Random Acoustics RA 022 Lines
Lines
Jim Denley, flutes, alto saxophone, flax, voice; Axel Dörner, trumpet; Phil Wachsmann, violin, viola, electronics; Marcio Mattos, double bass, cello, electronics; Martin Blume, drums, percussion.
1. In the back of the real (04.43)
2. Bo-tree (12.21)
3. Outlines (08.16)
4. Buoyancy (04.25)
5. Effusion (04.41)
6. Short cut 1 (03.22)
7. Zick-zack (03.31)
8. Short cut 2 (01.29)
9. Short cut 3 (02.32)
10. Short cut 4 (02.14)
11. Recreation of syntax (09.44)
12. Tangents (01.02)
Recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston upon Thames on 7 September 1996, with the exception of track 2, recorded on 27 October 1995 live at Museum Bochum. Drawing (reproduced above) by Martin Blume; artwork and design by Georg Graewe and Moosdruck.
“Martin Blume`s Lines. Fivefold strings of vibration, threads of breath. Lushness and complexity of simultaneous sounding. Clouds, mists, clusters, chords. Coordination of timings – listening as a line of connection. Coordination at the line of scrimmage. Startling alignment. Exactitude, precicion; delicacy, detail; timbre, texture. An exquisite corpus. The overlapping of segments, spontaneous orchestration (Wachsmann’s evanescent vision of electronics; an assembly of long tones with matching sounds). Colors, minute taste fluxes teasing the brain like a dish flavored with a familiar but unidentifiable spice.“
The line up.
String section with trumpet and rhythm. Or, heard as a quintet of soundmakers independent of instrument specifics, a cohesive entity. Mistaking Mattos for Wachsmann or Denley for Dörner: the tool is the band, not the axe. An intense interwining of lines, in this case, creates something not as sequential or simplistically linear, but intricate and recursive. Multiple lines, like kelp swaying tandem in a stormy tidal pool.
Along this line of thought.
Flute, cello, violine: ripping the overcoded classical instrumentation out of this entrenchment. But also chafing at the normal jazz segments – frontline/second-line. Instead, Blume`s tone –conscious percussion and harmonic-rich cymbals. (Or, as on ‘Outlines`traditional propulsion-function of jazz brushstrokes.) Denley’s percussive key-pads. Dörner’s unvoiced air/valve/cylinder pressure cooking.
Establishing a flexible line of credit.
An appreciation for the attention to form on Lines. Possibility of development. The construction of a site – a construction site – replete with concrete foundation (group listening), edifice (definitive decision making) and ornament (individual flourish). None of the wish and wash of formless wavering improvisation, but something that really lays it on the line. Spontanious structures, lines of force measured against one another in passing time. Unfurling buildings.
Please stay on the line.”
From the Lines notes.
John Corbett, Chicago, April 1997
“Lines is a meeting of five hard-headed musical adventurers: Denley, Axel Dorner, Phil Wachsmann, Marcio Mattos and Martin Blume. The electronic input (courtesy of Mattos and Wachsmann) is subtly deployed. Imagining it without this element would be to imagine a more rythmically intense, dynamic music. As it is, it's music of flows, quiet incidents and space. Tension and release? Both seem to happen all the time in this shape-shifting music. It's also intensely collective in method: the contributions, brief ctations at the edges of what the various instruments permit, sit together as nicely as different coloured pebbles. There's little space here for anything like a personal statement. It's hard to say how the feeling of coherance washes so strongly off such music, but it surges smoothly along with such care for sound that it's impossible to ignore its claims.” Resonance, Will Montgomery