Henceforth Records

Notes From Cabrillo

Friday, August 6, 2010

After a 2-hour delay at the SD airport, Marty and I were on our way to San Jose (as the saying goes) and then to Santa Cruz for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. We settled in, Marty on a friend’s boat and me at his sister’s lovely apt. in Capitola. I love Capitola.

First event of the evening was joining his friend, Ch!p (sic) and his wife for drinks, then off to the Pre-concert dinner. The dinner was mediocre at best: outside and too cold for that, the food was, well, let’s just say ordinary and not worth the ticket price. However, onward to the auditorium where we had good seats (love that) and the music began.

First, “Scherzoid,” by Mark-Anthony Turnage from London. This was really fast (hence the name), and rhythmically complex. Nice, but I won’t buy the CD. Second – “On a Wire” by Jennifer Higdon. The Cabrillo Orchestra with Eighth Blackbird. It began with the 8BB members huddled around the piano playing inside – bowing, plucking, strumming. A nice start. The composition made really good use of percussion, including the marimba. Lush sounds. And I liked the way the orchestra and 8BB were integrated – sometimes 8BB as a solo ensemble and then swept up by the orchestra; they were beautifully woven together. It was lovely and mellow. I am glad to hear the music of the much-lauded Higdon. While lovely is nice to experience, what came next was much more than that!

After intermission, wow: Michael Hersch’s World Premiere of his “Symphony No. 3.” I snapped-to as soon as it began and was mesmerized throughout. Dramatic and emotional, this work was exciting. I don’t really know why but it reminded me of “Black Angels,” a lament for the Vietnam War. It evoked those images to me, right or wrong. I found the instrumentation fascinating – including 2 harps, ominous trombones and bass bassoon. There were moments when the music crashed, swooped and sent warnings to us all. There were moments of delicacy, effective silences and swarming. We met with Oscar after the concert for a few beers for them and more club soda for me – we were all exhilarated and full of animated conversation about Hersch’s piece which led to long animated talk about contemporary music around the world. I took voluminous notes from Oscar about what else I should be hearing as well as concerts and Festivals worldwide. A very nice night.

Saturday, August 7th

This night of concerts continued to be good. Good is good, but not great.

There was the work of three composers. Anna Clyne’s “rewind” which I think I liked best of the night. Nice sounds, it hurries along at a steady pace, which was fine as it was a shortish piece. Had it gone on longer, I think it would have needed some variance.

Jennifer Higdon’s “Percussion Concerto.” I should probably like her work better than I do. It’s lovely, even lush, as were last night’s, but I find that lovely is just that. Not so engaging. The music was played really well, and the percussionist, Colin Currie, was terrific, although I am spoiled from hearing lots of great percussion from Steve Schick and his red fish blue fish ensemble. The section that did grab me was when Colin played along with the other percussionists, sans orchestra.

The last two pieces were by Mark-Anthony Turnage (London). I like his sprightly personality after hearing him speak a few times, but his music was, to me, not so interesting. “Chicago Remains” had a great beginning – horns, clarinets and rather haunting. It grew to a city/nightlife hustle and then back to plaintive. “Drowned Out” seemed much the same to me and maybe that was really my problem, but, hey, this is my opinion/blog. I was tired by the end of the night and it all began to sound the same.

Sunday, August 8th

After a really fun dinner with Oscar, his two brothers, and Marty, I was ready for an exciting night of music. The first set was that. Eighth Blackbird performed three pieces and I liked them all. “Still Life with Avalanche by Missy Mazzoli, was great and perhaps I am prejudiced because I like Missy personally, but still I liked what she created. It was melodic without being boring, great instrumentation including harmonicas now and then.

“Catch” by Thomas Ades was written when he was 19 and included the taunting refrain of nah, nah, nah, nah, nah nah, You know the one from playground days. Fun but also smart. “Meanwhile” was the bigger piece by Stephen Hartke. I had heard of him but never heard his music before so that was nice. The ensemble played this from memory and with staging as they moved around the stage during the piece. I have heard complaints about this “arty” way of performing but I like what they did and the piece was engaging – that was what was missing last night: engagement.

The Kronos St. Quartet performed the second set. I went to lots of their concerts when I lived in SF from 1983-86 and have always admired their selection of music as well as their playing. They continue to be dazzlingly good but somehow . . . what? They played “Aheym” by Bryce Dressner, which was really fast – always a crowd pleaser; “Raga Mishra Bhairavei:Alap” was a lovely raga with drones etc, and solo viola, which was gorgeous. Final piece was “. . . hold me, neighbor, in this storm . . . ” by Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. Is Kronos focusing on music from other lands now? I guess that’s fine but I miss their earlier focus. And for this performance, I loved the stage lighting even more than the music.

It was a good weekend of music and conversation with friends, old and new. I will go to this each year. I just wish I had written about the Ojai Festival as it really is the very best I have ever attended. Next year I will.

Avec quatre guitares électriques, Dither crée des superpositions d’accords entre Fred Frith et Monk héritiers du punk rock. Ils fonctionnent avec la précision d’un quatuor classique et la part d’improvisation pure de leur musique semble réduite à ce qu’elle est en rock, à cette différence près qu’ils sont les interprètes de partitions savantes. Musique discordante, dissonante, staccato, économe de ses mouvements. Tantôt énorme tantôt réduite à quelques notes elle définit un monde minéral et rigoureux où le plaisir se fraye de vigoureuses ouvertures. Plaisir des textures électriques avant tout, des changements d’ambiance musicale, plaisir de l’intrusion de la sauvagerie dans des sons policés, écrits, de border le silence de vacarme ou de presque rien. On les sent capables de reproduire cette musique chaque soir avec la même intensité — c’est à dire pas celle d’un improvisateur. Un exemple étonnant de ce que peut être une musique moderne créant sa forme instrumentale et empruntant sans hiérarchie aux musiques préexistantes (sauf au jazz). Une musique un peu pince sans rire : “et de ça vous en dites quoi ?”, “goûtez-encore celui-ci, voulez-vous ?”. Une musique très esthétique sans concession à la joliesse. Elle semble, à la manière surréaliste, viser un point fixe de subversion sans se laisser distraire d’aucune façon, musique au cordeau, sans courbes.

Translation:

With four electric guitars, Dither creates a superimposition of chords somewhere between Fred Frith and Monk, heirs to punk rock. They work with the precision of a classical quartet and the purely improvisatory side to their music seems reduced to what it is in rock music, with the added difference that they are skilled interpreters. Clashing, dissonant, staccato, sparse music. Colossal at one moment and reduced to a few notes in another, the music defines a mineral and rigorous world where pleasure opens up to vigorous overtures. Enjoyment of textures first, changing musical moods, pleasure at the savage interruption of sounds that are written and polished, to line the silence with clamorous noise or with almost nothing at all.

One feels that they are capable of reproducing this music every night with the same intensity- that is to say, not that of an improviser. An astounding example of what modern music can be in creating its own instrumental form and borrowing freely from pre-existing music (except from jazz). Music that’s a little bit deadpan: ‘and what do you have to say about that?’; ‘you want another taste of this?’. Music that is very aesthetic without conceding to prettiness. It seems, in a surrealist way, to look to a subversive fixed point without being distracted by anything, music that is straight as an arrow, without curves.

- Noël Tachet

Dither Reviewed by The Downtown Music Gallery

Dither, a New York based electric guitar quartet, is dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire which spans composed music, improvisation, and electronic manipulation. Formed in 2007, the quartet has performed in the United States and abroad, presenting new commissions, original compositions, multimedia works, and large guitar ensemble pieces. With sounds ranging from clean pop textures to heavily processed noise, from tight rhythmic unity to cacophonous sound mass; all of Dither’s music wholeheartedly embraces the beautiful, engulfing, and often gloriously loud sound of electric guitars. The quartet’s members are Taylor Levine, David Linaburg, Joshua Lopes, and James Moore.

- Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

The New York Times reviews Dither

Though the electric guitar was introduced in the early 1930s, its adoption into classical music came decades later. Composers like Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tippett used the instrument chiefly for its vernacular allusions. Later Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca and Lois V. Vierk tapped into its capacity for producing complex overtones and, yes, punishing volume. Nowadays the electric guitar has become ubiquitous, deployed to vastly different ends in a wide variety of formats. Among its foremost innovators is Scott Johnson, a New York composer and guitarist whose renown falls well short of his achievement, at least partly, no doubt, because of the snail’s pace at which his work has been documented. “Americans,” recently released by the Tzadik label (TZA 8074; CD), is the first newly recorded disc to be issued under Mr. Johnson’s name since 1996 . “Bowery Haunt,” a rock-inflected electric-guitar duet, and “Anthem Hunt,” a pensive quartet with a prominent cello part, establish Mr. Johnson’s flair as a performer. “The Illusion of Guidance,” written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, shows that he also writes idiomatically for other players; Derek Johnson, no relation to the composer, handles the perky, bristling guitar part.

“Americans,” a three-part suite, is a striking example of the way Mr. Johnson derives music from the contours and inflections of speech, a method he devised for “John Somebody,” a widely influential 1982 work for guitar and tape. “Americans all look the same to me,” a recorded female voice says at the start of the piece. As an isolated clip — “same to me” — repeats twice, its falling tone and syncopated beat are duplicated first on piano, then on guitar.

Here and throughout the work Mr. Johnson’s music is playful and engaging; only gradually do you realize “Americans” is also a sophisticated examination of the way immigrants negotiate cultural isolation and assimilation. Intentionally or not, the piece also shows how the electric guitar maintains its own character and connotations even when completely integrated into a mixed ensemble.

The New York quartet Dither focuses almost exclusively on sounds produced by electric guitars — clean, plucked lines, strummed chords, grungy feedback, resonating overtones, even the static buzz of amps and loose plugs — on its debut CD, “Dither,” issued by the California label Henceforth (108; CD).

The most conventional playing comes in “Pantagruel,” a jazzy tangle composed by Joshua Lopes, a quartet member. Lainie Fefferman’s “Tongue of Thorns” reclaims a primal Minimalism from art-rock bands like the Velvet Underground or Sonic Youth; “Vectors,” by Jascha Narveson, turns Dither into a live-wire gamelan.

In “Cross Sections,” the longest and most fascinating work on the disc, Lisa R. Coons painstakingly dissects the instrument, rendering muscular arpeggios, livid feedback, ominous rumbles and radiant drones. Erik K M Clark’s “exPAT,” in which the four players are prevented from hearing one another playing, is an agreeably noisy experiment most likely better encountered live.

By orthodox standards Kyle Bobby Dunn, a Toronto musician now based in Brooklyn, barely registers as a guitarist or a composer, though he is unquestionably both. Extending the work of drone-oriented Minimalists like Eliane Radigue, William Basinski and Stars of the Lid, Mr. Dunn uses a computer to transform sounds produced with an electric guitar and various acoustic instruments into nearly motionless reveries on his puckishly titled “Young Person’s Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn,” newly issued by Low Point (LP033; two CDs).

No doubt intentionally, the sound sources Mr. Dunn uses are usually obscured by his processes. But occasionally you can make out string instruments, brasses and piano in his mix. What results is something like a chamber-music equivalent of Kirlian photography: dark, shadowy and indistinct at its core, surrounded by an iridescent glow. The effect is mysterious, hypnotic and deeply affecting.

- Steve Smith, The New York Times

The Dither Quartet Mess with Your Mind

File this under psychedelia. If you’re a fan of the dirtier, more ominous textures an electric guitar can create, an entire ocean of them, the Dither guitar quartet’s new album is for you. This is one of those albums that sounds like it was an awful lot of fun to make, in places more so than it is to listen to. Incorporating elements of noise-rock, dreampop, guitar jazz, classical and the avant-garde, Dither’s dense, hypnotic, overtone-laden instrumentals are imaginative, clever, sometimes subtly funny, other times flat-out assaultive. The influence of Elliott Sharp (who wrote the album liner notes) is everywhere, as is that of Steve Reich. But this isn’t mere layers of drones: with five different composers (including Dither’s own Joshua Lopes) represented, there’s a wide diversity among the tracks here. From the first few seconds, it’s clear that trying to figure out which of the group’s members – Lopes, Taylor Levine, David Linaburg and James Moore – is playing what is a lost cause, but there’s a consistent dedication to thinking out of the box and just simply having fun.

The opening track, Lainie Fefferman’s Tongue of Torns, is a pretty standard Steve Reich-ish “let’s all play the same A chord for an hour and a half” except that this one has a surprise, a shock to the system about three quarters of the way through. And they do it again, and again. Pantagruel, written by Lopes, is the most overtly jazz-oriented work here, serpentine ascending progresssions intertwined through off-key, tone-warping patches that eventually crash, burn and then fade out a la “A Day in the Life”. Lisa R. Coons‘ suite Cross-Sections is a showcase for the group’s exuberant command of every guitar texture ever invented, weaving hypnotically through skronk, atmospherics, muted plucking, a long siren passage, raptly still atmospherics and good old-fashioned noise. The showstopper here (they played this at Bang on a Can last year) is Eric KM Clark’s ExPAT, written for “as many guitarists as possible.” It’s a hearing-deprivation piece, each guitarist sonically isolated from the rest of the group, wearing headphones blasting white noise so as to throw their timing off. Yet the group is not so easily distracted! Ominous and intense, it’s a pulsing, echoing choir of hell’s bells, very evocative of Louis Andriessen at his most insistently abrasive. And yet, its shifts are extremely subtle, drifting apart but then coming together before another slight divergence.

Dither plays the cd release show on June 12 at the Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St. in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn on a ridiculously inviting bill, a mini-Bang on a Can marathon of sorts with Redhooker, Kathleen Supové and Nick Didkovsky, Elliott Sharp, Matthew Welch, the Deprivation Orchestra of NY, Loud Objects, Mantra Percussion and Florent Ghys, which for a $6 cover turns out to be less than a dollar a band.

http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/the-dither-quartet-mess-with-your-mind/

- Lucid Culture

Point of Departure Reviews Dither

Dither is a New York-based guitar quartet, unusual in that the four guitars are electric and much of the music performed here is through-composed, including verbal and graphic scores. It’s unusual, too, in maintaining much of the traditional split between composers and interpretive performers. There are five composers represented here and only one, Joshua Lopes, is actually a member of Dither, otherwise made up of Taylor Levine, David Linaburg and James Moore. It’s an oddly formal distinction, for the performances can reach levels of volume and insistence that are usually reached without a program. The CD opens and closes with aural shock treatment. After a quiet lacework of isolated harmonics and hum, Lainie Fefferman’s “Crown of Thorns” suddenly turns to a crushing repeated chord that suggests the Velvet Underground, or even loops of the Velvet Underground, humming feedback and overtones providing variety. The conclusion, Erik km Clark’s “exPat,” is even more provocative, a hearing deprivation piece in which the four guitarists play the same music while wearing headphones that blast white noise, making it impossible to hear one another. In between, though, there are more immediately engaging moments as the group collaborates with composers to explore the electric guitar’s range of tunings and textures, often contrasting rock-inspired skronk with a subtle control of quarter- tones. The CD’s most compelling moments come in Lisa R. Coons “Cross-sections,” a four-part, 24-minute work that begins with broken rhythms that can suggest Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band and the surf band staple “Bumble-Boogie,” only to extend to a long segment called “Prolix” that demonstrates Dither’s remarkable abilities to match high levels of control and complexity. It’s an intriguing debut by a group that summarizes much of the electric guitar’s history (from Dick Dale to Fred Frith) and mines further possibilities of their own.

http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD29/PoD29MoreMoments2.html

- Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure: an online Music Journal

New Music Box review of Dither

Dither the band is a four-man electric guitar quartet and Dither the album comes packaged with liner notes by Elliott Sharp. Even if you think you know in what direction these details are leaning, there is a minute and a half at the outset of this self-titled debut release when things seem held aloft in a kind of sonic limbo. Over a vague, ominous rumble, the delicate opening notes of Lainie Fefferman’s Tongues of Thorns are carefully plucked out, tempting the ear deeper and deeper into the texture. But then in a breath the musicians punch their way straight through and out into the world with a repetitive primal drive that never lets up until the piece wraps minutes later. It’s a provocative rocking that sounds good, feels good, and even when the music hits its fever pitch and the wailing claps you sharply, things still manage to keep to the honest side of controlled.

It makes for a bracing start to a disc that flexes the ears in quite a few compelling directions. Vectors by Jascha Narveson is built on relentless pitch bending, spare and spring loaded until this wind-up toy of a piece finally begins to tire out. Lisa R. Coons’s four-movement Cross Sections takes up the bulk of the disc’s 53 minutes, but in many ways it also leaves the most air in the room, twisting a path through all manner of textures with a more nuanced, patient, and subtle touch than the other works utilize. Manic racing lines move into glitchy noise and then onto glacial harmonics. In the end, the music gives way to a platform of hardly any sound at all.

Dither’s own Joshua Lopes penned Pantagruel, and whether or not the piece was in any way influenced by Rabelais’s literary creation, there’s an inventive, comic-book style boldness of color in how Lopes throws down that makes this work a striking production. In performance, the exactness of the ensemble playing and the clear-cut layers in the sonic material impress with their clock-like precision.

Concluding this odyssey is Eric KM Clark’s punishing exPAT, “a Dither commission for hearing-deprived guitar orchestra.” Seriously, the players are wearing earplugs and headphones playing back white noise, and the piece is scored for “as many guitarists as possible,” so you can see how things might get loud. exPAT is dense and aggressive—a solid, unrelenting block of vibration that’s aurally exhausting in a way the works on the album up to this point have not been. Which is not to imply that the disorienting state of overdrive this train rides out in is a negative, but as in extreme sport, part of the thrill is in the possibility of pain. Prepare your ears.

http://www.newmusicbox.com/article.nmbx?id=6420

- Molly Sheridan, New Music Box

Monsieur Délire Reviews Dither

- Monsieur Délire, http://blog.monsieurdelire.com/

Early review from a great musician for Dither

“this cd is bad ass!  good work.”

- Sean Francis Conway

red fish blue fish at UCSD’s Conrad Prebys Hall

red fish blue fish at UCSD’s Conrad Prebys Hall on May 11, 2010 was stellar in all regards. I have been to lots of concerts and I must say that this one was one of my favorites. Many concerts have at least one piece I thought was wonderful but this concert was completely full of good music.

The first piece was composed by Mark Applebaum, a graduate of UCSD’s Music Dept. – he was a student there at the same time as I. He is now professing at Stanford. “Straightjacket” (2009) was an ensemble piece with most if not all of the 7 rfbf members (I don’t quite remember). The music, like Mark, was smart AND really fun. Steve Schick the brilliant percussionist, professor and leader of rfbf, conducted (as he does the LJ Symphony) and, of course, does that well too. One of the sections was him conducting like the music sounds with great imaginative gestures. I wish I could describe it. The second piece, “Marimba Duo from El Liver des Claviers” 1987-1988 by Philip Manoury, now a professor of composition at UCSD and one of my favorite composers ever. (More about that another time). This was performed by Bonnie Whiting Smith and Dustin Donahue on two marimbas, not surprising considering the title. Complicated rhythms AND melodic. “Dresseur” (1977) by Maurice Kagel was a trip through percussion-land. Jillions of instruments, sounds, gestures, music and fun, carried out by Ross Karre, Steve Schick and Justin Dehart. I saw this piece performed at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and was just as thrilled with it this time as last. Nothing quiet or passive. The performers strut the stage, performing on water bowls, clappers, and I don’t know what all. . . lots of instruments.

After intermission, another piece by Manoury: “Vibraphone Solo from El Livre des Claviers” (1987-88). This was performed by talented Brian Archinal and Philip, who was sitting next to me in the audience, said it was the best performance he had heard of his piece (he may of said one of the best) but, whatever, Brian did a masterful job (from memory).

The last piece, “Tocsic: Die funf Jahreszeiten (2009) by Lewis Nielson, a friend of Schick’s from the U. of Iowa, was also great. All rf bf performed and it was another wonder. I wish I had taken notes but was too immersed in the music to do so. There were lots of low tones and rumbles – gongs, bass drums as well as intricate rhythms perfectly (as far as I could tell) performed.

Not only was the music great, the performance was a delight to the eye. In the last number all the performers wore shades of blue (Bonnie was in gray but it blended in), the way Schick places the performers on the stage – in one number there were 3 drummers seated diagonally facing Schick. There was nothing dull about any of it. I hope they record and video this as more people should have the opportunity to see/hear this concert.

red fish blue fish performers: Brian Archinal, Justin deHart, Dustin Donahue, Ross Karre, Steven Schick, Stephen Solook, Bonnie Whiting Smith.