Abrash, Christian Moser (Scatter Archive)
Fearless, Martin Hoogeboom / Jukka-Pekka Kervinen / Senglar (Martin Hoogeboom)
Christian Moser is a Swiss-based oud player whose work cuts across genres. He started out as a violinist, but became interested in the oud in his late teens and went on to study it. As he says, ‘[he sees] the oud as an object that can be attended to, attuned to, in different ways that bring out strange hidden properties, that reveal something about the wood and the curvature of that instrument.’
Abrash is more meditative than the only other solo album of Moser’s I know about, Spirited Sketches. On that, sounds tend to crowd in more, as Moser goes off on more spirited – hence the title – explorations of the oud, creating a sound-world which radiates outwards from the instrument, through various extended techniques and employing various small objects. Abrash begins from similar raw materials, but what we get is a series of loosely-constructed forms which he compares to weaving a carpet. As he says, ‘everything is tolerated, except perfection’. The title, Abrash, is the Arabic word for ‘mottled’ or ‘speckled’ and is used to refer to the imperfections that arise in a carpet when the yarns run out. The end result is a spacious music of often mobile-like structures in which, typically, each sound is allowed just enough space to be itself without compromising the sense of forward movement. And, as with the sounds, so with the tracks; each is allowed just enough space: nothing outstays its welcome. At just under twenty-five minutes, it’s not a long album. However, it’s a magical listen and one which might appeal to a lot of people who wouldn’t normally consider improvised or experimental music to be ‘their thing’.
Dutch sound-artist Martin Hoogeboom describes himself as having ‘long standing interests in transcending conventional instrument approaches and the use of non-instrumental organic and home-made sounds.’ Here, on Fearless, the latest album to be released on his own Bandcamp label, he’s collaborating with Finnish composer and artist Jukka-Pekka Kervinen and Spanish sound artist Senglar.
It was John Cage, of course, who made silence famous: ‘There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot’. If you try listening to silence, you find it’s anything but. The world is full of sounds, most of which our brains filter out most of the time. It’s as if the music of Fearless is largely made up of such sonic detritus or, at least, sounds that sound like it. Odd though it may sound, listening to these five tracks I was reminded of what I’ve read about ocean gyres, the way they draw in all sorts of trash, creating huge floating islands. If there were similar natural processes – I guess they’d have to function in seas of time – that sucked in discarded sound, it would sound like this, a restless tapestry of everything your brain has thrown overboard, all the sounds you never paid particular attention to. It’s a fascinating listen that – like all good gyres – draws you in.
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Dominic Rivron
LINKS
Abrash: https://scatterarchive.bandcamp.com/album/abrash
Fearless: https://martinhoogeboom.bandcamp.com/album/fearless
Christian Moser: https://christianmoser.ch/Home
Martin Hoogeboom: https://martinhoogeboom.wordpress.com/
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen: https://jukkapekkakervinen.bandcamp.com/music
Senglar: https://soundcloud.com/senglar