Resolution
ErstwhileParis Transatlantic, Winter 2011
← backWith this collaboration, sound artist extraordinaire Olivia Block joins the Erstwhile roster and trumpeter Greg Kelley makes a welcome reappearance. The disc sets new standards for combining extended instrumental techniques with innovative field recording manipulation and continues Erstwhile’s trend toward increasing sonic diversity. From the opening moments of “Pinholed and Perpetual Light”, we have one foot in a documentarian’s world, as is usual for Block. Timbres are presented in what sounds like a natural state, and yet flow from one to another with cinematic grace, often evoking a single environment for long stretches. Yet there’s no simple way of demarcating individual contributions from moment to moment; the motoric and sibilant swells and ebbs that typify “Pinholed” probably result from Kelley’s breaths and whispers in juxtaposition with Block’s environmental captures, but they’re remarkable studies in sonic unity. Kelley’s finely controlled respiration provides the building blocks of “Looking Through Bone,” in which he conjures glassy and liquid textures similar to those of another remarkable brass player and recent Erstwhile collaborator, Radu Malfatti.
These long flowing soundscapes bookend the disc, but sandwiched in between are episodes of a much more whimsical nature. On “How Much Radiation Can You Stand,” amidst the sonorities of workaday perambulation, the shufflings, buzzes and scrapes are replaced by the muted but somehow shocking sounds of a sparse piano arpeggio, a beautifully tensioned major chord – a juxtaposition reminiscent of Michael Pisaro’s July Mountain. “Some Old Slapstick Routine” finds Kelley’s huge vocabulary of pitched and tremoloed air centerstage, dry and forward in the mix, while Block surrounds him with smashing objects, in humorously sympathetic dialogue. Piano strings, glass and metal engage in freefall repartee enhanced by changing acoustics.
The disc’s loosely palindromic form provides a sense of completion, of large-scale unity to this protean music, not to mention justifying the title. The return of long-held sonorities, like the pure tone on which the album ends, brings the project full circle. Taken as a whole, Resolution demonstrates growth in both musicians’ aesthetics, as well as being successful on its own terms.–MM
– Marc Medwin , Paris Transatlantic, Winter 2011