BIG CITY ORCHESTRA
pixies
CD, Dhyana
From the quarter-of-an-hour-long starting track “that old black
magic” to the 15 soundsamples provided at the end of this CD, Big City
Orchestra raises the flag of non-compromise and creative sounddesign on a route that
was explored by minimal music decades ago, but fortunately they manage to
find new ways to move. Their drones, be they noisy or harmonic, always sound
very organic and natural. Unlike a lot of (laptop-)musicians such as OOO or Vicnet, Big City
Orchestra manages to stay within realms of sound that feel warm and born.
This emotionality and warmth, even in the most noisiest parts of this
record, also sets them apart from other great drone-producers such as Cordell Klier, who
is as cold and beautiful as ice, or Black To Comm, whose drones are so thick an big
and invincible that the listener gets stuck completely, and not as
monotonous in its consequence as Kaffe Matthews and far from her academic
avantgardism. (This is not at all to say that one of the artists mentioned
above is better than the others. It doesn’t even mean that the music
produced by these people is better – how could one music ever be better
than another music?. Actually, I am very happy that there are a lot of
artists out there exploring the fringes of sounds and their temporal
arrangements (which is: music) in so many different ways. I should say a
“thank you” from time to time, so here it is: thank you, guys.) Even
though there is a multitude of sounds moving from one direction to another,
most of the time very slowly, but then some things happen at once and life
moves fast, the listener will never feel alone or left without security
within these sounds.
Quite on the contrary, you’ll marvel at the many sounds and dynamics
offered to you. From the field-recordings (or something that sounds like a
street-clutter jagged through various effects) on “dog with two bones”
to the ailing guitar-notes (jagged through overdrive, sustain and
distortion) of “flax” to the horror-noises and rising bass-sound of
“exodus from genesis” there is just so much to discover and fall into.
There are hidden vocal samples at some places, and little harmonies played
by what sounds like clarinettes at others, and at last I have always been a
big fan of slow, pounding beats mixed way back in the clutter of a drone,
like a big factory whose pulse also dictates the lives of the people and the
city around it.
I am as of yet undecided if Big City Orchestra are just one person, or a
small or even a large group of people producing music. One of the most
astonishing aspects of “pixies” is its variety in size of sounds. At
times you might feel you are listening to the works of one single producer
labouring over his computer during the night, at other times you feel in the
middle of a great free improvisation-concert, in which the participating
musicians are so tuned into one another that they are able to flow steadily
(without breaking into the chaotic spasm that made me avoid
free-impro-concerts in the first place) and move from one place to another
as if they were one person, which actually brings us back to the first part
of this sentence. We can break the casuistic circle by asking, if it does
really matter, how many people are behind the name of Big City Orchestra? In
a way, Robbie Williams is the name of one person, but actually he and his
music are a hundred or more people, a real company. What it sounds like, is
what is important. In art the production is never as important as the
product. But somehow I feel I am getting lost in the storm of text,
appropriately during the driving hailstorm and droning guitar-noise of
“terra firma”. So I’ll rig my ropes for now.
