The interaction between io and the three other players is really supple… and I like very much the gritty complexity of io’s vocabulary, and the fine sense of shaping, timbrally and in terms of gesture….
Han-earl Park has a special place in my music experience. I think, without exception, there has not yet been an opening to any one of his compositions where I have not had an adverse reaction, either repelling me back in my seat or leaving me shaking my head in exasperation of the noise coming out of my speakers. But the thing of it is, without exception, I find myself listening straight through to the final note. Somehow Han-earl Park finds a way to convert my ears to his music one song at a time….
There is no other artist in which I describe this way….
‘Topologically Correct Harry,’ it’s Sikora’s sax that ushers the listener right on in through the front door. Utilizing a pattern of phrasing that gives the impression of outlining a mountain range from a distance, Sikora’s sax is at the center of attention, with Smith’s trumpet searing blemishes of heat on a radar screen as Park’s guitar gurgles and pops just beneath the surface….
‘바르트’ has Ian Smith’s trumpet setting the table and drawing up a spontaneous menu of jab-right-cross combinations. Sikora moves in slow, but once she’s got both feet in the room, her sound expands into wildly arcing phrases that, when combined with Smith’s one-twos, makes for a delicious whirling dervish of sound. Park mostly keeps to the background, picking his spots and letting things develop organically….
‘Red Line Speed’ begins as a slow build that gains momentum along with height. It hits a plateau at the heart of the song, giving the sense of all three instruments feeling around in the dark to figure out the lay of the land before continuing their ascent in the final stretch of the track….
‘Massimo’s Imagined Juxtapositions’ is a lonely streetlight on a deserted midnight avenue, and the instruments are the moths darting in and out of the dim light carved into the darkness.
Two more reviews of ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) with two contrasting takes on the meeting between human and machine musicians. Ken Waxman, on the one hand, juxtaposes the “unobtrusive and egoless” machine with the human improvisers who display, for example, “thoughtful pauses”:
…Han-earl Park personifying Dr. Frankenstein, has created a non-human artificial musician from ad-hoc components including speakers, kitchenware and missile switches. This CD is a literal record of how the non-human, prosaically named io 0. 0. 1 beta++, sounds in concert with flesh-and-blood counterparts….
io 0. 0. 1 beta++ is unobtrusive and egoless enough… to warble its staccato particle contributions without trying to engulf or show up the humans. Its contributions are unique enough on their own.
For instance on the initial ‘Pioneer: Variance’ and ‘Pioneer: Dance’ contrasting alto and soprano saxophone trills and squeaks are put into bolder relief as the otherworldly flutters, oscillated tones and flanged rotations of the machine are kept in a straight line by Park’s legato picking. The thoughtful pauses audible in the guitar playing confirms Park’s human-ness, especially when compared to the grainy whistles and juddering vibrations that arise from io 0. 0. 1 beta++….
Nonetheless the machine further demonstrates its versatility on the 59-second ‘4G’, with metallic muted trombone-like snores and even raises the question as to whether io 0. 0. 1 beta++ or extended saxophone techniques are creating the air pops and abrasive tongue flutters on subsequent tracks. In the main crackling reductionist resonations are attributed to its properties, while any legato or lyrical intermezzos are, more likely than not, propelled from the instruments and imaginations of full-fledged Homo sapiens.
Succinctly as the three demonstrate on ‘Return Trajectory’, during which io 0. 0. 1 beta++ appears to have taken five, an additional voice—human or otherwise—is necessary to create a pleasing sound picture. The guitarist’s connective down strokes plus the swelling layers of contrapuntal reed timbres are distinctive and solipsistic enough on their own. [Read the rest…]
Romualdo Del Noce at Jazz Convention, on the other hand, hears a “charmingly imperfect interplay” between human and machine musicians becomes a drama of the ‘human,’ the ‘other,’ and of cyborgs. An interplay in which Han-earl Park improvises a “rugged plateau” and “hyperacid notes”, and Franziska Schroeder enriches “the other half of the sax… with a naked and experimental voice, together in harmony and dissonance with parallel and converging streams of the thoroughbred free-player Bruce Coates”.
Le corde tese di Park imbastiscono un plateau scabro ma di lungo e persistente respiro, vivente nelle articolazioni e nella tessitura della sua fisica elettroacustica; mentre sul versante “meccanico” dell’instrumentarium i modi performanti di Franziska Schroeder arricchiscono l’altra metà del sax (a fianco delle Matana Roberts, Alexandra Grimal, Ingrid Laubrock etc.) di una voce sperimentante e nuda, in sintonia e insieme dissonanza con i flussi paralleli e convergenti del free-player purosangue Bruce Coates, e il tutto si dipana entro uno svolgimento a canovaccio libero e istantaneo, lungo il suo deviante svolgimento interrogandosi (senza eccessivo paradosso) se l’autentica “alienità” sia rispettivamente appannaggio della cosa o, piuttosto e viceversa, dell’ “umano”….
Insomma, l’avanguardia è tornata: non che fosse mai stata davvero latitante, ma gli interrogativi sonori, lacerati e critici, del trio pongono come oggetto radicale la disumanizzazione progressiva e le implicazioni del sempre più preponderante avvento della macchina, forse retrodatando le intenzioni alle prime decadi del secolo scorso e alle relative allarmistiche dottrine, ma riprendendole lungo le forme acutamente nervose e l’attenzione creativa dei medianici e cyborghiani performers e del loro interplay attrattivamente imperfetto. [Read the rest…] [English translation…]
More reviews of ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) including Vittorio’s big thumbs-up at MusicZoom where he hails the recordings as a “total hymn to modernity”, in which the human musicians “throw themselves with passion on the ideas from the inanimate object”, and the listener will be “fully repaid by that which is a successful experiment”:
Il titolo da romanzo o di sigla di messaggio segreto è il nome della macchina sparamusica/rumori che fa bella mostra di sè sul palco e che senza alcun intervento dei musicisti intorno tira giù il suo catalogo di suoni con cui gli altri si trovano a confrontarsi. Un´idea che sarebbe piaciuta ai futuristi di omai un secolo fa, un inno totale alla modernità. Altro che strumenti acustici!
I tre musicisti coinvolti insieme alla macchina sono Han-earl Park alla chitarra, Bruce Coates al sax alto e sopranino e Franziska Schroeder al sax soprano. Non hanno nessuna paura per il confronto e così si avventano con passione sulla proposta dell´oggetto inanimato.
La session completamente improvvisata richiede molta attenzione da parte dell´ascoltatore, ripagata completamente da quello che è un esperimento riuscito. [Read the rest…] [English translation…]
Meanwhile, what to me is ‘playful’ may be ‘uncompromising’ to someone else:
Fra segmenti più atmosferico-minimali, e altri invece più frammentati e nervosi, si procede così, talora arrestandosi a una sorta di limbo emozionale, di quieta truculenza, peraltro sempre ammirevole per coerenza e rigore. [Read the rest…]
On the other hand, Ed Pinsent of The Sound Projector highlights the (fun, playful) material and interactive dimensions in the meeting between human and machine musicians:
The guitarist Park, sometime member of Mathilde 253 whose fine CD impressed us in March this year, is joined by two improvising saxophonists, Bruce Coates (from the Birmingham Improvisers’ Orchestra) and Franziska Schroeder (member of the trio FAINT), and the record documents the meeting of this trio with the “machine musician” io 0.0.1 beta++. This device is an automaton, a musical robot if you will, built by Mr Park; it’s not just another computer programme that plays random sounds or builds an “interactive” space for other laptop musicians, but actually occupies physical space and performs on the stage alongside its human counterparts. Shades of Pierre Bastien…. The multi-media artist Sara Roberts from California writes the liner notes and she does a much better job than I possibly could in articulating the cultural resonances of this man-meets-automaton event. [Read the rest…]
And Rui Eduardo Paes hears a meeting in which the human musicians bring their varied experience, in avant-jazz and in the space between electroacoustics and contemporary music, and in which the automaton “interactively reacting to what they do and even giving them cues”:
Os músicos de carbono envolvidos ora trabalham na área do ‘avant-jazz’, ora na da electroacústica de fronteira com a música contemporânea: Park com Charles Hayward, Wadada Leo Smith e Paul Dunmall, Coates com Tony Oxley, Lol Coxhill e o compositor indeterminista Christian Wolff, e Schroeder ao lado do pianista português Pedro Rebelo e em colaborações com Pauline Oliveros e Evan Parker. Todas essas experiências se reflectem em temas como ‘Ground-Based Telemetry’ e ‘Laplace: Instability’, sempre com o io a reagir interactivamente ao que fazem e até a dar-lhes deixas. [Read the rest…] [English translation…]
First set of reviews of the CD ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) including Beppe Colli’s take in which the “flesh-and-blood musicians” (Han-earl Park, Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder) demonstrate “excellent rapport” and “a good dose of telepathy”, while the machine musician (io 0.0.1 beta++) “works as a valuable stimulus for its fellow musicians”:
Closing track here, Return Trajectory is a good for instance of the excellent rapport existing among the aforementioned [“flesh-and-blood”] players, whose parallel traveling seems to suggest a good dose of telepathy—check the final moments, the two winds going towards a note in teleological mode. This is the track that, in my opinion, clearly shows more than a trace of these musicians’ formative influences, with Schroeder’s soprano reminding me of Evan Parker (elsewhere on the album she sounds quite more personal), while Coates’ alto is clearly reminiscent of the zig-zag wondering of Anthony Braxton (an influence that is also quite apparent elsewhere on the album, both on alto and sopranino). Han-earl Park’s guitar sits somewhere halfway between Joe Pass and Derek Bailey, being quite aware of the jazz vocabulary and the art of comping, though of course filtered through a modern sensibility, starting with timbre, but not as ‘indifferent’ to the surrounding as Bailey’s sometimes could be.
Were the album as good as its closing track, well… we’d only have a good album, nothing more. But—surprise!—as per its title, we have an ‘unknown quantity’ called io 0.0.1 beta++: a ‘musical automaton’ created by Han-earl Park whose improvising—so rich when it comes to timbres (which are sometimes more than a bit old-fashioned, a fact that goes well with its bizarre physical aspect, so reminiscent of 50s sci-fi movies), so mysterious when it comes to its decision-making—works as a valuable stimulus for its fellow musicians.
If on an aesthetic plane the main parallel that I can trace (one that I hope can be useful to readers) is with mid-80s Company, here the work as it’s offered to the listener appears to highlight the issue of the decisional process which is at the basis of improvisation when seen as a conscious ‘discipline of choices’. And in the CD liner notes penned by Sara Roberts I seemed to detect more than an echo of those debates which flourish about the famous (?) Turing Test. [Read the rest…] [In Italian…]
François Couture’s review of the “faux-quartet” with the “créature mécanique”io 0.0.1 beta++ which is “physically present on stage… and it interacts and improvises with the human improvisers”:
Ce quatuor (ou faux-quatuor, à la limite) propose des improvisations libres exigeantes faisant appel à de nombreuses techniques étendues, des pièces aux gestes décomposés, aux timbres déstabilisants, mais à la synergie impressionnante.
This quartet (or faux-quartet, if you prefer) performs demanding free improvisation calling on a range of extended techniques. Pieces of dismantled gestures, destabilizing timbres, and impressive synergy. [Read the rest…]
And Bruce Lee Gallanter who teases a Turing test around io 0.0.1 beta++:
…More rare is that these three human musicians are improvising with a machine called io 0.0.1 beta…. Io was constructed by Han-earl Park and is an integral part of this quartet…. Io… adds its own diverse yet fractured sounds to the blend. On “Pioneer: Dance” Mr. Coates plays slightly twisted alto sax while io adds similar textural sounds. If I didn’t know better, I would think that this was a successful session of European improv by a quartet of gifted yet thoughtful [human] players who take their time to explore similar textures and terrain together. I am not so sure that machines will ever take the place of human improvisers in the future, however this disc shows that someone is working in the right direction. [Read the rest…]
Lightheaded kitchen equipment and disciplined barbarism. Greg Burk of MetalJazz gives an account of the July 21, 2011 ResBox including the duo by Ted Byrnes and me:
…Drummer Ted Byrnes and electric guitarist Han-Earl Park launch into fast, busy abstraction. Byrnes tosses kitchen equipment around his kit, keeping up an ever-changing lightheaded commentary. Park applies every technique to his detuned ax—tapping, sliding, muting, twisting the machine heads. It’s simultaneously disciplined and barbaric. For the second time in a week, I witness a guitarist (the other was Allan Holdsworth) sounding as if he’s playing backward, and this time it’s clear that the method involves heavy pumping of a volume pedal. Between assaults, Park re-detunes his guitar. Ever ready for audience participation, [G. E.] Stinson yells, “Dude, why bother?” Park explains that he’s careful to avoid accidental tonality. [Read the rest…]
Le percussioni di Charles Hayward sono impulsi, fremiti di pelli, vibrazioni di metalli che interagiscono con lo spazio, oggetti che sfuggono alle leggi della fisica e della forza di gravità. Le corde della chitarra di Han-Earl Park sono pulsar che lanciano segnali dallo spazio, onde elettromagnetiche che contaminano la scena e ne modificano continuamente le sembianze. La tromba… di Ian Smith vaga errabonda in questo vuoto pneumatico deformando suoni, riflettendo immagini che si disintegrano come pulviscolo spaziale.
Nella sua orbita l’asteroide Mathilde 253 intercetta il pianeta Lol Coxhill, ma il rischio collisione è scongiurato. Anzi. L’armonia celeste è assicurata dall’uso del medesimo linguaggio di ricerca e di libertà. [Read the rest…]
…The trio interplay starts back up into territory that’s not quite free-jazz, not quite stereotypical British free improv, but somewhere in-between, with a slight rock-ist tinge. The stop/start modus continues, little cells erupting, sprawling and then halting, leaving guitar exposed again. [Han-earl] Park is the one to pay close attention to here, the development of his ideas is fascinating and very logical, and the other two players are embellishing and commenting on his story….
A section in which [Ian] Smith engages in high frequency squeaks makes my ears prick up, and what follows; ratcheting metallics, ringing scraped cymbals and odd muttering, is quite arresting…. On the last two pieces Lol Coxhill’s familiar sweet and sour tone joins in, initially in a duet with Park’s note-salad, as a carefully considered dialogue begins…. Coxhill seems to be having a lot of fun here, rubbing against the other’s ideas, or at times suggesting completely different areas for exploration. [Read the rest…]
A couple of more reviews of Mathilde 253 (SLAMCD 528) including Ken Waxman at JazzWord who says that it’s a “textbook example of high-class improvising” (and I’m a “sharp-witted” guitarist):
Riveting in its scope and cohesion, this seven-track slice of Free Improv captures the sounds made one night at a London club by an ad-hoc assemblage of players, who ordinarily may not have been expected to jell so effectively….
Blowsy pedal-point from the trumpeter; shuffles and drags from [Charles] Hayward; and remarkable strategies from the guitarist which involve investing each string with a different weight as he coaxes tones from near the machine head all the way down past the bridge. Half-valve plunger work from [Ian] Smith includes bent note flutters; while the drummer’s railway signal-crossing-like bell ringing and repetitive cymbal slams provide perfect matches for the guitarist’s flattened string patterns and note extensions…. [Read the rest…]
How’s your Italian? Romualdo Del Noce apprently compares us to the four musketeers:
Ronzante, provocatorio, mai davvero eccessivo ma comunque sfuggente, il contributo di questi quattro moschettieri non è eccepibile sul piano del coinvolgimento, testimoniando un action-playing contemporaneamente colto, “palestrato” e pregno di flussi idiosincrasici. [Read the rest…]
