Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Big Game
A challenge perhaps and the title is the clue as it references Steve Reich's famous Music for 18 Musicians.
In 2022 contemporary Dutch composer Jameszoo (Mitchel van Dinther) released the album Blind (which came with tarot deck and a short film), mostly improvised music which used vintage synthesizers alongside disklavier (a motorised piano) and which also used other pieces of music recorded separately by other musicians which would become part of the jazz-cum-classical tapestry.
It's a strange trip. (you can hear it bandcamp here)
Music for 17 Musicians is mostly quite different although van Dinther did deploy a similar kind of strategy and drew from Blind and his previous electronic works in the company of the Schönberg ensemble and percussion group Hiiit.
It's not quite as bizarre as that suggests, although it sounds like Music for Bat Caves is actually a field recording in a cave for 17 minutes (very little happens, unless you are devout Cagean) before askew piano part interferes in broken passages.
Because of the nature of the music and the performances you might sometimes think you are listening to the Art Ensemble of Chicago in a collision with the World Saxophone Quartet (Bugatti), at other times some minimalist group.
And sometimes all of them in the same piece.
These art artists who, in the deathless words of Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith, is being selective about its audience.
We've put it under Jazz at Elsewhere but you might put it somewhere else.
It's good, in parts.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here
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