Rien

text

In the utterly essential book ARCANA - musicians on music (Granary Books, 2000), the collection's Editor-compiler John Zorn contributes a typically unexpected piece amid the commentary and criticism. 'Treatment for a Film in Fifteen Scenes' is a collage of apparently unconnected scenes or moments which, while themselves classic-iconic, together form an entirely abstract, surreal non-commentary: "...TWO LANE BLACK TOP EXPANSE/GLOVES BEING PUT ON/MURDER VICTIM/TELEPHONE..." Some readers have asked what exactly the piece is doing there, but it seems natural to me that a composer and musician who's been so directly inspired by film techniques - particularly in his structural thinking - should turn to the language of film to discuss music.

Plainly, the French guitarist and composer Noël Akchoté thinks so, at least on the evidence of this, his third outing for the German Winter & Winter label. For he and his colleagues - Erik Minkkinen on computer and Andrew Sharpely on sampler and turntables - have created a long piece as a kind of aural screenplay. Or, as Akchoté puts it 'Rien is a journey, a road movie as well as a soundtrack... "Music to be watched" might be the more accurate form'. The whole notion of an imaginary soundtrack has, of course, become a very popular one over the last few years, but for my money, a great deal of the work done under this banner is on the opportunistic side. It's easier for a piece of music that has little reason to exist in itself to stand up if it's got an association with either visual imagery or textual narrative.

Luckily, Rien doesn't come into that category - or anywhere near it. Having few details on this record, I couldn't tell you whether the three musicians are responding to the equivalent of a screenplay, but for all its apparent stasis, the music here plainly tells some kind of story. Where a previous Akchoté album, Lust Corner was accompanied with photographs by Noboyashi Araki, Rien comes packaged with a set of photographs by fellow Japanese Daido Moriyama; a one-time colleague of poster artist Tadanori Yokoo, Moriyama's grainy and visceral images form a startling commentary on contemporary Japan. The photographs selected here again form some kind of mood-heavy, non-linear narrative. Borrowing Zorn's 'Treatment' language, we might characterise the photographs thus: 'WINDSCREEN WIPER IN RAIN/DRAWN CURTAINS /SEMI-NAKED WOMAN ON BED/DISCARDED WHITE STILETTO-HEELED SHOE/BAR" and so on.

Whether the performance here is directly inspired by these images or not, it describes them perfectly. The Akchoté I first came across on Lust Corner was very much a jazz musician; out there, for sure, but an improvisor taking his cues, somehow, from songforms. Not here. Instead, tiny fragments of the Frenchman's playing - some minimal feedback, a heavily tremeloed chord, the crackling of a pick-up, even, simply, some speaker hum - accompany the restless, fidgety sample work of the other two - and very possibly form their basis. The results are, above all else, dark. If this is a film soundtrack, we're talking noir. But forget melodrama; this is music without rhythm - or at any rate without pulse - without melody (with the single exception of the closing piece, 'Pousse' wherein a simple, folkish guitar chord progression is shrouded in clicks, scratches and sine waves). What it is is all texture, and all mood. Stunning stuff.