Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
TWO ALBUMS THAT ARE EVERYWHERE
Thank you Ellipsis Arts. And all of you. Folkway Records, Broadside, Arhoolie, Nonesuch. Informing us that the musical world isn't just a industrial novel of decaying garbage and flowers, but deep blue oceans of many tongues, cultures, and traditions. Reminding us once again that the sensibility of our own individual rhythm only derives from the shores of our own roots. This will of freedom is not the only thing heard in Ellipsis' Trance 2 , but the sacred echo of the ancient world rising beautifully, its voice still un-afflicted by any commercial highlight. Solid sounds of spirit and bliss that inspires any of us rare dreamers under the Western collage to live as children, and only children, of nature and belief.
Trance 2 is an exceptional journey into the tribal rituals of the Chinese, Moroccon, and Balinese cultures. The music fevering between the body and soul sets villages into wild fires of hypnotic trance, seasoned by the absolute will of religion and divine. To some readers this image may sound like a tropical attraction of punchy voodoo, but beware, its ceremonial rites of mutilation and mother earth are holy ground (and have only stayed holy because authentic room and board have stayed clear out). Particularly noted, the twenty-four minute descent during the Balinese track treasures some of the most beloved sounds my ears have ever been flurished by. A repeating three-note melody levitates the entire piece accompanied by Bali's notorious chorus of instrumental jangle, this soaking chill of antiquity being the seductive essence so rarely ever heard. Hearing the music of traditional faith and vernacular wisdom for the very first time, is like a misty rainbow during the darkest storm, a lucid, transparent bridge connecting the chase of thunder and lightning, rain and sun. Only a lucky few are there to see it.
Over and over again I listen to this album's events visually picturing all the idle barriers that interfere many of us to be released like Bali's festive worship of dirt and soul. Such village orthodox is quickly becoming alien to us. Native honesty hung into abstraction. How come? Because unlike the pure organics of the cultural world, our English and European language speaks two jaded lineages: "for, or against the machine". Most are content without it. We on the other hand, are completely disillusioned without its gears. Without it, our anchorage of conflict would suddenly be lost within the dim vanishing shadows of yesterday's moguls and forgotten prodigies, only to be remembered when the high seas of consequence rise and overflow the plateau of the world's ancient, virgin rhythm. The early wind has been here for quite some time, and before the flood itself arrives, we should come down to realistic terms that no matter how advanced we exaggerate our electrical talent, no matter how heavenly we try and decorate the slippery surface of our apparatus, it can never bleed that pure sensitivity of love, humanity, and dedication heard within the soil of the third world. Trance 2 will hopefully remind us that even though America's old roots are as solid as the land and its tree, everything fostered by the castles of industrial fabrication have since paved over this rare land. Greetings, to the militant and the civic. What are the roots of the present white man?
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From the far corners of the earth there are those who take the world's stranded cheapness and create a whole new universe of love and beauty. Ellipsis' Gravikords Whirlies & Pyrophones - produced and annotated by Bart Hopkins- collects nineteen inventors, designers and constructors of their experimental instruments. With a slick introduction by Tom Waits, the album is adopted with a narrative booklet complete with thick illustrations and passages of each artists' labor and belief through the acoustic, electronic, and thermal world. It is a contrast of sound in touch, and raw music without plastic disguise, traveling through the solid periods of Harry Partch, Leon Theremin, Robert Moog, and the many other aspiring individuals who have risen since that old destiny with tough, imaginative ambition. Though at times a few performances composed by such exaggerate acts of fire and electricity are bamboozled like a David Copperfield fantasy show, I think Ellipsis in the past, has dug a terrific job of revealing the many other sacred treasures far beyond wealthy noise-makers (those of which are made a lot simpler, yet have possessed a certain affection that could be related to under any ocean pocket).
Like Leon Theremin's "The Swan", moving like an amplified weightlessness of a thousand melting tears, I applaud any artist on this compilation who was able to free just an ounce of sensuality within their hand-woven craft. After all, isn't our own inner rhythm conceived by the tones of our heated, mysterious passion? Though a Pharaoh among us percussionists, my primary observation of Harry Partch that differs itself from somebody like Henry Cowell, is the cold suspended nature of instruments that engage themselves like they are suddenly surprised not to be conventional. This was one of the more interesting things about Partch, his unique persona of maturing dissonance and instinctive recklessness. When the two forces finally join, it is like a dry, barren sea of salty human and animal bones buried from a forgotten past or blown from an uncharted future, the flesh of notes searching for blood in a land of no shade and temptation.
There are many on Gravikords Whirlies & Pyrophones who take you to these new horizons. Many more who show you new suns. In the slow moments of the end, both albums wave and then close their doors into the great silence like Jack Keroauc's conclusion of his novel,Tristessa: "this is my part of the movie, let's hear yours".
-Carson Arnold February 10, 2003
copyright 2003 Carson Arnold
H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews, articles, and investigations written by Carson Arnold. As a freelance writer for various magazines and liner notes, living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]
Thanks and enjoy!
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