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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Memorize The Sky - Creeks (Broken Research, 2010) ****

By Stef

I was quite thrilled by "In Former Times", the second album by "Memorize The Sky", for its uncompromising nature and their adventurous take on the sax trio, a journey they take totally over the edge in "Creeks". The band is Matt Bauder on reeds, Zach Wallace on bass and Aaron Siegel on percussion.

And they add some electronics. Strangely enough, the album reminds me of John Zorn's "O'o" because of its fresh jungle and bird sounds, with one big difference, what Zorn does with melody and rhythm and rich instrumentation, is done here with sonic explorations and timbre and instrumental minimalism. Forget about melody, forget about structure, it is all about sound, more often than not impossible to describe its origin, light, ever so light. You hear bells, and prolonged tones, and some beats, and a whistling sound, coming and going, built around empty space, reacting to one another, like birds, or not at all, like water dripping from leaves.

Very few people would call this music, yet these very few are right : despite its lack of melody and patterns, it is beautiful, pure and fragile : it is the kind of thing you can do with sound, weave textures light like a spider's web, full of glistening dew in the morning sun.

It sounds like the new beginning of music.


© stef

3 comments:

Richard said...

I loved Bauder's CD with Anthony Braxton. I was amazed by how well each picked up the other's compositional style. The two were very different, but somehow complementary in a way I couldn't quite nail down. The CD was called 2+2 compositions on 482 Records.

This is the same rhythm section, so well worth a listen.

Anonymous said...

I've spent a small fortune buying OOP,Broken Research CD-R's,and ,now ANOTHER vinyl-only release.

When it get's this elitist and expensive,you start losing interest.

Great for entrepreneurs ,looking to sell burns,boots,etc,though...

I hate vinyl.

Anonymous said...

this lp is available directly from aaron siegel. my copy just came in the mail today, and i wish i could leave work right now and listen to it.