Droplets
Dominic Lash plays Eva-Maria Houben & Taylan Susam
with Patrick Farmer & Sarah Hughes

Interview with Dominic Lash

The music on Droplets includes both improvisation and realisations of scores.  As a player how does your attitude vary across these two disciplines?

The answer to this depends, of course, on the musicians one is improvising with or the score one is performing. I'm not sure I could explain exactly why but recently, when working in more pared-down contexts, I have found it preferable to have the discipline of a score rather than to improvise. I usually like to have a certain openness in free improvisation, whereas in a "reduced" musical situation a score can provide a focus and prevent the music becoming geared mainly towards the production a particular type of soundscape or mood; such situations can quickly result in my losing interest.
The single group with which I've done the most freely improvised concerts in the last year or so (which doesn't mean that many! - most performances are still with more transitory combinations of musicians) is the trio with John Butcher and John Russell. I don't know of any scores which I think would be more productive for that group to engage with than to improvise freely. I don't have the right background or training to perform densely notated music, so that isn't part of what I do; the closest I get to that at the moment is Alex Ward's quartet Predicate, for which he writes some relatively thorny themes, but the emphasis is still very much on improvisation. It does seem that I'm now playing scores with musicians with whom I might in the past have improvised in a more minimal fashion - such as Angharad Davies or Patrick Farmer. I don't know if that marks any kind of trend or just a shift of interest on my part, though I think Patrick has had similar feelings. Certainly it meant that the improvisations on this CD were an unusual thing for me to do at the present time, which made them interesting to me.

The scored pieces are by Wandelweiser composers, who you have performed a lot in the past couple of years, and that ethos seems to affect the improvised piece as well..... And yet at the same time for me much of the music on the disc doesn't correspond to the popular stereotype of Wandelweiser music - i.e. small sounds amidst oceans of silence.  Do you think of yourself as a "Wandelweiser musician"?

I think there are 2 questions here. The popular stereotype of Wandelweiser music is, as you say, a stereotype. Certain pieces written by the composers that make up the collective, both in the past and now, would more or less fit that stereotype. Many others wouldn't... There might have been a move away from such music (comparing Michael Pisaro's releases on his Gravity Wave label to some of his earlier compositions, for example) but I'm not confident of a general trend: Jürg Frey's music has never fitted such a characterisation, while Radu Malfatti's often still does. So the diversity of music in what seems at first glance to be a very narrow compass is a big part of why I continue to be interested in and excited by it. It certainly gives one things to think about, but it is first and foremost wonderful to listen to - not that I believe, of course, there is any such thing as "just music"! My continued involvement with the music produced by the group has come about because it is stimulating and beautiful, and also because I have found the people involved a very welcoming bunch indeed. But many other people have a far longer and deeper involvement than I have. If I'm thought of as in some way part of a Wandelweiser "family", that would make me very happy, but I wouldn't myself want to claim any particular status by declaring myself to be a "Wandelweiser musician".

Environmental sounds obviously feature to a huge degree in your realisation of the Houben piece 'Nachtstuck', but are also present - though less dramatically - in the improvised piece 'elusion'.  Does this embracing of surrounding 'noise' as part of the music go back to Cage, or does it have a different history for you (field recording, Michael Pisaro's work or whatever)?

In a concert presentation of this kind of music extraneous noise is absolutely inevitable. Clearly on a recording, one has a range of options, either attempting to minimise it, to accentuate it, or something in between. Cage is an important part of the conceptual background here, and field recording must come into it as well, though I don't actually know a great deal about contemporary field recording (beyond Chris Watson) - certainly nothing approaching Patrick and Sarah's knowledge of the subject. The idea that most resonates with me, actually, is Antoine Beuger's concept of cutting into the continuum. He talks about it in an interview in the Ashgate Companion to Experimental Music that James Saunders edited. Inspired I suspect by Alain Badiou, Beuger takes the mathematician Richard Dedekind's idea of defining a real number by "cutting" into the continuum of all possible numbers, and applies it as a metaphor for the creation of music (a metaphorical use of what is already a metaphor, which appeals to my English literature background!). The continuum becomes the whole of all possible sound, a kind of white noise I suppose, and any musical composition or performance is "cut" out of this material: music is made by a kind of carving out, rather than a building up from basic materials.

(It occurs to me that this might be a fundamental philosophical difference between the Wandelweiser composers and many of those usually classifed as Minimalist, despite the fact that in ordinary language Wandelweiser music is clearly "minimalist".) Hence environmental sounds are just another part of the continuum and in no way in conflict with the musical sounds - nor, I hope, are they merely atmospheric cushioning.

The outdoor performance of 'Nachtstuck' involves a rather extraordinary sonic narrative, as the sound environment goes through a number of dramatic changes while you are playing.  Could you describe this for us, and how it felt at the time as you carried on playing?  Had you anticipated that this sort of thing might happen, and at the time were you aware of how it would sound?

The most obvious and dramatic event, both sonically and in general, was the rain. It certainly wasn't part of the plan to capture the piece during a rainstorm! As I mention in the liner notes, rain doesn't do good things to wooden instruments... The plan was simply to record the piece outdoors; we were hoping for a rain-free window. But when the rains came, some way into the piece, they weren't especially heavy so I decided to keep on playing, hoping it would just be a brief shower. It turned out to be a little bit more than that, but never quite got heavy enough to make me decide to abandon the performance. I had some idea of how it would sound, but only vaguely... in fact, that was the main tension during the recording for me: balancing wanting to look after my instrument with being really curious as to how the recording would sound!

In addition to your interest in Wandelweiser and minimalist music, you are also involved in several quite fiery jazz-based improv groups with the likes of Alexander Hawkins and Alex Ward.  Does this make you schizophrenic, or do you feel a connection across these very different areas - do they seem to you two aspects of a single passion?

The short answer to the last part of your question is "yes". I've never felt any real difficulty moving between these different areas, they're all just things that excite me. As I said in one of my earlier answers, the main question for me is how to get the best music out of the different musical situations I find myself in. It's par for the course nowadays for musicians to have very diverse interests,  which often overlap only partially even between musicians who work together often. Asking Alexander Hawkins to play Wandelweiser music just isn't going to be the best application of his talents and interests (though actually he did play with the Set Ensemble once, and did so beautifully of course). I would, if you don't mind, like to pull out a couple of implied things in your question: that the difference between these areas is one either of "firiness" or the proportion of "jazz" in the music. Both these things may sometimes be true but to an extent after the fact. The only band I'm in that is explicitly set up to be full-on and noisy is Alex Ward's Predicate, and that draws just as much on rock as on jazz for its inspiration. (I should perhaps say here that Alex Ward, besides being one of the most remarkable musicians I know, has a knowledge of music that is probably the widest and most unclouded by fashion or prejudice I've ever encountered.) Alex Hawkins does think of himself as very much in the jazz tradition, but that for him is a tradition that includes the work of groups like the AACM from Chicago bang in the middle. And of course the AACM's music, back in the day, was not infrequently criticised in terms that sound rather familiar to those applied to the Butcher/Durrant/Russell group fifteen or twenty years ago, or to the work of improvisers inspired by Wandelweiser and related musics more recently: that it was unemotional, cerebral, not enough rhythmic momentum, bafflingly quiet and uneventful, etc, etc. Michael Pisaro in fact notes hearing the work of the AACM as an important influence on his development. I suppose what I'm getting at is that, while I don't deny that there is sometimes a feeling of two (at least!) "camps" in which I operate, the musical inter-relationships are many, and it's never as simple as "quiet" versus "loud" music. Another way of putting it might be that it goes back to my early listening to experimental music (which wasn't actually that early, I mean late teens/early twenties) where the most important musicians to me were Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, John Cage and Iannis Xenakis. I think the combination of those four names still pretty accurately describes the shape of the musical area I wish to be involved in.

You rightly refuse to categorise the Wandelweiser and non-Wandelweiser sides of your activity as "quiet" versus "loud", and that sets me thinking about the ways in which the world of 'post-reductionist improv' (for want of a better phrase) and Wandelweiser music are coming together.  There's been a fair amount said about the ways in which Wandelweiser is affecting contemporary improvisation, but little said about how the influx of players from an improv background may be affecting the Wandelweiser composers. But for me this coming together is having positive effects both ways.  I think improvisers bring a quality of edge and unpredictability to the table when they play Wandelweiser, which I welcome.  Do you see it like this at all?

I think I do see it like this. I'm not really qualified to talk about what effect the increase in numbers of improvisers playing Wandelweiser music might have had on the composers because I wasn't aware of the music before that point. But I certainly think it's something that they recognise - I spoke to Manfred Werder about this recently. He commented on this very fact, how for years it had only been classical musicians and the composers themselves that had played the music, but that now there were all these improvisers interested in it... For myself much of the interest, as a performer, lies in two, apparently opposed, areas. On the one hand it is exciting to play this music because of its difference from improvisation, the satisfaction of being given specific tasks to carry out and attempting to do so to the best of one's ability, rather than always worrying about "should I play now?... what should I play?... should I stop playing?" and all those other thoughts that, for me, are crucial to improvising. But on the other hand a large number of the pieces (increasingly so with more recent compositions, I think it's fair to say) call upon exactly those kind of decisions, but in a radically reduced way. In a piece by Stefan Thut that the Set Ensemble played recently, each musician simply had to play one pitch and one noise over what we decided would be a 20 minute duration. The pitch, and whether the pitch or the noise should come first, were specificed, but that was all. And so the question of when to play was given a hugely magnified significance. Which one could also subvert but deciding to play at predetermined times, regardless of what else was going on (which is also a strategy that can be fruitful in improvising). All of this is a slightly roundabout way of saying that this music appeals to me as an improviser both because it can at times be a relief from my usual thought-procedures while playing, and because it can also intensify those kinds of thinking.

Reviews

"Named Droplets, the disc is credited to Dominic Lash, Patrick Farmer, Sarah Hughes, Eva-Maria Houben and Taylan Susam. The last two names there, obviously are the composers of three of the four tracks, with Lash performing on all four of the pieces here, playing double bass, and with Farmer (acoustic turntable) and Hughes (chorded zither) on the first three. The first and third tracks then are different trio realisations of Susam’s score For Maaike Schoorel, the second is a group improvisation, and the fourth and final track, clocking in at a little ever half an hour and half the CD’s total running time is a remarkable solo realisation of Houben’s Nachtstück for solo bass. 

The Susam score performed twice by the trio is particularly wonderful in its simplicity. It is a fairly open work that presents the musicians with little clusters of numbers, which they are free to choose from, that dictate the dynamic and frequency that each musician should make a sound of their choosing. The dynamics indicated range from fairly soft to extremely soft, sounds can last no longer than three seconds and Susam, while asking ideally for ‘discrete events’ requests that musicians play together and overlap their particular clusters of sounds as much as possible. So the work will then pull the music made into small swells of extremely quiet sounds, some of them repeating slowly within little windows of time. Its a fascinating score in that it manages to control how the overall feel and shape of the music will sound without ever dictating instrumentation, particular sounds or the number of performers. On the day, the trio made two versions, both of which appear here, but both quite different. For the first realisation, somebody (I forget who but I seem to remember it being quite a spontaneous decision) suggested that instead of ‘playing’ their instruments in a manner that might be expected of them, they each chose to blow directly into them, one way or the other, so creating little clouds of whispery exhalations, each one slightly different as the air was captured differently, the bass sounding unsurprisingly deep, the turntable (which had a contact mic attached I think) quite bright and plasticky, and the zither full of the humming resonance caused by blowing on the strings. The end result is a lovely piece, very simple, extremely elegant and thoroughly human in its realisation.

The second version of For Maaike Schoorel here is equally refined and beautiful, but more familiar sounds are heard, slowly bowed bass notes, the scratch and scrape of items softly rubbed over the turntable and the gentlest of zither tones, from the harsher (yet always very soft) squeal of a glass tumbler being turned on the strings, to other more familiar bowed sounds. This music, typical of the Wandelweiser collective of composition that Susam is a member of alongside Houben has a wonderful stillness to it, and yet the little islands of soft sounds that do appear, as simple as they are, seem to harbour whole worlds of sound and timbre. The lengthy silences that span out between the clusters seemingly cleansing the ears afresh each time.

The trio improvisation is also a very quiet, subdued affair, with Farmer resisting the urge he has often had of late to throw the music off at more disruptive tangents. Things trickle and creak and hum away, and for this track the door to the drama studio space used for the recording was deliberately opened, so the gentle sounds of a leafy part of Oxford on a Sunday afternoon- passing aircraft, distant cars, the wind on the trees, the odd bird creep in and innocently flood the silences in the music. This track stands out from the others here simply through its improvised origins, sounding much freer and obviously open to wider possibilities. The recording, and particularly the mastering here is exceptional, with the external sounds sitting precisely where they belong, distant but present, and the mix between three quite intimate sets of instrumental sounds beautifully balanced.

The recording of Houben’s Nachtstück then, is something else again. This piece is very lovely in itself, a kind of slow meditation on the double bass perhaps, collections of softly bowed notes in small groups separated by lengthy silences. I have heard Dominic Lash perform the piece a couple of times, the most recent in Glasgow but a little earlier last year at an intimate performance given in the conservatory of his Oxford home, an event that had a strong impact upon me and which I wrote about here. Simon Reynell was also at this performance, and was moved enough by the mix of Dom’s playing with the sound of rain and wind bustling around the small glass conservatory to suggest that Lash record a version of it outdoors, which the pair set out to do in September last year, in a small wood in rural Derbyshire.

Right from the outset of this wonderful recording it is clear that the elements are determined to play a part in the recording. The wind roaring in the trees above and around bursts into the piece and remains present throughout. The bass has again been captured beautifully though, and when its little group soy harmonic clusters appear they are always clear, often competing with the weather, and particularly after a few minutes when the heavens open and rain hammers down, but always fully present. So Lash stood in the pouring rain and continued to play this extremely demanding half-hour long piece. On the recording we hear the bass, the wind and rain in the trees, and the rain splattering the floor all around, hitting the bass, interfering a little with the microphones but not enough to spoil the enjoyment of the recording. Also present are birds twittering, despite the inclement weather, aircraft passing, the horns and roars of nearby passing trains, insects buzzing close to microphones and, quite wonderfully, the occasional calls of nearby sheep. We often hear the sound of wind, rain and nature layered together with separate recordings of instrumental sounds on CDs these days, probably far too often, but very rarely do the sounds exist together in the same recording naturally. This version of Nachtstück then becomes a collaboration between the composer, the musician and the environment, which in theory every recording of the piece will be, but here the environment really makes its presence felt. Its a stunning work,  superbly composed, studying harmonic and melodic progressions, performed wonderfully,  and all together a remarkable feat of endurance as much as anything, but also a beautifully complex, detailed mass of sounds, whose presence together feels both absurd and perfect in the same moment. If, like me you just take huge joy from the act of listening, from discovering the sense of place in recordings, from allowing your imagination to run wild this piece, and this album as a whole is an essential purchase. So, so very good indeed.”  
Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear

“Droplets brings together three musicians from the Set Ensemble for three trios and a solo, or one improvisation and three interpretations of scores by composers from the Wandelweiser collective. The musicians are Dominic Lash on double bass, Patrick Farmer on percussion, and Sarah Hughes on piano and zither, and the composers are Taylan Susam and Eva-Maria Houben.

Taylan Susam wrote 'for maaike schoorel' in 2009, and the three musicians here offer two different versions of that short score, lasting around five or six minutes. Very quiet, gentle sounds take place, interspersed with light, airy silences, in a way that is certainly minimalist, but above all natural and serene. Strange, unexpected sounds, often extremely quiet, are rubbed, blown or scraped across surfaces in ways which are hardly conventional or expected. A truly unusual sonic material emerges, forming a unique and serene soundworld which is both meditative and airy. It is also profound and intense, in spite of the very low volume of these interpretations, something which augments the feeling of relaxation and poetry which this very delicate piece contains. The second realisation of the Dutch composer's score is probably less repetitive and minimalist, though the sounds are just as strange, and the silences just as long and significant, but the lack of strict, mechanical repetition somewhat dilutes the power of the first realisation. Nonetheless there is more relief and variety, and a richer soundworld is created.

The second piece, 'Elusion', is an entirely acoustic improvisation played by all three musicians and lasting twenty minutes. Bass, zither and percussion are superimposed, creating a variety of delicate, sensitive strata in ways that are always measured, but often quite intense. If silence is less prevalent in this piece, and the volume a little louder than usual, the influence of Wandelweiser is still felt in the powerful, quiet, calm and intense attention that characterises this improvisation. Not to mention the technical reproduction of sounds and noises which were part of the recording environment, and which are preserved in the mastering of the piece. There is a very assured kind of spatial equilibrium between the superimposition of different starta (the rubbing of drumskins, the bowing on the bass strings, the timbral exploration of the zither) and a radical silence. This contrast doesn’t take the form of a confrontation between “the full and the empty ", but of an endless continuity in which the transitions are achieved across passages of solo or duo improvising. 'Elusion', which lasts twenty minutes, pulls us into an extraordinary and as yet unheard universe characterised by a sense of unreality that is similar to that of many compositions by the Wandelweiser musicians. A world where time is abolished, where sound becomes space, and where composition is more akin to architecture (whether the music is composed or improvised, I don’t think this distinction makes much sense in so-called reductionist music). In short, this is a very beautiful improvisation.

So now to the main course: because if I very much enjoyed 'Elusion', the most beautiful piece on this disc is undoubtedly the magnificent realisation of 'Nachtstück', a work written in 2007 by the German composer and organist Eva-Maria Houben. 'Nachtstück' is originally a piece for solo bass, but for this realisation, Dominic Lash and Simon Reynell decided to record a half-hour version in a wood in England, in the rain. The rain, as well as the wind and the rustling of leaves which it provokes, have a huge importance and acquire a gripping emotional power. To this are added sporadic interventions of cars, insects, birds and sheep. For his part, Lash, with the help of his bow, explores the full range of the bass’s strings; every register is deployed with short notes that rise out of the potential silence and the actual rain. Correspondences seem to emerge between the registers of the instrument and the intensity, with each bass note becoming stronger, and similarly the double-stops, while the treble notes become quieter until the harmonics are lost amidst the wind and agitated leaves. In any case, if the sound environment of the wood is in itself quiet and serene, the environmental context appears well-suited to exploring the emotional properties of the double bass. Each note moves the body of the listener in its entirety, and sets off numerous unexpected emotions and sensations. This is the best work I've ever heard by a member of the Wandelweiser collective, but this is certainly not just due to the score itself. Because if the composition knows how to deploy an extremely rich emotional terrain with a singular warmth, depth and intensity, then the outdoor realisation and the virtuosity of Dominic Lash unlock all the possible emotions, passions, humanity and poetry that can be found within the score.

The wonderful interpretation of 'Nachtstück' seems accessible even for those who aren’t used to the works of the Wandelweiser collective. The Set Ensemble, which Dominic Lash founded, certainly creates unique spatial soundworlds, and rich and delicate poetic sonorities throughout Droplets, but it’s the fantastic long piece 'Nachtstück', with its dramatic and lyrical power, which really captured my attention and completely overcame and overwhelmed me. Highly recommended, Droplets seems to me to be the most successful in this new series of discs released by Another Timbre in the wake of John Cage’s music. Moreover Droplets, with its radical use of silence and extended techniques, and its use of an open-air recording environment, seems to be the most fully representative descendant of the famous American composer.”
Julien Heraud, Improv-Sphere

“"Droplets" is even better, containing an improvisation, two versions of a piece by Taylan Susamm ("For Maaike Schoorel") and Eva-Maria Houben's "Nachtstuck". The first realization of the Susam work involves soft, rushing sounds that seem wind-driven though I take it that's not the case. They kind of zip by, almost like sped up versions of car sounds (though maintaining a deep pitch), interspersed with silences. The second take features each musician's instrument as a recognizable element filling more or less the same "portions" of the score with sound. In both instances, a lovely, somber mood is generated. This is, I believe, my first exposure to Susam's music; would like to hear more.

The improvisation, titled "Elusion", is just wonderful. From the initial airplane hum to the steely rustles like metal shavings being disturbed, through delicious low tones and on. Really every moment seems vital here. I saw Dom a few times in the last couple of weeks performing Pisaro's music and was, as always, very impressed; perhaps I focus on him unfairly here, but his playing sounds great, really gluing things together. I guess you could say there's a "wandelweiser" feel in play--it's quiet, spacious and rather linear--but there's also something very flexible here, a certain give and pull that's very enticing. Hard to describe! But great.

Houben's 33 minute piece (an extract) is performed outdoors, through the rain, by Lash. The downpour is there from the get go, the deep arco drones welling up from the wet in almost stately fashion, like a slow, slow marche funebre, before transforming into sets of scale-like patterns interspersed among others. I'm not sure how I would have felt about the piece sans precipitation; perhaps other plein air sounds would have sufficed. But the rain really does sound fantastic and swathes the bass wonderfully. Whatever, it's lovely to listen to, as is the entire disc. Highly recommended.”     Brian Olewnick, Just Outside