a r t i s t : Keith Rowe & Toshimaru Nakamura
t i t l e : Between
d a t e : 2006
l a b e l : Erstwhile 050-2
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : Sep/2006
t r a c k s : 05
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 184,2 MB
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Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics
Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board
Produced by Jon Abbey
Recorded by Christoph Amann at Amann Studios, Vienna, July 2,
2005 (Disc 1-1; Disc 2-1, 3) and July 1, 2005 (Disc 1-2), and
by Masaki Hatsui at Theatre Arsenic, Lausanne, April 30, 2005
(Disc 2-2)
Mixed and mastered by Toshimaru Nakamura
Cover painting by Keith Rowe
Inside photo by Yuko Zama
Design by Friederike Paetzold
Released in April 2006
"There are certain fundamental ideas which have become
commonplace in one or more art forms but are less practiced in
others. One is the recognition of an unbridgeable separation
between objects and, by implication, people. For most of the
last century, the cultivation of a keen awareness of
spatial/psychological separation has been a standard lesson in
the visual arts. One learns to appreciate two or more distinct
objects inhabiting the same physical space yet not only
retaining their individual identities but, simply by
coexisting, creating a multitude of tensions, disturbances in
the air around them as well as psycho-gravitational pushes and
pulls, vortices of interacting essences influencing behavior
in a manner that swiftly becomes all but indecipherable. The
awareness, hyper-awareness even, of this space, indiscernible
and inconsequential to most lay or inobservant eyes, and of
all the intense activity occurring within it, becomes crucial
to the artist, perhaps more so than the objects causing the
rippling tension themselves. Consistently bearing that
knowledge in mind, never avoiding the reality of the
situation, will (at least potentially) lend a given visual
evocation an ineffable sense of energy, a dynamism difficult
to quantify but easy enough, if the viewer is so attuned, to
feel. This general notion is often paid lip service in
improvised music but rarely, I think, contemplated with the
thoroughgoing seriousness it has been in painting, sculpture,
etc.
'Between-ness' has always been a central idea in Rowe's
collaborative music. He's often described AMM's work, from its
earliest days, in terms of the energies generated between the
very different poles formed by himself and Prevost, later
between the two of them and Tilbury, drawing a clear
distinction between accommodation and acknowledgement of
differences, reveling in the unexpected (and unpredictable)
bounty returned by the interference patterns produced from
sources varying in multiple aspects as they rippled over and
through one another. It's a fundamental and fertile decision:
not to look for affinities but to accept and appreciate
differences. In Nakamura, he has an ideal partner. I'm
guessing Toshi thinks about these matters far more than he
talks about them (for he does scarce little of the latter),
but he seems naturally adept at limning the delicate line
between distancing reserve and warm embracing, fond of playing
in that particular indistinct field.
These thoughts, to the extent that they accurately reflect
some abiding concerns of the musicians involved (if at all),
began sinking in the seventh or eighth time I listened to this
set, especially to the final track, "Amann". I'd remarked here
and elsewhere how difficult a time I was having grasping the
pieces in their entirety, the eeliness with which they
resisted wrapping my arms around them. With much music, one is
content to follow along, as it were, to experience it
episodically and derive satisfactory enjoyment from so doing
but Rowe, I've long understood, tends to be after bigger game,
desiring to concretize as much as possible a concept, to
create a whole where the parts dissolve as soon as one
examines them too closely. While I enjoyed certain pieces
immediately and enormously - the lengthy track, "Lausanne",
for example, strikes me as every bit as beautiful as the bulk
of the "Duos for Doris" session; there's no higher praise from
meùit was proving very difficult to 'stand back' and take in
"between" as an entity, something I felt I should be able to
do. "Amann" had initially impressed me as a juicy drone, an
appropriate, hyper-extended punctuation to the set. The more I
listened, however, the more I could perceive the complex
strands in the piece. Their spatial aspect, their separateness
while intertwining, became clearer. I began to get an
analogous sense of magnetic fields surrounding each sound
element. The mental image that seemed to best describe this
music: You know when you fool around with a pair of bar
magnets and position like poles adjacent to each other, the
invisible yet obvious tensile field that occurs, that area
with imperceptible borders which nonetheless manifests with
clarity at a given point? That's the image I hadùseveral lines
spiraling around each other, forming a solid coherent whole
when viewed from a distance but retaining clear, almost
self-sufficient identities if I shifted my ears appropriately.
That 'either/or, neither/nor' experience is quite delicious.
More generally, and strictly aurally: the tracks on Disc 1
have something of a searching quality which settles
occasionally on moments of pure delight (in a sense like the
first 2/3 of ErstLive 005) while the hit single of the batch,
"13630 kHz" is as out and out raucous as much of the rest of
the session is subtle. Surprisingly, Nakamura was more
responsible than Rowe for the gargantuan outbursts therein;
that innocent looking guy sitting motionless behind his decks
isn't quite so. "Lausanne"'s expansive beauty has to do, I
think, with achieving something routinely mentioned, rarely
actuated: a space in which absolutely anything can happen,
infinite in all directions, yet the choices made seem entirely
non-arbitrary. It billows out into the void whereas "Amann"
gorgeously contracts back to two individuals, orbiting each
other in deep appreciation but acknowledging the hard fact
that they are, indeed, two individuals and that the tension
will always exist as part and parcel of being human.
erstwhile
(disclaimer for those concerned: IÆm working on a biography of
Keith Rowe and have a friendly relationship with ErstwhileÆs
owner, Jon Abbey)"
(Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen)
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CD1
01-July [24:36]
02-Vienna [34:52]
CD2
01-13630 Khz [08:48]
02-Amann [20:12]
03-Lausanne [41:22]
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