van Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble : Memory / Vision

[dogmatik]

Review as featured on my site : www.dogmatik.be

Artist : Evan Parker's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble
Title : Memory / Vision
Label : ECM
Format : CD
Review Date : 25/Nov/2005
Release Date : Released

Evan Parker's EAE came to life through the saxophonist's interest in techniques of processing acoustic sounds in an electronic way. Parker normally performs with a trio but the trio becomes a quintet for this performance. But the staff in charge of capturing the event and altering it in real time is almost as big in number. Though a lot of tricks are applied, the album never becomes a mess. Evan Parker avoids this by making each piece on itself a solo or an effort by just a few members of the band. The trickery consists mainly of filters, pitch shifting, looping and adding effects to loops over a performance. The whole event turns the acoustic instrumentum into an electronic band of some sort. The violin for example becomes a unlimited source of loped synthesizer-like strings and pads full of depth, arpeggios, decay, reverb... Parker has also added recordings of previous performances by his band into these recordings.

Promotional material mentions that "unlike totally free improvisation, wherein group members spontaneously create with minimal or no direction from a conductor, Parker charted an outline for this piece in advance. Said outline provided the musicians with a bare sketch of the work's "span and dramaturgy", while also sculpting the form on which "specific electro-acoustic events and guided improvisations" would be placed". In the end, the whole idea seems to have been to add the engineers as an instrument, an additional player to the band. It adds a layer of complexity and interaction to the whole event of free improvisation. It takes a leap into the unknown, exploring new means of interaction actually. Often before, electronic musicians have had a go at creating jazz improvisations on their own or with fellow musicians, but Parker is truly the first person to realize the true real-time interaction between the traditional instrumental side and the electronic side. Both have to engage in interplay and both have to go along as the other adds an idea to the ongoing creation.

All of this makes it impossible to tell wetter a musician is playing (his instrument in a normal way, in a experimental way) or if an engineer is looping, altering, ... Parker has created a unison between acoustics and electronics. And this is a huge achievement. The final result is a disc meant to be listened to in one go. The music varies from 'close to silence' moody bits, flirting with little hick-ups and interferences to more energetic, frantic, sometimes violent parts. The disc is a true intellectual challenge, aimed at an experienced listener with an open mind-set. It is experimental and innovative : scarce qualities in our nowadays environment of consumerism.

Link to the ECM website: http://www.ecmrecords.com/Startseite/startseite.php

[mosc]

Excellent review - thanks for posting it here...

[peripatitis]

This is trully an excellent cd .
I've seen the group perform in Amsterdam , but i got more 'mixed' feelings then.
Evan parker's performance was quite irritating (let's do the random generator style) it seemed that he was just trying to fill some buffers .
Of course it could just have been a bad night .

By the way the people that are in this electro-acoustic Ensemble are far from being just technicians.
From what i understand most of them are composers of electro-acoustic music and actually they might be the main reason for the 'musicality' of the cd !

[vi scose poise]

I've been listening to Evan since discovering his work with Barry and Paul Lytton and then discovered this ensemble last year. Being interested in both improvisation and contemporary computer technology, I fell in love with the first two releases, Toward the Margins and Drawn Inward. Though I enjoyed this live recording, I find the first two releases more enjoyable. I have not heard the latest recording of the even further-expanded ensemble, The Eleventh Hour.

Thanks for the review!

If you're interested in more of an experimental jazz with synthesizers, check out Supersilent.