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"HiGH ▀ iNTELLiGeNCE tRoLLS"
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a r t i s t : BNSF
t i t l e : Object 6
d a t e : 2004
l a b e l : Lucust Music (locust058)
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : December/2004
t r a c k s : 08
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 65,8 MB
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BNSF
Adam Diller: saxophone, timbales, microphone
Matt Crane: drums, percussion, samples
Jason E. Anderson: guitars, laptop, electronics, harmonica,
microphone
Inspired by natural cycles of texture and repetition, BNSF
creates music with an organic momentum. Building music from the
melodic noise and polyrhythms of industrial activity, BNSF
exists between aleatory structure and song form, music and
noise. Adam Diller, Jason E Anderson, and Matt Crane met
through their involvement with Open Music Workshop, an offshoot
of the recent explosion in Seattle's improvised music scene. A
sense of purpose was established during the first
improvisations of the trio, spurring the formation of BNSF.
Meeting at their practice space near a train junction in
downtown Seattle, they realized the importance of the
environment's influence on their music. Drawing on their
surroundings, BNSF took their name from a passing train car.
They began experimenting by playing in construction zones,
under a highway overpass, through a huge metal tube in a shop
yard, and next to unloading freight trains. Volume 6 of Locust
Music's Object series.
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The trio of Adam Diller, Matt Crane and Jason E. Anderson are
responsible for some of the Object series' most organic sounds,
even more so than Fred Lonberg-Holm and Axel D÷rner's cello and
trumpet on the initial Object offering. The basis of BNSF's
music is in saxophone, guitar, and drums, though electronics
and electro-acoustic sound manipulation also have their place.
What sets this Pacific Northwest trio apart, though, isn't
simply the instruments they play, but their approach to
traditional free-jazz improvisation. Their output isn't like
the stormy bluster, "R.W. Sarber et al. Killed a Virulent
Strain of Tubercle Vacilli and BCG by Ultra-Voilet Light," but
BNSF never depart completely from the realm of jazz-influenced
improv into the more sterile, refined environs that marked most
of their predecessors in the Object series. There are moments,
of course, when Diller's saxophone or Anderson's harmonica are
reduced to almost incognito buzzes and drones, and Anderson's
guitar undergoes plenty of masking on much of the disc, but,
due in part to Crane's percussion, Object 6 retains a living,
breathing feel. The changing locations of the recordings also
give life to the music, especially during "Domani Θ Troppo
Tardi," when the sound of passing traffic underlies the
musicians' soft conversation. While it's the series' least
distinctive disc, Object 6 remains a novel signifier of the
newest trends in improvisation, and a fitting successor in
Locust's ongoing Object explorations. - Dusted Magazine
"BNSF emerge from the Seattle improvisation scene and their
music registers the character of a gritty urban soundscape.
Adam Diller plays saxophone. Timbales and microphone, with Matt
Crane on drums, percussion and sampler, while Jason E Anderson
moves between guitar, laptop, electronics, harmonica and
microphone. Diller's saxophonics and Crane's drumming retain
links, with the ragged margins of jazz freedom and fire, but
the collective readiness to engage with sounds as such tilts
the trio into less overtly mediated encounters with noise.
Concrete field recordings surface in places, contrasting with
wild instrumental intensities reminiscent of Borbetomagus.
These sampled environmental traces make audible a pervasive
debt, shared by all three of these releases, to John Cage's
admonition to listen to everyday life. By extension they also
suggest further indebtedness to Marcel Duchamp's teasing play
with aesthetic assumptions and the customary placement and
meaning of ordinary objects." - Julian Cowley, The Wire 248
"Seasoned improvisers, its members founded the Open Music
Workshop, a performance space and sound-artist community that
helms things like marathon twelve-hour improvisations and
"guerilla music performances". BNSF know that music's character
has much to do with the environment in which it is played,
which is why they've experimented with playing next to trains,
in construction zones and under highway overpasses. In an
apparent acknowledgement of the large role chance and outside
objects play in their music, the group's name comes from a
Burlington Northern Santa Fe train car that passed by their
window during practice.
The trio succeeds at blurring the lines between their manmade
music and the supposedly "nonmusical" noise that inspires and
aurally populates it. Details of its aleatoric and
unpredictable creation process would be fascinating (right?),
but what does it sound like? Between Adam Diller's honking,
oft-psychotic saxophone, percussionist Matt Crane's mad drum
rattling and Jason E. Anderson's noisemaking, it's like a
fusion of John Zorn and field recording-heavy musique concrete.
On the second track (I'll spare you the epic title),
hard-to-place hums and beeps sounding like a broken HAM radio
give way to hailstorms of snare and then blaring sax, which
stands alone until a frenzy of scrapy guitar noise and maniacal
drums comes back to raise hell. A windy taped environment marks
the setting of "Domanφ Θ Troppo Tardi"; its foghorn sax moans
and tenuous harmonica convey a kind of wet melancholy that's
distinctly Seattle.
"Fiercely manic, Object 6 can be both idle ("Sorghum for
Forage"'s lonely train whistle and flycatcher spark), and
violent (the fluttery, drunken-bird sax of "These had
essentially the same effect on guinea pigs as live BCG" and
"Aureomycin"'s shrill, "Meat is Murder"-esque slaughterhouse
saw recreation). BNSF are thoroughly alert improvisers, never
resorting to some of the lazy crutches that stultify other
artists of their ilk. Here they've convincingly emulated the
whirr of industrial activity, while at the same time making an
orchestra out of train yards and stiff winds." - Justin
Stewart, Splendid
"BNSF trawl through the fried nether regions of free form and
besmirched electronics on the engaging Object 6." - bernardo
rondeau, future forms
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01-Grandson of the Italian Liberator [00:36]
02-R.W. Sarber et Al. Killed a Virulent Human Strain of [09:09]
Tubercle Vacilli and BCG By Ultra-Violet Light
03-These Had Essentially the Same Effect on Guinea Pigs [03:06]
as Live BCG
04-Maj. Gen. William F. Dean [00:30]
05-Domani ╔ Troppo Tardi [06:53]
06-Aureomycin [01:05]
07-The Total Production of White Potatoes in the Us in [11:24]
1950 Was Again Very Large at 439,500,000 bu.
08-Sorghum for Forage [02:02]
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34:45 min
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