ParisTransatlantic
If you're wondering why the inaugural album on a new improv label – Richard Pinnell's Cathnor – featuring notable improvisers John Tilbury, Mark Wastell and guitarist / laptopper Hervé Boghossian is reviewed here in the "Contemporary" section as opposed to "Jazz / Improv", it's because Boghossian, in his liner notes, specifically refers to himself as "the composer", and the three tracks as "composed by" H.B. He also provides them with rather dry New York School-y generic titles – "For Piano and Computer", "For Cello and Computer" and "For Piano, Cello and Computer" (en français dans le texte) – which, along with the rather drab punning album title and the added information that this is just the first of three projected volumes, certainly sets a serious, even ascetic tone. Tilbury fans expecting some of those exquisite Feldmanesque droplets might be somewhat disappointed to find the pianist confined to the bottom octave of his piano in the opening track (much as Maurizio Pollini's prodigious talents were for the most part restricted to low end thuds in Luigi Nono's Como una ola di fuerza y luz), but if that's what you're after you can always slip one of his AMM CDs into your machine instead. Boghossian's interest lies elsewhere (in point of fact Tilbury's contributions could have been recorded by just about any other pianist of modest technical ability with a sense of touch), namely in an exceedingly careful and subtle recrafting of timbre. Improv aficionados, EAI connoisseurs included, might find the music somewhat lacking in relief, but that's about as daft as complaining that Mark Rothko can't draw as well as Arshile Gorky or comparing Eliane Radigue (a Boghossian hero, and it shows) to Pierre Henry. Apples and oranges. Boghossian's exploration of the upper partials of Mark Wastell's looped cello drone is meticulous and exquisite. And if that's not good enough for you, "the composer invites the listener to use tracks 1 & 2 to create his own composition" (or her own composition, he might have added).
Dan Warburton
Vital Weekly
How to set yourself apart as a label, a very good lesson: make a package that nobody has, and make it look good. Cathnor, a new UK label, does that. Their first two releases come in what looks like oversized digipacks, and will surely be a pest to both your collection and the shop displays. But they stick out of the majority and that is a great thing.
The first release is the first of a trilogy to come, by Herve Boghossian, who plays computer (on the cover in the beautiful french word 'ordinateur'). He asked John Tilbury of AMM piano fame and Mark Wastell on cello to play a composition he made (each solo) and which he would use in his computer processing to 'focus on the textural qualities'. In the first piece it is piano and computer, then cello and computer and in the final piece both together and computer. In the first piece it is clearly the piano, playing clustered and sustaining piano sounds, and the computer treatment seems far away. It may or may not add environmental/reverb like sounds, but it's done in a more or less secret way. In the Wastell piece this is different. The cello is heard, but arrives through a web of sustained sine wave sound/feedback like sound. It moves almost without any flaw into the third piece. I might be entirely wrong, but it seems that this piece is just a mix of the previous two pieces, includingwhatever was processed on the computer, but it's a quite nice, almost sinister atmosphere that hoovers around in this piece. Although I am not sure what is to follow in the next two parts of this trilogy, I have a keen ear to explore that.
Franz de Waard
The Wire
Though the punning title of French electroacoustician Hervé Boghossian’s CD is inelegant, it takes us straight to the heart of his concerns: structure and texture. Archi.Texture Vol. 1 consists of three compositions. In “Pour Piano & Ordinateur”, John Tilbury holds down the sustain pedal and plays entirely in the piano’s bass register. As improvisation it’s atypical Tilbury and, quite frankly, not terribly interesting. One can’t help wondering to what extent Boghossian’s guidelines helped or hampered him. What Boghossian does with this material is gently emphasise aspects of the piano’s shimmering harmonics. His computer processing turns them into gaseous clouds that momentarily bloom before dissolving into the aether. It’s a delicate procedure, one he manages with great subtlety. The higher register, drone-based cello track that Mark Wastell provides for “Pour Violoncelle and Ordinateur” is more immediately interesting, and Boghossian’s edits and electronic enhancements do it justice. The final composition layers the Tilbury and Wastell tracks, seemingly without embellishment. Satisfying though it is, it never amounts to more than the sum of its parts.
Brian Marley
Touching Extremes
The concept behind this release is quite linear: three segments, about 20 minutes each, in which Hervé Boghossian altered via computer the sound of John Tilbury’s piano and Mark Wastell’s cello, first working on the single parts then merging the two tracks in a final virtual investigation of the resulting reciprocities. It’s an intriguing record who will displace many of those – like yours truly – who had thought about some sort of study in crepuscular silence. What’s immediately noticeable is instead the severe coldness of the whole, as the protagonists express themselves within opposite ranges: Tilbury never departing from a rumbling cascade of low-note arpeggios, Wastell sporting an impregnable defense that prevents any “sweet spot” from being individuated in a very harsh melange of squealing and hissing high frequencies. In both instances, Boghossian manages to chip off selected harmonics that keep hovering around the room even at very low volume, just as curious butterflies could remain fluttering near a high-tech incinerator; this choice of glimmering confinement within well defined limits of the audio spectrum seems to be Boghossian’s favourite (...only?) exploratory field throughout the CD. On a more vulgar level, Tilbury’s boiling rolls on the piano keyboard involuntarily recall, for a few moments, Rick Wright’s “Sisyphus” on Pink Floyd’s “Ummagumma” but, strangely enough, also elicit wobbling reverberations similar to Wastell’s tam tam's in his “Vibra” albums, especially - again - at low listening level; incidentally, speakers are absolutely a must for this release. No headphones! In his solo section, Wastell's cello depicts an X-rayed Tony Conrad surrounded by tear gas while fighting a silent guerilla of high-pitched unanswered questions. That said, the final track is obviously the most satisfactory on a sheer ear-pleasure level, the main reason being the acquired interiorization of the single elements, explicated through a hermetic system of contrasting waves and vibrations. Nothing truly groundbreaking here, but everything works fine for my taste.
Massimo Ricci
