HIGH ALPINE HUT NETWORK - 727/16
Ansible Editions CD 001
Jason Bhattacharya: drums; Robin Hatch: keyboards; Tobin Hopwood: electric guitar; Benjamin Pullia: synthesizer; Lauren Runions: percussion; Joseph Shabason: tenor saxophone; Christopher Shannon: electric bass; Nathan Vanderwielen: synthesizer
Recorded at the Oscillitarium, Toronto, Canada
Pullia and Shannon initiated this project, fully intending to explore house music in some universal, intangible form. Then Bhattacharya arrived on the scene and generated a more open-ended approach. Then the Miles Davis connection appears on scene: echoes of guitar, electric piano and sax debris appear haphazardly, even sounds like Miles’s trumpet-sound, though there’s not a horn in sight. That’s ‘727’. Then there is ‘16’, just as audacious, guitars and drums providing the force behind the throb. The prognosis is that the project has evolved. It has grown into a cooperative group of musicians who are all keen to reform sonic opportunities to suit their own discrete paths.
The ‘album’ is just about twenty minutes in all, encompassing a range of styles. ‘16’ is the harsher track. Electric guitar and electric bass lay down a hard-edged line shored up by piano and percussion and leading to a turbulent, passionate wrap from Shabason’s tenor saxophone.
The music never ceases its frantic, headlong motion and its pace is relentless. Yet still it manages to finish in a tranquil and quiet moment of composure. That apart, it’s a synonym for egotistical: it’s arrogant, boastful, conceited, pompous, proud, self-centred and smug. Compared with either of the other two ‘first releases’ of sonic experiments from Ansible, 727/16 certainly is the lesser.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Ansible Editions CD 001
Jason Bhattacharya: drums; Robin Hatch: keyboards; Tobin Hopwood: electric guitar; Benjamin Pullia: synthesizer; Lauren Runions: percussion; Joseph Shabason: tenor saxophone; Christopher Shannon: electric bass; Nathan Vanderwielen: synthesizer
Recorded at the Oscillitarium, Toronto, Canada
Pullia and Shannon initiated this project, fully intending to explore house music in some universal, intangible form. Then Bhattacharya arrived on the scene and generated a more open-ended approach. Then the Miles Davis connection appears on scene: echoes of guitar, electric piano and sax debris appear haphazardly, even sounds like Miles’s trumpet-sound, though there’s not a horn in sight. That’s ‘727’. Then there is ‘16’, just as audacious, guitars and drums providing the force behind the throb. The prognosis is that the project has evolved. It has grown into a cooperative group of musicians who are all keen to reform sonic opportunities to suit their own discrete paths.
The ‘album’ is just about twenty minutes in all, encompassing a range of styles. ‘16’ is the harsher track. Electric guitar and electric bass lay down a hard-edged line shored up by piano and percussion and leading to a turbulent, passionate wrap from Shabason’s tenor saxophone.
The music never ceases its frantic, headlong motion and its pace is relentless. Yet still it manages to finish in a tranquil and quiet moment of composure. That apart, it’s a synonym for egotistical: it’s arrogant, boastful, conceited, pompous, proud, self-centred and smug. Compared with either of the other two ‘first releases’ of sonic experiments from Ansible, 727/16 certainly is the lesser.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
