Sì sì sì! Lo comprai appena uscito incuriosito dalle preview. Disco molto particolare, piccoli frammenti impreziositi dalle improvvisazioni vocali.
In Denseland, the motormouth vocal improvisations of David Moss are reborn in the shapeshifting structures of Berlin electronica. By Clive Bell
Who??d have thought it? That what we needed was an improvised record made by a couple of graduates from the Berlin University of Ambiguous Underground Techno, and vocalist David Moss. Yes, that David Moss. The mile-a-minute, opera-house-barnstorming vocal improvisor, slapping listeners in the mush with his vocal chords till they beg for mercy. Because Denseland??s Chunk is an avant disco smash: close-up, crisp drumming, with a pit-ofthe-stomach boom on the one, learned from Techno. Hannes Strobl??s bass is agile but economical, and Moss??s vocals swim through shark-infested seas of electronic effects. It recalls Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit??s Secret Rhythms series, but with a fresher, improvised feel.
From Fred Frith to the English National Opera, Moss has worked with the best. ??The Caruso of the avant garde?, as one review had it, has babbled for Berio, scared the audience for Johann Strauss??s Die Fledermaus, and was last seen in London playing oh-so-crazee Mafia killer Mr Eddy in Olga Neuwirth??s operatic version of David Lynch??s Lost Highway. You can??t help wondering if Moss has got rather stuck with his avant-motormouth shtick, the go-to guy when you need an unembarrassable vocal acrobat to generate phonemes like a runaway dictaphone. But music moves along, and one magazine??s tagging of Moss as ??cantorial, David Byrne-ish, Beat-cool, raving post-Berio in the mad gabble of the city? is uncomfortably close to Radu Malfatti??s notorious condemnation of premillennial improvisation as just too gabby.
Phil Minton is another astonishing vocal conjuror, whose extreme vocalese usually emerges at high speed, like a torrent of ectoplasm. But in 2009 Minton showed his musical skills run deeper than a display of speed and volume, with his contribution to Midhopestones on Another Timbre making listeners check the credits to see if he was really there. Minton??s carefully calibrated blending in with the rest of the group (Rhodri Davies, Michel Doneda, Louisa Martin and Lee Patterson) was the key to that album??s achievement. As Richard Pinnell wrote in his Watchful Ear blog, it didn??t sound like the sum of five different instruments, as an Improv record of 15 years ago might, but an amorphous mass of sounds shifting and moulding itself into new shapes.
In a similar manner, Denseland aim for a unified sound, and Moss is adding texture, not grandstanding. Not that Chunk sounds anything like the expansive, fen-like landscapes of Midhopestones. Chunk is a robust, rhythmic record for the most part, a series of seductive grooves, but the skills of layered-up Improv are always present. ??Low Velocity Zone? finds Moss looping a dreamy vocal phrase, like a half-forgotten scrap of Bryan Ferry, and then hovering a couple of high, long tones on top, while bass and drums power forward. The dying moments are simply lovely, not a pair of words I ever expected to use about a David Moss track.
The drumming is a treat too. Hanno Leichtmann dances nimbly on skins, bowls and tambourines ?? are those knitting needles or chopsticks? He captures these sensuous sounds by close miking, while the electronics fatten up and deepen the music??s lower strata. ??Obsidian? mixes flickering stickwork with a pinging beat, like a game of Pong, while Moss sounds like a 78 rpm record in the next room. Perhaps Leichtmann??s best moment is on ??Chant Bleu?: Hannes Strobl has set up an amiable loop that somehow makes his bass sound like a harp, while Moss is searching for loose change under his uvula. Cool as a pickled Japanese cucumber, Leichtmann sashays in with a relaxed, brushed beat that slips around the bass in an unexpected way.
The ??God??s in his Heaven?? vibe is not even dispersed when Moss is moved to rant through a megaphone, like a distant North Korean reveille.
Strobl and Leichtmann are Berlin pals who go way back. Leichtmann works solo as electronica artist Static, and maintains strong links with Jan Jelinek, whose sensuous MicroHouse persona, Farben, is an audible influence on Denseland??s restrained grooves. Strobl meanwhile has a beautiful album also out this spring, Hear 5 Pieces with Toshimaru Nakamura and Tony Buck, where the starting point is Strobl??s compositions for his electric string bass, a skinny double bass that has dieted and shed its wooden curves. Strobl and Leichtmann have been playing together since their mid-1990s live Techno project, Paloma, and those years of both musicians closely interweaving their instrumental and electronic work are key to Chunk??s tightly meshed sound.
In photos, each member of the trio takes a turn to hide his face behind one of those cute, oval Omnichords, a kitsch Suzuki device with preset rhythms and a chord ??strumplate??. Denseland also employ a battery of machines to enable looping the loop on stage. The very contemporary sound of live looping ?? as practised by, say, Battles ?? is one of the tricks that make Denseland click, but what??s being looped, and by whom? Impossible to say on a track like ??Cyclone??s Centre?, where all is splendidly ambiguous. It??s the very uncertainty that is so effective. The album is a happy marriage of ebullient playing and exhilarating machines, of disciplined rhythms and improvising freedoms. ??Cumulus Crowds? is the darkest track, an ominous mumble of urban nerves. It may not have Burial looking over his shoulder ?? though looking over your shoulder is what Burial??s music is all about ?? but it shares some of that windswept dread and towerblock theatre.
... Ma magari già lo conosci...
