GUNTER MULLER / LE QUAN NINH
La Voyelle Liquide
Erstwhile Records
010
Erstwhile Records has done improv lovers a great service by filling in
a niche not covered by other labels. As Bernhard Gunter has done for various
types of ambient-at-the-verge of disappearance with his Trente Oiseaux
label, and Ryoji Ikeda has done in the click-and-sine-wave genre, label
head Jon Abbey (his name nowhere to be found on the packaging) has offered
us electronics, usually with live instruments, or in live performance,
that cannot be used as background music. Exemplary is his initial offering,
a double disc of Gerry Hemingway in duet with electronics whiz Thomas
Lehn. Their live gig at Phill Niblocks Experimental Intermedia performance
space is where I first encountered Abbey, whose face was familiar from
concerts, and discovered his new imprint.
The disc at hand presents improvisations with percussion and electronics. There are no notes regarding the music other than it was recording in Vand'oeuvre-le-Nancy, France in January, 2000. Müller has long been known as a European sound-maker; I know his work only through collaborations with Christian Marclay, and others I have on anthologies. Ninh is not a new name either, but I believe this is my first encounter with his work. The track titles are the vowel sounds, a liquid concept. Indeed, the title in English would be The Liquid Vowel.
The sounds are rumbles, chimes, scrapes. The first sets a stage. The second plays hard, with the sounds scrunching in on each other, The sounds these two create is, despite electronics, very concrete. The gurglings and cyclings might (and might not) be machine made, but theres nothing mechanical or rote here.
Each segment
could be listened to separately, or the whole, though at 75 minutes it
is a bit long for one session at home, though I could easily sit through
this at a concert. The final track is sort of a culmination of all the
sounds heard throughout, from sub-bass roar to mosquito-like metallic
ring, none of it MIDI-queasical. The percussions and airplane-deep bass
do honor to a good audio rig.
--Steven H. Koenig
Track Listing: 1. la voyelle a; 2. la voyelle e; 3. la voyelle i; 4. la
voyelle o; 5. la voyelle u; 6. la voyelle y; 7. la voyelle liquide
Personnel: Günter Müller, selected drums, minidiscs, electronics;
Lê Quan Ninh: surroun ded bass drum, electronics