label primer: five from recital

"what kind of cars are there in italy?"

(image by recital at wire)

welcome to the third issue of “tusk is better than rumours,” a newsletter featuring primers and album rankings of experimental and ‘outsider’ musicians. while artist primers are published every second and fourth monday, on off-weeks i will present a range of material from label and genre primers to interviews to guest writers. this week: an introduction to a few lesser-known releases from sean mccann’s recital label.

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if you’re a music critic you’ve probably heard some smirking dimwit repeat the famous quote “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” the preening ignorance of which used to annoy me because first of all a dance about architecture sounds right up my alley, bub. and actually some architecture about dancing would be nice too. the underlying premise—“art forms are incommensurable so hey don’t bother”—is indeed something a relatively thoughtful caveman would reject. but the more generous interpretation is that writing about music is simply a very difficult endeavor, which it is, believe you me. what the quote suggests is that the experience of listening to music is so transitory and emotional and subjective that any attempt to describe it will always fall short. fine, but there will always be folks who love music and love language and want to use the latter to describe the former. unfortunately a lot of music writing relies on bad adjectives so that for example guitars are “swirling” or “angular” and vocals are “soaring” or whatever and gee it makes me wonder if it’s possible to write compellingly about music after all.

luckily i’ve found one weird trick the music critics don’t want you to know: simply write about music that has such a complicated and hard-to-explain concept that by the time you’ve got the backstory set up you’ve reached your word limit and you’re good to go with nary an adjective in sight. this is where sean mccann’s recital label comes in, as their catalog is chock-a-block with high-concept albums that take ages to explain properly. recital has had several albums get glowing press, including mccann’s own Music for Public Ensemble, sarah davachi’s recent Let Night Come Bells End the Day, and ian william craig’s breakthrough A Turn of Breath. but there’s gold in that there catalog that didn’t get as much coverage, maybe actually exactly because of its (the gold’s, er albums’) complicated origin stories, so the purpose of this off-week issue is to select five of these albums and explain what they’re all about and recommend the hell out of them. so here we go, in reverse chronological order:

Nour Mobarak - Father Fugue

ok so nour mobarak’s father jean has a thirty-second memory and speaks four languages. side a of this album, mobarak’s first, consists of a conversation between her and her father that skips across all of these languages (french, italian, english, arabic). they talk about all sorts of things including how nice italy is. but wait that’s not all: this conversation is only in the left channel, while the right channel features mobarak extemporizing a vocal melody. the result is something between found sound and sound poetry. THEN side b has 11 songs where mobarak just sort of sings or vocalizes wherever she happens to be, in the shower or the car or one time she takes off running and screaming across monte alban, oaxaca, mexico.

Cop Tears - Thirteen Harmonies (Cage, 1986)

the story of this one starts in colonial america when people with names like supply belcher (no, really) would write four-part chorales for fun because electric guitars or tv or drugs weren’t invented yet. then america happened for about 200 years most of which were bad and then john cage applied chance operations from the i-ching to a selection of 44 of these chorales for his piece Apartment House 1776 for the american bicentennial. Apartment House 1776 also featured four vocal parts including protestant hymns, native american ritual songs, slave spirituals, and sephardic incantations. the idea is that if you were in an apartment house in 1776 you might hear any of these types of music, as they were all contemporary then. but the 44 melodies are what were written by cage and thus learnable and playable without being a member of one of those groups. so then this band called cop tears, which to be frank sounds like a hardcore band but is actually just three thoughtful classically-trained fellows, came along and decided to record 13 of the 44 harmonies from cage’s piece. but simply recording a chance-operated selection of 18th-century four-part chorales newly arranged for electric guitar, double bass, and flute would be too straightforward so they also decided to record themselves setting up and discussing how to record. and also they used a broken four track with bad tape on purpose. so you get nice conversation and lots of static in the background of sort of off-kilter faux-colonial compositions. not bad.

Charlie Morrow - Toot! Too

sean mccann describes charlie morrow as an “event-maker” and “organizer.” Toot! Too is a collection mainly of his “wave music” pieces, which are compositions or “events” for many of the same type of instrument (called “wave” because they move and undulate like water). for example “wave music II - 100 musicians with lights” featured 100 musicians playing in central park with penlights attached to their instruments march in a spiral pattern until they go home, still playing. the piece is over when the last musician gets to their house. “wave music iii - 60 clarinets and a boat” is a piece for many different types of clarinets that is timed to end at the exact moment of the summer solstice, at which point a boat blasts its horn. “wave music iv - drums and bugles” requires its players to march and play at an increasing tempo until they get to the top of a hill to watch the sunrise, at which point they dance with the audience. as you can tell these are difficult things to pull off, but at least we have this wonderful document to help us imagine being there.

Various - Voooxing Poooêtre

this here is a reissue of a compilation of sound poetry put together by the italian sound poet enzo minarelli in the early eighties. it features folks from all around the world including france italy spain america and eastern europe. recital has put out quite a few of these sound poetry albums including minarelli’s Romanzi nelle i and giovanni fontana’s Epigenetic Poetry and dick higgins’s Poems and Metapoems and even other work like mobarak’s above can be considered in this tradition. sound poetry is great because it emphasizes the pure joy to be found in making nonsense sounds with your mouth which i think we all did as kids but then when you try to do it as an adult you feel silly and probably look insane. but if you listen to other people do it? you still feel silly and look insane actually so wear headphones.

Annea Lockwood - Ground of Being

annea lockwood is a sound artist who i will probably dedicate a separate issue to here in a bit. but until then this album is a great introduction to the different types of things she gets up to. she records specific types of sounds, like water or wood or voice, which isn’t that uncommon, but what is uncommon is the way in which she defamiliarizes them and makes even something like sloshing water into a whole world that you get to explore with your earbones. she’s most famous for destroying pianos by dropping them in pools or setting them on fire which is pretty hardcore but here we get a less visually arresting but maybe more aurally adventurous selection including vents on the bottom of the ocean.

anyhow that’s it for this week. lots of exciting stuff coming up soon and i promise i’m not just saying that so subscribe and tell a friend to subscribe also. and also it would be good if that friend also told a friend. you don’t even have to get up, just click here