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)

I found this concert to be tremendously exciting and the first time I’ve heard Nils Molvaer build upon the promise of Khmer, his debut release as leader. His subsequent recordings have generally exploited contemporary production values and dance-derived beats without ultimately achieving much in the way of originality or managing to expand his emotional palette.

The sequencing revealed an impressive structure that alternated between subdued threat and magnificent noise. Already well-versed in Audun Klieve’s talents, I was particularly struck by the grinding abstractions of Stian Westerhus whose work I’d not heard before. I was also very much struck by the staging of the concert in terms of lighting, sound quality and video backdrop. I think I’ve seen Nils play live four or five times previously and it’s been my experience that he’s much more thrilling in concert than on record, where his productions smooth over the occasionally ragged glory of his band’s live performance. So too here although Hamada is very much worth hearing.

Although aware of Hamada’s release, I’d not bothered to seek it out and only through the kindness of a friend did I get to attend the concert. I’m extremely glad I did as I’m now a renewed fan and very much look forward to hearing where Nils goes next, now that he’s begun to develop his own voice again. I’d love to hear him move in the direction of the dark metal that Hamada hints at, as the likes of Steve Noble/Aethenor and Julian Priester/Sunn o))) have done.

Here’s a brief excerpt from a quieter passage:

For a diametrically opposed perspective, see John L. Walters’ review.

The realisation crept up on me rather slowly that this was a very special line-up. As soon as I heard that Moritz was performing, I’d booked tickets for Dan and myself. The only other time I’d caught Moritz performing live, apart his DJ sets was as Rhythm & Sound in the former Subterranea, Notting Hill with Tikiman a/o. The nostril and trouser quivering bass, full-frontal sonic attack, small audience and freedom to dance like a dervish made that experience one of my all-time favourites. Despite the subsequent, fascinating Recomposed and last year’s Trio release, I doubted the evening would be anything like as profound an experience. Though very different, it turned out to be very special indeed.

Of the people I spoke to, it seemed I was the only person to much enjoy Bugge’s opening set. I’d seen a few short videos of the duo and hadn’t been very impressed. However, their melding of house, techno and jazz in longform streams was a real pleasure. Bugge’s return to a house/jazz marriage was very welcome given my love of his Moving album (his other masterpiece is the solo piano Im). Once or twice Bugge veered a little too close to Cafe del Mar territory for my taste, but their marriage of lyricism, percussive experiment and pleasure left me wanting to hear more.

Despite thoroughly enjoying their set at The Scala a few years back, I wasn’t at first sure what might interest me about them, Matmos turned out to be a pleasure exploring areas of body horror and acid-drenched Disney in a short, but perfectly formed set.

The strikingly youthful pianist Francesco Tristano has performed with Craig, Oswald and orchestra and released an album produced by the latter. Neither had particularly engaged me. Saxophonist David Brutti was a new name while the other two are surely the techno equivalent of royal family. All bar Fox were distributed across the stage positioned at instrument stations with Craig at the centre. They performed a single lengthy piece that morphed between sections without pause. The music began in a becalmed state with a 4/4 pulse so distant that I wondered whether it was emanating from outside. Brutti improvised passages on bass and sopranino saxophones while Tristano supplied flourishes, melodic touches and comping. So far, so mundane, but what really impressed – what had me realise that I was experiencing something new and deliciously unfamiliar was the ambition and rigour of the music. The idea of marrying the techno grid to larger structures, improvisation and an approach that might best be termed symphonic sounds like an awful idea. However, the four of them made it work. Throughout, it felt like a tightrope, as if at any moment one of them might slip and bring the others crashing down.

Very little and a hell of a lot happened in the 45 minutes (that’s a pure guess) that the music lasted. It could have lasted much longer, but all too soon someone appeared on stage tapping his watch and indicating five minutes to go. The set received a mixed reaction from my friends, some enthusiastic, some not. I loved every moment and would be fascinated to be able to hear the music again. I hope they’ll release a recording although it would be fascinating if the music went unrecorded, remaining only in memory.

Afterwards, in the RFH lobby DJ Sprinkles played a fine house set which Dan and I shuffled to for a little while. I had to leave reluctantly at midnight lest my carriage turn into a pumpkin and leave me stranded. What a marvellous night!

Sick of end of year lists? Well, here’s another one.

Sometime around June 2009 seemed like a really promising year, but now I’ve come to make this list of my personal favourites, it doesn’t look as impressive as I’d expected. Boomkat’s end of years seemed a bit meh and The Wire’s rewind likewise imparted a sense of the lacklustre. It might just be me. Despite that, there were some really strong albums and my shortlist of enduring releases expanded from 2008’s trio to a quintet this year.

Enduring

• Junior Boys – Begone Dull Care
  Subtle pop masterpiece, distressingly ignored in year end lists, this even bested their debut Last Exit for me.
  
• Jon Hassell – Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes In The Street
  There are few such original instrumentalists left, though this release wasn’t revelatory that doesn’t seem important at this stage.
• King Midas Sound – Waiting For You
  More coherent and convincingly haunted for me than the Burial albums though I realise I’m in the minority with that opinion. Roger Robinson is amazing and it’s great to hear K. Martin rein in the bombast to
  
• Kraftwerk – The Catalogue
  An all too obvious choice I know, but an unavoidable one all the same.
• Moritz Von Oswald Trio – Vertical Ascent
  Vertical Ascent is a significant new approach for Moritz, particularly in light of his joint responsibility for the deep innovation of Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound (I’ve never been able to feel the claim for Monoton’s prior claim). Can’t wait for the second album from the trio.
  

Well worth hearing

• Broadcast & The Focus Group – Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age
• David Sylvian – Manafon
• Martyn – Great Lengths
• Monolake – Silence
• On – Your Naked Ghost Comes Back at Night
• Ryuichi Sakamoto/Alva Noto – UTP
• Shackleton – 3 EPs
• Snd – Atavism
• Tortoise – Beacons of Ancestorship
• Various – 5 Years of Hyperdub
• Vladislav Delay – Tummaa
• Zomby – One Foot In Front of the Other
• 2562 – Unbalance

Meaning to hear

• Supersilent 9
• Peverelist – Jarvik Mindstate

Music released prior to 2009 that I loved in 2009

• Steve Tibbetts
  This was the year Tibbetts’ music made sense to me. Unfortunately I struggle to articulate that sense to anybody else.
• Jimmy Giuffre – Free Fall
  Though I’d heard Free Fall before, this was the year I found it absolutely riveting in its exploration of the atavistic. I kept thinking of Harrison Birtwistle’s unrecorded opera Yan Tan Tithero. Giuffre’s 1961 live recordings Emphasis and Flight and Free Fall’s precursors Fusion and Thesis (reissued by ECM as 1961) are essential companions.
  
• John Martyn
  I cried buckets on learning of his death this year and listened to his ’70s albums on repeat for a long time after.
• Lech Jankowski – Institute Benjamenta.
  Long familiar with the film, 2009 saw me search out the soundtrack and found it to be a fascinating masterpiece. It’s OOP and rare as hen’s but the torrent is easily found.
  
• Neil Young – Dead Man.
  See above.
• Scritti Politti – White Bread, Black Beer.
  I really, really struggled with this album, but I finally appreciated its otherworldly strangeness this year.
• Jan Garbarek – Paths, Prints; Wayfarer
  Garbarek’s acerbic sound balances beautifully with Bill Frisell’s wafting chords on this pair of albums.
• Bugge Wesseltoft – Im
  Beautiful solo piano.
  

Other noteworthy lists

• Milkfactory, Mapsadaisical, Resident Advisor poll top 20

Previous years

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

I listen to too much music so I’m sorely tempted to list a slew of records, but I’m going to resist that temptation. Instead I’m going to choose just one record from the last ten years. It didn’t take me long to decide.

Scott Walker’s The Drift was released in 2006, I’ve listened to it a lot though I might wish I hadn’t. For the first year or so I could only respect it from a distance. It was monotonous, monolithic, monstrous, implacable, unforgiving. Much of it refused comprehension. Much of it still does.

Then I began to do things I’ve since come to deeply regret. Nothing about The Drift changed, but I did. I closed the gap until it became a part of me. I love and sometimes dread this record, but I don’t like it. Could anyone?

None of this justifies The Drift as a work of art to be picked out from the deafening labyrinth of music released in the last decade, but that’s my assertion. It’s a courageous work that refuses to look away from death and madness, from the darkness and horror perpetrated by other people who have names like ours – Clara, Jesse, Jones – and but for different circumstances might be our stories.

The Drift traverses nightmare dreamscapes, 9/11, Elvis Presley, genocide in the former Yugoslavia, fascist Italy, and the bl(e)ackest humour imaginable. It fixes the political and the poetic in its unblinking gaze and thereby sheds light on the darkest part of our souls.

I’ve heard no record that approaches its dark ambition, integrity or singularity.

To see more images of The Drift, please visit the post on Hard Format.

I’ll be damned if I can get WordPress to remember the lightbox setting so it’s just pics on sub-pages for the time being.

Stunning.

Robert Longo website
Via ISO50

Unofficial they may be, but lovely to behold. Note pointed use of original Olympic rings…

All designs by Alan Clarke.