PLAINS

Into tone

CD, scarcelight

I read that Tim Coster, Richard Francis, Rosy Parlane, Mark Sadgrove, Clinton Watkins and Paul Winstanley, who have been recorded here during a live session at a festival in Auckland, are the cream of the crop amongst live improvisation / experimentalism / laptop-noise musicians in New Zealand. I wouldn’t ever know, because except for Rosy Parlane, who strikes something in connection with Mego but nothing concrete, I don’t recall having ever heard any of their names. But actually, that doesn’t mean a thing. For one, I once saw Fred Frith, Sachinko M., Tom Cora and some percussionist I have forgotten the name of, play live together and it wasn’t all that great. I was coming down with fever that evening, so I at least enjoyed it somewhat, but that’s about all I can remember. So in this field of music, the big names don’t mean anything anyway. For second, I am forever thankful to labels like Scarcelight, who have made it one of their missions to bring interesting music and sounds to the world and with what I know about Scarcelight I can at least be sure that it is going to be something interesting I am spending the next half hour or so with. Yes, that means that Scarcelight has become a brand name to me, which I trust and trust, as everybody knows is the most important connector between the brand and the consumer. And for third, I have always had a certain distrust towards names or bands or things that become hyped. Even if speaking about hypes in this area is taking it a little too far, I know that I have fallen for hypes in spite of all the distrust and me being in the hype generating business myself at least small time, I nevertheless have an inclination to listen to bands or records I know nothing at all about. A trait that takes me from Acid Mother’s Temple to Joe Walsh to Regurgitator, but that is a whole different story. Moreover, this introduction is getting a little long as it is, so back to “Plains. Into Tone”.

I really think it should be written like this, not as a band name. The concept of a band like most traditional musical concepts don’t get a grip on this piece. It is amazing how six people can do so little with so much effects at the same time. Subtle, distant noises, clicks and scratches slowly grow into a fascinating drone that works on various levels at the same time. A low bass-frequency crawls in, strings are muted without being plucked first, a high hissing sound stays static for a longer time, tiny clicks turn into gigantic percussion if only in the imagination of the listener, any outside noise might drown them instantly. The interference sounds of an electric guitar is a most welcome sound, because of it being clearly decipherable between the lowdown clutter of the other players. Or is it a digital feedback? There might be a three-part structure on “into tone”, that could be roughly described as ten minutes of not doing much, another ten minutes of doing slightly more and the final ten minutes of taking most of it back again and trying out some things on their own. I don’t believe that this is how it was planned or that there was any real plan at all, but that’s how it worked out. Maybe there was a plan, but I would be surprised if it consisted of more than a tentative: Let’s start slow from silence and then go on for about half an hour, see what happens, and then slide back again into silence slowly. Nevertheless, the fascination and dynamic remains intact. If you really get into this piece of music, there is a moment, about ten minutes towards the end, when the soft droning feedback sound filling you head peacefully and softly sounds like the grand finale of a classic symphony. And from there the record fades out slowly into some minutes of almost silence, just the way it started. You guessed right, this is most definitely a headphones recommended record.

The most interesting part is the interplay between traditional instruments such as guitars and electric bass with the computer chip generated sounds. The introduction of field recordings, albeit not clearly audible ones, is just taking the concept to its consequential end. The apotheosis between the postulated though in reality never existing opposition between electronic instruments and traditional instruments (though musically speaking electric guitars aren’t that old, not with the tradition music has, both in classical and in folklore terms) is being resolved once more. This trend of mixing all kinds of sources for sounds without any inhibitions has been stated by me around here quite often in the last weeks (examples from of late would be Rusuden, Opak, Radian, Tu M’ and a slew of others). Which brings me to the most fascinating part, which is, of course, the sounds themselves. And here it is mainly the opposition between the ratio of silence and sounds within the record and he mind of the listener. Because whereas silence takes a bigger part of the aural spectrum on the record, posing as a massive backdrop to the subtle crackling, feedback and ambient noises, within the mind of the listener, those sounds grow into bigger and bigger proportions, grow details and cliffhangers and constantly surprise by their depth and undercover size. Almost like finding the tiny opening to a gigantic cavern that suddenly spreads out in front of you. And the most admirable part is how those six musicians structured their interplay into such a grand piece of glitchy crackling ambient drone, hone their sounds onto each other, lure their co-musicians into highlights that don’t exist and grow and fall together like a single mind. Especially, when there was no other plan than the one cited above. Which brings me to the conclusion that they do deserve the title of cream of the crop of New Zealand’s improvisers / experimentalists / noise / drone / whatevers, even if such a title means nothing at all, except that this is another good piece of music.