Music

Jon Mueller playing pieces of a drum set, a couple of snares hissing and groaning under the influence of the radio, and Jim Schoenecker eeking out a peculiar wasteland on his synth.  This recording was made during an extreme heat wave in Boston, in a room with sealed windows and no ventillation.  It shouldn't be surprising that the result is like a desert hallucination; horrifyingly slow and empty with sudden smears of desperate color, but the masterful pacing and lusciousness of the sounds make this nightmare a hoot to hear over and over again. 

Pretty overwhelming.  Ten fantastic improvisers (bhob rainey, greg kelley, liz tonne, howard stelzer, james coleman, mike bullock, vic rawlings, chris cooper, axel doerner, and andrea neumann) weaving out a gorgeously transparent, simmeringly intense piece that might have been penned by Nono had he a theremin and a prepared guitar at his disposal.  An electroacoustic bubble bath with some sandpaper and nails thrown in.

Pierre-Olivier Boulant's beautiful recording of this trio highlights the ephemeral delicacy of the music.  The sounds slowly float in space, at times barely giving voice to the surrounding air, at other times vibrating the room like an organ that's finally learned to breath on its own.  The single piece that fills this CD is something that can be entered, walked through, slept in, shouted at, encountered with any number of listening strategies or, perhaps best, none at all.

nmperign's first all-duo CD features raw live performances from their 1999 U.S. tour.  The humour, violence, and near-silent sensitivity of this duo are highlighted in 7 tracks that unfold like an absurdly complex game contrived in a sci-fi opium den. 

This collaboration hardly needs explanation - Mueller's gorgeous, eerie sound fields are a perfect playground for nmperign's irreverent cooperation.  Two extended trio tracks creep between beauty and menace and lend evidence to the rumor that nmperign can be real bullies.  Mueller accepts this behavior with aplomb and puts forth a solo track that is as eyebrow-raising as it is understated.  nmperign, refusing to be upstaged, finishes the CD with an ante-upping duo track.

The idiosyncratic saxophonistics of Rainey and Wright fuse a freakish alchemical bond.  Here they appear in a deliciously sparse duo and in two trios each with Matt Ingalls (clarinets) and Tom Djll (trumpet).  Severely under-recorded, Ingalls and Djll are agile companions in these mercurial tracks of percussive clatter and orchestral tone-clusters reminiscent of early AACM recordings or some lost score of John Cage.  Recorded live in the San Francisco Bay Area in February 2000.

Two saxophones and two cellos in the hands of theses musicians means a carnival of counterpoint and subterfuge as saxophones pose as cellos, cellos as saxophones and everybody as everybody else.  Although the chamber-like instrumentation does lead to a powerful intimacy, there is no chamber-jazz preciousness here; instead, there is a rollicking momentum and sense of playfulness amidst even the most seriously dark textures.  Recorded live in New York, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. in April 2000.

The Withered Grasses is actually two distinct pieces.  The first, from which the disc takes its title, is a slowly evolving suite in which a whispering, microtonal narrative is shattered by searing, percussive outbursts, mournfully reconstructed in the final movement.  The second, "For:" is a unique piece in Rainey's recorded output: an overdubbed array of small saxophone noises made large.  Something like "Cartridge Music" at your high school prom.

nmperign has always had a soft spot for Jason Lescalleet.  His crumpled tapeloops provide just the sort of rusty soup they need to open up and scream.  Here they collaborate on an extended piece that creeps along menacingly to it's inevitable, buzzing demise.  Four nmperign tracks follow that rival any of their other recordings, and Lescalleet takes the final bow with an electronic piece that will send your speakers to the graveyard.

nmperign never knew that they would be a duo, but they sure were happy with it when these recordings came up.  Three duo pieces make up the bulk of the CD and introduce the sparse-lush-angular question mark that was to become the nmperign signature.  Meanwhile, they met Jason Lescalleet and did a noise track that negates any possible alignment with the lowercase crowd.  The final track is the final piece played with percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and adds Phil Gelb on Shakuhachi - a meditative transition to duo-hood.

nmperign's first CD.  With Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion), the group has a cool, full sound, not without a hint of Gagaku.  There is a solemn brightness to this recording, like a white sun low in the winter sky.