The Heraclitean Two-Step, etc., Evan Parker (4 CDs plus 120-page book)
False Walls
To quote Plutarch – like you do – ‘According to Heraclitus one cannot step twice in the same river, nor can one grasp any mortal substance in a stable condition, but it scatters and again gathers; it forms and dissolves, and approaches and departs.’ Anyone reflecting on this and listening to Evan Parker’s solo improvisations will be immediately struck by the aptness of the title of the first album in this 4-CD collection, recently issued by False Walls to mark Parker’s eightieth birthday. In addition to the CDs, there’s a substantial, 120-page book to accompany them, featuring writing by and about Parker, interviews, poetry and artwork.
The Evan Parker that emerges from the book is something of a Renaissance character. He’s as at home quoting Tristram Shandy as he is quoting G. Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form. He’s not only a musician, but an artist, too, creating collages on the pages of his diary. His musical interests are eclectic: according to Richard Leigh, in the 1960s, ‘he had an impressive record collection – most of Coltrane’s output, plus Cage, Feldman, Xenakis, and what would now be called World Music but without the blandness’. The Spontaneous Music Ensemble’s Karyobin and Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun both came out in 1968: although each represented a very different approach to improvisation, Parker features on both. His interests range from Sufi mysticism to Bugs Bunny. There are insights into his spirituality, as when he quotes G. Spencer Brown: ‘…the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself. This is indeed amazing.’ He goes on to acknowledge science, but sees there to be other ways of understanding the world: ‘music is one of them, shamanism is another,’ he says. ‘Fortunately there are still cultures alive in the world where this is understood.’ It’s a way of seeing that’ll come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his solo improvisations, with their sense of ‘time suspended’ (to quote a Stephen C. Middleton poem written in response to a Parker improvisation and included in the booklet).
The Martin Davidson interview is full of interesting insights, such as when Parker talks of ‘trying to find out was there a middle ground somewhere between SME and AMM?’ (SME was more focussed on interaction, whereas AMM was more about layering sound). It’s reassuring, too, to know that he’s just as mystified by the processes of free improvisation as everyone else. Elsewhere, he talks about how, around 1969 (‘we played every week for almost a year before we did a gig’) he started playing regularly with percussionist Paul Lytton. He describes how they ‘used to listen back after gigs and after rehearsals – very often in the car – and we would find moments that we thought, “Ah, listen to that five seconds”, and wind it back and play it and study it, interiorise it. “Wouldn’t it be great if those kind of things happened more often?” … A strange way to do it, but it worked.’ Talking of 1969, there was an article about Parker in IT that year, Total Improvisation (see links below), which certainly helps fill in the picture we get of Parker around that time.
It’s interesting, too, to read what he says about technology (the Davidson interview took place in 1997). I was surprised that he sounded quite so pleased about the advances made in the recording and control of sound. I guess he’s right. I’ve always thought one of the great things, though, about the early days of free improvisation and experimental music was the primitive, improvised nature of the technology that often went with it – David Tudor’s home-soldered devices enclosed in Tupperware boxes, crystal mike inserts, hanging a lo-fi cassette recorder on a twisted rope and letting it spin, that kind of thing – but Parker comes over (in 1997) as being excited by the precision and sound quality of the new, digital technology. Of course, the excellent Trance Map project, Parker’s later work with Matt Wright, revolves around this technology. Then again, I guess it’s not really an either/or situation. I’m sure composers were excited by the advent of the pianoforte, but that doesn’t mean the harpsichord isn’t a great instrument. Far from it.
He has a lot to say, too, about the musicians and ensembles he’s worked with, solo versus ensemble playing, pulse (or the lack of it) and the passage of time in music. Some of it is revelatory, some more-or-less what you’d expect. In both cases, it’s interesting. He made a number of small additions to the interview text this year, shown in brackets, so we can take it that what we get here is pretty much a clear picture of where he stands. Asked, in 1997, if the 1970s were a ‘golden age’ of improvised music, he says he hopes not. On that, he’s been proved right. It was a great age, but not the ‘golden age’. I’d say digital technology, the advent of music streaming, the emergence of a world where you can simply record and share your own music, has created another.
Practise / Practice / Praxis is an essay that arose from an illustrated talk Parker gave on his work in 2015, at Turner Contemporary in Margate. He illustrated it with a selection of recordings of his work (a process he described as akin to Beckett’s play Krapps’ Last Tape). In it, he describes how he evolved his distinctive style of solo playing. He felt that to improvise solo required a ‘multi-minded’ approach, something achieved intuitively by Derek Bailey and not unlike, I guess, the way Bach created tonal solo works (most famously for violin and cello) where the structure of the instrumental line is important both melodically and harmonically and might even create the impression of counterpoint. He found his way to achieve this sense of depth through the discovery of circular breathing combined with the use of wide registers to create a similar illusion of polyphony. His first solo album (Saxophone Solos) came out in 1975, forty-nine years ago (it will be interesting to see what’s released next year to celebrate that!).
The first track on the first album (The Heraclitean Two-Step) was recorded way back in 1994, at the Unitarian Chapel in Warwick. Parker returned there in 2023 with his son, sound recordist Sam Parker, to record six more tracks. All seven, with a nod to Heraclitus, are named after rivers. There are three more solo albums in the collection, all recorded in the last six years at Parker’s favourite studio, Arco Barco in Ramsgate. The second album, The Path is Made by Walking, is a single track. It emerges from silence, key-clicks giving way to tentative pitched sounds that, in turn, quickly give way to Parker’s characteristic evolving, circling patterns, only to revert, after a while, to the tentative world of the opening. Then a single note rises and falls, veering one moment towards noise, at another into momentary grace-notes, before the establishment of more circling patterns. And so on, the music sometimes coming to rest before going off again in a new direction. There is the sense of a struggle to articulate something, which reminded me of Parker’s fondness for Beckett. Thinking of the title, I was reminded of something Beckett once said: “I have never in my life been on my way anywhere, but simply on my way”. As with the first album, the title of the second is an insight into the music: in this case the process of improvisation itself. The third album, The Straight and Narrow, is perhaps the most accessible of the four and a good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with Parker’s solo work and want to dip in your toe. The first track, Traffic, is a rip-roaring ride, almost bluesy in places. It’s the only track of Parker’s I’ve ever even tried to whistle! The third track, Straight vs Strait evolves into some of the most complex, virtuosic music in the whole box set. The final album, Time Sifts (one wants to keep reading it as ‘time shifts’, or at least I did) consists of four tracks, all (like most of the tracks on the third) dedicated to individuals. All four grow out of silence, air-notes or key-clicks giving way to more substantial sounds. The first, the title-track, is dedicated to scientist and ethnomusicologist Laurence Picken and ends with a passage which reminds us of the influence – acknowledged elsewhere by Parker – of traditional bagpipe musics on his playing. Is it a nod to Picken, famous for his work on the folk instruments of different cultures? Maybe. There may be other such references in the music, too, which I didn’t spot. At over twenty-eight minutes long, it could almost have been released as an album in it’s own right. The second track, Katasukashi is, for some reason, named after a Sumo wrestling move. The third, Geeignet, translates as ‘suitable’ and is dedicated to German pianist and free jazz pioneer, Alexander von Schlippenbach. The final track is dedicated ‘to you’ (the listener).
There is an intensity to Parker’s music: the more attention one pays to the evolving figures and to the articulation of the sounds, the more immersive it gets. And there’s well over four hours of it here to immerse oneself in! And then there’s the book, with it’s insight not only into Parker’s work and thinking, but into the history and practice of improvised music over the last six decades. An important release.
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Dominic Rivron
LINKS
The Heraclitean Two-Step, etc.:
https://evanparkerfw.bandcamp.com/album/the-heraclitean-two-step-etc
Evan Parker in International Times:
‘Total Improvisation’ – article by Victor Schonfield about Evan Parker, April 1969:
https://www.internationaltimes.it/archive/index.php?year=1969&volume=IT-Volume-1&issue=53&item=IT_1969-03-28_B-IT-Volume-1_Iss-53_015
‘Shadow of a Hand’ (poem by Rupert Loydell):
https://internationaltimes.it/shadow-of-a-hand/
Then Through Now – album review (1922):
https://internationaltimes.it/versions-of-live/
Marconi’s Drift, Transatlantic Trance Map – album review (2024):
https://internationaltimes.it/sonic-cartography/
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