Manafonistas

 

We haven’t had the chance to hear the JBL Paragon in person, but from what we gather, the speaker (that looks like furniture) has a very distinctive sound “signature” due to its single cabinet curved refraction design. The Paragon is capable of filling up a room in a uniquely powerful way that could be somewhat be compared (not in sound, but effect) to how Klipschorns fill out a room unlike any other speaker. Interesting to note, the sound is supposedly smoother the further away you are from the speaker and can sound a bit strange at close distances.

 

 

 

„I will bring you through the night“ (Laura Nyro)  NEULAND: Flying Saucer Attack / Mike Cooper / Hilde Marie Holsen / Dino Saluzzi / Sokratis Sinopoulos / „Eine Olive des Nichts“ / Robert Forster / Codex // Moritz von Oswald Trio (w. Tony Allen) / Fennesz + Ozmotic / Monkey Plot / Brutter (w. Christian Wallumrod) / Radio Vietnam / Heitor Oliveros // NAHAUFNAHME: Terje Isungset // ZEITREISE: Arthur Russell / Brian Eno / Michael Mantler / Dieter Moebius / Lloyd McNeill / David Toop / Michael Head / Terry Riley // Art Lande / Jan Garbarek / Peter Rühmkorf / Steve Kuhn

It is not a good advice, to end a night with exstatic music, but „Ecstasy“ was running on the record-player that night, and it was a long piece taken from the solo piano album with the same name. Deeply romantic! I had brought along my original first pressing, and it was surely turning its rounds with some cracks. I cannot imagine who, by chance, listened to that beauriful soumd of  the Steinway in the early hours, but a handful of people (at least) must have fallen in trance, and the day before their  eyes will have  looked very different.

Auch wenn ich nicht der gröBte Liebhaber von Jahreslisten bin, mach ich doch hie und da mit. Eine der letzten Listen im jährlichen Aufmarsch ist der EL INTRUSO Critics Poll, an dem mehr als 60 Kritiker weltweit teilnahmen. Die Bandbreite an verschiedenen musikalischen Universen und Hör(er)dramaturgien bleibt erstaunlich und das Gesamtergebnis hat seine bedenklichen und merkwürdigen Seiten. Ab und zu geht’s auf keine Kuhhaut, zB wenn Musiker und Gruppen genannt werden, die nicht oder kaum noch auftreten (für mich eine zentrale GröBe) oder sogar schon nicht mehr leben. Viele sitzen sehr in eigener Höhle. Es ist die allerdings die Evidenz der Tatsächlichkeit und man kann noch das eine oder andere entdecken.

 

Immer noch schlicht ein Skandal, dass wieder so wenige Europäer einen gebührenden Platz bekommen haben. Das geht anno 2022 gar nicht mehr. Rodrigo Amado ist schon länger die groBe Ausnahmen, auf die sich viele einigen können.

 

Ich habe mich daran orientiert, welche Gruppen und Musiker ich tatsächlich live gesehen habe oder die auch sonst verfolgen konnte. Und es kam mir darauf an, jüngere Musiker als Gegengewicht einzubringen. Und einige Male, habe ich mich dafür entschieden, nicht den groBen Namen zu bringen, sondern einen hervorragenden anderen, der Aufmerksamkeit verdient. Joe Lovano gehört bei den Tenorsaxophonisten sicherlich zu den gröBten, aber Tobias Delius musste von mir aus diesmal Erwähnung finden. Das Problem bei solchen Listen ist ja auch, dass es keine klaren, für alle leitenden Kriterien gibt und somit automatisch ein Sammelsurium programmiert ist. Es stellt sich dann aber am Ende heraus, wer – aus welchen guten oder zweifelhaften Gründen – hoch btw. am höchsten gehandelt wird. Hier meine Liste auf Elintruso und HIER der Link zum gesamten Panoptikum:

 
 
 

EL INTRUSO 2022

Henning Bolte

 
 

Musician of the Year:

Sylvie Courvoisier, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten,  Alexander Hawkins 

 

Newcomer Musician: 

Nick Dunston, Kateryna Ziabliuk, Sun-Mi Hong 

 

Group of the Year:

Kaja Draksler Octet  

Amir ElSaffar Rivers Of Sound

Paal-Nilssen Love Circus 

 

Newcomer Group: 

Pietre  (Alessandro Fongaro/Nicolo Ricci/Jesse Schilderink/Sun-Mi Hong)

Økse (Mette Rasmussen/Petter Eldh, Savanna Harris, Val Jeanty)

Mysterial Layers (Sanem Kalfa, Marta Warelis, Tineke Postma, Sun-Mi Hong)

 

Album of the Year:

Jakob Bro/Joe Lovano – Once Around The Room (A Tribute To Paul Motian). ECM

Ruben Machtelinckx/Arve Henriksen – A Short Story. Aspen Edities

Vadim Neselovskyi – Odesa – A Musical Walk Through A Legendary City. Sunnyside

 

Composer: 

Amir ElSaffar, Roberto Bonati, Petter Eldh

 

Drums:

Hamid Drake, Jim Black, Michele Rabbia

 

Acoustic Bass:

Claude Tchamitchian, Thomas Morgan, Petter Eldh

 

Electric Bass:

Steve Swallow, Simon Jermyn, Dan Peter Sundland 

 

Guitar:

Eivind Aarset, Gordon Grdina, Marc Ducret 

 

Piano:

Sylvie Courvoisier, Kris Davis, Jason Moran

 

Keyboards/Synthesizer/Organ:

Craig Taborn, Dan Nicholls, Kit Downs

 

Tenor Saxophone:

Rodrigo Amado, Charles Lloyd, Tobias Delius

 

Alto Saxophone:

Steve Coleman, Mette Rasmussen, Silke Eberhard

 

Baritone Saxophone:

Mats Gustafsson, Guiseppe Doronzo, John Dikeman

 

Soprano Saxophone:

Alexandra Grimal  

 

Trumpet/Cornet:

Amir ElSaffar, Ambrose Akinmusire, Arve Henriksen 

 

Clarinet/Bass Clarinet:

Aviva Endean, Oguz Büyükberber, Louis Sclavis

 

Trombone:

Jacob Garchik, Samuel Blaser, Gianluca Petrella  

 

Flute:

Naïssam Jalal, Sylvaine Hélary, Mark Alban Lotz

 

Violin/Viola:

Régis Huby, George Dumitriu, Mat Maneri

 

Cello:

Vincent Courtois, Tomeka Reid, Judith Hamann

 

Vibraphone:

Taiko Saito, Pasquale Mirra, Christopher Dell

 

Electronics:

Jan Bang, Ikue Mori, David Torn 

 

Other Instruments:

Gordon Grdina (oud), Mishiyo Yagi (koto), Sophie Bernado (bassoon)

 

Female Vocals:

Elaine Mitchener, Sanem Kalfa, Sunny Kim 

 

Male Vocals:

Theo Bleckmann   

 

Record Label:

Clean Feed, Relative Pitch Records, Pyroclastic Records

 

 

On that hot and sunny afternoon I met Brian Eno in Kilburn, in the year of „Neroli“, we at some point spoke about the two „ambient works“ he did with Harold Budd, and he explained how he worked on the sound of „The Plateaux Of Mirror“. All very technical, I responded, but, being a convinced agnostic by heart meeting an atheist by confession, I asked him about the deep impact this music often had, and for example, on me.

I hesitated to use the word but then dropped it: spiritual. Can agnostics attest music a spiritual, or, as I added, strangely otherworldly quality? He, the atheist, doesn‘t even think in these words. At least in that summer „Neroli“ was released, inspired by the experience of an orange garden. Already in early years, he spoke about his lust to put systems in motion and become an observer of the results. There is something about this that resembles a paradoxon. How can music go so deep when being regarded as „pure system music“ with not too much input from the creator, like „Discreet Music“? Or „Music for Airports“? Well, it can. But how?

At times, and quite often,  I have to say, Brian Eno stumbles, by chance and genius, into areas of sound that can have a variety of impacts on the listeners, and one of them being a profound, unsurpassable deepness. „The Plateaux Of Mirror“ or „Discreet Music“ or „Music For Airports“ contain and create, with all their surface shimmer and unspeakable magic, the same deepness as „A Love Supreme“ or Mahlers „6th Symphony“.

This is my experience. And Eno knows to leave (forever and a day) the landscapes he has once created. Would be much more easy to write about deepness when putting „On Land“ on the record player. No one doubts deepness when roaming through the wilderness. But when confronted with a tape loop running mistakenly half-speed!?  I can listen to „Discreet Music“ a thousand times without being bored. And I always feel it is moving as deep as deep can go.

The ungraspable, next paragraph: on another sunny afternoon, with (as I remember) Alan Bangs waiting slightly impatiently with his TV team for an interview, I came to speak with Laurie Anderson on „Music For Airports“, and how Bang On A Can delivered their version. She said something like this:

 

„Isn‘t it incredible that Brian‘s original, as a piece regarded „functional music“, has so much deep melancholia engraved in the four parts of the work, that a group of classical violinists and violas have to come to bring these deeply hidden emotions more to the surface – and even tears to the eyes? But this deepness was there, from the very start …“

 

The hushed notes on the piano, only these few notes, played by Robert Wyatt on „1/1“, the first part of „Music For Airports“ –  their return on loops, the sparse surroundings, the breath of machines in between, the hiss, the space near emptiness, and that road to silence not taken before, the hand at the machines rolling, the careful deleting of everything that has not to be, all that and much more is happening when nothing really happens.

 

War is a lesser or greater part of human’s daily reality. Almost a year ago it came very close to all of us and changed a lot. We don’t have to be speechless and also can dance. 

 

It has left its traces in music openly, subliminal, hidden, furiously, shadowing, encouragingly, desperately, hopefully …  I posted an example by Jason Moran from Saalfelden. Here’s is another one by Arve Henriksen in trio with Jakob Bro and Jorge Rossy. It was February 25 at Amsterdam Bimhuis, the day after RuZia’s raid on Ukraine … It’s these emerging moments that stuck. Here an impression in four (short) steps:

 
 

VIDEO 1

 

VIDEO 2

 

VIDEO 3

 

VIDEO 4