1966, performingin the MillsCollegeconcerthallin Oakland,
whereshewaslaterto be
instrumental
in establishing
the Centerfor Contemporary
Music,asits first director.
also in the University of Toronto Electronic
Music Studio. The most recent recordings
here reviewed document a week-long residency of her Deep Listening Band at Town
Hall Seattle in January 2011.
Although several decades separate these
recordings, and although the sounds produced
differ widely on either side of that time span,
they all demonstrate that Oliveros' inquisitively
creative mind has been at work all along. The
music is all about improvisation, in which electronics play an important role. At the core of
this work lies an attitude of intense listening.
As Oliveros has often stated, her interest

in listening stems from the moment when,
hearing her first performance on tape, she
discovered how much she had missed sonically
of what had actually been happening around
her. This led to an approach of concentrated
awareness called deep listening that became
the foundation of all her activities. Central to
this concept is the conscious use of hearinginstead of sight-:-as the predominant sense in
assessing and dealing with the world around
us, thereby flying in the face of ingrained
and unquestioned habit. In her Sounding the
continued on page 56 ►
WINTER 2012

I mus1cworks#774 55