michael t. bullock and andrew lafkas ceremonies to breathe upon

Sorry about last night’s post, a bit rubbish. Today wasn’t a whole lot better. I ended up working late when I didn’t think I would be and came home pretty barbwired tonight. Still, I am now off tomorrow to recharge the batteries a little. So I have been able to spend some time with Michael T. Bullock and Andrew Lafkas’ excellent Ceremonies to breathe again CD which was released recently on the generally very reliable windsmeasure label. Such a lovely CD.

I was previously only partly familiar with Bullock and Lafkas’ music, having heard both of these East Coast of the USA based (I think?) contrabass players in larger group recordings, but as far as I can remember not in a small group like this before. Thinking hard about it, I’m not sure I own a CD of a contrabass duo at all. Maybe I do and can’t recall it right now, but certainly nothing springs to mind. The way these two musicians choose to collaborate here, together with the wonderful resonance of the venue in which the music was made combine wonderfully to make this a completely absorbing, strangely relaxing record. The CD captures a live concert performance from March 2008 in the Troy district of New York that was held inside a large round 19th Century building known locally as The Gasholder. It is hard not to write several paragraphs about the sound of the recording space here, such is the extraordinary way the room lifts each bowed bass sound and throws it high in the air to die away slower than it normally would. The recording has been beautifully made and subsequently mastered (no credits are given for either job, but well done whoever you are) and perhaps it is a pertinent question to ask if I would be so enthralled with this music if it had been performed and recorded in a dry room in the back of a club somewhere, but actually the playing itself here is really rather great, the additional natural reverb just brings everything on a level further.

Bullock and Lafkas mostly bow their instruments, so we primarily hear long slow sweeps of sound that have a wonderfully soft quality to them, each note nicely rounded with very little abrasive screech audible. there are also little knocks, and a few strums and pokes at the strings, but these also become smoothed out and echoed around the huge space. Generally speaking the playing is delicately understated, quietly done with plenty of space in the music. Its hard to tell one bass from the other much of the time, so I’ve no idea who is doing what, but as both players mostly work in a similar area, crossing tones and little percussive throbs over each other none of this matters anyway. For the second review on the run I can’ think of anything to compare this music to. It has a gentle, restful feel to it for some of the time, though there are occasions such as around the thirty-six minute mark when the two basses flow together into a more menacing cloud of deep tones that really sets the hairs on the back of my neck on end. The playing is wonderfully controlled, really very subtle and restrained, reminding me for some odd reason of floaty fresh cotton sheets laid lightly on a bed for the first time, the interaction between the layers gentle, airy and calm, but with an underlying tension throughout. And then there’s the sound of the room when the playing stops….

I am naturally drawn to negative space in music, and particularly when that space is in fact charged with atmosphere and texture. The first time the two basses leave a significant gap in the music, at around the six minute mark, the sound of the city floods quietly in, its sound somehow altered in a similar way to the music, so no one event can be made out, just a blurred sensation of city hum, like the sound of static in the gaps between the music on old vinyl records. The city is always there of course, but when the basses drop away it feels like the other sounds in the room take their opportunity to speak out.

This is a wonderful forty-three minutes of very beautiful improvised music, in fact some of the most gorgeous I’ve heard in a while. The disc, a limited run of only 300 copies comes wrapped in a lovely sleeve that deserves its own mention. Like all of the windsmeasure releases the art is designed and then letterpress printed by Ben Owen. Letterpress work is one thing I have always wanted to do so I am insanely jealous. Great work all round.

reviewed by Richard Pinnell in the watchful ear
06-16-2010