This is my ninth annual look at my past year’s listening. It’s felt as rich a year as ever for the joy, thrill, comfort and stimulation that music gives me. My gratitude is immense. I’ve yet to feel any intimation of the loss of interest or drift towards conservatism that I see in others. I hope I never do. That’s not to say that I’m trying to stay up to date, I’m well aware that there are whole continents of music that don’t interest me at all. The vast majority of the music listed in the end of year polls published by the likes of The Guardian, The Liminal, The Quietus and The Wire intrigues me not a jot. I’m fine with that, but I read through them and there are a number of albums I’ve discovered as a result: James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual and SBTRKT’s eponymous debut. I continue to divide my listening and exploring to new music and to music in the recent past. New albums by favoured artists cause me to return to their other work and with luck I discover afresh the wonder of their creativity, the connections to related works and their own quality of distinctiveness. Examples of this include Kate Bush’s 50 Words For Snow, Vladislav Delay’s Vantaa, Junior Boys’ It’s All True, Tindersticks’ Claire Denis Soundtracks and Marilyn Mazur’s Celestial Circle. 2011 seems to have been the year when my writing about music faded out, I was only offered uninteresting crumbs by the Beebs so gave up responding, I wrote some longer reviews for The Liminal which felt like a challenge, but latterly with my increased interest in photography there doesn’t seem to have been the time to actively pursue writing.

If I was going to generalise wildly I’d say that 2011 was dominated by the two types of sonics: the gorgeous depth of ECM and the boundary-pushing depth of left-field dubstep.

Music released in 2011

Africa Hitech – 93 Million Miles // This received a mixed critical response, I heard it as beautiful, contemporary, sci-fi music.

Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto – summvs // I wasn’t exactly transported by this record, didn’t enjoy their live performance at the Round House and wrote up a fairly negative review of it for The Liminal. It seemed like a summation with a little too much restating of previously explored themes. Having said that, I find I’ve played it 25 times this year, perhaps I’ll warm to it eventually…

Andy Stott – Passed Me By/We Stay Together // I only discovered this later in the year with the CD re-release, but oh my goodness this is dark, roiling, wonderful music like drinking the richest, lava-like coffee while watching Alien alone with all the lights out. Mainstream Dubstep doesn’t do much for me at all, but the non-conformists arising out of this area are fascinating. This takes my vote for most original approach to sound of 2011 and

Byetone – Simeta // Promising, I look forward to becoming familiar with this sophomore album.

Daft Punk – Tron Legacy: Reconfigured // Daft Punk: mirror to our global capital present. All surface – and thrilling for it. My favourite running music.

François Couturier – Tarkovsky Quartet // My most listened to artist of 2011. Magisterial, haunting and beautiful.

Hercules and Love Affair – Blue Songs // I struggled to warm to Hercules’ debut, but I thought this was a great album of vocal dance music.

Hessle Audio – 116 and Rising // State of the art UK dance music. At the confluence of Dubstep, breaks and much more.

James Blake // This record has more than its fair share of detractors. I recoiled from its outspokenness initially, but returned to it late in the year. I hear it in relation to OMD’s Architecture and Morality. Blake’s r’n'b stylings and brave melodic repetition make for strange bedfellows with his dramatic use of space and contemplation.

Junior Boys – It’s All True // Junior Boys’ fourth album was released with little fanfare, their record company Domino seemed to make very little effort to promote it. The cover design was underwhelming and there was no special edition. It deserved to be in year end lists everywhere, but seems to have sunk without trace. A crime.

Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow // I’ve not been able to get close to Aerial or Director’s Cut because of their sound which I’ve found to be just too polished and hermetic. Sonically they were more like top quality digital facsimiles than living, breathing entities. 50 Words For Snow on the other hand sounded convincingly intimate, hushed and gorgeous.

King Midas Sound – Without You // I continued to listen to King Midas Sound’s debut Waiting For You… this year and was a little disappointed they didn’t release an original follow-up, but this was the next best thing: 16 excellent remixes, beautifully sequenced. Without You stands proud in the fine tradition of Rhythm & Sound’s See Mi Yah remix album. If K. Martin and Roger Robinson decided not to record a second album, I’d be happy with these two, but if they did and it was as good was Waiting For, well, I’d be a happy man.

Kode9 and The Spaceape – Black Sun // This seems to have been missed from all the year end lists, perhaps because it was released earlier in the year or just as likely because it’s a difficult second album, not as accessible as the first, but perseverance rewards.

Marilyn Mazur – Celestial Circle // Initially sounding fairly conventional, this gradually stole up on me to bewitching effect.

Mark Fry and the A Lords – I Lived In Trees // Forlorn and lovely.

Rustie – Glass Swords // Day-glo, floodlit, almost dizzying at times. Easy to be impressed by, perhaps difficult to love, but remarkable all the same.

Pinch and Shackleton // I tired of Shackleton’s Skull Disco middle-eastern references so I’m glad to see them increasingly discarded. This album’s unease and otherness makes for a roiling fit with much else on this list (King Midas, Kode9/Spaceape, Vladislav’s Vantaa and Andy Stott as well as James Blake)

Tindersticks – The Claire Denis Soundtracks // I’m a huge fan of Claire Denis’ work, particularly Beau Travail, White Material and L’Intrus. The horror of relationships and concomitant sense of aloneness in her films is almost overwhelming. There’s quite a few I still need to see, a resolution for 2012. Who could have predicted how perfectly Tindersticks would have suited them as interpreters? These five CDs were fragile, haunted affairs that I played over and over.

Vladislav Delay Quartet – Vladislav Delay Quartet // Wonderful. Vladislav Delay goes kozmigroov via Last Exit. More please.

Vladislav Delay – Vantaa // I’ve only heard this four times and am interested, but currently don’t hear it as being as revolutionary as his earlier dub-drenched oceanic maps.

Zomby – Dedication // Incredible. A response to the death of a loved one. Moving and magisterial.

2562 – Fever // Compacted, difficult to listen to on headphones, impressive, but harder to like than Aerial or Unbalance.

Music released before 2011

The most significant discovery of 2011 for me was Robin Williamson whose trilogy of albums for ECM between 2000 and 2007 mixes the work of William Blake, Dylan Thomas et al with his own compositions. Those 1,325 listens are from the last four months. I sincerely hope to see him in concert in 2012. Annette Peacock comes up second via was her album for voice, piano and string quartet, An Acrobat’s Heart. Released in 2000, again on ECM, its mournful monotony made it challenging and compelling. Peacock’s other albums that I’ve managed to find were interesting, though not quite as musically unique. Most of her back catalogue is long out of print, often unreleased on CD and very hard to find. This is a crime for a woman with such a highly intelligent, challenging voice. Gato Barbieri’s 70s albums were another lovely discovery, his mixture of passion, melody and South American sounds first caught my notice on the extended version of the Last Tango In Paris soundtrack. The Latin America trilogy soon followed. Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur’s Elixir, a percussion album accompanied by Jan Gabarek struck me with its haunted beauty, Small Labyrinths and this year’s Celestial Circle followed.

Ultimately 2011 was the year of François Couturier for me. His focus upon Andrei Tarkovsky as a source of inspiration kept me returning over and over to his solo piano album Un Jour Si Blanc and quartet albums Nostalghia and Tarkovsky Quartet. I’m not listening very often now, but I return to them from time to time and continue to be enthralled.

My listening in numbers

1. François Couturier (1,685)
2. Tindersticks (1,551)
3. Miles Davis (1,349)
4. Robin Williamson (1,325)
5. Kraftwerk (1,247)
6. Dino Saluzzi (898)
7. Zomby (894)
8. Anouar Brahem (816)
9. John Martyn (774)
10. Marilyn Mazur (774)
11. Tomasz Stańko (763)
12. Arto Lindsay (759)
13.  Stereolab (697)
14. Annette Peacock (502)
15. Daft Punk (474)
16. John Surman (450)
17. Junior Boys (429)
18. Scott Walker (420)
19. György Ligeti (418)
20. King Midas Sound (409)
21. Mark Fell (406)
22. 2562 (377)
23. Underworld (375)
24. Ennio Morricone (370)
25. Kate Bush (367)
26. Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto (361)
27. Gato Barbieri (359)
28. Brian Eno (331)
29. The Conet Project (320)
30. Ornette Coleman (315)

Thanks to last.fm

Previous years:

• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003

In the premature darkness ‘Minus Degrees, Bare Feet, Tickles’ rises up, conjuring the spirit of Last Exit in freeze-frame cross-section. Something of the latter’s brutal physicality is even suggested in the title’s tactile reference. The experience is somewhere between thrilling and ecstatic. Here’s noise to be subsumed in, surrendered to, an angle grinder applied to the ears. Saxophone feedback makes itself heard late into the track’s eight minutes, physically forcing space in the waves of clanking drums and digital distress. As a statement of intent, it’s exemplary.

Vladislav Delay Quartet takes inspiration from other places than the blessed, blasted quartet of Ronald Shannon Jackson, Peter Brötzmann, Sonny Sharrock and Bill Laswell, yet the impression persists and it’s a welcome one. This allegedly postmodern world of images, ‘texts’ and multiplying surfaces is in dire, ongoing need of engagement with the real: such encounters being recognisable for their challenge, rejection of irony and embracing of difficulty – not for its own sake, but as a way of discovering and articulating elements intrinsic to process. It’s this sense of (un)earthing – the possibility of revelation – that may have motivated Sasu Ripatti to return to drumming and to form a group based around live performance. It’s a course striking for its similarity to fellow one-time ur-techno minimalist Moritz Von Oswald’s establishment of the MvO Trio, in which Ripatti also plays drums. The attitude of electronic musicians to live performers is a long and chequered one, but both these groups are releasing exploratory music that’s fascinating for its physicality. In addition to Ripatti, the Quartet is made up of fellow Finn Mika Vainio (electronics and processing), Derek Shirley (bass) and Lucio Capece (clarinet and sax). The latter also appeared on Delay’s Tumaa which can now be heard as a tentative, occluded prologue to this recording.

‘Sonta Teresa’ opens up a haunted space whose echoing percussion summons up the opening scenes of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, in which the three characters begin their journey into the ruined Zone. The sense of eery calm is then bludgeoned by ‘Des Abends’, a brutal blast of foghorn like a distant, wounded giant refusing to die. The distinct sonic character of each of the quartet’s performers is striking: Ripatti’s dramatic percussion reverberating as if in a vast refinery, Derek Shirley’s double bass sounding lengthy single notes like the tolling of the final bell and Vainio providing a darkened pall to bleed the light out from the day. ‘Hohtokivi’ comes the closest to Mika Vainio’s Pan Sonic project with its high voltage blast of rhythmic texture.

Lucio Capece’s beautifully treated saxophone tangled in weird bass and trudging percussion on ‘Killing The Water Bed’ brings to mind both the mercurial and too-long silent Chris Bowden, a Soviet-era version of Joe Henderson’s 1974 masterpiece The Elements and even, tangentially – maybe wishfully, maybe not – the great lost hope of Herbie Mwandishi Hancock’s Sextant, a set of co-ordinates still waiting to be properly explored. ‘Presentimen’t recalls the becalmed electronic dubscapes of classic Delay works such as The Four Quarters and Multila. Then ‘Louhos’ arrives with its all-consuming rhythm and banshee sax achieving an alarming intensity over its 10 minute length. Finally, ‘Salt Flat’ paints its landscape in drawn-out, multi-tracked saxophone gradually punctuated by minimal percussion and swathes of hot air: a fitting, somber end to an astonishing record.

The sound colours, the meshing of textures, the sheer interaction and group force of this record would be impossible for a single musician to produce. It’s a disappointment when each of the eight tracks ends; it’s not difficult to imagine each of them extended to occupy a full side of a quadruple vinyl record. Vladislav Delay Quartet is a thrilling call to arms. It’s impossible to imagine how they will develop this music. Let this be a starting point.

First published on The Liminal

This review was based on a brief press release and pre-release CDs without a cover. Since the publication on The Liminal ECM kindly sent me the finished set which includes interesting notes by Villalobos/Loderbauer which I wish I’d been able to read before writing this. I’m tempted to rewrite, but am not sure I’ve got the time.

The title sounds like the subject line of an office memo. Those three letters, ECM, and their referent, Edition of Contemporary Music, signify a distinct musical universe, though one that has changed and developed over its four decade existence. The title’s very brevity implies a certain playfulness. Indeed, a sense of serious play is what these 17 tracks may ultimately represent. The outcome of Villalobos and Loderbauer’s attentions suggests a number of different descriptions. Remix is an obvious and inadequate classification, closely related to the narratives of dance music, an area which ECM has mostly chosen not to explore (though there are exceptions, more of which in a moment). Assault, transgression or collision are more bracing descriptions (some of which might originate from the direction of the outraged ECM purist). Let’s settle, for the time being, on interpretations and try to ignore the preciousness of the term – though it’s a characteristic that the label is sometimes accused of by its detractors.

That perception may be one of the reasons for label founder Manfred Eicher’s approval and release of this project or much more likely he was curious to see what would happen – after all, ECM has always an experimental label. Though its focus has been on acoustic music, with an album usually taking at most three days to record, there are examples of artists exploring electronica, dance and associated production values: Jon Hassell’s Power Spot (1986) was co-produced by Brian Eno, Nils Petter Molvaer explored the interstices of electric period Miles Davis and dance music with Khmer (1997), and John Surman’s solo albums are duets between saxophones and synthesizers.

It’s notable that Villalobos/Loderbauer have chosen to focus on only a small number of ECM artists and that most of their choices are fairly obscure: Wolfert Brederode, Alexander Knaifel and Paul Giger will be unfamiliar names to most. Otherwise the pair have chosen five Christian Wallumrød compositions as well as single pieces by Miroslav Vitous, Paul Motian and Louis Sclavis. Perhaps the very unfamiliarity of most of the source material makes it easier to experience as fresh and distinct work.

Some of the techniques on Re: ECM appear comparable to the Duchampian readymade L.H.O.O.Q. For example, there’s a gestural approach in evidence on their version of Bennie Maupin’s ‘Ensenada’ (The Jewel In The Lotus, 1974). The original is a contemplative, sun-dappled tone poem which almost obliterates its source under a continous spray of sonic slurry. It’s an odd, unsettling, but ultimately intriguing treatment. Similarly ‘Reemergence’ sounds uncomfortably like a drumkit alone in a room tortured by unwanted physical vibrations.

Where Villalobos’s take on minimal techno was very much concerned with rhythm, the duo’s engagement with ECM frequently places meter further back in the mix, often using percussion to create mood and a sense of stasis as much as forward momentum. The almost 12 minute long ‘Resvete’ is a case in point: it’s an extended lacuna haunted by distant cymbals, marshland glitch and otherworldly vocals. Exceptions include ‘Retimeless’ which applies a plodding beat to John Abercrombie that recalls the stumbling gait of an exhausted man, ‘Recat’ which recasts Christan Wallumrød as a light-hearted brushed-snare shuffle and ‘Reannounce’ which sees a blurred, gargling tribesman endlessly tracing the same circular path. Indeed, the tempos are generally funereal and the atmospheres lugubrious.

So, two antithetical approaches to music in collision. Is there any sex in this potentially Ballardian car crash? No sweaty funk for sure, but there’s a certain, determined sexiness to the evident and ongoing will to experiment. On paper the result could have been an explosion of anti-matter or a damp squib. In reality, it’s an intriguing affair that’s clearly the outcome of a variety of different techniques. Whether it’s better appreciated by those already acquainted with the original material, or the exact opposite, will be up to each listener to decide. The very idea of an ECM remix double album may be enough to both intrigue and repel in equal measure, but anyone wondering where Villalobos’s head is at currently should certainly investigate: the source material here provides a significantly greater degree of depth, variety and, ultimately, mystery when compared to Villalobos’s own albums. That these are treatments rather than originals may essentially only add to the seductiveness of the work.

Here’s my comment posted to ‘Pop Culture Consuming Itself? Simon Reynolds Discusses Retromania‘, published on The Quietus:

The reference made to late or transnational capitalism is I think apposite. Benjamin and Žižek amongst others are useful in understanding the political foundations and the effects of unprecedented choice that we’re subjected to by default.

It seems so misguided to be actively searching for influences to achieve difference. It makes me think of advertisers attempting to achieve differentiation through design. Tarkovsky in Voyage In Time says that young directors should look to their lives for inspiration, to work from their lives. Originality comes in my experience from deep engagement and focus. I briefly had a correspondence with Jon Hassell and was struck by how little music he listened to, he much preferred silence. Alva Noto said this too in a recent interview. Less really is more in my cultural experience. Less allows space for the listener/viewer to engage rather than be overwhelmed. I’ve had a lifelong respect for Kraftwerk who chose to exercise the discipline of not releasing albums: 10 records in 40 years – yet I ultimately listen to them more than any other. Similarly Borges and his handful of volumes of short stories.

I’m now 45 and have often been an early technological adopter. After reading 10 or so novels on my iPhone, being plugged into Twitter, numerous RSS feeds, etc., I’ve returned to the pleasure of reading books, significantly reduced my net usage and found myself listening intensely to a fairly small number of musicians in gradual succession. I feel more grounded, engaged and focused now. And sort of relieved!

Tarkovsky Quartet is the final part in a trilogy of works inspired by the Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-86). François Couturier first came to international attention in 2001 with Anouar Brahem on the Tunisian oudist’s delightfully elegant Le Pas du Chat Noir and its successor, Le Voyage de Sahar. Couturier initiated his Tarkovsky trilogy in 2006 with Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky, a collection of twelve compositions recorded by a quartet. Nostalghia was followed last year by the solo piano Un Jour Si Blanc.

If Andrei Tarkovsky is less familiar a cultural figure now than during his lifetime and for the decade or so afterwards, that lamentable fact may be attributed to the loss of repertory cinema and the fading of the era of the art movie. Most of the great auteurs are now either dead or in their dotage. Despite this, the Russian director’s small oeuvre of seven films continues to present the engaged viewer with an unforgettable breviary of poetic visions. Describe the bare architecture of Tarkovsky’s films and they may disappear like motes of dust dancing in the sunlight. In contrast, the films’ subjects, their length and pace and their earth-borne magical realities speak of the cruelty of history, the desire for redemption, of suffering, loss and faith. All of these elements and much more were woven by the director into poetics unique to cinema.

It’s entirely fitting that Tarkovsky’s example should serve as inspiration for François Couturier’s dark, lyrical and immaculately judged music. Both film and music are mediums that, consciously or otherwise, engage with and reflect upon time. Tarkovsky was acutely conscious of this. His films do not attempt to pressure or manipulate his audience, instead they address time as a flexible, malleable material within which the viewer may find their own position. Similarly, Couturier avoids percussive elements that might limit or regulate the sense of time. As a result, the rhythms of the music overlap and merge with each other, their articulation free to be negotiated by the listener. The same can be claimed of any music, but Couturier’s trilogy is inspired by, and benefits from being considered in relation to Tarkovsky’s own exploration of time.

Throughout the trilogy Couturier concerns himself with the spirit, not the letter, of Tarkovsky’s art. The director’s son Andrei A. Tarkovsky writes in the liner notes:

“I have always believed that an approach to my father’s films should be an emotional involvement, an empathy with the author’s feelings, rather than intellectual analysis of the contents.”

Feeling in both the musician’s and the director’s work shouldn’t be confused with sentimentality. The distinction between the anglicised form of nostalgia and the Italian/Russian nostalghia serves as an example. The English word denotes a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past while Tarkovsky’s version is much closer to pain and relates directly to the desire to return home.

Where the first part of Couturier’s trilogy directly explored facets of the director’s films (Solaris I and II, Ivan, Stalker, etc.), Tarkovsky Quartet shifts the focus somewhat and uses the merged sensibility of the director, composer and musicians as a prism to look outward upon subjects including Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus and Robert Bresson’s Mouchette. There’s no hint here of Edward Nicolay Artemyev’s original, brilliant electronic soundtracks. The quartet is entirely acoustic, arranged in an unusual configuration that comprises piano, cello, accordion and soprano saxophone.

“A Celui Qui A Vu L’Ange (To He Who Saw The Angel)” begins with Couturier’s measured chords that increase in intensity before being joined by the accordion of Jean-Louis Matinier and then Anja Lechner’s beautiful cello. Jean-Marc Larché’s soprano saxophone articulates the melody reaching a pitch that demands attention against the swelling backdrop of accordion and cello before the musicians pause to allow Couturier space to return. There’s a heightened understanding of space here and throughout – in multiple senses: of suspension, breath taking and allowing room for each musician to listen intently to the others.

“San Galgano”, named for the ruined abbey in Nostalghia, is the first in a sequence of compositions which seem almost literally haunted. The music hovers in the upper registers, tentative and spectral creating a space that’s full of dread. “Mychkin” begins in the same space, but gradually descends earthwards like a kite circling on outstretched wings, gradually achieving a certain groundedness that’s unexpectedly undermined by an eery epilogue of tinkling piano. “Mouchette” continues, stalked by Couturier’s ominous chords around which Larché flutters like a frightened sparrow and “Lechner” and “Matinier” rumble in brooding disquiet. After this, comes the pensive and deeply romantic “La Passion Selon Andrei” and the music explores other avenues.

It’s possible to recognise music that will reward repeated and concentrated attention. It’s also possible to intimate a sense of a work’s depth that will ultimately refuse to render its secrets in any way that might be easily expressed, summarised or imparted to others without their making a journey similar (or perhaps significantly different) to one’s own. There’s an echo here of Andrei A. Tarkovsky’s observation of empathy and emotion, that journey to be made.

There’s a sense throughout Tarkovsky Quartet that the music exists in the physical world, achieved in no small part by Manfred Eicher’s characteristically exquisite recording, but that it reaches for and coalesces into the spiritual. It is by this measure that comparison may be made with Andrei Tarkovsky’s films and that François Couturier’s project may be deemed a resounding success.

———-

Note: two luminous images grace the cover of Tarkovsky Quartet. They’re Polaroid photographs taken by the director in Russia at his dacha the year before his departure for Italy. A selection of Tarkovsky’s Polaroids were first assembled in Bright, Bright Day, but it’s out of print and sells for astronomical sums. However, there is a different, paperback edition available for a very reasonable price, it’s called Instant Light (Thames & Hudson) and is highly recommended.

This review was published at The Liminal.

The collaboration between Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, and Ryuichi Sakamoto has produced a significant amount of highly original music and proved to be a fascinating exploratory journey whose forms, though incremental and grounded in a particular configuration, have often exceeded expectations. summvs is the fourth album by the duo for Raster-Noton, but the additional releases, the Revep EP and the Insen Live DVD, are invaluable in providing a fuller picture of their collaborative work.

Noto/Sakamoto’s first album, Vrioon was released in 2002 and established the format: Sakamoto playing acoustic piano, Nicolai providing electronic rhythms, treatments and accompaniment. Sakamoto’s playing comprised an impressionistic romanticism with roots in Debussy, Ravel and Takemitsu. The binary oppositions of acoustic and electronic, performance and programming, repetition and uniqueness, romanticism and minimalism provided a rich bedrock of tensions as well as a structure pregnant with opportunities for development and manipulation.

Although summvs has been described as a return to basics, in fact it presents a variety of negotiations between the aforementioned oppositions. At times it continues the process of abstraction that was first signalled by “Intro”, the freely improvised opening passage on 2006′s Insen Live and which was developed to full-length on _utp, Noto/Sakamoto’s 2008 collaboration with Ensemble Modern. On “Reverso”, Sakamoto’s piano is less crystal clear than before and is subject to the extended repetition of a single figure: at play here is the titular reversal of roles. At other times, compositions such as “Halo”, “Microon I-III” and “Naono” achieve a merging of approaches that verges on the etiolated.

Without the subtle undermining of complacency resulting from the use of performative and sonic contrasts, there’s a sense both of the music settling into predefined roles and of an uneasy suspicion of incipient affectation. Key to this is the change in Carsten Nicolai’s practice. His contributions previously exploited dance music’s fascination with sonic extremes, with the synthetic bass a powerfully sculptural agent, while in the higher registers meter was formed from mica shards. The result was an intense morse codification of rhythm, signals at times so brief as to be almost not there. On summvs, those rhythms are blurred by cloud, they merge more easily with the ambient electronic backdrops resulting in a more unified sound. This loss of space between the music’s elements means that it is more immersive, but at the same time the experience is less spatial, less architectural, more indistinct.

In the latter half of summvs, the duo reprise their practice of recording a highly recognisable composition external to the duo’s work together and radically recontextualising it. This approach was first demonstrated on “Ax Mr.L.”, a treatment of Sakamoto’s signature theme, “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence”. This time, they feature two versions of “By This River” by Brian Eno, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, which was released on Eno’s 1977 album Before and After Science. As soon as the unforgettable melody is sounded out, and after divesting oneself of any expectation of hearing Eno’s dulcet tones, the duo gradually deconstruct the song into an extended form rich with echoes of the original.

summvs represents a tipping of the balance in favour of Sakamoto’s romanticism, with Noto sonically providing more of a supporting role. Many will welcome this – the result is after all rather gorgeous – but it’s at the cost of a sacrificing of tension previously achieved by a range of dynamic contrasts. The end result is also less strikingly original than its early predecessors, Vrioon and Insen.

The review was published on The Liminal

Here are the albums released in 2010 that caught my ear, in alphabetical order:

Actress – Splazsch
Akira Rabelais – Caduceus
ANBB – Mimikry
Brian Eno – Small Craft on a Milk Sea
David Sylvian – Sleepwalkers
Demdike Stare – Tryptych
Dino Saluzzi – El Encuentro
Food – Quiet Inlet
Francois Couturier – Un Jour Si Blanc
John Foxx – Cathedral Oceans (reissue)
Nils Petter Molvaer – Hamada
Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal
Stereolab – Not Music
Steve Tibbetts – Natural Causes
Stian Westerhus – Pitch Black Star Spangled
The Knife – Tomorrow In A Year
Underworld – Barking
Various – Vertical Integration (Second Language)

Last year, I divided my list into what I thought I would continue to listen to in 2010, what I thought was worth hearing, what I’d missed and what I’d been listening to that wasn’t new. The only ‘enduring’ choice I made last year that I’m still listening to is, absolutely inevitably, Kraftwerk’s The Catalogue.

This year I’m focusing solely on what I’ve actually been listening to, with reference to my last.fm account:

Artist Chart 2010

1. Kip Hanrahan (3,216)
2. Dino Saluzzi (1,468)
3. Steve Tibbetts (1,263)
4. Scott Walker (1,208)
5. Jimmy Giuffre (1,115)
6. Anouar Brahem (885)
7. Nils Petter Molvær (802)
8. Kraftwerk (795)
9. Billie Holiday (740)
10. Brian Eno (708)
11. Stereolab (682)
12. Astor Piazzolla (630)
13. Underworld (549)
14. SND (531)
15. Scritti Politti (462)
16. Cocteau Twins (421)
17. Ornette Coleman (387)
18. Akira Rabelais (386)
19. Zbigniew Preisner (372)
20. Oval (364)

2010 was the first full year of a new listening pattern for me (though in the last few months it’s partially changed again). This mode began in 2009 when I started to concentrate on a single artist intensely. That artist was the American guitarist Steve Tibbetts, at the very end of which phase (lasting something in the order of 10-12 months), I wrote a career overview for the long-running music web-zine, Perfect Sound Forever entitled Quicksilver, Fire and Water.

Kip Hanrahan was, by a long chalk, my most listened to artist of 2010. I don’t know how exactly I returned to listening to him after a decade or so of neglect, but this year I found and listened to everything he had recorded or produced: 19 albums under his own name and many releases by artists on his now criminally out of print label, American Clavé. I followed the Tibbetts overview toward the end of this year with a collage portrait, again for Perfect Sound Forever. Instead of attempting to write about the man myself I invited a number of writers to do so, a number of whom kindly and creatively responded. The resulting piece I hope conveys a partial outline of the man from multiple perspectives: Kip Hanrahan: This Song Could Be Rivers….

After Kip came the Argentinian bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi who proved an unexpected revelation. His mixture of passion, melancholy and experimentation continues to enthral: Kultrum is tango as chamber music, bandoneon plus string quartet; Senderos is a series of duets with drummer Jon Christenson that manages to be both Modern and traditional. My favourites, however, are the delightful, generous trio interplay of Cité De La Musique (1996) and the solo Andina (1988) whose Tango of Oblivion I choose as my funeral song! I came to Saluzzi via Kip Hanrahan’s production of Astor Piazzolla‘s final trilogy of albums, The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango Apasionado), Tango Zero Hour and La Camorra. This is music that took me much time to begin to assimilate, but whose connections with my favourite author Jorge Luis Borges provided ample incentive to do so.

Nils Petter Molvær‘s Hamada impressed me tremendously, it’s his most singular statement in a long career. I pray he continues to explore with such a precedent in mind. Likewise, Akira Rabelais‘s Caduceus was a career highpoint, its mixture of noise and light remains breathtaking. And Demdike Stare‘s combination of bass, soundtrack, techno and dubstep has been thrilling.  Brian Eno‘s Small Craft On A Milk Sea appeared to receive very mixed reviews, but I’m continue to find it tremendously enjoyable and characteristically beautiful.

Other groups that gave me a huge amount of pleasure in 2010: Stereolab (where previously I’d found ultimately same-y, I now find joyously fecund); Underworld, brilliant chroniclers of modern life, London, shopping centres, Essex, wonder and pleasure; Cocteau Twins who I never ‘got’ until I purchased their Lullabies to Violaine 4cd to feature on Hard Format and then the penny dropped, and snd whose skeletal, syncopated rigour continues to thrill. I’d wager Mark Fell‘s solo albums will appear in my 2011 list as I was late in ordering them.

A few months ago I ‘discovered’ ECM. I’ve been listening to music from the label for a quarter of a century, but my ears opened more fully, something finally made sense to me – the seriousness of the project, the quality of sound, the asceticism, but most important by far the music and the character of its musicians. I realise that the label is in most quarters tremendously unfashionable, perceived as painfully precious – it’s a view I’ve had for a long time. As a result, the music apparently receives no attention in year end blog lists or in that venerable institution The Wire (which I’ve become terribly averse to now after reading for more than 20 years. If only Mark Sinker’s attempt to refocus with the Michael Jackson edition had succeeded I might still be reading it, but I digress).

Listening to Dino Saluzzi provided a foot in the door to the label, so to speak, that enabled me to open my ears to Anouar Brahem, Tomasz Stańko, John Surman, Christian Wallumrød, François Couturier and others. Couturier is a current particular fascination, his tremendous contribution to the Brahem records on which he appears led me to investigate his solo piano Un Jour Si Blanc and Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky with Anja Lechner, Jean-Marc Larché, Jean-Louis Matinier. I can’t recommend these highly enough. And that’s where I am now, listening intensely not to one artist, but to one label, ECM.

Previous years:

• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003

Caduceus marks the bewitching return of Akira Rabelais, the American whose magnificent name simultaneously tilts its hat toward the deep past of the French Renaissance and post-apocalyptic manga Tokyo. It has been some time since we last made his acquaintance, six years since Spellewauerynsherde. In the interval there have been occasional field recordings – Hollywood and A.M. Station – but Caduceus convinces as Spellewauerynsherde’s dark sister.

There’s something both shadowy and playful about Rabelais’ presence. Wikipedia offers up almost nothing except “… a Los Angeles-based composer and author, who grew up on a racehorse ranch in South Texas and studied at…” and that his music “… bridges classical romanticism and digital composition.” This fittingly tempts the listener to project Rabelais into the burnt and warped faces of Caduceus’ photographs by Eric Rondepierre.

Rabelais first shimmered on the horizon with Argeïphontes Lyre, quixotic software for teasing otherwise innocent sound samples into uneasy forms. If memory serves, it was as beautiful and wilful as the website it appeared on. Both Lyre and its domain persist to this day, different but essentially the same. The homepage bears a lengthy list that dances back and forth across the centuries referencing Peake, Durrell, Keats and a hundred other less familiar names. Hyperlinks convey the visitor to long columns of figures, excerpts of Borges short stories, Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles. It’s a beautifully presented puzzle, a lattice-work of references and literary cul-de-sacs that thankfully refuses anything as tiresome as an explanation.

Reference to our modern-day oracle reveals that Caduceus was the staff borne by Iris, messenger of the gods and their link to humanity in Greek mythology. Perhaps the staff has transmuted into Rabelais’ guitar. If so, the message is gnomic, eaten away by rust in the long and uncertain transit. The listener waits in an anteroom between two states, straining to identify sounds heard at great distances. The space s/he stands in is as polluted as Tarkovsky’s Zone, as rubble-strewn, degraded as its anterior.

Caduceus opens with Seduced By The Silence, a thrilling roar of falling scree-like feedback, ploughed and phased as though a foundry were being dismantled using stop-motion photographic techniques. On The Little In-Betweens is its virginal 15 second sibling, timid and gently pensive. Then The Substanceless Blue conjours brilliant, billowing cloud-forms that dip into vivid distortion and lift into sun-warmed azure. Night Dances Through Heaven’s Black Amnesia excoriates with blissful distortion, a dyspeptic anti-cure for the terminally melancholic, a treatment perhaps to scour the soul. Comme Un Ange Enivré D’un Soleil Radieux is its ghost image, a tracery of loss embodied in crackle and hiss, the slow accumulation of sonic grime. Surface Of Soft Steps, Violets Whisper follows, innocent and tentative, delicately alluring, but like all of us invisibly diseased.

Caduceus traces a narrative of entropy, ruins illuminated in the half light. Rabelais’ production techniques – dysmorphic, congested with static and stray radio signals – bear a directness that mirrors Cocteau’s reverse transitions in Orphee (closing composition A Door Opens Backwards sustains an echo of this).

Caduceus is both a meditation on and an exposition of beauty. There’s something tyrannical, unforgiving, even intolerant, about it. This will happen, it seems to say, you must endure, but you may also be tempted to marvel as it unfolds.

See also:
- Akira Rabelais ~ Spellewauerynsherde
- Upcoming: Caduceus on Hard Format (22nd May)

My Twitter review of Humcrush (Stale Storløkken keyboards, Thomas Strønen percussion) at the Vortex on 16th April:

7.14pm

God, I hang my head in shame. First time ever in the ‘new’ Vortex. Why did it take me so long? Looking forward to Humcrush.

9.26pm

I love Stale Storløkken’s sound palette: haunted, ethereal, immediately recognisable. Likewise Stronen: spacious, silent and dense.

9.28pm

Strønen: one hand drumming, one hand processing.

9.37pm

Okay at this point I’m grinning like a hyena.

9.45pm

Storløkken looks like someone I used to share a squat with: earring, lived-in face, tie-dye shirt. Strønen, clean-cut, muscular, bit scary

10.11pm

Humcrush – quiet passages: non-Western, unearthly too? Percussion: controlled violence.

11.25pm

Empty platform. Ghost train, no lights.

What is about the music of Steve Tibbetts that’s had me listening so intently for the last six months? Here’s the first of what may or may not be an occasional series of posts on the Minnesota-born guitarist.

Tibbetts has shot from a personal oblivion to the fourth most listened to artist on my Last.fm charts, racing past the likes of Ornette, King Tubby, Rhythm & Sound and Jon Hassell. It even looks like he’s going to pass Miles Davis sometime soon – at time of writing I’ll only need to listen to four or five more albums to exceed Miles’ track count of 2,484. I know that I bought a couple of his later CDs a few years ago and absolutely failed to engage with them, my ears just weren’t open at the time. Continuing with the stats, among the millions of last.fm subscribers, Tibbetts has garnered a mere 4,172 listeners and 55,942 plays, and there are only two small images of him available on the site. In that last regard, he’s almost approaching Charley Patton photographic status in his lack of visible web presence.

Last.fm has of course only been monitoring my listening habits since the end of 2004, but I’m still struck by the intensity of my attention. From time to time over the last 6+ months, I’ve tried to analyse this fascination, but been struck by my desire to avoid close examination. I’ve had the sense of willing surrender to the music, of allowing myself to be swept along by its ebb and flow. Even now I remain a little reluctant to clarify my experience, but as the frequency of my attention wanes a little, it feels like a good point to look back.

Steve Tibbetts has recorded only a handful of albums as leader since his debut in 1977. He’s responsible for a mere eight records, with an additional three as collaborations: two with the Tibetan nun Choying Drolma (Chö, 1999, and Selwa, 2004) and one, Å, with the Norwegian hardanger fiddle player Knut Hamre. At this point in our rich musical history, it’s very difficult to resist describing artists as x meets y with a dash of z. It’s a dull and unimaginative shorthand that resists the much more fulfilling experience of listening without preconception.

His work can be divided into four main periods, the early experimentalism of the eponymous debut and sophomore album Yr (1976-80); the first four albums for ECM (1981-88) which begin with the bewitching stillness of Northern Song and navigate a span of alternating calmness and fire with Safe Journey, Exploded View and Big Map Idea; the aforementioned collaborations and finally, hopefully only for the moment, the two later works of eastern fire, The Fall Of Us All and A Man About A Horse (1994, 2002).

For much of his career, he’s worked only with the percussionist Marc Anderson (apart from occasional wordless vocal contributions). His music is the result of a deep layering of individually recorded tracks. The pace of the music changes within each track any number of times, racing forward, tumbling like quicksilver one moment, the next pausing in delicate contemplation. I used the word flow earlier and the sensation of Tibbetts’s music as a sophisticated torrent of ever-changing form is the closest I can come to an appropriate description. There’s a striking subtlety, dare I say in every moment of Tibbetts’ music. It’s difficult not to have a sense of his listening intensely to the music’s form unfolding as he creates it, this despite the music’s existence as a studio creation.

Tibbetts’ sound is distinctly his own. I know very little about the technology of guitars, but at times there’s a metal-stringed attack that, without sounding the same, reminds me of the alien excitement of Ralph Towner’s 12 string contribution to The Moors on Weather Report’s I Sing The Body Electric. At other times there’s an undertow of the American folk, the wonder of the little-acknowledged Cielo e Terra by Al Di Meola (Northern Song is the point of reference), the thrill of fire of Tibbetts himself, the sense of a world merging and metamorphosing Americana into new and unexpected forms. Here I am adding x to y – and not finding z of course…

As I write this, I’m listening to Big Map Idea and I’m struck afresh by its sparseness, its sense of space and silence. It is haunting in its beauty – beauty’s an essential element of Tibbetts’ music. There’s also a sense of discovering new feelings that can only be delineated in music where any words outside of a deeper poetry would seem too clumsy, too lacking in fine grain.

So, for any Tibbetts neophyte reading this, what should you listen to first? It’s difficult to make such a recommendation, but try either Big Map Idea or Exploded View and if you like what you hear, move on to The Fall Of Us All and then to one of the discs with Chöying Drolma.

It’s been six years since Tibbetts’ last release, Selwa. I hope that means there’ll be a new recording to explore soon. However, as with other pillars of my listening Scott Walker and Kraftwerk (whose oeuvres are similarly rich and sparse), if there isn’t his 11 albums to date will keep me stimulated, moved and intrigued for a long time to come. It would be such an honour to contribute a cover image if he does release another record – I like the multiple layer photographs used on Å, The Fall Of Us All and Northern Song.

Update: My wish has come true: a mere fortnight or so after writing this piece, news of a long overdue new album, Natural Causes! My joy is tempered just a little by my BBC editor’s refusal to commission a review. If nowhere else, one will appear here in due course.

Further reading:

• Steve Tibbetts’ website
• On which you can find a biography written by the man himself (it’s not linked from the site’s homepage)
• Steve Tibbett’s Wikipedia page
• Stereophile magazine review of A Man About A Horse

Steve Tibbetts with Chöying Drolma and Marc Anderson. Image by Mel Andringa (click on her image to visit her Flickr page)