Search - Matt Bauder :: Weary Already of the Way

Furthering the Anonymous

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 11/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First of all, before you read another sentence, please listen to the sound samples.

I am not quite sure how to review this work by Matt Bauder. I am finding it to be a challenge to some of my preconceptions about music.

What Bauder did in March 2001 was to bring a very talented sextet of musicians into a recording studio. At no time did they play all together. In fact, they seem to have recorded mostly solo or in small groups. Bauder gave them pieces to play and told them to play knowing that the recordings would be electronically manipulated. Mostly he just cut the results up into little bleeps and blips of sound. No electronic instruments were used (except, briefly, an organ) and there was no electronic distortion of the instruments at the time of the recording.

For his musicians he used himself on tenor sax and clarinet, Todd Margarsak and Rob Mazurek on cornet, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, Jason Roebke on bass and Aram Shelton on alto sax and clarinet. All these musicians are both imposing players on their respective instruments and excellent composers.

Bauder intent seems to have been anti-jazz. Let me explain that because I don't mean that in a good or bad way. Jazz music is notoriously difficult to pin down and I am not the man to try. However, it does seem to me to be true that jazz involves interaction between band members. It involves deep listening and trained intuitive responses to a evolving soundscape.

Bauder is taking a group of musician who are superb at that and isolating them from each other. And then further isolating them by changing their efforts to the almost unrecognizable. During the electronic sections of the four nameless pieces on this CD there is little sense of what instrument is playing what, let alone who.

There are always wonderful (seemingly) unmanipulated sections that have been layered together. These also work against my expection because there

is not a whole lot of development of melody (although as I write that I am listening to the beginning of the third section which is very melodic).

For the most part, Bauder seems more interested in variations on a melodic phrase and the effects of sustained tones or electronic sounds on those variations. I have just one observation on this sort of technique. I have come to realize that I never respond to a piece of my with just my intellect or my heart or my booty but with my whole being. As such, music like this is provocative in that it is hard to maintain a consistent emotional connection with it.

In spite of all that (or maybe because of all that), this is music of endless fascination. I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be moments when you are listening to music that is unlike most anything you have ever heard. Bauder has studied with both Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier. I guess one way I can describe this music is that it is using the materials of Braxton to produce the music of Lucier. But that makes it sound derivative which it simply not true.

Listen again to the samples. If you are more curious try one of the MP3 downloads. But mostly I recommend you go for the whole experience and challenge your own preconceptions.

"