The Wire
In May last year Swiss guitarist and electronics whiz Tomas Korber travelled to the depths of rural Norfolk to record three hours of music with the quiet man of British improv, Graham Halliwell, whose exquisite sustained saxophone feedback has graced several fine releases in recent years, notably by +minus, his trio with Bernhard Günter and Mark Wastell (samples of whose work are discreetly incorporated into The Large Glass). There are no Hendrix howls or Borbetomagus blares in Halliwell's patient explorations, but playing with feedback is always playing with fire, and the sense of danger is more palpable here than on his previous releases, perhaps also because this was the first time he'd experimented with pre-recorded multi-track feedback in live direct-to-disk recording. Eliane Radigue (a Halliwell hero) often comes to mind, especially in the opening "The Essence Of Things", not only because of the warmth of the low register drone but because of the skill with which Halliwell and Korber, whose editing and mastering is as impressive as the music he makes, move the piece forward almost imperceptibly from the chilly screes of filtered noise to the delicate bell-like sonorities that herald its stately retreat. Unlike much contemporary EAI, which is often deadly, even dully, serious in its investigation of rumbles and crackles, there's something genuinely mysterious and inexplicably beautiful about this music. When those hairs stand up you know you're on to something good, and the eerie distant choirs that close the album are absolutely magical. Halliwell is fond of the rather atypical Marcel Duchamp quotation "an artist expresses himself with his soul, with the soul it must be assimilated", and the titular reference to Duchamp's "Large Glass" is deliberate, referring to a remark by Korber who suggested the music reminded him of stained glass. There is indeed a kind of cathedral resonance to the closing "Coarse Ashes" as Halliwell's tones cast fine shafts of pure colour into Korber's dark vaulted spaces.
Dan Warburton
ParisTransatlantic
The Large Glass, the first collaboration between Graham Halliwell and Tomas Korber, pulls off a considerable feat: by all but freeze framing process, the duo manages to alienate their instrumentation from its chosen lexicon, but not through any recourse to "extended technique" practice. The bald list of instruments includes "prepared saxophone feedback" and "electronics", but there's nothing that can be index-linked to the physicality of the sound sources – something that's possible even with much extended technique playing. This alienation effect (though we're not talking Brecht here) isn't exactly new or surprising, but when it's essayed as strongly as Halliwell and Korber do it, it's no small achievement. The Large Glass offers a cold, almost inhospitable climate, a vast Arctic tundra within which feedback becomes spectral, amplifying its almost non-corporeal presence as the distressed cry of malfunctioning systems. At times, the album reminds me of the mid 1990s wave of "isolationism", sharing an impulse toward evacuating the human from the mise-en-scene and slowing everything down until ghost tones and muted feedback gather in dirty puddles under the feet of the collaborators. Its elegiac feel comes of pacing and placement, a considered chill.
Jon Dale
The area of music under discussion
Can a piece of music be aesthetically beautiful and at the same time dangerous? If it sounds achingly pretty, does that by virtue challenge the listener any less? I must admit to some snobbery on my part. I started to avoid recordings that sounded too nice. I equated this to playing it "safe". To me, "playing it safe" appeared to be the antithesis of everything compelling about taomud. I'm the first to admit that sometimes I can be a right tosser! I'll also readily admit that "The Large Glass" is a beautiful recording and I love it all the same. Perhaps it's time to reassess my values. "Playing it safe" and sounding beautiful or pretty are not one in the same. You could easily argue that some of the musicians who play the ugliest music constantly play it safe.
I've veered rather far from the release in question. Time to apply the breaks on the current tangent.
"The Large Glass" combines the talents of Graham Halliwell and Tomas Korber and marks the third release(and first of 2007) for Richard Pinnell's promising Cathnor label. Halliwell and Korber probably don't need much in the way of introduction to people familiar with this sphere of music. The former utilises saxophone feedback and the latter, guitar and electronics as their primary weapon of choice. As far as introductions go, that's all I'll offer .
The first thing that strikes me about "The Large Glass" is its ability to completely occupy the listening environment. It's an entirely immersive experience and one that really requires semi-decent speakers and an open room to appreciate. My attempts with headphones significantly subtracted the mystique and rendered the end result aenemic by comparrison. Such conditions can understandably cause one to be unenthused but the results are worth the effort.
The first(and longest) track, "the essence of things", is the immediate standout. It lends credence to my assertion that this album should have been titled "The Broken Glass" as the enormous sub-bass at the midpoint shook a wine glass right off the shelf to a shattered death below. As you might guess, this music has an impressive physicality. Halliwell's control of his saxophone feedback is remarkable and contributes greatly to the beautiful danger of the sounds therein. You get the feeling that it could all derail at any moment, but like a feedback wrangler Halliwell reigns it in and only lets the sound go where he dictates. Korber too, is equally impressive with his contributions, from static washes to ethereal drones and pre-recorded material courtesy of Mark Wastell. The whole thing hangs in the air like a miasma and builds in intensity. It's a remarkable track.
The remaining two tracks are wonderful in their own right, even if the overall impact isn't quite a strong. Given the height of the bar set by "the essence of things" this is by no means a negative statement. Each of these two tracks explore unique textures and are very strong, particularly the closing track "coarse ashes", which has a density and occult charm that rewards repeated listening. The presence of what sounds like a throat singing choir throughout the duration of this piece is wonderful and provides an eerie backbone to the proceedings.
It's hard to know where Halliwell ends and Korber begins on much of "The Large Glass", which is really part in parcel of the non-virtuostic nature of this type of music. I find this rewarding as it stops me focusing on the distinct parts and allows me to absorb the pieces as a whole. "The Large Glass" is a great example of the fragility of beauty and the underlying danger that makes this beauty so compelling. Derailment is completely avoided without "playing it safe". So in answer to my opening question, yes, a piece of music can be aesthetically beautiful as well as dangerous and it was exceptionally narrow-minded of me to think otherwise. As I said, I can really be a right tosser.
Matt
Touching Extremes
"The large glass" was recorded in the summer of 2006 at Graham Halliwell's home studio in Norfolk's countryside; it is subdivided into three tracks. "The essence of things" starts with tremulant sonic dirt becoming a steady shortwave waterfall, exalted by fluctuations in the intensity level and a series of overacute impulses that put the head in a frequency-alimented cerebral garotte. A phenomenic similarity with Keith Rowe's most recent explorations lingers, but is soon forgotten when - about six minutes into the piece - background rumble and controlled feedback sculpt and carve strangely familiar shapes of nervous, non-docile deep vibration. What sounds like radiophonic interference remains a constant presence, while the superimposition of "very low" and "very high" in the mix generate a multi-octave static texture that is panned on the extreme left and right at first, then it all morphs into an impressive surrounding pulse, like a giant pacing an overhead room. Calm is restored after a while, but it's that kind of hush that anticipates an environmental disaster. Additional electronic undulations lull our willpower until the process is completed; eyeballs rotate slowly, while feedback and electrostatic popcorn make sure that everything's alright. "In mezzo, nel mezzo" (a rough translation from Italian would be "Halfway, in between") begins with elongated bleeping signals that pierce our membranes, almost instantly flowing into a caressing texture whose dissonant complexion is deemed more than acceptable by the brain, which soon after is tested by a multi-directional attack of penetrating oscillation pushing back and forth with the same attitude of an alien emitting killing noises in the wrong belief that humans possess the same level of knowledge and resistance. Slow unfolding, gradual modification, apparent staticity; it feels like being on a highway's emergency lane at 3:00 AM, looking at the night lights while waiting for a tow truck that won't arrive: no certainty of returning home, and it's probably better that way. Sure enough, everything fades out at that very moment. "Coarse ashes" opens with murmuring glissando - totally stunning, the most beautiful spot of the whole disc. I suspect that treated guitar sounds are being used here but my idea becomes irrelevant in a matter of seconds, as the resonating mass assumes the command of each and every move of the psyche. A million voices become a single moan, the throb becomes unstable and irregular. It all amounts to a corpulent roar, reinforced by muscular feedback that squeezes any idea of rebellion out of the skull. What is perceived as processed Gregorian choirs leads to a more ethereal, esoteric section which ends this magnificent work in style.
Massimo Ricci
Vital Weekly
Although I can't find it on the CD or in the press text, I wonder what Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass piece has to do with this. Perhaps nothing. In the hot summer of last year, Tomas Korber, along with his guitar, electronics and prerecorded material to the Norfolk countryside to record with Graham Halliwell, who sat there with his prepared saxophone feedback, samples and loops. The three tracks now released on 'The Large Glass' were captured in a day. It's foremost an album of silent music, with apparently, on a superficial level with not much happening. Crackles, hiss, static sound: it all happens on soft level, careful, as not to make too much of a big wave. It's peaceful music if the right volume is used. If you play this at a more present volume, small details will unfold and the feedback saxophone can be real menace. There is a lot happening on this CD but still it is peaceful. Concentration is required. It fits the vast catalogue of especially Korber quite well. Nice, very nice.
Frans de Waard
Bagatellen
As I’ve greatly enjoyed much of the music provided by Halliwell and Korber over the last several years, I was naturally licking the old chops in anticipation of this release. That my hunger was less than slaked might have more to do with these raised expectations than the music as such is, therefore, a reasonable argument. But whatever the case, I wasn’t nearly as entranced and absorbed with “The Large Glass” as I was hoping to be.
There are three cuts. The first and longest of which, “The Essence of Things”, didn’t make much of an impression at all the first time I listened but subsequent airings brought out nuances I missed earlier and after several more spins, it had become my favorite of the three. If, in the end, I still think it lacks the power and subtlety I’d expect from this pair, it remains a good piece, well worth a listen. Halliwell employs his feedback saxophone (in addition to “samples and loops”) while Korber wields his normal arsenal of electronics and guitar in a long series of layered drones--high, fairly pure saxophone-derived tones aligned next to rougher staticky ones. But perhaps here you can see the problem: this is not only precisely what I might expect to hear from these two but also falls in the kind of comfort zone that’s been all too well established in this music. Sure, one can operate in this area and discover new relationships between sounds, place things in different relative aspects and to a good extent they do that in this particular performance. The tiny bell tones that emerge about 20 minutes in are one especially lovely example. Still, there’s a small sense of “playing it safe” that causes me to itch. Halliwell’s work has had a sexy kind of cerebralism going for it in recent years while Korber has the capability of plumbing some harsh but seductive brutalism; the combination should have been more incendiary, more troubling.
The remaining two tracks are fine in and of themselves and voyage in slightly different terrain but don’t really add anything very substantial to the first piece. The stasis in “In Mezzo, nel Mezzo” doesn’t achieve the depth required to convince one of its conviction, instead reading as a more or less attractive set of middle to high, organ-y drones, no more, no less. “Coarse Ashes” does indeed get mildly grainier but, as with the preceding track, doesn’t establish enough of a presence for me to sit up and take notice. Each work nips at one’s heels but doesn’t quite sink in its teeth.
As intimated above, it’s difficult to say how much of this reaction resulted from prior knowledge of Halliwell’s and Korber’s work. Had this arrived under the rubric, Joe and Jim Blow, I readily admit I may have had a different response, something on the order of, “Wow, these are two guys worth listening to.” Well, they are two guys very much worth listening to and while “The Large Glass” (I’m really resisting temptation re: any reference to degrees of fullness…) is perfectly serviceable, I can’t help but think they’re capable of far more.
Brian Olewnick
