Bill Tilland

DAMAGED IN TRANSIT by Steve Swallow, Chris Potter, Adam Nussbaum (067 792-2)

Initially, it’s hard to figure out why this is such a terrific CD. After all, the instrumentation is standard stuff – tenor sax, electric bass and drums. No piano, but it has been years since the absence of a piano in a small jazz group was regarded as an innovation. The tunes, all written by bassist Steve Swallow, are conventional hard bop and post bop, with a few blues and ballads, and one calypso. Nobody plays “outside” (or at least stays outside), and there is no obvious experimentation of any sort. So this should just be a good solid trio date by three jazz pros, right? But instead, it commands the listener’s attention from the first track to the last. The abilities of the three musicians certainly have something to do with that. Tenor saxophonist Chris Potter is truly one of the best young players on the scene right now. He has the facility on tenor to toss off fluid hard bop lines worthy of altoist Charlie Parker, but most often he adopts the staccato swagger of the “other” giant of the tenor, Sonny Rollins (as opposed to much more widely imitated John Coltrane). The calypso, especially, brings Rollins to mind, as Rollins has had a special fondness for calypso tunes throughout his career. Swallow is his usual lyrical, elegant self, demonstrating why he is still one of the masters of the electric jazz bass, and drummer Adam Nussbaum is crisp, cool and self-contained throughout. Recorded live at several venues during a 2001 tour of France, the music comes across as traditional in its basic form, but the group continually purshes the tradition around, mixing styles, tempos and interactive strategies. Four pieces open with Swallow’s silky unaccompanied electric bass, two with Potter’s unaccompanied horn, one with Nussbaum’s drums and two with the full trio. Solos commence in unexpected places (or not at all), and one player sometimes drops out, which provides creative duet opportunities for the remaining two. Rather than “trading fours,” i.e., alternating with four-bar solos, Nussbaum and Potter “trade twelves” on one piece, i.e., alternating every twelve measures. Finally, even though Swallow doesn’t deign to honor his nine original compositions with real titles (they’re simply called “Item 1, D.I.T.,” Item 5, D.I.T.,” etc.), they are much more than basic riffs or chord progressions. In fact, Swallow displays the scores of each of the nine pieces in lieu of conventional liner notes, which makes one wonder why he didn’t bother naming them – especially when some of them (like “Item 3, D.I.T." and “Item 7, D.I.T."), have gorgeous melodies, and others (like "Item 4, D.I.T.," "Item 5, D.I.T." and "Item 9, D.I.T.") have a very satisfying complexity. Overall, Swallow has succeeded in tapping into some sort of timeless jazz essence on this CD, where the more superficial aspects of music culture (trends, personalities, gimmicks, etc.) are left far behind. And instead of marking time with a typically nostalgic glance at the jazz tradition, Swallow & company demonstrate the continuing viability of the older forms. Calling this one a bona fide contemporary classic wouldn’t be much of a stretch.

Milli Tonverka by Einoma (VFORM031CD)

Einoma (the alias of Icelandic duo Bjarni and Steindor), apparently can’t get no respect. BBC Music Online recently put together a rather extensive review of the Reykjavik music scene (“Reykjavik Underground”), and unless my tired old eyes deceived me, Einoma (and its constituent parts) didn’t even rate a mention. And yet their second full-length CD on Vertical Form is, like its predecessor Undir Feilnotum, an adventurous and fresh take on glitch techno, and a worthy addition to any cutting edge techno collection. Percussion and rhythm is Einoma’s strength – both the sampling and the programming. Their sampling has a characteristic cold industrial sound, but the ambience is brooding rather than confrontational. Clanking chains, water pipes, old steam radiators and other metallic and or watery sounds come to mind, along with vague impressions of things being ripped and twisted. These organic sounds are nicely integrated with a more purely electronic vocabulary of twitters, squeaks and thumps. Rhythmically, Einoma straddles a line between heavy-handed 4/4 industrial excess and stuttering stop ‘n’ start abstraction; they’re too variable and complex to qualify as IDM or anything else that would find a place on the dancefloor, but you can follow them (usually) without a score(card), and sometimes they kick into a legitimate toe-tapping groove. In other words, they’re somewhat to the left of Orbital, and somewhat to the right of Autechre at its most extreme, i.e., certainly not predictable and not always easy to follow, but rhythmically grounded nonetheless. The most noticeable difference between this release and their last effort is a greater use of synthesizer drones and, on one piece, ethereal wailing from a female vocalist. The increased use of the drones (and the insertion of an occasional melodic fragment) doesn’t exactly transport Einoma into a warm and fuzzy new age world, but it does tend to temper their brittle austerity, replacing alien otherness with a more open-ended sense of mystery. Whether or not you regard this as an improvement or a loss of focus will depend upon your musical tastes, but both this new CD and their previous one are well worth acquiring – even if no one seems willing to create (let alone jump on) an Einoma bandwagon.

The Ducks and Drakes of Guapo and Cerberus Shoal by Cerberus Shoal (NEI0028)

A third installment in Cerberus Shoal’s so-called “split CD series” on the North East Indie label out of Portland, Maine, Ducks and Drakes pairs Maine’s own unclassifiable folk/rock/whatever aggregation Cerberus Shoal (the constant) with London’s equally unclassifiable Guapo (the variable). Having encountered the music of the two bands elsewhere, I would be foolish to attempt any general description of what they represent or do, as they are both wildly eclectic, po-mo, tongue-in-cheek and proudly non-commercial to their core. But on this offering, at least, Guapo contributes a thick, wobbly seventeen-minute organ drone piece with sliding pitch (titled “Idios Kosmos”), layered with all sorts of free-form percussive undercurrents and eerie, wailing overtones from cello, guitar, bass and electronics. The musical chaos that ensues is strangely exhilarating – at least to these ears. Even less predictable host band Cerberus Shoal provides a spoken word piece, inexplicably titled “a man who loved holes,” consisting of variously manipulated voices and an overlay of sampled, looped fragments. The surrealist text of this piece, which is helpfully printed out in the liner notes, suggests a literary synthesis of Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare and James Joyce, (e.g., “We seek the canisters, ripe with liquids and solids and miniature friendships…long toothed and breathing the moist oxygen of eyes.”), and it qualifies as engrossing and even occasionally profound even while making no objective sense at all. The primary narrative voice is initially altered for a “Darth Vader” effect, but other, less dominant voices take over the narrative periodically, including a chirpy Roy Rogers/Dale Evans soundalike cowboy duet. Sometimes the narrative turns into a chorus, with other voices, treated and untreated, providing a counterpoint – including a clear, very normal-sounding female soprano. The larger musical context of this text is equally fascinating -- rattling percussion, reverbed cackles, drones and looped patterns, snippets of unrelated conversations, insect clicks and the humming of distant machinery. Sixteen minutes later, the piece ends the way it began, with the reverbed cackles and two-note synthesizer pattern. What does it all mean? Who knows? But it’s an interesting journey.
The third and last piece on the CD appears to be a collaboration, as it is attributed to Guaperus Shoalo and titled “Kdios Iiasmos, He Two Loved Holes.” However, the joke may be on the listener, as this “collaboration” appears to be a re-run of the opening “Idios Kosmos” (which, by the way, is Greek for “personal reality”). Both pieces clock in at a little over 17 minutes, and both have essentially the same textures and sonic components. Maybe the second version is remixed slightly. Maybe Cerberus Shoal makes some modest contribution to the second version. And maybe not. But it doesn’t really matter, because if you got lost in the musical universe of “Idios Kosmos” the first time around, you can get lost in it all over again. And if you were bewildered the first time around and wondering what the hell was going on, you have another chance to get tight with Guapo’s own personal reality.

Supersilent 1-3 by Supersilent (RCD2001)

Released initially on the relatively obscure Norwegian Rune Grammofon label in 1997, before its distribution deal with ECM was in place, this triple CD debut from Supersilent is not as widely known or celebrated as the later Supersilent CDs – 4, 5 and 6. And the wary consumer can also be forgiven for making the assumption (quite inaccurate in this case) that Supersilent’s earlier music would be less sophisticated than what followed, and that it has been released for completists and/or to capitalize on the buzz created by the later work. However, this Supersilent debut may be the most remarkable of the bunch (so far), and should not be missed by any fan of visceral avant-garde noise/funk fusion and experimental music in general. Supersilent 1-3 may be noisier and less refined than what follows, but it has its own special virtues.

The four members of Supersilent were hardly musical novices when they joined forces in 1997, although their debut(at Norway’s avant garde Bergen Festival) came without any prior rehearsal or experience together as a group. Apparently pleased with the results, the group members retired to the studio, and the three disks and thirteen numbered but untitled tracks of music that emerged were a distilation of many more hours of studio experimentation and jamming. This strategy captures the raw energy and surprise of improvisation, but with all the improvisational false starts and dead ends edited out. Some of the thirteen tracks end abruptly (suggesting a collective “Enough!”), and some gradually wind down through an act of collective will and intuition.

Knowledgable listeners might recall that the then-revolutionary Miles Davis electric music of Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way and Jack Johnson was put together using a similar methodology; producer Teo Macero and Davis cut and spliced many hours of studio playing to achieve the desired results. And in fact, comparisons between Supersilent and the electric Miles Davis are apt in several other respects. First, Arve Henriksen’s trumpet is a prominent voice on a number of tracks, and Henriksen is well-schooled in the jabbing but fragile beauty of the Davis style, although the cooler, more slippery “fourth world” sound of Jon Hassell is probably more of a touchstone on several other tracks where the trumpet receives heavier electronic treatments. And Jarle Vespestad’s marvelous drumming can be every bit as dirty and down-home funky as Jack DeJohnette's, and as nimble as Tony Williams, although in the context of Supersilent’s wildest electronic assaults, Vespestad’s churning percussion is much freer – perhaps more the sort of creative frenzy that Rashied Ali brought to John Coltrane’s final ecstatic musical visions.

However, on these three debut disks, Supersilent pushes their experimental tendencies much further than Miles Davis ever did. Much hokum has been written about Davis studying the music of Stockhausen and wanting to blaze a trail into the musical unknown, but in his last years he retreated into something much more accessible, and was into Sly Stone and even Michael Jackson, whom he envied for their commercial and street-corner success. And while it might be theoretically possible to unite Stockhausen and Sly in a 40 minute free-form jam, Davis learned the hard way that radical experimentation does not equate with success in the marketplace. Still, if you’re familiar with some of Davis’s more difficult and still controversial work, such as Agharta, Pangea, Live-Evil or Dark Magus, it’s not such a big stretch to substitute some of these Supersilent tracks, and particularly those where furious funk drums, trumpet and/or the keyboards of Stale Storlokken unite in a delirious, visceral swamp of sound.

Still, Miles Davis is just one influence among many for Supersilent, and the preponderance of raw electronics on some tracks (washes of static, sine wave howls, machine gun bursts, muttered vocal samples, electronic clicks and pops, weird sci-fi effects and hideous aural distortions) take the music in less definable directions. It’s perhaps too easy to fasten upon Vespestad’s energy drumming, Henriksen’s expressive trumpet and Storlokken’s occasionally normal-sounding electric keyboards, because of their relative familiarity, but Supersilent’s more bizarre elements are equally integral to their sound – specifically, the machinations of the notorious Deathprod, aka studio engineer Helge Sten (playing“audio virus”) and the electronics of Vespestad and Henriksen when they are not holding forth on keyboards and trumpet. The music is really is all of a piece and fully realized, even at this early stage.

One final observation. With over three hours of music, a certain amount of repetition and resulting tedium might be expected, but even after repeating listening, I’m amazed at how much I’m hearing for the first time, and how much variety exists on these three CDs. Supersilent is not afraid of wistful melancholy on occasion, and they can produce an unholy din worthy of the Japan’s premier noisemasters. Plus, they nail down everything in between. Well worth a listen, and once you grab onto it, you may find that you can't let go.

An Hour Out of Desert Center by Chas Smith (CB0013)

Smith is a longtime lap and pedal steel guitarist who is also a trained welder and machinist. He has been experimenting for years with home built instruments to which he has given names such as the Guitarzilla, Bass Tweed, Mantis, Majestic and Copper Box. Living in California, Smith has ready access to military surplus outlets, and he has developed something of a connoisseur’s knowledge of the sonic properties of metals. No naïf musically, Smith has studied at Berklee College, has an M.F.A. from Mills College and at one point was under the spell of Morton Subotnik. He played and composed for the Buchla and Serge synthesizers, ultimately producing a piece for his Master’s thesis that he calls “an atrocious piece of shit.” Smith seems to have realized over time that his strongest musical connections were anything but academic – for example, the experience of hearing Link Ray’s “Rumble” as a teenage or, whilst incapacitated on the floor at a party, getting totally sucked inside the sound of Ralph Mooney’s pedal steel on a Waylon Jennings record set on automatic repeat – although Smith didn’t even like country music at the time. Indeed, Smith fits the profile of the “sound hound” who instinctively gravitates toward harmonics and overtones that seem to open up other dimensions of reality for some musicians and listeners, taking on an almost mystical significance.

Although he made a couple of recordings in the mid 1980’s, Smith’s primary musical activity until recently was as a soundtrack ambience specialist, supplying anonymous atmospheric treatments for some high profile movies such as American Beauty, The Horse Whisperer and The Shawshank Redemption. One of Smith’s early recordings was a 10” Ep for the experimental California-based Cold Blue label, but the music quickly disappeared -- along with the label. Clearly no label whore, Smith didn’t record again for fifteen years, until the same Cold Blue label revived itself three years ago. Smith and Cold Blue must have a congenial relationship (one suspects that Smith gets to do exactly what he wants), and this is his third CD released on the label in the past three years.

This newest release is in one sense Smith’s least extreme, as it has only a touch of the Guitarzilla on the third and longest track, “Albuquerque 5402.” Otherwise, Smith sticks for the most part to an overdubbed combination of pedal steel, Bigsby lap steel, zither and crotales (tuned metal disks) – although he does also list something called “cutters” (???), plus a “Pez Eater,” which is one of his simpler inventions -- a rack of thirty-six tunable steel rods, each with a guitar pickup. In a recent interview, Smith takes exception to the classification of his music as “drone” based, although to say that his tones are “long” would be an understatement. But Smith makes a good point. True drone music is static, while Smith’s is always moving, albeit sometimes almost imperceptibly, both horizontally (melodically) and vertically (harmonically). Smith’s compositional methodology seems to be an intuitive combination of improvisation and pre-planned structure. Nothing is written out, but chords clearly follow a linear progression, even if they move at a glacial pace. Much of the interaction from the listener comes as a result of trying to anticipant where the music is going – and to remember where it has been. Ultimate patterns remain elusive, just out of reach – which is ultimately one of the music’s strengths. And the four long pieces on the CD are indeed discernibly different. “Absence of Redemption,” as befits the title, is certainly the darkest of the four, with a substantial amount of dissonance and harmonic tension. The final piece, the delightful, floating “A ’75 Scircura,” begins with gentle strumming (perhaps the only piece on the CD to use actual finger-picking instead of long sustains), and while the strumming is eventually reverbed into inaudibility, it still gives the piece a certain buoyancy.

The other outstanding feature of the music on this CD is, of course, the sounds themselves. Synthesizers can undoubtedly approximate what Smith does with his guitars and metallic machines, but they can’t produce the resonances and subtle sonic surprises that are audible on this CD. Much as a real symphony orchestra will give the listener the sound of breath, vibrating wood, metal and horsehair on steel, nylon or gut, so does Smith give the listener the sound of fingers and mallets on metal, even though there is another level of electronic processing beyond that. The shifting tones and timbres have an eerie resemblance to a symphonic horn section at one moment, a string section the next, and at times a cosmic cathedral organ. It’s a quality that adds still another level of complexity to Smith’s superficially simple ambient music, and it contributes to what is ultimately a very rich and powerful listening experience for those who have ears to hear it.

Crammed Global Soundclash 1980-89 (CRAM100)

Judging from the music featured in this deluxe two-disk “connoisseur edition” box set (which also includes a handsome and very informative booklet and the obligatory “bonus” remix CD), Crammed Disc label boss Marc Hollander should have a secure place in the upper pantheon of independent record label founders. The music generated by his label has been hugely influential and consistently in advance of musical trends, to the extent that most of recordings from which these two disks were compiled have not dated themselves a bit, and could easily hold their own with the best of the current crop of worldbeat techno and experimental pop music. From a European perspective, I may be preaching to the converted, but I suspect that Hollander and his label remain an underground phenomenon in much of the U.S., largely because Crammed Disc has never made a concerted effort to establish a U.S. fanbase. Even the few Americans who recorded for the label were expat types such as Tuxedomoon, who usually established permanent residence in Europe after leaving the U.S.

Since this is a music review, I will dispense with anecdotes involving Crammed Disc’s very modest DIY beginnings in a semi-communal house/studio in Brussels, although it’s a fascinating story in itself. But it is important to note that from the inception of the label (and really even before, starting with the legendary Aksak Maboul group of which Hollander was a member), the emphasis was on collaboration, experimentation and the integration of cultures, styles and contemporary studio technology -- with no limitations imposed by rules or preconceptions. Hollander himself sometimes applies the word “fake” to the label’s music, as in “fake jazz” or” fake ethnic.” He uses the term positively, arguing that a musician’s creative interpretation of a form of which he has limited knowledge often leads to a fresh musical perspective and exciting new sounds. However, many contemporary critics didn’t see it that way, and they decried what they regarded as the label’s irreverent dabbling. Musical genres were still highly compartmentalized in the 1980’s, and it was anathema to some purists that various Crammed Disc artists would combine ethnic loops from folkloristic sources with electronic percussion, borrow jazz licks and apply them with ulterior, non-jazz motives, pair a Central African folksinger with a couple of experimental synthesizer wizards, feature ethnic musicians who were doing violence to their own traditional heritage, and generally mix classical, rock, ethnic and electronic materials in strange and curious fashion. Such willful syncretism is commonplace today, but Crammed Disc was not only there first, but they arguably did it as well as (if not better than) anyone who came after. Peter Gabriel’s Real World label, which not-so-coincidentally started in 1989, clearly extended a portion of the Crammed Disc aesthetic, and while Real World has been criticized (sometimes justly) for “tarting up” traditional ethnic music, the ethnic productions of Crammed were largely exempt from that charge, because the music was iconoclastic and "impure" from the outset, with no pretense of faithfully representing any particular tradition. Rather, the Crammed Disc motto always seemed to be “whatever works.”

As for the presentation of the music in this commemorative box set, Hollander’s creative selection and mix of the Crammed Disc music of the 1980’s is in itself somewhat perverse – although the listener should expect nothing less. First, the separation of the music into “Electrowave” and “World Fusion” is really quite arbitrary, because almost all of the featured music has electronic elements, and a substantial percentage also utilizes ethnic sources to some extent. Hollander also runs the individual pieces together, DJ style, bringing in the next track while still fading out its predecessor, which sometimes supplies an additional layer of musical disorientation. But the mixing is always done with care (after all, these are all Hollander’s “babies”), and given the mix of styles and influences found within a typical piece, it is really only fitting that an equivalent stretching of musical boundaries exists between pieces. Some of the original source material is seriously attenuated and used primarily as a musical bridge, which furthers Hollander’s mixing strategies but always doesn’t give the uninitiated listener much of an idea of the artist’s musical sensibility. Then again, the recordings by many of the major Crammed Disc artists of the period, e.g., Hector Zazou, Lew & Brown, Daniel Schell, Peter Principle, are so eclectic in themselves that nothing short of exposure to their entire body of work would give the listener a clear sense of direction. As it is, the musical fragments tease the ear, and perhaps invite further investigation by the listener.

For Crammed Disc and Made to Measure fanatics such as myself, all the big names are represented on the two disks – Aksak Maboul (of course), the marvelous collaborations between Zazou and Bony Bikaye, Tuxedomoon, Minimal Compact, The Honeymoon Killers, Colin Newman, Lew & Brown, Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz, Mahmoud Ahmed and so on. Hollander includes a handful of rarer items from limited edition EP’s, demos and previous samplers, and at least a few of these might be new even to the enthusiast. Also, given the volume of Crammed releases throughout the 80’s, and the difficulty of finding many of them in large areas of the U.S., I received one real surprise, which was my first exposure to the truly wonderful Bel Canto, a eclectic (of course) Norwegian trio with a pure and distinctive sound. Now they’re on my shopping list.

Not surprisingly, the “bonus” remix disk is a bit of an anticlimax, as most of the remixes don’t really add much to the originals, most of which were already remixed in one sense or another to begin with. In at least one instance (the Glynn Bush remix of “Decollage” by The Honeymoon Killers), a pounding techno rhythm undermines the original’s subtlety without adding anything positive in its place. Otherwise, the various treatments and re-shapings on the remix CD are certainly of interest, but the two primary disks of the compilation are the real stars of the show. My impractical and extravagant advice would be to pick up the twelve full-length reissues and collected works that are being released in conjunction with this box set, and supplement them with a number of other reissued full-length Crammed classics such as Hector Zazou’s Geologies and Geographies, the Zazou/Bikaye collaborations, Daniel Schell’s recordings, and so on). But short of that, I wholeheartedly recommend this collection. One word of caution: watch out for the Karen Finley track, “Tales of Taboo,” on the Electrowave disk. The label may have been courageous in recording the controversial Finley in 1986, but her squealing recitation of “forbidden” words and images involving body parts, sexual acts, her “granny” and Belgian waffles (??) is just about the only thing in the entire collection that seems dated. It’s kinda funny, though, if you adopt the right perspective. Especially the Belgian waffles.

Chas Smith -- An Hour Out of Desert Center

Chas Smith -- An Hour Out of Desert Center
(Cold Blue CB0013)

Smith is a longtime lap and pedal steel guitarist who is also a trained welder and machinist. He has been experimenting for years with home built instruments to which he has given names such as the Guitarzilla, Bass Tweed, Mantis, Majestic and Copper Box. Living in California, Smith has ready access to military surplus outlets, and he has developed something of a connoisseur’s knowledge of the sonic properties of metals. No naïf musically, Smith has studied at Berklee College, has an M.F.A. from Mills College and at one point was under the spell of Morton Subotnik. He played and composed for the Buchla and Serge synthesizers, ultimately producing a piece for his Master’s thesis that he calls “an atrocious piece of shit.” Smith seems to have realized over time that his strongest musical connections were anything but academic – for example, the experience of hearing Link Ray’s “Rumble” as a teenage or, whilst incapacitated on the floor at a party, getting totally sucked inside the sound of Ralph Mooney’s pedal steel on a Waylon Jennings record set on automatic repeat – although Smith didn’t even like country music at the time. Indeed, Smith fits the profile of the “sound hound” who instinctively gravitates toward harmonics and overtones that seem to open up other dimensions of reality for some musicians and listeners, taking on an almost mystical significance.

Although he made a couple of recordings in the mid 1980’s, Smith’s primary musical activity until recently was as a soundtrack ambience specialist, supplying anonymous atmospheric treatments for some high profile movies such as American Beauty, The Horse Whisperer and The Shawshank Redemption. One of Smith’s early recordings was a 10” Ep for the experimental California-based Cold Blue label, but the music quickly disappeared -- along with the label. Clearly no label whore, Smith didn’t record again for fifteen years, until the same Cold Blue label revived itself three years ago. Smith and Cold Blue must have a congenial relationship (one suspects that Smith gets to do exactly what he wants), and this is his third CD released on the label in the past three years.

This newest release is in one sense Smith’s least extreme, as it has only a touch of the Guitarzilla on the third and longest track, “Albuquerque 5402.” Otherwise, Smith sticks for the most part to an overdubbed combination of pedal steel, Bigsby lap steel, zither and crotales (tuned metal disks) – although he does also list something called “cutters” (???), plus a “Pez Eater,” which is one of his simpler inventions -- a rack of thirty-six tunable steel rods, each with a guitar pickup. In a recent interview, Smith takes exception to the classification of his music as “drone” based, although to say that his tones are “long” would be an understatement. But Smith makes a good point. True drone music is static, while Smith’s is always moving, albeit sometimes almost imperceptibly, both horizontally (melodically) and vertically (harmonically). Smith’s compositional methodology seems to be an intuitive combination of improvisation and pre-planned structure. Nothing is written out, but chords clearly follow a linear progression, even if they move at a glacial pace. Much of the interaction from the listener comes as a result of trying to anticipant where the music is going – and to remember where it has been. Ultimate patterns remain elusive, just out of reach – which is ultimately one of the music’s strengths. And the four long pieces on the CD are indeed discernibly different. “Absence of Redemption,” as befits the title, is certainly the darkest of the four, with a substantial amount of dissonance and harmonic tension. The final piece, the delightful, floating “A ’75 Scircura,” begins with gentle strumming (perhaps the only piece on the CD to use actual finger-picking instead of long sustains), and while the strumming is eventually reverbed into inaudibility, it still gives the piece a certain buoyancy.

The other outstanding feature of the music on this CD is, of course, the sounds themselves. Synthesizers can undoubtedly approximate what Smith does with his guitars and metallic machines, but they can’t produce the resonances and subtle sonic surprises that are audible on this CD. Much as a real symphony orchestra will give the listener the sound of breath, vibrating wood, metal and horsehair on steel, nylon or gut, so does Smith give the listener the sound of fingers and mallets on metal, even though there is another level of electronic processing beyond that. The shifting tones and timbres have an eerie resemblance to a symphonic horn section at one moment, a string section the next, and at times a cosmic cathedral organ. It’s a quality that adds still another level of complexity to Smith’s superficially simple ambient music, and it contributes to what is ultimately a very rich and powerful listening experience for those who have ears to hear it.