Tungu-Successful Utilization of Elements; Public Eyesore Records #157, 2024

 

The operative origin dynamic of Tungu's Successful Utilization of Elements can be summed up by the axiom: "ask and you shall receive". Ukrainian bassist and composer Sergey Senchuk sent out requests to a group of musicians and composers and sound artists that he had an interest in working with, and the album presents the results of those queries. It's a recording that is unified by the nature of its pieces, those being shorter vignettes that fuse the sounds of Tungu, sampled and pulled from acoustic instruments, with nineteen separate collaborators. Disaster Amnesiac has noted qualities that evince more of a fold-in characteristic than that of cut-up, in the sense that the transitions between and among the various sonic elements are always smoothly realized. Tungu places a lot of importance upon the human voice, either sampled or live performed, as is the case with the two pieces featuring Sainkho Namtchylak, The Tasting of Sensitivity and It's Great To Have A Sport Where You Cannot Be Found. Other stand out songs are Masque Bete N obj 217 which features whirling merry go round sounds and some sweet Primitive Guitar tones, tones that are again found on Four reasons to change the mood. That type of guitar playing is always appreciated in these parts, and Jean Marc Montera along with Guillaume Gargaud respectively do marvelous jobs with their axes. Liquid-ey Buchla by Philippe Petit is presented on Emergence from sleep, adept percussion samples and lovely pedal steel are paired within Susan Alcorn's Nightingale feature, minimal 1990's Cafe Glitch arises from DJ Sniff aka Takuro Mizuta Lippit on Hand in the mouth, and thick bowed basses ballast zesty electronics on Zeitdichte with Berit Jung. Jaap Blonk brings his bonkers dada vocalizing on JSPS and Rene Lussier plays crunchy Garage-ey tones on the very organic sounding Responds moi #2. Relaxing drones color Xavier Charles's Riviere seche and Giuseppe Verticchio aka Nimh's A few minutes before oblivion. These are my highlights from Successful Utilization of Elements but really each of its pieces have plenty of intriguing ideas for the astute listener to savor. Senchuk describes this album as "a whole musical world" and it really hangs all together as such. Sometimes all that one has to do is ask!