Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Cyclic Defrost Magazine

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David Lang – The Little Match Girl Passion (Harmonia Mundi)

Posted: 05 Aug 2009 05:49 PM PDT

David Lang may be most familiar to readers through his association with Bang on a Can, the multi-faceted new music organisation he helped found with Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon. His latest work, the Pulitzer-prize winning ‘The Little Match Girl Passion’ based on the folk tale by Hans Christian Anderson, is the most striking thing Lang has yet produced. Providing a fittingly charged score to this harrowing narrative, employing a musical vocabulary at once straightforward and direct, with hidden layers of complexity, ‘The Little Match Girl Passion’ stays long with the listener.

Anderson’s fable, of a girl selling matches on Christmas who then freezes to death, has an air of timelessness, and is naturally attractive to musical adaption – Helmut Lachenmann has also produced a version. Lang’s libretto reduces the tale to bare fragments and, read alone, has the force of poetry; sung by the Theatre of Voices, the results are spellbinding. Using a small ensemble, with bells and percussion suitably evoking the yuletide setting, Lang’s music flits between creeping dissonance and choruses of sublime beauty reminiscent of Arvo Part, a favourite composer of the vocal group. The score was also based partly on J. S. Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion, and Lang’s work retains a comparable awe-inspiring power. Also included are a number of shorter works exploring similar musical and narrative themes, and these function as intriguing parallels to the superlative title piece.

Joshua Meggitt

The Native Cats – Always On (Consumer Productions)

Posted: 04 Aug 2009 06:32 PM PDT

Before we hit the music, let me just say that, of every release bio I’ve ever read, and there’s been a few, the bio that came with Tasmania’s The Native Cats’ Always On stands out as my favourite of them all. It finishes with “Peter hasn’t told Julian what any of his lyrics are about. Julian hasn’t told Peter where he’s copied the bass lines from. Who knows where this fabulous lack of communication could lead?” It’s main plus is that, for all the humour, every joke is most likely based on a lot of truth.

The music reflects the attitude. Single, lo-fi drum machine loops repeat ad nauseum under one finger synth lines, grainy propulsive bass riffs and sung/spoke vocals. It’s a formula that leads to a surprising amount of variety while maintaining a basic consistency. ‘1000 A.D.’ could almost be postpunk with brighter production. I’m sure Peter Escott wouldn’t mind me saying that his warbling vocals never quite settle onto the notes he’s aiming for – that’s the whole point really. However, the sense of melodicism they hint at keep the ear attuned and interested. Julian Teakle’s bass lines are top heavy – Peter Hook without quite so much chorus effect – and seem to take the position of duetting with the vocal lines. With simple, subtle synth accents, the vocal and bass melodies often provide the entire sum of harmonic information in a track, so their snaking around each other is really the music’s main feature. The repetition feeds the mood of the music – ‘No Demons’ feels like it’s an intro building up to the explosion until, with 30 seconds remaining, you remember that the drum patterns haven’t changed in any of the other songs, what makes you think this one is going to opt for the cliched way out? The Native Cats prefer the subtlety of maintaining single directions, but always seem to have you expecting something else. It’s quite a great cat and mouse game.

Always On is raw but inviting. There’s no aggression, just drive counterbalanced with simple delicacy and a degree of brooding darkness. I’m certain that everything I can hear could be pulled off live by the duo, which gives the music an affecting immediacy. I can’t say I know a great deal about the Tasmanian underground scene, but The Native Cats are an excellent way to be introduced

Adrian Elmer

at 6:01 PM