There's altogether too much dilettantism(²)in the world of experimental music, all manners of musical incompetencecan hide behind strangeness and it seems that anyone can make noise.All too often I get the feeling that what motivates the latestimprovised experimental music project I subject myself to is theshortest path to contemporary artist status. It gets quite tiresome andthe conspiracy of silence surrounding the poseurs and their noveltystunts is frustrating. But free improvised music is a soil fertile forflowers as well as weeds. It defeats all other musics in its capacityfor surprise and drama and perseverance can pay off. This first disk byNYC trio PSI is one that makes the suffering worth while. JamieFennelly plays electronics and seems to use field recordings as part ofhis palate, Chris Forsyth plays guitar unconventionally (I know, aludicrously dated thing to say) and Frtiz Welch plays percussion andfound objects. Comparison to AMM is obvious. There is a comfort andconfidence in their sparse playing and a control of the collectivesound for which AMM is the archetype. The sound is also not unlikeAMM's—Welch's techniques, especially the bowing has a familiarity andboth the guitar playing and electronic sound like Keith Rowe at times.The interactions of the individuals becomes more apparent on repeatedlistening but more of the time the cohesive whole is what it's allabout. What impresses the most is how this collective voice achievesgenerative exposition of its ideas without ever getting stuck. It moveson from any given topic at the right time almost as though compositionwere involved. Thus many of the best aspects of improv are shown off ina fairly understated mezzo forte. The distinction between the flowersand the weeds in the fields of experimental improv may be hard toexplain but it is not hard to hear. PSI is a pleasing reassurance thatour belief in the genre is not purely religious. - Read More
