Tanja Feichtmair/ Damon Smith/ Gino Robair – The Shrilling of Frogs (Balance Point Acoustics)
Recordings are by their very nature an imperfect medium for historical measure. As fixed points in time they can only illustrate development by comparison. Connections and inferences made by these means are bound to leave out information and so conclusions must be qualified. The Shrilling of Frogs is one such connective dot, rescued and refurbished from bassist Damon Smith’s tape cache in a fortuitous moment when it literally in his words, “fell out of a box.”
It’s evocative of time in his career when he was deeply embedded in the improvised music community of Oakland, California. Percussionist Gino Robair was a regular confrere. Austrian reedist Tanja Feichtmair was presumably visiting. The trio booked some studio time and improvised thirteen pieces of music. English translations from the work of Austrian author Ingeborg Bachman served as track titles. Weasel Walter took a crack at mastering the session and improved on the already impressive original acoustics that retain every tweak, torque and twist alongside even the quietest creak or murmur.
Much of the music embodies a three-way conversation. Smith and Robair overlap in their exploitation of bowed surfaces. Bass strings vibrate from applied bow while cymbal edges sing with application scraped and rubbed objects. Feichtmair often gets remarkably close to these sonorities by altering her embouchure and constricting exhalation of breath. Tones and drones of varying lengths layer and elide to create undulating waves of striated sound. Similarities to European Free Improvisation past and then-present are arguable, but the trio works studiously within their own cul de sac without feeling derivative or repetitive.
Smith is careful to note the age and circumstances of the recording, but doesn’t attach any other firm ascriptions other than to bemusedly reflect that it’s rare to find such an aurally-immaculate artifact. That summation ends up an insightful analogue to the music, which is indicative of a specific place and time, but not necessarily representative of anything beyond that specificity. Taken on those refreshingly open-ended terms, it’s an hour-exactly, well spent.
