Keeping it Together as the World Crumbles

   

the call of a crumbling world, Inclusion Principle (Discus Music)

Ligand, Tom Ward / Adam Fairhall (Raw Tonk Records)

Martin Archer and Hervé Perez – both reed players with a number of interesting sidelines in keyboard, electronics, field recordings and suchlike –  have developed the balancing of the different elements in their work, from their use of field recordings to the cool jazz, to a fine art. That they have been playing together – as the duo Inclusion Principle – twenty years now, may have something to do with it. They aim to celebrate this anniversary with a series of releases over the year, of which the call of a crumbling world is the first.

The title is apt. There are four tracks, although the music was originally recorded in a single session, an improvisation for organ and laptop.  If I read the notes on the album right, the woodwinds were added later. The album offers two options: to listen to the session as one track, or as four separate tracks. At the beginning, the way I hear it, blocks of dark electronic sound create the sense of a forbidding environment, an earth devoid of everything we rely on to allow us to take it for granted. The saxophones, when they come in, seem to exist as an oasis in the middle of it all, nowhere more so than in the third section, romantic tangental. I’m not sure if the jungle-like sounds are field recordings or electronically created, but, either way, they had me thinking of the paintings of Henri Rousseau. It then occurred to me what an apt association this is; Archer and Perez seem to work to a similar aesthetic: at once avant-garde while at the same time being approachable. Erik Satie does something similar, and there is something of Satie, too, in this music: not the sound itself, but the way blocks of material are added together to create larger forms and the way the music takes its time to evolve yet still holds our rapt attention.

the call of a crumbling world is exactly what it says. It’s too complete a work of art to do anything as crude as carry a ‘message’, but it leaves you with the feeling that you’ve been listening to music that speaks of the times we’re living through in ways that are more easily expressed with music than with words. Essential listening.

Reed player Tom Ward, has been (and is) involved in numerous projects, including being leader of  the Magwort Sax Quartet. He also co-runs BRÅK, a regular South London free improvisation night.  Adam Fairhall has, over the past fifteen years, built up an international reputation as a jazz pianist and improvising musician. Together, they’ve worked as a duo for a long while. This album, Ligand, is – by my count – their third. It picks up their ongoing musical conversation more or less where the last one left off – which is no bad thing, given the depth and quality of that conversation! The main difference is that the previous album (Live at the Bridge) features Fairhall on a variety of keyboards (prepared Hohner Pianet T, dulcitone, accordion, harmonium and toy piano) while on Ligand he goes for a more minimal approach, confining himself to a Hammond C3.

Jazzwise have described their music in the past – tongue in cheek, perhaps – as ‘Konitz and Tristano under the influence of Schoenberg.’ I know what they mean. The opening chords of the first track here might be described as a tad Schoenbergian, but as the music develops, it loses most of its edginess and mellows considerably. The next two tracks are more playful and spiky, though, and as the album develops we discover just how wide a range of expression Ward and Fairhall bring to their music. Staccato organ gestures push pitched sounds into the realm of noise.  Frenetic textures give way to slow, intense passages. The mood keeps shifting. There are surprises, too: dark, noisy bass chords on the organ, or sudden shifts into very soft dynamics. The final track ends – surprisingly, perhaps, but not at all crudely, it’s just the way it is – on a major chord (a trick, as it happens, Schoenberg occasionally played).

The title puzzled me. I had to look it up. It turns out that ‘Ligands are ions or neutral molecules that bond to a central metal atom or ion.’ As I vaguely grasp this, it seems a pretty good metaphor for an interesting way of thinking about what a duet might do: two particles cleaving to a central particle, the latter, in this case, being a sense of musical common purpose. Whatever their reason for choosing it, it gives rise to some letter-crunching track-titles. Dipotassium Magnesium Ethylenediaminetetraacetate, for starters. Thank heavens for copy and paste. Great album though!

To go back to the title of the first album here, the world certainly seems to be crumbling. While, over the last few days, I’ve been listening to all this music and writing these reviews it’s been impossible to ignore the background noise of dark, depressing news: from climate catastrophe to vice-signalling would-be demagogues inciting racial hatred and even war. One great thing is the way artists like those I’ve written about here carry on through it all. Indeed, it often seems that the darkness of the times only causes the depth of their work to run deeper.

 

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Dominic Rivron

LINKS

the call of a crumbling world: https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-call-of-a-crumbling-world-9009dl-2025

Ligand: https://rawtonkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ligand

An interview with Martin Archer:
https://www.kathodik.org/2023/03/18/interview-with-martin-archer-founder-and-director-of-the-label-discus-music/

Hervé Perez: http://www.spacers.lowtech.org/herve/

Adam Fairhall: http://www.adamfairhall.co.uk/

Tom Ward: https://madwort.co.uk/

Live at the Bridge: https://madwort.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-bridge

 

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