#eric arn

So, just what is Arn’s hang-up? Since fixe Idee is instrumental, and the names of its tracks do not tip their hands to an obvious theme, one is left with the supposition that it has something to do with the album’s contents. The LP comprises seven solo acoustic guitar performances, but not all in the same style. This is not an American Primitive or free improv record, although elements of both methodologies and several others can be heard, sometimes within the same piece. “Bear, completely unraveled” lurches between galloping advance, scrabbling asides, and pile-ups containing bits of both like a sailor trying to stay on his feet as the deck heaves in heavy seas. On the other hand, “Impromptu pour le fantôme,” with its parade of contrasting segments whose succession suggests a narrative wreathed in mystery, is very much in the spirit of the Takoma School. And “Gutbucket” blows right past the blues implications of its name with a velocity, of not exactly a sound, that’s steeped in punk rock.

So, perhaps Arn’s unswerving obsession is that he has to deal mano-a-mano with the acoustic guitar? While fixe Idee is not his first crack at the format, Arn has waited a long time to get around to it. He first recorded in the 1980s, when he was a member of Crystalized Movements, and took his improvisational rock band, the Primordial Undermind, with him when he moved to Austria in 2005. With all that rocking out, he didn’t make a solo, mostly acoustic record until Higher Order (also on Carbon) in 2021. If this has become the thing he thinks he must do, well, it sure beats a lot of other fixed ideas going around these days.

In the quieter, more melodic entries, Arn sounds a good bit like Basho, washing homespun folk melodies in a luminous mystical light. “Wer Tauben füttert, füttert Gespenster” which translates as “Whoever feeds pigeons, feeds ghosts” is perhaps the best of these, a placid, gentle rain of notes that taps into something spiritual without making too much of it. “6 or 7 Adepts” is knottier and less serene. It leaves lots of space for meditation, hazarding a spray of notes, then a pause for contemplation. We have time to consider the intervals between the music. Phrases tilt upwards like question markets and are answered by muted bursts. The piece seems like an internal inquiry, as Arn picks his way carefully through it. There is a provisional quality to the way it resolves, as if he were just deciding what it means for himself.

Elsewhere, tracks veer further from folk tradition. “Warpage in the Figures,” molds blues-y bends into abstract shapes, agitated sound running sprints, then stopping to pant and recovery. It is less melodic than the other tracks, but full of a brainy aggression; you can imagine strings being broken in its rush towards revelation.

The disc closes with “Greets the Dawn,” for someone who has admittedly not kept up all that well, the track that most recalls Arn’s work with Primordial Undermind. Here tones build slowly in vibrating atmospheres. A sense of wonder is palpable. It puts into relief how densely full of notes and ideas all the previous tracks were, and how stillness can evoke just as much as busyness.

Eric Arn & Jasmine Pender — Hydromancy (Feeding Tube)

hydromancy by eric arn & jasmine pender

Hydromancy is the ancient practice of divining the gods’ intentions by staring for long periods into a pool of water. Eric Arn, an American guitarist who has been based in Austria for the last decade and a half, seems to have picked up at least one message from the cosmos, and he is acting upon it. Feeding Tube Records is his home. Hydromancy is his third release on the label, and like its two predecessors, it carves out a unique zone within a large and ever-spreading field of inquiry. Arn’s spent time playing psychedelic rock, free improvisation and solo acoustic explorations, and worked with players from Texas, New England and Vienna. This time he’s partnered with an English cellist, Jasmine Pender, on two side-long ponderances of resonance. The title is apt; the musicians seem to be regarding the surface of their sound, first letting ripples and reflections guide them, but ultimately peering beneath the surface into darker, persistent currents.

Bill Meyer

ARTHUR — Hair of the Dog (Honeymoon)

On his sophomore album, Philadelphia songwriter ARTHUR disguises ruminations on addiction, anxiety, pain and paranoia in summery cloaks of experimental pop. The combination of whimsy and woe is nothing new, but it’s a fine balance. In Hair of the Dog, complex arrangements surround naïve-sounding melodies, hinting at inner turmoil.  

The album incorporates whispers of disco in “No Tengo,” a low key Caleb Giles rap interlude on “Something Sweet,” swinging 1960s horns on “William Penn Island” and a choir of children on “You Are Mine.” The magpie eclecticism holds together beneath a voice that can err on the side of mannered. It is most effective when direct and unadorned as on “Simple Song” where a woozy waltz and detuned guitar bridge underline the poignancy of the lyrics: “In a couple of years/You lose a couple of friends/You lose yourself and you start over again/I don’t have patience/All that I know is addiction.” There is a lot to like here even if at times ARTHUR treads too hard on the path of whimsy.

Andrew Forell

Gaudenz Badrutt — Ganglions (Aussenraum)

Ganglions by Gaudenz Badrutt

“Connect” is the not the first words that 2020 is going to wear out, but it’s in the running. Veteran Swiss electronic musician Gudenz Badrutt could not have foreseen the present situation when he was making this LP, but it speaks to at least one aspect of it. Perhaps the barrages of commercials dropping the word “connect” by corporations interested in currying your subconscious good will has you pondering the networks by which that state is accomplished and sustained. Badrutt’s music is assembled from sine waves and feedback systems, which he layers and interrupts to make sound that flickers and surges like an audio rendering of your nervous system in various states of load-carrying and overload. Listen closely, and you can ponder your place within the system. But if you’re sick of thinking, feeling, and awareness, turn this shit up and it will blot out whatever offends you.

Bill Meyer

  Nat Baldwin — Autonomia I: Body Without Organs (Shinkoyo)

AUTONOMIA I: Body Without Organs by Nat Baldwin

Nat Baldwin is a published novelist as well as a singer and double bassist with several solo records and a long-time stint is a member of the Dirty Projectors on his cv. His versatility does not come at the expense of focus; indeed, Autonomia I (so named because there’s a second, cassette-only volume) show that he knows how to get a lot out of a particular idea. This LP was inspired by a broken bow, which he employs (sometimes in concert with an intact one) on five of the LP’s seven tracks. When one of your tools is unreliable, you have to be ready to scramble, and there are moments when it sounds like he’s trying to recover from or get ahead of his implement’s waywardness. But those also sound like moments of opportunity; whether he’s exploring rattle of a loose part against his bass’s body or using that bow to obtain non-prescribed tensions from his strings, he organizes his instrument’s unusual sounds into quick-moving, provocatively shaped constellations of sound.

Bill Meyer

Bonifrate—Mundo Encoberto (Self-released)

Mundo Encoberto by Bonifrate

Pedro Bonifrate is one-half of the Brazilian psych outfit Guaxe, this solo album (according to Google translate “overcast world”) springs from the same trippy, laid-back but multi-instrumented roots. Lush like the rainforest that surrounds him, playful and full of bright colors, this eight-part composition unfolds in the manner of a particularly vivid dream. “Parte 1” mutates freely over its 11 minute duration, stirring to life in a rush of strings, slipping into beach-y mildly hallucinogenic balladry, trying on a bit of Syd Barret-ish whimsy, crescendoing in clangorous guitar overload. Hard to say if Bonifrate played all the instruments, but the album has an idiosyncratic euphoria, as if it were lifted in one piece from the vivid contours of one person’s mushroom trip.

Jennifer Kelly

 Bobby Conn — Recovery (Tapete)

“It’s a disaster, the one we’ve been waiting for for years, and now we get to see how this thing ends,” croons the one-and-only Bobby Conn in his glam-shuddering, disco-sleek tenor, and sure, 2020 in a nutshell, got it in one, congrats! Who’d have thought that Conn’s arch, satiric performance art could be a form of comfort here at the end of the world? Who’s have supposed his stylized excesses would seem not an iota too much? Conn, as ever, is sharp and topical, pondering all the oppressed sub-groups left out of the “Good Old Days,” (against a swaggering Phil Spector beat), mourning the xxx-rated theaters put out of business by Pornhub in “Bijou,” skewering big data’s intrusions in the synth-operatic glories of “Disposable Future.” But what’s always separated Conn from mere satirists is the elaborate, over-the-top quality of the music he makes. “Recovery” with its scatted bassline, its frenetic syncopation, its funk precision—it all works as music way before you start to chuckle at the lyrics. Conn is as much a character in the long-running graphic novel that plays in his head as a bandleader, but don’t underestimate the bandleader. There’s art underneath all that eyeliner.

Jennifer Kelly

Curanderos — Raven’s Head (Null Zøne)

Raven's Head by Curanderos

If you’re looking for something to cure what ails you in these uncertain times, Raven’s Head might be your balm. You won’t need a prescription, since the tradition of shamanistic healing precedes the AMA, and the particular configuration of healers here — John and Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond + Scott Verrastro of Kohoutek — models a cooperative approach that more conventional leadership would do well to emulate. The combination of personalities also tips you off to what to expect. Verrastro is a colorist, using the metal parts of his drum kit to keep the listener aware of the dimensions surrounding the listening space, but he also provides just enough forward momentum to keep the music moving at a fogbank-rolling pace. The Gibbons match liquid lead and coarse riff with practiced ease; they’ve spent a lot of time in such cloudy spaces, and they breathe deeply of the inspirational atmosphere.

Bill Meyer

Discovery Zone — Remote Control (Mansions and Millions)

Remote Control by Discovery Zone

“Sophia Again” is a sci-fi mini-story, presenting the conversation between an AI creature and her creator, talking about the self, the meaning of life and the joy of connection, as bubbling arcs of synthesizer sounds jet off into the ether. It is, perhaps, the most literally futuristic of the cuts on this gleaming, synth-centric album, though the whole thing is polished to an other worldly, not quite natural glow. JJ Weihl, the artist behind Discovery Zone, also works in Fenster, a Berlin-based psychedelic pop band of a similarly polished, dance-referring (but not dance) aesthetic. Here, she works solo in luminous abstractions of crystal clear sound. The pleasure comes in the purity and beauty of voices, synths, drum beats, which sound like Sophia might have made them while learning to be human; they are a little too perfect to be wholly man-made.

Jennifer Kelly

 Esoctrilihum — Eternity of Shaog (I, Voidhanger)

Eternity Of Shaog by ESOCTRILIHUM

An epic of esoteric demonology from Ashtâghul’s one-man black metal project Esoctrilihum, Eternity of Shaog presents as ten songs, most of which bear titles like “Exh-Enî Söph (First Passage: Exiled from Sanity)” and “Amenthlys (5th Passage: Through the Yth-Whtu Seal).” One gets the sense that there is a cosmology being built—but even Google has a tough time tracking the references to the many, many Eastern mythic systems in the repertoire. The provisionally good news is that Eternity of Shaog is a bit less musically spastic than its predecessor, The Telluric Ashes of the Ö Vrth Immemorial Gods, an even longer record released just last year. Say what you will, Ashtâghul is prolific. On this new record, you get his signature combination of black metal speed and snarl and an ambitiously (that’s the kind word) proggy compositional sense. The transitions this time around are less violent, the riffs are pretty good and plentiful synths build out to lush soundscapes. The musical textures are rich, but the bad vibes dominate. It’s hard to say what malign presences you’ll be summoning into your home if you play this stuff as loud as seems intended. Maybe keep some holy water handy.

Jonathan Shaw

Fire-Toolz — Rainbow Bridge (Hausu Mountain)

Rainbow Bridge by Fire-Toolz

As Fire-Toolz composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Angel Marcloid conjures mosaics from such disparate elements that one wonders how the music hangs together. Yet what at first seems like a chaotic, fractured farrago coalesces into a cohesive picture of her world that simultaneously bewilders and awes. Catholic in source and meticulous in construction Rainbow Bridge is an uncompromising and often stunning dash through Marcloid’s mind. Treated vocals that evoke death metal or JG Thirwell at his most outré, passages of twinkling synth and arena guitar, elements of 1980s Japanese ambient music, fusion jazz and Chiptune slot together like Jenga blocks that wobble but never quite collapse.

Marcloid’s project of musical excavation, reclamation and transformation perhaps mirrors her experience as a non-binary transgender person and the atomization of many tracks on Rainbow Bridge read as a meditation on the contingency of identity and the struggle for place within/outside social constructs that define acceptability and “taste”. On the other hand, sit back, push play and prepare to drift along with the ambient flow then be jolted from reverie by glitch and noise. Much like the world really.

Andrew Forell       

 Jacaszek — Music for Film (Ghostly)

Music for Film by Jacaszek

Music for Film collects the Polish composer Jacaszek’s scores for three movies — the 2019 documentary He Dreams of Giants, the 2008 project Golgota wrocławska and the 2017 film November. Haunted, evocative, disquieting and gorgeous, these ten soundscapes infuse the sounds of electronics, strings and samples with dread. “The Iron Bridge” turns sampled voices and slow throbs of cello into dance with death and memory, while “Liina” picks up eerie vibrations just out of focus, like a camera accidentally recording a ghost. “Dance” hurls electric bolts of tremulous sound—they sizzle with aftertones—then picks out a morose melody in plucked strings. All is dark, subdued, ominous but velvety, sensually smooth. Not having seen the films, I can’t guess the subject matter, but let’s assume there’s no laugh track.

Jennifer Kelly  

 Kontrabassduo Studer-Frey — Zeit (Leo)

Double bassists Peter K Frey and Daniel Studer has spent the better part of the 21st century performing as a duo, but they don’t seem to have felt pressured to rush out a recording documenting their music. This CD includes selections from 2004, 2007, and 2018 that were made at home, in concert, and in the studio. But despite the variety of sources and occasions, this album feels quite cohesive, which is a testament to integrity of their partnership. They rarely play similarly at any given moment, but their contrasting techniques and frequency ranges evince a balance makes even the tracks with contributions by clarinetist Jürg Frey and cellist Alfred Zimmerlin feel like the work of one massive, multi-bodied bass.

Bill Meyer

 Marlin’s Dreaming — Quotidian (Self-Released)

Quotidian by Marlin's Dreaming

The trick of putting soft, flickery voices in front of raging guitars is not a new one, but it’s still worth trying, especially as well as Marlin’s Dreaming does on “Outward Crying.” This sweeping, soaring, but fundamentally introspective tune blasts and blares in a sensitive way, the guitar noise parting like drapes for the singer’s disconsolate confession that he’s leaving this town. The town in question is Auckland, New Zealand, and you can certainly make connections to antipodal fuzz icons, especially the Verlaines. Yet there’s a bit of romantic swoon here in cuts like “Sink or Swim,” which links Marlin’s Dreaming’s diffident lo-fi pop with the baroque gestures of Roxy Music. This is the band’s second album and rather poised given their short history. Marlin’s Dreaming out loud in soft colors and blistering fuzz, and it’s a good one.

Jennifer Kelly

 Christian Rønn & Aram Shelton—Multiring (Astral Spirits)

Multiring by Christian Rønn & Aram Shelton

Some musicians stake their claim within a particular locale, and others tour the world. Alto saxophonist Aram Shelton’s done a bit of both. You could say he’s a serial resident; over the past couple decades he’s been based in Chicago, Oakland, Copenhagen, and now, Budapest. But his recording history lags behind him. His latest release is a cassette recorded in April 2018, and it stands apart from anything he’s done to date. Credit for that lies partly with his choice of partner, Danish keyboardist Christian Rønn. Rønn’s instrument here is a Wurlitzer electric piano, augmented with effects that play up its reverberant qualities, but played without much reference to the way people used to play the thing when it was omnipresent in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead of nailing down a groove, Rønn posts reverberant signposts that Shelton can snake through or lays out undulating surfaces that the saxophonist can sail over. Either way, Shelton plays with a darker and softer tone than has been his wont in the past, casting a pall of eerie foreboding over this gradually evolving music.

Bill Meyer

Snekkestad / Guy / Fernandez — The Swiftest Traveller (Trost)

The Swiftest Traveler by Snekkestad / Guy / Fernandez

Englishman double bassist Barry Guy (b. 1947) has been shuttling between free and composed musical zones for over half a century, longer than the similarly versatile Scandinavian reeds and brass multi-threat Torben Snekkestad (b. 1973) has been alive. Catalan pianist Agusti Fernández (b. 1954) traverses similar terrain. And all three shift fluidly between conventional virtuosity and astutely applied extended techniques. The trio’s rapport is so strong that one supposes that however the album got its title, it wasn’t the result of some musical contest. They’re builders, not destroyers. Still, the rapidity with which these three musicians move from event to event is undeniable. Sparse stasis morphs into quick runs up and down the keyboard; a dense, high-velocity onslaught transforms into intricate, three-part counterpoint. The quickness with which the music changes and the completeness that it expresses from moment to moment make this a very satisfying performance.

Bill Meyer  

 Various Artists — Quilted Flowers: 1940s Albanian & Epirot Recordings from the Balkan Label (Canary Recordings)

Quilted Flowers: 1940s Albanian & Epirot Recordings from the Balkan Label by Canary Records

The word “Balkanized” has the dubious distinction of having acquired extra-regional meaning, to the point where it now signifies a whole divided into smaller, mutually hostile regions. But some of the Balkan musicians who moved to New York City pulled together to play on each other’s gigs and recordings. The Albanian multi-instrumentalist, Ajdan Asllan, who ran the Balkan record label, partnered with musicians from Greece and Bulgaria on both a musical and business level, and kept the company running into the LP age. This collection pulls 11 sides of instrumental and vocal music that originated on his home turf, but if your ears have previously pricked up in response to rural music from Greece or Anatolia, you will want to hear this stuff. A pair of clarinets or a violin usually carry the melodies, sometimes chased by sharp-pitched vocals that spread out in ragged but lusty unison, and always carried by unevenly accented rhythms articulated by vigorously strummed stringed instruments.

Bill Meyer

 Otomo Yoshihide & Chris Pitsiokos — Live in Florence (Astral Spirits)

Live in Florence by Otomo Yoshihide & Chris Pitsiokos

Live in Florence documents a meeting between Otomo Yoshihide on guitar and turntables and Chris Pitsiokos on alto sax and electronics at the Tempo Reale Festival in Florence, Italy. This was the final date of a six-day European tour by the duo, and they’re primed from the first crackled sputters and blasts. The two thrive on these sorts of boundary-crushing forays and their seven short improvisations careen along with frenetic, brawny energy. The two deploy jump-cut pacing and shredded attacks from piercing overtones and feedback to frayed overblown sax and turntable crackle to manically angular reed lines and searing electronic bursts to chafed sax amplifications and thundering rumbles. Even on pieces where they start things out a bit more subdued, the two quickly ratchet up the intensity with torrid, barely-controlled vigor. There’s a slight respite on the sixth piece, with Otomo’s chiming guitar harmonics laying a resonant field for Pitsiokos’s breathy chirps and bent tones but even here, they arc to waves of feedback and skirling reed fusillades by the end. The final piece starts with shattered electronics and spitting reeds and mounts into bellowing din, exploding to the finish of the exhilarating 37-minute set.

The story goes that Orpheus improved upon the work of the gods, perfecting an instrument that had been made by one. But he also lost his love to them by failing a test that would have allowed him to spring his dead bride from the underworld; musical skill isn’t enough to get you what you want, it seems. But Arn has been able to parlay his into over a dozen records on Strange Attractors, Camera Obscura, and Emperor Jones, as well as a handful of self-released cassettes and CDRs. But he has never made a solo LP before, and Orphic Resonance stands well away from Primordial Undermind in method and sound. Arn usually finds a posse of fellow travelers to accompany him in the Undermind as he shuttles between spaced-out rock jams and out-jazz freak-outs, but here he is truly solo and reliant mainly upon his acoustic guitar.  

Stylistically, Arn is as peripatetic as ever, and the titles he has assigned his tunes back this up. “Pas d’une Hélice” (which is French for “Not A Propeller”) leaps from jagged shapes to rushing, dissonant pile-ups; “Tepeyollotl” (named for an Aztec god of caves) is a luxuriant and winding tune that would fall easy on the ears of any Robbie Basho fan. “Es Wuchtet Gewaltig”  (German for “It Waves Violently”) showcases his bowing technique, which lures a myriad of tones out of his guitar and then sets them loose to flower and fly in a multi-hued sonic maelstrom. Only once does he opt for amplification and fuzz, which he yields to flatten the listener into a senseless trance state on “The Lure Of The Labyrinth.” On two other tracks he puts down the guitar altogether and switches to metallic chimes, which he either processes or layers with throat singing to achieve more other-worldly effects. I’ve never heard Arn sound so zonked before, but he’s damned good at it; here’s hoping he takes it even farther next time.