“As George Lewis recently said, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish
between improvised and composed music. It’s a distinction he would like to see
dropped. For much of its length this delicately nuanced recording could quite easily
be a formal electroacoustic composition, an impression strongly reinforced by the
fact that Evan Parker sounds curiously unfamiliar in this new grouping. He’s well
used now to working with electronics, but this was a first convocation of this quartet
with Max Eastley, Graham Halliwell and Mark Wastell, and in the full but not unduly
resonant acoustic of St.James the Great in North London, the four musicians move
round one another with the gracious decorum and unfussy discipline of monks walking
a prayer path. The track titles taken from ancient Japanese folklore perhaps suggest
another provenance, but there is nothing pictorial or impressionistic about this
music.
Wastell’s metal percussion and the sliding tones from Eastley
(or is it Halliwell?) sometimes recall honoured British improvisation of the kind
associated with Ovary Lodge, who offered similar hostages to critical fortune by
providing haiku-like titles. This is estimably quiet music and eminently reasonable,
which might seem a strange word in the circumstances. Listen to Parker alone, insofar
as one can separate even him from a shared soundworld, and he could be examining
his sound and its processes rather than spinning a linear narrative. One always
tends to reach for ‘stillness’ as a shorthand for music of this kind, but that’s
wrong too. It’s all movement, but movement of a markedly abstract and ratiocinative
sort, coming back to its own subtly altered premises at the end of each of the three
pieces. The notes suggest that, having embarked on this small pilgrimage at the
recording, the group are now working regularly. That’s excellent news.” -
Brian Morton, The Wire
“Two generations meet, it seems, Eastley and Parker on one side and Halliwell and
Wastell on the other. The music is from their first meeting as a quartet, which
has continued afterwards. The improvisations here aren't easy to describe. There
are on one hand the electronic and electric-charged machinery, which provide a very
modern look, crackling, drone, static, but on the other hand there are the acoustic
instruments, especially Parker's saxophone, that sound very traditionally improvised.
However most of the time this marriage works wonderfully well. An endless stream
of sounds colliding into each other, bumping but also carefully missing each other,
like a near collision. In that way each of the players knows how to avoid the other,
but also it's a matter of respect for the others; each of the players gets room to
play, to develop, take shapeand transform, noting what the others do and adding where
necessary. A great work. “
-
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly
“These three improvisations, traced in the air of a London church, form one of the
most beautiful sound landscapes of the year. This is the first offering from a quartet
which has become a regular grouping, and whose open and sensitive music reaches a
high plateau of deep satisfaction. There’s nothing forced or competitive about this
meeting of generations and styles (which are certainly different). It is a process
of mutual connection; everything is placed with impeccable delicacy into the swirling
mists and drones of sound, and interwoven with the furtive embellishments of the
soprano. Collective and majestic.” -
Guillaume Tarche, Improjazz
“Eastley is a sound sculptor and instrument builder who here plays an arc, an “electro-acoustic
monochord” of his own devising in the rich tradition of Harry Partch and Eddie “One
String” Jones. It’s a nine-foot long, wooden, single-string instrument that changes
pitch with a flexing of the wood. It’s also bowed and played with glass rods and
its sound is altered electronically. Graham Halliwell, who has previously concentrated
his energies on saxophone feedback, here plays computer and electronics, while Mark
Wastell plays tam- tam, metal percussion and harmonium. Parker plays soprano exclusively.
As all that might suggest, there’s a lot of droning going on, and the most characteristic
sound is wisps of high-pitched soprano saxophone against the slow, harmonium-like
oscillations of the other instruments. Even Wastell’s percussion is sometimes used
for sustained sound, a deeply resonant gong shimmering through the electronics. The
occasional glittering flash of struck percussion emphasizes the heightened resonance
of the church in which it was recorded, but with the further suggestion of Japanese
percussion employed in a Buddhist service, an inevitable analogy in a CD with artwork
and titles derived from traditional works of Japan. Within its almost constant
state, the music is always changing, sounds shifting and mutating. There’s no easy
way to describe it, index perhaps of one of its values. The music is both stimulus
and companion to reverie, a work of great beauty.” - Stuart Broomer, Point
of Departure
“Pioneer of European improvisation since the late 60’s, the saxophonist Evan Parker
continues to unite and enter into dialogue with improvisers from all around the world
and of all different aesthetics. He has extended the sonic possibilities of his
instrument through the use of multiphonics (which he has mastered to perfection)
and the technique of circular breathing. His playing - unlike any other - produces
a fluttering kind of phrasing that is at once wavy, sinuous, hypnotic and meandering.
Here Parker is accompanied by musicians who are principally concerned with electronic
and electro-acoustic treatments. Max Eastley, Graham Halliwell and Mark Wastell
construct a kind of dissolving backcloth, sometimes viscous but always substantial,
which is tautened and sharpened by Parker in such a way that different layers are
superimposed and interwoven to produce a dynamic and fascinating fabric. The purification,
the crystallisation of motifs, the tendency towards a reduction of elements down
to that which is essential, is evident throughout the recording. You can feel a
strong desire amongst the players to reject all artifice, to abandon the tonal system
and let the linearity of time be experienced as it is, alive in a pure alternation
between presence and absence.” - Théo Jarrier, Revue et Corrigée
“Eastley lets his arc drone, while Halliwell, known for his delicate Feldman-inspired
aesthetic, here uses computer and electronics. Wastell on tam-tam and metal percussion
is the third source of the minimalistic waves of sound which blossom in sublime shifts
of colour and light. Only occasionally does Wastell’s metallic scraping make calligraphic
marks on this canvas of sine-waves and gentle overtones. And within this Zen-garden
Parker is the twittering, pulsating, piping bird. Here are found the secret sounds
(bruits secrets) of this music, as strange as a silkworm smuggled into a bamboo
stick, as languid as slightly overcooked spaghetti, as suggestive as the nightsong
of a koi, or the interior monologue of a moon-sheep. And out of these craters emerges
a silence which slowly envelops the whole landscape.”
-
Rigobert Dittmann, Bad Alchemy
“Although Eastley and Parker may seem more EFI, while the younger Halliwell and Wastell
are more eai, the reality is more complex and interesting. The music straddles—and
thereby renders problematic—the perceived division between Eurpoean Free Improvisation
(EFI) and electro-acoustic improv (eai). Parker is more subdued than ever, adding
twittering and prolonged drone-like tones, but decidedly not dominating proceedings.
Sonically, he is an equal partner with the others; the whole ebbs and flows, creating
a slowly evolving soundscape that has a foot in both camps. Unlike anything else
you will have heard.” -
John Eyles, All About Jazz
“What surprises is the intensity of collaboration between the four musicians. This
reaches such a high level that the three pieces give the impression of being electro-acoustic
compositions rather than improvisations. The low volume and tranquil tone that
prevails over most of the music gives the musicians space to subtly play with the
dynamics of the sound. The result is a complete sonic experience for whoever chooses
to listen to these four players.”
-
José Francisco Tapiz, Tomajazz
“These three improvisations were recorded at the Church of St. James The Great ,
a venue whose mystical quietness seems to actively contribute to the lesson in restraint
that the music appears to teach. Two voices are instantly recognizable: Parker,
his soprano saxophone locating the environmental sweet spots and abandoning typically
reiterative outbursts in favour of delicate snippets of bird-like expressiveness,
and Wastell’s tam-tam which materializes in rarefied moments, emerging from the background
with the silent authority of a monk to assure everybody that a cosmologic order is
going to be respected. Eastley’s electro acoustic monochord and Halliwell’s computer
and electronics are not so easily attributable, constituting the element of utter
suspension that positively characterizes the most fascinating segments. In particular,
on top of everything, the fabulous final minutes of The chessboard cherry tree where
a minimal fluttering is the basis of a spellbinding alien counterpoint. The whole
record has an undercurrent of unidentified nervous satisfaction, the listener unaware
of what’s really happening yet ready to accept all consequences. An album that
leaves you speechless for a long time after its conclusion, to ponder about the
following move, both in the artists’ career and in your own life.”
-
Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
“This recording presents a particularly intriguing look at the tradition of London
free improvisation. Here is a meeting of three generations of improvisers. Evan
Parker has had a venerable presence as both musician and organizer for the last four
decades. Max Eastley was part of a second generation of improvisers like David Toop
and Paul Burwell who started playing in the mid ’70s. These musicians brought in
a home-made instruments and a notion of kinetic sound installations, and interactive
electronics in an effort to further subvert habitual responses in collective settings.
Mark Wastell and Graham Halliwell, of course, have been at the forefront of a more
recent generation looking to further extend collective interactions through concentrated
focus on the minute details of technique, timbres, and densities.
The three improvisations proceed with a sense of considered shimmering
scrims. What is immediately striking is the sound of Evan Parker’s soprano. His
instantly-recognizable tone and sinuous phrasing snakes across the field of electronics
and metallic shimmers. The sonic field has a quavering sense of economy, unlike
the more orchestrated lushness of Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Wastell’s
luminous fields of tam-tam resonance and harmonium drones constantly meld with Eastley’s
Arc (a bowed and scraped single string stretched over a sound box and manipulated
via a moveable bridge and real-time electronic modulation) and Halliwell’s electronic
treatments. There are flashes of Parker’s labyrinthine circular breathing, particularly
on the second track, but while his soprano provides a linear thrust to the improvisations,
the four players deftly avoid any notion of figure and ground. By the final improvisation,
they have truly synthesized a collective sound. This release captured the quartet’s
first performance together and the liner notes mention that they have continued to
perform since then. Kudos to producer Simon Reynell for capturing this inaugural
effort.”
-
Michael Rosenstein, Signal to Noise
