This recording is something of a rarity: the sound artist Yoshi Wada, ex of New York but now living and working out of San Francisco, very rarely commits his works onto any kind of commercial platform. The Appointed Cloud is a recording of a live performance from way back in 1987, of an installation created in the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science. It displays all the hallmarks of Wada's abiding interest in accidental tonalities through the use of drones, a home-made 80-pipe organ, bagpipes, a siren, and percussion of various species.
There are two prime elements here to consider; the human and the electronic. The former is provided by Wada himself on bagpipes, with help from Bob Drombowski & Wayne Hankin (both also on bagpipes), and percussive contributions from Michael Pugliese. Set against that is the electronic in the shape of a computer program, created by David Rayna (and remember this was a time when the ubiquity of electronics in music was still in the future), whose aim is to automate the entire installation, effectively creating a background on which Wada and cohorts could paint their tonal colors and textures. For me, what is at the heart of this recording is that tension created by the coming together of chaos and order in unplanned harmony or otherwise; and what results are complex harmonic interplays between frequencies and sounds, and also between those two primary controlling elements.
Comprising of a single 60 minute track, which is at times quietly meditative, as I often find the nature of drone work to be, and at others searingly dissonant. This is by turns a reflection on the nature of harmony and at others a deconstruction of the same. Intervals of drone and sub-sonic tones work their way stealthily into the brain, giving rise to the illusion that they are a separate part altogether and have their origin elsewhere; these passages seem introspective and inward-looking, like gentle waves lapping the shoreline of some lonely beach somewhere. Once in a while however, a thunderous percussive tsunami breaks shatteringly upon those same sands, breaking apart the grains of sound and reforming them into new structures, and creating new textures. The chaotic ululation of the three bagpipes adds a repetitive fractal quality, enabling one to dive into the music to explore the microtonal sonic landscape and find it reiterating itself constantly, itself echoing the cyclical and chiaroscopic nature of the work on the macroscopic level.
Chiaroscuro plays a major part in this work: not just in terms of its light and heavy elements but also in the contrasting emotional and psychic impact. There are passages of low hums and sub-sonic tones that are decidedly restful and balanced, punctuated by those monolithic and brooding stabs of percussion, collaborating in crescendo to create a sense of disequilibrium; so to do the multiple layers of shrill swirling bagpipe howls, together combining to produce a multitude of drone textures, ranging from soothing and eastern eastern-flavored skirls, and through to grating atonality, the whole bolstered by the occasional background intercession from the massed pipes of the home-made organ. At times there is an almost Philip Glass-like feel to it, compositionally and structurally, strongly reminiscent of his Koyaanisqaatsi era work. Above all, this surely is a highly dramatic presentation, containing both clear blue sky and lightning-charged thunderclouds, albeit a presentation of a species slightly lessened by the fact that the visual facet of the performance is absent, thus depriving it, in my view, of an essential element; this is, however, a minor quibble, as even without the benefit of the visual it still stands out as tumultuous and glowering as any emotionally-charged opera.
I am wary of live recordings at the best of times; this is an exception. It is well recorded, possesses a great deal of ambience, and even projects something of the ‘spirit’ of the Great Hall in which it was recorded, the quality of the Hall’s wonderful acoustics coming through more than amply. Moreover, and more importantly I feel, is that thankfully this is a timeless work, a piece which could have been composed, performed, and committed to tape this year quite as easily as it was on in 1987. Apart from its rarity as a recorded example of Wada’s work, The Appointed Cloud has another rarity value attached to it: it genuinely made me wish I had borne witness to its performance. For me, this is the ultimate seal of approval of any document pertaining to a live performance and in that sense then its credentials are absolutely unquestionable.
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