Search - Evan Parker :: Toward the Margins

On the sonic frontier...

R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 06/12/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a project that vividly shows the limitation of the cynical notion that "everything has been done before," leaving only creative recombination for the artist. What we have here is the Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton trio (sax/bass/percussion), the amazing English free improv group, joined by 3 real-time electronic processing players -- Walter Prati, Marco Vecchi and Philipp Wachsmann, with Wachsmann also playing violin and viola. What results has only 2 points of reference -- free improv, and contemporary electronic composition, from Stockhausen and (later) Boulez to Xenakis, Nono and Reynolds. This is a combination, yes, but of 2 cutting edge categories, using cutting edge technology in ways never before attempted. The ensemble formed in 1992, according to Steve Lake's fascinating liner notes (16 2-column pages!), but this, their first album, was recorded in 1996. It is my strong impression that Parker and associates find their following mainly among free jazz/free improv afficionados, but Lake documents numerous direct, as opposed to merely conceptual, connections, of Ensemble members to the contemporary composition tradition: 1) Parker played with the Music Improvisation Company in the early 70s. Hugh Davies, who provided live electronics for the group, had spent 5 years touring with the Stockhausen ensemble. 2) Parker has ties from the mid-60s to AMM, the process music group that took Cagean insights into the realm of improvisation. 3) Barry Guy had a composition, "D", premiered by Pierre Boulez in 1974. 4) Walter Prati is active in performing works by Stockhausen, Scelsi and others. 5) Wachsmann has studied composition since the 60s, when he performed pieces by Berio and Partch, among others. In this time of "postmodern" resignation, marked by many returns to the past and plunderings of past styles only to create jaded forms of pastiche, this electro-acoustic music is a beacon, a demonstration that the modernist vision is alive and well, and can incorporate fragmentation and still move forward! In fact, I can almost imagine a gathering 21st century tendency that will bring together IN REAL TIME the intimate communication of free improv and the complex architecture of the classical tradition with the mass appeal of the electronic dance scene..."