Andrea Parkins & Matthew Ostrowski | Elective Affinities
Infrequent Seams (CD/DL)
In modern experimental music, composition and improvisation are always treated like the two flips of the same coin. Some musicians reach a terrific consciousness in the improvisation process that becomes a way of life and makes hard for the audience to distinguish the person from the artist. Some others, instead, prefer to take another path and work with fixed structures, predetermined directions and control over the derivations of their musical acts.
There is not better or worse and, in between these two poles, also a wide variety of other compromises are possible. Yet it is very seldom that the two practices blend so interestingly and elegantly like in this case. Elective Affinities makes everything very difficult to grasp and comprehend. If it is absolutely improvised music, they got a clearness of intention and a sharpness which is of a totally other league, beyond reach. If it is composed, they have been able to achieve an outstanding complexity of material and treat the structure in such a liquid way that feels fresh and crisp, always thrilling and full of surprises.
The album opens with Substance and mixture, a piece that immediately brings on this sense of perceptual deception and introduces a very unusual organization of the materials, in which the structural elements are outlined by the most ephemeral sounds (chimes, glitches and bells) that elaborate architectural blueprints of crystal clear, pristine quality. While the most concrete, solid sounds of wooden bursts and metallic clashes are raving free, surfing the structure. This pattern is often subverted: the roles change, the behaviors too and some constructions only last for a few seconds before being dismantled and restructured.
The old school sampling technique, same sounds varying in pitch due to their playback speed, in really quick patterns, generate absurd polyphonics and counterpoints that remind of early live electronics performances by Alvin Curran, in his first Roman days, but are yet re-imagined in a different context that looks at macrostructural coherence in a very clever way. In this electronic sample mayhem, Andrea Parkins’ linear accordion notes intervene to ensure tridimensional depth by introducing a discourse between foreground and background and suggesting new states of alert and relief.
The piece Eclipse clarifies the duo’s aesthetics about cacophony, showing that making use of “anti-aesthetic” sounds and noises is not just a result of highspeed behaviors and a physical attitude towards improvisation, but a real choice. Twisted, crooked and broken sounds are taken into account and acquire a sense in their dialogue with the others.
I’m very happy I encountered this absolute gem that Andrea Parkins and Matthew Ostrowski are dropping on Infrequent Seams and will be a very great addition to anyone’s record collection.
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