Field

The creative improvising quintet Polwechsel certainly are part of a proud lineage that celebrates 20th century contemporary composition in the unconventional, abstract fashion of their predecessors. With signposts leading back to John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Alvin Lucier, and more directly, Morton Feldman or AMM, the group specializes in free discourse with loose rhythmic association, or none at all, while concepts like minimalism, counterpoint, and coalesced cohesion are also thrown out the window. Termed as a reductionist band while also taking into account Cage's indeterminate theorems, the group presents two lengthy pieces almost impossible to categorize, describe, or even fathom, upon or after listening. Feldman disciple and AMM pianist John Tilbury is added into the mix, a lithe and spacious improviser who invents semi-solo passages, adding to the larger color palette these musicians forge. Saxophonist John Butcher will be familiar to followers of this non-idiomatic style, a founding member who left the group after the making of this record. He joins percussionists Burkhard Beins, Martin Brandlmayr, and the composers of the ensemble -- cellist Michael Moser or acoustic bassist Werner Dafeldecker. At given stretches, the resulting music is thick, dense, and heavy, but more times than not, equally patient and unrelenting. The listener should be on alert that these sounds are not for everyone, and those inclined to enjoy it must take their time to appreciate it. Moser's spontaneous composition, "Place/Replace/"Represent," is not so cryptic a title as it represents a continuum of sight, sound, and egalitarian presence. Deep percussive sonic booms and long string tones, together with Tilbury's glistening piano notes suggest a careful tip-toe motif before overtones of noise are folded in. Like multiple miniatures that cannot possibly blend together, the piece is not so much developed as consistent in its mixed messages, at times macabre and labyrinthine located with little or no rhythmic glue holding it together. This is about as spare a music as you may ever hear, coalesced on a completely different level. Where Dafeldecker's "Field" is placed in a more guttural yet organic level, it phase-shifts between dense magnetic resonances, walls of sound, and natural sonic sculptures. Sustained, stone-cold wheezing with acoustic and electronic density suggests the pioneering Musica Eletronica Viva in its bold echoes of ghost-inspired ancestry and the grim future combined. Gushing, flowing water, throbbing but not actually pulsing abstract rhythms, and a quietude not wholly defined, then ratcheted up in an industrial fashion somewhat identifies the mid- to end section. A music based on despair and disillusionment, Polwechsel somehow takes these deep feelings of hopelessness and turns them into a stunningly vibrant, infinitely intriguing pastiche, emphasizing that indeed hope is a virtue we should fervently cling to, intensifying it instead of casually dismissing.