Graphical music scores (music notation formed from shapes, colors, time and ideas, and not necessarily notes, meter, rhythm, dynamics etc.) serve to organize the disorganized; to hinge artists involved in their performance, yet leave plenty of room for individuality and internal spontaneity. When referring to Cornelius Cardew's Treatise, one of the most fantastic anthologies of the art form — and the bones of AMM's AMMMusic 1966 — pianist (and Cardew's AMM band mate) John Tilbury stresses,
"It should be pointed out that none of Cardew's works ever gave total freedom to the performer. The instructions were a guide which focused each individual's creative instinct on a problem to be solved — how to interpret a particular system of notation using one's own musical background and attitudes."
Discussing his Timelines, a collection (this is third chapter) all rooted to graphical notation, Kahn is likewise quick to point out that his magic does not necessarily arrive from the score but the muse: "These graphical works of mine are therefore not interchangeable: they are conceived within the context of the particular instrumentation and, even more importantly, for the participating musicians."
After comparing a few minutes of this disc to the previous pieces while examining the similar stamps and overlaid architecture of each respective score, these words ring true. Whereas, for example, the collective on Timelines (2004, featuring Tomas Korber, Günter Müller, Norbert Möslang, Kahn and Ralph Steinbrüchel) realized a curious electronic alien blueprint in the vein of the NASA Voyager Recordings, this assemblage of Kahn on percussion and analog synthesizer, Olivia Block with prepared piano, Ulrich Krieger on saxophones and real-time electronics and guitarist / laptopper Mark Trayle revels in the acoustic space of their instruments and the performance space (The Cal Arts Center). Following snowflake-like figures, Block introduces the piece with a wooden thunk, then eases into a steady, gradual rumble. Kahn slinks in underneath, nervously rattling percussion to complement the pianist's knocks and quivering piano tines. Krieger and Trayle join five minutes in, further filling in the canvas with flutter-tongue, digital pops, whistles and flares. The four persist together, patiently animating this Frankenstein, until the fifteen-minute mark when Block and Kahn drop out, allowing Krieger and Trayle a few moments to construct a rhythmic bed of squeaks, key clicks and clacks, time-stretched warbles, and release whatever detritus they've recorded and manipulated thus far.
The quartet continues this tug, cohesion, overlap, divorce and discovery of new sounds for an hour. Block weaves in cash register bells, slaps and occasional notes as "sax" and "guitar" begin a series of spatially pregnant vamps on a ragged D Major chord before Kahn hijacks the mix with a coarse juxtaposition of frequency-dipping chirps. Krieger and Trayle, exhausted from building a dense wall of drones, drop out completely at 45 minutes; Kahn and Block now faintly shuffle (the movement of paper across a soundboard?) and gurgle, and the entire group soon unites to fade into the shadows.
"I see these works as more than just groupings of instruments but social situations", says Kahn. The man knows how to devise one hell of an icebreaker.
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Dave Madden 2010-05-10
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