Arcane Candy

Jiminy Cricket, am I glad another tiny and long overdue morsel from the estate of Richard Maxfield has finally been excavated from the murk of the mists of time and held up to proper glory in the almost-ultimate glowing light of the ever-whitening sun. Previously, I had spent several nights floatin’ a rickety canoe down Niagara Falls at 3:17 a.m. to Richard’s “Night Music” track on that old New Sounds In Electronic Music LP on Columbia. But that was all. No other material that I know of has ever been available, and any further documentation on Richard Maxfield is welcome.

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For Stefan Wolpe is a CD full of works for chorus (very lightly peppered with an instrument or two) from a couple of prominent composers from the second half of the 20th Century, Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972) and his student Morton Feldman (1926-1987). Stefan fled Germany during Hitler’s reign, only to become a prominent fixture in the New York School, where he befriended abstract expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline in the 1940s, as well as teaching from 1952-1956 at Black Mountain College when John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham and Lou Harrison hung out there. Stefan’s works tend toward the tonal and melodic, occasionally fired up with dissonance: “Wolpe enjoyed watching fish in an aquarium to get his inspirations, which helps explain why his notes shimmer, freeze, then dart in a new direction with such spontaneity.”—Kyle Gann

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Hmmm, “Elegies For the Recording Angel” sounds familiar. Is that a quote from The Wire there in the title? Straight outta left field, way back by the bleachers, here we have a collection of year 2000 meditations on the mysterious (and nearly lost) realm of early recording history—featuring the ancient, tinny, scratchy sounds of various Edison wax cylinders from the late 19th and early 20th Century combined with contemporary instrumental music. Straight outta the Bay Area, the Ensemble Diglossia layers their considerable musical talents with these haunting, gritty textures of yore in a most “melding of the minds” kind of way. A wide array of “free-improvisation, musique concrete, post-war composition, AACM-derived strategies and pop-music” comes into play. Quirky improv, rocking marches, chaotic climaxes and plenty of haunting atmospheric ambience all abound. All aboard.

Label: New World Records Catalog Number: 80548-2 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 28 Total Time: 72:51 Country: United States Released: 2000 More: Discogs, Last.FM, Official

Text ©2003 Arcane Candy

This is a much welcome double-CD set of enveloping electronic sound provided by the undynamic duo of 20th Century experimental music, pianist / composer David Tudor (1926-1996) and composer John Cage (1912-1992). This transcendent live performance is more than an adequate extension of their double-LP from 1959, Indeterminacy, and was recorded live by Radio Bremen in the Bremen Glocke, Germany, on May 5, 1972. It features John Cage reading a rearranged text of Thoreau mixed in with the homebrew music (hence “Mureau”) of David Tudor’s myriad electronic contraptions. With said equipment, David quilts a whole host of sonic afghans and sets them afloat in a most deep-space-staring manner: at times churning, misting, grating and massaging; evoking bird cries, placid scenery and foul weather density—all topped off by John’s peculiar warbled chanting and moaning of re-arranged text. Needless to say, it’s very beguiling and another essential listen from these two legends. What a treat to hear them together again.

Label: New World Records Catalog Number: 80540-2 Format: 2-CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: Disc 1: 1, Disc 2: 1 Total Time: Disc 1: 43:02, Disc 2: 51:17 Country: United States Released: 2000 More: Discogs, New World Records

Text ©2003 Arcane Candy

MC Maguire is a composer who has been working since the 1970s. His works fuse elements of modern classical and pop culture. Trash of Civilizations presents two long-form pieces for live instruments and recorded sounds. The nearly half-hour opener, “The Spawn of Abe,” features a Klezmer clarinet and an Arabic oboe prominently snaking through layers of rhythmic synth and sampled chaos. A thick soup full of singing and talking heads, cawing birds, machine guns, helicopters and the like are frequently punctured with shards of shattering glass. Although the liner notes don’t list drums as an instrument, I can swear I hear some buried deep in the mix.

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“Susan Fancher is known for her deep and poetic musical interpretations. Her work to develop the repertoire for the saxophone has produced dozens of commissioned works, as well as published transcriptions of music by composers as diverse as Josquin Desprez and Steve Reich. A much sought-after performer of new music, she has worked with a multitude of composers and has performed in many of the world’s leading concert venues and contemporary music festivals. Susan Fancher is a regularly featured columnist for the nationally distributed Saxophone Journal and an artist for the Vandoren and Selmer companies. She teaches saxophone at Duke University.”

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Remember Cornelius from Planet of the Apes? Well, this is definitely not him. While that Cornelius, a chimpanzee who lives in the year 3978, is an archaeologist concerned with digging up the remnants of a technologically advanced human civilization, this Cornelius is a musician who merely wants to fiddle. His latest album, named Dream Streets, offers your eardrums a meditation on New York City streets at night that is full to the brim with a variety-packed program for solo violin. Ranging from soaring, melodic notes to repetitive Terry Riley-like riffs; from sparse solos to simple string plucks; from gentle sawing to all-out country-inspired hoe-downs; from slow string scrapes to deep space wailing; from skittering improv to minimally held notes and complex runs, it’s all reverb-drenched and spread across the stereo field like a rock band. Occasionally, squirrelly electronics and deep atmospheric field recordings–cawing birds, rain, traffic ambience–find their way into the mix, and it all melds together in a most pleasing manner. Chalk up another cultural high point for the humans! In 2000 years, when the apes dig up a dusty old CD player and play Dream Streets, their simian minds are gonna be blown.

Label: Innova Catalog Number: 735 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 10 Total Time: 56:27 Country: United States Released: 2009 More: Amazon, Discogs, Issue Project Room, Last.FM, MySpace, Official, Twitter

Text ©2010 Arcane Candy

“In the ancient Chinese land of Ao-lai, on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit was a magic rock. This rock gave birth to an egg which hatched into a stone monkey. So begins one of the great classic Chinese works of literature, Journey to the West, written around 1550 by Wu Cheng-en.” With Monkey King, electronic music composer and a Cal Arts teacher since 1971, Barry Schrader, aurally tells the story of this intelligent animal’s birth and long journey to become a buddha. The CD’s five long tracks pulse out a veritable smorgasbord of musical challenges. Midnight drones provide a bed for all kinds of other sounds to bounce off of. Pinging shaker rhythms, cascading synth ruffles and stabs, drilling or echoey shimmers, rhythmic machine guns and static, reverb hits, gong storms, tolling bells and plenty of other drama suddenly gives way at various times to a stately stasis or a light flitting of uplifting effervescence. Then it all builds to swirling climax, occasionally interrupted by subtle touches of melody, or, alternately, hammering shimmers. Just when you start to hope the journey will never end, a sharp aluminum slash kills it all dead. If you’re a lover of minimal synth excursions, this disc will breathe new life into your listening day–whether you’re a man or a monkey.

Label: Innova Catalog Number: 703 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 5 Total Time: 56:19 Country: United States Released: 2008 More: Last.FM, MySpace, Official, Synthtopia, Tokafi, Wikipedia

Text ©2010 Arcane Candy

No, Val-Inc is not a company. It’s a person whose real name is Val Jeanty. Originally from Haiti, but residing in New York City since the late-1990s, Val composes a style of music she calls “Afro Electronica,” which pretty much sums it up perfectly. The seven tracks on this CD all form one long, flowing piece with no breaks. Restrained, quiet drum and percussion beats, synth storm swirl drones and low end turntable grooves lay the foundation for the shaking didgeridoo and sax squeaks to do their thing. And the spoken poetry, singing and vocal loops add a dash of reality to this subdued dream, in which Val somehow manages to build a wide, candle-lit atmosphere with surprisingly few ingredients. Clocking in at just 30 minutes, this album is definitely short but sweet, and the artwork / graphic design is top-notch. It’s on!

Label: Innova Catalog Number: 698 Format: CD Packaging: Digipak Tracks: 7 Total Time: 29:12 Country: United States Released: 2007 More: Downtown Music, Jazz Mix, Last.FM, MySpace, Official, YouTube

Text ©2010 Arcane Candy

Punk band Fear once “sang” that New York’s all right if you like saxophones. The same could be said of this CD, which an all-sax outfit called the Prism Quartet completely crams full like a sardine can with a four-layer burrito of complex compositions that resemble the most prickly improv. The 15 tracks hungrily chomp their way through a variety pack of approaches. In “Fantasy Etudes,” intricate runs filled with squeaks and squawks alternate between moods that run the gamut from jelled-up-hair-spiky to placid as a pond. The University of Michigan Symphony Band joins in on “Heater” for a rousing piece of big-band-inspired swing that dissolves into a field of obstuse dissonance in which the Pink Panther goes awry.

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