Jexper HOLMEN (b.1971)
Oort Cloud (2008) [41:40]
Martin Stig ANDERSEN (b.1973)
Cosmogyral Echo (2010) [14:00]
Torben Snekkestad (soprano saxophone)
Frode Andersen (accordion)
Frode Haltli (accordion)
rec. Engholm Church, Copenhagen, December 2009. DDD
DACAPO 8.226562 [56:23] 
If prizes were awarded on the basis of user-unfriendliness, this CD would
be in line for a Pulitzer. To begin with there is the glossy 24-side booklet
- with nothing on any of the pages but strings of apparently random letters,
looking like computer printout run amok. How on earth to tell what is on the
CD? Step one, take the disc itself and read the text that spirals around it
in ever-decreasing circles. That supplies recording details, engineers' names,
instrumentalists' names, works' titles, composers' names and some legal warnings.
The clue for step two is also there: "Further information www.dacapo-records.dk".
Unfortunate for those who come across the disc in a shop - but it could be
that this release is altogether too 21st century for shops.
According to the Dacapo website - and anyone considering buying this will
need this
link - this is the world première recording of Jexper Holmen's "international
breakthrough work", fresh from plaudits at the Huddersfield Festival
of Contemporary Music. It is a "1-track, 1-hour cloud of sound - an extraordinary
experience in every way!" It is extraordinary, but so is the fact
that Dacapo would claim that a forty minute work is a sixty minute one. Because
the last fourteen minutes belong to a different piece - well, sort of (see
below) - by Martin Stig Andersen ... even though, in a further annoying twist,
they are both part of the same CD track, with a thirty second silence inserted
between them!
All of this rigmarole is apparently intended, however, according to the composer
- to lend the CD the appearance or aura of an artefact of electronica.
The booklet, Holmen says, is "a piece of conceptual art that unfolds
chaotic principles related to those of the music." Bizarrely, the recording
is part-sponsored by the Danish Composers' Society and "KODA's Fund for
Social and Cultural Purposes." One can only suppose that both societies
have very deep pockets - they certainly have a strange notion of marketing.
But is the music any good, after all that? In fact, the first question to
answer is, is Oort Cloud music? Naturally, much hinges on one's definition
of music. The strange soundscape of Oort Cloud - an astronomical term
referring to a vast, hypothetical region beyond the solar system containing
an immense number of icy objects, including billions of potential comets -
suggests electronic music, but everything here comes from a soprano saxophone
and two accordions, which have been amplified. Holmen frequently uses saxophones
and accordions in his work, not only for the aeriform soundscape they can
conjure up, as here, but also, according to the composer, because they are
not heavily associated with classical music, a fact which is important to
him, with his boundary-blurring mission.
Oort Cloud is forty minutes of dense, relentless sostenuto - an unremittingly
slow, dissonant, swirling, mesmerising mass of ethereal sonorities, punctuated
by shrill outbursts. It is both 'ambient' music, and intellectual music; it
is also what many might imagine deep space sounded like, if sound could carry
in a near-vacuum, which it cannot, not even the screams of those who loathe
it - of which there will doubtless be many.
In an online interview, Holmen says that his original inspiration for the
piece was listening to concert music in church with poor acoustics - though
the music itself was spoilt by over-resonance, he found the sound enthralling.
For their uncompromising/radical approach to music, Holmen counts Iannis Xenakis
and Karlheinz Stockhausen as among his most important influences - something
which will be immediately evident to anyone listening to this disc. One thing
Oort Cloud is not is easy listening. According to Holmen, it is "intended
to be difficult to listen to, because its structure is so complex that it
is practically impossible to perceive everything. I have no complete overview
of its structure myself either." Be that as it may, Holmen is heavily
influenced by 'electronica', citing Aphex Twin as one of his favourite 'composers'.
Fortunately his other influences - house, trip-hop, punk techno and experimental
death metal - are nowhere in evidence.
The work is very physically demanding on performers. The saxophonist must
constantly draw on the advanced techniques of circular breathing and 'multiphonics';
the accordionists must repeatedly stretch the bellows right out, requiring
sustained muscular effort.
The second work on the CD, Cosmogyral Echo, is actually a remix of
Oort Cloud by producer Martin Stig Andersen, who is also a composer
of electronic music. It is a quieter, even more static distillation of the
original. Less extreme, but also duller.
The sound quality is very high. For no obvious reason, the apparently random
letters of the booklet are actually endless permutations of the letters of
the composer's name and of Oort Cloud. Overall, this is music best
heard through headphones.
It would be perpetuating a fatuity to say that this is the kind of CD for
those with 'open minds', but it really is only for those who are comfortable
in the Kuiper Belt of experimentalism.
Byzantion
Only for those who are comfortable in the Kuiper Belt of experimentalism.