TONY

itinierances

CD/download, autres directions

Music concrete has always been a tough cookie for me and Tony’s recording here is as hard to swallow. I am not sure of the exact reason, it might just be that in spite of all the discernible sounds and clear structures, the music itself sits as heavy as a big brickwall and it seems impossible to get through. Of course, you could walk around and look at it from the other side, but usually they just look the same and just as incomprehensible as from where you were before. But to know what’s inside takes a lot of hard work and research and still you might bite out a tooth or two. In other words, I can hear the various keyboard-sounds and the field recordings and the noise sounds mixed in, but what can I read into it or gather from it remains as unclassifiable and mysterious as the grimace of an old Chinese man. Moreover, the tracks seem to mark time a lot. Glissandis of harp-like synthie-sounds cover each other without changing chords and no discernible harmony seems to arise. Soft industrial noises wash over each other with unchanging rhythm and slowly dissolve or don’t. More strange sounds that remind me of how fluegelhorns were used in late Twenties surreal operas. The music seems to try to keep away as much as possible from traditional concepts such as harmony, beauty or any other aesthetic terminology. Is a sentence like “this music just is” a feasible conclusion? Not in this fanzine.

Now, why do I break my review-policy of only writing about music I like? Actually, I didn’t. While trying to get through this music, I had a hard time of changing my viewpoints, trying to read it in various directions, listen to it more carefully (and in instances even less carefully, thinking maybe it’d work different when only regarded from a distance and with less concentration) or trying to redefine my own listening habits and ever so on. Even though that didn’t help a lot, not to say it remained futile, the challenge was a big but enjoyable one. And even though I failed, because I really wasn’t able to form a proper opinion on “itinerances” that I’d want to share with you readers out there, the way to failure has taught me a few things. Failure isn’t a bad thing in itself. It is only the fact that the winner is much heralded in our society that the loser feels bad, but losing is an important experience and one I have had quite a lot. A few weeks ago we found the dry remains of a bush on a trash heap near our house and because it still showed some green leaves here and there, we took it home, cut it down and planted it in our garden. This week it flowered beautifully and I take that as a thank you.

Maybe it all boils down to Tony being a sound designer and young father and interested in sounds as such more than in music or song or a somesuch oldfashioned notion and I am trying to read something into something else that isn’t there. But my own experience with this little record is real and I don’t think I’ll soon forget it as the record I wasn’t able to do a proper review on.