Music that really challenges the listener, confronts them even, will often be the music that survives with them for a long time. This is certainly often the case for me. Richard Kamerman’s solo disc on the Copy for your records label came out late last year, but I have been tussling with the recording on and off for quite some time, as Richard had kindly (and stupidly considering my renowned unreliability with such things) sent me a copy of the recording long beforehand to ask my opinion. I should publicly offer my sincere apologies here to Richard simply because I never really got back to him about the recording, primarily because I didn’t know what to say about it for some time. (I’m still not sure I do now) Anyway, sorry Richard. I’ve got around to it now anyway…

The CD is titled And she sat up in the street in the sun and consists of one long forty minute piece recorded with mechanical parts, found objects and amplification devices. The reason I find it difficult is in the way it jumps around from one extreme volume to another, and utilises a set of ugly, dirty sounds throughout. The thing is, for much of the time, this piece of music touches all of the easy buttons for me. Kamerman’s mechanical objects rattling about, coupled with gentle hums and little glimpses of the room around him all work very nicely indeed. The first five minutes or so of the album works in this way, generally quiet, but constantly shifting and changing, often with dramatic clicks and cuts from one set of sounds to another. At this point, and also at later times, including the extended fuzzy silence in the middle of the album all the right boxes are ticked for me and I feel very comfortable with the music presented. The thing is, there are sudden moments scattered about, some of them just seconds long, other extended periods of several minutes, when the calm is broken (actually calm is the wrong word, there is a sense of tense anticipation right throughout the recording). Not only do we get disruptively loud sounds appearing, but they are also quite difficult to listen to sounds, often grating, distressed metallic sounds, far from naturally musical, usually it seems, the result of something electrical being abused in some way that was not really meant to happen.

So listening to, and coping with the Jekyll and Hyde nature of this piece of music is something of a challenge for me. As most regular readers here will know I prefer music to be on the quieter side, so the sudden spikes of volume are hard enough to cope with by themselves. When they arrive though the potential for personal discomfort os amplified by the unmusical nature of the sounds themselves. Clearly this is very intelligent and carefully considered music though, and the challenge it presents is one I welcome with open arms. While I say that the music is considered, I am not so sure that each sound is fully thought through and prepared for in advance, as I suspect this piece is entirely improvised in one sitting, but certainly the disruptive nature of the music, the definite will on behalf of Kamerman to produce something other than run-of-the-mill improvisation is a fully considered approach. Whether the music is deliberately confrontational is hard to tell. Whether anyone other than myself finds the music a welcome challenge as I do remains to be seen as well come to think of it.

There is certainly a lot of concentration and control involved here. There are very delicate shifts in volume in places, either the slightest adjustments to almost silent buzzes or tiny changes in loud drilling abrasions. This is not a case of someone setting up a loose structure and then randomly turning knobs up to eleven every so often. The music is structured very well, with the balance between “ugly” and “acceptable” or loud and quiet always hovering on the brink of collapse one way or the other. This is not really a noise music / improvisation crossover as such, as the music generally stays within the kind of structure we might expect from a lowercase improv solo setting, the only differences coming with the sudden dynamic spikes and the use of some rather harsh sounds here and there. but they never really stay around for long enough for the usual comparisons with noise music to be of any use here.

And she sat up in the street in the sun is a rewarding listen then, but the rewards only come if you put in the time and effort and allow your expectations to be constantly undermined. Some of the sudden shifts from one sound to another really do sound great, the contrasts from one section to the next really working well, but it is the overall impact of the piece, the journey it takes you along, never allowing you to rest as a listener, never fulfilling the expectations it sets as it goes along that makes this a rewarding, if exhausting trip. Like the Oscillation Vacillation disc I reviewed a few days ago, beauty doesn’t really come into the equation here, but still the music is rewarding if you are able to follow it through. Forget sensuality and expect to be picked up and shaken, dunked in icy cold water and then hung up to dry until its time to start again. Perhaps this may not sound like the most enticing of experiences, but I can only state that it is in fact a thoroughly rewarding and inspiring one. Very highly recommended.