Memory / vision
| Memory / vision | ||||
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| Live album by Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble | ||||
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Publication |
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| Label (s) | Edition of Contemporary Music | |||
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
1 |
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running time |
70:32 |
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Location (s) |
Norges Musikkhøgskole, Oslo |
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Memory / Vision is the third music album by Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, which was recorded in October 2002 at Norges Musikkhøgskole in Oslo . It was published by ECM in 2003.
The album
After Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble initially functioned as a free jazz group, “whose players were provided with electronic shadows,” says Thom Jurek, this model developed further both in terms of composition and execution, “in order to focus on improvisation based context to combine the sounds of acoustic instruments with those of live electronic devices and computers ”. The ensemble consisted of nine performers at the performance in Oslo, only five were musicians - Evan Parker, Philipp Wachsmann , Agustí Fernández , Barry Guy and Paul Lytton . Six members played electronic instruments (Parker, Wachsmann, Lytton and Joel Ryan , Walter Prati , Marco Vecchio and Lawrence Casserley ).
Parker had already worked with the live electronics engineers Walter Prati and Marco Vecchi in the early 1990s when he recorded Process and Reality (1991), in which he used multi-track and overdub effects with the aim of “creating a music that which evolved from the linear dimensions and vertical harmonies of a solo performance ”. At the concert in Oslo, the electronic manipulations (processing, looping and warping) took place while the music was being performed. Tom O'Neil notes:
- “Instead of a group of musicians playing together and inspiring each other in the context of a standard improvisation, real-time sound manipulation added an additional level of complexity to the interaction. Sounds and notes could be flipped and changed or looped back to their source, allowing musicians to interact with previously played notes and phrases ”.
Memory / Vision was a commissioned composition written by Evan Parker for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Oslo Ultima Festival ; on the latter the ECM recording was made in the Oslo music school. In the Liner Notes , Evan Parker dedicates the recording to Charles Arthur Musès (1919–2000), whose complex mathematical concepts of chronotopology provided the inspiration for this performance.
Parker continued working with the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble in the 2000s; In November 2004 the album The Eleventh Hour was recorded, a commission from the Glasgow Center for Contemporary Arts .
Track list
- Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: Memory / Vision (ECM 1852 - 0381172)
- Part 1 10:22
- Part 2 11:18
- Part 3 5:09
- Part 4 13:21
- Part 5 12:43
- Part 6 9:10
- Part 7 8:31
- Memory / Vision is an ongoing performance. The index is only intended to be selectable by the CD user.
reception
When the album was released in 2003, it received consistently benevolent reviews; Stuart Nicholson emphasized in the Observer that this was "not a spontaneous improvisation to be afraid of". Rather, Memory / Vision is far removed from his profound work and "an elegantly spreading statement the length of an album that pleases everyone who is interested in experimental music". John Fordham described it in the Guardian as Parker's most ambitious project to date, "with episodes of dramatic intensity and quiet reflection." The band staff and the structured approach give this abstract music a productive liveliness that is quite different from the stereotypical buzz, bubbling, beeping or Furniture-moving noises from other electronic improv music, and the generally prevailing sound has a surrounding tranquility about it.
Richard Cook and Brian Morton awarded the concert recording in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD with the highest rating of four stars; According to the authors, Memory / Vision is “a dramatic utopia, a real-time analysis of sound.” The continuous performance a few weeks after the first performance has “both a monumental quality and a convincing feeling for process and flow, like a sculpture made of plasma instead of marble or bronze. "The authors wrote in their exuberant résumé:
- " It's the test of very great music that it comes to the ears with an aura compounded of surprise and inevitability. After 70 minutes of this amazing work, it's hard to think that there was a time before you started listening to it. "
Thom Jurek wrote in Allmusic : What makes Memory / Vision so remarkable that four members of the ensemble made music by transforming sounds and interpreting the musicians' phrases individually in real time and republishing them as improvisational material. There would be resonances to something that has gone before. As a result, this sounds like a dialogue that does not come in isolation from the outside; rather, it ultimately appears like an ensemble sound. At times it is “amazing, wondrous, confusing and beautiful. It's always overwhelming, engaging, and interesting for any keen listener. Ultimately, it is one of Parker's most emotionally lingering works. "
According to Tim O'Neil, the album defines “a new platonic ideal of electronic fusion”. […] Parker succeeds in combining the spontaneity of real-time interaction with both the electronic and acoustic parts of the composition. Even with the first violin sequence by Philipp Wachsmann, which reminds the author of the sound collages of the Einstürzende Neubauten , it becomes clear that
- “The electronic and acoustic elements can only be distinguished with great difficulty. The ensemble made the conscious and deliberate decision to present a mixture of styles and techniques in such a way that it appears as a closed organism as possible. Is the pianist touched by a small echo of a staccato melody at 8:30 am on the first track, or is it the processor playing a loop? Impossible to see ”.
According to the author, the album eludes a quick perception; this is not music that was created to create a relaxed mood. Rather, it is: “ aggressively intellectual music, intended for furious contemplation. This is the sound of barriers being scraped and prodded, the process of the questing spirit seeking to constantly redefine the new and unknown ".
Chris Kelsey notes in JazzTimes that with this album Evan Parker would have developed further away from free jazz into a noise-emphasized “classic ambient hybrid”. Kelsey compares Parker's recording with European post- John Cage music or George Crumb's electric string quartet “Black Angels”. The most recognizable are Philipp Wachsmann's violin and Agusti Fernandez's piano, even if their contributions have been manipulated and transformed. Memory / Vision is originally a composition, but “mostly serves as a differently structured framework for improvisation, which works well. Textures ebb and flow, slow and economical ones transform into fast and dense ones. “The musicians of the ensemble are very sensitive reacting improvisers, as well as mostly the crew on the sound processing.
Jerry D'Souza described the album in All About Jazz as "Man and machine manipulate music" ; "Man thinks and the machine follows him". The Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble has proceeded in this way since it was founded in 1992. The process works extremely well here:
- Time and structure go through various dimensions. Structure is broken, time fragmented, in a flow that ebbs and eddies. When the machines are the end voice, the ideas that leap out in jiggles and squeals and whirs are mesmerizing. There is also the strength that derives from the playing. And as Parker's soprano gets a twist and a gnarl or Philip Wachsmann's violin scampers and skewers, the beckoning latches on to an important ingredient — emotion. One of the strongest segments comes when Agusti Fernandez creates a whirl on the strings of the piano and gets a countenance from Barry Guy on bass and Paul Lytton on the drums, a three-way discourse that is tremendously elevating.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Toward the Margins (1996), Drawn Inward (1998), Memory / Vision (2002), The Eleventh Hour (2004); The Electro-Acoustic Ensemble's fifth album was The Moment's Energy (2009). See ECM ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b http://www.klassikakzente.de/aktuell/klassik-news/artikel/article:68057/evan-parker-electro-acoustic-ensemble-the-eleventh-hour
- ↑ a b Review of Thom Jurek's album at Allmusic (English). Retrieved August 7, 2013.
- ↑ a b Cf. Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 , pp. 1027 f.
- ↑ a b c Review of the album in Pop Matters
- ↑ Evan Parker: Liner Notes
- ↑ Discographic information at Discogs
- ↑ Note in the liner notes of the album
- ↑ Review of the album in The Observer (2003)
- ↑ Review of the album in The Guardian (2003)
- ↑ Review of the album in JazzTimes (2004)
- ^ Review of the album in All About Jazz
