4g -- Cloud

Gary Sisco · October-6th-2005, 09:42 AM

Double wow.

Gary Sisco · October-6th-2005, 10:07 AM

Communication breakdown
it's always the same!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vince Kargatis · October-6th-2005, 10:26 AM

Haven't listened to d1 one, but "Yellow Cloud", the Victo performance, is as lovely as I remember it from Victo - it makes for a very nice record.

Gary Sisco · October-6th-2005, 10:35 AM

Ah, finally! A fellow traveler!

Vince -- I listened to both discs last night and it's my favorite Erstwhile or eai recording in the past year or more, easily. Beautiful.

John B · October-6th-2005, 11:33 AM

Disc 1 is good but disc 2 is sublime.

MRS · October-6th-2005, 11:38 AM

what John said

Sergio Zamora · October-6th-2005, 01:30 PM

Disc 2 is pure, unadulterated motherfucker.

I haven't heard it enough to comment, but I can sort of see where Rowe is coming from when he compares it to a string quartet. There's the same sort of fluidity, and even though you can't always say who is doing what, you can distinguish all the parts. And you can hear how all the parts integrate. Certainly not harmony and melody in a traditional sense, but it is a music with its own internal logic. It's hard to even call it experimental at this point because it sounds so coherent and 'resolved'.

Gary Sisco · October-7th-2005, 08:49 AM

I listened to it all evening yesterday with the machine on repeat mode.

This is my new favorite Erstwhile or eai recording. A beautiful performance, all around. I prefer disk 2 also, slightly, but the whole is great.

Lots of great stuff has come out of Erstwhile in the past year, but this is the best so far, you ask me.

My highest recommendation.

frankiepop · October-7th-2005, 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sand

Anyway, It's about time I checked out Rowe. I'll consider it. Next time I order something. Possibly.

rowe is arguably one of the best, if not the best..., musician(s) today...

Gary Sisco · October-7th-2005, 09:32 AM

I'm with you, F-pop. I totally agree. Also someone who took the electric guitar somewhere that Hendrix and his descendants (direct or indirect) never went and beyond anywhere they did go, and more power to him for it, you ask me.

Jason Bivins · October-7th-2005, 10:21 AM

It is pretty amazing, at least what I've heard so far. I popped in disc 1 late last night and was pretty knocked out by it.

David b. · October-7th-2005, 10:52 AM

I just received my copy today, it feels like i'm gonna have a pretty busy weekend listening to this lovely record....

Apparently you can now officially highly recommend an album by its cover

Jon Abbey · October-19th-2005, 11:07 AM

up, maybe people have had this long enough now that they can talk about it a bit more.

this is one of the rare Ersts that I've kept in pretty frequent rotation after releasing it, and it's continuing to grow on me. the only two others I remember like that were World Turned Upside Down and Wrapped Islands.

I also just got some very nice feedback from Günter Müller:

"dear jon

just finished listening the 1st time to 4g - but be sure it will not
be the last time. in my opinion this album is far the best erstwhile
release till now! a masterpiece! congratulations.

best
gunter"

Brian Olewnick · October-19th-2005, 11:15 AM

Interesting in that I have a somewhat different take on this, apparently, than many. Of the three tracks, I greatly prefer the 2nd on disc 1 to the others. imho, it's a tremendous piece of great depth--the only new thing I've heard this year I enjoy more is the last disc of erstlive 005. I like the 1st track a lot too, though that's more purely "solid", ie, excellent in a way I expected from this group. Disc 2, while I enjoy it and while there are moments I find very beautiful, leaves me with a nagging sense of something missing. I understand its "cloud-stasis" structure (I think), but there's still something about it that slightly bugs me. I don't think it scratches the marrow like track 2.

Given all this, it's a decidedly excellent set and it's remained in my active play pile since I've had it.

crawjo · October-19th-2005, 01:32 PM

As I mentioned in the WAYLT now thread, I love this music. Unfortunately, excessive amounts of school work have drastically cut into my listening time, so I've only been able to give it a couple of listens so far. But from what I've heard I'd say it's probably the best new release I've heard this year. I promise to share more interesting thoughts when time permits, but the way things are looking now, that might not be until Christmas.

In any event, thank you thank you thank you Jon for making this music available.

Gary Sisco · October-19th-2005, 03:04 PM

Jon -- Haven't time for writing much but I may well agree with Gunter about this one. There aren't many records I can just keep listening to on repeat mode all night. That's about the best review I can give. Erstwhile's had an amazing year of quality releases but this one is the best of an excellent lot.

Brian Olewnick · October-26th-2005, 08:33 PM

fwiw, listening yet again to disc 2 and, I think, enjoying it more than previously. High volume helps with the enveloping-nature of it, I imagine. Will wait for spousal apartment abandonment sometime this weekend, perhaps, to seriously crank it....

Slurpy · October-27th-2005, 02:39 PM

The high praise for this has me on the verge of taking the plunge on G4....can anyone add anything else to how this sounds or a similarity
to other works? Like Sand, I'm a Rowe virgin but it seems like that needs to end....

Jon Abbey · October-27th-2005, 09:31 PM

I'm itching to talk about this record, at least a little bit, and I've kept my mouth shut for a month or so, so here goes...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slurpy

The high praise for this has me on the verge of taking the plunge on G4....can anyone add anything else to how this sounds or a similarity to other works? Like Sand, I'm a Rowe virgin but it seems like that needs to end....

it doesn't compare well to music outside the genre, so I'd say that wouldn't be so helpful. it occurred to me this week that it's in the lineage of both Weather Sky and Wrapped Islands, a seemingly strange mix but it works here. no actual reviews of this yet, some in the works, it's a lot for people to really digest.

I personally wouldn't suggest it from the perspective of a first Keith disc, though. for that, I'd go with World Turned Upside Down, ErstLive 001 or Duos for Doris. 4g is Keith's idea (the project he was most excited about when we were planning the German AMPLIFY) and his overall musical concepts (the string quartet, the idea of a hovering cloud), but his actual playing isn't so much in evidence.

Slurpy · October-28th-2005, 09:20 AM

Ok, but does it kick ass!?

I've had good luck on the recommendations I've received so far..so I think
I'll spring for this and maybe more later on. Thanks, Jon.

Gary Sisco · October-28th-2005, 09:33 AM

The more I listen to it, the more I grasp the -- pretty abstract, let's face it -- string quartet idea behind it. There are times when it seems like distinct voices move into the foreground, then fade and others emerge out of the drones. I can dig it. It is also cloudlike in that it moves and changes but remains the cloud, like watching one in the sky for a long period of time. I don't really have a musical vocabulary for this kind of music, yet, so it's very hard for me to verbally communicate the musical ideas and happenings that strike me as I listen to it.

I'd put it in the same lineage of Ersts as Jon did above, but I'd add The World Turned Upside Down as the beginning of that particular strand of Erstwhile releases: TWTUD, Weather Sky, Wrapped Islands, Cloud. One of these evenings when I have the time, I'll load up the changer that way and let it go for a good long while.

Jon Abbey · October-28th-2005, 10:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slurpy

I've had good luck on the recommendations I've received so far..so I think I'll spring for this and maybe more later on. Thanks, Jon.

don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good choice for a first "eai" record, just not one where you can get much of a grip on Keith's work, I don't think.

MRS · October-28th-2005, 01:45 PM

After a couple pretty intense listening situations/environments, disc one, track two is the best part of the album.

Brian Olewnick · October-28th-2005, 01:52 PM

Once in a while, Schaumann gets things right. After my last post, I still found much of the last 20 or so minutes of disc 2 to be...less persuasive than much of the rest of the album. It's still, overall a good piece of music but I don't think it touches the 2nd track from Disc 1. (Haven't given it that full-out blast yet, though).

Wonder if there's a correlation between those who prefer disc 2 here and those who prefer the first two discs of ErstLive 005 to the last one. Might just be a matter of enjoying a fuller approach to a more desolate, pared down one (as hugely rich as I find the latter attack to be).

hatta · October-28th-2005, 02:14 PM

I'm also in the disc 1 track 2 camp, it edged ahead of disc 2 from about my second listen to cloud and I was sure by my third. Interestingly enough I ended up listening to disc 2 yesterday at as high a volume as I could take on headphones. This does really reveal layers and layers of cloud like particulars (and also Ambarchi playing the note sequence from Close Encounters). It is a great disc and must have been a stunning show to have seen. But d1t2 remains the most engaging and interesting to me. As I said on slsk a week or so ago, it seems the most forward looking the most like new music. Beautiful and more challenging. FWIW disc 3 of EL005 is my favorite, though I think it requires the full weight of the previous 2 discs to reach the heights that it does.

Brian Olewnick · October-28th-2005, 02:29 PM

Yeah (sorry to divert from 4g for a moment), agreed that disc 3 of EL005 was very much the end of a necessary journey. Maybe if the Victo performance had gone on for another couple of hours....That beautiful paring away....not this, not this, this....

Vince Kargatis · October-28th-2005, 03:15 PM

Mildly interesting that Cloud contains only 3 tracks, which are named, and yet people refer to disc & track numbers. I would be very surprised if some random album (double or not) with even more tracks (and thus technically harder to keep track) would not be referred to by names. Is this only because Erst didn't put track names on the outside?

Brian Olewnick · October-28th-2005, 03:37 PM

Yeah, if I remember correctly, Keith did actually intend the pieces to have some indirect programmatic content (pollution, etc., hence "Yellow Cloud") but I guess there's a natural tendency among some of us to turn away from that. Or we're just so used to listening to discs where every track is "untitled".

Jon Abbey · October-28th-2005, 05:37 PM

I agree that disc 1, track 2 is probably my favorite of the three ('deformed veil' for Vince) if I was forced to choose, but one thing I really like about doing double CDs is the ability to include twice the material, which gives a much broader perspective. bear with me a bit, this is something I've been thinking a lot about as we put the Keith/Toshi duo project together...

Keith told me a few years ago that when playing solo sets, he usually either plays right around 20 minutes or right around 40 minutes, and the two types of sets are very different. after we talked about this in depth, I spent a lot of time thinking about it and listening to his solo sets in that context. the 20 minute ones tend to be far simpler, whereas the 40 minute ones typically cover maybe four times the range and are four times as "large" of an achievement.

this is kind of how I feel as a producer when putting together double CDs, it allows me to make the release three-dimensional in a way instead of linear, two or three different angles onto the world of the musicians (usually a specific world created for that specific project), which hopefully ends up in a much greater achievement. the Erst subseries I'm personally most proud of at this point is the recent double CD one: Duos for Doris, Good Morning Good Night, cloud, and the upcoming Keith/Toshi, probably (we're still deciding for sure).

so I guess that my point, besides being simply an explanation of my own mindset, is that I think it misses the point a bit to break it down like Brian's doing here and like he tends to do on the longer Erst releases. it's the combination of the different parts that hopefully makes it the strong overall statement that it's intended to be. it's of course totally valid to prefer some parts to others, but I think it also misses the macro point to an extent.

and as a side note, I have real trouble understanding this way of breaking down EL005 specifically, it's something that really never occurred to me once while listening to it or thinking about it. it's simply one continuous 230 minute piece to me, only broken into three CDs because of current technology constraints.

Brian Olewnick · October-28th-2005, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon Abbey

so I guess that my point, besides being simply an explanation of my own mindset, is that I think it misses the point a bit to break it down like Brian's doing here and like he tends to do on the longer Erst releases. it's the combination of the different parts that hopefully makes it the strong overall statement that it's intended to be. it's of course totally valid to prefer some parts to others, but I think it also misses the macro point to an extent.

and as a side note, I have real trouble understanding this way of breaking down EL005 specifically, it's something that really never occurred to me once while listening to it or thinking about it. it's simply one continuous 230 minute piece to me, only broken into three CDs because of current technology constraints.

I agree to some extent, especially (as I said above, on EL005), though in any work, long or short, it's not uncommon to think that a given portion is more successful than another. I think of that one in particular (and I recall Keith thinking along similar lines) of a stripping away of unessential sounds, getting to the purity of the closing 45-50 minutes. So, as hatta noted above, the first couple of hours are necessary parts of the process (and, to be sure, beautiful in and of themselves); you wouldn't have the closing portion without them. Isolating that portion for special praise is only, to me, to recognize the "success" of the performance. In any case, as I've said before, 005 is my favorite new music since the Doris session.

4g, as a release, is at least a little different simply due to the fact that it's three separate performances. You can at the same time understand that they're, perhaps, thought of as a part of a body of work (and appreciate them as such) as you can decide that you think some individual pieces work better than others. Similarly, you can like a given movement of a string quartet more than its companions no matter how much the composer thinks they should be heard as a unit. Another excellent release anyway, even if I don't personally quite, as a whole, set it up there in the rarified air of Doris.