Potpourri or Popery?, Jumble Hole Clough
Jumble Hole Clough
Bist Du bereit?, Karlheinz Essl / Andrew Levine,
Nachtstück Records
Three days ago at time of writing, Colin Robinson (aka Jumble Hole Clough) announced that he’d ‘suddenly made a new album.’ He was talkng about Potpourri or Popery? It was mostly put together in the last two weeks of last year and the first week of this. Music doesn’t get much more hot off the press than that. He warned would-be listeners to ‘expect a mixture of slightly disturbing songs – rock, psychedelic pop, electronica, blues, funk, jazz, avant-garde – the whole gamut of styles. Except for country & western.’ I know what he means about the country and western (although I have to admit one of my favourite albums, Eugene Chadbourne’s There’ll be No Tears Tonight, actually occupies a place in the permanent library of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville).
The finished product turns out to be one of Robinson’s trademark potpourris (or poperies) of surrealist vocals, guitar, electronics, samples and sundry other sounds. If there is a theme running through it all, I haven’t spotted it yet – words, as the title itself suggests, are musical elements, the sounds they make being at least as important as any meaningful connection between them. The Friday 13th theme (last seen on the earlier album, Auntie Why Does Your House Smell Funny?) puts in an appearance. And for anyone unfamiliar with the word (as I was), ‘tovarishch’ is Russian for ‘comrade’ – not that you need to know. As for ‘All You Need is Gloves’, all you need to know there is that ‘glove’ rhymes with ‘love’. The rest follows. Words and music are governed by the opaque logic of dreams and, as usual, that dream is immersed in the post-industrial landscape of the Calder Valley. There were several stand-out tracks for me: ‘Fruit and Veg’ is harmonically and – as one would hope with fruit and veg – texturally interesting. ‘Somewhere in the North’ makes the most of a simple idea. ‘Scylla Black Mass’ has Jumble Hole Clough running all the way though it like Blackpool through a stick of rock (not to mention the nifty expressive guitar work). ‘Black Pudding’ is as effective as it’s short. ‘Krishna on roller blades’, gets full marks for atmosphere and sheer oddity.
Potpourri or Popery is well worth checking out and, if it’s the first JHC you’ve heard you might want to check out the other albums on the JHC Bandcamp page (there’s over forty to go at!).
American-born thereminist Andrew Levine now lives in Hamburg. His music explores the manipulation of the theremin sound using modular synthesis. He also incorporates other electronic devices into what he does, such as the cracklebox (he has, in fact, created a series of ‘4 Études 4 4 Crackleboxes’ – see links). The cracklebox, for anyone who doesn’t know is an electronic instrument with seven keys. It’s impossible to predict exactly what will happen when you play it: performing with one is an intuitive voyage of discovery.
Austrian composer and improviser Karlheinz Essl has been composer-in-residence at both Darmstadt Summer School and IRCAM, as well as being a featured composer at the Saltzburg Festival. He has also been a Professor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna since 2007. Since the 1990s he has been increasingly involved with improvisation.
In November 2024, Essl and Levine got together on stage for the first time – at the Centro Sociale in Hamburg – and improvised a concert together. In the original concert programme, Levine is credited as playing theremin and modular synthesizer, as well as singing (what, no crackleboxes?), while Essl is credited as playing granular and modular synths. As Essl says on his website, ‘Fortunately, Andrew recorded the performance and it sounded so good that we decided to release it to the public.’ The title they gave it, Bist Du bereit?, translates into English as ‘Are You Ready?’.
The music is as playful as the titles often suggest. ‘Bleeps and Lines’, for example, is exactly what it says. In ‘Out of the Maelstrom’, the sounds often seem to be spinning and, in places, the music even has a hint of Poe’s Gothic-Romantic sensibility about it (elsewhere, Essl refers to Poe directly in relation to his work). The sadness of the ‘Elegy’ has a comical, clown-like feel to it, more bathos than pathos. The latter part of the album contains the two longest tracks and some of the most involved music. The original concert included projections by Essl, which, sadly, we don’t get to see here.
Anyone involved in creative work of any kind knows how sometimes things can just come together and happen in a special way that’s impossible to repeat. Listening to Bist Du bereit?, I get the feeling that’s what happened here. We’re indeed fortunate that Levine recorded it. And it’s great when music manages to be serious and involved while being fun at the same time (although the sound-world is completely different, I found myself thinking of the work of British improvisers Steve Beresford and the late Alan Tomlinson). An album definitely worthy of attention that left me hoping Essl and Levine just happen to record some more of their encounters.
Dominic Rivron
LINKS
Potpourri or Popery?
https://jumbleholeclough.bandcamp.com/album/potpourri-or-popery
Bist Du bereit?
https://nachtstuckrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bist-du-bereit
An interview Colin Robinson (Jumble Hole Clough) gave recently to International Times:
https://internationaltimes.it/theyve-built-an-ark-in-arkham/
4 Études 4 4 Crackleboxes
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6mB1P3H-0dq8jgLu-aGBiynJTdNvbfEm
Thanks for the great reviews.
Comment by Jim Ramsden on 27 January, 2025 at 1:16 pmI’m enjoying my exploration of Potpourri or Popery (a magnificent wordplay) but Essl & Levine are new to me.
It struck me that Colin Robinson (JHC) might make an interesting collaborator for either or both of Levine and Essl.
But is he ready?
Yes, we are ready! Thanks for your posting. You can reach me under my website http://www.essl.at
Comment by Karlheinz Essl on 28 January, 2025 at 2:33 pmLooking forward to hearing from you, Karlheinz