Review Summary: Post-Cage music and improvisation in the expanded field
It seems to me that the current ethos in improvisation - mind you, in a certain part of improvised music that is seemingly dominated by the Erstwhile roster - is blurring consciously the line between music that is improvised or composed (as you know by now, some composers still practice open, indeterminate forms of composition) and environmental sounds that are accidental or the conscious result of the musician(s)' desire to record them - to the point that the (untrained?) ear, left on its own, may perceive music in what may actually be a "random" noise and consider part of the field recording sounds that may actually come from the musician(s).
Cage would be proud - and some of the followers of the EAI scene (or what is still being called as such) may notice with some disappointment that certain improvisers have started rejecting actual interplay, by overlaying, pasting together - in the space of an album, of course - what are in fact solo improvisations. Luciano Maggiore & Enrico Malatesta's talabalacco is one such example, but the approach seems to shine more on cru.
Richard Pinnell suggests that Ernesto Rodrigues, being the second to record himself, has listened to Ferran Fages and places his sounds in response to the first improvisation. Therefore, no accidental fooling around. In spite of what the title might suggest, cru is - unless if you are new to this kind of music - definitely not "crude", far from raw. Some of what you and I can hear here may also be heard in just about any urban environment, but, listening to this here and now, you can notice the beauty in what otherwise comes and goes for various purposes. This kind of spirit that this kind of music has brought - thanks to Cage, mind you - may be synthesized in this little epiphanic story (just a few days after I had first listened - or tried to listen - to the uncompromising Weather Sky by Rowe and Nakamura):
Part of my nearly daily routine is going to the supermarket in the area closest to my home (my city is renowned for its number of supermarkets and hypermarkets per capita...) and grabbing some pastry product from there, as they are cheaper than in the actual pastries from the very same area. I often eat right away, at the exit, but sometimes I cross hastily the one-way street and sit on one of the free benches in front of a long block of flats (Ceausescu-era, of course). From the block next to me I could hear the frequency of a vacuum cleaner. (I knew it was a vacuum cleaner several minutes after, when it was turned off.)
Music to my ears as it captured perfectly the spirit of the landscape: above the supermarket across the street, also seconded by rows of blocks of flats, the sky did not betray the sun, just the effects of the sunset - slowly moving yellow-dusty-golden clouds between which vapor trails (there's an airport not very far from the city) were also moving, slightly faster. For a while, before the disappearance of that vacuum cleaner sound, no traffic on this street, just the oceanic sound of very distant traffic. Everything was in its place.
