Olivia Block

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The disc in question is Teem, the recent duo disc by Olivia Block and Kyle Bruckmann on the either/OAR off shoot of the excellent and/OAR label. I like the word Teem, its one of those that just sounds nice when you say it… Strange that this disc should appear at almost the same time as Teeming, a different CD that I reviewed here. Teem is also Meet spelt backwards, which seems a fitting title for a disc of this type.

Before describing the music, some thoughts about how it was made. It appears that the four pieces here were put together over a period of five years, beginning back in 2003, soon after Bruckmann had contributed to Block’s Pure Gaze album. The two musicians live on opposite sides of the USA now, so with the exception of a recording session together in 2008 that produced material for two of the tracks, the majority of the music here was put together gradually by exchange of sound files. Both musicians are credited with mixing and editing, plus a long list of other instruments and processes, with both contributing field recordings, Block including piano and reed organ, and Bruckmann working with oboe, English horn, accordion and suona (whatever one of those might be). The truth is then, that given the mix of instrumentation and the method of production, its impossible to tell who is responsible for what, which adds a kind of mysterious quality to the music.

So what does it sound like? Well it varies quite a bit, but is generally a massed forest of high pitched acoustic sounds (oboe, horn, reed organ??) and hissing, crackling splutters that vary between what sounds like popcorn cooking and assorted small metallic items being thrown down a rubber staircase. The opening piece, titled I though also has an eerie melodic line threading through it, courtesy of the oboe I believe, that has a kind of old English folky feel to it, slow and slightly unnerving in its melancholy sat behind the pops and crackles. I like this piece a lot, but it has a sort of Oliver Postgate (sorry to non-English readers) feel to it, a kind of other-worldly sensation.

II, although retaining many of the same sounds kicks off in completely different fashion, a wall of high pitched wailing from assorted instruments hits you, giving way after thirty seconds or so to a vaguely familiar clanking and knocking recording that gently turns over behind small puffs and scribbles from one of Bruckmann’s wind instruments or another. Here the music takes on more of a constructed, musique concrete feel for a while, but the sounds all feel organic, piano strikes, whispery tones and more mechanical, clockwork patterns until this all gives way to airy reeds and some kind of industrial sounding field recording. The track then just keeps evolving and reinventing itself like this for its seventeen minute duration. This piece is great, wonderfully balanced, with a great ear for keeping sounds for just long enough before cutting them dead and replacing them with something altogether different and yet somehow complimentary. As with the Seth Nehil disc I reviewed last night (Nehil is another that has collaborated with Block quite a bit) the composition here sounds carefully considered. Given that it has taken five years for the music to progress to its finished state I think I’m probably safe in this assumption!

The third piece follows in a similar vein, but things grow into swells much more easily, building to an almighty climax of high wailing tones and rattling field recordings ten minutes in, only to shatter into a gradually subsiding percussive clatter that peters out over the last minute of the track. The closing IV is gentler, softer, made up mainly of layered acoustic tones, mostly reeds but who knows what else. Its shorter at a little over seven minutes and coupled with the five minute long opening track forms a kind of bookend for the album, a gradual winding down from the intensities of the middle two pieces.

This album is yet another great example of how improvisational techniques, when combined with careful, collaborative composition over time can result in really strong, refined musical statements. Like the Korber/Wehowsky disc from early this year this is a great example of two very talented, experienced musicians taking their time and using their experiences in an improvised setting to produce music of this kind. A fine release.