KEITH ROWE & JOHN TILBURY - enough still not to know
SOFA
Keith Rowe - guitar; John Tilbury - piano
The studio events recorded on the four cds of this box set, were originally made as part of a video installation by artist Norwegian Kjell Bjørgeengen, and in response to Bjørgeengen’s instructions, as cited on the press release for this box set, ’about making a kind of music which musically and conceptually worked with dissolution and unification.’ A suitable instruction, indeed, when placed alongside the influence on the Rowe / Tilbury duet of the later works of Samuel Beckett, and their prevalent ‘lacunae and elisions.’
Keith Rowe and John Tilbury have, of course, worked together for any decades, meeting originally when both were part of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra in the 1960s, and then in the AMM collective in many of its forms until Rowe departed that project in 2004. Since, they have made a number of landmark recordings, and have created a body of work that stands alongside their work with AMM and Cardew as one of the most influential and most vital of achievements in improvised music. Thankfully that process continues. But what also continues is the less easily defined accretion of shared language and instinct that forms between willing partners in improvisation over many years of playing, and which at various times might be described as an ‘approach’ or a ‘style’ in the possessive that can be isolated in and from that continuum. Perhaps this duet has become so at ease with complex concerns, tools and materials such as silence, disclosure, care, accident, reflection, that they can provide for an almost boundless possibility of renewal.
Bjørgeengen states in the booklet that accompanies this set that: ‘There was no pressure for musicality in a traditional sense, a feeling of trajectory or movement, but the possibility to be in the moment. Par the moment with silence, and we get a reminiscence of going in and out of life, from nothing to something and back again.’ This set does not provide any video record of the visuals in the installation by which these aims could be explored, and so we are left solely with the sound elements. More than three hours of sound elements in facts, with some guidance as to the focus of the work on each CD, such as the third CD being largely an exploration of lower frequency sounds.
With its own omissions, ‘enough still not to know’ is a problematic release, but in no sense is it diminished by that fact. The very format of a CD, a limited and truncated digital form, brings its own rules and boundaries that might not be suitable or conducive to the sense of this being a reproduction of an authentic moment in and of the studio. The recordings preserve the ambient noise of the processes of performance and recording. There are many periods of silence and of very low volume events punctuated with more cluttered passages. The sounds and silences themselves are from the complete array of extended techniques, preparations and treatments that Rowe and Tilbury have developed for their instruments over many years. There is a constant sense of the denial of form, of activities that might deposit too strong a sense of immediate structure. Then there are brief moments of incredible familiarity and lucidity, that appear so clear as to be almost laughably proud of their immediacy, and all of it emanating from a space that is never itself fully elucidated. Silence takes many hues and textures in this environment, and seems to expand and contract, perhaps teasing at expectation until that settles for the listener to a more easy and engaged acceptance.
Maybe the great strength of this CD set is its extended form which enables a real sense of all of these elements and events to be effective. Immersive might be an over-used word these days, but as an experience, it is entirely apt for this recording.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
SOFA
Keith Rowe - guitar; John Tilbury - piano
The studio events recorded on the four cds of this box set, were originally made as part of a video installation by artist Norwegian Kjell Bjørgeengen, and in response to Bjørgeengen’s instructions, as cited on the press release for this box set, ’about making a kind of music which musically and conceptually worked with dissolution and unification.’ A suitable instruction, indeed, when placed alongside the influence on the Rowe / Tilbury duet of the later works of Samuel Beckett, and their prevalent ‘lacunae and elisions.’
Keith Rowe and John Tilbury have, of course, worked together for any decades, meeting originally when both were part of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra in the 1960s, and then in the AMM collective in many of its forms until Rowe departed that project in 2004. Since, they have made a number of landmark recordings, and have created a body of work that stands alongside their work with AMM and Cardew as one of the most influential and most vital of achievements in improvised music. Thankfully that process continues. But what also continues is the less easily defined accretion of shared language and instinct that forms between willing partners in improvisation over many years of playing, and which at various times might be described as an ‘approach’ or a ‘style’ in the possessive that can be isolated in and from that continuum. Perhaps this duet has become so at ease with complex concerns, tools and materials such as silence, disclosure, care, accident, reflection, that they can provide for an almost boundless possibility of renewal.
Bjørgeengen states in the booklet that accompanies this set that: ‘There was no pressure for musicality in a traditional sense, a feeling of trajectory or movement, but the possibility to be in the moment. Par the moment with silence, and we get a reminiscence of going in and out of life, from nothing to something and back again.’ This set does not provide any video record of the visuals in the installation by which these aims could be explored, and so we are left solely with the sound elements. More than three hours of sound elements in facts, with some guidance as to the focus of the work on each CD, such as the third CD being largely an exploration of lower frequency sounds.
With its own omissions, ‘enough still not to know’ is a problematic release, but in no sense is it diminished by that fact. The very format of a CD, a limited and truncated digital form, brings its own rules and boundaries that might not be suitable or conducive to the sense of this being a reproduction of an authentic moment in and of the studio. The recordings preserve the ambient noise of the processes of performance and recording. There are many periods of silence and of very low volume events punctuated with more cluttered passages. The sounds and silences themselves are from the complete array of extended techniques, preparations and treatments that Rowe and Tilbury have developed for their instruments over many years. There is a constant sense of the denial of form, of activities that might deposit too strong a sense of immediate structure. Then there are brief moments of incredible familiarity and lucidity, that appear so clear as to be almost laughably proud of their immediacy, and all of it emanating from a space that is never itself fully elucidated. Silence takes many hues and textures in this environment, and seems to expand and contract, perhaps teasing at expectation until that settles for the listener to a more easy and engaged acceptance.
Maybe the great strength of this CD set is its extended form which enables a real sense of all of these elements and events to be effective. Immersive might be an over-used word these days, but as an experience, it is entirely apt for this recording.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
