Chris Cogburn, Bonnie Jones & Bhob Rainey
Arena Ladridos

Chris Cogburn   percussion
Bonnie Jones   electronics
Bhob Rainey   soprano saxophone

1  Govalle
2  Marfa

Recorded in Austin and Marfa, Texas, April 2010

Reviews

'Arena Ladridos' was released as part of a series of 5 CDs under the title Silence and After.  You can read reviews of the whole series here (Stuart Broomer in Point of Departure)  and here (Julian Cowley in The Wire).

“Synergies exist within group performance, whereby each individual voice is augmented by another, doubly so in group improvisation. An obvious statement, I know, but what may be less apparent is how this interaction resembles what one might call a nonlinear dynamical system. Here, voices coalesce together into a meshwork, feeding back into one another. This happens either on a purely physical level, where the sounds emitted by each performer interact in harmonic wave patterns; or on a cognitive level, where the decisions of player x influence those of player y (and then y back onto x). The former phenomenon is well-studied — from Bach's counterpoint to Grisey's spectralism, the notion that harmonics behave in a nonlinear fashion has long been entrenched in musical theory — but the latter is a far less understood and applied process, even among social scientists. Fortunately, the group documented by Arena Ladridos are world-class, providing an excellent example of a nonlinear dynamical system.

Frequently brought together through Austin's No Idea Festival, the trio of Chris Cogburn (percussion), Bonnie Jones (electronics), and Bhob Rainey (soprano saxophone) toured Texas and Mexico in 2010. Arena Ladridos is the recorded document of shows in Austin and Marfa, Texas, with each set comprising a 20-plus-minute track. Each member's credentials are unimpeachable, all having played with premier free improvisers. Jones is a Korean-born, Baltimore-based electronic improviser who makes up one half of English (with Joe Foster) and has played with such luminaries as Andrea Neumann and Toshimaru Nakamura. An instructor at Loyola University of New Orleans, Rainey ought to be familiar to most, as one of the principles of nmperign alongside Greg Kelley. The Austin-based Cogburn might be the least well-known, though his background is equally sound — as curator of No Idea Festival and having played with Vic Rawling, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Annette Krebs, among others.

So what then would be the most effective tool for understanding how a nonlinear dynamical system applies to an improvisational work like Arena Ladridos?

That would be the language of such a system's limiting behavior. On the opener "Govalle," for example, the trio quickly settles into what would be called a restrained 'attractor,' i.e., a stable point or cycle at which the variables sort of hover around (up to minor perturbation). For much of the first half of the track, the three are caught in this quiet, yet menacing cycle, aptly evoking the rough translation of Arena Ladridos, 'barking sand.' Jones' drone faintly hisses while Rainey and Cogburn emit sparse sounds of airy notes and delicate scratching, respectively. Just over four minutes in, the group attempt to dislodge the muted aesthetic, with each crescendoing simultaneously. But this perturbation is weak, resulting in a regression back to the original, minimal attractor. It isn't until around 12 minutes that the group breaks free of their initial state: Rainey's sax oscillates wildly while Jones introduces an intrusive feedback more akin to Nakamura's troublesome no-input mixer, thus disturbing their environment enough to evolve the system. As a result, for the remainder of "Govalle," Cogburn, Jones, and Rainey bifurcate rapidly between a loud and soft attractor, until finally the system disintegrates.

"Marfa," on the other hand, evolves in a drifting manner as opposed to bifurcation, proceeding sequentially as soft, loud, soft, loud, etc. Instances of unaccompanied 'lowercase' sax quickly transition into a troika of noise and just as swiftly back into near silence. Each quieter moment resembles "Govalle's" first attractor, but in no way could any be considered a derivative of another. The outbursts too are varied, ranging from a cacophonous flutter to a radiant drone reminiscent of nmperign's best. These basic components of volume comprise sections of drift, each an incremental development from its associated predecessor.

From the listener's perspective, especially the uninitiated, Cogburn, Jones, and Rainey's improvisation might seem chaotic and formless, but the best players always employ some sort of logic, whether that be agreed-upon heuristics or a player's internal theories. This 'logic' is actualized here through their performance and yet subsequently distorted by one another until they reach an obfuscated, bizarre structure: an instantaneous, complex meme. If this group were of the non-idiomatic persuasion, their aim would be to continually destroy these new memes they've established for themselves. But here the trio seeks to evolve in a novel, seemingly unforeseen way, dodging both exogenous idioms and a reliance on any one endogenous meme. This dismantling of attractors may border on the clinical, but Arena Ladridos is an aesthetic delight, an album that invites both overwrought analysis — as I have done here — and passive splendor — which I recommend you experience.”                   
Matthew Horne, Tiny Mix Tapes

“‘At the same time, there is silence, a silence which is not an absence of sound but which is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after crossing this silence.’

There is, often, a gorgeous sense of calm about this record, not a loss of focus or laziness but a willingness to let little happen, for however long it takes, for however long it needs; not imposing, not leading, following the sounds as and when they ask to be heard or made. Though it’s by no means a particularly silent listen, one feels that the lines quoted above, from Simone Weil, do somehow fit: each sound is filtered through a corresponding quietness, each sound is coaxed out of silence and falls back into it, like a wavering fleck of light suddenly emerging, then disappearing back into shadow again. This shouldn’t imply the monastic discipline or asceticism that Weil might have at the back of her mind; rather, the sense is of something relaxed, not casual exactly, but un-worried about grabbing attention or creating something that screams ‘I am important! Listen to me now!’ As time passes, not much might have happened, and so what? Spaces are filled enough, more than enough, so much of the time, and a genuine contemplative quietness can do no harm. To some, this may come across as aimlessness; and, true, compared to the composed or partially-composed work in this area, there is less obvious ‘focus’, less of a clear structural framework. But for me, that’s quite an attractive respite; listening to ‘Arena Ladridos’ allows one, free of overt structural considerations, to quite clearly imagine oneself into a physical space, to imagine the musicians sitting there, in front, perhaps, of a small audience, inhabiting the small room for forty-five minutes, sometimes filling it with sound, sometimes easing back and letting the room itself have a say in matters. There’s something about the logic with which things unfold that means this could be nothing other than a concert recording: the presence of hesitancies, even meandering moments – the imperfections which prevent things from having a surface’s that’s too shiny, that’s ‘just-so’.

The first piece begins with tinkling bells, maybe just jiggled or shaken or knocked slightly with the tips of fingers, electronic crackle, and wisps of breath amplified/modified through saxophone bell and keys. My somewhat whimsical way of listening to this opening minute or so is to imagine that the three musicians are ‘introducing’ themselves, in overlapping fashion. Here is percussion; here is electronics; here is a saxophone. But the separation is really less clear-cut: though it’s normally fairly obvious which sounds are percussion, the concentration on vague or merging tones from electronics and saxophone tend to create a grey area in which anyone could be creating any particular sound. At one point, the sound of a passing car seems to sub for Jones’ electronics, replacing her drone tone with something remarkably similar. It’s not all subtlety and hush, though: Jones’ playing is, at times, quite deliberately harsh, generating sudden beeps that sound like a warning signal, an electrical malfunction, an alarm, and Cogburn’s playing can be quite assertive, though he generally treats his drums as a surface to rub and scrape rather than one to strike and beat.

Indeed, there’s quite a variety of incident on display: there are a large number of events, however unhurried the pace, and one never feels that the players are holding anything back, practicing an overly studied reticence or aloofness; instead, they are using patience as a general method of working, and the results are to make gestures which elsewhere might seem small or un-dramatic (a surging consonance of crescendo – a half-choked wail rising and falling on intake and outtake of breath – the sound of almost conventional rhythms from drums) possess intense power and concentration. Equally, though, things could go the other way, all three musicians temporarily silent, while a dog barks, or a car distantly passes – where a sine tone sounds like a sucking in of breath or a tiny, suppressed whisper – sounds, sometimes, that seem to come from outside human agency, like those eerie screeches and rumbles one hears from on high in railways stations and near building sites. This or a swelling drama, a concord/concourse, not rising to shared climax, surging only to swell down again. Matthew Horne, in his review of the album for ‘Tiny Mix Tapes’, describes the process as a group aesthetic in which all three players hover around a particular area for several minutes, attempting, and failing to break out, before eventually moving away in quite dramatic form: “The trio quickly settles into what would be called a restrained 'attractor,' i.e., a stable point or cycle at which the variables hover around (up to minor perturbation). Just over four minutes in, the group attempt to dislodge the muted aesthetic, with each crescendoing simultaneously. But this perturbation is weak, resulting in a regression back to the original, minimal attractor. It isn't until around 12 minutes that the group breaks free of their initial state: Rainey's sax oscillates wildly while Jones introduces an intrusive feedback more akin to [Toshimaru] Nakamura's troublesome no-input mixer, thus disturbing their environment enough to evolve the system.” It’s a nice formal encapsulation of a music that seems to avoid formal systems in the moment of listening, of unfolding: but perhaps it belies the actual lack of overt tension (so often a driver of improvised music) that I feel when playing the CD back; despite abruptions from Jones or from Cogburn, despite intricacies of flow and of incident, the overall impression is unforced, unhurried, unharried. Here, as Weil puts it, noises have to cross the silence before they can be heard.”                                                                        David Grundy, Eartrip

“The opening scene in director David Lynch's movie Blue Velvet (1986) shows a placid neighborhood scene of a man watering his lawn. As the camera zooms closer and closer to the grass, the serenity of the landscape is peeled away to reveal a tumultuous battle of tiny insects in a life-and-death struggle that goes on outside of our familiar perspective.

The same can be said of these two minimalist improvisation pieces on Arena Ladridos. Recorded in Austin and Marfa, as a part of a Texas and Mexico tour, the trio presents a smoldering and at times an almost imperceptible array of sounds that focus on the possibilities of silence (or near silence).

A master of minimalist improvisation, Bhob Rainey can be heard in the company of today's free jazz superstars like Axel Dorner, Jack Wright, Jon Mueller, Alessandro Bosetti, and Greg Kelley his partner in Nmperign. This trio presents equal doses of improvisation and environmental tones, spreading an ambient construction, instead of structured tunes.

This is not music for the impatient, nor for Dick Clark's dance party. It is about the exploration of the minutia, but not the trivial. Cogburn's percussion is focused more on scrapings than the beat, and Jones' electronics makes use of her circuits' buzz and flutter to complement Rainey's breath. On the surface, nothing is happening here. Such is the verdict if played at low volumes without closer inspection., but at the micro-level the activity is blazing. Rainey is listening and reacting to the slightest movement by Cogburn and Jones' nerve synapses firing repeated instructions to alter pitch and tones. The rise and swell of energy is a tsunami for those living here close to the ground. It's just not apparent to anyone not scrutinizing the minimal.”                                                       
Mark Corroto, All About Jazz

“The trio of Chris Cogburn, Bonnie Jones, and Bhob Rainey provide a perfect complement to the other two recordings. The two live sets that make up the recording were captured live at the 2010 No Idea Festival in Austin and Marfa, Texas. There’s a markedly transparent sound to this trio with silence and ambient sound a distinguishing element to the unfolding improvisations. The character of each of the musicians makes a specific and discrete mark on the music; Rainey’s fricative overtones and sibilant use of breath, Jones’ burred and cracked circuits, and Cogburn’s gesturally abraded percussion. Their music is a tightrope display of careful listening as the three explore a dynamic sense of elastic balance. Over the course of these two sets, the trio evolves a potent collective vocabulary. Gesture plays a much stronger role here than in the previous two releases but each of the members eschews the use of conversational activity, instead, pursuing vectors of countervailing lines that coalesce around velocity and dynamics while creating a mutable tension. The three can drop down to near silence with wisps of detail or erupt in boisterous crescendos, but they emerge in a natural progression rather than any forced sense of formal arc. Rainey is fairly well documented, but Jones, and particularly Cogburn, have not recorded as frequently; this is a particularly welcome release and one I’ve been going back to often.”                                   
Michael Rosenstein, Signal to Noise