REPEAT, "SELECT DIALECT"
With a name as innocuous as Repeat and a cover as stunningly ugly as the one for "Select Dialect", it's no wonder that I discovered this recording in the "To Be Listened To Sometime Later, Maybe, If At All, Or Perhaps I'll Just Use These as Beer Coasters" pile of CDs at the home of this e-zine's esteemed editor. The cover looks awful. It looks like it was designed with random scraps of construction paper. It's difficult to tell what the band name is and what the album's title is, because of the awkward placement of words on square, green splotches unevenly distributed across a baby-blue (ugh!) scrap of cardboard. If I didn't happen to be turning over and examining every single CD on said editor's table one evening, this fine recording would have gone entirely unnoticed by either of us.
Repeat is the duo of Swiss percussionist Jason Kahn and Toshimaru Nakamura, who plays an empty mixing board feeding back into itself and wired out to a sampler. He tweaks the high-pitched feedback, and samples it in real-time. You may remember Nakamura from last year's fantastic "Four Focuses" CD, in which he performed duos with Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide, and the great Martin Tetreault. Both Nakamura and Kahn have been active in the international improvised music community for at least a decade, and Repeat may be their attempt to expand their audience beyond the already initiated.
What is most unexpected is how close this duo resembles the post-techno sound being set forth by labels such as Raster-Music and Karaoke Kalk. Nakamura's mixing desk shimmers with pleasant tones (yes, actual tones!), as well as the expected high-pitched squiggles. Kahn's metallic scraping and occasional synthesizer repeat simple melodic phrases, and his more traditional percussion even keeps a steady beat. In the album's closing track, Kahn's lightly stuck bowls ring and combine with a flute-like sound (the origin of which I will not attempt to locate), for an effect not dissimilar to polite New Age. From two musicians who have existed for years at the outside of the improvised music community, it is certainly novel to hear these song-like forms emerge. There are edgy moments, but not many, so if this is some listener's way into the potentially alienating world of electro-acoustic improvised music, then that's just fine with me. As it is, it's pleasant enough, and if I didn't know who these folks were, I wouldn't think twice about how oddly normal it was.
With a name as innocuous as Repeat and a cover as stunningly ugly as the one for "Select Dialect", it's no wonder that I discovered this recording in the "To Be Listened To Sometime Later, Maybe, If At All, Or Perhaps I'll Just Use These as Beer Coasters" pile of CDs at the home of this e-zine's esteemed editor. The cover looks awful. It looks like it was designed with random scraps of construction paper. It's difficult to tell what the band name is and what the album's title is, because of the awkward placement of words on square, green splotches unevenly distributed across a baby-blue (ugh!) scrap of cardboard. If I didn't happen to be turning over and examining every single CD on said editor's table one evening, this fine recording would have gone entirely unnoticed by either of us.Repeat is the duo of Swiss percussionist Jason Kahn and Toshimaru Nakamura, who plays an empty mixing board feeding back into itself and wired out to a sampler. He tweaks the high-pitched feedback, and samples it in real-time. You may remember Nakamura from last year's fantastic "Four Focuses" CD, in which he performed duos with Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide, and the great Martin Tetreault. Both Nakamura and Kahn have been active in the international improvised music community for at least a decade, and Repeat may be their attempt to expand their audience beyond the already initiated.
What is most unexpected is how close this duo resembles the post-techno sound being set forth by labels such as Raster-Music and Karaoke Kalk. Nakamura's mixing desk shimmers with pleasant tones (yes, actual tones!), as well as the expected high-pitched squiggles. Kahn's metallic scraping and occasional synthesizer repeat simple melodic phrases, and his more traditional percussion even keeps a steady beat. In the album's closing track, Kahn's lightly stuck bowls ring and combine with a flute-like sound (the origin of which I will not attempt to locate), for an effect not dissimilar to polite New Age. From two musicians who have existed for years at the outside of the improvised music community, it is certainly novel to hear these song-like forms emerge. There are edgy moments, but not many, so if this is some listener's way into the potentially alienating world of electro-acoustic improvised music, then that's just fine with me. As it is, it's pleasant enough, and if I didn't know who these folks were, I wouldn't think twice about how oddly normal it was.
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