Saturday 3rd October
Less grumpy tonight, but just as tired. A long hectic day at work followed by an annoying journey home tends to take it out of you. I had intended to write about the other new Eliane Radigue release today, but upon closer study it seems there is a conceptual element to the recording in that the idea is for the two discs to be played simultaneously. To be able to achieve anything close to this here takes more effort than I could be bothered with tonight so it will wait now until next week. Instead tonight, I took the first disc off of a little pile of releases by Simon Whetham, the Bristol based field recordist and composer. The disc is entitled Fractures, and was released earlier this summer on the excellent Entr’acte label.
The album is pieced together from dozens and dozens of fragments of field recordings made by Whetham on a trip to Iceland in 2007 where he took part in an axhibition alongside visual artists Kathryn Thomas and Tamany Baker. The title of the album apparently alludes to both the broken up glaciers of Iceland’s coasts and various tensions that occurred between the artists during their visit. The title could also easily represent the nature of the music, which involves sounds taken from all over the place, both natural and man-made sounds used throughout.
This kind of music, a kind of sculpted work made from field recordings, seems to be increasingly common these days. It feels slower than musique concrete, with longer samples of sounds used than that genre is more commonly associated with. Perhaps as portable digital recording has become easier and cheaper in recent years, and as just about everyone has software capable of simple sound collage on their computers these days anyone can make this type of music without too much effort or skill. So as there are more and more CDs of this kind available, so we need a little more originality and creativity from the musicians to stand out above the crowd. The subject matter of the field recordings will often be very similar on these releases as well, with running water, hydrophone recordings, traffic sounds and crowd scenes all very common indeed. As Whetham uses recordings he made out on and around glaciers alongside the sounds of Iceland’s capital city, most of the aforementioned list of sounds appear throughout Fractures. Water sounds in particular feature heavily.
So is the album any good or just another release along predictable lines? Well it is predictable to some degree in that it uses many of the sounds we might expect, but there are other elements in there that turn the ear, and the overall composition of the sounds is really rather good, with real attention paid to the way sounds fit together. The fifth track here, an untitled eleven minute long piece made up entirely (I think) of running water sounds is something that sounds entirely predictable, but actually is done really well. The two loud recordings of running water that cross over each other near the start of the track work really well together, creating a dense field of detail that actually leads you to forget what you are listening to. Sudden cuts away to other, much quieter trickling sounds etc are also very well done, a sense of strong timing and suspense present throughout. When traffic sounds appear in one of the early tracks we also get the loud, hollow roar of vehicles in a tunnel and the instantly recognisable but also oddly musical sound of a loose fan belt on one of the passing cars. On these tracks, while the subject matter might tick many of the usual boxes the way the sounds are used is particularly good. it feels like a lot of time and work went into the decisions made about where to place sounds in these pieces.
Elsewhere there are less obvious sounds present. There is a lovely, subtle period in the seventh track where an unidentifiable dull roar is undercut by a murky, unclear recording of a man talking, an odd electronic pulse appears in the second piece that could be some kind of pedestrian crossing warning (but probably isn’t) and spread out through the album there are often sudden appearances of sounds that at first do not seem to fit in, but when viewed through a wider lens actually represent Iceland as much as the watery sounds might. There are a few dull moments, a long period of gurgling water that takes up much of the seventh piece following the disappearance of the man’s voice has a nondescript feel to it, but then here I wonder if we are just being lured into a false sense of relxation as after about five minutes a blast of layered water sounds at very high volume suddenly knocks you sideways (actually causing me to spill toffee mousse into my lap on the first listen through, and still making me jump on the second, even though I knew it was coming. The use of sudden shifts in volume, as well as dramatic cuts in subject matter throughout the disc is very well done indeed. The final track on the album is particularly interesting. Lasting some nine minutes in total, the track begins with a solid five minutes of complete silence, only for water sounds to crash in with serious intensity all of a sudden, and then shift and cut in and out in a violent manner through to the end of the disc.
All in all Fractures is pretty good, a well put together, carefully considered construction that didn’t lose my interest after several listens through. Certainly one for the field recording fans, but also a good recommendation if you like a bit of modern concrete. Hopefully the other two or three discs by Whetham waiting for me here will match up.
Funnily enough I was attending a concert by Simon Whetham yesterday (part of the Seeds and Bridges series in Hull curated by Jez riley French). Again he used a lot of water sounds in a flowing collage of field recordings and other samples. His set was pleasant enough, and he certainly has a compositional awareness that lifted it above the mundane, but a couple of reservations struck me:
Firstly in terms of a performance (as opposed to listening to something similar on disc) it was kind of underwhelming as against attending a more traditional improvised music event. To travel 60 miles to see someone sitting at a laptop is a bit strange. Whilst the aural element is always most important for me in music, at a concert it is good to have something to enjoy at a visual or performance level. Watching a skilful instrumentalist is a pleasure in itself, whether s/he is playing piano, violin or amplified objects à-la-Lee-Patterson. But a laptop is a deadend in this respect and often leaves me dissatisfied. Simon may have been using extraordinary skill or virtuosity in the way he was manipulating his samples in real time, or he could have been just replaying a pre-mixed composition; it was impossible to tell.
Secondly the music was all rather dense in that the key samples themselves were quite busy sounds (flowing water etc) and for most of the time they were made more complex by having other samples mixed in with them. I found myself remembering Radu Malfatti’s famous criticism from 10 years or so ago of most improv as being too gabby or garrulous. These days a good deal of computer-based music is more garrulous than most improv on conventional instruments. I recently heard John Russell in a duo set that had oceans more space than Simon Whetham’s performance last night. Obviously there are lots of counter examples, and being garrulous is not synonymous with being good or bad in my book, but as a listener last night I did find myself craving a little more space in the music.
Thirdly I remembered something Sebastian Lexer said to me recently about when he saw a musician whose instrument was controlled by a mouse, then he knew there were going to be limitations in how he could play with them in an improvising context because there would always be at least a couple of seconds before they could react to anything he did. Now clearly this doesn’t apply to last night’s solo, but as I was wanting a little more from Simon in terms of performance, it came into my head. That is why Sebastian has spent so much time developing a computer system that can work in real time in a way that is virtually as intuitive and immediately reactive as a conventional instrument is in skilled hands. And for improvised performances that does seem to me a far more satisfying direction than something that remains laptop-based.
Finally I had half a thought about drones (of which I’m not a big fan). For much of the piece Simon was using running water as a kind of drone or carpet over or around which he introduced and wove other sounds. Again pleasant enough, but rather limited and I wondered if in solo sets for laptop this was simply too easy an option from a technical/performance point of view. It certainly didn’t feel like the kind of risk-taking you can get at the best improv gigs.
None of this is to dismiss Simon, whose set was as I said pretty good – and doubtless the disc is too, but they were just some thoughts I had while I was sitting there about the limitations of this kind of work in a performance setting.
Thanks for your thoughts Simon. I had half a mind to go over to Bristol on Thursday night to see (hear?!) Simon, Jez and Jgrzinich play a concert, but it was just one hectic day too many in a busy week.
This obviously was a CD of carefully arranged compositions, so I doubt there was any degree of improvisation involved. My comments about just how easy it is to make music of this type (not this quality, just of this type) echo your thoughts about drones and simply layered sounds (and often the same kinds of sounds). I am about as bored as you are at hearing that kind of simple composition, be it live in a room or on a CD, but as I tried to point out here there is actually a far more considered degree of compositional integrity in Fractures than I often hear in this kind of thing.
Your comments on laptoppers being able to improvise made me smile as they echo Eddie Prevost’s thoughts in his Minute Particulars book quite closely. Certainly things are moving on fast. Spending a little time with John Wall in his studio last year, messing around with Llooop and other bits of software showed me that laptop musicians can, under certain situations and with a limited set of sounds react in a live situation as quickly as any acoustic musician. The difficulty comes when you try and utilise the massive potential of a laptop to generate just about any sound in the world, this kind of things takes longer. Someone like Klaus Filip (who created Llooop) works with a limited palette (similar to many instrumentalists) and can do anything he likes with that area of sound just as fast as he can move his hand across a computer tablet. I suspect what Simon did at the gig you attended would have been quite different though, and yes less risk taking might have been involved.
The visual aspect of live concerts is a troublesome concern for me anyway, in that I find being distracted by a busy or visually exciting musician leads me to focus less on the sound as a whole. As I have written before I generally close my eyes when watching music these days. There are exceptions, Seymour Wright being one, wherein the narrative of his performance tends to extend beyond the mere sound itself. Certainly Sebastian is currently using computer technology in an incredibly tactile, immediate manner, but it could be argued that as he reaches down into the piano to pluck a string we can’t see what he is doing any more than hands behind a laptop screen. The physical similarities between the open piano and open laptop have always amused me, can we see what a pianist is doing with his hands any more than the laptopper? Mark Wastell routinely hides himself behind the tam tam when he plays live, so a good part of the audience just see a circle of metal wobbling a bit! I find I can enjoy the music of these guys just as much as I do any other musicians, so why should it be any different watching a laptopper?
Just some thoughts. I have always struggled with Eddie’s writing that a musician that can be seen to be physically performing should be of any more value than someone sat still behind a computer. It reminds me of people that suggest vinyl is better than CDs merely because you can watch the disc going round. There is a certain degree of romanticism in this kind of thinking that certainly has value (and certainly I would prefer to watch someone more active on stage) but I don’t think it necessarily should have any impact on your appreciation of the sound itself.
Hi Simon, Richard – some very interesting points here, thanks for sharing them.
Not much to add, it’s one of those arguments that’s been around since laptops started to be used for live work. The suspicion of “cheating” in some way goes back to the earliest proponents relying largely on play-back due to the limitations of the hardware.
Purely personally, I’ve used laptops live on and off for a few years now and have worked through a fair bit of what is commercially available software-wise, created my own patches and I still keep coming up against the same problem of reaction time. Lloopp comes close, but nothing I’ve tried gives you the same intuitive response that analogue electronics, objects or an instrument can as far as I’m concerned – this is partly why my tendency at the moment is to use it as a physical object in it’s own right, rather than as a “fast musical calculator”. Not a unique approach, but a gratifying one.
This is not to say that laptops can’t be used, and I have no problem seeing someone sitting stock-still behind one during a performance, I’m speaking purely about my own frustrations. Providing the resulting music is innovative (or at least, interesting) the delivery of it isn’t critical to me.
John Wall is a good example of someone who can make it work, Klaus Filip is another. As Richard said, these are performers who have a very strong sense of their sound palette and work within that fairly strictly. This seems to be the key as opposed to going off on a tangent and trying to make the computer produce all it can, as fast as it can. I’m sure this is the same for Simon Whetham.
I saw Simon playing while I was in Berlin a month or so ago, and he actually uses the same software as John Wall does for live work… it was interesting as there is a school of thought that “computer music” is largely generic and shares a set of glitchy clichés which means one performer is interchangeable with another. It was gratifying as obviously the results form Simon and John are totally different even though the instrument is largely built in the same way.
I’d like to elaborate on my statement Simon has been referring to.
Using a laptop is by default is through the mouse and laptop, unless further equipment is attached to it.
There’s amazing software around to manipulate audio in any way imaginable, there is an equal impressive list of interactive devices (human interfaces, strange word I know). Most software restricts the user to make use of the mouse and/or learning some keyboard shortcuts. The mouse allows to change one parameter at the time, shortcuts can call up presets and macros. This is most practical, the laptop is opened and off you go.
Using the laptop in performances while accepting the restriction to operate the instrument with the mouse has in my opinion implications on the musical structure. If the mouse is used, changes are gradual over time, if keystrokes and presets are unavoidable, the processes had to been pre-planned.
If I recall correctly, in the mentioned conversation I had pronounced my surprise that many laptop instruments restrict themselves to call up appropriate sounds at any particular time (reminds me of DJing), giving little options to investigate the root of the sounds and staying within gradual modulations. That this should not be understood as a qualifier for the value of the performance is hopefully clear by a long list of great music created in this manner, but, that the resulting restrictions in flexibility and adaptability have a direct influence on the musical structure ought to be clear as well.
My continuing question is, how does this relate to its use within improvisations combining technology and acoustic instruments. Who is deciding on the resulting structure, the music, or the technology?
S
Thanks for the elaboration, Sebastian.
An afterthought about my attitude to performances and what I want from them:
98% of the music I listen to is from disc. Because I live 200 miles from London I rarely get the chance to attend concerts of music that I like. That probably colours my attitude to the few performances I do attend in that I want something different from what I get from listening to cd’s. In improvised music this can come from a sense of live drama within the music: if the music is adventurous and risky enough I can enjoy it hugely even if on a purely musical level it ultimately fails and wouldn’t sustain repeated listens on disc. Or it could simply come from the pleasure of watching a skilled instrumentalist at work, though as mentioned above a skilled player of electronics is less likely to offer any visual satisfaction than someone playing an acoustic instrument. (This is not, of course, to argue that playing an acoustic instrument is “better” than playing electronics; both can be great, but this discussion has made me realise that I’m more likely to make an effort to travel to see a performance that involves at least some acoustic element.) But I don’t want visual elements added on to music gratuitously. I agree with Richard that musicians who play in a histrionic way are off-putting, and I’m not usually convinced by attempts to combine music with film/video projections, let alone embarrassing things like music theatre. Nonetheless when I’m at a concert I am looking for the overall experience to be more than simply aural, and –unlike Richard – I don’t shut my eyes. Hence my disappointment when – as on Saturday night – there was nothing for me to absorb visually. It reminded me of a bizarre concert I attended 20 years ago of a number of Xenakis’ electronic works. The music and the sound system were great, but ultimately I’d rather have listened to the pieces on my stereo in the comfort of my bedroom rather than sitting in a concert hall staring at a bank of huge speakers on stage, being distracted by the coughs and shuffles of other audients around me.
Finally an apology to Simon Whetham for hijacking Richard’s review of his cd. I’m sure, as Richard says – that Fractures is a thoroughly composed piece and therefore irrelevant to this tangential discussion of improvised performance. And I very much look forward to hearing the disc.
i guess we have to add Christof Kurzmann to discussion (and he is using llooop also). Some of the artists are trying to escape that by exploiting the technology (for example Mattin w the amplification of internal feedback via mic in his laptop). I don’t mind ‘laptop gigs’ what i do mind is that many of them see their performance as boring to the public’s eye that’s why they use videos and visuals, which sadly many times function merely as a background not at all related to music, and even worse they also sometimes take yr mind of the music itself. i guess artists who are using laptops have to be much more aware how to present their sound via creating strong sound environment that can ’speak’ for itself and strong enough even in a context of ‘boring spectacle of watching somebody sitting at his laptop and staring in it’s screen’ …
Great comments here guys, thanks, a really good read.
Sebastian, regarding this:
I’d like to hope its the musician!
The thing is, there has always been limitations placed upon musicians when they sit down to improvise with their chosen instrument. A double bassist can only play notes as fast as his hand can move up and down a long fretboard (if that’s what it is called?) a pianist only has two hands and can only reach so many keys at once… When John Butcher picks up the alto sax ahead of the soprano he is limiting his possibilities, when Sean Meehan chooses only a snare, a cymbal and a dowel rod the possibilities are even slimmer, even Phil Minton, who might have the fastest reaction time of all musicians can only make so many noises at once…
In all of these situations the instrumentation is limited in how it can impact on the music. A laptop has different limitations again that are changing all the time. The fascinating thing to me is just how far it has come, and how far it has moved (in some instances) away from simple playback of pre-recorded material. I’ve already gone on record to say that Sebastian’s use of the computer in a live situation is the most alive, potentially powerful use I have seen yet. The most interesting use of computers in the near future may well be in this area, how can a computer extend the piano beyond what a human can achieve with it alone? Its a dangerous area. I suspect the majority of attempts to work in this area will produce dreadful music, which is one of the reasons why Sebastian’s achievements are so impressive to me.
just a quick comment: for one thing, Simon often does have an images or images projected while he performs & the fact that he didn’t is partly down to the budget for the show & the fact the galleries projector was already in use.
laptops in performance: yes, it’s something I find less easy to engage with that other methods because of the visual thing, but actually there is an odd thing here: I like looking at very ’still’ paintings & listening to very ’still’ music – so one person sat in dim lighting illuminated by their laptop screen shouldn’t be a problem & indeed this is how I have learnt to look at it. Actually the lighting & situation at this performance made for a visually good still shot !
Did you actually take a photo then Jez? Would be nice to see if you did.
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