During the period of the mid to late 2010's, Disaster Amnesiac was pretty deeply immersed in listening to Improvised Music in as many of its varied strains as could be found. Any and all forms of delivery were veritably gobbled up by this fan, the more the merrier, really. Blessed by having a house with a sweet sound room, easy access to live venues which showcased improvising musicians and additionally a relatively low stress commute for jamming CDs, I spent tons of time enjoying the myriad sounds to be discovered from the form. RAIC (Richmond Avant Improv Collective) was one group that was discovered during that time, and Lamentations is one of their releases that shuffled into the rotation. It's a really lovely boxed CD document of the music or RAIC, which was (is?) guided by drummer/composer Samuel Goff. This sumptuous package comes not only with a disc's worth of musical ruminations but several post card sized photos, mostly of rural southern abodes but also a few of the musical participants. The one in Disaster Amnesiac's possession features banjo master Paul Metzger looking quite severe and barefooted guitarist John Saint Pelvyn mid-exploration. All that being said, RAIC primary mission was clearly musical exploration so let's dwell upon that aspect for a spell. Over fourteen tracks, the collective do indeed explore within the macro group matrix along within their micro subjective experiences. Goff leads the group not so much by declaration as by suggestion: his drumming throughout does not so much push as it does murmur. He's very adept at coaxing rounded or fluffy tones from mallet press rolls upon toms and cymbals. These pulses offer aspects of shade and discrete drama which are hugely present and at the forefront of Lamentations. Goff keeps the wailing to a minimum throughout and it's a testament to his taste as a leader save excepting parts of Possession O The Spirit and Cancellation Reversal which close the proceedings. Mostly he sticks to his own singular free pocket explorations. The strings of Zoe Olivia Kinney on cello and Robert Andrew Scott on violin are also notable timbres on the album. They skitter about within the pieces, at times percussive and at others more tonal, but always spinning out mysterious tones and semi-tones that give the entire album a delightfully Avant tone. Erik Schroeder brings controlled alto saxophone bleats and beat howling to the mix. He pairs particularly well with Goff's drumming. Passages wherein the two feed off of each other's playing give the most heated moments on this mostly cool sesh. Over the years and listens, Metzger's banjo has mostly been opaque to this listener. Disaster Amnesiac has often thought that he may have just stuck well to the background, physically, not wanting to overtake the other players. That said, there are some interesting, ghostly moments on Baptism that sound guitar or banjo generated. Ditto for Possesion Of The Spirit. Or is that six string chiming coming from Pelvyn? The real musical wild card on Lamentations is vocalist Laura Marina, whose naive soprano utterances go off into wildly, very innocent places. It's her approach that gives the performance a veneer of childlike overall tone. When she steps to the mics it's almost as if the entire group (hello Jacob Courington on bass and Brandon Simmons on flute) is made of people that are only just now using their given instruments. I am an appreciator of that, as it seems to me that one of the goals of extended techniques and improvisation is to get to those types of places, where every note and gesture feels like a newfound discovery. Was Goff cognizant of that effect that Marina's style would have on the rest of the group? Whether or not that was the case it's testimony to his astuteness as an assembler of musical personnel. Is RAIC still a working unit? Do they still present their freely improvised sounds to people in and around Richmond, the Eastern Seaboard, or even further afield? Here's to hoping that this is the case. My copy of Lamentations came with a thank you card. Wanna say thanks right back to Samuel Goff and his crew for all of the beautiful, otherworldly sounds that they pushed out into the sonic world.
No comments:
Post a Comment