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Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics

by Jason Alder, Thanos Chrysakis, Caroline Kraabel, Yoni Silver

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1.
I 09:14
2.
II 07:53
3.
III 13:04
4.
IV 07:56
5.
V 09:25

about

Todd M. McComb — Jazz Thoughts — 18.06.2019

Thanos Chrysakis is someone I noticed relatively early in this project, and especially since the pace of his album releases is more modest than e.g. Ernesto Rodrigues, albeit still steady, I've been discussing many or most of them since. In fact, it's kind of funny to reflect back on this space, and the feeling that I'd started from much more traditional or conservative music: That's certainly true to an extent, but (as noted last August) I'd already mentioned Rodrigues in early 2012, and then first mentioned Chrysakis in November 2013 (with Zafiros en el barro) & again in March 2014 (with Garnet Skein). Both of those albums are what I might characterize as more keyboardistic than his recent output, but I already noted how Chrysakis was able to highlight particular lines & relations in order to create a sense of balance, i.e. a sort of order from chaos, something that I'd noted again more recently (in January this year) around Iridescent Strand. Chrysakis seems to be moving away from even non-traditional keyboards, though, into more of an electronic environment that emphasizes manipulation of pitch & timbre, and this direction reaches a new level of sophistication with the marvelous Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics. One might even note something of a trilogy then, beginning with the similarly generically named Music for Two Organs & Two Bass Clarinets (discussed here in May 2018, so a little over a year ago), an album that both interrogates a broad sonic landscape & more specific timbres (doubling an earlier duo release, which one might thus compare to e.g. Face to Face, as discussed earlier this month, in its overlapping timbral relations between synth & reed). After that acoustic album (with Chrysakis credited on chamber organ alone), Iridescent Strand had projected more of an industrial tapestry, largely because of the metallic contributions of guitar, but also due to broadly chaotic interactions around instrument changes & electronic manipulation. Rather than illuminate a line of exploration within rumbling chaos, then, (the also five movement, as seems to be a predilection for Chrysakis) Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics retains a more contrapuntal (or broadly textural) emphasis, while restricting electronic participation to Chrysakis himself, yielding what at times feels like a horn trio being interrogated & manipulated — not unlike on World of Objects as just mentioned, or indeed even the acoustic Empty Castles, where "the space itself" takes on the character of an electronic framework via physical reverberations, etc. Electronics tend to be subtle in that regard here, although sometimes burbling or hissing in the background, or perhaps in fragile ringing overtones, but then emerge more explicitly into the foreground with what seems to be samples of military radio in the 4th track. (It's strangely affective within its broader musical context, but if the discussion of "Weasel Island" is supposed to evoke any specific historical event or context, it doesn't for me.) Despite the title, the horns do also change sometimes in the person ofJason Alder, an impressive technician who was new to me, but who does (surprise!) have a new duo album soon to appear on Creative Sources, Contradictions. Joining Alder & Chrysakis — also from the English scene, the edges of which seem to supply most of Chrysakis' performing colleagues in general — are then Caroline Kraabel & Yoni Silver: Kraabel, who is originally from Seattle, is also credited with voice (although that isn't apparent sonically), and has performed extensively with the London Improvisers Orchestra, from which I'd heard some of her compositions, as well as writes liner notes of late (e.g. for Vulcan). And I'd mentioned Silver in conjunction with (prior Aural Terrains duo release) Home around Ag in February 2018.... Perhaps its difficult to render such a generically titled album as Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics as distinctive & revelatory, but besides the strange military radio presence in the following track, e.g. the central (& longest) track presents another sort of recitative feel (which had seemed to be the goal of Iridescent Strand at times), with difference tones & small scratchings moving from a low roar into chirping atmospheric shifts & beats, finally into what can only be described as a novel lyricism.... (One might say that it involves a Scelsian concept of melody & perhaps even a Scelsian sense of time.) Indeed, Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics is often brilliantly lyrical — in an emergent sense — while usually remaining disorienting, as it generates its own sense of space. Clearly it also involves some planning in its "symphonic" form, which isn't discussed, but presumably improvisation within a conceptual plan & perhaps editing longer takes... track breaks generally presenting affective changes as well. (I should further note two other Chrysakis favorites of yore, namely Carved Water, discussed here in January 2017, with its sound installation approach, and then Skiagraphía, likewise with double electronics as discussed that April, with its relatively silhouetted wave of activity, both featuring viola & reed.... There, contrasts emerge more from major technical differences in the instruments, whereas here they're derived from the finest grain of articulation.) The use of radio might evoke another sound installation, but Music for Baritone Saxophone, Bass Clarinets & Electronics comes off more as "absolute music," i.e. as "instant composition" as it's increasingly observed today, and does so within a broadly shifting field of frequency relations that never seems content with traditional Western (discrete) forms, i.e. as a truly postmodern (or postcolonial) production. (One doesn't hear echoes of Mozart, then, as one might on some earlier Chrysakis albums....) Rather than the constraints of the traditional keyboard, one hears the electronics as a source of timbral & more broadly, relational innovation. Intensity & exploration track all the way down to the smallest particles, the grain of reed articulation, and up again into a broadly symphonic form — including subtle structural unfoldings via tempo relation (around maintained linear tensions) to yield a strongly balanced & coherent synthesis across perceptual levels. Chrysakis thus seems to have completed a real arc of development in this latest, affectively satisfying album: It can leave one (subsequently, immersively) listening to silence for quite some time.

credits

released April 1, 2019

Duration 47.32 | Released April 2019

Jason Alder | bass clarinet | contra bass clarinet | clarinet in B♭ | clarinet in E♭ | Thanos Chrysakis | laptop computer | synthesizers | Caroline Kraabel | baritone saxophone | voice | Yoni Silver | bass clarinet



Recorded at OneCat Studio in London

on the 6th of December 2017 by Jon Clayton.

Edited—Mixed—Mastered by

THANOS CHRYSAKIS

Between January — February 2019

at Meridian Studio.

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Jason Alder- (Bass) Clarinetist London, UK

Jason Alder is a low clarinet and contemporary music specialist, improviser, and electro-acoustic musician. He is frequently found performing around the world. He is an endorsing Artist for Selmer, D'Addario, Behn, and Silverstein.

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