michael t. bullock and andrew lafkas ceremonies to breathe upon

out of site, out of time: between personal and architectural history in improvisation

The phrase '‘in the moment'’ has been called upon countless times to describe performative sound practices that exist in the absence of a score or explicit plan. But to mobilize those words as an explanation of the engagement between Michael Bullock and Andrew Lafkas on offer here would be not only facile, but also a little myopic. The immediacy and fluency of choices in this recording is indeed ‘'in the moment,’' but this is a moment of the type experienced by the playhead of a cassette deck: a distinct '‘now’' presented for audition - time in the context of meters upon meters of tape already past, and miles of tape still to come. There is something of the physicality of tape at work here as well, the unshaking steadiness with which the motor drives the tape forward. Yet, for all that mechanical steadiness, the material develops in a room-saturated ebb and flow that is free from the strictures of clock time.

This un-edited recording, re-presenting a live performance which took place in March of 2008, provokes recognition of the dearth of language available for the description of what the moment represents for listening. This is not spontaneous music, and neither is it a precious or carefully wrought soundscape. This work is the constructed result of a complex set of contingencies, engaging an exploration of the nexus of space and sound. Lafkas and Bullock are in the company of a handful of contrabass players who have spent their lives engaging their instrument as site - developing strategies both traditional and discovered that operate with an awareness of the bass-in-history and the bass-as-object. An un-filtered, meta-idiomatic expertise of the contrabass as vehicle for improvisation lives inside these performers; where they meet, the moment functions not only as an acoustical microscope but a temporal telescope.

The space in which they are performing is a 19th century circular behemoth in Troy, New York referred to by its residents as The Gasholder. A structure of a type not unlike those detailed by the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, this particular Gasholder has moved on from feeding the hungry gas-lamps intended to light the way to its current manifestation as a storage garage for paint trucks - and an occasional host to experimental sound events. With a reverberation lasting nearly seventeen seconds and a strong slapback echo, the temptation to exploit the features of the gasholder’s acoustic architecture has overcome much of the music made in this special place.

This duo has resisted these temptations by listening beyond the superficial exploitation of the moment to unearth an acoustic profile not ruled by surface characteristics. The deep acoustics of this space are dark; the reverberation is not in the service of a musician: rather, it becomes a true support on which the sound might be palpably and tangibly moulded. In this recording, Bullock and Lafkas see each moment before it arrives, and then the space holds on to them for review and assessment. Perhaps the only listening that is ‘'in the moment'’ is the relentless now that pours past the listener as the object of hearing, and this beautiful document is the memory that keeps it.

Seth Cluett, 2010