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Reviews / Quotes
Stengam
music/film website - www.bagatellen.com
Review from Bagatellen (interesting music/film website - www.bagatellen.com)
In some ways, and not only because they arrived in close proximity to each other, I find myself thinking of Stengam as a companion piece to Matthieu Saladin's fine release on l'Innomable, Intervalles. Both are solo efforts, sure, but more to the point, each exercises great restraint in not using the arsenal at their fingertips to overwhelm the listener with effects, preferring a calmer, more circumspect approach to their material. Fuhler uses ebows and super magnets (and presumably less exotic objects) on his piano's strings hence, I imagine, the title of the disc.
The recording is basically in three parts: two individual works and the six part title suite. North-South, the opening track, immediately (perhaps inevitably) evokes Cage but quickly adds elements that won't be found in Sonatas and Interludes, including one that sounds like Greg Kelley vibrating a thin sheet of metal with his trumpet. Fuhler excites his instrument in a variety of ways, often playing off the more electronic or drone-oriented sounds presumably generated via ebow with rather percussive, flickering ones of unknown origin. Technical details aside, he constructs wonderfully convincing, carefully observed and spacious sound worlds, gently meandering pathways through his piano's interior. As with Saladin, though there are almost always numerous events occurring, there's never any sense of overcrowding, of piling on an effect for the effect's sake. The second piece, Ferrous, mixes low pulses with skittering high ones that seem set into motion by a rapidly spinning object just barely making contact with the stringboard, these two sandwiching a selection of more liquid sounding elements that leak out the sides.
The Stengam suite is more ambitious and has a tougher job of maintaining cohesiveness over the course of some 23 minutes but by and large succeeds. Several of the “movements” (the third and last couple) are stellar enough on their own to obviate any minor qualms. The first of these begins with some deliciously grainy textures before fanning out into a dense array of drones while still retaining a fluttering undercurrent that keeps things tactile and appropriately dirt-smudged. Two delicious, underwater-sounding sections lead to the fantastic, ringing overtones leading into the finale, a layered set of intense waves that flame out into some handcrafted strokes recalling Partch's kithara, before welling once again to draw things to a close.
Excellent, creative work, the best I've heard from Fuhler.
Brian Olewnich
-- Brian Olewnich
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