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old fires catch old buildings on new focus records
AMAZON ::: NAXOS ::: iTUNES
"Though they arrived on the scene without a repertoire to speak of, loadbang’s decade-long output now speaks for itself in quality and depth of involvement." - I CARE IF YOU LISTEN
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Album info:
Artist: loadbang
Title: old fires catch old buildings
Label: New Focus Records
Release: May 25, 2018
Track Listing:
Taylor BROOK Ouaricon Songs: Volume 2
William LANG Sciarrino Songs I-IV
Reiko FÜTING mo(nu)ment for C
Jeffrey GAVETT Musicorum et Cantorum
Angélica NEGRÓN dóabin
Scott WOLLSCHLEGER WHAT IS THE WORD I-III
Paula MATTHUSEN old fires catch old buildings
Recorded by loadbang (Carlos Cordeiro, bass clarinet; Jeffrey Gavett, baritone voice; Andy Kozar, trumpet; Will Lang, trombone)
Album Description: old fires catch old buildings is the third full-length album from ‘formidable new-music force’ loadbang, a quartet comprised of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. It features works by Taylor Brook, Reiko Füting, Paula Matthusen, Angélica Negrón, Scott Wollschleger and loadbang’s own Jeffrey Gavett and William Lang. Much of the music on the record deals with language and communication, and the ways in which those natural human capabilities can break down or flourish in unexpected ways.
The instinct to atomize and manipulate phonetic fragments runs through these recordings. Taylor Brook, Jeffrey Gavett, and Scott Wollschleger’s works use the International Phonetic Alphabet to separate words into their component parts, obfuscate, reverse, and otherwise compose with language itself. Brook’s Ouaricon Songs vol. 2 takes as its musical and textual basis a collection of recordings by Alan Lomax. These quintessentially American recordings of songs, jokes, and vocal miscellany are transformed and meticulously transcribed to yield a fictional folk music. Jeffrey Gavett’s Musicorum et Cantorum breaks a small poem by musical pioneer and inventor of the staff Guido d’Arezzo into its smallest possible parts, statistically arranging the phonemes as pure sonic information. A series of short microtonal musical episodes exploits all the possible combinations of loadbang’s instruments and voice. Samuel Beckett’s late poem What is the Word was a meditation on a friend of his who was suffering from aphasia, or an inability to produce or understand language. Scott Wollschleger’s setting takes Beckett’s already obsessive repetition and develops it musically over three distinct movements. The instrumentalists share the text with the singer, occasionally shouting or speaking through their instruments, all in an intense attempt to communicate. The text appears both as Beckett wrote it, in a more traditional relationship to text, as well as in a looping, manipulated state. The looped fragmentary nature of this CD appears musically in William Lang’s miniature Sciarrino Songs. Lang gently layers small distinct musical gestures reminiscent of the eminent Italian composer’s work, emphasizing the texture of loadbang’s unique instrumentation. The remaining works on the record are tied together by the use of an electronic accompaniment; Angélica Negrón’s work has a synthesized track, while Paula Matthusen assembled a collage of numerous recordings made for her by the members of loadbang. Negrón’s dóabin is built on recordings of Poto and Cabengo, a pair of identical twins who developed an idiolect, or private language. The childlike sense of play and mystery is brought through into the instrumental and vocal writing, which includes spoken and sung portions of the idiolect. The title work on the record, Paula Matthusen’s Old Fires Catch Old Buildings, takes its title from author William S. Burroughs, and borrows some of the iconic writer’s cut-up techniques, assembling the work from hours of recordings of loadbang. Fragments of a Norwegian table prayer appear in a Lynchian tape-reverse effect, pairing the singer with his recorded ghost in a haunting exchange.
Elsewhere On the Web:
www.newfocusrecordings.com
Title: old fires catch old buildings
Label: New Focus Records
Release: May 25, 2018
Track Listing:
Taylor BROOK Ouaricon Songs: Volume 2
William LANG Sciarrino Songs I-IV
Reiko FÜTING mo(nu)ment for C
Jeffrey GAVETT Musicorum et Cantorum
Angélica NEGRÓN dóabin
Scott WOLLSCHLEGER WHAT IS THE WORD I-III
Paula MATTHUSEN old fires catch old buildings
Recorded by loadbang (Carlos Cordeiro, bass clarinet; Jeffrey Gavett, baritone voice; Andy Kozar, trumpet; Will Lang, trombone)
Album Description: old fires catch old buildings is the third full-length album from ‘formidable new-music force’ loadbang, a quartet comprised of trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice. It features works by Taylor Brook, Reiko Füting, Paula Matthusen, Angélica Negrón, Scott Wollschleger and loadbang’s own Jeffrey Gavett and William Lang. Much of the music on the record deals with language and communication, and the ways in which those natural human capabilities can break down or flourish in unexpected ways.
The instinct to atomize and manipulate phonetic fragments runs through these recordings. Taylor Brook, Jeffrey Gavett, and Scott Wollschleger’s works use the International Phonetic Alphabet to separate words into their component parts, obfuscate, reverse, and otherwise compose with language itself. Brook’s Ouaricon Songs vol. 2 takes as its musical and textual basis a collection of recordings by Alan Lomax. These quintessentially American recordings of songs, jokes, and vocal miscellany are transformed and meticulously transcribed to yield a fictional folk music. Jeffrey Gavett’s Musicorum et Cantorum breaks a small poem by musical pioneer and inventor of the staff Guido d’Arezzo into its smallest possible parts, statistically arranging the phonemes as pure sonic information. A series of short microtonal musical episodes exploits all the possible combinations of loadbang’s instruments and voice. Samuel Beckett’s late poem What is the Word was a meditation on a friend of his who was suffering from aphasia, or an inability to produce or understand language. Scott Wollschleger’s setting takes Beckett’s already obsessive repetition and develops it musically over three distinct movements. The instrumentalists share the text with the singer, occasionally shouting or speaking through their instruments, all in an intense attempt to communicate. The text appears both as Beckett wrote it, in a more traditional relationship to text, as well as in a looping, manipulated state. The looped fragmentary nature of this CD appears musically in William Lang’s miniature Sciarrino Songs. Lang gently layers small distinct musical gestures reminiscent of the eminent Italian composer’s work, emphasizing the texture of loadbang’s unique instrumentation. The remaining works on the record are tied together by the use of an electronic accompaniment; Angélica Negrón’s work has a synthesized track, while Paula Matthusen assembled a collage of numerous recordings made for her by the members of loadbang. Negrón’s dóabin is built on recordings of Poto and Cabengo, a pair of identical twins who developed an idiolect, or private language. The childlike sense of play and mystery is brought through into the instrumental and vocal writing, which includes spoken and sung portions of the idiolect. The title work on the record, Paula Matthusen’s Old Fires Catch Old Buildings, takes its title from author William S. Burroughs, and borrows some of the iconic writer’s cut-up techniques, assembling the work from hours of recordings of loadbang. Fragments of a Norwegian table prayer appear in a Lynchian tape-reverse effect, pairing the singer with his recorded ghost in a haunting exchange.
Elsewhere On the Web:
www.newfocusrecordings.com