barry chabala, michael pisaro black, white, red, green, blue (voyelles)

Barry Chabala’s multitracked realisation of Michael Pisaro’s An Unrhymed Chord (for 25 Acoustic Guitars) on Confront last year was a superb release, with Chabala coaxing tones from an army of overdubbed guitars as he explored preset relationships between the duration and dynamics of sounds. This cassette comes in a simple but attractive letterpress sleeve and features Chabala’s version of another Pisaro score, published by Wandelweiser in 2004.

The piece unfolds through five distinct episodes over an hour. On the other side of tape is Pisaro’s reworking of side A, with the composer adding sampled tape hiss and sine tones, which he uses to re-skew the tonal focus of the original. So, without making a fuss about it, the package embraces conventional scored composition, a highly individual interpretation of said score, and studio manipulation by the original composer – version galore. The use of tape hiss samples on a cassette-only release adds a self-aware reflection on audio formats into the equation.

The slow moving composition is based on a series of sounds in isolation, these apparently discrete events gradually accumulating a feeling of continuity as the piece moves forward. The sounds are varied: on one of the sections Chabala uses untreated guitar; on another he seems to be striking the back of the guitar neck; on other parts he appears to be using effects. The listener’s attention flickers between the decay of each sound and the anticipation of the coming new departure. Pisaro’s version of Chabala’s version thickens the textures at both ends of the frequency spectrum, substituting warmth and density for the sparseness of Chabala’s take. Initially, it seemed a pain to drag my old cassette deck out of storage just to listen to this. Obsolete-tech fetishism has never hooked me in. But it was more than worth it: it’s been looping softly at home ever since.

reviewed by Will Montgomery the wire issue 314
april -2010