Domestic Dragon 214CD, Eclectic Maybe Band (Discus Music)
ALTO FRAGILE, Marco Pezzenati / Mario Gabola (Scatter Archive)
A Delicate Stiletto, Herb Diamante, (Herb Diamante / Nyahh Records)
between representation and abstraction, Karine Germaix / Dirk Wachtelaer (Dirk Wachtelaer)
Domestic Dragon is the sixth (I think) release by Guy Segers’ Eclectic Maybe Band. The previous, Cosmic Light Clusters, was a far more spaced-out affair both musically and literally, as it was a concept album (though not of the ‘dreaded’ kind – far from it) on the theme of astronomy and space-travel. What we have here – and it’s obvious from the beginning of the first track, ‘Cage’ – is an altogether funkier, more diverse collection of music, ‘a mixture’ as the album notes put it, ‘of avant pop and progressive complexity’.
Et maintenant… the second track is a cover of Dave Holland’s early 1970s piece, ‘Conference of the Birds’, arranged by EMB sax player Joe Higham. It got me going back to the original. I know this is something people talk about a lot, but it could be that they do so because it’s important. It’s impossible to hear this music – or, at least it is for me – without contemplating the road not travelled. One gets the feeling, listening to it, that one is in the presence of something that speaks of a promised future that never came to pass, that we’ve somehow, since then, been hustled down an ersatz timeline into a futureless world. This is often talked about in relation to technology, to an advanced ‘space age’ evoked by electronic music that never materialised, but it’s equally true of social relations and our relationship with the planet we’re part of – and that’s what springs to mind here. The existence of outfits like EMB is proof that the hustlers haven’t had it all their own way, though. Moreover, the way Segers puts together the music of EMB, bringing together the skills of musicians from around the world, shows that one can turn the technology of the hustlers to one’s advantage. Can music change the world? The answer, perhaps is an eclectic ‘maybe’.
The next track, ‘Meek Monsters’ is – the phrase popped into my head as I was listening to it – ‘a miracle of rare device’. This quote from Coleridge just seemed to describe it: perhaps because I was reflecting on its engaging complexity. It begins with a series of massive dynamic contrasts, so be warned, if you’re wearing headphones, holding a full glass or both! It’s followed by ‘Jonction Nuageuse’, a moody, slightly sinister, improvised rumination on a chromatic riff, which itself emerges from a filtered world of almost pink noise, invoking the impossible clarity of the title. This is followed by the edgy restlessness of ‘Just In Exact’. There’s the faintest echo of Bowie’s Jean Genie running through the next track, ‘Inaltérable Offre’, a diffuse, dream-like group improvisation based on an idea by Joe Higham. ‘Chateau Kafka ‘ – the name of an imaginary wine – charts the development of a fast-moving spikey melody. The final track, ‘Conquistadores’, the longest on the album, begins by charting a similar path, building up, in this case, to a hypnotic mantra that could just go on and on. Instead, it stops suddenly, to be replaced by much slower music, with an intriguing voice-over, speaking in Spanish. I’d love to know what it’s saying (it’s something to do with the title), but I don’t think it matters: the effect is impressionistic. More recently recorded by EMB, the piece itself was composed by Segers back in his Univers Zéro days.
From what I’ve heard of his work, I’d describe Marco Pezzenati as a vibraphone player who expands the sound of the instrument outwards using other, often metallic, sound-sources. His arrangements – of Bach, Debussy and Schoenberg, among others – are spellbinding. When he plays other people’s music, he tends, again from what I’ve heard, to go for music that breathes slowly and demands close attention to timbre. The same could be said of his improvisations. As the album notes to ALTO FRAGILE, a joint venture with regular collaborator Mario Gabola, put it, we’re talking about music that: ‘seeks to push the boundaries of musicality toward fragile elements – where composition begins with the materials and collapses into their physical fragility’. It’s not on this album, but it’s a description which immediately put me in mind of the music and title of one of Pezzenati’s most captivating performances, that of Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige (‘Footprints in the snow’). The album title itself, by the way, is a label commonly seen on Italian parcels – ‘highly fragile’ – which explains the capital letters.
Sax-player Mario Gabola’s involvement with experimental and improvised music began at the turn of the century. In 2003, he founded the Italian free jazz noise band A Spirale (you can hear their work on their own Bandcamp label, Viande Records. It showcases a range of musicians, not just A Spirale itself. It’s well worth checking out). He first met Pezzenati in 2015, through the Italian improvisation group, the Tricatiempo Ensemble. Like Pezzenati, he extends the sound of his instrument outwards using, in this case, everything from feedback to everyday objects like balloons and tin cans.
If I have a personal favourite here, it’s the track ‘Satellite 21’, with its constant shifting between understated, colourful busy-ness and points of stasis. However, it’s not the only intriguing track on the album. ALTO FRAGILE is a great listen.
Over the years, when not wandering the woods of North Wales, playing percussive toys and sax with the Vibracathedral Orchestra or the Llift improvisation project, or providing album-art for The Fall, artist-musician John Godbert has been known to morph into the ‘psychedelic lounge karaoke singer’ or ‘cracked lounge crooner’ Herb Diamanté (I don’t know who coined those phrases, but they’ve followed him around almost ever since the invention of cut and paste, probably because they’re impossible to improve on). In the course of his career, Herb has collaborated with various artists including the American experimental rock band Sun City Girls and the British noise rockers Skullflower.
The songs collected on A Delicate Stiletto have been around for a while (an album of the same name was released back in the naughties), but the music is pretty timeless, and he’s not lost his capacity to surprise, so if you’ve not heard Herb before do check it out! If you have, you won’t need me to tell you to.
The recently-released album between representation and abstraction brings together the Belgian musicians accordionist and singer Karine Germaix and percussionist and sound artist Dirk Wachtelaer. Geramaix is perhaps best known for her blending of chanson and indie pop with her trio (check out the EP they brought out in 2020, Incandescence – see link below). Wachtelaer is an improvising musician who is known for collaborating with artists from different genres and cultures. He has worked in the past with Toshinori Kondo, Paul Litton and David Toop, to name but three.
I love the title of this album. Although it can strain towards representation, music is abstract. You can make it invoke the physical world (the movement of water, for example) but what it’s far better at is representing states of mind and relationships between people. And that’s what seems to be happening here. The fifteen short tracks that comprise this album have titles like ‘uniting’, ‘weaving’ and ‘melding’. There are some particularly striking ones, too: ‘blending’, ‘balancing’ and ‘individual truth’ spring to mind.
between representation and abstraction is an intriguing listen, and one which got me checking out the other work of these two performers.
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Dominic Rivron
LINKS
Domestic Dragon: https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/domestic-dragon-214cd-2026
ALTO FRAGILE: https://scatterarchive.bandcamp.com/album/alto-fragile
A Delicate Stiletto: https://herbdiamante.bandcamp.com/album/a-delicate-stiletto
between representation and abstraction: https://dirkwachtelaer.bandcamp.com/album/between-representation-and-abstraction
Je Brûle (le clip) from Incandescence: https://youtu.be/qR9Qf2bg7yM?si=6Pke8vsxxMqsddAB