Douglas R. Ewart & Ignaz Schick — Now Is Forever (Zarek)
Schick (l), Ewart (r)
When the Art Ensemble of Chicago arrived in Paris in 1969, their combination of free jazz, boundary-defying composition, sardonic humor and theater caused quite a stir. They and the other African American musicians who joined them were invited to share stages, parties and business endeavors with hippies, underground rockers, political radicals and record labels of varying degrees of sketchiness. One scene that did not rush to embrace them was the electronic music institution, Groupes de recherches musicales (GRM). Sure, there was that 1977 collaboration between Don Cherry and Jean Schwarz, but it took 46 years to make it to a record. One wonders what might have happened if the GRM had opened its doors to the first ambassadors of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). It might have sounded a little like Now Is Forever.
Ignaz Schick is one such wonderer. The German polymath’s own involvement with electronic sound was preceded by a youthful immersion in free jazz, and if you catch him in Berlin, where he now lives, he’s likely to bring an alto saxophone to a gig alongside his turntables and sampler. But Now Is Forever isn’t the product of wondering, but of action. In 2017 Schick took a break from a residency in Los Angeles to fly into Minneapolis for a couple of days, which he spent playing with Douglas Ewart. Ewart is a multi-instrumentalist, poet, sculptor and mask and instrument maker who grew up in Jamaica, then moved to Chicago as a teen, where he fell in with the AACM. He rose from being a student in the association’s school to being its chairman for a spell, and his integration of jazz sonorities, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and ceremonial staging carries on traditions initiated by the Art Ensemble in the 1960s.
While their encounter only lasted two days, there’s nothing rushed about the performances spread across Now Is Forever. Schick layers and ruptures classical piano recordings, orchestral surges, captured mechanical sounds and vinyl crackle into a seething, constantly changing backdrop. Ewart likewise moves between woodwinds, percussion and stern proclamations. His saxophone forays are like lightning rods, drawing and concentrating the powers flowing around him. His recitations direct the energy back outwards, projecting scorn towards phonies and environmental despoilers in general, Trump in particular, and the wasteful plasticity of contemporary living. He doesn’t just condemn, though; “Bamboo Paradise” suggests the titular plant as a sustainable alternative material against a backdrop of East Asian (maybe Vietnamese?) string samples. Spread across two CDs, the album is a journey, sometimes demanding, sometimes edifying, but ultimately asserting the viability of more encounters like this one.
C-drík - Not Your Noise
Die K - - Buttery pop feed and Potential Difference. - kaos
Ignaz Schick - Improvisation Sursprise
Knifeloop - Vision Of Noise
My Silver Booster - Chilling Electronics
Sistemi Audiofobici Burp - Magico Disco Svago
Stories In Colour - Ambient Electronics
Freier Eintritt
Berlin Sound Connective prend la forme d'un "super-band" digne des décennies 60 et 70 puisqu'on trouve en son sein quelques unes des figures les plus proéminentes de la bouillonnante scène berlinoise. Des vétérans : Burkhard Beins et Ignaz Schick, mais également des (plus tant que ça) nouveaux arrivants : Thomas Ankersmit et Clayton Thomas.
Le principe de base est assez simple, encore fallait-il y penser et oser le concrétiser : explorer les contrastes, les parallèles et les transitions entre les sons acoustiques joués et leur transformation électronique ou électro-acoustique. Pour pimenter leurs rencontres, ils invitent à chaque représentation un "ingénieur" en la matière pour ce faire. S'ils étaient accompagnés de Valerio Tricoli sur l'extrait MP3 disponible, ce sera un autre grand sorcier de l'alchimie analogique/digitale qui sera présent à Mulhouse : Jérôme Noetinger.
