Manafonistas

ME: Jon, in a rather strange way, your new album, „Say and Play“ (ECM 2245), brings together a kind of „easy listening“, easy in a very thrilling way, and some avantgarde principles. The music is highly accessible, but not in a well-known way. It is groovy, but without ethno-cliches … so, one could call it, with a smile, „easy-avant-music“…

JB: The departure point in developing this music is 100% rythm, as it appears in spoken language, poems, drumming, AND in melodic playing. I think the melodic „friendliness“ is a consequence of this approach: the melodies are rythmic tools to propel the music onwards, more than sculptural elements in themselves. We also tried to record and mix everything from this point of view: the melodic phrases as background for the solistic drumming and language. This was the dogma that producer Olav Torget and me reminded ourselves of again and again: rythm and language  is king. 

Brian Eno did publish so-called “speech songs“ on „Drums Between the Bells“, his cooperation with Rick Holland. You are also presenting four  spoken-word pieces from a Norwegian poet. Why did you use his original language (your language) – and what was so special to work with the  energy of spoken words? 

JB:  If you listen to „Statements“ (the first Jon Balke/ Batagraf album on ECM records; Anm. V. M.E.)  there is a track with a long speech by Miki N´Doye in Wolof. This is a monologue of Miki speaking to someone imaginary that  he meets. As I know very few who speak Wolof, but very many who like the melodics in the voice and language of this track enormously, I felt it right to follow this approach and use the poems and voice of Torgeir in the same manner: his sound, melody and the way he floats over the percussion in a kind of counter-rythm makes musical sense to me. As I hope it does to others … The poems in themselves are a kind of bonus, he is a very playful, subtle writer.

Is there, in the way you´re treating these poems, a parallel to African music? 

JB: Not in the poems as such, but In all the tracks, as well as in all the music I have made, there is an influence and a parallel to and from Africa, especially West-Africa. But I have painstakingly tried to avoid copying the great music from there. I hope I have not unconciously patched in elements from things I have heard. If I found such things, I would have removed them, as it would feel like stealing … And I don´t like to be a musical thief :-)

You are working on several pieces  with Jon Chistensen´s daughter,  using  a very different type of lyrics: riddles, surreal imageries, daydreams … how do they relate to the powerful drum patterns? The record sounds fantastic, by the way.

JB: This is actually the main building block in Batagrafs music : original Bakas. The Baka is a term from Wolof meaning short poem-like phrases that say something about life or a person, and these phrases can also be played by percussion groups. So the Wolof drum groups build up a complex system of these bakas that are mixed with grooves and patterns, and bakas serve as breaks to change energy or tempo in the music. I think it is a fantastically interesting way to organize music, so I have started to construct my own universe of Bakas, which is what you hear Emilie speaking or singing, and the percussion choir responding. I hope the listener can be rewarded  by repeated listening to this album, I hope it constitutes a musical universe that you can „travel“ in by using your ear to focus around in  different layers.

On some pieces your keyboards/synths are reminiscent (and I´m sure this was intended!) of Joe Zawinul and Weather Report. Nevertheless it sounds totally fresh.  Can you illuminate this element of „hommage“ „or „nordic way“ of  playing with some stylings a la  Zawinul … Is the „Birdland“ now a music club in “Oslo 13”, the non-existent area of Oslo?  (“Oslo 13” the name of an early Jon Balke album; Anm. v. M.E.)

JB: I owe enormously to Joe Zawinul, especially from the Weather Report era, but as with the Bakas, I feel like stealing if I go for his sounds. So I try to squeeze other stuff out of what I have, mostly just developing by ear. But in Say and Play the overall use of synths is there to make depth: drums/voice up front, and layers of keyboard sounds floating inwards in the soundscape, from solo lines inwards all the way to „melodic“ reverb layers. Melodically Zawinul is a European, with strong echoes of romantic music and harmonizations. Olivier Messiaen is another important voice, when you speak of sustained keyboard sounds. The vague notion of „Nordic sound“ is an echo of both these voices, as well as  the melodic traditions of the north.

Are you making use of some of the old, famous keyboards/synths, some sounds ring a bell … 

JB: I accidentally ended up with a DX7 in a theatre performance in 1982, so this has been with me since then. I feel familiar with the inner structure of that instrument. And somehow I have been continuing using Yamahas from different times: AN1x, FS1r, and now the Motif XS. Maybe this also has to do with keeping a distance to old Joe, all the Moogs and Prophets in the world tend to pull towards his sound. I also have an ambivalent relation to synth music: I get easily tired by an overall synthetic soundscape, and feel the need to mix with acoustic sounds that are richer in timbre. There is no ideology in this, I just go for the sounds i like by research and discover.

You are making, on this new album, a very careful and thoughtful use of jazz piano playing. But this also adds to the  different textures of the compositions …

JB: The piano here is used as a single line solo instrument, in order not to  fill up the soundscape but keep it transparent. So I play very economically and rather add electronic shadows to the lines that blend with the electronics … that is the idea … again depths of melodic and rythmic polyphony punctured by powerful drums phrases and voices …

Nils Økland – Hardanger fiddle, violin
Sigbjørn Apeland – Harmonium, Wurlitzer
Øyvind Skarbø – Drums
 
Pintura is the second album by the original trio 1982. Their eponymous debut LP, released by NORCD in 2008, was one of our absolute favorites that year. On their new album, Pintura, they lift their interaction and experimentation to a new level.
 1982 must be designated as a supergroup within the genre of modern, improvised chamber music. The group’s instrumentation is unusual. As far as we know there is no other ensemble playing improvised music using the combination of harmonium, drums and Hardanger fiddle. This gives 1982 a distinctive sound, but in a purely musical sense, too, the group follows its own path. “We aren’t afraid of moving into a sensitive, harmonic and melancholic landscape. That space is not closed to us,” drummer Øyvind Skarbø says in an interview with the magazine Natt og Dag. Nils Økland says, “I’ve been playing a lot of Balkan music, while Øyvind and Sigbjørn have been travelling around and working with musicians from all over the world. So maybe we have a sense of curiosity and openness as a backdrop when we play.”

(Veröffentlichung in Deutschland: 2. Dezember 2012)

https://vimeo.com/31020290

Eines meiner Lieblingsbücher ist Roger Willemsen´s „Der Knacks“. Daran musste ich denken, als ich gestern bei einer Radtour lange an einer Stelle verweilte, weil sie zu meinen Lieblingsplätzen gehört (a healing place of magic). Dort beobachtete ich lange und genau das geschäftige Treiben ringsum. Rehe waren zwar nicht zu sichten, aber ich fühlte mich sichtbar wohl – fühlte die subtilen Energien fliessen, die aus dem Stillsein erwachsen. Doch ein leichtes Hintergrundgrummeln des internalisierten Geschäftigkeitszwanges wollte nicht ganz weichen. Hier die betreffende Textstelle aus Willemsen´s Buch, an die ich dachte:

Ein Mann stellt sich in einen Winkel zwischen zwei Wohnblocks. Er steht regungslos. Niemand sieht, wohin er blickt, aber er ist anwesend. Wo vorher Bewußtlosigkeit war, ist jetzt eine Situation, weil er da ist. Er ist Zeuge, bevor es etwas zu bezeugen gibt. Das stört. Zieht der Zeuge Geschehnisse an? Eine Frau nähert sich …

„Warten Sie?“
„Nein.“
„Was wollen Sie dann?“
„Nichts.“
„Muss das hier sein?“

Als er nichts erwidert, überlegt sie, ob das erlaubt ist: Nichts zu wollen.

 

„Jetzt laufen die Republikaner rum wie weiße Verbindungsstudenten in Bedford-Stuyvesant, die auf harte Macker machen, um zu beweisen, dass sie keine Angst haben, obwohl ihnen gleichzeitig schon der Urin aus den Chinohosen in die Ziegenlederschuhe läuft. Obama hat diesen trüben Tassen derart eins vor den Bug geknallt, dass sie sich jetzt nur noch hinter einem fetten Junkie-DJ, einer unverständliches Zeug brabbelnden Psycho-Tante aus dem hohen Norden und einem Fernsehdeppen verstecken können, der wie ein Gesundheitsberater auf der Sexualstraftäterstation vom Adrenalin beflügelt „Lehrreiches“ im Stil der fünfziger Jahre verbreitet.“

Solche politischen Abrechnungen finden sich in dem neuen Roman „Zeit des Zorns“ von Don Winslow. Zwei Freunde mit eigenwillig justierten Moralvorstellungen – zwischen Buddhimus und „Baddhismus“ haben lange Zeit beste Kundenkreise mit allerbestem Dope versorgt, und sollen nun die Früchte ihrer Arbeit an das mexikanische Drogenkartell abtreten. Don Winslow findet in diesem Roman zu einem speziellen „Sound“. Die düstere Spannung seines Meisterwerkes „Tage der Toten“ wird  abgelöst durch einen burlesken, irrwitzigen Tarantino-esken Liebes- und Totentanz voller schwarzem Humor – und politisch angenehm unkorrekter Scharfzüngigkeit!

„My language came from watching Humphrey Bogart movies as a kid and wondering, Who is this Raymond Chandler guy? A lot of it just has to do with the metre, the way the sentences are put together. I outgrew Chandler once I discovered (US-hard boiled authors) Cain, Hammett and Woolrich. Some of the Hammett short stories are almost like Beckett, and Woolrich was kind of like Poe. Those writers speak to me in a way Shakespeare doesn´t.“ (Mojo)